Murder by the Clock

by Rufus King

  Lieutenant Valcour measured the distance between where he stood at the top of the stairs and the trunk. He could never make it. Some board would creak. And yet, if he cried out, or spoke, if he failed in the proper choice of a word—in fact, the least thing that startled her would destroy her almost calm stance of fatalistic poise.

  He took a penknife from his pocket and, slitting the laces of his shoes, removed them. Thank God her back was toward him, and the window was there with its square of light cut clearly in muffled grays—its light with which she seemed to be holding some private service of communion—that inevitable farewell with earth indulged in by each wretched soul before exchanging its conscious lonesomeness for the obscure and problematic company of the damned…

  He was very near her now, himself a mist drifting softly through mist…

  Whispering—whispering—he could hear her whispering—a thin flow of meaning rather than of words, sent from the grayness to that light beyond—sent through a little measured casement out into the immeasurable brilliance of eternity. Her hands were resting easily by her side; her body relaxed more and more peacefully in repose.

  “… and if you’re there, Tom darling, and Herbert, too…”

  He could leap forward now and catch her if it were necessary, but better be safe, quite safe.

  “…it won’t be heaven, dear. They have no room for such as you and me in heaven. But when you come—”

  His arms closed gently about her, and her body seemed to stiffen into steel. She relaxed at once, and then stared down at him incuriously. She removed the noose from about her neck as casually as she might have taken off a hat. He lifted her to the floor.

  “There isn’t any hurry,” she said.

  He knew that she was hinting definitely at the future, when he and the law were finished with her and she would be free to book her passage for eternity again without supervision or restraint.

  “No hurry, Mrs. Endicott; nor any need, now.”

  The “now” dragged her sharply from the mists. She stared at him with penetrating interest.

  “Mr. Hollander,” he said, “will undoubtedly recover.”

  “Yes?”

  The word was clipped from some inner store of ice.

  “Doesn’t that alter the surface of things, Mrs. Endicott—of your intention?”

  “Why should it, Lieutenant?”

  “I am sorry that you choose to continue evasive.”

  “I’m not. It is you who see things, read things in people that are never there.”

  “That isn’t true, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “What is there further that you wish to know?” There was no compromise, no yielding, and the hardness in her voice was very definite. She looked almost extravagantly capable, too, in the smart dark dress she had put on. She was, Lieutenant Valcour reflected, one of those rare women who always “look their best” no matter what the time is or the situation; who make a point of looking so even when quite alone, and especially so, he added, when committing suicide. But he was not deceived by her hardness. There were invisible forces working within her, still stirred into turmoil by that impressive emotional ladder she must have so recently climbed in order to arrive at the decision to take her own life. If he were ever to understand this complex woman he felt that he must do so now, while he and she stood where they were in their private world—a tight little sphere of shadows sifted with mists of sunlit dust—and before they descended the attic stairs to the routined environment of daily living. He decided to attempt to lead her by certain matter-of-fact paths that would end in quicksands.

  “Why did you have the address of Marge Myles in your directory, Mrs. Endicott?”

  She answered with the mechanical patience of an elder explaining some academic problem to a child.

  “It was necessary to take her into account. As I have already told you, she possessed a certain standing—enough of a one to differentiate her from the other women whom my husband picked up promiscuously—and the time might have come when I felt it advisable to get rid of her. Not murder—you’re too intelligent to misunderstand me—there are several ways one woman can get rid of another woman that are just as effective.”

  “Which one did you employ, Mrs. Endicott?”

  “It wasn’t especially nice, but I wasn’t dealing with a nice woman. I employed forgery.”

  This caught Lieutenant Valcour a little unprepared. “Forgery?”

  “Yes. I added a postscript to a letter Harry Myles had sent me before he married Marge. Harry never dated his letters. This one was harmless enough, but there was a reference in it to the camp he owned by that lake up in Maine. The postscript that I added changed the whole character of the letter. It made it apparent that Harry very definitely feared Marge was planning to murder him. I gave that letter to Herbert about a month ago, when it seemed that his interest in Marge was becoming dangerously serious.”

  “Didn’t he ask you why you hadn’t produced it before?”

  “Yes. I explained that I had just come across it in an old letter file that hadn’t been gone through for years. I asked him whether it was too late to do anything about it—show the letter to some proper authority, for instance. Of course I knew what he would say.”

  “That it was too late?”

  “Yes.”

  “But didn’t he also ask you why you hadn’t said something about the letter at the time of Harry Myles’s death?”

  “I pointed out that we were in Europe at that time and didn’t hear the news until many months later, when we got back. By then the letter had escaped my mind.”

  “And did your action influence your husband’s feeling toward Marge Myles?”

  “It was beginning to. Things like that work slowly; they keep breeding in the mind until they become effective.”

  She had missed, he decided, her century. When the Medicis were in flower she, too, would have bloomed her best.

  “Mrs. Endicott, what was your real reason for sending for the police last night?”

