The Dutch Shoe Mystery

Ellery felt his throat tenderly. “Dry as dust... As for your point that a murder might not have been necessary at all, it’s not tenable for this reason: Both Minchen and Janney were perfectly confident that Janney would pull the old lady through. Now certainly Lucille Price, so close to the surgeon, would be bound to accept his confident attitude. And consider that if Mrs. Doorn recovered, and the appendix operation were delayed indefinitely, Lucille Price would have had to wait indefinitely, and all her plans would have been up in the air. No, Pete, the accident merely hastened the commission of the crime; it certainly did not inspire the commission of the crime.”

Sampson sat still as stone, thinking. Ellery was watching him with amusement; Harper was chuckling to himself. Sampson said: “But Lucille Price’s motive? I don’t get it. What connection can there be between her and Swanson? There’s never been a hint — Why should she do the dirty work for him, if he’s the gainer by the double murder?”

Inspector Queen took his hat and coat from a clothes-tree, mumbling an apology. There was work to do. Before he left, he said in a mild voice, “Let Ellery tell you, Henry. It’s his story, no matter what he says... Djuna, be a good boy.”

As the door closed, Ellery relaxed in his father’s chair and crossed his feet on his father’s desk. “Very good question, Sampson,” he drawled. “I asked myself that one whole afternoon. What connection could there be between two apparently unrelated people? Swanson, nursing his hate of the old woman for having smashed his career by evicting him from the Hospital; a warped mentality, criminally scheming the death of his step-father for sanctioning the smash-up of his career, and also for financial reasons, since he was his stepfather’s heir despite everything... And Lucille Price, a quiet trained nurse— Yes, what connection was there?”

In the silence that followed Ellery extracted from his pocket the mysterious document which he had commissioned Harper to find on Thursday afternoon. He waved it in the air.

“This was the laconic answer. It explains why Lucille Price did the dirty work for Swanson, since it makes her heir with him to Janney’s estate.

“It conceals the story of several years of planning, criminal deliberation and hellish skill.

“It shows how and where Lucille Price was able to secure men’s surgical clothing without leaving a trail — from Swanson, the ex-surgeon, accounting by the way, for her use of trousers too long for her. The shoes are probably his, too; he is about five feet nine, but he’s small-boned.

“It points to their close and secret cooperation; such things as dangerously discussing, perhaps by telephone — for they must have been too canny to meet or live together — the premature killing of Janney. For Swanson was forced by the newspaper ruse the other day to visit your office, inadvertently and fortunately giving him a perfect alibi while Janney was being murdered.

“It explains why the same method was used to kill both people: for if Swanson were suspected and even arrested for Mrs. Doorn’s murder — a possibility in their minds — and Janney was then murdered in such a way as to make it seem the work of the same criminal, Swanson’s alibi for the second murder would automatically clear him of suspicion for the first.

“It implies that not even Janney knew that his step-son, Thomas Janney, alias Swanson, and Lucille Price were inextricably linked...

“Yes, what could be that link, I asked myself?”

Ellery tossed the document across the Inspector’s desk, so that District Attorney Sampson, Dr. Minchen and Djuna could lean over and inspect it. Harper merely grinned.

It was a photostatic copy of a marriage certificate.