The wrong book lay where the other had lain, on the night table, with a page protruding. A loose page. And when I arrived after my night walk, a little before eleven, I put out my hand in the darkness—that was after my father was dead, you know—and pulled out what I thought was the letter. I couldn’t delay, never looked at it.
I soon discovered my mistake, and I had to return and replace the loose page; I leave no clues, you know! You wouldn’t believe the trouble I’ve taken over details.
The proposal of marriage was in the Rigby Library; but I had looked in on Hattie Bluett while I was in the process of building up the Prowler identity, and she can’t have touched Woodland Birds. She was still working on big sets of bound magazines. Now she won’t be in the library again, as I said, for many a day. I’ll make an excuse to get there—happy thought, the forgotten book!—and all will be well. So here I sit with my glass of brandy beside me, cheerfully enough, writing you this letter that you will never read. I almost wish that you could read it. I wish you knew what Lydia’s and my lives have been—how we were crushed and discouraged and devoured, taken for granted and at last disinherited. He let Nadine die, he ruined Lydia’s life, because they wouldn’t completely efface themselves; he can’t ruin what’s left of mine.
This is melodrama; I’d better stop. I’ve had a good deal of brandy. Will you think better of me as a husband now, Rose? If you do, what fun it will be to turn you down.
As Gamadge finished reading, Yates came back. “Well?” Yates asked it with raised eyebrows. “Call it madness?”
“A weak man pursued by furies. They overtook him.”
“You didn’t know all that, but you guessed it was Carrington.”
“I didn’t know anything, but I guessed it was Carrington almost from the first. I built up a theory, and last night I tested it—that’s all.”
“All? I’d like to hear the build-up.”
“Glad to oblige.”
“You owe me something, you know.” Yates regarded him with a half-smile. “Going to the police behind my back after I telephoned you on Friday.”
“How else could I have got into the Carrington house without giving you away?”
“Couldn’t you have mentioned the fact to me?”
“Well, no. Not after you told me that you were calling me on behalf of Miss Rose Jenner.”
“I see. Needed a free hand, did you?”
“If I had found reason to suspect Miss Jenner, I couldn’t very well have taken you into my confidence, could I? You called me in; but not, I assumed, as special pleader or counsel for anybody’s defense. I couldn’t be that, knowing nothing of the case and nothing of Miss Jenner beyond the fact that she had no alibi.”
“Knowing her, I knew she’d be all right with you. But I hadn’t realized how the chips fly when you hew to the line. You had me a little nervous. Well, we know the outcome; tell me how you arrived at it.”
“Glad to oblige.”
They sat on opposite sides of Miss Wakefield’s desk. Gamadge picked up a bronze paperweight in the form of a pacing horse.
“That,” said Yates, “is Bay Bayard. The animals with proper names were Wakefield animals.”
“And Lydia and Lawrence Carrington had to know their stud catechism, though they weren’t interested.”
“And neither of them had the courage to break away.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN Night Walk
“I ARRIVED AT it,” said Gamadge, “by way of the maniac theory. The idea was that there must have been a maniac because there was no motive for the murders, no link between the near-victims and the actual victim, and an infinite capacity on the part of the murderer for taking risks.
“You and the sheriff and I-don’t-know-how-many-other people insisted on those points to me; and the points were valid. But if the maniac took risks—wilder risks than such maniacs as our old friend the Düsseldorf Monster took, for instance—he seemed to have an infinite capacity for getting away with them. It looked as though he was an inhabitant of Frazer’s Mills, as the sheriff suspected; and it looked to me as if he might not be quite so crazy as all that after all.
“But if he wasn’t crazy, there must have been a motive.”
“That was the trouble,” said Yates eagerly. “There was no motive.”
“There must have been one, and therefore I could make some eliminations. Anybody who was in Frazer’s Mills by accident that night, or on legitimate other business, could be eliminated. You were out, from my point of view, because you hadn’t intended to be here on Thursday night at all; they could prove that in Westbury.”
“Well, thanks,” said Yates, laughing.
Gamadge cast a severe glance at him. “This is a problem, my good fellow; not a feast of friendship.”
“I see.”
“Miss Wakefield was out because you, already out, alibied her. Don’t talk to me about local reputation…”
“I won’t.”
“Carrington had one—that of a highly respectable man of cultivated tastes, devoted to his charming father. Miss Homans and the Silvers senior alibied one another. The Silver boy remained a possibility. Miss Bluett? No, she went home with Willie Stapler before Carrington was killed.
“The people at Edgewood? Miss Pepper and Mrs. Norbury out—they were together after ten thirty. Miss Studley out—she answered Miss Wakefield’s telephone call before she could have returned to Edgewood from the Carringtons’. Haynes out—he had been sent here for definite reasons by his doctor. Mrs. Turnbull ditto. For either of them to arrive at a strange place and find a mortal enemy there—no; logic doesn’t have to deal with such coincidences.”
“You don’t mention Motley, but he was out too—sent up here by his doctor.”
