“Yes. You’d better fill it.”
“Suppose I gave you my solemn word of honour that that information wouldn’t be of the slightest value, and that the source of it has nothing to do with the case?”
“Protecting somebody, are you?”
“The somebody talked to me in confidence.” Gamadge leaned back in his corner and looked at the pale drink in his glass. “I have a couple of other reasons for keeping myself under cover for the time being. In a very short time I intend to go to the police myself.”
“What reasons?” asked Macloud sourly.
“First, of course, personal safety. That always comes first, doesn’t it?” asked Gamadge with a half-smile.
Macloud grunted. Then he said rather crossly: “If this Fuller can get his hands on you, we ought to be able to get our hands on him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We get our hands on people if we know who they are. My second reason for keeping out of it temporarily is the one I spoke of before—expediency. I can’t move a step if I’m suspected by anybody of trying to collect evidence of any sort. None of these people ever heard of my meddlings with crime.” He picked up an evening paper, and looked at the short paragraph of text under headlines half a foot high. “Mrs. Flynn acquitted herself nobly. I knew she would.”
“She did. They got Scale long distance, and he gave them permission to dig the whole place up if they wanted to.”
“Must have been a considerable shock to the old gentleman.”
“He was gibbering. Very co-operative and sensible, you know, but furious that his place should be used like that, and that Mrs. Woodworth should have been used like that too. He never had any kind of communication with Fuller directly; Mrs. Woodworth wrote him that a very nice man she knew wanted a flat. She wrote in late September.”
“Fuller didn’t lose any time.”
“No! Old Scale wrote to Mrs. Flynn and told her to let the fellow have it. Miss Cole finds him hard to describe, too; and Mrs. Flynn says she hardly ever saw him, and always in a poor light. Even when he first came, she was in that dark hall when she opened the door, and he had his back to the light.”
“Neighbours?”
“Nothing so far, but it’s early days. However, if he was going to commit a murder there, he’d take pretty good care not to be seen in that street.”
“And Alice Dunbar took good care too?”
Macloud said morosely: “She might have been invisible, for all the police can find out about her comings and goings. And when did she come or go? Probably only that one time—that Friday. It’s more of a mystery than ever. Those clothes.”
“Yes, I was rather wondering about the red macintosh.”
“She did some shopping that day; no doubt about it. There was a shopping bag buried with her; she’d stuffed it full of her own things—her gloves and stockings and handbag and hat—and she was wearing a lot of junk she must have bought and put on to disguise herself. Hat; cheap stockings and hat, God-forsaken pair of tin earrings, that red macintosh. The shopping bag had the name of a store on it, still decipherable; they’ll probably trace the stuff to it. But that’s still to be done. She was wearing her own dress and underclothes. They won’t have to wait for her dentist to report—it’s Alice Dunbar all right. The stuff in the shopping bag was in better preservation than the other things, of course. Twenty-five days in that grave: my God.”
He drained his second cocktail. Gamadge reached for the glass, but he put it down and shook his head. “I’d be tight.”
“You’re staying to dinner? Theodore will manage something.”
“Can’t do it; too much on hand yet. I have to go back to the Dunbars’. You know what? Abigail Tanner ran out on us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s back at the Stanton, you know, she’s been there for over two weeks. She was up at the Dunbar house this afternoon, of course, after the news broke; but her mother has a nurse-companion—she’s had one ever since Alice left—and there’s nothing much for anybody to do, and Abigail said she was in the way. She left when I did, half an hour ago. I will say she looked pretty well knocked out.”
Gamadge said nothing. He finished his drink, and asked: “Those people on the top floor—Steadmans—they’re not being nagged too much?”
Macloud gave him a sideways, grudging smile. “First thing old Scale asked after the shock wore off. They’re all right. Solid alibis, I helped with them myself. And they didn’t mention any indescribable characters wandering around at the time of the discovery.”
“I must be colourless to the point of transparence. But why mention me, after all? Nice people,” said Gamadge reflectively.
