“Lawrence was up in the bedroom one day, and picked up a little mask covered with black velvet, and put it on for fun and went to look at himself in the glass. He hadn’t time for a proper look, for old Baxter shouted out to him from the bed: ‘Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes?’ ”
—M. R. JAMES, A View from a Hill
At seven-thirty next morning, refreshed by a shower and clean clothes, Stevens was coming downstairs again when the front-door knocker rapped hesitantly.
He stood holding to the banisters, feeling suddenly tongue-tied and averse to answering. If it were Marie, he did not know what to say to her, despite the speeches he had rehearsed throughout the night. The downstairs lights were still on; the living-room was full of stale smoke. He had not gone to bed that night, for the reason that he could not sleep. His head ached a little, and his wits were none of the best: to thrash endlessly through the same thoughts all night is not a good preparation for a meeting, since you never say what you have so carefully planned to say. Even the hallway looked unfamiliar. Dawn had come up strangled in a cold white mist which pressed with a dead stare against the windows. The only heartening thing was a faint hiss and bubble from the dining-room, where he had connected the coffee-percolator.
He went downstairs, into the dining-room, and carefully disconnected the plug of the percolator. That early morning aroma of coffee was good. Then he answered the door.
“I beg your pardon,” said an unfamiliar voice, and his heart sank again. “I wondered——”
He was looking down at a sturdy woman in a long blue coat. Though her manner was hesitant, a smoldering anger underlay it. She seemed vaguely familiar. Her face, under a small blue hat pulled down in waves as though by violence, was not good-looking; but it was attractive and intelligent. Sandy eyelashes hardly flickered over her alert brown eyes. She looked (as she was) direct, brisk, and capable.
“I don’t know whether you remember me, Mr. Stevens,” she went on, “but I’ve seen you at the Despards’ several times. I noticed that your lights were on, and so—I’m Myra Corbett. I nursed Mr. Miles Despard.”
“Oh, Lord, yes; certainly! Come in.”
“You see,” she said, giving another twitch to her hat and glancing in the direction of the Park, “something seems to have gone wrong. Last night some one sent me a message to come here immediately——”
Again she hesitated. Another of those damned telegrams, Stevens knew.
“—but I was out on a case and I didn’t get it until an hour or so ago, when I got home. Then, for various reasons”—the anger deepened—“I thought I ought to come as soon as possible. But when I went up there I couldn’t make anybody hear. I hammered and hammered on the door, but nobody answered it. I can’t imagine what’s wrong. So, when I saw your light, I wondered if you would mind my sitting down and waiting a little while.”
“Not in the least. Please come in.”
He stood back, glancing down the road. In the gauzy white mist a car was chugging up the hill, its lights full on. The car swerved, rather erratically, slowed down, and then drew up at the curb.
“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho!” bellowed a voice. It was Ogden Despard, beyond a doubt.
A car door slammed and Ogden’s rather tall figure moved up the walk out of the mist. He wore a light camel’s hair topcoat, under which showed the legs of dress-trousers. Ogden was one of the throwbacks which occur in most families: he resembled nobody in it. He was dark, sleek, and somewhat hollow-cheeked, with a blue chin. Though he needed a shave this morning, his black hair was carefully brushed and shining like a helmet; the face, with lines drawn slantwise under the eyes, was so sallow that you could see every pore. His heavy-lidded dark eyes moved from the nurse to Stevens in amusement. Though he was only twenty-five (and often acted younger) he looked older than Mark.
“Good morning,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “The reveller returns. Hello! what’s this? An assignation?”
Ogden usually made remarks like this. He was not exactly unpleasant; but it is true that you seldom felt comfortable with him. Stevens, who was in no mood to meet him this morning, led Miss Corbett into the hall, and Ogden sauntered after them, closing the door.
“The place is in a mess, I’m afraid,” Stevens said to the nurse. “I’ve been working most of the night. But I’ve got some coffee boiling. Would you like a cup?”
“I would, very much,” answered Miss Corbett, and suddenly shivered.
“Coffee!” said Ogden, with a contemptuous “puh!” “That’s no way to greet a man on the morning after a party. But if you’ve got such a thing as a drink on the premises——?”
“There’s whisky back in my den,” said Stevens. “Help yourself.”
He saw the nurse and Ogden eyeing each other curiously; but neither spoke, and a curious air of tension had begun to grow. With a stolid face Miss Corbett went into the living-room. Stevens got the percolator from the dining-room, went out into the kitchen, and began rummaging after caps. In the midst of it Ogden pushed through the swing door, carrying several fingers of whisky in a glass; he was humming to himself, but keeping a wary eye out. While he opened the door of the refrigerator in search of ginger ale, he spoke conversationally.
“So our Myra,” he observed, “also got a telegram from the police department, requesting her presence here. The same as I did.”
Stevens said nothing.
“I got mine last night,” Ogden pursued, “but I was on a good round of parties, and I really couldn’t let it interrupt my drinking. Still, I’m glad the cops have got on the trail. It’ll establish what everybody knows.” He took out the tray of ice-cubes, batted it in the edge of the sink, and dropped one cube into the glass as carefully as though he were sighting a plumb-line. “By the way, I see you spent the night helping Mark open the crypt.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I’m not dumb.”
“No. Not in any sense.”
Ogden put down the glass. His sallow face looked somehow crooked and out of line. “What do you mean,” he said quietly, “by that crack?”
“Look here,” said Stevens, turning round. “In my present mood I would take great pleasure in pasting you straight through that china-closet. Or anybody else who gave me the excuse. But, for the sake of keeping both our heads, try not to start a row at seven-thirty in the morning. Hand me the cream out of the refrigerator, will you?”
Ogden laughed. “Sorry. But I don’t see why you should be on edge.—It’s my detective instincts. There are a couple of Mark’s self-rolled cigarettes in your den, where I got the whisky. There’s also a little drawing of the paving over the crypt, evidently done by Mark. Oh yes; I notice everything. It helps. I knew Mark was considering doing something like that; it was why he wanted us all away from the house last night.” His long face grew sharp and malicious. “What did the police say when they got there and found you boys having so much fun taking up the pavement?”
“The police didn’t arrive.”
“What?”
“What’s more, it seems pretty evident that those telegrams didn’t come from the police.”
Ogden, chewing at his lower lip, glanced at him sharply. Something shifted and altered in Ogden’s look. “Yes, I’d thought of that, too. But—but— Look, Stevens. You might as well tell me, because I’ll only find it out when I go up to the house. There were three people back in that room of yours. I saw three glasses. Who was the third?”
“A Doctor Partington.”
“Whe-ew!” said Ogden. His look grew thoughtful, with a far-off pleasure in it. “There’s something big coming. The unfrocked one, of course. I thought he was safely in England. If he ever finds out— But I might have known it. I see it all now, said he, said he.” (This was another irritating mannerism of speech peculiar to Ogden.) “Of course. Mark wanted him to do the whatisit, poke into the innards, and so on. Come on: you might as well tell me. What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“Eh——?”
“I mean we found literally nothing. The body wasn’t in the crypt at all.”
Ogden drew his head back, and on his face there was a look of such pale scepticism that it was like a light. Stevens had never disliked his face so much as at that moment. After peering for a moment, Ogden slid his hand into the refrigerator, gravely drew out a small dish of applesauce, and pushed it across the drain-board towards the other.
“What you mean,” he said, “is that you staunch friends and allies, rallying round the flag, found that poor old Uncle Miles was full of poison. And you hid the body somewhere so that nobody should learn about it. I know Mark’s opinion about the police. Do you mind my opinion?”
“No. I’m just telling you what happened, that’s all.—Mind holding that door open while I carry these cups in?”
Ogden, evidently startled but now very thoughtful, absent-mindedly complied. Stevens could see that his nimble brain was searching into corners, looking after loopholes; and he fixed on his host a gaze of disconcerting quality.
He said: “By the way, where’s Marie?”
“She’s—still in bed.”
“Odd,” remarked the other. Stevens was aware that there was probably nothing behind this; that Ogden merely said it on his usual principle of trying to make some one uncomfortable, even out of a casual word; but, nevertheless, it tightened the strain. Carrying the two cups, Stevens went on ahead to the living room. Ogden, who had apparently come to a decision, strode past him and saluted Miss Corbett with his glass.
“I had intended, my dear, to speak to you before,” he began. “But the fact is I needed liquid sustenance first. À votre santé.”
Stevens thought: If he keeps on using these clichés, I think I’ll empty this cup over his head. Miss Corbett, who was sitting with her hands folded calmly in her lap, eyed Ogden, and was not impressed.
“About this matter of the telegrams,” Ogden continued; “what does yours say?”
“What makes you think I got a telegram?” inquired the nurse.
“Must I explain it to everybody? All right; here goes again. Because I got one myself. As I told our friend here, I got it last night. But I was barging from house to house in a round of parties, and so——”
“If you were barging from house to house in a round of parties,” said Miss Corbett, practically, “how was the telegram delivered to you?”
Ogden’s eyes narrowed. He seemed about to say something in a manner of heavy and coy sarcasm, intended either to be crushing or to rouse the other person’s indiscreet ire. But he had the shrewdness to see that this would be wasted.
“Like to pin me down?” he enquired. “As it happens, I dropped in at the Caliban Club, and it was waiting for me there. No, seriously: why not be frank with me? You’d better, you know, for I’ll find it out when I go up to the house. And you can speak frankly in front of Ted Stevens; he knows all about it. Besides, in a way, it’s probably a very good thing you were called here. Your evidence may be important to the police. You can’t tell.”
“Thank you,” said the nurse, gravely. “My evidence about what?”
“About Uncle Miles being poisoned, of course.”
“You have absolutely no reason to say that!” she cried, and coffee spilled over the edge of her cup. “If you have anything to say, say it to Doctor Baker. There was no reason whatever to think—” She stopped. “I’ll admit I was worried afterwards; not on account of any suspicion like that, but because I was out on the night it happened, and I’d——”
“And,” interposed Ogden, pouncing instantly, “you had carefully locked up your own room; and, if he did happen to have a seizure, nobody could get in to get any remedies. So possibly, in one way, you killed your own patient. If that isn’t culpable negligence, I don’t know what is. It won’t be altogether good for your reputation when the story comes out.”
This was what was worrying her, they all knew, and Ogden deftly led her on.
“Oh, I’ll admit you had reason,” he conceded. “Uncle Miles was supposed to be practically well again. And, since somebody had just stolen a deadly poison out of your room—well, maybe you were right to try to prevent it happening again. But didn’t it make you suspicious at all? I know Baker’s an old fogey, and just about at his dotage; but didn’t it make even him suspicious? A poison is stolen from you on Saturday. On the following Wednesday night, Uncle Miles dies. Very funny, if you ask me.”
Ogden was enjoying himself so much that his purpose, which was trouble-making rather than detection, suddenly became apparent; the nurse realized it, and her face became stolid again.
“You seem to know a lot more than anybody else,” she told him, wearily. “So you ought to know this. If anything was taken, in the first place it couldn’t possibly have caused anybody’s death; and, in the second place, it couldn’t possibly have caused any of the symptoms Mr. Despard had.”
“Ah, I thought not. So it wasn’t arsenic. What was it?”
She did not reply.
“Besides, you must have some idea who took it——”
Very carefully Miss Corbett put down her empty cup on the table. Stevens, who felt himself that morning abnormally sensitive to atmosphere, knew that a new element had come into the questioning. He felt that for some reason the nurse was looking round the room; looking towards the stairs; waiting or listening; and that she wished very strongly to talk if only Ogden’s presence were removed.
“I haven’t any idea,” she answered, calmly.
Ogden was persuasive. “Come now. You’d better tell me, you know. It’ll make things easier for your conscience, and I’ll only find out——”
“Haven’t you used that dodge often enough?” asked Stevens, curtly. “For God’s sake try to act like a human being. You’re not the police. Actually, you don’t give a curse what happened to your uncle——”
The other turned round, alert and smiling. “Now I wonder what you have to hide?” he asked. “I’m certain there’s something. You haven’t been your old bright jolly self all morning. It may be that bunk you told me about Uncle Miles’s body having disappeared. Or it may not. I reserve judgement.” He glanced away again as the nurse got to her feet. “Not going? Yes? Let me give you a lift up to the house.”
“No, thank you.”
The air of tension had grown. Ogden remained watching them, like a fencer keeping two opponents in play; his neck was hunched down into the upturned collar of his camel’s hair coat, and on his long face there was the same sceptical smile. He remarked that his company did not seem welcome. He thanked Stevens for the whisky, observing judicially that, all things considered, it was not bad; and he left them. Not until the front door had closed did the nurse follow Stevens out into the hall. Then she put her hand on his arm and spoke rapidly.
“The real reason I came here,” she said, “was that I wanted to speak to you. I know it’s not important, but just the same I thought I’d better warn you that——”
The front door opened abruptly, and Ogden appeared in the aperture.
“Excuse me,” he said, grinning like a wolf. “But this does look like an assignation, after all. It’s a terrible thing, with your wife sleeping upstairs, too. Or is she? I notice that the car’s gone from your garage. Just to preserve the purity of public morals, I really think I’d better tail along with you when you go up to the house.”
“Get out,” said Stevens, calmly.
“Tut, tut,” Ogden urged, pleasantly. “Also, I see that the lights in your bedroom are full on. Does Marie sleep with the lights on?”
“Get OUT,” said Stevens.
Though Ogden’s manner did not change, something in this appeared to make him think he had better. He had the best of the situation, nevertheless, for he drove his car at the speed of two miles an hour, following them as they went up to the Park. Although the mist had thinned a little, it was still impossible to see more than a dozen feet ahead; hedges, trees, and lampposts swam suddenly out of the white murk, and in the Park itself there was an utter deadness of silence. There was an utter deadness of silence until they heard the sharp rapping of the front-door knocker rise insistently, and die away, and rise again. Its effect, in that muffling fog, was not pleasant.
“God!” Ogden said, abruptly. “You don’t suppose they’re all——?”
What peculiar quirk had struck Ogden at that moment, Stevens could not tell; but the car, slowly as it was going, almost collided with one pillar of the porte-cochère. On the front porch, shifting from one leg to another during the intervals in which he pounded at the door, stood a thick-set man with a briefcase in his hand. He turned round at their approach, and looked at them dubiously. He was a neat figure in a dark-blue overcoat and soft grey hat. Under the down-turned brim of the hat he had humorous eyes, a sandy complexion, and a broad jaw; his face looked much younger than his age, for the sides of his hair were slightly grizzled. His manner was genial and almost deprecating.
“Any of you live here?” he asked. “I know I’m early, but it seems like there’s nobody at home.” He paused. “My name is Brennan. I’m from police headquarters.”
