Death Wears a Mask

by Thérèse Benson

  Aimée shrugged her shoulders with a certain effect of ashamed embarrassment.

  “Perhaps it is like this,” she suggested. “When I was a child, on the way to bed I had to pass a closet door. Always I ran. My mother showed me that there was nothing there to alarm, and for that day I was content. The next day it was the same as before. Something could hide there to jump out on me and, although nothing ever did, I was still afraid. So with this little lady. When she was safely gone I would say to myself, ‘But, Aimée, you fool, she is harmless.’ Then when she came again I seemed to turn to jelly as before. I cannot say if it was her voice, so flat, so hard; or her eyes so cold; or her few words, which seemed to mean so much that she never said. She terrified me.”

  “Did your mistress seem afraid of her?”

  “M’sieur, I do not know. The more she had feared the more she would have made a jest of fear. Two things lead me to say she was not afraid. She was contemptuous of the strange lady. Must one not have a respect for what one fears?”

  “Yes, yes, Aimée. You’re right!” Alix exclaimed, impetuously.

  Dolan remained stolid. He wasn’t sure he followed her reasoning, but he made a note of it in his notebook.

  “You said two things—“ He held his pencil poised.

  “Madame would never receive her,” Aimée answered, as if this explained much.

  Dolan stared at her, his small eyes widening in surprise.

  “Surely that shows she was afraid? Surelee!”

  Aimée shook her head in obstinate contradiction.

  “It might with some. Not with my mistress. She had an inquisitiveness of the emotions. I feel sure that had she been afraid she would have invited the lady in, if only to discover how one shuddered in such circumstances.” Dolan looked helplessly at the others to see how this abstract analysis struck them.

  “Do you make sense of that?” he inquired. Alix and Louise exchanged glances and Louise spoke:

  “Mrs. Thorne was a complex character, but the fact that she made a will leads me to think that she was afraid. That is, unless she had been ill. How about that, Aimée? Had Mrs. Thorne consulted a doctor recently?”

  “Never in the years I have been with her,” Aimée asserted. “She had not even little sicknesses like other people.”

  “You would have known of it?” Dolan again poised his pencil.

  Aimée shrugged her shoulders.

  “Who can say? For a reason, madame might have kept her own counsel. Here, I can see no reason. She ate, she slept, she amused herself, she complained of nothing except sometimes of her luck in the stock market or at bridge. When she went to the dentist she told me. She never mentioned a doctor and rarely took medicine. Her health seemed perfect.”

  The rest of the day wore through somehow without new developments, and when Sam reached home he was too tired to be pleased when Sing, hearing the sound of his key in the lock, met him with the news that there was a lady waiting for him.

  A lady waiting to see him indicated tea or cocktails, and Sam was in no mood for either, or for the gossip that would accompany the entertainment. He expected his visitor to be some casual acquaintance who had ventured on the intrusion, driven by a desire for inside information about the Thorne sensation.

  His surprise was intense, on entering his living-room, to find Miss Lucilla Livingston seated in the most uncompromising of his chairs, which she had selected with unerring judgment.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Mellon,” she said. And when he had bowed before her and inquired what he could do for her, being under no illusion that the pleasure of his society had lured her there, her rejoinder furnished a further surprise.

  “You can get rid of that heathen who is listening at the pantry door,” she said, crisply.

  In a couple of swift strides Sam reached it and threw it open to catch Sing slipping into the butler’s lavatory.

  He was indignant at this evidence of espionage, but not ready at the moment to come to an issue with the man.

  Instead, he opened his notecase and took out some bills.

  “You are to go to Francis and Company’s. Order and pay for a case of Italian vermouth. That they can send. Bring back with you a bottle of benedictine and a bottle of white mint. There’s a retail store right there.”

  “Sir, it will make me late with my dinner,” Sing’s tone was surly, and Sam faced him sternly.

  “I am aware of that, Sing, and the sooner you go the sooner you should be back.”

  There was no reply possible to this, short of open rebellion, and Sing went.

