"What is your name?"
"Oh, don't drag her into this!" Mr. Starr exclaimed involuntarily.
"I don't mind telling him," she said. "My name is Mary Lansdowne."
This name suggested nothing to Anders. Mme. Storey and I knew it before it was spoken of course. I was filled with a great compassion for the pair—a great curiosity, too. What on earth was the girl doing there?
"Please explain your presence in this house," said Mr. Anders.
"I came to see Mrs. Starr at her request," was the rather surprising reply.
Norbert Starr was frankly amazed.
"You were on friendly terms with her?" asked Anders.
"I was not on any terms with her. I had never seen her before."
"Yet you are friends with her husband, I judge."
"Mr. Starr and I are friends."
"Very intimate friends, I take it."
The girl's chin went up. "That is not a question, but an insinuation," she said with spirit. "What right have you to question me, anyway? Who are you?"
"Anders, County Prosecutor of Middlesex," he said with an affectation of boredom.
The girl was shaken. "What has happened here?" she demanded.
"Do you not know?" sneered Anders.
"If I knew I would not ask you."
"Mrs. Starr has been shot dead."
The girl gazed at him in silent horror; glanced around at the rest of us for confirmation. Involuntarily, our eyes turned toward what lay on the floor. She ran around the desk and looked. She drew a gasping breath in her throat, and turning, flung an arm up over her eyes to shut out the sight. Strong shudders went through her slender frame. Mr. Starr's eyes dwelt on her, half sick with solicitude; but he made no move to go to her.
Presently the girl said nervously: "Has been shot...has been shot? You mean she shot herself?"
"I do not mean that," said Mr. Anders.
"But she must have shot herself. There was no one else in the room."
"Where were you?" he asked significantly.
The girl pointed. "Behind the sliding door."
"Mary!...In God's name...!" gasped Mr. Starr.
Anders shrugged. "Well, Mrs. Starr was shot from behind. That's proven. Moreover, we have the pistol from which the shot was fired."
The girl looked at Mr. Starr with a horrified question in her eyes. Clearly, she could not put it into words.
A new strength had come into him since she had entered the room. "Yes," he said quietly, "they accuse me."
"That's ridiculous," she said quickly. "You were outside the door before the shot was fired."
"How do you know if you were hidden behind the panelling?" Anders asked quickly.
"I could hear everything in the room. I heard the door slam before the shot was fired."
"How do you know he didn't push the door shut and then shoot her."
The girl faltered. "She...she had threatened to shoot him."
Mme. Storey said softly: "The bullet is over here beside the door."
Anders smiled at her in an annoyed way. "Er—of course, of course. Supposing the girl to be telling the truth about the slamming of the door. But I am far from satisfied as to that. Her own position is a highly suspicious one." He turned to the butler. "Pascoe, did you know that this young woman was in the house?"
"No, sir."
"How could she have got in without your knowing of it?"
"I can't say, sir."
"It was by no honourable means, we may be sure," said Mr. Anders, answering his question to suit himself. "...What were you doing locked up in the room overhead?" he suddenly barked at the girl.
"I thought she had shot at Norbert through the door," the girl answered simply. "I was afraid she would try to shoot me next. I couldn't get out of the garden door, because she had locked it and taken the key. So I ran into the room overhead. The key was in the door, and I turned it to protect myself."
"Why did you not throw open one of the windows above and call for help?"
"I suppose that is what I should have done," she murmured. "I can see it now. But I was half distracted. I dreaded being mixed up in an ugly scandal. I thought it would only make it harder for Mr. Starr. I hoped that I would be able to find my own way out later."
"Ha! that sounds at least as if we were approaching the truth," sneered Mr. Anders.
Norbert Starr glared at him.
"Perhaps Miss Lansdowne will tell us how she came to be in the house in the first place," suggested Mme. Storey mildly.
