Somewhere in the House (12 page)

“What was wrong with the books?”

She thought. “The Dante—there was only one volume out of three. Nobody knew what had become of the other volumes; but Grandfather liked auctions, and we thought he had picked up an odd lot of books, just for the fun of seeing what would turn up among them when they were unpacked.” She looked at Gamadge. “Don't people often do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “It's great fun. Sometimes it's a box of letters or papers—you buy them as ‘sight unseen' and look for rarities. You don't as a rule find any.”

“What about this walk in the Cotswolds? ” asked Nordhall.

“Season,” suggested Gamadge. “The titled authoress spent a summer there, presumably.”

“Uncle Gavan said it must have been printed by her relations,” said Mrs. Leeder. “And the coloured plates had been torn out.”

“And the Cribb journal?”

“Mr. Gamadge seemed to think it ought to have been kept.” She looked at Gamadge again. “Didn't you? What
did
you say—about sugar and pickaxes?”

“Sugar and pickaxes?” asked Nordhall.

“That Thug ritual I was telling you about,” said Gamadge.

“Oh, yes. Why was this book used as a box, Mrs. Leeder?”

“There were pages missing or something. Is all this important, Lieutenant Nordhall? But I suppose it must be or you wouldn't ask the questions.”

“I'd like to know who finally decided to convert this book into a box—who read it to see why it needn't be kept as a book; who could have read it.”

“Any of us could have read it, I suppose.”

“Who'd be likely to?”

“I don't know. Anybody reads anything, I suppose, if there's nothing better on hand.”

“Mr. Leeder read the books here in this house?”

Nordhall's questions, coming fast and along lines he had not prepared her for, had had the effect he wanted of hurrying and perplexing her. But at this one she stopped, collected herself, and looked at him coldly. She said: “He never cared much for reading.”

“But he may have sat around here reading—on a rainy day?”

“Yes, he may.”

“I'm interested in this Cribb thing because Mr. Gamadge found it hidden here.”

“Hidden?” She looked astonished.

“Among the other books, as if it
was
a book. Does anybody in the house do much reading in these books down here?”

“I don't think so. They're the kind that everybody is supposed to read and hardly anybody does.”

Gamadge cast a mournful look at a large-paper edition of Balzac in the case nearest him.

“Then this Cribb thing would have been as good as lost for a day or two?” asked Nordhall.

“I don't think anybody would have noticed that it had gone—for a day or two. Then Roberts would have looked around the house for it.”

“It was in the sitting-room yesterday. Nobody knew Mr. Gamadge was coming here, did they?”

“No.” She looked at Gamadge. “Not even Ena. It was through her that Mr. Gamadge came, but she didn't know it. I hope he wasn't too much annoyed with me when he found out that Mr. Malcolm—”

“Mr. Gamadge isn't annoyed. All these people, including Mr. Leeder, knew that Mr. Gamadge was interested in books, knew about old books?”

“Yes, I think so. Lieutenant Nordhall, what is it about this Cribb thing?”

“I'll tell you, and it's something I haven't even told Mr. Gamadge yet.”

Nordhall sat up, drew the cardboard box nearer to him, lifted the cover, and slowly produced from within a few inches of what looked like silk cord. It was yellow, tarnished to old gold; and from its frayed end there protruded two tiny strands of wire.

Mrs. Leeder said blankly: “That's our lamp cord.”

“Yes, and Roberts told me all about it. It was put in when the house was converted to electricity, nearly fifty years ago. The electricians left so much of an extra supply that no flex has ever had to be bought since. This kind couldn't be bought now. The coils of it have always been kept in a drawer of a cupboard in the studio, where other house supplies were kept—picture wire and picture hooks, paper and string, screw eyes and such things. You know that drawer, Mrs. Leeder?”

“Of course.”

“But outsiders wouldn't be likely to know it, would they? People like the Nagles?”

“I shouldn't think so.”

“Mr. Leeder, though—he'd lived in the house two years after you were married. You couldn't call him an outsider.”

“Why should—what do you mean about it?”

