Any Shape or Form (13 page)

“Lucky for you she found you in that ditch.”

“Lucky.” He lighted another cigarette. “I married her in Lisbon; still in the hospital, you know, and not a good risk. But she was kind enough to accept the proposition, and that released Cora, who went on ahead by Clipper. And that's all.”

Griggs said: “I understand you're now separated from your wife.”

“Yes, but we're quite friendly. She drops in on us in New York when she's there, but she's fond of travel, and she has relatives in the Middle West.”

“Too bad you had to break it up, after all you went through together, and all she did for you and your sister.”

“Yes, wasn't it? But when she married me I was simply a recumbent object of charity, and when I got on my feet she didn't like me so well. I don't blame her. I'm much more agreeable when I'm ill.”

“Did you break up after you reached this country, Mr. Malcolm?”

“Oh, yes. A year afterwards. We got here in the autumn of nineteen forty, and we separated the following year.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't keep in touch with this lady, Mr. Malcolm?” Griggs' tone was one of dry surprise.

“She keeps in touch with me. She knows where I am, and I never know where she is.”

“Neither of you wants a divorce?”

“Well, really,” said Malcolm, “I don't know why that question should enter into this investigation. But I'll answer it by saying that the matter is entirely in her hands.”

“Young people—I should think you'd want a fresh start.”

Malcolm, his eyes on the tip of his cigarette, might not even have heard this remark. Griggs, after a long and lowering stare at him, turned back to his notes. When he looked up again he spoke casually:

“Exactly what did you do, Mr. Malcolm, after you hung up the dead crows outside that gate?”

Malcolm answered readily: “I went down the road to the lower gate, went through the garden, went through the orchard, and went down to the swimming pool.”

“Didn't you talk to anybody first?”

“A word or two with Mrs. Drummond. She stopped on her way to the greenhouse.”

“What did you talk about?”

Malcolm, looking surprised, said he didn't remember. “Just a passing word.”

“You don't remember that she excused herself from going down to the swimming pool with you, as you'd arranged to do?”

Malcolm studied him. Then he said: “No, it's slipped my mind.”

“Don't remember her excuse? That she'd spoil her shoes?”

“No, I really don't.” He added: “Subsequent events drove that kind of thing from my mind.”

“I'm not trying to catch you out, Mr. Malcolm; Mrs. Drummond was definite about the conversation.”

“I should corroborate if I could. Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not. Did you see her go into the greenhouse?”

“No, I didn't. I started down the road and never looked back.”

“See Mr. Redfield?”

“I dimly remember a glimpse of him stooping among his cabbages.”

“But you didn't get a glimpse of Mr. Drummond when you went through the flower garden?”

“No, but that's just cutting across a corner from one gate to another.”

“Mr. Malcolm, why did you go down to the swimming pool?”

“I like it there.”

“You
didn't go there expecting to find flowers to cut for Mr. Redfield?”

“Never thought of such a thing until I saw those wild asters.”

“It was a party; a party for your stepmother. Yet you go off to the bottom end of the property and stay there by yourself for twenty minutes.”

“Our host absented himself; I probably took his procedure to mean that the party as a party was over, and that we might all do as we pleased.”

Griggs rose. “That's all for now.”

Malcolm, with what seemed like relief, got up and walked to the door. He opened it and went out with no backward glance; Griggs watched the door close behind him. Then he said: “Ames, go get yourself something to eat at that buffet. Ask them to send two trays in here, and then come back yourself.” He came from behind the table as Ames went out, sank down on the sofa beside Gamadge, and muttered: “You could go crazy.”

“So you could,” said Mosson, with sympathy. “So you could.”

“Mrs. Drummond's right; as things stand now we'd have to arrest them both.”

“My personal opinion is,” said Mosson, “that they're as guilty as the Macbeths. Cold as fishes. They used that wife of his to get them out of France, and then they ditched her—when the rhythm of their lives got broken!” He looked at Gamadge. “And there you sat, and never opened your mouth except to give Malcolm a friendly warning.”

