Night Walk

by Elizabeth Daly

  “Then I’ll resign and the family can run the Library.”

  Gamadge went back along the passage, from which stairs led up and down. He washed his hands in a large old-fashioned bathroom, and dried them on a paper towel, which he dropped into a metal basket. He came back, thanked Miss Bluett again, hoped he’d still be in Frazer’s Mills when she returned from her holiday, and collected Mr. Isaacs and the Monster. He went out into the sun and lengthening shadow of the afternoon.

  Miss Bluett followed him to the door. She summoned the Stapler boy, who now sat under a tree, and Gamadge left them conversing on the step. He walked down to the street. Nobody was in sight except a state policeman whom Gamadge had not seen before, and who smoked a cigarette in the shade of the Library hedge.

  CHAPTER TWELVE Elimination

  THE OFFICER SAID: “Good afternoon. You’re Mr. Gamadge.”

  “People have been telling me so all day,” said Gamadge.

  “You’re quite famous.”

  “In one way or another. You’re Vines.”

  “That’s right. My beat is at the Edgewood end. Goin’ there now.”

  He went to his motorcycle, which leaned against a tree, righted it, and wheeled it to the curb. Willie Stapler came down across the lawn, a dollar bill in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.

  “Hey, sonny,” said Vines, “leavin’ your post?”

  “She latched herself in. Wants some stuff from the drugstore—they close up on Sundays at five.”

  He turned up the street towards the Tavern. Gamadge and Vines walked in the other direction, Gamadge on the footway and Vines at the curb. Vines said: “Adey thinks all this is a waste of time.”

  “You don’t agree with him?”

  “In a way I do. But”—Vines moved his head to the left—“Adey laughs about checking up on those cottages over there.”

  Gamadge looked across the road at a particularly sweet little house—one with the jigsaw trimmings; he asked: “Does he?”

  “Sure. My folks come from Maine.”

  “They do?”

  “Way down in Maine. You ought to hear some of the stories they can tell you about villages there. Not farms way out in the country, you know; villages about the size of this one with the neighbors right on top of you.”

  “I’ve heard stories.”

  “No, but the folks have one about a house in some small town, and one day a neighbor happened in around suppertime, when it ain’t considered just the thing to go dropping in.”

  “I know,” said Gamadge, laughing.

  “Went in the back way. There was a woman—girl—sitting at the kitchen table being fed some supper. Fat girl. One of the family, that was sure—there hadn’t been visitors. This neighbor had never seen this girl before, never heard of her, didn’t know there was any such person in the house. Far as the town knew, there never had been.”

  “Creepy.”

  “The neighbor went through to the front, said what she had to say, beat it out front. Nobody ever mentioned the fat girl, and nobody ever heard of her again. Died, I suppose, and they carted her off in the middle of the night and buried her.”

  “They know how to mind their own business down that way.”

  “Don’t they though? Plenty of gab, but where does it get to? Perhaps they know how to mind their own business in Frazer’s Mills; it ain’t a place like any other.”

  “Unique, I should say.”

  “Closed corporation. I’ll tell you one house got searched that night, and by me.” He added: “And it proves my point.”

  “Edgewood?”

  “That got a pretty good going over, too; I’m talking about Carringtons’. In spite of the fact that the feller’s footprints did lead away from the door, I was nervous about Carringtons’. It’s a big house, closed most of the year. Plenty of facilities for taking care of funny folks in the attics. So I asked permission, and I went through the place. And even so, if it hadn’t been for Miss Carrington herself, I’d have missed something.”

  “What?”

  Officer Vines screwed up his face and grinned at Gamadge. “Would you think of searching a pediment?”

  “A pediment?” Gamadge was astonished.

  “That’s what they call that triangular part that runs across the front of the house over the porch.”

  “I know.”

  “But did you know they could be hollow and have a space in them? This one has. Nobody knows why; perhaps there ought to be a way of getting into them in case of leaks or rats or too many chipmunks. There’s a square hole leading into the Carringtons’ pediment, a square hole at the front end of the upper hall, with a big map hung over it. You’d never imagine. Miss Carrington showed me—Lawrence reminded her, she said.”

