The House without the Door (6 page)

"She disappeared, and wasn't on hand when the men went into the dining-room for refreshments. Everything was laid out ready, there were no servants, and they helped themselves to whisky, sandwiches, and coffee out of an urn. He saw her once or twice afterwards in the street, but not to speak to; he says that when the news broke he couldn't have been more astounded if they'd arrested
him
.

"He knew vaguely that the Gregsons had two young people living with them—relatives, he supposed; but only one of them was a relative. Miss Cecilia Warren, aged twenty-six, was a cousin of Mrs. Gregson's, also from Omega. Benton Locke, aged nineteen, was the son of one of Gregson's oldest friends. Locke's father and mother were dead, and Gregson had taken him in some years before. I may say here that Miss Warren was Mrs. Gregson's only living relative; the daughter of Mrs. Gregson's father's sister. Mrs. Gregson's maiden name was Voories, and her family had christened her Vina. What do you think of that?"

Clara said, surprised, that she didn't know what she was expected to think of it.

"You like alliterative names? You like the name of Vina?"

"Well, Mr. Colby's right—it's a little countrified, perhaps."

"Don't go through life understating things out of politeness, Clara; don't, I beg of you. It's a hell of a name."

"What does it matter what her name was, or is?"

"It matters a lot; it gives you a slant on her background. And she never altered it, mind you; I bet that helped with the jury! You know, Mrs. Gregson's faculties have been sharpened by what she's been through, but she's really quite a dull woman."

"That makes it all more horrible."

"Yes, it does. Well: the aunt who married this Warren died long ago—twenty-odd years ago. Warren died in 1931, seven years before the Gregson trial.

"There was a third dependent in the Gregson household, a widow named Stoner, Minnie Stoner, a friend of Gregson's mother's. She was a kind of lady-help, and now she lives with Mrs. Gregson. In 1938, when the tragedy happened, there was only one other person in the house, the cook, Martha Beach. I know nothing about her, except that she wasn't a young woman.

"There's a certain peculiarity about the status of the two young people in the Gregson circle. Cecilia Warren arrived there when she was sixteen, in 1930; but nothing was done for her socially—Bellfield knew her not. She was put straight into a business college, where she learned stenography and typewriting, and as soon as she was qualified she got a job. She had several jobs, and ended in an architect's office as a kind of secretary to one of the firm, a young man named Paul Belden. He comes from Amsterdam, New York, and he and Miss Warren have known each other for years—since childhood. They're now engaged to be married."

Clara said: "If Cecilia Warren had to earn her living, I don't think there's anything so queer about all that. You say Mrs. Gregson didn't go out much herself."

"The peculiarity comes later—you'll see. Her existence, however, seems to have been none too merry. Young Locke arrived at the Gregson home when he was fifteen, went to high school, did very badly there, and was put to one and another job—in vain. He insisted on dancing. Dancing is the only thing that he has ever taken seriously, so far as I know, and dance he would. Gregson seems at last to have let him go his way. Locke's father was a brilliant man; by profession an accountant, but by nature a musician. He didn't work at much except music, and died penniless. The boy was brought up to sleep on the floor and live on bananas—so Colby seems to think; but he was devoted to his father.

"Well, we now come to the celebrated night of June 5th, 1938. It was a very warm evening, unusually warm and sultry, which fact has everything—practically everything, as you will see—to do with the case. Gregson came home on his accustomed train, which arrives at Bellfield about six-thirty; Colby remembers seeing him on it. It's the express that most of the Bellfield men commute by. Cecilia Warren and Locke arrived on their local at about seven. I should mention that the Gregsons had no chauffeur, and that Mrs. Gregson taxied Gregson to and from his trains; Miss Warren and Locke walked in all weathers. The house is between a half and a quarter of a mile from the station, and is approached by a fine road that runs between elms and maples—uphill."

"Quite a walk, on a bad winter's night," observed Harold.

"Or even on a rainy summer morning. On that hot June evening dinner was eaten at seven-thirty; Miss Warren and Locke wouldn't have been in time for it if it had been earlier, but as a concession to the servant problem in Bellfield Martha Beach was allowed to go—presumably to the movies—after she had cooked it. It was served, and the dishes washed afterwards, by Mrs. Stoner.

