Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 114, May 1953

The Witch of Times Square by Ellery Queen[5]

If last year you had asked Father Bowen of All Souls-off-Tines Square whether or not he subscribed to the Deuteronomic doctrine of an eye for an eye, he would have rebuked you — being a good Anglican — and cited some St. Jamesian reminder, probably Matthew V, 38–39, on the Case of the Reversible Cheek. Put the question to him today and Father Bowen is more likely to quote that profane authority, Ellery Queen, on the Case of the False Claimant.

Father Bowen’s flock being pastured in the West Forties, it is plentifully mixed with black sheep. Until last year one of his sorriest blessings was a gay old ewe known to the touts, newspaper vendors, bartenders, carny boys, cops, and other habitués of Broadway as the Witch — a hag with lank gray-blonde locks, cheeks like bark, and runny blue eyes, who wore sidewalk-length skirts, an outrageous shawl, and a man’s fedora which came from some night-club trash can. The Witch lived alone in a basement hole over towards Tenth Avenue, and she bounded forth at night to sell violets, corsages of gardenias, and policy tickets under the marquees and neon signs. Towards morning — she was of English blood, her name being Wichingame — she could usually be found at some all-night bar before a long row of empty gin-and-tonic glasses, singing Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning in a hoarse, joyful voice. Her record of attendance at All Souls was not meritorious, although she could be depended upon in the confessional, where she went into enthusiastic detail.

Her pastor labored hard in this exasperating vineyard, but he had no cause to rejoice until one winter week, when the Witch mistook the new snowfall on her sidewalk for the coverlet of her bed and awakened in Bellevue Hospital with a case of double lobar pneumonia. She was very ill, and at some time during her sojourn in the Valley she saw the Light. She sent for Father Bowen, and when she clanged home in a jubilant ambulance she was a permanently repentant sinner.

“Then what’s the problem, Father Bowen?” asked Ellery, wincing as he tried to turn over in bed. He had been laid up for ten days by a painful attack of sciatica.

“The root of the problem, Mr. Queen,” said Father Bowen, hooking his bony arm under Ellery’s and lifting expertly, “is the love of money. See I Timothy, VI, 10. It turns out that Miss Wichingame is — as they say in my parish — loaded. She owns several immensely valuable parcels of property and a considerable amount of cash and bonds. The poor thing has been, of course, a miser. Now, in her spiritual regeneration, she insists on giving it all away.”

“To some needy bartender?”

“I almost wish that were it,” said the old clergyman with a sigh. “I know at least three whose needs are great. But no — it’s to go to her only living heir.” And he told Ellery the curious story of the Witch’s nephew.

Miss Wichingame had had a twin sister, and while they were identical in every physical respect, their tastes differed profoundly. Miss Wichingame, for example, had early shown a preference for gin and the wilder variety of oat, whereas her twin looked upon spirits as the devil’s lubricant and was as moral as a breakfast cereal.

This disparity, unfortunately for Miss Wichingame, extended to their tastes in men. Miss Wichingame fell in love with a small, handsome, dark man — a Spaniard; but her sister, whose eugenic credo was “like to like,” gave her heart to “a pure Nordic,” as Miss Wichingame told Father Bowen — one Erik Gaard, of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, a large sedate Viking who had gone over to the Anglican church and become a missionary priest. Miss Wichingame’s Spaniard left her unwed and with pleasant if not entirely respectable memories; the Reverend Gaard, no trifler, proposed holy matrimony and was triumphantly accepted.

A son was born to the Gaards, and when he was eight years old his parents sailed with him to the Orient. For a short time the missionary’s wife corresponded with her sister, but as Miss Wichingame’s address became increasingly fluid the letters from the mission in Korea took longer and longer to catch up with her, until finally they stopped altogether.

“I take it,” said Ellery, cautiously shifting his left leg, “that when your communicant repented her sins she asked you to locate her sister.”

“I instituted inquiries through our missionary branch,” nodded Father Bowen, “and discovered that Father Gaard and his wife were murdered many years ago — the Japanese made it very difficult for Christian missionaries in Korea — and their mission burned to the ground. Their son, John, was believed to have escaped to China.

“My parishioner,” continued Father Bowen, and he became agitated, “revealed at this point an unexpected firmness of character. She insisted that her nephew was alive and that he must be found and brought to the United States, so that she might embrace him before she died and give him all her money. Perhaps you recall the newspaper publicity, Mr. Queen, especially among the columnists. I shall not try your patience with the details of our search — it was expensive and hopeless... hopeless, that is, to one of little faith, like myself; for Miss Wichingame’s part, I must say she was perfectly confident through it all.”

“And Nephew John was found.”

“Yes, Mr. Queen. Two of him.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He appeared at my rectory in two installments, as it were, each part of him fresh from Korea, and each part of him insisting he was John Gaard, son of Erik and Clementine Gaard, and that the other fellow was a cheeky impostor. An embarrassment of blessings. Frankly, I’m up the creek.”

“I suppose they look alike?”

“Not the least bit. While both are blond and about 35 — the correct age — there’s no resemblance at all, either to each other or to Father and Mrs. Gaard, an old photo of whom exists. But there is no authenticated photograph of John Gaard, so even their dissimilarity doesn’t help.”

“But I should think,” protested Ellery, “visas, passports, ordinary proofs of identity, background—”

“You forget, Mr. Queen,” said Father Bowen with a certain steeliness, “that Korea in recent years has not been exactly a garden of tranquillity. The two young men, it appears, had been close friends, both having worked for the same oil company in China. When the Chinese Communists closed in, they fled — quite irregularly — to Korea. The North Korean invasion caught them there, and they got out with a mob of refugees after the Communist armies took Seoul. There was a great deal of official confusion and a relaxation of the normal precautions. Each young man exhibits documents in the name of John Gaard, and each came out through a different airfield.”

