Murder by the Clock

by Rufus King

  Roberts hadn’t looked toward the bed—yet—but then he hadn’t really expected that she would. Perhaps she wouldn’t look for some time, but eventually she would lose some portion of that really splendid self-control that she was exerting and then, instead of the expanse of white sheet she had been expecting, there would be Endicott’s face…

  “I wonder if you could tell me, Miss Roberts, the number of shots that were fired during the shooting.”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t.”

  She was pointedly on guard, her eyes held at a level that included his cravat but went no higher.

  “The question isn’t as silly a one as it seems,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “I don’t suggest for a minute that you counted the shots as they were being fired, actually, but it’s quite within possibility that your subconscious mind really did that very thing, and that on consciously thinking about it the number might come to you. It’s something along the principle of visualizing sound.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sure that no amount of thinking about it would clear the rather terrible confusion of that moment.”

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I prefer to stand, thank you.”

  “Just as you wish. You were with Mrs. Endicott, weren’t you, when it happened?”

  “Yes.”

  Lieutenant Valcour admired the accomplished ease with which the word had so unhesitatingly been brought out; but then most women, in his estimation, were natural-born liars. The art formed for him one of their greatest charms.

  “You were sitting down beside the bed?” he went on.

  “Yes. Reading.”

  Splendid—splendid—she was a Bernhardt—a Duse. “And Miss Vickers?”

  “She was down in the kitchen making some coffee.”

  “Did the shooting upset you, Miss Roberts?”

  “I’m naturally nervous. The sound of firing has always disturbed me terribly.” Then she flung at him abruptly, “My brother was killed in the war.” Lieutenant Valcour both looked and felt genuinely consoling. He also felt a selfish measure of irritation. The statement was such a perfect period mark. When a young woman, no matter how great a criminal, potentially, announces flatly that her brother has been killed during the war, one can’t ride over the fact roughshod.

  “Was there anyone whom you loved killed in the war, Lieutenant?”

  She was determined to hammer at the point, it seemed. He wished that she would stop.

  “There wasn’t, Miss Roberts.”

  “Then you don’t know much about soldiers.’”

  “No, not much, really.”

  “I don’t mean soldiers—or the war itself, either. It’s a state of being—a sort of lucid abnormality. It’s hard to tell you just what I do mean. But it’s the thing,” she ended fiercely, “that made me understand Mr. Endicott. He never quite recovered, you see, from being a soldier.”

  “And perhaps it also made you understand why Mrs. Endicott misunderstood him?”

  Things were going better now; the channel was broadening into useful seas.

  “Of course it was,” Roberts said. “She, too, lost no one in the war.”

  The fog rolled in again.

  “I’m afraid I’m not following you very clearly.”

  “It’s quite useless, Lieutenant—simply that in Mr. Endicott I kept seeing my brother. I suffered for him to the extent I would have suffered for my brother had my brother been in similar circumstances.”

  “Suffered?”

  “Yes, suffered. From her damned superiority.”

  “You think that Mrs. Endicott overdid the mental?”

  He noted that Roberts was slowly losing control. There was a blazing quality of anger creeping into her eyes.

  “Lieutenant, she regarded that man as her tame tiger. You realize how strong he must have been physically.”

  “Very strong.”

  “It used to please her to control him—you know the way it’s commonly expressed—with a ‘word.’”

  “I shouldn’t exactly say that she had succeeded.”

  “The other women?”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t care about that. If anything, it satisfied her sense of power. She looked on them as a pack of shoddy substitutes that he could fool with, kick around, and treat terribly, if he liked. But she still remained the original—the unapproachable—the happy possessor of a tame tiger. He was always hers, you see, no matter what it was he had done. She’s had him crying.”

  “That’s a little hard to believe.”

  “It’s the truth. He took her in his hands one night and twisted her—just like that! She didn’t say a thing to him. For a month afterward he went around the house like a whipped cat. Then she said something kind to him, and he cried. I wish she was in hell.”

  “Perhaps she is, Miss Roberts—just that.”

  “She won’t stay in it long. Her kind doesn’t.” Lieutenant Valcour held his eyes thoughtfully directed toward the bed.

  “Tell me, Miss Roberts, do you think that Mr. Endicott is happier dead? Let me put it in this fashion: if Mr. Endicott had really been your brother, would you rather have seen him dead than living in the emotional hell you picture Mr. Endicott as having lived in?”

  His gaze retained its determined fixity.

  “No,” she said. “There is always a way out.” It was irresistible. She found herself having to look, too. Against every advice of instinct her eyes were drawn toward the bed in company with Lieutenant Valcour’s…peace—there was peace—greater than she had ever seen when he had been living—peace to a tired heart—a plain, normal, happy human heart that had been broken on the wheel of too much complexity…“Oh, I’m lying, Lieutenant! I would—I would—a million times rather.”

  He worked very fast now, having captured the mood. “Were you thinking of all that when you stood outside on the balcony and watched him through the window?”

  Her eyes clung immovably to the cold closed lids, the mouth, carved in gentle shadows; her very being seemed withdrawn on private heights. “I wasn’t on the balcony.”

