Madame Velasquez spread billows of blue satin and marabou into an armchair.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said.
“Did you find her body in the apartment?”
“There ain’t no body.” Madame Velasquez then added, as her brittle little eyes glittered with a strange sort of conviction, “He made away with it.”
“Who did, Madame Velasquez?”
“Herbert Endicott,” she said.
For a startled moment Lieutenant Valcour stared sharply down curious vistas: had Endicott killed Marge Myles, perhaps having called for her just after she had written that note to her mother? He brought himself up shortly. Utter nonsense! Endicott was in this very room at the time when Marge Myles must have been writing that note and was himself in the process of being killed.
“That isn’t possible, Madame Velasquez,” he said quietly. “Endicott was himself attacked right here at about the time your stepdaughter must have been writing that note to you. That was at seven last evening—at the very moment he was to call for her at her apartment—and it must have been a little after seven when she wrote, as she states in the note that he hadn’t come.”
“No matter”—her beringed fingers fluttered extravagantly—“I feel certain he did it, and I want him punished and caught.”
“But Mr. Endicott is dead, Madame Velasquez.”
“That’s what you say,” she said.
Was he really, Lieutenant Valcour wondered, going mad? There seemed such terribly disturbing possibilities of fact in every absurd aspect on the case the woman facing him opened up. Who, after all, had identified Endicott? His wife, and that only by implication; his friend Hollander, again by implication; Roberts had seen the dead man’s face, but she, in common with all the world, was mad; Dr. Worth—what proof was there that Dr. Worth was Dr. Worth, or that the telephone number given him by Mrs. Endicott had been Dr. Worth’s? It could all have been arranged by some clever mob. …
“This is folly,” he said abruptly, really more to convince himself than the nutlike face peering at him from the armchair. What he needed was sleep—just a couple of hours of good sleep. “Madame Velasquez, that body on the bed is Herbert Endicott. Now tell me as lucidly as you can, please, just why you say that Marge is dead.”
Her little eyes began to glitter with rage. “I believe she has killed herself to spite me.” The knotted paste jewels on her thin fingers quivered indignantly. “She did it to make me suffer,” she added, “to stint me.”
“Just so she wouldn’t have to give you any more money,” he suggested.
Madame Velasquez began to weep noisily. “What’ll I do, Lieutenant—oh, what will I do?”
He continued to regard her through lazy eyes.
“Can’t you find somebody else to take her place?” he said. “Somebody else to blackmail?”
“I ain’t young. It’s too late.”
“Tut, tut, Madame Velasquez.”
“No, I ain’t. And unless it’s a case like Marge’s was, such rackets take looks.”
“But surely such an intelligent and charming woman as you, Madame Velasquez”—he unearthed a trowel and laid it on pretty thick—“a woman of the world, surely you can think up other cases where the evidence or proof can be faked. You know very well that you never had any real or visible proof that Marge killed her husband in that canoe disaster, now, don’t you?”
“I did, too, Lieutenant.”
“Nonsense. If you really did, you’d have it with you and would show it to me.”
She nibbled the bait slyly and refused it.
“I wouldn’t, and I haven’t. And,” she said, “I want proof of that trollop’s death. I’ll get it if I have to drag the river myself.”
Madame Velasquez jumped up and ran nervously to the door.
“Then you saw her drown herself, Madame Velasquez?”
“I saw nothing, but I know—I know—what must have been …”
She was out in the corridor and running for the stairs—a velvet virago in blue. Lieutenant Valcour ran out after her, and saw that Cassidy was blocking her way.
“Ring up the wagon, Cassidy, and have her booked as a material witness.”
Madame Velasquez began to screech. “Don’t touch me. Keep your dirty hands off me.”
“Take her downstairs, Cassidy. After you’ve arranged for the wagon leave her with O’Brian. Then go up to the housekeeper’s room and ask Mrs. Siddons if she’ll come down. I’ll see her in Endicott’s room.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour slowly retraced his steps. When he was again in Endicott’s room and the door shut, he felt a strong recurrence of that annoying sense of some hovering danger. He even shivered a little as if at some draught of cold air and glanced hastily at the windows.
But both were closed.
XXVI
5:25 a.m.—There Was a Sailor
Mrs. Siddons had not gone to bed at all. She remained the same amazing pencil done in flat planes of black that had left him standing with his ear pressed against the panels of her bedroom door.
Lieutenant Valcour was acutely interested in her attitude toward Endicott’s body. Her glance, the instant she entered the room, had flown to it surely and accurately. There was no sorrow, no horror or fear of the dead in that glance. It was wholly one of triumph, the satisfied gazing of some revenge that was removed from petty commonplaces. Mirrored in its satisfaction were avenging hell fires, tormenting presumably the black and wicked soul of what had been a very black and wicked Endicott. After that single initial glance she did not look toward the bed again, but came over and sat with extraordinary rigidity on the edge of a chair from where she could stare out of the window at the clear morning light of the winter’s day.
“Several hours ago, Mrs. Siddons,” Lieutenant Valcour said abruptly, “you spoke with considerable bitterness about Mr. Endicott’s attitude toward the servants. I shan’t embarrass you by asking for any information in detail. There are only one or two things that I want to know—Are you listening to me, please?”
She dragged her eyes from the daylight, from the white misty air from which she had been gathering in her thoughts
