Murder by the Clock

by Rufus King

  As Lieutenant Valcour went down he wondered at the complete stillness of the house. There was no sound of any nature at all. There was a waiting quality about the stillness: a definite waiting for something that would shatter the hush into bedlam.

  “What are you pressing your nose against the glass for, O’Brian?” he said.

  The young policeman turned and grinned at him broadly.

  “Sure, it’s them boys from the papers, sir,” he said. “They’re all stirred up over what the medical examiner has just told them.”

  Lieutenant Valcour groaned faintly. “When was this, O’Brian?”

  “Not two whisks of a lamb’s tail ago, sir—out there in the vestibule.”

  “Did the medical examiner go out into the vestibule?”

  “He did that, Lieutenant, and the last mother’s son of them has just beaten it off down the street like a jumping jack rabbit. They were crazy after photographs, but he drew the line at that now.”

  “Really?” Lieutenant Valcour was politely astounded.

  “Sure and he did—with the exception of a flash or two he let them take of himself.”

  “And were you the little birdie, O’Brian?”

  “Was I the which, Lieutenant?”

  “Did you say ‘peet-tweet’ over his left shoulder as the flashlights went off?”

  “Ah, sure now, sir, and I did have the door open a wee bit. I was just explaining to the boys that they couldn’t come in without your permission nohow, and it was then that the medical examiner came along and, hearing the talking, went outside to pacify them.”

  “A modern martyr throwing himself to the lions. Except for the tea party, O’Brian, has anything happened down here?”

  “Not a thing, sir.”

  “Any of the servants been drifting around?”

  “Only one old dame in black, and seven foot tall if she’s one inch. She came halfway down the stairs, took one dirty look at me, and then stalked back up as stiff as a poker. Her bonnet was on her head.”

  “You don’t know who she was, I suppose?”

  “That and I don’t, sir. She looked like she might be a housekeeper.”

  “She probably was. By the way, O’Brian, just what was it the medical examiner told the boys?”

  “Lieutenant, I could make neither the head nor the tail out of it. I’d been telling them myself that the boss upstairs was dead and that foul play was suspected, and they were hot after the medical examiner for a further word, and I’m damned if he didn’t give it to them.”

  “What was the word, O’Brian?”

  “Indeed and it sounded like crinoline, sir—the stuff the missus do be talking about in old dresses.”

  “Was that all he said?”

  “It was enough, sir. ‘Crinoline,’ said he, and looked very wise at that. Then he added, ‘For the present, boys, no more,’ and off they scampered like the devil in person was after them.”

  “All right, O’Brian. Just stick where you are.” Lieutenant Valcour wandered around the entrance hall but encountered, beyond his own and the medical examiner’s, no hat. He knew that Dr. Worth’s was still upstairs where the doctor had left it in Endicott’s bedroom. He found the cupboard Mrs. Endicott had referred to. There was no hat. The subject was becoming a fixed idea. It was growing increasingly believable that the attacker had taken the hat and worn it out of the house. But why should the attacker leave the house? And what was the matter with the attacker’s own hat? Time, if not Endicott himself, would have to tell.

  From a reception room opening off the entrance hall he caught the murmur of Dr. Worth’s and the medical examiner’s voices in consultation. He passed the door indifferently and went upstairs.

  …an old dame in black, seven foot tall if she was an inch. Her bonnet was on her head.

  …and her bonnet, Lieutenant Valcour repeated softly to himself, was on her head.

  He continued on up a second flight of stairs to the third floor. A door toward the end of the hall was open, and light flooded out through the doorway. He walked to it and looked in.

  A tall, thin woman sat on a chair before a grate in which some coals burned bleakly. She was unbelievably gaunt—her silhouette a pencil, rigidly supporting an austere face beneath a smooth inverted cup of steel gray hair. Black taffeta sheathed her, tightly pressing against flat narrow planes, and smoothly surfacing two pipelike arms that ended in the tapering, sensitive hands of an emotional ascetic. Lieutenant Valcour rapped on the door jamb.

