“But only,” chuckled the Judge, “up to a certain point. Where did you go from there?”
“Well,” said Ellery gloomily, “when I knew the criminal wasn’t in the house during the immediate period of the murder it was child’s play. Every one who had been in or about the house on the night of the murder had to be dismissed as the possible murderer. That eliminated Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey, Mrs. Constable, Cecilia Munn and her precious husband, Cort, Tiller, Pitts, Jorum — the whole kit and boodle of ’em with the exception of Rosa Godfrey, Kummer, and Kidd.”
“But how did you arrive at Kummer specifically? Or did you select him as the likeliest possibility? Actually, you had no reason to suspect he wasn’t dead, you know.”
“Peace,” intoned Ellery. “It was demonstrable. For what were the characteristics of the criminal — deducible from the phenomena of his crime? They were six in number, and I listed them with care.
“One: He knew Marco and the Marco relationships intimately. Because he knew enough about the supposedly secret connection between Marco and Rosa to frame Marco with the false appointment, ostensibly made by Rosa, by way of the fake note.
“Two: He knew that Mrs. Godfrey came down early every morning to the beach for a swim. Had he not known this, he would have made his escape by the way he had come — over the beach to the water in the Cove and out to sea, leaving footprints. For the incoming tide in the late morning would have washed away the prints and left no trace. The fact that he did not choose that route tends to show he foresaw Mrs. Godfrey’s appearance before the tide would erase the prints; consequently that he knew she would come.
“Three: He knew the locale so well that he was acquainted with the times of the tides in the Cove.
“Four: He was an excellent swimmer. Since he came from the sea originally, he must have come from a boat anchored offshore — not too close so that it wouldn’t attract attention. But if he came from a boat, then he must have returned to the boat after the crime. He felt compelled, however, to escape by the highway route, as I’ve shown—”
“Wait—”
“Let me go on. To escape by the highway route he needed clothes, since he had no bathing-suit or robe; Stebbins’s place is directly opposite the exit from the Cape — the only spot where he could emerge from the estate by land — and he could take no chance of being seen coming out of that brightly illuminated exit in the nude. So he walked down the highway clothed in Marco’s duds, to one of the public beaches. Each beach is a mile or so from the Cove, as we noticed. What did he do? He undressed on the public beach — deserted at more than one-thirty in the morning — bundled up the clothes (he wouldn’t have risked leaving them there) and swam with the clothes the minimum of one mile back to the boat. Therefore, I say, logic indicated that the murderer was an excellent swimmer.”
“There are loopholes,” pointed out the Judge as Ellery paused for breath. “You say that if he came from a boat he must have returned to the boat. Not necessarily—”
“Most necessarily,” retorted Ellery. “He came naked in the first place, didn’t he? Did he expect to make an escape by land — in the nude? No, he expected to swim back to his boat. If he had planned to, with his getaway means of transportation waiting for him, then he did. But to go on.
“Five: Physically he must have been built like Marco. Why? In order to have been able to wear Marco’s clothes well enough so that had Stebbins seen him or had he met some one on the road during his march to the public beach there would have been nothing incongruous in the fit of the clothing to attract attention to him and probably get him into instant trouble, let alone leaving an indelible impress on a possible witness’s memory. A big man, then — certainly about the general build of Marco.
“And six: The criminal had had previous access to the Godfrey house. That was most important.”
“You mean the note?”
“Of course. He used the Godfrey typewriter in writing the faked note. But the typewriter had never left the house. Consequently the typist must necessarily have visited the house or been a member of the household to have been able to use the machine.”
Ellery slowed down for a red light. “Well,” he sighed, “there I was. Rosa Godfrey, even supposing that we doubted the genuineness of her story about having been tied up in Waring’s shack all night — could she have been the criminal after all? Impossible. She doesn’t swim. She can’t type. And while she might have masqueraded in Marco’s clothes — theoretically — she would certainly have taken his hat to conceal her woman’s hair. But Marco’s hat was not taken. Out on at least three counts, then.
“Kidd? Impossible for the reason that, from the descriptions provided, he was a giant of a man, so extraordinary in size that he could never have got into Marco’s clothes at all. And shoes — do you remember Rosa’s horrified description of the man’s enormous feet? No, no, not Kidd.
“There were,” continued Ellery with a tired, if reminiscent, smile, “certain whimsical possibilities. Constable, for instance — the unfortunate Laura’s invalid husband. But even he could be eliminated on a logical basis. He had never met the Godfreys and so couldn’t have known of Mrs. Godfrey’s natatorial habits; he had never been in the Godfrey house and so couldn’t have typed the ‘Rosa’ note.
“And Waring. The man who owns the cottage and cruiser. Why not he? Well, because he was, from Rosa’s description, a very tiny man; and he had never been — on your own testimony, my dear Solon, within the Godfrey house.
“Only Kummer was left. I didn’t know he was dead and had to consider him. I was startled to find that he satisfied all six conditions. He had intimated to Rosa that he knew about her and Marco. He certainly knew that his sister Stella went for a dip every morning; in fact, she told us he often accompanied her! He was a sportsman — loved the Cape, went sailing; undoubtedly he must have known about the tides. Swim? Very well indeed, according to his sister. Physical ability to wear Marco’s clothes? Oh, yes; he was of a size with the dead man, according to Rosa. And last, he certainly had access to the Godfrey typewriter, since he was a permanent resident in the house. So Kummer, the only one satisfying all these conditions, and moreover having been the only one on the sea (with the exception of Kidd) during the night of the murder, must have been the criminal. And there I was.”
“I suppose,” remarked the Judge after an interval of silence, “it’s really no feat to reconstruct what must have happened — after you’ve arrived at Kummer as the one and only possible criminal.”
Ellery depressed the accelerator viciously, and they whizzed by a caterpillar truck. “Of course. It was plain as a pikestaff. If Kummer was the criminal, then it was evident that the whole incident of the kidnaping had been a plant, pure and simple. A plant of Kummer’s to get himself out of the way under sympathetic circumstances, to make it look as if he was not only emotionally but physically an impossibility as the criminal. Very clever — much too clever.