Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

A Test of Identity by Michael Innes

“Yes,” inspector Appleby said as we strolled to the far end of his study, “I do keep a bit of a museum in this room. A sign of old age and the reminiscent mood, no doubt.”

He pointed to a range of well-ordered shelves. “You may find them depressing. For these things connect up, one way or another, with every sort of wickedness under the sun.”

“All of them?”

“Well, no. One or two recall affairs that would have to be termed bizarre, I suppose, rather than nefarious. For example, that photograph. What do you make of it?”

I found myself studying a formal, three-quarter length portrait of a young man, taken full face and looking straight at the camera. A professional job, I thought, but of rather an old-fashioned sort.

“Attract you?” No comment had occurred to me, and Appleby appeared to feel I needed prompting. “Or do you prefer a man to be handsome in a more regular way?”

“The features are certainly irregular enough,” I said. “But they have vitality. For what it is worth, then, your specimen does attract me. Was he a great criminal?”

Appleby smiled. “That was the question which confronted us. Did you ever hear of Leonard Morton?”

“Never. Is this his photograph?”

Appleby smiled. “Sit down, my dear chap, and I’ll tell you the tale.”

“It is sometimes said that if the whole population was fingerprinted the police and the law courts would be saved some pretty large headaches. And Morton is a case in point.

“His parents had been wealthy folk who lost their lives in some accident when he was a baby. There were no near relatives, and young Leonard was brought up in a careful enough, but rather impersonal, way. Nobody had much occasion to be interested in him, and he seems to have had no talent for impressing himself upon the world.

“You spoke of vitality. I suspect he shoved most of that into a rugger scrum. And by his companions there, I suppose, he was remembered only as so much heave and shove. He made no print, so to speak, as a personality. Which was awkward, in view of what happened.

“He took off into the skies one day — it was for the purpose of bombing Berlin — and ceased to be a recognizable physical object some hours later.”

I was horrified. “Do you mean,” I asked Appleby, “that he was charred to a cinder?”

“Nothing so drastic. But he was abominably burned. Or that was the story the world was asked to believe later. At the time, Morton was posted as missing, believed killed. No word of him came through, you see, as a P.O.W. or anything else. Then the war ended, and suddenly there was this mutilated man with his story — his story of being Leonard Morton.

“There was nothing out of the way in it. He had baled out; every rag had been blasted or burned off him; and for a long time he had suffered a complete loss of memory. And now here he was back in England, proposing to claim quite a substantial fortune. But was he Morton?

“If he wasn’t, he had certainly known Morton — and known him as quite a young man, before the war started. There could, it seemed, be no doubt about that. If he was an impostor, he wasn’t impersonating a dead man whom he had met for the first time in a hospital or prison camp. But here certainty ended.”

Appleby paused at this to stare thoughtfully at the photograph, and a question occurred to me. “At which point did you come into the affair?”

“In the first few days. There was, you see, an important time element in the matter. For a reason I’ll presently explain, it was essential that the truth be got at quickly.

“Sooner or later, of course, it was bound to be got at — although a bold impostor might well persuade himself it wasn’t so. The claimant — as I suppose he should be called — hadn’t materialized miraculously on a frontier of postwar Germany. He had come out in a train, and the train had had a starting point, and so on. There existed, as you can guess, a highly efficient organization for tackling just such problems, and there was little doubt that in the end the facts would be run to earth.”

“But meanwhile there was this important time element?”

“Precisely. Nearly everybody’s relations with Morton had been impersonal, as I’ve said. Or, if not impersonal, say professional. Schoolmasters, holiday tutors, trustees, executors, bankers — and so on. They could none of them be confident, one way or the other. Quite early they got together and held a sort of committee of inquiry on the young man, with a fellow called Firth, who was senior trustee, in the chair.

“Well, the claimant did pretty well. When he realized that they conceived it their duty to question his identity, he behaved very much as the genuine man might have been expected to do — if the genuine man was a pretty decent and forbearing sort of fellow. The committee was impressed, but by no means convinced.

“And then the claimant sprang a bombshell. There was after all, it appeared, one highly personal relationship in his life. Shortly before that bombing trip he had met and become engaged to a young lady. He demanded to be confronted with her. And the — young lady, when named, proved to be the only daughter of the occasion’s Grand Inquisitor.”

I stared. “Firth?”

Appleby bobbed his head. “Exactly... and that was where I came in. Miss Firth — at least, according to her father’s idea of her — was a young person of an extremely delicate nervous constitution; and to be presented with a lover from the grave, and later see him unmasked as an impostor, Would be quite, quite fatal to her. So Firth came and besought me. Could I resolve the puzzle straightaway, or at least arrive at some reliable opinion? I said I thought I could.”

“And you did?”

“Yes. Not in a fashion that would have had much value as evidence in a court. But at least it gave Firth confidence in choosing a line.

“I did a quick rake around photographers who might have had dealings with young Morton just before the war — and then some equally quick work in our own laboratories and files. When I met the young man — whose face was certainly badly disfigured — I had a batch of portraits, including the one that you see hanging here. I asked him to select his own portrait, and he promptly chose this one. I wonder if you can see what that meant to me?”

“I don’t know that I can.”

“I was able to tell Firth that the claimant was certainly genuine, and that his daughter might be brought along.”

This floored me completely. “My dear Appleby, I don’t see—”

“I realize you don’t. Imagine you’re a tailor, and try again.”

Inspiration came to me. “The buttons and buttonholes!”

Appleby was delighted. “Splendid! What about them?”

“They’re on the wrong side. The printing has been reversed!”

“Exactly. I found a photograph of Morton, and had this reverse print prepared. The two looked substanially different, because human features are never symmetrical, and his were more irregular than most. Both prints were included in the batch he was to sort through to find himself. You see what was involved?”

“I’m blessed if I do still.”

“If he chose the original print, he was choosing a Leonard Morton he recognized from life. If he chose the reverse print, he was choosing a Leonard Morton he had never seen — except in a mirror.

“That, you see, was how I knew he was the genuine Morton.”