  “When he has had time to be off, I would suggest that you bolt the back door so that he can’t return unexpectedly,” Miss Livingston commanded rather than suggested. “What I have to say is not meant to go any farther—for the present.”

  There was something of menace in the cadences of the lady’s voice, and Sam caught himself wondering if here before him was Aimée’s little lady in black. But there was nothing birdlike about Miss Livingston. She was of a solid if dumpy figure and one not given to scurrying—or was it scuttling—along the street.

  Sam followed her instructions and returned to seat himself opposite to her.

  “We are quite alone,” he said, eager to be rid of his neighbor as quickly as possible.

  “Why did you murder Harvey Thorne’s wife?” Miss Livingston demanded, bringing into play that devastating single eyeglass.

  Sam stared back at her, speechless with amazement.

  “Don’t waste time denying it. I know you did it. And I may tell you that it rests entirely with you whether I pass on the facts to the District Attorney.”

  “I—I kill Connie?” Sam at last found his tongue. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “You killed her and you almost killed Harvey Thorne,” his visitor snapped. “Don’t try to impose on me. Cleverer men than you have tried it and failed.”

  “Would you mind telling me on what you base this accusation?” Sam asked, warily. Instinctively he knew this old woman to be formidable. A person whose evidence would carry weight on the witness stand and not one easily to be shifted from her purpose, whatever it might be.

  “Harvey Thorne paid you a visit last evening, arriving just as you were finishing your dinner. He took coffee with you. You don’t deny that?”

  “Why should I? It is quite true.”

  “You were alone when he got here, but later you gave him a hint that his divorced wife might soon arrive. When he left you, he told you he was coming to see me. Then, for some reason best known to yourself, you killed Mrs. Thorne and, wishing to make it appear as if he had done it, you placed her in my vestibule. I can swear to this. I heard you start the elevator from your landing, come to mine, throw open the door, carry something out, and instantly make your way to the street level.”

  “You have very sharp ears,” Sam said, in a vein of compliment. “Unfortunately for the value of your evidence, the question of identification would be difficult. You heard, you say, but you saw nothing. Moreover, on one point of several, I must correct you. I did not know that Harvey was visiting you. I remember now that he said something as he pushed off in the elevator. ‘I’m going’ or ‘I’m only going,’ were all I caught of his words. And far from wishing him to be suspected, I’ve been doing my utmost to keep from the police any knowledge of his presence in the city.” Seeing her look of incredulity, he added: “Are you aware that he left an umbrella engraved with his initials in the charge of the doorman, and if I hadn’t trumped up a story about a friend of mine named Harry Thomas who had dressed for the masquerade in my apartment and who had forgotten his umbrella when escorting a lady home, it would have been handed over to the police with the added information that Harvey Thorne was still in the building?”

  “And so he is,” Miss Livingston admitted, grimly. “That’s what I’m here for. To get him away promptly is the price of my silence. He’s been half out of his mind since we found the body. Unfortunately, not knowing her,
I called to him for help——”

  “You don’t mean he came on it like that?” Sam’s sympathy for his friend was too sincere to be mistaken. “Good God! How—how heartrending.”

  Miss Livingston softened a trifle and looked at Sam less inimically.

  “It was just that,” she agreed, “heart-rending. Of course Harvey recognized her and thought only of her while I, seeing at once that she was dead, knew that for his sake it was necessary to make some immediate disposition of the body. He had carried her into my reception-room and insisted on attempts with smelling-salts and liquor to bring her to her senses. It was pitiful. A whole hour went by before he would give up hope. Fortunately, Eliza was out (the woman is insane about the cinema). That was how I happened to hear the elevator so clearly. I was in the pantry, fixing some sandwiches for Harvey, when you ran the car down. The shaft is right beside the pantry wall.”

  (Somehow the homely act of making sandwiches for a hungry man made Miss Livingston seem more human. Plainly she was a staunch friend, and Sam began to like her despite the terrifying eyeglass.)

