by Otto Penzler
“But he was sitting with his back to the hall,” interrupted Madame Storey. “How could you see his face?”
“There was a mirror over the fireplace hung at such an angle that his face was reflected in it.”
“But if you could see him in it could he not see you?”
“No, I was standing too far back in the dark hall.”
“Go on.”
“The look on his face conveyed an insult no man could bear. I went in and shot him; that’s all.”
Philippa Dean struggled to her feet. From her lips broke a cry none of us will ever forget.
“It’s not true. It was I who did it. He knows it was I. He’s trying to shield me.”
She could go no further, but stood, struggling to control the dry sobbing that tore her breast. None of the rest of us stirred.
Grantland did not look at her. One could see that he dared not. “She knows it was I,” he said stonily.
With a great effort Philippa regained a measure of control.
“Listen! Listen!” she cried desperately. “I will tell the truth now. Mr. Poor sent for me. He asked me to take some letters. He looked at me in such a way I was afraid—afraid. I asked him to excuse me while I got a handkerchief. I went upstairs. But it was my pistol that I went for. I was so afraid they would meet—and fight. I got my pistol. I came downstairs again. I shot him. Lieutenant Grantland wasn’t there at all.”
“I was there,” cried Grantland. “Ask Mrs. Batten. Mrs. Batten, didn’t I follow her?”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” wailed the little body. “Yes, you followed her.”
“And if I was not there how could I have known about the handkerchief?” he demanded.
By this time Philippa had nerved herself. She faced him out fearlessly. Never have I seen anything like that look, so hard, so full of pain. “Well, if you were there you didn’t wait till I got back. You weren’t there when I got back, were you? Answer that.”
“No,” he admitted, “but——”
She wouldn’t let him go on. “Why should I have wanted a handkerchief at such a moment? It was my pistol I went for, and I got it, and I came downstairs and shot him.”
“Without warning?” Grantland demanded in his turn.
“No. I sat down and made ready to take his letters. But he had no letters to dictate, of course. He put his hand on my shoulder and I—I shot him.”
“How could you shoot him in the back when you were sitting beside him?”
“I reached around behind him and shot him.”
“Where did you have the pistol?”
“Hidden in the bosom of my waist.”
“The waist you wore that night was closed in front.”
“Pooh! What do you know about such things? You never notice what I have on. Mrs. Batten, wasn’t the waist I wore that night buttoned in front?”
The little body was completely distracted. “Yes—no—I don’t know, I can’t remember,” she wailed.
“Now answer me,” cried Philippa to Grantland. “How could you get into the room when the man was sitting there watching in the mirror for my return?”
“I dropped to my knees out of range of his vision and crept in.”
The girl’s eyes flashed at him. “Do you mean to tell all these people that you, an officer in the uniform of the United States, crawled in on hands and knees like a thug and shot the man in the back?”
Grantland’s head dropped on his breast; a dark flush overspread his face, he gritted his teeth until the muscles stood out in lumps on either side of his jaw.
“It is the truth,” he muttered. “I looked on him as a kind of wild beast against whom any measures were justifiable.”
The girl passionately appealed to the rest of us. “Look at him! Look at him!” she cried. “Anyone could see he is lying.”
The spectacle of the two lovers cross-examining each other; facing each other down with hard, inimical glances; each desperately striving to pull down the other’s tale, was the strangest and most dreadful scene I ever expect to witness.
The young man stubbornly raised his head, and his glance bore hers down. He had better command of himself than she.
“Your story could not be true,” he said firmly. “You were not more than half a minute behind me in returning to Mrs. Batten’s room.”
“Half a minute was long enough to pull the trigger,” she retorted.
A new thought struck Grantland. “You could not have returned that way at all,” he said. “You must have come down the back stairs. I remember now that as you came into the room you appeared from the rear of the house.”
“Too bad you didn’t think of that before!” she rejoined scornfully. “Your tardy recollection will not deceive Madame Storey or this gentleman. This is all wasting time anyway. You have not explained the most important thing of all.”
“What’s that?” he asked sullenly.
“How did you get hold of my pistol?”
She thought she had him there, but he instantly retorted: “You gave it to me yourself a week before to have it fixed. I had had it fixed, and I was bringing it back to you that night.”
“Now I have caught you,” cried the girl with wildly shining eyes. “You had returned my pistol to me two days before that night, and Mrs. Batten was present when you handed it to me.” She whirled around. “Mrs. Batten, didn’t you see him return my pistol to me two days before that night?”
The little woman, unable to speak, nodded her head.
“Now, who’s lying?” cried Philippa.
The young aviator never flinched. “That wasn’t your pistol I gave you two days before,” he said coolly. “That was a pistol I borrowed from the dealer while yours was being repaired. I got it for you because I believed after what I’d heard that you ought not to be without the means to defend yourself.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this at the time?” she demanded.
“Because I would have had to explain why I got you the pistol, and I didn’t want to alarm you unnecessarily.”
“Fine tale!” she said with curling lip—but her assurance was failing her. “How about the two little marks on the barrel that identified the pistol as mine?”
