The Gracie Allen Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Hang it all,” said Gamadge, “I seem to be a complete blight, this evening. I don’t care so very much about it, to be perfectly frank; but then, I haven’t read all of it, or seen much of it. Perhaps I haven’t given it a chance.”

  “Why don’t you come up and try it at Seal Cove?” Young Cowden’s face assumed a gleeful and impish expression. “I have an interest in drumming up audiences, you know. I’m…”

  He had pulled off a pair of thick chamois gloves, and was twisting them into a rope. As his cousin appeared with a tray, he shoved them into a pocket, and produced a truly magnificent cigarette case. It was thin, made of platinum, and initialled in gold. “I won’t offer you a cigarette,” he said; “I only smoke those awful things without any tobacco in them.”

  “Without any nicotine, you mean, you young ass.” Fred Barclay put the tray down on a stand, and poured out a cup. “Have some of this stuff, Alma?”

  Alma Cowden, followed by Sanderson, came up to them.

  “Don’t look so cross,” said her brother.

  “I’m not cross.”

  “Cross as a bear all day. Isn’t that so, Hugh?”

  “Stop badgering your sister, and give me one of those gaspers of yours. I rather like them.”

  “I don’t.” Miss Cowden, ignoring young Barclay’s proffered case, fished a crumpled package of cigarettes from her pocket. Sanderson gave her a light. He, too, was a little threadbare; his Harris tweeds had seen better days. In fact, of all the men in the room, the sick boy alone looked, and unconsciously behaved, like a rich man. “The heir,” Gamadge reflected, “and his poor relations. It leaps to the eye.”

  Colonel Barclay, tray in hand, pushed at the swing door with his foot. Gamadge went over, relieved him of his burden, and set it on the bridge table. This had been drawn up beside the couch where Mrs. Barclay sat in deep conversation with her sister-in-law.

  “Family reunion,” thought Gamadge. “I ought to go. A short drink, and I’m off.” He helped the colonel to mix highballs, while the two ladies chatted, practically in his ear:

  “Of course it is dreadful to have to let him do these things, Lulu; but he must be kept happy.”

  “I should have thought, though, that if this attack at Portsmouth was so serious—”

  “All his attacks are serious. We got a room for him, and Hugh Sanderson got him to bed; but he would get up and come on to-night. All he can think of is this wretched summer theatre. It opens tomorrow night, and he is determined to be on hand.”

  “Because those Atwoods are there!”

  “And a little girl called Baker. He adores it all.”

  “He never would have got into it if it hadn’t been for the Atwoods.”

  “I tried my best to break up the intimacy; he’s been cross with me ever since. But that studio of theirs in New York was so bad for him—the smoke, and the crowds, and the excitement. Poor child, he hasn’t had much fun, of course. You don’t know what a strain it’s all been, these last years. Oh, thank you, Mr. Gamadge. That looks just right.”

  She took the glass from him, and sat back against the cushions to enjoy it. Gamadge, mixing Mrs. Barclay’s drink, glanced at her with admiration. Fine bones, fine skin, level eyebrows over hazel eyes, beautiful figure, beautiful, simple clothes. She must be in her late forties, but with that physique she would always be good-looking. The rippling brown hair that showed under one side of her small hat had no grey in it, but he would swear it wasn’t dyed. Just one of those lucky people that couldn’t grow old.

  Colonel Barclay came up, and drew a chair to Mrs. Cowden’s side. “Sit down, Gamadge,” he said, patting the back of another one.

  “No, thank you, Colonel. I’ll just swallow this, and then I must go.”

  “Can we give you a lift to the hotel?” asked Mrs. Cowden. “If you don’t mind a lot of things falling all over your feet, there’s plenty of room.”

  “Thank you very much, I have my small bus.”

  He finished his whisky, shook hands with her and with his host and hostess, and crossed the room. Miss Cowden had again retired to the window, and Mr. Sanderson had again joined her there. Lieutenant Barclay was handing a paper to Amberley Cowden, who said, as he shoved it into a pocket: “What do you think?”

