“Ah! Now we're getting at it. Jennings would have been dismissed without a character. A serious matter for him.”
“You said something about a clock,” said Laura Dwighton.
“There's just a chance – if you want to fix the time – James would have been sure to have his little golf watch on him. Mightn't that have been smashed, too, when he fell forward?”
“It's an idea,” said the colonel slowly. “But I'm afraid – Curtis!”
The inspector nodded in quick comprehension and left the room. He returned a minute later. On the palm of his hand was a silver watch marked like a golf ball, the kind that are sold for golfers to carry loose in a pocket with balls.
“Here it is, sir,” he said, “but I doubt if it will be any good. They're tough, these watches.”
The colonel took it from him and held it to his ear.
“It seems to have stopped, anyway,” he observed.
He pressed with his thumb, and the lid of the watch flew open. Inside the glass was cracked across.
“Ah!” he said exultantly.
The hand pointed to exactly a quarter past six.
“A very good glass of port, Colonel Melrose,” said Mr. Quin.
It was half past nine, and the three men had just finished a belated dinner at Colonel Melrose's house. Mr. Satterthwaite was particularly jubilant.
“I was quite right,” he chuckled. “You can't deny it, Mr. Quin. You turned up tonight to save two absurd young people who were both bent on putting their heads into a noose.”
“Did I?” said Mr. Quin. “Surely not. I did nothing at all.”
“As it turned out, it was not necessary,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite. “But it might have been. It was touch and go, you know. I shall never forget the moment when Lady Dwighton said, 'I killed him.' I've never seen anything on the stage half as dramatic.”
“I'm inclined to agree with you,” said Mr. Quin.
“Wouldn't have believed such a thing could happen outside a novel,” declared the colonel, for perhaps the twentieth time that night.
“Does it?” asked Mr. Quin.
The colonel stared at him, “Damn it, it happened tonight.”
“Mind you,” interposed Mr. Satterthwaite, leaning back and sipping his port, “Lady Dwighton was magnificent, quite magnificent, but she made one mistake. She shouldn't have leaped to the conclusion that her husband had been shot. In the same way Delangua was a fool to assume that he had been stabbed just because the dagger happened to be lying on the table in front of us. It was a mere coincidence that Lady Dwighton should have brought it down with her.”
“Was it?” asked Mr. Quin.
“Now if they'd only confined themselves to saying that they'd killed Sir James, without particularizing how –” went on Mr. Satterthwaite – ”what would have been the result?”
“They might have been believed,” said Mr. Quin with an odd smile.
“The whole thing was exactly like a novel,” said the colonel.
“That's where they got the idea from, I daresay,” said Mr. Quin.
“Possibly,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite. “Things one has read do come back to one in the oddest way.” He looked across at Mr. Quinn. “Of course,” he said, “the clock really looked suspicious from the first. One ought never to forget how easy it is to put the hands of a clock or watch forward or back.”
Mr. Quin nodded and repeated the words. “Forward,” he said, and paused. “Or back.”
There was something encouraging in his voice. His bright, dark eyes were fixed on Mr. Satterthwaite.
“The hands of the clock were put forward,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “We know that.”
“Were they?” asked Mr. Quin.
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him. “Do you mean,” he said slowly, “that it was the watch which was put back? But that doesn't make sense. It's impossible.”
“Not impossible,” murmured Mr. Quin.
“Well – absurd. To whose advantage could that be?”
“Only, I suppose, to someone who had an alibi for that time.”
“By gad!” cried the colonel. “That's the time young Delangua said he was talking to the keeper.”
“He told us that very particularly,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.
They looked at each other. They had an uneasy feeling as of solid ground failing beneath their feet. Facts went spinning round, turning new and unexpected faces. And in the center of the kaleidoscope was the dark, smiling face of Mr. Quin.
“But in that case –” began Melrose – ”in that case –”
Mr. Satterthwaite, nimble–witted, finished his sentence for him. “It's all the other way round. A plant just the same – but a plant against the valet. Oh, but it can't be! It's impossible. Why each of them accused themselves of the crime.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Quin. “Up till then you suspected them, didn't you?” His voice went on, placid and dreamy. “Just like something out of a book, you said, colonel. They got the idea there. It's what the innocent hero and heroine do. Of course it made you think them innocent – there was the force of tradition behind them. Mr. Satterthwaite has been saying all along it was like something on the stage. You were both right. It wasn't real. You've been saying so all along without knowing what you were saying. They'd have told a much better story than that if they'd wanted to be believed.”
The two men looked at him helplessly.
“It would be clever,” said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. “It would be diabolically clever. And I've thought of something else. The butler said he went in at seven to shut the windows – so he must have expected them to be open.”
