“Do.”
“If he cut down from the wood path above the house, I mean to the north of the house on the way from Emeline Wakefield’s, he wouldn’t see the light in the library. The kitchen wing cuts it off.”
“I understand.”
“And my reading light wouldn’t cast a glow outside. Very much the same thing that seems to have happened when he visited the Inn. Both places entirely dark, so far as he knew, downstairs. I’m giving you what evidence there is for a prowler, you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Same thing at Edgewood.”
“But at the Rigby Library—”
“I know, that does seem to break the chain. But if he’d been hanging about in the neighborhood at all he may very well have known that it is a library, and that anyone working late there would be alone. He’d make sure first. Look in. But he saw that he’d put Miss Bluett on the alert. Didn’t chance it. For all he knew her desk might have been facing the other way. This afternoon he got her—from the rear.”
“Quite possibly that’s the way it was.”
“One can’t hope to follow the mental processes of such a being.”
“No.”
“Look out for your head, these pine branches hang down.”
Pine needles underfoot now, pine branches overhead. The little circles of light from their torches got them through, and up a bank slippery with old leaves. Opposite them the woods hung dark, tree trunks looming.
“We’re on the trail now,” said Carrington. “Screened on both sides, no break through until we’re behind the Inn.”
“Pleasant walk in summer.”
“And in winter; well protected from snow and wind.”
They went silently, until Carrington stopped. “Here’s the break through to Emeline’s orchard. Nice apples. We have some of our own. You can see the Inn lights.”
“I see them.”
“Almost anywhere along behind the Inn you can get through to the grounds without trouble.”
They went on. “Careful,” said Carrington, “roots here. The trail is going back to jungle. You see now that the prowler must have had a torch.”
“Absolutely.”
“But with a torch there was no trick to it.”
“None.”
“Here’s the break to the Library.”
They left the path and made their way between old sprawling shrubbery and trees, crossed the wall where Gamadge had sat that afternoon, and arrived at the head of the cellar steps. Carrington took out Hawkins’ key.
“If you’re not familiar with the library cellar,” said Gamadge, “perhaps I might go first. I made the trip twice this afternoon. Place is rather cluttered.”
“Go ahead.”
He unlocked the door, and Gamadge went in. “Lock up behind you?” he suggested.
“Good idea.” Carrington did so. They stood in the clean damp place, Gamadge’s torch pointing to the woodpile.
“Logs down,” he said, and promptly stumbled. “Look out, all over the floor.”
They picked their way across to the stairs. Carrington said: “Can you imagine negotiating these with a candle, and probably a bag or bottles under your other arm? Why weren’t all our ancestors’ servants crippled for life? Where is the light switch?”
“Up above, I suppose. Wait a minute.” Gamadge went up, opened a door, hunted about. “Yes, all right.”
The light went on. Carrington joined him in the back hall. They looked into the kitchen and the bathroom, and Gamadge turned another switch that lighted the back stairs.
“Going up there?” asked Carrington.
“Later.”
“If I hadn’t come you’d be doing all this alone? Gad, I envy you your nerves.”
“I’m a bundle of nerves at all times.”
“What absurdity.”
Gamadge went along and turned the switch that lighted the book room. Carrington glanced down at the toppled books on the floor to the right, and looked at Gamadge. “Yes, she was down there. They’ve cleaned up.”
“Thank heaven.”
“She sat at the desk working. I believe she was kneeling down looking at the books when her caller came on Thursday night. She must have been terribly frightened, but she wouldn’t admit it. Well, the place is shut up tight enough now; hot as hell.”
“What are you going to look for here, Gamadge?”
“I’m going to cast my eye over these criminology shelves.” Gamadge moved to the left. Carrington laid his rifle on Miss Bluett’s desk. He bent to the piles of books on the floor.
“Here’s where this fellow belongs.” He knelt on one knee, straightening the Birds of Our Woodlands. “Damn shame, how they’ve been kicked around. I’ll stack ’em.”
