Any Shape or Form (22 page)

Blanche Drummond covered her eyes. She gasped: “I can't bear it!”

“But we need you, Blanche,” said Gamadge. “You're one of the jury.”

Redfield lifted his head at last. “I didn't kill
her,
Blanche. I didn't plant Cora's pin.” He looked at Drummond. “It was just as you said, Walter. I was half out of my wits afterwards, and I ran for this side of the trellis. Then I remembered that Cora was up at the tool house, and I turned and ran the other way. But I had got half way through the vines, and something—a tendril—must have caught the thing. I never realized I didn't have it until I saw that it wasn't on Cora, and remembered.”

Drummond said harshly: “You left it here to be found, Redfield.”

“I didn't think they'd find it. I hoped they wouldn't. They didn't find it, Walter. Since last night I've been—my God, none of you understands. I'll tell you what happened. I'll explain.”

R
EDFIELD SEEMED
to pull himself together. He sat up, felt in his pockets, and got out matches and his cigarette case. By the time he had lighted a cigarette his mood had altered; he watched the smoke rise on the still air, and his face hardened. By the time he began to speak his tone was ironical and cold:

“If I'm to defend myself I'd better do a good job. Get it all in, say everything; nobody'll say it for me.

“It's all very well for Gamadge to talk about being civilized and having traditions. If you're civilized, that means you're used to the decencies of life and can't get along without them. Your traditions clamp you to those decencies; nobody becomes civilized in a minute. I wish anybody here could have been in my jam; I wonder what any of you would have done? I'm not so sure you wouldn't have behaved as I did.

“Take Gamadge. He has enough to be comfortable on without working—he's proved it. He doesn't do a thing but volunteer war work now, and he married a girl with some money of her own and more coming. I'd like to try him out in a fix like mine.

“Take Walter Drummond. Walter's as fond of his place up here as I am of mine; he's martyrized Blanche for years so that he can hang on to it. If he'd do that—and he was fond of Blanche once, too—what would he have done if he'd been up against my problem?

“And what has all that done to Blanche? What have her traditions done to her? She thinks of practically nothing but keeping up in the old style, and she thinks it's a crime to deprive her of a new hat. Well, never mind; I'm fond of Blanche, and I'm sorry for her.

“Then look at the Malcolm children. They're good children, I was always fond of them; but I saw their faults. They were brought up to think they'd always be rich, and spoiled by their mother. And when their money was taken away from them—only temporarily, mind! They didn't have to worry about
their
old age—what did they do? Set up as a couple of Hamlets; The Dispossessed! Lived on their incomes—and very well, too, in Paris—and on their expectations. Never even tried to earn. So civilized, you know. But they were willing to make friends with my poor aunt when they found they hadn't enough money to be comfortable over here. They wouldn't kill for money, I suppose, but neither did I.

“But she never offered
me
an income! No indeed. That five thousand wasn't a present, you know—the five thousand she sent me every year. She wanted to buy the children, but she didn't have to buy me. I was going to get her money when she died, if she had any saved then. I didn't think she'd have much. Meanwhile I was to invest the five thousand for her.

“I didn't invest it, I spent it; and whoever tells you that five thousand doesn't make a difference in keeping up a place like Idlers—he's a liar, that's all. I couldn't have kept Idlers going without it. I never had the slightest fear she'd find out I was spending it; she hated business, and she trusted me, and she never asked for an accounting or a receipt. And I simply looked at it as part of my own future inheritance—my own. What was the difference, since I paid her a fair income—four and a half per cent?

“Only of late years, when the percentage began to mount up from the accumulated capital she'd sent me, I persuaded her to let me invest the income too. I was her residuary legatee, and would have had access to all her papers, and every spring I made sure all over again that she wasn't keeping memoranda. There was nothing to connect me with the money except her checks, which were her own business, and nothing to prove that the five thousand a year wasn't a present. I never even worried about it.