“Motley? Oh, yes. Motley was out. The natives were eliminated by the police, pace Vines. I was left with young Silver, the Carringtons and Rose Jenner. Why should the Carringtons or Rose Jenner eliminate the man who kept them all in luxury? And why should they try to eliminate Mrs. Norbury, Miss Bluett, and old Mr. Compson?
“Struggling for a link, I found none to connect those three as murder victims; but I found a link between the Carrington house and Edgewood, the Library and the Wakefield Inn.
“Anybody from the Carrington house might well visit Edgewood to consult Miss Studley about George Carrington’s thermo-therapy; any of them might conceivably mistake old Mrs. Norbury’s room for Miss Studley’s office, which is just above it and may be entered freely night or day. Anybody from the Carrington house might stop in at the Library to have a word with Miss Bluett about the Carrington donation. Anybody from the Carrington house might call on old Mr. Compson, say to arrange for a game of chess. Would young Silver have any such excuse for a visit to those people?
“And who from the Carrington house could excusably visit all of them at half past ten of a rainy night?”
Yates said after a moment: “The women wouldn’t drop in on Compson.”
“They wouldn’t indeed. Who but Lawrence Carrington could make those visits and explain himself if caught?”
Yates said: “I don’t know how he could explain himself.”
“Let’s analyze the risk he ran; but first let’s look at the man who ran the risk. He’s in his raincoat, he’s the son of a local magnate, he’s known to all. He’s the town’s intellectual, no doubt looked upon as dreamy. His goings and comings are part of the native scene. He, if anyone, would be forgiven for absent-mindedness.
“He arrives at Edgewood; the place is in darkness below stairs, and the side door is unlocked. The second floor corridor is in darkness too. He walks in and fumbles at Mrs. Norbury’s door—he’d have known which it was from previous reconnaissance. Who’s to catch him? Even if Mrs. Norbury makes a noise he’ll be out of the place in a few seconds, through the shrubbery and on the wood path in a minute more. But what if he is caught? He can say that he forgot which floor Miss Studley’s office was on. He can apologize in embarrassment and back away.
“At the
Library, if Miss Bluett pursues him, she’ll find Lawrence Carrington fumbling with dropped keys, or a pipe lost in the bushes. He’ll explain that he dropped his keys or his pipe while trying her latch.”
“And at the Inn,” said Yates, “he couldn’t resist scaring the living daylights out of old Compson with that fire axe. He scared the living daylights out of me.”
“But after he’d put the fire axe on the floor and knocked at Mr. Compson’s door, how long do you suppose it took him to get out of the Inn by the side entrance, and get home? I’ve seen that layout. Seconds to do the job, home in five minutes—less. Once at home he could answer the telephone; once at home”—Gamadge leaned forward, his arms on the desk—“if there were any premature disturbance on account of his activities, he could call the whole thing off.
“For he had planned that campaign with the knowledge that there was no serious risk of any kind for him until the murder had been committed. Until the very moment of the murder he could drop the whole thing. At any moment of that night walk, at Edgewood, or the Library, or the Inn, if he were caught he could abandon his project forever. The prowler would be a local mystery, never cleared up and with no consequences.
“At none of those places—until he arrived at the Inn—had he done anything to cause great excitement; people don’t start a panic at night or call the police in for nothing.”
“But at the Inn it was only chance that kept Miss Wakefield from telephoning Carrington first.”
“Chance. You both acted normally. And if she’d telephoned Carrington, he’d have answered. People talk these scares over, as I said, before they take action. As a matter of fact Carrington had time after the murder to leave his house again—the maniac’s trail—and come in again by the back door.”
Gamadge sat back and felt for his cigarettes. He lighted one and looked at it. “I was getting on,” he said complacently. “I had a possible suspect with a possible motive—some state of mind connected with Miss Rose Jenner—and I had decided that the night walk was a plant.”
Yates said: “Well, that was lovely. Do you always work on pure assumption?”
Gamadge looked at him with mild surprise. “I thought you’d remember that I also had a fact.”
“That’s good. What was it?”
“You ought to know; you were the first person to mention it to me—up by the pond. Then the sheriff mentioned it, and then Miss Bluett did, and finally Lawrence Carrington was good enough to tell me all about it last night.”
“Hanged if I remember what it was.”
“It was that touch of the unusual that one always looks for and hopes to find in the background of a crime. Something unexpected, something off schedule, something that might possibly have had unusual results. It wasn’t much—just the fact that Miss Bluett had sent for a last consignment of books from the Carringtons, had sent for them only a few hours before George Carrington was murdered, and had got them days ahead of time. Miss Carrington had collected them and sent them off hastily, and Lawrence Carrington might not have known that they were gone.
“Nothing to think of until Miss Bluett was murdered. After she was murdered—wouldn’t you have thought about them in my place?
“For since I wasn’t looking for a maniac, Miss Bluett’s death meant only one thing to me—she had been killed because she was a danger to somebody. Why a danger? As a blackmailer? She didn’t strike me as the stuff of which blackmailers are made, and from what others told me about her I couldn’t imagine her as a blackmailer. Miss Bluett was quite single-minded. Nor would such a type, if she had recognized the prowler on Thursday night, have kept the knowledge to herself; duty and self-importance would forbid.
