MRS2 Madame Storey

by Hulbert Footner

  "What a woman!" I said as I left the window.

  "Suffers from an inferiority complex," said Mme. Storey, lighting a fresh cigarette. "That's always what's the matter with these shouters."

  III

  We supposed that the incident was closed as far as we were concerned, and thought no more about it. Three days later, at noon, a man's voice on the telephone asked for Mme. Storey. I did not recognise the voice, but I did apprehend the tremor of a desperate agitation in it; and, as I switched the call into my mistress's room, I wondered what new excitement was in the wind.

  Almost immediately she came out of her room, and I saw by her face that I was not mistaken as to the seriousness of the matter.

  "Bella," she said, "Mr. Norbert Starr telephones that his wife has just committed suicide while he was in her house."

  A quiet announcement like this does not alarm the nerves. I suppose I said: "Is that so?" or something like that. A moment later the sense of it reached me. "My God!" I weakly ejaculated, staring, no doubt, like a clown.

  "He begs me to come to his aid," said Mme. Storey.

  "But...but..." I stammered in confusion, "if she's killed herself he doesn't need any aid, does he?"

  Mme. Storey looked at me queerly. "Think, Bella! Is it likely that that woman would kill herself?..."

  Horror grew in me. "You think...?" I began.

  "I think nothing yet," she said crisply. "...Come let's go. I really feel as if I owed it to the poor wretch. Did I not as good as tell him there was no release for him except through her death?"

  I could not pull myself together all at once. In our business we are used to dreadful happenings, dear knows! But this was too shocking. Had not the woman herself been in our office three days before? Ordinarily we first hear of our tragedies after the event. We are not consulted in advance!

  "Come, Bella, your hat!" said Mme. Storey impatiently. "We'll taxi out to Upper Bellaire. It will save precious minutes."

  The entrance to the park surrounding Bolingbroke Castle was guarded by a pair of immense and beautiful wrought-iron gates. Just inside was a picturesque stone lodge in the English style. The gates were closed. When our chauffeur sounded a summons on his horn, the lodge-keeper hastened out of his door, but after looking us over, undertook to wave us away. Our Broadway chauffeur remarked upon his inhospitality with more force than politeness. The lodge-keeper merely pointed to a little sign outside the gates which had hitherto escaped our attention.

  "Hired vehicles will use the East drive."

  Mme. Storey and I looked at each other. How exactly characteristic of the chatelaine of Bolingbroke! The woman was rather splendid in her way. Certainly she stopped at nothing. Perhaps mediæval chatelaines were like that. Sooner than waste time by arguing with the lodge-keeper, who obviously did not yet know that the author of these regulations was lying dead in her castle, we obediently turned around and sought the humbler entrance.

  The castle was truly magnificent. The approach was from below, and the foreshortened view of the piled, grey masses of masonry struck powerfully upon the imagination. There was a squat, grey central keep, with encircling walls flanked by smaller towers of different sizes and designs, all of the very stuff of romance. One wondered if after all there had been a strain of romance in the coarse-grained woman who had it built to order. Probably not—still it was a disconcerting thought. From the top of the great central tower a flag fluttered insolently against the sky. It bore a white swan on a red ground, a device that the owner had chosen for her own. A swan! Its purpose in flying was to advertise that the owner was in residence. Nobody had thought to pull it down.

  It made one rub one's eyes to come upon such an apparition in Upper Bellaire. Of course when one looked closely there were certain anachronisms; the plantations were rather immature, and the rear premises had somewhat of a Bellairish look. One remembered the thirty tiled bathrooms the place was said to contain. I think it was thirty. That would have amused the Normans.

  I had only time to receive the swiftest impression of the place ere we were swallowed up in the tragedy which filled it. The inside servants knew what had happened. They stood or moved about in dazed attitudes as if a spell of horror had been laid on them—men in gorgeous liveries and maids peeping from around doors. It was touching, the eager expectant way they looked at my composed mistress, counting on her to lift the spell.

