The Chinese Orange Mystery

“So here I had the kernel of the entire process of inversion. For to what backwards phenomenon¯meant to be obscured, buried among the irrelevant backwardnesses¯did the necktie-clue point? And then it struck me like a physical blow that a Catholic or Episcopalian man-of-God wears his collar turned around. Backwardsl”

There was a stifling silence. Inspector Queen, at the corridor door, did not stir. He had his eyes fixed oddly upon the door opposite him, the door to the office, which stood shut.

“So I had finally smelled out the backwards significance of the crime,” sighed Ellery. “Everything had been turned backwards by the murderer to conceal the fact that his victim was a priest, to conceal the fact that his victim wore no necktie and wore a turned-around collar.”

They erupted all at once, springing into life as if some one had given a signal. But it was Miss Temple’s soft voice which somehow caught on. “There must be something wrong, Mr. Queen. It was an ordinary collar, wasn’t it? Couldn’t the murderer have merely turned the collar around on the dead man’s neck into the usual lay position?”

“Excellent objection,” smiled Ellery. “Naturally that occurred to me, as it certainly occurred to the murderer. I should point out, incidentally, that the cravatless victim must have been a great shock to the murderer. For it is true that no one in this case, including the murderer himself, had ever actually seen that stout little man before he emerged quietly from the elevator on this floor. Muffled up to the chin in the scarf, he was killed before the murderer realized that he was a priest . . . . But to reply to your question. If the murderer had turned the collar around¯that is, turned it into the lay position¯it would have stood out like a sore thumb. And the missing tie would have only called further attention to the one thing about the victim the murderer wanted to conceal.”

“But why the devil,” objected Macgowan, “didn’t this murderer solve the whole problem by getting a tie somewhere and putting it on the dead man’s neck?”

“Why indeed?” said Ellery, his eyes gleaming. “And that question, too, occurred to me. In fact, it was one of the most important indications in the whole logical structure! I shan’t answer it fully now, but you’ll see later why the murderer couldn’t get a necktie. Of course he couldn’t use his own¯” Ellery smiled maliciously, “if he were a man, since he had to meet other people; and if he, so to speak, were a woman he naturally, also so to speak, couldn’t provide one from his own person. But most important, he couldn’t get out of the anteroom, as I’ll show you later. At any rate, take my word for it at this point that his best course was to leave the collar as it was¯turned around¯and then as a blind to turn everything else on the body and in the room around, thereby concealing the significance of the inverted collar and the lack of a necktie and thereby leading the police astray.” Ellery paused, and continued thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, at this point in my deductions it was evident that we were dealing with a person of great imagination, even brilliance, and also with a large cranial capacity and a strictly methodical temperament. It took genius of a sort to conceive the idea of inverting all the clothes; and it took brain-power and logic to foresee that to turn only the clothes about was not sufficient, since the very strangeness of the appearance of the clothes would call dangerous attention to them. So he turned the furniture and everything else movable around as well, diverting attention from the clothes and therefore from the collar¯the whole thing a perfectly inspired logical chain of reasoning. And it very nearly worked.”

“But even so, even if you knew the victim was a priest¯” began Donald.

“Where did it get me?” Ellery grimaced. “It’s true that merely knowing the victim was a priest, while it narrowed the field of search, was hardly vital. But then there was the business of the valise.”

“Valise?”

“Yes. I didn’t visualize baggage myself; Inspector Queen did, to his eternal credit. But the murderer knew all along what he was up against. When he emptied the priest’s pockets he found the baggage-check, bearing the inscription of the Hotel Chancellor itself. Since his main objective was to prevent identification of the victim, it was apparent that he had to get hold of the luggage held by the Chancellor checkroom to prevent its falling into the hands of the police. Yet he was afraid. The Chancellor was under close surveillance. He dilly-dallied, apprehensive, timid, worried, until it was too late. Then he conceived the scheme of gaining possession of the valise by way of the falsely signed note, the five-dollar bill, and the instructions to the Postal Telegraph office. As it happened, we caught the trail instantly; he was watching and saw the game was spoiled, made no effort to claim the bag in Grand Central, and the bag fell into our hands.