The clerk had learned more about his informant through this detail than if he had read a book about him; or so no doubt he thought.
“Just before the intermission ended,” continued Gamadge, “a waiter opened a window in the dance room. I stepped out through it into the garden; I simply wished to find out whether it had stopped raining. It had, and I had the impulse to walk along through the place, smoking a cigarette.”
The clerk knew all about those impulses. Had this old busybody come across a couple of unfortunates seeking privacy among the turned-up tables? By Heaven, you couldn’t open a french window.
“There was no keep-out sign to prevent me,” continued Gamadge. “I walked about, along the flagged paths. There is a dead man in your garden, sir.”
After a moment the clerk made a sound of some kind. Gamadge plodded on:
“One of the musicians, I should judge. He was wearing a white coat. He was shot; there is a pistol beside him.”
The clerk came to life: “Listen: who are you? I—”
Gamadge said coldly: “As I told you, I didn’t care to wait through a police investigation. I am an elderly man, and tired. I will tell you the exact hour when I found him: thirty-eight minutes past eleven, and the band was playing.”
The clerk shouted: “They’re playing now!”
“You might count them.”
Gamadge cut off an articulate cry from the clerk and left the booth. “I’m not elderly yet,” he told himself, “but I’m tired all right; too tired to wait up several hours more doing Bishop’s job for him.”
He reached home, left his car in front of the house, let himself in, and a few minutes later fell into bed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Perfection
GAMADGE SLEPT VERY late. Theodore, serving him his breakfast in the library, said that the telephone had been ringing a good deal.
“But I read your sign on my do’, and I didn’t answer.”
“That’s right. Never mind the newspapers yet, I’m not even going to look at them till my coffee begins to take hold.”
It took hold while he was smoking his first cigarette, and he spread out the late city editions and glanced through them. Osterbridge had not made the front page, but city editors had decided, late as the news of his death had come in, that it was picturesque enough to catch the morning news:
CROONER SHOOTS SELF WHILE BAND PLAYS
There was no mention of Mrs. Tanner’s party, of Bishop’s conversation with Gamadge behind the scenes, of any anonymous telephone call to the management of the Stanton. A night watchman had discovered the body while on his regular rounds. Wayne Bishop, the band leader, had informed police that at the end of the intermission Osterbridge was not to be found, and that Miss Bean, singer for the outfit, had taken his place at the piano. Miss Bean supplied a little reader interest too: “Jack was such a nice boy, I wouldn’t think he’d do anything like that. He must have had troubles we didn’t know about.” She had been very much overcome by the event, and in tears.
She, Bishop, and certain members of the orchestra had testified that Osterbridge had seemed worried during the evening.
Gamadge put down the papers and called up his friend Nordhall, Department of Homicide. Nordhall, unlike some of his colleagues, and after a trying initiation, had come to regard Gamadge’s exploits as serviceable; he often showed his appreciation of them, in fact, by roaring with laughter.
He now greeted Gamadge buoyantly: “This is quite a coincidence. I’ve been trying to get you. Are you all dead up there?”
“Theodore and I are alone. I was asleep, and he must have been out.”
Nordhall was amused. “I know. Hear you were at a party last night.”
“That’s so.”
“They’re all downtown making statements, all but Mrs. Tanner, who isn’t so well. They want your statement too, of course, but you left before the shooting, I mean before the excitement, and you seem to have been dragged down to the Stanton by your friend Jennings, and I told them that being a friend of yours I’d interview you myself. So I let you have your sleep out. I’ve been busy.”
“You won’t regret that act of mercy, Nordhall.”
“No, I was hoping you’d have something or other interesting to contribute. I didn’t think you were down there just to listen to the band.”
“Can I come down after lunch?”
“It is after lunch. After mine, anyway. Have you thrown your watch out of the window and decided to go by your own time from now on?”
Gamadge looked up at the old clock on the mantel.
“No wonder I feel so rested. How about my coming down now?”
“I have to go out again; see Mrs. Tanner. She’s better, that friend of hers tells me. Collecting information on the state of mind of the deceased, you know,” said Nordhall sepulchrally.
