3:51 a. m.—A Woman’s Slipper
Lieutenant Valcour felt a distinct shock, and his eyes became
predatorily alert. If this astonishing thing was true and Mrs.
Endicott had not taken the narcotic prepared for her by Dr. Worth,
then the bypaths one might dart along were numerous and alarming
indeed.
“How do you know, Miss Roberts?” he said.
“Because when the nurse went downstairs to make that coffee I went
over to the bed. I wanted to take a close look at Mrs. Endicott. Have
you ever felt that desire to look closely at something that you hate
very much? It’s the curiosity of hate, I suppose. I put my hand on the
spread, at the edge, so that I could lean down. The spread was damp;
something had been poured on it. There wasn’t anything that could have
been poured on it except the narcotic. She’d recovered consciousness,
you see, when the nurse and Dr. Worth brought her in from here and put
her to bed.”
“But wouldn’t he or the nurse have seen her pour it out?”
“None of us saw it, Lieutenant, because she said, just after the
doctor had handed her the glass, ‘There’s blood on that dresser.’ We
all looked at the dresser, of course. Naturally there wasn’t any blood
on it. The doctor thought she was delirious. She was just finishing
drinking when we turned around.”
“Didn’t you accuse her—when you felt the damp spot on the spread?”
“What was the use? She never would have admitted it. I believe,”
Roberts said fiercely, “that I could have stuck pins in her and that
she’d have endured the pain rather than admit it. And suddenly I began
to feel afraid—not so much of her, as of what she might do to Mr.
Endicott. She was playing a trick and I didn’t know just what the
purpose of it was. I ran upstairs and got my gun, then came right
back.”
“She was still in bed?”
“Yes. But the shooting was over, and the room was cold. The room was
cold”—Roberts’s voice was very intense as she drove her points
home—“and her skin was cold, and her breathing was heavy from recent
exertion. I think I was going to kill her. I _would_ have killed her
if the nurse hadn’t come in just then.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone of this at once, Miss Roberts?”
“Would you have? Would anyone have?”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“There had just been that shooting—and I had a gun. I wanted to get
rid of it. By the time I had got rid of it, it was too late. I
couldn’t say anything then without practically accusing myself of a
murder I didn’t commit.”
“You’ll stay here in the house, Miss Roberts?”
“Naturally, since I’m to be accused of having killed Mr. Endicott.”
“Not as yet, Miss Roberts.”
“It won’t bother me.” She added bitterly, as she started for the door,
“You’ll find me a tractable prisoner.”
“One minute please, Miss Roberts. How long were you gone from Mrs.
Endicott’s room when you went upstairs to get the gun?”
“Just long enough to run up and back again. I have no idea, really.”
“Where is your room?”
“On the upper floor—the room to the left of the corridor in the front
of the house.”
“And whereabouts did you keep the gun?”
“In my trunk—where it is now.”
“Was the trunk locked?”
“Yes. I keep it locked.”
“And the keys for it?”
“In a purse. The purse was in a dresser drawer.”
“Then that gives us a pretty good idea of the length of time you must
have been gone, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does. Three or four minutes, probably.”
“Nearer, I imagine, to five or six. But we don’t require the actual
number of minutes. The point we need is, rather, a comparison of two
different operations within the same time limit. While you were going
through the various movements you have described, would Mrs. Endicott
have had the time to get out of bed, supply herself with a revolver,
open a window, and, from the balcony, shoot Mr. Endicott, return to
her room, and be in bed again by the time you came down? I think so,
don’t you?”
“There would have been plenty of time for that.”
“You’ve been with Mrs. Endicott for quite a while. Have you ever
noticed whether or not she owns a pistol?”
“I don’t think I have. No, I’m sure I’ve never seen one. That doesn’t
prove anything, though. There are any number of private places where
she may have kept it. It is also possible”—Roberts seemed desperately
earnest in her effort to strengthen each link in her accusation, for
she was accusing rather than simply offering a theory—“that someone
may recently have given her a revolver, isn’t it?”