“How much more probable that she was a danger because she was a librarian. As a librarian she was the only person ever likely to examine those books, which might have left the Carrington house without the knowledge of Lawrence Carrington. He couldn’t have known about them when he visited the Library on the night walk, or I suppose he’d have committed the Bluett murder then. And he can’t have known that she was going back to the Library to work yesterday afternoon; when he found that out, after he left me at Edgewood, he knew that he mustn’t risk letting her make a discovery. After her murder he couldn’t wait to examine the bird books—he had no time.
“He would return as soon as he safely could, not too soon for safety. I supplied him with an excuse to return, and a strong reason to return with me; I had remarked that his father’s letter paper resembled the pages of the bird book in texture and size, and he was afraid that I might make discoveries myself. I wondered at the time whether some mistake of the kind had been made, whether the death of Miss Bluett wasn’t connected with some confusion—in the hurry and excitement of the Carrington murder—between a page of the bird book and a sheet of that writing paper, with writing on it.
“I could only make my test; and as you know, the test didn’t fail.”
“You’d already called the sheriff and arranged for an ambush.”
“I called him as soon as I knew he’d be at the Tavern, after I’d had a chance to think the Bluett murder over. He and White were only too glad to try the thing out—they’re not sentimental about Frazer’s Mills. So they waited in the cellar—they were afraid Carrington might have a look round upstairs—and came up after us. I had that idea that Carrington might still have business at the Rigby Library; I didn’t know at all what he was going to do. I could only watch him and see.”
“He never knew you’d watch him?”
“I had to keep him reassured about that before we went. It wasn’t too easy. It’s never a pleasant thing, you know, to play the part of agent provocateur—I had to keep my mind on Miss Harriet Bluett, a nice woman, who never got her bus ride.”
“How did you keep him happy?” asked Yates. “In your place I don’t think I’d have had compunctions.”
“Oh, he had his points; for instance, much as he hated Rose Jenner by that time, he didn’t allow me to fix guilt on her.”
“Were you pretending to do that?” Yates raised his eyebrows.
“Well, I had to convince him that I wasn’t suspecting him. I was afraid that he’d do what he says in that letter he’d have done at the first alarm—remove himself from the scene. I had to get him to the Library and find out what he was after there. You know”—Gamadge looked innocently at Yates—“I’d pretty well worked out her position in the affair.”
“Had you really.”
“Well, if she supplied a motive for the crime—that thwarted love motive—she couldn’t have been in it with Lawrence Carrington. I decided that her anxiety on his account must be altruism.”
“That was nice of you.”
“And I was a good deal cleverer than Carrington had been about that proposal of marriage. Those few opening lines that George Carrington had written were no more than a flat request for her hand. If Lawrence Carrington hadn’t been blind with accumulated rage he ought to have realized that a proposal of marriage isn’t written—to somebody living under the same roof—if the answer is certain to be favorable. In that case a written proposal is bound to be a brief—an argument; George Carrington wasn’t sure of Rose Jenner. His previous attitude to her became clear, and she emerged to me as a generous character struggling in the toils of her own gratitude.”
Yates burst out laughing. “I’d told you so.”
“You were in love, my boy.”
“That disqualified me, did it?”
“Certainly. I’m the only man I know of who ever judged his future wife correctly; but even I didn’t expect others to share my judgment.”
They looked at each other, grinning amiably. Yates said: “Well, anyhow, we know pretty well what Lawrence Carrington did on Thursday night. He’d had a look at that proposal of marriage, and he had a brainstorm. He decided the marriage mustn’t take place.”
“And he decided that his father—whom he hadn’t regarded as a father for a long time—must die before seeing Rose Je
nner again. Nobody must ever know about the letter, which constituted a motive for murder.”
“Rose was rushing off, presumably to the movies, wouldn’t be back until about half past eleven. And the front of the house would be in darkness—Miss Carrington wouldn’t be near the parlor bedroom.
“She wouldn’t disturb the invalid until he called. Well, the campaign was planned; the whole idea being to build up the picture of a homicidal maniac. He knew every inch of the way, he knew the town and the people in it. He didn’t need properties; all he had to do was to pull on a pair of woollen socks over his shoes before he got home.”
Yates sat for a minute thinking it over; then he shook himself free of the bad dream. “I hate The Mills now,” he said. “I can’t wait to get Rose away.”
“Clara’s sold on it. We’re booking rooms here. But I must say,” observed Gamadge wistfully, “that I’d like to have known the place in its vintage years; tasted the full flavor and bouquet.”
The triple blast of a motor horn came to them from somewhere, a blast so peremptory that they got up with one accord and went through the hall to the front porch. A tremendous closed car was slowly coming to a stop at the curb below the Inn; it looked as though it had been carved out of a solid block of onyx, and inlaid with platinum.
Night Walk Page 17