“That is the dealer’s private mark to protect himself. It appears on all the weapons that he handles.”
“Well, if it was really my pistol that you say you shot the man with, why did you leave it there to incriminate me?”
“I thought you had only to produce the one you had in order to clear yourself.”
“It’s not true. No other was found. There was no other. What did you want to leave the pistol there for anyway to make trouble?”
“I thought it would be regarded as a suicide.”
Philippa had regained her assurance.
“Do you expect these people to believe that with your knowledge of weapons you thought you could shoot the man through the back and have anybody think he did it himself?”
Grantland showed some confusion. “Well, I was excited,” he said sullenly. “One can’t think of everything.”
The girl smiled scornfully. “I’ve no more to say,” she said abruptly. “These people will not need any help in deciding who is telling the truth.” She sat down.
What the others thought of this confession and counter-confession I cannot say. I believed Philippa was telling the truth.
My employer’s face was like a tinted ivory mask. “Have you anything more to say?” she asked Grantland.
He shook his head.
“Mr. Barron, do you wish to put any questions?”
“I think not,” he answered, with a casual air that did not conceal his triumph. “I see no reason to alter my original opinion. Lieutenant Grantland’s motives do him credit, but his story simply does not hold water. Leaving aside all other considerations, it is preposterous to suppose that after shooting the man in the way he describes he could fly away and leave the two women to their fate.”
Philippa looked gratefully toward him. Wh
at a strange, topsy-turvy situation that she should actually thank him for expressing his belief in her guilt!
My employer said in the silky tones that always portended danger: “I must differ with you, Mr. Barron. Lieutenant Grantland has explained how he thought he had ensured Miss Dean’s safety. On the other hand it is incredible to suppose that a gently reared girl, after having killed a man, could sit down and sup with her two friends as if nothing had happened. A man might, a soldier, but this girl, never! And afterward allow him, her only protector, to leave her without a word!”
“I had to let him go,” sobbed Philippa. “His reputation was staked on that flight.”
I noticed at this point that Mrs. Poor’s foot was nervously tapping the floor. In my concern for the two young people, it had not occurred to me what a harrowing business all this must have been for the widow.
“No,” said Madame Storey to Mr. Barron, “you have done me the honour to consult me in this case. I must ask you to put Lieutenant Grantland under arrest. I pledge myself to justify it directly.”
Grantland fairly beamed on my employer. I wondered mightily what she was up to. Poor Philippa seemed on the verge of a collapse.
“But how—why—on what grounds?” demanded the puzzled prosecutor.
Madame Storey’s next words fell like icy drops: “At the proper moment—I will produce an eyewitness to the affair—who will swear—that Lieutenant Grantland shot Ashcomb Poor.”
“You lie.”
This scream—for scream it was—from a new direction, almost completed the demoralisation of our nerves. Every eye turned toward Mrs. Poor. She had leaped to her feet and had thrown her veil back. The pale, proud face was working with intense emotion, her hands were dragging at her bodice, she had lost every vestige of control—a dreadful sight.
“It’s a conspiracy,” she cried shrilly, “to railroad him—with his consent. They staged it here together. Can’t you all see? That’s why we were brought here.”
Madame Storey turned to the hysterical woman with seeming surprise. “Why, Mrs. Poor, what do you know about it?”
Under that cold glance the woman suddenly collapsed in her chair. Her eyes sickened with terror. The strident voice declined to a whisper. “Of course—of course I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I am simply overwrought. All this—all this has been too much for me. I am simply overwrought. I beg your pardon. I will retire—if some one will help me to my car.”
Mr. Barron made a move to go to her, but Madame Storey laid hand on his arm and looked at him significantly.
He fell back in his chair, muttering: “My God!”
At Madame Storey’s mention of a new witness Philippa had sagged down in her chair. Little Mrs. Batten had flown to her, and now knelt beside her with an arm around the girl. Grantland was staring at Mrs. Poor with a strange, perplexed frown.
“Don’t go, Mrs. Poor,” said Madame Storey softly. “Help us to throw a little light on this baffling matter.”
Mrs. Poor made an attempt to draw her accustomed garments of pride and aloofness about her, but they would no longer serve. She shivered under our glances like a naked woman.
Madame Storey proceeded: “How long have you known Lieutenant Grantland?”
“About two years,” was the reply.
“Ah, that is longer than Miss Dean has known him, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Dean met Lieutenant Grantland in your house?”
“Yes.”
“Formerly you took a great interest in Lieutenant Grantland?”
“I liked him, if that is what you mean. We were friends.”
“Great friends?”
“That is such a vague phrase. I advised him as I could out of my greater experience.”
“Like an elder sister?”
“If you like.”
“Did you notice any change in him after he met Miss Dean?”
“No.”
“But he stopped coming to see you.”
“Well, yes. I saw him less often.”
“But he was still coming to the house?”
“So it seems.”
“Did you know they were engaged?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Gossip, rumour.”
“He did not tell you?”
“No.”
