“Mrs. Platz was a chambermaid in Mrs. Ives’s employ?”
“Yes.”
“They left because Mrs. Platz quarrelled with you, did they not?”
“One moment, please.” The prosecutor lifted an imperious voice. “Are we to be presented with an account of all the back-stairs quarrels, past and present, indulged in by Mrs. Ives’s domestics? To the best of my belief, my distinguished adversary is entering a field, however profitable and entertaining it may prove, that I have left totally virgin. Does the court hold this proper for cross-examination?”
“The Court does not. The question is overruled.”
“I ask an exception, Your Honor. . . . Miss Cordier, when you were turning out the lights that night, did you go into all the downstairs rooms?”
“Into all of them—yes.”
“Did you see Mr. Patrick Ives in any of them?”
“No, monsieur.”
Sue Ives leaned forward with a swift gesture, a sudden wave of color sweeping her from throat to brow. Mr. Lambert looked diligently away.
“You have placed great stress on your skill, experience, and training as a waitress, Miss Cordier. Are you a waitress at present?”
“No.”
“Just what is your present occupation?”
“At present I have no occupation. I rest.”
“In the boarding house in Atlantic City where you have been occupied in resting for the past three or four months, you are not reposing under the name of Melanie Cordier, are you?”
The black eyes darted toward the prosecutor, who stood leaning, shrewd and careless, over the back of a tilted chair. “Is it particularly germane to this inquiry whether Miss Cordier chooses to call herself Joan of Arc, if she wants to?” he inquired.
“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr. Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married woman. . . . Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”
In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest assured.”
“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her, horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs. Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”
The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and greatly needed vacation, did it not?”
“More than ample—yes.”
“Mr. Platz had left his wife some time before these unhappy events caused you to leave Mrs. Ives, hadn’t he?”
“Of a surety, monsieur.”
“That’s all, thank you, Miss Cordier.”
Miss Cordier moved leisurely from the stand, chic and poised as ever, disdaining even a glance at the highly gratified Lambert, and bestowing the briefest of smiles on Mr. Farr, who responded even more briefly. Many a lady, trailing sable and brocade from an opera box, has moved with less assurance and grace than Mrs. Ives’s one-time waitress, the temporary Mrs. Adolph Platz. The eyes of the courtroom, perplexed, diverted, and faintly disturbed, followed her balanced and orderly retreat, the scarlet camellia defiant as a little flag.
“Call Miss Roberts.”
“Miss Laura Roberts!”
Miss Laura Roberts also wore black, but she wore her black with a difference. A decent, sober, respectful apparel for a decent, sober, respectful little person—Miss Roberts, comely, rosy-faced, gray-eyed, fawn-haired and soft-voiced, had all the surface qualifications of an ideal maid, and she obviously considered that those qualifications did not include scarlet lips and scarlet flowers. Under the neat black hat her eyes met the prosecutor’s shyly and bravely.
“Miss Roberts, what was your occupation on June nineteenth, 1926?”
“I was maid and seamstress to Mrs. Patrick Ives, sir.”
The pretty English voice, with its neat, clipped accent, fell pleasantly and reassuringly on the ears of the courtroom, which relaxed with unfeigned relief from the tensity into which her Gallic colleague had managed to plunge it during her tenure of the witness box.
“Did you see Mrs. Ives on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Not after dinner—no, sir. I asked her before dinner if it would be quite all right for cook and me to go down to the village to church that night, and she said quite, and not to bother about getting home early, because she wouldn’t be needing me again. So after church we met two young gentlemen that we knew and went across to the drug store and had some ices, and sat talking a bit before we walked home, so that it was well on to eleven when we got in, and all the lights were out except the one in the kitchen, so I knew that Mrs. Ives was in bed.”
“What time did you leave the house for church, Miss Roberts?”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly swear to it, sir, but it must have been around half-past eight; because service was at nine, and it’s a good bit of a walk, and I do remember hurrying with dinner so that I could turn down the beds and be off.”
“Were you chambermaid in the household as well as seamstress-maid?”
“Oh, no, sir; only it was the chambermaid’s night off, you see, and then it was my place to do it.”
“I see. So on this night you turned down all the beds before eight-thirty?”
“Yes, sir—all but Miss Page’s, that is.”
“That wasn’t included in your duties?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was. But that night when I got to the day nurse’s door it was locked, and when I knocked, no one didn’t answer at first, and then Miss Page called out that she had a headache and had gone to bed already____”
Miss Roberts hesitated and looked down at the prosecutor with honest, troubled eyes.
“Nothing extraordinary about that, was there?”