  “And I’d like to know what you did with the gun.”… Perhaps he was laughing at it all now, if people laugh in heaven. He and her brother. They would have met and be laughing at it all together. But they wouldn’t be laughing at her…“There wasn’t any need to use the gun, Lieutenant.”

  “Then what did you do with it?”

  “Put it back in the bottom of my trunk.”… He’d know, now, the exact reason why she had done the things that she had done. People know everything in heaven—sort of an enveloping awareness—like lightning darting brilliantly to immediate comprehension at its target—target—gun?—gun. Her face was bleak ivory. “What did you say, Lieutenant?”

  “I had just asked you, Miss Roberts, what you did with the gun, and you told me that you put it back again in the bottom of your trunk.”

  Her eyes, as she looked at him, were strangely devoid of fear.

  “Then if I told you that, you’ll find it there.”

  “It wasn’t the wisest place to put it, Miss Roberts.”

  “It doesn’t matter much.”

  “You mean you don’t care?”

  “Not just that. I’m speaking about the gun. I never fired it.”

  “Then why did you hide it?”

  “Because it’s illegal to have a gun.”

  “Then why did you have one, Miss Roberts?”

  “It’s one my brother gave me over twelve years ago. I’ve always kept it with me.”

  “What caliber is it?”

  “A Colt .38.”

  The bullet in Lieutenant Valcour’s pocket had been fired from a Colt .38.

  “And tonight you were going to use it to save Mr. Endicott by shooting him.”

  “No, Lieutenant. I was going to use it to shoot Mrs. Endicott if she attempted to get near him again.”

  “Again?”

  “Why, yes, Lieutenant. She went out of the room last night righ
t after he had knocked and said goodbye.”

  “Out into the hallway?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she come back?”

  “She didn’t come back.”

  “Then when was the next time you saw her?”

  “When you rang for me—after you had found Mr. Endicott in the cupboard.”

  “And you think it was Mrs. Endicott who put him there.” Lieutenant Valcour thought for a moment of the broken finger nail of Mrs. Endicott’s otherwise immaculate hand. “But why, Miss Roberts, should she kill her—tiger?”

  “Perhaps Mr. Hollander could tell you that better than I.”

  “And why did you get a gun to prevent Mrs. Endicott from going again to her husband, when you knew she was under the influence of a narcotic, that she was unconscious, and couldn’t possibly move?”

  “Because, Lieutenant, she never drank the narcotic.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  3:51 A.M.—A Woman’s Slipper

  Lieutenant Valcour felt a distinct shock, and his eyes became predatorily alert. If this astonishing thing was true and Mrs. Endicott had not taken the narcotic prepared for her by Dr. Worth, then the bypaths one might dart along were numerous and alarming indeed.

  “How do you know, Miss Roberts?” he said.

  “Because when the nurse went downstairs to make that coffee I went over to the bed. I wanted to take a close look at Mrs. Endicott. Have you ever felt that desire to look closely at something that you hate very much? It’s the curiosity of hate, I suppose. I put my hand on the spread, at the edge, so that I could lean down. The spread was damp; something had been poured on it. There wasn’t anything that could have been poured on it except the narcotic. She’d recovered consciousness, you see, when the nurse and Dr. Worth brought her in from here and put her to bed.”

  “But wouldn’t he or the nurse have seen her pour it out?”

  “None of us saw it, Lieutenant, because she said, just after the doctor had handed her the glass, ‘There’s blood on that dresser.’ We all looked at the dresser, of course. Naturally there wasn’t any blood on it. The doctor thought she was delirious. She was just finishing drinking when we turned around.”

  “Didn’t you accuse her—when you felt the damp spot on the spread?”

  “What was the use? She never would have admitted it. I believe,” Roberts said fiercely, “that I could have stuck pins in her and that she’d have endured the pain rather than admit it. And suddenly I began to feel afraid—not so much of her, as of what she might do to Mr. Endicott. She was playing a trick and I didn’t know just what the purpose of it was. I ran upstairs and got my gun, then came right back.”

  “She was still in bed?”

  “Yes. But the shooting was over, and the room was cold. The room was cold,”—Roberts’s voice was very intense as she drove her points home—“and her skin was cold, and her breathing was heavy from recent exertion. I think I was going to kill her. I would have killed her if the nurse hadn’t come in just then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell someone of this at once, Miss Roberts?”

  “Would you have? Would anyone have?”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “There had just been that shooting—and I had a gun. I wanted to get rid of it. By the time I had got rid of it, it was too late. I couldn’t say anything then without practically accusing myself of a murder I didn’t commit.”

  “You’ll stay here in the house, Miss Roberts?”

  “Naturally, since I’m to be accused of having killed Mr. Endicott.”

  “Not as yet, Miss Roberts.”

  “It won’t bother me.” She added bitterly, as she started for the door, “You’ll find me a tractable prisoner.”

  “One minute please, Miss Roberts. How long were you gone from Mrs. Endicott’s room when you went upstairs to get the gun?”

  “Just long enough to run up and back again. I have no idea, really.”

  “Where is your room?”

  “On the upper floor—the room to the left of the corridor in the front of the house.”

  “And whereabouts did you keep the gun?”

