The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (ereader for comics txt) 📖

above. We read opposite 63—Aconitina. XIII

Mme. Storey sent for Jarboe, and Mr. Henry was locked in his bedroom.

The windows looked out upon a stone paved well or court about thirty

feet below, and there was no way he could have escaped short of wings.

However, the house was full of the young man’s friends, and my mistress

telephoned to Inspector Rumsey for a guard to be sent. This man,

Manby, was posted in the outer room of the suite. Jarboe was

heartbroken by this turn of affairs. We took nobody else into our

confidence. When Mrs. Varick learned her son was a prisoner we

expected the devil to pay.

 

Mme. Storey and I slept in the house. Early next morning the body of

Commodore Varick was privately removed to the family vault in Woodlawn

cemetery, there to await further orders from the police. There had

been no official reading of the will, but everybody in the house now

seemed to know what it contained. The Commodore had created a great

trust fund of which his wife was to be sole beneficiary during her

lifetime. Upon her death the fortune was to be divided into three

equal parts, of which one was to go to the New York Hospital, one to

the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one to Yale University. Mr.

Henry’s worst fear was not realized inasmuch as Mr. Theodore Varick’s

name did not appear.

 

In describing the dramatic scenes that took place inside the house, I

must not omit mention of the efficient, but quite unspectacular spade

work that was going on outside. There was a small army of operatives

engaged on the case. To ensure secrecy, Inspector Rumsey had agreed

that, at any rate for the first twenty-four hours, our men should be

principally used on this work. Every move of Dr. Slingluff’s and Miss

Priestley’s was shadowed. On Miss Gilsey we could get no line because

she lived in the house, and had never left it since the murder. The

valet, Gabbitt, and indeed, all the servants in the house were picked

up whenever they went out. Frequent reports from these operatives

reached Mme. Storey under cover to Mrs. Varick.

 

In addition to these outside men, our best operative, Crider, was

installed as a footman inside the house. Crider’s work however,

resulted in nothing. He complained that from the very first, every

servant in the house was aware of who he was, and became mum in his

presence. This looked as if Jarboe had played us false, since none but

he knew where Crider had come from. By a clever piece of detective

work the police had established that the first anonymous letter (the

one addressed to Inspector Rumsey) had been mailed in a pillar box on

Lexington Avenue somewhere between 36th and 42nd Streets shortly before

eleven on Tuesday night; whereas the second letter (addressed to Mme.

Storey) had been dropped in a chute at the branch post office in the

Grand Central Station at 3.30 on Wednesday afternoon. The peculiarly

formed characters had aided in the tracing of these letters.

 

A report had been received from the chemists to whom Commodore Varick’s

medicines had been sent the day before. It was to the effect that they

contained nothing but what was represented on the labels; the first, a

tincture of digitalis of the usual strength; the second, capsules

containing a simple compound of pepsin and bismuth.

 

Mme. Storey and I established ourselves in Commodore Varick’s office.

My mistress dictated to me some notes she had taken of an examination

of one of the maids while I was busy elsewhere. This maid, Nellie

Hannaford by name, had removed the tea things from the Commodore’s

study. Hannaford said she met nobody in the Commodore’s suite. She

said that Gabbitt had already been sent for to come to his master, but

there were three doors between her and the Commodore’s bedroom, and she

saw nothing, or heard nothing that led her to suppose the master had

been taken sick. In fact, she hadn’t heard anything about his sickness

until after he was dead.

 

She said she found on the study table two empty cups that had contained

tea, and another cup in the service pantry full of tea that had been

made and not drunk. Four of the tea balls had been used, indicating

that four cups of tea had been made. The cups belonged to a tea

service that was kept in the Commodore’s suite, and it was her duty to

wash them in the pantry, and return them to the shelves. She denied

having found a glass that had contained whisky and soda. (In making

this statement we supposed she was lying.)

 

“Who could the third cup of tea have been for?” I asked involuntarily.

 

“Think, Bella,” said my employer with a smile. “Surely it was obvious

when we questioned Henry Varick last night, that he did not go to his

father’s study alone. Mrs. Varick was out of the house, remember.”

 

The picture of a lovely blue-eyed face rose before my mind’s eye, a

face stony with distress. Estelle Gilsey! I thought in amazement.

Another one! Good Heavens! this young man was entangled amongst women

like a horseman in a thicket! While we were still engaged in routine

work Miss Priestley entered the room. The tall dark girl still had

faintly the look of one suffering from shock. Her curious parrot-like

utterance carried out the idea. What she said seemed to have no

relation to the remote, sombre glance of her dark eyes. It was her

room that we were working in, and Mme. Storey apologised politely.

 

“Oh,” said Miss Priestley with a gesture, “I scarcely know what right

I have here now that the Commodore is gone. The bottom has fallen

out of everything. It is just a blind instinct that brings me back to

finish his work as far as I can…. I will carry it into the study if

I am in your way.”