  “Interesting. So you looked in there?”

  “Nothing, of course, but it shows you. Those little old houses might have any kind of hide-holes in them; space under the rafters, behind a chimney. Adey says not.”

  “No wonder they all lock up, if your delightful idea is a possibility.”

  “They lock up, all right; they all bolt themselves into their bedrooms at night, even the Carringtons do. Miss Carrington told Mrs. Begbie. Or was it Mrs. Begbie told Miss Carrington to do it?”

  “That way, I imagine.”

  They had reached the Edgewood drive. Vines said: “Well, be seeing you.”

  “How do you manage about relief and so on?”

  “We eat at Mrs. Broadbent’s—the Tavern. Adey and I work here from midmorning till around eleven at night. Hope it won’t keep up forever.”

  “The inquest will change things a little.”

  “So they say.”

  Vines got on his motorcycle and rode up the Green Tree road. Gamadge turned into the Edgewood grounds; Miss Studley, busy in a flower garden at one side of the lawn, waved to him. He saluted in return and went on up the drive. He mounted the steps.

  The front door was open; Miss Pepper could be seen in the lounge arranging flowers. She said as Gamadge pushed open the screen: “Tea served on the porch at five, Mr. Gamadge. You’ll find Mrs. Turnbull out there now, and I think Mr. Motley.”

  “Good.”

  “Been shopping?”

  “Just something for the progeny.” He unwrapped his bundle, and Miss Pepper exclaimed with delight: “How cute!”

  “A parent speaks.”

  “I only wish I had one like it for my Billy.”

  “Miss Wakefield may not be out of them.” Gamadge was turning to the stairs when the telephone rang. He waited. Miss Pepper went back to the booth, and returned to say that the call was for him. “And I’ll take the—I’ll take it upstairs with me.”

  “It’s a panda—the brown ones are rare.”

  Miss Pepper said that Gamadge was a terror. He went to the booth and picked up the receiver.

  “Gamadge?”

  “Hello, Durfee.”

  “That Pennsylvania business.”

  “Quick work. Yes?”

  “I’ll give you what I have. Three guests in the house that night besides the servants and Mr. and Mrs. A redhead woman, friend of Mrs. T.’s, and her husband; well-known characters in the city, rich, the Ellwood Garveys. And a man named Matthews, friend of the late Mr. T., brought along to the house party to play bridge. The deceased couldn’t get the game through his head.”

  “Chauffeur friend?”

  “No, man that helped the deceased with his financial affairs—which means what Mrs. T. gave him. Dark, good-looking, out of war service on account of some physical disability, been working in Washington. Harold Matthews. Mrs. T. hadn’t met him before. He came originally from East Orange.”

  “Thanks. That’ll do.”

  “Anything for you?”

  “Don’t think so. Let you know.”

  “That case is a washout, Gamadge. The deceased never went to bed sober, his valet said, had trouble with his nerves and took sleeping stuff regularly. Of course it weakened on him, and he overdid it. H
is doctor warned him.”

  “I understand. Had his own room, you said?”

  “I don’t know what I said; he had his own room, anyway. Found late next morning. All evidence pointed to the fact that he was attentive to his wife, took her around, acted fond of her. She was happy with him, and if the servants say so it’s true. You don’t want to make anything of it, do you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Getting along at all?”

  “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Well, watch it.”

  Gamadge came out of the booth and made his way through the dining room to the porch. He stopped in the doorway. Motley faced it, leaning against the opposite rail; hands in pockets, chin down, he had the look of a man who has come to a dead end.

  Mrs. Turnbull reclined on a chaise lounge, so far to the right that she was invisible to anyone not standing where Gamadge stood; a good arrangement. Motley, in fact, said something in a low voice as Gamadge approached, and when he caught sight of her she was picking up a magazine. Her face was composed.

  Gamadge looked from one to the other of them; he said: “I think you two must be the greatest idiots on earth.”