“The architects and the printers and the stationers in that house are getting all the publicity they can stand, I tell you. There are a lot of people around town explaining now that they never laid eyes on Alice Dunbar. A mighty dangerous person to have known, until they find Fuller. That character certainly didn’t leave anything behind him but Alice Dunbar’s dead body and a few memories.”
“Wonderful nerve he must have, to stay in the place until the thirty-first.”
“Makes you think he was a maniac.”
“Nothing else he’s done points to insanity.”
“That shopping she did—that disguise she put on—she certainly thought she was running away for good.” Macloud shook his head gloomily. “I wish I could make sense of it. Why did he kill her? We had that all out before.”
Gamadge said: “I won’t pretend that I see a motive myself, not for Alice Dunbar’s murder. But there may have been one for Mrs. Woodworth’s, if we assume that the Dunbars did expect her money. I mean if they expected it to be left to Alice, the daughter who had no private fortune.”
Macloud was sitting up, his face a study. “What’s that you say?”
“Old Mrs. Woodworth won’t be the first old party to fix a time bomb for her relations. Didn’t you say she had her own lawyer? Would he think it necessary to inform the Dunbars that she’d changed her will?”
Macloud said blankly: “He’d never say a word. Close as a fish.”
“The Dunbars won’t think it a matter of life and death to save their faces about the Woodworth disappointment now. Go and ask them; ask Abigail Tanner, ask her intimate friends. I’ll bet you anything that you’ll find Alice Dunbar did expect a million when her great-aunt died, and that they had the shock of their lives when the will was opened.”
Macloud was looking at him grimly. “I suppose this is something else you’re releasing into the public domain?” He added, “It changes everything. It broadens the whole damned scope. That fellow with the long view—he may have thought he was getting the money for—any of them; if he killed Alice Dunbar after the Woodworth murder, I mean.” Appalled, he shook his head as if to free it of the idea.
“We needn’t feel that we must put a limit on his activities,” said Gamadge. “We know what he’s capable of, and we know he hasn’t the normal complement of human feeling. I don’t mean morals. I mean that he could live in the Scale apartment a week after he’d buried her under his windows.”
“Yes, but—”
“Would it be too much of a strain on his conscience to shove an old lady downstairs?”
Macloud was thinking furiously. “Yes, but you’re forgetting something. There’s a catch. That will of Mrs. Woodworth’s was published on the Thursday. Would he miss it? And it wasn’t till the next Monday that he ordered that yard dug up.”
“That’s why I can’t see his motive for the Dunbar murder,” said Gamadge.
“There simply was none. Unless she told him about the will on the day she went to the Scale house—the twenty-second—and he killed her in a fit of temper.” Macloud laughed shortly. “A whole week! It won’t do. We’re back at the old problem. How does her death benefit him or anybody?”
“At least we know that he may have thought it would benefit him to kill old Mrs. Woodworth. You must go up there, Macloud, and l
ook at the terrain. He didn’t go there just to get a reference for a flat.” Gamadge put out his cigarette. “Is there any evidence how Alice Dunbar was killed?”
“There hasn’t been time. It won’t be easy.”
“I know.”
“If they can find anything like marks of strangulation, they’ll be wizards. But that’s a layman’s opinion.” He rose. “This rather looks as if Bruce Dunbar were out of it, don’t you think?”
Gamadge pushed himself up off the chesterfield. “You don’t see him killing a woman instead of jilting her?”
“That certainly; but the payoff is that Mrs. Flynn and Miss Cole would be able to identify him.”
“They’re so good at it.”
“Fuller wouldn’t risk it. He’s nobody those two women could possibly identify.”
Gamadge frowned. “Tan make-up, brown wig, glasses; I don’t know. Clothes make a lot of difference too.”
“Don’t worry about Bruce Dunbar; we’ll take care of him,” said Macloud, as Theodore came to the door with his hat and coat. “You turn up Fuller for us.”
