Evidence of Things Seen (12 page)

“If she doesn't go back now, her legs may be weak all her life. She may dream periodically of women in sunbonnets, unless I can clear the whole thing away. And what I propose to do,” said Gamadge, his eyes on the floor and his hands hanging between his knees, “is to clear it away before she can get up on that witness stand and swear that the woman never came into the bedroom, and that she herself never lost consciousness. If I'm to do that, or even try to do it, I must keep my own hours. I shouldn't be even tolerable as a guest.”

Hunter said: “Clara fainted, of course. There's no way out of it. Why the devil can't one keep one's head in a crisis? If I'd kept mine I should have looked at my own watch. I didn't, until Clara asked the time; it was then thirteen minutes to one.”

“So Clara tells me.”

“And Fanny heard me say so, and Maggie heard me, and I had Duckett on the wire five minutes later. Less. Clara simply must have read the time wrong when she looked at her own watch, or dreamed that she looked at it. I've dreamed—why, I've dreamed that I woke up and looked at my watch, I don't know how often.”

“So have I; but we knew afterwards that we did dream it.”

“I was half in a dream myself when I heard Clara screaming, and rolled off that bed and out through the living room. And then I looked over Clara's head and saw that door yawning open on space, and saw the poor woman's head on the pillow; I knew her neck was broken before I ever went up to the bed. Of course Clara had seen it too, and her mind went blank; she simply doesn't remember.”

“I won't advise her to change her story; if she thinks it's the truth, it will sound like truth on the witness stand; at least, it will sound as if she thought it was true.”

“That's a counsel of perfection, but I dare say you're right. Let her tell it as she remembers it, and let them make what they can of it. Clara admits to about half a minute of semi-oblivion, doesn't she?”

“Yes.”

“That will have to be enough for them, and I'm not sure that it isn't enough; it wouldn't take longer for a pair of strong hands to break an old woman's neck.” Fanny moaned, and Hunter looked at her in self-reproach. “Forgive me, my child.”

Gamadge said: “Clara won't admit that the woman could have come into the room at all, much less come up to the bed and killed her patient.”

“Oh, Henry,” wailed Fanny Hunter, “what are you going to
do
?”

Gamadge lifted his head to smile at her. “Go back to the cottage.”

“I couldn't, I never could! I mean, to sleep there!”

Hunter said: “My dear, whatever there was, there was no ghost.”

“I'm happy to hear you say so,” said Gamadge, still faintly smiling. “I am not sure that a certain member of the state police, and our friend Mrs. Groby, would agree with you.”

“Metaphysic, I hope,” replied Hunter, “still calls for aid on Sense.”

“With you they wouldn't be likely to turn giddy, rave and die.”

Refreshed slightly by this excursion into Pope, Gamadge and Hunter looked smug. Mrs. Hunter said: “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

“About dunces,” said Hunter, laughing.

“I only hope that the sheriff of Avebury isn't a dunce; somehow, he doesn't sound like one.” Gamadge rose. “Fanny, may I telephone?”

“Of course.”

Gamadge made two appointments for the afternoon, and one for the next day. When he came back to the study Fanny was at the hall door. She joined them, to remark that that was Gil Craye.

“He wouldn't come in. He just wanted to leave me some songs to go over. He simply can't believe, Henry, that you're taking Clara back to the cottage!”

“Nobody can believe it.”

G
AMADGE TOOK HIS
car soon after lunch and drove away from the Hunters' farm. Mountain Ridge Road circled the top of the mountain in a rough arc, meeting the route from Avebury at a point midway between that town and a village called Stormer. He drove the four miles to the Radford farm without passing more than two small dwellings and an icehouse; dense woodland was on his left, rolling meadows on his right.

He passed the culvert above the stream, the Radford farm, the branch to the cottage, and Mrs. Simms' place; after that he saw no more houses for three miles, but then came the scattered fringes of Avebury township. He stopped the car when he saw the top of a funerary monument showing to the left above a knoll.

Getting out, he walked up a grass-grown track to the top of the knoll, and looked down at a small old graveyard. A strip of pasture separated it from the woods beyond, and the track he had followed continued past the cemetery, across the field, and up to these woods; no doubt it became the trail that could be seen on the slope behind the cottage.

