Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

The Wagstaff Pearls by Mignon G. Eberhart

Jewels are meant for beautiful women. That is why, sometimes, a beautiful woman will do anything for... pearls.

At midnight the telephone rang and a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Wickwire?”

I had been asleep. I was only half awake. I said, “Yes? Who... who is...?”

She cried, in an agitated, incoherent way, “This is Frances Dune. I’m sorry to call you now but — I can’t wait. I’ve got to tell you. My conscience—” She took a long rasping breath, “It’s the Wagstaff pearls—”

There was a thud and clatter as if the telephone dropped, a kind of dull crash, and then a scream. It was a terrible scream, which gradually, as if from an increasing distance, died away. Then there was nothing.

I pressed the telephone against my ear. Frances Dune was my secretary, and the Wagstaff pearls were in my care. I knew that something was very wrong and I didn’t like that scream. Suddenly I heard rapid breathing, and somebody began to dial.

I cried, “Miss Dune! What is it? Miss Dune!”

The dialing stopped. “Oh, Mr. Wickwire, I didn’t know you were still on the phone. Miss Dune — I tried to stop her — I couldn’t—”

She sounded hysterical. I snapped, “Who is this?”

“I’m... I’m Muriel Evans. I work in the bank. Mr. Wickwire, she killed herself—”

The scream echoed horribly in my ear, put an edge to my voice. “Where are you?”

“Her apartment,” she quavered.

“Give me the address.”

She gave it to me in a voice that was still shaking.

“Call the police. I’ll be right there. Don’t let anybody else come into the place. Call them — wait a minute. How did she kill herself? Are you sure she’s dead?”

Miss Evans seemed to swallow hard. “She jumped out the window. It’s the ninth floor.”

With another cold wave of horror I realized that there wouldn’t be much use in calling a doctor.

Ten minutes later I was dressed and in a taxi. My house is in the upper sixties; we hurtled down Park Avenue. I was all too certain that I knew what had happened. Rarely but sometimes, things like that do happen in a bank. The trusted teller walks away with cash; the reliable cashier disappears with negotiable bonds. This time my perfect secretary had stolen the Wagstaff pearls.

My name is James Wickwire. I am a banker, a bachelor. I am indeed elderly enough to be one of the senior vice presidents. The Wagstaff pearls had been in my care for some twelve years since Mrs. Wagstaff had died. Her estate was left to minors; its administration was in the care of trustees. I was one of them and I had a power of attorney for the estate.

I was under the authority of the other trustees, but I could open the Wagstaff Estate safe deposit boxes. In one of those boxes, enclosed in a flat box of blue velvet, lay the Wagstaff pearls, wasting their beauty.

They were rather a nuisance because, twice a year, they had to be taken out of the vault and worn for one entire day.

Banks do many odd chores for old and valued clients and this was one of those chores. Twice a year one of the girls in the bank was sent down to the vault, the pearls were clasped around her neck (next to her skin, one of Mrs. Wagstaff’s requirements), and there she sat, reading a book for the entire day.

At closing time the pearls were returned to their blue box and to the vault for another six months. I could never see that their lustre was in any way improved thereby, but that had been Mrs. Wagstaff’s idea. She had charged me directly with the pearls.

It was a cold, raw night with the traffic lights reflected in eerie streaks on the wet pavement, yet I could see Mrs. Wagstaff against the night as clearly, almost, as I had seen her during what proved to be my last talk with her. I could see her bedroom, luxurious with feminine fripperies. I could see her sitting up against the pillow, with her white hair neatly arranged and her veined, small hands caressing the pearls. “They must be worn, you understand,” she told me. “Otherwise they lose their lustre. They must be worn by a woman and, Jim—” She was one of the few women who have ever called me Jim — “one of the girls in the bank will have to do it. I’m glad you have such pretty girls working in the bank.”

Prettiness is not exactly a qualification for any bank employee. Perhaps my face showed perplexity for she smiled.

“Pearls are meant for beautiful women. I was — they said I was beautiful once,” she smiled, and a luminous quality of beauty flashed out and touched something in my heart. “My husband used to say that only beautiful women really love pearls. Beauty calls for beauty.” She laughed, but rather sadly. “Of course he didn’t mean it, but he said that is why, sometimes, a beautiful woman will do anything for jewels — for pearls like these.” She sighed. A nurse rustled forward. I kissed her small hand before I went away; I don’t know why.

