Evidence of Things Seen (19 page)

“Yes, it's after twelve. You must be worn out after the day you've had.”

“I thought I'd feel better if I talked to you. I hope I didn't wake you up?”

“No indeed; I'm a night bird. Very good of you to call me.”

“I wanted to tell you that Mr. Duckett says they all appreciate it very much—my turning that money in. Mr. Gamadge, I didn't half thank you for finding it.”

“Glad I did.”

“Mr. Duckett thinks it means Aunt Alvira hadn't been robbed of those securities, and killed to prevent her finding out; because she would have kept them where she kept the money, if they were in the house at all.”

“So she would.”

“Mr. Gamadge—
where are they
?”

“Perhaps we'll find out.”

A
T TWO O'CLOCK
on the morning of Friday the tenth the weather broke with a tremendous crash; Gamadge, waked by it, lurched about closing the bedroom door and windows that faced the west. He had already heard the drum and rush of the rain, now he saw it by lightning—a steely curtain blown past the cottage in waves.

He went into the farther bedroom, listened until he was sure Maggie's footsteps were pounding about overhead, and closed those windows too. No earthly waterfall could be heard above this cataract. When he returned to the north room he went to the east doorway; rivulets were already beginning to trickle down the hillside.

In the morning it was still pouring. Maggie was distressed. She had important errands to be done in Avebury, too important to be entrusted to any delivery boy; if a cardinal's niece were expected to dinner, for instance, there must be a mighty fish course. Gamadge said he would drive in; he had meant to do so in any case—he had telephoning to do that was not for Clara's ears.

He shut himself into a booth in a drugstore and called his friend Robert Macloud at that gentleman's summer fastness in Vermont. Macloud said no, he read no papers while he was on vacation. He got his news on the radio—as much as he could stand of it. “What's in the papers that I ought to have seen? Something about you? You seem to have got back safely, anyhow; congratulations.”

“I got back safely. Could you possibly come over to Connecticut this Sunday? Place north of Avebury.”

“You'll have to do better than that; what's Avebury?”

“Place north of Hartford. I think there'll be an inquest on Monday, and I'd like you to be present.”

“Inquest? On who?”

“Nobody you know; but Clara's a witness.”

“What does she want a lawyer there for?”

“It was a homicide. I wasn't here, and she has a queer story. Somebody ought to be on hand to see that she isn't unnecessarily heckled. Ledwell—the Stratfield state's attorney—is a young fellow, very keen on his job; I think he's going to follow up with an arrest and a trial, if he can.”

“Arrest
Clara
?”

“If there's a trial, she'll get a verdict of guilty but insane.”

“Great heavens, Gamadge, what are you telling me?”

“It may not come to that, but I have to be ready for it. I don't want her confused at the inquest. I don't want people thinking there's something wrong with her.”

“Great heavens, no wonder you sound as though you'd been chewing alum!”

“I've been eating ashes for about four days, and keeping up a front.”

“Nice homecoming for you.”

“That doesn't matter. Can you get here by Sunday?”

“I'd come today, only I have a man with me. I'll get rid of him, if you like, and drive down now.”

“No, Sunday will do. I hate to break into your vacation.”

“Don't talk nonsense.”

“We can discuss the thing on Sunday. I needn't tell you that I'm doing what I can at this end, but I doubt if I can manage anything effective in the time; however, I dug up something yesterday that gave me a possible lead. Who's that fellow you told me was such a whiz at tracing financial deals and illegal sales of bonds, and so on?”

“Lovsky.”

“Could you get hold of him and start him working for me on Monday?”

“I'll call the office.”

“No hope of getting him this week, I suppose?”

“Not unless by some miracle he's in his New York quarters. He's all over the place, you know. I only hope he isn't smothered in some war job.”

“Well, get hold of somebody, if you can; it shouldn't be too difficult a job, but the trouble is that it may take some time. Tricky; it means finding the real financial rating of somebody, and a lot of undercover work. I want Lovsky particularly because you said he knew how to work on the quiet.”

“He does. He's the original bolt from the blue. Er—he comes high, you know.”

“Do you think that matters while I have a dollar, or a dollar's worth of credit?”