“Is that an assignment?” Gamadge smiled.
“Go to it.” Macloud was getting his arms into his coat sleeves. “Use my name.”
“That’s understood.”
Theodore was smiling as he went down to the front door. He wished Macloud to realize that all was understood, all forgiven. Macloud asked: “Will you tell me the rest of it when we’re ninety? Bridge that gap between the Woodworth place and the Scale house?”
Gamadge made a mental calculation. “When we’re eighty, perhaps.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Macloud was out of the house, and the front door had slammed behind him, before Gamadge went back into the library and picked up the telephone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Call of Condolence
JENNINGS’ “HELLO” WAS lugubrious, but there was a repressed excitement in it. “That you, Gamadge? Isn’t this news horrible?”
“Awful, yes.”
“I never had such a shock in my life. I bought a paper on my way home from the office, and when I saw that headline I stood there in the pouring rain and missed my subway express. And dear old Scale, everybody knows Scale; why, I’ve been to that house in the old days before he converted it. How he can ever live in it again…!”
“It’s all very ghastly. Macloud was just here—”
Jennings’ voice took on an avid note. “Had he any more details?”
“You’d have them from the family, I should think.”
“Well, not yet. Of course I telephoned the house, I got that nurse-companion of poor Mrs. Dunbar’s. She didn’t know much. She told me that Gail was back at the Stanton. So I—but of course I couldn’t ask questions. And it seems that the police are telling the Dunbars hardly anything. Doesn’t that seem very brutal to you?”
“It’s a murder case. I suppose—”
“Well, but is it?”
Gamadge was taken aback. “Isn’t it?”
“Well, we don’t know yet. Poor Abigail was wondering how Alice ever got into the place. Not like her at all. It isn’t as if she had any—as if she could be meeting the man there. She didn’t meet men. Not strangers, I mean; and he can’t be anybody she knew.”
“In that case it would be something of a mystery—”
“Abigail wondered whether she had got into the apartment by mistake somehow, looking for the printers—there’s a shop there, and she had her gift cards printed, you know.”
“I understood that they were all done by hand.”
“Well, she might have had some of them printed; the family wouldn’t know. And she might have run into some gang there—this Fuller was probably an underworld character, since he’s completely disappeared. No forwarding address at all.”
“Well, but then it is a murder case, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps some accident. If she were frightened she’d jump out of a window.”
“You tell Mrs. Tanner that won’t do at all,” said Gamadge. “Too much coincidence in it. Fuller may be a gangster, but he got his reference from Mrs. Ames Woodworth.”
“It isn’t too much of a coincidence, you know yourself such things are always happening. And if he recognized her somehow as Mrs. Woodworth’s niece, why of course he’d threaten her—he’d be afraid she’d give him away. It’s much more sensible, Gamadge, than thinking she had an appointment there.”
“Why did she put on a disguise to go and talk to the printers?”
“Abigail says that’s ridiculous, it wasn’t a disguise at all. She went out shopping that afternoon, she was simply getting a few bargains. The things probably didn’t look so bad before they’d been…” Jennings’ voice died.
“Mrs. Tanner will have to do better than that,” said Gamadge severely. “Mind you,” he added, “I don’t blame her. It’s a sickening thing for the family, but she’d better let it alone. How is she, by the way?”
“Well, I’m afraid she’s in an hysterical state, Gamadge. It was all too much for her up at the house. She couldn’t stand it. Miss Hooley, the nurse-companion, thought she was quite right to get off by herself, where she can be protected from the newspapers. Her father’s busy, and her mother can’t see anybody, not even Abigail. You know they brought things for her to identify? Mrs. Dunbar, I mean. She insisted—they wouldn’t have made her do it, but she insisted. Gail couldn’t stand it.”
Gamadge made a sound that might have been one of sympathy.
“So she went back to the Stanton, where she needn’t even get a telephone call if she doesn’t want to. They do you very well at the Stanton, you know.”
“She hasn’t cut her telephone off yet, apparently.”
