"Well, I don"t think his death was a natural one."
It startled me, the a.s.sured manner in which he spoke; in an instant, the atmosphere of this quiet country room seemed to have grown tense and heavy. "Go on," I said briefly.
"As you know," continued Doctor Marcy, "Mr. Graeme died suddenly on Tuesday, June 21, presumably from heart failure or a cerebral hemorrhage. As a matter of record, my routine certificate gives the latter as the cause of death. The fact of a brain lesion was fully established, as I"ll explain later, but I"m not at all satisfied as to the predisposing cause."
"Yes."
"You"ll understand what I"m driving at when I tell you that I saw Francis Graeme professionally that very morning, and I know that he was in the best of health for a man of his age. He had been thinking of taking out additional life insurance, and as I am the county examiner for the company, he asked me to drop in Tuesday morning and go over him.
Mind you, I had been his regular physician for a number of years, long before he came to the "Hundred," and I knew him inside and out. A straighter, cleaner man never lived, and he had always kept himself in top condition; I had never discovered the least sign of any degenerative process.
"Well, I did come over, and I saw him in this very room where we are sitting. He was cheerful as usual, and even joked me on the possibility that I might at last uncover one of the insidious enemies to health that so often make their appearance in middle life. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing--heart, lungs, circulatory system--all in first-cla.s.s shape. As a matter of form, there would have to be a laboratory a.n.a.lysis, but otherwise I was prepared to give him a clean bill of health, and I told him so. He took it quite as a matter of course, and, after arranging for a round of golf that same afternoon at the Lost River Country Club, we parted. That was around ten o"clock, and at half past two I had a telephone from the "Hundred," asking me to come over at once. When I arrived I was taken in here. Graeme lay on the floor, alongside the big library table. On his right temple there was a noticeable contusion, triangular in shape. He was stone dead."
"Could you tell how long?"
"Probably a couple of hours."
"The wound, of course, was your first thought."
"Naturally. And in itself it was quite enough to have caused death.
Remember that it was on the temple, a vulnerable spot."
"An a.s.sailant then?"
"By hypothesis certainly. I may say that I have had some experience in criminal cases; accordingly I was very careful not to disturb anything, and up to this time I had only touched the man"s wrist to a.s.sure myself that the pulse was gone."
"Who was it that gave the alarm?"
"I am told that one of the servants, Effingham, to be precise, knocked on the library door at about half past one o"clock, to announce the serving of luncheon. He then went away without waiting for an answer from Mr. Graeme; it seems that was his custom on the occasion of this particular summons. A half hour later, when Mr. Graeme failed to appear at the table, Miss Trevor told Effingham to go again and make sure that his master had heard the message. I understood that occasionally Graeme would not come to luncheon, especially if he happened to be more than usually busy; he might appear an hour or so later, and forage around for a gla.s.s of milk and a couple of biscuits."
"His tardiness then excited no surprise?"
"Apparently not. But Effingham went again to the library, and knocked two or three times without getting any response."
"Must have been very alarming to Miss Graeme."
"Oh, luckily Betty wasn"t at home. Miss Trevor was alone in the house, and everything devolved upon her. Finally she decided to have the door broken down, but after she had given the order Effingham reminded her that it would not be necessary. A few months before Graeme had installed a complete system of modern locks throughout the house, and the butler had the master key in his possession."
"That"s an interesting point."
"Yes--very. Well, Effingham went to the butler"s pantry and got the key."
"Oh, then it was not in his immediate possession after all?"
"I believe he was in the habit of keeping it behind the clock in the pantry instead of with his regular bunch. Of course the idea was that if any of the ordinary keys were lost, or indeed the whole lot of them, he would still have the master key in reserve."
"Do you suppose that anyone else--especially among the other servants--knew about the master-key and where it was kept?"
"Effingham is quite sure that no one did know, but really it"s impossible to say. You understand what darkies are--as curious as magpies and quite as lighthanded. If one of them had chanced to see Effingham hiding something behind the clock, he would be sure to investigate for himself at the first convenient opportunity."
"While a clever thief, guessing that a master-key must be in existence, would go straight to such a prominent object as a clock for his first try. Curious, isn"t it, how human nature prefers beaten trails, the old ruts, the obvious grooves in which to run. Take the ordinary small suburban house, with n.o.body home and everything supposed to be tightly locked up. It"s a one-to-three shot, at least, that the front door key will be found neatly tucked away under the mat. But I shouldn"t have interrupted."
"The more light the better," nodded the doctor, helping himself to a fresh cigar.
"Where was I? Ah, yes, at the opening of the door. Miss Trevor, so I understand, hung back a little; a woman naturally shrinks from this sort of thing, and Marcus, the house-boy, was the first person to enter. For the instant it seemed as though the room was empty, and Effingham says he heard Marcus exclaim: "Ma.r.s.e Francis he done gone out!" Then as the boy drew level with the high leather screen, standing at the right of the big desk as one enters the room, he saw the body, yelled in terror, and bolted. Miss Trevor had fainted----"
"When? Exactly when?" I broke in.
