Evidence of Things Seen (11 page)

“You got me. I didn't think wild horses would get you here.” He gazed at Clara. “It's all I can do to sit on the porch.”

“Psychic, are you?”

“I guess your wife isn't.”

“My wife is a sensible woman. This tragedy had nothing to do with us, you know; we're thinking about our summer plans. Any objection to letting us in now? I want to be able to report on the condition of our belongings when I see the sheriff this afternoon.”

The trooper hesitated. At last he said: “The new owners might want to cancel the lease.”

“Who are they?”

“People named Groby. Live in Avebury; but just now they're at the farm, the Radford farm; just down on the highway.”

“Thanks, I'll see them.”

“They might let you off the summer rent.”

“I don't know that I want to be let off. It seems a nice little place, and I haven't any wish to spend what vacation I have looking around for another one. Take us in, will you, officer?”

The trooper, after another long look at him, turned and pushed open the screen door of the living room.

“Perfectly charming,” said Gamadge, standing in the middle of it with his arm by Clara's. “The decorators must be first class.”

“They are,” said the trooper. “Yost and Company, Hartford.” Gamadge inspected the blue bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen and the bathroom. Then he walked alone into the little green bedroom where Miss Radford had died. The blind door in the south wall hung slightly ajar, and he opened it. He looked it over with interest, and then spoke over his shoulder to the trooper, who stood with Clara in the dining room, watching him.

“This door wasn't sealed; it was just locked, and the outside metal parts taken off and painted over. The keyhole was plugged.”

“So I heard,” said the trooper.

“My wife heard the plug fall out before the door opened—the night Miss Radford was killed.”

The trooper stared; Clara stared.

“Did they find it?” asked Gamadge, in a peremptory tone.

“I don't know,” said the trooper.

“The murderer must simply have loosened it first, at some earlier time, and then pushed it through and used a key. What key? I suppose plenty of old keys would fit this old lock?”

The trooper said that the front door keys fitted it. “The latch is loose; all the murderer had to do was to unlock the door and push.” Gamadge looked down at a log which at present did duty as a step, glanced up at the new broken branches of the lilac, and then allowed his gaze to wander to the gnarled old apple trees which obscured his view of the field to the south. He stepped down and walked into the orchard. When he had a clear view of the slopes behind the cottage he stopped. The short line of the ridge stood out against the sky, the hillside beneath was like watered yellow silk across which ran a flaw—the little trail. He noted its abrupt entrance into the woods to right and left, and then turned to look at the back of the cottage. He glanced up at the attic windows, one small and dim, the other neatly curtained; at Clara's back door, just visible through trees on the slope; at the two windows on the ground floor that lighted the two little bedrooms.

Clara, looking as if she had stepped through the looking glass, came around from the ambiguous door and joined him. He smiled at her. “Let's go up to your room by the back way,” he said.

They climbed over slippery dead leaves and among bushes and saplings. The trooper, toiling behind, unlocked the door for them.

Gamadge looked along the vista from Clara's room to the Herons', said it was all even nicer than he had imagined it, and then, whistling gently, went into the sitting room and climbed to the attic. When he came down he was still whistling. He stopped, to say: “All cleared out.”

“I understand there was a lot of Radford stuff up there,” said the trooper. “The sheriff had it carted away.”

“And he carted away the plug from that keyhole. I must meet the sheriff; he seems like a very thorough man, a man I should like.”

The trooper had been studying Clara unobtrusively but with concentration. Now, rather awkwardly, he said: “Mr. Gamadge, that ghost business gets in everybody's way; I mean about how the ghost could commit the murder with Mrs. Gamadge right there in the room. I got a theory that eliminates all that stuff.”

“Good. Let's hear it.”

“The old lady had had a shot of morphia, and I don't know if you know that it excites some people.”

“I have heard that it does.”

“She lays there for a while asleep; after the shock, and getting her leg set, you know; and then she wakes up. She don't know where she is, she thrashes around, gets her head up against the headboard of the bed, and breaks her neck.”

Clara made a faint sound. Gamadge said hurriedly: “Go ahead.”

