Murders in, Volume 2 (15 page)

Harold met him in the front hall, eyes bulging. “You've been getting us into trouble,” he said.

“Called up for my dossier, did they?”

“Twice. How do you like being on the wrong side of a murder case?”

“Quite restful; I left them to it, poor devils.” Gamadge cast his hat on the hall table, and went upstairs to the library. The dinner table was set, as usual, beside a window; but Athalie the cook had taken the unusual step of coming up and waiting for him at the door.

“Nine o'clock, Mr. Gamadge,” she said, “and what about your squab?”

“What about it?”

“You want a chaud-froid, or will I put it back in the oven and dry it up some more?”

“Give it to me the way it is, I want it now. Sorry, Athalie, the police got me.”

While he ate Harold hovered near him; which was also unprecedented. Gamadge said at last: “Sit down, won't you? What are you worrying about?”

“You cut loose from those Vauregards.” He produced an envelope. “This came by Postal messenger boy, but I didn't exactly like to interrupt your dinner.”

“You will all end by driving me crazy. Can't I even have my mail any more?” Gamadge seized the letter, opened it, and read as follows

Gamadge pocketed the letter, and went on with his dinner. When he had reached the coffee, he said: “All right, Harold. It seems I'm still on the case. I think I'm going to need you, from now on. Listen, while I tell you a fairy tale.”

Harold listened in silence. There was a pause while Theodore cleared away, and then, while Gamadge smoked, his assistant pondered. When he spoke he surprised his employer:

“This Dykinck bird.”

“What about her?”

“She probably told him this noon that you took those letters and those books. He knows that you know he took the missing letter, and that second volume.”

“What of it?”

“What of it? She'll connect him with this murder, unless she's loony; even if she is loony, she'll connect him with it when and if those people tell the police the arbor story.”

“She'd connive at ten murders before she told her story. Do you think she'd allow those girls in her sewing circle to know that she let X in by the area gate? I honestly believe she'd die first.”

“He can't bank on that. He won't take a chance on it. He'll go there, and he'll—X is no sissy.”

“He can't get into the place without making an appointment with her—he can't even get into communication with her.”

“She may have made the appointment with him when she telephoned him today.”

“He won't go near her now; not on your life! He can't risk it, with me in the know. It would sink him to be seen there.”

“He'll risk it, all right. You got her into this—”

“I like that. She got herself into it. Here I am, in the worst jam I ever was in since I was born, and you talk to me about Miss Dykinck. I kept poor Miss Vauregard at the telephone when she was hardly able to talk or listen, telling her to keep the Dykincks out of it. If she remembers to, she's an even better sport than I thought she was. Miss Dykinck!”

“She's the one that's in the jam. He may go around there this evening—”

“Talk sense. Time enough to worry about her when and if the Wagoneur story gets into the news. It never may.”

“Who is this X, anyhow? Duncannon, or young Vauregard, or Payne?” He paused, and added: “Or Bridge, or Chandor, or somebody else?”

“Payne? Payne?”

“Miss Dykinck likes him, and he's engaged to one of the Vauregard heirs.”

“And he's a lame man who walks with a stick.”

“Seems to get around, though. They left before five. She could have driven him down there in twenty minutes. She could have waited around, and driven him back.”

“Have you ever seen Miss Dawson?”

“Yes, but you always told me never to go by what people look like.”

“If I did, it's the only time I ever generalized in my life, and I take it back. Would you mind telephoning the Morton house for me? If a cop answers, say you want Butterfield, not Rhinelander. If somebody else does, say Mr. Gamadge will call on Miss Vauregard at half past ten o'clock tomorrow morning.”

W
HEN GAMADGE PRESENTED
himself at the Morton house next morning, Luigi the houseman received him tragically, and took him directly up to the second floor front. This seemed to be Miss Vauregard's workroom. A small, curly desk which Gamadge thought must be the first and only one she had ever had was littered with bills, address books, laundry lists and canceled checks. There was a little ancient typewriter on a table in front of a window, with telephone directories piled on the floor beside it. Miss Vauregard came in through a communicating door, which led to her bedroom.

She looked haggard, and her eyes were raised to Gamadge's with so much distress in them that he spoke even more gently than he had intended.

“You are making a great mistake, Miss Vauregard.”

“I had to talk to you!”

“Let's sit down and talk, then; but you shouldn't have written to me, and I shouldn't be here.”

He saw her installed on a lumpy sofa, and sat down in front of her, leaning forward. He continued with extreme gravity. “Our attempt—my attempt—to scare Miss Smith away has been only too successful—it has ended in this tragedy. Now the whole thing is out of our hands, and in those of the proper authorities. Unless you can be frank with them, you don't want me near you.”

“But the police don't know anything about the arbor story—they won't ask you any questions.”

“Durfee asked me questions yesterday, and I sailed a little too close to the wind in my answers. I can't stay on the job and conceal evidence, Miss Vauregard.”

“But if I do persuade Angela to tell the whole story about Miss Smith, the police will know that we employed you. You'll get into trouble with them.”

“No, not serious trouble; I was employed by you, and I was trying to get you to give them the story. All I had done was to work on Volume II, hoping to prove that it didn't belong to the Vauregard set. Well, Volume II has disappeared, and how I was working on it even you don't know. The police won't be interested in my twaddle about states of binding, now that the book's gone.”

“But you don't want me to tell about the Dykincks.”

“Their evidence won't help the police.”

Miss Vauregard said, looking at him doubtfully “Mightn't they know who took the second volume?”

“If they do, they won't tell, and nobody will get it out of them.”

