The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives

by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

  “I have no objection to your going in,” she said to the policeman, “but I will not give up my keys to her. What right has she in our house any way.” And I thought I heard her murmur something about a meddlesome old maid.

  The look which I received from the policeman convinced me that my ears had not played me false.

  “The lady’s right,” he declared; and pushing by me quite disrespectfully, he led the way to the basement door, into which he and the so-called cleaner presently disappeared.

  I waited in front. I felt it to be my duty to do so. The various passers-by stopped an instant to stare at me before proceeding on their way, but I did not flinch from my post. Not till I had heard that the young woman whom I had seen enter these doors at midnight was well, and that her delay in opening the windows was entirely due to fashionable laziness, would I feel justified in returning to my own home and its affairs. But it took patience and some courage to remain there. Several minutes elapsed before I perceived the shutters in the third story open, and a still longer time before a window on the second floor flew up and the policeman looked out, only to meet my inquiring gaze and rapidly disappear again.

  Meantime three or four persons had stopped on the walk near me, the nucleus of a crowd which would not be long in collecting, and I was beginning to feel I was paying dearly for my virtuous resolution, when the front door burst violently open and we caught sight of the trembling form and shocked face of the scrub-woman.

  “She’s dead!” she cried, “she’s dead! Murder!” and would have said more had not the policeman pulled her back, with a growl which sounded very much like a suppressed oath.

  He would have shut the door upon me had I not been quicker than lightning. As it was, I got in before it slammed, and happily too; for just at that moment the house-cleaner, who had grown paler every instant, fell in a heap in the entry, and the policeman, who was not the man I would want about me in any trouble, seemed somewhat embarrassed by this new emergency, and let me lift the poor thing up and drag her farther into the hall.

  She had fainted, and should have had something done for her, but anxious though I always am to be of help where help is needed, I had no sooner got within range of the parlor door with my burden, than I beheld a sight so terrifying that I involuntarily let the poor woman slip from my arms to the floor.

  In the darkness of a dim corner (for the room had no light save that which came through the doorway where I stood) lay the form of a woman under a fallen piece of furniture. Her skirts and distended arms alone were visible; but no one who saw the rigid outlines of her limbs could doubt for a moment that she was dead.

  At a sight so dreadful, and, in spite of all my apprehensions, so unexpected, I felt a sensation of sickness which in another moment might have ended in my fainting also, if I had not realized that it would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own. So I shook off my momentary weakness, and turning to the policeman, who was hesitating between the unconscious figure of the woman outside the door and the dead form of the one within I cried sharply:

  “Come, man, to business! The woman inside there is dead, but this one is living. Fetch me a pitcher of water from below if you can, and then go for whatever assistance you need. I’ll wait here and bring this woman to. She is a strong one, and it won’t take long.”

  “You’ll stay here alone with that—” he began.

  But I stopped him with a look of disdain.

  “Of course I will stay here; why not? Is there anything in the dead to be afraid of? Save me from the living, and I undertake to save myself from the dead.”

  But his face had grown very suspicious.

  “You go for the water,” he cried. “And see here! Just call out for someone to telephone to Police Headquarters for the Coroner and a detective. I don’t quit this room till one or the other of them comes.”

  Smiling at a caution so very ill-timed, but abiding by my invariable rule of never arguing with a man unless I see some way of getting the better of him, I did what he bade me, though I hated dreadfully to leave the spot and its woful mystery, even for so short a time as was required.

  “Run up to the second story,” he called out, as I passed by the prostrate figure of the cleaner. “Tell them what you want from the window, or we will have the whole street in here.”

  So I ran upstairs—I had always wished to visit this house, but had never been encouraged to do so by the Misses Van Burnam—and making my way into the front room, the door of which stood wide open, I rushed to the window and hailed the crowd, which by this time extended far out beyond the curb-stone.

  “An officer!” I called out, “a police officer! An accident has occurred and the man in charge here wants the Coroner and a detective from Police Headquarters.”

  “Who’s hurt?” “Is it a man?” “Is it a woman?” shouted up one or two; and “Let us in!” shouted others; but the sight of a boy rushing off to meet an advancing policeman satisfied me that help would soon be forthcoming, so I drew in my head and looked about me for the next necessity—water.

  I was in a lady’s bed-chamber, probably that of the eldest Miss Van Burnam; but it was a bed-chamber which had not been occupied for some months, and naturally it lacked the very articles which would have been of assistance to me in the present emergency. No eau de Cologne on the bureau, no camphor on the mantel-shelf. But there was water in the pipes (something I had hardly hoped for), and a mug on the wash-stand; so I filled the mug and ran with it to the door, stumbling, as I did so, over some small object which I presently perceived to be a little round pin-cushion. Picking it up, for I hate anything like disorder, I placed it on a table near by, and continued on my way.

  The woman was still lying at the foot of the stairs. I dashed the water in her face and she immediately came to.

  Sitting up, she was about to open her lips when she checked herself; a fact which struck me as odd, though I did not allow my surprise to become apparent.

