“My family cowers inside me,” he shivered. “Guilty ... yes, phantoms that cringe before familiar accusations. Murder.... But this policeman is absurd. If Ballau wanted to do something for Florence—the insurance—why should he crush her with his death? And the false beard ... good God, he would have taken it off before killing himself and hidden it.... But Norton will say he wanted to make it look as if he’d snatched it from someone else’s face. Yet the mucilage on his chin. He would have thought of that.”
“Do you begin to feel the logic of the thing?” Norton inquired suddenly.
“No,” De Medici answered. “It remains impossible in my mind despite everything you say. Mr. Ballau was a man of taste. He would not have gone to such preposterous and unconvincing details as this—the disordered room, the ridiculous idea of a table with an empty wine bottle....”
“I see,” Norton nodded. “But you are figuring from a wrong point of view. Suicide isn’t as sane and simple a thing as buying a piece of furniture. A man about to take his life is never normal. I mentioned two facts which we will probably find to be the motive. There were unquestionably other facts operating. But of one thing we may be sure. The Ballau who killed himself was not the elegant Mr. Ballau New York knows so well. He was a man in a hysterical condition. He wasn’t the cultured and calm gentleman you knew, Mr. De Medici.
“And remember another thing. He was a man of the theater. When the time came for him to do the thing—his nerves on edge, his mind at a hysterical tension—he reverted to type. He was a man of the theater. He wanted to camouflage it to look like a murder. And the only murders he knew were murders he had witnessed on the stage, murders after which the police arrive to find the table set for two, furniture overturned, clews everywhere—candlesticks, crucifixes, signs of a great struggle—in the usual second-act climax fashion. It was his intention to set the stage for such a murder. But he wasn’t himself. He went about his work with the insane deliberation of a man who functions automatically.”
Lieutenant Norton stood up.
“I think we’ll find some among the guests tonight who’ll be able to throw a light on the dead man’s finances and troubles,” he said. “In the meantime, we’ll have the body moved and hold it in the undertaking rooms until the inquest. Of course, what I’ve outlined here is only the result of first impressions. But, as I’ve said, first impressions are usually one’s best conclusions.”
The detective walked out of the room. De Medici rose to follow. As he did an object fell out of the heavy upholstered chair in which he had been sitting. He stooped and picked it up. A woman’s purse. Norton had turned at the door and De Medici slipped it quickly into his pocket.
“An old purse,” he murmured to himself, “and there were some faded silver initials in the corner.”
The guests were waiting for him. They crowded around him, babbling questions, exclamations, condolences.