"Immediately after dinner Gregson complained of a slight indigestion. He said that it had been dogging him all day, and he attributed it to the heat. I will say here that there was nothing seriously wrong with his digestive apparatus; except for a bilious tendency he was what you might call a well man. He decided on this occasion to take bicarbonate of soda and go to bed early, and he went up at about nine.

"You are now to take careful note of the arrangement of rooms in that house. It has a wide front hall, with the parlour and the library on the left, and dining-room, pantry, kitchen, and so on to the right. Mrs. Gregson's bedroom was over the parlour and Gregson's over the library. There's a bath between."

"I thought people like Mrs. Gregson never had a room of their own," said Clara.

"Mrs. Gregson had one, and I dare say that the prosecution at her trial hoped that the jury would disapprove of that fact. The bathroom had once been a store cupboard; Gregson had had it piped—his parents never dreamed of more than one bathroom in a house.

"On the other side of the hall, opposite Mrs. Gregson, there is a sewing-room and sitting-room combined. Behind it are linen cupboards, a large bathroom, and the guest chamber. This last, just opposite Gregson's quarters, had at some time or other been fitted with what is known as a summer door; shuttered, you know, and to be used in hot weather when the regular door had to be kept open for air.

"On the third floor we find Martha Beach, the cook, over Mrs. Gregson, and Locke over the sewing-room. Mrs. Stoner behind Locke, Miss Warren behind Martha Beach. Bath between Locke and Stoner, trunk room between Miss Warren and the cook. Get it?"

"I get it," said Harold. "The help and the non-paying guests were all up on the third floor together."

"And the help's room was by no means the least desirable of the lot. Miss Warren had the one with the sloping roof, the peephole window, and no cupboard; her clothes hung on hooks behind a curtain. It came out in evidence that the top rooms were pretty cold in winter—the cook had a gas heater, by the way. And in summer the whole top floor was an oven. They gave Martha Beach an electric fan."

Clara said: "Murder trials do bring out the queerest things."

"That's what makes them so fascinating," said Gamadge. "We hear of mutton soup for breakfast in the dog days, flypaper soaking in saucers for the ladies' complexions, chloroform on the mantelpiece. Nobody, in court or out of it, seems to remember how funny their own little ways would look if brought out at a trial."

"We might come out very funny at a trial, Henry," said Clara.

"We might indeed. It would sound funny if we had to admit that we had no idea who Harold is, or where he came from."

"But I do know where he came from," said Clara.

Gamadge stared in astonishment at his assistant, who muttered: "We get to talking."

"You do, do you?" After another moment devoted to a wondering survey of the taciturn Harold, Gamadge returned to his notes. He was totally incurious, except in the way of business.

"As I said, Gregson went upstairs at nine. Mrs. Gregson prepared the dose of soda for him, and the whole family was in on it; there was none in the Gregsons' bathroom cabinet, so Miss Warren got the large tin of soda that was in the third-floor medicine cupboard. Mrs. Stoner brought a tumbler of boiled water upstairs, and a silver spoon. Locke stood in the hall and talked to his benefactor, while that gentleman, at the open door of his bedroom and in his shirt sleeves, tossed off the mixture. Locke was asking permission to borrow the family car—he wished to take a friend to the movies. He did not specify what friend, but the Gregsons knew very well that it was a Miss Arline Prady, who worked in her father's drugstore in the village.

"Permission was reluctantly granted—the Gregsons did not much care for Locke's best girl. Then Gregson closed his door, and after that no member of the household admits to seeing him again, alive. Mrs. Gregson came downstairs and listened to the radio until ten, when she also went to bed; quietly, so that she need not disturb her husband. Mrs. Stoner washed the dishes, played patience, and went up just after Mrs. Gregson. Miss Warren usually disappeared as soon as dinner was over; she went out, or read in her room; on this occasion she went upstairs, but she did not read. She said afterwards that the night was so hot she simply lay on her bed in the dark. She heard the cook come in, a little after ten.

