THE MURDER OF ANDREW APTHORPE
THE Apthorpe estate ran parallel to the main street of the town but the
house itself was perched on a hill almost a mile distant from it. A long
winding ascent led to a big stone, turreted mansion commanding an
extensive view of the country that lay about it. A well kept lawn three
hundred yards in width surrounded the house.
“The place was built,” Mr. Westward explained, “by Colonel Crofton, the
railroad man. On this lawn were great beds of rhododendrons which cost a
great deal of money. When Apthorpe bought it he had them torn up and
sown in grass. He said the flower beds and shrubberies were places where
burglars might conceal themselves by day to break in by night.”
“He was certainly suspicious,” Trent commented.
Westward pointed to the house which rose like a fortress above them.
“When Crofton had it there were windows on the ground level and several
entrances. Apthorpe had them filled with granite all except that big
doorway opposite.”
By this time Trent was near enough to see that the house was not remote
from buildings such as the stables and garages which are adjacent to
most such residences. He remarked on the peculiarity.
“The automobiles are kept in the basement of the house,” Westward
explained. “The big doors I pointed out to you cannot be opened by the
chauffeurs. When they want to go out or come in they have to phone for
permission. Then Mr. Apthorpe or some one else would touch a button in
his big living room and the gates would swing open. He had a searchlight
on the tower until the Federal authorities forbade it.”
“It seems to me he must have lived in dread of violence,” Trent
observed, “and yet why should he? He was a well known Boston broker of
an old New England family, not the kind one would think involved in
crime. In fiction it is the man who comes home after spending half his
life in the mysterious East that one suspects of robbing gods of their
jeweled eyes and incurring the sworn vengeances of their priests.”
“All men who collect precious stones live in dread,” Charles Westward
said. “I’ve never seen any of his things. I’m not interested in them
particularly. I’ve always talked about fishing when I’ve been there, but
it’s common knowledge that he was going to leave his valuables to the
Museum of Fine Arts. One of the things which incensed his wife was that
he wouldn’t give her or her daughter any of the jewels but preferred to
keep them locked away.”
A flight of twenty granite steps led to the main entrance, two heavily
built, metal studded doors. A lofty hall was disclosed with a circular
stairway around it. Leading from the hall to what seemed the main room
on that floor was a flight of six steps. The chestnut doors had been
shattered. Obviously it was the room in which Apthorpe had met his
death. For the rest it looked in no way different from half a hundred
other rooms in big houses which Trent had investigated professionally.
Bookshelves not more than four feet in height lined three sides of the
apartment. Making a pretense of reading the titles Trent looked to see
whether they were indeed volumes or mere blinds. The policeman in
charge, knowing Mr. Westward well, was only too willing to show him and
his friend what was to be seen. The body, he explained, was in an upper
chamber.
One peculiarity Trent noted in the book cases. Apparently there was no
way to open them. They were of metal painted over. If keyholes existed
they were hidden from view. Fearing that the policeman in charge would
notice his scrutiny, he walked over to the open window and looked out.
It was from this that the murderer made his escape. Twelve feet below
the green closely cropped turf touched the granite foundation of the
walls.
When Mr. Westward offered him a cigar he took out his pipe instead and
knocked out the ashes against the window ledge. Mr. Westward heard an
exclamation of annoyance and asked its cause. Then he saw that while the
stem of the pipe remained in its owner’s hand the bowl had fallen to the
lawn below.
“I won’t be a minute,” Trent said, and went down the main steps to the
grounds. It was no accident that led him to drop his favorite briar. His
keen eyes had seen footprints in the grass as he looked down. They might
well be the marks of him who had stolen the famous emerald and Trent had
decreed a private vendetta against one who might have robbed him for
what he came into Massachusetts. Searching for the pipe bowl which he
had instantly detected he made a rapid examination of the ground.
There were indeed footprints made undoubtedly by some one dropping from
the end of the portiere to the soft turf. And as he gazed, the
mysterious man whom he had suspected faded into thin air. They were the
imprints of the high heels that only women wear! Carefully he followed
them as far as the big gates of the garage. They were not distinct to
any but a trained observer. They were single tracks leading from the
grass beneath the window to the garage. Not an unnecessary step had been
taken. Apparently the local police had pulled in the portiere from the
window and had made no examination of the grass below.
Trent noticed that a man, evidently a gardener, was approaching him.
Quickly he dropped the bowl of his pipe again among some clover. The man
was eager and obliging. Furthermore he had heavily shod feet which were
already making their impression on the turf to the undoing of any who
might seek, as Anthony Trent had done, to make a careful examination.
Already the high heeled imprints were obliterated.
