Halfway House (7 page)

“Cadillac?” He could barely hear her voice. For a maddening moment her aroma filled his nostrils with increased insistence.

“Tell me the truth,” he muttered. “I could have told the police. You came here earlier tonight in a Cadillac roadster. You were dressed differently—in dark clothes. You came out of this house. What were you doing here, Miss Gimball? Tell me!”

She was silent for so long that he thought she had not heard him. Then she said, “Oh, Bill Angell, I’m so frightened I—I don’t know what to say. I never thought… If I could only trust you—”

Bill thought bitterly, This is what comes of weakness with a woman. Is this cleverness, or desperation? And he said in a low voice: “I haven’t had time to think. I don’t trust women—as a rule. But I suppose…”

He felt her slender body straining against him, and her voice floated with odd cadence into his consciousness. “I’ve no right at all, Bill Angell—whoever you are. But you won’t say anything? You’ll protect me? Oh, it would be so easy for—for them to misunderstand!” She was trembling as if she had just emerged from cold water.

“Well,” he said at last, “well… no, I won’t say anything.”

The glad little cry was music. For a stunned instant he felt the pressure of her arms about his neck and her lips, fumbling and then sure, against his own. Then she had slipped out of his shadow, and he felt so curiously alone that his own body shivered, and he stepped back into the shack and ugly reality.

Ellery said quietly from an adjoining shadow: “I think, De Jong, you could defer all this until later.”

Her mother, the tall man, De Jong, had not missed her. They fell silent, and then De Jong led the way into the house. Lucy Wilson was sitting where they had left her. It might have been the instant before, she was so still and pale and changeless. Bill was in a corner, gazing at the floor. Something kept him from looking at the girl in the ermine wrap. Every fiber inside him demanded refreshment in this full, bold light. She must be pretty, he thought. No, beautiful. What had he done?

“Where is—” began the sabled woman, hesitating near the doorway. Her old eyes, older than they should have been, went from one face to another, uncertainly, and then settled with a slow horror on the stiff legs behind the table.

Andrea Gimball murmured, “Mother. Please. Please don’t.”

Then Bill looked at her. In the light of the lamp he saw grace and youth and beauty—and something else which made the unrelaxed pressure against his lips burn a little with remembrance. This was so futile, he thought, and so ill-timed. This girl represented everything he had always held in contempt. A young débutante. Society. Wealth. The snobbishness of blood. Idleness. The antithesis of what he and Lucy were and stood for. His duty was clear. There was more than duty to the law; there was something else. He glanced at his sister, so deathly still in her chair. She was beautiful, too—but in a different way. And she
was
his sister. How could he be thinking such thoughts at such a time… And now two things burned: his lips and fingers in his pocket closed about the diamond he had picked up from the rug.

“Mrs. Gimball,” came Ellery’s cool, remote voice, “will you please identify the body?”

The blood was sucked out of Lucy Wilson’s face. The sight of her increasing pallor brought Bill Angell sharply to himself.

“I still don’t see,” said Chief De Jong in a puzzled tone, “what the devil you’re driving at, Mr. Queen.”

But the woman in the sable coat was floating across the fawn rug like a somnambulist. Her thin figure, erect and regal and dehydrated, was steel. The girl remained where she was, and the silk-hatted man put out a hand and steadied her. De Jong’s nostrils were oscillating; he darted behind the table and snatched the newspaper from Joseph Wilson’s face.

“That is—” began the woman, and she stopped. “He is—” She groped with one heavily jeweled hand for the table behind her.

“You’re sure? There’s no possibility of error?” asked Ellery calmly from the door.

“None… whatever. He was hurt in an automobile accident fifteen years ago. You can still see the permanent scar over his left eyebrow.”

Lucy Wilson uttered an inchoate scream and leaped to her feet. Her control was gone; under the plain dress her breasts heaved wildly. She sprang forward as if she meant to tear the other woman to pieces. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What do you mean? What do you mean coming here like this? Who are you?”

The tall woman turned her head slowly. Their eyes touched—hot young black eyes and the brittle blue of age.

Mrs. Gimball drew her sable coat more closely about her in a gesture almost insulting. “And who are you?”

“I? I?” Luck shrieked. “I’m Lucy Wilson. That’s Joe Wilson, of Philadelphia. That’s my husband!”

For an instant the woman in evening clothes looked bewildered. Then her eyes sought Ellery’s at the door and she said coldly, “What nonsense. I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Queen. What sort of game is this?”

“Mother,” said Andrea Gimball in an anguished voice. “Please, Mother.”