  “I can explain that better by accounting for my movements between the time that Herbert knocked on the door to say good-bye and you arrived. Will that satisfy you?”

  “I hope so, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “I shan’t lie to you, Lieutenant. I shall tell you the exact truth. Roberts was in the room with me, fixing some disorder in my dress. I left the room shortly after and started down the corridor for the sitting room. Mrs. Siddons, my housekeeper—I don’t know whether you’ve met her or not?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “She was standing at the foot of the stairs leading to the floor above. She said she had something to tell me, and we went into the sitting room.”

  “That was just after seven o’clock?”

  “Five minutes—ten—yes. Mrs. Siddons brought up the subject of a particularly despicable affair that my husband was involved in with one of our maids over a year ago. Shall I go into it?”

  “It isn’t necessary, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “The maid was married. Her husband was a sailor.” Mrs. Endicott paused for a moment, and seemed to be sorting in her mind which facts she cared to present and which, in spite of her recent avowal of candor, she preferred to hold in reserve. “You have probably noticed, Lieutenant, that Mrs. Siddons is an abnormal woman. She is the most striking example of the religious-fanatic type that I have ever met. Her life is literally built upon the composite foundation of faith and duty which she believes all mankind owes to God. Her belief in direct punishment visited by God on earthly sinners is a fixed idea. And last night in my sitting room she told me that God was going to strike my husband and that His instrument would be the husband of that maid whom Herbert had injured.”

  “But if that was an act which she so obviously desired to see consummated, Mrs. Endicott, why did she warn you—anybody—about it in advance?”

  “Religious fanatics, Lieutenant, scorn the idea that human agency can interfere with the workings of any divine plan. Thin
gs, for them, are ordained and are supposed to happen just exactly as they are ordained.”

  “But why did she warn you?”

  “She came to tell me about it, she said, in order that I might be prepared for the shock. She has always sympathized inordinately with me over what she terms Herbert’s ungodly actions. I asked her, naturally, to be more explicit, and I finally forced the admission from her that she had seen, or else believed that she had seen, the maid’s husband that afternoon loitering about the street in front of the house. She went upstairs, then, to her own quarters. It seemed absurd.”

  “Then it began to prey upon you?”

  “Indirectly.”

  “How?”

  “In its possible relation to something else.” Lieutenant Valcour became intuitive.

  “You are wondering now,” he said, “whether or not you ought to tell me all about the tea.”

  “How did you establish the connection?”

  “Between your having tea with Mr. Hollander yesterday afternoon and Mrs. Siddons’s story?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s rather simple, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Endicott, I think it is. You won’t deny, will you, that you very definitely impressed on Mr. Hollander that your determination to ‘end it all’ either by committing suicide or killing your husband was sincere? Mr. Hollander was the confidant for your secret confusions, sort of a proving ground for reactions. I’ve already substantiated that theory, both through Mr. Hollander himself and his friend.”

  “No, I won’t deny it.”

  “And you believed that he would do something to prevent you from accomplishing your purpose.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “And in your naturally upset state of mind last evening Mrs. Siddons’s curious prophecy concerning the maid’s husband taking his revenge made more of a genuine impression upon you than you cared to admit. You were subconsciously afraid that something would happen—that the sailor might really injure or kill your husband, and that Mr. Hollander, when the police investigated, would somehow become involved. There was even a possibility that worshipping you as he does, when he heard of your husband’s murder he might give himself up to the police and offer a false confession in order to shield you. It has often been done, you know.”

  “You are right, Lieutenant. I did think exactly that. The muddle of the whole thing began to drive me crazy during dinner. I went down at seven-thirty and ate nothing. I don’t think I stayed at the table for more than five minutes. I went upstairs and into Herbert’s room, looking for something. I really don’t know what—unless it was for some sort of physical confirmation of his aliveness by the things he owned. Then I saw that note on his desk. I hadn’t the shred of a nerve left by then, and the note genuinely worried me. It was such a direct confirmation of Mrs. Siddons’s story. I wasn’t exactly panicky, but I felt as if things had got out of hand. I tried to reach Mr. Hollander by telephone, but he wasn’t in his apartment. I began to picture converging forces: himself—the maid’s husband—and Herbert as a focal point. I felt that something had to be done. Well, I telephoned the police.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the maid and her husband when I came, Mrs. Endicott?”

  “It isn’t the sort of thing one would plunge into directly.”

  “You would have told me in time, then?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And why,” he asked quietly, “did you try to direct my suspicions against Marge Myles when, in view of your special knowledge, that maid’s husband was the logical suspect? That’s a little inconsistent, isn’t it?”

  She looked at him evenly.

  “Do you always do precisely the proper thing at the proper moment?”

  “Rarely ever, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “Well, neither do I. I don’t think anybody does.” She adopted again that patient, explanatory precision of the teacher. “A person’s actions or statements during any moment of great strain are dominated by that moment itself, rather than being any sane reflection of logical and contributory causes. At such times one clings to straws.”

  “Marge Myles was a straw?”

