The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime

by Michael Sims

  “I am beginning to fear,” she said irrelevantly, “that we’ll have to defer our strawberry shortcake!”

  The sound eye of Daniel Peddicord, liveryman by avocation, and sheriff of Merino County by election, drooped over his florid left cheek. Mr. Peddicord took himself and his duties to the taxpayers of Merino County seriously.

  Having lowered his sound eye with befitting official dubious-ness, while his glass eye stared guilelessly ahead, as though it took absolutely no notice of the procedure, Mr. Peddicord jerked a fat red thumb toward the winding stairway at the rear of the Marsh hall.

  “I reckon as how Mr. Marsh is still up there, Miss Mack. You see, I told ’em not to disturb the body until—”

  Our stares brought the sentence to an abrupt end. Mr. Peddicord’s sound eye underwent a violent agitation.

  “You don’t mean that you haven’t—heard?”

  The silence of the great house seemed suddenly oppressive. For the first time I realized the oddity of our having been received by an ill-at-ease policeman instead of by a member of the family. I was abruptly conscious of the incongruity between Mr. Peddicord’s awkward figure and the dim, luxurious background.

  Madelyn gripped the chief’s arm, bringing his sound eye circling around to her face.

  “Tell me what has happened!”

  Mr. Peddicord drew a huge red handkerchief over his forehead.

  “Wendell Marsh was found dead in his library at eight o’clock this morning! He had been dead for hours.”

  Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Through my daze beat the rhythm of a tall, gaunt clock in the corner. I stared at it dully. Madelyn’s hands had caught themselves behind her back, her veins swollen into sharp blue ridges. Mr. Peddicord still gripped his red handkerchief.

  “It sure is queer you hadn’t heard! I reckoned as how that was what had brought you down. It—it looks like murder!”

  In Madelyn’s eyes had appeared a greyish glint like cold steel.

  “Where is the body?”

  “Upstairs in the library. Mr. Marsh had worked—”

  “Will you kindly show me the room?”

  I do not think we noted at the time the crispness in her tones, certainly not with any resentment. Madelyn had taken command of the situation quite as a matter of course.

  “Also, will you have my card sent to the family?”

  Mr. Peddicord stuffed his handkerchief back into a rear trousers’ pocket. A red corner protruded in jaunty abandon from under his blue coat.

  “Why, there ain’t no family—at least none but Muriel Jansen.” His head cocked itself cautiously up the stairs. “She’s his niece, and I reckon now everything here is hers. Her maid says as how she is clear bowled over. Only left her room once since—since it happened. And that was to tell me as how nothing was to be disturbed.” Mr. Peddicord drew himself up with the suspicion of a frown. “Just as though an experienced officer wouldn’t know that much!”

  Madelyn glanced over her shoulder to the end of the hall. A hatchet-faced man in russet livery stood staring at us with wooden eyes.

  Mr. Peddicord shrugged.

  “That’s Peters, the butler. He’s the chap what found Mr. Marsh.”

  I could feel the wooden eyes following us until a turn in the stairs blocked their range.

  A red-glowing room—oppressively red. Scarlet-frescoed walls, deep red draperies, cherry-upholstered furniture, Turkish-red rugs, rows on rows of red-bound books. Above, a great, flat glass roof, open to the sky from corner to corner, through which the splash of the sun on the rich colors gave the weird semblance of a crimson pool almost in the room’s exact center. Such was Wendell Marsh’s library—as eccentrically designed as its master.

  It was the wreck of a room that we found. Shattered vases littered the floor—books were ripped savagely apart—curtains were hanging in ribbons—a heavy leather rocker was splintered.

  The wreckage might have marked the death-struggle of giants. In the midst of the destruction, Wendell Marsh was twisted on his back. His face was shriveled, his eyes were staring. There was no hint of a wound or even a bruise. In his right hand was gripped an object partially turned from me.

  I found myself stepping nearer, as though drawn by a magnet. There is something hypnotic in such horrible scenes! And then I barely checked a cry.

  Wendell Marsh’s dead fingers held a pipe—a strangely carved red sandstone bowl, and a long, glistening stem.

