And Dangerous to Know

by Elizabeth Daly

  “She didn’t inherit from the aunt that died?”

  “No, and didn’t expect to. Mrs. Woodworth left everything except legacies to servants away from the family; to the Aaron Means Hospital, which her husband helped to found. The Dunbars knew her intentions.”

  “When did the old lady die?”

  “Let’s see: Sunday, July tenth. The funeral was on the thirteenth.”

  “How much did she leave?”

  “About a million.”

  “You think in millions, Macloud. Fatalities tread on one another’s heels in the Dunbar family, don’t they?”

  “Old Mrs. Woodworth’s death wasn’t a tragedy for them; they saw very little of her, and she was over eighty and had had a stroke before. High time she went, if you ask me.”

  “We can’t ask her,” said Gamadge, smiling.

  “They’re very clannish,” said Macloud. “They all came down for the funeral; came down on the eleventh, I think. They were going back to the Cape as soon as Dunbar got the Woodworth affairs in shape. She had her own lawyer, old Baynes, and he handed the whole thing over to us on a platter—not a nickel out.” Macloud laughed. “Abigail says they were a little worried, the old lady had been getting interested in some war protégés; cases from the hospital. They were afraid there might be big largesse for them in the will, and a scandal. But no; if the boys got anything it wasn’t enough to make old Baynes raise an eyebrow.”

  “She might have adopted one of them.”

  “She didn’t. The last favourite was a young fellow named Dobbs, Walter Dobbs; he came to the funeral. He’s happily established at present in Brooklyn somewhere.”

  “Died of another stroke, did she?”

  “Yes, she was found in the front hall. At first they thought she might have fallen downstairs, but old people bruise easily on bare floors, and probably she just collapsed.”

  “Nobody seems to have profited much—unless the hospital sent someone to push her downstairs?”

  Macloud laughed. “I don’t think they were sorry to get the money, anyhow. They’re going to have a new wing. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened to Alice Dunbar, Gamadge?”

  “I couldn’t even make a guess.”

  “She wasn’t a slummer, she couldn’t have been blackmailed—never tried to raise money. How did she run into trouble on that July afternoon? If it was amnesia, and there’s not a hint of it in her medical history, why hasn’t she been picked up and turned in—there’s a reward, and plenty of publicity! If some maniac killed her, why hide the body?”

  “Only one reason—safety for the murderer. How many women have been killed to get rid of them?”

  “But my God, Gamadge, why should any man want to get rid of Alice Dunbar? She was a catch; she would have inherited from her parents.”

  “If they didn’t like the man?”

  “Everybody knew her circumstances. An ineligible would know what he could expect. If they had to keep the affair a secret, he’d know damn well!”

  “People change their minds.”

  “Well, suppose she was hanging on to him; in their station of life—or hers—the man would merely quit; like that first fellow she was engaged to. And in these days,” said Macloud sourly, “nobody’d blame him. If she hung on, they’d be sorry for him!”

  “I’m only taking it into consideration. Certainly there would have to be a very serious reason for murder.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be because some other girl was jealous, or her parents were jealous for her. Not nowadays.”

  “Would her people consider Bruce Dunbar ineligible?” Gamadge, his legs stretched out, was smoking thoughtfully.

  “Absolutely not,” replied Macloud. “They’d have loved it. They’d have staked them. They’re very fond of Bruce Dunbar.”

  “A fortune hunter would have to take the long view.”

  “I don’t know that Bruce Dunbar is a fortune hunter, and there’s no evidence that he ever even looked at Alice Dunbar—unless he had to. And she seems to have considered him a lightweight.”

  “I’m discussing him because she did know him, and she seems to have had some difficulty in meeting men.”

  Macloud rose, went over to the mantel, and stood knocking out his pipe against the long-suffering bricks of the hearth. He said: “I can’t help thinking she must have gone off purposely: a callous thing to do. These people are losing their minds over the uncertainty; I wish I’d never got into this brutal case.”

