style="font-size:15px;"> “If we knew, we might have a reasonable clue. Now as to your alibi, Mr. Carpenter . . .”
Shelby groaned.
“I won’t make you go through it again. I’ve got the details. You had dinner at the Myrtle Cafeteria on Forty-Second Street, you walked to Fifth Avenue, took a bus to a 146th Street, bought a twenty-five-cent seat for the concert . . .”
Shelby pouted like a hurt child. “I’ve had some bad times, you know. When I’m alone I try to save money. I’m just getting on my feet again.”
“There’s no shame in saving money,” Mark reminded him. “That’s the only reasonable explanation anyone’s given for anything so far. You walked home after the concert, eh? Quite a distance.”
“The poor man’s exercise.” Shelby grinned feebly.
Mark dropped the alibi, and with one of those characteristic swift thrusts, asked: “Why didn’t you get married before this? Why did the engagement last so long?”
Shelby cleared his throat.
“Money, wasn’t it?”
A schoolboy flush ripened Shelby’s skin. He spoke bitterly. “When I went to work for Rose, Rowe and Sanders, I made thirty-five dollars a week. She was getting a hundred and seventy-five.” He hesitated, the color of his cheeks brightened to the tones of an overripe peach. “Not that I resented her success. She was so clever that I was awed and respectful. And I wanted her to make as much as she could; believe that, Mr. McPherson. But it’s hard on a man’s pride. I was brought up to think of women . . . differently.”
“And what made you decide to marry?”
Shelby brightened. “I’ve had a little success myself.”
“But she was still holding a better job. What made you change your mind?”
“There wasn’t so much discrepancy. My salary, if not munificent, was respectable. And I felt that I was advancing. Besides, I’d been catching up with my debts. A man doesn’t like to get married, you know, while he owes money.”
“Except to the woman he’s marrying,” a shrill voice added.
In the mirror’s gilt frame Mark saw the reflection of an advancing figure. She was small, robed in deepest mourning and carrying under her right arm a Pomeranian whose auburn coat matched her own bright hair. As she paused in the door with the marble statues and bronze figurines behind her, the gold frame giving margins to the portrait, she was like a picture done by one of Sargent’s imitators who had failed to carry over to the twentieth century the dignity of the nineteenth. Mark had seen her briefly at the inquest and had thought her young to be Laura’s aunt. Now he saw that she was well over fifty. The rigid perfection of her face was almost artificial, as if flesh-pink velvet were drawn over an iron frame.
Shelby leaped. “Darling! You remarkable creature! How you’ve recovered! How can you be so beautiful, darling, when you’ve gone through such intolerable agonies?” He led her to the room’s most important chair.
“I hope you find the fiend”—she addressed Mark but gave attention to her chiffon. “I hope you find him and scrouge his eyes out and drive hot nails through his body and boil him in oil.” Her vehemence spent, she tossed Mark her most enchanting smile.
“Comfortable, darling?” Shelby inquired. “How about your fan? Would you like a cool drink?”
Had the dog’s affection begun to bore her, she might have dismissed it with the same pretty indifference. To Mark she said: “Has Shelby told you the story of his romantic courtship? I hope he’s not left out of any of the thrilling episodes.”
“Now, darling, what would Laura have said if she could hear you?”
“She’d say I was a jealous bitch. And she’d be right. Except that I’m not jealous. I wouldn’t have you on a gold platter, darling.”
“You musn’t mind Auntie Sue, Mr. McPherson. She’s prejudiced because I’m poor.”
“Isn’t he cute?” cooed Auntie Sue, petting the dog.
“I never asked Laura for money”—Shelby might have been taking an oath at an altar. “If she were here, she’d swear it, too. I never asked. She knew I was having a hard time and insisted, simply upon lending it to me. She always made money so easily, she said.”
“She worked like a dog!” cried Laura’s aunt.
The Pomeranian sniffed. Aunt Sue pressed its small nose to her cheek, then settled it upon her lap. Having achieved this enviable position, the Pomeranian looked upon the men smugly.
“Do you know, Mrs. Treadwell, if your niece had any—” Mark produced the word uneasily “—enemies?”
“Enemies!” the good lady shrieked. “Everyone adored her. Didn’t everyone adore her, Shelby? She had more friends than money.”
“That,” Shelby added gravely, “was one of the finest things about her.”
“Anyone who had troubles came to her,” Aunt Sue declaimed, quite in the manner of the immortal Bernhardt. “I warned her more than once. It’s when you put yourself out for people that you find yourself in trouble. Don’t you think that’s true, Mr. McPherson?”
“I don’t know. I’ve probably not put myself out for enough people.” The posturing offended him; he had become curt.
His annoyance failed to check the lady’s histrionic aspirations. “‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft buried with their bones,’” she misquoted, and giggling lightly, added, “although her poor bones aren’t buried yet. But we must be truthful, even about the dead. It wasn’t money principally with Laura, it was people, if you know what I mean. She was always running around, doing favors, wasting her time and strength on people she scarcely knew. Remember that model, Shelby, the girl with the fancy name? Laura got me to give her my leopard coat. It wasn’t half worn out either. I could have got another winter out of it and spared my mink. Don’t you remember, Shelby?”
Shelby had become infatuated with a bronze Diana who had been threatening for years to leap, with dog and stag, from her pedestal.
Auntie Sue continued naughtily: “And Shelby’s job! Do you know how he got it, Mr. McPherson? He’d been selling washing machines—or was it casings for frankfurters, darling? Or was that the time when you earned thirty dollars a week writing letters for a school that taught people to be successful business executives?”
Shelby turned defiantly from Diana. “What’s that to be ashamed of? When I met Laura, Mr. McPherson, I happened to be working as correspondent for the University of the Science of Finance. Laura saw some of my copy, realized that I was wasting a certain gift or flair, and with her usual generosity . . .”
“Generosity wasn’t the half of it,” Auntie Sue interrupted.
“She spoke to Mr. Rowe about me and a few months later, when there was a vacancy, he called me in. You can’t say I’ve been ungrateful”—he forgave Mrs. Treadwell with his gentle smile. “It was she, not I, who suggested that you forget it.”
“Mustn’t
