Any Shape or Form (20 page)

“And thou must die”
he informed it. He felt sad and sententious.

Drummond came in, strolling as if on a tour of casual inspection. He had acquired his pipe, and was smoking it. He wandered over to look at the rose, said nothing to Gamadge, and wandered on.

Johnny Redfield came in, his hand under Blanche Drummond's arm. She had a waxy look, but was turned out with all her accustomed finish.

Redfield said: “Not a bad idea of yours, Gamadge, a conference. Gives us an airing, anyway.”

Blanche looked at Gamadge. “Henry, did you telephone to Abigail as I asked you?”

“Not yet, Blanche. Plenty of time.”

“No reason on earth you shouldn't stay with me.” Redfield looked at Drummond's back, and lowered his voice. “No reason at all. No reason you shouldn't go home, if it comes to that. Gamadge, this poor girl is quite mistaken about everything. Everything.”

Blanche said: “Why, here's a rose! Johnny, what's its name? Ours are still coming out, too.”

“I never can tell those pink ones apart,” said Redfield. “Even George couldn't teach me.”

The Malcolms appeared, Malcolm's arm through his sister's, his hand lightly covering hers.

He stood looking at Gamadge, and his expression was that of one who finds a problem insoluble. Then he said, a faint contempt in his voice: “Cora and I are being—what's the phrase?—‘pushed around,' Mr. Gamadge. Otherwise we shouldn't have joined your conference.”

“I thought you would have guessed—I thought all of you would have guessed that it's not a conference.”

“Not?”

“No. We're here for another purpose, and one so private that I have Griggs's word for it we're not to be listened in on. But for our own comfort let's make sure that we shan't be.” Gamadge surveyed the enclosure. “There is a bench in every corner, and the outside world can be seen by turning and parting the vines. Blanche, will you sit there—to the left of the entrance?”

She looked at him, vaguely, and then walked over to the rustic seat and sank down on it.

“Redfield, will you sit there on my left? And Drummond on my right? And I'll stand here beside Apollo, where I can see you all.”

Redfield went slowly to his appointed place; his puzzled eyes fixed on Gamadge as if imploringly. Drummond stood where he was.

“To keep a lookout, Walter,” said Gamadge politely. “Would you mind very much?”

Drummond backed into the corner; but he did not sit down.

“And you and your sister, Mr. Malcolm; may I ask you to occupy the remaining point of the compass?”

Cora put her left hand on her brother's left, turned him, and gently urged him over to the bench indicated. It was just beyond the pile of turfs, and placed like the others, across the corner. She sat down; Malcolm slowly settled himself at her feet.

“Thank you,” said Gamadge. “Now for our purpose in being here. Surely you know that it's to look for Miss Malcolm's gold pin?”

Redfield said hoarsely: “Gamadge—for heaven's sake…”

“Surely”—Gamadge turned his head to look at him—“it will be best for us to find it before the police do? Of course they never may; they don't know that there is such a thing as that gold heart, much less that it was lost. Nobody's mentioned its loss to them; nobody's spoken of it at all since Blanche Drummond spoke of it just outside this place yesterday afternoon. Called our attention to the fact that Miss Malcolm had lost it—you remember?”

He turned his eyes to Drummond, then to the Malcolms, then to Blanche. Redfield said: “Gamadge, I don't know what you're talking about. I had no idea it was lost.”

“You didn't hear Blanche speak of it; that's quite true, Johnny,” said Gamadge. “You came through the gate just afterwards. But Miss Malcolm was facing the rose garden—she had been about to go in when I stopped her. She was therefore facing you, or nearly so, as you came towards us; you, of all people would notice that the pin had gone from her lapel. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't miss. It was no ordinary pin, you know; it was large, it was a curio, it was very noticeable; and it was a gift from the murdered woman.”

“The murder was sprung on us just afterwards. It would drive a trifle of that kind from our heads!”

