Mr. Lambert was not laughing. “You are a little late in recalling this,” he remarked heavily.
“Oh, a good deal late,” agreed Patrick Ives. “But, you see, I hadn’t been going in for watching the sun rise for some time previous to the murder. Since then I have. And when I heard that letter read in court the other day, something clicked in my head. Not five o’clock, and the sun was up! Something wrong there. I went back to New York and looked it up in the public library. On Friday, June 9, 1916, the sun rose at four twenty-two A.M. On Wednesday, June 9, 1926, the sun rose at five twenty-eight. So that’s that.”
“Have you a certified statement to that effect?” inquired Lambert, forlornly pompous.
“No,” said Mr. Ives. “But I can lend you a World Almanac.”
“You seem to find a trial for murder a very amusing affair,” remarked Lambert heavily, his eyes once more on the jury.
‘You’re wrong,” said Patrick Ives briefly. “I don’t.”
“I do not believe that your attitude makes further examination desirable,” commented Lambert judicially. “Cross-examine.”
Farr rose casually from his chair, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked a trifle to one side. “Mr. Ives,” he said leisurely, “I’m going to ask you the one question that Mr. Lambert didn’t. Did you murder Madeleine Bellamy?”
After a pause that seemed interminable, Pat Ives lifted his eyes from their scrutiny of his hands, locked at the edge of the witness box. “No,” he said tonelessly.
“No further questions,” remarked Mr. Farr, still more leisurely resuming his seat.
Lambert glared—swallowed—glared again, and turned on his heel. “Mrs. Ives, will you be good enough to take the stand?”
She was on her feet before the words were off his lips, brushing by him with her light, swift step and a look of contemptuous anger that was bright and terrible as a sword.
“Looks as though his precious Sue was going to give Uncle Dudley a bad half hour,” murmured the reporter exultantly.
“Why?” whispered the red-headed girl. “Why did she look like that?”
“Because I rather fancy that Lambert has just a scrap exceeded his authority in his efforts to speed Pat Ives to the gallows. The old walrus made out a fairly damaging case against him, even if he did snort himself purple. If____”
“Mrs. Ives, I’m going to ask you to tell us in your own words just what occurred on the evening of the nineteenth of June, from the time that Mr. Farwell spoke to you at the club. I won’t interrupt unless I feel that something is not quite clear. At what time did the conversation with Mr. Farwell take place?”
She looked so small, sitting there—so small and young and fearless, with her dark, bright eyes and her lifted chin and the pale gold wings of her hair folded under the curve of the little russet hat. She had no color at all—not in her cheeks, not in her lips.
“It was a little after five,” said Sue Ives, and the red-headed girl gave a sigh of sheer delight. Once or twice in a lifetime a voice like that falls on our lucky ears—a voice clear and fresh as running water, alive and beautiful and effortless. The girl in the box did not have to lift it a half tone to have it penetrate to the farthest corner of the gallery. “We got in from the links just at five, and Elliot came up and asked me if he could bring me something to drink. I said yes, and when he came back he suggested that we go over and sit on the steps, as he had a splitting headache, and everyone was making a good deal of a racket. We hadn’t been there more than five minutes before he told me.”
“Before he told you what?” prompted Lambert helpfully.
“Before he told me that Pat was having an affair with Mimi Bellamy.” She did not vouchsafe him even a glance, but kept the clear, stem little face turned squarely to the twelve attentive ones lifted to hers. “At first I thought that it was simply preposterous nonsense—I told him so. Everyone knew that Elliot was absolutely out of his head over Mimi, and I thought that he really was going a little mad. I could see that he’d been drinking, of course, and I wasn’t even as angry as I ought to have been, because he was so unhappy—dreadfully unhappy. And then he said that he’d spied on them—that he’d seen them go to the cottage together. Well, that—that was different. That didn’t sound like the kind of thing that you’d invent or imagine, no matter how unbalanced you were.”
“You believed it?”