“Oh yes. He was worried.”
“Was he? So they say. Be seeing you at four o’clock.”
Gamadge put down the receiver, and then asked for the Welshes’ suburban number. He got Sally Welsh on the wire.
“She got here all right, Mr. Gamadge.”
“How’s she getting along?”
“She seems to be fine. She’s out in the yard sketching. I never saw anybody keep so busy. I looked at her picture, Mr. Gamadge, and she’s left out the wash on the line. She says you’re allowed to.”
“What’s she putting in?”
“I couldn’t make out,” said Sally laughing. “I didn’t dare ask her.”
“Better not, they hate that. I hope she’s not too much trouble, Sally?”
“She’s no trouble at all. Tom says it’s like having a stuffed chipmunk in the place.”
“Stuffed! Chipmunk, yes; stuffed, I shouldn’t think so.”
“She is like that when he’s around.”
“That’s so, she’d be shy of the great hulk. Give her a message from me, will you, Sally? Tell her not to worry, I think her affairs are going to come out all right. And don’t charge her much board, will you? I’ll make it up to you. Charge her about half.”
“That’s what she offered me,” said Sally, and joined in Gamadge’s laughter. “But Tom’s greatly impressed.”
“By her?”
“At her being willing to come up here and stay with total strangers at your suggestion, when she doesn’t know who you are. I mean she doesn’t even know your name!”
“Well—er—we were a little hurried at the last. I told you it was an emergency.”
“Tom nearly died laughing.”
“In the circumstances I can’t very well ask him to mind his own business. Regards to Miss Vesey, and say I’ll keep in touch.”
Gamadge spent the early afternoon reading his notes, making others, and thinking. At four o’clock he was in Nordhall’s little office; Nordhall, a big blond man, leaned across his desk to shake hands. He was grinning.
“Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. Dying to make that statement, are you?”
“I want to see you about something else.”
Nordhall looked at him, grinning no longer. “That so?”
“Let’s hear about the suicide first.”
“All right, let’s see.” Nordhall sorted papers on his desk. “We got the call at ten minutes past twelve. I was there about twelve-thirty. The newspapers didn’t give it out, by the way, in fact they didn’t have it then, but the management was tipped off by somebody telephoning in from a pay station. He said he’d stepped out in the garden and found the body at eleven-thirty-eight.”
“That so?”
“Yes. Osterbridge had shot himself just under the right jawbone, and it would take his own mother to identify him from his face. But it’s Osterbridge. Worried, was he? In a way I wouldn’t blame him. The gun was a thirty-eight Colt automatic, and the bullets that killed Alice Dunbar came out of it.”
Gamadge jerked upright in his chair.
Nordhall smiled at him, leaned back, and clasped his hands behind his
head. “Neat, isn’t it? He meets her at Mrs. Tanner’s place in the Stanton—that’s established. Mrs. Tanner told me so; poor thing, she’s all upset about it. She’d entirely forgotten it, but she introduced them.” He eyed Gamadge quizzically. “Might you have guessed that?”
“I thought it was possible,” said Gamadge faintly.
“Don’t let it get you, there’s worse to come. Poor Mrs. Tanner, she was in bad shape; trembling like a leaf.”
“Natural reaction from anxiety.”
“What’s that?” asked Nordhall sharply.
“Well, she’d be relieved to know that the case was closed, wouldn’t she? Sister’s murderer knows he’ll be recognized by Miss Cole and Mrs. Flynn and he kills himself.”
“Yes,” said Nordhall, watching him. “It all turned on the finding of Alice Dunbar. He lived alone in a men’s hotel, and he could easily have gone to and from the Scale house. And by the way, there never was any houseman; Fuller didn’t have one. The local tradespeople say there wasn’t a thing bought, no milk ordered, not a thing.”
Gamadge nodded vaguely.
“I suppose that wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anybody. Would this surprise you? Macloud thinks the Dunbars did expect old Mrs. Woodworth’s money; they thought Alice was going to get it.”