  “Fine. But you’ll live to bury the lot of us.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Too bad Aunt El is in such a deuce of a hurry; you could have stayed here till the zero hour, and got it off your mind.” He turned, as Gamadge came up. “Going, old man? I was just telling young Amberley that the state of Maine requires three witnesses to a will.”

  “Uncle and Aunt Lu and Mr. Gamadge could have signed; that’s so. Well, to-morrow will do. Can’t you wait and go up with us, Mr. Gamadge?”

  “I have a little car outside. Good night, Mr. Cowden.”

  “Next time you see me, I’ll be twenty-one.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes. Goes by standard time.” He consulted his watch. “It’s only ten past eleven, really.” He shook hands with Gamadge, who went over to the pair by the window. This time they were both contemplating the curtain of mist. When he spoke, they turned. Sanderson shook hands, amiably; but she did not at first seem to remember who Gamadge was, or why he was there. Her short, smooth dark hair, brushed straight back from her forehead, gave her a melancholy, Pierrot look, and her dark eyes met his with a brooding gaze.

  “Good night, Miss Cowden.”

  “Good night.”

  He went out, turning up his collar; found his way across the yard to the road; stood for a moment admiring the big Cowden car, and then climbed into the modest coupé behind it, and drove off through the mist.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gamadge Minds His Own Business

  FROM THE BARCLAY Cottage to the Ocean House drive the shore road rises gently, curving to the left. It then dips again, runs level for a couple of miles, and turns inland through pinewoods to Oakport Village. Gamadge would have said that he knew every bump of it; but to-night the fog had dropped a veil over the familiar and the real. It had muffled the sound of the tide that came booming in below the rocks on the right, so that the surf might have been half a mile away, instead of just across the beach. It had dimmed the lights of the cottages on the left, so that these were confused with the bathhouse and the beach shops, and Gamadge thought he had passed the boardwalk long before he had reached it. He nearly missed the turn to the hotel.

  He backed, went up the rough drive, and followed it past the Ocean House down to the garage. Drawing up in front of the sign that said: “Please Do Not Blow Your Horn,” he called Kimball, the night man.

  “Don’t bury my car behind the big one that’s coming in,” he begged.

  “Lots of room, this early in the season,” replied Kimball.

  Gamadge walked up to the hotel, climbed the steps, crossed the wide veranda, and opened one of the doors that led into the lobby. These were usually wide, but to-night they were closed against the fog. Sam, the night watchman, sat behind the counter, his feet up, eating a banana.

  “Hello, Mr. Gamadge,” he said. “Nice night for a drive.”

  “Fine. I hope it blows over before morning.”

  “It’ll blow over before that.”

  “Your party from New York is on the way. I just saw them down at the Barclays’.”

  “I’m all ready for ‘em.”

  “Don’t stare when you see the boy. He startles you, for a minute. He has heart trouble, you know, and it makes him a queer colour.”

  “I heard he was sick. How about my takin’ him up in the elevator?”

  “The what?”

  “The freight elevator.”

  “Oh, that thing. I don’t think they’d trust him on it. If they had to have an elevator for him, they’d have written and asked about one.”

  “Mrs. Cowden’s been here before. She knows there ain’t any.”

  “Have Waldo call me at eight, will you? I have a golf date.”

/>   “O.K.” Sam made a note on a pad. Gamadge’s eye wandered to the mailboxes, and he stared, unpleasantly affected by what he saw.

  “Don’t tell me there’s a letter for me.”

  “Seems so. And a big one,” replied Sam, taking it out of its pigeonhole, and handing it across the counter.

  “Oh, Lord. Proof. I’ll be at it an hour.”

  “Can’t it wait till to-morrow?”

  “No, it can’t. I have to get it into the box for the early collection.”

  He climbed the first flight of wide, shallow stairs, and then the second, steeper one that led to his room on the second floor. He was as yet alone on this corridor, which somehow conveyed an impression of the fact, as hotel corridors mysteriously do, even without the testimony of dark, closed transoms and a minimum of light. Nobody had bothered to close the glass door at the end; it gave on the spiral stairway, enclosing the shaft of the freight elevator, that did duty at the Ocean House for fire escape. Salt air, damp and fog-laden, met Gamadge as he turned towards his room.

