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Authors: Ellery Queen

The Roman Hat Mystery

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The Roman Hat Mystery

Ellery Queen

 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to

PROFESSOR ALEXANDER GOETTLER

Chief Toxicologist of the City of New York
for his friendly offices in the preparation of this tale

 

Lexicon of Persons Connected with the Investigation

Note:
The complete list of individuals, male and female, brought into the story of Monte Field

s murder and appended below is given solely for the convenience of the reader. It is intended to simplify rather than mystify. In the course of perusing mysterio-detective literature the reader is, like as not, apt to lose sight of a number of seemingly unimportant characters who eventually prove of primary significance in the solution of the crime. The writer therefore urges a frequent study of this chart during the reader

s pilgrimage through the tale, if toward no other end than to ward off the inevitable cry of

Unfair!
”―
the consolation of those who read and do not reason.
Ellery Queen

 

Monte Field,
an important personage indeed

the victim.

William Pusak,
clerk. Cranially a brachycephalic.

Doyle,
a
gendarme
with brains.

Louis Panzer,
a Broadway theatre manager.

James Peale,
the Don Juan of

Gunplay.

Eve Ellis.
The quality of friendship is not strained.

Stephen Barry.
One can understand the perturbation of the juvenile lead.

Lucille Horton,
the

lady of the streets
”―
in the play.

Hilda Orange,
a celebrated English character actress.

Thomas Velie,
Detective-Sergeant who knows a thing or two about crime.

Hesse, Piggott, Flint, Johnson, Hagstrom, Ritter,
gentlemen of the
Homicide Squad.
Dr. Samuel Prouty,
Assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner.
Madge O

Connell,
usherette on the fatal aisle.
Dr. Stuttgard.
There is always a doctor in the audience.
Jess Lynch,
the obliging orangeade boy.

John Cazzanelli,
alias

Parson Johnny,

naturally takes a professional interest in

Gunplay.

Benjamin Morgan.
What do you make of him?
Frances Ives-Pope.
Enter the society interest.
Stanford Ives-Pope,
man-about-town.
Harry Neilson.
He revels in the sweet uses of publicity.

Henry Sampson,
for once an intelligent District Attorney.
Charles Michaels,
the fly

or the spider?
Mrs. Angela Russo,
a lady of reputation.
Timothy Cronin,
a legal ferret.
Arthur Stoates,
another.

Oscar Lewin,
the Charon of the dead man

s office.

Franklin Ives-Pope.
If wealth meant happiness.

Mrs. Franklin Ives-Pope,
a maternal hypochondriac.

Mrs. Phillips.
Middle-aged angels have their uses.

Dr. Thaddeus Jones,
toxicologist of the City of New York.

Edmund Crewe,
architectural expert attached to the Detective Bureau.

Djuna,
an Admirable Crichton of a new species.

The Problem Is

Who Killed Monte Field?

Meet the astute gentlemen whose business it is to discover such things

Mr. Richard Queen

Mr. Ellery Queen

 

Explanation for the Map of the Roman Theatre

A:Actors

dressing-rooms.

B:Frances Ives-Pope

s seat.

C:Benjamin Morgan

s seat.

D:Aisle seats occupied by

Parson Johnny

Cazzanelli and Madge O

Connell.

E:Dr. Stuttgard

s seat.

F, F:Orangeade boys

stands (only during intermissions).

G:Area in vicinity of crime. Black square represents seat occupied by Monte Field. Three white squares to the right and four white squares directly in front represent vacant seats.

H:Publicity office, occupied by Harry Neilson.

I:Manager Louis Panzer

s private office.

J:Anteroom to manager

s office.

K:Ticket-taker

s box.

L:Only stairway leading to the balcony.

M:Stairway leading downstairs to General Lounge.

N, N:Cashiers

offices.

O:Property Room.

P:William Pusak

s seat.

Q, Q:Orchestra boxes.