  We were received in the gloomy lower entry by the butler, quite a personage on his own account in sober dress. But a shaken personage now. His face was ashy, and his hands trembled. Without a word being spoken, he led us up a shallow, sweeping stone stairway into the great hall of the castle. The entrance had purposely been made dark and restricted. Rising from those depths one's breath was taken away by the great hall. It soared thrillingly to a pointed roof like a cathedral; there were no windows low down, but the whole place seemed to sing with the warm colour that was admitted through the painted glass above. Fancy all that to house one fat woman! Why, the coal necessary to heat it in winter would have kept a whole village comfortable.

  As received from the architects and decorators I expect the place was all in keeping, but it was inevitable that innovations should have been introduced. One perceived examples of the Jewett taste here and there; a large phonograph in a Jacobean case à la Camden, N. J.; a pair of those perfectly useless torch lamps that have lately become so popular. Among such objects my eye was attracted by a large photograph in an over-elaborate silver frame. It depicted two young women in incongruous costumes consisting of ragged short skirts, torn blouses, expensive slippers and enormous picture hats. Tasteless photograph, tasteless costumes, but the girls were of really remarkable beauty. Their faces haunted you. I did not need to be told who they were. They were very much alike, but it was not hard to pick out the bold Bessie from the meek Tessie.

  All this I got in passing. Crossing the tessellated floor of the great hall, we struck into a corridor whence we entered a beautiful panelled chamber—filled with stuffed velure furniture. Such were the contrasts of Bolingbroke. In this room Norbert Starr was walking up and down with a tragic assumption of composure. For his lower lip was hanging down loosely, and his eyes were simply witless from shock.

  Before Mme. Storey was well inside the room, he ran to her and picked up her hand. His face worked so, he could scarcely get any words out. "Ah, you've come! Thank God! How kind of you! I had no right to expect it!...But if I had not someone to turn to, I'd go out of my mind!"

  Mme. Storey sought to stiffen him. "Ah, come!" she said resolutely. "We are grown-up people. We can look ugly facts in the face, I hope. Why should you...?"

  "Ah! you know what they'll say! you know what they'll say!" he stuttered with a distracted gesture. "Come!"

  He led the way out of the room. We walked the whole length of the stone-paved, stone-vaulted corridor, which was lined with armour and antique weapons and conspicuously worm-eaten oaken furniture. No one had given the butler an order, but he followed at our heels with his head sunk between his shoulders as if he simply had to attach himself to somebody. Obviously a man accustomed to command, it was disconcerting to see him so unstrung. All the doors opening out of the corridor were shut. One wondered what was behind them.

  The end of the corridor was closed by a little pointed door with great ornamental hinges stretching all the way across it, nicely blacked. Such are the things that one notices at such a moment. Opening this door, we passed through a sort of vault, and thence into a smaller corridor running transversely to the other. On our left it was closed by another pointed door. This door had a knob sticking through a hole; you lifted it to raise the antique latch within. As Mr. Starr put his forefinger under the knob he hesitated, and I heard his breath hiss between his teeth. The heavy door swung slowly in, and he quickly averted his head.

  We looked into a perfectly round room which evidently formed a storey of one of the flanking towers of the castle. It was very bare. One's eyes marked only a great flat-toppe
d desk in the centre. On the floor between the desk and us lay what had been Bessie Jewett Starr. A great, inert huddle of flesh, all her violence was stilled now. She was enveloped in pale blue chiffon fresh as flower petals, which, like the costume of an actress in a tragedy, seemed to have been put on especially to enact this scene. One thick arm was extended before her, and the puffy fingers clasped a blued revolver. There was still a suggestion of gunpowder on the air. Her head and face were covered with a napkin.

  From behind us like scurrying dead leaves came Mr. Starr's whisper: "She has not been moved not been moved...We waited for you."

  And the butler like an echo: "Not moved...not moved...I just covered her face."

  "Have you notified the police?" asked Mme. Storey.

  "Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" stuttered Mr. Starr.

