“Why should it, Lieutenant?”
“I am sorry that you choose to continue evasive.”
“I’m not. It is you who see things, read things in people that are never there.”
“That isn’t true, Mrs. Endicott.”
“What is there further that you wish to know?”
There was no compromise, no yielding, and the hardness in her voice was very definite. She looked almost extravagantly capable, too, in the smart dark dress she had put on. She was, Lieutenant Valcour reflected, one of those rare women who always “look their best” no matter what the time is or the situation; who make a point of looking so even when quite alone, and especially so, he added, when committing suicide. But he was not deceived by her hardness. There were invisible forces working within her, still stirred into turmoil by that impressive emotional ladder she must have so recently climbed in order to arrive at the decision to take her own life. If he were ever to understand this complex woman he felt that he must do so now, while he and she stood where they were in their private world—a tight little sphere of shadows sifted with mists of sunlit dust—and before they descended the attic stairs to the routined environment of daily living. He decided to attempt to lead her by certain matter-of-fact paths that would end in quicksands.
“Why did you have the address of Marge Myles in your directory, Mrs. Endicott?”
She answered with the mechanical patience of an elder explaining some academic problem to a child.
“It was necessary to take her into account. As I have already told you, she possessed a certain standing—enough of a one to differentiate her from the other women whom my husband picked up promiscuously—and the time might have come when I felt it advisable to get rid of her. Not murder—you’re too intelligent to misunderstand me—there are several ways one woman can get rid of another woman that are just as effective.”
“Which one did you employ, Mrs. Endicott?”
“It wasn’t especially nice, but I wasn’t dealing with a nice woman. I employed forgery.”
This caught Lieutenant Valcour a little unprepared.
“Forgery?”
“Yes. I added a postscript to a letter Harry Myles had sent me before he married Marge. Harry never dated his letters. This one was harmless enough, but there was a reference in it to the camp he owned by that lake up in Maine. The postscript that I added changed the whole character of the letter. It made it apparent that Harry very definitely feared Marge was planning to murder him. I gave that letter to Herbert about a month ago, when it seemed that his interest in Marge was becoming dangerously serious.”
“Didn’t he ask you why you hadn’t produced it before?”
“Yes. I explained that I had just come across it in an old letter file that hadn’t been gone through for years. I asked him whether it was too late to do anything about it—show the letter to some proper authority, for instance. Of course I knew what he would say.”
“That it was too late?”
“Yes.”
“But didn’t he also ask you why you hadn’t said something about the letter at the time of Harry Myles’s death?”
“I pointed out that we were in Europe at that time and didn’t hear the news until many months later, when we got back. By then the letter had escaped my mind.”
“And did your action influence your husband’s feeling toward Marge Myles?”
“It was beginning to. Things like that work slowly; they keep breeding in the mind until they become effective.”
She had missed, he decided, her century. When the Medicis were in flower she, too, would have bloomed her best.
“Mrs. Endicott, what was your real reason for sending for the police last night?”
“I can explain that better by accounting for my movements between the time that Herbert knocked on the door to say goodbye and you arrived. Will that satisfy you?”
“I hope so, Mrs. Endicott.”
“I shan’t lie to you, Lieutenant. I shall tell you the exact truth. Roberts was in the room with me, fixing some disorder in my dress. I left the room shortly after and started down the corridor for the sitting room. Mrs. Siddons, my housekeeper—I don’t know whether you’ve met her or not?”
“Yes, Mrs. Endicott.”
“She was standing at the foot of the stairs leading to the floor above. She said she had something to tell me, and we went into the sitting room.”
“That was just after seven o’clock?”
“Five minutes—ten—yes. Mrs. Siddons brought up the subject of a particularly despicable affair that my husband was involved in with one of our maids over a year ago. Shall I go into it?”
“It isn’t necessary, Mrs. Endicott.”
“The maid was married. Her husband was a sailor.” Mrs. Endicott paused for a moment, and seemed to be sorting in her mind which facts she cared to present and which, in spite of her recent avowal of candour, she preferred to hold in reserve. “You have probably noticed, Lieutenant, that Mrs. Siddons is an abnormal woman. She is the most striking example of the religious-fanatic type that I have ever met. Her life is literally built upon the composite foundation of faith and duty which she believes all mankind owes to God. Her belief in direct punishment visited by God on earthly sinners is a fixed idea. And last night in my sitting room she told me that God was going to strike my husband and that His instrument would be the husband of that maid whom Herbert had injured.”
“But if that was an act which she so obviously desired to see consummated, Mrs. Endicott, why did she warn you—anybody—about it in advance?”
“Religious fanatics, Lieutenant, scorn the idea that human agency can interfere with the workings of any divine plan. Things, for them, are ordained and are supposed to happen just exactly as they are ordained.”
“But why did she warn you?”
“She came to tell me about it, she said, in order that I might be prepared for the shock. She has always sympathized inordinately
