The Almost Perfect Murder Part 30

XII.

Soon afterwards we left the dining-room, and sauntered down the great hall. Following upon the little outburst of emotion that I have described, we had a.s.sumed the ordinary appearances of good form. It is instinctive. Nothing in my employer's manner suggested that Henry Varick had rendered himself an object of suspicion by his disclosures. She talked of ordinary matters in an ordinary manner. He answered in kind, of course, but I could see from his uneasy glances that he did not know what to make of her. He was wondering whether he had to deal with an agent of the police who was trying to entrap him, or with a woman of the world who took everything as it came. As a matter of fact, my employer was both.

"The library is at the other end," he said; "it's a pleasant room. Let's go in there."

It was a most inviting room, but "library" I judged to be a polite fiction; there were no books visible. Though the spring was well advanced there was a wood fire burning on the hearth which gave off a most agreeable warmth. We ranged ourselves before it in luxurious easy-chairs, and talked like congenial acquaintances, who had nothing in particular on their minds. This sort of rambling casual conversation is one of Mme. Storey's most insidious lines of attack, and I could see that Henry Varick was growing more and more visibly uneasy. He must have been under a terrible strain. The only other light besides the fire was given by a shaded reading-lamp in a corner.

I say we talked, but the truth is they talked, while I sat perfectly silent, feeding my infatuation with the sight of that handsome young face in the firelight, haggard with pa.s.sionate emotion. It was most of all tragic when he smiled in a reckless boy fashion, trying to carry things off lightly. I was in a rapt state, scarcely mistress of myself. It only needed a spark to set me off. While we sat there a footman came in with a note for Mme. Storey. This I judged must come from Inspector Rumsey via the underground channel they had provided. She read it with a bland face, tore it into small pieces, and tossed them on the fire.

"From Inspector Rumsey," she said. "He says he can trace no sales of aconitina recently."

I guessed that there was more in it than this, and so, apparently did Henry Varick. He watched the little pieces catch fire one by one with an expression of baulked curiosity.

More conversation followed. Mme. Storey discussed her work on the case with apparent frankness. Some time afterwards, long enough anyhow for us not to connect what she said with the arrival of the note, she brought the talk around to the plan of the second floor. "In order to be able to figure out what happened, I must have that clear in my mind," she said. "I visited most of the rooms today, but I didn't like to go into your suite without having you along."

There was but one thing that he could reply to this. "Shall we go up now?"

"If you don't mind."

It was rather touching to find in that grand house a simple boy's room. I judged that it had been changed very little since Henry Varick was fifteen or sixteen years old. The school pennants were still tacked on the walls, and that type of picture that adolescent boys like, depicting flamboyant misses in sports clothes. There were fencing foils and masks hung up; a set of boxing gloves; a shotgun, a rifle, and various sporting trophies. There was an armoire full of baseball bats, hockey sticks, tennis rackets and like impedimenta. Evidently young Henry had been no effete son of luxury.

This was the "study," which like "library" downstairs was a misnomer. Two shelves, and those not full, contained all the books. Many of them I noticed dealt with chemistry and drugs. Mme. Storey pulled out a fat green volume that was ent.i.tled: Pharmacology and Therapeutics and skimmed through it. "Have you consulted this lately?" she asked.

"Not in years," he said carelessly.

She then did something that I had seen her do before; a simple trick that has an uncanny effectiveness. Holding the book loosely between her two hands, she let it fall open of itself. She repeated this two or three times. "Yet I should say that it has been consulted recently," she said quietly, "and more than once. See! It opens of itself on page 425."

We looked over her shoulder, he on one side, I on the other, and there we saw staring at us from the page a chapter heading: XXI--ACONITINE.

It gave me a horrid shock; Henry Varick, too. He stepped back, his face working spasmodically.

"Well," he said harshly, "does that prove anything?"

"No," said Mme. Storey, closing the book and putting it back.

"Anyhow," he went on, in a loud, strained voice, "I am perfectly familiar with the action of aconite. I wouldn't have to consult that book." This was an answer that cut both ways. The next object of interest in the room was a gla.s.s fronted curio cabinet that contained the schoolboy's collections. One saw the usual things neatly set out on the shelves; the minerals, the fossils, the arrowheads and pipe bowls. And on the lower shelves; b.u.t.terflies, beetles, birds' eggs and miscellaneous souvenirs. It was more comprehensive than the usual youngsters' gatherings, because this boy had been well supplied with money. I could picture the handsome, intent stripling arranging his treasures.