  Mrs. Endicott shrugged. “Herbert had gone, as I supposed, to see her. I believed that whatever happened to him would occur between this house and her apartment, or at some moment during the evening while they were together. I’m not claiming that there was any sense to my beliefs. I wasn’t feeling exactly sensible just then.”

  “And you would have been quite willing to have Marge Myles blamed for anything that happened rather than either the sailor or Mr. Hollander?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  It was very convincing—her willingness, that is. As for her credibility, Lieutenant Valcour retained reservations. He started along another divergence.

  “Why have you kept Roberts so long in your employ, Mrs. Endicott, when you must have known how deeply she hates you?”

  Mrs. Endicott smiled with frank amusement. “You’ve never kept a maid, have you, Lieutenant?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then you can’t appreciate fully what I mean when I say that Roberts is a good maid. What earthly difference does it make whether she hates or loves me? I’m hiring her services, not her emotions, and her services are excellent. I’ve frequently wished that someone in my successive chain of cooks would develop a similar passion. There’s something so binding about it.”

  He felt that she was escaping him again, that her armor was swiftly undergoing repair. In the brightening light her face shone clearer. She didn’t seem quite such an enigma, after all. Nothing ever was, he reflected, truly enigmatic in daytime. It was just a tired face, wearied by any number of things other than the lack of sleep.

  “I wish you would trust me, Mrs. Endicott,” he said. “I’m not a bad sort, really, and I’m not trying to trap you into admissions that would prove injurious to yourself. There are still confusions that have to be straightened out. I have been assured by Mr. Hollander that you were devoted to your husband. You personally imply that your interest in Mr. Hollander is purely that of a friend, and yet you address him in your notes as ‘Tom, darling.’ And there isn’t any question but that he worships you. The situation doesn’t fall under the heading of the eternal triangle. It’s a hub, rather, from which radiate several broken and uneven spokes.”

  “Broken spokes.” The phrase appealed to her in a tragic sense inordinately out of keeping with its flavor of triteness. But then—he had said so to her before, ages ago—the trite things were the true things. And that’s just what Tom and Herbert and herself were. And the hub? Passion, she supposed, or perhaps a composite illusion of all the various derivatives of love.

  “It’s hard to resolve human feelings into the simplicity of A B C’s,” she said. “I can’t just say I loved Herbert because I was married to him and because he was the first person I ever loved, or that no matter how many other people there may be later in my life I will always return to him in my heart, just because he was the first person whom I loved, and expect you to understand.” She brushed with elementary strokes through fog in her effort to be explicit. “I love Tom Hollander, too, just as much as I loved Herbert. It isn’t nice, but it’s the truth. Love isn’t a unit, a single emotion tightly wrapped up in one word. It’s a hundred feelings and desires and any number of little human hurts that are longing to be made well again.” A certain bitterness crept into her manner: a bitterness of revolt. “The whole wretched business is too stylized. It’s quite all right to love your father and your mother equally; in fact, it’s held wrong not to—exactly fifty percent of your parental love must go to each. Brotherly love must also be reduced to proportionate fractions. The love for one’s neighbors is presumably scattered into legion. But if a woman announced that this otherwise divisible quality is spent upon more than one single man—”

  Her laughter wasn’t very pleasant to hear. Lieutenant Valcour felt a little upset; there was something dist
urbingly reasonable in her attitude. Was it pure sophistry? Not really. There was a strong element of fact and truth running through it all. It was useless to parade before her the different clichés of what any universal acceptance of her implied philosophy would do to society. He imagined rather accurately the treatment she would hand out to them. And like most people who had got what they wanted, he didn’t know even faintly what to do with it. He couldn’t come out flatly and ask her if she was planning to marry Hollander, and apart from the insight it gave him into her character there hadn’t been any special advancement toward a definite solution of the problem of who did kill her husband, and for what motive. Lieutenant Valcour began to feel that it was he who had landed in the quicksands rather than herself.

  “You have been very patient with me, Mrs. Endicott, and very kind. To an extent I am beginning to understand you. We have arrived again, but perhaps with a surer footing this time, at our stumbling block. Before we attack it, I wonder if you cannot think of any reason why your husband should have joined you up here in the attic when he found you here yesterday afternoon.”

  Mrs. Endicott was still too drugged with abstracts to attend very kindly to the mechanics of detailed fact.

  “Well,” she said, “it wasn’t to commit suicide. That leaves your other nine tenths, doesn’t it?”

  “You mean that he must have been just looking for something?”

  “There’s hardly any other plausible explanation.”

  “But does he keep things up here?”

  “He may have. This is his trunk.”

  She moved off toward the window, disinterested in anything further that he might care to do. A complete lassitude drenched her, and she sunned it negligently in the light sifting down through dusty panes.

  Lieutenant Valcour righted the upended trunk and raised its lid. There were some papers lying loosely in its upper tray. He studied them curiously until he came across a certain one that caused him to draw his breath in sharply. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he closed the trunk. His manner, as he approached Mrs. Endicott, was implacably stern.