Ogden whistled two notes and his manner grew much calmer; yet Stevens had a feeling that he was suddenly on the defensive. “Well, well, well. I imagine they were all up late last night, and that’s why they’re sleeping in. Never mind; I’ve got a key here somewhere. I live here. I’m Ogden Despard. And what would you be wanting with us this morning, Inspector?”
“Captain,” said Brennan, looking at Ogden. Ogden did not seem to be making himself popular with anyone this morning. “I believe it’s your brother I want to see, Mr. Despard. If——”
The front door opened so suddenly that Brennan’s hand over the knocker was left in the air. The hall inside looked even bleaker and gloomier than the mist-filled porch, despite a heavy sooty drizzle from the chimneys which filled the mist with grit. Partington, fully dressed and shaven so closely that he looked scrubbed, was surveying them from the doorway.
“Yes?” he said.
The captain cleared his throat. “My name is Brennan,” he repeated. “I’m from police headquar——”
At this point Stevens became convinced that the whole world was wrong. Partington’s face had turned a muddy color. He put his hand on the post of the door, sliding it down for a better grip; and if he had not held to the door it seemed that his knees might have buckled under him.
“Anything the matter?” asked Brennan, in an ordinary tone. It was so completely matter-of-fact that it helped. Partington pull himself together in a second, as though you had jerked the wires of a loose doll.
“Police headquarters,” he repeated, in a noncommittal growl.
“Yes. Of course. No, nothing’s wrong. Or, if I told you what it was, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why not?” asked Brennan practically.
Partington blinked a little. He seemed so puzzled that for a moment Stevens wondered whether he was drunk; but Partington dispelled that idea as a new thought appeared to strike him.
“Brennan!” he said. “I knew that name was—Look here, are you the man who sent those messages to everybody, asking them to come home?”
The captain looked at him. “We seem to have got the wires crossed,” he said, patiently. “Can I come in and talk this over before we get ’em more crossed? I didn’t send any messages. What I want to know is who sent me one. I want to see Mr. Despard, Mr. Mark Despard. The Commissioner sent me to see him.”
“I don’t think the doctor is quite himself this morning, Captain Brennan,” said Ogden, with unction. “In case you’ve forgotten me, Doctor Partington, I’m Ogden. I was at school when you—left us. Also, in case you’ve forgotten, this is Ted Stevens, whom you met last night. This is Miss Corbett, who nursed Uncle Miles.”
“I see,” said Partington. “Mark!”
Yellow light penetrated into the hall as the door to the big front room opened, and Mark stood in the doorway. Behind every move that was made now there was a curiously repressed and muffled significance, like a note of warning. It was like seeing the edge of some crisis whose meaning just eluded the spectator. Mark stood loosely, and yet drawn up, with the light along the side of his face. He wore a heavy grey sweater with a rolled collar, which gave his shoulders a top-heavy look.
“Well, well, well, well,” said Ogden. “We seem to have run into some trouble, brother. This is Captain Brennan of the Homicide Bureau.”
“I’m not from the Homicide Bureau,” said Brennan, a faint roar beginning to be distinguishable under his voice. “I’m attached to the staff of the Commissioner of Police. Are you Mr. Mark Despard?”
“Yes. Come in here, please.”
He stood to one side. He might have added, “The-doctor-will-see-you-in-a-minute” in the same tone of voice; it was not like Mark, and it was a bad sign.
“We’re a little disorganized here this morning,” he went on. “My sister has had a rather bad night. (Miss Corbett, will you go up and see her?) Also, the cook and the maid are away, and we’ve been trying to get breakfast in the best way we can. This way. Ted—Partington—will you come in here, too? No, Ogden, not you.”
Ogden could hardly believe his ears. “Oh, tut, tut! What’s the matter with you, Mark? Of course I’ll come in. Don’t try to pull any of that stuff on me. After all——”
“There are times, Ogden,” Mark continued, “when I feel for you a true brotherly affection. There are times when you are the life and soul of the party. But there are also times when your presence is definitely an encumbrance. This is one of them. Go on out to the kitchen and get yourself something to eat. Now I warn you.”
He closed the door as the other three went into the front room. The shutters were still on the windows as they had been last night, the lamps still burning; there seemed hardly a hiatus in time. At Mark’s gesture Brennan sat down in an overstuffed chair, where he put his hat and briefcase on the floor beside him. Without his hat Brennan was revealed as a middle-aged, shrewd-looking man with grizzled hair carefully brushed to hide the bald spot, a pleasant jaw, and a young face. He seemed hesitant about how to get down to business. Then he took a deep breath and unlocked his briefcase.
“I suppose you know why I’m here, Mr. Despard,” he said, “and I suppose I can talk in the presence of your friends here. I’ve got something I want you to read.” From the briefcase he took an envelope and a sheet of notepaper neatly typed. “I got that letter just about this time yesterday morning. As you can see, it was addressed to me personally, and mailed from Crispen on Thursday night.”
Mark unfolded the letter without haste. At first he seemed to be studying it without reading it. Then, without lifting his eyes, he began to read it aloud.
“Miles Despard, who died at Despard Park, Crispen, on April 12th, did not die a natural death. He was poisoned. This is not a crank letter. If you want proof, go to Joyce & Redfern Analytical Chemists, 218 Walnut Street. The day after the murder, Mark Despard brought them a drinking-glass that had contained milk, and a silver cup that had contained a wine-and-egg mixture. The cup had arsenic in it. This cup is now locked up in Mark Despard’s desk at home. He found it somewhere in Miles Despard’s room after the murder. The body of a cat formerly belonging to the house is buried in a flower-bed to the east of the house. Mark Despard buried it there. The cat had probably drunk some of the mixture with arsenic in it. Mark did not do the murder, but he is trying to cover up.
“The murder was done by a woman. If you want proof of this, see Mrs. Joe Henderson, who is the cook. She saw the woman in Miles Despard’s bedroom on the night of the murder, handing him the same silver cup. You can catch her away from the house and make her tell you. But go easy, as she does not know it is murder, and you will learn a lot. You will find her staying with friends at 92 Lees Street, Frankford. It is to your advantage not to disregard this.
AMOR JUSTITIAE.”
Mark put the letter down on the table. “I like that business about Amor Justitiae. It’s not much as a model of composition, is it?”
“I don’t know about that. The point is, Mr. Despard, it’s true.— Now just a minute,” Brennan added, more sharply. “I’ve got to tell you that we had this Mrs. Henderson at City Hall yesterday. And I’ve been sent here by the Commissioner, because he’s a personal friend of yours, to help you.”
“You’re a damned funny sort of detective,” said Mark. And suddenly he began to laugh.
Brennan grinned broadly in reply. Stevens thought he had never seen a more complete puncturing of tension, a more sudden cessation of hostilities. The real reason for it occurred to him at last; and it occurred to Brennan too.
“Yes, I could feel what you were thinking the minute I walked in here,” he declared. His startled grin became a chuckle. “Let me ask you something. Did you expect me to come charging in here, pointing my finger in everybody’s face, insulting people right and left, and roaring for blood? Listen, Mr. Despard. I can tell you this: the cop who acted like that would get his pants thrown out of the police department so quick you couldn’t see ’em for dust. Especially if the party concerned happened to have an ounce of influence, or was a personal friend of the Commissioner’s: like you. When people write those stories, there’s one thing they seem to forget—and that’s politics. But we can’t forget it. And there’s more to it. We have a job to do. We try to do it as well as we can, and I think we do it pretty well. We’re not a side-show or a monkey-house. And the ambitious young fellow who tries to turn us into one, and make a splash for himself, is the one who doesn’t get on with the department. That’s only common sense. As I say, I’m here representing Mr. Cartell, the Commissioner——”
“Cartell,” repeated Mark, and sat up. “Of course. He was——”
“So,” concluded Brennan, with a broad gesture, “what about telling me the whole truth? I’ve told you this so that you’ll see where I stand; and the Commissioner wants me to help as far as I can within the law. Is it a deal?”
This, Stevens reflected, was probably the one course which would have won over Mark Despard. Captain Brennan was not only a representative of the head of the department; he was a clever man. Mark nodded, and Brennan opened the briefcase again.
“First of all, though,” he said, “you’ll want to know about my end of the business, to show that this isn’t any bluff.
“As I told you, I got that letter early yesterday morning. Now, I know all about you here; I’ve got a cousin who lives down in Merion. So I took that letter straight to the Commissioner. He didn’t think there was anything to it, and neither did I. But I thought I’d better go round and see Joyce and Redfern, the chemists. And,” said Brennan, running his finger down a typed sheet, “that part of it was right, anyway. You went to them on Thursday, April 13th. You took a glass and a cup for analysis. You said you thought your cat had been poisoned, and the cat had been lapping some stuff out of one of these two. You asked them not to say anything about it if anybody asked. You came back next day and got the report. Glass O. K., but two grains of arsenic in the cup. Description of cup: about four inches in diameter, three inches high; solid silver; a design like flowers round the top; very old.” He raised his eyes. “Correct?”
In the ensuing minutes Brennan demonstrated that, beyond doubt, he had a way with him. Mark always said afterwards that it was like being lured into a purchase by an expert salesman: so painlessly, so imperceptibly, that before you knew what you were doing it suddenly occurred to you that you had promised to buy the article. Brennan—with a bland and catlike pleasantness, his ear inclined, his grizzled head bent over his notes—was as confidential as a Balkan diplomat. He could mention even the weather in terms of one imparting a grave secret. But he received as much information as he gave. Imperceptibly he got Mark to tell the story of Miles’s illness, of Miles’s death and the events of that night, of the finding of the cup in Miles’s room; and he established that, if poison had been drunk at all, it must have been drunk out of that silver cup.
Then Brennan went on to tell how Mrs. Henderson came to give her evidence. This part of it was not clear. But, Stevens guessed, Brennan had probably gone to Frankford in the guise of a friend of Mark’s, had seen Mrs. Henderson, and had encouraged her in her natural tendency to gossip. For—Brennan admitted—Mrs. Henderson had no suspicion that anything was wrong until she was invited to come to City Hall and repeat her statement to the Commissioner of Police. Afterwards, Brennan also admitted, she had departed in tears and hysterics, swearing that she had betrayed the family and that she could never bring herself to look on their faces again.
From a typed copy Brennan read the statement made by Mrs. Henderson about the night of April 12th. And, in essentials, it was exactly the same thing she had told Mark. There was only one thing absent from the police record—the intangible quality of atmosphere. This record contained no suggestion of anything supernatural or even supernormal. It contained merely the statement that Mrs. Henderson, at 11:15 p.m., had peeped through a gap in the curtain and seen a woman in Miles’s room. At this time Miles had been in perfect health. The visitor was a small woman who wore “queer old-fashioned clothes,” or fancy dress. Mrs. Henderson had supposed that it was Mrs. Lucy Despard or Miss Edith Despard. She knew that both had gone to a masquerade that night; but she had just returned from a visit to Cleveland, had not seen either, and did not know what costumes they were wearing. The visitor in “queer old-fashioned clothes” had been carrying a silver cup whose description corresponded with that later found to have contained arsenic, and had given this cup to Miles Despard. Miles was seen to have the cup in his hand, although he was not actually seen to drink from it.
So far, the record had sounded all the more damning since it was shorn of atmosphere and suggestion. All the same, Stevens wondered how Brennan’s matter-of-factness would treat the end of the story—the visitor’s exit through a door which did not exist.
Then Brennan came to it.
“Now, Mr. Despard,” he confided, “the only part of it that wasn’t just straight was right there. Mrs. Henderson says that this woman ‘walked through the wall.’ It’s right here—‘walked through the wall.’ She couldn’t or wouldn’t make it clearer than that. She said the wall ‘looked like it changed, and then changed back again.’ Get me? All right. Well, the Commissioner said to her, ‘I think I know what you mean. You mean the door to a secret passage, don’t you?’ That made sense, naturally. I know myself that this is a very old house.”
Mark had been sitting back rather stiffly, his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the detective. His face was as inscrutable as Brennan’s. “And what,” he asked at this point, “did Mrs. Henderson say to that?”
“She said, ‘Yes, I guess that’s what it must have been.’ And it’s the thing I wanted to ask you. I’ve heard a lot about secret passages, but, to tell you the truth, I never actually SAW one. A friend of mine claimed he had one in his attic, but it was a fake; it was only the place where they kept the fuse-box, and you could see the door if you looked close. So, naturally, I was pretty interested. There’s one in that room all right, isn’t there?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Yes, but there is one? You could show it to me, couldn’t you?”
For the first time Mark seemed to feel that he was fighting on his own ground, with words rather than facts.
“Sorry, Captain. They didn’t have fuse-boxes in the seventeenth century. Yes, there was once a door there. It led to another part of the house, which has been burned down since. The trouble is, I’ve never been able to find the catch or spring that opens it.”
“All right,” said Brennan, eyeing him. “The only reason I asked was that, if you could have shown Mrs. Henderson was lying beyond any doubt, we wouldn’t have needed to be suspicious of anybody but her.”
After a pause, during which Mark seemed to be cursing inaudibly, the captain went on.
“So that was the situation we had on our hands. If we believed her, we had a cut-and-dried case. And there’s no use saying we didn’t believe her. I can sort of smell a liar the minute I see one.” He gave a slight wave of his hand, looking round the room. “We had the time of the murder fixed at about 11:15. We had the cup containing arsenic, seen in your uncle’s hand. We had a description of the dress worn by the woman——”
“You had everything, in short,” said Mark, “except any actual evidence that murder had been committed at all.”
“That’s right!” Brennan agreed, instantly, and tapped the briefcase. He seemed pleased that Mark should have appreciated the point. “So you see how we were situated. First we phoned Doctor Baker and asked privately, what he thought of the idea of Mr. Miles Despard being poisoned. He said we were crazy. He said it was impossible, though he admitted that the symptoms with which Mr. Despard died might have been the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. Of course his attitude was plain. No family doctor wants to start trouble of that kind if he can help it. If there’s an exhumation order, and an autopsy, and it turns out that he was wrong—well, it’s just too bad for him. Next the Commissioner tried to get in touch with you, to see what you had to say to all this. But he couldn’t locate you, at either your office or your home. …”
“No,” said Mark, who was regarding him with a hard and wary stare. “I was in New York. I went to meet a friend of mine just arriving from England. Mr. Partington over there, as a matter of fact.”
Partington, who had been sitting by the fireplace with his clasped hands on his knees, looked up. The shadows showed deep wrinkles in his forehead, but he did not comment.
