Murders in, Volume 2 (6 page)

Mr. Vauregard, again laughing heartily, said that he doubted whether any female Dykinck had ever had the initiative required for such an adventure.

“Well, your lucky find is in excellent condition; one would almost say that it had been in a state of suspended animation, if books could be called animate objects. Sometimes I almost think they are.” Gamadge rose, drifted back to the bookcase against the east wall, replaced the Byrons, and sauntered to the southeast window. He stood there looking out at shaven turf, narrow graveled paths, a fountain surmounted by an Italian bronze nymph, dolphin and shell—all in the worst baroque taste—and the little white arbor, now smothered in wisteria.

“I see that you are not superstitious, Mr. Vauregard,” he said, without turning.

“Superstitious, my dear fellow! I think I may truthfully say that I am not.”

“You have a hexagon made of iron on the premises.”

“A hexagon!” Mr. Vauregard got up and joined his guest at the window.

“Your summerhouse is hexagonal.”

“It is; and pray why not?”

“Doesn't Albertus Magnus, or Paracelsus, or somebody, warn us against hexagons made of metal?”

“Bless my soul, do they?” Mr. Vauregard was intensely interested. “I never heard so.” He gazed at his disappearing cabinet with a kind of delighted dismay. “Do you hear that, Lydia? Hexagons!”

“All nonsense, of course,” said Gamadge, “but I know I've read about it somewhere. I've read so many useless but interesting things. I think I even have a book—
Mystery and Magic of Numbers
—something of the kind.”

“I should be most grateful if you would let me see it, Mr. Gamadge. Most grateful.”

“I'll look it up for you.”

“Would it—I know you're a busy man. Would it be too much to ask—could you look it up—ah—soon, Mr. Gamadge?”

“I'll drop in with it tomorrow; I have business downtown. May I leave it here between six and seven, say?”

“You may, indeed, and I shall take it very hard if you don't give me a minute or two of your time, when you do leave it. Robina, my child, absurd as it may seem, I don't think I ever realized until this moment that the arbor is hexagonal.”

“Why should you, Uncle Imbrie?” Miss Vauregard, now definitely out of sorts, spoke crossly. “Such nonsense.”

“Well, my dear, I know your healthy skepticism of old; but yours is a narrow way, after all. Straight, but narrow. Lydia's mind is more receptive to wonders. Don't you think Mr. Gamadge's information about metal hexagons very odd, Lydia?”

Miss Smith replied in a colorless tone that it was very odd. Her eyes, as they rested on Gamadge, seemed to say that he was very odd, too; but her face remained serene.

“And we must make an appointment when you come tomorrow, an appointment for you to give a day to my books. I shall be glad of your professional services,” said Mr. Vauregard, delicately, as he and Gamadge shook hands. Gamadge then took Miss Smith's slender fingers in his, and their eyes met; Gamadge's as blank of expression as her own.

He followed Miss Vauregard down the wide stairs to the lower floor. They went along the hall, through an arched door, and into a narrower passage that led by way of an open doorway straight into the garden. Pausing with her hand on a knob to the left, she faced him, angrily.

“Uncle is in his dotage.”

“Or very near it. He is amenable to any suggestion, if it approaches the occult, I should say.”

“Hexagons! You made that up!”

“Well, I had to invent some excuse for coming back as soon as possible. Miss Smith must be scared away, somehow.”

“If you didn't scare her this afternoon, she can't be scared at all. That poetry! I felt as if the ice were breaking under me.”

“Wouldn't you have been thankful for a cold dip? I should. The atmosphere up there is morally stifling. Your uncle and Miss Smith are museum pieces.”

“Have you really that book—about numbers?”

“I have a book about numbers. I didn't promise that it dealt with the danger inherent in hexagons.”

Miss Vauregard, looking grim, opened the door on the left and they entered a pantry. Its window was set high in the east wall. They passed through it into a big kitchen, all white-painted brick and plaster. Its east windows were also high, with an open door between them which gave on the carriageway. Two south windows afforded a view of a narrow yard or drying ground, enclosed by a lattice; between them rose the ancient coal range.