  The woman did not start. Her head alone turned and faced him, and her eyes were a contradiction of nature—black planets glowing coldly in a sky of white.

  “Pardon me, I am Lieutenant Valcour of the police. Are you, by any chance, the housekeeper?”

  Her voice was of New England—low almost to huskiness, a trifle harsh, and completely stripped of all nuances. “Yes, Lieutenant. I am Mrs. Siddons.”

  “May I come in? Thank you—please don’t get up. I’ll only stay a minute or two, if you don’t mind.” He took a chair and placed it before the fireplace beside her own. He sat down and did nothing beyond observing obliquely for a moment the curiously artificial placidity of Mrs. Siddons’s clasped hands.

  “There is no use in questioning me, Lieutenant, because I have nothing to say.”

  Her tone was the chill clear winds that sweep the rigorous mountains of Vermont.

  Lieutenant Valcour warmed his hands before the lazy coals and smiled amiably. “And I,” he said, “have absolutely nothing to ask.”

  “That is a lie.”

  There was nothing abusive in the remark. It was simply a statement of fact, coldly, dispassionately pronounced by the remarkable pencil dressed in black who spired beside him. Lieutenant Valcour was shocked into a nervous laugh. He discarded his mask of indifference and stared at Mrs. Siddons openly and with complete interest. Not planets, her eyes—rather were they banked fires beneath whose ash hot coals smoldered deeply.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, “but that your forbears came from Salem.”

  A look of interest stirred sleepily in the coals.

  “Why so, sir?”

  “Because there’s a look of witch-burning in your eyes.”

  Mrs. Siddons gestured a slow negation.

  “I would never abrogate the rights of God.”

  “But you would approve, Mrs. Siddons.”

  “I would rejoice, sir, in the crushing out of any evil or”—her tone became implacably stern—“of any evil thing.”

  “Or even of a human being?”

  Her look did not waver.

  “Yes, Lieutenant—or even of a human being.” She went on steadily and unemotionally. Her words were fragments of stone chipped from some elemental quarry of granite-like conviction and harsh purpose. “That is why you find me dry-eyed, sir, in spite of the tragedy which has been visited upon this house.”

  Lieutenant Valcour felt that there was a catch in it somewhere. If she held Endicott’s condition in the light of a tragedy then she scarcely regarded his death as an act of vengeance on the part of her unquestionably inflexible god.

  “Tragedy?” he repeated softly.

  “A tragedy, sir, for blinded eyes.”

  He hoped that she wasn’t going to be allegorical. He endeavored to interpret. “It is hard on Mrs. Endicott,” he said.

  For a moment he thought she was going to melt. “That poor young thing,” she said, and her voice fringed on unaccustomed softnesses. “That sweet young child of beauty—what a bitter ending for the journey of her tormented heart.”

  He stepped delicately out upon the fragile ice. “But she’s really better off, don’t you think?”

  “She will never know to the full the fortune of her release.” Mrs. Siddons’s incredibly thin body was suddenly shaken with passion as she added, “From that hateful—that filthy beast.”

  “Oh, come, Mrs. Siddons—no man is quite as bad as all that.”

  Her eyes blazed with the heat of a strange
malevolence. “You didn’t know him, Lieutenant, as we did.”

  “‘We,’ Mrs. Siddons?”

  “Myself, sir, and the servants under my charge.”

  “You found him disagreeable—overbearing?”

  Mrs. Siddons stared fixedly at the coals, as if finding in their vibrant reds some adequate illustration of her angered thoughts. “I found him such a man, Lieutenant, that I am glad to know that he is dead.”

  “But you see, Mrs. Siddons, he isn’t dead.”

  He thought for a minute that she was going to faint and instinctively leaned forward to support her. She stood up unsteadily but refused the offer of his hands.

  “If you will pardon me, sir, I believe I will lie down. There has naturally been a certain strain—a—”

  She bowed and found her way to a door that led into an inner room. Lieutenant Valcour listened for a moment at its panels after she had closed it.

