Torn between Lovers

by Frank Howell Evans

“Hurt myself?” exclaimed the colonel, with contempt. “It’s a mere scratch.”

  “But, Monsieur, it drew the blood,” replied the detective, emphatically. “We know there is the blood on the knife now, so we will never know whether there was the blood on it before.”

  There was a silence. Then Lord Charles said, with a brusqueness quite alien to his nature, “But I saw a man in the corridor.”

  “But Monsieur,” answered detective Poiret with a face full of curiosity, “so did Monsieur le Colonel and that, it makes it improbable.”

  Before either man could make sufficient sense of his words to answer, Poiret had politely excused himself and gone stumping up the corridor with his gorgeously crafted cane.

  On a big ship, with only fifteen passengers, it was not surprising that breakfast was spent discussing and gossiping about the events of the night before. This happened in a hush voice as the men it concerned were also at table, quietly eating their breakfast. The true reason, of course, for all the gossip was the persons involved. The victim was a popular actress. The accused was a rich publisher and he had been caught red-handed, as it were, by a hero of the last war. In those extraordinary circumstances the passengers, who were not directly involved were shocked into curiosity and excitement even.

  The formal proceedings after breakfast were open to all and attended by all. It was presided over by Captain Tomkinson, as the highest authority on the ship. He was one of those captains, who are jeered at as humorous men of authority, but who are generally much more serious than the serious men of authority, for their levity comes from a professional solemnity. Serious men of authority, on the other hand, are filled with frivolity, because they are vain. As Poiret was the only man, who would know how to conduct a murder investigation, the captain asked him to fulfill the role of prosecutor during the procedure. He impressed on all to respect his role and to answer all his questions. The prisoner was brought in by three burly crew members, who sat him down and surrounded him.

  The medical evidence was clear. The ship’s surgeon testified that Michelle Murs had been stabbed with a sharp instrument such as a knife or dagger, an instrument of which the blade was long. The wound was in the back, and she had died instantly. When the doctor first saw her she could hardly have been dead for twenty minutes. Therefore when Poiret found her she could hardly have been dead for three.

  Poiret testified that there was proof of a struggle, the tearing of the dress at the shoulder, but that this did not seem to fit in well with the direction the final blow had come from. When these details had been supplied, though not explained, the first of the witnesses was called.

  Lord Charles gave evidence as he did everything else that he did, not only well, but perfectly. Though himself much more important than the captain, he conveyed exactly the measure of respect due to a captain of a ship investigating a murder. Though the audience looked at him as they would at a minister or a bishop, they had nothing but praise for his part in the proceedings as he behaved like a perfect gentleman. He was also refreshingly clear, as he was on his boards of directors.

  He testified that he had been calling on Miss Murs at her stateroom. He had met Colonel Drewitt-Barlow there. They had been joined for a short time by the accused, who had then returned to his own cabin. They had then been joined by detective Poiret, who asked for the deceased lady. Miss Murs had then gone outside her stateroom into the corridor, in order to point out to Colonel Drewitt-Barlow, where he could find the purser, to buy her her favorite flowers. The witness had remained in the cabin, exchanging a few words with the detective. He had then distinctly heard the deceased, having sent the colonel on his errand, turn round laughing and run down the corridor towards its other end, where the prisoner’s stateroom was. Curious as to the whereabouts of the young lady, he had left the cabin and strolled to one end of the corridor himself and looked down it towards the publisher’s door.

  “What did you see, Monsieur?” asked Poiret, enjoying the audience’s curious eyes on him.

  “I saw something in the corridor.”

  Lord Charles allowed an impressive interval, during which he looked down, and for all his usual composure seemed to become pale.

  Then the detective said in a lower voice, which seemed at once encouraging and creepy, “Did you see it clearly, Monsieur, this something?”

  Lord Charles, no matter how much his brain was in a whirl, had his excellent brains in full working-order.