“Yes. We found that out,” Brennan answered, briefly. “Now face the facts,” he went on. “A woman in masquerade costume was in the room. We knew from Mrs. Henderson that your wife and your sister, and you as well, were at a masquerade at St. Davids on that night. It looked as though it must have been one of the two: pretty certainly your wife, because Mrs. Henderson—the day afterwards—saw the costume Mrs. Despard had been wearing, and admitted it was like the dress worn by the woman in that room. Easy now! I’m just telling you.
“But yesterday we couldn’t get hold of either your wife or your sister because both of ’em were in New York too. So the Commissioner decided to check up on all your movements for the night of the 12th. He could do it without kicking up a rumpus, because he knows the man who gave the party, and knows a lot of the people who were there.—Now. Mr. Despard, I’ve got a full report on all of you, particularly for those critical times around 11:15. If it’s all right with you, I’ll give you the gist of it.”
There was a sort of bursting pause. It was very hot in the room, where two centuries seemed to wait and listen. Out of the corner of his eye Stevens had seen the door move; somebody must have been listening from the first. He thought it was Ogden. But, as the door opened still farther, he saw that it was Lucy. Lucy Despard came in very softly and stood in the corner by the door, her hands straight down at her sides. She was so pale that the faint freckles stood out on her face; and her hair, parted at one side as though with an angry sweep of the comb, showed dead black against it; but she looked mutinous.
“First of all,” Brennan pursued, without looking at her or seeming to notice her presence, “we’ll take you, Mr. Despard. Yes, yes; I know nobody would be likely to mistake you for a small woman in a low-cut dress. But, to prove the absence of any funny business, we’ll just take it in order. You’ve got a cast-iron alibi for the whole evening, especially as you didn’t wear a mask. Two dozen people are willing to swear where you were at any given time. I needn’t give you all the dope because it’s not important. But it’s established that you couldn’t have left the house and come here. So that’s that.”
“Go on,” said Mark.
“Next there’s Miss Edith Despard.” Brennan ran his eye down the sheet. “She got there with your party at about 9:50. She was wearing a white hoopskirt outfit with black trimmings, a white bonnet, and a black domino mask. She was seen dancing between 10 and 10:30. At about 10:30 the hostess met her. Your sister had managed to tear some lace bloomer, or pants, or some damn thing, that she was wearing under the hoopskirts——”
“Yes, that’s right,” assented Mark. “She was still grousing about it when we came home.”
“—and she didn’t like it. So the hostess told her there were bridge tables in another room, and asked her if she would like to play bridge. She said she would. She went to this room, and naturally she took off her mask. From about 10:30 until 2 A.M., when all of you went home, she was playing bridge. There’s a whole crowd of witnesses of this. Result: complete alibi.”
Brennan cleared his throat.
“Now we come to your wife, Mr. Despard. She was wearing a silk dress colored blue and red, with wide skirts and things like diamonds in it. She didn’t have a hat, but had a gauze scarf over the back of her head. She also wore a blue domino mask with lace on the edges of it. She started dancing right away. At about 10:35 or 10:40 there was a telephone call for her——”
“A telephone call!” said Mark, sharply, and sat up. “A telephone call at somebody else’s house? Who was it from?”
“That’s the part we can’t get,” snorted Brennan. “We don’t know who answered the phone. The only reason it was noticed at all was because some man dressed like a town-crier (nobody seems to know who he was, including the host and hostess) started going among the dancers imitating a town-crier and saying Mrs. Mark Despard was wanted on the phone. She went out. Next, the butler saw her come into the front hall about 10:45. The butler is sure of this. There was nobody else in the hall. She was going towards the front door, and she didn’t have her mask on. The butler noticed her especially because he saw she was going out, and he went to open the door for her; but she hurried out before he could get there. As it happens, the butler stayed in the hall. Well, about five minutes later Mrs. Despard came back again—still not wearing her mask. She went across towards the room where they were dancing, and was asked to dance by a man dressed as Tarzan. She had two successive partners after this: we’ve got the names of both. At 11:15 she was dancing with some one everybody noticed—a big figure about seven feet tall, thin as a rake, and with a skull for a head——”
“By God, yes!” Mark cried, softly, and struck the arm of the chair. “I remember now. It was old Kenyon—Judge Kenyon, of the Superior Court. I had a drink with him afterwards.”
“Yes. We found that out. Anyhow, it was noticed; because the host said to somebody, ‘Look, there’s Lucy Despard dancing with Death.’ They both noticed this because Mrs. Despard leaned back and lifted up her mask to get a better look at Death. The time, as I say, was exactly 11:15. Result——”
Brennan put down the paper.
“Complete alibi,” he said.
A great weight had gone from Mark Despard. He straightened up in the chair; he seemed gradually to commence to see things; and in this shaken condition he acted with what was—for Mark—something like a flourish. He jumped up from his chair and turned towards Lucy.
“Let me,” he said, in a rolling voice like an actor’s, “present you to the lady who danced with Death. Captain Brennan, this is my wife.”
He somewhat marred the effect of this by adding in a peevish tone, “Why the devil couldn’t you have told us all this as soon as you got here, instead of fooling around for so long and making us feel like murderers?” But Stevens’s attention was concentrated on Lucy and Brennan.
Lucy had come forward immediately, with her free and easy stride, and that manner of hers which put everyone at ease. Though her light-brown eyes had a twinkle of amusement, she was still pale and she did not seem so relieved as a spectator would have expected. Stevens noticed that she glanced quickly at Mark.
“I think you know, Captain,” she said, “that I overheard everything you were saying. I’m rather sure you intended me to. But there are a whole lot of things that—that should have been discussed before, and are only just coming out now. I—I—” Her face tightened, and momentarily she was on the edge of tears. “I never knew there was so much behind this. It would have been better if I had. Anyhow, I’m terribly grateful to you.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Despard,” said Brennan, surprised. He stood in front of her, shifting from one foot to the other and avoiding her eye. “Just the other way round, I’d say. But I’m telling you it’s a good thing you decided to come back after you went out, that night of the party, and the butler saw you come back. You can see for yourself you’d have been in a jam if you hadn’t.”
“By the way, Lucy,” Mark put in, casually, “who was that telephone call from? Where were you going?”
She made a gesture of her wrist towards him without looking at him. “That doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you about it later. —Mr. Brennan, Mark asked you a minute ago why you didn’t tell him all these things flat out as soon as you came in here. I think I know the reason. I’ve heard of you. In fact, I’ve been warned against you, in a way.” She grinned. “No offence, but tell me, is it true that at City Hall you’re known as Foxy Frank?”
Brennan was unabashed. He returned the grin and made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, I wouldn’t believe everything I heard, Mrs. Brennan. The boys——”
“They say, to put it vulgarly,” Lucy told him, severely, “that you could talk a crook out of his back collar-button, and arrest him afterwards. Is that true? And if it is, have you got anything else up your sleeve?”
“If I have, I’m going to tell you what it is,” he replied, and stopped suddenly. “Where did you hear about me?”
“Hear? I don’t know. It stuck in my mind, somehow. From the Commissioner, maybe. But why? When we all got those telegrams from you, telling us to come home——”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. I didn’t send you any telegrams or messages. But somebody sent me one; I mean that letter signed Amor Whateveritis. Whoever wrote that had all the dope, and had it straight. Who did write it?”
“I think I can tell you that,” snapped Mark.
He strode across the room to where, in the clutter along the walls, stood a square desk-like box in walnut, covered with a cloth. Pulling the lid up with a bang, he revealed a folding typewriter-desk with a rather dusty Smith Premier machine. After searching in vain for some paper, Mark compromised by whipping an old letter out of his hip pocket and rolling the back of it into the machine.
“Try this,” he suggested, “and compare the typing with the typing on that letter.”
Brennan gravely fitted on a pair of owlish shell-rimmed glasses, sat down like a maestro at a piano, peered at it for a few moments, and then struck gingerly. Now is the time, he wrote, for all good men— The typewriter pecked sharply, like a hen after corn; Brennan studied it and sat back.
“I’m not an expert,” he admitted, “but it strikes me you don’t need to be. There’s no fingerprint plainer than this. They’re the same. Somebody in the house wrote it, all right. Got any idea who it was?”
“OGDEN wrote it,” said Mark, patiently. “Ogden wrote it, of course. I knew that the minute I looked at the letter. Ogden wrote it because he’s the only person in the house who could have written it. Look.” He turned to Stevens and Partington, fiery with the certainty of a new idea. “That part about me burying the cat was a dead give-away. Do you remember last night, when I was telling you about it? I told you that, while I was just finishing the burying, the lights of Ogden’s car came up over the hill and I was afraid he had seen me? Well, he did see me. Only he didn’t say anything. He watched.”
Lucy’s eyes were moving from corner to corner of the room. “And you think he sent the telegrams to us, too? But, Mark, that’s horrible! Why should he do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” Mark replied, rather wearily. He sat down in the chair and ruffled the hair at his temples. “There’s no real harm in Ogden. I mean that. He wouldn’t—that is, intentionally—I’m not making myself quite clear, but the point is he probably didn’t think there was anything really wrong. He simply did it to make a little trouble and watch people jump. Ogden is the sort of person who, if he were giving a jolly little dinner party, would invite two notorious enemies and seat them together at the table. He can’t help it; he’s like that. That quality sometimes makes great scientists, sometimes great sneaks, and sometimes both. But as for thinking there was anything actually——”
“Oh, rubbish, Mark,” said Lucy, with asperity. She was in a flouncing, bouncing mood, possibly because she appeared worried. “You simply cannot seem to believe there’s ever anything wrong with anyone. There’s something wrong with Ogden. He’s—changed, somehow. He was never so bad as this before. And he seems positively to hate Marie Stevens. (Sorry, Ted.) Do you mean to say he could write a letter like that, practically accusing a member of his own family of murder, and not think there was anything wrong?”
“How should I know? He’s certainly been one first-class spy, the damned young whelp! I wonder he didn’t guess we were going to open the cryp——”
Mark stopped dead. There was a palpable silence in the room, broken by a slow, measured tapping. Brennan, at ease in the straight chair by the typewriter, had removed his glasses and was tapping them on the top of the desk. Brennan regarded the company with grim affability.
“Go on,” he said. “Go on. Don’t stop there, Mr. Despard. You were going to say, ‘open the crypt.’ I’ve played square with you, and I’ve been waiting for you to play square with me.”
“Foxy Frank—” said Mark. He opened his mouth and shut it again. “Do you mean to tell me you know about that, too?”
“Yes. That’s what’s been worrying me. That’s what’s been on my mind. That’s why I don’t know what in—” Brennan’s almost elephantine delicacy in front of a woman made him break off and roar thunderation with some effect of anticlimax—“to make of this nightmare, this foolishness, this jungle of unadulterated bunk! And I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you found in the crypt.”
“If I told you what we found there, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’d believe you all right. You bet I would. Mr. Despard, I know every move you and your friends made yesterday, from the time you met Doctor Partington at pier 57 in New York. There was a ‘tail’ on you.”
“You know about last night?”
“Listen!” urged Brennan, holding up one finger with an arresting motion and taking another paper out of his briefcase. “You came back from New York with Doctor Partington at 6:25 p.m. You came up to this house. At 8:05 you left it again, and both of you drove down to the little white house on the left-hand side of King’s Avenue as you come up it. The house belongs to a Mr. Stevens. … I guess that’s you,” he added, turning to Stevens with matter-of-fact pleasantness. “You stayed there until 8:45. Then you and Doctor Partington returned to this house. You two, with a servant named Henderson, went back and forth from the house to Henderson’s house, gathering up tools. At 9:30 Mr. Stevens joined you. At 9:40 you four started to open the crypt, and you got it open at just a quarter to twelve.”
“Henderson said there was some one watching us,” Mark growled, uneasily. He glanced at Brennan. “But——”
“Three of you went down into it. Doctor Partington went back to the house, but joined you in two minutes. At 12:28 Doctor Partington, Mr. Stevens, and Henderson came pelting out of the crypt so hard that the ‘tail’ thought something was wrong, and followed. But it was evidently the odor of the place: the first two came up to this house with Doctor Partington, got two step-ladders, and returned at 12:32. Doctor Partington returned at 12:35. At 12:45 there was a devil of a noise of you upsetting some marble urns. At 12:55 you gave it up and went to Henderson’s place——”
“You can spare us the details,” growled Mark. His voice took on a note of urgency. “There’s just one thing, though. Never mind what we did; we know that well enough. But could this ‘tail’ of yours hear us? Could he overhear what we were saying?”
“He could while you were in the crypt or in Henderson’s house. In case you don’t remember it, the windows of Henderson’s living-room were open. So he heard most of your talk.”
“Sunk,” said Mark, after a pause.
“No, don’t let it get you down,” advised Brennan, picking up his glasses again. “I’m telling you all this in detail—well, to explain why I showed up on your doorstep so early this morning. The ‘tail’ stuck to your party until three o’clock this morning. He didn’t interfere with you; he had orders not to. But as soon as he left he came chasing out to Chestnut Hill, where I live, and proceeded to wake me up. He said he couldn’t have slept last night if his life depended on it: it’s the first time I ever saw Burke rattled. He said: ‘Captain, they’re a bunch of loonies. They’re stark, raving nuts. They talk about dead people coming to life. They say maybe the old man got up out of his coffin and walked out of that vault, and that’s why it’s empty now.’ So I thought I’d better get out here as soon as I could.”
Mark, who had taken to striding round the room again, stopped and stared at him with dry glee.
“Ah, now we come to it. Now we approach the fount and origin. Do you believe we’re a bunch of loonies, Captain?”
“Not necessarily,” said Brennan, considering the question down the side of his nose. “Not necessarily.”
“But you agree that the body disappeared out of the crypt?”
“I’ve got to. Burke was pretty emphatic about that. He said you thought of everything the police department could think of. My own guess is that he was too plain scared to go down into the crypt himself after you had all left and it began to look a little spooky. Especially as—” He glanced towards his briefcase and checked himself abruptly.
Mark was alert. “Here! Just a moment. ‘Especially as—’ what? This whole interview has consisted in taking unexpected rabbits out of the hat. I’ll ask the same question Lucy did a while ago: have you got any more rabbits in your hat?”
“Yes,” said Brennan, calmly. “For instance, I’ve got a complete check-up on the movements of the other members of this household for that night, April 12th.”
After a pause he went on:
“The trouble with you, Mr. Despard, is that you’ve been hypnotized by Mrs. Despard. I mean,” he rumbled, hastily, shutting his eyes as though in apology, “by the possibility of her being guilty. And your sister, too. But there were others in the house. I’ll take them in turn, beginning with your brother, Mr. Ogden Despard—the same as I did with your group. All right. Now, I’d understand from what Mrs. Henderson said that he was out of town yesterday; so I couldn’t question him, or thought I couldn’t. But I put a man to look him up, and, by a piece of good luck, we found out what he was doing on the night of the murder.”