  Sheriff Peddicord noted the direction of my glance.

  “Mr. Marsh got that there pipe in London, along with those other relics he brought home. They do say as how it was the first pipe ever smoked by a white man. The Indians of Virginia gave it to a chap named Sir Walter Raleigh. Mr. Marsh had a new stem put to it, and his butler says he smoked it every day. Queer, ain’t it, how some folks’ tastes do run?”

  The sheriff moistened his lips under his scraggly yellow moustache.

  “Must have been some fight what done this!” His head included the wrecked room in a vague sweep.

  Madelyn strolled over to a pair of the ribboned curtains, and fingered them musingly.

  “But that isn’t the queerest part.” The chief glanced at Madelyn expectantly. “There was no way for any one else to get out—or in!”

  Madelyn stooped lower over the curtains. They seemed to fascinate her. “The door?” she hazarded absently. “It was locked?”

  “From the inside. Peters and the footman saw the key when they broke in this morning ... Peters swears he heard Mr. Marsh turn it when he left him writing at ten o’clock last night.”

  “The windows?”

  “Fastened as tight as a drum—and, if they wasn’t, it’s a matter of a good thirty foot to the ground.”

  “The roof, perhaps?”

  “A cat might get through it—if every part wasn’t clamped as tight as the windows.”

  Mr. Peddicord spoke with a distinct inflection of triumph. Madelyn was still staring at the curtains.

  “Isn’t it rather odd,” I ventured, “that the sounds of the struggle, or whatever it was, didn’t alarm the house?”

  Sheriff Peddicord plainly regarded me as an outsider. He answered my question with obvious shortness.

  “You could fire a blunderbuss up here and no one would be the wiser. They say as how Mr. Marsh had the room made soundproof. And, besides, the servants have a building to themselves, all except Miss Jansen’s maid, who sleeps in a room next to her at the other end of the house.”

  My eyes circled back to Wendell Marsh’s knotted figure—his shriveled face—horror-frozen eyes—the hand gripped about the fantastic pipe. I think it was the pipe that held my glance. Of all incongruities, a pipe in the hand of a dead man!

  Maybe it was something of the same thought that brought Madelyn of a sudden across the room. She stooped, straightened the cold fingers, and rose with the pipe in her hand.

  A new stem had obviously been added to it, of a substance which I judged to be jessamine. At its end, teeth-marks had bitten nearly through. The stone bowl was filled with the cold ashes of half-consumed tobacco. Madelyn balanced it musingly.

  “Curious, isn’t it, Sheriff, that a man engaged in a life-or-death struggle should cling to a heavy pipe?”

  “Why—I suppose so. But the question, Miss Mack, is what became of that there other man? It isn’t natural as how Mr. Marsh could have fought with himself.”

  “The other man?” Madelyn repeated mechanically. She was stirring the rim of the dead ashes.

  “And how in tarnation was Mr. Marsh killed?”

  Madelyn contemplated a dust-covered finger.

  “Will you do me a favor, Sheriff?”

  “Why, er—of course.”

  “Kindly find out from the butler if Mr. Marsh had cherry pie for dinner last night!”

  The sheriff gulped.

  “Che-cherry pie?”

  Madelyn glanced up impatiently.

  “I believe he was very fond of it.”

  The sheriff shuff
led across to the door uncertainly. Madelyn’s eyes flashed to me.

  “You might go, too, Nora.”

  For a moment I was tempted to flat rebellion. But Madelyn affected not to notice the fact. She is always so aggravatingly sure of her own way!—With what I tried to make a mood of aggrieved silence, I followed the sheriff’s blue-coated figure. As the door closed, I saw that Madelyn was still balancing Raleigh’s pipe.

  From the top of the stairs, Sheriff Peddicord glanced across at me suspiciously.

  “I say, what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!”

  A wisp of a black-gowned figure, peering through a dormer window at the end of the second-floor hall, turned suddenly as we reached the landing. A white, drawn face, suggesting a tired child, stared at us from under a frame of dull-gold hair, drawn low from a careless part. I knew at once it was Muriel Jansen, for the time, at least, mistress of the house of death.

  “Has the coroner come yet, Sheriff?”