Madame Storey turned unexpectedly to Mrs. Batten. “Mrs. Batten,” she said, “why did Lieutenant Grantland come to see Miss Dean secretly? Quick, the truth!”
The little body could not resist that sharp command. She glanced in a scared way at her mistress, and the truth came tumbling out involuntarily. “She—she had taken a fancy to him. They did not wish to anger her.”
“That is sufficient,” said Madame Storey.
Mrs. Poor struggled to her feet. “Servants’ gossip!” she cried. “This is outrageous. I will not stay to be insulted.”
Madame Storey rose too, and said in a tone oddly compounded of scorn and pity: “What’s the use, Mrs. Poor? You have passed the limit of a woman’s endurance. Tell the assistant district attorney who killed your husband.”
The other woman with a last effort threw her head back, and tried to face Madame Storey down—meanwhile her ashy cheeks and trembling lips told their own tale.
“How should I know?” she cried. “How dare you take such a tone to me? Do you presume to accuse me? Oh, this is too funny!” Her laugh had a mocking ring. “You know very well I was performing at the club when it happened. Hundreds saw me there. I returned home with my servants. Ask them.”
“I know all this,” said Madame Storey with a bored air, “but that’s only the beginning of the story. Sit down and I’ll tell the rest.”
Mrs. Poor obeyed—simply because her legs would not support her. As Madame Storey proceeded the other woman let her veil fall over her face. Her hands convulsively gripped the arms of her chair.
Madame Storey sat down and drew from the drawer of her table the several bits of evidence in connection with the case. She had in addition a programme of the pageant given at the Pudding Stone Club. Consulting this, she said:
“You made your first appearance in the second tableau as Starving Russia,” she said. “This was at nine-fifteen. Upon leaving the stage your maid dressed you for your second appearance. This consumed about twenty-five minutes. You then went out into the audience to view the performance. Your maid joined the other servants in the part of the grounds reserved for them. You had told her you would not need her again.
“While everybody was looking at a tableau you slipped into the shrubbery surrounding the open-air theatre and made your way to your car. You are an expert chauffeur, as everybody knows. You drove it home. You did not turn in at the main gate but at the lower entrance leading to the service door. You did not drive up to the house, but left the car just inside the gate and walked to the house. The tracks made by the car were found where you had run it just inside the gate and later backed it out into the road again. It was identified as your car by certain peculiarities in the tyres.
“You went to one of the French windows of the library—to be exact, it was the second window from the front door. In order to reach the sill you had to make one step in the soft mould of the flower bed. You turned around on the sill, and stooping over, with your hand you brushed loose earth over the print of your foot. But a slight depression was left there, and by carefully brushing the loose dirt away again I was able to lay bare the deep print made by your slipper.
“I assume that you tapped on the window, and that your husband, seeing you, turned off the burglar-alarm and let you in. This would be about ten o’clock, or just as the other three persons in the house were sitting down to supper in Mrs. Batten’s room. Perhaps you glanced through the window of that room as you passed by on the drive. What you said to your husband, of course, I do not know. My guess is that you accounted for your unexpected return by saying that an unforeseen request for a contribution had been made on you. At any rate he sa
t down at his writing-table and drew out his cheque-book. As he dated the stub you shot him in the back with Miss Dean’s pistol which you had previously stolen from her bureau.”
A convulsive shudder passed through the frame of the woman in black.
Madame Storey continued in her sure, quiet voice: “You had wrapped your right arm and the hand holding the pistol in many folds of a chiffon scarf. This was for the double purpose of concealing the weapon and of muffling the report. After the deed you tore off these wrappings and, crumpling the scarf into a ball, threw it on the fire which the servants have testified was burning in the room. But it must have opened up as it burned. At any rate a small piece fell outside the embers and was not consumed. Here it is. The characteristic odour of gunpowder still clings to it faintly.
“My principal difficulty was to establish how you got out of the house. I suspected that you must have contrived some means of setting the burglar-alarm behind you. The string box on Mr. Poor’s desk furnished me with my clue. It was empty. When the last piece of string comes out of such a box, a man’s instinctive act is to put a fresh ball in at once—if he has one. There were several spare balls in Mr. Poor’s desk. Yet the box was empty. I may say that I subsequently found the length of string that you pulled out of that box in a tangled skein beside the road where you threw it on your way back to the club. Here it is.
“When I examined the burglar-alarm all was clear. A tiny staple had been driven into the floor under the switch. It was still there at nine o’clock of the morning after the murder when you had had no opportunity to remove it. You tied the string in a slip-knot to the handle of the switch, passed the other end through the staple in the floor—this gave you the necessary downward pull on the handle. You then ran the string across the floor and passed it through the keyhole of the front door. This door locks with a spring lock, and the original keyhole is not used.
“You went out closing the door behind you. Your first light pull on the string set the alarm—the handle of the switch moved easily. A second and harder pull slipped the knot, and you drew the string through the keyhole. You returned to the club, arriving there in ample time for your second appearance as Victory at ten-fifty.”
