5:25 a. m.—There Was a Sailor
Mrs. Siddons had not gone to bed at all. She remained the same amazing
pencil done in flat planes of black that had left him standing with
his ear pressed against the panels of her bedroom door.
Lieutenant Valcour was acutely interested in her attitude toward
Endicott’s body. Her glance, the instant she entered the room, had
flown to it surely and accurately. There was no sorrow, no horror or
fear of the dead in that glance. It was wholly one of triumph, the
satisfied gazing of some revenge that was removed from petty
commonplaces. Mirrored in its satisfaction were avenging hell fires,
tormenting presumably the black and wicked soul of what had been a
very black and wicked Endicott. After that single initial glance she
did not look toward the bed again, but came over and sat with
extraordinary rigidity on the edge of a chair from where she could
stare out of the window at the clear morning light of the winter’s
day.
“Several hours ago, Mrs. Siddons,” Lieutenant Valcour said abruptly,
“you spoke with considerable bitterness about Mr. Endicott’s attitude
toward the servants. I shan’t embarrass you by asking for any
information in detail. There are only one or two things that I want to
know—— Are you listening to me, please?”
She dragged her eyes from the daylight, from the white misty air from
which she had been gathering in her thoughts the happy flowers of a
seed long bedded in hate.
“I am listening,” she said.
“Then the first thing I want to know is this: was there any one
particular instance in which Mr. Endicott’s actions toward one of the
servants were especially brutal or resented?”
The coals began to glow faintly beneath the ash that dusted her eyes.
“There was one very particular instance, Lieutenant.”
“Recently, Mrs. Siddons?”
“It occurred about a year ago, almost to a day.”
“Did Mr. Endicott attack her?”
“Yes.”
“Here in the house?”
“No, Lieutenant. It happened on her afternoon and evening out. Mr.
Endicott’s car was parked outside at the curb. He offered her a ride.”
“Where is this girl now, Mrs. Siddons?”
“She was committed last year to an institution for the insane.”
The ash was completely gone now, and her eyes blazed with avenging
fires.
“But surely she brought charges, Mrs. Siddons?”
“She was insane when they found her, Lieutenant. She was trying to die
by throwing herself in front of a motor in Central Park. She has never
spoken lucidly since.”
Lieutenant Valcour shrugged hopelessly. There it was again: that
wretched wave of hearsay showing its baffling crest above the placid
sea of established fact. Rumour had had it that Marge Myles had killed
her husband; rumour now would have it about all sorts of terrible
implications concerning Endicott, who was dead, and a girl who was
confined in an insane asylum. And neither, obviously, could give
direct testimony in accusation or defense.
“What was Mr. Endicott’s story?” he said.
“That he had driven her to Macy’s, where she wanted to buy something,
and had left her there.”
And why not? Undoubtedly Endicott had been the blackest sort of a
sheep, but the case was valueless without a thousand illuminative
lights, without a whole medical history of the girl’s family, for
example.
“Did you know this girl fairly well, Mrs. Siddons?”
“Yes. It is my habit to know all of the girls in my charge here very
well. It is my duty, as I see it, to act not only as a housekeeper,
but as their religious mentor and guide.”
“Then in the case of this girl, had she ever previously shown any
symptoms of being mentally unbalanced?”
“There were times when I thought so, yes. Her family, you see, was not
free from the taint. Her grandmother, on her mother’s side, had been
insane. That is what made Mr. Endicott’s actions so peculiarly
detestable, sir. She might have continued to live a normal, useful,
happy life had he not shocked her so fatally.”
And on the other hand, Lieutenant Valcour decided, Endicott need not
necessarily have done anything remotely of the sort. With such a
direct strain of insanity inherent in her blood no outside agency
whatever might have been needed to awaken it into activity. And then,
he reminded himself, the girl had been shopping. He often wondered why
more women didn’t go mad while shopping.
“Had Mr. Endicott any alibi for the period between the time he left
her at Macy’s and came home?”
“No, Lieutenant. He said he had driven out a ways on Long Island along
the Motor Parkway and then had come back.”
“So nothing was done about the matter officially?”
“There was nothing to do.”
“Then the only substantiated fact in the story is that she was seen
getting into Mr. Endicott’s car in front of this house. I suppose
someone did see her?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Endicott saw her, Lieutenant.”
There was distinct food for thought in that. No matter how far flung
the tangents in the case appeared to be, they touched as a common
circumference the enveloping influence of Mrs. Endicott.
“Is this girl still confined at the institution, Mrs. Siddons?”
“I don’t know. There has been nothing said—no communication.”
“What was the colour of her hair, Mrs. Siddons?”
“Black—the deepest, prettiest black I ever saw. They say that
opposites are attracted to one another, and it was so in her case.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Her husband was a blond.”
Lieutenant Valcour caught his breath sharply. It fitted surprisingly
well—the motive—the crime—the fact that the girl might have retained
her key to the servants’ entrance and her husband have got hold of it.
And her husband would readily enough have believed the talk about his
wife and Endicott—husbands had a habit of doing just that. To the
man’s way of thinking, it wouldn’t have been anything so ephemeral as
a maternal grandmother who had driven his wife insane: it would have
been Endicott.
Madame Velasquez’s innuendoes against the true identity of anybody
came back to Lieutenant Valcour with annoying force. What about
Hollander? Hollander was a blond, and obviously of a different level
in education and position than the Endicotts. And who had identified
Hollander? Nobody. Endicott and his wife were the only two in the
house who could, and Endicott was dead, and Mrs. Endicott had not seen
Hollander at all, if her unbelievable statement were true: that she
had not gone out onto the balcony and along it to the window from
where the shot had been fired.
Suppose the man who had sat with Endicott had just been posing as
Hollander but had been, in reality, the husband of this unfortunate
girl. Suppose he had been waiting outside for an opportunity to
reënter the house, had waylaid Hollander and forced his errand from
him, had taken his driver’s licence and cards from him and had shown
them to O’Brian at the door to gain admittance. . . .
No—there still arose that fundamental question: what had the attacker
been searching for among Endicott’s papers? This girl’s husband surely
would have nothing for which to search, unless it would be for
problematic evidence of his wife’s infidelity, and that theory was
pretty thin. . . .
“What became of this girl’s husband, Mrs. Siddons?”
“He is a sailor on merchant vessels.” Her gesture vaguely encompassed
the Seven Seas. “Where he is, or when, is as indeterminate as wind and
tide.”
Lieutenant Valcour did not molest her extravagance. He refrained from
pointing out that few things were determined quite so accurately,
nowadays, as the tides or, for the matter of that, the winds
themselves. He stood up.
“Thank you, Mrs. Siddons.”
“Shall I go?”
“If you will be so kind. Later, perhaps, we will go into greater
details concerning this poor girl’s husband.”
Mrs. Siddons feasted her eyes for one parting, blinding instinct on
the bed. She stopped at the door and said, “You will never get them
from me, Lieutenant. And I am the only person who knows; who even
knows that she was married at all. She confided in me, and if it was
her husband who did this thing you will never drag his name from my
lips even if my silence should mean——” Her eyes became clouded and her
thoughts confused. She wanted to say something magnificent, something
splendidly fitting to the occasion which she interpreted quite
sincerely as a divine act on the part of God, with that poor, frail
little Maizie’s husband as His instrument on earth. Even if her
silence were to mean what? The words wouldn’t form. They rattled
around in her tired head meaninglessly: bar of justice—herself in the
dock—oh, it was cruel—life was cruel, and living was crueler still.
Only death was kind, sleep and peace beneath the shelter of His sweet
omnipotence. She stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold and
made her way, sobbing futilely, back upstairs.