  She spoke with one of the most liquid voices I have ever heard. Had it not been for her bronze hair, I would have fancied her at once of Latin descent. The fact of my presence she seemed scarcely to notice, not with any suggestion of aloofness, but rather as though she had been drained even of the emotion of curiosity.

  “Not yet, Miss Jansen. He should be here now.”

  She stepped closer to the window, and then turned slightly.

  “I told Peters to telegraph to New York for Dr. Dench when he summoned you. He was one of Uncle’s oldest friends. I—I would like him to be here when—when the coroner makes his examination.”

  The sheriff bowed awkwardly.

  “Miss Mack is upstairs now.”

  The pale face was staring at us again with raised eyebrows.

  “Miss Mack? I don’t understand.” Her eyes shifted to me.

  “She had a letter from Mr. Marsh by this morning’s early post,” I explained. “I am Miss Noraker. Mr. Marsh wanted her to come down at once. She didn’t know, of course—couldn’t know—that—that he was—dead!”

  “A letter from—Uncle?” A puzzled line gathered in her face.

  I nodded.

  “A distinctly curious letter. But—Miss Mack would perhaps prefer to give you the details.”

  The puzzled line deepened. I could feel her eyes searching mine intently.

  “I presume Miss Mack will be down soon,” I volunteered. “If you wish, however, I will tell her—”

  “That will hardly be necessary. But—you are quite sure—a letter?”

  “Quite sure,” I returned, somewhat impatiently.

  And then, without warning, her hands darted to her head, and she swayed forward. I caught her in my arms with a side-view of Sheriff Peddicord staring, open-mouthed.

  “Get her maid!” I gasped.

  The sheriff roused into belated action. As he took a cumbersome step toward the nearest door, it opened suddenly. A gaunt, middle-aged woman, in a crisp white apron, digested the situation with cold grey eyes. Without a word, she caught Muriel Jansen in her arms.

  “She has fainted,” I said rather vaguely. “Can I help you?”

  The other paused with her burden.

  “When I need you, I’ll ask you!” she snapped, and banged the door in our faces.

  In the wake of Sheriff Peddicord, I descended the stairs. A dozen question-marks were spinning through my brain. Why had Muriel Jansen fainted? Why had the mention of Wendell Marsh’s letter left such an atmosphere of bewildered doubt? Why had the dragonlike maid—for such I divined her to be—faced us with such hostility? The undercurrent of hidden secrets in the dim, silent house seemed suddenly intensified.

  With a vague wish for fresh air and the sun on the grass, I sought the front veranda, leaving the sheriff in the hall, mopping his face with his red handkerchief.

  A carefully tended yard of generous distances stretched an inviting expanse of graded lawn before me. Evidently Wendell Marsh had provided a discreet distance between himself and his neighbors. The advance guard of a morbid crowd was already shuffling about the gate. I knew that it would not be long, too, before the press siege would begin.

  I could picture frantic city editors pitchforking their star men New Jerseyward. I smiled at the thought. The Bugle—the slave driver that presided over my own financial destinies—was assured of a generous beat in advance. The next train from New York was not due until late afternoon.

  From the staring line about the gate, the figure of a well-set-up young man in blue serge detached itself with swinging step.

  “A reporter?” I breathed, incredulous.

  With a glance at me, he ascended the steps and paused at the door, awaiting an answer to his bell. My stealthy glances failed to place him among the “stars” of New York newspaperdom. Perhaps he was a local correspondent. With smug expectancy, I awaited his discomfiture when Peters received his card. And then I rubbed my eyes. Peters was stepping back from the door, and the other was following him with every suggestion of assurance.

  I was still gasping when a maid, broom in hand, zigzagged toward my end of the veranda. She smiled at me with a pair of friendly black eyes.

  “Are you a detective?”

  “Why?” I parried.

  She drew her broom idly across the floor.

  “I—I always thought detectives different from other people.”

  She sent a rivulet of dust through the railing, with a side-glance still in my direction.

  “Oh, you will find them human enough,” I laughed, “outside of detective stories!”

  She pondered my reply doubtfully.

  “I thought it about time Mr. Truxton was appearing!” she ventured suddenly.

