Mrs. Balfame: A Novel
Page 17
CHAPTER XVII
The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the backstairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usualappearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered witha large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Friedaslicing potatoes.
"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself."I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continuedevenly. "You have had so much to do of late."
Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have donethat before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by thedinner washed."
"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too.I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."
"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I getup by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then Imake the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. ThenI make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee--"
"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might makethe coffee at once."
"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.
"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."
"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit inthe oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast isby eight o'clock."
Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen.But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but farfrom soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenlyin the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"
Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments ofembarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on thewater tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts atconversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted theparlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off herrestlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what theybelieved to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have givenmuch to know whether those men were watching her movements or those ofher servant.
Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to goto the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train camein. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop theworld has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of lifeat the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different fromthe aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watchingbehind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. Theother continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Bothshe and Frieda were watched!
But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premisesidentified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powersof the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.
She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and hadforgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture andportrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror thepicture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of ahard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, toprejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.
Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before thefull menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew thatmost people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounterof their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all thesensations of the outraged novice.
A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and whenshe finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skinwas disfigured by a greenish pallor.
The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected thenewspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public tounderstand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame casewas about to be gratified.
There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grovesimultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of treeand gate).
Was one of them--the smaller--fired by a woman? And if so, by whatwoman?
Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time oranother with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and sofar as was known--although of course some one as yet unsuspected mayhave climbed the back fence and hid in the grove--the only two women onthe premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.
Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it wascasually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had largerhands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figureand aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this waswritten by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informedthat certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of amedium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's statelyheight was again commented upon, but as the public had already beeninformed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of thisfact was astutely avoided.
A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her largestudiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so oftenrouted her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and amanifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.
The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the realdetective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to thewoman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him inpublic a few hours before his death.
The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass ofdoctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass wasnot mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe indigressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease.The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.
Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she hadfinished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. Theroom turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth,infinitely multiplied.
But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even tobewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concernher was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whosegood taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthlesstossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the morerefined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block inthe good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; shewished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief inshrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.
Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fatewhich had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the houseand drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (sheshrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brickpath), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? Shewould have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would havemanaged to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended tovisit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over toDoctor Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would havesent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the deathdue to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.
She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass oflemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalledthat he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon hisreturn; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases ofsudden death. But that did not matter now.
She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in thegrove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already inthe house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But whyFrieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since thedeclaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated
himwith increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody thatpresumed to question the right and might of Germany.
But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could shevisualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame becausehe cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallowto be entertained.
The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival toointimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some womanwho for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the largervillage of New York.
She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was aman, but women's skirts were very narrow and silent these days, andafter all she herself was as tall as the average man.
Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignantfriends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and hewould ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel.He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.
The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame,although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay tolunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battleteetered over to the window.
"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sherifffrom Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"
Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with theirneedles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with theexception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put herplump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew awayhaughtily.
"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am preparedfor anything after those newspapers--that is all."
The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon thehand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a momentlater with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.
"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is beingsubpoenaed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputysheriff is going to take her with him."
Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no onesuspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised themeaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been"interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probablybribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.
But she too resumed her knitting.