MRS2 Madame Storey

by Hulbert Footner

  That simple cry of pain aroused my sympathies for the unfortunate man. I began to change my opinion.

  Mme. Storey said quietly: "I was not going to advise you to plead self-defence...But, tell me, why did you keep this fact back in the beginning?"

  "For a simple enough reason," he said with a shrug. "When I thought she had turned the gun on herself it seemed as if there was some good in her after all. I didn't want to blacken her memory any further. I thought she was sorry. I was sorry for her."

  "Have you anything else to add to your first story?"

  "No, I told you the truth...I don't suppose it matters."

  IV

  The hint of a case within the very walls of Bolingbroke Castle brought Mr. Ira Anders, the county prosecutor of Middlesex, on the run. He proved to be a slender little man with a big head and great round black-rimmed glasses. Dominant masculinity was his line. You know the type; the little dog making out to be a big one. His brow was furrowed like a mastiff's. Pascoe had given him no particulars over the phone, and when he learned that his "case" dealt with no less a matter than the apparent murder of Bessie Jewett Starr herself, his self-importance was shaken for a moment. But only for a moment. As the sweet assurance of undreamed-of publicity and fame stole into his soul, he began to swell bigger and bigger like the frog that sought to rival the ox. The magnitude of his opportunity rendered him a little breathless; the round glasses became moist with emotion, and he had frequently to wipe them. He looked around furtively for a telephone; clearly he burned to spread the marvellous news. But decency restrained him for a while. He brought with him a crude sort of county detective; an honest, red-faced yokel whose "bright" air was on a par with his master's heavy air. This creature's name, as I heard it, sounded like Kelliger.

  Mme. Storey had refused to make any further move until the prosecutor arrived, and we were all waiting for him in the great hall. When he was introduced to my mistress it was clear that the name Storey suggested nothing to the suburban lawyer. He took it that she was merely a friend of the family's, and she let it go at that. Her beauty won a suitable tribute from his masculinity; he was very gallant. You know the sort of thing; so comical in a little man addressing a superb woman. He all but patted her hand and assured her that everything would be all right now that he had been called in. One foresaw a rude awakening for the little man. It was almost a shame.

  On the other hand, the name of Starr had a magical effect on the attorney. His manner towards the unfortunate husband was as smooth as velvet. Mr. Starr merely looked at him in a bitter silence.

  We all returned to the scene of the tragedy. There was a horrible formality about the procession; two and two down the long corridor. Mr. Anders, his eyes darting right and left to spy out the wonders of Bolingbroke, offered professional condolences to Mme. Storey the whole way, like an undertaker. Behind him walked Mr. Starr unseeing, unhearing, like a man in a trance. He had become so apathetic that he walked unmoved into the round room with the rest of us. But I noticed that he never looked directly at what lay on the floor.

  "Ah, suicide!" said Mr. Anders with a world of melodious compassion in his voice.

  "The pistol in her hand has not been discharged," said Mme. Storey.

  "Eh, what?" exclaimed Mr. Anders, blinking behind the round glasses, and wrinkling up his forehead like our Giannino.

  "She was shot from behind," said Mme. Storey in her quiet voice.

  It was then that Mr. Anders really began to swell. A murder in Bolingbroke Castle, and he the prosecutor!

  I went out of the room while he made his examination of the body. Afterwards somebody covered it with a green velure drapery brought from another room. It did not look any the less dreadful under that shroud.

  Mr. Anders then set on foot a regular investigation. Such a man rejoices in formalities. He seated himself at the big desk, and had additional chairs brought in for the rest of us. There we sat. A curious inconsequence seemed to attach to the proceedings. The grim reality at our feet mocked at them.

  Mr. Starr was the first and the principal witness. As he told his story the prosecutor's eyes glittered. His manner towards the witness underwent a notable change. He became the stern avenger of crime. In the end he even dared point an inquisitorial forefinger at the millionaire. Mr. Starr took his arrogance as he had taken his obsequiousness with the same dreary indifference. He answered all questions unhesitatingly, however they seemed to strengthen the case against him. Mr. Anders, satisfied that he had his man, only asked him such questions as would tend to incriminate him. Mr. Starr did not change his story in any important particular.