An ornamental iron fence enclosed the burying ground; he went down and through an arched gateway into a half-acre of old tombstones and graves. It was well cared for, although growth of moss and lichen had been allowed to blacken the half-obliterated names of early settlers. He saw a minatory
Pause, Stranger!
, and an uncompromising…
meet thy maker
, before he arrived at milder epitaphs on more modern erections of marble or granite. There was a handsome obelisk, dominating a large enclosed plot, which bore the name in block letters; but the plot contained few graves; the Radfords had been a small or a scattered clan.

In front of the obelisk two graves, side by side, contained the mortal remains of Ephraim (1841–1922) and his wife Evelina. To the right of Evelina lay Eva Radford Hickson, 1878–1941,
At Peace
. To the left of Ephraim the short grass had been marked off into an oblong with pegs and cord; here Alvira would rest.

There was a grave in a corner with a small stone which commemorated one Rhoda Radford, with a date so weather-worn that Gamadge could only suppose Rhoda to have been Ephraim's mother or aunt; and in the opposite corner, under a mountain ash tree, lay John Radford, only son of Ephraim and Evelina, and his wife May, Mrs. Groby's parents; and there was plenty of room for her, and for Groby too.

Gamadge sat on top of John's plain headstone, while grasshoppers whined about him and the sun beat on his head through the branches of the mountain ash. Eva Hickson had a handsomer monument, a fine granite slab; Gamadge wondered whether the Grobys would put up anything so expensive to Alvira.

He thought it not unbecoming to smoke a cigarette in these precincts. Then he returned to his car, and drove to a large filling station and garage on the outskirts of Avebury. It had once been a thriving concern, with a refreshment counter and all modern conveniences for travelers; but it had lately been permitted to run down. Its counters were bare, its plate glass dim, and there seemed to be only one man on the premises, a sour and sharp-faced youth.

Gamadge asked him to inflate a rear tire. Sitting on a bench while the operation was carried out, he opened a conversation:

“Boss around?”

“No, he ain't.”

“Is he up at Radford's, do you know? I see his wife came into that property.”

“He ain't there now; he's gone the other way—to trade back a new car—or try to.” The young man's skeptical features showed amusement of the cynic's own special kind.

“Quite some trouble up there, I understand,” continued Gamadge. “Miss Radford was killed in a cottage she owned, wasn't she?”

“Summer folks got to brawling, and she got in the way.”

“Oh. Is that the story?”

“There's plenty of stories; that's Groby's.”

Gamadge sat in silence until the tire was ready. Then, after paying the garageman, he said casually: “You might give Mr. Groby a message from me when he gets back. My name's Gamadge. Tell him to call up his wife before he spreads that story of his about Miss Radford's death; he may want to alter it.”

He left the young man looking less skeptical now, and more human in his startled interest. Then he drove into town, inquired his way to Dr. Knapp's, and was quickly directed to a frame house on a pleasant street. He rang at the office door, and was admitted by Knapp himself. A minute later they were contemplating each other across the desk in Knapp's office-study. Knapp looked worried and concerned.

“It's a mean thing to happen to you, Mr. Gamadge,” said the doctor. “Not much of a home-coming. But I'm glad you got here as soon as you did; a nicer young lady than your wife I never met.”

“She hasn't made it easy for her friends to do much for her, Doctor; I realize that.”

“I'd be glad to do anything I conscientiously could. I can say people faint and don't know they fainted, and I can say it doesn't take more than a second or two for a strong-fingered person to break an old woman's neck; not if they know how, and this person knew how. Hand at the base of the skull, the other hand forcing the chin back. Regular expert.”

“So I understand.”

“I got out to the cottage at a quarter to two, and I gave it as my best opinion then and later that Alvira had been dead about an hour—about an hour,” repeated Knapp. “It's only an opinion. Nothing to go by; no stomach content. When she had her accident Alvira hadn't eaten supper, and I only let them give her liquids afterwards, on account of the shock she had. The autopsy won't place the time of death.”

