“You got ahead of the Chapleys and Compsons and the rest of them?”
“They were all taking cat-washes in tin basins while my great-grandfather luxuriated in his coffin, like Donne.”
Gamadge’s eyes traveled about the room. The silver on the bureau top was so old that its engraved monograms were all but effaced; beautiful stuff. Everything of a personal kind was rich and beautiful, from the thick silk of the dark dressing gown that hung on a chair back to the squares of writing paper in a lacquered case on the nightstand.
Gamadge went up to look at it. “I love such paper.”
“Part of my father’s pre-war stock; he always got it from England, and it had to be that shade of off-white. If it came gray, or café-au-lait, or white, you know, back it went.”
“I sympathize. Nothing like the right thing.” Gamadge fingered a corner of the paper lovingly, and admired the spidery and ornate monogram.
“There’s that book,” said Carrington, “that didn’t get sent to the Library.”
Gamadge picked the thin volume up from the night table. “Oh yes; Miss Bluett told me about it, poor soul, while I was with her this afternoon; I wonder if her murderer profited by our literary conversation.”
Carrington drew his shoulders together and exhaled a breath. Then, as Gamadge turned pages, he came and looked over his shoulder. “How fond we were of that set. We always had it out on rainy days when we were children. The Woodpecker, The Thrush, The Starling. Nicely colored, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“A regional book; Mrs. E. Lampton was a Westchester woman, and a sentimental one. Her prose errs on the side of poesy. Too bad we got the set into such poor condition.”
“I’m thinking what nice paper they made in those days for such books, and what nice paper the British make still. Look.” He drew out a protruding leaf, and held it beside the writing paper in the lacquer case. “Rag paper, quarto size, and this is discolored to your father’s favorite shade of off-white. You’d hardly know the difference to sight or touch, would you?”
Carrington looked from one specimen to the other, looked closer, then smiled. “Well, you’re an expert; I suppose this is the kind of things you notice in your professional work?”
“And in my extra-professional work.”
“All that kind of information—or observation, trained observation, must come in very handy.”
“It does. As you say,” and Gamadge replaced the leaf in the bird book, “too bad the set is in such poor condition.”
“That’s what my father said when he saw them—the first time, I do believe, since he was a child on a rainy day himself. They were in the attic, have been ever since they ceased to be presentable. He wanted a last look at the woodpecker and the starling before they went away forever. So like Hattie Bluett to send over at seven o’clock and demand them and the rest of the lot—salt of the earth, but she did love ordering us about when she could. And so like her to decide to put labels in all the poor old books on Thursday night if it killed her. She was going off on that awful jaunt of hers the next day; a bus trip to Boston, I think, and there’s some hotel that has arrangements for a whole party to pig together in one room; five double-decker beds in it.”
“Cosy.”
“Well, she sent Hawkins for the books. Hattie Bluett always rather intimidated Lydia, so poor Lydia came in here and collected the birds. If I’d been on hand or known anything about it Hawkins would have been sent empty away. My father was asleep; Lydia hurried over the job, and what with her hurry and her efforts to make no noise, that volume got left behind. The others were on a chair beside the bed. He must have been reading the one you have, and set it down. In fact he was reading something when I was here, just before his tray came in. I took the tray from Mrs. Begbie; I think I remember that he was reading, and did set the book aside. Then I went up to change. I never saw him alive again.”
“He went to sleep soon after he’d had his supper, then?”
“Just tea and toast, something very light. Afterwards he’d take his ten grains of aspirin; and what with his slight fever and the aspirin he’d soon drop off.” Carrington went over to the bow window and stood there in the failing light, looking out. “I’m afraid he sounds neglected.”
“No. Why?”
“People always say so when there’s been a tragedy. But Rose dashed off right after dinner to her movie, and I was in the library, and after Lydia looked in here at nine she went upstairs herself. She wanted him to sleep—she didn’t even light the lamps in her sitting room across the hall. He could get about, you know; took care of himself, loathed nursing. I’d been trying to get him to let Miss Studley or the other nurse come down and give him heat therapy; he wouldn’t hear of it. A call from him—from the hall—would have brought both of us on the run.”
“I know, Carrington. I know.”
“That damned front door. But it was always his own wish in hot weather, and we’re used—we were used to thinking of Frazer’s Mills as our own front yard.” Carrington turned. “I suppose the Library will close up now—none too soon. The books will go at auction. Or are they even worth a sale, I wonder?”
Gamadge said: “I might take this over and put it with the rest, if you like.”
“When?”
“Tonight. I thought I’d like to pay the Library another visit before I left. I’m off tomorrow.”
Carrington looked surprised. “Another visit? Why?”
“I didn’t half see it this afternoon. There are one or two things I’d like to see again.” Gamadge added: “Without publicity.”
“Have you a key?”
“No; I thought perhaps Hawkins—”
“Hawkins, or one of the state police might have his. I’ll telephone for you. Go with you, if you like—you might care to see what the back way and the wood path are like at night.”
“It’s exactly what I would like.”
“We’ll go then, after dinner. Bring that thing along, will you?”