  “Very clearly as regards its shape, but quite indistinctly, indeed not at all, as regards the details inside the shape. The corridor was not very well lit on the captain’s orders, as we all know and the length of the corridor is such that anyone in the middle of it appears quite black against the dim light at the other end.” The witness lowered his steady eyes once more and added, “I had noticed the fact before, when Colonel Drewitt-Barlow first entered it.” There was another silence, and Captain Tomkinson made a note on a sheet of paper in front of him.

  “Well,” he said, “what was the shape like? Was it, for instance, like the figure of the murdered woman?”

  “Not in the least,” answered Lord Charles quietly.

  “What did it look like to you?”

  “It looked to me,” replied the witness, “like a tall man.”

  A sailor burst into the room and quickly walked to the captain and exchanged a few hushed words with him. The captain looked upset and sprang up. He signaled to the doctor and Poiret to follow him.

  “Every one, please remain seated. We will continue in five minutes,” he said and rushed out of the door.

  Padgett, the maid had not been at the proceeding, though she had been requested to attend. In the maid’s former mistress’s stateroom they could see the reason for her absence.

  “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Poiret, touched.

  The maid lay on her mistress’s bed, clad in one of her outrageous stage costumes. A bottle of sleeping medicine was on a dresser nearby, next to an empty glass. The doctor examined her. He shook his head. She was dead.

  “Poor girl,” sighed the captain. “Let’s not touch anything and leave everything undisturbed. Let’s lock the door and proceed first with the investigation into the murder of her employer.”

  The captain ushered the other men out of the room and locked it. With a calm expression on his face he walked back to his stateroom and sat down again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we are ready to continue with the proceedings. Mr. Poiret, if you will?”

  Poiret said simply, but quite brutally, “Monsieur, why were you at the cabin of Mademoiselle Murs?”

  The captain gave Poiret a look, but then looked at Lord Charles, still sitting on the chair reserved for the witnesses. Everyone turned his eyes on him. He seemed to be holding their eyes away from the prisoner, but they felt his presence. Tall as Springfield was to the eye, he seemed to become taller and taller as the horror of the murder became clearer.

  “I loved her,” said the lord, humbly.

  Poiret nodded, satisfied and resumed his seat with a solemn face, smoothing his gorgeous dark grey suit, and white and blue striped silk tie. After a few more questions from the captain, Lord Charles stood up to leave. Poiret suddenly sprang up and stopped him.

  “Poiret, he shall only detain you for a moment,” said Poiret. “Please to tell to us, Monsieur, how you knew the shape, which you could not see clearly in the dark corridor, it was the man?”

  A faint smile seemed to pass over Lord Charles’s fine face. “I’m afraid it is the vulgar test of trousers,” he said. “When I saw light between the legs I was sure it was a man. Wouldn’t you, sir?”

  Springfield’s wild eyes turned on him as suddenly as a hurricane. “So, you confess,” he cried, “that at first you thought it was a woman?”

  Lord Charles looked troubled for the first time. “That’s hardly a point of fact,” he said, “but if you and with the captain’s permission,” and he nodded in the direction of Poiret and then Captain Tomlins
on, “would like me to tell you about my first impression, of course I shall do so. There was something about the shape that was not exactly a woman and yet was not quite a man. It was something different. And it had long hair.”

  “Thank you,” said the captain, and added a note on his sheet of paper.

  Colonel Drewitt-Barlow was a far less composed witness than Lord Charles, but his account of the opening incidents was the same. He described the return of Springfield to his own cabin, the dispatching of himself to fetch a bunch of yellow roses, his return to the upper end of the corridor, the figure he saw in the corridor, his suspicion at first of Lord Charles, and his struggle with Springfield. But he couldn’t give any profound information about the black figure that he and Lord Charles had seen. Asked by the captain about its shape, he said he did not have the eyes of a hawk, a somewhat obvious sneer at Lord Charles. Asked if it was a man or a woman, he said it looked more like a brute, with a snarl directed at the prisoner. He was visibly shaken with sorrow and sincere anger, and the captain, looking at Poiret, quickly excused him from confirming facts that were already clear.

