The Almost Perfect Murder, Hulbert Footner [digital e reader .TXT] 📗

should Darius mind?” demanded my mistress. “Doesn’t he like me?”

 

“Oh, yes!” said Fay quickly. “He admires you ever so much!”

 

“Then why should he mind?”

 

The girl could not withstand the point-blank question. “Well, you

see,” she faltered, “he thinks … that you do not like him very much

… that you disapprove of him.”

 

“Fay,” challenged my mistress, “have I ever by word or look given you

any reason to suppose such a thing?”

 

“Oh, no, Rosika! And so I have told him. Over and over…. But he

still thinks so.”

 

“Now, look here,” said Mme. Storey. “I am never the one to interfere

between a married pair—or a soon-to-be-married pair, but you must make

a stand somewhere, my child, or you’ll soon find yourself a loving

little slave. I mean when you are in the right. Now this particular

notion of Darius’s is a silly notion, isn’t it?”

 

“Y-yes,” said Fay.

 

“Then you should not give in to it…. But look here, I’ll make it

easier for you. Let’s pretend that it’s your party. You tell Darius

that you have asked Bella and me to your hotel for supper after the

show on your last night, and he could not possibly object, could he?”

 

Fay’s face lighted up. “Oh, no!” she cried. “That will be splendid!”

 

“All right!” said Mme. Storey. “Expect us about quarter to twelve.

You’ll have it in your own rooms, of course, where we may be quite

free.”

 

“Now I must run!” said Fay.

 

“Oh, wait a minute!” pleaded Mme. Storey, slipping her arm through the

girl’s. “This is the last moment I shall see you alone! There are so

many things I want to talk to you about! … And now you have driven

them all out of my head…. Is the little nest ready in the East

Seventies?”

 

“It will be when we get back from Pinehurst.” Fay launched into an

enthusiastic description.

 

“And what happens to Oakhurst?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Darius has put it into the hands of Merryman.

It’s to be sold, lock, stock and barrel.”

 

“And quite right, too…. By the way, do you know what Darius’s

movements will be tomorrow? I must see him if I can, in order to

remove this ridiculous wrong impression he has got of me.”

 

“You’re so kind, Rosika! All I know is, he’s going to sleep at his

rooms in the Vandermeer tonight, in order to be on hand early for all

the things he has to see to tomorrow.”

 

“Well, I’ll call him up at the Vandermeer.”

 

Arm in arm, they had been moving slowly out through my office with me

at their heels. They had now reached the door. Mme. Storey kissed the

girl fondly. My mistress was playing an elaborate game, but at least

there was nothing insincere about that gesture.

 

“One last thing,” she said. “I want to make you a little gift of some

sort…”

 

Fay made a gesture of dissent.

 

“When the news comes out you will be showered with all sorts of useless

things. I should like to give you something that you want. What

shall it be?”

 

“Oh, I’d much rather leave it to you, dear.”

 

“Well, I must think of something original.” She feigned to be

considering deeply. “I have it!” she said. “I will give you a

beautifully mounted gun with your name chased on the handle. Every

woman ought to have a gun.”

 

“Oh, thank you!” said Fay. “But I have one! Darius says too that

every woman ought to have a gun. He gave me one months ago.”

 

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mme. Storey. “What sort of gun?”

 

“A Matson 32, automatic.”

 

I shivered inwardly. Did the man buy them wholesale?

 

“Do you carry it about with you?” asked Mme. Storey, laughing.

 

“Oh, no,” said Fay simply. “I keep it in my bottom drawer.”

 

“Ah, well, I’ll have to think of something else then,” said Mme. Storey.

 

They embraced, and Fay went.

 

The instant the door closed after her, Mme. Storey said to me: “Quick,

Bella! Your hat!” She went to the window to wave her hand to Fay when

she issued below. While standing there, she continued to speak rapidly

to me. “Pick up a taxi, and go to Merryman’s. That’s the big real

estate office on Madison Avenue near Forty-Fourth Street. If it’s

closed, you’ll have to look up the address of one of the partners in

the telephone book, and go to his house. Apologise for disturbing him

and say that your employer (who wishes to remain unknown for the

moment) has just learned that the Whittall property in Riverdale has

come into the market. Ask for an order to view the place tomorrow.

Explain that, owing to your employer’s leaving for the West, tomorrow

is the only day he will have for the purpose…. Wait a minute! Fay

is just getting into her car…. Now she’s off. Run along!”

VI

Next morning we drove up to Riverdale in Mme. Storey’s own limousine,

but instead of her regular chauffeur, we had Crider at the wheel, an

admirable fellow, quiet and keen; the chief of all our operatives. I

pointed out to Mme. Storey that if anybody at the house was curious

about us, it would be an easy matter to find out who we were by tracing

the number of our licence.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “By tonight it will all be decided one

way or the other.”

