Evidence of Things Seen (20 page)

She slowly bent her head. “Yes. I relinquish the ghost now. Someone else wore those things, and it was a frightful plot.”

“But are you stuck now, Henry,” asked Mrs. Hunter with childlike anxiety, “and can't you do anything more?”

“Well, I was stuck yesterday morning,” confessed Gamadge, “but in the afternoon that line of inquiry that I was hoping for presented itself. I won't bore you with it.”

“Bore us?” Hunter, laughing heartily, waved his hand. “Look at your audience!”

“Do you really want me to go on with this?” Gamadge's eyes passed from him to Fanny, on to Mrs. Hunter, and then to Craye. There was a chorus.

“Well, then; but first we must refresh ourselves.”

He went into the kitchen, and came back with ice. When drinks had been mixed and distributed, he sat down with his own glass at his elbow and a cigarette between his fingers. He got a notebook out of his pocket, consulted it, and laid it down.

“What I needed,” he said, “was some faint indication of a motive for this most curious crime. And what I asked myself first of all was whether the murderer's object had or had not been achieved. I inferred that it had; in fact, I looked upon the case as an end-game in chess: problem, to mate in three moves. The first move, Miss Radford's accident and its result—her immobilization in the little green bedroom with the latchless door. By this move a pawn was sacrificed—Clara.

“Move two, Miss Radford's murder; a piece was taken, the Queen.

“Move three—what was move three?”

“But wasn't Miss Radford's death the end of the game, then?” asked Fanny.

“No; Miss Radford had to die, but her death didn't end the game, Fanny. Why that most remarkable masquerade, why all those circumstances of confusion and terror, if Miss Radford's death were the end of the game? I was confused myself, I can tell you, until I learned yesterday afternoon from Mrs. Groby that Miss Radford's securities, inherited last summer from Mrs. Hickson and amounting—taxes paid—to about seventy thousand dollars, had completely disappeared.”

“O
H, GOOD HEAVENS,”
protested Hunter, “the unfortunate Grobys!”

“Unless they took them, Phin.” Mrs. Hunter, very alert, sat up straight to interrogate Gamadge: “Where are they missing
from
, Henry?”

“Well, that's the trouble; we don't know. We only know that Miss Radford herself took them out of her safe deposit box last October—as soon, in fact, as she got her hands on the estate.”

“But where was the box?”

Gamadge turned a smiling look on Craye. “In Stratfield.”

Craye had already come to the end of his highball. It seemed to have done him good; he also sat up straighter, got out his glasses, put them on, and returned his host's look with a firm, judicial one. “The securities are not missing,” he said in a corrective tone. “They have been exchanged. The money's been reinvested.”

“If it has,” said Gamadge, “Miss Radford has left no trace of the transaction anywhere. The natural place for such memoranda would be her desk at the farm; but nothing of the kind is there, although it contains her other business papers.”

“You don't get cash out of the air, you know,” Craye informed him with polite condescension. “You deposit the coupons, or you cash the dividend checks.”

“But Miss Radford hasn't been depositing coupons or cashing dividend checks—or any other checks—in Avebury, in Stormer or in Stratfield. Or,” said Gamadge, referring to the second of the typed papers on the table beside him, “so far as Toms of Stratfield has been able to discover, in Hartford.”

“Then what on earth has she been paying her expenses with?”

“With cash. Odd, isn't it? Have another highball.”

Craye allowed his glass to be refilled. His attitude relaxed, and one long hand lay passive on the arm of his chair as the other conveyed the tumbler to his mouth. Mrs. Star's eyes were on him. She said: “Perhaps she converted the securities into currency, and was hoarding it.”

“Well, no, I don't think so.” Gamadge, having attended to the wants of his other guests, resumed his seat. “She kept money on hand, but I found it. It amounted to nearly a thousand dollars, and I imagine that that's all she had on the premises at the time of her death. She was undoubtedly receiving cash from some source unknown.”

Mrs. Star slowly turned her eyes away from Craye and upon Gamadge. “How very extraordinary.”

