The Woman in the Alcove

“Do you think this a probable explanation of the crime?” I demanded of Mr. Durand at this juncture. “If I remember rightly this window overlooks the carriage drive; it must, therefore, be within plain sight of the door through which some three hundred guests have passed to-night. How could any one climb to such a height, lift the window and step in without being seen?”

“You forget the awning.” He spoke quickly and with unexpected vivacity. “The awning runs up very near this window and quite shuts it off from the sight of arriving guests. The drivers of departing carriages could see it if they chanced to glance back. But their eyes are usually on their horses in such a crowd. The probabilities are against any of them having looked up.” His brow had cleared; a weight seemed removed from his mind. “When I went into the alcove to see Mrs. Fairbrother, she was sitting in a chair near this window looking out. I remember the effect of her splendor against the snow sifting down in a steady stream behind her. The pink velvet—the soft green of the curtains on either side—her brilliants—and the snow for a background! Yes, the murderer came in that way. Her figure would be plain to any one outside, and if she moved and the diamond shone—Don’t you see what a probable theory it is? There must be ways by which a desperate man might reach that balcony. I believe—”

How eager he was and with what a look he turned when the word came filtering through the crowd that, though footsteps had been found in the snow pointing directly toward the balcony, there was none on the balcony itself, proving, as any one could see, that the attack had not come from without, since no one could enter the alcove by the window without stepping on the balcony.

“Mr. Durand has suspicions of his own,” I explained determinedly to myself. “He met some one going in as he stepped out. Shall I ask him to name this person?” No, I did not have the courage; not while his face wore so stern a look and was so resolutely turned away.

The next excitement was a request from Mr. Ramsdell for us all to go into the drawing-room. This led to various cries from hysterical lips, such as, “We are going to be searched!” “He believes the thief and murderer to be still in the house!” “Do you see the diamond on me?” “Why don’t they confine their suspicions to the favored few who were admitted to the alcove?”

“They will,” remarked some one close to my ear.

But quickly as I turned I could not guess from whom the comment came. Possibly from a much beflowered, bejeweled, elderly dame, whose eyes were fixed on Mr. Durand’s averted face. If so, she received a defiant look from mine, which I do not believe she forgot in a hurry.

Alas! it was not the only curious, I might say searching glance I surprised directed against him as we made our way to where I could see my uncle struggling to reach us from a short side hall. The whisper seemed to have gone about that Mr. Durand had been the last one to converse with Mrs. Fairbrother prior to the tragedy.

In time I had the satisfaction of joining my uncle. He betrayed great relief at the sight of me, and, encouraged by his kindly smile, I introduced Mr. Durand. My conscious air must have produced its impression, for he turned a startled and inquiring look upon my companion, then took me resolutely on his own arm, saying:

“There is likely to be some unpleasantness ahead for all of us. I do not think the police will allow any one to go till that diamond has been looked for. This is a very serious matter, dear. So many think the murderer was one of the guests.”

“I think so, too,” said I. But why I thought so or why I should say so with such vehemence, I do not know even now.

My uncle looked surprised.

“You had better not advance any opinions,” he advised. “A lady like yourself should have none on a subject so gruesome. I shall never cease regretting bringing you here tonight. I shall seize on the first opportunity to take you home. At present we are supposed to await the action of our host.”

“He can not keep all these people here long,” I ventured.

“No; most of us will be relieved soon. Had you not better get your wraps so as to be ready to go as soon as he gives the word?”

“I should prefer to have a peep at the people in the drawing-room first,” was my perverse reply. “I don’t know why I want to see them, but I do; and, uncle, I might as well tell you now that I engaged myself to Mr. Durand this evening—the gentleman with me when you first came up.”

“You have engaged yourself to—to this man—to marry him, do you mean?”

I nodded, with a sly look behind to see if Mr. Durand were near enough to hear. He was not, and I allowed my enthusiasm to escape in a few quick words.

“He has chosen me,” I said, “the plainest, most uninteresting puss in the whole city.” My uncle smiled. “And I believe he loves me; at all events, I know that I love him.”

