Evidence of Things Seen (14 page)

“On formal terms, were you?”

“Kind of. They let me give them their supper and wash ‘em up sometimes. With Alvira lookin' on.”

“Mrs. Groby here?”

“No, she goes home by sunset. Certainly gettin' the old house turned inside out.”

“That's what heirs are for.”

At the cottage Eli the Indian was waiting on the porch. He said that he had taken over after the state trooper left, just to see that everything was in good shape when the Gamadges came. He had a bunch of flowers for Clara, picked in his own garden; his shack was two miles away in the heart of the reservation.

Clara pored lovingly over the sweet williams, marigolds and mourning bride. “Eli, it was nice of you.”

Eli, grave and calm, said that he had an idea Mrs. Gamadge liked flowers. Gamadge offered him a cigarette, and they sat smoking while Clara got out vases and her clipping scissors.

“Are you inclined to the ghost theory, Eli?” inquired Gamadge. “Do you think my wife saw a ghost on Saturday night?”

Eli said: “Tell you what, Mr. Gamadge; when I give up being a ward of the government so I could vote, I must have given up ghosts too. I don't seem to think much of ‘em now, if I ever did.”

“I don't believe she saw a ghost, either.”

“There weren't no tracks around the place, nothing the law and the newspaper fellers and the sightseers couldn't have left. The grass and the leaves—you don't get footprints on ‘em. You want me to help fix anything before I go?”

Gamadge produced a brown paper package. When opened it disclosed a new brass bolt, four screws, and a screwdriver. “I thought I'd just put this on the back door, and take down the bed.”

He and Eli screwed the bolt on, took the bed down, and carried bed and bedding up to the empty attic. Then, since Eli said that they might as well finish the chore, they moved out the rest of the furniture—dresser, night table and chairs. It was light stuff, and they got it up into the attic too. Clara, much pleased, hung all the family raincoats and outer wraps in the curtained recess across a corner of the little room, and said that now they had a decent entry, and how cool it would make the house.

“We'll have to get a screen for the door,” said Gamadge.

Eli remarked that he believed he had seen one in the barn; and indeed there proved to be one which had undoubtedly belonged in that entrance. They screwed it up with hardware which Eli found at the bottom of one of his leather pockets.

“You'll have to do a better job on it sometime,” he said, “but it'll keep out the bugs for now.”

Gamadge forced a bill on him; he went off, smiling his antique smile.

Gamadge had his first dip in the pool under the waterfall, and then Clara called him to supper. Afterwards they sat out on the porch drinking their coffee.

“You're a sport not to do me out of this,” he said. “I know it was tough for you to come back.”

“I haven't minded it for one single minute, and since you made that bedroom disappear the cottage is like new. It's just
gone
,” said Clara. “It's as though nothing ever happened in it; it isn't a room, even, any more.”

“Maggie will like our being able to stack our wet bathing things and umbrellas there. This weather won't hold forever, I suppose.”

“We can be cozy when it rains.”

“Can't we, though?” He added: “Hello, more company.”

The state trooper rode up on his motorcycle. He said, balanced at the foot of the path, “You really got here.”

“All settled, too. Come up and have some coffee,” said Gamadge. “And you can lay a bet, too; if you want to lose it.”

“Bet?” The trooper, one eye on Clara, drank coffee standing.

“That you can't find the little green bedroom.”

“The—the murder room?”

“It's vanished. There's something wrong with this cottage, officer.”

The trooper squinted at him, set his cup down, and went unceremoniously into the house. When he came out he was smiling. “Certainly makes a difference.”

“We think so.”

“I kind of had Mrs. Gamadge on my mind, but I guess she'll be all right with the boyfriend.”

Clara, wincing, said that she would.

“And he'll persuade you you went off into a doze that night.”

“I'm tackling the problem from a different angle,” said Gamadge.

“You are?”

“Of course I am.”

“Well, I certainly am glad you have one. I didn't like the idea of Mrs. Gamadge gettin' up at the inquest and tellin' the ghost story.”

“Very strange story, but true.”