  Should he close the end door? He decided against it, opened his own, and switched on his light. He took his coat off, sat down, put his feet up on the only other chair, got out his fountain pen, and went to work.

  At five minutes past one Sam looked up from his magazine, saw the darkness beyond the glass of the front doors change to grey, to cloudy opalescence, to yellow. He jumped up, came from behind the counter, and hurried across the lobby and out on the porch. The Cowden car was just coming to a stop at the foot of the veranda steps. He ran down and opened the rear door.

  “Glad to have you back, Mrs. Cowden,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Why, it’s Sam. Nice to see you again. I’ve brought my family with me, this summer. This is my niece.”

  “How are you, Miss Cowden?” Sam helped the elder lady out, and would have done the same for the other; but she jumped down without his assistance, and ran up the steps and into the hotel, her little dressing case in her hand. The blond young man in the raincoat who had been behind the wheel slipped out, came around the car, and opened the near front door. Sam, getting out luggage, watched from the corner of his eye while he helped a bundled figure to descend, decided that his own help was not needed, and after one glimpse of the livid face between hat-brim and coat collar, turned away. When the bags were out, he put his fingers to his mouth and gave a low, owl-like hoot, which brought a similar response from the garage.

  “Don’t bother.” The young man in the raincoat paused in his slow ascent of the steps, his arm in that of his companion. “I can drive the car down.”

  “No trouble. Kimball ain’t busy.” Sam started on his first trip into the hotel with the luggage, thinking: “They’re all tuckered out, and three of ‘em’s scared to death. The sick feller ain’t. Acts like he was enjoying it.”

  The pale young man had, in fact, straightened, thrown back his shoulders, shaken off Sanderson’s arm, and looked about him with a cheerful smile. Mrs. Cowden, bringing up the rear with Sam, murmured: “My nephew isn’t well.”

  “I heard he wasn’t.”

  “We were terribly frightened on the way up from the Barclays’. He had some cocoa there. I don’t think it agreed with him.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I thought we should never get him here.”

  “Want I should call a doctor?”

  “No, he says he’s all right. But he always says that. Oh, dear! What is he doing now?”

  The pale young man had walked across to the desk, and was writing in the register.

  “Come off it, Amby,” protested Sanderson. “No need for that. Come on up to bed.”

  Sam put the luggage on the floor, and went behind the counter to officiate. The young man looked up at him, and then, above his head, at the clock on the wall. He gave Sam a roguish and elfin smile.

  “That clock of yours right?” he asked.

  “Set it by radio every day.”

  “Then I’ve been of age for eleven minutes. This is my birthday.”

  “Many hap—“ began Sam.

  “I don’t know about that; but I can do as I please, now, and I want to register.” He finished his task, and Sam, blotting it, read, upside down:

  Mrs. Francis Cowden, New York City.

  Miss Alma Cowden,  ”  ”  ”

  Amberley Cowden,  ”  ”  ”

  Hugh Sanderson,   ”  ”  ”

  “That right?”

  “It’s exactly right, Mr. Cowden.”

  “Any telephone message for me?”

  Sam investigated in the rack, and said there was none.

  “Funny. All right, Hugh. I’ll go up, now. What’s the hurry?”

  Sanderson, who had been exchanging helpless glances with Mrs. Cowden, propelled the recalcitrant young man toward the stairs. Miss Cowden had been standing halfway up, her back turned to them all. Sam picked up three bags, and led the way to the first door.

  “Right down here,” he said, walking the length of the corridor, and stopping in front of a room just to the right of the fire-escape door. “Number 21—that’s yours, Mrs. Cowden. Miss Cowden has 19, next door; bath between. Mr. Cowden is in 17, with bath. Mr. Sanderson is opposite, Number 20; single, no bath. That right?”