“This length was what the Fitch woman was strangled with.”

Mrs. Leeder gave a faint cry, and her hands closed on the arms of her chair.

“I wouldn't show it to you,” said Nordhall, “if it wasn't necessary. I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't have to. But this is the neatest, quickest, quietest, surest method of murder there is, Mrs. Leeder—takes only a few seconds. The victim's breath is choked off right away, choked off for good; after the ends are pulled tight you couldn't get a finger in. Why isn't it a method that's used all the time, then? Well, I don't have to say.”

Mrs. Leeder sat dumbly, her eyes on the end of yellow cord.

“It isn't always used,” continued Nordhall, “because of course the murderer has to get up behind the victim first. That can't always be arranged. And when it is used, the murder is premeditated. Take this case: nobody found a coil of house wire loose, grabbed it up, and killed Fitch with it on the spur of the moment.

“We can draw several conclusions from this wire, then: The murderer knew that there was lots of the stuff, in handy lengths, in the studio cupboard: therefore, the murderer knew this house pretty well; therefore, the Nagles are probably out—and so is anybody else that didn't live here.

“I draw another conclusion: that the murder wasn't committed in the music room, but in the studio. Here's the picture: This Fitch woman found somebody in the music room, somebody who had got hold of the key after you all came back from the funeral that afternoon. Well, imagine your uncle or aunt, or your cousin Seward, or Leeder, caught by the Fitch woman stealing buttons. Very bad position. Unbearable.

“But that person couldn't very well go to the studio and get a length of wire out of the drawer and come back and strangle Fitch with it. Fitch wouldn't have waited in there with her back turned. But if she went into the studio to talk things over with this party, the party could have grabbed a chance.

“Then the little Fitch woman was dragged back into the music room and put on the sofa in the corner and locked in; and the key was returned to wherever Mr. Gavan Clayborn kept it. The door wasn't going to be opened again—would an outsider know that?”

Mrs. Leeder said clearly: “Rowe Leeder had gone. He wouldn't have known anything about it.”

“Perhaps not. He'd only been gone a week or so; perhaps he had contacts in the house still. Anyway, Fitch's handbag was taken. Perhaps there was a receipt in it that told the murderer where to find her luggage. Perhaps the luggage was claimed and taken somewhere else—hotel room, another checking office; never mind that. What I'd like to have you know is that one of the chapters in this Cribb book was about Indian Thugs—they strangled people from behind.”

Mrs. Leeder said almost inaudibly: “Absurd.”

“Is it? Then why was the thing hidden after Mr. Gamadge came here yesterday? The murderer had a pretty good idea that it was safe to leave it around among the family—that
they
hadn't read it. But Gamadge, a book expert, shows up, and it's hidden. If it hadn't been hidden we couldn't do a thing with it at a trial, not a thing, but now it corroborates the plain fact that the murder was committed by an inmate of the house, or somebody who had been one.”

“Only we'd have to find another copy of Sir Arthur Wilson Cribb's
Journals in the Punjaub
,” said Gamadge.

Nordhall looked at him. “Trust you to think of that.”

“Who wouldn't?”

“Can we find one?”

“I dare say one exists in the British Museum, anyhow.”

“Would they let us have a transcription made?”

“I'm sure they would. They're all for eliminating murderers over there.”

Nordhall turned back to Mrs. Leeder. “Well,” he said, “there you have it, as far as I've got it myself. You can see whether or not I'm hoping for a little light on the subject from you, Mrs. Leeder. Anything at all that would help me. Anything,” he went on, while Gamadge regarded him with a certain admiration, “that you can remember about that afternoon twenty years ago.”

She said: “I told it all to Mr. Allsop.”

“Tell it all to me. It's easy to get off on the wrong track in a case of this kind; I wouldn't want to do that—waste time. You wouldn't want me to do it. But what's the logical thing to do, if there isn't any other lead at all? The logical thing is to get after the man or woman in the case with a bad record.”

She said: “I knew it. I knew it.”

“Of course you knew it; everybody knows it. Leeder was involved in another murder case.”