“Didn't want him wasting your time with his gibberish,” explained Gamadge.

“He might have gone on and talked himself into trouble, a show-off like that.”

Griggs was frowning. “Of course,” he said, “Drummond and the Malcolm girl would have been an unbeatable combination. She to do the shooting, he to scout for her.”

“Make a noise like a crow if anybody came along?” Mosson smiled. “Any two of them were an unbeatable combination, Griggs; Mrs. Drummond and Malcolm, or Redfield and anybody. But I'm for the Malcolms.”

“It's worse than the old gang wars,” said Griggs, bitterly, “because there's nobody here to tip us off. Except the servants, and Malcolm's right about the Wirtz woman's evidence—all the prosecution would get out of that would be a laugh.”

Gamadge rose. “Try it as a solo,” he said. “You don't often get two murderers in a crowd like this—not in the run of the cards. I'm still interested in Miss Gouch.”

“Like it the hard way, don't you?” Griggs scowled at him.

“I only wondered whether you'd be willing for me to go up and look around the room—Mrs. Malcolm's room. There might be some trace of Gouch's past address or future destination among Mrs. Malcolm's effects. Or have you looked through everything?”

“Not for Gouch. Go ahead,” said Griggs, “and good luck to you. The door's unlocked; the M.E. is through.”

“I'll just have a look before I patronize the buffet and take Abby home.”

“The Drummonds are going to have to stay tonight,” said Griggs. “I might as well hang on to what I've got till after the inquest, anyhow.”

“Much better,” agreed Gamadge.

He went out through the living room, which he found deserted, crossed the hall, and had a discreet look into the dining room. They were all there, helping themselves to food and drink from the long table and the sideboard. Officer Stromer loyally superintended the party, refusing coffee from Alice's tray with a detached and official air.

Gamadge lightly climbed to the second floor.

I
T WAS DIM UPSTAIRS,
but Gamadge remembered the arrangement of the rooms very well. Before the wings had been put on, a broad hall had run from the front to the back of the square house, with two bedchambers and a bath on one side of it, two smaller rooms, a series of cupboards and the stair landing on the other. The attics had accommodated such help as lived in; but Redfield now used them for storage, thinking them too hot in summer for human occupation. Now a cross corridor bisected the main hall and ran north and south, giving access to the rooms in the new wings.

But though these rooms were modern, some of them luxurious, none was as impressive as the old best chamber over the dining room. It had always been the best bedroom in the Redfield house, and it retained its fine solid furniture and its great fourpost curtained bed. Redfield, Gamadge thought, would certainly have put his Aunt Josephine in it. She would have respected it of old.

He was surprised to find its door open; for, dim as the light was, he could see that it was indeed a chamber of death. The shaded lamp on a dresser hardly brought out the subdued colors in the handsome flowered hangings and upholstery, and the bed curtains hung to the carpet, but he made out the sheeted figure of the dead woman.

He went across and looked down on it. The sheet was turned back from the face, which was enclosed in bandages like cerements. A strip crossed the forehead, concealing the bullet hole, and another bound up the chin. Like ancient cerements; there should have been tapers here, and watchers. But the sun worshiper had none.

Or had she none? Gamadge liked to describe himself as a mere bundle of nerves, but if the description had been accurate he might now have shrieked and fainted. Instead, he stood motionless as a figure detached itself from the shadows at the bed's head and looked at him across the body.

After some moments he put out his hand and turned the switch of a lamp on the bedside table beside him. This was no wraith or fetch, but a decidedly human being; a youngish woman, rather tall and buxom, with a white skin and a high color, and yellow hair surmounted by a jaunty hat. She was eying him coolly. At last she spoke in a sharp voice slightly subdued: “Are you Mr. Redfield?”

“No. I'm a guest.”