“How do they explain the identical documents?”

“Each says the other stole his credentials and had them duplicated — except, of course, for the passport photographs. Each says he told the other of an aunt in the United States. No check-up can be made in Korea and, unfortunately, the oil company records in China are not accessible. All our inquiries of the Chinese Communist authorities, made through diplomatic intermediaries, have been ignored. You may take my word for it, Mr. Queen, there’s simply no way of checking back on their identities.”

Ellery was surprised to find himself sitting up in bed, a position he had been unable to achieve in over a week. “And the Witch?” he exclaimed.

“Bewildered, Mr. Queen. The last time she saw her nephew was when he was seven years old, just before his parents took him to the Far East. He spent an exciting week in New York with her — during which week, by the way, she kept a diary. She still has it—”

“There you are,” said Ellery. “All she has to do is question each man about that week. The genuine one surely remembers something of such a great boyhood adventure.”

“She has done so.” said Father Bowen sorrowfully. “Each recalls part of it. Each claims with dismaying bitterness that the other can answer such questions because he told him all about it — forgive me if my pronouns are confused. The poor woman has quite worn herself out trying to trip one of them up. She’s ready to divide her money between them — and I won’t have that!” said the old shepherd sternly.

Ellery asked every question he could think of, and he thought of a great many.

“Well, Father,” he said at last, shaking his head, and Father Bowen’s lean face fell, “I don’t see...” And suddenly he stopped shaking his head.

“Yes?” cried the clergyman.

“Or maybe I do! A way to get at the truth... yes... Where are the two Johns now, Father?”

“At my rectory.”

“Could you have them here in, say, an hour?”

“Oh, yes,” said Father Bowen grimly. “Oh, yes, indeed!”

One hour later the aged cleric herded two angry-looking young men into Ellery’s bedroom and shut the door with a sinister little snick.

“I’ve had a lot of trouble keeping them from manhandling each other, Mr. Queen. This, gentlemen, is Ellery Queen,” said Father Bowen coldly, “and he’ll soon put an end to this nonsense!”

“I don’t care who he is and what he says,” growled the first young man. “I’m John Gaard.”

“You dug-up shi,” bellowed the second young man, “you took those words right out of my mouth!”

“Did you ever get your head knocked off by a corpse?”

“Try it, you—”

“Would you two stand side by side, please,” said Ellery, “facing that window?”

They grew quiet.

Ellery looked them over sharply. The first young man was blond and tall, with big shoulders, sun-squinted brown eyes, a snub nose, and huge feet and work-battered hands. The second was short and sandy-haired, squintily blue-eyed and curve-nosed, with small feet and clever-looking hands. They were as unlike as two kittens in an alley litter, but two pairs of fists were at the ready, and both glowered, and it was impossible to say which seemed more honestly outraged, the Witch’s nephew or his impostor.

“You see?” said Father Bowen despairingly.

“Indeed I do, Father,” said Ellery, smiling through his travail, “and I’ll be happy to identify John Gaard for you.”

The young men glared, as if daring each other to make a break for it.

“It’s all right, gentlemen,” said Ellery, “there’s a very large detective-sergeant named Tom Velie waiting in the next room who could break the back of either of you without dropping the ash from his cigaret. How do I know, did you ask, Father Bowen?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Queen,” said the clergyman, bewildered. “You haven’t asked these young men a single question.”

“Would you mind reaching to that shelf, Father,” said Ellery with another smile, “and handing me that great, fat, ominous-looking book in the plain paper wrapper?... Thank you... This volume, gentlemen, is forbiddingly entitled Forensic Medicine and Legal Biology, and it was written by two of the foremost authorities in the field, Mendelius and Claggett. Let’s see, it should be around page five hundred and something... Why, Father, you told me that Miss Wichingame’s twin sister was identical with her in every physical respect. Since Miss Wichingame is blue-eyed, then Mrs. Gaard must have been blue-eyed, too. And you described the Reverend Gaard in Miss Wichingame’s words as ‘a pure Nordic,’ which ethnologically puts John Gaard’s father among the blue-eyed, too... Ah, here it is. Now let me read you the second paragraph on page 563 of this authoritative work.

“ ‘Two blue-eyed persons,’ ” Ellery said, his eyes on the open page of the big book, “ would produce only children with blue eyes. They would not produce children with brown eyes.’ ”

“There he goes!” cried Father Bowen.

“Velie!” roared Ellery. “Catch him!”

And Sergeant Velie, appearing magically, did so in his usual emphatic manner.

While the Sergeant was leading the tall, broad, brown-eyed impostor away, and the short, blue-eyed, authenticated John Gaard was trying to express his thanks to Ellery in an excited mixture of English, Chinese, and Korean, Father Bowen picked up the fat book from Ellery’s bed, which Ellery had closed, and he turned to page 563. A look of perplexity wrinkled his leathery face, and he removed the paper jacket and glanced at the cover.

“But Mr. Queen,” exclaimed Father Bowen, “this book isn’t entitled Forensic Medicine and Legal Biology. It’s an old edition of Who’s Who!”

“Is it?” said Ellery guiltily. “I could have sworn—”

“Don’t,” said Father Bowen in a severe tone. “The fact is Mendelius and Claggett don’t exist. You just made up that whole quotation about blue eyes-brown eyes! Isn’t it true?”

“There was a time when the books said it was,” said Ellery mournfully, “but they probably don’t any more — too many blue-eyed parents of irreproachable probity were turning up with brown-eyed children. However, our brown-eyed claimant didn’t know that, Father, did he? And now,” Ellery said to blue-eyed young John, who was gaping idiotically, “I’ll name my fee: Turn me over in this damned — beg pardon, Father — bed!”