Evidence of Things Seen (8 page)

“Of course I shan't be lonely, and while we're here Phin will be just around the corner.”

Maggie was sent to bed. Clara tilted the shade of the little lamp beside Miss Radford's bed so that her face was in shadow, placed the two boxes of capsules ready, and got fresh drinking water. She settled Fanny to her book, left a sweater for her shoulders in case it should turn cool later, and a sweater for her feet, and joined Hunter in the living room.

“I've made the rounds again upstairs,” he told her, “and locked all the doors. The window screens are pretty tight; we'll all hear it if anybody tampers with
them.
”

“Oh, thank you, Phin. I don't know
how
to thank you.”

“I have an idea that that woman in the sunbonnet is badly on your nerves.”

“She isn't now.”

“Look here; would you like a shakedown on this decent-looking sofa? Instead of going up to your own room for this two-hour nap you're going to have?”

“I meant to sneak down after you were safely shut up in your room. I was ashamed to tell you and Fanny.”

“Shh. Fanny needn't know.” His dark, humorous face smiled down at her. “Get your things. I won't be more than a few steps away; you can doze in peace.”

She rushed upstairs, dragged bedding off the bed, got into a bathrobe, and was back again. Hunter helped her to make up the sofa, and then, with a parting wave of encouragement, went into the blue room and shut the door.

This was better than she had hoped. She peeped around the edge of the door at Fanny, who was apparently quite comfortable, absorbed in her book; then she lay down on the sofa, her watch under the pillow. It seemed only a minute or two before she was waked by the sound of Fanny getting out of her chair.

She went into the dining room. Fanny, looking sleepy, was surprised to see her.

“Why, Clara, can you wake yourself? I was just going to call you.”

“I didn't want you to sit up beyond your time.”

“No danger of that!” Fanny laughed softly. “I should have been asleep in a minute. I went in twice to look at her; she's all right.”

“Well, here's your candle now.” Clara lighted one. “You've done your share—ever so much more than your share. I'd go up with you, but I hate to leave her, even for a minute.”

“There's one thing—if you get frightened, you won't have to call very loud to wake Phin, or any of us!”

“No.”

Fanny climbed the stairs to her landing. Clara went into the little green bedroom; she had no intention, had never had any intention of keeping her watch outside its door; she meant to keep it in the wicker chair beside the night table. If Miss Radford should open her eyes, she would know in one moment that Clara was there.

The bed was placed along the east wall, under the screened window, and facing the door that went nowhere. This presented a front as blank and solid as the wall, and no less reassuring. Miss Radford was sleeping calmly, her face turned away from the light; Clara tilted the shade a little more, to cast her deeper in shadow and give herself plenty of light for her crossword puzzle. She sat down and opened the book.

But she could not concentrate on her puzzle; she could not look away from the bony profile on the pillow, yellow against white; from the little gauze and plaster patch on the scratched and wrinkled cheek, the thin ridge of nose, the deep eye socket. She could not help listening to Miss Radford's deep breaths. She could not help wondering what Miss Radford's dreams were, if murder had really been committed in this room twelve months before.

I have a neurosis, she thought. If Henry were here he would laugh at me; there are no ghosts. That woman in the sunbonnet probably lives in the Simms attic, and gets out now and then; you hear of such things—feeble-minded relatives the family keeps locked up and won't tell about. There's more than one purple dress and sunbonnet in the world, and Maggie tinkers with the attic door and then forgets she left it open.

Well, one thing was certain; Clara wasn't going to give in and talk about ghosts to Phineas Hunter; that was something you never lived down. How mortifying for Gamadge, to have people saying that his wife was weak in the head.

She applied herself seriously to her puzzle, and worked at it for what seemed to her a long time. Her watch said twenty minutes past twelve, then half past twelve, then twenty minutes to one. She felt thirsty, thought of going to the kitchen for ice water, and suddenly realized that she was afraid to get up and walk out into the lighted dining room. She was afraid to move from her chair.

I've read about this, she thought. This is what happens to people who sit up all night in a haunted house; it gets them. Anything can happen. People don't wake when you call, or they're all dead.

She was still gazing at her watch, which seemed to have stopped; or had all these thoughts rushed through her mind in a few seconds, and was it still twenty minutes to one? There was a small sound like something dropping to the floor, and she raised her eyes in time to see the sealed door swing open, pushed by a brownish hand at the end of an arm clad in faded purple. It was there, against a screen of darkness; shapeless and faceless in its black-sprigged garment and its collapsed sunbonnet, it seemed to dominate the room.

If it comes in I shall go out of my mind, thought Clara. I shall go out of my mind if I see its face. But it did not come in, it was there only a moment; it faded or moved aside, it was no longer in the doorway; it had retreated as if before Clara's presence, as if unable to enter the room while she sat staring at it.

For a few seconds Clara's head went forward almost to her knees; then the dizziness left her, and with her eyes again on the black oblong of the doorway she struggled to her feet. Still watching the empty place where the figure had stood, she walked stiffly to the door that led into the dining room; there, clinging to the frame, she tried to scream for Hunter. His door was shut, but somebody must hear her. She screamed wildly.