He picked up the thin volumes one by one, replaced loose pages, glanced at colored plates. His back was to Gamadge, who pulled volumes from the shelf in front of him and replaced them. Suddenly, as Carrington drew a page out of a book, he felt his wrist grasped. The sheet was pulled from his fingers. He twisted to look up. “What the—”
Gamadge had the page and was reading it. Carrington gasped: “What’s that? What—”
“If you didn’t know, why did you come here to look for it?”
“Are you—are you crazy?”
“Just the size of those bird book pages; but it’s a sheet of your father’s letter paper. The color’s pretty nearly right, too, off-white. The old pages are yellowed. I mentioned the similarity of size and color and texture when I was in that bedroom this evening.” Gamadge’s voice was toneless. “I wouldn’t blame anyone for making a mistake.”
“Mistake?” Carrington snatched at the sheet in Gamadge’s hand. Still on one knee and twisted back, he was ashen.
“Didn’t you make one? Didn’t you mistake a loose page from a bird book for this letter, and pull out the page, and find out your mistake after you killed him? That book on his night table was the wrong one, wasn’t it? He must have changed them after you left him in the afternoon.”
Carrington said in a whisper: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is that in your hand?”
“You wretched blundering fool, don’t you know yet that if you’re here it’s on my invitation?”
Carrington stared at him, his face drawn into a mask. “I had a theory,” said Gamadge, “and I had to test it. And you carried out the test for me.”
Carrington’s head jerked sharply to the left; his hand went to his pocket; he whispered: “For God’s sake, Gamadge, stand away from me.”
Gamadge did so. Carrington’s pistol exploded as the sheriff and White, the captain of state police, surged into the room from the passage. Ridley shouted: “Damn it, Gamadge, I knew you couldn’t handle it.” But Gamadge thought he had handled it pretty well.
White was on one knee beside the fallen body. Ridley watched him; when he turned to Gamadge he spoke not unamiably:
“Well, you couldn’t know he had a gun in his pocket as well as that Winchester he brought.”
“No.”
“You fixed the act all right, and you had the sense to kick that log of wood when I made that noise in the cellar. Close quarters behind the furnace, I knocked something with my knee.” He added, looking down at Carrington’s body, “I couldn’t believe you when you telephoned from Edgewood before supper. Neither could White when I told him. But our motto is, try anything.”
Captain White got to his feet. He grunted: “Didn’t think you’d get him here if he was guilty.”
“He had to come,” said Gamadge. “He hadn’t had a chance before, and he had to take this one. I’d remarked that this paper is very much like the pages in the bird books. If he let me come here alone, what mightn’t I have poked around and discovered?”
“He had this afternoon,” objected White, scowling at the paper in Gamadge’s hand. “Why not get the thing then, whatever it is?”
“This afternoon he had barely time to arrange the evidence upstairs after the murder
. How did he know Willie Stapler wouldn’t raise an alarm sooner?”
“Miss Bluett might have found that thing”—the sheriff jerked his head at what Gamadge was holding—“any time.”
“She had Thursday evening to find it, and Carrington didn’t know it was here until after he’d killed his father that night. Then the Library was full of you people, and afterwards locked. He knew she hadn’t found it, and he thought he had days, while she was away, to invent some reasonable excuse to get in alone. He never dreamed she’d be here this afternoon. When he found she was, did he waste time? But he couldn’t search eleven books for this.”
“What in time is it?”
“It’s the beginning of his father’s proposal of marriage to Rose Jenner.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Love Letter
LABOR DAY WAS bright and mild; Mrs. Gamadge and young Henry came up to Westbury by train, were met by Gamadge, and had lunch at Edgewood. Afterwards Mrs. Gamadge, Mrs. Turnbull, Miss Studley, Miss Pepper, Mrs. Norbury and Mr. Haynes sat in the lounge while young Henry staggered from one to the other, the Monster in his arms, calling it Nice Kitty.
Mr. Haynes did not seem the worse for his shocking experience with the law; in fact he was very talkative and cheerful, and Gamadge remarked to Clara that now Haynes had seen life in the raw and could retire on the anecdote. “Dine out on it for years.”
“Poor Mrs. Turnbull. I’m afraid somebody will marry her for her money.”
“Are you? Perhaps you’re right.”