My uncle sighed, while giving me the most affectionate of glances.

“It’s a pity you should have come to this understanding to-night,” said he. “He’s an acquaintance of the murdered woman, and it is only right for you to know that you will have to leave him behind when you start for home. All who have been seen entering that alcove this evening will necessarily be detained here till the coroner arrives.”

My uncle and I strolled toward the drawing-room and as we did so we passed the library. It held but one occupant, the Englishman. He was seated before a table, and his appearance was such as precluded any attempt at intrusion, even if one had been so disposed. There was a fixity in his gaze and a frown on his powerful forehead which bespoke a mind greatly agitated. It was not for me to read that mind, much as it interested me, and I passed on, chatting, as if I had not the least desire to stop.

I can not say how much time elapsed before my uncle touched me on the arm with the remark:

“The police are here in full force. I saw a detective in plain clothes look in here a minute ago. He seemed to have his eye on you. There he is again! What can he want? No, don’t turn; he’s gone away now.”

Frightened as I had never been in all my life, I managed to keep my head up and maintain an indifferent aspect. What, as my uncle said, could a detective want of me? I had nothing to do with the crime; not in the remotest way could I be said to be connected with it; why, then, had I caught the attention of the police? Looking about, I sought Mr. Durand. He had left me on my uncle’s coming up, but had remained, as I supposed, within sight. But at this moment he was nowhere to be seen. Was I afraid on his account? Impossible; yet—

Happily just then the word was passed about that the police had given orders that, with the exception of such as had been requested to remain to answer questions, the guests generally should feel themselves at liberty to depart.

The time had now come to take a stand and I informed my uncle, to his evident chagrin, that I should not leave as long as any excuse could be found for staying.

He said nothing at the time, but as the noise of departing carriages gradually lessened and the great hall and drawing-rooms began to wear a look of desertion he at last ventured on this gentle protest:

“You have more pluck, Rita, than I supposed. Do you think it wise to stay on here? Will not people imagine that you have been requested to do so? Look at those waiters hanging about in the different doorways. Run up and put on your wraps. Mr. Durand will come to the house fast enough as soon as he is released. I give you leave to sit up for him if you will; only let us leave this place before that impertinent little man dares to come around again,” he artfully added.

But I stood firm, though somewhat moved by his final suggestion; and, being a small tyrant in my way, at least with him, I carried my point.

Suddenly my anxiety became poignant. A party of men, among whom I saw Mr. Durand, appeared at the end of the hall, led by a very small but self-important personage whom my uncle immediately pointed out as the detective who had twice come to the door near which I stood. As this man looked up and saw me still there, a look of relief crossed his face, and, after a word or two with another stranger of seeming authority, he detached himself from the group he had ushered upon the scene, and, approaching me respectfully enough, said with a deprecatory glance at my uncle whose frown he doubtless understood:

“Miss Van Arsdale, I believe?”

I nodded, too choked to speak.

“I am sorry, Madam, if you were expecting to go. Inspector Dalzell has arrived and would like to speak to you. Will you step into one of these rooms? Not the library, but any other. He will come to you as quickly as he can.”

I tried to carry it off bravely and as if I saw nothing in this summons which was unique or alarming. But I succeeded only in dividing a wavering glance between him and the group of men of which he had just formed a part. In the latter were several gentlemen whom I had noted in Mrs. Fairbrother’s train early in the evening and a few strangers, two of whom were officials. Mr. Durand was with the former, and his expression did not encourage me.

“The affair is very serious,” commented the detective on leaving me. “That’s our excuse for any trouble we may be putting you to.” I clutched my uncle’s arm.

“Where shall we go?” I asked. “The drawing-room is too large. In this hall my eyes are for ever traveling in the direction of the alcove. Don’t you know some little room? Oh, what, what can he want of me?”

“Nothing serious, nothing important,” blustered my good uncle. “Some triviality such as you can answer in a moment. A little room? Yes, I know one, there, under the stairs. Come, I will find the door for you. Why did we ever come to this wretched ball?”

I had no answer for this. Why, indeed!