“Well, yes, sir, there was. You see, when I was coming down the hall I heard what I thought were voices coming out of those rooms, and crying, and I was afraid that the little girl was having more trouble with her ear. That’s why I started to go in without knocking, but after I’d been standing there a minute, I heard that it was Miss Page crying herself, fit to break her heart. I never heard anyone cry so dreadful in all my life. It fairly gave me a turn, but the moment I knocked there wasn’t a sound, and then after a minute she called out that she wouldn’t need me, just as I told you, sir. So I went on my way, of
course, though I was still a bit worried. She’d been crying so dreadful, poor thing, that I was afraid she would be right down sick.”
“Yes, quite so. Very much upset, as though she’d been through an agitating experience?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir.”
“You were mistaken about the voices weren’t you? It was just Miss Page crying?”
“No, sir—I thought I heard voices, too.” The soft voice was barely audible.
“The little girl’s?”
“No, sir. It sounded—it sounded like Mr. Ives.”
The prosecutor stared at her blankly.
“Mr. Patrick Ives?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You could hear what he was saying?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t; it stopped as soon as I tried the door. I thought he was talking to the little girl.”
Mr. Farr continued to contemplate her blankly for a moment, and then, with an eloquent shrug of the shoulders, dismissed Mr. Ives, Miss Page, and the locked door for more fruitful pastures.
“Now, Miss Roberts, your duties included the care of your mistress’s wardrobe, did they not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are quite familiar with all its contents?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Will you be good enough to tell us if it contains to-day all the articles that it contained on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“No, sir, it doesn’t. Mrs. Ives gives away a lot of her things at the end of every season. We sent a big box off to a sick cousin she has in Arizona, and another to some young ladies in Delaware, and another to the____”
“Never mind about the things that you sent at the end of the season. Did you send anything at about the time of the murder—within a few weeks of it, say?”
The roses in Miss Roberts’s cheeks faded abruptly, and the candid eyes fled precipitately to the chair where Susan Ives sat, playing idly with the crystal clasp of her brown suede bag. At the warm, friendly, reassuring little smile that she found waiting for her, Miss Roberts apparently found heart of grace. “Yes, sir, we did,” she said steadily.
“On what date, please?”
“On the twentieth of June.”
The courtroom drew in its breath sharply—a little sigh for its lost ease—and moved forward the inch that separated suspense from polite attention.
“To whom was the package sent?”
“It was sent to the Salvation Army.”
“What was in it?”
“Well, there were two old sweaters and a swiss dress that had shrunk quite small, and a wrapper, and some blouses and a coat.”
“What kind of a coat, Miss Roberts?”
“A light flannel coat—a kind of sports coat, you might call it,” said Miss Roberts clearly; but those who craned forward sharply enough could see the knuckles whiten on the small, square, capable hands.
“Cream-colored flannel?”
“Well, more of a biscuit, I’d call it,” replied Mrs. Ives’s maid judicially.
“The coat that Mrs. Ives had been wearing the evening before, wasn’t it?”
“I believe it was, sir.”
“Did you see the condition of this coat before you packed it, Miss Roberts?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. It wasn’t I that packed it.”
“Not you? Who did pack it?”
“Mrs. Ives packed it herself.”
“Ah, I see.” In that sudden white light of triumph the prosecutor’s face was almost beautiful—a cruel and sinister beauty, such as might have lighted the face of the youngest Spanish Inquisitionist as the stray shot of a question went straight to the enemy’s heart. “It was Mrs. Ives who packed it. How did it come into your hands, Miss Roberts?”
“The package, sir?”
“Certainly, the package.”
“It was this way, sir: A little before eight Sunday morning Mrs. Ives’s bell rang and I went down to her room. She was all dressed for church, and there was a big box on her bed. She said, ‘I rang for you before, Roberts, but you were probably at breakfast. Take this down to MacDonald and tell him to mail it when he gets the papers. The post office closes at half-past nine.’____”
“Was that all that she said?”
“Oh, no, sir. She asked me for some fresh gloves, and then she said over her shoulder like as she was going out, ‘It’s those things that I was getting together for the Salvation Army. I put in the coat I was wearing last night too. I absolutely ruined it with some automobile grease on Mr. Bellamy’s car.”
“Nothing more?”
“Well, then I said, ‘Oh, madam, couldn’t it be cleaned?’ And Mrs. Ives said, ‘It isn’t worth cleaning; this is the third year I’ve had it.’ Then she went out, sir, and I took it down and gave it to MacDonald.”
“Was it addressed?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“How?”
“‘Just Salvation Army Headquarters, New York, N. Y.”