Gamadge left the party and walked down to the Wakefield Inn. Miss Wakefield would not be there—she was with Lydia Carrington; but Yates had telephoned that Rose Jenner and he would like to see Gamadge if he could spare the time, and were in Miss Wakefield’s office. “We won’t be interrupted, Homans has got a Descendant to fix her hair.”
“Fix—oh yes. Has she?”
“Descendant of a Chapley lady’s maid; does all the hair in Frazer’s Mills from a great-great-aunt’s recipe.”
“I’d like to see the result.” Gamadge added: “You sound very brisk and happy.”
“I am.”
“Good. Be with you.”
Walking down the street to the Inn, Gamadge marveled at the transformation in The Mills, wrought overnight. People did not, it is true, look gay, some of them were downcast; but there were people, lots of people; on the footways, on the porches, everywhere. Doors stood wide, old inhabitants sunned themselves in the yards. It was a different place.
Yates and Rose Jenner were in the office, waiting for him. He took her hand.
“Nice try of yours last night, Miss Jenner; I knew you were fighting for him.”
“I’d do anything—anything—for the Carringtons.”
“You felt that you were doing what your guardian would have wanted?”
“What Lydia wanted. What my stepmother would have wanted. She was a Carrington. I’d never heard of them until she married my father; there’s nothing she didn’t try to do for me. Mr. Gamadge, you don’t know what she was like; and we were happy together. When she died I lost everything—or thought I had. And then my guardian sent and saved me again. And Lydia was so kind. I was just a bother and a nuisance, but they were so kind. Even Lawrence—until…”
“Until he fell in love with you?”
She stood looking at him silently, as if unable to speak. He went on gently:
“I was sure that Lawrence Carrington had committed the murders; but I was sure he wouldn’t commit murder for motives of gain, and in cold blood. There must have been some other reason, the kind of thing, suddenly discovered, that drives a man like Carrington temporarily mad.”
She nodded sombrely.
“He had accumulated rage ever since his father sank the family fortunes in an annuity; I could understand that. He had ceased to think of George Carrington as a father at all. Perhaps he had discovered that he was going to lose this place, which he loved.”
“Yes, he loved it.”
“Motive, but not enough. What had lighted that sudden fire in Lawrence Carrington’s brain, and impelled that civilized, inhibited man to commit such a crime? Well, some intense form of jealousy might do it—has done it before. Was it a crime of passion? Frustrated passion? I wondered.” He looked at Rose Jenner and smiled faintly.
“He loved me; I couldn’t marry him. Mr. Gamadge, he was out of his senses when he killed my guardian.”
“But he killed Miss Bluett to save himself from discovery.”
“Can’t people go mad from fear?”
“They can. Call it madness. You did your best for him; and his sister had a try at helping him, too, didn’t she?”
“I realized then that she knew.”
“Knew because he didn’t care whether doors were locked or not?”
“We knew the way he felt about his father. He couldn’t hide it. He hated him—on account of the annuity first. Mr. Gamadge, you frightened me yesterday at the Library, when you said that about the newspapers; you didn’t believe in the maniac. I was so frightened on Lawrence’s account that I got that stick of wood, just before dinner, and hid it in the trellis. I had to do something.”
“You succeeded in knocking him almost silly.”
“I didn’t realize that Lawrence would know then I suspected him.”
“And at supper Miss Carrington put on her show, and he knew she suspected him.”
Rose put her hand in her coat pocket, brought out a square gray envelope, and offered it to Gamadge. “I want you to read this.”
“Now,” said Yates, “you’ll know what she’s really made of, Gamadge.”
Gamadge looked at it. It was addressed Rose, and on the flap was an engraved Lawrence Carrington in block letters. “He left this for you?”
“Lydia found it in his desk. It wasn’t hidden; he was so sure there would never be any need for it. I don’t want to see it again. If it weren’t for Lydia I’d ask you to burn it, but somebody might blame her in some way, and he wrote it to prevent that.”
Gamadge turned the envelope in his hand. “But you don’t want it?”
“It’s a frightful letter.”
Yates said: “It was written to distress her, but she won’t destroy it. I’ve read it, Gamadge; when you’ve read it you’ll understand these ghastly murders better.”