  Poiret stood up and was also brief in his cross-examination, although, as was his custom, even in being brief, he seemed to take a long time about it.

  “Monsieur, you used the remarkable expression,” he said, looking at Drewitt-Barlow. “Please to tell to us, why you said that it looked more like the beast than the man or the woman?”

  The colonel seemed to become agitated. “Perhaps I ought not to have said that,” he said; “but when the animal has humped shoulders like a gorilla, and hair sticking out of its head like a horse…”

  The captain cut short his obviously exaggerated statement. “Never mind that,” he said. “Was it a woman’s shape?”

  “A woman’s?” exclaimed the weary war horse. “My goodness, no man, no!”

  “Lord Charles said it was,” commented the captain, swiftly. “Now tell us, sir, did the figure have any of those feminine shapes to which our previous witness alluded so eloquently? No? Not feminine? The figure, if I understand you, was rather bulky and square?”

  “Maybe he was bending forward,” said the colonel, in a hoarse voice.

  “Or, Monsieur,” said Poiret, turning to the audience, “he was not.”

  This ended the soldier’s time on the witness stand. The third witness was Poiret himself, who sat down on the chair the other two men had occupied before him and waited for the captain’s questions. They were long in coming. The captain seemed to be busy looking at his notes and discussing some or another matter with the doctor, who had just joined him after examining the dead maid more thoroughly. When the interrogation began, the captain was adamant to show that his surrogate prosecutor would be held to the same standard as all other witnesses. Therefore he took Poiret up sharply when he began, in his usual dramatic way, to say who he thought the figure in the corridor was, the captain told him that he did not want his theories.

  “You,” said the captain, “may know a lot about investigating crimes, but I know a lot about conducting hearings.”

  Poiret raised his eyebrows in anger, but before he could say a word the captain continued.

  “A black figure was seen in the corridor. And you say you saw it. Well, tell us, what shape was it?”

  Poiret shook his head, angrily. “The shape,” he said, testily, “it was the short and rotund shape, but had at the top the round shape, like the huge egg.”

  “Oh! A huge egg, no doubt,” exclaimed the captain, looking at the audience in triumphant jocularity. “It was a giant bird’s nest with giant eggs.”

  “Monsieur, please not to twist the words of Poiret,” said the detective, furiously, “Poiret, he knows who the shape, it was.”

  Those in the captain’s stateroom listening to the riveting eye witness reports had forgotten the man in the dock and thought only of the dark figure in the corridor. And the figure in the corridor, described by three respectable men, who had all seen it, was shifting shapes. One had called it feminine in appearance. The other had called it a monster. The detective, absurdly, had described it as looking like an egg.

  The captain looked at Poiret with piercing eyes. “You are an extraordinary witness,” he said, “and I must admit there is something about you that makes me think you are telling the truth. So, please tell us who the figure was you saw in the corridor?”

  “C’etait moi, Poiret,” said Poiret, triumphantly.

  The captain sprang to his feet, and said quite calmly, “You?”

  Poiret nodded. “Poiret, oui, Monsieur.”

  The captain gasped for air for a moment, then sat down. He asked an apparently disconnected question, “You have seen the dagger. The doctor said the crime was committed with a blade.”

  “The long blade,” assented Poiret, nodding solemnly like an owl, “but why the dagger? The crook of Monsieur Springfield, it has the end, which it is capable of piercing the flesh.”

  The audience could not quite understand the idea that the detective had seen himself murder the young woman with a sharp shepherd’s crook. The general impression was that the little detective had literally gone insane. But the captain still looked at him with bright and steady eyes, full of interest.

  “Mr. Poiret, did you murder the unfortunate young lady?”