  Meantime I stole a glance into the parlor. The officer was standing where I had left him, looking down on the prostrate figure before him.

  There was no sign of feeling in his heavy countenance, and he had not opened a shutter, nor, so far as I could see, disarranged an object in the room.

  The mysterious character of the whole affair fascinated me in spite of myself, and leaving the now fully aroused woman in the hall, I was half-way across the parlor floor when the latter stopped me with a shrill cry:

  “Don’t leave me! I have never seen anything before so horrible. The poor dear! The poor dear! Why don’t he take those dreadful things off her?”

  She alluded not only to the piece of furniture which had fallen upon the prostrate woman, and which can best be described as a cabinet with closets below and shelves above, but to the various articles of bric-à-brac which had tumbled from the shelves, and which now lay in broken pieces about her.

  “He will do so; they will do so very soon,” I replied. “He is waiting for someone with more authority than himself; for the Coroner, if you know what that means.”

  “But what if she’s alive! Those things will crush her. Let us take them off. I’ll help. I’m not too weak to help.”

  “Do you know who this person is?” I asked, for her voice had more feeling in it than I thought natural to the occasion, dreadful as it was.

  “I?” she repeated, her weak eyelids quivering for a moment as she tried to sustain my scrutiny. “How should I know? I came in with the policeman and haven’t been any nearer than I now be. What makes you think I know anything about her? I’m only the scrub-woman, and don’t even know the names of the family.”

  “I thought you seemed so very anxious,” I explained, suspicious of her suspiciousness, which was of so sly and emphatic a character that it changed her whole bearing from one of fear to one o
f cunning in a moment.

  “And who wouldn’t feel the like of that for a poor creature lying crushed under a heap of broken crockery!”

  Crockery! those Japanese vases worth hundreds of dollars! that ormulu clock and those Dresden figures which must have been more than a couple of centuries old!

  “It’s a poor sense of duty that keeps a man standing dumb and staring like that, when with a lift of his hand he could show us the like of her pretty face, and if it’s dead she be or alive.”

  As this burst of indignation was natural enough and not altogether uncalled for from the standpoint of humanity, I gave the woman a nod of approval, and wished I were a man myself that I might lift the heavy cabinet or whatever it was that lay upon the poor creature before us. But not being a man, and not judging it wise to irritate the one representative of that sex then present, I made no remark, but only took a few steps farther into the room, followed, as it afterwards appeared, by the scrub-woman.

  The Van Burnam parlors are separated by an open arch. It was to the right of this arch and in the corner opposite the doorway that the dead woman lay. Using my eyes, now that I was somewhat accustomed to the semi-darkness enveloping us, I noticed two or three facts which had hitherto escaped me. One was, that she lay on her back with her feet pointing towards the hall door, and another, that nowhere in the room, save in her immediate vicinity, were there to be seen any signs of struggle or disorder. All was as set and proper as in my own parlor when it has been undisturbed for any length of time by guests; and though I could not see far into the rooms beyond, they were to all appearance in an equally orderly condition.

  Meanwhile the cleaner was trying to account for the overturned cabinet.

  “Poor dear! poor dear! she must have pulled it over on herself! But however did she get into the house? And what was she doing in this great empty place?”

  The policeman, to whom these remarks had evidently been addressed, growled out some unintelligible reply, and in her perplexity the woman turned towards me.

  But what could I say to her? I had my own private knowledge of the matter, but she was not one to confide in, so I stoically shook my head. Doubly disappointed, the poor thing shrank back, after looking first at the policeman and then at me in an odd, appealing way, difficult to understand. Then her eyes fell again on the dead girl at her feet, and being nearer now than before, she evidently saw something that startled her, for she sank on her knees with a little cry and began examining the girl’s skirts.

  “What are you looking at there?” growled the policeman. “Get up, can’t you! No one but the Coroner has right to lay hand on anything here.”

  “I’m doing no harm,” the woman protested, in an odd, shaking voice. “I only wanted to see what the poor thing had on. Some blue stuff, isn’t it?” she asked me.

  “Blue serge,” I answered; “store-made, but very good; must have come from Altman’s or Stern’s.”

  “I—I’m not used to sights like this,” stammered the scrub-woman, stumbling awkwardly to her feet, and looking as if her few remaining wits had followed the rest on an endless vacation. “I—I think I shall have to go home.” But she did not move.

  “The poor dear’s young, isn’t she?” she presently insinuated, with an odd catch in her voice that gave to the question an air of hesitation and doubt.

  “I think she is younger than either you or myself,” I deigned to reply. “Her narrow pointed shoes show she has not reached the years of discretion.”

  “Yes, yes, so they do!” ejaculated the cleaner, eagerly—too eagerly for perfect ingenuousness. “That’s why I said ‘Poor dear!’ and spoke of her pretty face. I am sorry for young folks when they get into trouble, aint you? You and me might lie here and no one be much the worse for it, but a sweet lady like this—”

  This was not very flattering to me, but I was prevented from rebuking her by a prolonged shout from the stoop without, as a rush was made against the front door, followed by a shrill peal of the bell.

