Chapter 9

On Tuesday morning, as Lee got out of a taxicab in front of the little building on Madison Avenue which contained his offices, he was accosted by a breathless woman:

"Mr. Mappin...if you please...I recognized you from your picture in the newspaper...may I speak to you?"

Lee sized her up. While extremely agitated, her aspect was not at all dangerous; a stout woman of fifty-odd, with a plain, pale face; well dressed in a sober style; no make-up, no effort to appear younger than she was. She never had been beautiful, but she looked honest, well meaning, sensitive in her distress. Obviously, it had required a great effort for her to nerve herself up to speak to a strange man.

"What can I do for you?" asked Lee.

"I have some information about the Gartrey case."

"Won't you come into my office?"

"I intended to call at your office," she stammered, "but...but my courage failed me. There will be other people there...clerks, perhaps newspaper reporters. If I could see you alone!"

"Well, there's a hotel on the next corner," said Lee. "Let us go in there and order a cup of coffee."

She thanked him gratefully.

They sat down in the coffee room of the hotel with a little table between them. Lee made conversation to put the nervous woman at her ease. Her faded eyes had a good, kind expression; he believed in her honesty.

"My name is Bertha Cressy, Mrs. Cressy," she said. "I have been a widow for over twenty years. I was a friend of the late Mr. Gartrey's." She hesitated painfully.

"How long have you known Mr. Gartrey?" asked Lee to help her out.

"Mr. Mappin," she said distressfully, "will you give me your word that you will keep what I am about to tell you to yourself? I could not bear to have it printed in the newspapers. I have a horror of publicity. If the newspaper reporters found me out, I...I don't know what I'd do!"

"I certainly will not relay your story to the newspapers," said Lee kindly, "but how can I give you the assurance that you require? If you have evidence to give in this case it must be brought into court."

"I have no evidence to give," she said. "I don't know who killed Jules Gartrey. I only want to see justice done to my dead friend. The newspapers are making him out a perfect monster! He was kind to me. It seems so unfair!"

"The newspapers do that sort of thing in order to heighten interest in the case," said Lee. "It sometimes makes me indignant, too. Unless there is something in your story that requires to be told in court, I promise you I will keep what you tell me to myself."

She thanked him profusely. "I have known Mr. Gartrey from the time of his first marriage, but not intimately," she said. "That is thirty years ago. I was a girlhood friend of his first wife, Mona Hawley. We were schoolmates and we continued to be friends until she died eleven years ago. Long before that, the death of my husband had left me in very straitened circumstances and Mona helped me out, in fact she supported me. Her husband knew nothing about it, and when she died it ceased. I didn't see Mr. Gartrey for some time after that. A year after Mona's death he married for the second time. Do you know about that?"

"Only that it turned out badly," said Lee. "There was an ugly scandal of some sort."

"Yes. I wouldn't pretend that Jules was an easy man to get along with, but he was far from being the cold and selfish being that the newspapers make out. Sometimes while my friend was alive it made me angry to see the way he treated her. But Mona never complained. You see, she had fallen in love with him as a young man, before he became rich. She always saw him in that light. His second wife was a young actress--not that I have anything against actresses, but this one was a badhearted woman. She married him for his money and repented of her bargain. She was a flaunting, conspicuous creature, always getting in the newspapers, and she made Jules, who hated that sort of thing, very unhappy.

"It was at this time that he looked me up. I was working as a saleswoman in a department store; poor pay and very hard work for a woman of my age. You can imagine my surprise when the rich man came to my shabby little furnished room. He had found some of my old letters to Mona, he said, and after reading them was convinced that Mona and I were the only good women he had ever known. He said it was not fitting that a friend of his dead wife's should be living in such poverty, and he arranged to have an annuity paid me that enabled me to give up my job and live in modest comfort ever since. What an act of kindness! To lift the awful dread of insecurity from my breast forever! I could never sufficiently express my gratitude.

