Murders in, Volume 2 (20 page)

“Very clever indeed. Has he obliged the police with the theory?”

“No, but he's dying to. He says Miss Smith found Uncle dead, and rushed off in a panic. I should think she might—shouldn't you?”

“All things considered, yes.”

“What I can't make out is, where she's got to.”

“That doesn't bother me at all.”

“Doesn't?” Young Vauregard glanced at him, puzzled.

“Not at all. To the police she is a phantom; one pale girl among millions. To those of us who saw her she is almost as spectral; a colorless picture, which would be changed practically out of recognition by any applied color at all. If you saw her in the street with darkened hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes; with her eyes made up—or unmade; they looked extra-long to me—and a good deal of make-up; with smart clothes, and a hat, are you sure you would know her?”

Dick Vauregard stared at him. “I'm sure I shouldn't!”

“Remember, there's no picture for the papers to display. Unless she makes a rather spectacular appearance somewhere, she probably won't be found. Of course, if Duncannon should by any chance know her, he may lead us to her.”

Vauregard said, uneasily: “Payne thinks she had nothing to do with these—murders.”

“Did Mrs. Morton strangle herself, according to him?”

“Oh, he says a sneak thief wandered in here last night while the front door was unlatched, and killed Aunt Angela in a panic, when he found her in the library.”

“Well—er—not quite so clever, that one.”

“Cam says it's perfectly reasonable. There are hordes of professionals just waiting for a chance like that; they snap up your umbrella or your parcel if you leave it on a counter for a second. They're always looking for a way to get into houses.”

“Have the police sewed him up, too?”

“Cam?” Young Vauregard looked surprised, and then rather horrified. “He's right out of it. He wasn't here, and he's lame, and he only has a contingent interest in Clara's hundred thousand. For heaven's sake don't let Clara hear you say a thing like that!”

“I should have thought that the police would consider him an interested party.”

“If they do, they haven't said so.”

“You're not going to be a trial lawyer, are you, Mr. Vauregard?” asked Gamadge, smiling.

“I certainly am not. Arguing is the worst thing I do. Just nice quiet patents, under Bedlowe's wing.” The young man stood frowning out at the parked cars, the staring people, and the sunny avenue off to the right. “We couldn't do anything much today, anyhow, on account of Uncle and Aunt Angie; but it's decent weather, for a change, and I certainly wouldn't mind being out in it. Do you know what? I bet they'll try to keep us caged up here until after the inquests.”

Durfee, behind them, said: “You're an ungrateful sort of a character; here the city's paying three men to look out for you, day and night. Will you give me a minute before you go upstairs, Mr. Gamadge?”

Gamadge followed him into the drawing room, where Mr. Bridge sat alone, contemplating the portrait of Angela Morton as Viola. He wore a pale silk suit, belted at the waist, and his Panama hat lay on the sofa beside him. His hands, in creamy doeskin gloves, clasped the knob of his cane, and his chin rested on his hands. He looked disgusted.

He said, turning his eyes on Gamadge: “Lots of managers wanted to kill her at one time or another, they say; but I hadn't got as far as that, yet.”

“Don't talk foolishness, Mr. Bridge,” said Durfee.

“You ask me what our financial relations are. We hadn't any. I had no money, she had no money—or said she hadn't; the moving picture people wouldn't look at us, and old Mr. Vauregard never put cash into her plays. He didn't like her being in the theater, and I don't know what kind of fit he would have thrown when he found out she was thinking of going back to it. I thought the Webster play would run because of the production; she thought it would run because the critics would say she was greater than Rachel in it; nobody else thought it would run at all.”

This speech, made in a colorless voice, seemed to exhaust Bridge. He closed his eyes.

“No harm trying to find out if you were in her confidence,” said Durfee irritably.

“Oh, I was.” Bridge opened his eyes halfway. “Don't worry. She confided in me, all right—all her hopes, fears and ambitions about Duncannon,” he said, in a sour voice. “Did you hear him tearing off the last lines out of the Webster play, just now?”

