A Fine and Private Place by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page A

which was lying on what appeared to be a short-piled rug.
    â€œWhat is that material the shoeprint shows up on?” Ellery asked. “Looks like ashes.”
    â€œIt is ashes,” Voytershack said.
    â€œWhat kind?”
    â€œCigar.”
    There was a great deal of it. In one picture, taken at slightly longer range, a large glass ashtray in what seemed to be an ebony holder was visible on the rug a foot or so from the ash deposit. The ashtray lay face down.
    â€œWhose cigars?” Ellery asked. “Do you have a make on that?”
    â€œThey’re from the same cigars the boys found in a humidor on the murdered guy’s desk,” the sergeant said. “Prime Cuban. The finest.”
    â€œThe tray must have been piled pretty high to have dumped this much ash when it overturned.”
    â€œThey all claim Julio was a cigar chain-smoker,” Inspector Queen said. “And the maid hadn’t yet cleaned up his library this morning from yesterday.”
    â€œSo presumably the tray was knocked off the desk in the struggle?”
    â€œThat’s the way it figures. Joe’ll show you the series of photos of the room. Chairs and lamps knocked over, a 200-year old Chinese vase smashed to bits, a rack of fire tools upset—one of them, a hefty three-foot trident-type poker, was the murder weapon—an antique taboret squashed to kindling wood where somebody must have fallen on it—as I told you back home, a donnybrook. What do you make of the shoeprint, Ellery?”
    â€œMan’s right shoe, smallish size—I’d estimate no more than an eight, could even be a seven. The sole is rippled. Might be of crepe. Certainly a sports shoe of some type. Also, diagonally down the length of the sole there’s something that looks like a deep cut in the crepe. It’s definitely not part of the design of the sole. The cut crosses four consecutive ripples of the crepe at an acute angle. Dad, this should have made identification a kindergarten exercise. That is, if you found the shoe.”
    â€œOh, it was, and we did,” the Inspector said. “The shoe—a yachting shoe, by the way, and crepe-soled, as you say—was found on the 9th floor of 99 East, in a shoe rack of the east apartment’s dressing room adjoining the master bedroom. Size about 7½C. Fits the imprint in the ashes like a glove. And with a cut in the sole positioned exactly as in the ashes, crossing the same four ripples at the same angle.”
    â€œMarco Importunato’s apartment. His shoe.”
    â€œMarco’s apartment, his shoe. Right.”
    â€œJoe, do you have the shoe here?”
    Sergeant Voytershack produced it. It was a common navy blue sports oxford with the characteristic thick crepe sole. Ellery studied the crosscut.
    â€œMay I have a caliper or a tongs, Joe—something to pry the edges of the cut apart?”
    Voytershack handed him a tool and a magnifying glass. The two officers watched without expression. Ellery separated the lips of the cut and peered into its vitals through the glass.
    He looked up with a nod. “Can’t be much doubt. The cut down the sole looks fresh—definitely not an old cut; in fact, it was made very recently. And I don’t see how a slash of this length and uniform depth could have been the result of stepping on something, unless the wearer of the shoe was doing a balancing act on an ax blade. So the cut across these ripples in the crepe was made deliberately. And since this is a mass-produced sports shoe obtainable almost anywhere, making it hard to trace, the purpose of the cut can only have been for identification—to connect the distinctive print the shoe left in the cigar ashes with the specific shoe belonging to Marco Importunato. In other words—again—to frame Marco for his brother Julio’s murder. Has Marco been questioned yet?”
    â€œVery delicately,” Inspector Queen said. “Sort of in