"Where is your collection of drugs?" asked Mme. Storey quietly.

It came like a blow. He caught his breath, and started to answer, but she checked him with a sudden, involuntary gesture. "Ah, don't lie to me!" she said with real feeling. "It shames you and me both. I am to blame. I will deceive you no longer. The letter that I got from Inspector Rumsey said: 'I have learned that Henry Varick while he was engaged in the drug business caused a collection to be made of samples of every drug. The samples were contained in a walnut case which was sent to his home. Presumably the drug aconitina was included amongst the rest, but I cannot verify this at the moment. See if you can trace the case.'"

"I wasn't going to lie to you," Henry Varick said in his rapid, strained voice. "I had such a collection, but I destroyed it two years ago. When the trust busted I was sick of the business. Besides, such a thing was too dangerous to have lying around."

It was only too clear that he was lying then. It made me feel sick at heart.

"How did you destroy it?" asked Madame Storey.

"Burned it up entire in the furnace downstairs."

She said no more, but led the way into the bedroom adjoining, a bare and spa.r.s.ely furnished chamber almost like a hospital room. Amidst the almost oppressive luxury of that house it was like a breath of fresh air. In one corner stood a narrow white bed.

Mme. Storey stood in the doorway looking around her without speaking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the face of the young man beside me was livid and sweating. I suffered with him. Finally, my employer said in a deadly quiet voice: "Turn down the mattress, Bella."

A groan was forced from the young man that seemed to come from his very entrails. "Oh, G.o.d! I'm lost!"

With trembling arms I obeyed my mistress. Between mattress and springs there was revealed a flat square walnut box of the sort that artists use to carry their paints in. Evidently, it had been hastily thrust there while a better hiding place was sought, or a chance to destroy it.

"Have you anything to say?" asked Mme. Storey.

He broke into a bitter fleering laughter. "Say? What do you want me to say? You've got a case against me, haven't you? Better proceed with it. I guess I've reached the point where I'd better keep my mouth shut without advice of counsel." This was merely the bravado of one who was half-crazed.

Meanwhile, I had laid the box on the bed, and let the mattress fall back into place. The box was locked.

"Have you the key?" asked Mme. Storey.

"What the use?" he cried. "I admit the stuff was there, and it's gone now." Nevertheless, he produced his keys, and sought for the right one.

"Have those keys ever been out of your possession?" she asked.

"No."

"Was there ever another key?"

"No."

I could no longer keep still. I was in a state approaching collapse myself. "You are convicting yourself!" I cried to him.

"Oh, what does it matter?" he said.

My mistress gave me a curious glance of pity. I didn't want pity from her. In the condition of mind that I was in, she represented the enemy. "When did you put it under the mattress?" she asked.

"This afternoon. I intended to burn it tonight when the house was quiet."

"Oh, keep still! keep still!" I cried, clasping my hands. Neither paid any attention to me.

"Where was it before that?"

"In the curio cabinet."

"Has anybody a key to that cabinet but yourself?"

"No."

By this time the box was open. It was lined with red velvet, and was divided into scores of little grooves holding gla.s.s phials full of drugs, stopped with wax or some such substance. Each phial had its label neatly pasted around it; and as a further precaution, there was a number under each groove, and an index pasted into the top of the box. One groove was empty! Under it was the number 63, and our eyes flew to the index above. We read opposite 63--Aconitina.

XIII.

Mme. Storey sent for Jarboe, and Mr. Henry was locked in his bedroom. The windows looked out upon a stone paved well or court about thirty feet below, and there was no way he could have escaped short of wings. However, the house was full of the young man's friends, and my mistress telephoned to Inspector Rumsey for a guard to be sent. This man, Manby, was posted in the outer room of the suite. Jarboe was heartbroken by this turn of affairs. We took n.o.body else into our confidence. When Mrs. Varick learned her son was a prisoner we expected the devil to pay.

Mme. Storey and I slept in the house. Early next morning the body of Commodore Varick was privately removed to the family vault in Woodlawn cemetery, there to await further orders from the police. There had been no official reading of the will, but everybody in the house now seemed to know what it contained. The Commodore had created a great trust fund of which his wife was to be sole beneficiary during her lifetime. Upon her death the fortune was to be divided into three equal parts, of which one was to go to the New York Hospital, one to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one to Yale University. Mr. Henry's worst fear was not realized inasmuch as Mr. Theodore Varick's name did not appear.