When the pipe was found the man insisted on speaking of the murder. He
declared that for an hour on the fatal night a big touring car had been
drawn up near his cottage in a lane nearby and that two men got out of
it leaving another in charge.
Trent shook him off as soon as he could and returned to the house, his
previously held theories wholly upset. He had built them in the facts or
falsities carefully supplied by Miss Thompson and he was anxious to see
the lady. It was most likely that the woman who had lowered herself from
the window was the woman who had committed the murder. And for what
could the crimes have been committed so readily as the Takowaja emerald?
He recalled now that there had been a certain reserve in the Westwards’
manner when they had spoken of Miss Thompson. Might they not have
suspected her and yet feared to voice these suspicions to a stranger?
As he thought it over he came to the conclusion that it was not of the
crime of murder they suspected her but perhaps because of her relations
with so notorious a man as the late Andrew Apthorpe. He remembered that
the dead man’s family was alienated from him, possibly for this very
reason.
He was given an opportunity very shortly to see the nurse. She came
along the hall, not seeing him as he stood in the entrance, and made her
way toward Mr. Westward. She was a tall woman, quietly dressed and not
in nurses’ uniform. Her walk was studied and her gestures exaggerated.
She was that hard, blond type overladen with affectation to one who
observed carelessly. But Trent could see she had a jaw like a prize
fighter and her carefully pencilled eyes were intrinsically bellicose.
She had a big frame and was, he judged, muscularly strong. And of course
nurses must have good nerves. If she had the emerald he was determined
to obtain, it would not be an easy conquest.
Her greeting of Mr. Westward was effusive. Indeed it seemed too effusive
to please him. He was courteous and expressed sympathy. She talked
volubly. She related in detail the events of the previous night and the
listener noticed that she was letter perfect. The only new angle he got
was a description of the supposed murderer. According to Nurse Thompson
he was about fifty, wore a short grizzled moustache, was of medium
height but very broad, and dressed in a dark gray suit. In accent she
judged him to be a Westerner. She would recognize him, she declared
dramatically, among ten million.
Trent had no wish to meet her--yet. He had seen her, recognized a
predacious and formidable type and had observed she wore expensive shoes
with fashionably high heels.
Presently Charles Westward joined him.
“I’ve been talking to Miss Thompson,” he volunteered.
“I saw you,” Trent said, “but supposed it was one of the family. She
wasn’t dressed as a nurse.”
“She doesn’t act like one,” Westward answered. “Richmond was right. That
woman drinks. I don’t like her, Mr. Trent.”
“I suppose she needs sympathy now that her position is lost?”
The more Anthony Trent thought over the matter the more thoroughly he
became convinced that the mysterious stranger of whom the nurse spoke
had no existence. If she had killed her employer she would not have done
so unless it were to her advantage. And what better reason could there
be, were she criminally minded, than some of his famous jewels? Trent
determined to follow the thing up. He chuckled to think that he was now
on the opposite side of the fence, the hunter instead of the hunted.
But that was no reason that he should aid his enemy the law. If he
devoted his talents to the running down of the murderer he wanted the
reward for himself.
Supposing that she had planned the crime, the opportunity was hers when
she had the old man alone in the house. She would have been far too
clever to use her knowledge of drugs to poison him. By such a ruse she
would inevitably have incurred suspicion. If his assumption were correct
she had been very clever. At eight o’clock she had started the ball
rolling. At nine she had strengthened her position by some acting clever
enough to deceive Mrs. Westward. And when they had reached her primed by
her story of the threatening stranger they had found her waiting
hysterically for their aid. No doubt she had been drinking. Most women
hate using firearms for violent purposes unless the act is one of
suddenly inspired fury when the deed almost synchronizes with the
impelling thought.
She had planned the thing carefully. She had, if his theory held,
probably shot the old man as he sat reading. Then she had locked and
barred the great doors and lowered herself to the ground and entered by
the garage door which she could have opened from above. Thus the men
coming to her aid found a scene prepared which her ingenuity had led
them to expect as entirely reasonable.
“By the way,” he demanded suddenly, “how long was the doctor or coroner
in getting to Mr. Apthorpe?”
“He didn’t get there until midnight. His motor broke down.”
It was thus impossible to fix accurately the time of Apthorpe’s death.
As they turned from the drive into Groton’s main street a big limousine
passed them. To its occupants Mr. Westward raised his hat.
“Mrs. Apthorpe,” he explained, “her daughter and son-in-law, Hugh
Fanwood. The other man was Wilkinson the lawyer who acts for Mrs.
Apthorpe.” He paused as another car turned into the drive. “Look like
detectives,” he commented. “We are well out of it.”