“No, that wouldn’t surprise me too much. There had to be money in the case somewhere.”
“He says it’s a hunch, but I wouldn’t ignore a hunch of Mr. Macloud’s, not for anything. Mrs. Tanner will admit it now. But when did Alice Dunbar get time off to meet Osterbridge at the Scale house? Well, how about the middle of the night?”
“There’s that,” agreed Gamadge, staring.
“Why not?”
“It’s a mighty good idea, Nordhall.”
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t have thought of it,” said Nordhall modestly.
“You police are trained like that.”
Nordhall gave him a suspicious glance, but his face was serious. He went on: “Unfortunately there isn’t a print in the Fuller flat; guy must have lived in gloves; but of course he wasn’t there much. Well, the thing explodes in his face yesterday—the body’s found, Mrs. Tanner can connect him up with Alice Dunbar. No wonder he wanted to talk to her. He did, didn’t he?”
“Certainly did.”
“So,” said Nordhall, sitting forward and putting his hands flat on the papers before him, “we have it all; all except his motive for killing that girl. Just because he’s disappointed about the Woodworth money? Nonsense.”
“Thin, yes.”
“He might have had Mrs. Tanner as a second string, but we have no evidence of that. I wouldn’t say she was interested in him at all.” He added: “Not that way.”
“Nor would I.”
“That’s where you come in handy, Gamadge; on the psychology.”
“Thanks.”
“But we get the information; we have the equipment for that.” Nordhall smiled. “We’ve traced that Colt thirty-eight.”
“What!”
“You know something?” Nordhall was grinning broadly. “I like giving you a shock now and then; instead of you bringing in the evidence and laying it down on the line the way that cat of yours would lay down a row of dead mice.”
Gamadge said mechanically: “That metaphor is repulsive and the analogy is cock-eyed. My mice are never dead. I shouldn’t have thought that gun could be traced, Nordhall.”
“Not to Osterbridge?” Nordhall broke into laughter.
“Not to anybody.”
“It was easy; we got it right away. It belonged to Richfield Tanner.”
Gamadge sat silent, his hands on the arms of his chair. Looking up at last to meet Nordhall’s triumphant gaze, he smiled.
“Like that, do you?”
“Yes.” Gamadge felt for his cigarettes and got one into his mouth. He lighted it and spoke around it: “I like that very much.”
“Mrs. Tanner didn’t. She says she never laid eyes on it since before the war, when Tanner got his service forty-five. She can’t imagine how Osterbridge ever got hold of it.” Nordhall shifted papers around, looked up at Gamadge, and smiled. “Osterbridge didn’t know Tanner, none of them knew him. He was never at the Stanton in his life, according to Mrs. Tanner, and so far as we can find out, Bishop didn’t get near his outfit while they were both overseas; Bishop making that tour of camps, you know, and Dunbar was always with his staff, a thousand miles away from Tanner in the war.”
Gamadge said, returning the smile: “We’re getting a little away from Osterbridge.”
“So we are. Mrs. Tanner says he might have picked up the gun in her suite, if he snooped around among her husband’s things. But how she missed it if it was there, all these three years, she can’t say. Would you think she’d be so thick with those types, Gamadge?”
“If she was bored, yes.”
“Of course the gun lets her out, out of both murders, as killer or accessory. She wouldn’t give that gun to anybody to murder anybody with. And you probably know that she never left her suite last night after you left her there; we have three witnesses, and the hotel maid and the house detective aren’t lying, even if Mrs. Lynch would.”
“I don’t think she’d be likely to leave the suite, Nordhall.”
“Besides which, she has a lot of alibi for the afternoon that her sister was killed. The whole Dunbar household, and then that cocktail party. She hadn’t the time.”
Gamadge was laughing. “What’s become of the Osterbridge suicide, anyway?”
“Did you think he was a good candidate for the Fuller position?”
“Not very, no.”
“Miss Cole describes him as the gigolo type, though.”
“Why should Osterbridge go up there and disguise himself as his own character?”
