“Miss Page, when you realized that Mrs. Ives was talking to someone on the telephone, why did you not go on into the house?”
“Because I was interested in what she was saying.”
“So you eavesdropped, eh?”
“Yes.”
“A very pretty, honorable, decent thing to do in your opinion?”
“Oh,” said Miss Page, with her most disarming smile, “I don’t pretend not to be human.”
“Well, that’s very reassuring. Can you tell us why Mrs. Ives didn’t hear you outside on the porch, Miss Page?”
“I wasn’t on the porch. I had just started to come up the steps when I stopped to listen. I had on tennis shoes, which wouldn’t make any noise at all on the lawn.”
“You say that you could hear Mrs. Ives distinctly?”
“Oh, quite.”
“So that anybody else could have heard her distinctly too?”
“Anyone who was standing in that place could have—yes.”
“She was making a secret rendezvous and yet was speaking to a tone sufficiently audible for any passer-by to hear?”
“She probably thought there would be no passer-by.”
“Your Honor, I ask to have that stricken from the record as deliberately unresponsive.”
“You were not asked as to Mrs. Ives’s thoughts, Miss Page. Mr. Lambert asked you whether any passer-by could not have heard Mrs. Ives’s conversation.”
“Anyone who passed over the route that I did could have heard it perfectly.”
“Mr. Patrick Ives could have heard it?”
“Mr. Patrick Ives was upstairs.”
“That was not my question. I asked you if Patrick Ives could not have heard it quite as readily as you?”
“He could, if he had been there.”
“Miss Page, will you be good enough to repeat that conversation for us once again?”
“The whole thing?”
“Certainly.”
“Mrs. Ives said”—again the little frown of concentration—“she said, ‘Is that you Stephen? . . . It’s Sue—Sue Ives. Is Mimi there? . . . How long ago did she leave? . . . Are you sure she went there? . . . No, wait—this is vital—I have to see you at once. Can you get the car here in ten minutes? . . . No, not at the house. Stop at the far corner of the back road. I’ll come through the back gate to meet you. . . . Elliot hasn’t said anything to you? . . . No, no, never mind that—just hurry. . . . Good-bye.’____”
Mr. Lambert beamed at her—a ferocious and colossal beam. “Now, that’s very nice—very nice, indeed, Miss Page. Every word pat, eh? Almost as though you’d learned it by heart, shouldn’t you say?”
“That’s probably because I did learn it by heart,” proffered Miss Page helpfully.
The beam forsook Mr. Lambert’s countenance, leaving the ferocity. “Oh, you learned it by heart, did you? Between the front steps and the side door, I suppose?”
“Not exactly. I wrote it down before I went in the side door.”
“You did what?”
“I wrote it down while Mrs. Ives was talking, most of it. The last sentence or so I did just before I came in.”
Mr. Lambert took a convulsive grip on his sagging jaw. “Oh, indeed! Brought back a portable typewriter and a fountain pen and a box of notepaper from the sand pile, too, I suppose?”
Miss Page smiled patiently and politely.
“No; but I had some crayons of the children’s in my sweater pocket.”
“And half a dozen pads, too, no doubt?”
“No, I wrote it on the flyleaf of the book—Cytherea, you know.”
“For what purpose did you write this down?” The voice of Mr. Lambert was the voice of one who has run hard and long toward a receding goal.
“It sounded important to me; I didn’t want to make any mistakes.”
“Quite so. So your story is that you took this information, which you admit you acquired by eavesdropping on the woman you claim had been invariably kind and generous to you, straight to her husband, in the fond expectation of ruining both their lives?”
“Oh, no, indeed—in the expectation of saving them. Mr. Ives had been even kinder to me than Mrs. Ives; I was desperately anxious to help them both.”
“And this was your idea of helping them?”
“It was probably a stupid way,” said Miss Page humbly. “But it was the only one that I could think of. I was afraid they were planning to elope, and I thought that Mr. Ives might be able to stop them. You see, I hadn’t realized then the real significance of the telephone conversation.”
“What real significance, if you please?”
“The fact that someone must have told Mrs. Ives all about Mr. Ives’s affair with Mrs. Bellamy before she went out that night,” said Miss Page softly.
“Your Honor,” said the flagging voice—“Your Honor, I ask that that reply be stricken from the record as unresponsive.”
“The Court does not regard it as unresponsive. You requested Miss Page to give her final interpretation of the telephone conversation and she has given it.”
“May I have an exception, Your Honor?”
“Certainly.”
“Then the story that you expect this jury to believe, Miss Page, is that nothing but affectionate zeal prompted you to spy on this benefactress of yours and to bear the glad tidings of her infidelity to her unsuspecting husband—tidings acquired through a reputed conversation of which you were the sole witness and the self-constituted recorder?”
“I hope that they will believe me,” said Miss Page meekly. For one brief moment her ingenuous eyes rested appealingly on the twelve stolid and inscrutable countenances.
“And I hope that you are unduly optimistic,” said Mr. Lambert heavily. “That is all, Miss Page.”