Gamadge, the bird book in hand, followed Carrington back into the parlor. Carrington, at the cocktail tray, said: “Must leave enough for the young people—Lydia won’t touch gin. She’ll have a sherry. Oh, by the way, I didn’t tell you; Rose has acquired a young man. He’s staying for supper.”
“Good.”
“That Yates fellow who had a call from the murderer at the Wakefield Inn, and had fortunately locked his door. But you know all that. Rose met him this afternoon. I think she has some vague idea that he’s a fellow sufferer; I don’t know why, unless it’s because he’ll be a witness at the inquest. Lydia and I feel that Rose is a sufferer, and we were glad to give her young company since she wants it. Young people get acquainted rapidly nowadays.” He poured drinks.
Gamadge, sipping his, said that Yates seemed a pleasant youth.
“Thank heaven she’s found somebody at last whom we can like. You’ve no idea, Gamadge, what oddities she managed to pick up in New York. My father—well, in this case you couldn’t have called him too fastidious. There was a married man, at least forty years old, a European, I don’t know exactly from where. His reminiscences were interminable. Then there was a youngish individual who needed a shave and a clean collar, and who didn’t rise when my sister came into the room. Rose said he was very interesting. Another lout, on leave from the army, lectured us on the post-war world; and at that time we weren’t even living in it. Well, Rose had had a curious life, in some ways she’s old for her age. I dare say she did find these people intellectually stimulating—more so than the upper bourgeoisie whom we offered her. Now, however, she’s back to normal with Mr. Yates. Thank heaven.”
Gamadge said that Yates seemed a normal type enough.
“Just the thing for Rose. I hope he has prospects. She has none, poor child, one of the minor tragedies connected with my father’s death. If he’d lived, and she hadn’t married, I’m sure he would have arranged life insurance for her benefit. As it is—”
Foot
steps sounded on the porch. Carrington put down his glass and went to open the door. When he returned, Rose Jenner and Yates followed him; she had changed into a long dress, yellow with white flowers. She nodded to Gamadge, took her cocktail and went across the room to the bow window. Standing there and looking out, her dark hair loose on her neck, she was an exotic figure in that formal setting, where the very richness of ornament looked prim.
Yates, standing with his back to her at the console, between the other men, said under his breath: “She’s terribly upset by this Bluett thing.”
“Is she? Well, I suppose so.” Carrington poured his drink. “We all are.”
“But she’s—she seems to feel it more and more.”
“Frightened of the tramp?”
“It may be that.”
“Perhaps it’s more personal. She read a good deal in the Library. She may have made friends with Miss Bluett.”
Gamadge shook his head. “I don’t think so. Miss Bluett mentioned her to me, but only as a reader.”
“What she can have found there to read!”
“Oh, lots of things.” Gamadge smiled. “That’s why I borrowed Miss Bluett’s key—to read there. But I handed it back to the authorities.”
“Hattie Bluett lent you her key?” Carrington was astonished and amused. “You must have the tongue of angels.”
“No, merely a lot of useless information.”
“I don’t think many people of your kind—if there are many—bothered to talk to poor Hattie.”
Rose Jenner suddenly turned; she said in a strained, hurried way, as if she had come to a decision once for all: “He could have hidden in the trellis.”
The three men stared.
“There’s a broken part on the other side,” she went on quickly. “I saw it early this summer, when I was looking at the honeysuckle. Just now I—he could be there this moment, and nobody would know.”
Carrington exclaimed: “You must be off your head,” and strode across the room to the bay. The others followed him. All three windows were up; Yates leaned from the middle one where Rose had stood; Gamadge from the one on the right. Carrington from the third.
The trellis, not fifteen yards away, rose four-sided and tapering, shrouded in its vines. From the north it simply presented a leafy wall of green.
Carrington withdrew his head. “Perfectly ridiculous. How would a prowler know that he could get into the thing? Nobody’s ever been inside of it since it was constructed—who’d get such an idea? How should anybody of that kind even think of it?”
Rose said: “I just had the idea.”
“Well, it isn’t a cheerful one.” Yates looked down at her, smiling. “Want me to settle it, Miss Jenner? Here and now?”
Carrington answered him: “Better lay that ghost on the spot… Very good of you, Yates.” He added, eyeing Yates whimsically behind Rose’s back: “Will you have a weapon of some kind? How about a walking stick? My—there’s a blackthorn in the hall stand.”
Yates said he didn’t think he’d bother with the blackthorn; he went out, and presently they heard his steps on the porch. Then they all saw him come around the corner of the house and walk towards the trellis over the short grass.
Carrington said: “Really, my dear child, a fatuous idea.”
“You’d have said so if I’d asked if he might be in the Library.”
“Right as usual; but a trellis…!”
Yates turned and waved to them. He went around to the far side of the trellis, and was lost to view. The three, leaning from the windows of the bay, waited.
Twilight had fallen. The trees and bushes of the lawn were motionless in the sad quiet of the late summer evening. Carrington said: “He’ll come out covered with spiders’ webs and old birds’ nests.”
Yates came around the trellis, stopped, and looked up at them. There was an odd expression on his face, a mixture of incredulity and astonishment. In his hand he held a piece of wood, a two-foot section of oak like a club. He said: “Nothing there but this.”
