Afterward, too, she remembered that they talked, in circles, of the murder. The detective did not telephone and did not come. About ten, however, there was a telephone call for Jevan. He returned from it looking pleased. “It was Willy,” he said but did not explain. “My bags have come; Bench put them in my room. Here’s something I want you to take.”
He had a glass of water and a capsule. “It’s a sedative. I got it from Cary.”
“But I——”
“Take it”
She took it, choking a little on the capsule. He stood a moment looking down at her. “That’s good,” he said, then abruptly, “Good night, Dorcas.”
He went away abruptly, too, closing the door firmly, and did not return.
All night long the wind and sleet continued intermittently. Now and then Dorcas roused to hear sleet beating gustily at the black windows. Morning was still cold and dark. Mamie brought her breakfast tray and a wool jacket.
“It s bitter cold out, Miss Dorcas.”
“Are the morning papers here?”
“Mr Jevan has them.” Mamie smiled. “It’s good to have a man in the house, Miss Dorcas. We would have called the police this morning when Bench found it but I thought of Mr Jevan and he was informed and said not to call the police.”
“When Bench found what?” said Dorcas, sitting up abruptly. The dishes on the tray clattered and Mamie grasped and steadied it swiftly.
“That the house was entered last night, of course. I thought Mr Jevan had told you.” She gave Dorcas a curious, swiftly withdrawn glance and went to close the windows.
“The house entered! What on earth do you mean, Mamie? A burglar?”
Mamie’s neatly striped blue shoulders lifted.
“Nobody knows. Nothing was taken. It was the little door in the back—the grade door beside the basement steps. Standing wide open this morning, it was. Wind and sleet blowing in and the whole house open to any tramp going by. It’s just a lucky thing we weren’t all murdered in our beds.”
“What did Mr Jevan do?” inquired Dorcas slowly.
Again the woman gave her a veiled, swiftly withdrawn glance. She replied: “He came right away and looked and said not to call the police. Nothing was missing that we could discover. There were some smudges of dirt on the floor that might have been footprints but nothing else.”
“Where is Mr Jevan now?”
“Having his breakfast, miss. Shall I——”
“No, no,” said Dorcas quickly. “That’s all, Mamie. Thank you.”
So began Friday, March thirteenth—a dark, stormy day with lights on all over the great gloomy house. With newspapers and telephone calls and the doctor coming to see Cary. With caterers’ men removing chairs and ferns; with servants cleaning and rearranging the vast, chilly rooms downstairs. With roses all over the house left over from the wedding and fully opened so their fragrance drifted along the halls. With Marcus Pett arriving shortly before lunch.
The telephone calls that day were the worst, although the newspapers were even then, subtly, beginning to change. One of the newspapers carried along with the story of Ronald’s murder and on the front page a paragraph stating that Mr and Mrs Jevan Locke, whose marriage had taken place the day following the murder, had not yet gone on their wedding trip; it observed without further conjecture that they had been questioned by the police.
That was one of the more conservative newspapers. Dorcas did not see the Call.
But others did and went to telephones.
WHIPPLE HEIRESS HELD IN MURDER INQUIRY. The headline from the paper repeated itself endlessly over telephone wires, and eventually, a little cautiously, friends began to telephone to the Whipple house. Cary’s friends mostly, and loyally, yet with inquiries that were beginning to be a little edged with something more—or less—than friendly anxiety. However, that day the main note struck was indignation. WHIPPLE HEIRESS HELD IN MURDER INQUIRY: it was preposterous, outrageous. Yet—had the police really refused to permit Dorcas and Jevan to go on their wedding trip? And if so, why?
Sophie took most of the telephone calls, coming away with a wry face and giving very brief messages to Cary. “Mrs Mortimer telephoned,” she would say. And that was all. After the first few times Cary did not question further.
Jevan might have been a hundred miles away for all Dorcas saw of him that morning. He did not come to her room; she heard nothing of or from him until about eleven, when Marcus arrived.
