And Dangerous to Know

by Elizabeth Daly

  “Mountains in July, August the sea,” said Gamadge. “You can’t beat that schedule.” He leaned back, relaxed and cheerful. “Quiet here, is it?”

  “Well, we have a night club in the rear,” said Mrs. Steadman.

  “I’ll say we have,” agreed Steadman. “But we won’t get much of the band music when the windows shut down. When we win a competition we’ll go there ourselves, be part of the row.”

  “Every night,” declared Mrs. Steadman.

  “Another thing,” said Steadman. “If you get Fuller’s apartment, you get the use of the garden. It goes with the flat.”

  “No! That’s nice,” said Gamadge.

  “Mr. Scale has his breakfast there when he’s at home in summer,” said Mrs. Steadman, “and his coffee at night.”

  “I’ll certainly do the same.”

  “Like to have a look?” Steadman rose. “You’ll see that it isn’t as public as most yards.”

  “Very glad to see it.”

  “And you’ll get an idea of the lay-out of the Fuller flat, too. It’s like this, only bigger, as I said.”

  They all moved towards the connecting passage between front and rear; Steadman leading, Gamadge following with Mrs. Steadman. She said: “Don’t be shocked at its being so old-fashioned. I’m afraid Mr. Scale doesn’t spend much on his tenants. But there’s one thing, Mrs. Flynn says he never raises the rent.”

  “Let the ceilings fall.”

  “He does necessary repairs,” said Mrs. Steadman seriously, “and Mrs. Flynn is awfully nice about what’s necessary.”

  The little kitchen at one side of the passage was so thickly covered with yellow paint that its look of yesterday was quaint rather than mean. The bathroom opposite, from the glimpse Gamadge had of it, seemed cramped for one of Steadman’s build, and the old clawfoot tub strangely narrow and high. But the bedroom was delightful, all green and white, with window seats and awnings. Steadman made room for him at a window.

  The night club was to the left, its back windows closely barred and latticed; next to it, behind the Scale premises, was the bare brick of a warehouse, next to that something that must be the rear end of a garage. Along the block to the right the houses seemed given up to business—there were plaster statuettes in one window, glassware in another, blank uncurtained oblongs of dusty pane above.

  “Yes, you’d be quite private here,” said Gamadge, leaning out to look down.

  The yard was enclosed by the usual high fence, painted green; there were bushes almost as high as the fence, a tree, flagged paths around the middle plot. This had been bordered with a wide margin of blooming flowers.

  “How very nice,” said Gamadge.

  “It was all turf,” explained Mrs. Steadman, leaning out beside him, “but Mr. Fuller had them put the flowers in. Don’t you love double petunias?”

  “I do.”

  “The old turf in the middle ought to be replaced; but I suppose he couldn’t face that, and now he’s gone and can’t enjoy the flowers.”

  “He had them all summer, I suppose.”

  “Put them in while we were away,” said Steadman. “We found them there when we got back. They’ll look like the devil if nobody takes care of them. Mrs. Flynn can’t do much in the time she’s here.”

  “I’d take care of them if they’d let me,” said Mrs. Steadman, “but we’re not supposed to go near the garden.”

  “If I get the flat you can live in it if you want to,” said Gamadge.

  “And we might put in other flowers!”

  “I don’t think I’m as rich as Fuller was.”

  “Oh dear, I keep forgetting how much things cost in the city.”

  “Shouldn’t think you’d need much reminding,” said Steadman, gathering her fan of hair into a large brown hand and affectionately pulling it.

  Gamadge withdrew his head. “It’s a nice outlook. Why on earth did the other people go? I mean the ones that had this flat before you did?”

  “They were two ladies, cousins of Mr. Scale,” said Mrs. Steadman. “One of them taught in a school, the other just lived with her and kept house. They got too old for the extra stairs.”

  “When we get too old to climb,” said Steadman, “we’d better be rich like Fuller.”

  “Mrs. Flynn won’t have to do any watering today, anyhow.” Gamadge craned out again to look at the sky. “It’s going to rain sometime. Which reminds me, I ought to go down and see her. Wish me luck.”

