4:29 a. m.—A Turn of the Screw
“You needn’t say anything you don’t care to, Mrs. Endicott.”
“I’m glad you didn’t use the stereotyped formula, Lieutenant. It would
have disappointed me if you had. Get me a cigarette, please; there are
some over there on the dresser.”
Lieutenant Valcour stood up. He got the cigarettes and lighted one for
Mrs. Endicott and one for himself.
“You shouldn’t have dropped your slipper outside of the window,” he
said.
“You shouldn’t have found it.”
Her eyes, now that they were opened, were admirably guarded, and her
fingers, as they held the cigarette, showed no trace of nervousness.
“The slipper is of no great consequence, Mrs. Endicott. There are so
many other things, too, you see.”
“Sort of a wholesale strewing of clues? I never imagined you as
bothering very much with clues. It’s people you’re more interested in:
reading their minds.”
Her eyes offered an almost impudent invitation that he read hers.
“Whom were you aiming at when you fired, Mrs. Endicott, at your
husband or at Mr. Hollander?”
Mrs. Endicott blew smoke rings elaborately.
“At neither, Lieutenant. I didn’t have a gun.”
“Then it was just curiosity?”
“What was?”
“Your going out on the balcony.”
“I didn’t go out on the balcony. I’ve never been on it in my life.”
“I am not stupid, Mrs. Endicott.”
“Nor very credulous, either.”
“No, nor credulous.”
“That’s the trouble with truth: it often sounds so silly.”
“Surely you realize how things look against you, Mrs. Endicott.”
“Black.”
“The worst of all is your not having taken the narcotic, and then
having pretended to be in a state of unconsciousness.”
Her eyes became stupefyingly innocent. “Is it illegal to decide not to
take medicine, Lieutenant?”
His respect for her as an adversary began to mount by leaps and
bounds. “No, Mrs. Endicott. But in the present case it was
purposefully deceptive.”
“Why, I simply disliked hurting Dr. Worth’s feelings; that was all.”
Lieutenant Valcour pictured her maintaining that attitude—smartly
dressed in becomingly plain black, very innocent, very
beautiful-looking—before the twelve impressionable and normally dumb
people one finds on juries. He was grudgingly afraid she could get
away with it.
“And it isn’t illegal, either,” she went on, “to go to sleep, is it?”
Lieutenant Valcour decided that if anything was to be gained from the
interview he would have to give a turn to the screw.
“No, Mrs. Endicott, sleeping isn’t illegal. Even,” he added
negligently, “if your husband has just been killed, and your—well,
whatever state of relationship exists between you and Mr.
Hollander—your friend, let us say, is wounded to the point of death.”
The cigarette dropped from her fingers to the floor. Lieutenant
Valcour crushed it with the sole of his shoe.
“I don’t believe you.”
Her voice had the same pallid qualities as her skin.
“You must have seen for yourself, Mrs. Endicott, that he was pretty
badly hurt when he slipped to the floor. There was blood enough
smeared around, goodness knows.”
“You’re trying to trap me.”
“Just stating facts, Mrs. Endicott. Of course you may have left the
instant after you fired and so not have seen Mr. Hollander shot down
by the police.”
“You are being vulgarly brutal.”
“You were certainly in a frantic enough hurry to have dropped your
slipper and not to have bothered to pick it up. Did you throw the gun
into the garden, Mrs. Endicott? We’re bound to find it, you know.”
“Is Mr. Hollander still in the house?”
“No.”
“Where have they taken him?”
“To the hospital.”
“Please ring for my maid and leave the room. I must go to him
immediately.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Will you please leave this room?”
“You don’t seem to realize, Mrs. Endicott, that you are under arrest.”
The thought stunned her. Her head fell back among the pillows as if it
had been thrown there.
“But that’s silly—silly, I tell you.”
“You admitted yourself, Mrs. Endicott, that the truth is always
silly.”
“You are actually charging me with the murder of my husband?”
“‘Arrest’ was perhaps an injudicious word. I am holding you, Mrs.
Endicott, as a material witness, for the present.”
Mrs. Endicott had recovered somewhat from the shock.
“I shan’t be bromidic, Lieutenant, and attempt either tears or
bribery. I’m not stupid enough to think that either would affect you
in the slightest from the performance of duty. But I should like to
appeal to your reason.”
“You will find me a sympathetic listener, Mrs. Endicott. My wretched
conceit forces me to add that I shall also be an intelligent one.”
“You see, I knew pretty well what was going on from hearing the nurse
and Roberts talking about it. Lieutenant, just what do you want me to
admit?”
“That you were on the balcony.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Then how did your slipper get there?”
“It fell from my foot.”
Lieutenant Valcour stood up abruptly. “You will have to pardon me,
Mrs. Endicott,” he said, “while I search this room.”
“You misunderstand me. I mean exactly what I say. I wasn’t on the
balcony, and the slipper did fall off my foot. If you must know it, I
was straddling the window sill.”
“What stopped you from going out, Mrs. Endicott?”
“The sound of the shooting. It unnerved me. I almost fell back into
the room and closed the window. I knew that I had dropped a slipper
outside, but the idea of doing anything further than hurrying back
into bed terrified me.”
Lieutenant Valcour examined the slipper he still held in his hand.
“This is a slipper for the left foot,” he said. “And in that case,
when you were straddling the window it is the foot which must have
been on the outside. Isn’t that so?”
“That’s rather elementary, isn’t it?”
“Quite. But it serves to prove that at the moment when the shots were
fired you could look along the balcony toward the windows of your
husband’s room. Did you?”
“I imagine so. I’m not quite certain, really. It was absolutely dark
out there.”
“On the contrary, there was a glow cast on the balcony from the
farthest window, which was open a little, wasn’t there?”
“Perhaps. Yes, I think there was.”
“And did you see anybody standing at that window when the shots were
fired?”
“You mean on the balcony?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“That is all, Mrs. Endicott.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Frankly, I don’t.”
Mrs. Endicott’s expression hardened perceptibly. Whether from
bitterness or from some sudden private determination it was difficult
to say.
“Does being detained as a material witness prohibit me from getting
out of bed and dressing?” she said.
“Not at all. In fact, it is essential that you do so. You see, we
detain our material witnesses in jail.”
He heard again, as he had heard it earlier in the night, the muted
echo of brass bells in her voice. “If you will leave me then, please?”
“Just as soon as I have searched the room.”
“For what?”
“For a revolver, Mrs. Endicott.”
Mrs. Endicott closed her eyes. She turned on her side and faced the
wall. Lieutenant Valcour conducted his search with the thoroughness
and speed born of experience. In the room, in the room’s cupboard, in
the various drawers, beneath the different pieces of furniture, there
was no gun. He took a dressing gown and placed it on the bed.
“Put this on, please, Mrs. Endicott, I want to search the bed.”
She did so, without either comment or objection. She went to the
window and stared unseeingly at the breaking day.
Lieutenant Valcour removed the spread, and with a pencil roughly
outlined the damp spot where the narcotic had been spilled. Then he
folded the spread and tucked it under one arm. The rest of the
bedclothes, the mattress, the pillows, concealed no gun. He walked to
the door.
“I will send your maid to you, Mrs. Endicott, if you wish.”
She continued to stare through the window and to present her back to
him. She said nothing. He tried to catch the suggestion in her pose.
It wasn’t a gesture of petty rudeness or angry spite; nor was it by
any means suggestive of despair or fear. He went outside and closed
the door.
And as he crossed the corridor to Endicott’s room it occurred to him
with shocking clearness that, in spite of the idea’s seeming
absurdity, her pose had suggested a very definite mood of positive
exaltation.