“Besides, she wasn't a good insurance risk. She hated doctors, but one of her other companions told me once that she had high blood pressure. And last spring Gouch said she was sure Aunt had had a slight stroke.

“I never liked Gouch. Officious, talky, always writing me about Aunt's health and Aunt's feelings. Lately it was pure hypocrisy. She'd been getting my aunt all worked up about the capital I had had from her, and the income I was keeping back, and the accounts I never sent in. And I thought she was just one of Aunt's reduced gentlewomen, not slated to last!

“I didn't realize, of course, that Aunt was by that time all wrapped up in the stars. She'd turned all her business over to the creature, and Gouch knew her income and expenditures. And Gouch finally convinced her that she'd better pay me a visit—without saying she was bringing Gouch along—to get details.

“You know I drove the station wagon myself this summer. When I saw that woman get off the train with Aunt, and saw poor Aunt's expression when we met, I knew something was up. I ought to have known beforehand that there was something queer about her coming at all. She said she wanted to see the old place before she died, but she never liked it. She wasn't happy here as a girl.

“We got into the station wagon, those two behind with the luggage. Gouch only had a couple of bags. Aunt Josie couldn't wait; she began to talk about the money, and an accounting, and of having brought a statement with her (only Gouch had it) and so on. I wondered what to do. If Gouch hadn't been along it would have been easy enough to manage, but you ought to have heard
her
putting her oar in! By the time we were in the lane here we were in a brawl. Suddenly Gouch screamed. I braked the car. By the time I got around to the back, Aunt was dead.

“I was going to jump back in and drive up to the house; but that was when Gouch took charge. She stood there in the road and said I didn't quite understand the situation. Her brain was working like an engine, and like a fool I let it work; I talked away as airily as you please. I reminded her that I was Aunt's sole heir, and her executor, and I told her she could go to the devil. Nobody would pay any attention to what she said, and we'd just forget the whole thing. I'd give her a nice little present, and I'd get poor Aunt up to the house and get hold of the doctor, and then Alice would drive Gouch back to Rivertown to catch the half-past eight to New York. With Aunt Josie dead she couldn't touch me.

“Gouch said that was all I knew about it. Aunt had made a new will, lodged at the bank, and there was a copy of it in her bag. She was leaving one-fifth of her property to an astrological society, and they'd be very much interested in the difference between what the tax people would find in Los Angeles and the five thousand a year and income I'd been having for years. It might double the estate. I hadn't been stealing from my own future inheritance, I'd been stealing from the United Brotherhood of Stargazers, or whatever it was.

“My reply was, she had no proof that Aunt had sent me money to invest. Her reply to that was that the document to prove it, the original, drawn up and signed by Aunt, was in Los Angeles. That if I'd meet her views she'd send for it and turn it over to me. If she turned it over to the authorities, it would finish me.

“As you may imagine, I was flustered. We stood there in the road, and it wasn't even dark; late twilight, June thirtieth. Poor Aunt's body collapsed in the car, and the Drummonds might drive by any minute. Not likely this summer, but they used their station wagon too, for necessary trips. Perhaps
they
were having guests!

“I made my mistake. I asked Gouch what she proposed.”

Blanche Drummond cried out: “But what else could you have done, Johnny?”

“I could have killed her, Blanche.” He turned a sadly smiling face in her direction. “But Gamadge reminded you that I'm not a habitual criminal. I'm civilized.

“Well, of course, you all know now what she had in mind; an inspiration born of circumstance. For the station had been crowded, and she'd heard me say that I didn't know our porter, and here was my place to dispose of a body in. We'd just passed the gate that leads in to the swimming pool, and I'd mentioned the fact.

“A truly sublime idea of Gouch's, and one that gives you the full measure of her greed. She wanted the seven thousand that was in the bank, of course; but the Stargazers' cut bothered her. She felt quite robbed by it. She insisted on having a try at the July income installment too. Not that she had much to lose if the check with the forged indorsement didn't go through—she had only to disappear. I was the one who'd be ruined. But I may say now that it did go through, and, so did the October one—she was so elated by our initial success that she extended her tour, stayed on. Why shouldn't my forgery have succeeded? I knew Aunt's signature well enough, and had specimens of it; and I'm supposed to be an artist”—he smiled grimly—“in black and white.

