Unexpected Night (22 page)

Callaghan took her by the arm, and they went off together, with the crowd. A wet shimmer had appeared on the floor of the Cove, and Gamadge felt a cool breath of air against his cheek.

“The mist is thinning,” he said.

“It'll be gone with the tide.” Mitchell picked up the pistol, slipped the safety catch, and wrapped it in his handkerchief. He stowed it in his pocket, remarking: “Cogswell will think there's something mighty queer about this place, even if this does turn out to be suicide. It might be. We don't know, yet, what he had on his mind.”

Gamadge said: “I think I know one thing that was on it, all right. That alibi of his is no good.”

“No good! Why, it's the only thing we
are
sure of, so far as it goes, which ain't far enough, by a jugful. You think these people are all lying?”

“No. I think he fooled them. I don't believe he rehearsed that part last night one minute after eight o'clock, when Callaghan saw him, and the Brown boy heard him. I think Miss Adrienne Lake played her own part. Remember the mist, and remember his make-up; do you suppose they could have been told apart?”

“But she was sick. Why would she do such a thing?”

“Well, you found fifty dollars on her, Mitchell; and they say she had no money at all.”

“Atwood's supposed to have paid her to rehearse her own part, last night? So he could get off the place?”

“Yes; and no living person can break his alibi. Miss Lake is dead.”

Mitchell looked down at the body at their feet, over the head of which he had thrown the red shawl. Then he said: “Fixed that, too, did he?”

“I'm inclined to think so. How, we don't yet know; but we may possibly find out. Mr. Arthur Atwood,” said Gamadge, sombrely, “was a clever fellow; but like all clever fellows, he thought nobody else was as intelligent as he was. I wonder how he felt, when he dropped down from that ladder, and saw the pistol coming up through the mist, two inches from his face? He'd back right under the pier, and he'd keep going until he was shot. You were well-advised not to waste time looking for the person that pulled the trigger, Mitchell.”

“I knew we couldn't find anybody in that fog.”

“Not with such a head start as that.”

“Perhaps Trainor…”

“Perhaps.”

The two young men in their leopard skins and bronze armour arrived, with a blanket stretched across their spears. Atwood's body was lifted on it, and the cortège moved slowly out into the open. Somebody had backed a car down to the shore; its headlamps illuminated the scene in a sudden bath of white light. Officer Jones roared across the clearing on his motorcycle; one or two cars were driving off; and a huddled group of summer visitors waited beside their cars. The actors sat or stood among the trailers, rugs cast about their shoulders, coffee cups passing from hand to hand.

Atwood's body was placed in Adrienne Lake's caravan, and then Mitchell addressed the Old Pier Players:

“Now, folks; stands to reason that Atwood wouldn't go down there under that pier and shoot himself for no reason at all. Suppose he got some bad news? Any messages come down from Tucon?”

“Not a one. We have our telephone, now,” said Callaghan.

“Did he get a call on the telephone?”

“Not this evening. So far as I know, not all day.”

“Well, how about a visitor? I want to know if any of you saw anybody down here to-night that didn't belong on the place. Any stranger wandering around, looking like a member of the audience, perhaps, but keeping off the pier. Anybody at all.”

Susie Baker spoke tremulously from the enveloping folds of her blanket: “Only the telephone man.”

“What telephone man?”

“He was back of Miss Lake's trailer, working on the pole, or something.”

“Where was Jones, the state policeman?”

“He'd gone across to the tents to get some coffee.”

“I thought the telephone people left.”

“There was just this one man. He was only back there a minute, and then he went down the bank.”

“Any of the rest of you see him?”

One other girl had noticed him, but neither she nor Susie could describe him; he had been a shadow among shadows, a phantom of the mist. They had thought him a telephone man because telephone men had been working there for days, and because he wore a peaked cap.

“He waited for Atwood down on the bank, below his tent,” said Gamadge, when they had moved out of ear-shot. “Atwood must have come down the ladder almost on top of him. Pleasant surprise all round.”

“If Trainor's let him through—”

“Why shouldn't Trainor have let him through? I'll go up and have a word with him. Don't look so desperate, Mitchell; all is not lost. That telephone man was one of the few living persons that expected to find Atwood under a head shawl. There's Mrs. Atwood—I want to speak to her.”

Mrs. Atwood sat by herself on the stump she seemed to prefer as a resting place, drinking coffee from a mug. Her glittering crown had been removed, and she had thrown a loose coat over her shoulders. Gamadge said: “Now, that's sensible. I hope there's a stick in that.”

“There is; brandy.”

“Look here, Mrs. Atwood; I do wish you could see your way to helping us out a little. Poor Susie Baker's a material witness; she may be in for all sorts of inconvenience and bother if the police can't find out where that morphia came from. No dentist gives anybody morphia for an abscessed tooth; it's ridiculous.”

Mrs. Atwood said nothing.

“Your husband's dead,” continued Gamadge. “It's a question now of considering the living—and the innocent Susie Baker saw him coming home to the Cove at three o'clock last night.”

“What!”

“And we have reason to think that he paid Miss Lake to go out there on the pier from eight to ten, and impersonate herself.”

Mrs. Atwood's mouth fell open.

“Couldn't it have been worked? Just think back, and see whether it couldn't.”

Mrs. Atwood looked about her as if she hardly knew where she was. At last she said, “Perhaps it could. I don't know anything about it.”

