The White Room

"It might be, sir," confessed Mulligan. "I was leaning over the gate when the young gentleman came out."

"The men saw you from the window, and as they couldn't kill the woman while you were there, Number One went out to draw you away, while Number Two remained behind to commit the crime. At what hour did you part with Number One?"

"Half-past eleven, sir. I was with him thirty minutes."

"Time enough for Number Two to murder the woman and make off. He escaped by the front door, since you say the back premises are locked up. Ah! there's the doctor. Go to the station and send on-" Here Derrick named two of his most trusted subordinates.

When Mulligan left, the inspector resumed his examination. Already he had looked over the clothing of the deceased. She was plainly but tastefully dressed in black, but wore no ornaments. Everything was of good quality, but made without trimmings. The under-linen was equally fine, but on it the inspector could find no mark or initials likely to indicate the name. Apparently she had been seated at the piano when stabbed, and had fallen dead on the bearskin almost without a cry. The assassin had assured himself that she was dead, then had turned her face downward, so as to avoid the horrified stare of those wide-open eyes. At least this was the inspector's view.

"A pretty woman," said Derrick musingly. "Fair, slender, blue eyes, delicate hands. I should think she was a lady. Married" – he touched the ring-"but not rich, since she wears no ornaments. Careful in her dress, but, not mean, and not fashionable either. Hullo!"

This exclamation was drawn from him by the sight of a hat and cloak thrown over a chair on the further side of the piano. These were also fine, but neat and unpretentious. The woman must have come to the house on a visit, since she certainly would not have placed her out-of-door things in such a place and have sat down had she a bedroom in the house. But what was she doing in a mansion, the owner of which was at the seaside? Had the first man let her in with his latch-key, and if so, how did he come to be in possession of the latch-key? These were questions which the inspector was trying to answer when the doctor arrived.

Geason was an ambitious young medical man who had set up in Troy a year previously, and was trying hard to scrape a practice together. He was well aware that such a case as this would give him a much-desired publicity, and consequently expressed himself profoundly grateful to Derrick for the job. Then he knelt beside the body and made an examination, while Tracey, who had returned, questioned the inspector. "Found out anything?" he asked.

"Only that the woman was a visitor to this house," and Derrick pointed out the cloak and hat.

"Strange," said the American. "Wonder what she meant making free with a man's house in his absence?"

"Are you sure Mr. Fane's at the seaside?"

"Certain. Miss Baldwin was told by Miss Mason-and she's Mrs. Fane's sister-that they would stay a month. Westcliff-on-Sea is the place. Miss Mason got a letter yesterday. Fane was there then."

"It is an easy run from Westcliff-on-Sea to this place," responded Derrick dryly. "A man can fetch this house from there in a couple of hours. But I don't suspect Mr. Fane."

"He might be the man with the latch-key."

"No." Derrick thought of the key being new. "I don't think so. Did any young man stay in this house?"

"Not that I know of. You'd better ask Miss Mason. I know nothing about this ranche. Well, doctor?"

"She's been dead nearly five hours," said Geason, rising.

"Nonsense," said Derrick. "She was alive at eleven, and it's not one o'clock yet."

"I don't know about that," persisted Geason, "but from the condition of the body and the lack of warmth, I say she has been dead five hours."

Derrick and Tracey looked at one another perplexed. If the doctor was right-and he seemed positive-this unknown person could not have been the woman who sang "Kathleen Mavourneen."

"There's four of them," said Tracey; "two women and two men."

Derrick shook his head. The case was too mysterious for him to venture an opinion.

CHAPTER III

THE BALDWINS

"Maryanneliza, do keep the children quiet. The bad twins are fighting with the good twins, and the odd ones are making such a noise that I can't finish this story."

"Well, ma'am, there's so much to be done. The breakfast's to clear away, and the washing to be counted, and-"

"Oh, don't trouble me," cried Mrs. Baldwin, settling herself on the sofa. "It's one of my bad days. What Miss Mason will think of the way this house is kept, I don't know. What do I pay you wages for?"

"It's little enough I get," said Mary Ann Eliza, firing up.

"More than you're worth," retorted her mistress. "If you were a mother, with seven orphans to keep, you might talk. Where's Miss Gerty?"

"Gone to see Mr. Tracey at the factory."

"So like her," lamented the mother; "no consideration for my feelings. What I feel only the doctor knows. There!" as several wild screams rent the air to tatters, "that's blood. If any one of my darlings die, I'll hold you responsible, Maryanneliza!" Mrs. Baldwin ran the three names into one as the children did, and shrieked out to stop the servant from going. But Maryanneliza knew better. If she stopped to listen to Mrs. Baldwin's complaints, there would be no work done. She simply bolted to see which child was being tormented to death, and Mrs. Baldwin, after calling in vain, subsided into her book, and solaced herself with a lump of Turkish delight.

She was not unlike a Turkish odalisque herself, if rumour speaks truly of their fatness and flabbiness. A more shapeless woman it would have been hard to discover, and she usually wore a tea-gown as the least troublesome garment to assume. From one week's end to the other, Mrs. Baldwin never went out, save for a stroll in the garden. Not even the delights of shopping could tempt her into making any exertion, and she had long since ceased to care for the preservation of her figure or good looks. At one time of her life she had been handsome, but the production of seven children, including two sets of twins, had proved too much for her. Also her second husband had deserted her, and as he had been responsible for six children, she complained bitterly of his absence. He was supposed to be alive, but kept carefully away from his too prolific wife. For eight years she had not heard from him, but never ceased to expect him back.