My uncle, who is a very patient man, guided me to the place he had picked out, without adding a word to the ejaculation in which he had just allowed his impatience to expend itself. But once seated within, and out of the range of peering eyes and listening ears, he allowed a sigh to escape him which expressed the fullness of his agitation.

“My dear,” he began, and stopped. “I feel—” here he again came to a pause—“that you should know—”

“What?” I managed to ask.

“That I do not like Mr. Durand and—that others do not like him.”

“Is it because of something you knew about him before to-night?”

He made no answer.

“Or because he was seen, like many other gentlemen, talking with that woman some time before—a long time before—she was attacked for her diamond and murdered?”

“Pardon me, my dear, he was the last one seen talking to her. Some one may yet be found who went in after he came out, but as yet he is considered the last. Mr. Ramsdell himself told me so.”

“It makes no difference,” I exclaimed, in all the heat of my long-suppressed agitation. “I am willing to stake my life on his integrity and honor. No man could talk to me as he did early this evening with any vile intentions at heart. He was interested, no doubt, like many others, in one who had the name of being a captivating woman, but—”

I paused in sudden alarm. A look had crossed my uncle’s face which assured me that we were no longer alone. Who could have entered so silently? In some trepidation I turned to see. A gentleman was standing in the doorway, who smiled as I met his eye.

“Is this Miss Van Arsdale?” he asked.

Instantly my courage, which had threatened to leave me, returned and I smiled.

“I am,” said I. “Are you the inspector?”

“Inspector Dalzell,” he explained with a bow, which included my uncle.

Then he closed the door.

“I hope I have not frightened you,” he went on, approaching me with a gentlemanly air. “A little matter has come up concerning which I mean to be perfectly frank with you. It may prove to be of trivial importance; if so, you will pardon my disturbing you. Mr. Durand—you know him?”

“I am engaged to him,” I declared before poor uncle could raise his hand.

“You are engaged to him. Well, that makes it difficult, and yet, in some respects, easier for me to ask a certain question.”

It must have made it more difficult than easy, for he did not proceed to put this question immediately, but went on:

“You know that Mr. Durand visited Mrs. Fairbrother in the alcove a little while before her death?”

“I have been told so.”

“He was seen to go in, but I have not yet found any one who saw him come out; consequently we have been unable to fix the exact minute when he did so. What is the matter, Miss Van Arsdale? You want to say something?”

“No, no,” I protested, reconsidering my first impulse. Then, as I met his look, “He can probably tell you that himself. I am sure he would not hesitate.”

“We shall ask him later,” was the inspector’s response. “Meanwhile, are you ready to assure me that since that time he has not intrusted you with a little article to keep—No, no, I do not mean the diamond,” he broke in, in very evident dismay, as I fell back from him in irrepressible indignation and alarm. “The diamond—well, we shall look for that later; it is another article we are in search of now, one which Mr. Durand might very well have taken in his hand without realizing just what he was doing. As it is important for us to find this article, and as it is one he might very naturally have passed over to you when he found himself in the hall with it in his hand, I have ventured to ask you if this surmise is correct.”

“It is not,” I retorted fiercely, glad that I could speak from my very heart. “He has given me nothing to keep for him. He would not—”

Why that peculiar look in the inspector’s eye? Why did he reach out for a chair and seat me in it before he took up my interrupted sentence and finished it?

“—would not give you anything to hold which had belonged to another woman? Miss Van Arsdale, you do not know men. They do many things which a young, trusting girl like yourself would hardly expect from them.”

“Not Mr. Durand,” I maintained stoutly.

“Perhaps not; let us hope not.” Then, with a quick change of manner, he bent toward me, with a sidelong look at uncle, and, pointing to my gloves, remarked: “You wear gloves. Did you feel the need of two pairs, that you carry another in that pretty bag hanging from your arm?”

I started, looked down, and then slowly drew up into my hand the bag he had mentioned. The white finger of a glove was protruding from the top. Any one could see it; many probably had. What did it mean? I had brought no extra pair with me.

“This is not mine,” I began, faltering into silence as I perceived my uncle turn and walk a step or two away.

