In the Shadow of Agatha Christie

by Leslie S. Klinger

  He usually sat in her favorite place, at an oblong table that stood in front of two long, narrow windows. Voluminous curtains of gold and amber brocade covered the windows and the wall space between them, and these rich draperies made a splendid background for powder and diamonds, brilliant eyes and complexion; and her visitors, who noted Mrs. Fermor’s preference for this particular table, were wont to ascribe the choice to vanity.

  The game affected at that time, and in that particular circle, was a development, or at least a modification, of faro. Challoner, as deputy host, took the bank, and did his utmost to keep the play low; such play as would have provoked the scorn of those fine gentlemen Horace Walpole writes about, who could make love at the end of the room, while they were risking thousands on the turn of a card at the other end. Sybilla’s luck seemed to have passed to her lover. Moderate as the play was, his winnings were not altogether despicable. He handed them to his mistress to dispose of among those insatiable creditors who made her life a burden.

  “Another sop for Cerberus,” she would say, laughingly, as she put his money in her apron pocket. “You really ought to play a bolder game, since Fortune is so kind to you.”

  “I doubt I am unwise to play at all, Sybilla; for, after all, it is only letting you gamble behind a mask.”

  “Pshaw, child, somebody must play for politeness sake; or people will leave off coming to my house. They would fancy themselves reproved by my self-denial. No, so long as I have my day and my evening in this court suburb, somebody must make my house pleasant.”

  She teased her lover until one night he consented to play high, still at her favourite table, with the background of voluminous brocade. A circular mirror, surmounted by a brazen eagle, occupied the only wall-space between the amplitude of the curtains, but the candles in the brazen sconces, on either side of the glass, were never lighted. Mrs. Fermor declared they threw the players’ cards into shadow. There were only a pair of candles on each card-table, and people often complained to one another that Mrs. Fermor’s drawing-room was too ill lighted for anything but a camera obscura.†

  “If the play is to be serious, love, you had best seek some other amusement than to watch my cards.” Challoner said, before he took his seat. “Your presence makes all other things seem trivial.”

  “What! May I not be your adviser?” she asked.

  “I would rather play my own hand.”

  “As you will,” she said, and turned from him with a vexed air, to lavish her attentions upon a wit of 70, whose conversation so amused her that a ripple of youthful and aged laughter was wafted to Colonel Challoner’s ear as he sat at cards, and distracted him greatly. Indeed, he soon found he was no better off for having got rid of his adviser, since his glances were continually wandering towards that distant corner where the ancient jest-maker was lolling across the spinet, looking up at Mrs. Fermor, and where a brace of younger sparks had joined them.

  He knew that he was playing wildly—backing weak cards, doubling the stakes, just when he ought not. His luck had turned.

  “She is my luck,” he thought, “and without her I am nothing.”

  He tried to catch her eye; but she did not look his way—till the end of the hand, when, as he flung his losses on the table, she turned suddenly and looked at him across all the length of the room as if the jingle of his guineas had attracted her.

  He beckoned her with a glance. She left her friends instantly and came gliding to his elbow.

  “Well,” she whispered, “have you lost much?”

  “Only a month’s pay. Not worth speaking of, so long as you are pleased.”

  “I am not pleased. You should let me advise you. Fairy Goodluck was not at your christening.”

  She established herself in her old place, hung over his chair, cut the cards for him; and with pretty impetuous movement flung the cards that were done with from the table to the floor. The perfume that hung about her lace and frippery, the ivory whiteness, of her arm, the tapering hand, the music of her sotto voce speech, these were the ingredients in the intoxicating cup which she brewed for him nightly. He was not master of his wits, he was not master of himself, when she hung over him, when her hair touched his brow and her breath fluttered on his cheek, and he scarcely knew what he dealt, or to whom he dealt, scarcely knew whether he was winning or losing, had but one desire, one impulse—to draw the lovely head down to his breast, and lose himself in the witchcraft of her kisses.