“No, she’s very lonely.”
“I should think so.”
“She’s getting hold of Nellie Lynch, though. You know Nellie, of course? Very old friend of Abigail’s. She’s rushing right in from Jersey.”
Gamadge had met Mrs. Lynch, a lively widow in her forties. He said so.
“It’s particularly frightful for Abigail,” said Jennings dolefully, “because she’s so highly strung. There’ll be the inquest, and they won’t be able to have the funeral for goodness knows how long. I thought of calling up again and asking Nellie Lynch if I hadn’t better go down for a little while later. I’m a very old friend, after all. Lawyer, too. It wouldn’t look queer.”
Gamadge was steeling himself; what he was about to do would mortgage his future. If Arthur Jennings ever got a foothold in a house he kept it forever; he was an old-fashioned caller and dropper-in, famous for getting past sentries, paralysing parties, out-staying everybody, exhausting his hosts. And Jennings had long shown unmistakable signs of wanting to get into the Gamadge house. His hints had been politely ignored, his invitations sidestepped; Clara, usually so charitable, couldn’t bear him.
Gamadge said: “And it’s such a rotten night, too; enough to depress anybody. Look here—how would it be if you persuaded her to slip out of the Stanton—they’d manage it for her—and come up here with you and Mrs. Lynch for a little while? Get right away from everything. I’m alone; we could have a drink, and if she wanted to hear what Macloud had to say, I could tell her. But I wouldn’t mention it unless she did want me to.”
Jennings was silent; the temptation—a double one—to spend the evening with Abigail Tanner for once, and to enlarge his calling list, was too much for him. He was trying to think how he could manage it.
At last he said: “I don’t know, Gamadge. Of course it would be—you’re an exceptional man. She’d like to meet you. But—well, I’ll call her and see. It’s very kind of you.”
“Not at all.”
Gamadge replaced the telephone. Theodore came in and began to lay the table for the evening meal. There was a long wait. Then the call came.
“Gamadge?”
“Yes.”
“She was interested, and so was Nellie Lynch. We told her all about you.” Jenning
s chuckled condescendingly. “Said you were quite distinguished. And she’s very anxious to hear what Macloud had to say. But it seems that she has one or two other friends coming in to cheer her up, so she says we’re to go down there, Nellie suggests about nine o’clock. They’re having some supper in the suite.”
“That’s fine.”
“You’ll come?” Jennings sounded almost jubilant.
“Of course. If you can get as far as this in a cab, I’ll drive you down. My car’s outside.”
“What a good idea. No cabs in this weather—I’ll probably have to walk.”
“I’ll be ready by eight-thirty.” Struck by a sudden and annoying idea, Gamadge called out: “Hold on a minute. You’re not going to change, are you?” Never, he remembered, had he seen Jennings at the club of an evening in anything but his rather obsolete-looking dinner clothes.
Jennings replied stiffly: “I have changed.”
“Artie, you’re not human.”
“It’s purely habit. My mother expects it; so will Gail Tanner.”
Gamadge rang off. He went and got into dinner clothes, had his supper, and listened to the radio until Jennings came. His rubbers were glistening with wet, his umbrella dripped on the mat.
“Short of service?” he asked in a housewifely tone of sympathy when Gamadge opened the front door.
“Theodore went out. Didn’t you ever open a front door?” Gamadge was irritated already.
“To my knowledge, no.”
Gamadge slammed the door, and they dashed for the car.
Traffic was heavy on Park Avenue; red and green lights were reflected mistily from the wet blackness of the pavement, yellow headlights came and went in the rain-dimmed oblong of the windshield. The wiper swept to and fro, Gamadge peered ahead, Jennings sat well forward with his hands on his knees and directed proceedings:
“Don’t hurry, Gamadge; plenty of time.”
“We’re crawling.”
“Look out, that cab is very close. I don’t trust them.”
“They’re not looking for a crash.”
“Don’t hurry.”
And Dangerous to Know Page 8
