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Title: The Almost Perfect Murder.

A Case Book of Madame Storey.

Author: Footner, Hulbert (1879-1944)

Author [preface]: Anonymous

Date of first publication: 1937

Edition used as base for this ebook:

New York: Caxton House, 1939

Date first posted: 21 July 2010

Date last updated: 21 July 2010

Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #577

 

This ebook was produced by: Al Haines

 

THE

ALMOST PERFECT MURDER

Mr. Hulbert Footner’s well-known character, Madame Storey, is perhaps

the most celebrated woman detective in fiction. Her detective ability

is aided to some extent by feminine intuition, but she achieves

results—amazingly successful results, for the problems here elucidated

certainly proved baffling enough to the police. This volume provides

thrilling fare for all readers of detective stories, and Mr. Hulbert

Footner writes with his customary verve and ingenuity.

 

THE

ALMOST PERFECT MURDER

A Case Book of Madame Storey

BY HULBERT FOOTNER

Publishers

 

CAXTON HOUSE, INC.

 

Rockefeller Plaza

 

New York, N. Y.

 

1939

 

Made in the

 

United States of

 

America

CONTENTS I THE ALMOST PERFECT MURDER II MURDER IN MASQUERADE III THE DEATH NOTICE IV TAKEN FOR A RIDE

V IT NEVER GOT INTO THE PAPERS

 

The Almost Perfect Murder

I

Fay Brunton was one of those stars who suddenly shine out on Broadway

in full effulgence, and are almost as quickly darkened. Most people

will remember her name, but I doubt if many could name the parts in

which she appeared. But to those of us who knew her, she remains a

vivid and lovely memory; she was so beautiful! And that was not all of

it; beauty is not uncommon on Broadway: it was her great sweetness of

nature that endeared her to us; her girlishness; her simplicity. She

was not a great actress; her smile was her passport to popular favour.

 

My employer, Madame Storey, who knows everybody in the great world, had

become acquainted with Fay, and through her I had met the girl. By

degrees, I can hardly say how, Fay and I had become intimate friends.

She brought colour and incident into my life. To a plain Jane like me,

she was marvellous. I was the recipient of all her charming

confidences—or nearly all; and as well as I could, I steered her with

my advice amongst the pitfalls that beset a popular favourite. For one

in the limelight she was incredibly ignorant of evil. And you could

not bear to show her the ugly side of life.

 

How bitterly I regretted that I had not warned her against Darius

Whittall in the beginning. But I had thought that her natural goodness

would protect her. Goodness, however, is apt to be blind. Whittall’s

name had been connected with Fay’s for several months, but he was only

one of many. I had hoped that one of the young men would win out;

particularly one who was called Frank Esher, a fine fellow. I banked

on the fact that Fay had been shy about mentioning his name in her

confidences. As for Whittall, he was a notorious evil-liver. His wife

had committed suicide some weeks before. To me he was no better than a

murderer.

 

How well I remember the morning that Fay came to our offices to tell

us. It must have been November, for the trees in Gramercy Park had

shed their leaves, though the grass was still green. This was during

Fay’s second season when she was appearing with huge success in _Wild

Hyacinth_. She came in beaming, and I marked the gleam of a new pearl

necklace under her partly-opened sables. What a vision of youthful

loveliness she made, sparkling with a childlike excitement!

 

She had Mrs. Brunton with her. This lady was not her real mother, but

an ageing actress whom Fay had rescued from a cheap boarding-house, and

set up as her official chaperone. Such an arrangement is not unusual

on the stage. Mrs. Brunton was a typical stage mamma; over-dressed,

over-talkative; a foolish woman, but devoted to Fay, and people put up

with her on that account.

 

When Fay came to call, business was dropped for the time being. I took

her in to my mistress. What a complement they made to each other! the

one so dark and tall and wise; the other simple, fair and girlish.

Alongside my mistress, the girl looked the least bit colourless, but

that was inevitable. There is only one Madame Storey. Fay was not

aware that she suffered by comparison with the other, and if she had

known, I doubt if she would have minded.

 

Mrs. Brunton was in a great flutter. “Oh, I hope we’re not

interrupting anything important! Fay couldn’t wait a minute! What I

have been through since last night you wouldn’t believe! I didn’t

sleep a wink! And then to be hauled out of my bed at eight o’clock!

Eight o’clock! And dragged here half-dressed. Is there a mirror

anywhere? I know I’m a sight…!”

 

And so on; and so on. The exasperating thing about that woman was that

her talk never meant anything. She surrounded herself with a cloud of

words. Nobody ever paid any attention to what she said. Talk with her

was a sort of nervous habit, like biting the fingernails.

