The House Opposite: A Mystery

The House Opposite: A Mystery
Elizabeth Kent

Elizabeth Kent

The House Opposite: A Mystery

CHAPTER I

THROUGH MY NEIGHBOUR’S WINDOWS

WHAT I am about to relate occurred but a few years ago—in the summer of ’99, in fact. You may remember that the heat that year was something fearful. Even old New Yorkers, inured by the sufferings of many summers, were overcome by it, and everyone who could, fled from the city. On the particular August day when this story begins, the temperature had been even more unbearable than usual, and approaching night brought no perceptible relief. After dining with Burton (a young doctor like myself), we spent the evening wandering about town trying to discover a cool spot.

At last, thoroughly exhausted by our vain search, I decided to turn in, hoping to sleep from sheer fatigue; but one glance at my stuffy little bedroom discouraged me. Dragging a divan before the window of the front room, I composed myself for the night with what resignation I could muster.

I found, however, that the light and noise from the street kept me awake; so, giving up sleep as a bad job, I decided to try my luck on the roof. Arming myself with a rug and a pipe, I stole softly upstairs. It was a beautiful starlight night, and after spreading my rug against a chimney and lighting my pipe I concluded that things really might be worse.

Across the street loomed the great Rosemere apartment-house, and I noted with surprise that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour and of the season, several lights were still burning there. From two windows directly opposite, and on a level with me, light filtered dimly through lowered shades, and I wondered what possible motive people could have for shutting out the little air there was on such a night. My neighbours must be uncommonly suspicious, I thought, to fear observation from so unlikely a place as my roof; and yet that was the only spot from which they could by any chance be overlooked.

The only other light in the building shone clear and unobstructed through the open windows of the corresponding room two floors higher up. I was too far below to be able to look into this room, but I caught a suggestion of sumptuous satin hangings and could distinguish the tops of heavy gilt frames and of some flowering plants and palms.

As I sat idly looking upwards at these latter windows, my attention was suddenly arrested by the violent movement of one of the lace curtains. It was rolled into a cord by some unseen person who was presumably on the floor, and then dragged across the window. A dark object, which I took to be a human head, moved up and down among the palms, one of which fell with an audible crash. At the same moment I heard a woman’s voice raised in a cry of terror. I leaped to my feet in great excitement, but nothing further occurred.

After a minute or so the curtain fell back into its accustomed folds, and I distinctly saw a man moving swiftly away from the window supporting on his shoulder a fair-haired woman. Soon afterwards the lights in this room were extinguished, to be followed almost immediately by the illumination of the floor above.

What I had just seen and heard would not have surprised me in a tenement, but that such scenes could take place in a respectable house like the Rosemere, inhabited largely by fashionable people, was indeed startling. Who could the couple be? And what could have happened? Had the man, coming home drunk, proceeded to beat the woman and been partially sobered by her cry; or was the woman subject to hysteria, or even insane? I remembered that the apartments were what are commonly known as double-deckers. That is to say: each one contained two floors, connected by a private staircase—the living rooms below, the bedrooms above. So I concluded, from seeing a light in what was in all probability a bedroom, that the struggle, or whatever the commotion had been, was over, and that the victim and her assailant, or perhaps the patient and her nurse, had gone quietly, and I trusted amicably, to bed.

Still ruminating over these different conjectures, I heard a neighbouring clock strike two. I now noticed for the first time signs of life in the lower apartment which I first mentioned; shadows, reflected on the blinds, moved swiftly to and fro, and, growing gigantic, vanished.

But not for long. Soon they reappeared, and the shades were at last drawn up. I had now an unobstructed view of the room, which proved to be a drawing-room, as I had already surmised. It was dismantled for the summer, and the pictures and furniture were hidden under brown holland. A man leant against the window with his head bowed down, in an attitude expressive of complete exhaustion or of great grief. It was too dark for me to distinguish his features; but I noticed that he was tall and dark, with a youthful, athletic figure.