Mark reflected. “As far as I remember, he had intended to go to an alumni dinner of his preparatory-school year at the Bellevue-Stratford in town. But we held him up so long here, waiting for Mrs. Henderson to get back from Cleveland, that he must have missed it. I remember he was still here when we left for the masquerade at half-past nine.”
“I wonder—” said Lucy, suddenly, and stopped.
“You wonder what, Mrs. Despard?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Well, that’s right, anyhow,” said Brennan. “Mrs. Henderson remembered where he was going. He left here about 9:40, driving a blue Buick. He drove to town, and got to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel at about 10:35, when the dinner was over but the speech-making was going on. He was seen to come in. Afterwards, it seems, some of the alumni had rooms at the hotel, and were doing some celebrating. He joined the party, and his movements can be proved from 10:35 until 2 a.m. Result—another complete alibi. Again I’ll admit that nobody would be likely to mistake him for the visitor, any more than they would you. But I’m being thorough.
“Next on our list there’s Miss Myra Corbett, trained nurse.” Brennan looked up from his notes, grinned, and made a gesture. “Well, now, I didn’t think it was very likely that trained nurses run around murdering their patients. But it was another thing that had to be checked. I put a good man on to it, and,” said Brennan, significantly, “we got an interview with her as well as checking her movements.”
“You mean,” Lucy put in, quickly, after a pause, “you got her to talk about—things that happened while she was here?”
“Yes.”
Lucy regarded him as though she were searching for a trap.
“You’ve still got something up your sleeve,” she accused him.
“Did she—did she say anything about a little bottle of something being stolen from her room?”
“Yes.”
“Well?” demanded Mark, exasperated. “Does she know who stole it, whatever it was?”
“She believes it must have been one of two persons,” replied Foxy Frank, looking at them with great deliberation. “But we’ll go into that in a moment. First, her movements. The night of the 12th was her night off. We traced her back to her—um—sinister lair in the Spring Garden Street Y.W.C.A. She got there about seven o’clock. She had dinner at the Y.W.C.A., went to a picture-show with a girl-friend about 7:30, came back about 10, and went to bed. This is confirmed by another nurse, who shares a room with her. One more complete alibi.
“Next and last we have Margaret Lightner, your maid, now staying with her parents in West Philadelphia. …”
“Margaret?” cried Lucy. “Did you even go after her? I remember. I gave her permission to go out on a date that night.”
“Yes. We found that out. We also got hold of her boyfriend, and another couple who’d been out on a double-date with them. The four of ’em spent the evening driving (and by this they mean parking) all over the place. Anyway, from about half-past ten to midnight they were stopping somewhere out in the wilds in Fairmount Park. So that gets rid of any idea that the maid—she’s Pennsylvania Dutch; did you know it?—might have been the woman in your uncle’s room at 11:15.”
Mark was staring at him with puckered eyelids.
“I don’t see what Margaret’s being Pennsylvania Dutch has to do with it,” he remarked. “But the implications of this are getting beyond me. Look here. You believe Mrs. Henderson’s story, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Brennan, thoughtfully. “Yes, I believe it.”
“And you don’t have any idea that old Joe Henderson, her husband, was mixed up in it, do you?”
“No.”
Mark put his fists on his hips. “In that case, my lad, you’ve eliminated the whole crowd! You’ve proved an alibi for every single person in the house or associated with the house. There’s nobody else who could have done it. If the police are going to believe that this business was supernatural, after all——”
“Man,” said Brennan, with a sort of wild petulance, “I wish you’d snap out of this and try to see just what did happen here that night. I’ve been explaining to you like a kindergarten-teacher because you’re all as jumpy as rabbits, and you wouldn’t have answered any questions unless you could get it out of your systems that one of you was guilty or that it was some tommyrot about ghosts. What I wanted to show you was plain all along. I knew it the moment I heard about the business. This little stunt was pulled by an outsider.”
After a pause he went on, broadly:
“Don’t look so flabbergasted. It’s good news, isn’t it? Now figure it out for yourselves. The poisoner was a woman. On the night of the 12th she knew that most of you would be out. She knew that Mrs. Despard was going to a masquerade, and she knew the kind of costume Mrs. Despard would wear. That’s a cinch: she even imitated it down to the extent of a gauze scarf over the head and shoulders. So she came here—probably wearing a mask, too—knowing that if anybody saw her they’d take her for Mrs. Despard. And that’s just exactly what happened.
“But it’s not all she did. Mrs. Despard was going to this party and wearing a mask. Sure; but there was a chance that everybody in the place would know who she was and be able to give her an alibi afterwards. So the poisoner cooks up some kind of fake telephone call to Mrs. Despard at St. Davids.” He glanced over at Lucy with sudden shrewdness. “We don’t know who that call was from or what it was about. Mrs. Despard doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
Lucy opened her mouth to speak, flushed, and hesitated.
“But never mind. I’ll bet you ten dollars to a plugged nickel that the call was a fake. It was intended to send Mrs. Despard out on some wild-goose chase so that she couldn’t prove where she was. Remember what time the call was made? About twenty minutes to eleven. If she went out, and stayed out for three-quarters of an hour, or an hour— See what I mean? But Mrs. Despard changed her mind and didn’t go.
“The real murderer (or maybe I ought to say murderess) wasn’t much afraid of being seen. And I’ll tell you why—because she came by a secret passage. But then up came Mrs. Henderson, to listen to the radio. And there was a hole in that curtain over the window looking on the sun porch. Still, this didn’t bother the woman, because she’d still be taken for Mrs. Despard unless somebody saw her face. Mrs. Henderson talked a lot of how still this woman was, and how she didn’t seem to move at all. You can bet your bottom dollar she didn’t! She didn’t move because she’d have had to turn around, and she might have been recognized.
“Now, I’ve been gassing away here. But you’re the people who have got to do the thinking now. You want to find somebody who knows this house inside out and is an intimate friend of yours and knows what was going on that night. Have you got any ideas?”
Lucy and Mark turned to stare at each other.
“But that’s impossible!” Lucy protested. “You see, we keep ourselves pretty secluded here. We don’t go out much. I like going out, but Mark hates it. That masquerade was something of a treat. And, you see, we have no intimate friends except——”
She stopped.
“Except—” prompted Brennan.
Lucy turned slowly round and looked Stevens full in the face.
He had seen it coming. Faintly at first, a word here, a phrase there, going off the path, coming back again—Stevens had seen it insistently approaching and growing larger, all the more ugly because its movements were so haphazard. It was a blind thing, flapping its way, but it had come into the room at last. And he was powerless to shut it out.
“Except Ted and Marie, of course,” said Lucy. She smiled uncertainly.
Stevens could see the idea come into three minds at once. Mark and Lucy looked at him. Even Partington, who had remained in a brown study throughout the whole interview, raised his head a little. In that almost fey state which comes with a stringing-up of the nerves for battle, Stevens thought that he could see into Mark’s brain and follow every thought. Thus the idea sprang into Mark’s head. He pictured Marie visually; there was a blank interval; a little twitch of incredulity came to his lips. He pictured her again; the incredulity grew to a broadening smile.
And, as though to prove it, Mark spoke.
“I’ll be hanged,” he said, in the flat tone of one making a statement. “I never thought of that. You know, Ted, you asked me last night whether I could stand having a case made out against my own wife. It looks as though the tables are turned. It looks as though I’ll have to ask you the same question.”
“That’s fair enough,” said Stevens, answering his casual lightness. “As a matter of fact, I hadn’t thought of it myself. But I can see the point.”
But he was not concerned with Mark. Out of the corner of his eye he was watching Brennan, who had turned round with a courteous mask of a face. He wondered how much Brennan might know. He also had an unreal sensation that this whole scene had been played out somewhere before. But he realized that the next few minutes might be the most critical of his life—for he was about to try a wrestling-fall with Foxy Frank.
“Ted and Marie?” repeated Brennan, inclining his head with just that degree of broad heartiness which Stevens had expected. “I suppose that’s you and your wife, Mr. Stevens?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, man to man, now. Do you know any reason why either of you should want to poison Miles Despard?”
“No; that’s just it. We scarcely knew him, either of us. I don’t think I’ve talked with him a dozen times, and Marie rather less. Any of the family will tell you that.”
“You don’t seem very surprised.”
“At what?”
“At being accused,” said Brennan, blinking a little as though he were pulled up short.
“That depends on what you mean by surprised. I’m not going to jump up and yell, ‘Damn you, what are you insinuating?’ I know what you’re getting at, all right, Captain; and I don’t blame you. The trouble is, it’s not true.”
“For the sake of argument,” said Brennan. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, Mr. Stevens. I’d like to know what she looks like. For instance, is she about the size and build of Mrs. Despard? What do you say, Mrs. Despard?”
Lucy’s eyes were shining strangely, yet it was with a blank stare which seemed to be turned inward. Stevens had never seen such an expression on the face of the placid, easy-going Lucy he knew, and it disquieted him.
“Yes, she’s about my size,” she admitted. “But— Oh, this is absurd! You don’t know her! Besides…”
“Thanks, Lucy,” Stevens said. “What Mrs. Despard was probably going to say,” he went on, easily, “is something that I’m afraid is bad for your theory, Captain. Let me understand this. You think that the woman went there disguised in a mask and a costume exactly like Lucy’s, so that, if somebody happened to see her, she would be mistaken for Lucy?”
“Yes, I’m pretty certain of it.”
“Good. And it’s furthermore agreed that this woman, whatever else she wore, did not wear a hat. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s what I was telling you; she was imitating Mrs. Despard’s costume, and Mrs. Despard didn’t have a hat. But both of ’em had a gauze scarf over the shoulders.”
“Then,” the other said, decisively, “you can get rid of any idea that it was Marie. Lucy, as you can see for yourself, has hair of the color that the poets compare to a raven’s wing. Marie is a blonde. Therefore——”
Brennan held up his hand. “Whoa, there! Don’t go so fast. We asked Mrs. Henderson about that. She said she didn’t notice, or couldn’t tell exactly, what color hair the woman had; so you can’t prove anything by that. Mrs. Henderson said the light was too dim.”
“The light was too dim for her to tell the color of the hair—although she told you every color in the dress. What’s more, this woman was standing silhouetted against the light. Gauze scarf or no, that’s exactly the position where hair does shine, if it’s blonde, with a light on the edges of it. Yet Mrs. Henderson didn’t notice. You can see for yourself that what she saw was some woman with black hair like Lucy or dark brown hair like Edith. That’s why she thought it must be either Lucy or Edith. Whereas Marie’s hair would have been like a brass kettle, and Mrs. H. would have known it wasn’t either one of them.” He paused. “But that isn’t the point. Let’s suppose Marie is going to disguise herself as Lucy. Now, if a blonde is masquerading as a brunette—muffled up in heavy clothes, mask, and scarf—let me ask you this: is it reasonable to think she’ll wear no hat and thus leave exposed the one part of her which will show, twenty feet away, that she isn’t the brunette?”
Mark reached up and made a gesture as though he were pulling the cord of a bell.
“End of round one,” he said, critically, “He’s got you there, Captain. I thought I’d stand by as amicus curiae, Ted; but it doesn’t seem to be necessary. I warn you, Captain, this fellow is an academic terror. The Jesuits aren’t in it when he begins to argue.”
Brennan considered. “It’s true, in a way. Though I’ve got a feeling we’re being steered away from the main issue, somehow.” He frowned. “Let’s just get back to straight facts. Where were you and your wife on the night of the 12th?”
“Right here in Crispen. I admit that.”
“Why do you say you ‘admit it’?” Brennan asked, quickly.
“Because it wasn’t usual. As a rule we come down here only on week-ends, and that was a Wednesday. I had business in Philadelphia.”
Brennan turned to Lucy. “Did Mrs. Stevens know you were going to that masquerade, and what costume you were wearing?”
“Yes, she knew that. Marie came up here in the afternoon to say they’d come down unexpectedly for the night, and to ask what we were doing that evening. I showed her the dress. I was just finishing it. I made it myself, you know, from the design of one of the pictures in the gallery.”
“May I ask you something, Lucy?” interposed Stevens. “Was that Wednesday afternoon the first time Marie had heard anything about the dress?”
“Yes. I only decided to make it on Monday.”
“Could somebody have bought a duplicate of that dress at a theatrical costumier’s, or dressmaker’s, or somewhere?”
“I should certainly think they couldn’t!” said Lucy, with some asperity. “It was much too elaborate and much too distinctive. As I say, I copied it from a painting here. I never saw anything like it. That’s why I——”
“Between the time you told Marie about the dress on Wednesday afternoon, and the time the mysterious visitor showed up in Miles’s room at 11:15, would there have been time for her to make one of them herself?”
Lucy’s eyes opened wide, and then narrowed. “Good Lord, no! Of course. I never thought of that. It took me three days as it was. She wouldn’t even have had time to get the materials. Besides, now I remember it, she stayed here with me until half-past six. Then she went down to meet you.”
Stevens sat back and looked at Brennan. For the first time Brennan was genuinely worried. Though he was holding himself in well, a faint stir of temper began to show under the brisk exterior. He covered it with smiles and a confidential air.
“I can depend on that, can I, Mrs. Despard?” he asked. “I don’t know much about these things, but it strikes me that if some one worked fast——”
“It’s absolutely impossible,” declared Lucy, wagging her head with the air of a schoolmistress. “My dear man! It takes the best part of a day just to put on those paste diamonds. You ask Edith.”
Brennan scratched the back of his neck. “But somebody copied the dress! If— No, wait; we’ll come back to that. We’re getting sidetracked again. I’ll go back to the questioning.” He faced Stevens with sour good-nature. “How did you spend the evening of the 12th?”
“With my wife. We stayed at home, and went to bed early.”
“What time did you go to bed?”
“At exactly 11:30,” said Stevens, advancing the real time by one hour. It was the first tangible lie he had told Brennan; and, as he told it, Foxy Frank’s eyeballs seemed to grow larger. Through the effect of his own imagination, his voice suddenly sounded wrong. “Eleven-thirty, Captain, I happened to notice it particularly.”
“Why should you notice it?”
“Because it was the first time we had been at Crispen during the week. I had to set the alarm-clock so that we could get up in the morning to drive back to New York.”
“Have you got any witness besides yourself? Any kids? Any maid?”
“No. There’s a maid, but she only comes in during the day.”
Brennan appeared to come to a decision. He thrust his glasses back into the breast pocket of his coat, slapped his knees, and got up. He looked sharper and more dangerous.