  The butler, Pascoe, followed him. This Pascoe was a self-respecting middle-aged man with a manner considerably above that of a servant. I suppose his job at Bolingbroke called for a good deal of administrative ability. The prosecutor's aggressive manner had the effect of stiffening his backbone, and he gave his answers coolly enough. So far as it went his story corroborated that of Mr. Starr, and Anders naturally assumed that they were both lying. The prosecutor brought out one new point to which he made believe to attach great importance.

  "When you were coming back to this room with Mr. Starr," he asked, "did you hear him say anything?"

  "He was like a man half out of his senses," answered the butler. "He kept saying over and over: 'Oh my God! the poor soul! How I have wronged her!'"

  "Ha!" exclaimed Anders, busily writing it down.

  "I understood by that..." Pascoe went on.

  "Never mind that."

  But the butler persisted. "That as the result of a quarrel she had shot herself, and he regretted the quarrel."

  "I am not interested in your deductions," said Anders loftily. "As you see, she did not shoot herself."

  "But he thought she had."

  "Please confine yourself to answering my questions."

  Later Mr. Anders proceeded to delve a little into the past of the Starrs. "What were the relations between Mr. and Mrs. Starr?" he asked Pascoe.

  The butler glanced at Mr. Starr and spread out his hands deprecatingly.

  "That is no answer," said Anders.

  "They have been separated for the past eight or nine years," said Pascoe.

  "How long have you been working here?"

  "Ever since the castle was completed, sir. That is ten years in the Spring."

  "Then Mr. and Mrs. Starr were living together when you came here?"

  "Mr. Starr occasionally visited the castle."

  "What were the relations between them then?"

  "Bad, sir," said Pascoe laconically.

  "Very bad?"

  "Very bad."

  "Quarrels?"

  "Continual quarrels. Mrs. Starr was a woman it was impossible to get along with."

  "Yet you stayed with her ten years."

  "I was not her husband, sir," said Pascoe dryly.

  "You were her servant."

  "Oh, she got to know a long time ago about how much I would stand. I was useful to her and she left me pretty much alone."

  "In these quarrels that you refer to, did you ever hear any threats passed?"

  "What sort of threats?" asked Pascoe guardedly.

  "Threats of personal injury."

  "From Mrs. Starr, often, sir. Not from Mr. Starr. He would simply leave the house."

  This was not the answer Anders wanted, and he sneered. "You do not seem to have retained much loyalty towards your mistress—after taking her wages for ten years."

  "I earned my wages, sir," said Pascoe quietly.

  After Pascoe, Anders examined a number of lesser terrified servants. From none of them did he obtain anything of significance. None had been in that part of the castle. None had so much as heard the shot.

  From the sample of Anders's cross-examination which I have given, it may be gathered that he asked only the obvious questions to which of course he received obvious replies. It was impossible for Mme. Storey to betray much interest in what was going on. She was not idle, though.
I saw her fine, keen eyes travelling about the room, taking in every detail, from which, assuredly, she was drawing her own conclusions.

  The round room was not the least incongruous in that incongruous castle. Wall and ceiling were hidden under a glorious oaken panelling, rich with antiquity, that must have been raped entire from some European stronghold. There were two Gothic windows filled with exquisite tracery containing leaded glass. Yet the floor was covered with battleship linoleum, and the dingy, flat-topped desk might have come out of a city editor's den. The other movables in the room were in keeping; some plain wood chairs, a filing cabinet, a typewriter on its stand and a cheap rattan sofa. Nevertheless, Pascoe had testified it was in this room that his mistress spent most of her time.

  Mme. Storey, reading my thoughts, murmured: "Even Bessie Jewett Starr discovered at last that magnificence is fatiguing."

  Pascoe, released from the witness chair, sent up trays of sandwiches and bottles of ginger ale, which we partook of very thankfully in an adjoining room.