“Everything is possible.”
“Mr. Hollander, for example?”
“A very good example.”
He said nothing further, and after a while the stillness became almost
physically oppressive. Roberts was finished with emotions. “Is that
all?” she said, and her voice was colourless.
“I believe so, Miss Roberts—except that I wish you would tell me why,
in view of your recent insinuations concerning Mrs. Endicott and
Hollander, you ever suggested him as the proper friend to stay with
her husband to-night. It’s a little inconsistent, don’t you think?”
“Very.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I have nothing further to say.”
Lieutenant Valcour went abruptly to the door and opened it. Cassidy
and Hansen were standing near by in the corridor.
“Hansen,” he said, “go with Miss Roberts up to her room. There is a
gun in her trunk. She will give it to you. Keep it for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roberts went outside.
“Am I to consider myself under arrest, Lieutenant?”
“No, Miss Roberts. But, as I have explained, you are not to leave the
house. Cassidy, come inside here with me.”
Cassidy came in and closed the door. He watched Lieutenant Valcour
draw the sheet up again over Endicott’s face.
“What’s Dr. Worth doing, Cassidy?”
“He has gone back to bed, sir. Shall I go get him?” Cassidy cast one
suspicious look toward the bed.
“No, let him sleep. There’s nothing just this instant. I’ll want to
see him in about a quarter of an hour, though.”
Lieutenant Valcour went into the bathroom, opened the window, and went
outside onto the balcony. The gray before dawning was in the sky, and
a rare clearness was vibrant in the fresh, sweet air.
The outline of the garden down below was quite distinct. There were
other gardens belonging to the adjacent houses, too, and to the houses
backing them from the rear. It was a street of gardens which bloomed,
Lieutenant Valcour reflected, for the express benefit of caretakers in
summer, while their owners spent the season at fashionable resorts
either in the mountains or on the shore.
Lieutenant Valcour went and carefully examined with his flashlight the
window to Endicott’s room that had been raised from the bottom when
the shot was fired. He played the light upon the surface of its glass.
It was quite clean. There was no trace of any pressing of noses or of
foreheads against its polished surface. Nor, on the stone sill, were
there any telltale threads of silk, or any of the various clues that
would serve to indicate a woman’s presence.
He stared speculatively for a minute at the windows of the room above,
where the curiously vindictive Mrs. Siddons was now presumably
resting, or else indulging in her blank-eyed game of mental
maledictions. No, he couldn’t really visualize her as descending to
the balcony by a rope or any other kind of ladder. A hundred years
ago, perhaps, she might have gone so far as to shape a replica of Mr.
Endicott in wax and then, with appropriate incantations, proceed to
stick pins in such portions of it as would cabalistically do the most
good. But there was no such simple expedient left her in our modern
skeptic age. It would be necessary, of course, to interview her
further concerning those vague, bitter hints she had thrown out about
outrageous actions on the part of Endicott toward the maids.
Even the city could not kill the fair fresh breezes of dawn. He stared
at the dimming stars and wondered whether Roberts’s extraordinary
statement was a lie. For after all it hinged upon nothing more
significant than a damp spot at the edge of a spread, and Roberts
could easily have spilled something there herself to offer as
corroborative evidence to her tale. Was she, he wondered, quite so
smart? And from all that he had been able to judge of her, he rather
thought that she was.
He would have to consult with Dr. Worth, of course, before doing
anything drastic. And the doctor would probably raise a holler,
especially since he had just gone to bed and would have to be yanked
summarily out of it again. Well, bed-yankings were to be expected in
the lives of doctors and of the police; they were expected to be
perpetually on tap, like heat or water.
He made his way slowly toward the windows of Mrs. Endicott’s room,
carefully inspecting the balcony and sills with his flashlight as he
went along. There were no smudges, no threads, no clues until he
reached the last window in the row. And there, on the balcony floor
just below its sash, something blazed in the circle of his torch a
bright jade green.
It was a woman’s slipper.