“ROSES AND A KNIFE”
The crowd in the apartment entrance and upon the sidewalk had been dispersed, the body of the unknown victim of the night’s tragedy was removed to the morgue, and a semblance of order and quiet restored.
Dr. Elmsford had gone to his patient up-stairs, and Inspector Druet sat in the office with his detectives and McCarty, concluding his hasty tabulation of the scant evidence at hand.
“You went over the body just now before it was taken away, Martin?” he began.
“Yes, sir, but not as thoroughly as I will at the morgue.” The detective addressed drew his chair forward to the desk. “I got a good line on her, though.”
“Well, what’s the answer?” Inspector Druet looked up sharply, for there was a note of hesitancy in the man’s tones which hinted at a mental reservation.
“Oh, I guess she was a swell, all right. The clothes alone show that. ‘Lucette,’ the name in her coat, is the best-known and highest-priced dressmaker in this country, and the hat was imported from one of the leading Paris houses. But for all that, there were one or two queer things that don’t jibe.
“For instance, in spite of the smart costume, there wasn’t a sign of jewelry on her except the hat-pin; not even the plain, rich sort that ladies wear with tailored clothes; shirtwaist rings, belt or collar pins or a wrist watch.
“One hatpin must have been jarred out and lost in her fall, for the marks of it were in her hat, but the other—it had broken short off and jammed into the straw—was a star sapphire, the real thing. Her purse or hand-bag or whatever she carried must be in this house somewhere, in the room from which she fell, but she must have worn some other jewelry. What’s become of it?”
“Don’t run away with that idea, Martin,” objected the inspector. “If she came here secretly for some purpose she didn’t want even the hall-boy to know about, as his evidence seems to show, she may have had good reasons to leave her valuables at home.
“But we haven’t any time now for theorizing; we’ve got the tenants in this house to interview yet, and it’s after midnight. Did you get anything more definite, anything practical from your survey of the body?”
“I don’t know whether you’d think it was, inspector, or not,” Martin responded in an aggrieved voice. “Only, did you notice her feet? They were small enough anyway, but she’d squeezed them into shoes two sizes too little for her; the doctor had to cut one off. And the foot itself was all calloused, not soft like a lady’s. That’s all, but the identification will be a pipe, of course, from the marks in the clothes alone.”
“Then we’ll get to work.” The inspector rose. “Martin you go and see if you can find out anything from the coat and hat tabs. The caretakers or watchmen at the shops will know where the managers live. Rout them out and make them tell you from the description of the things who purchased them, or else show you the books, if they can be had to-night.
“Yost, you get on down to the morgue and keep an eye on any one who comes to look at the body. If some party arouses your suspicions, telephone to headquarters for a man to take your place there, and tail them. I want to have a look at the outside of the house now, to get a line on where she might have fallen from.”
“I suppose I’d better be getting on home,” McCarty announced reluctantly. “I’m only butting in here now. I’ll see you at the inquest.”
“Oh, stick around, Mac.” There was a kindly flash of understanding in the inspector’s eyes. “You got mixed up in this thing at the very start, and you might as well see it through. You have nothing else to do, I hear, since you got so prosperous you turned the department down.”
“I’d like nothing better than to be on hand when the folks in this house tell what they know!” responded McCarty, with unrestrained eagerness. “I’d never believed in a million years that it’s either suicide or accident, inspector, if only for that whisper I got from her.”
“We’ll see. Come along outside.”
They found the superintendent, a stolid-faced, lanky Swede, awaiting them in the hall. He verified the diagram and list of tenants which the hall-boy has supplied, and accompanied them to the street.
By his orders the gruesome traces of the tragedy had been obliterated, and a broad expanse of glistening, freshly hosed sidewalk met their eyes.
McCarty measured his distances carefully and walked to the exact spot where the woman fell.