  Back in the round room again, it was Mme. Storey who discovered the bullet lodged in the panelling alongside the door. She called Mr. Anders's attention to it.

  "Ah, yes, thank you," he said with rather a strained smile. "I have not come to that yet."

  Mme. Storey made a whispered request of one of the footmen for a tape-measure which was presently fetched her. She measured the distance of the bullet from the floor. Mr. Anders affected to take no notice of what she was doing, but he looked rather annoyed.

  It was about this time that the proceedings were interrupted by the sounds of an arriving automobile that reached us through the open windows. One of the windows of the round room commanded the main entrance to the castle, and Pascoe, glancing out, said with a dismayed look at the rest of us:

  "It is Miss Jewett and the old lady coming home."

  A horrified silence fell on the room. Who would tell them? was the general thought.

  "It will have to be you, Pascoe," said Mme. Storey with concern. "I can't go to meet them in their own house. It would be an impertinence."

  Pascoe bowed and went out of the room, leaving the door open.

  During the succeeding moments the investigation faltered. Mr. Anders was nervous. I suppose we were all unconsciously listening for sounds from the house. I recalled that Mr. Starr had told us the mother of the two women was mad, and I shivered with apprehension.

  But no distant shrieks, no sounds of any sort reached us until in a few moments there came soft hurrying footsteps along the corridor. Tessie Jewett came into the room, and stopped with a jerk just inside the door. Pascoe was behind her.

  She presented a startling contrast to her sister. The strong facial resemblance was still there, but how different, how extraordinarily different! Tessie Jewett had grown gaunt and dull-looking with the years. It was well-nigh impossible to reconstruct the former music hall favourite from this dispirited and frankly middle-aged woman. Dull, worn and apathetic, the skin of her face was flabby and greyish; her hair dust-coloured. She was dressed in a ridiculous travesty of her sister's style, i.e. the ultra-fashionable woman. The rich garments hung anyhow on her angular frame; on her head was balanced some sort of tasteless hat that had no relation whatever to her dulled, simple face and sparse hair. To remind you of her former beauty only the large, dim blue eyes were left. They turned helplessly this way and that behind the old woman's spectacles that she wore. In a word, the very picture of an unmarried household martyr. Between a domineering sister and a mad mother what a life she must have led!

  Her dazed and uncomprehending gaze fixed itself on the shapeless huddle under the green velure drapery, and her lips shaped some indistinguishable words. Raising her eyes at last, she looked at each one of us in a puzzled way, but the body, like a magnet, dragged them back to itself. She half lifted her hands in an ineffective way and let them fall again. Then I made out what it was she was trying to say.

  "Oh, my God! What next? What next?"

  It was unspeakably affecting.

  Mme. Storey went to her in her large, grave way, and said simply: "I am Rosika Storey. I am here to help if I can."

  Obviously the name meant nothing to Miss Jewett; nevertheless she retained Mme. Storey's hand, and pressed closer to her like a bewildered child. "I'm glad there's someone here," she whispered, "some woman. I wouldn't know what to do, myself."

  All this time her fascinated gaze had never budged from what lay under the green velure. Everybody else in the room was silenced. According to their natures some looked out of the windows, and some gaped at the stricken sister.

  At length she murmured huskily: "Who did it?"

  "That's what we're trying to find out," said Mr. Anders, briskly moving his glasses up and down on his nose. His voice sounded thin and pert in that highly charged atmosphere. Puff himself up as he might, he was unable to measure to the situation.

  "Don't you know who did it?" she asked in a curious, far-off whisper.

  "It is not proven," said Mr. Anders significantly.

  Miss Jewett slowly raised her dim, great beautiful eyes and let them rest accusingly on Norbert Starr. A shiver went through all of us. There was something so remote, so disembodied about her. That involuntary glance was more convincing than any of the evidence which had been brought out against the husband. I confess I was shaken by it. Yet Mr. Starr seemed not to be affected.

  "Have you any reason to suspect anybody in this room?" asked Mr. Anders with a preternatural air of acuteness as if he alone had been capable of seeing what would have been patent to a child.