  “Man from Headquarters,” stolidly announced the policeman. “Open the door, ma’am; or step back into the further hall if you want me to do it.”

  Such rudeness was uncalled for; but considering myself too important a witness to show feeling, I swallowed my indignation and proceeded with all my native dignity to the front door.

  CHAPTER II

  QUESTIONS

  As I did so, I could catch the murmur of the crowd outside as it seethed forward at the first intimation of the door being opened; but my attention was not so distracted by it, loud as it sounded after the quiet of the shut-up house, that I failed to notice that the door had not been locked by the gentleman leaving the night before, and that, consequently, only the night latch was on. With a turn of the knob it opened, showing me the mob of shouting boys and the forms of two gentlemen awaiting admittance on the door-step. I frowned at the mob and smiled on the gentlemen, one of whom was portly and easy-going in appearance, and the other spare, with a touch of severity in his aspect. But for some reason these gentlemen did not seem to appreciate the honor I had done them, for they both gave me a displeased glance, which was so odd and unsympathetic in its character that I bridled a little, though I soon returned to my natural manner. Did they realize at the first glance that I was destined to prove a thorn in the sides of every one connected with this matter, for days to come?

  “Are you the woman who called from the window?” asked the larger of the two, whose business here I found it difficult at first to determine.

  “I am,” was my perfectly self-possessed reply. “I live next door and my presence here is due to the anxious interest I always take in my neighbors. I had reason to think that all was not as it should be in this house, and I was right. Look in the parlor, sirs.”

  They were already as far as the threshold of that room and needed no further encouragement to enter. The heavier man went first and the other followed, and you may be sure I was not far behind. The sight meeting our eyes was ghastly enough, as you know; but these men were evidently accustomed to ghastly sights, for they showed but little emotion.

  “I thought this house was empty,” observed the second gentleman, who was evidently a doctor.

  “So it was till last night,” I put in; and was about to tell my story, when I felt my skirts jerked.

  Turning, I found that this warning had come from the cleaner who stood close beside me.

  “What do you want?” I asked, not understanding her and having nothing to conceal.

  “I?” she faltered, with a frightened air. “Nothing, ma’am, nothing.”

  “Then don’t interrupt me,” I harshly admonished her, annoyed at an interference that tended to throw suspicion upon my candor. “This woman came here to scrub and clean,” I now explained; “it was by means of the key she carried that we were enabled to get into the house. I never spoke to her till a half hour ago.”

  At which, with a display of subtlety I was far from expecting in one of her appearance, she let her emotions take a fresh direction, and pointing towards the dead woman, she impetuously cried:

  “But the poor child there! Aint you going to take those things off of her? It’s wicked to leave her under all that stuff. Suppose there was life in her!”

  “Oh! there’s no hope of that,” muttered the doctor, lifting one of the hands, and letting it fall again.

  “Still—” he cast a side look at his companion, who gave him a meaning nod—“it might be well enough to lift this cabinet sufficiently for me to lay my hand on her heart.”

  They accordingly did this; and the doctor, leaning down, placed his hand over the poor bruised breast.

  “No life,” he murmured. “She has been dead some hours. Do you think we had better release the head?” he went on, glancing up at the portly man at his side.

  But the latter, who was rapidly
growing serious, made a slight protest with his finger, and turning to me, inquired, with sudden authority:

  “What did you mean when you said that the house had been empty till last night?”

  “Just what I said, sir. It was empty till about midnight, when two persons—” Again I felt my dress twitched, this time very cautiously. What did the woman want? Not daring to give her a look, for these men were only too ready to detect harm in everything I did, I gently drew my skirt away and took a step aside, going on as if no interruption had occurred. “Did I say persons? I should have said a man and a woman drove up to the house and entered. I saw them from my window.”

  “You did?” murmured my interlocutor, whom I had by this time decided to be a detective. “And this is the woman, I suppose?” he proceeded, pointing to the poor creature lying before us.

  “Why, yes, of course. Who else can she be? I did not see the lady’s face last night, but she was young and light on her feet, and ran up the stoop gaily.”

  “And the man? Where is the man? I don’t see him here.”

  “I am not surprised at that. He went very soon after he came, not ten minutes after, I should say. That is what alarmed me and caused me to have the house investigated. It did not seem natural or like any of the Van Burnams to leave a woman to spend the night in so large a house alone.”

  “You know the Van Burnams?”

  “Not well. But that don’t signify. I know what report says of them; they are gentlemen.”

  “But Mr. Van Burnam is in Europe.”

  “He has two sons.”

  “Living here?”

  “No; the unmarried one spends his nights at Long Branch, and the other is with his wife somewhere in Connecticut.”

  “How did the young couple you saw get in last night? Was there any one here to admit them?”

  “No; the gentleman had a key.”