Murder by the Clock

I 8:37 p.m.⁠—Spring 3100

Mrs. Endicott thought for a moment of simply dialling the operator and saying, “I want a policeman.”

It was what the printed notices in the telephone directory urged one to do in case of an emergency. But it wasn’t an emergency exactly, nor⁠—still exactly⁠—was it a policeman she wanted. She wanted a detective, or an inspector, or something; a man to whom she could explain her worry about Herbert, and who could do something about it if he agreed with her that Herbert was in danger.

Mrs. Endicott had never had any personal contact with the police. Whenever she thought about it at all she thought of the force as an efficient piece of machinery, the active parts of which one observed daily from one’s motor as healthy and generally good-looking young men who controlled traffic. She knew that there was a patrolman whose beat carried him past their door. Upon thinking suddenly about it she realized that she had only seen this man twice or three times at most during the past year. She knew that Herbert always left a ten-dollar gold piece to be given him by one of the maids at Christmas, and a check for twenty dollars as a subscription to some enterprise vaguely designated as the “fund.”

She wondered momentarily whether the police characters she had seen in various plays, while at the theatre with Herbert, were true to life.

“I,” said Mrs. Endicott, “have several times wished to kill him.”

Lieutenant Valcour nodded. “There is nothing left for me but the trite things to say about marriage. And trite things, after all, are the true things, don’t you think?”

“If they’re just discovered. I mean by that, that to the person just discovering their deadly aptness they’re true. Rather terribly so sometimes.”

“But the aptness wears off with usage?”

Mrs. Endicott’s slender hand and arm were models of quietness in motion as she reached for a cigarette. “Everything wears off with usage,” she said. “Love quicker than anything else.”

“But it doesn’t wear off completely, love doesn’t, ever.”

Mrs. Endicott looked at him sharply. “Why are you a detective?” she said.

“The accident of birth⁠—of environment. Only geniuses, you know, ever quite escape those two fatalities. My parents emigrated from France to Canada, where my father held a certain reputation in my present profession. My parents died. There was enough money to secure an education at McGill⁠—one had contacts here in the States⁠ ⁠…” Lieutenant Valcour smiled infectiously. “I reversed Caesar in that I came, was seen, was conquered.”

Mrs. Endicott was amused. “How utterly conceited.”

“Isn’t it?”

The smile vanished from her face with the peculiar suddenness of some conjuring trick. She veered abruptly. “What are they doing in my husband’s room now?” she said.

“Dr. Worth and the medical examiner are determining the cause of death.” Lieutenant Valcour transferred his attention to a Sargent watercolour above the mantel. “Dr. Worth has already expressed the opinion that it was heart failure,” he said.

A tall, thin woman sat on a chair before a grate in which some coals burned bleakly. She was unbelievably gaunt⁠—her silhouette a pencil, rigidly supporting an austere face beneath a smooth inverted cup of steel gray hair. Black taffeta sheathed her, tightly pressing against flat narrow planes, and smoothly surfacing two pipelike arms that ended in the tapering, sensitive hands of an emotional ascetic.

Lieutenant Valcour rapped on the door jamb.

The woman did not start. Her head alone turned and faced him, and her eyes were a contradiction of nature⁠—black planets glowing coldly in a sky of white.

“Pardon me, I am Lieutenant Valcour of the police. Are you, by any chance, the housekeeper?”

Her voice was of New England⁠—low almost to huskiness, a trifle harsh, and completely stripped of all nuances.

“Yes, Lieutenant. I am Mrs. Siddons.”

“May I come in? Thank you⁠—please don’t get up. I’ll only stay a minute or two, if you don’t mind.”

He took a chair and placed it before the fireplace beside her own. He sat down and did nothing beyond observing obliquely for a moment the curiously artificial placidity of Mrs. Siddons’s clasped hands.

“There is no use in questioning me, Lieutenant, because I have nothing to say.”

Her tone was the chill clear winds that sweep the rigorous mountains of Vermont.

Lieutenant Valcour warmed his hands before the lazy coals and smiled amiably. “And I,” he said, “have absolutely nothing to ask.”

“That is a lie.”

There was nothing abusive in the remark. It was simply a statement of fact, coldly, dispassionately pronounced by the remarkable pencil dressed in black who spired beside him. Lieutenant Valcour was shocked into a nervous laugh.

Dr. Worth, feeling very much like one of those fabulous characters he had read about in Fenimore Cooper when a child, went back into Endicott’s room.

Lieutenant Valcour waited another full minute before he opened the door and went inside. He did not look at Mrs. Endicott, but walked softly over to a chair, lifted it, and placed it close beside the bed. He drew the slipper from his pocket and sat down.

There was an utter and complete hush. For three minutes⁠—he timed himself with his wrist watch⁠—he sat motionless and stared at the closed lids of Mrs. Endicott’s eyes.

Then he began to tap the slipper quite softly, but quite persistently and with a rhythmic regularity, upon an arm of the chair.

Tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—

Mrs. Endicott’s face retained the smooth expressionlessness of slumber.

Tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—

Her breathing held the steady depths of sleep.

Tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—tap⁠—

“If you do that much longer,” she said quietly, “I shall go insane.”