They were waiting, Mamie told her, in her father’s study. Dorcas roused from staring out at the leaden sky and thinking in deep, troubled circles, dressed in one of her trousseau gowns, a soft, leaf-green wool, and went down. Her mother’s door was closed; Sophie was nowhere to be seen. In the drawing room men in gray aprons were carrying out pots of ferns. She went along the narrow hall and, again, entered her father’s study. Marcus bobbed up quickly from his chair. “Good morning, my dear. Good morning.” Jevan rose and said nothing.
Somebody pushed forward a chair for her. On the table was a leather brief case, packed and bulging. Marcus said: “It’s right that you should be present, my dear. I’m turning over your affairs to your husband. From now on you are his responsibility, not mine. Ha, ha. Well, now, here we are. Here we are.”
He looked old and tired in the cruelly clear light above his head. The pouches under his eyes were heavy; his hands trembled a little as he fumbled among the papers.
“Your wife is a very rich woman, Jevan,” he went on. “Here are the reports of all transactions I have made in her name. Here is my power of attorney—no, that’s a list of securities. Well, anyway, it’s here somewhere.” He dropped the papers, fumbled in an inner pocket for thick eyeglasses and adjusted them.
Jevan looked quietly at Dorcas. “We had an uninvited caller last night.”
“Mamie told me.”
“Apparently nothing was taken. There was no point in calling the police.”
“Police,” said Marcus. “What’s all this? Do you mean the house was entered?”
“Only that, apparently. A little door in the back was found open this morning. It’s very rarely used. Nobody could remember when it was last used. Nothing was taken, however.”
“Good God,” cried Marcus, his eyes bulging. “Good heavens! Why should anyone enter the house and not take anything? I mean—good heavens, Jevan, you should get the police.”
“Why?”
“Why! Because that’s what the police are for. Protection. Good God——”
“But, Marcus, nothing was stolen. What complaint would we have? Besides, I didn’t want to call the police.”
“But the thing is so pointless, so——”
“That’s it,” said Jevan. “No point to it. The door is now closed and locked and we searched the place and found no one.” He smiled a little ruefully. “Searching this house is no small job. The cellars alone—I didn’t know it was such an enormous house, Dorcas. There are fruit cellars and wine cellars and storage rooms and coal cellars. The laundry chutes alone are big enough for elevators—or nearly. Your father certainly had his notions of comfort. Or ideas about families; you ought to have had a dozen or so brothers and sisters. Even then the house would be too big. Ever been on the third floor, Marcus?”
Marcus shook his head. He looked a little bored and, under the harsh light, gray and lined as if overnight the thin, cobwebby film of old age had fastened itself upon him. Jevan went on cheerfully:
“Besides the servants’ rooms there’s a couple of game rooms; furniture all sheeted; a piano in one room; a billiard table so big it will have to stay here until the house dissolves, for it could never be moved. Well, anyway, we searched the place and I hope to God we never have to live here, Dorcas, I thought I was doing fairly well for a rising young broker but I can’t keep up a place like this.”
“You won’t need to,” Marcus pointed out. “There’s all Dorcas’ money——”
“No, thank you,” said Jevan politely. “I support my wife. At least I sup
ply her food and her roof. If she finds sable coats and star sapphires necessary to her existence she can go and buy them with her own money. But she eats my food and lives under a roof I can supply.”
“But, my dear boy!” Marcus was plainly aghast. “Here’s all this money. What are you going to do with it?”
“Turn it straight back to you. Form another trusteeship. Unless Dorcas wants to manage it herself.”
“Turn it——” Marcus dropped the papers in his hand and leaned back in his chair. His eyes bulged and his mouth opened. “Do you mean that, Jevan?”
“Certainly.”
“But Dorcas——”
“Dorcas has nothing to do with it.”
“But—but it’s her money.”
“She’s my wife. Unless she wants to manage the money herself. Do you, Dorcas?” he said directly.
“Yes,” said Dorcas. “No.”
“Huh,” said Marcus in a disorganized way.