“It was just here, inspector. I’m certain, because when I looked up I marked that it was on a plumb line with the space between those two windows that come almost together on each floor. She could have fallen from either window and a twist of her body would have landed her here.”
“Which apartment are those two windows in?” The inspector turned to the superintendent.
“In both,” the latter replied. “The one on left, as you stand here and look oop, bane last winder of ’partment ‘A.’ That’s music-room like, next drawing-room on corner. Other winder living-room of ’partment ‘B.’ Only house wall between.”
“Humph! Then she might have been in either apartment, on any floor,” remarked the inspector. “That doesn’t help any. Now we’ll have a go at the tenants. You needn’t come, superintendent; I’ll take the hall-boy. Give him your pass-keys.”
McCarty understood that the inspector believed information to be more easily available from the garrulous negro than the taciturn Swede, but he doubted, as he followed the official into the elevator, whether anything more of value could be learned from either source.
The two closed apartments on the second floor gave unmistakable evidence in the stuffiness of the atmosphere and the smooth unbroken film of dust which lay everywhere, that they had not been entered for several weeks at least. Everything was in order, the furniture funereally encased in linen covers, and the pictures draped with netting.
They ascended to the third floor, and pressed the bell of the corner apartment. The same maid who had interrupted the conference below with her call for the doctor opened the door cautiously and her eyes widened when she recognized the inspector.
“I should like to speak to Mrs. Doremus.”
“Oh! I don’t think you can,” the girl demurred. “She’s all upset, and the doctor has given her a sleeping-powder.”
“I’m sorry to disturb her, but it’s important.” The inspector pushed his way in unceremoniously, with McCarty at his heels.
“She’ll be very angry,” persisted the girl. “This is a nice time of night to come getting people out of their beds! She don’t know anything about what happened—”
“That will do! You tell your mistress the police want to ask her some questions, or I’ll go in myself!” the inspector interrupted sternly.
With an impudent toss of her head the girl disappeared down the hall. There was a little cry, a petulant murmur, and then silence for five long minutes.
“If she knows anything at all about it, at least it was not from here the woman fell,” McCarty whispered. “If you remember ’twas after I raised the poor thing’s head that the window here opened and this one screamed.”
“The window might have been shut quickly and opened again by some one with presence of mind enough to pull such a stunt,” remarked the inspector reflectively. “Don’t you see, Mac, that screaming would draw attention to the fact that the window had been closed before? We’ll try what we can get out of the lady. Here she is.”
The drawing-room curtains at the end of the hall parted, and a short, plump figure in an elaborate tea gown stood before them.
“Come in, please, and let me know what you want. I am very ill; this terrible affair has completely unnerved me.”
Her eyes were round and staring, and of a bright, rather hard blue. It was only when they were quite close that McCarty noticed the carefully massaged crow’s feet and the meretricious glitter of her curling blond hair.
“We regret the necessity of breaking in upon you like this, Mrs. Doremus, but we must learn all we can without delay.”
“But what can I tell you? I know nothing, nothing of this awful thing!”
She led the way into the library, waved them to seats, and sank weakly upon a couch.
“How many are in your family? Your husband—”
The lady’s languid pose stiffened.
“I live here alone, with my two maids!” The dulcet sweetness of her affected, childish treble had sharpened. “I fail to see what bearing my private affairs have on this matter. Please state what you want as briefly as you can and permit me to retire.”
“Very well, madam. Who was in your apartment this evening?”
It was evident that she regretted her flash of temper as quickly as she had exhibited it, for she dropped her eyes and murmured shrinkingly:
“When—when the accident occurred? Only Mary, the maid you saw just now, and myself. I let my cook go to her people in Brooklyn for the night.”
“What did you hear or see; what made you go to your window and scream—for it was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She shuddered, and for a moment covered her eyes with her hand. “It is so horrible to have to recall it, I was trying so hard to put it all out of my thoughts. I was as you see me now, sitting in that chair over there under the floor-lamp, reading the dearest little story I was so interested in. The chair was turned around, almost facing the window.