“Tell Mrs. Wilson,” said Ellery without moving, “precisely who the man on the floor is, Mrs. Gimball.”

The cold woman said, “This is Joseph Kent Gimball of Park Avenue, New York. My husband.
My
husband.”

Ella Amity screamed “Oh, my God!” and sprang like a cat for the door.

“…the trail of the serpent is over them all.”

“I
F THAT
doesn’t beat all hell,” said De Jong. “
Cheese!
” With a brutal gesture he tore the cigar from his mouth and hurled it to the floor. And then he sprang after the Amity woman.

Lucy Wilson stood gripping her throat as if she were afraid it might burst. Her black eyes were groping from Mrs. Gimball to the man on the floor in helpless agony. Andrea Gimball was shivering and biting her lips.

“
Gimball,
” said Bill in a shocked voice. “Good Lord, Mrs. Gimball, do you realize what you’re saying?”

The society woman made an imperious gesture with her fine thin white veined hands. The jewels sparkled under the lamp. “This is insanity. Who are these people, Mr. Queen? And why am I subjected to this ridiculous scene when my husband is… lying here dead?”

Lucy’s nostrils expanded like sails in a storm. “
Your
husband? Yours? This is Joe Wilson, I tell you. Maybe your husband just looks like my Joe. Oh, please go away, won’t you?”

“I refuse to discuss my personal affairs with you,” said the woman in sables haughtily. “Where is that man who’s in charge? Of all the disgraceful exhibitions—”

“Jessica,” said the tall midle-aged man patiently. “Perhaps you had better sit down and permit Mr. Queen and me to handle this matter. It’s obvious that a shocking error’s occurred, but it won’t be helped by nerves or a brawl.” He spoke as if he were addressing a child. The angry line between his brows had vanished. “Jessica?”

Her lips were bitter parallel lines. She sat down.

“Did I understand you to say,” asked the man with the silk hat in a courteous voice, “that you are Mrs. Lucy Wilson of Fairmount Park, Philadelphia?”

“Yes. Yes!” cried Lucy.

“I see.” The glance he gave her was cold, rather calculating, as if he were weighing in his deliberate way how much of her was real and how much false. “I see,” he said again, and this time the line reappeared between his brows.

“I don’t believe,” said Bill wearily, “I caught the name.”

The tall man made a wry face. “Grosvenor Finch, and I’ve been an intimate friend of the Borden and Gimball families for more years than I care to count. I came here tonight only because Mr. Jasper Borden, Mrs. Gimball’s father, is an invalid and requested me to take his place by his daughter’s side.” Finch placed his silk hat carefully on the table. “I came, as I say,” he continued in his quiet way, “as a friend of Mrs. Gimball’s. It begins to appear that I shall have to stay in quite a different capacity.”

“And what,” said Bill softly, “do you mean by that?”

“May I question your right to ask, young man?”

Bill’s eyes flashed. “I’m Bill Angell, attorney, of Philadelphia. Mrs. Wilson’s brother.”

“Mrs. Wilson’s brother. I see.” Finch glanced at Ellery, nodding in an interrogatory way. Ellery, who had not stirred from the door, muttered something; and Finch rounded the table and stooped over the body. He did not touch it. For a moment he stared at the frozen, upturned face; then he said in a low voice: “Andrea, my dear, do you think you could bring yourself—?”

Andrea swallowed; she looked sick. But she set her smooth jaw and came forward and stood at his shoulder, forcing herself to look down. “Yes.” Andrea turned away, ashen. “That’s Joe. Joe, Ducky.”

Finch nodded, and Andrea went to her mother’s chair and stood behind it rather helplessly. “Mrs. Wilson,” continued the distinguished-looking man, “you must understand you’ve made a horrible mistake.”

“I haven’t!”

“A mistake, I repeat. I sincerely hope it’s that—and nothing more.” Lucy’s hands fluttered in protest. “I assure you once more,” the tall man went on soberly, “that this gentleman on the floor is Joseph Kent Gimball of New York, the legally wedded husband of the lady in the chair, who was Jessica Borden, then Mrs. Richard Paine Monstelle, and then—after the early death of Monstelle—Mrs. Joseph Kent Gimball. The young lady is Joseph Gimball’s stepdaughter Andrea, Mrs. Jessica Gimball’s daughter by her first husband.”

“You may spare us,” remarked Ellery, “the genealogical details.”