“Naturally not; I'm just telling you.” Macloud paused. “Sure you'll have to do all the financing?”

“You mean can I push it off on the state of Connecticut? Not unless I have a stroke of luck. I wish I could go more into detail, but I've said more than I ought, now.”

“Take it easy. I'll see you on Sunday before lunch.”

Gamadge told him how to find the cottage, and rang off. He returned home with a magnificent piece of salmon and the makings of hors d'oeuvres, besides a bundle of rain-washed rosebuds. Flowers had been a problem, but the woman at the nursery had waded out in rubber boots and a mackintosh and cut the roses for him.

After lunch the rain ceased; the waterfall could be heard roaring. By three o'clock Gamadge made Clara put on a bathing suit and walk around the property with him; he said that if he had to buy it he might as well know what he was getting for his money. The tour ended, he sat on the dividing wall at the bottom of the slope behind the house, and looked up at the ridge and its flanking woods.

“I never saw better ground for an advance or a retreat,” he said. “The woman in the sunbonnet could leave a car along the reservation road or above or below the farms on the highway. She could cut through the woods across the stream, or through those woods up there and behind the ridge, or circle the north end of the cottage. She wouldn't be seen, and the trips wouldn't take more than a few minutes either way. That purple dress is a kind of smock thing; buttons down the front. You could get out of it in a second.”

Clara said that it was almost worse to think that a human being had been doing it than to think it was a ghost.

A fine sunset and a rosy sky welcomed the dinner guests when they drove up for early cocktails. The cottage was festive; a little iron table was set out on the porch with canapés, and Gamadge stood in the yard with the shaker in his hand, its glass and chromium twinkling in the rays of the evening light. The guests stood about on the grass to eat and drink. They looked exotic in that setting, beings from another world.

“It is perfect; it is charming,” said Mrs. Star to Gamadge. “You know how to live. It looks so simple, and really it means so much complicated preparation. I hear a waterfall.”

“Yes, it's booming today. Like to see it?”

“I should love to.”

“If you won't spoil your dress—there's long grass.”

Mrs. Star, lifting her pale-gray skirt a little disdainfully, said that if it were spoiled she could soon make another. They crossed the road and went along a rough track that led them under trees and out upon a flat stone. She stood looking at the surging water, and the dark pool below.

“This is what I like.”

“You are the genius loci.”

“Am I?”

“But I hope your wicked uncle won't make the waterfall drown the lot of us.”

“I have no malign spirits in my family; and in any case, Undine turned it all back into a stream again. The setting is wrong, Mr. Gamadge, for your fancy; this is no tributary of the Danube.”

“I dare say the whole look of it is different.”

“The feel of it is different.”

She stood poised in her floating dress, an image out of the dead past; literally and forever, she had no background of her own. Of course she was different.

They went back to the cottage. Dinner was lively, there was much approving talk about the transformation of the little bedroom—“I was simply dreading it,” said Fanny Hunter, “and now it isn't even there!”—and everybody agreed that the Gamadges had been right to stick to the cottage.

When they were at coffee in the living room a faint swish of tires on grass and a bump against the porch preceded Maggie's entrance with an announcement: “It's a boy on a bicycle. He has an envelope for Mr. Gamadge, and he won't give it to me. He says he's to put it into Mr. Gamadge's hands himself.”

Gamadge went out. When he came back he had a smile on his face and a long envelope in his hands. As he advanced, he took several sheets of typing from the envelope, and glanced at them.

“Splendid,” he said. “Shall we put off bridge for half an hour, and have an exorcism?”

Everybody looked surprised, but only Mrs. Star spoke. She asked after a moment, gravely, “You are joking?”

“Not at all. With these papers in my hand I can exorcise the ghost of Mrs. Hickson out of this cottage.”

“Please don't joke about an exorcism, Mr. Gamadge.”

“I'm speaking in symbols, Mrs. Star.” Gamadge sat down beside a lamp, and spread his papers out on the table. “The sheriff of Avebury is a great fellow, and he's done a great job. I thought you might all like to hear about it.”