  “Mr. Truxton?”

  “He’s the man that just came—Mr. Homer Truxton. Miss Jansen is going to marry him!”

  A light broke through my fog.

  “Then he is not a reporter?”

  “Mr. Truxton? He’s a lawyer.” The broom continued its dilatory course. “Mr. Marsh didn’t like him—so they say!”

  I stepped back, smoothing my skirts. I have learned the cardinal rule of Madelyn never to pretend too great an interest in the gossip of a servant.

  The maid was mechanically shaking out a rug.

  “For my part, I always thought Mr. Truxton far and away the pick of Miss Jansen’s two steadies. I never could understand what she could see in Dr. Dench! Why, he’s old enough to be her—”

  In the doorway, Sheriff Peddicord’s bulky figure beckoned.

  “Don’t you reckon as how it’s about time we were going back to Miss Mack?” he whispered.

  “Perhaps,” I assented rather reluctantly.

  From the shadows of the hall, the sheriff’s sound eye fixed itself on me belligerently.

  “I say, what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!”

  As we paused on the second landing the well-set-up figure of Mr. Homer Truxton was bending toward a partially opened door. Beyond his shoulder, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pale face under a border of rumpled dull-gold hair. Evidently Muriel Jansen had recovered from her faint.

  The door closed abruptly, but not before I had seen that her eyes were red with weeping.

  Madelyn was sunk into a red-backed chair before a huge flat-top desk in the corner of the library, a stack of Wendell Marsh’s red-bound books, from a wheel-cabinet at her side, bulked before her. She finished the page she was reading—a page marked with a broad blue pencil—without a hint that she had heard us enter.

  Sheriff Peddicord stared across at her with a disappointment that was almost ludicrous. Evidently Madelyn was falling short of his conception of the approved attitudes for a celebrated detective!

  “Are you a student of Elizabethan literature, Sheriff?” she asked suddenly.

  The sheriff gurgled weakly.

  “If you are, I am quite sure you will be interested in Mr. Marsh’s collection. It is the most thorough on the subject that I have ever seen.
For instance, here is a volume on the inner court life of Elizabeth—perhaps you would like me to read you this random passage?”

  The sheriff drew himself up with more dignity than I thought he possessed.

  “We are investigating a crime, Miss Mack!”

  Madelyn closed the book with a sigh.

  “So we are! May I ask what is your report from the butler?”

  “Mr. Marsh did not have cherry pie for dinner last night!” the sheriff snapped.

  “You are quite confident?”

  And then abruptly the purport of the question flashed to me.

  “Why, Mr. Marsh, himself, mentioned the fact in his letter!” I burst out.

  Madelyn’s eyes turned to me reprovingly.

  “You must be mistaken, Nora.”

  With a lingering glance at the books on the desk, she rose. Sheriff Peddicord moved toward the door, opened it, and faced about with an abrupt clearing of his throat.

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Mack, have—have you found any clues in the case?”

  Madelyn had paused again at the ribboned curtains.

  “Clues? The man who made Mr. Marsh’s death possible, Sheriff, was an expert chemist, of Italian origin, living for some time in London—and he died three hundred years ago!”

  From the hall we had a fleeting view of Sheriff Peddicord’s face, flushed as red as his handkerchief, and then it and the handkerchief disappeared.

  I whirled on Madelyn sternly.

  “You are carrying your absurd joke, Miss Mack, altogether too—”

  I paused, gulping in my turn. It was as though I had stumbled from the shadows into an electric glare.

  Madelyn had crossed to the desk, and was gently shifting the dead ashes of Raleigh’s pipe into an envelope. A moment she sniffed at its bowl, peering down at the crumpled body at her feet.

  “The pipe!” I gasped. “Wendell Marsh was poisoned with the pipe!”

  Madelyn sealed the envelope slowly.

  “Is that fact just dawning on you, Nora?”

  “But the rest of it—what you told the—”

  Madelyn thrummed on the bulky volume of Elizabethan history.

  “Someday, Nora, if you will remind me, I will give you the material for what you call a Sunday ‘feature’ on the historic side of murder as a fine art!”