Arrow Pointing Nowhere (13 page)

Gamadge shoved his way to the bottom step, and had his foot on it when a blue-clad arm got in his way. He felt as though he had been nudged by a safe.

Craddock's voice reached him. “Is that Mr. Gamadge?”

“Yes.”

The young man's face was drawn into an expression of forced calm, a lock of his black hair straggled down to his eyes. “Would you just come up? Get Mr. Fenway into the house?”

The policeman looked up at him, and at Gamadge; then he removed his arm, and Gamadge ran up the steps.

“If you'll just take him inside,” said Craddock. “He mustn't stay here. Mr. Fenway, won't you go in? The other police and the newspapermen will be coming. You don't want to talk to them?”

The second radio policeman was now faced against the gate in front of the service door; behind him, within
the railing, Gamadge saw a black shape against the snow. Sprawled there, it looked huge. Patches of gleaming wet were spreading across the hard icy crust of white.

“Accident. I want my cousin brought into the house; I can't leave him here,” gasped Fenway.

“We can't move him, Mr. Fenway. I'll stay; I'll explain; I'll attend to it. Please go in. Mr. Gamadge, he needs a spot of brandy.” Craddock let go of Fenway's arm. “I know how to talk to them,” he said urgently,

Gamadge had Fenway by the elbow; he turned him gently, and got him into the house as a police car and another car came silently around the corner from the avenue. He closed the door.

Caroline Fenway was coming down the stairs, trailing brown velvet. When she saw her father she ran the rest of the way, and put her arms around him. “Father, poor Father, I know. Phillips just told me.” She looked at Gamadge. “Cousin Mott fell.”

“I don't know why they won't let him be brought in,” said Fenway. “I want him in his own room. Send for Thurley, Caroline.”

“Phillips is telephoning. Mr. Gamadge, will you take my father into the back drawing room while I get him something—some brandy?” She added, as Gamadge again took Fenway by the elbow, “I don't know—were you passing by?” Her vague look steadied, became questioning.

“Yes. Craddock called me in and asked me to look after Mr. Fenway.” But the master of the house had pulled himself together. He walked stiffly and slowly at Gamadge's side through the dusk of the unlighted drawing room, under the faint sparkle of prisms on the chandelier, past the soft gleam of gold chairs and cabinets. The farther room was bright with lamps, and a fire burned in the grate; a room all gray and pale red, with a grand piano in the bow window and a
glass-framed mirror above the gray marble mantelpiece. The French clock said ten minutes past nine.

Fenway sat in a chair beside the fire. He got out a handkerchief, and pressed it to dry eyes. After a moment he looked at Gamadge. “I can't believe it. We were talking in the library, and the telephone rang. He answered it—not long before nine. He came back and said something about a bridge game tomorrow, and then he went upstairs. Went straight to his room on the top floor. Young Craddock was in his room next door, he heard him call out. He ran through; the window was open and no one there. He looked out—looked down.”

Fenway paused. Gamadge said gently: “Frightful for you. But if he fell—if your cousin fell from the top story he must have died instantly.”

“The officer said so. I explained—how my cousin always kept a window open while he was out of his room, and the door closed; not to make the rest of us cold, you know. Always so careful and so kind. My best friend. He went to close it, and those windows are low. I knew they were dangerous, I should have realized that he wasn't a young man. I wanted him brought into the house—why not, since it was plainly an accident? I wanted him on his own bed.”

“They never do want a dead body moved, Mr. Fenway.”

“It was Craddock that telephoned for the police. He didn't consult me; he called them before he told me what had happened. If I had only known, we could have brought my cousin into the house first.”

“People would have crowded up, Mr. Fenway; you couldn't have handled it. And I'm quite sure that you'll have far less trouble and difficulty as it is; about getting it on the records and into the papers as an accident, you know; from the start.”

Fenway sat with his handkerchief crumpled forgotten in his hand, his eyes wandering. “I respect the police, their job
isn't an easy one; I understand their routine. But they so often leave the question open; suicide, you know. My cousin—it's quite absurd.”

“If you'd moved him, Mr. Fenway, you might have had a lot of explaining to do. Craddock showed great presence of mind, I assure you.”

“He went out there first; then he came and told me, and told Phillips. The radio car was very quick; they were here almost as soon as I had gone out myself.”

Caroline appeared in the doorway that led to the back hall; Phillips came after her, a little decanter and glasses on a tray. He put the tray on a table beside Fenway. “I called Dr. Thurley, sir,” he faltered, “and Officer Stoller's here.”

“Oh—Stoller. Good. Stoller's the night man on our beat, Mr. Gamadge, a very good man. Knows us all. Knew my cousin. Phillips! You must call Bedlow.”

“Yes, Mr. Fenway.” Phillips's voice trembled.

“Bedlow will make arrangements for us. Where is Mr. Craddock?” Fenway began to struggle to his feet. “Why aren't they bringing Mott into the house, Caroline? I won't have him lying there.”

Caroline had poured a little glassful of brandy. She had the glass in one hand; with the other she gently forced her father into his chair again. “Please let them do it as they must, Father. You can't interfere. Can he, Mr. Gamadge?” Her dark eyes were steady.

“Better leave them to manage it in their own way.”

Fenway swallowed his brandy. “Somebody must tell your aunt, Caroline. Who's told your aunt?”

“Phillips. Mrs. Grove will look after her.”

Gamadge, watching her, said: “Have a glass of that, Miss Fenway.” As she made no move to pour herself one, he filled another of the little engraved bells on their delicate stems,
and handed it to her. “And sit down,” he added. “You've had a bad shock too.”

She gave him another steady look over her father's head. “So have you—haven't you?”

He returned the look quietly. “Of course.”

“You're as white as a ghost; you'd better have some brandy yourself.”