Rose turned her face away. “I never dreamed that my guardian wanted to marry me. He never said a word. And I wouldn’t have married him; but Lawrence thought I would.”
Gamadge asked: “It never occurred to you that your guardian had reasons of self-interest in keeping you away from young company and banishing your friends?”
“No, it never did.”
“But you had a feeling that he wouldn’t care even for Yates?”
“I only thought he was a little unfair.”
“I’m glad you had spirit enough to see young Mr. Yates away from home.”
Yates observed: “Selfish old brute.”
“Yes, he was selfish,” said Rose. “I know he was. But when I had nobody, he saved me.”
“I’m glad your loyalty has limits. You’d have done anything for the Carringtons—but marry them.” Gamadge looked at the letter in his hand. “But you’re loyal enough. Thank you for trusting me with this, Miss Jenner; if it isn’t needed—and I don’t know why it should be—I’ll return it to you for burning.”
“Mr. Gamadge—” she hesitated. “You’ll see when you read it that he meant to kill himself if anything went wrong for him. And he had his gun last night. Did you let him do it?”
“That’s putting myself into your hands; but I’m glad to show my admiration by doing so. I knew he must have a gun—I knew that rifle was camouflage. If he hadn’t known I had one—but never mind that. At the end he begged me, almost in words, to let him use his. Thinking of you and Miss Carrington, I did let him use it.” He added: “I’d have been still more willing to let him use it if I’d known that you were capable of saving a letter such as this one must be, saving it i
nstead of burning it, running the risk of having it published, for a Carrington’s sake.”
She put her hand into his again, and then turned away, “I must get back to the house. Don’t come, Garry. You want to talk to Mr. Gamadge.”
Yates went to the front door with her; while he was gone, Gamadge opened and read the letter. It was dated: Two o’clock, Friday Morning, 27th August, and it began abruptly:
Rosie, you know I loved you; you can imagine whether I love you now. But why do I write as if you were ever going to see this? There is no chance whatever, so far as I can judge, that you will see it; but who can tell? So I leave it—for Lydia’s protection and your enlightenment. I shouldn’t care to depart this life without letting you know that I had discovered your game here, and had ruined it. Now, whatever happens, you won’t be the mistress of this house and of all our valued things; and you won’t turn Lydia and me out of our home: all that my father left us of our patrimony.
I suppose you would have persuaded him to sell the place—you wouldn’t be satisfied with a widow’s share, would you?
As I imply above, I shall remove myself abruptly from the scene if anything goes wrong; I shall not stay for protestations or the long farce of self-defense. And I will admit that one mistake was made by me, though it won’t be fatal. I shall rectify it. Nobody will look through those bird books now—Miss Bluett won’t be in the Library for days.
What happened was absurd. This afternoon—it seems a long time ago—I wandered to the south doorway of my father’s room and looked in. He was writing, using one of the bird books for a writing-block. When I came in he closed the book—hastily, I thought—and laid it on his bed table. Then his tray came, and I had an opportunity—hidden by the bed curtain—of glancing at what he was anxious I shouldn’t see.
One glance was quite enough to show me that Lydia and I were going to acquire a stepmother, and suffer final disinheritance. But it showed me more. When you refused me, dear Rosie, I humbly admitted that I was not only unworthy of you but too old for you. But your guardian wasn’t too old for you, was he? You were out for bigger game than Lawrence Carrington and his five thousand a year. He’d have taken out life insurance for you, wouldn’t he, though he never did for us? How demure you have been, and what fools Lydia and I were not to know why that old man was keeping you to himself! Well, I love my sister Lydia, and I love my own comfort too. And I loved you once. If I did go mad there in that bedroom, when I read those lines and realized all they meant, I didn’t show it. I’m used to repressing my feelings, you know. Did Lydia or my father ever guess how I once felt about you? So I left the letter where it was, a half inch showing beyond the page, and I retired. How was I to know that he’d take up another of the bird books from the chair beside the bed, and lay the one with the letter in it in the other’s place on top of the pile? How was he to know that Hattie Bluett would send for the set, and that poor Lydia would creep in and take them—all but one—while he was asleep?
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