5:01 a. m.—Lunatic Vistas
The report from Central Office which Lieutenant Valcour received over
the telephone contained one definitely useful piece of information:
the person who had used the comb and brushes belonging to Endicott had
been a blonde and was either a man or a woman with bobbed hair.
And Mrs. Endicott, Lieutenant Valcour reflected as he hung up the
receiver, had blonde shingled hair. And so, except for the shingling,
did Hollander.
Roberts, on the other hand, had not.
And where, he wanted to know, was his inspiring confidence in the
innocence of Mrs. Endicott now? Precisely where it had been before.
His mind began to gibber. What _was_ that curious scent, that trace of
an aroma? What about Hollander’s roommate: the young Southerner who
preyed upon wealthy women in night clubs? Had Endicott evidence that
Hollander was mixed up in similar jobs, and had Hollander come to
steal it, or silence Endicott? Rats! And what were Marge Myles’s
address and telephone number doing in Mrs. Endicott’s personal
directory? And why had Mrs. Endicott been such a stupid liar as to say
she had seen no one on the balcony at the time when the shots were
fired, when the only apparent place from which the shot that had
killed Endicott could have been fired was the balcony? . . . A
knock-knock.
“Come in,” he said.
Cassidy opened the door.
“There’s an old dame downstairs, Lieutenant, who insisted on coming
in. She wants to see you.”
“Did she say who she was, Cassidy?”
“She did. And you can believe it or not, sir, but her name is
Molasses.”
Lieutenant Valcour made a desperate clutch at his scattering reason.
“By all means, Cassidy,” he said, “show Mrs. Molasses right up.”
Madame Velasquez, in the penetrating light of early morning, was
beyond words. The intervening hours since Lieutenant Valcour had left
her, wigless and talking to herself in her stepdaughter’s apartment,
had unquestionably been ones of worry. As she came into the room
Lieutenant Valcour motioned to Cassidy to wait outside and close the
corridor door.
Over her black sequinned dress she had thrown an evening cape of blue
satin edged with marabou, and on her wig rested a picture hat trimmed
with plumes. Her eyes ignored the details of Endicott’s room, of
Endicott’s body stretched beneath the sheet; ignored everything but
Lieutenant Valcour, the man whom she had come to see.
“Marge is dead,” she said.
Her voice still retained the curious qualities that made it suggest a
scream.
Lieutenant Valcour wearily closed his eyes. One other murder would
truly prove to be the straw with himself in the rôle of the already
overladen camel.
“Sit down, Madame Velasquez,” he said, “and tell me how it happened.”
Madame Velasquez spread billows of blue satin and marabou into an
armchair.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said.
“Did you find her body in the apartment?”
“There ain’t no body.” Madame Velasquez then added, as her brittle
little eyes glittered with a strange sort of conviction, “He made away
with it.”
“Who did, Madame Velasquez?”
“Herbert Endicott,” she said.
For a startled moment Lieutenant Valcour stared sharply down curious
vistas: _had_ Endicott killed Marge Myles, perhaps having called for
her just after she had written that note to her mother? He brought
himself up shortly. Utter nonsense! Endicott was in this very room at
the time when Marge Myles must have been writing that note and was
himself in the process of being killed.
“That isn’t possible, Madame Velasquez,” he said quietly. “Endicott
was himself attacked right here at about the time your stepdaughter
must have been writing that note to you. That was at seven last
evening—at the very moment he was to call for her at her apartment—and
it must have been a little after seven when she wrote, as she states
in the note that he hadn’t come.”
“No matter”—her beringed fingers fluttered extravagantly—“I feel
certain he did it, and I want him punished and caught.”
“But Mr. Endicott is dead, Madame Velasquez.”
“That’s what _you_ say,” she said.
Was he really, Lieutenant Valcour wondered, going mad? There seemed
such terribly disturbing possibilities of fact in every absurd aspect
on the case the woman facing him opened up. Who, after all, _had_
identified Endicott? His wife, and that only by implication; his
friend Hollander, again by implication; Roberts had seen the dead
man’s face, but she, in common with all the world, was mad; Dr.
Worth—what proof was there that Dr. Worth _was_ Dr. Worth, or that the
telephone number given him by Mrs. Endicott had been Dr. Worth’s? It
could all have been arranged by some clever mob. . . .
“This is folly,” he said abruptly, really more to convince himself
than the nutlike face peering at him from the armchair. What he needed
was sleep—just a couple of hours of good sleep. “Madame Velasquez,
that body on the bed is Herbert Endicott. Now tell me as lucidly as
you can, please, just why you say that Marge is dead.”
Her little eyes began to glitter with rage. “I believe she has killed
herself to spite me.” The knotted paste jewels on her thin fingers
quivered indignantly. “She did it to make me suffer,” she added, “to
_stint_ me.”
“Just so she wouldn’t have to give you any more money,” he suggested.
Madame Velasquez began to weep noisily. “What’ll I do, Lieutenant—oh,
what _will_ I do?”
He continued to regard her through lazy eyes.
“Can’t you find somebody else to take her place?” he said. “Somebody
else to blackmail?”
“I ain’t young. It’s too _late_.”
“Tut, tut, Madame Velasquez.”
“No, I ain’t. And unless it’s a case like Marge’s was, such rackets
take looks.”
“But surely such an intelligent and charming woman as you, Madame
Velasquez”—he unearthed a trowel and laid it on pretty thick—“a woman
of the world, surely you can think up other cases where the evidence
or proof can be faked. You know very well that you never had any real
or visible proof that Marge killed her husband in that canoe disaster,
now, don’t you?”
“I did, too, Lieutenant.”
“Nonsense. If you really did, you’d have it with you and would show it
to me.”
She nibbled the bait slyly and refused it.
“I wouldn’t, and I haven’t. And,” she said, “I want proof of that
trollop’s death. I’ll get it if I have to drag the river myself.”
Madame Velasquez jumped up and ran nervously to the door.
“Then you saw her drown herself, Madame Velasquez?”
“I saw nothing, but I know—I know—what must have been . . .”
She was out in the corridor and running for the stairs—a velvet virago
in blue. Lieutenant Valcour ran out after her, and saw that Cassidy
was blocking her way.
“Ring up the wagon, Cassidy, and have her booked as a material
witness.”
Madame Velasquez began to screech. “Don’t touch me. Keep your dirty
hands off me.”
“Take her downstairs, Cassidy. After you’ve arranged for the wagon
leave her with O’Brian. Then go up to the housekeeper’s room and ask
Mrs. Siddons if she’ll come down. I’ll see her in Endicott’s room.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour slowly retraced his steps. When he was again in
Endicott’s room and the door shut, he felt a strong recurrence of that
annoying sense of some hovering danger. He even shivered a little as
if at some draught of cold air and glanced hastily at the windows.
But both were closed.