  "But they must be notified!"

  "What am I to say to them?" he wailed.

  "The truth, I suppose."

  "Of course...of course!...But I looked to you to steady me a little first. I am so unnerved I could not even be sure that I was telling the truth...And if they confused me, it would look...it would look...they would naturally believe...everybody will be prepared to believe..."

  "Tell me what happened," said Mme. Storey quietly. "My mind is open."

  He drew her a little away from the open door. He told his story in a whisper as if he feared the dead might overhear.

  "When I left your office I didn't know what to do...I sat down and wrote to my wife asking her to let me talk to her. I thought perhaps I might buy her off. A foolish hope—but I was prepared to go high...After making me wait two days, she wrote, appointing eleven o'clock this morning. I had a premonition that my coming would be worse than useless...but one must do something!

  "She had me brought to her in the round room here, which she uses as a sort of office. All her private rooms open off this corridor..."

  "One moment," interrupted Mme. Storey, "where are the other members of the family?"

  "Early this morning Miss Jewett took her mother in to New York to the doctor's. They have not returned."

  "Go on."

  "My wife received me with the sort of smile which always presages her most insane bursts of rage. I immediately regretted my coming; nevertheless I persevered. All the way here I kept saying to myself over and over: I will not lose my temper; I will not lose my temper; no matter what she says, I will not lose my temper. But that was the worst course I could have pursued. In her eyes the unforgivable sin was not to lose your temper...Need I say what passed between us? The usual thing. In fact I can scarcely remember. She deafened me with her screaming..."

  "Better tell me as far as you can remember," said Mme. Storey.

  He lowered his head. "She insisted on dragging in the name of a certain lady," he whispered. "The one I told you about. I thought I had been able to keep that...even from her. But it seems not. She made gross accusations. I could afford to smile at that. But finally it turned out that she had seen this lady. That...that was very hard for me to bear...But I swear to you, I stuck to the line I had laid out for myself. That was to ask her how much she'd take to release me. She said if I was ten times as rich as I am it wouldn't be enough...I permitted myself one retort. I did say that I would be happy in spite of her. Then she...she...then I got out..."

  There was a fatal stammer at the end. One could not escape the suspicion that all had not been told.

  "Go on," said Mme. Storey.

  "I had no more than got out of the room when I heard the shot and the fall. I ran back. I saw her just as she is now. There was smoke floating in the air..."

  "Where did she get the gun?" asked Mme. Storey.

  "I...I don't know. I didn't see. Out of her desk I suppose."

  "How long was it, precisely, after you had left the room when the shot was fired?"

  "It was no time at all. I pulled the door to after me; my hand had no more than dropped from the knob; I had not taken a single step when I heard the shot."

  "She must have moved with marvellous quickness," said Mme. Storey. "To get around the desk, I mean; to get the gun out; to get back in front of the desk where she now lies."

  "I don't know..." he said, vaguely passing his hand over his face.

  "Had she said anything to lead you to suppose that she might...?"

  "Oh, no! no!...That was what shocked me so. I never dreamed of such a possibility. Not Bessie!...When I saw her lying there I could not believe my eyes. Bessie kill herself! My thought was there must be some humanity in her after all. Years ago there seemed to be...Her hatred of me was just a sort of obsession. She had had a lucid moment, and aghast at herself had snatched up the gun to set me free...That was what shattered my nerve. To find her lying dead by her own hand. Dead to set me free...And I hating her so...!"

  Some moments passed before he was able to go on. "I ran down the corridor shouting for help," he whispered huskily. "Down the main corridor. I met no one until I got to the great hall. Pascoe was coming up the stairs. I brought him back with me. That's all...In my confusion my only coherent thought was of you. I telephoned you. I have simply been waiting..."

  The butler kept up a sort of whispered chorus to this. "That's right...He met me coming up the stairs...I went back with him...It was terrible...terrible!...He telephoned. We've simply been waiting..."

  "Did you hear the shot?" Mme. Storey asked the butler.