“No address in the corner as to whom it came from?”
“Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Ives never____”
“Be good enough to confine yourself to the question. You are not aware, yourself, of the exact nature of these stains, are you, Miss Roberts?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” said the pink-cheeked Miss Roberts firmly. “They were grease stains.”
“What?” The prosecutor’s startled voice skipped half an octave. “Didn’t you distinctly tell me that you didn’t see this coat?”
“No, sir, no more I did. It was Mrs. Ives that told me they were grease stains.”
The prosecutor indulged in a brief bark of mirth that indicated more relief than amusement. “Then, as I say, you are unable to tell us of your own knowledge?”
“No, sir,” replied Miss Roberts, a trifle pinker and a trifle firmer. “Mrs. Ives told me that those stains were grease stains, so I’m certainly able to say of my own knowledge that it was absolutely true if she said so.”
There was something in the soft, sturdy voice that made the grimy courtroom a pleasanter place. Sue Ives’s careless serenity flashed suddenly to that of a delighted child; Stephen Bellamy’s fine, grave face warmed and lightened; the shadows lifted for a moment from Pat Ives’s haunted eyes; there was a grateful murmur from the press, a friendly stir in the jury. The quiet-eyed, soft-voiced, stubborn little Miss Roberts was undoubtedly the heroine of the moment.
Mr. Farr, however, was obviously unmoved by this exhibition of devotion and loyalty. He permitted more than a trace of annoyance to penetrate his clear, metallic voice. “That’s all very pretty and touching, naturally, Miss Roberts, but from a crudely legal standpoint we are forced to realize that your statement as to the nature of the stains has no weight whatever. It is a fact, is it not, that you never laid eyes on the stained coat that Mrs. Ives sent out of her house within a few hours of the time that this murder was committed?”
“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”
“No further questions, Miss Roberts. Cross-examine.”
“It is a fact, too, that Mrs. Ives frequently sent packages in just this way, isn’t it, Miss Roberts?” inquired Mr. Lambert mellifluously.
“Oh, yes, indeed, she did—often and often.”
“Was she in the habit of putting her address on packages sent to charitable institutions?”
“No, sir. She didn’t want to be thanked for her charities—not ever.”
“Precisely. That’s all, Miss Roberts—thanks.”
“Call Orsini.”
“Loo-weegee Aw-see-nee!”
Luigi Orsini glanced darkly at Ben Potts as he mounted the witness stand, and Mr. Potts returned the glance with Nordic severity.
“What was your occupation on June 19, 1926, Orsini?”
“I work for Miz’ Bell’my.”
“In what capacity?”
“What you say?”
“What was your job?”
“I am what you call handy—do everything there is to do.”
The spacious gesture implied Gargantuan
labors and superhuman abilities. A small, thick, stocky individual, swarthy and pompadoured, with lustrous eyes, a glittering smile, and a magnificent barytone voice, he suggested without any effort whatever infinite possibilities in the rôle of either tragedian or comedian. The redoubtable Farr eyed him with a trace of well-justified apprehension.
“Well, suppose you tell us what your principal activities were on the nineteenth of June.”
“Ah, well, that day me, I am very active, like per usual. At six o’clock I arise and after some small breakfast I take extra-fine strong wire and some very long sticks____”
“No, no, you can skip all that. You heard Mr. Farwell’s testimony, didn’t you?”
“For sure I hear that testimony.”
“Was it correct that he stopped around noon at the Bellamys’ and asked for Mrs. Bellamy?”
“All correct, O. K.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“Yes, sair, he then he say he get her at that cottage.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not one other thing else.”
“You didn’t see him again?”
“No, no; I do not see him again evair.”
“When did you last see Mrs. Bellamy?”
“It is about eight in the evening—maybe five minute before, maybe five minute after.”
“How do you fix the time?”
“I have look at my watch—this watch you now see, which is a good instrument of entirely pure silver, but not always faithful.”
The prosecutor waved away the bulky shining object dangled enticingly before his eyes with a gesture of almost ferocious impatience. “Never mind about that. Why did you consult your watch?”
The owner of the magnificent but unfaithful instrument swelled darkly for a moment, but continued to dangle his treasure. “That you shall hear—patience. I produce the instrument at this time so that you note that while the clock over the door it say twenty minutes before the hour, this watch it say nine minute—or maybe eight. You judge for yourself. It is without a doubt eccentric. But on that night still I have consult it to see if I go to New York at eight-twenty. I wait to decide still when I see Mrs. Bell’my run down the front steps and come down to the gate where I stand.”
“Did she speak to you?”
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 14