  “She may have gone off her head.” Gamadge stood up, finished his drink, and put the glass down. “We don’t know enough about her to judge, but some things stick out: she was washed out by the sister from infancy, she couldn’t hold on to her man, she didn’t make friends. Her family probably regarded her as a failure, fit for nothing but to make herself useful; she was young, perhaps she saw no end to it. Don’t they think she simply made off, Bob?”

  “To work or starve?”

  “That’s so, she wasn’t trained to anything. I don’t suppose she’d make much of a living at the gift cards and the wastebaskets. They think she didn’t go alone?”

  “They don’t know what to think, Gamadge, and there isn’t a policeman or a newspaper that believes they’re keeping anything back.” As they walked out into the hall, Macloud grumbled: “I must say I thought you’d have a bright idea or so to contribute to the pool; public-spirited amateur like you. Where’s all that armchair criminology? You needn’t look at me like that, I know you get out of the chair sometimes. Or perhaps you’re tired of doing it free. Why don’t you turn pro this time? The Dunbars would pay you anything you liked to ask, and you can use my name.”

  Gamadge pressed the button for the little elevator. He said: “I’d hate to make a fool of myself.”

  “That’s so, there don’t seem to be any clues. Except that bus conductor, who may have seen her get on his bus somewhere in the lower seventies, but doesn’t remember where she got off!”

  Gamadge said nothing. The elevator came, Macloud got into it and moodily waved a hand. “Go to it with my blessing,” he said, and the elevator sank from sight.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Other One

  MONDAY THE FIFTEENTH was one of those days that sometimes surprise city people in August; pleasant and cool, with that strangeness and difference in the air and sunshine that means a season coming to an end. Gamadge dressed in his thinnest grey flannels, had late breakfast, got out his car, and drove up to his subscription library in the seventies. He sometimes said that if he had to die he wouldn’t mind dying in the sunny reading-room, comfortably settled in one of the large chairs, with his favourite humorous periodical open on his knee. The librarians assured him he was welcome, no trouble at all, they’d make it right with the board of governors.

  This morning he talked for a while with the ladies at the desk, put Clara down for a couple of books, put himself down for one, turned to leave, and came back again.

  “By the way,” he said, “somebody I know seems to have died while I was in the country. I missed the obituary, and my wife wants the particulars. Could I have back files of the Times for—let’s see—better make it four weeks.”

  The papers were laid out for him on the long table in the catalogue room. Pencil in hand, blank slips at his elbow, he studied the Dunbar case and made an occasional note. Time passed, librarians went out to lunch, others came to relieve them. He sat on absorbed until two o’clock.

  At last he put his slips in his wallet, got up, and left. He drove around the corner, had lunch, and then got into his car again and headed for the West Side Highway.

  He drove up the Henry Hudson Parkway as far as Yonkers, where he cut back to North Broadway; he liked that thoroughfare, with its big trees and its glimpses of the river. He left Hastings behind him, and after another ten minutes slowed down and began to look for road signs. He turned off the route and stopped at the entrance to a small old estate with a shadowy lawn and a circular driveway.

  The
house, barely visible among the trees, was not far back from the road; he turned in, and drew up in front of a porte-cochère. The place seemed to sleep; turreted and gabled, it belonged to the past and seemed rooted there. Faint summer noises came from the gardens and grounds; the scrape of a hoe, the twitter of birds, a rustling as of rabbits in grass.

  He got out and rang. Footsteps sounded on bare boards, and the door opened; a thin woman in a dotted silk dress looked out at him.

  “You’re Miss Cole,” Gamadge informed her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Staying on to look after the place, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m an associate of Mr. Macloud’s, Miss Cole; you know Mr. Macloud? Mr. Dunbar’s partner.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” She swung the door wide. “Come right in.”

  He followed her through a dim hallway, from which stairs rose. At a double doorway on the right he paused and turned. “That’s where Mrs. Woodworth was found, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. That’s where I found her.” Her pleasant face showed an old distress. “It was so sad. She must have been coming down for her tea. I didn’t hear a thing—I was alone here, you know; it was a Sunday afternoon, and the Russi couple were out.”