  She quickly veiled her eyes. "Oh, I accuse nobody, I accuse nobody," she said nervously.

  "Do you feel able to answer a few questions?" asked Mr. Anders.

  She kept her eyes fixed on the body. "Ask me anything you want," she murmured dejectedly. "...What does it matter?"

  "Did you know that Mr. Starr was coming to see your sister this morning?"

  "No, sir."

  "She did not tell you, then, that she had written to him, making the appointment?"

  "No, sir."

  "Do you not think she would have mentioned it to you if she had written such a letter?"

  "I can't answer for what Bessie might have done."

  "Has Mr. Starr been here at any other time recently?"

  "No, sir."

  "Your sister and he have not met at all, then, of late years."

  "Bessie went to see him sometimes—when she wanted to plague him."

  "I understood that you took your mother to the doctor today. Is that a regular duty of yours?"

  "Yes, sir, every Thursday morning I take her in."

  "It is well known then, that you and your mother are always away on Thursdays."

  "I suppose so."

  "Could not Mr. Starr have been aware of this fact?"

  "Bessie told him, maybe. I don't know."

  "Have you ever overheard Mr. Starr threaten harm to your sister, or do you know that he has ever done so?"

  She shook her head heavily. "I accuse nobody."

  "Have you ever heard your sister express a fear of him?"

  Something about this question had the effect of unlocking the frozen woman's speech. But it still came out of her involuntarily, like the mutterings of one asleep. Her remote, bewildered eyes seemed to have no part in what she was saying. As is sometimes the case with elderly unmarried women her voice still had a suggestion of the immature girl in it, and she had reverted to the homely idiom of the village she had left so many years before.

  "Oh, Bessie often said he'd like to do her in, but she wasn't really afraid of him. Bessie wasn't afraid of anybody. She had everybody afraid of her except Momma. Momma wasn't afraid of Bessie. They never could get along. Both too quick-tempered. And lately Momma brooded. She's not herself, you know. She'd done Bessie a hurt if she could. I had to watch her and keep her away. Momma's not herself any more."

  What a picture of life in that tragic household this drew!<
br />
  The apathetic voice droned on: "Of course, we could have put Momma away somewheres. Bessie wanted to. But I said no. No hired nurse could manage Momma like I can. I keep her with me. I sleep with her nights. Of course I wisht that Momma and I could have gone away somewheres together. But Bessie wouldn't let us. It would have left her alone here. She wouldn't have had anybody to jaw at but the servants. And they leave."

  "Yes, yes. Most distressing!" said Mr. Anders impatiently. "But it hasn't got anything to do with the tragedy before us. I do not suppose that you mean to suggest your mother might..."

  "Momma was with me all the time."

  "Kelliger," said Mr. Anders, "uncover the hand."

  A corner of the cloth was lifted, and the fat ringed fingers clutching the revolver were revealed once more. Though we had been conscious of it every minute, there was nevertheless a horrid shock in finding that it was still there. The hand had changed colour a little in the interim; grown more clayey.

  "Do you recognise that pistol?" asked the prosecutor.

  "I suppose it is Bessie's," Miss Jewett answered. "She's had it a long time. She threatened people with it when she was mad, but I don't know as she ever fired it off...The last time I seen it—if that is the same one, was one day when she run into the house in a passion to get it, saying that some common Irish from the village had brought their lunch into the Park..."

  "Yes, yes," said Mr. Anders, "but that hasn't got anything to do with the matter before us..."

  Once started, it appeared that the gentle, disembodied voice was not to be shut off. "...I never heard how it turned out. I expect it was Mitchell Crear, the tinsmith. Bessie's had trouble with him before. He was one of these red republicans that have it in for the rich. He'd go out of his way to spite Bessie, and made remarks as she passed by..."

  Mr. Anders shook his head. "I'm afraid this has been too much for the poor lady," he remarked sotto voce to us. "It is impossible to get anything out of her."

  "I will take her away," said Mme. Storey.

  We left him to his ridiculous "investigation."