Finch’s clear and honest gray eyes did not waver. “I’ve known Joe Gimball for over twenty years, ever since his undergraduate days at Princeton. I knew his father, old Roger Gimball of the Back Bay branch of the family; he died during the War. And his mother, who died six years ago, a Providence Kent. For generations the Gimballs have been—” he hesitated—“one of our more prominent families. Now do you see how impossible it is for this man to have been your husband, Mrs. Wilson?”

Lucy Wilson uttered a curious little sigh, like the breath of an expiring hope. “We’ve never been anybody. Just working people. Joe was, too. Joe couldn’t have been—”

“Lucy dear,” said Bill gently. Then he said, “You see, the funny part of it is that we’re just as certain he’s Joe Wilson, of Philadelphia, itinerant peddler who made his living selling cheap jewelry to middle-class housewives. We’ve got his car outside, and his peddler’s stock. We have the contents of his pockets, samples of his handwriting—all evidence that he was Wilson the peddler, not Gimball the society man. Impossible, Mr. Finch? You can’t really believe that.”

The tall man returned his gaze; there was something reluctant and stubborn in the set of his handsome jaw.

Jessica Gimball said, “A
peddler
?” in a voice sick with loathing.

Andrea was staring at Bill with a horror in her eyes that had not gone away since she set foot in the shack.

“The answer,” said Ellery from the doorway, “is obvious enough. Of course you’ve guessed it, Bill.” He shrugged. “This man was both.”

De Jong burst in, bug-eyed with triumph. He stopped short. “Oh, getting acquainted?” he asked, rubbing his hands. “That’s the stuff; no sense getting the wind up. It’s just too bad all round, just too bad.” But he kept rubbing his hands. There was a continuous sound of departing motors from the road.

“We have just come to the conclusion, De Jong,” said Ellery, walking slowly forward, “that this is not some fictional case of twins, or impersonation, but a sordid one of deliberately assumed double identity. More frequent than people realize. There can’t be any doubt about it. You have positive identification on both sides. Everything fits.”

“Does it?” said De Jong pleasantly.

“We know that, as Joseph Wilson, this man for years spent only two or three days a week in Philadelphia with Lucy Wilson; you yourself, Bill, were disturbed by this peculiarity in his behaviour. And I am sure Mrs. Gimball can tell us that her husband spent several days each week away from the Gimball home in New York.”

The middle-aged eyes were haggard, red with lacquered resentment that made them glow from her bony face. “For years,” she said. “Joe was always… Oh, how could he have done such a thing? He used to say he had to be by himself or he would go mad. The beast, the beast!” Her voice was choked with passion.

“Mother,” said Andrea. She placed her slim hands on the trembling woman’s shoulders. “Joe said he had a hideaway somewhere not far from New York. He would never tell mother or anyone where, saying that a man was entitled to his privacy. We never suspected because he never liked the social life.…”

“I can see now,” cried Mrs. Gimball, “that it was just an excuse to get away and be with this—this woman!”

Lucy quivered as if she had been struck. Grosvenor Finch shook his head at Mrs. Gimball in disapproval and warning. But she plunged on. “And I never suspected. What a fool!” Her voice was savage. “Cheap. Cheap. To do such a cheap thing… to me.”

“Cheapness is a point of view, Mrs. Gimball,” said Bill coldly. “Please remember that my sister is involved. She’s as good—”

“Bill,” said Ellery. “We’ll get nowhere with these childish recriminations. On the other hand, common sense demands a clarification of the situation. This place confirms the dual-personality theory. Here we find the two personalities intermingled. Wilson clothes and Gimball clothes, a Wilson car and a Gimball car. This was, in a manner of speaking, neutral territory. Undoubtedly he stopped here periodically on his way to Philadelphia to change into his Wilson outfit and take the Wilson Packard; and stopped again on his return journey to New York to change back into his Gimball clothes and take the Gimball Lincoln. Of course, he never did sell this cheap jewelry; he merely told Mrs. Wilson he did… And by the way, Mrs. Gimball, what makes you think your—this man was conducting a tawdry tabloid affair with Mrs. Wilson?”

The woman’s lip curled. “What would a man like Joe Gimball want with a woman like this but one thing? Oh, I suppose she’s attractive enough in a coarse way”—Lucy blushed to the cleft between her breasts—“but Joe was a man of breeding, of taste. It wouldn’t be more than the most passing fancy. Husband! Fiddlesticks. It’s a plot.” Her brittle eyes examined Lucy with a corrosive hatred that melted the clothes away and left her victim naked. Lucy flinched as the acid bit; but her eyes glittered. Bill checked her with a whisper.