"In my new home he came to see me regularly. It relieved his breast to talk to me about Mona and to confide in me how the other woman wounded him in his pride. There soon began to be talk of other men in her life. I don't need to go into detail about that; it is long past. Matters went from bad to worse with his marriage; he finally paid the woman an immense sum of money and she went to Reno and got a divorce. So far, that was all right, but when she returned to New York, out of pure malevolence she made a statement to the newspapers that almost wrecked my poor friend."

"What was that?" asked Lee.

Mrs. Cressy blushed slightly. "Don't ask me to repeat it in detail. A coarse and shameless woman! She had his money and she had her divorce and she didn't care what she said. I only mention this to enable you to understand what happened later. What she said reflected on Mr. Gartrey's manhood; she intimated that...that he had never been a real husband to her. He was a proud man. There was nothing he could do but suffer in silence. Only I knew what he suffered. The wound that that woman dealt to his pride never healed.

"Six years ago he married for the third time. I was not consulted in advance or I might have warned him--but I don't suppose it would have made any difference if I had. His new wife was a young girl living on the island of Barbados. He met her while he was cruising in the West Indies on his yacht. Her father was a clergyman; she had never been away from the little colony; she was innocent, simple, unsophisticated, and as beautiful as an angel. He thought she would make him an ideal wife; he thought when he introduced her to the great world it would be like fairyland to her and he the Prince Charming.

"Of course, it didn't turn out like that. He made the initial mistake of settling a million dollars on her at the time of their marriage, so that from the beginning she had an independent income of forty thousand dollars a year. She was corrupted by luxury; her beauty made her famous and her whole character altered. It was the story of his second marriage over again, but this time he suffered worse and for a longer time.

"Gradually he learned that she was unfaithful to him, though he had no legal proof of it. And she knew that he knew; she didn't care because she believed that he would put up with anything rather than face a second scandal. When they were alone together she was completely cynical; she twitted him with his advancing age. She made his life a hell on earth but he was a proud man and he never let the world guess it. As before, I was his confidante. I don't think anybody else ever knew except possibly Mr. George Coler, who was his closest male friend.

"Finally, like the other one, Agnes Gartrey offered to go to Reno to divorce him, but she demanded such an enormous settlement that he refused. He could not bear, he said, after having given her one fortune to reward her unfaithfulness with another. He made up his mind that if there had to be a second scandal this one should not be at his expense. He was preparing to divorce her on statutory grounds here in New York State. Then he would not have to give her a penny. His suspicions settled on Alastair Yohe, the society photographer, and a precious young scoundrel!"

"Have you ever seen him?" put in Lee.

"No! And I have no wish to!...In order to further the affair, Mr. Gartrey made friends with Yohe and even lent him a large sum of money to refurnish his night club. Mr. Gartrey engaged private detectives to watch the couple, but nothing came of that. He then arranged with one of his own menservants to inform him by telephone when Yohe came to the house. I assume that it was such a message which took him home so early on the afternoon he was killed."

"There can be no doubt of that," said Lee.

"That is my story," said Mrs. Cressy. "About a month ago, when Mr. Gartrey was in my apartment, he tore up the will he had made in the woman's favor and burned the pieces. At that time he wanted to make a will leaving me a great sum of money, but I protested against it. He put off making another will and now, I suppose, she will inherit his fortune anyhow."

"Certainly the greater part of it," said Lee. "Unless she should be convicted of his murder."

Mrs. Cressy's eyes widened. "Do you think...do you think?..." she stammered.

"Ah, that I can't say," said Lee. "All the evidence so far appears to point to the young man."

"I've told you the story for your own information," said Mrs. Cressy. "I am not a revengeful woman, but I should like to see her punished. Even if it was the young man who fired the shot, morally she is just as guilty as he."

"So it would seem," said Lee. "I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mrs. Cressy. You have thrown much light on a dark subject. I shall respect your confidence."