"Certainly," said the girl. "I received a note from Mrs. Starr yesterday asking me to come to see her at ten o'clock this morning. I was astonished to hear from her at all, and still more astonished that it was a kindly seeming letter. She said in it that if we could talk together woman to woman perhaps I would find out that she was not so black as she had been painted. She...she..." The poor girl faltered. "It is difficult to speak of these private matters," she whispered.
"You are not obliged to tell!" Mr. Starr burst out.
"Silence!" cried Mr. Anders.
"Silence, yourself!" retorted Mr. Starr. "This happens to be my house!"
When this little flurry blew over, the girl said firmly: "I will tell everything. Everything must come out now...Mrs. Starr intimated in her letter that she was prepared to set Mr. Starr free under certain conditions. She asked me to meet her alone in a certain spot in the castle grounds, giving as her reason that she was continually spied upon by servants and others. This seemed like a natural enough reason to me. She further asked me not to tell Mr. Starr that I was coming, or he would be sure to dissuade me..."
Norbert Starr's face was a study throughout this. "Oh, Mary!" he murmured.
"It was a very clever letter," the girl continued, "and I was completely taken in by it. I have every confidence in Mr. Starr, but even so, it seemed natural to me after the intolerable injuries he had received at her hands, that he might not be altogether fair to her. Nobody had ever acted hatefully or maliciously to me, consequently I believed that everybody must be good at heart.
"So I came. I followed the directions in the letter; entering the park by a little-used gate, and meeting Mrs. Starr in the spot she had described. In manner she was as kind and gentle as her letter had been, and I was glad I had come. She frankly acknowledged her former faults, but said she had experienced a change of heart. Her whole object now, she said, was to make up as far as she could for all the unhappiness she had caused Mr. Starr. She said that the reason she had sent for me was to make sure that I was the sort of woman who could really make him happy. If I were, she would put no further obstacles in his way, she said.
"In a little while she suggested that I come to the castle with her, where we could talk more at our ease. She brought me here by a way known to herself through the woods and the rose garden. We met nobody. We entered this tower by a door from the garden which Mrs. Starr locked behind her. We had not been in this room but a few moments when there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Starr asked me to wait on the stairway while she found out who it was. I did not like that sort of thing, still under the circumstances it did not seem unnatural that she should ask it. So I waited on the stairway, and she closed the panel behind me.
"It was a servant who had knocked. To my dismay I heard him announce Mr. Starr. When Mrs. Starr told the servant to bring Mr. Starr to this room, I realised that I had been tricked.
"I rattled the panel—I did not know how to open it from that side; I begged Mrs. Starr to let me out before he came, or at least to give me the key that I might get out through the garden. She only laughed at me. What I heard would open my eyes, she said through the door.
"At first I would not listen to what took place between them. I ran down to the foot of the steps. But when the woman began to scream at him, I became afraid on his account. I came back...then I heard all that was said..."
"Oh, Mary!" Mr. Starr murmured in horror.
"It didn't hurt me," she said stoutly. "I am not made
of glass...I believe the poor woman was mad; mad with malice and hatred. Her object in getting me here was evidently to have me overhear her triumphing over Mr. Starr. But if that is so, it was not realised, for her foul abuse only reacted on herself. It never touched him.
"Her failure to move him aroused her in the end to a perfect frenzy. She screamed out that she'd kill him. I heard her fumble in the drawer of her desk for a gun. Then the door slammed and the shot rang out. I thought she had fired after him."
"Very interesting," said Mr. Anders with a disagreeable smile. "I am just going to ask you one little question." He paused for effect.
The girl looked at him as if puzzled to know what sort of disagreeable insect this could be. That glance of hers was a deadly affront to the little egoist.
"Are you prepared to produce the letter you say you received from Mrs. Starr?" he asked with an air.
"No, I burned it," she answered at once. "As she had in the letter asked me to do."
"How unfortunate!" said Mr. Anders sneering. "For I have established the fact that Mrs. Starr was shot by a woman or a short man."
This was pretty cool. I looked at Mme. Storey full of indignation, but she only smiled. When, oh, when, would she arise and crock this insect, I wondered.