“If it’s agreeable to you, Mr. Despard,” he said, “there’s one point in connection with this business that we’ll settle now. Is that nurse, Miss Corbett, in the house? I’d like to ask her something about a theft.”
“She’s with Edith. I’ll get her.” Mark regarded him shrewdly, but with a curious wariness. “And I’m glad to see you’ve stopped barking up that tree. The point about the dress pretty well proves it; but we all knew Marie couldn’t have had anything to do with this thing——”
“Yet,” said Lucy, “you didn’t hesitate to believe I might have had something to do with it.”
It flashed out of her; she could not seem to check herself. The next moment she obviously regretted it. Lucy’s square little jaw grew set, and her eyes went roving; but she did not look at Mark. She stood with a heightened color, staring at a picture over the stone mantelpiece.
“What would you have thought, I ask you?” enquired Mark. “I— Oh, damn it, think! The dress. The appearance. The—Besides, I never thought you did have anything to do with it! That’s the whole point.”
“I don’t mind that,” said Lucy, still staring at the picture. “What I do mind is that you should have discussed it carefully with other people before you even mentioned it to me.”
Mark was stung so badly that he hit back by instinct. “Discussions of such things don’t seem to be very popular with anyone hereabouts. I was worried. I’d have had even more reason to be worried if I had known that a telephone call almost took you away from the masquerade as it was. Not having heard about that phone call—”
“Tais-toi, imbécile” said Lucy, changing her mind but not lowering her eyes from the picture: “les agents ont des oreilles longues. Ce n’était pas un rendezvous, je t’ assure.”
Mark nodded and stumped out of the room, and there was anger in even so small a thing as the ape-like swing of his arms. At the door he gestured to Partington, who rose, nodded gravely to the company, and followed him out. Stevens was startled even to remember the doctor’s presence there. Remembering Partington’s placid but very talkative mood of the night before, he wondered whether the doctor would need several eye-openers before he became his dignified self. But Stevens was concentrated on Brennan, and on whether Brennan had really left off the attack or whether he was only preparing to return to it.
Lucy lowered her eyes and smiled.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brennan,” she said. “It was the very worst taste to speak in French, the way you spell out words before a child when you don’t want it to understand. It was dreadfully banal, too. I have an idea you understood quite well.”
Brennan, it was clear, had taken a genuine liking to Lucy. He waved his hand.
“You seem a whole lot bothered about that phone call, Mrs. Despard. I’m not: that’s straight. I don’t know the exact truth about it, but I won’t press you yet. There’s more important things we have to do.”
“But what?” cried Lucy. “That’s what I was going to ask you. The thing is so mixed up with—ghosts, and nonsense, and that horrible business of Uncle Miles’s body disappearing, that I don’t even see where you’re going to start.”
“Why, I’m going to find that body, of course,” said Brennan, opening his eyes wide. “We can’t get anywhere without it. The old man was poisoned; there’s no doubt about that. And the murderer, learning in advance that Mr. Despard was going to open the crypt, got scared and stole the body out of it. That’s easy. We can’t prove the man was poisoned until we do find the body. How did somebody swipe it? Don’t ask me how! I haven’t found the private entrance to the crypt—yet.” He turned round and eyed Stevens frowningly. “There’s one little bit of information, though, I’ll give you free of charge. I know you four people who opened up the crypt weren’t up to any funny business last night. If you’d come to me this morning and told that story, I’d have believed you cooked it up among yourselves. But I had a man there watching you, and I know better.”
“Yes. That,” said Stevens, “is the only piece of luck we’ve had so far.”
Lucy was uneasy. “But where are you going to look for it? I mean, are you going to—dig up the grounds, or something? That’s what they always do in the stories. With lanterns and things.”
“If it’s got to be done, I’ll do it. But we may not have to make as much mess as that. It’s entirely in the cards”—he spoke with calmness, but with an eye on both of them—“it’s entirely in the cards that the body may be in this house.”
“In the house?” said Stevens, startled without knowing why.
“Yes. Why not? There must be a private way into the crypt. There’s also a private door somewhere in Miles Despard’s room. Personally, I’ve got a hunch that the two are connected, and probably connected with each other.”
“But, good God, Captain! You don’t suggest that this woman, after she had given Miles a cup of arsenic, went out through the secret door and retired to one of the coffins in the crypt?”
“ ‘Suggest.’ ‘Suggest,’ ” snapped the other. “No; I’m not crazy enough for that. But I say this. I say that last night, while you four were taking two hours to open up that vault, the woman might have got in there and pulled the body out—so that it’s somewhere in the passage between the crypt and the house.” He raised his hand. “Don’t say she wouldn’t have had the strength.” He considered, and went on with an indulgent light of reminiscence in his eye, “My old dad was a son-of-a-gun.”
Lucy blinked at him. “We’re not discussing questions of heredity,” she said. “Why the change of subject?”
“He was born in Cork,” said Brennan, “and he came out to this country in ’81. He was six feet three inches tall. When he sang the ‘Shan Van Voght’ in Rafferty’s saloon, you could hear him from Second Street to Independence Hall. Well, sir, he used to get drunk every Saturday night, and I mean drunk. When he came home he was lucky if he got past the hat rack in the hall before he keeled over. He was a dead weight. And yet my mother—who wasn’t a big woman, mind you—always got him to bed.” Brennan paused, and added in a brisk tone: “That’s what I meant. Does it sound wild?”
“Yes,” said Stevens, briefly.
“Let’s look at the physical side of it. Never mind who was guilty, just at present. Say it was anybody. But, granting there was a way into that crypt, would it have been hard to open the coffin? That is, they don’t solder or weld the lid on, do they?”
“No,” the other was forced to admit. “This was a wooden coffin, anyhow. There are just two automatic bolts down through the sides. But, though it doesn’t take long, it takes a whale of a lot of strength to lift the catch. A female shot-putter or discus-thrower might have managed it.”
“I never said the murderer mightn’t have had an accomplice. You’re pretty husky yourself.—What about the old man? Was he big?”
Lucy shook her head. The puzzled look which had been in her eyes a while ago had returned. “No. He was rather small. Five feet six at the most; rather under that, I should say. He wasn’t much taller than I am.”
“Heavy?”
“No. He wasn’t well, you know. While he was getting better, the doctor used to make him weigh himself on one of those bathroom scales, and it used to make Uncle Miles furious. He was all skin and bones; he weighed 109, if I can remember correctly.”
“Then—” said Brennan, and stopped. Miss Corbett had come into the room, with Mark, eager to hear.
The nurse still had her coat on, but she had removed her hat. Stevens was so obsessed with this notion of the color of the hair that he half hoped to see a brunette like Lucy or Edith; but her hair was a pale and somewhat washed-out yellow, in contrast with the strong square face and level brown eyes. Hers would have been a very attractive face if it had not been for an almost complete lack of animation except the animation of duty or annoyance. With some ceremony Brennan installed her in a chair.
“Miss Corbett? Good. Yesterday afternoon a man from our department, Detective Partridge, came round to see you, didn’t he? And you gave him a statement.”
“I answered his questions.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Brennan, looking at her quickly. He got after his papers again. “You said that on the evening of Saturday, April 8th, at some time between six and eleven o’clock, a two-ounce bottle of quarter-grain morphia tablets had been taken out of your room.”
“So it was morphia!—” said Mark.
“Let me handle this, please,” snapped Brennan. “When you found the bottle gone, who did you think had taken it?”
“I thought at first that Mr. Despard had taken it. Mr. Miles Despard. He was always wanting morphia, but naturally Doctor Baker wouldn’t give it to him. Once I found him in my room, looking for it. That was why I thought it must have been Mr. Despard.”
“What did you do when you found the bottle gone?”
“I looked for it,” said the nurse, practically, as though she found the dullness of man somewhat excessive. “I spoke to Miss Despard about it, but I didn’t say much because I believed Mr. Despard had taken it and I could make him give it back to me. He swore he hadn’t, though.—And there wasn’t much time to do anything. The bottle was returned on the night afterwards.”
“Had anything been taken from it?”
“Yes. Three quarter-grain tablets.”
“Speaking from a legal point of view,” interposed Mark, “I should call this irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial. Why the devil are all of you harping so much on that morphine? There’s no suggestion that Uncle Miles was poisoned with it, is there? And three quarter-grain tablets wouldn’t have hurt even him.”
Brennan looked briefly over his shoulder. “I think we’ll get down to the point of it, though. Miss Corbett, I’d like you to tell me what you told the sergeant yesterday—about how the bottle was returned and what you saw on that Sunday night, the 9th of April.”
She nodded.
“It was about eight o’clock in the evening. I had just gone into the bathroom at the end of the hall upstairs. From the bathroom door you can see straight down the hall past Mr. Despard’s door, and the table outside it. There is a light there. I wasn’t in the bathroom longer than two minutes. When I opened the bathroom door again I looked down the hall, and there was a person just going away from Mr. Despard’s door towards the staircase. I could see that there was something on the table now, although I couldn’t tell what it was at that distance. There had been nothing on the table before. When I got there I saw that it was the two-ounce bottle, which had been returned.”
“Who was the person you saw coming away from the table?”
“It was Mrs. Stevens,” said the nurse.
Hitherto her manner had been as impersonal as that of a constable giving evidence before a magistrate, rattling through to get a duty done. Now she turned to Stevens and spoke with grave intensity.
“I’m sorry. I tried to see you or your wife this morning, but my dear friend, Mr. Ogden Despard, butted in. I wanted to tell you what I actually had said to that numbskull of a policeman yesterday. He tried to get me to say I had really seen Mrs. Stevens putting the bottle on the table. And that’s one kind of thing I won’t stand for.”
There was a twinkle in Brennan’s eye, but it was not a twinkle of amusement. “Now, now, that’s very commendable. But what else could you think? Who else could it have been?”
“I still don’t know. It might have been Mr. Despard.”
“But what did you do? Didn’t you speak to Mrs. Stevens about it?”
“I couldn’t. She was already downstairs and out of the house, and they were off to New York. She had come up that night to say good-bye. I thought I would just wait and see.”
“Yes; and then?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stand for any more of that foolishness,” said Miss Corbett, raising her pale eyebrows. “Whoever was doing it. So I simply locked up my room whenever I wasn’t in it. I bolted the door communicating with Mr. Despard’s room on my side. The door of my room giving on the hall was harder, because it’s a common type of lock. But my father happens to be a locksmith, and I know a few things. I simply took the lock apart and altered it. Houdini himself couldn’t have got in unless I had shown him how to manipulate the key. I wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble, but Mrs. Stevens turned up unexpectedly on the following Wednesday afternoon, and that was to be my evening out——”
“The afternoon of the day Miles Despard was murdered?”
“The afternoon before Mr. Despard died,” she said sharply. “And by that time I’d begun to think——”
“Now,” interposed Brennan, and turned to Mark, “now we’re coming to it. Now you’re going to see why I’m plugging away at these questions. Did Mrs. Stevens ever” —he looked at his notes— “did Mrs. Stevens ever say anything to you about poisons in general?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me where she could buy arsenic.”
There was a thick, eerie silence in the room. Stevens was conscious of eyes turned on him, of a ring of eyes. Miss Corbett’s forehead showed reddish and rather spotted; but her own eyes faced him levelly and determinedly. He could hear her breathing. Brennan’s eyes were catlike and bland as he looked over his shoulder.
“That’s a strong accusation,” Brennan suggested.
“It’s not an accusation! It’s not! It’s only——”
“And it ought to be supported,” Brennan pursued; “that is, if it can be. Did anybody else hear her say that to you?”
The nurse moved her head. “Yes. Mrs. Despard did.”
“Is that true, Mrs. Despard?”
Lucy hesitated, opened her mouth, hesitated, and then faced them.
“Yes, it is,” replied Lucy.
Stevens, his palms pressed flat against the arms of the chair, was conscious of the great heat in this room and also of the ring of eyes. He noticed in a detached way that the ring of eyes had been increased by another pair. Over in the gloom by the door he saw now the jeering, calm stare and down-pulled mouth of Ogden Despard.
Brennan leaned across the top of Miss Corbett’s chair, his arm along the back of it, and spoke to Lucy.
“I’ve been trying to follow the way your mind was working, Mrs. Despard,” he said. “Your face showed a whole lot. When I first sprung this on you, you looked surprised. But you began to think about Mrs. Stevens. And the more you thought, the more kept occurring to you. You got mad because it did occur to you, but you couldn’t keep it out. Then somebody brought up the point about that masquerade dress, and how nobody could have copied it in such a short time. That seemed to settle things for you. And you thought Mrs. Stevens couldn’t have had anything to do with it. But now you’re not so sure. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“I—” said Lucy. She took a few quick steps up and down the room; then she folded her arms. “Oh, this is ridiculous! How should I know? You speak to him, Ted.”
“Don’t worry. I will,” said the other. “Am I allowed to cross-examine, Captain?” It was sheer bravado. He had not a thought in his head.
“As soon as you have something to cross-examine about,” said Brennan. “Let’s get back to it, Miss Corbett. When did Mrs. Stevens ask you where she could buy arsenic?”
“About three weeks ago. On a Sunday afternoon, I think it was.”
“Tell us what happened. Let’s have the whole story.”
“Mrs. Stevens and Mrs. Despard and I were sitting in the dining-room. We were sitting in front of a log fire, because it was the end of March and the weather was blowy. We were eating buttered toast with cinnamon on it. There was a case in the papers just then, some murder case in California, and we were talking about it. Then we started to talk about murders. Mrs. Despard was asking me about poisons——”
“You mean Mrs. Stevens,” said Brennan.
“No, I don’t,” retorted the other, turning on him sharply. “I mean Mrs. Despard there. You ask her. Mrs. Stevens did not say one word the whole time. Oh, except once. I was telling them how one of my first cases as a probationer was when a man was brought into the hospital after he had drunk strychnine, and how he acted; and Mrs. Stevens asked whether I thought he suffered much pain.”
“Ah, that’s what I wanted to know. What was her manner then? How did she look then?”
“She looked beautiful.”
Brennan stared in annoyance, glanced at his notes, and up again. “What kind of an answer is that? You don’t seem to see what I’m getting at. Beautiful. What do you mean by that?”
“That’s exactly what I do mean. She— May I speak frankly?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“She looked,” said the witness, in a cold and steady voice, “like a woman suffering from sexual excitement.”
A cold shock of rage went through Stevens and spread inside him like an explosion or like strong liquor. But he continued to look steadily at her.
“Just a minute,” he interposed. “That’s going a little too far. Miss Corbett, would you mind giving us your impression of a woman suffering from sexual excitement?”