“That's the way Delangua came in,” said Mr. Quin. “He killed Sir James with one blow, and he and she together did what they had to do –”
He looked at Mr. Satterthwaite, encouraging him to reconstruct the scene. He did so, hesitatingly.
“They smashed the clock and put it on its side. Yes. They altered the watch and smashed it. Then he went out of the window, and she fastened it after him. But there's one thing I don't see. Why bother with the watch at all? Why not simply put back the hands of the clock?”
“The clock was always a little obvious,” said Mr. Quin.
“Anyone might have seen through a rather transparent device like that.”
“But surely the watch was too farfetched. Why, it was pure chance that we ever thought of the watch.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Quin. “It was the lady's suggestion, remember.”
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him, fascinated.
“And yet, you know,” said Mr. Quin dreamily, “the one person who wouldn't be likely to overlook the watch would be the valet. Valets know better than anyone what their masters carry in their pockets. If he altered the clock, the valet would have altered the watch, too. They don't understand human nature, those two. They are not like Mr. Satterthwaite.”
Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head.
“I was all wrong,” he murmured humbly. “I thought that you had come to save them.”
“So I did,” said Mr. Quin. “Oh! Not those two – the others. Perhaps you didn't notice the lady's maid? She wasn't wearing blue brocade, or acting a dramatic part. But she's really a very pretty girl, and I think she loves that man Jennings very much. I think that between you you'll be able to save her man from getting hanged.”
“We've no proof of any kind,” said Colonel Melrose heavily.
Mr. Quin smiled. “Mr. Satterthwaite has.”
“I?” Mr. Satterthwaite was astonished.
Mr. Quin went on. “You've got a proof that that watch wasn't smashed in Sir James's pocket. You can't smash a watch like that without opening the case. Just try it and see. Someone took the watch out and opened it, set back the hands, smashed the glass, and then shut it and put it back.
They never noticed that a fragment of glass was missing.”
“Oh!” cried Mr. Satterthwaite. His hand flew to his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a fragment of c
urved glass.
It was his moment.
“With this,” said Mr. Satterthwaite importantly, “I shall save a man from death.”
Hulbert Footner
(1879–1944)
Madame Rosika Storey was among the earliest of the fully realized female sleuths, a professional detective who was not above using her voluptuous charm to inspire awe in other people. The hard–headed police inspector in “The Sealed Room,” for instance, is “floored by her beauty (and) brains.” Yet in the private company of Bella, her assistant and “Watson,” she could often be keen, human, lovable, and full of laughter. Together, Mme. Storey and Bella, who sometimes contributed to the solution of a particular case, formed the first major two–woman detective duo. They appeared in four novels, among them The Under Dogs (1925), The Doctor Who Held Hands (1929), and Dangerous Cargo (1934), and four volumes of short stories, beginning with –Madame Storey (1926) and concluding with The Almost PerfectMurder (1933). Despite the relative brevity of their ten–year joint career, Mme. Storey and Bella made a small but significant contribution to both the development of partnership sleuthing and to the Golden Age (i.e., between the two world wars) of fictional detectives.
The same is not quite true of their creator.
William Hulbert Footner was a Canadian actor and novelist who wrote adventure and “modern romance” fiction as well as detective stories. From 1911 to 1945 he produced upward of fifty novels and half a dozen collections of short stories; more than two–thirds of these are criminous in nature, yet except for Mme. Storey – and, arguably, his 1930 novel, The Mystery of the Folded Paper with his other principal series detective, Amos Lee Mappin – he wrote little of interest or merit. Mappin appeared in ten novels, but despite a resemblance to Dickens's Mr. Pickwick, he was a rather colorless character and his cases other than The Mystery of the Folded Paper were pedestrian.
Footner's nonseries crime novels, notably The Island of Fear (1936) and The Obeah Murders (1937), are better than the Mappins and some of the Storeys, but still lack any lasting qualities. As one critic has noted, his style is undistinguished. However, the Mme. Storey tales have a certain period charm that makes them, unlike most of his other work, quite readable today.
THE SEALED HOUSE
MME. ROSIKA STOREY AND BELLA
NEW YORK C. 1930
My job as secretary to Madame Storey has always been an exciting one (sometimes too exciting for my own comfort), but the most active period was during the time when my employer was retained by the Washburn legislative committee in connection with their investigation of the Police Department. Mme. Storey's particular job was to examine into the methods used in detecting crime and to make a report.
Our first interview with Inspector Barron who was in charge of the detective force at that time, had its humorous side. Barron was a big, red–faced man, a magnificent physical specimen, quite honest I believe, but somewhat bullheaded. The sight of Mme. Storey threw him into confusion, and I could not help but feel a little sorry for him. He was floored by her beauty and he resented her brains. He objected to my presence at the conference.
