Somewhere in the House (7 page)

She replied indifferently: “No. He never talks about himself.”

There was silence until a tall, thin, dark-haired man came quietly into the room. The lids of his grey eyes drooped a little, which fact gave him a quizzical expression that matched his smile. His features were as thin and sharp as beaten metal, but there was nothing beaten down about his manner. His pepper-and-salt clothes were well made, but more than well used; they were almost seedy. His hands were in his pockets as he smilingly surveyed the room.

“Mr. Gamadge,” said Mrs. Leeder, “let me introduce Rowe Leeder.”

Gamadge rose and returned Leeder's nod.

“Mr. Gamadge is coming tomorrow to find the buttons, Roly,” said Elena.

“Buttons? Oh, the collection. I should think that would be soon found, if it's there.” Leeder came up to the end of the sofa, opened Sir Arthur Wilson Cribb, and took out a cigarette. He lighted it, pulled up a chair, and seated himself as Gamadge also sat down. “Quite a lot of the things,” he went on. “Poor old Nonie showed them to me once. Can't say I was much interested, but I thought some of them were pretty. Nonie had them all poked into pockets in a case.”

“Were there jewelled ones, Roly?” asked Elena.

“I dare say. I don't remember. I just thought they were some of her gimcracks.”

“Is Roberts bringing you something? ” asked Mrs. Leeder. “Or shall I ring for more tea?”

“Not a thing, thanks,” said Leeder. He looked up at Gamadge. “You a button authority?” he asked. “Going to value them? I thought you were a book man.”

“And a crime man,” said Elena. “He's just going to look for the buttons, so there won't be a scrimmage in the music room.”

Leeder cast a sidelong glance at Gavan Clayborn, and then looked at Gamadge again. “Well,” he said, “if you all think that's the best way. Poor old Nonie. It'll seem funny to see her again. I always felt rather sorry to think of her walled up in there. The place for family skeletons is in the open, where they can rattle themselves to pieces.”

Gavan rose heavily from his chair, and without a look at anybody walked heavily from the room. After a moment Elena said: “He's wild, Roly.”

“He would be, if Harriet wished Mr. Gamadge on him.” Leeder smiled at Gamadge. “What's the idea? That the buttons are hidden in some inaccessible place?”

“My idea,” said Gamadge, “if I can be said to have one, is that they're gone.”

“Aggie Fitch must have taken them,” said Elena, “and she must have taken the other things.”

“Well, I never thought so,” said Leeder. “Timid little peeper. I think her adventures stopped at reading letters. She used to give mine a going-over now and then; I didn't mind. She had few pleasures.”

“But then who did take the things?” asked Elena, looking at him anxiously.

“Oh, these mysteries—they're never solved. Somebody breaks something or loses something—takes something out of the house to show a friend and mislays it, or the friend does.”

“Takes three things?” asked Seward.

“It's all too vague and too long ago,” replied Leeder, “and it's a good-sized family. The things might turn up yet. The big mystery to me is how Harriet persuaded Mr. Gamadge to take on the button job.”

“You think it an unlikely job for me?” Gamadge, rising, exchanged a long and inquiring look with him.

“From what I seem to have heard of you,” replied Leeder, getting to his feet, “I shouldn't have thought it would commend itself to you much.”

“It commends itself to me.” Gamadge leaned across the tea table to shake hands with his client. “What time tomorrow?”

“Three o'clock. And thank you again so very much.”

“I'll be here.”

He nodded from one to another of the people in the room, and went downstairs. Roberts, warned by some bell, was waiting for him. The old servant's face was a friendly blank; Roberts had the invaluable gift of knowing secrets without betraying the fact that he knew them.

“I'm to be at the opening tomorrow, Roberts,” said Gamadge.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Don't let them badger Mrs. Leeder to death before I come.”

“No, Sir,” said Roberts gravely.

