The Chinese Orange Mystery

“The spears were stuck through the victim’s clothes from shoes to head. They are solid wood; they made the body almost like an animal’s corpse strung on stout poles. They stiffened the body; they produced, in a way, artificial rigor mortis. A dead man falling from an upright position would crumple in sections to land in a shapeless heap. This dead man, with the spears to stiffen his limp corpse into one piece, would fall in one piece, rigidly. But the right-hand bookcase had been moved back to leave space on the right of the door. Then the dead man was intended to fall before the door, at least part of him coming to rest in that cleared space. And he was intended to fall parallel with the door, otherwise there would have been no necessity for clearing a space to the side of the door. What was the left-hand bookcase moved for? Why that angle, patently deliberately made? I saw then that if the dead man had been set on his feet in that angle he would, if something occurred to move his body, have had to fall roughly toward that cleared space on the other side of the doorway!

“But why should the murderer want him to fall precisely that way, let alone fall at all?” Ellery drew a long breath. “And, impossible as it seemed, the only logical answer I could give to that question was: The murderer, who had removed the body from another part of the room to the door, wanted the dead man to do something to that door in falling . . . . The rest was a matter of concentration and experiment. The only thing that can be done to a door which might conceivably be of importance to a criminal would be to lock it; in this case, to bolt it. But why, for heaven’s sake, make a dead man bolt the door when the murderer himself could have bolted it from this room and made his escape by the other door, that one leading to the corridor from this room?”

The cracked voice said: “I¯never¯thought¯”

Ellery said deliberately: “The only possible answer was that the murderer couldn’t or wouldn’t leave this room by that corridor door. The murderer wanted to leave this room by way of the door to the office. And he wanted everyone to believe that he had left by the corridor door, that the office door had been bolted all the time, that whoever was in the office and had not appeared in the corridor outside the office therefore could not apparently have been the criminal!”

James Osborne covered his face with his hands and said: “Yes, I did it. I murdered him.”

* * *

“You see,” said Ellery a moment later, regarding the cowering man with pitying eyes as the others, transfixed by horror, stared at Osborne, “the problem resolved itself simply into a logical analysis. The use of the spears and the shifting of the bookcases and the moved body of the dead missionary proved that the murderer must have left the anteroom after the crime by the office door. The murderer, therefore, was in the office directly after the murder. But, by his own admission, Osborne was the only constant tenant of that office during the murder-period! The visitors¯Macgowan, Miss Sewell, Miss Temple, Miss Diversey¯were eliminated because had one of them been the murderer he or she could have left the scene of the crime by the corridor door from this room and therefore could have bolted the office door from the inside of this room without having to resort to the mechanical method Osborne used. Or, to put it another way, since any one who could have left this room by the corridor door could have bolted the office door without resorting to the mechanical method, then any one who could have used the corridor door, instead of being suspect for the crime, as we had assumed all along, became actually innocent.

“The only one who could not use the corridor door of the anteroom without being seen by Mrs. Shane as he returned to the office was Osborne. You, Osborne, were therefore the only possible suspect, the only one for whom the door trick and the spears were necessary, and the only one who benefited from the creation of the illusion that the criminal had to leave the murder-room via the corridor door. Why didn’t you leave well enough alone¯leave that office door unbolted?”

“Because,” choked Osborne, “then I knew 1 would be the first one suspected. But if it was bolted from the other side, they’d¯you’d never suspect me. Even now I can’t see how¯”