The officer looked at him, finished his coffee in silence, and then said good night and rode away. Clara said: “Does he believe in the ghost, Henry?”

“He doesn't know what to believe. Now I'll tax
your
credulity some more; that woman in the sunbonnet wasn't wearing the things you saw in the attic, Clara.”

“She
wasn't
?”

“No. The sheriff showed them to me today, and he and Ledwell know that the woman never wore them. They haven't been out of their creases for a long time, and the strings of the sunbonnet haven't been untied for ages. I don't believe those things have been worn since Mrs. Hickson last wore them, certainly as long ago as early last summer; she died in the first week of July, you know, and she probably wasn't out for two weeks before that—she was ailing.”

Clara moved nearer to him. “Then—what did I see?” She added, her voice tremulous, “And who opened the attic door?”

“Somebody who had dressed up in Mrs. Hickson's other set of working clothes. Haven't you ever ordered two sets of things alike?”

“Yes, often; tennis things and wash dresses.”

“One for the tub, one to wear. That's what Mrs. Hickson did, but unfortunately we have no one to tell us what her habits were, unless her friends in Stratfield can—those dressmakers, you know. The purple clothes were hand-hemmed and finished; they never came from a factory. I only hope Mrs. Hickson or Miss Radford didn't make them. I can ask Mrs. Groby whether there's a sewing machine at the farm.”

Clara insisted: “Henry, why was the attic door opened, if nobody wanted to get the purple things out of it?”

“To make your flesh creep. To convince you, and through you others, that the murder was strictly in the family; and that's what did convince you—the trick worked.”

He called Mrs. Groby on the telephone. She told him that she had spoken to Duckett, and that there was no sewing machine at the farm.

“They've started badgering us about alibis, Mr. Gamadge,” she went on, in a quavering voice. “Walt's nearly crazy. Who has any alibis for the middle of the night, except a person's wife or husband?”

“Nobody in Avebury, I should hope. They have to do it, Mrs. Groby.”

“But what's the use? I wouldn't tell if Walt had been out till morning, which he often is, with a garage business and everything.” She faltered: “They're just badgering him to death.”

“They have to; you got all the money, you know.”

Mrs. Groby gave a kind of screeching wail, and rang off. Gamadge returned to Clara, looking interested. “No sewing machine, and, unless I'm greatly mistaken, no money.”

“No
money
?”

“Mrs. Groby is agitated, and not only because Mr. Groby is being investigated ruthlessly.” He took his wife's hand. “Listen to that waterfall.”

“It's very gentle tonight; the stream must be getting low.”

“If it weren't for you I shouldn't be hearing it at all.”

The weather still held next day. Gamadge took Clara with him to Stratfield, but when they reached the village he left her and the car in front of the public library. Then, having been told by a man in a drugstore how to find the old Craye mansion, he walked along the main street to the next corner, and turned left.

Stratfield, except for its small and inconspicuous business section, was an eighteenth-century county seat of memorable beauty. It was set rather high, between the river and a mountain, miles from any railroad, and its churches, courthouse and original dwellings had been religiously preserved from restoration. At least, their outsides were as they had always been; the Craye mansion, shaded by its maples and surrounded by its acres of lawn, must have looked very much as it did now when imported English workmen finished slating its roof before the Revolution.

But a faint green patina was now to be seen on the gravel of the drive, and the hedge required clipping. Gamadge was observing these by-products of war (if such they were) when Gilbert Craye cantered up on a brown pony, dismounted, and shook hands. They walked on to the house together, Craye with the pony's rein over his arm.

“Perfectly lovely place,” said Gamadge.

“You'll find it a trifle crowded, at present; with my refugees, you know.”

“I didn't know.”

“Didn't you? We all take them so much for granted now that nobody thinks to mention them, I suppose. I've had refugees,” said Craye, switching the unclipped hedge with his riding crop, “for a couple of years.”

“Who are they?”

“This lot? Don't ask me. People push them on me, and I ask no questions. I ought to do what I can, you know, since I'm disqualified for service. It wasn't so bad when I had my staff but now, oh Lord.”