“Would it? But we'll return to that question. I'll go back now to my remark that the police haven't found it; not the proper word, since they don't know it exists; they haven't looked for it. What I should have said was that they didn't see it when they were going over that corner where the dislodged turf is, and where the rifle and the gloves were. I didn't see it either, when I looked the spot over myself—just after the crime. But I
might
have missed it; they wouldn't. It isn't there.

“Where is it, then? Somewhere, I suppose, on Miss Malcolm's route across the garden from the west side to that corner. I propose to search for it along that route.”

“But Gamadge—” Johnny almost shouted it, and then, with a glance at the green wall behind him, lowered his voice. “Why do you imagine it
is
here? What earthly reason—”

Gamadge said: “Perhaps it would be best to tell you now. We return to your first objection—that the loss of the pin would have been driven from your heads by my announcement that there had been a murder.

“I say it wouldn't. I say it would have been fixed in your minds after that announcement, by the very fact that there had been a murder. I, of course, knowing beforehand about the murder, noticed everything. I saw that the pin was gone from Miss Malcolm's coat, and I prevented her from entering this place. I heard Blanche call attention to the loss of the pin.

“I noted the following facts:

“You never mentioned the lost pin at all, then or later—although it was the dead woman's gift to Miss Malcolm, a ‘token'; although you are interested in everything, even trifles, that affects the happiness of your guests. Happiness? Anything that affects them at all affects you as a host. Normally, I swear that you would have kept after the police and the deputy and the rest of them until that pin had been looked for with torches and floodlights.

“You never spoke of it even to me.

“Blanche Drummond called our attention to the loss, and then she never spoke of it again.

“Drummond never mentioned it either; you'd think he would have said whether Miss Malcolm was wearing it when she was with him in the lower garden. I have ventured to guess that he hasn't mentioned it precisely because she did have it on when she left him there.”

Drummond stood, pipe in hand, gazing at nothing.

“Miss Malcolm hasn't referred to it,” continued Gamadge. “I gave her a lead last night, but she didn't follow it. Malcolm”—he met the young man's stony look—“hasn't named it.

“My cousin Abigail may I think be excepted from this roster; she came late upon the scene yesterday afternoon, Miss Malcolm wasn't facing in her direction by that time, and she didn't hear Blanche Drummond's announcement. But perhaps even she can't be excepted. However: to my conclusion—subject, of course, to disproof: though the loss of the pin wasn't referred to again, it hadn't been forgotten. Nobody dared mention it.

“Why not? I thought there could be only one answer to that question: all but one of you thought it was here.

“And that one knew it was here.”

Crickets sang in the warm, bright, sheltered place. There was no other sound until Blanche Drummond cried: “Why, Henry, what do you mean?”

“I'll tell you how I bolstered up the theory. But even before I looked for evidence to bolster it—negative evidence—I made sure that if the pin were here it shouldn't be removed; if it were not, that it shouldn't be planted. The rose garden was under my eye almost from the time the murderer left it until the state policeman came. Nobody had entered, I didn't enter it again. I didn't want anybody, certainly not the police, to see me looking about in here; I had no wish to give them ideas that there was something to be looked for.

“One of you might have come back, and I didn't want any of
you
to see me looking, either.”

Drummond asked roughly: “Why the devil not?”

“Well, Walter, perhaps someone wanted it found. So that they could tell the police, explaining that they hadn't found it themselves.”

Blanche said: “But
Henry
…!”

“I needed certain evidence,” continued Gamadge, “that my theories were correct. As soon as the state policeman came I acted. I followed Miss Malcolm's footsteps along the way she said she had come from the lower garden; but I also followed the route she might have taken from the tool house down here. I tried to behave as if I were simply strolling. The light wasn't too good, but as I keep reminding you, the pin is large and bright. It would show up against grass, earth, or dead leaves.

“I went up from the west side of this enclosure to the tool house; I went into the tool house and looked into the croquet box—Miss Malcolm had bent over it when she took out her mallet. I walked through into the woods, and down to the Loop. I went into the flower garden, searched behind the cosmos, came back the other way. I retraced my steps to the tool house.