  Motley had lifted his head, and would probably have greeted Gamadge with a casual word; now he stared, mouth half open. Mrs. Turnbull’s magazine slowly descended to her lap, and her eyes showed white all around the irises.

  “Your name’s Harold Matthews,” continued Gamadge, ignoring her and addressing Motley, whose color was changing to the queerest grayish pallor. “You were at the Turnbull house in Pittsburgh the night Turnbull died. You were probably a friend of Mrs. Turnbull’s, though she and you didn’t advertise that fact to her other friends. When she was sent here you had yourself sent too, by a doctor who knows you under a false name. Were you crazy to do such a thing?”

  Matthews had trouble in answering. At last he got his lips somewhat under control, and spoke huskily: “How could we know we’d get caught in a damned trap?”

  Mrs. Turnbull covered her face with a handkerchief, held in both hands. She faltered through it: “There wasn’t any harm. It was only because it didn’t look well for us to be up here together so soon afterwards. It isn’t Harold’s fault. I made him.”

  Matthews asked through his teeth: “Are you police?”

  “No. And you can be thankful I got the information from somebody who tapped a private source. It’s not information that your doctor would give out to everybody—perhaps he wouldn’t give it out to anyone. But as luck would have it he wasn’t in town, and the office nurse obliged with the word that you’d proposed yourself for Edgewood.”

  “But—I don’t see why you asked.”

  “I asked because I want to eliminate people from suspicion in this case—weed out the impossibles. I was following all pointers. I rather wondered why a man of your age and type—a man, by the way, whose ailment might be a fake—should want to come to Edgewood. If it’s any comfort to you and Mrs. Turnbull, you are eliminated from my point of view. Mrs. Turnbull was sent here for a definite reason by her specialist, you came to be with her. Too bad we can’t use the material.”

  Mrs. Turnbull began to sob.

  Matthews said violently: “A chance in a million.”

  “Not quite, Matthews. Or I’d better go on calling you Motley, I suppose. No use risking a slip.” Mrs. Turnbull took her handkerchief away from her face and looked at Gamadge with a faint dawning hope in her eyes. He went on: “Not quite such odds as that. You weren’t born yesterday. You know the chances—sudden illness, all kinds of coincidences, unexpected meetings—”

  “I thought it was safe enough in this hole. They never had my pictures in the papers last June, and May telephoned me that there wasn’t anybody here we knew. She’s telling you the absolute truth, she just wanted me along for company.”

  “We thought it was such a joke,” quavered Mrs. Turnbull, “nobody knowing we’d ever met before. It was such fun.”

  “Such fun for Motley to be here under an assumed name—in the circumstances?”

  Motley said: “Gamadge—for God’s sake you don’t think…? Turnbull died of accidental poisoning, his own stuff. Everybody knows it.”

  “Then why introduce an element of conspiracy afterwards? I’m not investigating Turnbull’s death, Motley.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. And to be frank with you, I don’t believe either you or Mrs. Turnbull would have run such a risk if you’d been responsible.”

  “Of course we wouldn’t,” said Motley, with simulated scorn.

  “But others might not argue as I do.”

  Mrs. Turnbull began to cry again. “I loved Clarence, I was heartbroken. I still am. Harold was the only comfort I had, and I couldn’t even see him because everybody thought he was Clarence’s friend, and Harold didn’t think it was safe.”

  Harold gave her a glance that did not express affection.

  “People talk so,” wailed Mrs. Turnbull.

  “They do.” Gamadge stood contemplating her with a certain exasperation.

  “And every minute we’re here now—”

  “The inquest will do it,” muttered her friend. “They’ll get pictures, and some newshawk will be sure to connect up.”

  “They tried to suggest at the time that somebody might have gone to Clarence’s room that night and had a drink with him,” said Mrs. Turnbull faintly.

  “But there wasn’t any motive?” Gamadge turned from her to Motley. “Only one thing possible—to get you out of here before the inquest.”

  “Don’t I know that?”