“Miss Brickley is my memory,” said Mme. Storey with that baffling smile which has capsized so many men honest and otherwise; “she is my card–index, my prompt–book, almost I might say my other self. I cannot move without her.”
He shrugged and let the matter go. “Well, Madame,” he said with a sour face, “I need hardly say that the police welcome your co–operation in any shape, manner or form. Everything is open here. How do you propose to begin?”
“I am not interested in your office routine,” she said; “let us work out one or two typical cases together.”
“Fine!” he said. “I will let you know just as soon as anything important breaks, so that you can be in on it from the beginning.”
“But why wait for a crime to be committed?” said Mme. Storey. “Surely there is plenty of unfinished business on hand.”
He scowled at her in an injured way as if he was thinking: “You're too darn good–looking! It's not fair!”
“The Ada Rousseau case, for instance,” she added quietly.
“That's not unfinished business!” he said, all hot immediately. “That was closed up a week ago. There never was anything for the police to do there.”
“I wonder!” said Mme. Storey thoughtfully.
“Ada Rousseau committed suicide!” he cried, slapping his desk. “There can be no question or doubt about that. She was a damned ... excuse me, Madame ... she was a bad woman. She lived in luxury in a fine house without any visible means of support. She was known in all the flashy speakeasies in town as a souse – and worse! She was found dead under some shrubbery in Central Park with an empty bottle of veronal in her hand, and the autopsy proved that she died from an overdose. She had bought the veronal herself. What more do you want?”
“Somebody may have given her the veronal in a drink,” suggested Mme. Storey. “She was seen earlier that night in Raffaello's speakeasy on
Fifty–third Street
. She picked up a young man there and left the place with him. Did you find
that young man?”
“Why should I?” demanded Barron. “She was found lying in a mink coat that was worth three thousand dollars, and she had diamonds on her worth ten thousand. As for its being a crime of jealousy, the woman was getting old; she had lost her looks and attractiveness. That's ridiculous.”
“But there are other motives for murder besides robbery and jealousy,” said Mme. Storey quietly.
“What are they?”
“Well, there is ... fear!”
Inspector Barron puffed out his red cheeks and fussed amongst the papers on his desk. Then his sullen eyes like a schoolboy's crept back to Mme. Storey's face. He wanted to stand in well with so handsome a woman, but she exasperated him. “What do you know?” he muttered.
“Not a thing!” she said with a wave of her hand. “Except what I have read in the newspapers. ... But it struck me as very strange that a woman like Ada Rousseau, as luxurious as a cat, should go and creep under a bush on a wet winter's
night to kill herself. If she wanted to end it all, why didn't she do it in her own comfortable house?”
“You can search me!” said Barron.
“Another thing,” Mme. Storey went on, “in the published list of articles that were found on her there was no mention of keys or a key, yet her maid testified at the inquest that she was not accustomed to wait up for her mistress. What
became of Ada Rousseau's latchkey?”
The burly Inspector merely scowled and made marks on his desk pad.
“How did she live, anyhow?” my employer continued. “A woman whose beauty was fading, as you have pointed out. It has been shown that she spent money with the greatest freedom, yet no property has been found except the furnishings of her house and her jewels. Somebody was paying, and paying heavily.”
“Some things are best not stirred up,” muttered the Inspector.
“Oh, quite!” said Mme. Storey. “But it's up to you and me to ferret out murder if murder has been done.”
“Whom do you suspect?” he growled.
Mme. Storey laughed candidly. “My dear man! How do I know? I'm no magician. I have merely pointed out one or two suspicious circumstances. Let's go up and look over the woman's house together, and we'll see what we see.”
“Can't get in,” he said. “The house has been sealed up by the Surrogate's court until the woman's estate is adjudged.”
“Under the circumstances you could obtain an order from the Surrogate to view it.”
“I suppose I could, if the husband was willing.”
“Husband?” said Mme. Storey. “I didn't know Ada Rousseau had a husband.”
“He doesn't figure,” said Inspector Barron. “They've been parted for twenty–five years. He turned up when he read of her death in the newspapers, and there appears to be no other heir.”
“He could hardly
object to our going over the house,” said Mme. Storey. “Let him come along with us if he is afraid that we might pinch something.”
Barron picked up his telephone muttering something that sounded like: “All damn nonsense!” But his eye kindled when it dwelt on Mme. Storey sitting there smiling delightfully in a chic little hat and speckless white gloves. The Inspector part of him was disgusted, but the man was charmed by the idea of going on an expedition with her.
The house was a smallish brownstone front on East Thirty–Sixth Street where it slides down Murray Hill. Not very grand on the outside, but when you considered the value of property in that neighbourhood, an impressive residence for a lone woman. Ada Rousseau had lived there for twenty years and the rent was four hundred dollars a month.
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