And suddenly there leaped from the dull eyes before him a flame of such raw agony that Mr. Lambert took a hasty and prudent step backward.
“What do you take me for? I thought she’d make him cut it out.”
“And it was absolutely essential to you that he should cut it out, wasn’t it, Mr. Farwell?”
“What?”
“You were endeavoring to persuade Mrs. Bellamy to divorce Mr. Bellamy and marry you, weren’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
Mr. Farwell sat glaring dumbly at his tormentor out of those strange eyes.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes.” As baldly as though Mr. Farwell were stating that he had tried to get her to play a game of bridge.
“How long had it been since your affection for her had revived?”
“It hadn’t revived. My affection for her, if that’s what you want to call it, hadn’t ever stopped.”
“Oh, I see. And at the time of the murder you were not convinced that it was hopeless?”
“No.”
“I see. But you were a good deal disturbed over this affair with Mr. Ives, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And when you went home you had a few more drinks just to celebrate the fact that you’d fixed everything up, didn’t you?”
“I had another drink or so.”
“And when you went up to bed with the detective story you took a full bottle of whisky with you, didn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“And it was three quarters empty the next morning, wasn’t it?”
“How do I know?”
“Wasn’t it found beside your bed almost empty next morning, Mr. Farwell?”
“I don’t know. I’d taken a good deal of it.”
“Mr. Farwell, are you sure that you didn’t find that you had lost that cigarette lighter before nine-thirty—at a little after nine, say?”
“No, I told you that it was nine-thirty.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I looked at my watch.”
“And just why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to know the time.”’
“Why?”
“I don’t know—I just wanted to know.”
“It was very convenient that it happened to be just nine-thirty, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean; it wasn’t convenient at all, if it comes to that.”
“You don’t? And you don’t see why it was convenient that you happened to call up the Dallas house at about ten minutes to ten, assuring them thereby that you were safe at home in your pajamas?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You have a Filipino boy who works for you, haven’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
“Yes.”
“Was he in the house after Mr. Burgoyne went on to the poker party?”
“No; he goes home after he finishes the dinner things—around half-past eight usually.”
“So you were absolutely alone in the house?”
“Absolutely.”
“Your car was outside, wasn’t it?”
“It was in the garage.”
“It never entered your head when you missed that lighter, the loss of which concerned you so deeply, to get into that automobile and take the five- or ten-minute drive to Orchards to recover it?”
“It certainly didn’t.”
“You didn’t do anything of the kind?”
“Look here, I’ve already told you about twenty times that I didn’t, haven’t I?” Mr. Farwell’s voice was straining perilously at the leash.
“I didn’t remember that I’d asked you that before. At what time did you first hear of this tragedy, Mr. Farwell?”
“You mean the—murder?”
“Naturally.”
Once more the dull eyes were lit by that strange flare of stupefied agony. “At about twelve o’clock Sunday morning, I guess—or half-past eleven—I don’t know—sometime late that morning. George Dallas telephoned me. I was still half asleep.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? I don’t know what I did. It knocked me cold.”
Mr. Lambert suddenly thrust his beaming countenance into the stolid mask before him. “However cold it might have knocked you, Mr. Farwell, don’t you remember that within three quarters of an hour of the time that you received this news you locked yourself in the library and tried to blow your brains out?”
“Yes,” said Elliot Farwell, “I remember that.”
“You didn’t succeed because your friend Richard Burgoyne had previously emptied the pistol?”
“Correct.”
“And your Filipino boy, looking for you to announce lunch, noticed you through the window and set up the alarm, didn’t he?”
“So I understand.”
“What did you say to Mr. Burgoyne when he forced his way into the library, Mr. Farwell?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember that you said, ‘Keep your hands off me, Dick; after what I’ve done, there’s no way out but this’?”
“No, I don’t remember it, but I probably said it. I don’t remember what I said.”
“What explanation do you offer for that remark, Mr. Farwell?”
“I’m not offering any explanations; if I said it, I said it. What difference does it make what I meant?”
“It makes quite a difference, I assure you. You have no explanation to offer?”
“No.”
“Mr. Farwell, for the last time I ask you whether you were not at the gardener’s cottage at Orchards on the night of June nineteenth?”
“No.”
“At about nine-thirty?”
“No.”
Mr. Lambert, the ruddy moon of his countenance suddenly alive with malice, shot his question viciously into the tortured mask: “It was not your laugh that Mr. Thorne heard coming from the cottage, Mr. Farwell?”
“You____”
Over the gasp of the courtroom rose the bellow of rage from the witness box, the metallic ring of the prosecutor’s voice, the thunder of Judge Carver’s gavel and Ben Potts’s chant.
“Silence! Silence!”
“Your Honor, I would like to ask one question. Is Mr. Farwell on trial for his life here, or is this the case of the People versus Bellamy and Ives?”
“This Court is not given to answering rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. Mr. Lambert, Mr. Farwell has already told you several times that he was not at Orchards on the night of June nineteenth. The Court has given you great latitude in your cross-examination, but it does not propose to let you press it farther along those lines. If you have other questions to put, you may proceed.”