  He pulled back his head again, and they all shook hands. The Steadmans saw him to the top of the stairs. Just like New York, you meet people and even like them, and you don’t even know their name; not if you’re as polite as the nice couple on the top floor of the Scale house.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  References

  GAMADGE WENT DOWN the three flights of stairs and out into the vestibule. He pushed the superintendent’s bell; Alice Dunbar had stood here, once at least, and pushed a bell—whose?

  Not the Steadmans’—they had only moved in last June. Not, presumably, the printer’s, or the architect’s, or that of the two elderly ladies on the top floor—the “couple” of poor Miss Bransome’s information. Alice Dunbar would hardly need to resort to deception in dealing with those.

  Mr. Fuller, the tenant who had a personal recommendation, who spent money on flowers but didn’t mind the ragged grass of a city backyard? Puzzled and morose, Gamadge waited; but when the door opened he greeted the stout woman in front of him with a smile.

  “You’re the superintendent?”

  “Yes, sir.” She was getting on in years, but her colour was still fresh and high and there was hardly any grey in her dark, neatly coiled hair. She looked strong, competent, and amiable. The Scale cook-housekeeper once, perhaps; and she didn’t mind coming to the door with a large clean apron over her black-and-white print dress.

  “I had some kind of an idea, Mrs. Flynn, that the Fuller apartment was available. Had a word or two just now with that nice couple on the top floor.”

  “Yes, sir.” She smiled. “Lovely young people. But I don’t know yet what Mr. Scale’s arrangements will be. It’s—Mr. Fuller had to go before his lease was up. Of course Mr. Scale would probably like to get a tenant in now, if he doesn’t mean to be here himself. I don’t know. You’d better write him. I’ll give you the address, if you’ll just step in.” She added, as Gamadge passed her and she closed the door: “Mr. Scale always wants to settle about tenants himself.”

  “I understood that he does like personal recommendations.”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t think”—she smiled at him—“that there’d be any trouble if you knew somebody he knows; as you would, I’m sure.”

  Gamadge said: “Very likely. Could I just see the apartment, Mrs. Flynn? Then I’d know better what I was bargaining about, wouldn’t I?”

  She hesitated. “It’s neat enough, I cleared it up myself; and Mr. Fuller was a very clean tenant, and he wasn’t here much. But Mr. Scale let it just as it was, and didn’t do any decorating and repairs—Mr. Fuller wasn’t particular.”

  “I don’t think I’m over-particular,” said Gamadge.

  “Oh, it would have to be fixed up for a regular tenant, sir. It needs a good deal done to it. Mr. Scale was used to the old ways, he didn’t care; and this Mr. Fuller—he only got the place as a favour, you might say. To oblige old Mrs. Woodworth.”

  Gamadge had such a shock this time that he actually had to put out a hand and clutch the polished old banister of the stairs. Fool! he thought. The landscape gardener. He said: “Mrs. Ames Woodworth; she died.”

  “Yes, poor old lady; she was an old friend of the Scales’. There’s nothing Mr. Scale wouldn’t do for Mrs. Woodworth, so when she wrote and asked him if this Mr. Fuller could have the apartment till October—”

  “Year’s lease, was it?”

  “Yes, sir. Only Mr. Fuller was called away, way out West.”

  They were mounting the first flight of stairs, Mrs. Flynn in the lead. “He on
ly wanted it for weekends now and then,” she went on. “Or a day now and then in between. He got himself some kind of a houseman, only I never saw him. I’m only here at noon in the summer, and morning and evening in the winter months.”

  “Fuller, Fuller,” said Gamadge, as if thinking aloud. “Man in his thirties, brown hair, glasses, tanned complexion, rather a sporty dresser. Could that be—”

  “That’s him,” said Mrs. Flynn placidly, as they began the second flight. To her urban experience Mr. Fuller would be no cause for wonderment or disapproval. Anything in human shape could materialize on a New York doorstep with letters of recommendation; anything at all, nowadays. Types from the Village, from outlying centres of art, from foreign lands.

  “Landscape gardener, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir; and a lovely job he did in our yard. I mean he ordered it; I had it done myself through our own florists.”

