“There’s quite a mass of stuff here,” he said. “It might be simpler to eliminate other possible places before tackling it. I must repeat again that I’ll be exceeding any legal rights by doing so, but if you earnestly believe your husband is in danger I’d like to go through the pockets of his clothing.”
“Pockets?”
“It’s a much more usual place to find important things than you would imagine.”
“His clothes are in that cupboard.”
Mrs. Endicott indicated a door. Lieutenant Valcour went over and opened it. An electric light was automatically turned on in the ceiling. The large hulk of a man crumpled into one corner of the cupboard gave him a severe shock. The man was dead. He closed the door and faced Mrs. Endicott. He nodded toward the desk, on which a telephone was standing.
“I’m going to use that telephone for a few minutes,” he said. “There’s a message I want to put through. Also, please ring for your maid.”
Mrs. Endicott’s eyes widened a little. “There’s something in the cupboard,” she said.
“Ring for your maid, please.”
She went past him and toward the cupboard door. He shrugged. The value of her reaction would offset the brutality of not stopping her. She opened the door and looked in. Her grip tightened on the knob.
“Then he didn’t go out at seven,” she said.
“No, Mrs. Endicott. He didn’t go out at all.”
II
9:24 p.m.—Hallmarks of Murder
Lieutenant Valcour felt that the utter stillness of the room would overwhelm him. He—Mrs. Endicott—everything seemed to be taking its cue from death. He reached past Mrs. Endicott and touched the body’s cheek. It was quite cold.
“Where is your room, Mrs. Endicott?”
He carefully pried her fingers from the knob of the cupboard door and then closed it.
“But you can’t leave him in that cupboard.”
Her voice held the toneless qualities of arrested emotion, as if the functioning of her nerve centres had stopped.
“We must leave him in there, Mrs. Endicott, until someone from the medical examiner’s office has seen him. If you’ll tell me the name of your family physician before you lie down—”
“Lie down—I? Lie down?”
“Yes, and rest. I’ll call the doctor up on the possible chance that we’re mistaken, only I’m quite certain, Mrs. Endicott, that we aren’t.”
She stumbled verbally in her rush. “Worth—Dr. Sanford Worth—Calumet 876—it’s 876 something—I know it perfectly well. I—it’s in my book—come with me.”
She seemed mechanically vitalized, and her movements were those of a nervous, jerky toy. She flung open a door adjacent to the cupboard. It led into a bathroom, the fittings of which were of coral-coloured porcelain. A door in the opposite wall led into her bedroom. She went immediately to a leather reference book beside a telephone near her bed.
“It’s Calumet 8769,” she said.
Her finger slipped in the dialling. Lieutenant Valcour gently took the instrument from her hands and put through the call.
“The office of Dr. Worth?” he said, when a woman’s voice answered him. “This is the home of Mr. Herbert Endicott. I am Lieutenant Valcour of the police department. Mr. Endicott is dead. I would appreciate it if Dr. Worth would come here at once and consult with the medical examiner, and also attend to Mrs. Endicott. Thank you.” He replaced the receiver.
“I haven’t the slightest intention of collapsing, Lieutenant.”
“We will need Dr. Worth anyway, Mrs. Endicott.”
Lieutenant Valcour dialled the Central Office and, in a suddenly most efficient voice, gave the requisite information. He then called his own precinct station and told the sergeant at the desk to send over a detail of five men in uniform.
“The chief of the Homicide Bureau, the medical examiner, and some of my own men will be here presently,” he said to Mrs. Endicott.
“And my husband has to stay in that cupboard until they come?”
“Unless Dr. Worth arrives first and disagrees with me that Mr. Endicott is dead.”
“It’s inhuman.”
“Very, but there’s a set routine for these cases that we have to observe. Is this the button you ring for your maid?”
He pressed a push button set in the wall at the head of the bed.
“Yes, but I don’t want her.”
“You may, and there’s no harm in her being with you. I’m going to leave you in here for a little while, until the people we’ve telephoned for come.”
“You insist on my staying in this room?”
“Heavens, no. Do anything you like, Mrs. Endicott, or that you feel will help you. As long,” he added gently, “as you don’t leave the house.”
“Oh.”
“You see we’ll have to talk such a lot of things over, just as soon as the usual formalities are finished.”
“It’s rather terrible, isn’t it?”
“Pretty terrible, Mrs. Endicott.”
“So”—she mentally groped for a satisfactory word—“so conclusive.”
It seemed a peculiar choice. Lieutenant Valcour sensed that it wasn’t just Endicott’s life alone which was concluded by death, but something else as well—such as an argument, perhaps, or a secret and bitter struggle. The precise significance was elusive, and he gave it up, or rather checked it within his memory in that compartment which already contained six barely smoked cigarette butts, a broken finger nail, bruise marks, and a note which, in view of the body, might safely be presumed to have been a threat.
A maid knocked on the door and came in. She stared speculatively for a curious second at Lieutenant Valcour.
“Madam rang?”
“No, Roberts. Lieutenant Valcour rang. Lieutenant Valcour is of the police.”
Any sudden announcing of the police is always shocking. It is a prelude to so many unpleasant possibilities even in the lives of the most blameless. They are in a class with telegrams. Lieutenant Valcour noted that Roberts accepted his identity with nothing further than an almost imperceptible catching of breath. Mrs. Endicott’s attitude puzzled him. It wasn’t resentment, certainly, or any stretching at rudeness; such emotions seemed so utterly inconsequential at this moment when she must have been wrenched by a very severe shock. It reminded him of
