MRS2 Madame Storey

by Hulbert Footner

  V

  As we walked through the corridor, Miss Jewett murmured: "You mustn't mind Momma. I let her dress up to please herself. She is always quiet if you put her before a mirror."

  I wondered if I could believe my ears.

  Out in the great hall under the watchful eyes of two maids, we came upon the third member of the strange household. It was a woman incredibly old, incredibly made up. Her hair was dyed a strange bright red hue; her seamed and sunken cheeks were carmined. This strong colour simply obliterated the faded eyes that she could not restore. She seemed to have no eyes. Her thin bent frame was dressed in—how shall I describe it?—gewgaws and ribbons and laces seemed to be pinned at random all over her. She had all the tricks of a stage ingénue. One of the maids was holding a large hand mirror up before her, into which she smirked, endlessly prinking. The sight was too tragic for tears.

  She saw us coming from afar, and simpered, and put her head on one side, and waved her hand in an affected fashion. When we came close, she said to Mme. Storey in her cracked old voice:

  "How are you! I suppose I know you, but I forget who you are. I think you're very pretty."

  "And I think you're pretty, too," said Mme. Storey, taking her hand, and smiling down at her.

  A quick look of gratitude shot out of Miss Jewett's dim eyes. When she came into the presence of her mother, she no longer looked so remote and wandering. Her spirit seemed to brood over the helpless old woman.

  Mrs. Jewett bridled and simpered and raised her shoulders in a killing way. "Me!" she said. "Oh, no! I can no longer pretend to have any looks with two such great girls. There was a time, my dears, when the gentlemen did not pass me by...Hold that glass up, girl...This is my baby, Teresa. She is a little backward...Have you lost your tongue, Teresa? Can't you speak to the lady?...My other girl Elizabeth has more of a spirit..."

  Mme. Storey looked at Miss Jewett, and her lips shaped the words: "Have you told her?"

  Miss Jewett nodded. "She can't take it in," she whispered.

  "Can't take what in?" instantly demanded the old lady. "What are you keeping from me?"

  "Bessie is dead, Momma," said Miss Jewett.

  But the old lady's attention had already wandered. "Heigho!" she sighed. "It's a great responsibility bringing up girls! I was married at seventeen and left a widow before I was twenty. How'm I ever going to find husbands for them when the time comes...I hope you've come to lunch. We have better food when there's strangers here. Too many fal-lals. Don't you like apple dumplings?"

  "Momma, Bessie is dead!" cried Miss Jewett in a dreadful low voice of pain.

  Mme. Storey quickly laid a hand on her arm. "What does it matter?" she whispered. "It is better so."

  "Apple dumplings," repeated the old lady unctuously. "Baked. With hard sause. Um yum..."

  Presently a footman came to tell Mme. Storey that Mr. Starr would appreciate it, if she would return to the round room for a moment. I was thankful to get away.

  As we entered the round room Mr. Starr said in a voice of cynical despair: "He's ready to lock me up now. I thought you'd better know about it."

  Mr. Anders spread out his hands. "In view of what I have learned it has become my painful duty to order Mr. Starr detained in custody," he said. "You will appreciate, I am sure, that no other course is open to me."

  Mme. Storey bowed without committing herself.

  Mr. Starr sneered at the prosecutor's elaborate phraseology. He went direct to the heart of the matter. "You can't hang me until you find the gun with which I am supposed to have done it!" he cried in a voice reckless with pain. "That won't be easy. Why, it would have been suicidal to come to see that woman with a gun in my pocket."

  "You have a perfectly good plea of self-defence," said Mr. Anders. "Why aren't you satisfied with that?"

  "Ah, you're a fool!" said Mr. Starr.

  Mr. Anders, with the expression of a man sorely-tried, looked towards Mme. Storey for sympathy. But my mistress kept her eyes down.

  "You make a great point of the fact that I had a reason to kill her," Mr. Starr went on, "but you overlook the fact that I had a reason, every reason to live! I left my gun at home in my desk, where it may be found if you send for it."

  "I suppose there is no reason why you may not have stopped on the way here and bought another gun," said Mr. Anders with that acute smile of his.