  “Off on other jobs when he wasn’t here, I suppose.”

  “Oh yes, sir, and then he got this wonderful opportunity in the West, and he went off.”

  They were on the second-floor landing, in front of a brown panelled door. “At a day’s notice?” asked Gamadge casually.

  “A week’s notice, sir, he waited till the first of August; and he paid me up to October. A nice gentleman.”

  “If I came in, you’d refund his September rent to him, I suppose?”

  “Well, sir, Mr. Scale would. I haven’t the address.”

  She opened the door and allowed Gamadge to pass her into a big panelled room with built-in bookshelves and a fine old marble fireplace. “It was the old library,” she said.

  “Comfortable.” Gamadge looked round him at threadbare upholstered chairs, old mahogany, old-fashioned lamps with battered silk shades, Rookwood urns on the mantel, an ormolu clock. The white ceiling was smoky, the rug faded and worn. “I’m not too particular for this,” he said with sincere admiration.

  Mrs. Flynn was pleased. “That’s what I think; it would be a pity to change it. But it does need painting. And it’s the plumbing and so on…” She led the way into a passage corresponding to the one in the flat above.

  Her apology was called for. The kitchen was in bad shape—drainboard rotting, sink beyond polish, pipes rusty, woodwork of dark oak, with sinister cracks in it. There was an ancient drip icebox. Gamadge turned to look into the bathroom.

  White enamel here, but rust from the pipes had discoloured it with reddish-brown stains; looking down into the tub, he had macabre thoughts:

  “It can be done, I suppose; it has been done. But it never worked out well.”

  Mrs. Flynn spoke behind him: “Mr. Scale would have to put money into it. Unless a tenant wanted it at a low rent. I wouldn’t advise that myself, the place needs doing over.”

  “Well, yes, it really does.”

  The bedroom was pleasant, and would have got plenty of sunshine if the sun were out. Grey clouds, however, covered the sky; Gamadge, leaning from a window, saw the garden closer now, its petunias soft-coloured in the softer light. Mrs. Flynn, beside him, said they were lovely flowers.

  “Yes. Wouldn’t think they’d grow so well in such sour old earth. I did something of the kind once, and they had to dig two feet down to put in enough new soil.”

  “They did here, sir; Mr. Fuller was very particular about that.”

  “He would be, of course.”

  “A terrible mess, sir; and then to think he had to leave!”

  “Long job, too. You said he left on the first of August?”

  “Last of July, sir. Yes, it was terrible—you know what workmen are. He ordered it done on—let’s see—the Monday; July eighteenth. By Friday they had it ready, the whole border dug up. Then they quit for the weekend, and it wasn’t till the next Monday that they filled in and planted the flowers.”

  “You mean you had the soil piled up around that trench, and nobody touched it on Saturday?”

  “That’s right, sir; and it took two more days to finish. One thing, they didn’t hit rock, or clay either. It’s a kind of sandy soil.”

  “They were luckier than I was. Fuller didn’t returf, I see.”

  “They wanted to, of course, but Mr. Fuller said he’d leave it till spring. He’d spent a lot of money—I know how much, I paid the bill for him. He was great for cash, Mr. Fuller was.”

  “What a man.”

  He drew back into the room, glanced rather casually at the ponderous walnut furniture, said a little paint and plaster would do here, and that you’d never know there’d ever been a tenant in the place.

  “Mr. Fuller didn’t leave a collar button!”

  “I suppose not.”

  It must be the dullness of the light, she thought, that was making him look so grey; he spoke as if he were tired, too—this closeness in the air was enough to take the life out of anybody. She was surprised when he asked her whether she had time to show him the garden.

  “I have, sir; it’s what I’m here for.”

  They went down to the first floor, and then along the hall to a door at the end of it which she unlocked. They were at the head of green-painted wooden stairs that led down into the yard.

  “Convenient,” said Gamadge.

  “Mr. Scale put them in.”

  Standing on the old flags below, Gamadge looked around, over the fence, at the blind windows beyond that would be even blinder after business hours, when shops closed and the night club was concentrating on its own affairs. To right and left of him extensions jutted out, shades drawn down for the summer.