Gamadge, looking at him with something like affection, remarked that it would do no good for Dr. Knapp to stretch the time, kind as it was of him to suggest doing so. “My wife says that when she began her watch Alvira Radford was breathing audibly.”

“I thought perhaps the woman might have got in while Mrs. Hunter was doing her spell; Mrs. Hunter didn't sit in the bedroom, you know. Somebody might have managed it sometime between eleven and twelve.”

“We won't ask you to get up and say all that on oath, Doctor.”

“I'd be willing—it's only a medical opinion either way. The lampshade was tilted, and Mrs. Gamadge says she never once looked at the bed after she saw that door open. Darnedest story I ever listened to.”

“It is. Would you be willing to tell me something about Mrs. Hickson's death, Doctor?”

Knapp started violently. “Eva Hickson's, did you say?”

“Yes. You looked after her, didn't you? Did you think she was going to die so soon?”

Knapp suddenly looked angry. “Nothing in that story, not a thing; it's these darned gabbling country neighbors. There never was any question about Eva Hickson's death; she could have died of several natural causes, but I diagnosed collapse after flu, intestinal flu. It may have been gastroenteritis. I wasn't called in till she was pretty low with it, saw her twice in the week before she went. She didn't like doctors; nearly died of blood poisoning one summer because she wouldn't have an infected hand seen to. Paid her bills, you know, but hated to run up.”

“You weren't surprised, then, when Hawley got hold of you that Sunday afternoon and told you she was dead?”

“Surprised? Woman of over sixty, in her weakened condition and with her symptoms? No. No doctor would have been surprised. Naturally I gave the certificate. As for the gossip afterwards, you'd be surprised at the ignorance of these country people even now; they don't know a thing about disease, and they like excitement. If a person dies, the doctor gave ‘em the wrong medicine, or the relatives neglected ‘em. If the patient had money, she—or he—was murdered for it. I heard the talk, but I knew it would die down.”

“Had Miss Radford heard it, do you know?”

“If she had, she didn't mention it to me.”

“I can take it, then, that you never at any time suspected arsenic?”

Knapp uncrossed his short legs, recrossed them, and threw himself pettishly about in his chair. “When the talk began, of course I went over the case in my mind. Eva Hickson complained of her legs, but she always complained of ‘em; she had arthritis. Perhaps I didn't listen very hard when she talked about her legs; no doctor listens very hard to old symptoms of that kind when he's trying to cure something else.”

“Did Alvira ever tell you why she put up that fence of hers, and bought those Baskerville hounds?”

“I haven't seen her to speak to since Eva Hickson's death; I mean I hadn't, till Saturday night.”

“Well, Doctor.” Gamadge rose and held out his hand. “I'm definitely obliged to you for your interest, and for what you were willing to do for us.”

“Never met a nicer girl than your wife.”

“I'm afraid she'll have a bad time of it at the inquest unless they can make sense of her testimony. I'm working on it. I hope, by the way, Doctor, that you'll consider yourself our family physician while we're at the cottage.”

Knapp stood beside his desk, staring at Gamadge. He repeated in a disbelieving tone: “At the cottage?”

“Yes. We're moving in this afternoon, I hope.”

“Mrs. Gamadge had a shock—a bad shock there. Is it wise?”

“She says she's willing to go back.”

Knapp continued to stare. Gamadge said, smiling, “Do you know something, Doctor? I believe you think there may have been arsenic in Mrs. Hickson's medicine after all.”

Knapp said nothing.

“And that there may have been a ghost at the cottage on Saturday night.”

“Pshah.”

But he said no more; he shook hands silently, and silently accompanied Gamadge to the side door.

Gamadge found Avebury Town Hall with no difficulty, and climbed the stairs to Duckett's office on the stroke of three. Duckett and young Mr. Ledwell of Stratfield were also on time for the appointment; Duckett, an imperturbable man of fifty-odd with a bald head and a sorrel moustache, shook hands with Gamadge and then resumed his swivel chair. He did not seem anxious to direct proceedings or to talk at all, but tilted the chair back and continued to chew. His manner was detached.