“All at once I heard a muffled sort of cry. It seemed to come from somewhere overhead, but I couldn’t be sure, everything was so confused and happened so quickly. There was a piano going, too, at the time, but the cry rose above it. That is the terrible part of it, that the piano should have kept right on, as if nothing was the matter—”
“Please go on,” prompted the inspector patiently. “You heard the cry—”
“And I looked up. I don’t know why, for the people just over my head are so noisy that I’ve grown accustomed to all sorts of hilarious sounds from there, but this was like nothing I had heard before. Just as I raised my eyes something shot past my window! Of course it was light in here and comparatively dark outside, so it made merely a faint shadow on the blind, but I felt what it was. I’m very psychic, every one tells me so, and things seem to come to me. I don’t know whether I actually heard it—her, strike the ground or not, but I fancied I did, and that was quite as bad. I sat here with my poor little heart up in my throat, afraid to breathe!”
“Do you usually sit with closed windows on such a hot night?”
The lady blinked.
“Why, no! I hadn’t noticed before then that it was closed. I never feel the heat, and I suppose Mary forgot to open it. I leave everything to her, and she has complete charge. She takes care of me just like a baby.”
She paused with a sidelong glance at the inspector’s inscrutable face, but her naive helplessness did not appear to have carried effectively.
“What else did you hear from above?”
“Oh, nothing! Not a sound! I tried to call Mary, but my voice wouldn’t come. I managed somehow to get over to the window and open it and when I looked down—”
“Your voice came then,” the inspector observed dryly.
“Yes, I must have screamed—oh, fearfully! I’m very delicate, the slightest thing affects me, and this—I know I shall never recover from the shock, never! My little home here will not be the same to me ever again!”
The lady’s corpulency belied the frailness she claimed, but it was evident beneath what might have been her habitual pose that she was genuinely shaken and on the verge of a fresh outburst of hysteria.
With a parting reminder that she must hold herself in readiness for the inquest, the inspector and McCarty withdrew.
The maid, Mary, was waiting at the entrance door, but instead of closing it after them, she followed for a hesitating step or two into the main corridor.
“I suppose it’s not my place to be offering any information, if you don’t think it worth while to ask me,” she remarked, “but I could tell you something.”
“Good!” The inspector turned to her. “What part of the flat were you in when this affair happened?”
“In Mrs. Doremus’s bedroom, sir, picking up.” She spoke haltingly, but then the words came with a rush. “The window on the air-shaft was open, and you could hear a kind of murmur of voices from the different apartments opening onto it. All at once, above them all I heard a hoarse voice call out. It seemed to be just one quick sentence, and I could only make out one word near the middle of it. That word was ’stepfather.’ Just after that came a funny, choked cry, but I couldn’t tell whether it was the same voice or not.”
“Was the first voice a man’s or a woman’s?” asked Inspector Druet.
“I don’t know, sir. It was so hoarse and harsh like.”
“And this was—”
The girl hesitated.
“About a minute before Mrs. Doremus screamed. That’s all I know, but I wanted to tell you.”
“I’m glad you did, Mary. Now, have you any idea where this voice came from?”
“Well, sir, I thought at the time that it was directly overhead, but sounds carry so in that shaft that I may have been mistaken. It might have come from higher up and across for all I know. There’s Mrs. Doremus calling, I’ll have to run back.”
“There may be something in that,” the inspector observed, when she had closed the door. “What do you make of the other one, Mrs. Doremus, Mac?”
McCarty’s eyes twinkled, but he replied evasively.
“Throwing the bull in great style, wasn’t she? She’d never get by in a good light!”
“Oh, come, you know what I mean!”
“Has she got an ace in the hole, you’re thinking?” McCarty’s tone was still noncommittal. “No, I guess her story is straight enough—maybe.”
