10:17 p. m.—Living or Dead?
Lieutenant Valcour’s eyes narrowed slightly. He had a habit of
dividing suicides into two classes—those who talked about killing
themselves, and those who did so. He knew that the two rarely
overlapped. He felt a shocking conviction that in Mrs. Endicott’s case
she might well have been the exception which proved the rule. “I
suppose an attic is the conventional place for suicide,” he said. “Or
at least to think about it.”
Mrs. Endicott’s laugh was without humour. “One doesn’t need an attic
in order to think about it.”
“That’s true. And so you went downstairs with him, then?”
“He followed me in here. That is,” she corrected herself with
noticeable carelessness, “we went into the living room and he
wondered, while he kissed me, whether I’d mind very much being alone
for dinner. I doubt whether you’ve ever experienced, Lieutenant, the
rather perfect torture of a, well, an abstract kiss. Men don’t.”
“We’re too self-centred, I’m afraid, or conceited or something, or
else our sensibilities aren’t refined enough to be hurt by it.”
“But you could understand—if you could vision the background?”
“Everybody knows what love is, Mrs. Endicott.”
“That’s just it—it’s the comparison of what is with what has been.
It’s an indescribably vulgar subject—kissing—but it’s either very
wonderful or very painful. People who claim it can be a combination
talk nonsense. We can eliminate, of course——”
“Of course—‘petting’ they call it, or did. You never know from one
minute to the next just what a thing is being called. And then he went
to his room to dress?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Certainly.”
“Has he a valet?”
“Herbert? Heavens, no.”
“And you dressed?”
“Yes.”
“Roberts helped you?”
“Of course.”
“Then when Mr. Endicott said good-bye?”
“He called it through the closed door.”
Lieutenant Valcour almost visibly showed his surprise. “He did say
good-bye?”
“Herbert insists upon saying good-bye. He rapped on the door and
called in. If it would interest you to know his exact words,” she said
bitterly, “they were in the falsetto voice he uses when he thinks he’s
being especially funny and were, ‘Don’t be angry with Herbie-werbie,
sweetheart. Goodie-byskie.’”
“They’re almost a motive in themselves,” said Lieutenant Valcour,
smiling. “Which door did he rap on, Mrs. Endicott?”
“The hall door.”
“I see. And you heard him going down the stairs?”
“One can’t hear footsteps with the door closed.”
“And that was at——?”
“The clock over there on my mantel was striking seven.”
“And after that there is nothing further you can tell me about Mr.
Endicott?”
“Nothing.”
“You dined. You went to his room. You found the note. You began to
worry, and then you called us up.”
“That is it.”
“Was it in this room here or up in the attic, Mrs. Endicott, that you
told him you were going to kill him?”
“Here, after he—— That wasn’t exactly fair, was it?”
“Heavens no, but awfully smart.” Lieutenant Valcour’s smile was the
essence of pleasantness. “I do wish you’d continue with the ‘after
he.’ After he did what? Or was it something he said?”
“Did.”
“Yes?”
“I told you,” she blazed, “that he was half animal. You can hardly
expect me to become more explicit.”
Lieutenant Valcour was genuinely upset. “I do beg your pardon, Mrs.
Endicott,” he said. “About this afternoon, were you in the house?”
“Partly. I had tea at the Ritz, early, about four-thirty—with,” she
added defiantly, “a man.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly so. That will permit you to reverse another tradition and go
_cherchez l’homme_.”
Lieutenant Valcour found instant good humour. “So you decided to fight
fire with fire,” he said.
“If you care to call it that.”
“Just who is Marge Myles, and what?” Lieutenant Valcour said suddenly.
“There are several terms one might apply to her. They all mean the
same thing. I believe that recently, however,” Mrs. Endicott said very
distinctly, “she has lost her amateur standing.”
“Recently?”
“The past year or so.”
“Mr. Endicott had known her as long as that?”
“Until the past month or two my husband had not known her at all. He’d
heard of her, of course, and so had I.”
“Then she is a woman who once had position?”
“She was the wife of one of Herbert’s friends, a man who died two
years ago and left her penniless. They say, incidentally, that she
killed him.”
“Killed him?”
“It was just gossip, of course. They had a camp near some obscure lake
up in Maine. The canoe they were in one evening upset. Harry Myles
couldn’t swim.”
“And Marge Myles?”
“Marge Myles was famous for her swimming.”
“Then the inference is that she, well, neglected to save her husband?”
“That—and that she deliberately upset the canoe. I repeat it’s all
gossip. People dropped him, you see, after he married her. That’s a
commentary for you.”
“You mean they still accepted him while he was—that is, before the
ceremony.”
“Yes, while he was living with her. It’s thoroughly natural, of
course. People didn’t have to recognize her then; they could ignore
her. But you can’t ignore a man’s wife; you either have to recognize
her or not. The nots had it. If she had been a genuinely nice person,
or an amusing one, I doubt whether the fact of their having lived
together really would have mattered. But she wasn’t.”
“What was she before her marriage?”
“A member of that much-maligned group known as the chorus.”
“And recently she had got in touch with your husband?”
“She looked up all of Harry’s old friends. Don’t you see? As a widow
she again had a standing—a shade higher, but similar to the one she
held before Harry married her. I don’t know how many others she
landed, but she certainly landed Herbert.”
“And you were afraid she would do something to him?”
“Well, she killed Harry.”
“Then you personally believe the gossip?”
Mrs. Endicott did not bother to give a direct reply. She shrugged, and
twisted a little on the _chaise longue_.
“And do you associate her in any way, Mrs. Endicott, with what has
happened here to-night?”
She continued to evade further direct responsibility for an opinion.
“Who else?” she said.
“But the actual mechanics of it, Mrs. Endicott—how could she have got
into the house?”
“It could be done. Herbert himself might have let her in.”
“That’s going a little far, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It was rotten of me to suggest it. I never really thought it,
Lieutenant. I just said it.”
“And after all, Mrs. Endicott, why should she want to kill your
husband? You weren’t trying to keep him from her.”
“He might have been trying to keep himself from her.”
“He might. It’s stretching it a little, though, to think she’d
deliberately kill him for that.”
“She wouldn’t do it deliberately.”
“I don’t know. When a woman starts out to kill she invariably chooses
some weapon, or a poison. Every case has proved it again and again.
But we’re only speculating, aren’t we? Who was it who took you to
tea?”
“I haven’t any intention of telling you.”
“Because it might involve him?”
“He couldn’t possibly be involved. If I thought he were I’d tell you
in a minute.”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Just the same, Mrs. Endicott, I wish you would tell me who he was.”
“No.”
Lieutenant Valcour was able not only to recognize finality, he could
accept it. He considered Mrs. Endicott’s very definite refusal to
answer his question as of small consequence; there were so many more
ways than one for frying an eel. He stood up and crossed to the door.
He opened it and stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind
him. Even in the dimmish light young Cassidy’s normally ruddy face was
the colour of chalk.
“What’s happened, Cassidy?”
“Honest to God, Lieutenant, I’m scared stiff. They’re getting things
ready in there to bring that corpse back to life.”