Gamadge, in fact, was not entirely easy in his mind about his client. As he walked down Fifth Avenue along the green old wall and then past the Museum, in a chill dusk that smelled of smoke and leaf mould, he wondered if it was fantastic of him to be uneasy. Her position was an isolated one; the young people had no authority in that house, Leeder had less than none. Would they, even if they cared—and Garth probably wouldn't care—know how to protect her? Did
he
know how? What could he do about it if he should be refused admittance tomorrow, told by Roberts in all good faith that Mrs. Leeder had been taken ill?

Gamadge allowed his imagination free rein. Gavan Clayborn and his sister were tough-minded people, how tough Gamadge didn't know; Seward Clayborn looked and behaved like a warped and a disappointed man; Garth was physically and morally weak, but perhaps he had a strong sense of property. They had all four of them been forced into proximity with one another and the Leeders by the restrictions of a will; they were all poisoned and embittered by mutual distrust and suspicion.

Mrs. Leeder was standing between them and—what? Leeder would presently go home, wherever that was; Elena would eventually go to bed. If old Roberts should be told that Mrs. Leeder had been seized with an illness, would he telephone to a stranger about it? Would he even be tempted to do so? He was devoted to them all; if he had abetted her this afternoon he had done so as he would have abetted her in some innocent plot when she was a young girl.

Mrs. Leeder might lie under drugs for days. Something could in the end be done about it, but what would Gamadge be able to do on the spot, tomorrow? He had no authority, no standing, and nothing to act on but the airiest hypothesis. Mrs. Leeder herself dreaded publicity, she had depended on him to keep the whole thing a dark secret. He could disregard her wishes if her own safety should be in question; but no policeman would force his way into a house without a search warrant, certainly not a house like the Clayborn house, and on what could Gamadge base a request for a search warrant now, before the fact?

By the time he had reached his own street and turned east, he remembered that Mrs. Leeder was not afraid of her relations.

“I'm a fool,” he told himself; “she knows them better than I do.”

On reaching home he went directly to his office, which had once been the Gamadge drawing-room. He got out an encyclopedia, and was finishing an article on buttons when Malcolm came through from the dining-room, which was now the laboratory.

Gamadge scowled up at him. “Thanks for the job you found me,” he said acidly.

“Job?”

“Elena Clayborn turned up and gave you away. What do you mean by pushing this Clayborn thing on me while I'm on leave?”

“Ena just said Mrs. Leeder wanted advice.”

“If I'd known you two juveniles arranged it, I wouldn't have gone up there.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

“Now I've got to go back tomorrow.”

Malcolm leaned against the edge of the desk. “Why did you take the job if you don't want it?”

“I was afraid not to, damn it. What kind of treatment do you think I'm getting from those barbarians?”

“I thought they were a charming family,” protested Malcolm. “Except Garth, of course. I rather think that that fellow looks upon me as a little black man.”

“A what?” Gamadge considered the height and elegance of his assistant in some surprise.

“That's a term they use at the seat of learning he patronized—for types they're not accustomed to.”

“You must have been very rude to Garth Clayborn,” said Gamadge.

“I thought his behaviour to Ena was oafish; I may have let him see that I thought so.”

“You may.” Gamadge studied him. “How well do you know this Clayborn girl?”

“Didn't you like her?”

“She seems very nice. She must have got it from her mother.”

“But her father's a most delightful man; cultivated and gifted. He does beautiful work.”

“I didn't meet him in the most auspicious circumstances. Don't bring Elena Clayborn here to the house unless I say so.”

“Why not? It's exactly what I meant to do. I want her to meet Mrs. Gamadge,” said Malcolm.

“Don't bring her here until I give the word. You've made the Clayborns my business; in this case I prefer to keep business out of the home.”

Malcolm said after a pause: “I like Ena Clayborn better than any girl I ever met.”

“Of course you do; she's a fountain of vitality. How about the Lucas girl, who thinks she's got you cold?”

“Ellie Lucas thinks nothing of the kind. I got you up there to advise Mrs. Leeder because Ena asked me to. Surely you think Mrs. Leeder's charming?”

“She is. Consider yourself in on the case, if it is one, and tell me what you know about the family.”

“Nothing, except the Leeder tragedy. Everybody knows that.”

“Certainly a tragedy for Miss Sillerman.”