A stout, rosy-faced old woman in a gray dress and a large white apron turned to greet them:

“I am glad to see you, Miss; that I am.”

“Dear Eliza, we have kept you from your nap.”

“I need a talk with you more than any nap.” Eliza glanced at Gamadge, and Miss Vauregard introduced him:

“This is a friend of mine—Mr. Gamadge. I'm showing him the place.”

Eliza bobbed at Gamadge, obviously wondering how to get rid of him. She said: “I wanted a word with you about the Master, Miss. John and me are worried about him.”

“So am I, and so is Mr. Gamadge. We can talk in front of Mr. Gamadge, Eliza.”

“Oh, very well, Miss, if you say so, I'm sure. Shall we go into the 'all, Miss? And Sir?”

Since Eliza crossed the passage and opened a door on the opposite side of it, and since this door led into a large comfortably furnished sitting room with a dining table in the middle of it, Gamadge realized that she had referred to the servants' hall, and that her beginnings had had a lofty and impressive background.

“Do sit down, Eliza,” said Miss Vauregard. They all sat down, and Eliza plunged into her subject:

“Miss, I know you will understand. If that young lady stays, we must get in a maid. You know how kind and considerate the Master is—all laundry goes out, and all cleaning comes in. I have a kitchenmaid nine months of the year, and would have one now, but we were going on our vacations next week, and the Master was leaving town as usual. Now he says it depends on the young lady's 'ealth, and we are making out as best we can.”

“I never thought, Eliza. Of course, you must have extra help. Uncle has probably been too upset by all this to think of it.”

“Nor do we wish to remind him, at present. If you could—”

“Of course I will. I don't know what Uncle can have been thinking of. You don't have to maid her, I hope?”

“Not a thing has she asked me to do, Miss, not since she appeared, with no coat nor no 'at, and came to 'er senses in the drawing room. But she never steps out of the ‘ouse, and it's not right that she should take care of 'erself, let alone that 'ead of 'air.”

“I'll speak to Uncle. No, I'll leave him a note.”

Miss Vauregard sat down at a little desk in the corner, and began to write. Gamadge said:

“The poor thing had no luggage, either, I think.”

“No, Sir; she did not.”

“How in the world did she lose her hat?”

“It was borrowed from a passenger on the boat, Sir.”

“Dreadful thing to happen to an English lady.”

“Sir, if she is an English lady she was brought up somewhere else.”

“Really? Lost her native characteristics, has she?”

“I couldn't 'ardly say what she has lost, Sir, but John and I ‘ave the same impression.”

“Burned her clothes, Mr. Vauregard says. That shows you what she'd been through.”

“Sir, when I brought up early tea, she said: ‘I 'ave 'ad these things on my back for weeks and weeks, and if your 'usband will light a fire in the furnace, I will burn them.'”

“Furnace? She said furnace?”

“That,” replied Eliza, with a resigned look at him, “is what she said—or so I remember it.”

Miss Vauregard looked up from her writing. Gamadge continued: “I should have thought she knew nothing about furnaces.”

“Don't they 'ave central 'eating on the Continent, Sir?”

“Not where Miss Smith is supposed to have been. So she burned the things in the furnace, did she?”

“Sir, she did more than burn them. She waited in the cellar until they were ashes, and then she raked out the pan.”

“Raked out the pan, did she? Dear me.”

“And scraped it. I think,” said Eliza, in the hushed tone of shock, “she put the 'eap down the drain.”

“Very thorough.”

“John and I were greatly distressed, Sir; we thought 'er sufferings had sent the young lady off 'er 'ead.”

“Looks like it.”

“We 'ardly like the Master being alone with 'er.”

“But she seems to be improving, doesn't she?”

“Quite the lady, Sir. But that beautiful thick silk the dress was made of! I 'aven't seen such silk in years. It did seem cruel to put it on the fire.”

“Too good to burn, was it?”

“Fresh as when it came out of the shop, it looked.”

“How was it you and your husband didn't see her arrive?”

“I was up 'aving my sleep, and John was 'aving a nap, as usual, on that sofa there. After 'e takes up the coffee at five o'clock, 'e 'as nothing to do until the sherry goes up at seven.”

“Unless callers come.”

