6:30 a. m.—As Is Mirage
Mrs. Endicott stared sharply at Lieutenant Valcour. She was suddenly
tensely alert.
“I think,” she said, “that you have gone mad.”
“Do you still maintain the pretence that when you were on the sill of
your window and looking toward your husband’s room you saw nobody on
the balcony?”
“There is no reason why I should alter the truth.”
“I shall be as patient with you, Mrs. Endicott, as you have just been
with me. Listen carefully to me, please, and I will tell you why it is
I believe Marge Myles killed your husband, and why I think you have
given her sanctuary after the crime by concealing her some place
within this house.”
“I’ve no alternative but to listen, Lieutenant. But you are
wrong—absurdly wrong.”
“We will start with the initial premise, Mrs. Endicott, that Marge
_did_ murder Harry Myles in that canoe episode on the lake. I know
that she has been paying blackmail to her stepmother, Madame
Velasquez, for a long while, probably since the time of the crime
itself. Well, a woman of her type doesn’t pay hush money easily; she
makes very certain, first, that the blackmailer really has the goods
on her. Which made it simple for your husband.”
“Herbert? Are you suggesting the fantastic idea that Herbert was
trying to blackmail her?”
“People are blackmailed into giving up more things than money, Mrs.
Endicott. I’m not suggesting that your husband was after money, but I
do suggest that to further some abortive purpose Mr. Endicott held the
postscript forgery that you made over Marge Myles’s head as a threat.
I have just found that letter in his trunk, and it is now in my
pocket.”
“Abortive purpose—— Don’t go on just for a moment, please—I’m trying
to make it fit.”
“It’s something along the lines of cruelty that I’m suggesting—some
special cruelty.”
“Perhaps. Herbert liked to see things squirm. He was subconsciously
sadistic.”
“He probably drove her pretty far, because she made up her mind to get
that letter—he undoubtedly greatly magnified its importance as
evidence to her—no matter at what risk to herself. I don’t really
believe that when she came here last night she had any intention at
all of actually killing your husband. What she wanted was that letter.
Did you let her into the house, Mrs. Endicott?”
Mrs. Endicott smiled a bit acidly and kept her lips tightly
compressed.
“Because if you didn’t,” Lieutenant Valcour went on, “she must have
stolen a key from your husband. At any rate, she was in the house here
and searching for the letter in Mr. Endicott’s room sometime around
seven last night. Mr. Endicott should have been miles away up at her
apartment, according to appointment, and leaving her a clear field.
She had planned the whole thing out pretty carefully, because she left
a note for Madame Velasquez, who was due to arrive at the apartment
for a visit last night. Marge implied in the note that it had been
written after seven when, as a matter of fact, it must have been
written considerably earlier and planted in the apartment either as an
alibi or as an explanation to Mr. Endicott of her absence. It would
certainly have sent him hurrying off to the Colonial in search of her.
It wasn’t successful, of course, as he was undoubtedly delayed because
of the quarrel he had with you, and was here in the house instead of
up at her apartment as she had expected he would be. Don’t you see
that it rather all fits in?”
“Quite. But I still fail to understand what possible connection it can
have with me.”
“It has every connection with you, Mrs. Endicott, because unless we
can prove that Marge Myles fired the shot this morning that killed
your husband it will be unpleasantly necessary to establish the charge
against yourself.”
“I am probably very stupid, Lieutenant, but it is incomprehensible to
me why I should shoot my husband around two or three o’clock this
morning because Marge Myles was searching for a letter in his room at
seven last night.”
“Consider the problem, please, as two separate crimes and follow it
through on that basis. At seven o’clock last night we have Marge Myles
searching the pockets of your husband’s clothes in his cupboard. He
comes into the room, and she finds herself trapped in the cupboard. He
opens the door, and the sudden terrifying sight of her gives him a
heart attack. She believes him dead and drags him into the cupboard so
that his body will not be found until she has had a chance to escape.
She hasn’t returned to her apartment, you know, all night, so it’s
quite possible she has either taken flight or is in hiding some place
in the city.”
“Then I can’t, as you have suggested, be hiding her in the house.”
It was Lieutenant Valcour who now assumed the rôle of teacher, with
Mrs. Endicott as his young pupil.
“Not under that supposition. But if she did escape from the house at
that time, what have we left? You found the scrap of paper on which
she herself wrote a hinted threat in an effort to divert suspicion,
and the writing of which was inspired by the distraught mental
condition she must have been in. You called the police, and we found
Mr. Endicott. Your suspicions jumped unerringly to the man who was
uppermost in your thoughts: Mr. Hollander. He, you said to yourself,
had done this thing to save you. Consequently, when you learned that
Mr. Endicott had been revived and was expected to make a statement,
you shot him to prevent his accusing Mr. Hollander, and you arranged
your alibi with considerable ingenuity by only pretending to have
taken the narcotic.”
“It makes quite a case, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Mrs. Endicott, quite a case.”
“And the alternative? You did suggest that there was an alternative.”
“That Marge Myles has never left the house at all. That she is still
here. And this is what the prosecuting attorney will offer to the
jury: that with your knowledge she got onto the balcony through one of
the windows in your room, shot Mr. Endicott, returned to your room,
and was hidden by you some place around this house.”
“All of which is unfortunately negatived, Lieutenant, by the fact that
it was my slipper you found outside the window, and not hers.”
“The prosecuting attorney can alter the action of the scene to suit
that, Mrs. Endicott. After Marge Myles got onto the balcony you were
terrified at the thought of what you had become a party to. You made
an effort to recall her, when the shots were fired and threw you into
a panic. You dropped your slipper and got back into the room.”
Lieutenant Valcour became quietly persuasive. “Which of my two
theories shall I believe? I can make you no promises, Mrs. Endicott,
because any confession that has been given under an understanding that
there will be an amelioration of punishment loses value in court. But
I can suggest to you that if you choose to make things easier for
justice the act may prove beneficial for yourself. There are more
unwritten laws than the common one so generally known.”
Mrs. Endicott looked at him queerly.
“You don’t worry me,” she said, “at all. Any course that I might take
can have but a common, a desired ending. The method of achievement is
utterly inconsequential to me, as long as the ultimate result remains
the same.”
She was mounted again, Lieutenant Valcour decided, upon her hobby
which carried her along indifferent trails to death. The apparent
strength of her obsession rendered any further efforts on his part
futile. In the attic there was, for him, no longer anything of mystery
or the beauty of shrouded things. It was an ugly, littered room
peopled by a smartly turned out beauty who, like a petulant and
spoiled child reaching for the moon, sought further mysteries in that
life which beckons from beyond life, and by a tired, oldish fellow
standing stupidly in his stockinged feet away from his shoes.
“Come downstairs with me, Mrs. Endicott,” he said. “As soon as my men
have thoroughly searched this house you will be formally charged.”