The smaller apartment beside that of Mrs. Doremus was closed, and they gave it merely a cursory inspection, as her account, if true, narrowed the investigation to the floors above.
“Who lives here?” asked the inspector, as they halted before the corner apartment on the next floor.
“Mr. and Mrs. Grafton Foxe, sir,” the hall-boy replied. “Real lively folks, they is—seems like they’s in some kind of theater business.”
“Well, they don’t appear to be at home,” McCarty remarked, as repeated pressure of the bell failed to bring a response.
“Lordy, I done forgot!” The hall-boy’s eyes rolled apologetically. “They went out ’long about eight, and the young lady, she left after you-all come.”
“What young lady?”
“Miss Collins, sir. She’s been—er—visitin’ here for nearly a month.”
“What do you mean about her leaving after I came?” demanded the inspector sharply. “I gave orders that none of the tenants were to leave the premises!”
“Oh, it was before you got hyar, sir! I mean this gen’l’man.” He pointed to McCarty. “It was after he done cyarry that daid lady in.”
“How long after?”
“I don’t know. I was too scared to reckon the time. But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, ’cause the ambulance hadn’t come.”
“Did you bring her down in the elevator?”
“Me, boss? No, sir, I wasn’t fit to run no elevator then. She come down the stairs, and pushed through the crowd and out.”
The inspector made a gesture of impatience.
“Cunliffe’s a fool! You’re sure she hasn’t come in yet?”
“She ain’t coming back. She’s done gone for good.”
“Gone!”
The boy nodded.
“Her trunk went this morning. And Mis’ Foxe called back from the elevator as they was goin’ out to-night that they’d meet her at the train. She was cyarryin’ her suitcase when she left.”
“She should have been stopped, whether she knows anything about this affair or not!” declared the inspector hotly. “Well, we can’t waste any more time. Open the door.”
The boy obeyed, and leaving him outside, Inspector Druet and McCarty entered. The hall was lighted, as appeared the drawing-room at the end, but all the other rooms were in darkness.
Involuntarily they paused a moment, but no sound came to their ears, and they made their way down the hall, past a moth-eaten stag’s head, a row of framed photographs, and a heterogeneous arrangement of stage property swords.
The drawing-room was in startling contrast to the soft-toned one below. Blatant reds and greens clashed riotously everywhere, and a general air of convivial untidiness prevailed. They passed through the archway into the library or music-room beyond, and McCarty’s hand found and pressed the switch in the wall.
There was a shabby leather couch and two bookcases on the opposite side of the room, a heaped-up writing table between the two open windows, several deep-cushioned chairs scattered about, and an electric piano in the angle of the wall leading into the bedroom. Nowhere was there any sign of a struggle, or of disorder beyond what appeared to be the habitual condition of the apartment.
“That’s where the music came from.” The inspector nodded toward the piano. “The girl who left must have been playing. I wonder why she turned out the light in here and left it on in the drawing-room and hall when she went out?”
McCarty did not reply. He had stooped and picked up something which lay on the floor before the open window and was examining it closely.
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
McCarty held it out, without remark. It was a paperknife with a curved bronze handle and long steel blade.
“Belongs on the desk there,” the inspector commented. “It matches the other bronze things. If the woman picked it up to defend herself, she must have dropped it in the struggle, providing that it was from this room she fell. Are there any marks on it?”
McCarty shook his head.
“Well, put it in your pocket, anyway. Now, come on.”
The bedroom was in a far worse state of disorder than the other two. Old garments were trailing about from chairs and half-opened drawers, wads of tissue-paper were here and there, and the dresser was littered with empty cosmetic jars and scent bottles. On the bed was a long, pasteboard florist’s box, the carelessly displaced lid revealing a sheaf of deep-red roses still fresh and fragrant. A torn envelope lay beside the box, with a card protruding from it.
The inspector pulled it out.