It was my last talk with Mrs. Wagstaff. But I had seen to it that her wishes about the pearls were observed. That is, they were worn regularly. I did not subscribe to her notion about beauty and pearls. I put that down to sentiment. Certainly I could not hold, in effect, beauty contests in the bank. Frances Dune had worn the pearls that day.

That, too, was my own direct responsibility. I had had occasion to be out of the office from noon till after the bank closed. I had returned to my own house about 11. Miss Dune, looking at my calendar that morning, had reminded me of the pearls, and I had sent her to wear them because I should not require her services. Miss Dune had been my secretary for nearly ten years. She was a tall, extremely plain woman of about 40, very neat, rather meagre somehow, fussy and overconscientious in a way, but efficient. I had trusted her.

Yet as soon as she spoke to me in that frenzied way over the telephone I knew what had happened. I had left it to her to check in the pearls with Mr. Wazey, manager of the vaults; I had overstepped my power of attorney to the extent of giving him my key, without which he could not have opened the safe deposit box. Obviously, Mr. Wazey had taken the velvet box, without looking inside it, returned it to the safe deposit box, and gone home. Miss Dune had taken the pearls.

Then, overcome by remorse, she had telephoned to confess it and had jumped out of the window rather than face the consequences. It was tragic and it was pathetic — this plain, hard-working woman conquered by the beauty of a strand of pearls.

And they were beautiful; no question of that. But times have changed. When Mrs. Wagstaff — young then — had been given the pearls, her husband had paid nearly a quarter of a million for them; I knew that. I also knew that their value was nothing like that now. The old-time high market for pearls is no more. The popularity of cultured pearls — flawless, too, but plentiful — has done that.

We arrived at an apartment house not far from the river. Already the street was lighted up. Police cars and an ambulance were there, and there were lights from windows all around and heads craning out of them.

A lieutenant of police, a big, burly fellow who looked rather strained and white, asked me to identify the body, and I did. The night seemed very cold; my gray topcoat was insufficient to keep out a chill that seemed to clutch my very bones. Then the ambulance moved closer. I went with the lieutenant to Miss Dune’s apartment on the ninth floor.

It was a small apartment, a bedroom-sitting room with a tiny kitchenette. It was painstakingly neat and rather sparse and meagre. Like Miss Dune.

A girl sat in a stiff chair; she rose as we came in. I recognized her only vaguely; she worked in the bookkeeping department of the bank, and I rarely saw her.

“I’m Muriel Evans, Mr. Wick-wire,” she said in a low voice. She was slender, dressed simply in red. She wore lipstick and matching nail polish, a custom I rather oppose in the bank, but certainly if the girls chose to wear nose rings outside the bank it was none of my business. However, she was quiet and well-behaved in a very trying and, indeed, a terrible situation.

I nodded. “This is the young lady who reported it,” I told the lieutenant. I still felt cold and rather sick.

He removed his cap. “I’ll have to ask you for a statement, Miss,” he said. “I realize it’s been a shock but—” He was sorry for her; I could see that.

She began to talk, and I glanced around the room. She had replaced the telephone in its cradle. A chair lay on its side on the floor. It accounted for the dull crash I had heard. The window, a long window, too near the floor, was still open. “Miss Dune telephoned to me about eleven,” Miss Evans was saying. “I live near here, two streets north. She said she couldn’t sleep; she was nervous and she asked me to come over. I didn’t know her well, but she was rather important, you see, at the bank, being Mr. Wickwire’s secretary. Of course I came — and she told me she’d taken the Wagstaff pearls. They were in the vault and—”

“I’ll explain that,” I told the lieutenant and did so briefly.

The lieutenant said, “Take it easy now, Miss Evans. Was she hysterical?”

“Yes! Oh, yes! I didn’t believe her. She said she had to talk — it seemed to come out in spite of herself. She was crying and — well, I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t. I thought she was ill, nervous, something wrong. Anyway, I went into the kitchen. I intended to make some coffee. I didn’t know what to do. While I was there I heard her at the telephone. She telephoned to Mr. Wickwire — I could hear her — and started to tell him what she’d done. But then she dropped the phone as if she couldn’t go on. I ran from the kitchen and — and she was pulling up the window. I caught at her and — I don’t know what I did. But I couldn’t stop her—” She put her hands over her face.

The lieutenant put a large hand kindly on her shoulder. “It’s been tough — take it easy.”