 

 

FOREWORD

I have been asked by both publisher and author to write a cursory preface to the story of Monte Field

s murder. Let me say at once that I am neither a writer nor a criminologist. To make authoritative remarks, therefore, anent the techniques of crime and crime fiction is obviously beyond my capacity. Nevertheless, I have one legitimate claim to the privilege of introducing this remarkable story, based as it is upon perhaps the most mystifying crime of the past decade . . . . If it were not for me,
The Roman Hat Mystery
would never have reached the fiction-reading public. I am responsible for its having been brought to light; and there my pallid connection with it ends.

During the past winter I shook off the dust of New York and went a-traveling in Europe. In the course of a capricious roving about the corners of the Continent (a roving induced by that boredom which comes to every Conrad in quest of his youth)

I found myself one August day in a tiny Italian mountain village. How I got there, its location and its name do not matter; a promise is a promise, even when it is made by a stockbroker. Dimly I remembered that this toy hamlet perched on the lip of a sierra harbored two old friends whom I had not seen for two years. They had come from the seething sidewalks of New York to bask in the brilliant peace of an Italian countryside

well, perhaps it was as much curiosity about their regrets as anything else, that prompted me to intrude upon their solitude.

My reception at the hands of old Richard Queen, keener and grayer than ever, and of his son Ellery was cordial enough. We had been more than friends in the old days; perhaps, too, the vinous air of Italy was too heady a cure for their dust-choked Manhattan memories. In any case, they seemed profoundly glad to see me. Mrs. Ellery Queen

Ellery was now the husband of a glorious creature and the startled father of an infant who resembled his grandfather to an extraordinary degree

was as gracious as the name she bore. Even Djuna, no longer the scapegrace I had known, greeted me with every sign of nostalgia.

Despite Ellery

s desperate efforts to make me forget New York and appreciate the lofty beauties of his local scenery, I had not been in their tiny villa for many days before a devilish notion took possession of me and I began to pester poor Ellery to death. I have something of a reputation for persistence, if no other virtue; so that before I left, Ellery in despair agreed to compromise. He took me into his library, locked the door and attacked an old steel filing cabinet. After a slow search he managed to bring out what I suspect was under his fingers all the time. It was a faded manuscript bound Ellery-like in blue legal paper.

The argument raged. I wished to leave his beloved Italian shores with the manuscript in my trunk, whereas he insisted that the sheaf of contention remain hidden in the cabinet. Old Richard was wrenched away from his desk, where he was writing a treatise for a German magazine on

American Crime and Methods of Detection,

to settle the affair. Mrs. Queen held her husband

s arm as he was about to close the incident with a workmanlike fist; Djuna clucked gravely; and even Ellery, Jr., extracted his pudgy hand from his mouth long enough to make a comment in his gurgle-language.

The upshot of it all was that
The Roman Hat Mystery
went back to the States in my luggage. Not unconditionally, however

Ellery is a peculiar man. I was forced solemnly and by all I held dear to swear the identities of my friends and of the important characters concerned in the story be veiled by pseudonyms; and that, on pain of instant annihilation, their names be permanently withheld from the reading public.

Consequently

Richard Queen

and

Ellery Queen

are not the true names of those gentlemen. Ellery himself made the selections; and I might add at once that his choices were contrived to baffle the reader who might endeavor to ferret the truth from some apparent clue of anagram.

The Roman Hat Mystery
is based on actual records in the police archives of New York City. Ellery and his father, as usual, worked hand-in-hand on the case. During this period in his career Ellery was a detective-story writer of no mean reputation. Adhering to the aphorism that truth is often stranger than fiction, it was his custom to make notes of interesting investigations for possible use in his murder tales. The affair of the Hat so fascinated him that he kept unusually exhaustive notes, intending to publish it. Immediately after, however, he was plunged into another investigation which left him scant opportunity for business; and when this last case was successfully closed, Ellery

s father, the Inspector, consummated a lifelong ambition by retiring and moving to Italy, bag and baggage. Ellery, who had in this affair found the lady of his heart, was animated by a painful desire to do something

big

in letters, Italy sounded idyllic to him; he married with his father

s blessing and the three of them, accompanied by Djuna, went off to their new European home. The manuscript was utterly forgotten until I rescued it.

On one point, before I close this painfully unhandsome preface, I should like to make myself clear.