“The article we are looking for,” pursued the inspector, “is a pair of long, white gloves, supposed to have been worn by Mrs. Fairbrother when she entered the alcove. Do you mind showing me those, a finger of which I see?”

I dropped the bag into his hand. The room and everything in it was whirling around me. But when I noted what trouble it was to his clumsy fingers to open it, my senses returned and, reaching for the bag, I pulled it open and snatched out the gloves. They had been hastily rolled up and some of the fingers were showing.

“Let me have them,” he said.

With quaking heart and shaking fingers I handed over the gloves.

“Mrs. Fairbrother’s hand was not a small one,” he observed as he slowly unrolled them. “Yours is. We can soon tell—”

But that sentence was never finished. As the gloves fell open in his grasp he uttered a sudden, sharp ejaculation and I a smothered shriek. An object of superlative brilliancy had rolled out from them. The diamond! the gem which men said was worth a king’s ransom, and which we all knew had just cost a life.

III. ANSON DURAND

With benumbed senses and a dismayed heart, I stared at the fallen jewel as at some hateful thing menacing both my life and honor.

“I have had nothing to do with it,” I vehemently declared. “I did not put the gloves in my bag, nor did I know the diamond was in them. I fainted at the first alarm, and—”

“There! there! I know,” interposed the inspector kindly. “I do not doubt you in the least; not when there is a man to doubt. Miss Van Arsdale, you had better let your uncle take you home. I will see that the hall is cleared for you. Tomorrow I may wish to talk to you again, but I will spare you all further importunity tonight.”

I shook my head. It would require more courage to leave at that moment than to stay. Meeting the inspector’s eye firmly, I quietly declared,

“If Mr. Durand’s good name is to suffer in any way, I will not forsake him. I have confidence in his integrity, if you have not. It was not his hand, but one much more guilty, which dropped this jewel into the bag.”

“So! so! do not be too sure of that, little woman. You had better take your lesson at once. It will be easier for you, and more wholesome for him.”

Here he picked up the jewel.

“Well, they said it was a wonder!” he exclaimed, in sudden admiration. “I am not surprised, now that I have seen a great gem, at the famous stories I have read of men risking life and honor for their possession. If only no blood had been shed!”

“Uncle! uncle!” I wailed aloud in my agony.

It was all my lips could utter, but to uncle it was enough. Speaking for the first time, he asked to have a passage made for us, and when the inspector moved forward to comply, he threw his arm about me, and was endeavoring to find fitting words with which to fill up the delay, when a short altercation was heard from the doorway, and Mr. Durand came rushing in, followed immediately by the inspector.

His first look was not at myself, but at the bag, which still hung from my arm. As I noted this action, my whole inner self seemed to collapse, dragging my happiness down with it. But my countenance remained unchanged, too much so, it seems; for when his eye finally rose to my face, he found there what made him recoil and turn with something like fierceness on his companion.

“You have been talking to her,” he vehemently protested. “Perhaps you have gone further than that. What has happened here? I think I ought to know. She is so guileless, Inspector Dalzell; so perfectly free from all connection with this crime. Why have you shut her up here, and plied her with questions, and made her look at me with such an expression, when all you have against me is just what you have against some half-dozen others,—that I was weak enough, or unfortunate enough, to spend a few minutes with that unhappy woman in the alcove before she died?”

“It might be well if Miss Van Arsdale herself would answer you,” was the inspector’s quiet retort. “What you have said may constitute all that we have against you, but it is not all we have against her.”

I gasped, not so much at this seeming accusation, the motive of which I believed myself to understand, but at the burning blush with which it was received by Mr. Durand.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, with certain odd breaks in his voice. “What can you have against her?”

“A triviality,” returned the inspector, with a look in my direction that was, I felt, not to be mistaken.

“I do not call it a triviality,” I burst out. “It seems that Mrs. Fairbrother, for all her elaborate toilet, was found without gloves on her arms. As she certainly wore them on entering the alcove, the police have naturally been looking for them. And where do you think they have found them? Not in the alcove with her, not in the possession of the man who undoubtedly carried them away with him, but—”

“I know, I know,” Mr. Durand hoarsely put in. “You need not say any more. Oh, my poor Rita! what have I brought upon you by my weakness?”