She gave him no time to ask
his
question, but went on to explain her presence: “I saw people in the dining room when I passed the windows. I didn't care to mix with a party—I was looking for somebody I wanted to talk to privately. So I just came in and upstairs.”

“You just…Excuse me. You're not here professionally, then?”

“Professionally?” She looked surprised, then amused. “Oh—you mean am I from the morticians? No.”

Gamadge said: “I really must get this straight. Stromer was in the dining room, we didn't expect callers. But why didn't you ring?”

“The front door wasn't locked, and there wasn't anybody in the hall. I thought I'd slip upstairs and find somebody's room. Somebody I know.”

“And you walked in on a corpse. It doesn't seem to have upset you!”

“I'm a trained nurse. I don't scream and run at sight of a body. Who's dead?”

Gamadge, studying her, asked: “Can you be Mrs. David Malcolm?”

“Certainly I am.”

“You weren't expected, I think.”

“No.” She smiled. “But Dave and Cora might have expected me.”

“You—er—came along to find out whether they actually did get two thousand more a year apiece from their stepmother?”

“Certainly I did. Dave said they'd been promised it, but it might have been six months before he let me know, and I can use some extra money myself.”

“Of course you'd have a claim on some of it.”

“I certainly would.”

“He didn't know you were in this neighborhood today, I think you said?”

“He knew I'd come up if I found out when they were coming. I found out. Listen: would you mind telling me who this was, and why they're having a party about it? Is it a wake?”

“This is Mrs. Archibald Malcolm.”

Her eyes opened until he saw a ring of whites around the blue, and she looked at him dumbly. Then, almost in a whisper, she asked: “The
stepmother?”

“Yes.”

She gazed down at the peaked face framed in its white dressings, then at him again. “You mean they get all the money now?”

“Presumably.”

“What—what killed the woman? Heart? Stroke?”

“I'll show you.”

While she stood watching him and chewing at her lower lip, he leaned forward and gently turned back the gauze from the yellowish forehead.

When Mrs. David Malcolm saw the bullet hole her mouth fell open. As he replaced the gauze she straightened to stare at him again. He pulled the sheet over the dead face.

“Do you mean”—she got it out slowly—“it's a murder?”

“No doubt about that.”

She drew in her breath, and then seemed to draw on her almost limitless reserves of self-possession: “Well, who did it?”

“There's no evidence.”

“There isn't?”

“No.”

“What the dickens happened, then?”

“Your husband had been shooting crows. He left a loaded rifle where any of six people could have got hold of it. Somebody put gloves on to fire it.”

“When?”

“At about five twenty-six this afternoon.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Have you ever been here before, Mrs. Malcolm?”

“No, I never put foot in the place until a fewer minutes ago.”

“Then you wouldn't quite understand why the murderer wasn't seen. Would you tell me—I don't ask out of idle curiosity, I'm supposed to be more or less investigating the problem—when you arrived in Rivertown, if you came up by train?”

She thought his question over, her eyes on his greenish ones. Suddenly she looked amused. “I get it. They're trying to make out an outsider got in.”

“Well—you did, although the place is now overrun by police.”

“Well. Now isn't it just too bad!”

“Isn't what too bad?”

“Wait till you hear. You'll laugh, it's one on me.”

“Go ahead and tell me the joke.”

“I took the twelve twenty-seven from New York, as soon as a certain party in the Malcolms' apartment house telephoned me that they'd started off for the country. I missed their train, and got the next. That twelve twenty-seven was awful, but the only train I could get. It's Sunday, and it was jammed! I got to Rivertown at three-two, and found there was no bus out this way for an hour. I asked around in the station until they told me where I might hire a bike.”

“A bike! “

“Yes, isn't that the limit? Some trail I left, didn't I?”

“I mean how on earth did you find a bike to hire on a Sunday?”

“I can get anything I want, any day of the week.”

“So I gathered from your husband's description of how you got him and his sister out of France.”