  He could not determine whether the muffled sound he heard was of peculiar laughter or a sob.

  CHAPTER VIII

  11:28 P.M.—Mrs. Endicott Screams

  The tangents and the bypaths were beginning to increase. Lieutenant Valcour tabulated them as he went thoughtfully down the stairs and along the corridor toward Endicott’s room: Mrs. Endicott herself, and the Spartan Mrs. Siddons—both had been partially explored; Roberts, with her astonishing glance that had hinted so definitely at revelations. Then what of Marge Myles? And what of the unknown man with whom Mrs. Endicott, that afternoon, had taken tea? He opened the door to Endicott’s room and went in.

  Preparations for the operation were practically complete. Dr. Worth and the medical examiner were beside the bed, and hovering near them were two trained nurses in uniform—middle-aged, competent women, starched and abstract looking, moving a bit aloofly in their private world which was so concisely separated from the sphere of laymen.

  Cassidy, who seemed bleaker than ever, still stiffly occupied the chair near the doorway. He continued to inspect with an almost feverish interest an unsullied expanse of white ceiling above his head.

  Lieutenant Valcour seated himself on the corner of a long mahogany chest that was placed before the window farthest from the bed and gravely watched Dr. Worth. He began to feel a little sickish and hoped that he wasn’t going to make an ass of himself and faint. He had witnessed any number of accidents and stabbings, but had never been present at an operation, and it worked on his nerves. Even if Endicott weren’t dead, he certainly looked it. Suspended animation and catalepsy were all right as figures of speech, but the human illustration was rather ghastly. Lieutenant Valcour felt justified in believing that he knew his corpses. He wondered why Dr. Worth was delaying—hesitating—no, bending over now, and in his hand, ready to give the injection of adrenaline into the cardiac muscles, was…

  The response was immediate.

  With the aid of the stethoscope Dr. Worth heard Endicott’s heart throbbing again, growing steadily stronger. Quite noticeably beneath the bright white lights a faint flush started to run through Endicott’s skin. Lieutenant Valcour saw it, and he moistened with his tongue the dry pressed surface of his lips.

  Dr. Worth straightened up and handed the stethoscope to the medical examiner. “Endicott lives,” he said.

  No one had noticed Mrs. Endicott standing in the doorway. No one had even noticed that the door was open. It was her terrific scream, her dropping to the floor, that shocked everyone into instant awareness of her presence. Dr. Worth nodded to one of the nurses. With her aid he lifted Mrs. Endicott and carried her from the room. Everyone else remained quite literally spellbound, still chained within the influence of that extraordinary scream. It didn’t seem more than a second or two before Dr. Worth returned. He went directly to Lieutenant Valcour.

  “I have given Mrs. Endicott a narcotic that will keep her quiet for the night,” he said. “It was outrageous—her being here. That guard at the door should have seen to it that it was kept closed.”

  “Most outrageous, Dr. Worth. I believe all of us were hypnotized by watching you.”

  “And I don’t care what the law is, she can’t be questioned or disturbed in any way at all until I say so.”

  “But that is the law, Doctor. You are quite within your rights to dictate concerning your patient.”

  “I don’t want to dictate. I’m just as willing as anybody to have the criminal side of this mess cleared up, if there is a criminal side.”

  “Endicott would hardly have crawled into a cupboard to have a stroke, would he, Doctor?”

  “No.” Dr. Worth’s intelligent eyes stared speculatively at Lieutenant Valcour for a minute. “Not unless he’d hidden in there to overhear something, and did overhear something that gave him a stroke,” he said.

  The cesspool, Lieutenant Valcour decided, was beginning to show strange depths within its depth. The medical examiner came over and joined them. He complimented Dr. Worth briefly on the success of his operation, assured Lieutenant Valcour that the homicide chief would be given a full report of Endicott’s recovery, and presumed that from now on the case would be left in Lieutenant Valcour’s hands. Lieutenant Valcour would deal with whatever charges of robbery or assault might develop from it. He said good-bye and left the room, with the fullest intention of going right straight home to bed; and so he promptly did, as soon as he had made the promised report to Andrews.