 

“No, indeed!” said Mme. Storey. “If anybody moves, it shan’t be you.

At present we are only engaged in routine work.”

 

Lighting a cigarette, my employer leaned back in her chair, and started

chatting with the girl in offhand, friendly fashion. She told Miss

Priestley many of the details of the case that had come to light

overnight, but not the more important developments. And then,

characteristically, she graduated by insensible degrees from the act of

giving information into that of seeking it.

 

“I expect that will be a very interesting book,” she remarked, with a

nod towards the pile of typescript that the secretary had taken from a

drawer.

 

“Oh, yes!” said Miss Priestley; “the Commodore was acquainted with all

of the most eminent persons of his time.”

 

“And, of course, his end will give the book a tragic interest now.”

 

“Oh, don’t!” said the girl with one of her curious wooden gestures.

“It is too dreadful to reflect that what you say is true!”

 

“Is it nearly finished?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“Yes. I shall be able to bring it up to the end of 1918. That will

include all the most interesting parts of the Commodore’s life.”

 

“How long had he been working on it?”

 

“Since last May. It is just a year since he engaged me to help him

with it.”

 

“A year!” said Mme. Storey. “Bless me! Isn’t that a long time to take

in writing a book? I understood that books were written overnight

nowadays.”

 

“Not this one,” said the girl patting the sheets. “The Commodore took

the greatest pains in polishing his style…. Besides, you must

remember that he was a man of many engagements. He could not spare

very much time to it.”

 

“Did he work on it when he was in Europe last winter?”

 

“No. He had no intention of doing so. The script was left at home.”

 

“What did you do during that time?”

 

“I stayed at home. The Commodore was good enough to pay me my salary

while he was away. I was so familiar with the work that he wished to

be sure of getting me to go on with it when he returned.”

 

“Was Mr. Henry interested in this work of his father’s?”

 

“I can hardly say that he was interested in it. Mr. Henry is not very

literary.”

 

“But he knew that it existed?”

 

“Oh, yes. He was in and out of the house all last summer at

Easthampton while we were working on it. A reconciliation took place

between Mr. Henry and his father in June, and he stayed a month with

us.”

 

The conversation was rudely broken off at this point. If my

description of the plan of the house was clear, it will be remembered

that the room beyond the Commodore’s office was Mr. Henry’s study.

There was a door between, but it was not used. I suppose it had been

locked when the rooms were first divided into suites. From the next

room we heard a suppressed shriek. Mme. Storey and I both jumped to

our feet, but Miss Priestley was before us. That strange girl, as if

electrified by the sound, was out of the door like a flash and in

through the next door, Mme. Storey and I making a bad second and third.

In Mr. Henry’s study the situation could be read at a glance. The

detective stood barring the way to the bedroom door. Facing him stood

Estelle Gilsey frozen with horror, one hand clapped over her mouth as

if to still an incontrollable need to shriek. A black dress emphasized

the fragility of her fair beauty. She turned to my mistress.

 

“He won’t let me in!” she gasped. “… He is a policeman! … Henry is

arrested…!”

 

Before my mistress could answer her Miss Priestley spoke. The dark

girl held herself like a very Juno then, her handsome face icy with

scorn. Her self-control was in very odd contrast to her mad dash out

of the room just now. Verily, as I knew to my cost, a woman’s

infatuation leads her to cut strange capers! I perceived in Julia

Priestley still another victim. She said with a superb air of scorn:

“What are you doing here?”

 

The blonde girl beyond half a glance paid no attention to her. She

repeated her agonised question of my mistress: “Is he arrested?”

 

“What are you doing in his room?” reiterated Miss Priestley. “In his

bedroom? Have you no shame?”

 

Miss Gilsey turned on her then. It appeared that the blue eyes could

flash sparks, too. “What business is it of yours?” she demanded.

 

“You would not have dared while the Commodore was alive!” cried the

other girl. “His body has scarcely been carried out of the house. You

are shameless!”

 

“Be quiet!” cried the blonde girl, stamping her foot. “Everybody knows

what’s the matter with you!”

 

What a scene! It appeared that the delicate little thing could show

her claws, too. We are indeed all alike under our skins. My mistress

was taking it all in with a sphinx-like regard. To add to the

confusion Mr. Henry began to pound on the other side of the bedroom

door. “Let me out! Let me out!”

 

Mme. Storey nodded to the detective, who thereupon opened the door.

Henry Varick seemed to catapult out of the inner room. He had eyes for

none of us except Miss Gilsey. He seized her in his arms. “Oh, my

darling!” he murmured.

 

She, too, forgot the world. Her arms wreathed themselves around his

neck. “Henry! … Henry…!” she murmured. I thought she was about