"Miss Lansdowne is hardly five-foot-nine," Mme. Storey murmured.
"Oh, you cannot figure to a fraction of an inch," he retorted loftily. "A very pretty little plot is suggested here. It is too miraculous, the set of coincidences that brought them here at the same moment, the two people in the world most interested in putting this poor woman out of the way. Just what part each one played in the matter, I am not prepared to state without further investigation. In the meanwhile I shall of course order Miss Lansdowne's detention also."
"My detention?" gasped the girl, opening her eyes very wide.
"Detaining her!...Oh, you fool!" burst out Norbert Starr.
"Oh, doubtless, doubtless," said the little man, with a jocose smile at Kelliger, whose sympathy he could depend on; "but time will tell!"
VII
Mr. Anders had not yet published the sensational news broadcast, but he could not quite keep it to himself, either. He had telephoned to a certain Mr. Beckwith, who, it appeared, was chief of the selectmen or burgesses or whatever it was they called them, of Bellaire. In other words, the leading citizen of that suburb. He arrived at about the same time as the sergeant and constable.
Mr. Beckwith was a large, smooth, highly polished man. Besides running Bellaire in his off hours, he was a New York business man; vice-president of some Trust Company or another. In short, much more the experienced man of the world than little Anders, whose horizon was bounded by Patching Mountain and the Hohokus' meadows. When he was introduced to Mme. Storey, Beckwith's pale face shone with excited gratification.
"Mme. Rosika Storey?" he asked.
"The same," said my mistress.
"I am honoured...I am honoured," he said, bowing again and again. "Good Heavens, Anders!" turning to the other man, "how lucky we are to have the great Madame Storey to take an interest in this case."
Anders's jaw dropped as if its prop had been knocked from under. Behind the owlish glasses his eyelids made a thousand revolutions a minute. "Of course, of course!" he pattered. "Lucky indeed!" Meanwhile his bewildered face was mutely demanding: "But who the Hell is she?"
"Of course, in your business you know more about her work than I do," said Beckwith.
"Naturally."
"I shall never forget how she solved the Ashcomb Poor case. And the mysterious murder of that unfortunate girl up in Westchester County."
The prosecutor looked at my mistress as one might suppose the ugly step-sisters looked at Cinderella when the glass slipper went on. He gulped over the bitter pill. "Wonderful work," he said with a sickly smile. One could almost have felt sorry for him.
My mistress was too big a woman to rub it in. She smiled good-naturedly at little Anders. No one who did not know her as well as I did, could have perceived the humorous mockery in it.
"Mr. Anders," she said, drawing him a little apart, "before you have this man and woman taken away, indulge me just a little."
He was knocked quite flat. "Anything in my power," he murmured quite humbly.
"Let us suppose for the sake of argument that these two may be telling the truth. We have to admit that their stories dovetailed remarkably well."
"Oh, they fixed that all up beforehand," he said.
"Possibly. But just for the sake of argument...If they were telling the truth, there must have been a third person present in the room all the time."
"Obviously. But..."
"Well, before taking any action, let you and I pursue that possibility as far as it will take us."
"Just as you say, ma'am."
"If there was such a person in the room," Mme. Storey went on, "after firing the fatal shot, he or she ducked under the desk again as Mr. Starr ran back to see what had happened. Then when Mr. Starr ran out again to summon help, the murderer must have followed him out of the door, since Miss Lansdowne was hidden behind the door in the panelling. And since the murderer had been in this room even before Mrs. Starr and Miss Lansdowne talked here, he or she knew that Miss Lansdowne blocked the way out by the circular stair."
"Most ingenious," murmured Mr. Anders.
"But merely theorising, you would say," she put in good-naturedly. "Quite right...Well, give up ten minutes to accompany me on the trail of this supposed person, and if within that time we do not discover some facts to support the theory, I will retire."
"I am in your hands," he murmured submissively.
"Bella, you come with us," she said, "and you, please, Pascoe, to guide us through the house."