  "Well, find it then," said Mr. Starr sullenly.

  "That I shall," said the prosecutor. "You may remain here while we look."

  A haphazard and unsystematic search followed. The bare room offered but a certain number of possible hiding places, and they looked in these over and over. The corridor down which Mr. Starr had run to summon help was searched, and finally Kelliger was sent outside the building to see if the pistol had been tossed out of one of the windows. Nothing came of it all.

  While it was going on Mme. Storey sat in the round room pondering. That is how she generally looks for a thing. She was of course trying to reconstruct the assassin's course of reasoning. When Anders and Kelliger had come to a stand, and were looking around rather foolishly for new places, she said dryly:

  "You have not moved the desk. There is room under the drawers on either side for a gun to be hidden."

  "I was just coming to that," said Mr. Anders.

  The desk was a heavy piece, and it was not upon casters. It required the combined efforts of Kelliger and Pascoe to move it. And there, on one of the dusty oblongs of linoleum that were uncovered, lay as if by magic another pistol. It was a bigger pistol than the one clutched in the dead woman's hand, an old-fashioned pistol.

  It created an immense sensation in the room. Everybody (except Mme. Storey) looked at Mr. Starr as much as to say: That finishes you! I myself was badly shaken. Mr. Anders plumed himself ridiculously. He said with a sneer:

  "I hope that satisfies you, Mr. Starr."

  That unfortunate man was not thinking about him: He stared at the pistol as if it was pointed at his own heart, and a low, anguished cry escaped him. "God help me! How did that get there!"

  Mme. Storey gave the pistol a close examination. She was rendered a little impatient by the general excitement. With her magnificent common sense she said:

  "I cannot see that the finding of this gun alters the situation. It was conceded beforehand that somebody shot Mrs. Starr."

  Her irony failed to reach Mr. Anders. He bustled in his triumph. "Kelliger," he said, "telephone to the Central station for the sergeant and a constable to come here and take Mr. Starr. Let them come in a taxicab."

  Mr. Starr glanced imploringly at Mme. Storey, but she was still busy with the pistol. She scribbled the number of the weapon and the maker's name on a bit of paper and handed it to me.

  "Telephone," she whispered, "and see if you can learn when that gun was first sold."

  I left the room.

  For some little time past I had been chafing at Mme. Storey's apparent supineness. Of course I knew she was simply biding her own time, but I wanted to see her show these people. When I returned, apparently the time had come for that. She arose.

  "Mr. Anders," she said with the satirical-seductive smile that is her most effective weapon against men of his sort, "of course I'm only a woman, but I've been trying to put things together. I wish you'd let me tell you my theory."

  That smile brought him up on tip-toe. He smiled back so gallantly, so indulgently. "My dear lady! I should be charmed to listen to anything you may have to say."

  Said Mme. Storey: "I should say that Mrs. Starr was shot by a tall woman or a man of average height."

  Mr. Anders blinked. This was hardly what he had expected. "What reason have you to think so?"

  "The dead woman was five feet nine inches tall..."

  "How do you know that?" he interrupted, round-eyed.

  "She visited me three days ago, and my secretary happened to remark that she was the same height as myself."

  "Very interesting. Very interesting. But, if I may ask, ho
w does that apply here?"

  "The bullet is lodged in the woodwork yonder exactly five feet seven inches above the floor. Mrs. Starr was shot, as near, as I can determine, two inches below the crown of her head. It must therefore be obvious to you that the bullet pursued an exactly horizontal course across the room. Need I go on?"

  Mr. Anders's jaw had fallen lower and lower as she proceeded. Such words from the lips of a pretty woman! Trying to teach him his trade!

  Mme. Storey continued, since he did not seem to be able to supply the rest. "A person must aim a gun on the level of his eye. It is true one reads in fiction of marvellous Westerners who shoot from the hip, but I think we may safely disregard that possibility...If I am right, Mrs. Starr must have been shot by a man or woman of about her own height, while Mr. Starr is..." She looked at him.

  "Six foot one," he stammered, a wild hope dawning in his eyes.