“I shall,” said Hunter. He sat beside his wife on the sofa; Craye was on Fanny's left, Mrs. Star between him and Clara. Maggie came in and put up a side table; then she went out and brought in a tray with whiskey, a siphon, and tumblers.

Craye, watching her, said: “We all will. The fewer ghosts the better; we don't need ‘em. There are too many people in the world, let's eliminate ghosts.”

Hunter, raising an eyebrow, said: “As a pillar of the First Congregational Church of Avebury, let me protest against these Malthusian heresies. You Stratfield heathen are getting far too cynical, Craye.”

Mrs. Star said: “Mr. Craye has every reason to think that there are too many people.”

Craye flushed a little, his eyes still on the whiskey. “I withdraw the remark,” he said, “but I say remove the ghosts.”

“I'll remove one,” said Gamadge, “here and now. This letter from Duckett informs me that the autopsy on Mrs. Hickson was performed this morning.”

“On Mrs. Hickson?” Craye stared.

“Yes. She was exhumed privately last night, and a toxicologist performed a belated autopsy today. Her body contains no arsenic.”

Hunter said: “You let no grass grow under your feet. I congratulate you.”

“Further examinations will be carried on,” continued Gamadge, “but there seems to be no question in the case of any poison but arsenic; Mrs. Hickson's symptoms rule other poisons out. No arsenic, no murder; Mrs. Hickson died a natural death, and her ghost had no cause to avenge itself upon Alvira Radford. Therefore, no ghost.”

Fanny said eagerly: “We said there was nothing in that poisoning story; didn't we, Clara?”

Clara nodded, her eyes on Gamadge.

“But what must have been Alvira Radford's feelings last Saturday evening,” he went on, smiling at her, “when she saw a figure, clothed in her sister's old purple dress and sunbonnet, surge up at the corner of the cottage; at the moment, you will remember, when the Radford buggy was full of flowers for that sister's grave? Of course she fainted, and of course, when she regained consciousness, she didn't want to enter this haunted place. But afterwards she pulled herself together; if there was a ghost, it could not harm her.

“Clara will tell you that Miss Radford had already shown dislike for the cottage, and had refused to enter it. I have good reason to suppose, from certain evidence, that she had the unhappiest memories of her life here—years of slavery under the domination of a cold, penurious, selfish woman. When she moved back to her old home she left her sister's personal possessions behind; she even left the furniture that they had used here and the pictures they had looked at. Her instincts were against burning up wearable clothing or even giving it away; but she had put off dealing with it.”

“But the apparition still might have been a ghost,” said Mrs. Star, “even if it didn't kill Miss Radford. It might have come to warn her.”

“You may feel strongly persuaded that that is true,” said Gamadge, “when I tell you that the garments in the attic, to which a flesh-and-blood murderer might have had access, cannot have been worn by any person since they were worn by Eva Hickson; their knots and creases prove it.”

Mrs. Star inhaled a long breath, and Fanny Hunter shrank against her husband. He patted her shoulder.

“Trust Gamadge, my dear,” he said. “He has promised to remove the ghost for us.”

“I could only suppose, when I saw those knots and creases,” said Gamadge, “that there must be another set of purple garments; purple, sprigged with black. There is. Two sets, exactly alike, were made for Mrs. Hickson by dressmakers named Jeans, who lived in Stratfield, or near it, and whose address was kindly supplied to me yesterday by Mr. Gilbert Craye.”

Craye, with a smile like a faint grimace, murmured: “What a fellow you are.”

“Not at all; the clothes had been finished by hand, the Jeans women were dressmakers and friends of Miss Radford, Miss Radford seems to have possessed no sewing machine. Logic forced me to call upon Mrs. and Miss Jeans. I saw pieces of the material in a quilt, and Duckett says here that he now has a scrap in his possession, found in the Jeans piece bag. Yesterday I was not ready to be quite frank with the Jeans family; I had no other line of inquiry to pursue, and I could only hope that if I kept my search for the other dress and sunbonnet a secret the murderer might not destroy it, and it might be found. But that was a forlorn hope at best; the territory to be searched is too vast, the murderer too cunning. All I have done was to lay the ghost. Or have I laid it?” He looked at Mrs. Star.