  “That’s right, thank you, Sam. Just bring the rest of the things up, and we’ll settle ourselves in.” She gave him a generous tip, and went through the door he held open for her. “Oh, how glad I am to be here. I suppose we could get at extra blankets? He—he’s apt to be cold.”

  “Right in the linen closet, down the hall.”

  “We’ll get them if we need them.”

  Sam deposited her bags in the room, opened the other doors, and then went down for the rest of the luggage. When he approached Room 17 with a handsome pigskin dressing case, he found the occupant sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over with his hands between his knees, and breathing hard. Sam’s kind, freckled face was troubled.

  “You all right?” he enquired, putting the case on the table.

  “Yes. Fine. Call Sanderson, will you?”

  Sam did so, and went downstairs. He had left the three golf bags belonging to the party leaning against the counter; he put them in the lobby chest, and was just emerging when the office telephone rang. He went back to answer it, and heard Sanderson s voice:

  “That you, Sam? Hang on a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sanderson’s voice went on, to somebody else: “All right, Amby, you idiot. Go ahead, and make it short.”

  Sam said: “You want to make a call, Mr. Cowden?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s to Seal Cove. You know where that is?”

  “Yes. Oakport exchange.”

  “I don’t know the number, it’s that summer theatre—‘The Old Pier Players.’”

  “I’ll get the Oakport operator.”

  Sam got into communication with Oakport. Presently he said: “They have no telephone up there, Mr. Cowden.”

  “What? There must be one. That’s crazy.”

  “No, sir, they haven’t. No number listed.”

  “Perhaps they’re all asleep. Ring them again.”

  “No number to ring.”

  “I don’t understand. It’s a theatre. They must have a telephone.”

  “Wait a minute.” Sam again interviewed Oakport, and came back with the news: “They ain’t installed yet. They only been there a week, and the poles was all down. There’s been a lot of trouble with outlying districts since the storm last fall. Operator can get you Tucon.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Little place on the back route from Oakport to Portland. They been getting their messages and telegrams left there in some store. Operator has the number. They might take your call, and ride down to the Cove with it.”

  “Oh, well; I hate to get them up, this time of night.”

  “It’s only a little place. Might not anybody be around, late as this.”

/>   “I should think those people at the Cove would be wild.”

  “I should, too.”

  “Well, it’s not so important as all that. I guess—”

  Sanderson’s voice said: “Amby, you are a jackass. I’ll get him for you first thing in the morning. Now will you quit? I want to go to bed. I’m all in.”

  “I see now why there wasn’t any message for me to-night.”

  “Of course. He couldn’t get through. Quit, will you?”

  “All right, Sam.”

  The receiver clicked. Sam exchanged some words with Oakport, and returned to his magazine. He was deep in it, when a curious sound on the stairs beside him made him look up, and then stare, transfixed. The sound had been, as he thought, laboured breathing.

  He gazed incredulously at the pallid, smiling face, the tweed coat, the white silk muffler, the thick yellow chamois gloves, and the Panama hat; and he spoke as he had never before spoken to a guest of the Ocean House:

  “What you doing down here?”

  “Oh, you’re there, are you? I wasn’t sure you would be.”

  “Certainly I’m here.”

  “I thought you might be making your rounds. You do, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. You ain’t going out, Mr. Cowden?”

  “Not if you’ll do something for me. I dropped my cigarette case. I had it in the car, and I know just where it must be—right outside, near the steps. It must have fallen out of my coat when Hugh Sanderson was helping me down.”

  Sam, remembering that awkward exit from the front seat, was not surprised to hear that something had been dropped in the process; but he continued to stare.

  “Why didn’t you telephone down?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you send—”

  “Sanderson’s dead on his feet; I’m as fresh as a daisy. I had two solid hours in bed, at Portsmouth.”

  “You could have telephoned.”

  “They’re not asleep, yet. They might have heard me. I want my cigarette case; it’s a good one.”

  “You were going poking out in this fog, lookin’ for it? You must be crazy. You turn right round and go on back up to bed. I’ll find it, if it’s there.” Sam got up, and produced a big torch from under the counter.