  “Mighty private here,” said Gamadge. He was walking along the path, past the petunia beds, stooping to admire the flowers. Mrs. Flynn, behind him, nipped off dead leaves.

  Turning the first corner, Gamadge paused midway of the border and bent over it. He pushed a plant aside, then another. Mrs. Flynn joined him.

  “Do they look dry? I’ll give them a good sprinkling while the sun’s in, for fear it shouldn’t rain after all. It might not. I try to slip in of an evening,” she went on, “but I’ve not much time.”

  Gamadge was moving along a little, pushing back other plants. He said: “The earth is sunk a little here, isn’t it?”

  “Is it? I didn’t notice.”

  “In a kind of oblong. See?”

  Mrs. Flynn stooped too, not a thing she was likely to do more often than necessary. “I do see. That’s a funny thing—as if they’d filled it in looser here.”

  Gamadge straightened, lit a cigarette, and stood looking down. He said: “They left the whole border dug out over the weekend of the twenty-second, you say. And the new soil here?”

  She was looking at him in perplexity. “Yes, but—”

  Gamadge met her troubled eyes quietly. “You know what happened on Friday the twenty-second, don’t you, Mrs. Flynn? Everybody does.”

  Her lips formed words.

  “Was Fuller here that weekend?”

  She nodded, her face chalky.

  “You know they’re looking everywhere. Ought we—”

  She cried out: “It can’t be!”

  “Sh…” He glanced up at the Steadmans’ windows, but there was no one looking out between the white curtains. Mrs. Flynn’s eyes were fixed in the sunken earth of the flowerbed.

  “It does look like a grave,” he said very low.

  “It does. I’ll call Mr. Scale.”

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Flynn; in your place I wouldn’t wait even to telephone Mr. Scale. He wouldn’t want you to wait. These are his premises, and he’s put you in charge of them. I’m sure you must know every policeman on the beat, and the radio men, and half the people at the Precinct.”

  “I do, yes.” Her firm lips were a straight line as she met his eyes.

  “They’ll keep quiet until they find out whether this is anything; they’ll take you seriously.”

  “They will.”

  “If I were you I’d go round there now, and say what you’ve noticed here, and give them the information about the gar
dening operations, and the dates.”

  “Mr. Fuller—”

  “If they find nothing he’ll know nothing; and don’t forget that his only reference is dead. Mr. Scale may not know a thing about him, and he may have taken in that old lady.”

  “That’s so.”

  “And be sure to put those top-floor tenants in the clear from the first, won’t you?” He waited until he knew she had taken this in. She looked up at their windows and nodded.

  “They were out of town all that time, and their families will say so. And don’t forget to say that they didn’t come here till June, and Mr. Scale himself knows all about them.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it. God help them, I wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t think the police won’t be interested. They’d try anything.”

  Her eyes wandered, she was not yet convinced; but suddenly, as if she had had a blow over the heart, she staggered and stepped back. “Oh God, they were related!”

  “You mean Mrs. Woodworth and Alice Dunbar; yes.”

  With a glance of horror downward, she turned away. “I’ll go now.”

  “That’s right.”

  She began to run. Gamadge watched her climb panting up the wooden stair. He followed, walked through the hall, and stopped in the vestibule to look along the street. Mrs. Flynn, at a fast walk, was almost at the corner. He went to the opposite corner and took a cab home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Conscience

  GAMADGE HAD A BATH, changed into the brown worsted suit, and ate a cold lunch. It was spattering rain now, and cool enough for him to bear the weight of his lightest raincoat; he put it on, put on a soft hat, and took a cab down to the Scale corner.

  The street was parked double, there was a small shiny van in front of the house, and Gamadge recognized a tall man in blue serge and a smart felt hat, standing with others on the steps, as his old friend Detective-Lieutenant Nordhall, Homicide. Turning back into the avenue, Gamadge hailed another cab and was driven to Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. As he rode, he had visions of newspaper headlines dissolving, front pages being reset for afternoon editions, radio announcers interrupting programmes to bring listeners a flash: The body, said to be that of Alice Dunbar…