 

Meanwhile Mme. Storey was gazing into Fay’s face with searching

kindness. Nervously pulling off one of her gloves, the girl mutely

exhibited the third finger of her left hand. I caught a glimpse of an

emerald that took my breath away.

 

“Who is it?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“Darius Whittall,” she murmured.

 

It was a horrible shock to me. Fortunately none of them was looking at

me at the moment. The thought of seeing my friend in all her youth and

loveliness handed over to that murderer—for such he was in all

essentials—was more than I could bear. The bottom seemed to drop out

of everything.

 

Mme. Storey’s face showed no change upon hearing the announcement,

though she must have known Darius Whittall better than I did. She

enfolded the girl in her arms, and murmured her good wishes.

 

Meanwhile Mrs. Brunton in the background was talking away like steam

puffing out of a boiling kettle. I perceived a certain glint of

anxiety in the old lady’s eye; she knew that Darius Whittall was no

paragon for a husband. But he was so rich! so rich! who could blame a

mother? She was relieved when Mme. Storey appeared to make no

difficulties about the match.

 

“Well, I never thought he’d be the one!” said Mme. Storey with an

appearance of great cheerfulness.

 

“Neither did I,” said Fay, laughing.

 

“Are you dreadfully in love with him?”

 

“I suppose so … I don’t know… Don’t ask me to examine my

feelings!”

 

“Look at her!” cried Mrs. Brunton. “Isn’t that enough? Radiantly

happy!”

 

“But if you’re going to marry the man,” said Mme. Storey, laughing,

“surely you must know the state of your feelings!”

 

“I want to marry him,” said Fay quickly. “Very much. I suppose it’s

because he needs me so.”

 

Mme. Storey’s expression said: Hum! But she did not utter it. She

asked when it was going to be.

 

“Soon,” said Fay. “There’s no reason for delay. It will be very

quiet, of course.”

 

“Of course,” said Mme. Storey.

 

Fay seemed to feel that some further explanation was required. “It’s

true his wife has only been dead two months,” she said. “But as Darius

pointed out, she had not been a real wife to him for years before that.”

 

“Poor woman!” said Madame Storey.

 

We all echoed that. “Poor woman!”

 

By this time I was aware that my mistress was not any better pleased

with Fay’s announcement than I had been; but she was too wise to burst

out with objections as I might have done.

 

“Why do you suppose she killed herself?” she said thoughtfully.

 

“Oh, don’t you know?” said Fay. “She was in love with somebody else.

Darius talks about her so nicely. He offered to let her divorce him,

but she wouldn’t because of her religion. A Catholic, you know. I

suppose she could see no way but to end it all. Darius honours her for

it.”

 

“Oh, don’t talk about it!” cried Mrs. Brunton. “Don’t let that cloud

darken this happy day! How that poor man has suffered! And such a

gentleman with it all. Such delicacy! I could tell you things about

him! But never mind!”

 

What has he given her? I thought.

 

Fay and Mme. Storey ignored her interruption. “But I think,” the

former went on with gentle censure, “that she ought to have considered

what a dreadful blow it would be to her husband.”

 

“Still,” said Mme. Storey dryly, “if she had not done it, you would not

be marrying him now.”

 

“No-o,” said Fay innocently. “I suppose not…. Of course Darius is

going to sell the house at Riverdale,” she continued with an

involuntary shiver. “I shouldn’t care to live there where it happened.”

 

Mme. Storey struck out on a new line. “Well! Well!” she said, “what a

poor guesser I am! Frank Esher was the one I backed.”

 

I saw a spark of animosity leap out of the old woman’s eye. I suppose

it occurred to her, too, that my seemingly candid mistress was trying

to gum her game.

 

“Oh, Frank Esher!” said Fay pettishly. “Don’t speak of him!”

 

“He was so good-looking!” said Mme. Storey dreamily.

 

“Good-looking, yes,” said Fay with some heat. “But impossible. You

don’t know! Oh, impossible!”

 

“I liked him,” said Mme. Storey, “because there seemed to be a genuine

fire in him. Most young fellows are so tame! I should have thought he

would make a wonderful lover.”

 

Fay, silenced, looked at her with rather a stricken expression in the

candid blue eyes.

 

Mrs. Brunton rushed in to fill the breach. “Fire!” she snorted.

“Preserve us from that kind of fire. That’s all I have to say. I

don’t speak of his rudeness to me. I am nobody. He treated Fay as if

she was just an ordinary girl. No sense of the difference in their

positions. A dreadful young man! He spoiled everything. So different

from Mr. Whittall. He is such a gentleman. You never catch him making

a vulgar display of his feelings!”

 

Fay had recovered her speech. “That incident is closed,” she said.

“Frank was simply a thorn in my side.”

 

But Mme. Storey would not let Frank drop. “By the way,