After standing there a few minutes, he turned away. His actions now struck me as most singular. He crawled on the floor, disappeared under sofas, and finally moved even the heavy pieces of furniture from their places. However valuable the thing which he had evidently lost might be, yet 2 A.M. seemed hardly the hour in which to undertake a search for it.

Meanwhile, my attention had been a good deal distracted from the man by observing a woman in one of the bedrooms of the floor immediately above, and consequently belonging to the same suite. When I first caught sight of her, the room was already ablaze with light and she was standing by the window, gazing out into the darkness. At last, as if overcome by her emotions, she threw up her hands in a gesture of despair, and, kneeling down with her elbows on the window sill, buried her head in her arms. Her hair was so dark that, as she knelt there against the light, it was undistinguishable from her black dress.

I don’t know how long she stayed in this position, but the man below had given up his search and turned out the lights long before she moved. Finally, she rose slowly up, a tall black-robed figure, and disappeared into the back of the room. I waited for some time hoping to see her again, but as she remained invisible and nothing further happened, and the approaching dawn held out hopes of a more bearable temperature below, I decided to return to my divan; but the last thing I saw before descending was that solitary light, keeping its silent vigil in the great black building.

CHAPTER II

I AM INVOLVED IN THE CASE

IT seemed to me that I had only just got to sleep on my divan when I was awakened by a heavy truck lumbering by. The sun was already high in the heavens, but on consulting my watch I found that it was only ten minutes past six. Annoyed at having waked up so early I was just dozing off again when my sleepy eyes saw the side door leading to the back stairs of the Rosemere slowly open and a young man come out.

Now I do not doubt that, except for what I had seen and heard the night before, I should not have given the fellow a thought; but the house opposite had now become for me a very hotbed of mystery, and everything connected with it aroused my curiosity. So I watched the young man keenly, although he appeared to be nothing but a grocer’s or baker’s boy going on his morning rounds. But looking at him again I thought him rather old for an errand boy, for they are seldom over eighteen, while this young fellow was twenty-five at the very least. He was tall, dark, and clean-shaven, although not very recently so. He wore no collar, and had on a short, black coat over which was tied a not immaculate white apron. On his arm hung a covered basket, which, from the way he carried it, I judged to be empty, or nearly so.

It may have been my imagination,—in fact, I am inclined to think it was,—but it certainly seemed to me that he stole furtively from the house and glanced apprehensively up and down the street, casting a look in my direction. I thought that he started on encountering my eyes. Be that as it may, he certainly drew his battered hat farther over his face, and, with both hands in his pockets, and chewing a straw with real or assumed carelessness, walked rapidly up town.

I now found my position by the window too noisy, so sought the quiet and darkness of my bedroom, where I fell immediately into such a heavy sleep that it was some time before I realised that the alarm-bell that had been clanging intermittently through my dreams was in reality my office-bell. Hurriedly throwing on a few clothes, I hastened to open the door.

A negro lad stood there, literally grey with terror. His great eyes rolled alarmingly in their sockets, and it was several minutes before I could make out that somebody had been killed, and that my services were required immediately.

Hastily completing my dressing, and snatching up my instrument case, I was ready to follow him in a few moments. What was my astonishment and horror when he led me to the Rosemere!

For a moment my heart stood still. My thoughts flew back to last night. So this was the explanation of that scream, and I had remained silent! Dolt, imbecile that I was! I felt positively guilty.

The large entrance hall through which I hurried was crowded with excited people, and, as I flew up in the elevator, I tried to prepare myself for the sight of a fair-haired girl weltering in her blood. On the landing at which we stopped were several workmen, huddled together in a small knot, with white, scared faces. One of the two doors which now confronted me stood open, and I was surprised to notice that it led, not to either of the apartments I had watched the night before, but to one of those on the farther side of the building. Yet here, evidently, was the corpse.