“No further questions, Your Honor.” Mr. Lambert’s voice remained buoyantly impervious to rebuke.
“One moment, Mr. Farwell.” The prosecutor moved swiftly forward. The man in the witness box, who had lurched to his feet at that last outrage from the exultant Lambert, turned smoldering eyes on him. On the rim of the witness box, his hands were shaking visibly—thick, well groomed, insensitive hands, with a heavy seal ring on one finger. “You admit that you had been drinking heavily before you spoke to Mrs. Ives, do you not?”
“Yes—yes—yes.”
“Did you regret that fact when you returned home that evening?”
“I knew I’d talked too much—yes.”
“Did you regret it still more deeply when you received the news of the murder the following morning?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that the reason for your attempted suicide?”
A long pause, and then once more the heavy tortured voice: “Yes.”
“Because you realized that harm had come to her through your indiscretion?”
“Yes, I told you—yes.”
“Thanks, that’s all. Call Mr. Dallas.”
“Mr. George Dallas!”
A jaunty figure in blue serge, with a smart foulard tie and curly blond hair just beginning to thin, moved briskly forward. M
r. Dallas was obviously a good fellow; there was a hearty timbre to his rather light voice, his lips parted constantly in an earnestly engaging smile over even white teeth, and his brown eyes were the friendliest ever seen out of a dog’s head. If he had not had thirty thousand dollars a year, he would have been an Elk, a Rotarian, and the best salesman on the force.
He cast an earnestly propitiatory smile at Sue Ives, who smiled back, faintly and gravely, and an even more earnestly propitiatory one at the prosecutor, who returned it somewhat perfunctorily.
“Mr. Dallas, you were giving a poker party on the night of the nineteenth of June, were you not?”
“I was indeed.”
Mr. Dallas’s tone implied eloquently that it had been a highly successful party, lacking only the prosecutor’s presence to make it quite flawless.
“You were present when Mr. Farwell telephoned Mr. Burgoyne?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The telephone was in the room in which you were playing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About what time did the call come in?”
“Well, now let’s see.” Mr. Dallas was all eager helpfulness. “It must have been about quarter to ten, because every fifteen minutes we were making a jack pot, and I remember that we’d had the first and another was just about due when the ’phone rang and Dick held up the game for a while.”
“Did you get Mr. Burgoyne’s end of the conversation?”
“Well, not all of it. We were all making a good deal of a racket—just kidding along, you know—but I heard Dick say, ‘Oh, put on your clothes and come over and we’ll give you enough of ’em to start a bonfire.’____”
“Did Mr. Burgoyne make any comments after he came back?”
“He said, ‘Boys, don’t let me forget to take some matches when I go. Farwell hasn’t got one in the house.’____”
“What time did he leave?”
“Oh, around eleven-fifteen, I guess; we broke up earlier than usual.”
“Did you call Mr. Farwell up the following day around noon?”
“Yes, I did.” Mr. Dallas’s jaunty accents were suddenly tinged with gravity.
“Can you remember that conversation?”
“Well, I remember that when Elliot answered he still sounded half asleep and rather put out. He said, ‘What’s the idea, waking a guy up at this time of day?’ And I said, ‘Listen, Elliot, something terrible’s happened. I was afraid you’d see it in the papers. Mimi Bellamy’s been murdered in the gardener’s cottage at Orchards.’ He made a queer sort of noise and said, ‘Don’t, George! Don’t, George!’ Don’t—don’t—over and over again, as though he were wound up. I said, ‘Don’t what?’ But he’d hung up, I guess; anyway he didn’t answer.”
“He seemed startled?”
“Oh, rather—he seemed absolutely knocked cuckoo.” The voice hung neatly between pity and regret, the sober eyes tempering the flippant words.
“All right, Mr. Dallas—thanks. Cross-examine.”
As though loath to tear himself from this interesting and congenial chatter, Mr. Dallas wrenched his expressive countenance from the prosecutor and turned it, flatteringly intent, on the roseate Lambert.
“Did other people overhear Mr. Burgoyne’s remarks, Mr. Dallas?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure that they must have. We were all within a foot or so of each other, you know.”
“Who was in the room?”
“Well, there was Burgoyne, and I had Martin and two fellows from New York who were out for the week-end, and—let’s see____”
“Wasn’t Mr. Ives in the room at the time?”
“Well, no,” said Mr. Dallas, a curious, apprehensive shadow playing over his sunny countenance. “No, he wasn’t.”
“I see. What time had he arrived, Mr. Dallas?”
“Mr. Ives?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Dallas cast a fleeting and despairing glance at the whitefaced figure in the corner by the window, and Patrick Ives returned it with a steady, amused, indifferent air. “Oh—oh, well, he hadn’t.”
Mr. Lambert stopped, literally transfixed, his eyes bulging in his head. “You mean that he hadn’t arrived at a quarter to ten?”
“No, he hadn’t.”
For the first time since the trial opened, Sue Ives stirred in her seat. She leaned forward swiftly, her eyes, urgent and imperious, on her stupefied counsel. Her lifted face, suddenly vivid with purpose, her lifted hand, cried a warning to him clearer than words. But Mr. Lambert was heeding no warnings.