  Mr. Anders was very much discomposed. The gallant smile had become strained. "Very interesting; very interesting," he said, looking at his finger-nails. "But I am afraid your ingenious theory will hardly stand against the stubborn facts. If there was a third person in the room while Mr. and Mrs. Starr were talking, where was he hidden?"

  "Under the middle part of the desk at which you are sitting," said Mme. Storey softly. "There is room there, you see, for a person to hide even from the sight of one who might be seated at the desk."

  Like a wondering child, the little man ducked down and looked under the desk.

  Mme. Storey went on: "Mr. Starr says he found her lying on the very spot where he had left her standing. And why not? The murderer had only to stand up to shoot. The shot came from the direction of the desk. And when the desk was moved you noticed, of course, when you examined the dust, that the revolver had been pushed under from the middle part."

  "Of course I noticed it," said Mr. Anders.

  "There was plenty of time for the murderer to escape while Mr. Starr was away fetching help," said Mme. Storey.

  "How could he escape without being seen?" stammered Mr. Anders.

  "Well, for one thing, there's another door in this room," she said coolly.

  "Another door!" he echoed, gaping.

  "Pascoe, is there not a door about there?" she asked, pointing to the panelling behind the desk.

  "Yes, madam," he said unhesitatingly. "In the sixth panel counting from the other door."

  "What is on the other side of it?"

  "A circular stairway. There is a door at the foot of it leading to the rose garden. Mrs. Starr frequently went in and out that way. There was no secret about it."

  "Can you open the door, Pascoe?"

  "I think so, madame. I have seen Mrs. Starr open it when I have been in the room."

  He went and felt about the woodwork. At length his fingers met the concealed spring, and the panel slid slowly back, and thudded against its stops. Within the dark aperture a circular stone stairway was revealed mysteriously rounding from above, only to be swallowed up below. What a glimpse!

  We all peered fearfully into the place and listened.

  "Why wasn't I told of this?" Mr. Anders demanded of Pascoe.

  "You didn't ask me, sir," said Pascoe dryly.

  "How did you know of its existence, madam?" the prosecutor asked my mistress with a glance of dark suspicion.

  She smiled. "Oh, there's no magic in it. As we drove up to the castle I happened to notice that each of the flanking towers had its attendant turret built alongside, topped off with an extinguisher. It was customary in the period. The turret always contained a stairway with an opening to each floor of the tower."

  "Hum!" said Mr. Anders.

  He drew a revolver from his pocket, and started down the stairway.

  Pascoe picked up a great key on the desk, saying: "I believe this is the key to the garden door, if you require it."

  "That door is kept locked?" asked Mme. Storey.

  "Oh, always, madam. Mrs. Starr would not have allowed anybody but herself to use that entrance."

  "Well, if it's locked now, and the key's been lying here all the time, the murderer could not have got out that way."

  Mr. Anders came back for the key, and resumed his way down. Mme. Storey followed, smiling. Pascoe and I brought up the rear. Mr. Starr was left under guard of Kelliger. The reawakened hope and anxiety in the unfortunate man's face was painful to see.

  Well, we marched down the stairway, took a look at the rose garden, and marched back again. The garden, by the way, which was surrounded by an arbor vitæ screen, was a dream of secluded loveliness. But the door was locked, and it was evident no one could have got out that way.

  Returning, Mr. Anders did not stop at the room we had set out from, but kept on up the stair. It was not absolutely dark, for there was a loophole or two in the thick stone wall. One made so many turns one lost all sense of direction. We came to a door which presumably gave on an upper chamber corresponding to the round room. It was locked, and having no key we kept on. Higher up, an arched opening led to another and a larger round chamber which was perfectly empty, floored, walled and vaulted with stone. It contained no windows, but in the edge of the floor all around there were curious holes, through which one could peer down to the ground far below.

  "Machicolations, they are called," said Mme. Storey. "Through these holes the defenders could drop stones on anybody who might attack the base of the tower."

  Fancy, in Upper Bellaire!