“Man was doped up with his sleeping powder.”

“He does it much better when he's doped up. I was quite surprised. All he did at rehearsals was grab his stomach with both hands. Angela thought he was a great romantic actor. Well, I've paid the artists something on the stage sets and the costumes—perhaps Duncannon will reimburse me, now that he's come into all this money; and perhaps not. They say you met that Smith woman—Lydia Smith, whatever she called herself.” His eyes turned to Gamadge again. “Somebody said something about your saying she could play Vittoria Corombona.”

“I thought she might very well play the character that Webster based his Vittoria on.”

“You know anything about the theater?”

“Only what I see when I pay for a seat.”

“If they catch her, and let her go again, I might have a look at her. From the way Duncannon talks, I bet he'd back her in
The White Devil
himself.”

This was too much for Durfee. “I wouldn't exactly put my money on it, if I was you,” he said. “Thanks, Mr. Bridge—I guess that will be all, for now.”

Bridge rose, placed his rather wide-brimmed Panama on his head, drew up the spotless gloves on his hands, and rolled out on his short, thick legs without another word or any glance of farewell. Durfee, sardonic, watched him go.

“That character never thought up any such scheme as the Smith scheme,” he said.

“That character has thought up many interesting, involved and lucrative schemes connected with the theater,” said Gamadge, “but far be it from me to suggest that he could or would stage a
Tragedy of Blood
in real life.”

Mr. Zanch, correctly and quietly dressed, came between the curtains from the library. Upon seeing Gamadge he stopped, and his narrow, handsome face was alert and watchful.

“The clairvoyant,” he said. “The who?” inquired Durfee, lowering at him. “The gentleman who looks for trouble, and finds it. Mr. Gamadge paid us a call, on Thursday afternoon; recommended by Miss Vauregard.”

“That so?”

“That is so. Quite interested, he was, in poor old Mr. Vauregard's money. If ever I saw a barefaced shakedown pulled off, it was the one he pulled off on us. You ought to ask him about it, Lieutenant.”

“Pulled some information out of you, did he? Wish he'd tell me how he managed it.”

“He managed it by threatening to show us up in a book. My wife rather took to him; wouldn't let me have him thrown out, or arrested. She's psychic. Know what she said after you left, Mr. Gamadge? She said you had a very dark aura, very dark indeed. Dark and opaque. Bad combination.”

“I must do something about it.”

“Drop that line, Zanch,” said Durfee. “We are not interested. You've made your statement, for what it's worth, and you can go. We haven't got done with you yet, though.”

“If there is any law against telling people how to think sanely, my wife and I have not heard of it.”

“You've got more than one hardheaded businessman to put money into your thinking plant.”

“We need a plant, yes. An academy.”

“Never heard of anybody like Miss Lydia Smith, never heard that
Sleeping Beauty
story until you saw it in the papers, and didn't even know Byron wrote poetry. Thought he was an explorer, I guess,” said Durfee.

“Quite ironical, are you not?”

“You and your wife look out for yourselves. Every time we get a good hook into you, some rich, brainy guy tears it out again. It can't go on forever.”

“Can it not? You must study Confucius.”

He went out, and Durfee sat down and pointed with some abruptness to a chair near him. Gamadge drew it up, and sat politely on the edge of it.

“Now! We've got rid of the nuts at last; or most of 'em.” A flicker in his eye brought an answering spark from Gamadge's.

“I'll have to be going myself, pretty soon,” he replied.

“Just hand over that evidence you think you have, first, if you don't mind.”

“It isn't ready for you yet. I have to see Miss Dawson first.”

The look that Gamadge was used to evoking on the faces of policemen again appeared on the countenance of Lieutenant Durfee. He said, after a moment: “Quite outspoken and candid, you are.”

“Always. Didn't Schenck say so?”

“See here. That girl has something on her mind.”

“No!”

“She's a type that can't lie and not show that she's lying. She could give a better account of herself on Thursday afternoon, all right, and she could account for Payne. She won't do it. You try to make her see where that gets her.”