“Here!” snapped Brennan, while a dull color went over the nurse’s face and made it appear shiny. “Go easy with that stuff! Try to act like a gentleman. You’ve got no reason to go and insult her. She was only trying——”
“I didn’t mean to insult her. If I did, I’m sorry. All I mean is that a term like that doesn’t mean anything; or rather that you can make it mean anything you like. And I’d like to know what this does mean. Accuse all you want to, but don’t turn this thing into a damned psychologist’s case-book. Let’s have short words, Miss Corbett. Do you mean you think my wife is a homicidal maniac?”
“That’s the stuff,” said Mark Despard, coming to the defence with angry bewilderment. “I don’t quite understand what’s going on here. Look, Captain: if you think you have a case against Marie Stevens, why are you talking to us? Why don’t you see her? Ted, why don’t you ring up Marie and ask her to come up here and answer all this for herself?”
A new voice spoke.
“Yes,” it said. “Oh yes. Ask him. Ask him why he doesn’t.”
From the doorway Ogden Despard sauntered forward, nodding so deeply that his long chin went down to his collar. He had not removed the camel’s hair coat or changed his clothes. He surveyed Stevens with an expression which was too judicial to be called pleasure, but he was obviously enjoying himself so much that his personality dominated this room.
“If you don’t mind, Brennan,” he remarked, “I’ll ask this fellow a few questions. It’ll be to your advantage, because I guarantee to tie him up into knots in about a minute.—Well, Stevens, why don’t you call her up?”
He waited, like one listening for the answer of a child. Stevens had to get a grip on himself in order to conceal his rage. He didn’t mind Brennan; Brennan was a good fellow. But Ogden was an altogether different proposition.
“You see he doesn’t answer,” said Ogden. “So I see I’ll have to make him answer. It’s because she’s not there, isn’t it? She ran away, didn’t she? She’s not there this morning, is she?”
“No, she’s not there.”
“And yet,” pursued Ogden, opening his eyes, “when I dropped in on you at seven-thirty this morning, you told me she was still in bed.”
“That’s a lie,” said Stevens, calmly.
It brought Ogden up short; for about a tenth of a second he did not know what to say. He was used to making certain of his suspicions, and then bringing them up; at which time the victim usually admitted the truth, but immediately began to justify himself, which put Ogden in the position he liked. To have the accusation denied was a new experience.
“Go on,” he said, patronizingly. “Don’t lie. You know you said it. You were heard, so you might as well admit it. Didn’t he say that, Miss Corbett?”
“I really don’t know,” the nurse returned, with composure. “You two were in the kitchen, and I don’t know what he said. So you can’t prove it by me.”
“All right. But you admit she isn’t there. Where is she?”
“She went in to Philadelphia this morning.”
“Oh, she went in to Philadelphia this morning, did she? What for?”
“To do some shopping.”
“That’s what I wanted you to say. She got up before seven-thirty this morning, in order to rush in and do some shopping. Do you expect anybody to believe that?” enquired Ogden, raking his chin round his collar and peering satirically at the others.
“Did Marie Stevens ever before in her life get out of her warm bed at a time like that, to ‘go in and do some shopping’?”
“No, she never did. As I think I told you in front of Miss Corbett, both of us had been up all night.”
“But she felt she just had to be at the stores bright and early in the morning. Why was that?”
“Because this is Saturday. They close at noon.”
Ogden smirked. “Oh, this is Saturday, is it? This is Saturday, and that’s why she runs out on you. Why don’t you stop lying? You know she ran away last night, didn’t she?”
“If I were you,” said Stevens, judicially, “I wouldn’t try that sort of thing too long or too far.” He looked at Brennan. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, Captain? It’s quite true my wife went into town this morning. But, if she isn’t back by the afternoon, I’ll confess to the murder. I shouldn’t be inclined to put too much stock in what our friend Ogden says. By the way, he’s the fellow who writes you anonymous letters and forges your name to telegrams, so you can judge how reliable he is.”
Brennan’s face was black with doubt. He stared from Ogden to Stevens.
“I’m not going to be side-tracked every time I get down to something important,” he growled, “but this at least is a side track worth going into.—Is that true, young fellow? Did you write that letter to me and send all these other people telegrams to come back here?”
Whatever Ogden’s other qualities might be, at least he had plenty of courage. He took two steps backwards, and remained coolly looking round him. His nimble brain was obviously debating courses, yet his face remained without expression whatsoever.
“You can’t prove anything, you know,” he remarked, lifting one shoulder. “I’d be careful, if I were you. You’re talking libel. Or is it slander? I never can remember which is which; but at least it’s something you’d better be careful about.”
Brennan surveyed him keenly. For a short time Brennan remained quiet, a stocky figure jingling coins in his pocket. Then Brennan shook his head.
“It strikes me, young man, that you’re trying to play detective in the way your favorite books have taught you. Let me tell you it’s a rotten way. It’s also the wrong way. If I acted the way you think I ought to, I’d have you in the can before you could say Jack Robinson. As far as proof is concerned, that wouldn’t be hard. We could find out who handed those telegrams in.”
“Learn your law, Foxy Grandpa,” said Ogden, also shaking his head with a pale smile. “Those telegrams aren’t forgery. According to the law, forgery is an act in which it can be shown that personal profit is directly gained from it. If I write a note to the president of the Chase National Bank, saying, ‘This is to introduce Mr. Ogden Despard, who is my personal messenger, and to whom I wish you to give ten thousand dollars,’ and I sign it, ‘John D. Rockefeller,’ that’s forgery. But if I write a note saying, ‘This is to introduce Mr. Ogden Despard, to whom I wish you would extend every courtesy,’ and sign it with the same name, that’s no forgery. It’s a fine point. There’s not one word in those telegrams for which I could be prosecuted.”
“So you did send them, then?”
Ogden lifted one shoulder. “I never admit anything. It’s not good policy. I pride myself on being tough, and I am tough.”
Stevens glanced over at Mark. Mark had been leaning indolently against the bookcase beside the fire-place. Mark’s light-blue eyes were very mild, very thoughtful; his fists were dug into the pockets of his grey sweater, which pulled it out of shape.
“Ogden,” he said, “it’s hard to understand what has come over you. Lucy’s right; you never were as bad as this before. Maybe getting a slice of Uncle Miles’s money has gone to your head. But it’s possible, when I get you alone, that I’ll try to find out just how tough you are.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ogden told him, with an instantaneous turn like a jump. “My value to the world is the number of things I know. I’m just interested in things. I think you were a fool, for instance, to bring Tom Partington over here. He was getting along very well as it was, drinking all the English pubs dry, and considering his past. He never learned. But now he might learn something about Jeannette White. Wasn’t once enough for you? Are you going to pick it up all over again?”
“Who,” asked Brennan, quickly, “is Jeannette White?”
“Oh, a lady. I don’t know her, but I know a lot about her.”
“You know a great deal of things,” said Brennan, explosively; “but do you know anything that has to do with this case? Anything more? No. Sure of that? All right. If that’s true, we’ll go on—about arsenic and Mrs. Stevens. You were telling us, Miss Corbett, about the Sunday three weeks ago when you talked about poisons. Go on,”
The nurse reflected.
“We talked a little while longer, and then I had to go and get Mr. Miles Despard his beef tea. I had gone out into the hall, where it was a little dark, and Mrs. Stevens followed me out. She came up behind and grabbed my wrist. Her hand was as hot as fire. Then she asked me where she could buy arsenic.” Miss Corbett hesitated. “I thought it was queer at the time, because at first I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. At first she didn’t call it arsenic. She called it Somebody’s ‘receipt.’ Somebody’s receipt—I have forgotten what the name was. I think it was some French name. Then she explained what she meant. Just afterwards Mrs. Despard came out of the dining-room, and I think Mrs. Despard overheard her.”
Brennan was puzzled. “Somebody’s receipt? Can you help us out, Mrs. Despard?”
Lucy frowned uneasily. She looked at Stevens as though with appeal.
“I can’t tell you very much, although I heard her. I don’t know what the name was: but I think it began with a ‘G.’ Something like glacé, which doesn’t seem to mean anything. Also, she spoke very fast, and I hardly recognized her voice. It seemed different.”
It was at this point that Mark Despard turned his head and slowly looked around. He blinked like a man in front of a bright light; then it was as though he tried to accustom his eyes to it. He took his hands out of his pocket, and lifted one of them to rub his forehead.
“Can you, either of you,” insisted Brennan, “try to remember exactly what she said? You can see how important it is.”
“No,” replied the nurse, vaguely troubled and irritated. “It was confused, and she spoke in a queer kind of way, just as Mrs. Despard says. She said something like: ‘Who keeps it now? Where I lived it was not difficult, but the old man is dead.’”
Brennan, who was making notes with a pencil, frowned over them. “Makes no sense!” he complained. “I don’t see—Here; wait a minute! You mean she was having difficulty with the language? Her name is Marie, you say. And she used a French name. She’s French, then?”
“No, no, no,” said Lucy. “She speaks English just the same as you or I. She’s a Canadian; of French descent, of course. I think she told me once her maiden name was Marie D’Aubray.”
“Marie D’Aubray—” said Mark.
An almost frightful change had come over his face. He came forward a little and spoke with a lumbering lucidity, making a little movement of his forefinger at each word.
“I want you to think, Lucy, and think hard, because somebody’s soul may depend on this. ‘Somebody’s receipt.’ Could that have been ‘Glaser’s receipt’? Could it?”
“Yes, I believe it was. But why. What on earth is the matter with you?”
“You know Marie,” he pursued, with the same fixity of look, “better than most of us here in the house. In all the time you’ve known her, did you ever notice anything strange in her behavior besides that? Anything at all that struck you? No matter how nonsensical it sounds?”
During this time Stevens had a sensation of being on a railway track and seeing a train flying closer towards him, without power to move from the tracks or look away from the hypnotic eye of the locomotive. He could hear the roar of the thing. But he intervened, nevertheless.
“Don’t be a fool, Mark,” he said. “This seems to be contagious. That’s the old principle of ‘The whole world is queer except me and thee, and thee is a little queer.’ On that principle I’ll undertake to prove that everyone in this room is cracked, particularly yourself.”
“Answer me, Lucy,” said Mark.
“I never did,” Lucy answered, promptly. “I certainly never did. Ted’s right about one thing; you’re the one whose actions could bear investigation. I happen to know that Marie thinks your interest in murder trials and things like that is morbid. No, I never noticed anything in the least odd about her. Except, of course——”
She stopped.
“Except——?”
“It’s nothing. She can’t stand the sight of a funnel. Mrs. Henderson was putting up preserves in the kitchen, and straining the juice, and… well, I never knew Marie had so many lines around her eyes, or that her mouth could go out of shape like that.”
There was a silence, a silence of almost physical coldness. Mark remained shading his eyes with his hand. When he took his hand away again, his face had an expression of ordinary earnestness and simplicity.
“Look here, Mr. Brennan. The shortest way out of this will be to show you what’s behind it.—I want the rest of you to go out of the room, if you will, all except Ted and the captain. No argument, please. Just go. Ogden, you might make yourself useful. Go down to Henderson’s place and rout him out; he doesn’t seem to be up yet. Tell him to bring that small scout-axe of his, and a chisel. There’s a larger axe here in the kitchen, I think. I’ll use that.”
It was clear from Brennan’s look that the captain half-wondered whether Mark’s brain might not have been unhinged. It was a little like a look of alarm, followed by a deprecating air but a settling of the shoulders as though Brennan prepared to deal with it. Nevertheless, the others obeyed Mark’s order.
“No, I’m not going to kill anybody with the axe,” Mark said. “Now, we might get an architect out here to examine the wall between the windows in Miles’s room, and find out whether there’s really a secret door there. But it would mean more delay and fooling around. The shortest way will be to knock open that wall and see for ourselves.”
Brennan drew a deep breath. “Good. Good! If you don’t mind wrecking the room——”
“But let me ask you just one question. So far, your theories about this case are pretty cut and dried. I’m not going to say anything; I want you to deduce it for yourself. But I want to ask you just one question. Suppose we don’t find any secret door in that wall, or anywhere in the room. What would you think then?”
“I’d think the Henderson woman was lying,” Brennan retorted, promptly.
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“And it would make you think Marie Stevens was innocent?”
“We-el,” said Brennan, cautiously, and hunched up his shoulders, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say—still, yes, I kind of think it would. It would certainly bust the whole thing wide open. You couldn’t very well take a case to court when the defence could prove your star witness was a liar. No human being can walk through a stone wall, I’ll tell you that.”
Mark turned to Stevens. “That’s good news, isn’t it, Ted?” he asked. “Let’s go.”
They went out into the high and dusky hall. Neither Brennan nor Stevens spoke while Mark hurried back to the kitchen, returning with a basket of tools and a short-handled axe.
Upstairs, at the end of the gallery on the right-hand side as you ascended the stairs, was the door of Miles Despard’s room. Stevens noticed the portraits on the walls of the gallery, but it was too dim for him to find the one in which he was interested. Mark opened the door of Miles’s room, and for a moment they studied it from the threshold.
It was a room about twenty feet square; but, like the other rooms in this house, with a somewhat low ceiling after the fashion of the late seventeenth century. On the floor was a bright-patterned carpet in blue and grey, faded and begrimed. The uneven floorboards showed at its edges. The walls were panelled in dark walnut to a height of about eight feet; and above this was plaster painted white like the ceiling, except where the oak beams showed through. At the junction of the two walls towards their left—as they stood in the doorway—was a gigantic cupboard or wardrobe standing cater-cornered. It was built of patterned oak; and its door, which had a brass handle, stood partly open to show ranks of suits hanging inside, and a great display of shoes in their trees.
In the left-hand wall, which formed the back wall of the house, were the two small-paned windows. In the space between them stood a very high-backed Carolean chair in black oak. Hung on the wall over it was the Greuze head, a circular painting of a curly-haired child in a light frame. A short electric socket, with a bulb in it, depended from the ceiling over the head. By the far window stood a big basket-chair.
The next wall—that which faced them from across the room—contained the bed with its foot towards the hall door. A brass warming-pan and a seventeenth-century woodcut hung on this wall. In the right-hand corner, at the junction of this wall with the one on their right, was the glass door opening on the sun porch, still curtained in brown velvet. The right-hand wall showed first a highly ugly gas-stove (there was no fireplace), and then the door to the nurse’s room, with Miles’s blue quilted dressing-gown depending from a hanger against it. Finally, completing the tour to the wall of the hall door, there was against this a bureau almost smothered in a vast display of ties.