  Continuing still higher, we issued out through the candle extinguisher she had spoken of, on to the flat roof of the tower. It was floored with thick sheets of lead—think of the expense nowadays! and surrounded by battlements. There was a widespread view of the salt meadows; a light haze lent even the distant fertilizer factories a charm; but at the moment we were looking for something else besides a view. The battlements were a good twenty-five feet above the main roof of the castle. No one could have escaped that way. There was nothing to do but go down again.

  We paused by the locked door.

  "What is this room used for?" Mr. Anders asked Pascoe.

  "It has never been used, sir, so far as I know," the butler replied. "It is too remote from the rest of the house. Mrs. Starr may have stored some personal belongings there. I have never been in it."

  "The key?"

  "It has always been in her possession, sir."

  "Well, if it's in her possession there's no use our looking in," he said, taking a leaf out of Mme. Storey's book.

  But it is not safe to try to borrow her thunder. "May I have your flashlight?" she asked sweetly.

  It was handed over to her. She turned it on the keyhole, and bent down to look.

  "The key is on the inside," she said quietly.

  VI

  Her quiet words had all the effect of a small explosion among us. My heart began to beat thickly. Somebody was in that room! What fresh horror was in store for us? I heartily wished myself back in my quiet office. I do not like these sensational scenes.

  Mr. Anders in great excitement beat upon the solid wood with the soft side of his fists. "Open the door!" he cried. "I am an officer of the law!"

  No sound came to us from the other side.

  He used the handle of his flashlight upon the door. "Open!" he cried louder; "or I'll break it down!"

  This was easier said than done, for the door, like all the others, was presumably of two-inch oak, and there was not room enough on the narrow landing to wield a battering ram or to swing an axe.

  "What shall we do?" the little prosecutor said helplessly.

  "We can lower a man through the machicolations above, and let him smash a window," said Mme. Storey.

  Before there was time to make a move in this direction, we heard the great key creak in the lock, and the door swung slowly in. It was not a formidable figure which faced us, but a woman with hanging arms and lowered head. A beautiful, slender creature with hair wall-flower brown, and dark curled lashes that swept her cheeks like an infant's. Her soft cheeks w
ere hollowed and bloodless and when, finally, she raised her blue eyes they looked most piteously as if they had wept themselves dry of tears. One side of her pretty mauve dress was all fouled with brown dust as if she had flung herself down on the floor in her despair.

  "Who are you?" gasped Mr. Anders.

  The girl's pale lips essayed to move, but she was incapable of making a sound.

  "Who is she?" Anders demanded in turn of Pascoe and Mme. Storey. They shook their heads.

  Mr. Anders took her by the arm, and started to lead her unresistingly down the stairway. Before following, Mme. Storey took a survey of the room she came out of. It corresponded to the room below, but the stone walls had never been finished off with panelling. It contained nothing but some miscellaneous litter such as bundles of old papers, books, etc., all thick with dust. One of the books was a big scrap-book stuffed with press clippings. Mme. Storey's eyes gleamed at the sight of it. She said:

  "Bring it downstairs, Bella. It may prove valuable."

  As we were rounding the stairs, we heard a strange cry from Norbert Starr below: "Mary!...Oh, my God, what are you doing here?"

  "Ah, poor souls!" murmured Mme. Storey.

  When we got into the room the two had run together. Seizing Mr. Starr by his two elbows, the girl gave him a little shake in her relief and joy. Her frozen face melted; speech returned to her.

  "Oh, Norbert!...Oh, Norbert! Thank God you're all right. I could not be sure...I could not be sure what had happened!"

  The man's harassed face grew soft and youthful and he looked down at her. Clearly he forgot everything else when their eyes met. The girl, too.

  "But, Mary, how did you get here?" he murmured.

  "Oh, how can I tell you?" she said with a shudder. "It's been so dreadful and confused!...But it doesn't matter now. If you are safe."

  Anders grew very impatient at being excluded from the scene. He assumed to be filled with moral indignation. "Come, Miss," he said sharply, "you must give some account of yourself."

  The girl turned from Mr. Starr. A little colour had come back to her face, and she was getting her grip again. She had not yet perceived what was lying under the green shroud, because the big desk was in the way.