I said, “Where are the pearls?”

The girl, Muriel Evans, looked up with a start. She had light brown hair, parted in the middle and drawn up on her head. It was the kind of hair, fine and soft, that seems to make a nimbus around a girl’s face. She had blue eyes, set in finely arched hollows. It struck me that in spite of her shock she was rather attractive. “I don’t know,” she said. “She wouldn’t show them to me. That’s why I didn’t believe her.”

“We’ll find them,” the lieutenant said. “The pearls or a pawn ticket.”

I went to the telephone. “Is it all right for me to use this?”

He hesitated. “Well, the fact is, Mr. Wickwire, it’s suicide, but I have to go through some formalities — fingerprints and all that. Do you mind using another telephone?”

Miss Evans’s blue eyes leaped to sudden darkness. “But it was suicide! I saw her—”

“I understand,” the lieutenant said quickly. “Don’t get scared, Miss. It’s not a question of murder. Besides if you’d murdered her—”

“Oh—” Miss Evans gave a kind of gasp.

He patted her shoulder. “If you’d murdered her you’d have got the hell — that is, you’d have got out of here. Nobody knew you were here, did they?”

She moved her head slowly, saying, no, in a whisper.

“Well, there, you see! You’d have got out. You wouldn’t have called the police.”

A sergeant and another policeman came in from the hall as I went out. I took the elevator down and used the telephone at the switchboard in the foyer, to rout out Mr. Wazey. The boy on duty watched me, pop-eyed.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “Miss Dune was sure upset when she phoned for the lady in the red coat. But I never thought of—”

I asked him to get me a taxi.

Banks are supposed to operate through masses of red tape and in a sense they do; they have to. At the same time, in an emergency, there are ways to cut some of that red tape. Mr. Wazey met me at the bank and went into the vaults and got out the flat velvet box. When we opened it there were pearls lying on the satin lining. But the sight of those pearls shook me in a way that even Miss Dune’s tragic confession had not done — for they were not the Wagstaff pearls! They were not pearls at all, but dull and waxy fakes; they proved that the theft had been planned. And a moment of passionate impulse, and a carefully planned theft are two different things.

“I looked at them,” Mr. Wazey panted, his round face very pale. “When I replaced the box I glanced inside it. But I didn’t notice. I’m no connoisseur of pearls. Besides it was Miss Dune.”

She had never been delegated to wear the pearls before that day. I was fairly sure of that but we checked the records Mr. Wazey had kept. I could not remember when I had actually looked at the pearls myself so, for accuracy, I ran down the entire list of names.

Some of the girls whose names appeared there had married or drifted to other jobs; and many of the girls had worn the pearls twice or even three times, but practically every girl in the bank had worn the pearls at some time. Miss Busch had worn them three times; Miss Smith, twice; Miss Evans (Muriel Evans, the girl in the apartment), twice; Miss Wilkins, three times — Miss Dune, only once.

But she’d have known all about them from my Wagstaff file, so she had prepared herself for an opportunity. And she had reminded me of the date and made the opportunity. My heart was heavy as I watched Mr. Wazey lock up the vaults. Then I went back through the dismal, rainy night to Miss Dune’s apartment.

I had been gone scarcely an hour, but the search of the apartment had been so thorough that it looked as if a hurricane had struck it. Muriel Evans still sat in the armchair. She was pale, and something in the texture of her face made me think (although absently) of a magnolia. The lieutenant had unbuttoned his blue coat and was wiping his forehead. “They’re not here, Mr. Wickwire,” he said rather desperately. “No pawn ticket. Nothing.”

I have never been one to shirk my duty, even if unpleasant. I had to report not only to the insurance company but to the trustees of the estate and the officers of the bank, exactly how I had permitted this thing to happen. I made my way past the debris of cushions, books, untidy heaps of clothing to the window and looked down, so far down to the street that I felt queerly dizzy and sick again. Poor tragic Miss Dune who had paid with her life for the pearls, entrusted to me! Again I could almost see the still beautiful woman who had put her delicate old hands in mine and given the pearls into my keeping. I could almost see her smile, and hear her voice.

I stood at the window, it seemed to me, for a long time; in fact I suppose it was only a few seconds while I made up my mind to undertake the only course of action that I could determine. I turned back to the lieutenant. “Is it all right for me to go now?”