She thought she would never hear sounds in the house, but at last Hunter came at a run through the living room. In his shirt sleeves and his black dress-trousers, what did he look like? A duelist? He was across the dining room in two seconds, and had her by the elbows; she clutched him, her eyes still on the blackness beyond the open door.

“Clara—what is it?” He was staring over her shoulder at that incredible gateway to mystery and night.

“She came, she came! The woman in the sunbonnet!”

“Who opened that door?”

“She did.”

He frowned, and turned his head to the left.

“She's all right,” gasped Clara. “The woman didn't come in. Miss Radford's all right.”

But Hunter, still looking at the bed, was frowning even more heavily. He asked: “Will you be all right for a moment? You won't fall?”

“No.”

He left her leaning against the doorframe, and went past her and up to the bedside. Clara, watching him, saw him stand there, looking down; saw him bend slightly, saw his face change. Then he just put out a hand and touched Miss Radford's, which lay along the counterpane. He turned and came back to Clara.

“Come out of here, my poor child.”

“We can't leave her! We must fasten that door shut!”

“Nothing can hurt her now.”

“Phineas—you don't mean… She was all right!”

“She's dead. She's been killed.”

“That thing never came into the room. I never took my eyes off it or off the doorway except for a few seconds when I got dizzy, nothing could have happened in just those seconds, I should have known.” Her words were running together. Hunter got her into the dining room, into the easy chair. Fanny came running down, Maggie lumbered in her wake.

“Get her some whiskey, you two,” Clara heard him say. “Get her to bed. Wait a minute, give her some of the luminal with the whiskey. I'll get it.”

“I'll get it,” said Maggie's voice.

“No, don't go in there. Nobody must—I must telephone.”

He dashed into the bedroom and out again, the little box of tablets in his hand. Then Clara found herself being helped up the stairs, heard Hunter telephoning, heard herself ask the time over and over again—she didn't know why. Somebody told her that it was thirteen minutes to one.

Things became confused for Clara. She was put to bed in her own room, she had whiskey and luminal, somebody sat beside her, holding her hand, until she fell asleep.

G
AMADGE'S PLANE ARRIVED
in Canada on Monday, July the sixth. He reached Washington late that night, reported at headquarters, and then tried to get Clara by telephone. He was told that the number did not answer, growled invective against rural telephone services, and sent a telegram giving the address of his hotel. He said that he would be with her on Wednesday.

Three letters were waiting for him in the office; he waved off a dozen people while he read them, frowning a little at the last one; it was dated Wednesday the first, and told him that Clara was alone with Maggie in the cottage. Well, he was more than ever glad that he had been able to get home ahead of schedule.

He at last got to the hotel, and by one A.M. began to wonder whether the Connecticut telegraph system had broken down also. But it was late to call Clara, or try to call her; he finally decided to wait until morning.

At seven he was awakened by the reply to his telegram, which said:

Gamadge sent down for papers—New York and Hartford papers—and began to dress. When they arrived he was swallowing coffee. He found what he was looking for on an inside page:

Gamadge, his eyes still glued to these paragraphs, reached for the telephone. He dictated a telegram:

He got an answer before he had finished stuffing things into the smaller of his two bags:

Gamadge did not have time to telephone. He does not know to this day how he caught the train that got him to New York in time to catch the three o'clock for Hartford; but he managed before he left Washington to order his other bag sent after him, to see his chief, and to get a fortnight's leave. During the two-and-a-half-hour's run to Hartford he reread Clara's letters and the paragraphs on Miss Radford's peculiar death, but none of them told him anything new.

At Hartford he caught a bus to Avebury—fourteen miles of delightful country which he did not appreciate. At Avebury he hired a car and a driver, and reached Mountain Ridge Farm just as Phineas Hunter, wishing for the departed Alonzo, was shaking cocktails for dinner.

Hunter put down the shaker when Maggie, wild with excitement, announced the guest. He rushed into the hall and shouted for Clara, meanwhile shaking Gamadge's hand and pounding his shoulder. Clara flew down the stairs and into her husband's arms. The taximan, waiting in the front doorway with Gamadge's bag, got a good look at Mrs. Gamadge; he wondered what was behind the Radford killing, and whether he was really gazing at a society strangler.

Gamadge somehow paid him. Fanny Hunter arrived, pushed the Gamadges towards the stairs, and told them that dinner would be kept back; they had three-quarters of an hour.

Gamadge had to use some of this precious time to wash and shave; but Clara, who looked less battle-worn than he did, stood beside him and handed him things. It would take a good deal, he thought, to make a wreck of Clara. But that she had had an ordeal was plain enough, and as he looked at her he thought it had been a worse one than she as yet wanted him to guess. She said: “Henry…”

“Yes, my angel?”

“Henry, could we just not talk about it tonight? About Miss Radford, or anything?”

“I don't want to talk about Miss Radford—if you don't.”

“It's so wonderful, having you back. I can't bear to spoil it.”

“You couldn't spoil it.”

“Yes, I could.” She stood beside him in her white dress, a towel over her arm, his comb and brush in her hands. “You'll be—it's all so dreadful. Much worse than people know.”

“Do just as you like about telling me. Tell me now, if you'd rather.”