“Just one moment,” said the prosecutor easily. “Miss Page, when Mr. Lambert asked you whether anyone couldn’t have overheard that conversation, he prevented you from explaining why no one was likely to. Let’s first get that straight. Where was Mrs. Daniel Ives?”
“In the rose garden.”
“That was where she usually went after dinner, wasn’t it?”
“Always, I think. She used to work out there for an hour or so until it got dark, because that was the coolest part of the day.”
“Was the rose garden visible from the study?”
“Quite clearly. A window overlooked the little paved terrace that led down into the rose garden.”
“So that it would have been simple for Mrs. Ives to verify whether Mrs. Daniel Ives was in the garden?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Where were the servants apt to be at that time?”
“They would be having their dinner in the back part of the house—they dined after the family.”
“What about Mr. Patrick Ives?”
“Mrs. Ives knew that he had gone upstairs. He told me that she had been helping him to fasten the little pennant on in the study just before he came up.”
“And she thought that you were upstairs, too, didn’t she?”
“Oh, yes; I was not in the habit of coming down after dinner. I had my meals in the nursery.”
“Did Mr. Ives use the study much—to write or to work in, I mean?”
“I don’t know how much he worked in it; he had quite a collection of technical volumes in it, but I don’t believe that he did much writing, though. He had a very large, flat-topped desk that he used as a kind of work bench.”
“Where he made the boats and dollhouses?”
“Yes.”
“Kept his tools and materials?”
“Yes.”
“Was that desk visible from the door?”
“Yes; it was directly opposite the door into the hall.”
“Would a person going from the flower room to the foot of the nursery stairs pass it?”
“They could not very well avoid doing so.”
“Would the contents of the top of the desk be visible from the doorway?”
&n
bsp; “Oh, surely. The study is not a large room.”
The prosecutor made two strides toward the witness box. Something small and dark and bright glinted for a moment in his hand. “Miss Page, have you ever seen this knife before?”
Very delicately Miss Page lifted it in her slender fingers, eyeing it gravely and fastidiously. “Yes,” she said quietly.
A little wind seemed to blow suddenly through the courtroom—a little, cold, ominous wind.
“Where?”
“On the desk in Mr. Patrick Ives’s study on the afternoon of the nineteenth of June, 1926.”
In a voice almost as gentle as her own, the prosecutor said, “That will be all, Miss Page. You may go.”
And as lightly, as softly as she had come, Miss Page slipped from the witness box and was gone.
The second day of the Bellamy trial was over.
CHAPTER III
“OH, I knew I would be—I knew it!” moaned the red-headed girl crawling abjectly over three irritated and unhelpful members of the Fourth Estate, dropping her pencil, dropping her notebook, dropping a pair of gray gloves and a squirrel scarf, and lifting a stricken face to the menacing countenance of Ben Potts, king of court criers. “I’ve been late for every single thing that’s happened since I got to this wretched town. It’s like Alice in Wonderland—you have to run like mad to keep in the same place. Who’s talking? What’s happened?”
“Well, you seem to be doing most of the talking,” replied the real reporter unkindly. “And about all that’s happened has been fifteen minutes of as hot legal brimstone and sulphur as you’d want to hear in a thousand years, emitted by the Mephistophelean Farr, who thinks it would be nice to have a jackknife in evidence, and the inflammable Lambert, who thinks it would be horrid. Mr. Lambert was mistaken, the knife is in, and they’re just opening a few windows to clear the air. Outside of that, everything’s lovely. Not a soul’s confessed, the day is young, and Mr. Douglas Thorne is just taking the stand. Carry on!”
The red-headed girl watched, the lean, bronzed gentleman with sandy hair and a look of effortless distinction with approval. Nice eyes, nice hands.
“Mr. Thorne, what is your occupation?”
Nice voice: “I am a member of the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Are you a relative of the defendant, Susan Ives?”
“Her elder brother, I’m proud to say.”
His pleasant eyes smiled down at the slight figure in the familiar tweed suit, and for the first since she had come to court Sue Ives smiled back freely and spontaneously—a friendly, joyous smile, brilliant as a banner.
The prosecutor lifted a warning hand. “Please stick to the issue, Mr. Thorne, and we’ll take your affection for your sister for granted. Are you the proprietor of the old Thorne estate, Orchards?”
“Yes.”
“The sole proprietor?”
“The sole proprietor.”
“Why did your sister not share in that estate, Mr. Thorne?”
“My father no longer regarded my sister as his heir after she married Patrick Ives. He took a violent dislike to Mr. Ives from the first, and it was distinctly against his wishes that Sue married him.”
“Did you share this dislike?”
“For Patrick? Oh, no. At the time I hardly knew him, and later I became extremely fond of him.”
“You still are?”
The pleasant gray eyes, suddenly grave, looked back unswervingly into the hot blue fire of the prosecutor’s. “That is a difficult question to answer categorically. Perhaps the most accurate reply that I can give is that at present I am reserving an opinion on my brother-in-law and his conduct.”
“That’s hardly a satisfactory reply, Mr. Thorne.”
“I regret it; it is an honest one.”
“Well, let’s put it this way: You are devoted to your sister, aren’t you, Mr. Thorne?”