But what took their attention was the panelling of the wall where the picture and the chair showed so uncompromisingly. Down the panelling, where a door would have been, were very faint bulges in the wood like the outlines of door-posts.
“You see?” said Mark, pointing. “I told you that the door there once led to another part of the house, which was destroyed by fire early in the eighteenth century. They filled it in with brick and panelled it over, but the doorposts were stone and you can still trace them.”
Brennan went over to it, studied the wall, and struck it with his fist.
“It seems solid enough,” he said, and stared round. “Damn it, Mr. Despard, if this won’t work—” He strode over to the glass door in the other wall, examining the curtain and taking measurements with his eye. “Is the curtain now just as it was when Mrs. Henderson looked through it?”
“Yes. I’ve been making experiments.”
“The chinks aren’t very big,” Brennan grunted, dubiously, peering back and forth. “Not much larger than a dime. You don’t think she could have seen some other door across the room, do you? Like the door of that wardrobe?”
“It’s absolutely impossible,” said Mark. “Try it for yourself. The only thing you can see is just what she did see across the room: The Greuze head, the top of the chair, the outlines of the doorposts making a bulge in the walls. There’s no other angle for the eye however you twist your neck. Even if it weren’t for the picture, the chair, and the doorposts, nobody could ever mistake that whacking big wardrobe door, which sticks way out into the room and has a brass handle, for a secret entrance of any kind. … What’s the matter, Captain? You’re not afraid to get down to it, are you?”
With an air of ferocious pleasantry Mark squared off and cradled the axe across his arm. It was almost as though the wall had done him an injury, and he looked on it as a living thing. You might even have fancied a cry, as though from the house, when he swung up the axe and crashed it into the panelling. From a long way off a voice said:
“Satisfied, Captain?”
In the room was a faint gritty haze, and the acrid smell of chipped mortar. That haze showed like the thinning mist outside the windows, from which you could see down across the sunken gardens, the crazy paving of the path, and the rich-blossoming trees of the park. Panelling and wall were gutted to ruin. After the woodwork was gone, mallet and chisel had pried into the bricks and pulled them out as the searchers burrowed through. In several places, nakedly, you could see daylight through the wall.
There was no secret door.
For a time Brennan did not speak. His exertions had made him red in the face, and even his jowls looked wilted. After staring at the wall, he took out a handkerchief with an air of grave deliberation, and mopped his forehead and neck like one performing a ceremony.
“I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it,” he said. “I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it. Do you think there might be a door or a trap-door somewhere else along that wall, and the witness was just looking at the wrong place?”
“Oh, we’ll have the panelling down all around the place, just to make sure,” Mark told him. Mark’s grin was so sardonic that he seemed to be showing his teeth. He lounged against the grey light of the window, and spun a chisel round in his hand. “But I rather think, Captain, that you’ve been taken by the slack of the trousers and pitched into belief. What price are you offering for a material universe now?”
Brennan went over and looked unhappily at the door of the cupboard.
“No,” he muttered to himself. Then he craned his neck round again. “By the way, I see there’s a light hanging over that panelling we’ve just torn out. Was that light on when our visitor sneaked out through the door that’s not there? No, wait! The old lady said——”
“That’s right,” agreed Mark, “It wasn’t on. There wasn’t any light except that little reading one at the head of the bed, which is poor at the best; that’s why we have no more information about the visitor, including the color of her hair. Those, you can see, are the only lights in the room. Mrs. Henderson says——”
Stevens found rising in himself a feeling of blind exasperation. Whether the absence of a secret passage was a complete relief he could not be sure; very probably it was. But he was certain of the exasperation.
“May I point out,” he said, “that there is not one single blasted point in this case which does not depend on ‘Mrs. Henderson says.’ To be frank, the repetition of ‘Mrs. Henderson says’ is giving me a pain in the neck. Who is Mrs. Henderson? What is she? Is she an oracle or an augur or a mouthpiece of Holy Writ? Where is Mrs. Henderson? She seems to be about as elusive as Mrs. Harris; for we certainly haven’t seen her here at the house, despite the fact that she knows she’s put the police on the track and almost literally tried to raise the devil. You’ve accused Mark’s wife of murder. You’ve accused my wife of murder. You’ve checked up on the smallest circumstance in connection with them, despite the fact that Lucy has a cast-iron alibi and it’s been proved by independent witnesses that Marie could not possibly have procured or made a dress like the Brinvilliers one. Very well. But when Mrs. Henderson says that blood flows uphill, or that there is a door where we can see for ourselves there isn’t a door, you believe her solely on the grounds that her story is so wildly incredible.”
Mark shook his head. “That’s not as paradoxical as it sounds,” he said. “If she had been lying, why all the fancy trimmings? Why didn’t she simply say she saw the woman in the room giving Miles a drink, and let it go at that? Why add a statement that we could prove was untrue, and therefore wouldn’t believe?”
“You’ve answered your own question. Because you still do believe it, don’t you, or you wouldn’t be arguing with me?”
There was a silence.
“But that,” Stevens went on, “is aside from the immediate point. You ask me why Mrs. Henderson should swear so positively that a dead woman walked through a brick wall. Let me ask you, why should Mr. Henderson swear so positively that a dead man walked through a granite wall? Why should he be so insistent that not one stone was disturbed in a sealed crypt? We’ve got two flat impossibilities in this case, and only two: first, the disappearance of the woman from this room; second, the disappearance of the body from the coffin. And it’s a curious thing that the only two witnesses to both those happenings are the Hendersons.”
Brennan was whistling softly through his teeth. He reached into his pocket, produced a package of cigarettes, and passed it round; and each accepted a cigarette, like duelists accepting swords.
Brennan said, “Go on.”
“Let’s take the physical circumstances of this murder, if it was a murder. You, Captain,” Stevens went on, “maintain that the murderer must have been an outsider. I deny that. It seems to me almost certain, that the murderer must have been a member of this household. For there’s just one thing which seems to have been generally overlooked: the way in which the poison was administered. It was administered in an egg, milk, and port-wine mixture.”
“I begin to see—” said Brennan.
“Yes. To begin with, is it likely that an outsider would come sneaking in here, get the eggs out of your ice-box, beat them up, add milk from the ice-box and port from your cellar, to make up the mixture? Or, conversely, that an outsider would walk across the fields carrying a bowl of the stuff in order to fill a silver cup on your sideboard? But it leads up to the biggest difficulty: how could any outsider expect to make Miles drink the stuff? You know what trouble you had with him about things that were good for him, particularly on that night. If an outsider had wanted to poison him, an outsider would have chosen something he would certainly drink—like champagne or brandy. No; that homely egg-and-port combination is something that would have occurred to a member of the household, who would (1) think of making it, (2) be able to make Miles drink it. Lucy might have done it, Edith might have done it, the nurse might have done it, even the maid might have done it. But Lucy was dancing at St. Davids, Edith was playing bridge, Miss Corbett was rioting at the Y.W.C.A., and Margaret in Fairmount Park. Which brings us to the question of alibis. There are just two people whose alibis you haven’t checked or even questioned. I don’t need to mention them. But kindly note, with regard to the homely mixture, that one of them is the cook. And both, of them, I think you’ve said, inherit substantially in your uncle’s will.”
Mark shrugged his shoulders.
“I can’t believe it, and that’s flat,” he returned. “In the first place, they’ve been with us too long. In the second place, if they killed Uncle Miles and are cooking up a story to cover it, why should they make the story supernatural? What good would that do them? It seems a highly unusual and romantic way to go about it, when ordinary murderers can’t get away with plain lies.”
“Let me ask you something. Last night you told us her story about the mysterious visitor, and about the qualms she had: the ‘funniness’ of the figure, even that pleasant little detail about the possibility that the visitor’s neck might not have been securely fastened on. …”
“WHAT?” said Brennan.
“Now think, Mark. Did you put that idea into her head, as we thought last night—or did she put it into yours?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said, abruptly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to think.”
“But if she hadn’t suggested it to you, would it have occurred to you at all?”
“Maybe not. I don’t know.”
“Here’s something we all know, though. Four of us opened that crypt. Who was the only one of the four who definitely did swear he believed in ghosts? Who tried to throw a supernatural atmosphere over it, even to intimating that there were Powers watching us? Who went to fantastic lengths in swearing that nobody had approached that crypt? Wasn’t it Joe Henderson?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But there’s where it sticks. Do you mean to tell me that a pair of innocent old family retainers would suddenly turn into a couple of demons——”
“Not at all. They’re not demons; you’re the one who’s been importing the demons. I admit that they’re very amiable people. But some very amiable people have been known to commit murder. I admit that they’re faithful to you. But they had no reason to be faithful to Miles, who has been so much abroad that (like you) they hardly knew him. And money was to come from Miles to them only on your father’s wish. As for the supernatural story, what was the origin of that?”
“Origin?”
Brennan intervened, pointing a cigarette which had burnt crookedly up one side and seemed to express his state of mind.
“All this,” he said, “is words and words and words. Just the same, I think I see what Mr. Stevens is driving at. Here’s the way I understand it. When the old man died, nobody had any suspicion he’d been poisoned—except you.” He nodded towards Mark. “Because you found the silver cup in that cupboard. And right away Mrs. Henderson comes to you with a story of goblins and women walking out of walls—she didn’t say anything to me about the woman’s head not being fastened on, whatever that is; but all the rest of it’s the same—she comes and tells you that story. Because why? Because you’ll half-believe it. Because it’ll make you hush the thing up all the more. The most you’ll do is to open the crypt. And then, when you discover that the goblins have apparently stolen the old man’s body, you’ll hush it up all the more. Doesn’t that square with everything that pair have told us?”
Mark contemplated him with sudden amusement.
“Then,” Mark asked, “the whole parade of lies and body-snatching was got up just to impress me so that I’d keep it all quiet?”
“It might be.”
“But in that case,” said Mark, “will you tell me why yesterday, before the crypt was even opened, Mrs. Henderson blurted out exactly the same story to the Commissioner of Police?”
They looked at each other.
“That’s true,” Stevens admitted.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, either. Don’t forget your brother Ogden, Mr. Despard,” said Brennan. “He’s a very smart lad, that one is. He suspected, too. And there’s no knowing how far he suspected, or the Hendersons thought he did. They’d know he wouldn’t keep it quiet. So maybe Mrs. Henderson got hysterical and did what many another woman has done: she knew she had committed herself, and she wanted to try out her story.”
Again Brennan wandered over to the wardrobe and stared at it, but his air was belligerent now.
“What I’d like to know is how this wardrobe figures in the case. And, friends, I’ve got a hunch it does—somehow. I don’t mean that there’s anything mechanically wrong with it. But it was on the floor inside this thing that you found the poison-cup, wasn’t it? Now, why did the murderer put it in there? Why were both the harmless glass of milk and the not-so-harmless cup of arsenic stuck right in here? Why did the cat follow ’em in, and, it’d seem, drink from the cup?” He poked among the suits hanging inside. “Your uncle certainly had a lot of clothes, Mr. Despard.”
“Yes. I was telling the others last night he was supposed to spend a lot of time here changing his clothes for his own edification. But he didn’t like any of us to know he was quite so——”
“That,” said a new voice, “is not all he did in here.”
Edith Despard had come in by the hall door, with such quietness that none of them had heard her. But it was not the quietness of stealth. The underlying expression of her face they did not then understand, and were not to understand until somewhat later. Nevertheless, though her eyes still seemed a trifle sanded from lack of sleep, the thin-boned good looks had a quietness of certainty. To Stevens she appeared for some reason much younger than last night. Under her arm she had two books, on which the fingers of her other hand were tapping gently. In some subtle way she was Fashion; she was handsome and bedecked, though afterwards Stevens realized that he had no notion of what she had been wearing, except that it was black.
Mark was startled. He protested: “Edith, you shouldn’t be here! You promised to stay in bed today. Lucy says you didn’t sleep at all last night: except once, and that was a nightmare.”
“That’s right,” said Edith. She turned to Brennan with a business-like politeness. “Captain Brennan, isn’t it? The others were telling me about you a few minutes ago, when you dismissed them.” Her smile had genuine charm. “But I’m sure you won’t dismiss me.”
Brennan was affable but noncommittal. “Miss Despard? I’m afraid we’ve been—” he nodded towards the shattered wall, and coughed.
“Oh, that was to be expected. I have the solution of your difficulties here,” said Edith, and gently touched the books under her arm. “You see, I overheard you saying you believed the wardrobe there had some connection with this case. It has, very much so. I found these books inside it last night. The second volume turned down easily at one chapter; so I gathered that Uncle Miles, though you could hardly call him a man of books, had found something in it to study. I should like to read you some of it—all of you. You may not find it enthralling. It is academic and even rather dull. But I think you ought to listen. Will you close the door, Ted?”
“Book?” said Mark. “What book?”
“It is Grimaud’s History of Witchcraft,” replied Edith.
Sitting down in the basket-chair by the window, she spoke with no more apology or diffidence than if she were dealing with a laundry-list. Yet, just before she began to read aloud, she lifted her eyes towards Stevens; and he was startled at the interest and curiosity with which she regarded him, as though she wondered. Her voice was clear and fluent, if without great expression.
“The root of the belief in the ‘non-dead’ (pas-morts) appears to have originated in France in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. It is first written of by the Sieur de la Marre in 1737 (Traité sur la Magie, Sortilêge, Possessions, Obsessions, et Maléfices); for some years it was seriously discussed even by men of science; and controversy about it was again aroused by a criminal trial so recently as 1861.
“Briefly, the non-dead are those persons—commonly women—who have been condemned to death for the crime of poisoning, and whose bodies have been burnt at the stake, whether alive or dead. It is here that the province of criminology touches the province of witchcraft.
“From the earliest times the use of poison was regarded as a branch of sorcery, nor is the origin of the belief difficult to trace. ‘Love-potions’ or ‘hate-potions,’ admittedly a part of magic, have always been the mask under which the poisoner has worked; and to administer even a harmless love-potion was made punishable under Roman law.1 During the Middle Ages it was identified with heresy. In England, as late as 1615, a trial for murder by poison was, in effect, a trial for sorcery. When Anne Turner was tried before Lord Chief Justice Coke for poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, there were shown in court her ‘inchantments’—figures in lead, parchments, a piece of human skin—and the spectators could feel the wind of the Black Man’s passing.