  “Go on,” he said, simply, “tell me what you did. Then I’ll fill in the parts of the story you don’t know. It’s all an awful mess.”

  “Harvey wouldn’t give her up, not even when at last he acknowledged that she was dead. He seemed to feel that she had been miraculously restored to him, that some instinct had brought her back to him at the last. So I had to resort to a trick. I called my doctor on the telephone and asked how much of my sleeping-potion I dared give a man. Doctor Chester knows better than to argue with me, so I suppose you may say that I doped Harvey. You know as well as I do what would have been the instant conclusion had he been found with the dead girl. To please me, he took a whisky and soda, and if it tasted queer he doubtless put it down to a woman’s bad liquor. Finally I got him into my guest-room, where he collapsed on the bed. After that I moved that poor, pretty child into the elevator. You had taught me how to get rid of her, but it was almost more than I had strength for...Now it’s your turn. Was it an accident? Somehow I can’t believe you’re a wanton murderer.” She examined him critically through her monocle.

  “Do you mind not looking at me through that?” Sam asked. “You make me so self-conscious that I must look as guilty as hell.”

  “Bless the man!” Miss Livingston snapped. “Do you think I carry this for ornament? The other eye’s blind. It would be an affectation to use a double eyeglass. Forget about me. I want to get away before that sneaky boy of yours returns.”

  “I can tell my tale quickly if you don’t demand details,” Sam said. “Sing was out. My niece, Louise Harris, came, and then Connie. She insisted on a cocktail which I had to make with no ingredients ready. Lou went home with a headache. I found the apartment empty and was going to the Club when I came on Connie in the vestibule. She was quite dead. Indeed, the Medical Examiner says that death was instantaneous. What I would have done otherwise I don’t know; but finding a white mask on the floor beside her, I got a wrong notion. I thought I had to protect Lou. Then when I discovered to whom the mask really belonged the obligation remained the same. I had Harvey in mind, too—I put Connie in your vestibule because I knew that by no stretch of the imagination could you be connected with such a crime. Harvey’s being with you was the blackest of bad luck.”

  “And the funny thing is that I believe you,” Miss Livingston nodded, the acknowledgment of her invulnerable position evidently not displeasing. “Only, if you didn’t, and Harvey didn’t, and your other friends didn’t, who did the killing?”

  “I wish to God I knew,” Sam said, his hands plunged deep in his pockets.

  There had been no mention of Alix Ruland in his sketchy tale. He had not meant that there should be, but Miss Livingston was too keen not to note that there was an ownerless mask on the floor. A white mask. Consuela Thorne’s had been black and she was still wearing it after death. However, the New York arbiter of fashion was a woman given to trusting her intuitions and she now trusted Sam, although she was not yet ready to amend her story to fit the facts as she knew them, and since she could count on his protecting Harvey Thorne, she did not care how many others he might be shielding from suspicion.

  Chapter XI

  “Why can’t Harvey walk out of this apartment openly in daylight?” Sam’s thoughts had harked back to the immediate necessity of safety for his friend. “Bill Martin’s a good scout. Once on the yacht, Harvey’ll find things to do that’ll take his mind off his troubles.”

  “We daren’t risk his walking out openly,” Miss Livingston said, “because the place is watched. If you don’t know why, perhaps your fat friend who called on me with you does. That’s a small reason. We might be able to get around it if Harvey would go, but he has made up his mind to stay here until he sees justice done.”

  “Aren’t we men dumb?” Sam exclaimed, whole-heartedly. “What help could he be to justice shut up in a nice well-ventilated and advertised cell, awaiting trial on a capital charge? I’ll have to see him. You didn’t by any chance tell him that I was the murderer, did you?”

  “I didn’t.” Miss Livingston was almost betrayed into a laugh. “And that’s no thanks to any belief in your innocence, either. I was sure you were guilty; jealous, probably, of Hugh Oliver. No, I kept quiet because some arrangement with you seemed to offer my only hope of smuggling Harvey out of the country. I was prepared to bargain with you. My silence for his safety.”