  Poiret raised his head high in the air and with some importance replied, “There was Monsieur Maxwell, Monsieur le Colonel, Monsieur Springfield, Poiret and not to forget, Mademoiselle Padgett.” He looked at the audience and smiled a little. “Anyone, they could have committed the crime as at any moment, each one, he was alone. But the crime it was committed with either the dagger given to Mademoiselle Murs as the present or the shepherd’s crook belonging to Monsieur Springfield. But not to make the mistake. At the time of the murder,” said Poiret, standing up and pacing up and down the room excitedly, “neither weapon, it was in the hands of its owner. The dagger, it was in the room of the poor young woman, who fell victim and the shepherd’s crook, Poiret he saw it in the hands of the maid, until she left the room to take it to the room of Monsieur Springfield.”

  “Murderer!” cried Colonel Drewitt-Barlow.

  “If Mr. Springfield murdered her with his cane,” said the captain, “he must have thrust it from four yards away. How do you account for the signs of struggle, like the dress dragged off the shoulder?” He had slipped into treating his witness as an expert, but no one seemed to notice it.

  “The dress, it was torn,” said Poiret, “because there was the fight, ending in the death of the young woman. It is not logical to assume she was murdered by the crook as it is easier to murder at close distance with the knife than with the long crook. She then would have the time to cry for the help. The murder, it was quick.”

  “Who, sir? Who did it?”

  “Only three persons, they had the access to the dagger. Monsieur Springfield, he had left early. The colonel, he had already left the room on his errand to buy the favorite flowers of Mademoiselle Murs. They could not have taken the knife. It was still in the cabin. Only Mademoiselle Padgett, Monsieur Maxwell and Poiret could have taken it. The innocence of Mademoiselle Padgett, it is clear.”

  “Poiret, I understand your emotions, for we all feel for the poor maid taking her life, because of the death of her mistress, but we cannot let our feelings stand in the way of a proper scientific conclusion.”

  Poiret looked at the captain and then said, “Monsieur, you are correct! A thousand apologies. The order and the method, it must be maintained.”

  “So we are down to three possible perpetrators. There is you, Lord Charles and Miss Padgett.”

  “When Mademoiselle Padgett, she left the room to take the walking stick to the cabin of Monsieur Springfield, she was wearing the dress without the pockets and Poiret, he did not see her take the dagger with her.”

  The audience gasped as one. The captain stood up and waved to the men guarding the publisher. They moved away from him.

  “
Did you murder the young lady, Mr. Poiret?”

  “Non, he did,” said Poiret simply and pointed at Lord Charles Maxwell.

  The captain frowned, hesitating for a moment.

  “Lord Charles, forgive me, but it is my duty as the captain of this ship to ask you this question. Did you murder the poor young woman?”

  “No,” came the calm answer.

  “I thought not,” said the captain and turned to Poiret. “It must have been the figure you all saw in the corridor.”

  “There was not the mysterious figure in the corridor,” answered Poiret.

  There was another vast and unnatural silence. The captain spoke, “Explain yourself, sir.”

  “When Poiret, he looked down the corridor, he saw himself, in the mirror of the door of the cabin, which it was open. And so did Monsieur Drewitt-Barlow, who saw the shape of the gorilla.” The audience laughed.

  The captain leaned back in his chair with an air in which it was hard to not notice his cynicism. “And can you tell us why,” he asked, “you should know your own image in a mirror, when two such distinguished men don’t?”

  Poiret blinked painfully, then he stammered, as all looked at his exquisite dress and his luxurious mustache and his well-groomed dandyish appearance, “Monsieur, it is the mystery to Poiret.”

  The audience laughed again as Poiret turned to Lord Charles, “But Monsieur Maxwell, he lies and says he saw the woman. Monsieur, it is clear to Poiret that Monsieur Drewitt-Barlow and Monsieur Springfield and the poor maid, they were innocent and it was you…”

  “Or you,” said Lord Charles defiantly.

  “…who took the knife, you had given to the young woman as the present and murdered her in the corridor after she left the room of the man she had lost her heart to. You see how happy she is and you know she will never be yours and in a moment of the rage you grab her, her dress, it is torn, and then you thrust the dagger into her as she turns to flee.”

  The lord remained silent, feeling all eyes on him.

  “I owe you no explanation, except to say you are wrong.” He stood up and walked to the door.