"Locke got home at eleven-thirty, garaged the car, saw or noticed no lights in the house, and went in. He locked the front door after him. Mrs. Gregson had already made the rounds for the night and fastened all other doors and all downstairs windows.

"Next morning Miss Warren and Locke came down as usual for their early breakfast, prepared for them by Mrs. Stoner, and then walked off to catch their early train. Mrs. Gregson came down at eight, the Gregson breakfast hour; she told Mrs. Stoner that her husband's door into the bathroom was shut, and that she wasn't going to wake him. At nine, however, she did go up; she was afraid he might not want to sleep longer. She found him dead. The doctor, a Dr. Goff, got there in a few minutes and said that he had died of an overdose of narcotic—probably morphia. The 'probably' seems an excess of caution, since there was one of those little brown-glass tubes beside the tumbler on the night table. The label said that it had contained twenty-five quarter-grain tablets of morphia; it was now empty. There was a trace of morphia in the tumbler, with dregs of soda bicarbonate. At the post-mortem they found that he had swallowed at least three grains, perhaps more.

"Goff, and the entire Bellfield community with one exception, supposed that it must be suicide. The inquest was to be a mere formality, and everybody hoped that the jury would bring a verdict of accidental death, to save Mrs. Gregson's feelings. Let me repeat here that there had never been the faintest breath of gossip about her, and assure you that spotless moral reputations weigh heavily in favour of women who are being tried for murdering their husbands."

"Why shouldn't they weigh heavily?" asked Harold.

"No reason; but sometimes there is a reason why the contrary shouldn't weigh heavily against them. However, we're not at the trial yet, we're at the inquest. Studbury, the medical examiner, had known Gregson slightly, and had not known Mrs. Gregson at all; he employed the man who worked on the Gregson place, and he learned from him a curious fact: Martha Beach had told him that when Cecilia Warren got home on the evening of Gregson's death, and first heard of it, she exclaimed (to Martha Beach, who told her the news): 'But he can't have killed himself, I heard him laugh in the middle of the night.' She never repeated the statement, nor did Martha Beach— except to the hired man.

"Studbury could not of course be sure that Cecilia Warren had ever said any such thing; but he saw Gregson's law partners, who were in a state of incredulity and bewilderment over the idea of Gregson killing himself, and from them he got two additional pieces of information; Gregson was worth at least two hundred thousand dollars in paying stock and insurance, and his first and only will left every penny of it to his wife.

"Studbury then discovered from Goff and others that Gregson had no physical reason for ending his life. He was fussy about his health, had regular examinations made by the medical department of his insurance company, and paid semiannual visits to his oculist and his dentist. As for the possibility of his having led a double life and found it too much for him, his partners exploded it. They solemnly assured Studbury that Gregson's time had been fully occupied in New York by his business. He was in the office all day, lunched there, and only left to catch his commuters' special. He had had no more chance to lead a double life than he would have had if he had been in a condemned cell.

"Studbury began to think that it was very unusual for a suicide to leave no farewell letter; and he worked up such a case in his own mind against Mrs. Gregson that at the inquest he played a terrible, if legitimate, trick on her. He called her first, and took her sworn statement that she had seen and heard nothing of her husband after nine-thirty on the night of June the fifth. Then he called Miss Warren, and asked her to repeat her statement to Martha Beach about hearing Gregson laugh.

"Miss Warren was a reluctant witness, staggered by his question and at first unwilling to answer it. Then she told a very queer story indeed. It seems that she didn't after all stay up in that attic of hers on hot nights. For years she had made a practice of creeping down to the guest-room after every body was in bed, and staying there until early morning. It had that shuttered door, you will remember, and it has windows north and west. Personally, I don't blame her."

"You mean nobody in the house knew she slept down there?" asked Harold.

"Not a soul. She slept on top of the bed, and remade it carefully every morning. Locke could come in late and go upstairs without noticing the shuttered door at all."

Clara asked indignantly: "Why did she have to sneak around the house like that?"

"Mrs. Gregson, recalled, said that she
didn't
have to, and that if she had dreamed the girl was uncomfortable she would have done something about it. A general impression got about that Miss Cecilia Warren was a reserved, if not secretive, kind of young woman, and she certainly made that impression on the jury—then and at the trial."