“The Master only sees 'is friends very rarely, nowadays; and 'e always tells us when 'e expects them.”

“These windows are screened off from the garden by bushes, aren't they?”

“What we can't make out,” said Eliza uneasily, “is why that young lady should 'ave come by the garden door. The Master often takes a stroll after his coffee, and 'e says 'e saw her at the gates; why did she stand at the gates, we want to know? Miss, and Sir, I won't say it's none of our business, because we have took care of the Master for forty years; but what we want to know is—” Eliza's small round eyes stared distressfully from Miss Vauregard to Gamadge—“could the young lady be a him-poster?” The fact that she had aspirated a vowel for the first time was the measure of her anxiety.

“Just between ourselves, and you, and John,” said Gamadge, leaning his elbow on the table and looking at her seriously, “we are asking ourselves that question. Now, we're all in the same boat, and we must trust one another. The greatest favor you could possibly do Mr. Vauregard would be to settle the question, once and for all.”

“I'm sure we—”

“Just you get John to help you, and sit down tonight and write out every word you've told us today. Every word. The new silk dress, the furnace, the scraping, and the drain. And your impression that Miss Smith is not quite so English as she ought to be. Will you do that?”

“What will 'appen to the paper?”

“Miss Vauregard will take charge of it.”

Eliza turned her head and looked at Miss Vauregard, who nodded vigorously.

“He's an old gentleman, you know,” said Gamadge, “eighty years old. He looks so young that one forgets it.”

“I'll get John to do it, Sir. Tonight.”

“Good for you.”

Miss Vauregard rose, and handed an envelope to Eliza. “There you are,” she said, “and I can promise you that at least you'll have another woman in the house.”

Eliza bobbed them out of the garden door. They followed a very ancient brick path around the grass plot that contained the fountain, which never played any more—its shell was full of leaves, and its basin planted with a fine crop of geraniums. Gamadge had to put aside a trail of wisteria, in order to make his way into the arbor.

He sat down in a green gloom, and surveyed the back of the old house. Mr. Vauregard appeared at an open window, nodding and smiling at his niece, who stood between the arbor and the fountain; a fair, pointed face looked over his shoulder, but the rather wide lips did not smile. When the window was empty again, Gamadge came out.

“You wouldn't go into the arbor for anything, would you?” he asked. “Not even now.”

Miss Vauregard said: “Of course I would.”

“You didn't.”

“Well…” she gave a nervous laugh. “Old habits are hard to break, at my age. How did you like it?”

“Gave me claustrophobia.”

“I
KNOW NOW WHAT YOU MEANT,
Mr. Gamadge.” Miss Vauregard spoke in a hard, dry voice. They were walking eastward through the quiet back streets of lower New York, where even pedestrian traffic seemed almost to have ceased. Miss Vauregard had insisted on going uptown by subway.

Gamadge looked down at her sympathetically. “You do?”

“I realized it when Uncle began talking about that other set of books. What a fool I've been. Of course Volume II belongs to the Dykinck set!”

“Looks that way. See here, Miss Vauregard—you'd better fire me.”

She ignored this. “Uncle wouldn't tell that old story to the Chandors—why should he? And even if he did, how could they, or any outsider, get hold of the Byron?”

“How, indeed?”

“You guessed it before you ever heard about the Dykincks from Uncle. I don't see how.”

“It just looked to me like an inside job. I couldn't see Miss Smith having the nerve, or the facilities, to put it over without backing from a member of the clan—someone who knew all the ropes. You thought an outsider was trying to get your uncle's money away from the family; I wondered whether one of the family wasn't trying to prevent exactly that. It would have to be somebody who had learned that Mr. Vauregard meant to give property away, and who was determined to keep the old gentleman's interests within the home. So far, I should say that it's been a huge success; he's engrossed by Miss Smith, and he already regards her as his ward.”

Miss Vauregard walked along very fast beside him, her head down. “I can't believe it!” she said, in a choked voice. “I won't believe it!”

“Don't take it so hard. Look at it as a pious fraud—an attempt to prevent your uncle from doing something very foolish, something he would never have done even a few years ago, and wouldn't do now if his wits weren't befogged by fake occultism.”