“No, not at first—not quite. But it bothered me dreadfully all the way home from the club—all the time that we were standing around in our living room waiting for the cocktails. I couldn’t get it out of my head. And then Pat came in.”
She paused, frowning a little at the memory of that sick perplexity.
“You say that Mr. Ives came in?”
“Yes. He was looking dreadfully tired and—excited. No, that’s not the word. Keyed up—different. Or perhaps it was just that I expected him to look different. I don’t know. Anyway, Elliot started to go then, and I went into the hall after him, because he’d been drinking a good deal more, and I was afraid that he’d talk as indiscreetly to someone else as he had to me. I couldn’t think very clearly yet, but I was quite sure that that ought to be stopped. So I asked him to be careful, and he said that he would.”
“Did you notice Melanie Cordier in the library?”
“No. I was watching Elliot. He looked so wretchedly unhappy that I was really worried about him. Well, anyway, he went off without even saying good-bye, and I went back toward the living room. Just as I came up to it I heard George Dallas say, ‘We can count on you for the poker party to-night, can’t we?’ And Pat said, ‘I’ll surely try to make it, but don’t count on me.’ Something inside my head went click, and all the pieces in the puzzle fell into place. I walked straight into the room and up to where he was standing. He’d gone over to the table and was pouring out another of those new cocktails. Everyone was making a dreadful racket, laughing and talking. I said, ‘Nell Conroy wanted us to go to the movies to-night. Don’t you think that it would be rather fun?’ And he said, ‘Sorry, but I told George that I’d run over for a poker game. Tell Nell that you’ll go, and then I won’t worry about you being lonely.’ I said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ And Pat said, ‘Be back in a minute. I have some papers I want to get rid of.’
“He went across the hall; I could hear his steps. I felt just exactly as though I’d taken poison and I stood there waiting for it to begin to work. Someone came up to me to say good-bye—I think it was the Conroys, and then everyone else began to go, too, the way they always do. I started to go out to the porch with them, and while I was passing through the hall I saw Pat standing by the desk. He was looking at some papers in his hand. I went on toward the porch, calling back over my shoulder that everyone was leaving. In a minute, he came out too. I looked to see whether he still had the papers in his hand, but he hadn’t. While we were both standing there watching them drive off, Melanie came out, announced dinner, and we went in.” Pat stopped behind in the study for a moment, but he didn’t go near the desk drawer—I could see it from my place at the table.”
“Could you have seen him take a book from the corner shelf?”
“No—the screen between the rooms cut off that corner.”
“Nothing unusual occurred at dinner?”
“No. That made it worse. Nothing unusual occurred at all. Pat talked and laughed a good deal, but that’s what he always did.”
“And after dinner?”
“After dinner Mother Ives went out into the garden, and Pat asked me to come into the study to look at the clipper ship that he’d been making for Pete. All the time that I was supposed to be looking at it, I couldn’t take my eyes off the desk, wondering what he’d done with those papers—wondering what they were. There had been quite a little pile of them. After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I said, ‘If you want to say good-night to Pete and Polly, you’ll have to hurry. They ought to be asleep by now.’ He said, ‘Lord, that’s true!’ He snatched up the boat and start
ed for the door, and I called after him, ‘I’m not coming. I kissed them good-night before dinner.’ I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs____”
She paused for a moment, pushing the bright hair back from her brow as though she found it suddenly heavy.
“And then, Mrs. Ives?”
“Then,” said Sue Ives steadily, “I did something disgusting. I searched the desk. I pushed the door to, so that none of the servants could see me if they passed through the hall, and I hurried like mad. I don’t know exactly what I expected to find, but I thought that maybe those papers were letters from Mimi, and then I knew that Pat kept his check book there, too, and I thought that there might be entries of some kind that would tell me something; I could bear anything but not knowing. It was like a—like a frenzy. Oh, it was worse! The top drawer on the left-hand side of the desk was locked.”