  Dr. Worth pointedly raised his eyebrows. “Then there will be charges, Lieutenant?”

  “That will depend largely upon Endicott, Doctor. As he is now revived he will tell us himself who attacked him, or the nature of the circumstance that gave him the shock.”

  “I trust so.”

  “There isn’t any doubt, is there?”

  Dr. Worth grew expansive. “Certainly there is a doubt,” he said. “While it is true that Endicott has been revived, it is impossible to state definitely that he will recover consciousness. And even granting that he should recover consciousness, there is also a chance that he might prefer not to make any statement at all. What would you do then, Lieutenant?”

  “Fold my tents, Doctor, and fade away.”

  Dr. Worth looked down a long straight nose for a minute at tips of low patent-leather shoes. “And if Endicott does not recover consciousness,” he said softly, “what will you do then?”

  “You’ll be surprised at the number of things I will do then.”

  Dr. Worth’s eyes, surfeited with patent leather, snapped up sharply. “I must impress on you that Mrs. Endicott is not to be disturbed,” he said.

  “She won’t be, Doctor.”

  “Nurse Vickers, who helped me into her room with her, is going to stay with Mrs. Endicott all night. Two day nurses will come in the morning: one for her, if necessary, and surely one for Endicott. I need scarcely impress upon you the seriousness of his condition.” Dr. Worth made a gesture of irritated bewilderment. “I wish I knew him more intimately—who his friends are, I mean.”

  “He never talked with you about them?”

  “Never. He seems an unusually reticent man, with an almost abnormally developed feeling for privacy concerning his intimate affairs.” Dr. Worth’s manner grew definitely severe. Mentally, he wagged a finger under Lieutenant Valcour’s nose. “He mustn’t have any further shock. There must be nothing, absolutely nothing that will shock him when, and if, he regains consciousness.” He directed his attention momentarily to the nurse. “Get those shades back on the lamps, please, Miss Murrow, and turn out the ceiling lights. And now, Lieutenant, to continue about Endicott. As she is under the influence of the narcotic I gave her, it is out of the question that his wife be here. I wish she could be. I want the first person he sees to be someone he knows—loves. His mind, you see, will pick up functioning at the precise second where it left off—at least, such is my conclusion.”

  “And that was one of shock.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, evidently one of shock or of great fear. We cannot overestimate the importance of getting him past it
safely. Personally, I shall sleep here in the house tonight, and Nurse Murrow will call me if Endicott shows any signs of coming to. That may not be before morning. I hope so, in a way, as the effect of the narcotic will have worn off by then, and Mrs. Endicott can be in here with him.”

  “One of the servants might know of some friend,” Lieutenant Valcour suggested. “I take it you would like a friend to sit here with him during the night?”

  Dr. Worth was emphatic. “It is almost a necessity that there should be. The mental and nervous viewpoints, you see, predominate in the case.”

  “There is just one thing that I would like to arrange, too, Doctor.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to keep a couple of men posted all night in the bathroom. They can sit on chairs just inside the doorway there, where they can watch the bed, but where Endicott can’t see them. He need never know they are there.”

  “What on earth would be the need for that?”

  “Why, it’s quite simple, Doctor. When Endicott comes to he will be in a position to tell us who gave him the shock—a shock sufficient almost to kill him—one which would have killed him if we hadn’t found him tonight—and if,” he added thoughtfully, “Mrs. Endicott hadn’t had her suspicions.”

  “But why the men in the bathroom?”

  “Because I don’t want to take any chances of there being a repetition before Endicott makes his statement.”

  Dr. Worth pursed his lips and looked very wise indeed. “I see,” he said. “I see. You are afraid that the same person might get at him again and, well, silence him before he could talk.”

  “Something like that, Doctor.” Lieutenant Valcour became courteously formal. “As the physician in charge of this case, sir, have you any objection to my stationing the two men in the bathroom?”

  “Providing Endicott isn’t able to see them and won’t be disturbed by them in any way at all.”