I have always found it extremely difficult to explain to strangers the peculiar affinity which bound Richard to Ellery Queen, as I must call them. For one thing, they are persons of by no means uncomplicated natures. Richard Queen, sprucely middle-aged after thirty-two years

service in the city police, earned his Inspector

s chevrons not so much through diligence as by an extraordinary grasp of the technique of criminal investigation. It was said, for example, at the time of his brilliant detectival efforts during the now-ancient Barnaby Ross murder case, that

Richard Queen by this feat firmly establishes his fame beside such masters of crime detection as Tamaka Hiero, Brillon the Frenchman, Kris Oliver, Renaud, and James Redix the Younger.

Queen, with his habitual shyness toward newspaper eulogy, was the first to scoff at this extravagant statement; although Ellery maintains that for many years the old man secretly preserved a clipping of the story. However that may be

and I like to think of Richard Queen in terms of human personality, despite the efforts of imaginative journalists to make a legend of him

I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that he was heavily dependent upon his son

s wit for success in many of his professional achievements.

This is not a matter of public knowledge. Some mementoes of their careers are still reverently preserved by friends: the small bachelor establishment maintained during their American residence on West 87th Street, and now a semiprivate museum of curios collected during their productive years; the really excellent portrait of father and son, done by Thiraud and hanging in the art gallery of an anonymous millionaire; Richard

s precious snuffbox, the Florentine antique which he had picked up at an auction and which he therefore held dearer than rubies, only to succumb to the blandishments of a charming old lady whose name he cleared of slander; Ellery

s enormous collection of books on violence, perhaps as complete as any in the world, which he regretfully discarded when the Queens left for Italy; and, of course, the many as yet unpublished documents containing records of cases solved by the Queens and now stored away from prying eyes in the City

s police archives.

But the things of the heart

the spiritual bonds between father and son

have until this time remained secret from all except a few favored intimates, among whom I was fortunate enough to be numbered. The old man, perhaps the most famous executive of the Detective Division in the last half-century, overshadowing in public renown, it is to be feared, even those gentlemen who sat briefly in the Police Commissioner

s suite

the old man, let me repeat, owed a respectable portion of his reputation to his son

s genius.

In matters of pure tenacity, when possibilities lay frankly open on every hand, Richard Queen was a peerless investigator. He had a crystal-clear mind for detail; a retentive memory for complexities of motive and plot; a cool viewpoint when the obstacle seemed insuperable. Give him a hundred facts, bungled and torn, out of proportion and sequence, and he had them assembled in short order. He was like a bloodhound who follows the true scent in the clutter of a hopelessly tangled trail.

But the intuitive sense, the gift of imagination, belonged to Ellery Queen, the fiction writer. The two might have been twins possessing abnormally developed faculties of mind, impotent by themselves but vigorous when applied one to the other. Richard Queen, far from resenting the bond which made his success so spectacularly possible

as a less generous nature might have done

took pains to make it plain to his friends. The slender, gray old man whose name was anathema to contemporary lawbreakers, used to utter his

confession,

as he called it, with a naivete explicable only on the score of his proud fatherhood.

One word more. Of all the affairs pursued by the two Queens this, which Ellery has titled
The Roman Hat Mystery
for reasons shortly to be made clear, was surely the crowning case of them all. The dilettante of criminology, the thoughtful reader of detective literature, will understand as the tale unfolds why Ellery considers the murder of Monte Field worthy of study. The average murderer

s motives and habits are fairly accessible to the criminal specialist. Not so, however, in the case of the Field killer. Here the Queens dealt with a person of delicate perception and extraordinary finesse. In fact, as Richard pointed out shortly after the denouement, the crime planned was as nearly perfect as human ingenuity could make it. As in so many

perfect crimes,

however, a small mischance of fate coupled with Ellery

s acute deductive analyses gave the hunting Queens the single clue which led ultimately to the destruction of the plotter.

J. J. McC.

New York March 1, 1929

PART ONE


The policeman must oft follow the precept of the

bakadori
’―
those fool-birds who, though they know disaster awaits them at the hands and clubs of the beachcombers, brave ignominious death to bury their eggs in the sandy shore . . . . So the policeman. All Nippon should not deter him from hatching the egg of thoroughness.


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