Malcolm looked taken aback. “Ena says he was completely exonerated. Did you meet him? I thought he was perfectly—”

“Charming. So did I. Leeder the Mystery Man. What do you know about the case?”

“Only that this Sillerman woman was shot, and Leeder's name and address were in her telephone book; but lots of other men were in her telephone book—only the janitor of her flat saw Leeder go in there the night before. Recognized his photograph. He talked to some newspaper, and Leeder got into the headlines—the other men didn't.”

“There is no justice.”

“He had an alibi; he was playing bridge with three friends at his club.”

“Private card-room?”

“I don't know.”

“What did he say about having been to call on Miss Sillerman the night before she was shot?”

“Said she was an old friend of his bachelor days, and that he just dropped in. Of course it was a big scandal.”

“Even he wouldn't be surprised at that.”

“He behaved very well, considering the circumstances. Had an interview with the old lady, packed his bags and got out.”

“But returned.”

“Ena thinks he was worried about his ex-wife. Ena says the family's rather down on her. Thought she should have got out too, married somebody else, taken the scandal away from the house. Ena says they're pretty hard-boiled—her great-uncle and aunt. She's very fond of Mrs. Leeder. Thinks it's wonderful of her to have stuck by him. At first she couldn't—too much pressure for a young woman of twenty-four or so. But she never did marry again.”

“Why didn't she marry Leeder again?”

“Ena says he wouldn't consider it.”

“Looks upon himself as a man forbid, does he? He seems to bear up medium well.”

“That's his disposition. Ena says he's a stoic.”

“Touching. What was the Sillerman girl like, do you know?”

“Bad lot. Hadn't worked for several years, lived in an expensive flat with a cook and a daily maid, had all kinds of jewellery and furs; and invested money.”

“Anybody suggest at the time why Leeder should have killed her?”

“No, unless she'd been blackmailing him and he got tired of it.”

“Does he hold himself responsible for old Mrs. Clayborn's stroke, and subsequent death?”

“Ena thinks he does, and that that's why he never had the energy to break away and start fresh and make any money.”

“He must have made enough to live on, unless he'd saved or had a private income.”

“He hadn't a thing. Ena says he only laughs when she asks him what he does for a living, and tells her it isn't for polite ears.”

“He's accepting his share of the estate, however, in spite of the possibility that he isn't morally entitled to it?” And as Malcolm did not answer, Gamadge added: “Perhaps remorse is a luxury stoics don't permit themselves. I forget. Elena's view of him is romantic.”

Theodore came in and stood waiting at the door. Malcolm said: “He's had a thin time of it for twenty years. Of course everybody dropped him; of course they said he'd only married Harriet Clayborn for the Clayborn money.”

“Well, I suppose they thought that if he continued to drop in afterwards on his girl friends he couldn't have married for love.”

Theodore said: “Excuse me. Cocktails are served. And I remember that case, Mr. Gamadge.”

“You would.”

“
You
was in college; but your father and mother, they was deeply interested in that murder. Everybody in New York said Mr. Leeder killed the young person, and was lied out of it by his friends.”

“That's always the more interesting theory.”

“Too bad,” said Theodore. “Young feller, came from nice folks that lost their money. They was dead, and he lived in clubs and kited around. Big doings when he married Miss Harriet Clayborn, what a couple they made. Everybody wanted to marry Mr. Leeder, but he would have Miss Clayborn. It was a love match.”

He turned to go, and then stopped. “Mr. Leeder and that showgirl,” he said. “That was all part of the foolishness of those days. You don't remember, Mr. Gamadge—you was in college. Those was the wild days. Speakeasy right next door to us, folks climbin' over our yard fence when the place was raided, trucks drivin' in from Canada at four in the mornin', all full of murderers. Young people runnin' crazy. Shootin's everywhere. Bootleggers invited to folks' houses to dinner.”

“I get the picture,” said Gamadge. “I was in college, but I wasn't dead.”

“Mr. Leeder got in too deep,” said Theodore, “and he shot his way out.”

“Part way out.” As they left the office Gamadge addressed Malcolm: “Wasn't the Lucas girl to be here? What happened to her?”