Rose Jenner, her elbows on the sill, did not move. Gamadge, eyes fixed on the cudgel, was silent. Carrington, after a pause of stupefaction, shouted: “You found that thing in there?”
“Yes, in among a lot of weeds.”
Gamadge withdrew his head to meet Carrington’s amazed eyes. Carrington said almost in a whisper: “That weapon they thought he must have carried with him—but why should he think of putting it into the trellis?”
Rose said: “They say he had a flashlight.”
“They think he had.” Carrington gazed at her profile. “What on earth gave you the notion?”
“I don’t know.”
Yates called up to them: “Shall I bring it in?”
“For God’s sake,” Carrington told him, leaning out again, “don’t let Lydia see it. Put it back. I suppose you ought never to have moved it.”
“It wouldn’t take prints.”
“No, but they’ll want to see where it was, and how long it’s been there.”
“I can put it where it was.” Yates looked at it. “It’s old wood. Picked up somewhere and broken off short. I’m awfully sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing, Mr. Carrington.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m sure.”
“I was so staggered when I made it out by the light of a match, down among the dandelions and the chickweed.”
“Well, put it back; or—want to look at it, Gamadge?”
Gamadge shook his head.
Yates went around the trellis. He returned, crossed the lawn at a fast pace, and came back into the house. The others met him as he entered.
“Well!” he said, looking from Rose to Carrington. “So that’s what he—”
“We don’t know, of course.” Carrington was frowning. “Might be something Begbie pushed into the place for some reason or no reason. To get rid of it. He’ll never say so if he thinks it’s important. They never do. What I do not understand is Rose’s inspiration. Uncanny.” He looked at her with knitted brows.
“The whole thing’s been so on her mind,” said Yates, and Gamadge wondered how long he would be able to keep up a pretense of recent acquaintanceship.
“Of course,” Carrington turned his puzzled face to Gamadge, “the man himself was never there. That’s—”
“Doesn’t look as if he had been,” said Yates. “The weeds aren’t crushed down, and there doesn’t seem to be any fresh break in the trellis. There’d hardly be room for him to crawl through without smashing crosspieces. Those breaks are old. The thing’s pretty rotten-looking, Mr. Carrington.”
“I dare say. I’ll speak to Begbie about repairs this fall. And now, hang it all”—Carrington looked from Gamadge to Yates—“I suppose we’ll have to have the whole lot of them crawling over the place again. Rotten? The whole trellis will be down. More publicity. Well, can’t be helped, I suppose.”
“It wouldn’t do to keep it to ourselves, would it?” Rose spoke without much interest.
“Well, no. No. I hardly like to suppress it. Let them make what they can of the thing. We’ll even admit we moved it, because if we deny it they’ll know we’re lying.” He smiled faintly. “They know people do move things—we’re not robots, much as they wish we were, sometimes. But remember, now; Lydia isn’t to hear a word. If she must, she must—later; not yet. She’s had enough.”
Rose said: “Lydia ought to know.”
He swung to look at her. “Why?”
“It’ll simply frighten her to have people here again and not know why.”
“I’ll tell her then; tonight.”
Gamadge said: “We can tell the authorities when we ask for the key.”
“So we can.”
Rose asked: “Key?” but just then Lydia Carrington came to the door. She said: “Supper’s ready.” Her white dress gave her a yellow look; it wasn’t the right shade of white for her faded blondness.
“And much help we’ve been to you,” said Carrington.
“There was har
dly anything to do; Mrs. Begbie left everything ready.”
Rose said: “I’m sorry, Lydia.”
“My dear child! I’m glad you had a little pleasure. It was high time.”
They all went out into the hall and back to the dining room; Carrington last. The front door was closed, and Carrington waited to pull down a lamp on a ceiling chain and light the wick. It spread a pale, mellow glow, just right for the pale old woodwork and engravings of the wide hall.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Obsession
CANDLES BURNED ON the long table in the dining room, on the white chimneypiece and in wall brackets. The buffet held platters of cold chicken and ham, salad, fruit; there was a huge silver coffee urn.
People helped themselves and sat down. Gamadge found himself beside Rose Jenner. He said: “I understand that you’re a chess player, Miss Jenner.”
“I play. I’m not really good. I was as good when I was ten years old as I ever will be; my father taught me all the gambits, that’s all.”
“All? If the gambits were all! But there comes the awful moment for duffers when the other fellow refuses to respond any longer; what then? Then people like you exercise your strange power of knowing what people like me will do long before we know it ourselves.”
“I could never win against a real master.”
“Have you tried?”
“No, and I never shall.”
“You’d play an amateur, though?”
“I hope I’ll never have to look at a board again. Thank goodness Garry doesn’t know a knight from a queen.” She spoke low.
“Oh, everybody knows a knight from a queen. Let’s say he wouldn’t know that the game was lost until the final move.”
Yates, sitting beyond her, had been talking to Lydia Carrington. He turned. “Let’s forget chess,” he said. “Let’s stick to the great outdoors. What do you say, Miss Jenner? How about a drive after supper? Take in Westbury night life.”
Night Walk Page 14
