The Roman Hat Mystery

“Let me get back to Ellery again — my favorite subject,” continued the Inspector, with one of his recurrent dry chuckles. “Aside from these deductions about the hat — as a matter of fact, before the deductions were completely worked out — Ellery got his first indication of which way the wind blew during the meeting at the Ives-Pope house. It was clear that Field had not accosted Frances Ives-Pope in the alleyway between acts with merely flirtatious intentions. It seemed to Ellery that some connection existed between the two widely separated individuals. Now, this does not mean that Frances had to be aware of the connection. She was positive that she had never heard of or seen Field before. We had no reason to doubt her and every reason to believe her. That possible connection might have been Stephen Barry, provided Stephen Barry and Field knew each other without Frances’ knowledge. If, for example, Field had an appointment at the theatre Monday night with the actor and suddenly saw Frances, it was possible that in his half-drunken mood he would venture to approach her, especially since the subject he and Barry had in common concerned her so deeply. As for recognizing her — thousands of people who read the daily papers know every line of her features — she is a much-photographed young society lady. Field certainly would have acquainted himself with her description and appearance out of sheer thoroughness of business method... But to return to the triangle connection — Field, Frances, Barry — which I will go into detail later. You realize that no one else in the cast except Barry, who was engaged to Frances and had been publicly announced as her fiancé, with pictures and all the rest of the journalistic business, could have satisfied so well the question: Why did Field accost Frances?

“The other disturbing factor concerning Frances — the discovery of her bag in Field’s clothes — was plausibly explained by her dropping it in the natural excitement of the moment when the drunken lawyer approached her. This was later confirmed by Jess Lynch’s testimony to the effect that he saw Field pick up Frances’ bag. Poor girl — I feel sorry for her.” The Inspector sighed.

“To get back to the hat — you’ll notice we always return to that blasted top piece,” resumed Queen, after a pause. “I never knew of a case in which a single factor so dominated every aspect of the investigation... Now mark this: Of the entire cast Barry was the only one who left the Roman Theatre Monday night dressed in evening clothes and tophat. As Ellery watched at the main door Monday night while the people were filing out, his mind characteristically registered the fact that the entire cast, except Barry, left the theatre wearing street clothes; in fact, he even mentioned this to Sampson and me in Panzer’s office later, although at the time neither of us realized its full significance... Barry was therefore the only member of the cast who could have taken away Field’s tophat. Think this over a moment and you will see that, in view of Ellery’s hat deductions, we could now pin the guilt to Barry’s shoulders beyond the shadow of a doubt.

“Our next step was to witness the play, which we did the evening of the day on which Ellery made the vital deductions — Thursday. You can see why. We wanted to confirm our conclusion by seeing whether Barry had the time during the second act to commit the murder. And, amazingly enough, of all the members of the cast, Barry was the only one who did have the time. He was absent from the stage from 9:20 — he opened the business of the act and left almost at once — until 9:50, when he returned to the stage to remain there until the act ended. This was incontrovertible — part of a fixed and unchanging time schedule. Every other player was either on the stage all the time or else went on and off at extremely short intervals. This means that last Thursday night, more than five days ago — and the whole case took only nine days to consummate — we had solved our mystery. But solving the mystery of the murderer’s identity was a far cry from bringing him to justice. You’ll see why in a moment.”

“The fact that the murderer could not enter until 9:30 or thereabouts explains why the torn edges of LL32 Left and LL30 Left did not coincide. It was necessary for Field and Barry, you see, to come in at different times. Field could not very well enter with Barry or even at a noticeably later hour — the matter of secrecy was too important to Barry, and Field understood, or thought he did, how necessary it was for him to play the secret game.”