"I don"t know," returned Marcy. "It may have been before she heard Marcus scream, and it may have been after. I dare say everybody"s nerves were pretty tense by this time."
"Well, Effingham seems to have kept his head. He ordered out the other servants, had Miss Trevor carried into the dining room, where she quickly revived, and finally he telephoned for me."
"At Miss Trevor"s request?"
"At Miss Trevor"s request. That brings us up again to my arrival on the scene, and my first hasty impressions.
"As I have said, Mr. Graeme lay face downward alongside the desk, just hidden by the screen from the gaze of anyone entering the room from the hall. Since the head was turned slightly to the right, the wound was not visible unless one knelt, as I did, directly beside the body.
"Now a wound of this nature could have been received in two easily understandable ways. Either Mr. Graeme, overcome with vertigo, had fallen and hit his head against some sharp corner, or he had been attacked and struck down by a weapon in the hands of some unknown a.s.sailant.
"Hypothesis No. 1, or the accident theory. I can state positively that Francis Graeme was not in the least subject to vertigo or fainting spells, and there was nothing to indicate an ordinary trip-up and fall.
There is no rug at this point, the floor while smooth is not noticeably slippery, and Graeme was dressed for golf, wearing rubber-soled shoes which must have given him a particularly firm footing. Finally, there was no apparent sharp corner on which his head could have struck. From the position of the body it was clear that he had fallen entirely clear of the writing-desk."
"That seems to dispose of the accident theory."
"Seems to--yes. But it"s still a possibility that he might have fallen and struck on something calculated to inflict an injury of this nature, a something which was afterward removed."
"By whom?"
"Who knows? There was time enough for many things to happen between my departure from the house and the discovery of the body. In the meantime no one, supposedly, saw him. So nearly as I can determine, he died a little after twelve o"clock, but the door was not opened until two. A person who knew the house well could have secured the master-key, entered the room, and left it again with little danger of detection."
"It"s an impertinent observation, Doctor Marcy, but you say that _no one_ saw Mr. Graeme alive after your departure from the library at ten o"clock?"
"Oh, I have my alibi straight enough," smiled the doctor. "Miss Trevor happened to be pa.s.sing through the hall as I left the room. I stopped and spoke to her, made some jesting remark about Graeme"s being good for a thousand years, more or less. At that same moment he came to the library door and waved his hand to us both; then he turned back, and we heard the click of the spring-latch. I believe that he usually set the catch when he wanted to make sure of not being disturbed.
"Now we come to hypothesis No. 2, the possible a.s.sailant. The door leading into the hall was locked. There are no roof openings. The windows of stained gla.s.s in leaded frames are immovable; otherwise there would be danger of the valuable gla.s.s being broken or knocked out through an accidental jar. But for purposes of ventilation there is inserted in each section a pridella. Ah, you don"t understand--come over here."
Doctor Marcy conducted me across the room to the window on the right of the fireplace, the one depicting the return of the spies from the land of Canaan. "You will notice," he said, "that there are three panels in the window, each carrying a part of the general picture. Then, in the lower part of the central panel, there is a small subsidiary scene; in this particular case it represents a field of waving wheat in which scarlet poppies are interspersed. This section is technically called the pridella. Being small and exactly square in shape it can be easily hinged. See, I pull the cord that controls the locking-catch--thus--and this small window swings open.
"Tuesday the twenty-first of June was a warm day, and the pridella in each of the large windows was in use. Now the available aperture is about twenty inches by ten, the gla.s.s revolving on central pivots. A boy, or a very small man, might possibly squeeze through, but the bottom ledge of the window being some five feet above the terrace level he would have to use a ladder or a pair of steps in order to reach it. Now, as it chanced, that portion of the lawn lying adjacent to the library terrace was in process of being mowed that morning. I saw the men at work, two of the farm negroes. a.s.suredly they would have noticed any attempt to scale the windows."
"They themselves are quite above suspicion, I suppose."
"Unquestionably. They are elderly men who have been employed at the "Hundred" all their lives, and who bear excellent characters. Zack is the local colored Baptist preacher, and Zeb is an a.s.sistant field overseer. Impossible to suspect either, let alone both."
"Wouldn"t they knock off for dinner at noon? Go to their cabins, I mean."
"Ordinarily, yes. But on Tuesday Mandy, Zack"s wife, went to Calverton, and didn"t return until late in the evening, or afternoon, as you would say. Accordingly she made up pail dinners for both Zack and Zeb, the latter being a boarder in their family. The men ate their food in the shadow of the osage hedge directly opposite the terrace; Effingham saw them and told me so."
"You seem to have covered the ground pretty thoroughly," I observed approvingly.