“But perhaps you can imagine the tortures I went through all summer. I wasn't much afraid of old residents who had known her in her youth turning up, and I could be mighty careful not to let them see her if they should turn up; but there's always the possibility of accident.”

Gamadge asked: “That party you gave for her on the tenth of July was her first public appearance, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“You told us last night that her income payments came in July and October. I wondered whether you had waited for the check to get back to Los Angeles and go through the bank before you finally risked the party.”

“You wondered
then
?”

“I already suspected an impersonation, Johnny.”

“Yes. Of course. And she waited for the second check to go through before leaving; she meant to go this week.'

“Her future plans for acquiring Aunt's money were to my mind risky and uncertain to the last degree; but what could I do? I only hoped that they would succeed. They wouldn't leave her worse off if they failed, I was the one they'd destroy in that case. Her idea was to build up a reputation here for eccentricity—the sun cult took care of that—and then disappear. Evidence would point to accidental death or suicide. She might have pulled it off; she was clever, much cleverer than you would have guessed from her behavior in her role of eccentric, and she had every reason for pulling it off. If she didn't, she wouldn't get Aunt's estate for years, if ever. Aunt would have to be presumed dead.

“Well, sketchy as her plan was, I had to fall in with it; and as I intimated before, I was pretty sure nobody at Rivertown Station had noticed that I had two women with me instead of one—nobody but a strange porter who was trying to serve a dozen other people besides us. I had the key of the gate on me—I always do. We carried poor Aunt's body into the grounds, and then got her luggage. Gouch unpacked her own bags in the car. She unpacked Aunt's things, all but the garments and stuff you specified, and filled up with hers. She worked it all out on the spot—about the shoes and so on; and it seems that she'd always had a covetous eye on those house robes, or tea gowns, or whatever they were.

“I thought of the old watering trough. It may sound pretty ghastly to you people, but it was a gift of the gods to me that evening. I got the lid off somehow—you don't want those details. Gamadge has told you what's there.

“Next morning I was down early and piled the undergrowth, and tried to think of something to prop up. I thought of the wooden image in the garage.

“She was delighted with it, and from the moment she saw it the sun cult was born. She enjoyed it all; she enjoyed meeting the children and acting the part of benefactress which poor Aunt had always wanted to act herself. She didn't care, of course, whether they liked her or not; but she couldn't resist getting back at them when she saw they couldn't stand her. That's why she handed Cora that pin, with Cora's mother's diamonds pinned on the front of the yellow thing she sported. Handed Cora the pin, and gave herself away.

“You can imagine whether I hated her. You can imagine whether I trusted her to send me that signed statement, and how much I liked the idea of waiting for it until I had sent her my share of the thirty thousand. But it wasn't until the very moment when I came in here and saw the rifle...

“I was in the vegetable garden, you know; I saw Cora go up through the woods, as I thought to the house. I saw Blanche cross to the greenhouse, and David go down the Loop. I knew where Abby was. I thought Drummond was busy in the flower garden, cutting me something or other—and so he was. I needed that weeder, and I needed the extra basket. I went across and cut into this place from the east. I heard your voice, Gamadge, and hers, as you went up to the rockery. I spied through those vines in that corner—I wondered how much of a fool she might be making of herself with you. I saw her against that birch tree.

“And I turned, and there was the rifle in that thing's arms. He seemed—I swear he seemed to be offering it to me. I wondered if it were loaded. Gamadge, I saw all my troubles falling away; there had been crow shooting, it might be considered an accident, and in any case there were so many of us to choose from that I thought we'd all be safe. I can't work things out as you do. I knew I'd never be suspected, nobody'd ever bother Los Angeles, and I thought I'd offer my financial motive as a cover for the children. I'm not hard up, credit's good, they could check if they liked.