 

Riverdale, as everybody knows, is not a “dale” at all, but a bold hill

on the mainland, just to the North of Manhattan Island. On the one

side it overlooks the Hudson River; on the other the flat expanse of

the Bronx with Van Cortlandt Park. The original village may have

started down by the river, but now the whole rocky height is thickly

covered with handsome new villas standing in their limited plots. It

is an exceedingly well-to-do community, but not fashionable. Fashion

has fled farther from town. “Oakhurst,” however, is a survival. It

was built and laid out by the first Darius Whittall in the days when “a

mansion on the Hudson” was synonymous with everything that was opulent

and eminent.

 

The grounds were of considerable extent. We drove in through beautiful

wrought iron gates and past a lodge in the English style. The house

was invisible from the road. We wound through a wood of evergreens and

oaks before coming to it in the midst of its lawns. It was a long,

irregular structure built of native stone. It had no particular

architectural pretensions, but the years had mellowed it. It looked

dignified and comfortable. This was the back of the house really; the

principal rooms faced the glorious prospect over the Hudson with the

Palisades beyond.

 

We drove up under a porte coch�re, and upon alighting, were received

by an irreproachable butler. This must have been Frost. I showed him

our order to view the place, and Mme. Storey expressed a wish to be

shown the grounds first. Whereupon he handed us over to the second

man, a sort of embryo butler; younger, fresh-faced; not yet able to

subdue his curiosity and interest at the sight of a woman so beautiful

as Madame Storey. He conducted us around the side of the house to the

head gardener, who was directing the operations of several men engaged

in setting out shrubs.

 

So we began our perambulations. There was only one thing about the

grounds that really interested us; i.e., the pavilion; but of course we

said nothing about it, waiting until we should arrive there in proper

order. In front of the house the ground fell away gradually in

beautiful flower-beds and terraces, to the edge of a steep declivity

which dropped to the river. The steep part was wooded in order to mask

the railway tracks below. At this season it was all rather sere and

leafless, except the grass, which was clipped and rolled to the

semblance of green velvet. Stables, garage and other offices were all

concealed behind shrubbery to the north of the house.

 

We could see the pavilion off to the left as we faced the river; that

is to say the southerly side. On this side the hill ran out in a

little point ending in a knoll, and on the knoll was the pavilion, in

the form of a little Greek temple with a flattened dome and a circle of

Doric columns. The winding path which led to it was bordered with

rhododendrons, backed with arbour vit�. As we approached, I pictured

the beautiful woman running down that path thinking she was going to

the man she loved, and I seemed to hear the shot that ended everything

for her. At the foot of the three steps one instinctively looked for

bloodstains in the grey gravel; but, of course, all such marks had been

erased long since.

 

Mme. Storey said to the gardener: “I should like to sit down here for

five minutes to look at the view. Will you come back?”

 

The man bowed and hurried away to look after his subordinates.

 

As we mounted the three steps Mme. Storey laid her hand against the

first pillar to the right. “Here,” she murmured, “the murderer waited

concealed, gun in hand.”

 

I shivered.

 

Inside, there was a circle of flat-topped marble benches. The view

from that spot is world famous. One could see both up and down the

glorious river for miles. Only within the last few years the

foreground had been defaced by the cutting of new streets and the

building of showy houses.

 

“Our first job is to decide how the murderer got here,” said Mme.

Storey. “He must have familiarised himself with the spot beforehand.”

 

“But, of course, he knew the spot!” I said, in surprise.

 

“Mustn’t jump to conclusions, my Bella!” she said with a smile. “To go

upon the assumption that we already know everything would only be to

warp the judgment. All that we can say so far is, some person unknown

to us stood behind that pillar and shot Mrs. Whittall.”

 

I thought she was over-scrupulous.

 

As soon as we looked down to the left, the means of access was clear.

The present boundary of the Whittall property was only about a hundred

feet away on this side. It was marked by a rough stone wall, not very

high; any determined person could have scrambled over it. On the other

side of the wall a new street had been laid off down to the river.

There were several new houses looking over the wall, and a boating club

house down at the end. Once over the wall it was an easy climb through

the dead leaves and thin undergrowth up to the pavilion.

 

“If one followed that street back over the hill and down into the

valley on the other side,” said Mme. Storey, “it would bring one out

somewhere in the vicinity of the subway terminal at Van Cortlandt Park.

That is the way he came. You cannot trace anybody on the subway.”

 

She went on: “Now, what did Whittall do with his wife’s revolver?”

 

“A search?” I asked anxiously, thinking what a little time we had.

 

“Oh, sit down,” she said, suiting the action to the word. “And appear

to be enjoying the view like me.” She produced a cigarette, and

lighted it. “Let us search in our heads first. Let us put it through

a process of elimination.