  “You know it. Now of course you’ve both been keeping out of the limelight as much as possible; you’d even suppress evidence, I suppose, rather than make yourselves conspicuous in the case. You’d even hand out false evidence if necessary. I understand all that; I won’t blame you for it. But if I’m to help you out of this—which I probably won’t be able to do—you’ll both have to be frank with me now. In the first place, can you alibi each other? Were you together on Thursday evening when the party opened Mrs. Norbury’s door and then left?”

  Mrs. Turnbull reacted violently to this suggestion: “How dare you?”

  Motley smiled—a smile of bitterness. “We would have been crazy, Gamadge; at that hour. Very little privacy at Edgewood until later, much later, and no guarantee at any time; with hypochondriacs watching their symptoms and waiting for palpitations all night.”

  Gamadge answered Mrs. Turnbull’s implied rebuke: “Of course you’d want to meet sometimes, Mrs. Turnbull; the joke wouldn’t be any good if you couldn’t share it in private now and then. Nothing in that.”

  “Harold and I were not together.”

  “That’s that. Your room is at the back, next to Mrs. Norbury’s. Motley’s, I think, is in front next to mine. Did either of you—”

  Motley said: “She thinks she heard the maniac arrive.”

  “Just a little noise from the direction of the woods,” faltered Mrs. Turnbull. “I didn’t think anything of it. But afterwards I remembered that I heard it just before half past ten. I happened to look at my watch at half past, to set it by my traveling clock.”

  And count the hours, thought Gamadge. He said: “Mrs. Norbury didn’t hear this noise.”

  “She’s deaf. She doesn’t know it, but she’s deaf.”

  “Well, it would have helped to exonerate Edgewood, but I can see that you wouldn’t care to come forward.”

  Mrs. Turnbull sat up, put her feet to the floor, and rose. After a pitiful struggle between resentment and anxiety, she spoke in a tremulous and wheedling voice: “Mr. Gamadge, I don’t know what your interest is in all this. But if you can possibly help us, you won’t find me ungrateful.”

  “No, May,” said Motley. “Don’t offer him anything.”

  “I mean I’ll be grateful to him. I don’t want tea; I have a headache, and please tell them I can’t be disturbed.”

  She tottered across the porch, past Gamadge, and away.
There was a long silence, during which Gamadge sat down and lighted a cigarette. At last Motley spoke harshly:

  “I know what you think. Say it if you want to, I’m in no position to complain.”

  “Never mind what I think, Mr. Motley. You’re in no position to be lectured by me.”

  “Somebody’ll marry her; I’d make her a better husband than that oaf Turnbull did. But I doubt whether she’ll ever get up the nerve to marry me now.” He added: “Even if we squeak out of this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Gamadge. “After a good long wait you could probably manage it quite openly through mutual friends. It would have to be openly, unless you feel able to risk trouble.”

  “A good long wait?” Motley laughed. “She’ll have the first man that gets a chance at her—if he’s moderately presentable. I’m fond of her, you know,” he insisted, and his voice was suddenly a whine. “I met her long before Turnbull ever saw her, scraped acquaintance in a tea shop. But he was on hand, and he got ahead of me after the old man died. I know it looks funny, my being there the night Turnbull cashed in, but I was the only unattached man she knew, and she had me along to play bridge. Good food, all the liquor you could drink, and May knew I had no money and staked me—none of the rest of them knew that.” He paused. “If you’ve dug into my medical history you know I’m handicapped.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I haven’t a cent except what I can earn.”

  “Mrs. Turnbull staked you to the Creighton, I suppose?” Gamadge’s tone was a detached one.

  “Naturally. The whole idea appealed to her. I was a fool, but I didn’t like to disappoint her.”

  “If it does come out, you realize of course that she’ll always be viewed as an accessory; more likely, an accomplice.”

  “And she’d make such a rotten showing on the witness stand. Gamadge, I don’t know why you bother with us; but if there’s any earthly chance—”

  Heralded by a clinking of silver against glass, Miss Pepper approached through the dining room with a tray. Both men came forward to help her. Haynes followed her, a plate in each hand, and Mrs. Norbury lumbered in his wake.

  “Mrs. Turnbull has a headache,” said Gamadge. “Lying down. No tea by request.”