"May I come, too?" asked the fat Mr. Beckwith, eagerly.
"Ah, this is purely professional," said Mme. Storey with an apologetic smile. "We mustn't be too big a crowd."
He fell back disappointed. Anders, Pascoe and I followed Mme. Storey out of the room. Mr. Starr and Miss Lansdowne were left under guard of the various constables.
It was a queer sort of personally conducted tour that Mme. Storey took us. "The murderer would scarcely have followed Mr. Starr out into the main corridor," she said. "Let us see what alternatives there are. There are three other doors on this rear corridor. The first..."
"Mrs. Starr's bedroom," put in Pascoe.
"Ah, a noble room," said Mme. Storey as we entered, "with three tall windows facing the east such as a bedroom ought to have. The windows are open, but there are screens outside which have not been disturbed. The ground is about twenty feet below. There is but one other door in the room, and that leads to..."
"The bathroom," said Pascoe.
We all crossed this most luxurious cabinet which had nothing mediæval about it. It was lined throughout with green marble, and there was a vast bath let in flush with the floor, and quantities of brass-piping—or gold-plated, for aught I know.
"It has a door on the corridor we have just left," continued Mme. Storey, like one thinking aloud, "and a third door leading to..."
"Mrs. Starr's dressing-room," said Pascoe.
The dressing-room contained nothing but a great table standing in the window embrasure surmounted by an ingenious arrangement of mirrors which gave you a view of every angle at once without moving your head; also chests and chests of drawers. The walls all around were lined with wardrobes having glass doors.
"A businesslike place," remarked Mme. Storey dryly.
"Shall I search the wardrobes?" asked Mr. Anders.
"You may if you wish. But I think so cunning a criminal would scarcely..."
"The wardrobes are always locked," said Pascoe. "The keys are never out of the possession of Miss Woodley, Mrs. Starr's own maid."
So we went on.
There was no door from the dressing-room into the corridor, and we proceeded directly into the last room of the suite, which was known as the boudoir, according to Pascoe. In this, h
er own sitting-room, the mistress of the castle had given herself a free hand, and the resulting effect was one of the weirdest we had seen. Imagine a magnificent lofty chamber with a massive beamed ceiling, a superb fourteenth-century fire-place with projecting canopy, and along the south wall a whole row of tall pointed windows which looked out upon the central court of Bolingbroke, brilliant with clipped grass and parterres of many-coloured flowers. To complete it there should have been arras hanging before the stone walls; old faded rugs and a few pieces of heavy oak. But instead of that the stone walls were concealed behind hangings of pink taffeta—one wouldn't have thought there was so much pink taffeta in the world! The windows were curtained with it, the great corpulent chairs were upholstered in it, and there were besides a myriad lamp shades, cushions, screens. The floor was covered with a vast pink Aubusson carpet. Come to think of it, Mrs. Starr's instinct was not so far wrong after all. The boudoir must have made a fit setting for her.
Mme. Storey looked around her in an eloquent silence. Mr. Anders goggled at the pink taffeta.
Besides the door through which we had entered, there was a door from the corridor, and, diagonally across the room, a third door. Mme. Storey immediately proceeded to it, and opening it revealed a narrow landing and a stair descending. She looked at Pascoe inquiringly.
"For the servants," he explained. "So that Mrs. Starr could be waited on directly from below."
"This is the natural way out," said Mme. Storey. "Let us go down."
At the bottom of the stairs there was an ordinary door and window—once you left the show rooms of Bolingbroke the construction was frankly modern. Mme. Storey opened the door, and we looked into a sort of central servants' hall, from which corridors radiated in several directions, to storerooms, pantries, kitchens, no doubt. Half a dozen servants were within view. It appeared that work was still going on after a fashion, though the end of it all no longer existed.
"The murderer would not go this way if there was any other," said Mme. Storey. "Let us look at the window."
A sharp exclamation escaped from Pascoe. "Why, it's open!"
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