  “I know. Well, at least she didn’t fall downstairs.”

  “They don’t know, sir; I hope not. She’d had the other stroke before. I do wish I’d been right there, but I was getting the tray ready in the pantry.”

  “You could not have done anything for her, Miss Cole.”

  “I know, but I wish I’d been there.”

  “These sudden deaths are harder on the bystanders than on the old person who dies.”

  “I know.” She asked: “You didn’t come about that, sir?”

  “Oh no, I’m just clearing up some details for the estate.” He smiled at her. “I should think you’d be sick of us.”

  “I’m only too glad to do anything I can.” She led the way into a dusky high-ceilinged parlour, shuttered against the sun. “I was Mrs. Woodworth’s housekeeper for twenty-four years. She’s left me comfortable for the rest of my life.”

  “Yes, I was glad to know it.”

  “Please sit down, sir.” Miss Cole went to a high, narrow window and let in some greenish light, which had to find its way through vines and shrubbery into the room. She said: “And now this other terrible thing.”

  “Yes, awful.” Gamadge waited until she had taken a chair, and then sat opposite her on a hard sofa. He looked around him. “I hope the place won’t be torn down. I like these fine old houses.”

  “It’s got to go, sir. The hospital will never keep it. And all McBride’s lovely vegetables and flowers and fruit trees.”

  “They’ll be salvaged, I’m sure.”

  “They belong here,” said Miss Cole. “All these years!”

  Gamadge nodded in solemn sympathy. The room was solemn, with its bareness and its shrouded furniture, the grand piano in a dark corner, the great bronze clock and flanking urns.

  “Have they heard anything about poor Miss Dunbar, sir?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “We just can’t understand it. Such a quiet young lady, and just the way she always was at Christmastime, when they were here. And such a handsome card she did for Mrs. Woodworth.”

  “Yes, it’s a mystery. May I smoke, Miss Cole?”

  “Of course, sir. There’s that bronze ashtray.”

  “It looks more like a card tray,” said Gamadge, pulling it across a little ormulu table towards him.

  “Mrs. Woodworth had it for the boys.”

  “Oh yes, her hospital cases. How’s Dobbs?”

  “I think he’s going on all right; she got him the job. She was always getting things done for people.”

  “Was he the last, Miss Cole?” Gamadge added: “I know he hasn’t been up for a long time. I had a sort of idea that there was another one.”

  Miss Cole had hesitated, and now looked at him in a puzzled kind of way. “Well, she did have—but he just dropped in.”

  “Really?” Gamadge spoke with polite interest.

  “I mean he…” She looked at him, the puzzled expression growing in her eyes. “How did you hear about him, sir? They never asked me about him, they just took Mrs. Woodworth’s address book and got the other names. Such nice boys, they used to be all over the place, fooling with McBride and sometimes driving her in the car. They cheered her up.”

  “Of course they did. Didn’t the other one cheer her up?”

  “I guess he did.”

  “But not you?” Gamadge smiled at her. “Perhaps you didn’t care for the idea—strangers dropping in on Mrs. Woodworth?”

  “I didn’t, and the Russis didn’t. McBride didn’t. But she seemed to like him.”

  “Who was he?” Gamadge was lighting a cigarette.

  “We don’t know.”

  Gamadge raised his eyes to glance at her over the flame of his lighter. She went on: “Mrs. Woodworth didn’t say. Of course there’s no reason why she should. She just told us the first time—after he came the first time—that he was driving by, and saw the place, and walked in to look at it because he was a landscape gardener.”

  “Walked in?” Gamadge replaced his lighter in his pocket.

  “He left his car in the road every time,” said Miss Cole.

  “Perhaps he wasn’t proud of it.”

  “It must have been some rattletrap kind of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “I suppose he was a gentleman,” said Miss Cole, rather grimly, “or Mrs. Woodworth wouldn’t have had him.”