The lieutenant nodded. “I’ll report to you. We’ll get started with the pawn shops and jewelers. We’ll get the pearls back.”

I thanked him. I said to Miss Evans, “Do you mind coming to my house with me? I have to dictate a full report of this.”

The light fell fully on her magnolia face. She nodded, and picked up her coat. While she preceded me to the elevator I lingered, to speak to the lieutenant. I gave a concise word or two of directions and joined Miss Evans as the elevator came.

We found a taxi at once. Neither of us spoke all the way uptown. When we got to my house I got out my latch key. “My manservant is on his vacation,” I said, and let her into the hall. “I’m going to have a whiskey and soda. Will you join me?”

She refused but thanked me with a lift of her shadowed, lovely blue eyes. Then I said, “You might know. Did Miss Dune have a... well, I suppose one would say a boy friend? Some man—”

She gave me a quiet but intelligent look. “That occurred to me, too. You mean, someone might have planned this and might have influenced her to take the pearls. Yes, I think so. Once or twice I’ve seen her with a man. I’m not sure that I could identify him. I might be able to. But I feel sure that she wouldn’t have done that unless she was urged to do it. Some man, someone younger perhaps— But it seems cruel to say or think it.”

My study is at the right of the hall, and I took her there and told her to sit down. A tray with decanter and glasses stood on my desk. I mixed myself a rather strong whiskey and soda, then I opened a drawer of the desk and took out my revolver.

“What—” Miss Evans began, sitting upright.

I took out the box of shells and loaded the gun. “I don’t like the idea of a man. By now he knows what has happened. He might be dangerous.” I put the loaded gun down on the table and went into the hall to the street door. I opened it. The street was deserted. I went back to the study and closed the door. The house was extraordinarily quiet.

I picked up my glass and went to the window. The curtains had not been closed; the room behind me was reflected in the glittering, black windowpanes. I took rather a long drink. Then I said, “Where are the pearls?”

The figure in the cherry red dress stiffened.

I said, “You’ve worn the pearls twice — once six months ago, once a year and a half ago. One of those times you changed them for false pearls. No one saw the difference until today. Miss Dune saw that they were not the Wagstaff pearls; probably she looked up the record herself. She sent for you tonight to tell you to give them up and you—”

Her head lifted. “I reported the suicide. I wouldn’t have done that if—”

“You had to report it. The boy at the switchboard knew that you were there.”

The red dress flashed. I am not a brave man but I had to go on, “You killed her.”

I heard then a kind of metallic click behind me. I turned. She was standing beside the table, facing me. Her beauty leaped out like a flame. But she had my gun in her hand, and it was pointed at me.

I am not a brave man and I swiftly decided that I wasn’t very smart either. “You can’t do that!”

“I have to,” she said. Her voice was low and melodious, her face as lovely as the stars and as fateful. “The pearls are in my apartment. I intended to hide them, but I’ll not have time for that. You’d tell the police. But the pearls were your responsibility and everyone knows how you feel about the bank and — they’ll say this is suicide, too.” She put her finger on the trigger.

I hadn’t heard anyone enter the hall through the street door which I had been at some pains to open. But the study door smashed open and the room was flooded with policemen and the gun went off but the bullet went straight through the ceiling.

“Of course she’d snatch at the idea of some man who might have the pearls. And you had to have an excuse for the gun. That was pretty smart, sir,” the lieutenant said later.

I said wearily, “I had no facts, nothing I could tell you. I could not make so serious a charge without facts. But I thought that if she were guilty, if I accused her and I gave her a chance to get hold of the gun, she’d try to get rid of me. Thanks for getting here as I asked you to do, Lieutenant.”

He eyed me over his glass with a certain respect. “You are a real detective.”

“No, the detective in this case was — well, never mind.” He wouldn’t have understood. The detective was a lady who had smiled at me and said, “Beauty calls for beauty — that is why, sometimes, a beautiful woman will do anything for jewels.”

Yet perhaps he would have understood, for he said, a trifle wistfully, “That girl really stacked up. A beauty, wouldn’t you say? You didn’t exactly see it at first. But gradually — yes, sir, I guess that Helen of Troy dame might have looked something like that.”

He seemed to fumble deep down in his consciousness, for an idea. “I guess that’s why she wanted the pearls—” he said, gave me an abashed glance, murmured, “So long as I’m off duty,” and lifted his glass toward me.

I lifted my glass, too; but I drank my toast to another beautiful woman.