  "No, madam. It was too far away. The doors are very thick."

  Mme. Storey went into the round room, leaving us in the corridor. Mr. Starr still kept his head averted. My mistress went down on one knee beside the body. She did not raise the napkin as yet, but examined the revolver with close attention. Without removing it from the dead woman's clutch, she broke it, and looked in the magazine.

  She presently arose, and her face was like a mask. I caught my breath, for I had learned to dread that look. "This pistol has not been discharged," she said. "The magazine is full."

  There was a dreadful silence. Mr. Starr looked at her witlessly. "Wh-what did you say?" he stuttered.

  "You said you found smoke in the room," Mme. Storey went on. "This pistol contains only modern smokeless shells.'

  "She must have killed herself!" he said stupidly. "There was nobody else here...no other gun."

  Mme. Storey shrugged her shoulders. She went down beside the body again. This time she lifted the napkin. I involuntarily turned my head. Thank God! it was not my business to make an examination.

  "She was shot from behind," Mme. Storey said impassively. "This hole in her forehead was made by the issue of the bullet."

  The man fell back against the wall. His voice scaled up shrilly. "Do you realise what you're saying?" he cried. "Do you think I have been lying to you...lying...?"

  "Not necessarily," said Mme. Storey mildly.

  "Oh, my God! what has happened then?" he cried, clutching his head. "What devilish combination of circumstances has come about? Who was it? Who was it?...You must believe me! You must! Why, if I had done it, how easy it would have been for me to discharge her pistol while I was waiting. But it never occurred to me. I was sure she had done it herself...Merciful Heaven! what will I do now?"

  "Nobody has accused you," said Mme. Storey patiently. "With your help I will get to the bottom of the matter."

  "Ah, no one will believe me now!" he cried despairingly.

  "The police must be sent for," said Mme. Storey.

  "Wait!" he cried sharply. "Give me a chance to collect my wits. First let us find out for ourselves what has happened."

  "I can do nothing," said Mme. Storey firmly. "I must not disturb the body until the police have viewed it."

  "Ah, wait! wait!" he cried. "You must listen to me. If it is true that you can read people's hearts you must know that I didn't kill her. But no one else will believe me...Before they come let me let me fire a bullet out of her pistol. Where would be the harm?...If I don't do it, it will mean the ruin of two lives. I swear I am not thinking of m
yself alone. There is another...I cannot bear the thought of wrecking her life..."

  "This is useless," said Mme. Storey. "You know it is useless...Pascoe must telephone at once. In this county, I understand, the county prosecutor takes direct charge of all criminal investigations. Pascoe, telephone to his office and ask him to come at once."

  The butler disappeared. Mr. Starr turned from us, wrapping his arms around his head like a man who had given up all hope.

  I thought Mme. Storey was extraordinarily patient with the abject creature. A hint of disapproval must have shown in my face, for she murmured while his back was turned to us:

  "Do not be too quick to jump to conclusions, Bella."

  "But this unmanly panic!" I said.

  "It doesn't prove anything. A guilty man is prepared for an accusation. An innocent man might well be thrown into a panic by it."

  To Mr. Starr she said hearteningly: "Pull yourself together. Answer me a question or two."

  "What's the use?" he said apathetically. "I'm a goner...I'd better blow my brains out at once and save the state money."

  "And convict yourself without a hearing?" suggested Mme. Storey.

  "It's nothing to me what they think. If I want to live it's for myself and one other. Popular opinion is nothing to me. I'm hardened to it."

  "Then, for the sake of that other?"

  "What is it you want to know?"

  "What you held back when you first told your story. She could not possibly have got the gun out so quickly."

  "No," he said dully. "She got it out of her desk while I was still in the room. She threatened me with it. That's why I got out."

  "That alters the case somewhat," said Mme. Storey.

  "It is useless for you to advise me to plead self-defence," he said. "If I had Bessie's blood on my hands, no matter how it came about, how could I...another woman...surely you must understand."