“Try to make me see what on earth you can do about it.”

“Not much, unless the office decides these people are as unimportant as I'm beginning to think they are.”

“Have you really got three men on this job, here?”

“Yes, and three men are going to stay on it, night and day, till we get a line on the Smith woman.”

“Old school friend of Miss Dawson's, perhaps?”

“Or of Vauregard's.”

“Or of Duncannon's.”

“That character wasn't putting on an act. He's scared out of a year's growth. Scared silly.”

“This house would scare me—scare anybody. I'm glad you have three men in it. Hard to get out of it, but just as hard to get in.”

“You go up and talk to that Dawson girl. Old Vauregard died over an hour before our man saw him. We want some of these people to think up somebody that got a glimpse of them between five and five thirty-five, or five forty. The rest of 'em tell a straight enough story, not that it's good for anything; but Miss Dawson doesn't. Oh, by the way—here's your camera, and you'll find a nice new film in it; just the way it was. A nicer little box I never saw.”

“Who handed the papers that line about Miss Smith getting persecution mania and wiping out the Vauregards?”

“Bedlowe. It's just,” said Durfee, without resentment, “one of the stalls we've been getting. Have to expect 'em, from friends of the family.”

A
S GAMADGE ENTERED
Miss Vauregard's sitting room he was met at the door of it by Sun, the big chow. Sun looked at him inquiringly, reflected, and then waved his tail.

“Oh, good,” said Gamadge. “I'm glad you have this fellow.”

Clara got up from Miss Vauregard's desk. “I had to have him. Poor Aunt Rob didn't think it was so very nice of me, getting him here the day after…But I had to have him.”

“She's hit by this as nobody else can be. How is she?”

“I'm worried about her, she seems so dazed. The doctor wants her to get away, but she wouldn't, even if they'd let her.”

“They'll let her; I'm going to get you both out of here in no time.”

She looked up at him wonderingly. There was a great change, this morning, in Clara Dawson. It was not surprising, it was decent and natural that she should have lost her head-long high spirits, but her spontaneity had gone too. Her eyes still had the shallow, agate-like quality that Gamadge had seen in them the night before; not hardness so much as withdrawal. She did not look frightened, she looked intensely and strangely preoccupied.

“How could you get us out?” she asked.

“Not unaided; you must help a little.”

“I can't help at all.”

“Yes, you can.” He pushed up a chair for her, with its back to the light; and when she had sat down, he pulled another squarely in front of her. “Now,” he said, in a businesslike tone. “Has there been any sickness in the family, lately?”

The unexpectedness of this opening confused her so much that for a moment she was unable to speak. At last, tearing herself out of that quiet, guarded concentration, she said : “I don't think so…no.”

“Nobody been ailing in any way at all during, say, the last week or so? Megrims, aches and pains, hangovers?”

She considered. “Aunt Rob had one of her attacks of rheumatism.”

“Take anything for it?”

“Only what Doctor Lestrange always gives her—aspirin.”

“Does she keep a supply in the house, or did she have to send out and get some?”

“She got a new bottle of fifty tablets from our druggist.”

“Who's he?”

“Thorwald, on Madison Avenue.” Gamadge's sharp questions were drawing her out of her abstraction. She was interested, curious, entirely bewildered by them.

“Durfee thinks it's fine, the way you answer questions without asking any of your own.” As she stared, suddenly on guard, he went on: “Anybody else need medicine?”

“I had a sty in my eye last week. The oculist took it out and gave me a prescription for something in a little tube—you squeeze it under your eyelid, and rub it around.”

“What oculist?”

“Doctor Owen, West Fifty-ninth Street.”

“Any more casualties?”

“We all had something the matter! Dick and Tom Duncannon caught cold last Saturday at the ball game. Tom had a sore throat—he got something to inhale. Dick has nose drops.”

“All from Thorwald?”

“Yes.”

“Your aunt, Mrs. Morton?”

“I don't think—yes; she did. She had a headache the other day. She says—said—nothing did them any good except Pyramidon.”