“Thanks.”

They had their brandy, and Caroline sat beside her father. He put out his hand and clasped hers. “When I think that if Craddock hadn't been in his room Mott would have lain there—lain there—”

“Don't think of it. It's bad enough as it is, but poor Cousin Mott doesn't know.”

“I'm very glad you happened to be passing, Mr. Gamadge. You understand these things—police procedure. If you'll stay and help us—”

“I'll be glad to do anything I can, Mr. Fenway.”

“Somebody who knows police procedure, and happens to pass by. How lucky for us,” murmured Caroline.

“I don't live so very far away, you know, and I have friends in this neighborhood.”

They exchanged a look, unreadable on both sides. A large man appeared in the doorway; he was in uniform, and carried a nightstick; behind him loomed a still larger and taller man, in plain clothes. He was light-haired, blue-eyed and square-faced. Another policeman in uniform, notebook in hand, brought up the rear.

“Stoller!” Fenway did rise this time.

“Yes, sir, and I was sorry I wasn't on the street when it happened.” The first policeman put up a hand in salute. “It's a sad thing for you and Miss Fenway. Poor Mr. Mott, it was only last week I was talking to him in front of the house. I've been telling the lieutenant what a nice man
he was. This is Lieutenant Nordhall, sir; he wants to talk to you.”

Lieutenant Nordhall said: “If it's convenient.”

“Quite convenient. This is my daughter, and this is Mr. Gamadge, a friend who happened to be passing just after the accident occurred.”

Nordhall, polite and grave, acknowledged these introductions: He then told Stoller that Stoller had better go back to his beat. Stoller withdrew, and the other uniformed man opened his notebook and screwed up his patent pencil.

“Officer Stoller,” said Nordhall, “gave me some information, general information, useful. Mr. Craddock has been a lot of help; he's getting rid of the newspapermen for you. I've talked to your man Phillips, and I've seen the other servants. If I can have a few words with the family, that'll be all. Won't you take it easy, sir? Sit down?”

“My cousin's body, Lieutenant—”

“Well.” Nordhall glanced at Caroline's calm face, and went on: “It's very badly injured, struck the railings. The people you wanted—Bedlow's—just came. Better let them take it, sir; bring it back tomorrow, next day.”

“Yes. Very well.” Fenway closed his eyes, and sat blindly down. Nordhall, looking polite sympathy, went on:

“Get all this over in no time. I've been over the scene of the tragedy, and I'm going to write it off as an accident.”

“Anything else is out of the question, Lieutenant, of course.”

“Looks so. Deceased went up to his room to close the window; high window, with a very low sill.”

“Most dangerous, but he wouldn't have a guard.”

“He put his arms up, the slots in the frame must have been about level with his chin; put his fingers in the slots, and his fingers slipped; for once he was careless. Pitched forward and out; the sill wouldn't reach his knees.”

“If I had only realized that he was an old man! I should have insisted—but that's useless now.”

“What I'm after—for the record—is the state of mind of the deceased prior to death. You understand.”

“Of course. He was with me in the library, just across the hall; he was perfectly cheerful, I've never seen him depressed in my life. He had what is known as a happy disposition, Lieutenant. Some people called him happy-go-lucky, but that doesn't do him justice. He had had reverses in early life, but he was incapable of brooding; and for many years he has had no personal anxieties at all.”

“Answered a telephone call, Mr. Craddock says.”

“Oh—yes. Downstairs here.”

“Telephone rang in the upstairs front room, Mr. Craddock answered. Somebody wanted to get up a bridge game.”

“My cousin mentioned it when he came back to the library. He was looking forward to the game, tomorrow night I think it was to be.”

“And then he went up to his room?”

“After a minute or so. We were going to play bridge ourselves—Craddock and I and my sister-in-law and her friend Mrs. Grove, who lives with us. My cousin Mott was anxious to finish some work he was doing on our income taxes. He did all that kind of thing for my daughter and me, and a great deal of it for my sister-in-law.”

Nordhall looked at Caroline. “You saw the deceased after dinner, Miss Fenway?”

“Yes; we all had coffee upstairs, and then Cousin Mott came down to the library with my father. He was just as he always was. When they left the sitting room, I went into my own room and closed the door; I had some letters to write. The next thing I knew was when Phillips knocked at my door and said that there had been an accident, and that Cousin Mott had fallen out of his window. I came down-
stairs, and met my father and Mr. Gamadge coming into the house.”

“Mrs. Fenway and Mrs. Grove and young Mr. Fenway—” Nordhall's tone was colorless—“stayed in the sitting room. Craddock left them there after he answered the telephone—or rather after he picked up the receiver and found that Mr. Mott Fenway was answering his own call. Craddock went up to his own room to wash his hands for the bridge game; he'd been getting them dusty mending some puzzle or other for Mr. Alden Fenway. He heard a shout or a cry, very much muffled, from Mr. Mott Fenway's room; must have been a loud cry the deceased gave, because Craddock heard it through two closed doors—the ones that lead from his room and Mr. Mott Fenway's room to that passage and bath. He got through, and found an empty room and a wide-open window. Says he knew what had happened, and looked out. Then he rushed downstairs and out the front door. Found life extinct, ran in and telephoned the precinct. He did the only thing, Mr. Fenway; by the time he got outdoors again with you, people were gathering. You and he and that old butler of yours could never have managed alone; but let me say I understand you wanting to move the body. Of course you wouldn't want it lying out there practically in the street. Mr. Craddock did the right thing, though.”

“I realize it now. I must tell him—thank him. I hope I didn't show anger at the time.”

“He understands all that. He tells me that I can't expect evidence from Mr. Alden Fenway…”

“No. No.”

“And I don't like to disturb the ladies upstairs; I think one of 'em's an invalid?”