In the front yard were maples and clipped evergreens, interspersed with hydrangea and lilac-bushes; and at the rear was a row of weeping willows overhanging the river. Along the herringbone-bond brick walks were high quickset hedges of hawthorn; and the inner sides of the encircling wall were covered with compact espaliers. To the west of the house an asphalt driveway led to a double garage at the rear—an addition built by the newer generation of Greenes. But here too were boxwood hedgerows which cloaked the driveway’s modernity.
As we entered the grounds that gray November afternoon an atmosphere of foreboding bleakness seemed to have settled over the estate. The trees and shrubs were all bare, except the evergreens, which were laden with patches of snow. The trellises stood stripped along the walls, like clinging black skeletons; and, save for the front walk, which had been hastily and imperfectly swept, the grounds were piled high with irregular snowdrifts. The gray of the mansion’s masonry was almost the color of the brooding overcast sky; and I felt a premonitory chill of eeriness pass over me as we mounted the shallow steps that led to the high front door, with its pointed pediment above the deeply arched entrance.
Sproot, the butler—a little old man with white hair and a heavily seamed capriform face—admitted us with silent, funereal dignity (he had evidently been apprised of our coming); and we were ushered at once into the great gloomy drawing-room whose heavily curtained windows overlooked the river. A few moments later Chester Greene came in and greeted Markham fulsomely. Heath and Vance and me he included in a single supercilious nod.
“Awfully good of you to come, Markham,” he said, with nervous eagerness, seating himself on the edge of a chair and taking out his cigarette-holder. “I suppose you’ll want to hold an inquisition first. Whom’ll I summon as a starter?”
“We can let that go for the moment,” said Markham. “First, I’d like to know something concerning the servants. Tell me what you can about them.”
Greene moved restlessly in his chair, and seemed to have difficulty lighting his cigarette.
“There’s only four. Big house and all that, but we don’t need much help. Julia always acted as housekeeper, and Ada looked after the Mater.—To begin with, there’s old Sproot. He’s been butler, seneschal, and majordomo for us for thirty years. Regular family retainer—kind you read about in English novels—devoted, loyal, humble, dictatorial, and snooping. And a damned nuisance, I may add. Then there are two maids—one to look after the rooms and the other for general service, though the women monopolize her, mostly for useless fiddle-faddle. Hemming, the older maid, has been with us ten years. Still wears corsets and fit-easy shoes. Deep-water Baptist, I believe—excruciatingly devout. Barton, the other maid, is young and flighty: thinks she’s irresistible, knows a little table-d’hôte French, and is the kind that’s constantly expecting the males of the family to kiss her behind the door. Sibella picked her out—she’s just the kind Sibella would pick out. Been adorning our house and shirking the hard work for about two years. The cook’s a stodgy German woman, a typical hausfrau—voluminous bosoms and number-ten feet. Puts in all her spare time writing to distant nieces and nephews in the upper reaches of the Rhine basin somewhere; and boasts that the most fastidious person could eat off her kitchen floor, it’s that clean; though I’ve never tried it. The old man engaged her a year before he died; gave orders she was to remain as long as she liked.—There you have the personnel of the backstairs. Of course, there is a gardener who loafs about the lawn in summer. He hibernates in a speakeasy up Harlem way.”
“No chauffeur?”
“A nuisance we dispense with. Julia hated motorcars, and Rex is afraid to travel in them—squeamish lad, Rex. I drive my own racer, and Sibella’s a regular Barney Oldfield. Ada drives, too, when the Mater isn’t using her and Sibella’s car is idle.—So endeth.”
Markham had been making notes as Greene rambled along with his information. At length he put out the cigar he had been smoking.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I want to look over the house.”
Greene rose with alacrity and led the way into the main lower hall—a vaulted, oak-panelled entrance containing two large carved Flemish tables of the Sambin school, against opposite walls, and several Anglo-Dutch crown-back chairs. A great Daghestan rug stretched along the parqueted floor, its faded colors repeated in the heavy draperies of the archways.
“We have, of course, just come from the drawing-room,” explained Greene, with a pompous air. “Back of it, down the hall”—he pointed past the wide marble stairway—“was the governor’s library and den—what he called his sanctum sanctorum. Nobody’s been in it for twelve years. The Mater has kept it locked up ever since the old man died. Sentiment of some kind; though I’ve often told her she ought to clean the place out and make a billiard-room of it. But you can’t move the Mater, once she’s got an idea in her head. Try it some time when you’re looking for heavy exercise.”
He walked across the hall and pulled aside the draperies of the archway opposite to the drawing-room.
“Here’s the reception-room, though we don’t use it much nowadays. Stuffy, stiff place, and the flue doesn’t draw worth a damn. Every time we’ve built a fire here, we’ve had to have the cleaners in to remove the soot from the tapestries.” He waved his cigarette-holder toward two beautiful Gobelins. “Back there, through those sliding doors, is the dining-room; and farther on are the butler’s pantry and the kitchen where