She paused again for a moment, staring down as curiously and intently at the upturned faces below her as they stared up at her; then, with a quick, impatient shake of her head she went on: “But that didn’t make any difference, because I knew where the key was. I used the top right-hand drawer myself for my household accounts and bills and loose silver, and I kept it locked because, whenever Pat brought home gold pieces from his directors’ meetings, we used to put them there. We saved them up until we had enough to get a present for the house, something beautiful and____ No, that doesn’t make any difference. We called the drawer the bank, and Pat showed me where he kept the key so that I could always get into it.”
“Where did he keep this key?”
“In a tobacco jar on top of the bookcase. I found it and opened the drawer, and there were the papers, quite a thick packet of them, pushed way back in the drawer. They were bonds—eighty-five thousand Liberty, fifteen thousand municipal. I counted them twice to make sure.” For the first time since she had mounted the stand she turned her dark and shining eyes on the perturbed Lambert. “You were very anxious to know whether anyone but Pat had seen that money, weren’t you? Well, I saw it. And I was just as sure that Pat had taken it out of our safe-deposit box in order to run away with Mimi Bellamy as I was that I was standing there counting it—just as sure as that. I put it back and locked the drawer and dropped the key back into the tobacco jar and went to the flower room to telephone to Stephen Bellamy. The clock in the hall said five minutes past eight. I hadn’t been in the study for more than ten minutes.” Once more she lifted her hands to that bright hair. “Do you want me to repeat the telephone conversation?”
“Was it substantially the same as Miss Page gave it?”
“Exactly the same, word for word.”
“Then I hardly think that that will be necessary. Just tell us what you did after you finished telephoning.”
“I went to the foot of the nursery stairs and called up to ask Pat if he had absolutely decided to go to the poker game. He called back yes, and asked if he couldn’t drop me at the Conroys’. I told him that I’d rather walk. I got that flannel coat out of the closet and started off for the gate at the back of the house that led to the back road. I was almost running.”
“Had you planned any course of action?”
“No, I hadn’t any definite plan, but I knew that I had to get to Stephen and make him stop Mimi, and that every minute was precious. Just as I got to the gate, I noticed that a wind had sprung up—quite a cold wind—and I remembered that Mother Ives had told me at dinner that Polly’s ear had been hurting her, and that she slept right by the window where that wind would blow on her, so I turned back to the house to tell Miss Page to be sure to put a screen around the head of her crib. I saw Mother Ives at the far end of the rose garden, but I thought that it would take as long to call her and explain as it would to do it myself. So I ran on to the house, and I was halfway up the nursery stairs before I heard Pat’s voice. I thought he was talking to the babies, and I hurried up the last few steps. I was almost at the nursery door when I heard another voice—Kathleen Page’s. It wasn’t coming from the nursery; it was coming from her room. She was saying, ‘Don’t let her send me away from you—don’t, don’t! All I want____’ ”
“Your Honor____”
Farr’s warning voice was hardly swifter than Judge Carver’s: “I am afraid that you cannot tell us what you heard, Mrs. Ives.”
“I cannot tell you what I heard Kathleen Page saying?”
The wonder in the clear, incredulous voice penetrated the farthest corner of the courtroom.
“No. Simply confine yourself to what you did.”
“Did? I did nothing whatever. I could no more have moved a step nearer to the door than if I had been nailed to the floor. She was crying dreadfully, in horrid little pants and gasps. It was absolutely sickening. Pat said, ‘Keep quiet, you little lunatic. Do you want____’ ”
“Mrs. Ives, the Court has already warned you that you are not able to tell us what was said.”
“Why am I not able to tell you what was said? I told you what we said downstairs.”
Judge Carver leaned toward her, his black sleeves flowing majestically over the edge of the rail. “No objection was raised as to that conversation. Mr. Farr objects to this and the Court sustains him. For your own sake, the Court requests you to conform promptly to its rulings.”