“Is it not? Since the thirtieth of last November she has not filled out a check, or paid a bill with one.”

Craye said: “You're going to try to trace those bonds.”

“Well, the trouble is they were all bearer bonds; I am not sure that they will ever be traced.”

“Then,” declared Fanny Hunter with bright finality, “You're stuck again!”

Hunter imprisoned her hand in his. “My child, does Gamadge look to you as if he were stuck?”

“If I am,” said Gamadge, “it's not in that quicksand. I'm going at the mystery from a different angle.”

Mrs. Star, since she had abandoned the supernatural in favor of the mundane, had become practical and cool, as if concentrating on an abstract problem of some interest. She said: “You will try to find out who is paying her the income.”

“Was, Mrs. Star. She is dead, and the income need be paid no longer.”

“Of course. You make it all so vivid, for the moment she lived again.”

“And of course,” said Gamadge, “I could not but relate the two oddities in her behavior of last autumn; she withdrew her securities, and at about the same time she carried out those remarkable changes at the farm. I did not think it unreasonable to conclude that there was one influence at work in both cases. Duckett has been invaluable.” He picked up one of the typed sheets and ran his eye over it. “He has tackled the painters, plumbers and builders, Yost in Hartford, and Keene in New York; and he gives me the following facts:

“Yost's job was over when they finished the cottage; the plumbers' job was over when they finished the bathrooms at the cottage and at the farm. But shortly after the painters and builders had left the farm—early in September it was—she called up to request further work from them. She wanted the bay window in the living room arched over, and a bench built under it; and she wanted silver paint on the dining room walls and ceiling. In other words, she had had advice as to the modernization of those two rooms.

“She was prepared not only with instructions for the workmen, which included cutting down a marble-topped table, but she had a sample of silver-gray silk to show the men who were to decorate the dining room.

“On the twelfth of September she wrote a letter to Keene's in New York; Keene's, I may tell you, has been most obliging over long-distance telephone, consulted clerks and files on the spot, and will follow up with a letter. They were able to inform Duckett that Miss Radford's letter asked whether they could duplicate for her two rooms in their latest model house—the Pink-and-Green Parlor and the Mauve Dining Room. She wanted only rugs and furniture, curtains, seats for a bench (measurements enclosed), and the wall mirror.

“They replied in the affirmative, asking a whacking deposit of course, and three weeks to a month to complete the order from their factories. She sent a money order for the deposit next day.

“Keene first mailed her an itemized list with prices, dimensions of rugs, and colored pictures of both rooms. She O.K.'d their letter.

“Transportation difficulties held up delivery until mid-October, when the vans arrived, and with them Keene's man, Mr. Willis. Mr. Willis saw everything in its place, went into raptures over Miss Radford's vases, lamp, and wax flowers, and departed mystified. He could only assume that she was going to open a very elegant little private hotel. He came to the telephone himself to tell Duckett two things: Miss Radford had put into his hands cash amounting to more than two thousand dollars, and she had twice retired to the back parlor, certainly to consult with someone.

“Well.” Gamadge leaned back in his chair, drank some whiskey, and looked at his audience. “Have you ever heard a much odder story?”

“Her money went to her head, that's all,” said Fanny Hunter.

“The queerness of the story doesn't lie in the fact that she spent the money,” her husband told her, “but in the kind of things she bought, and the manner in which she bought them.”

“Exactly,” said Gamadge. “The party in the back parlor managed to remain there during the whole transaction; yet he, or she, must have told her about Keene's rooms, perhaps showed her Keene's catalogue, got her that sample of gray silk, told her how to cut down a monstrous piece of Victorian furniture into a coffee table; must have instructed her to use the vases, the lamp and the wax flowers as she used them; must have persuaded her that there was something desirable in that charming but funny parlor. Whose playful and at that time friendly mind can it have been? Don't suggest one of the Grobys!”

“Friendly?” murmured Hunter, doubt in his tone.