“Weakness!”

He started; I started; my voice was totally unrecognizable.

“I should give it another name,” I added coldly.

For a moment he seemed to lose heart, then he lifted his head again, and looked as handsome as when he pleaded for my hand in the little conservatory.

“You have that right,” said he; “besides, weakness at such a time, and under such an exigency, is little short of wrong. It was unmanly in me to endeavor to secrete these gloves; more than unmanly for me to choose for their hiding-place the recesses of an article belonging exclusively to yourself. I acknowledge it, Rita, and shall meet only my just punishment if you deny me in the future both your sympathy and regard. But you must let me assure you and these gentlemen also, one of whom can make it very unpleasant for me, that consideration for you, much more than any miserable anxiety about myself, lay at the bottom of what must strike you all as an act of unpardonable cowardice. From the moment I learned of this woman’s murder in the alcove, where I had visited her, I realized that every one who had been seen to approach her within a half-hour of her death would be subjected to a more or less rigid investigation, and I feared, if her gloves were found in my possession, some special attention might be directed my way which would cause you unmerited distress. So, yielding to an impulse which I now recognize as a most unwise, as well as unworthy one, I took advantage of the bustle about us, and of the insensibility into which you had fallen, to tuck these miserable gloves into the bag I saw lying on the floor at your side. I do not ask your pardon. My whole future life shall be devoted to winning that; I simply wish to state a fact.”

“Very good!” It was the inspector who spoke; I could not have uttered a word to save my life. “Perhaps you will now feel that you owe it to this young lady to add how you came to have these gloves in your possession?”

“Mrs. Fairbrother handed them to me.”

“Handed them to you?”

“Yes, I hardly know why myself. She asked me to take care of them for her. I know that this must strike you as a very peculiar statement. It was my realization of the unfavorable effect it could not fail to produce upon those who beard it, which made me dread any interrogation on the subject. But I assure you it was as I say. She put the gloves into my hand while I was talking to her, saying they incommoded her.”

“And you?”

“Well, I held them for a few minutes, then I put them in my pocket, but quite automatically, and without thinking very much about it. She was a woman accustomed to have her own way. People seldom questioned it, I judge.”

Here the tension about my throat relaxed, and I opened my lips to speak. But the inspector, with a glance of some authority, forestalled me.

“Were the gloves open or rolled up when she offered them to you?”

“They were rolled up.”

“Did you see her take them off?”

“Assuredly.”

“And roll them up?”

“Certainly.”

“After which she passed them over to you?”

“Not immediately. She let them lie in her lap for a while.”

“While you talked?”

Mr. Durand bowed.

“And looked at the diamond?”

Mr. Durand bowed for the second time.

“Had you ever seen so fine a diamond before?”

“No.”

“Yet you deal in precious stones?”

“That is my business.”

“And are regarded as a judge of them?”

“I have that reputation.”

“Mr. Durand, would you know this diamond if you saw it?”

“I certainly should.”

“The setting was an uncommon one, I hear.”

“Quite an unusual one.”

The inspector opened his hand.

“Is this the article?”

“Good God! Where—”

“Don’t you know?”

“I do not.”

The inspector eyed him gravely.

“Then I have a bit of news for you. It was hidden in the gloves you took from Mrs. Fairbrother. Miss Van Arsdale was present at their unrolling.”

Do we live, move, breathe at certain moments? It hardly seems so. I know that I was conscious of but one sense, that of seeing; and of but one faculty, that of judgment. Would he flinch, break down, betray guilt, or simply show astonishment? I chose to believe it was the latter feeling only which informed his slowly whitening and disturbed features. Certainly it was all his words expressed, as his glances flew from the stone to the gloves, and back again to the inspector’s face.

“I can not believe it. I can not believe it.” And his hand flew wildly to his forehead.

“Yet it is the truth, Mr. Durand, and one you have now to face. How will you do this? By any further explanations, or by what you may consider a discreet silence?”