For a moment the two pairs of dark eyes met in an exchange of glances more eloquent than words; a look of grave warning and one of fearless rebellion.
“I do not understand your rules. What am I permitted to tell of the things that I am asked to explain?”
“Simply tell us what you did after you heard the voices in the room.”
“Very well; I will try again. I stood there for a moment, staring at the door to the day nursery. The key was on the outside so that the babies couldn’t lock themselves in. I don’t remember moving, but I must have moved, because suddenly I had the door knob in my hand. I jerked it toward me and slammed the door so hard that it nearly threw me off my feet. The key____”
“Yes, yes,” cut in Lambert, his face suffused with a sudden and terrifying premonition. “We needn’t go too much into all these details, you know. We want to stick to our story as closely as possible. You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“No.”
“Just went on downstairs to meet Stephen Bellamy, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You did not?” Mr. Lambert’s blank query was enough to wring commiseration from a stone. Sue Ives did not look particularly merciful, however. She had turned in her chair so that she faced her devoted adversary squarely. She leaned forward a little now, her lovely mouth schooled to disdain, her eyes under their level brows bright with anger.
“No, not then. I was telling you what I did. I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket. You didn’t want me to say that, did you, Uncle Dudley? You wanted everyone to believe that it was Pat who murdered Mimi, didn’t you?”
“Mrs. Ives—Mrs. Ives____”
“Silence! Silence!”
“Mrs. Ives!”
Over the outraged clamor of the law, her voice rose, clear and triumphant: “He didn’t murder her, because he was locked in those rooms until quarter to eleven that night, and I had the key in my pocket. Now, you can all strike that out of the record!”
“Mrs. Ives!” Over the last crash of the gavel, Judge Carver’s voice was shaken with something deeper than anger. “Mrs. Ives, if you are not immediately silent, the Court will be obliged to have you removed.”
“Removed?” She was on her feet in an instant, poised and light. “You wish me to go?”
“I wish you to get yourself in hand immediately. You are doing yourself untold injury by pursuing this line of conduct. The rules that you are refusing to obey were made largely for your own protection.”
“I don’t want to be protected. I want to tell the truth. Apparently no one wants to hear it.”
“On the contrary, you are permitted to take the stand for that express purpose.”
“For that pu
rpose? To tell the truth?” The scorn in her voice was almost gay.
“Precisely. The limits that are imposed are for your benefit, and you are injuring your co-defendant as well as yourself by refusing to abide by them.”
“Stephen?” She paused at that, considering gravely, “I don’t want to do that, of course. Very well, I will try to go on.” She turned back to her chair, and a long sigh of incredulous relief trembled through the courtroom.
“I have forgotten where I stopped.”
“You were about to tell us what you did after you came down the nursery stairs?” Lambert’s shaken voice was hardly audible.
“Yes. Well, then—then we did exactly what Stephen said we did. We drove through the back road to the River Road, where we turned to the left and went into Lakedale in order to get more gasoline. I distinctly remember the time, because we had been discussing whether the movies would be out by the time that we got back. It was twenty-five minutes past nine. After that we retraced our steps—down the River Road to the back road, down to the place in the back road where I had met Stephen, past our house into the main street of the village, past the movie house, which was dark, and up the main street, which runs into the Perrytown Highway—up the Perrytown Highway to the Bellamy house.
“I was absolutely sure that I saw a light over the garage, but it certainly wasn’t there a minute or so afterwards, and I decided that I might as well go in anyway. I was beyond bothering much about any minor conventions, and I thought that if Mimi were actually there, it would be a heavenly relief to put all the cards on the table and have it out with her once and forever. Mimi wasn’t there, of course; it was then that Steve called up the Conroys. When he found that she wasn’t there, I was really terrified at his condition. He was as quiet as usual, but he didn’t seem to understand anything at all that was said to him. He didn’t even bother to listen. He had some kind of a chill, and he just sat there shivering, while I reassured and argued and explained.
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 25