“That's so unfair. So unfair. You oughtn't to bring that into it at all. My husband—Rowe Leeder had an alibi.”

“Yes. Three people said he was somewhere else. They didn't even get as far as swearing it, they just said so. You'd be surprised, Mrs. Leeder, how many known murderers have got off scot free because three people—half a dozen people—swore on the Bible that they were somewhere else.”

“Yes—gangsters.”

“People that didn't want to see justice done.”

“You simply can't involve Rowe in this after that alibi.”

“I'll tell you when we can't use evidence against a man, Mrs. Leeder—when he's been tried for a crime and acquitted. That's when. Perhaps you acquitted him; anyway, you let him come back here ten years later. Why? Because you knew he hadn't been a particular friend of the Sillerman girl's, but only a client? A drug client?”

She laughed. “Drugs! Rowe Leeder!”

“I was just trying to understand why you let him come back. Plenty of women will forgive murder, forgive anything, before they forgive a man for running after another woman—a man they've only been married to for two years.”

If Nordhall's easy way of dealing with pronouns seemed to introduce a note of polygamy into the subject under discussion, it at least conveyed his meaning to Mrs. Leeder. She said: “Women let men come back because they want to see them.”

“Yes,” agreed Nordhall, “but then they usually remarry.”

“Rowe wouldn't have considered it. It would have revived the old scandal, and that's the last thing he wanted. He protected us from it in every way; outsiders didn't know he came here. Roberts understood that if other callers came he must warn Rowe before bringing them up to the sitting-room.”

“And then Leeder would hide?”

“No, certainly not. He would go out the back way, by the alley.”

“It looks to me as if Leeder had good reasons of his own for pushing in again like that. But you say definitely that so far as you know he wasn't here the day of your grandmother's funeral?”

“He wasn't even at the funeral.”

“Had he kept his latchkeys to this house?”

“I don't know. He never used a latchkey after he began to come back.”

Nordhall shuffled papers. “Your grandmother died November 6, 1924. The funeral was on the 10th. Where?”

“St. Thomas's chapel.”

“Who went from this house?”

“All of us. Uncle Gavan and Aunt Cynthia, Seward and his wife, my father and mother and I, Roberts and Aggie Fitch and some of the maids.”

“Mr. Allsop has a note here that you only went because your parents thought it would be best. You would have liked to stay home on account of this horrible scandal about Leeder.”

“Yes. Not because of the scandal, but because he'd left. I wasn't in a state of mind to go anywhere.”

“But your mother thought it would cause more talk if you didn't go. There was a five-year-old child in the house—Garth Clayborn. What happened to him?”

“Mother had taken him down to a day nursery she was interested in and left him there in the charge of the superintendent.”

“Miss Fitch wore a red hat and a red dress to the funeral.”

“Yes. Grandmother didn't approve of mourning, but the Clayborns did. We all wore the usual black, and crêpe veils.”

“Leeder might have been in the back of the chapel somewhere?”

She said wearily: “You don't understand, Lieutenant Nordhall. He had disappeared. He was still in the papers, but the reporters couldn't find him. Nobody could. He wouldn't have come to a funeral.”

“Well, then. You all drove up to Woodlawn, Miss Fitch still with you.”

“She went in a car with Roberts and Grandmother's maid. The maid didn't come back to the house; as you probably know, none of the servants except Roberts came back at all.”

“What time did you get back?”

“About five.”

“Roberts says he was downstairs getting tea, and he brought it up to the sitting-room. Then he was busy getting supper for you all, and never came upstairs again that afternoon except to take the tray down again.”

“Yes. He was very busy.”

“What did you do?”

“I came in with Mother, and I saw Aggie Fitch go past us upstairs. I never saw her again. Mother only came in for a minute, to take off her veil. She took it off in the downstairs hall, and then went back downtown to get Garth. I went up to the sitting-room and waited for her and had tea.”

“Garth's nursery was on the top floor, the suite Mr. Seward Clayborn and his daughter have now?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't see any comings or goings at all?”