“Some outsider could have got hold of it.”

“True. It's not a physical impossibility.”

“I'm convinced that we were absolutely mistaken about everything. I can't forgive myself. One of the family might have put that woman in the house, though my instincts were always against it; but none of us is capable of this frightful thing.”

“If you have come to that conclusion, you want me less than ever.”

“But they say the police are so stupid. You could persuade them to drop all this nonsense about our alibis. Why do they bother about it, when they haven't even found Miss Smith?”

“Perhaps they think Miss Smith is another victim.”

Miss Vauregard stared at him. “She can't be!”

“They don't know that she isn't a refugee. They don't know that she didn't witness the murder. You must tell them that arbor story.”

“Oh, why didn't we all meet people we knew, yesterday afternoon! You know yourself, Mr. Gamadge, that one doesn't, especially at this time of year.”

“Of course I know it; I walked through the park yesterday and didn't meet a soul. At least, I met about a thousand souls, but nobody I knew, or—so far as I can tell—that knew me.”

“Why can't the police understand that?”

“They have to follow a logical course of conduct. Look here, Miss Vauregard; you've been through a lot, and you're not by any means up to par, and I don't intend to take a high moral attitude; but you're not after the truth, any more.”

“Yes, I am. I just don't want the police to make any mistakes.”

“You don't care whether they make mistakes or not, so long as they make them about somebody outside the family. Who shall blame you?”

“But Miss Smith is the logical person to suspect! She must have had something to do with it!”

“If she's found, she may have a story to tell that will blow the case sky-high, and then where will you be? You say she's the logical suspect; but why should she kill Mr. Vauregard, unless she was acting for someone who had an interest in his estate?”

“He may have given her—”

“Then why not merely vanish? Miss Vauregard, I'm awfully sorry to bully you like this; but do look at it sensibly. If anything leaks out—and I may tell you that the police have seen that report John and Eliza were drawing up, and they're all ready to ask themselves whether there wasn't an imposture going on—they'll want to know why you didn't any of you dare to tell them that Miss Smith was a swindler. Tell them now and they'll go after her and her friends. I know you're frightened; but you can't help what's happened, and you can't fight this kind of situation. It's madness to try.”

“Angela won't do it.”

“I'll talk to Mrs. Morton. If she won't agree, I'm out of the case. So I'd better say good-bye now.” Gamadge took her hand and smiled at her. “Until all this is a thing of the past, you know.”

Miss Vauregard said, chokingly: “You warned us all.”

“I blame myself for underrating the risk. What I or anyone could have done, in the peculiar circumstances, I hardly know.”

He shook hands with her, patted her drooping shoulder, and went down to the drawing room.

There were four people in it, but Gamadge's eyes went first to Clara Dawson, who stood in a window, looking out. When she turned there was horror in her face, and a certain bewilderment, but her eyes did not cloud at the sight of him. “She isn't afraid of me,” thought Gamadge, “and perhaps that's no compliment to either of us.”

Mrs. Morton was pacing the long room. A thin, flowing black dress trailed behind her, and its wide sleeves fell back from her arms as she clasped her head in her hands. She would always dramatize a tragedy, that was her nature; but she was obviously distracted.

When Gamadge came in, she stopped and faced him. “Mr. Gamadge,” she wailed, “why didn't we take your advice in the first place? Why didn't we call in the police?”

“Please relax, dearest.” Duncannon, who stood with an elbow on the mantelpiece, watched her rather anxiously. “You'll be ill.” “Yes, for heaven's sake, Aunt Angie!” Dick Vauregard, astride a chair, spoke with impatience. “Take it easy. Now that Gamadge is here, we must discuss the thing quietly, you know. He can put you in the soup.”

“He can put us all—he can ruin us all!”

“Not me, because I don't care.”

“Mr. Gamadge!” Mrs. Morton addressed him wildly. “That girl was a tool of the Chandors. They put her in the house, and she told them all his ways, and when they faced exposure she helped them to come in and kill him.”

“Is that what you're going to tell the police, Mrs. Morton?” asked Gamadge quietly.

“I have told them. This morning, as soon as I had heard from Mr. Bedlowe, I called Mr. Durfee up and told him again. Mr. Bedlowe now says that Uncle was going to create a new trust, and that it would have meant making a new will. He spoke to Mr. Bedlowe about it in January. Mr. Bedlowe warned him that as things are now, it would mean cutting down the endowment on the house, and perhaps altering our legacies; but Uncle only laughed, and said that that would all be taken care of. It's quite evident that the Chandors had got hold of him, and that when I interfered they simply pretended to drop Uncle, and put this girl in the house. Mr. Bedlowe is perfectly horrified at this police talk about our alibis.”

“You have one, I believe, Mrs. Morton.”

“But the others have not, so far. Of course they must have been seen by somebody, between five and five thirty.”

“Do the police put your uncle's death as early as five thirty?”

“Not much later. Oh, I cannot bear to think of it!”

Duncannon said: “We have to go over the situation, I quite realize that; but would you mind, Gamadge, steering away from details as much as possible?”

Dick Vauregard gave a short laugh. “Let's pretend,” he said.

Mrs. Morton drew herself up. “No, I must face it. I will not have such stuff in the papers,” she said. “One never lives it down. My husband was trying his new sports car, and he paid two tolls on the parkway; is it his fault if the man didn't remember him?”

“If you want to protect yourself and your family, Mrs. Morton, tell the police the arbor story, and tell them now.”

“That I shall not do. It is unnecessary. The mere fact that the girl has disappeared is enough to implicate her.”