“Very deeply devoted.”
“You admit that her happiness is dear to you?”
“I don’t particularly care for the word ‘admit’; I state willingly that her happiness is very dear to me.”
“And you would do anything to secure it?”
“I would do a great deal.”
“Anything?”
Douglas Thorne leaned forward over the witness box, his face suddenly stern. “If by ‘anything,’ Mr. Farr, you mean would I commit murder, my reply is no.”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “That is an entirely uncalled for conclusion, Mr. Thorne. It may be stricken from the record.”
“Kindly reply to my question, Mr. Thorne. Would you not do anything in order to secure your sister’s happiness?”
“No.”
Once more Sue Ives’s smile flew like a banner.
“Mr. Thorne, did your sister ever speak to you about her first two or three years in New York?”
“I have a vague general impression that we discussed certain aspects of it, such as living conditions there at the time, and____”
“Vague general impressions aren’t what we want. You have no specific knowledge of where they were or what they were doing at the time?”
“I can recall nothing at the moment.”
“Your sister, to whom you are so devoted, never once communicated with you during that time?”
“I received a letter from her about a week after she left Rosemont, stating that she thought that for the time being it would be better to sever all connections with Rosemont, but that her affection for all of us was unchanged.”
“I haven’t asked you for the contents of the letter. Is that the only communication that you received from her during those years in New York?”
“With the exception of Christmas cards, I heard nothing more for a little over two years. Then she began to write fairly regularly.”
“Mr. Thorne, were you on the estate of Orchards at any time on June 19, 1926?”
“I was.”
There was a sudden stir and ripple throughout the court room. “Now!” said the ripple. “Now! At last!”
“At what time?”
“I couldn’t state the exact time at which I arrived, but I believe that it must have been shortly after nine in the evening.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Nine o’clock—nine____
“And at what time did you leave?”
“That I can tell you exactly. I left the main house at Orchards at exactly ten minutes to ten.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Ten o’clock—ten____
“Silence!” banged Judge Carver’s gavel.
“Silence!” sang Ben Potts.
“Please tell us what you were doing at Orchards during that hour.”
“It was considerably less than an hour. Mr. Conroy had telephoned me shortly before dinner, asking me to leave the keys at the cottage, which I gladly agreed to do, as I had been intending for some time to get some old account books I had left in my desk at the main house. I didn’t notice the exact time at which I left Lakedale, but it must have been about half-past eight, as we dine at half-past seven, and I smoked a cigar before I started. I drove over at a fair rate of speed—around thirty-five miles an hour, say—and went straight to the main house.”
“You did not stop at the gardener’s cottage?”
“No; I____”
‘Yet you pass it on your way from the lodge to the house, don’t you?”
“No, coming from Lakedale I use the River Road; the first entrance off the road leads straight from the back of the place to the main house; the lodge gates are at the opposite end of the place on the main road from Rosemont. Shall I go on?”
“Certainly.”
“It was just beginning to get dark when I arrived, and the electricity was shut off, so I didn’t linger in the house—just procured the papers and cleared out. When I got back to the car, I decided to leave it there and walk over to the cottage and back. It was only a ten-minute walk each way, and it was a fine evening. I started off____”
“
You say that it was dark at the time?”
“It was fairly dark when I started, and quite dark as I approached the cottage.”
“Was there a moon?”
“I don’t think so; I remember noticing the stars on the way home, but I am quite sure that there was no moon at that time.”
“You met no one on your way to the cottage?”
“No one at all.”
“You saw nothing to attract your attention?”
“No.”
“And heard nothing?”
“Yes,” said Douglas Thorne, as quietly and unemphatically as he had said no.
The prosecutor took a quick step forward. “You say you heard something? What did you hear?”
“I heard a woman scream.”
“Nothing else?”
“Yes, a second or so afterward I heard a man laugh.”
“A man laugh?” the prosecutor’s voice was rough with incredulity. “What kind of a laugh?”
“I don’t know how to characterize it,” said Mr. Thorne simply. “It was an ordinary enough laugh, in a rather deep masculine voice. It didn’t strike me as in any way extraordinary.”
“It didn’t strike you as extraordinary to hear a woman scream and a man laugh in a deserted place at that hour of the night?”
“No, frankly, it didn’t. My first reaction was that the caretaker and his wife had returned from their vacation earlier than we had expected them; or if not, that possibly some of the young people from the village were indulging in some romantic trespassing—that’s not unknown, I may state.”
“You heard no words? No voices?”
“Oh, no; I was about three hundred feet from the cottage at the time that I heard the scream.”
“You did not consider that that sound was the voice of a woman raised in mortal terror?”
“No,” said Douglas Thorne. “Naturally, if I had, I should have done something to investigate. I was somewhat startled when I first heard it, but the laugh following so promptly completely reassured me. A scream of terror, a scream of pain, a scream of surprise, a scream of more or less perfunctory protest—I doubt whether anyone could distinguish between them at three hundred feet. I certainly couldn’t.”
The prosecutor shook his head irritably; he seemed hardly to be listening to this lucid exposition. “You’re quite sure about the laugh—you heard it distinctly?”
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 8