Passing through the small hall, filled with rolls of paper and pots of paints, I entered a room immediately on my right. Here several men stood together, gazing down at some object on the floor; but at my approach they moved aside and disclosed—not a golden-haired woman, as I had feared, but the body of a large man stretched out in a corner.

I was so astonished that I could not help giving vent to an exclamation of surprise.

“Do you know the gentleman?” inquired a man, whom I afterwards discovered to be the foreman of the workmen, with quick suspicion.

“No, indeed,” I answered, as I knelt down beside the body.

A policeman stepped forward.

“Please, sir, don’t disturb the corpse; the Coroner and the gen’l’man from headquarters must see him just as he is.”

I nodded assent. One glance was sufficient to show me that life had been extinct for some time. The eyes were half open, staring stupidly before them. The mouth had fallen apart, disclosing even, white teeth. As he lay there on his back, with arms spread out, and his hands unclenched, his whole attitude suggested nothing so much as a drunken stupor. He appeared to be twenty-five or thirty years old. No wound or mark of violence was visible. He wore a short, pointed beard, and was dressed in a white linen shirt, a pair of evening trousers, a black satin tie, silk socks, and patent-leather pumps. By his side lay a Tuxedo coat and a low waistcoat. All his clothes were of fine texture, but somewhat the worse for wear. On the other hand, the pearl studs in his shirt-bosom were very handsome, and on his gold sleeve-links a crest was engraved.

As I said before, a glance had been enough to tell me that the man was dead; but I was astonished to discover, on examining him more closely, that he had been dead at least twenty-four hours; mortification had already set in.

As I arose to my feet, I noticed a small, red-haired man, in the most comical deshabille, regarding me with breathless anxiety.

“Well, Doc, what is it?”

“Of course, I can give no definite opinion without making a further examination,” I said, “but I am inclined to believe that our friend succumbed to alcoholism or apoplexy; he has been dead twenty-four hours, and probably somewhat longer.”

“There, now,” exclaimed the foreman; “I knew he hadn’t died last night; no, nor yistidy, neither.”

“But it can’t be, I tell you!” almost shrieked the little Irishman. “Where could he have come from? Oh, Lord,” he wailed, “to think that sich a thing should have happened in this building! We only take the most iligant people; yes, sir, and now they’ll lave shure, see if they don’t. It’ll give the house a bad name; and me as worked so hard to keep it genteel.”

A commotion on the landing announced the arrival of a stout, florid individual, who turned out to be the Coroner, and a quiet, middle-aged man in plain clothes, whom I inferred, from the respect with which he was treated, to be no other than the “gen’l’man” from headquarters. After looking at the corpse for some moments, the Coroner turned to us and demanded:

“Who is this man?”

The little Irishman stepped forward. “We don’t none of us know, sor.”

“How came he here then?”

“The Lord only knows!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sor, it’s this way. This apartment is being re-fixed, and five men were working here till six o’clock yistidy evening, and when they left they locks the door, and it has a Yale lock; and they brought me the key and I locks it away at once; and this morning at seven they come while I was still half asleep, having slept bad on account of the heat, and I gets up and opens the safe myself and takes out the key and gives it to this gintleman,” pointing to the foreman; “and he come up here, and a few minutes afterwards I hear a great hue and cry and the workmen and elevaytor-boy come ashrieking that a body’s murthered upstairs. How the fellow got in here, unless the Divil brought him, I can’t think; and now here’s the doctor that says he’s been dead twenty-four hours!”

At my mention the Coroner turned towards me with a slight bow. “You are a doctor?”

“Yes, I am Dr. Charles Fortescue, of Madison Avenue. My office is exactly opposite; I was summoned this morning to see the corpse; I find that the man has been dead at least twenty-four hours. I have not yet made an examination of the body, as I did not wish to disturb it till you”—with a bow which included his companion—“had seen it; but I am inclined to think he died of alcoholism or apoplexy.”