That night Anthony Trent went back to New York. Twenty-four hours later
his fast runabout drew up at the Westward’s hospitable home.
“I brought my car over from Boston,” he explained untruthfully, “on my
way back to New York by way of the Berkshires and dropped in to see if
there was any news in the Apthorpe murder case. The Boston papers had
very little I didn’t already know.”
He learned a great deal that interested him. First that Nurse Thompson
had been left fifty thousand dollars in the Apthorpe will. This, on the
advice of counsel, would not be contested, as the widow desired, on the
ground of undue influence. Her daughter Mrs. Hugh Fanwood was not
desirous of publicity.
Secondly one of the most famous jewels in the world had been stolen.
“Imagine it,” Mrs. Westward exclaimed, “for five years an emerald that
was once in a Tsarina’s crown has been within a mile of us and not a
soul in Groton knew of it. It was worth a fortune. _Now_ we know why the
poor man was done to death.”
“Have they any clue?” he demanded.
“They have offered a reward of ten thousand dollars. Miss Thompson’s
description of the man has been circulated widely and caused arrests in
every town in the state. The house is being searched by a detective
agency but we all believe it’s useless. I don’t think Amelia Apthorpe
behaved at all well. She insisted on having everybody searched who was
in the house. Not Charles of course but every one she didn’t know and
some whom she did.”
“I was in the house,” Trent reminded them, “perhaps I ought to offer
myself.”
“No, no,” Westward exclaimed, “I told Mrs. Apthorpe who you were. I said
you bought the Stanley camp on Kennebago and that I could vouch for
you.”
“That’s mighty nice of you,” Trent responded warmly. It was at a moment
like this when he realized he was deceiving a good sportsman that he
hated the life he had chosen. It was one of the reasons that he denied
himself friends. “Did she have any sort of scrap with Miss Thompson?”
“It’s too mild a word,” said Westward. “After the nurse’s things were
searched she was told to go. Then she said she should bring an action
against Mrs. Apthorpe for defamation of character and illegal search.
She promised that there would be enough scandal unearthed to satisfy
even the yellow press. I don’t suppose poor Amelia Apthorpe knew there
were such lurid words in or out of the dictionary until the Thompson
woman flung them at her.”
“Will she bring action, do you think?”
“I think she’s too shrewd. From what Hugh Fanwood told me they had
looked up her record and found it shady. She _was_ a graduate nurse
once. Her diploma is genuine and the doctor here tells me she knew her
business, but there are other things that she wouldn’t want in print. I
think we’ve seen the last of her. She’ll get her fifty thousand dollars
and when she’s gone through that she’ll find some other old fool to fall
for her.”
So far, Trent’s conjecture as to her character had been accurate. The
death of Apthorpe meant a large sum of money to her while the legacy
remained unrevoked. He could not marry her since he was not divorced
from his wife. Perhaps he had believed in her sufficiently to show her
his peerless emerald. Or perhaps he had only hinted at its glories and
she had become possessed of the secret of its whereabouts. In any case
Anthony Trent firmly believed she had it. It was quite likely that she
had secreted it somewhere in the grounds of the mansion to retrieve it
without risk later on. What woman except Nurse Thompson would have
lowered herself from the room to the turf below on the night of the
murder? And was it not likely that the emerald was the cause of the
tragedy? The whole history of precious stones could be written in blood.
In any case it was a working hypothesis sound enough for Trent to have
faith in.
In accordance with the advice of lawyers and relatives Mrs. Andrew
Apthorpe decided to place no obstacle in the way of the departure of
Nurse Thompson. She told Mrs. Westward she was certain the woman had
taken the diamond ring she flaunted and that it had not been a gift, as
she claimed, from her employer. Furthermore it was evident that she had
made a good deal of money in padding the household expenses.
Detectives, meanwhile, clinging faithfully to the description so
generously amplified by Miss Thompson of the thief in the night, were
hunting everywhere for him and his loot.
The _West Groton Gazette_ supplied Anthony Trent with some much needed
information. It printed in its social columns the news that Miss Norah
Thompson was to make an extended stay in the West, making her first long
stop at San Francisco. Until then she was staying with a married sister
in East Boston. Since the name was given in full Anthony Trent had
little difficulty in finding what he needed. An operative from a Boston
detective agency gleaned the facts while Trent made a pleasant stay at
the Touraine. To the operative he was a Mr. Graham Maltby of Chicago.
When he went West on the same train as the now resplendent Miss Norah
Thompson he was possessed of a vast amount of information concerning
her. In St. Louis six years before she had badly beaten a man whom she
declared had broken his engagement to marry her. She was a singularly
violent disposition and had figured in half a dozen cases which wound up
in police courts.