  “So I gathered,” Sam said, dryly. “Suppose I drop in on you this evening? I’m executor of Connie’s will and I’ve a letter from her that I think may be a comfort to Harvey. At least it’s a proof that even after five years’ separation she cared more for him than she did for any other man.”

  “The complexities of the human heart are beyond human understanding,” remarked Miss Livingston, sententiously, as she rose. “We’ll expect you about eight-thirty. Don’t forget to unbolt your back door, young man, so that your Chinese junk can sail in.”

  Once the lady was gone, Sam began to go over what she had told him, and of a sudden, with blinding force was struck with what amounted to a certainty that Harvey Thorne was Consuela’s slayer. That flamboyant article in the evening papers could hardly have escaped him. Undoubtedly he had seen it and his call on the eighth floor was made for the express purpose of locating his ex-wife. Then, when he had misunderstood Sam to the extent of imagining that Consuela was expected there, nothing could have been easier than to watch for her, concealed in the swarm of masqueraders already beginning to congregate in the entrance hall. He might even have gone back to the apartment, moved only by a desire to see Connie once again while she was still free, or to plead with her to return to him. And if Connie had been contemptuous, or as exasperating as no one else could be——

  More than likely Thorne had thought he was hiding her engagement to Oliver in the hope that he had not heard of it.

  Sam tried to review their conversation in his mind. Most of it had been trivial. They had been separated for too many years for an easy renewal of intercourse. Finally, Thorne had spoken of Connie and had made it abundantly clear that he had never recovered from his infatuation.

  Was he the sort of man who would rather see her dead than know her married to another? He had always seemed easy-going rather than intense, but he had revealed unsuspected depths of suffering when talking of his wife.

  Sam seized his head in his hands. Was suspicion in this case to be directed away from one of his friends only to settle more firmly on another? And if Harvey had slain his wife, what was he going to do about it? He, the Police Commissioner of New York City.

  One thing he was most certainly not going to do, and that was give the poor fool up to justice.

  Harvey had suffered much in his short adult life, and, if he had killed Connie, he would suffer still more in the future. He, his and her old friend, would spare him anything he could, confident that that would have been Connie’s wish. And after all, it could do the city no
harm. He was not letting loose a habitual criminal to prey on it.

  He reached for his telephone with the idea of calling Bill Martin and finding out when his boat was to sail. Then he held his hand. He had a sudden flash of intuition—of warning—what if he himself were not freed from suspicion in the eyes of the police? Why was Sing spying on him? What if his wire were tapped? He might play right into their hands if he mentioned Harvey over the phone.

  He told himself that this was ludicrous—far fetched. The Commissioner of Police afraid of the force he commanded; but still he did not telephone.

  Sing, in a very bad temper, came in with the two bottles of liqueurs, gave Sam his change, and was walking back to his kitchen with the bottles, when his master stopped him.

  “You may leave those. They are a commission. Ladies dislike to buy liquor for themselves.”

  “I am to deliver them for you?” Sing asked, awakening to a sudden interest.

  Sam concealed a smile. It hardly seemed likely that Sing cherished a passion for the movie-mad Eliza, but the thought was amusing and the liqueurs would furnish an excuse for his own call on his neighbor if he were watched, since any sudden intimacy might arouse interest.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll take them to Miss Livingston myself before I go out this evening.”

  This visit was short and less harrowing than he had anticipated.

  Harvey looked ill, but was quite collected. Sam gave him Connie’s letter, telling him to keep it if he wished, and advised him of the provisions of her will. Harvey shaded his eyes with his hand for a minute, then placed the letter in an inner pocket with the gentle words, “Thanks, Sam,” and at once changed the subject.

  “You have arranged about the funeral?”

  “Yes,” Sam replied. “It will be entirely private. A simple service at the Little Church Around the Corner.”

  “And the interment?” Harvey’s fingers, interlaced, showed the first sign of his nervous tension.

  “I shall have to buy a lot tomorrow. Unless, that is, I find a deed in her box at the State Trust Company.”