  The game was played with two packs shuffled together, and the banker might have the cards cut by whomsoever he chose; by the black footman handing chocolate if he thought blackie would bring him luck. Colonel Challoner’s luck was at his elbow in the dazzling white hand, which scarce needed the sparkle of diamonds—the restless impetuous hand, which swooped upon the cards like a white bird, quick and eager. It was growing late, and pack after pack had been thrown down since the game began, until the floor about the table was scattered thick with cards. The losers had begun to look at their watches and yawn ostentatiously. The bank was winning steadily, when one of the men who had been losing, cried out:—

  “I protest against that Queen of Hearts. It is the third that has been played since the pack was cut? And ’tis not the first time I have suspected an interloping honour. No wonder you are so fortunate a banker, Colonel Challoner. Some good fairy doctors your cards. I’ll wager that previous packs would prove as rich in winning cards as the last Mrs. Fermor flung on the floor, if anyone would take the trouble to hunt for them.”

  If anyone would take the trouble? All the seven players were down on their knees within the next minute, gathering up the scattered cards, counting, sorting, arranging, and oh! that terrible array of honors, damning evidence of somebody’s dishonour, which Sir Lomax Treherne, the man who had given the alarm, laid out on the card-table. A king of spades not accounted for; ace of diamonds, not accounted for; and so on, and so on. The packs which had been gathered up and sorted were complete without those cards.

  Colonel Challoner stood in the midst of the excited babblers, white as marble, silent, till the last card had been picked up.

  “This matter concerns you and me primarily, Sir Lomax,” he said; “and I think we can settle it without any fuss. My friend shall wait upon you.”

  He walked out of the room without another word, without one look at the woman who stood with her powdered head against the blue and gold brocade, her tall slim figure leaning against the curtained wall, smiling at the company with tremulous lips, that convulsive smile accentuated by carmine, fanning herself, and saying over and over again: “’Tis all vastly absurd. I protest not one of you knows how to count a pack of cards.”

  Mrs. Fermor’s black footman had little rest that night, but was kept trudging about upon his lady’s service. He carried a letter to Colonel Challoner’s suburban lodging; and was told there was no answer, but on going back to his mistress she stormed at him, wrote another letter, longer, more passionate than the last, and despatched him again, bidding him not to return to her without Colonel Challoner’s reply, if he valued his life.

  “I shall kill you if you come back empty handed,” she cried. Day was dawning when he brought his mistress Challoner’s letter, for which he had waited more than an hour, sitting in darkness on a bench in the entrance hall. Mrs. Fermor’s hands shook as broke the seal, and her scowling brow told poor Scipio that she was not much better pleased with her lover’s letter than she had been by his silence. She stared at the letter with heaving breast and quivering lips, then crushed the paper suddenly, and turned on the weary African as if he had offended her.

  “Go to bed, fool,” she said; “but be sure you are up and dressed before 8 o’clock, and ready to go on an errand.”

  It was now five, a summer morning, and the birds were singing in the hawthorns and lilacs that screened Mrs. Fermor’s garden from the high road. She snatched up her hood, with a sudden design of going to her lover’s lodgings, to fling her arms about his neck and hold him back from
death, as Circe might have held him; for, though his letter contained nothing but an icy farewell, she knew that a duel between him and Treherne was inevitable. She would have gone to him, secure in her power to mould him to her will, but, as she stopped automatically before her looking-glass to put on her hood, the reflection she saw there in the clear morning light made her change her mind. Was that haggard countenance, plastered with white lead and ceruse, with drawn features and purple lips, a face to work Circean spells. To see her as she looked this morning in the searching eastern light, would be enough to break love’s spell at its strongest. No, she would not try to see him. She would write to him again and again, passionate protestations of love, piteous entreaties, fevered words blotted with tears. Could he resist such an appeal?

  “For my sake—for my sake—refuse to meet the man. Tell him that I, and I alone, was the cheat; that you have done with me for ever. I care not what shame I have to endure. I can hide myself from the world, turn Catholic, and bury myself alive in a convent; but, oh, if you have a spark of mercy in your nature, let me not suffer the agony of knowing that I killed you—that you flung away your life because of my sin. My love—my husband that was to be—have pity upon me. I will never ask to see you again, if you would have it so. Live a stranger to me, if you will; only live, live, live; and save the woman who adores you from madness.”

  Those were the closing sentences of a long letter—a letter of passionate recapitulation—such a letter as distracted women write, drowning meaning in a torrent of words. A letter which generally fails in its purpose.