“No pin. Though the search was far from conclusive, I was pretty well convinced that only two theories were tenable; she had dropped it in the rose garden, or somebody else had picked it up outside.

“But why should that person not have said so?”

There was another silence.

“I think I'm justified in looking for it here,” continued Gamadge. “Before I do so, however, I should like to explain why I don't think Miss Malcolm is the one who dropped it here.”

Drummond moved a few steps backward, looked behind him at the rustic bench, and sat slowly down on it. Cora Malcolm's face did not change; her brother's seemed actually to dissolve from a masklike rigidity into the warmth and texture of humanity.

“Miss Malcolm,” said Gamadge, “did try to enter this place yesterday when she came down from the tool house. But she had expressed a wish to see the Apollo; and if she had wanted to look for the pin here, she would have come through the upper side of the place, through the vines. We shouldn't have seen or heard her.

“And although Blanche described her as looking terrified, I thought she looked not terrified but depressed.”

He straightened, took his hands out of his pockets, and went on more briskly: “Well: shall I, as the disinterested observer, hunt for this object? You must all watch me; but I promise you I shan't palm it!”

Redfield muttered: “
I
should.”

“I believe you would, Johnny.”

Gamadge walked over to the Malcolm's corner. From there he came back across the garden, following the turfed paths, bending to brush aside uncut grass from the edges of the rose beds. It was not until he had arrived at a bed nearly halfway along the west trellis, and moved a clump of encroaching chickweed, that he stood up with the gold heart glittering in his fingers.

“Not hard to find,” he said, “if you looked.”

Blanche said: “I knew it would be here! I knew it would be here! Right where she would have come in from the tool house! And here it is!”

“Yes. Here it is, Blanche. Now let me discourse upon it a little,” said Gamadge, walking back to his station beside the Apollo. “For of course, (I quite agree with you, Blanche), I required more than these flimsy conjectures to persuade me that Miss Malcolm wasn't a criminal. Miss Malcolm has been calm; but I've known murderers who were calmer. No: if she wasn't at any time my favorite suspect, it was because of the pin itself. It has argued her case for her, and for me.

“I have a way of letting things speak for themselves. I have followed this course when the thing was a book; when the thing was a picture. I followed it when—but doesn't any of you really know what this thing is?”

The sunlight glittered on the gold heart. Redfield said: “We all know what it is.”

“None of you does. I can see that in your faces. But I knew what it was the moment I had it in my hand at the cocktail party yesterday, and this morning—to be quite certain—I called up a friend in the antique jewelry business and got his verdict. I'd never seen one like it, but I've seen another piece of jewelry with—let me say—the same meaning. It's a rebus.”

Gamadge looked about him at blank faces.

“When Miss Malcolm received it,” he went on, “she thought it a paltry gift. Perhaps the giver meant it to be one. But as a matter of fact, it's rather rare. Five little colored stones, and a diamond in the middle; an odd and rather awkward arrangement of jewels; three different-colored red ones, two of them in a row. Miss Malcolm didn't call them off in the proper order, and she thought the paler ruby was a tourmaline. But say it like this: Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, Diamond. What does that spell? Has none of you heard of a Regard
ring
?”

Drummond gave an exclamation. “My mother had one—it was her grandmother's.” He added: “I liked to look at it when I was a kid—read off the row of stones. But I hardly noticed the thing yesterday, and the stones aren't in a row, and the diamond's in the middle.”

“That makes it harder,” agreed Gamadge. “I nearly missed it myself. But my grand-aunt used to let
me
read off
Regard
on her ring, and I did happen to notice that the right stones were all on this pin. I'd never seen a Regard pin before, and I was amused. Such a mass of sentiment it is, three times as sentimental as a ring. There's the heart shape to begin with, and then the locket with the hair. When it was presented to Miss Malcolm yesterday, and the giver called it a ‘token,' I nearly added: ‘A token of regard.'”

“Well,” asked Drummond, “and why didn't you?”