“Of course friendly; last autumn all was cheerful, rosy, even gay between Miss Radford and her adviser. But—as you imply—that state of things did not last; this summer Miss Radford was horribly murdered. If, as I think, one person lurked behind all these phenomena, why the change in that person's behavior?”

“The investments went wrong,” said Mrs. Star with decision.

“The investments went wrong, and Miss Radford could not be allowed to find it out. But why the building up of the ghost legend? Well, as I maintain, to localize the murder.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Star, lifting a white hand and waving it in a negative gesture from side to side. “To involve others; Miss Radford was made to die in the cottage so that others should be blamed.”

Craye, after draining his glass, set it down. “No, Leda,” he said. “The murderer couldn't be sure that she'd be hurt in that accident, or spend the night here.”

Gamadge put his arms on the table, clasped his hands, and leaned forward to answer Mrs. Star: “It wasn't necessary for Miss Radford to die in this cottage,” he said. “It was only necessary that she should die away from home.”

Mrs. Star drew back a little from his intent look. “Away from home?”

“No doubt the time was short, no doubt the murderer seized the lucky chance that she was here, in the room her sister died in, with Clara to testify to the dress and the sunbonnet; but the murder could have taken place in the fields or on the road. For after the murder came the third and last move in that end-game—you remember? The pawn has been sacrificed, the Queen has been removed, and then comes the final sweep across the board—to the Radford farm: undefended at last, since the first thing Knapp and Hunter had to do after the accident was to wake old Sam and make him tie up the dogs.”

“Ah.” Hunter stretched out his legs with a sigh. “We are on solid ground at last. Gamadge, I congratulate you.”

“I don't get it,” said Craye.

“Don't you?” Hunter glanced at him sidewise. “The dogs had to be chained up so that people could get in and out of the farm while Alvira was out of circulation. We realized that at once. I thought we never should wake Sam.”

“Well, what difference would that make to the killer?”

“All the difference, Gil;” and Craye's glance, fixed on Gamadge, flickered at the latter's tone. “Miss Radford didn't know it, but she possessed something more valuable than money to her murderer; she hadn't hidden it, I'm sure; it was probably in a pigeonhole of her desk, among bills, and old and new leases.”

“Well, whatever it was, why couldn't the fellow walk in one evening, knock her brains out, and…” he paused.

“Those dogs.” Gamadge smiled. “How Miss Radford's kind adviser and friend must have raged that
they
were bought without consultation! Miss Radford could let a caller in past them, but she couldn't, if she were dead, let a caller out. Nor could a visitor very well ask her to chain them up for the duration of a visit, or risk making off with the desired object while she lived. As for the classic tradition of poisoned meat, how difficult in practice to follow! For there were two dogs; and what if one of them got the whole bait, or neither of them touched it? The trick couldn't be tried twice, since the meat would be found next morning if a dead dog wasn't, and Miss Radford put on the alert.”

“But what
was
the thing the murderer wanted?” almost screamed Fanny Hunter.

“Dear Fanny, I can only think that it was something which connected the murderer with those securities. Why should Miss Radford lock it away, since she thought it harmless, and since the person implicated was her friend?”

Mrs. Star said: “Horrible.” She added, after a silence, “Mr. Gamadge, I cannot but think of those Grobys. I do not like to accuse anyone; but this is only an inquiry, you have no proofs.”

“None.”

“They had a motive, the only motive we know; they are the persons most likely to be informed of Miss Radford's private affairs; they might have taken those securities, pretended to invest them, and sold them. They might have lost or spent the money. With Miss Radford dead, they have only to pretend that the bonds are gone. As for what you say about the decorations at the farm, I have been in this country for some years now; I am always amazed at the cleverness, the imitative qualities of American women. Even the poorest of them learn so fast, develop so much taste from the papers and moving pictures and magazines. Could not Mrs. Groby have encouraged Miss Radford to spend money at the farm in order to show interest, lack of egotism?”

Fanny said eagerly: “And Mrs. Groby probably knew all about those two dresses and sunbonnets. And Mr. Groby is such a horrid little man; he isn't even honest, is he?”