  Scipio carried the letter to Challoner’s lodgings at 8 o’clock, and brought home the fatal news. Colonel Challoner had left the house in a coach at half-past 7, with two other gentlemen. He had been heard to tell the coachman to drive to Ham-common.

  Mrs. Fermor went about the house all day, smiling, and talking to herself, as she had talked to her departing guests the previous night. “So vastly absurd! Was there ever such a ridiculous mistake?” Dear Lady Sarah could not conceive that she tampered with the cards. If there were too many honours it was the cardmaker’s error. The cards came into her house in sealed packets, and she never touched them till the game began. She still smiled her strange artificial smile, still talked to herself or to any rare visitor in the same strain, long after Colonel Challoner had been lying in Petersham churchyard, shot through the heart by Sir Lomax Treherne.

  She was quite mad, but quite harmless. She lived for many years in this piteous condition, and used to walk about Richmond with an attendant, pointed out as the poor lady that had lost her wits after the tragical death of her lover, who had been discovered cheating at cards, and had been killed in the duel which followed that discovery.

  * A lady’s personal maid (the term is based on the name of a servant in a 1616 play).

  † A darkened enclosure in which images of objects might be projected through a pinhole—a form of entertainment among the rich.

  Anna Katharine Green is often called “the mother of the detective novel” (though that laurel should properly be worn by the little-remembered Seeley Regester). Her first ambition was to write romantic verse. However, Green achieved immediate success with her first novel, The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story, published in 1868, featuring New York police detective Ebenezer Gryce. The book was not only popular but well-received critically; Agatha Christie herself later expressed that the book influenced her writing. In three later novels, Gryce is joined by a nosy spinster named Amelia Butterworth. Green produced almost forty books, and she was highly regarded for her ingenious plots and careful use of evidence. Green’s father was a lawyer, and her understanding of criminal law is well in evidence throughout her work. Green also wrote nine stories about a young female detective, Violet Strange, who is a debutante and secretly works with a detective agency. These were collected in The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange, first published in 1915.

  MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN

  ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

  I.

  One more! just one more well-paying affair, and I promise to stop; really and truly to stop.”

  “But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for yourself,—or very nearly,—and though my help is not great, in three months I can add enough—”

  “No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact, I am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you cannot, in your position, make enough in three months, or in six, to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me. The measure must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure following promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called upon to do this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the Zabriskie tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to put it out of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible—”

  “No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would have been driven to shoot himself—”

  “But not her.”

  “No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes of perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of miserable life?”

  Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this Arthur? Had a few weeks’ work and a close connection with the really serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:

  “Forget it, Violet; only don’t let anyone or anything lead you to interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only behave; that’s all.”

  “He’s right,” she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away; “altogether right.”

  Yet because she wanted the extra money—

  The scene invited alarm,—that is, for so young a girl as Violet, surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight. An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a woman’s form leaning eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It vanished while she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to her seat for one startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had anticipated adventure. One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a dozen miles into the country on an errand of investigation, without some expectation of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature, and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an indefinable fear which no words can explain and no plummet sound.

  But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of a man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman, and it was not only that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted—a friend whose very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a better understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.

  “You here!” she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into the hall.

  He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for the presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There was trouble in the house—great trouble. Something had occurred for which an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He knew it was late—that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary ride alone, but her success with
the problem which had once come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the office and—“But you are in ball-dress,” he cried in amazement. “Did you think—”

  “I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go home. I had been bidden to hurry.”

  He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:

  “This is the situation. Miss Digby—”

  “The lady who is to be married tomorrow?”

  “Who hopes to be married tomorrow.”

  “How, hopes?”

  “Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here leave for their homes.”

  Violet uttered an exclamation.

  “Then, Mr. Cornell—” she began.

  “Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence,” Roger hastened to interpose. “But the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire to possess and which he alone of all present had the opportunity of securing. You can therefore see why he, with his pride—the pride of a man not rich, engaged to marry a woman who is—should declare that unless his innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St. Bartholomew will remain shut tomorrow.”

  “But the article lost—what is it?”

  “Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive you,” he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.

  Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in which they stood.

  “Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I know. She lives in the city.”

  “And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never been here before?”

  “I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an exciting place for an investigation!”