“You sound as though you had a dozen refugees.”

“I have five at present, counting the Medos children. Medos is a Greek, I believe, and one of the women is a German, old Bavarian family, and one's English; married to a Frenchman, poor devil, but she hasn't heard from him for a long time now.”

“What a combination; do they enjoy each other's society?”

“I don't think they foregather much. How's Mrs. Gamadge?”

“Splendid. We moved to the cottage yesterday.”

Craye stopped short, and the pony threw up its head. “You did?”

“Why not?”

“Well…” They moved on again. “She went through a pretty grim experience there.”

“Clara doesn't find it grim now.”

“Grim story, though. Who did strangle the old lady? Does anybody know yet?”

“I have no information; but a good many of the natives seem to think that Mrs. Hickson strangled her; or rather, broke her neck.”

Again Craye stopped, and again the pony backed and skittered nervously. “Mrs. Hickson? You mean the dead sister?”

“Because Miss Radford poisoned her; so they suspect.”

“Mrs. Gamadge said something. I never heard of such a thing.”

“Very sensational.”

They walked on, and Craye began to whistle. Gamadge said: “So they're going to exhume Mrs. Hickson and find out.”

Craye stopped whistling. “Find out?”

“Whether they can't eliminate Mrs. Hickson's ghost as a suspect. No crime last summer, no ghost this summer. I want the ghost eliminated, of course, because I want attention focused on the party who impersonated the ghost and committed the murder.”

“You care?”

“Yes. Ledwell wants Clara to take the rap for the murder; as a dangerous intermittent maniac, you know.” Gamadge spoke without emphasis. Craye, this time apparently quite staggered, stood looking at him with every freckle standing out on his fair skin.

He said: “Ledwell's crazy himself.”

“Well, no. What would you or I think if we read about this murder in the papers? But I don't want Clara in the papers, held for examination, for all I know railroaded to an asylum for the criminal insane.”

“Good Lord, Gamadge, you exaggerate! It would never come to that.”

“In my place, would you want it to come to anything? I have the weekend to find out who did wear that sunbonnet, and why Miss Alvira Radford was killed. In order to get anywhere I must find out something about Miss Radford.”

They had arrived at the noble portico, with its fluted columns and its grave pediment. A youth came around the corner of the house and took the pony. Craye turned the knob of the white door, muttered irritably, and plied the knocker; the door was opened almost immediately by a pale, slender woman in a blue dress. Her hair was so light a gold as to be almost silvery; her features resembled those once seen in the old gift annuals; she had the wide forehead, large eyes, oval cheeks and small mouth, she had even the sloping shoulders and the long, slim waist of the Keepsakes.

“Thank you, Mrs. Star,” said Craye, as they passed her.

She bowed without smiling, and closed the door after them. Then she turned, and went into a room on the left. “That cuts out the library,” said Craye. “I didn't introduce you, because when she's on these premises Mrs. Star likes to pretend that she's a domestic. Her idea of working out her board, I think.”

“She is the German lady?” Gamadge's eyes were on two children who sat close together halfway up the broad stairs; they were very small, of indeterminate sex, sharp-chinned and pale; with thick dark hair and great black eyes. They sat silent, staring back at him.

“Yes.” Craye looked up at the children and saluted them with his riding crop. “Nearly got us quarantined last month,” he muttered to Gamadge. “Came out in spots, but it was only prickly heat, or something repulsive.”

He led the way into a room on the right; a large drawing room, stately and high, done up for the summer in flowered chintz. As they entered, a short, dark man rose from a chair beside a window, closed his book, and stood leaning slightly forward and smiling.

“Mr. Medos,” said Craye, “Mr. Gamadge.”

The dark man bowed, and said in the accents of Oxford, “I am just going.”

“Not at all, don't disturb yourself; I'm taking Gamadge into the back parlor,” said Craye.

Gamadge was piloted through a double doorway into a kind of study, rich and somber, where a stocky gray-haired woman sat working at a jigsaw puzzle. She said “Ow,” and made as if to rise.