“He wouldn’t if he could help it. Is that why you went down to the Stanton, Gamadge? To look these people over?”
“I hadn’t even heard of them. I went down to make Mrs. Tanner’s acquaintance. I wondered whether Alice Dunbar might have met some of her sporting friends, that’s all.”
“Perhaps we’re being too smart,” said Nordhall, squinting at Gamadge thoughtfully. “But what a setup! Perfection. Osterbridge was worried, and wasn’t that natural? He knew she’d be questioned again, now that Alice Dunbar’s death was established; he wanted to brace her up, he had to be sure she wouldn’t say he’d met her sister. He couldn’t talk to her, so he goes out in the garden and shoots himself with a gun that nobody but a suicide would dare use—it can be traced. And he disfigures himself so badly that no jury would blame Miss Cole or Mrs. Flynn for not identifying him with Fuller. Even if they reconstructed him, nobody would blame anybody for failing to recognize him. So that takes care of that—he’s Fuller. Perfect.”
“He couldn’t face Miss Cole and Mrs. Flynn, you mean.”
“That’s it. It’s so good we ought to believe it. I have to hand it to that killer, I really do.”
“He’d have to know how to get hold of Osterbridge.”
“No trouble about that,” said Nordhall gaily, “no trouble at all. You’d better have a look at the statement.”
“Just a minute; I suppose Miss Cole and Mrs. Flynn haven’t seen the others yet?”
Nordhall’s gaiety faded. “They had a good look, while everybody was downtown making the statements and signing them; and nobody saw them. Neither of those women will swear to Bishop or Dunbar. Well, they’re not the only people in the world; but that gun keeps it near home. Listen to some of these things here, they might amuse you.”
“I’m in the mood.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Statements
“WE MIGHT GET rid of the small fry first.” Nordhall picked up a carbon from the desk. “Your stooge, Mr. Jennings.” He read aloud:
Statement of Arthur Stone Jennings:
Being an intimate friend of the Dunbar family, I wished to pay a call of condolence last night on Mrs. Richfield Tanner at t
he Stanton Hotel. I had informed Mrs. Tanner over the telephone that Mr. Henry Gamadge, a classmate of mine and a man of some literary standing, had seen Mr. Robert Macloud that afternoon. Mr. Macloud is a partner of Mr. Angus Dunbar’s and an old friend of Mr. Gamadge’s. Mrs. Tanner expressed a wish to see him and hear what later news about her sister’s tragic death might have come in.
Nordhall looked up. “Sly dog. I mean you.” He went on:
We reached the Stanton at a little after nine, a few minutes late. The driving was very slow in the rain. We found Mrs. Tanner in a pitifully nervous condition, with a friend, Elinor Lynch, looking out for her. Some musical acquaintances dropped in, among them the singer Mr. Osterbridge. If he seemed worried, it was probably on Mrs. Tanner’s account. He played the piano to divert her mind from her deep grief, but she soon gave up the effort to talk to us, and retired. I went home.
Nordhall’s voice was now trembling a little. He replaced the statement in its folder, and raised his eyes to Gamadge’s. They exchanged a solemn look.
Gamadge broke down first. His elbows on the desk, his head in his hands, he sat silent with his shoulders heaving. Nordhall rocked in his chair.
“Boy, what a hangover!” he gasped after a while. “And the Bean girl says there was enough liquor up there to drown her. Was there?”
“More. More.”
“Was anybody sober at that wake?”
Gamadge, recovering himself, said that everybody else was. “And I think Mrs. Lynch was right; it was partly exhaustion and shock. After all, whether the sisters were congenial or not it would be a hideous shock, Nordhall.”
“Did she say much before she retired? I’m glad you know one gentleman, Gamadge.”
“Well, he went home.”
“That’s so. I suppose this Jennings couldn’t have been the old peeker that telephoned the Stanton about finding Osterbridge in the garden? Sounds like him.”
“Oh, Jennings wouldn’t do a thing like that,” said Gamadge hastily. “He’d never go wandering around like that, he’s not the adventurous type at all.”
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