Mrs. Baldwin's first husband had been a gentleman, and she was the pretty daughter of a lodging-house keeper, who had ensnared him when he was not on his guard. His family disowned him, and after the birth of a daughter, the young man broke his neck when hunting. He left Mrs. Harrow, as she was then, with the child and five hundred a year. Afterwards a man called Rufus Baldwin, attracted by the money, married the pretty young widow. Luckily, owing to the will, Mr. Baldwin was not able to seize the principal of the income. But he lived on his wife till six children came to lessen the money, and then finding he could get nothing more luxurious, he ran away. Mrs. Baldwin then removed to Cloverhead, and occupied an old manor-house at a small rent. It was a pleasant, rambling old mansion in a quiet street, and here she lived very comfortably on her five hundred a year.

"Do you remember Gerty Harrow with whom we were at school?" wrote Laura Mason to an old friend. "She lives here, near the place of my brother-in-law, and is now about twenty-two years of age. Such a nice girl-pretty and clever, and engaged to a most amusing American called Luther Tracey. He manufactures motor-cars, and Gerty Baldwin drives them. Whenever a car is sold, Gerty goes down and stops for a week or so with the people who buy it, to show them how it works. Being pretty she gets plenty to do. Mrs. Baldwin objected to Gerty doing this for a livelihood, and only consented when Gerty agreed to drop her father's name. She is Miss Baldwin now, and I like her more than ever. The mother-"

Here followed several marks of exclamation, as though Laura's powers of writing failed her, as they assuredly did. It would have taken the pen of Dickens to describe this lazy, self-indulgent, querulous woman, who lay on a sofa all day reading novels. At the present moment, she was deep in a Family Herald story called "Only an Earl," in which a governess with a single rose in her hair marries, with great self-abnegation, a mere earl, after refusing two dukes and a foreign prince. Mrs. Baldwin, basking like a cat in the sunshine that poured through the window, read each page slowly, and ate a lump of Turkish delight every time she turned a page.

The sitting-room was most untidy. Children's toys were strewn about; the carpet was raggedy the pictures hung askew, the red plush table-cloth-it was a most abominable covering-was stained, the blind was torn, and a broken window-pane had been filled up with brown paper. Yet the room had a comfortable, homely look, and if it had not been so disorderly, would have been pleasant to live in. But Mrs. Baldwin, quite undisturbed by the confusion, read on with great enjoyment. She only lifted her eyes when Laura Mason entered the room, and then her first words were querulous.

"How you can bear to stop here with Getty when your own home is so beautiful, I really don't know," moaned Mrs. Baldwin, keeping her place in the tale by bending the book backward. "Just look at this room. I may toil from morning to night, and it never will look tidy."

"It's comfortable, at all events," said Laura, sitting down. "Do you feel well this morning, Mrs. Baldwin."

"Just alive. I could hardly get out of bed. Not a wink of sleep, and dreadful dreams."

Mrs. Baldwin did not explain how she could dream without sleeping, but she was such a wonderful woman that she could do anything. For instance, she could be idle throughout the day, and keep up the fiction that she worked like a slave. She could enjoy her life in laziness and dirt and selfishness, posing as a martyr to every one. Laura saw through her as most people did; but as Laura was a guest, and Gerty's friend, she did not explain herself at length, as she would have liked to do. Besides, Mrs. Baldwin was a good-natured old dormouse, and no one could be angry with her long.

"I have been out with Gerty," said Laura, sitting near the window; "she has gone to the factory to see Mr. Tracey."

"She never thinks of me slaving from morning till night," moaned the mother. "I'm skin and bone."

Miss Mason nearly laughed outright, for Mrs. Baldwin was as fat as butter, and quite as soft. "You should take more care of yourself."

"No, Miss Mason," said the heroic woman. "I must deny myself all pleasures for the sake of my babes. Ah, they will never know what a mother they have."

It certainly would not be for the want of telling, for Mrs. Baldwin was always recounting her virtues at length. She did so now. "When I was young and gay, and truly lovely, and lived with ma in Soho Square," she rambled on, "I little thought that life would be so hard. When Mr. Harrow led me to the altar, all was sunshine, but now penury and disgrace are my portion."

"Oh, not so bad as that, Mrs. Baldwin," protested Laura.

"Penury, disgrace, and desertion, Miss Mason. Rufus Baldwin has left me with six pledges of his affection, and but for the forethought of my first husband-who must have foreseen the twins-I would have starved in chains and miry clay."

Having thus placed herself in the lowest position she could think of, in order to extort sympathy, Mrs. Baldwin ate more Turkish delight-she was too selfish to offer Laura any-and stated that her heart was broken. "Though I don't show it, being trained by ma to bear my woes in silence," she finished.

Laura said a few words of comfort in order to stop further complaints, and then stated that she was going to Westcliff-on-Sea in two days. "My sister Julia is expecting me," she said, "and I have been with you for over a week. It is so good of you to have me."

"Not at all. I've done my best to make you comfortable, Miss Mason, though heaven knows I can hardly keep on my feet." Here Mrs. Baldwin closed her eyes as a token of extreme exhaustion. "But we must do our duty in the world, as I always tell Horry, who is to be a parson, if he can pass the examinations, which I doubt. Of course Gerty will marry Mr. Tracey, who is well off, and leave her poor ma, who has done so much for her. But I am determined that my babes shall occupy the best places in society. Totty, Dolly, and Sally shall marry money. Jimmy and Dickey must win renown to repay me for my lifelong agonies. You don't look well, Miss Mason?"