“ ‘At the shewing of these and inchanted papers and other pictures in court,’ writes the recorder, ‘there was heard a crack from the scaffolds, which caused great fear, tumult, and confusion among the spectators, every one fearing hurt, as if the Devil had been present, and grown angry to have his workmanship shewed by such as were not his own scholars.’2
“But it was in France, during the latter part of the same century, that the practice of murder-cum-diablerie reached its height. It is stated that in Lisbon there were so many hags practising witchcraft that they had a quarter of their own.3 Out of Italy (where the ladies of Toffana’s secret-society poisoned six hundred people) came Glaser and Exili, who searched for the Philosopher’s Stone and sold arsenic. In another chapter we have seen how eagerly the ladies of Louis XIV’s court embraced the cult of Satanism, notably the sacrifice of a child on the body of a woman during the Black Mass.4 Muffled rites took place in-muffled rooms. The witch La Voisin evoked ghosts at Saint-Denis. Those enlisted now for Satanism were not, in Gaule’s phrase, ‘every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr’d brow, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue’: they were the handsomest women procurable, from seamstress to court lady.5 And husbands and fathers died.
“Through the confessional, some hint of these underground crafts reached the Grand Penitentiary of Paris. At the Arsenal, near the Bastille, was established the famous ‘Burning Court,’ whose vengeance was the wheel and the fire. The mysterious death of Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV’s favourite, in 1672, gave impetus to the poison-seekers. Between 1672 and 1680 some of the greatest ladies in France were summoned before the Burning Court: among them two nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the Duchess of Bouillon, and the Countess of Soissons, mother of Prince Eugene. But what opened every secret cabinet to the world was the trial in 1676—a trial lasting three months—of the Marquise de Brinvilliers.
“The activities of the Marquise de Brinvilliers had been revealed through the accidental death of her lover, Captain Sainte-Croix. Among Sainte-Croix’s effects was a teakwood box to which was attached a paper of instructions that after his death it ‘might be delivered to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, who resides in the rue Neuve St. Paul.’ The box was filled with poisons, including corrosive sublimate, antimony, and opium. Madame de Brinvilliers fled; but was ultimately brought back to trial, on a charge of wholesale poisoning, by the efforts of a detective named Desprez. Though she was ably defended by Maître Nivelle, it was Desprez who secured her conviction. He produced in court a written confession which she had privately entrusted to him. It was a hysterical document, containing—among a terrible list of things she had really done—things which apparently she could not have done. She was sentenced to be beheaded and burnt.6
“ ‘After the sentence, in order to make her divulge the names of any accomplices, she was put to the “water-torture.” This was a part of the judicial system: the victim was placed on a table, a leather funnel was put into her mouth, and water was poured into it until…’”
Briefly, Edith Despard raised her eyes from the book. The grey light of the window lay flat on her hair; and Edith’s expression was only one of great curiosity and interest. None of the men moved. Stevens was staring at the pattern in the carpet. He remembered now the address of the house in Paris to which Dr. Welden had told him to go if he were interested in famous crimes. It was Number 16, rue Neuve St. Paul.
“Madame de Sévigné saw her going to execution afterwards, and laughed and gossiped. A great multitude saw her do penance before Nôtre Dame, in a white shift, barefoot, with a lighted candle in her hand. She was now forty-two years old, and much of her doll’s beauty was gone. But she was a model of penitence and devotion, which satisfied the noble Abbé Pirot. She does not appear, however, to have forgiven Desprez: and, on mounting the scaffold, she uttered some words which were imperfectly understood. Her body was burnt in the Place de Grève.
“Due to the revelations at the trial, the authorities were ultimately able to penetrate the net of diablerie beneath the court of the Grand Monarque. La Chausée, a servant of Sainte-Croix, had already been broken to death on the wheel. The witch and poisoner La Voisin, taken with all her accomplices, was burnt alive in 1680. The dancers before Satan were gone; their ashes were scattered; and the great devil grinned alone on Nôtre Dame.
“But all persons do not seem to have accepted this. Although there is no apparent reason of their belief, Maître Nivelle is said to have told the Grand Penitentiary: ‘There is something beyond this. I saw them die. They were not ordinary women. They will be restless.’
“Now, what is behind this? It is noted that even today there are outbreaks of Satanism in Europe, as instanced by the investigation of MM. Marcel Nadaud and Maurice Pelletier so recently as 1925.7 It needs no documentation to show that there have been outbreaks of poisoning, mass-murders—usually by women, and usually without any apparent motive. For instance (argues Perrot), there was Anna Maria Schonleben in Bavaria in 1811, and Marie Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1868;8 there was Frau Van de Leyden, who poisoned twenty-seven people; there are even men, like Palmer and Cream in England.9 What motive actuated them? In the case of the women, there was seldom any gain to be derived from the death of their victims, no hope of profit, no wrong to right. They were not mad: even though they seem puzzled to explain their own motives.
“It has been argued that theirs was a simple lust, and that they loved the little white powder of arsenic because it gave them the power of queens and the workers of destinies. But this does not explain all. If the women possessed a desire to kill, it cannot be thought that their victims possessed a desire to be killed. The most curious feature in all of these cases is the ease, the sense of fatality, the complete willingness of these victims to undergo it—even when they must have known they were being poisoned. Frau Van de Leyden said openly to a victim: ‘It will be your rum in a month.’ Jedago said: ‘Wherever I go, people die.’ Yet they remained undenounced. It is as though there were some diabolic bond uniting murderer and victim, something not unlike a spell or a hypnosis.
“This theory was first vaguely stated by the Sieur de la Marre in 1737, due to a case which agitated Paris in that year. A girl of nineteen—Thérèse La Voisin, the same surname as the alleged sorceress who was burnt in 1680—had been arrested for a series of murders. Her parents were charcoal-burners in the Forest of Chantilly. She could not read or write. She had been born in the ordinary way; and until the age of sixteen seemed quite normal. But even the ponderous detective wits of the time were aroused by eight deaths in that neighbourhood. A curious circumstance was that under the pillow or blanket of each person was found a cord—usually of hair, but sometimes of string or plaited hair—tied into nine small knots.
“They understood this. Nine, as we have seen, is the mystic number, the multiple of three, and it occurs over and over again in connection with magical ceremonies everywhere. The tying of nine knots in a string is believed to put on the victim a spell which places him entirely in the power of the sorceress.
“When the authorities descended on her house, they found the girl La Voisin in the wood near by, under a thicket, without clothes and with what one of them describes as ‘the eyes of a wolf.’ Taken to Paris and questioned, she made a statement. She screamed at the sight of fire. Though her parents said she could not read or write, she could do both; and spoke like a court lady. She admitted committing the murders. Asked the meaning of the spell put on them, she said:
“ ‘They are now one of us. There are so few of us, and we have need of others. They are not truly dead; they are alive again now. If you do not believe me, open their coffins and you will see. They are not in the coffins. One was at the Grand Sabbath last night.’
“It seems to have been true that the coffins were empty, at least. Another strange feature of the affair was that, at her trial, the girl’s parents came near proving something like an alibi for one of the crimes: resting on the fact that she must have walked two kilometers in a remarkably short time, and in some fashion penetrated a locked house. La Voisin is said to have replied:
“ ‘That is of no consequence. I went into the bushes, and I put the ointment on myself, and I put on the dress I had before. Then I had no trouble.’ Asked what she meant by the ‘dress she had before,’ she said: ‘I had many dresses. This was a beautiful dress, but I did not wear it when I went to the fire.’ At mention of the fire she seemed suddenly to recollect herself, and fell into a fit of screaming. …”
“I’ve had about enough of this,” interrupted Brennan, heavily. He passed a hand over his face, as though to make sure it was still there. “Excuse me, Miss Despard, but I’ve got work to do. This is April, not Halloween. Women on broomsticks are a little out of my line. If you tell me that a woman put a spell on Mr. Miles Despard, and rubbed herself with ointment, and got into a dress several hundred odd years old, and consequently walked through that wall—well, all I’ve got to say is, I want a case that’ll at least get past the grand jury.”
Edith, though a trifle supercilious, was not put out.
“You do?” she said. “Then here is one. The part I wanted you to read, really, comes next. But if you can’t derive profit from it, I won’t bother to read it. It’s about a woman named Marie D’Aubray (the same maiden name, I can tell you, as the Marquise de Brinvilliers) who was guillotined in 1861. Whatever you think of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, I presume you don’t think they were quite so unenlightened in the eighteen-sixties.”
“You don’t mean she was executed for witchcraft?”
“No. She was executed for murder. The details aren’t pleasant, and I don’t want to go over them. But I should just like to read you the description of her, written by a contemporary reporter, as she stepped into the dock. It says: ‘The case attracted wide attention, not only because of the good looks and comparative wealth of the accused woman, but by the modesty of her bearing; a modesty so great that when, on one occasion, the procurer-general put certain blunt words to her, she colored like a schoolgirl.’ And here we are: ‘She stepped into the dock bowing timidly to the President of the Tribunal. … She wore a boat-shaped hat of brown velvet, with a drooping plume and a gown of brown silk. In one hand she carried a silver-topped smelling bottle, and on the other wrist she wore a curious antique gold bracelet, with a clasp like a cat’s head, and a ruby in the mouth of the clasp. When witnesses began to testify as to the details of the Black Mass in the upper room of the villa at Versailles, and the poisoning of Louis Dinard, several over-excited spectators shouted, “No, no!” It was observed that her only sign of agitation was to finger this bracelet on her wrist.’ ” Edith closed the book with a snap. “Truth will out, Ted. You know who’s got a bracelet just like that.”
Stevens did know it. He remembered seeing that bracelet in the photograph of the Marie D’Aubray of 1861, which had disappeared that night. But by this time he was in such a state of black befuddlement that he could say nothing.
“Yes,” Mark interposed, in a dull voice. “That’s what I thought, too. But,” said Mark, “now it’s out, I can’t face it.”
“I can,” snapped Brennan. “I see what you’ve been getting at, and the one I sympathize with is Mr. Stevens. I wouldn’t let it worry you, my friend, if that’s what you’re looking so queer about. It’s a funny thing. Mr. Despard strongly defended her until he heard or thought of this guff. I strongly attacked her until I heard of it.”
Edith’s voice grew sharp. “Do you deny that witchcraft has been practised in the past?”
“Of course I don’t,” said Brennan unexpectedly. “It’s being practised right here in modern America. I know all about that nine-knots-in-a-piece-of-string curse. It’s called the witch’s ladder.”
Mark stared. “But, good God, man! You said——”
“Have you forgotten where you are?” inquired Brennan. “Don’t you read the newspapers, even? You’re right on the edge of the territory of the Pennsylvania Dutch, where the local witch still makes wax images and puts spells on a cow. Why, there was that hex murder up there not very long ago. One of our boys went up to advise ’em about it. You remember, a while ago I put some emphasis on the fact that your maid here, Margaret, was originally Pennsylvania Dutch; and you asked me what that had to do with it. It may have a whole lot to do with it, though I don’t think the maid has. As soon as I heard of that piece of string with the knots, I thought some yokel rainmaker was trying to hex, or pretending he was trying to hex, your uncle. And—when I think over Mr. Stevens’s theory about the Hendersons—I think I see who it might have been. That’s why I wanted to ask you: where are the Hendersons from?”
“Reading, I think,” said Mark, “originally. Part of the family moved to Cleveland.”
“Well, Reading’s a nice town,” said Brennan, mildly, “and it’s far from being full of yokels. But still it’s Pennsylvania Dutch.”
“I’m hanged if I understand this, Captain. You’re full of surprises,” growled Mark. “Then you do believe witchcraft can be practised? For, if you do——”
Brennan folded his arms and contemplated Mark with his head a little on one side. The reminiscent light was back in his eye.
“When I was a kid,” he said, “I wanted a revolver. Wow! how I wanted a revolver!—a big Ivor-Johnson six-shooter with an ivory handle. I wanted that revolver more than anything else in the world. They told me at Sunday school that, if you wanted anything bad enough, all you had to do was pray for it and you’d get it. Well, I prayed. I prayed and prayed for that revolver. I bet nobody ever did pray as much as I did for that revolver. In those days my old dad used to tell me a lot about the devil, specially when he was recovering from the horrors and was resolving never to touch another drop. My dad was very religious, and once he said the devil stuck his head round the corner of the sitting-room door, and pointed at him, and said, ‘Shamus Brennan, if you take just one more little drink of whisky, I’m coming for you.’ He said the devil was all in red and had curved horns a foot long. But, all the same, I thought if the devil would appear and offer to swap me my soul for the big ivory-handled six-shooter in Clancy’s window, I’d do it. And yet, no matter how much I wanted it and how much I prayed, I didn’t get that revolver.
“It’s the same thing here. Practise magic? Sure I can practise magic, as much as I want to. I can make wax images of all the people I don’t like—which is the Republican Party, mostly—but that doesn’t say they’ll die if I stick pins in the images. So, when you tell me your uncle was murdered and bewitched so that he’s joined a gang of ghouls… that he walked out of his coffin in the crypt, and might walk into this room at any minute… I must take leave to——”
The door of the room banged open with a crash which made them all jump, and brought Mark round with a ringing oath. Ogden Despard, looking somewhat greenish and sweaty, leaned against the door-post. At his very appearance, and for no tangible reason, Stevens experienced a feeling of horror worse than any that had yet crept on him. Ogden drew the back of his overcoat sleeves across his forehead.
“Henderson—” he said.
“What about Henderson?” demanded Mark.
“You sent me out there,” said Ogden, “out to his house, to get Henderson and have him bring some tools up here. I’ve been trying to bring him round. No wonder he didn’t show up here early this morning. He’s had a fit, or something. He can’t, or won’t, talk straight. I wish the rest of you would go down to him. He says he’s seen Uncle Miles.”
“You mean,” said Brennan, back to crisp matter-of-factness again—“you mean he’s found the body?”
“No, I don’t mean that,” Ogden said, pettishly. “I mean—he says he’s seen Uncle Miles.”
1 Paulus, Sententiae, v. 21–23.
2 The Tryal of Anne Turner, Widow, at the King’s Bench Bar, 7th Nov., 1615.
3 Encyclopædic des Sciences Occultes. Paris, 1924.
4 Montague Summers, History of Witchcraft.
5 John Gaule, Vicar of Great Staughton, the exposer of Matthew Hopkins.
6 Procès de la Marquise de Brinvilliers, 1676. Alexandre Dumas, Crimes Célèbres. Madame de Sévigné, Lettres. Philip Lefroy Barry, Twelve Monstrous Criminals. Lord Birkenhead, Famous Trials.
7 Le Petit Journal, May, 1925. See also Elliott O’Donnell, Strange Cults and Secret Societies of Modern London.
8 Henry T. F. Rhodes, Genius and Criminal.
9 F. Tennyson Jesse, Murder and its Motives. H. M. Walbrook, Murders and Murder Trials, 1812–1912. See also the trials of William Palmer and Dr. Pritchard in the Notable British Trial series. It seems that the victims of both must have known they were being poisoned.