  “War hero, perhaps,” suggested Gamadge.

  Miss Cole’s smile was sardonic. “He was older than the boys; over thirty anyway. And I hate those flashy sport clothes. Russi said that first time he brought in the tea—“‘What does Madam want with that gigolo?’”

  “I see. Might be an artistic type, Miss Cole; landscape gardening is certainly an art.”

  “He never went near the gardens after that first day, when he walked around with Mrs. Woodworth. He wasn’t here much,” she added. “He only started coming last September, and he hasn’t been near the place since June. He’d come about once in two months, have his tea and go.”

  “What did Mrs. Woodworth see in him, I wonder?”

  “Well, he’d sing.”

  “Sing? Was he a professional?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He’d— ”She turned and looked at the great dark bulk of the closed piano. “He’d play and sing sometimes, that’s all. You’d hear him all over the house, way back in the kitchen; and I must say you could have cried sometimes.”

  “Sad music? Crooning?”

  “No, just songs, beautiful. There was one—the only time I ever heard words: ‘Don’t Fill Up a Glass for Me’.”

  Gamadge laughed. “I could cry over that song any time; the harmonies are wonderful. I could cry over it cold sober.”

  Miss Cole smiled too. “I wouldn’t blame you, sir.”

  Gamadge crossed his knees. “What did he look like, this accomplished party?”

  “You could hardly see him. It’s always so dim in here, and in winter Mrs. Woodworth only liked soft light; and he never looked at us.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Mrs. Russi never saw him at all; McBride only saw him way off across the orchard. Russi and I—we weren’t supposed to stare at visitors when we brought in a tray, and I only brought the tray on Sundays.”

  “You must have got an impression. The whole thing’s so odd—you’ve really got me very much interested in the landscape gardener.”

  “Brown hair, glasses, quite good-looking, a heavy tan.”

  “Even in winter?”

  “He may have had a naturally dark skin, I suppose. It looked more like tan.”

  “And then these loud clothes.”

  “Coat with big checks; and a terrible necktie.”

  “Even in winter?”

  “Yes, sir.�
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  Gamadge rose and went over to the piano; he looked through the music in the canterbury, the books of songs, shook his head. “No Stephen Foster here. He must have known it by heart.”

  “What, sir?” She had turned in her chair to watch him.

  “‘Comrades, Fill No Glass for Me’; what he sang.” Gamadge came back and sat down again. “I wonder what he was after.”

  Miss Cole was frightened. “There’s nothing missing.”

  “No, of course not. I mean, why should this raffish young man drive all the way from—anywhere, to call on an old lady?”

  “We thought he wanted the job of doing the grounds up, sir.”

  “But McBride was never consulted?”

  “Not a word was said.” She added anxiously: “I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

  “Not a thing, so far as I know.”

  “Mrs. Woodworth wasn’t an old lady that talked much about her affairs to anybody. She had a horror of being interfered with, sir; she was always afraid that the family would want to take her affairs out of her hands. She didn’t want them told that she had that first stroke, only the doctor insisted.”

  “I understand.”

  “We understood her, sir. The family was afraid we—just the servants, you know—couldn’t take proper care of her. But they didn’t blame us because she died that way, all alone.”

  “Naturally not. It’s the most difficult thing in the world, making suitable arrangements for old people and keeping them happy about it.”

  “So we never talked about her to the family.”

  “Or about her guests.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Especially since she wasn’t too fond of her relations?”

  “She thought very highly of Mr. Dunbar’s business ability,” said Miss Cole. “But Mrs. Dunbar was very interfering. That poor Miss Dunbar, what could have become of her? I wouldn’t think anything could.”

  “Become of her?” Gamadge asked it drily. “Hardly anything, one would say.”

  “I mean happen to her.”

  “It’s very ironical—if anything did.” Gamadge rose. “I suppose the police didn’t bother you much up here after she disappeared. But they must have inquired here, as everywhere.”