Jevan smiled. “She means, I imagine, that she would have to learn. I can help her if she wants me to. But I’ll not take charge of her money and I’ll not use it and so far as I’m concerned you can simply take your papers back. Dorcas can go through them some day at her leisure. But in the meantime you’d better carry on. Right, Dorcas?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Dorcas a little reluctantly and Marcus jerked abruptly toward Jevan. “Carry on!” he cried sharply. “What do you mean?”
“It’s this business of Drew’s murder——”
“Unfortunate,” said Marcus, fingering his mustache. “Most unfortunate.”
“Well,” said Jevan dubiously. “I suppose you can call it that. At any rate you knew the police were here yesterday.”
“Yes.” He sat down.
“They are likely to come again. There’s no evidence, of course, that leads them to think either Dorcas or I had any—knew anything of the murder. There’s no reason, except the fact that we both knew him, to lead them to think that we can inform them of anything in his life or circumstances that would lead to the murderer.” He said it all coolly, very clearly, very definitely, and waited an instant for it to sink into Marcus’ troubled perceptions. “But nevertheless I think they’ll be back to question some more. It may be that for—oh, some time (until they find the murderer or get some line on him) we’ll be sort of preoccupied with the affair. I hope not. As soon as they let us, however, we’ll take our honeymoon trip. When we return Dorcas will examine all these reports. I’ll help her if she wants me to. But until then I think you’d better go on as usual. If you will. Does that suit you, Dorcas?”
“Yes. Yes, perfectly. Will you, Marcus?”
“Why, of course. Certainly. By all means. My poor dear child, I know exactly how you feel.” He looked at the reports and apparently was aware of the faint trembling of his hands, like a beginning palsy, for he put them down tight upon the bundles of papers. “Certainly,” he repeated briskly. “But don’t thank me. Don’t thank me. I’m only too glad to do anything I can for you. And as a matter of fact it’s a very good arrangement. You can’t take things over in ten minutes time and the markets just now are very jumpy. Very jumpy,” said Marcus, thoughtful for an instant, with gray cobwebs over his face again. But he rose energetically. “Shall I take the reports with me, Jevan? Yes, I think I’d better just take them along.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Jevan rather quickly. “There’s a safe here somewhere, I expect.”
“Back of the picture,” said Dorcas and told them how to slide the stag aside and, when the safe was disclosed, how to open it.
“Somewhat antiquated,” said Marcus doubtfully. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take them to my office safe?”
Jevan frowned. “There’s nothing here a burglar might want, is there, Marcus?”
“No. No, certainly not.”
“They’ll be all right here then,” said Jevan and put the reports and the brief case in the safe. Marcus watched him a little dubiously but went away briskly enough, bowing gallantly over Dorcas’ hand and striding down the corridor with the step and carriage of a younger man. And he must have met the detective on the step, for he had barely gone, and Jevan had turned to Dorcas briskly and begun to say something about the trusteeship and Marcus, when Bench came to the study door. He looked pale and very distressed and said the man was there again.
“Who?”
“The police, sir. That is, the—the detective. The one that was here yesterday.”
He didn’t mention the two detectives who had accompanied Jacob Wait and neither Dorcas nor Jevan thought of them either, but thought instead and immediately of Wait.
“Oh,” said Jevan. “Wait.” He glanced at Dorcas. “Send him in.”
Dorcas was standing, her heart pounding furiously, her breath jerky. She clutched at the back of the chair near her with stiff, frightened fingers.
Jevan was standing, too, lighting another cigarette. Bench hesitated and said: “There’s a man with him. Not a police man. Shall I permit him——”
“Certainly. All of them.”
“Yes sir.”
“Jevan—I didn’t expect them so soon. What shall I——”
“I didn’t either. I thought there’d be time to talk. But there’d be nothing more to say. I mean, you’re to deny having been there. Deny everything. Believe me, it’s the only way to do; trust me, Dorcas.”
He said it suddenly, pleadingly. He took a long step nearer her and looked down into her eyes and said again: “Trust me—my wife.”
Dorcas did not speak. She was suddenly very much afraid of a little, sallow-faced man who walked like a cat and had somber dark eyes, and what Jevan said scarcely reached her. But he turned abruptly away and added in his usual, pleasantly impersonal way: “Take it easy, Dorcas. Try not to look so guilty.”