“‘I love you,’” he read. “‘Until I come. Jack.’ Well, here’s something! She went off in such a hurry that she forgot her roses. And from a sweetheart, too!”
“She must expect to meet him, wherever she has gone,’ McCarty observed. “At least he means to follow her.”
“I’ll have a talk with him first,” asserted the inspector. “That knife on the floor, roses forgotten, one light turned off and two left on—it begins to look as if there had been something doing here. What do you think, Mac?”
“Me? Oh, I’m just trailing along, inspector. I’ve no call to be forming opinions, worse luck. You’re forgetting, sir, that I’m an outsider now, and no longer on the force, and sure, I’m like to forget it myself, for this does seem like old times and no mistake!” McCarty was at the opened window now, staring out. “This must be the air-shaft in that diagram you’ve got.”
“Yes. Let’s try the next apartment after we give a good look through the other rooms to be sure no one’s hiding out. There is nothing else here.”
A search of the rest of the apartment produced no further result, and they proceeded to the smaller one beside it. They had scarcely touched the bell when quick, firm footsteps sounded within and a tall, broad-shouldered young man in a frayed silk dressing-gown opened the door.”
“I say, what the—” he began, but the words died. as his pleasant gray eyes traveled over the inspector’s uniform. Then he asked quietly: “What is the matter? Something about that disturbance below?”
“Yes,” Inspector Druet responded. “We’d like to have a little talk with you.”
“Certainly. Come in.” He stepped back for them to enter, then led the way to the room which opened from the hall as in the first apartment. Books were piled everywhere, but in a disarray which yet held a suggestion of system, and the table between the windows was heaped with oddments of mechanism in all stages of assemblage.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything,” he went on. “I heard some one scream, and saw the crowd, and then the ambulance came, but that is all I know. What was it, a fight?”
“It was murder, sir.” The inspector faced him under the light.
“Murder! Good God!” The young man retreated a step or two, and his voice shook. “Who was it? I didn’t hear any shots!”
“A woman was flung out of a window—some window in this house.”
“Horrible!” His eyes traveled frankly toward his own opened windows, and suddenly he strode to one of them and stood for a moment looking out. Then he turned again abruptly. “I cannot believe it! have heard something!”
“Suppose you tell us what you did hear. By the way, your name is Antonio, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Guiseppe Antonio—Joseph, in this country. I’m American born, but my father was Italian. Sit down, won’t you?” He dropped into a chair himself as he spoke. “It was murder, you say! And a woman! I’ll be glad to tell you anything I can. I’ve been reading all the evening-boning up on mechanics. I’m by way of being an inventor, you know, trying to perfect a new automobile appliance.
“The piano next door started up about half-past ten; they appear to be a jolly bunch in there. It seems to me now that I did hear a sort of a cry, but I wouldn’t swear to it; they are always singing and carrying on. Anyhow, I did hear some one below screaming. I didn’t pay much attention at first, somehow it didn’t get to me, my mind was so concentrated on my work.
“When I did fling down my book and go to the window I could see only that a crowd was collecting about the entrance, and I thought there had been a fight, as I told you. The screaming had stopped and the piano-playing, too, and I was going back to my reading when the ambulance came. I watched it drive away again after a bit, and then I took up my book again and read until just now when you came. I don’t know another thing about it, I wish I did!”
He had told his story in such a straightforward manner, and was so evidently anxious to render any possible assistance, that the inspector found few queries to put to him. He lived quite alone, it developed, cared for by a man servant, who went home at night. He had only been there two months, having subleased from another bachelor tenant, and was taking a special course in advanced mechanical engineering and chemistry at the neighboring university.
After a glance about his apartment, every corner of which he threw wide for their inspection, they took leave of him.
The hall-boy had deserted his post, but as they stepped into the main corridor the elevator ascended and stopped, and a man and woman emerged.
“Here they are, boss!” the boy called eagerly. “Here’s Mr. and Mrs. Grafton Foxe!”