In describing the dramatic scenes that took place inside the house, I must not omit mention of the efficient, but quite unspectacular spade work that was going on outside. There was a small army of operatives engaged on the case. To ensure secrecy, Inspector Rumsey had agreed that, at any rate for the first twenty-four hours, our men should be princ.i.p.ally used on this work. Every move of Dr. Slingluff's and Miss Priestley's was shadowed. On Miss Gilsey we could get no line because she lived in the house, and had never left it since the murder. The valet, Gabbitt, and indeed, all the servants in the house were picked up whenever they went out. Frequent reports from these operatives reached Mme. Storey under cover to Mrs. Varick.

In addition to these outside men, our best operative, Crider, was installed as a footman inside the house. Crider's work however, resulted in nothing. He complained that from the very first, every servant in the house was aware of who he was, and became mum in his presence. This looked as if Jarboe had played us false, since none but he knew where Crider had come from. By a clever piece of detective work the police had established that the first anonymous letter (the one addressed to Inspector Rumsey) had been mailed in a pillar box on Lexington Avenue somewhere between 36th and 42nd Streets shortly before eleven on Tuesday night; whereas the second letter (addressed to Mme. Storey) had been dropped in a chute at the branch post office in the Grand Central Station at 3.30 on Wednesday afternoon. The peculiarly formed characters had aided in the tracing of these letters.

A report had been received from the chemists to whom Commodore Varick's medicines had been sent the day before. It was to the effect that they contained nothing but what was represented on the labels; the first, a tincture of digitalis of the usual strength; the second, capsules containing a simple compound of pepsin and bis.m.u.th.

Mme. Storey and I established ourselves in Commodore Varick's office. My mistress dictated to me some notes she had taken of an examination of one of the maids while I was busy elsewhere. This maid, Nellie Hannaford by name, had removed the tea things from the Commodore's study. Hannaford said she met n.o.body in the Commodore's suite. She said that Gabbitt had already been sent for to come to his master, but there were three doors between her and the Commodore's bedroom, and she saw nothing, or heard nothing that led her to suppose the master had been taken sick. In fact, she hadn't heard anything about his sickness until after he was dead.

She said she found on the study table two empty cups that had contained tea, and another cup in the service pantry full of tea that had been made and not drunk. Four of the tea b.a.l.l.s had been used, indicating that four cups of tea had been made. The cups belonged to a tea service that was kept in the Commodore's suite, and it was her duty to wash them in the pantry, and return them to the shelves. She denied having found a gla.s.s that had contained whisky and soda. (In making this statement we supposed she was lying.) "Who could the third cup of tea have been for?" I asked involuntarily.

"Think, Bella," said my employer with a smile. "Surely it was obvious when we questioned Henry Varick last night, that he did not go to his father's study alone. Mrs. Varick was out of the house, remember."

The picture of a lovely blue-eyed face rose before my mind's eye, a face stony with distress. Estelle Gilsey! I thought in amazement. Another one! Good Heavens! this young man was entangled amongst women like a horseman in a thicket! While we were still engaged in routine work Miss Priestley entered the room. The tall dark girl still had faintly the look of one suffering from shock. Her curious parrot-like utterance carried out the idea. What she said seemed to have no relation to the remote, sombre glance of her dark eyes. It was her room that we were working in, and Mme. Storey apologised politely.

"Oh," said Miss Priestley with a gesture, "I scarcely know what right I have here now that the Commodore is gone. The bottom has fallen out of everything. It is just a blind instinct that brings me back to finish his work as far as I can.... I will carry it into the study if I am in your way."

"No, indeed!" said Mme. Storey. "If anybody moves, it shan't be you. At present we are only engaged in routine work."

Lighting a cigarette, my employer leaned back in her chair, and started chatting with the girl in offhand, friendly fashion. She told Miss Priestley many of the details of the case that had come to light overnight, but not the more important developments. And then, characteristically, she graduated by insensible degrees from the act of giving information into that of seeking it.

"I expect that will be a very interesting book," she remarked, with a nod towards the pile of typescript that the secretary had taken from a drawer.

"Oh, yes!" said Miss Priestley; "the Commodore was acquainted with all of the most eminent persons of his time."

"And, of course, his end will give the book a tragic interest now."

"Oh, don't!" said the girl with one of her curious wooden gestures. "It is too dreadful to reflect that what you say is true!"

"Is it nearly finished?" asked Mme. Storey.

"Yes. I shall be able to bring it up to the end of 1918. That will include all the most interesting parts of the Commodore's life."

"How long had he been working on it?"

"Since last May. It is just a year since he engaged me to help him with it."