  “In my trunk—where it is now.”

  “Was the trunk locked?”

  “Yes. I keep it locked.”

  “And the keys for it?”

  “In a purse. The purse was in a dresser drawer.”

  “Then that gives us a pretty good idea of the length of time you must have been gone, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose it does. Three or four minutes, probably.”

  “Nearer, I imagine, to five or six. But we don’t require the actual number of minutes. The point we need is, rather, a comparison of two different operations within the same time limit. While you were going through the various movements you have described, would Mrs. Endicott have had the time to get out of bed, supply herself with a revolver, open a window, and, from the balcony, shoot Mr. Endicott, return to her room, and be in bed again by the time you came down? I think so, don’t you?”

  “There would have been plenty of time for that.”

  “You’ve been with Mrs. Endicott for quite a while. Have you ever noticed whether or not she owns a pistol?”

  “I don’t think I have. No, I’m sure I’ve never seen one. That doesn’t prove anything, though. There are any number of private places where she may have kept it. It is also possible”—Roberts seemed desperately earnest in her effort to strengthen each link in her accusation, for she was accusing rather than simply offering a theory—“that someone may recently have given her a revolver, isn’t it?”

  “Everything is possible.”

  “Mr. Hollander, for example?”

  “A very good example.”

  He said nothing further, and after a while the stillness became almost physically oppressive. Roberts was finished with emotions. “Is that all?” she said, and her voice was colorless.

  “I believe so, Miss Roberts—except that I wish you would tell me why, in view of your recent insinuations concerning Mrs. Endicott and Hollander, you ever suggested him as the proper friend to stay with her husband tonight. It’s a little inconsistent, don’t you think?”

  “Very.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “I have nothing further to say.”

  Lieutenant Valcour went abruptly to the door and opened it. Cassidy and Hansen were standing near by in the corridor.

  “Hansen,” he said, “go with Miss Roberts up to her room. There is a gun in her trunk. She will give it to you. Keep it for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roberts went outside.

  “Am I to consider myself under arrest, Lieutenant?”

  “No, Miss Roberts. But, as I have explained, you are not to leave the house. Cassidy, come inside here with me.”

  Cassidy came in and closed the door. He watched Lieutenant Valcour draw the sheet up again over Endicott’s face.

  “What’s Dr. Worth doing, Cassidy?”

  “He has gone back to bed, sir. Shall I go get him?” Cassidy cast one suspicious look toward the bed.

  “No, let him sleep. There’s nothing just this instant. I’ll want to see him in about a quarter of an hour, though.”

  Lieutenant Valcour went into the bathroom, opened the window, and went outside onto the balcony. The gray before dawning was in the sky, and a rare clearness was vibrant in the fresh, sweet air.

  The outline of the garden down below was quite distinct. There were other gardens belonging to the adjacent houses, too, and to the houses backing them from the rear. It was a street of gardens which bloomed, Lieutenant Valcour reflected, for the express benefit of caretakers in summer, while their owners spent the season at fashionable resorts either in the mountains or on the shore.

  Lieutenant Valcour went and carefully examined with his flashlight the window to Endicott’s room that had been raised from the bottom when the shot was fired. He played the light upon the surface of its glass. It was quite clean. The
re was no trace of any pressing of noses or of foreheads against its polished surface. Nor, on the stone sill, were there any telltale threads of silk, or any of the various clues that would serve to indicate a woman’s presence.

  He stared speculatively for a minute at the windows of the room above, where the curiously vindictive Mrs. Siddons was now presumably resting, or else indulging in her blank-eyed game of mental maledictions. No, he couldn’t really visualize her as descending to the balcony by a rope or any other kind of ladder. A hundred years ago, perhaps, she might have gone so far as to shape a replica of Mr. Endicott in wax and then, with appropriate incantations, proceed to stick pins in such portions of it as would cabalistically do the most good. But there was no such simple expedient left her in our modern skeptic age. It would be necessary, of course, to interview her further concerning those vague, bitter hints she had thrown out about outrageous actions on the part of Endicott toward the maids.

  Even the city could not kill the fair fresh breezes of dawn. He stared at the dimming stars and wondered whether Roberts’s extraordinary statement was a lie. For after all it hinged upon nothing more significant than a damp spot at the edge of a spread, and Roberts could easily have spilled something there herself to offer as corroborative evidence to her tale. Was she, he wondered, quite so smart? And from all that he had been able to judge of her, he rather thought that she was.

  He would have to consult with Dr. Worth, of course, before doing anything drastic. And the doctor would probably raise a holler, especially since he had just gone to bed and would have to be yanked summarily out of it again. Well, bed-yankings were to be expected in the lives of doctors and of the police; they were expected to be perpetually on tap, like heat or water.

  He made his way slowly toward the windows of Mrs. Endicott’s room, carefully inspecting the balcony and sills with his flashlight as he went along.

  There were no smudges, no threads, no clues until he reached the last window in the row. And there, on the balcony floor just below its sash, something blazed in the circle of his torch a bright jade green. It was a woman’s slipper.

  CHAPTER XXII

  4:14 A.M.—Tap—Tap—Tap