The Dutch Shoe Mystery

“I want to go on record,” said Ellery a short time later, when Minchen was seated and the Inspector had waived his right to take the floor, “with the blanket-statement that, in all the years in which I’ve taken a more or less active interest in my father’s cases, I’ve never encountered a more thoroughly planned crime than the murder of Abigail Doorn.

“It’s a little difficult to know where to begin... I suppose the same unbelieving thought has crossed all your minds — how it was possible for Lucille Price, whose presence in the Anteroom was attested by a number of reliable witnesses — Dr. Byers, Grace Obermann the nurse, and the doubtful gentleman known as ‘Big Mike’ — witnesses who at the same time vouched for the presence of Dr. Janney’s impersonator — I say, how it was possible for Lucille Price to have been two distinct personalities at apparently the identical moment.”

There was a vigorous nodding of heads.

“That she was, you now know,” continued Ellery; “how she accomplished this spiritistic feat I’ll tell you by analysis.

“Consider the amazing situation. Lucille Price was Lucille Price, the trained nurse, dutifully watching over Abby Doorn’s unconscious body in the Anteroom. Yet she was also the seemingly masculine figure of Dr. Janney’s impersonator in the same period. Unimpeachable witnesses swore that two people occupied the Anteroom (I mean omitting Mrs. Doorn) — a nurse and a doctor. The nurse was heard talking. The doctor was seen going in and coming out. How could any one dream that both nurse and doctor were one, that Lucille Price’s original story concerning herself as the nurse, and the impostor as the doctor, was anything but the absolute truth? Now that it’s all over, and we know what actually happened, we can put our finger on the significant feature which makes a seemingly impossible series of circumstances not only possible but plausible — that is, that while the nurse was heard she was not seen; and that while the impostor was seen, he was not heard.”

Ellery sipped at a glass of water. “But this is beginning the wrong way. Before telling you how Lucille Price accomplished this apparent miracle of duality, let me go back to the inception of the case and describe the deductive steps by which we finally arrived at that blissful state in which vincit omnia veritas.

“When the clothing of the impostor was found on the floor of the telephone booth the face-gag, gown and surgical cap proved unproductive of clews. They were ordinary samples of such wear, without interesting characteristics.

“But three items — the trousers and the two shoes — were rather startlingly illuminating.

“Let’s dissect — if I may use a laboratory word — the shoes. On one of them a scrap of adhesive had been wrapped about a torn shoelace. What did this mean? We went to work.

“In the first place, it was patent after a little thought that the lace must have broken during the crime-period. Why?

“This was a carefully schemed murder. We had ample evidence of that. Now, if the lace had snapped during the preparatory period — that is to say, some time before the crime-period, when the clothes were being assembled by the criminal at some place other than the Hospital — would a piece of adhesive have been used to patch up the tear? Hardly. For it would have been more in keeping with the general method of the murderer to procure a new, unbroken lace and insert it in the shoe, in order to prevent another breaking during the crime-period to come, when seconds were precious and any delay would be fatal.