“She's an old lady, it breaks like that.” He snapped his fingers with the sound of a pistol going off. “Why, my grandmother, she broke a leg once by sitting on it; bones brittle.”

“And then?” Gamadge was all attention.

“Then she slides down on the bed again of her own weight, and Mrs. Gamadge doesn't know the difference.”

“Although she's on the other side of that little night table?”

“She was kind of dozing. It wouldn't take a second.”

Clara said: “I wasn't dozing, and I didn't know Miss Radford's neck was broken.”

“Sure, that's how she was killed.” The trooper looked at her. “Didn't you know? Wouldn't take a second.”

“I wasn't dozing for a second.”

“You said yourself you were out for longer than that,” said the trooper, almost pleadingly. “You dreamed about that woman in the sunbonnet.”

“Well, officer,” said Gamadge cheerfully, “we're obliged to you for the suggestion; I'm sorry my wife can't accept it. I'll drive over to Avebury this afternoon, see the sheriff and get some of the red tape cut if I can. They'll let you know.”

The trooper cleared his throat. “Will you want protection till they catch—that crazy woman?”

“No protection, thanks all the same. All I want now,” said Gamadge, as they filed down the enclosed stairway, “is my car. I think it's still in the barn here.”

The trooper halted. “I don't believe I can let you have that.”

“Can't?” Gamadge also stopped, to look up at him in the gloom. “Why in the world not? You mean that I come up here and can't use my own car? You'd better telephone!”

The trooper telephoned. Presently he came out on the porch to say that Gamadge could have the car if Mr. Hunter would make himself responsible. “For the car,” he added, “and for you and Mrs. Gamadge staying in the county.”

“Call Hunter up,” said Gamadge, laughing.

More telephoning resulted in a solemn assurance by Phineas Hunter that he would produce the Gamadges and their car when and if they were required. Gamadge backed his property out of the yellow barn, and he and Clara drove off in it.

Clara said: “I didn't know her neck was broken, Henry.”

“Oh. Yes, it was. In the process of strangling.”

“Why didn't anybody say so? Why didn't the papers say?”

“Perhaps people thought it wasn't necessary to mention shocking details to you. As for not putting it in the papers, it will be in them after the inquest. The truth is, that poisoning story has leaked out, and the law in these parts has been in mortal horror lest the avenging ghost should leak out too.”

“Why do they care?”

“Well, because they're afraid the city papers will make them out fools. Make a feature story of it, with skeleton hands clawing, you know.”

“But why should Miss Radford being killed that way make the ghost leak out?”

“Well, don't you see,” said Gamadge, rather reluctantly, “it was like a hanging; like an execution. That's what happens when people are hanged. Now shall we change the subject?”

They had turned up the highway, and Gamadge stopped the car at the open gate in front of the Radford farm. No dogs were anywhere in sight, and the Groby car stood just off the roadway, in the drive.

Mrs. Groby, who had probably seen the Gamadges from a window, came out of the house. She looked hot and anxious. She wore an apron over a new-looking black dress, and her hair was done up in a checked scarf. Gamadge met her halfway up the walk.

“Mrs. Groby? I'm Henry Gamadge.”

“Oh, Mr. Gamadge! I didn't know you were here.”

“I'm awfully sorry about your loss,” he said, shaking hands.

“Thanks; but what an upset for you to run into, too! And poor Mrs. Gamadge. I hope she's feeling better?”

“She's all right again. We both hope this isn't going to make any difference in our summer plans, Mrs. Groby.”

Mrs. Groby looked at him, looked past him at Clara, and looked back at him. “You want to stay on at the cottage?” she asked, in a voice of wonder.

“If you have no objection. Of course if you want to try to sell, we'll be glad to meet your wishes.”

“Sell!” Mrs. Groby stood with her prominent eyes fixed incredulously on him. Her yellow curls and her bright make-up were even more artificial in effect than they were meant to be, against the sick pallor of her skin and the shiny black of her mourning. She said: “We couldn't sell. I was afraid you'd want to go, and that there'd be some mix-up about the rent.”

