Lydia raised her head and looked straight at Cork. “No. No, of course not. It’s ridiculous.”
“Now, Mr. van Loon, when you entered the den with the others in the escort party to bring in the sedan chair, were the curtains pulled shut?”
“Yes, they were.”
“And no one spoke to its occupant?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Strange, isn’t it? Such a festive occasion, and yet no one spoke?”
“We were in a hurry to get her out to where the Governor was waiting. Wait, someone did say, ‘Hang on, Gretchen’ when we lifted the chair. I don’t remember who said it, though.”
“You heard no sound from inside the chair? No groan or murmur?”
“No, sir, not a sound.”
“Well, thank you for your candor. Oh, yes, Miss Daws-Smith, when you left Gretchen, was she still standing by the fire?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Was her mask on or off?”
She frowned. “Why, she had it on. What a queer question!”
“It’s a queer case, young lady.”
The great clock in the center hall had just tolled three when Cork finished talking with the other five young men who had carried the murdered girl in the sedan chair. They all corroborated Brock’s version. All were ignorant of any expression of love between Brock and Lydia, and they were unanimous in their relief that Brock, and not one of them, had been Gretchen’s intended. As one young man named Langley put it, “At least Brock has an inheritance of his own, and would not have been dependent on his wife and mother-in-law.”
“Dependent?” Cork queried. “Would he not assume her estate under law?”
“No, sir, not in this house,” Langley explained. “I am told it’s a kind of morganatic arrangement and a tradition with the old van der Malin line. I have little income, so Gretchen would have been no bargain for me. Not that I am up to the Dame’s standards.”
When Langley had left, Trask, the footman, entered to tell us that rooms had been prepared for us at the major’s request. Cork thanked him and said, “I know the hour is late, but is your mistress available?”
He told us he would see, and showed us to a small sitting room off the main upstairs hall. It was a tight and cozy chamber with a newly-stirred hearth and the accoutrements of womankind-a small velvet couch with tiny pillows, a secretaire in the corner, buckbaskets of knitting and mending.
Unusual, however, was the portrait of the Dame herself that hung on a wall over the secretaire. It was certainly not the work of a local limner, for the controlled hand of a master painter showed through. Each line was carefully laid down, each color blended one with the other, to produce a perfect likeness of the Dame. She was dressed in a gown almost as beautiful as the one she had worn this evening. At her throat was a remarkable diamond necklace which, despite the two dimensions of the portrait, was lifelike in its cool, blue-white lustre.
Cork was drawn to the portrait and even lifted a candle to study it more closely. I joined him and was about to tell him to be careful of the flame when a voice from behind startled me.
“There are additional candles if you need more light.”
We both turned to find Wilda van Schooner standing in the doorway. She looked twice her seventeen years, with the obvious woe she carried inside her. Her puffed eyes betrayed the tears of grief that had recently welled there.
“Forgive my curiosity, Miss van Schooner,” Cork said, turning back to the portrait. “Inquisitiveness and a passion for details are my afflictions. This work was done in Europe, of course?”
“No, sir, here in New York, although Jan der Trogue is from the continent. He is-was-to have painted all of us eventually.” She broke off into thought and then rejoined us. “My mother is with my sister, gentlemen, and is not available. She insists on seeing to Gretchen herself.”
“That is most admirable.” Cork bid her to seat herself, and she did so. She did not have her sister’s or her mother’s coloring, nor their chiseled beauty, but there was something strangely attractive about this tall, dark-haired girl.
“I understand, Captain, that you are here to help us discover the fiend who did this thing, but you will have to bear with my mother’s grief.”
“To be sure. And what can you tell me, Miss Wilda?”
“I wish I could offer some clue, but my sister and I were not close-we did not exchange confidences.”
“Was she in love with Brock van Loon?”
“Love!” she cried, and then did a strange thing. She giggled almost uncontrollably for a few seconds. “That’s no word to use in this house, Captain.”
“Wilda, my dear,” a female voice said from the open door. “I think you are too upset to make much sense tonight. Perhaps in the morning, gentlemen?”
The speaker was the girl’s aunt, Hetta van der Malin, and we rose as she entered.
“Forgive our intrusion into your sitting room, ma’am,” Cork said with a bow. “Perhaps you are right. Miss Wilda looks exhausted.”
“I agree, Captain Cork,” the aunt said, and she put her arm around the girl and ushered her out the door.
“Pray,” Cork interrupted, “could you spare us some time in your niece’s stead?”
Her smile went faint, but it was a smile all the same. “How did you know this was my room, Captain? Oh, of course. Trask must have-”
“On the contrary, my eyes told me. Your older sister does not fit the image of a woman surrounded by knitting and mending and pert pillowcases.”
“No, she doesn’t. The den is Ilsa’s sitting room. Our mother raised her that way. She is quite a capable person, you know.”
“So it would seem. Miss Hetta, may I ask why you invited us here this evening?”
I was as caught off guard as she was.
“Whatever put that notion into your head? My sister dispatched the invitations herself.”
“Precisely! That’s why you had to purloin one and fill in our names yourself. Come, dear woman, the sample of your hand on the letters on your secretaire matches the hand that penned the unsigned note I received.”
“You have looked through my things!”
“I snoop when forced to. Pretence will fail you, ma’am, for the young lad who delivered this invitation will undoubtedly be found and will identify you. Come, now, you wrote to invite me here and now you deny it. I will have an answer.”
“Captain Cork,” I cautioned him, for the woman was quivering.
“Yes, I sent it.” Her voice was tiny and hollow. “But it had nothing to do with this horrible murder. It was trivial compared to it, and it is senseless to bring it up now. Please believe me, Captain. It was foolish of me.”
“You said ‘calamity’ in your note, and now we have a murder done. Is that not the extreme of calamity?”
“Yes, of course it is. I used too strong a word in my note. I would gladly have told you about it after the coronation. But now it would just muddle things. I can’t.”
“Then, my dear woman, I must dig it out. Must I play the ferret while you play the mute?” His voice was getting sterner. I know how good an actor he is, but was he acting?
“Do you know what a colligation is, Madam?”
She shook her head.
“It is the orderly bringing together of isolated facts. Yet you blunt my efforts; half facts can lead to half truths. Do you want a half truth?” He paused and then spat it out. “Your sister may have killed her older daughter!”
“That is unbearable!” she cried.
“A surmise based on a half truth. She was the last person to see Gretchen alive, if the Daws-Smith girl is to be believed. And why not believe her? If Lydia had killed Gretchen, would she then send the mother into the room to her corpse? Take the honor guards who were to carry the sedan chair: if Gretchen were alive when her mother left her, could one of those young men have killed her in the presence of five witnesses?”