“What time did he get there?”
“He—well, you see—he didn’t get there.”
Mr. Dallas again turned imploring eyes on the gentleman in the corner, whose own eyes smiled back indulgently, a little more indifferent, a little more amused.
“Had he let you know of this change of plans?”
“No,” said Mr. Dallas wretchedly. “No, he hadn’t—exactly.”
“He simply didn’t turn up?”
“That’s it—he just didn’t turn up.” Mr. Dallas’s voice made a feeble effort to imply that nothing could possibly be of less consequence between men of the world.
Mr. Lambert, stupor still rounding his eyes, made a vague gesture of dismissal, his face carefully averted from Sue Ives’s sternly accusing countenance.
“No further questions.”
Mr. Dallas scrambled hastily to his feet, his ingenuous gaze turned hopefully on the prosecutor.
The expression on the prosecutor’s classic features, however, was not calculated to reassure the most optimistic. Mr. Farr was contemplating the amiable countenance of his late witness with much the look of astounded displeasure which must have adorned Medusa’s first audience. He, too, sketched a slight gesture of dismissal toward the door, and Dallas, eager and docile, followed it.
The third day of the Bellamy trial was over.
CHAPTER IV
“WELL, this is the time you beat me to it,” commented the reporter approvingly. “That’s the hat I like too. Want a pencil?”
“I always want a pencil,” said the red-headed girl. “And I beat everybody to it. I’d rather get here at six o’clock than go through that howling mob of maniacs one single time more. Besides, I’ve been sleeping, so I might as well be here. Besides, I thought that if I got here early you might tell me whether it was Mr. Ives or Mr. Farwell who did it.”
“Who did what?”
“Who killed Mrs. Bellamy.”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned the reporter. “Why is it that every mortal soul at a murder trial spends his life trying to pin the crime on to anyone in the world but the people being tried for it. Talk about juries!”
“I’m not talking about juries,” said the red-headed girl firmly. “I’m talking about Mr. Farwell and Mr. Ives. Don’t you think that it was funny that Mr. Farwell was there that day?”
“Oh, comical as all get out! Still and all, I believe that he was there precisely when he said he was. That poor devil was telling the truth.”
“How do you know?” inquired the red-headed girl respectfully.
“Oh, you get hunches at this game when you’ve been at it long enough.”
“That must be nice. Did you get a hunch about Mr. Ives?”
“About Pat Ives? I haven’t heard him yet.”
“What did it mean, his not being at that poker game?”
“Well, it might have meant anything in the world—or nothing. The only thing that’s perfectly clear is that it meant that last night was undoubtedly one of wassail and carouse for Uncle Dudley Lambert.”
“Why?”
“My dear child, didn’t you see the look of unholy glee that flooded the old gentleman’s countenance when he realized that young Mr. Ives hadn’t a shadow of an alibi for that eventful evening?”
“Well, but why?”
“Because the only thing that Uncle Dudley would as soon do as save his angel goddaughter from the halter is to drape one around Pat Ives’s neck. He’s hated Pat ever since he
dared to subject his precious Sue to a life of good healthy hardship in New York; he’s never forgiven him for estranging her from her father; and since he found out that he betrayed her with the Bellamy girl, he’s been simply imbecile with rage. And now, through some heaven-sent fluke, he’s enabled to put his life in jeopardy. He’s almost out of his head. He’d better go a bit warily, however. If I can read the human countenance—and it may interest you to know that I can read the human countenance—Mrs. Patrick Ives is not entirely in favor of sending her unworthy spouse to the gallows. She had a monitory look in her eye that bodes ill for Uncle Dudley if she ever realizes what he’s doing.”
The red-headed girl heaved an unhappy sigh. “Well, I don’t believe that anyone did it,” she remarked spaciously. “Not anyone here, I mean. Burglars, probably, or one of those funny organizations, or____”
“Silence, silence! The Court!”
Mr. Farr had a new purple necktie, sombre and impressive; Mr. Lambert was a trifle more frivolous, though the polka dots were discreet; Mrs. Ives wore the same tweed suit, the same copper-colored hat. Heavens, it might as well be a uniform!
“Call Miss Cordier.”
“Miss Melanie Cordier!”
The slim elegance of the figure in the severely simple black coat and black cloche hat was especially startling when one remembered that Miss Melanie Cordier was the waitress in the Ives household. It was a trifle more comprehensible when one remembered that she was as Gallic as her name implied. With her creamy skin, her long black eyes and smooth black curves of hair, her lacquer-red mouth exactly matching the lacquer-red camellia on her lapel, Miss Cordier bore a striking resemblance to a fashion magazine’s cover designs. She mounted the witness box with profound composure and seated herself, elaborately at ease.
“Miss Cordier, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“I was waitress in the employment of Mrs. Patrick Ives.” There was only the faintest trace of accent in the clear syllables—a slight softening of consonants and broadening of vowels, becoming enough variations on an Anglo-Saxon theme.
“How long had you been in her employ?”
“A year and nine month—ten month. I could not be quite sure.”
“How did you happen to go to Mrs. Ives?”
“It was through Mrs. Bellamy that I go.”
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 12