“Not at all. Why should we go? My wife doesn't mind staying there with me, and I hope our friends will turn up, too. I understand that you have inherited Miss Radford's whole estate; let me congratulate you.”

“I don't know if we're to be congratulated.” Mrs. Groby looked suddenly desolate. “My husband and I are half crazy with all the business involved.”

“Settling an estate is always a nuisance. Do you want anything more out of the cottage?”

“Anything more?”

“I believe the sheriff, or somebody, had stuff carted out of the attic.”

“Oh; yes. Some old things.” Mrs. Groby bit her lip.

“Because if you were willing to leave that nice old furniture, I might consider making you an offer for the place. I couldn't pay anything fancy, you know.”

Mrs. Groby rocked on her high heels. After a moment of stupor she asked in a feeble voice: “You want to
buy
?”

“I might consider buying, if this mystery can be cleared up.”

“We'd certainly like to sell; we have this farm on our hands, too; we don't want to live out here, especially with the car situation the way it is.”

“We wouldn't care to buy it with this mystery hanging over it.”

“It's just as much of a mystery to us as it is to you. I don't know what happened. Mr. Gamadge—does Mrs. Gamadge stick to it that she wasn't asleep that night?”

“She sticks to it.”

“Well, then, it was autosuggestion; that's what it was! I'm going to have somebody get up and say so at the inquest.”

“Autosuggestion?”

“I've read about it. They say you can even make spots come out on yourself, and somebody strangled himself to death once.”

“Well; Miss Radford's neck was broken, you know.”

Mrs. Groby clutched at her own neck, and rolled her eyes. “Yes, but perhaps they can even do that.”

“But why should your aunt victimize herself in such a way? How could she have got into such a state of mind?”

“Haven't you—haven't you heard what they're saying?”

“That Miss Radford poisoned Mrs. Hickson, and was being haunted? We couldn't live in a haunted cottage, Mrs. Groby; my wife's nerves wouldn't stand it; and surely you don't like the idea? Murder in the family?”

“No, but I thought you meant you wouldn't buy the cottage if people thought Mrs. Gamadge—thought Mrs. Gamadge didn't know what did go on that night.”

Gamadge looked at her thoughtfully. After a while he said: “I have no anxiety on that score, Mrs. Groby; what I want is to lay the ghost. You know how you can do that, once for all.”

“I can?”

“Of course. By authorizing the sheriff to have Mrs. Hickson's body exhumed.”

Mrs. Groby again tottered, but recovered her balance to ask eagerly: “And if they didn't find any arsenic, then there wouldn't be any reason for Aunt Eva Hickson to haunt the cottage?”

“Exactly.”

Mrs. Groby furiously chewed her lip. “You'd buy the cottage if I could get rid of the ghost idea?”

“Unless you do, we shan't be able to keep servants.”

“I'll talk to Mr. Duckett today, soon as I get back to Avebury.”

“Good.”

They shook hands. Gamadge left her staring into space, and got back into the car. As they drove up the hill towards the Hunters' ridge, he said: “I'm to buy the cottage if Mrs. Hickson's remains contain no arsenic.”

“Mrs. Hickson's…But Henry; can we afford to buy the cottage?”

He glanced at her. “We can afford anything, if it results in getting the Grobys on our side and keeping them there.”

Before lunch Gamadge took the Hunters aside and told them that he proposed to take his family back to the cottage that afternoon. Hunter looked disappointed, and Fanny almost wept. “I was looking forward to the fun we were going to have,” she protested. “And Maggie's a godsend!”

“But Clara's a liability,” said Gamadge. “Hunter realizes it, even if you don't, my dear girl.”

Hunter said: “You needn't consider that, Gamadge.”

“Not consider it? Wait until the inquest! You'd have not only Avebury and Stratfield on your doorstep, you'd have the press of four states and half the cranks in Connecticut. This is a murder.”

“It's cruel of you,” mourned Fanny, “to take Clara back to that awful place! You weren't there that night; Clara will lose her mind. She was so weak on Sunday that her legs wouldn't hold her up!”