"A year!" said Mme. Storey. "Bless me! Isn't that a long time to take in writing a book? I understood that books were written overnight nowadays."

"Not this one," said the girl patting the sheets. "The Commodore took the greatest pains in polishing his style.... Besides, you must remember that he was a man of many engagements. He could not spare very much time to it."

"Did he work on it when he was in Europe last winter?"

"No. He had no intention of doing so. The script was left at home."

"What did you do during that time?"

"I stayed at home. The Commodore was good enough to pay me my salary while he was away. I was so familiar with the work that he wished to be sure of getting me to go on with it when he returned."

"Was Mr. Henry interested in this work of his father's?"

"I can hardly say that he was interested in it. Mr. Henry is not very literary."

"But he knew that it existed?"

"Oh, yes. He was in and out of the house all last summer at Easthampton while we were working on it. A reconciliation took place between Mr. Henry and his father in June, and he stayed a month with us."

The conversation was rudely broken off at this point. If my description of the plan of the house was clear, it will be remembered that the room beyond the Commodore's office was Mr. Henry's study. There was a door between, but it was not used. I suppose it had been locked when the rooms were first divided into suites. From the next room we heard a suppressed shriek. Mme. Storey and I both jumped to our feet, but Miss Priestley was before us. That strange girl, as if electrified by the sound, was out of the door like a flash and in through the next door, Mme. Storey and I making a bad second and third. In Mr. Henry's study the situation could be read at a glance. The detective stood barring the way to the bedroom door. Facing him stood Estelle Gilsey frozen with horror, one hand clapped over her mouth as if to still an incontrollable need to shriek. A black dress emphasized the fragility of her fair beauty. She turned to my mistress.

"He won't let me in!" she gasped. "... He is a policeman! ... Henry is arrested...!"

Before my mistress could answer her Miss Priestley spoke. The dark girl held herself like a very Juno then, her handsome face icy with scorn. Her self-control was in very odd contrast to her mad dash out of the room just now. Verily, as I knew to my cost, a woman's infatuation leads her to cut strange capers! I perceived in Julia Priestley still another victim. She said with a superb air of scorn: "What are you doing here?"

The blonde girl beyond half a glance paid no attention to her. She repeated her agonised question of my mistress: "Is he arrested?"

"What are you doing in his room?" reiterated Miss Priestley. "In his bedroom? Have you no shame?"

Miss Gilsey turned on her then. It appeared that the blue eyes could flash sparks, too. "What business is it of yours?" she demanded.

"You would not have dared while the Commodore was alive!" cried the other girl. "His body has scarcely been carried out of the house. You are shameless!"

"Be quiet!" cried the blonde girl, stamping her foot. "Everybody knows what's the matter with you!"

What a scene! It appeared that the delicate little thing could show her claws, too. We are indeed all alike under our skins. My mistress was taking it all in with a sphinx-like regard. To add to the confusion Mr. Henry began to pound on the other side of the bedroom door. "Let me out! Let me out!"

Mme. Storey nodded to the detective, who thereupon opened the door. Henry Varick seemed to catapult out of the inner room. He had eyes for none of us except Miss Gilsey. He seized her in his arms. "Oh, my darling!" he murmured.

She, too, forgot the world. Her arms wreathed themselves around his neck. "Henry! ... Henry...!" she murmured. I thought she was about to faint.

So it was revealed at last which one among the many girls young Henry favoured. I experienced no feeling of jealousy against Estelle Gilsey. In the first place, I had seen from the beginning that there was some sort of an understanding between them, and anyhow, in my crazy infatuation there was no thought of self. I cannot say as much for Julia Priestley. She surveyed this scene with cold and amused scorn, but the rising and falling of her breast betrayed the inner tempest. She uttered two words: "Good comedy!"

That drew Henry's attention to her. When he perceived who it was he dropped his girl as if she had been red hot. He flushed and then paled, and a craven look came into his face that was very painful to see if you were fond of him. The tall girl seemed taller still, regarding him like an empress with flashing eyes. He could not face the situation. He turned and fled back into his bedroom.

Estelle made as if to follow him. "Henry!" she gasped. But at that moment there was a knock on the outer door, and she stopped. Strange it was to see how we all drew masks over our faces. There was one thing all were agreed upon in that house; to hush things up. Estelle allowed the detective to lock the bedroom door. Meanwhile, Mme. Storey opened the other. It was Jarboe, showing an anxious face. Evidently he had heard something, but had succeeded in keeping the other servants off. Mme. Storey rea.s.sured him with a word, and he went away again.