Bench came to the door and stood aside and Jacob Wait appeared in the doorway. His black, glossy hair made his features pale by contrast, looming out of the dimly lighted hall. He wore a heavy brown burberry; perhaps Bench had made no offer to take it from him. He looked at Dorcas and at Jevan and turned to someone following him.
“In here,” he said in an unexpectedly full, rich voice and entered the room. The man following him entered too. He was tall and extremely well built and did not wear a uniform but, instead, rather shabby dark clothing. He glanced at Jevan and very quickly away, as if he did not want to meet Jevan’s eyes. He looked fully and boldly at Dorcas, however, and Wait amazingly took a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the table. Jevan started to say something and stopped. Wait’s small, graceful hand lingered upon the bill and he said: “Well, how about it?”
The man replied at once. “That’s the woman,” he said. “That’s the woman who was with Drew the night he was killed. I’d know her anywhere.”
CHAPTER 11
IT WAS, IT MUST be, the doorman.
Dorcas sought for something memorable about him, something recognizable, but there was nothing. Jevan said: “Who is this? What do you mean by bringing this man here?”
“His name is McFee. He is the doorman for the apartment house where Ronald Drew lived. He saw Miss Whipple arrive with Drew and enter the apartment house a short time before Drew was murdered.”
“The man is mistaken,” said Jevan shortly. “He saw someone else. You can ask anyone in the house, Wait; they’ll tell you Mrs Locke was here. She has a perfect alibi.”
“Oh, has she,” said Wait. “Well, that’s fine. But she couldn’t be in two places at once. Therefore I am obliged to arrest——”
“What’s that hundred-dollar bill for?”
Wait smiled. “Doormen don’t customarily go about trying to change hundred-dollar bills. It’s routine; he was being watched and he tried to get change for it; in five minutes he admitted that he’d had a typewritten note enclosing the bill and telling him not to identify a woman he would be asked to identify.”
“So you think I gave it to him. You are wrong, Wait. Look a
t me, McFee.” McFee looked once in deep embarrassment and quickly away. “No, look at me. Now then, did you ever see me before?”
“No,” said McFee, not looking. “No sir.”
“Sure about that?” said Wait. “Remember the man who went up to Drew’s apartment later on. Are you sure this wasn’t the man?”
McFee’s Adam’s apple went up and down and he stared at the stag, who returned his gaze remotely.
“No, Mr Wait.”
“What’s that! Did you see this man? Can you identify him? Look at him.”
McFee wouldn’t. He gave one scared look at Wait and sought the stag again swiftly. “I meant, no sir, Mr Wait. I meant, I don’t know. I only saw the man enter the elevator. Just his back—a dark overcoat, a felt hat. I wouldn’t know him again. I didn’t see him leave. I’m new in the building and don’t know all the regulars yet. He might have been anybody.”
Wait stopped him. Jevan was smiling. Wait said quickly: “That’ll do, McFee.”
“There goes your witness,” said Jevan.
“He identified Mrs Locke,” said Wait. “Now then, Mrs Locke, when you went to Drew’s apartment with——”
Sophie opened the door and entered. Sophie, dressed for the street in a green tweed suit with the long coat fastened over a skirt which was undoubtedly much too tight.
“Dorcas,” she said, saw the two men and stopped too abruptly. McFee, clutched by the little silence, tore his eyes from the stag, saw Sophie, saw the green suit, let his jaw fall in a look of consternation and said: “Oh——”
“What is it, McFee?” cried Jevan quickly. “Is that the woman you saw?”
“Yes,” said McFee. “No. I don’t know. I——”
“Stop that,” snapped Wait. “Shut up, you fool, you. You’ve already identified the woman——”
“Not much of an identification, Wait,” said Jevan. “No. You’re wrong. He’s admitted before three people that he doesn’t know. That identification is no good All he remembers is a green suit. Any woman in a green suit would look like that woman you saw. Isn’t that right, McFee?”
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