“You wouldn't. The point is, there really isn't any use fighting to preserve Atwood's reputation. That's hopeless. But one word from you might send that little Baker girl home to her family without any trouble or delay.”

Mrs. Atwood cogitated, and seemed suddenly to make up her mind. “Adrienne Lake wasn't taking morphia,” she said harshly. “The dentist gave her something to rub on her tooth; that's all.”

“She hadn't anything at all to help her sleep?”

“She had aspirin.”

“Aspirin!” Mitchell repeated it blankly.

“That's all she ever took.”

“You seemed surprised when we told you it was morphia, ma'am; very much surprised.”

“I was.”

“Your husband didn't possess any, so far as you know?” She gave him a questioning look. After a moment she said: “He used to have some. He never could stand pain—not a twinge. No aspirin for him!”

“I'm obliged to you. Just one question more—routine. You were with some of the others while this shooting was going on?”

“Yes. I didn't kill Arthur,” she said with a stiff smile. Gamadge left them. On his way to his car he stopped in front of Callaghan, who stood alone in the middle of the clearing, hands on hips and legs straddled. He was watching his public depart. His lower lip jutted out, and he looked defeated, yet indomitable.

“I'm awfully sorry about all this,” said Gamadge. “It's the rottenest kind of luck. I wouldn't take it too hard, though; this business may actually draw people, instead of putting them off.”

“I hope you're right.”

“And I don't think you're going to have any police trouble, to speak of.”

“I'll have trouble finding another Atwood. He was only half human, sorry as I am to say so; but he was clever, and I needed him. Tell me, now; did you ever see anything cleverer than that show he put on to-night?”

“It was remarkable. Famous for female impersonations, wasn't he?”

“He was, and his father before him.”

“I gathered that he was going to play Cathleen from what was said up here this afternoon; and somebody told me about the female impersonating, which clinched it for me.”

“He told me you had an evil eye.”

“Oh, that was only because I intimated that the gods were about to destroy him. He didn't like that.”

“And how did you know they were about to destroy him?”

“He finally gave me the tip himself. Well, good luck to you. I'm staying at the Ocean House, Ford's Beach; let me know if I can do anything for Mrs. Atwood.”

“She'll stay on here with me, and so will the others—if I can feed them.”

“You'll feed them, don't worry. Only for Heaven's sake drop that play with the corpse in it! Put a funny one in the bill. Don't the Irish ever write funny plays?”

“They're famous for it.”

“Then dig some up, that's my advice to you.”

He got into his car, and drove away from the desolate reaches of Seal Cove. At the other end of the lane Officer Trainor was at the car window before Gamadge saw him, and stopped.

“What is all this?” he asked, from the running board. “Cal Jones said he didn't know anything, and he wouldn't wait a second. I can't ask the folks in the cars!”

“No; very humiliating. One of the actors was shot, and it probably wasn't suicide. Did you pass any sort of mechanic into the lane to-night?”

“Only the telephone feller.”

“Late on the job, wasn't he?”

“He came back for some gear they left. He was the next in after you, and he came back five minutes before Cal Jones got here with the news.”

“He's home by now. Did you notice his car?”

“I didn't take the number of it; why should I? It was an old green Dodge sedan.”

“The grey-fly. Did you get a look at the fellow?”

“Half his face under the cap, with a streak of grease across it.”

“This seems to be a costume piece. You wouldn't know him again, I gather?”

“Say, what is all this, anyway?” Trainor had one leg over his machine. “I can phone in an alarm.”

“Useless. You couldn't say whether this lineman was young or old, man, woman, or boy. Now, could you?”

“I'd have said he was a feller about my age.”

“Say so now?”

“You've got me all mixed up.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“Word or two. He talked slow and husky; had a cough.”

“You know what I'd do if I were you, Trainor? I'd take a chance and quit this job. When you tell Mitchell what you've just told me, he'll know your work is over, up here. He can use you at the Cove.”

“I don't know.”

“He'll want to hear about this telephone man. Tell him to drop in at the Ocean House later—no matter how late. I'll have that report he wanted, or some of it.”

The family car which had passed Gamadge on the road earlier in the evening drove up, bulging with clamorous children.

“Name, sir, please.” Trainor automatically got out his notebook.

“Newberry. Who was it got shot, officer?”

“One of the actors. Where are you staying?”

“The Gunket, the Gunket, the Gunket,” shouted a child, and another implored: “Oh, Daddy, don't let's go home yet. Let's wait and find out who killed him.”

The back seat spoke, in no uncertain terms: “We're going back to Ogunquit just as fast as we can get there.”

“And I didn't think much of the play,” complained the far from Neo-Celt beside her, clutching a child as the car began to move. “When I saw ‘The Shaughraun'—”

Gamadge started his coupé, and prepared to follow. “Don't forget to ask Mitchell to see me at the Ocean House, no matter how late,” he said.

He took the back road. There was no longer much fog, and on this second trip he made better time than he had made that afternoon. He reached the Ocean House at ten minutes past ten.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
HE HOTEL WAS
blazing with lights from tower to basement. Several cars were parked in front, and Gamadge drove on down to the garage, the rumble of the freight elevator in his ears. Officer Loomis was sitting in converse with Kimball, the night man, beside a long, low, shining bulk that Gamadge recognised as the Cowden touring car.

“Nobody's been near it,” said Loomis. “Young feller came in, asked for the road maps. I got them out and give them to him. He asked what I was doin' there, and I said, mindin' my own business.”