Murders in, Volume 2 (8 page)

“You think she may be in the house with old Mr. Vauregard's connivance?”

“That's a notion!” Duncannon stared at him, his light hazel eyes widening between their long lashes.

“A cockeyed notion.” Young Vauregard also stared.

“I said it was silly.” Miss Vauregard turned her eyes resolutely away from Duncannon, and fixed them on her gloves, which she had removed and was rolling into a ball.

Duncannon said, coming back towards them, “I never thought of that.”

“But how else could she be there—innocently, let us say?” Gamadge asked the question mildly. “Unless, of course, she really is a refugee, and the old gentleman has concocted his romance out of too much family atmosphere.”

Duncannon said firmly, “I believe she really is a refugee.”

“Fine,” agreed Dick Vauregard, with lowering sarcasm. “Now, if she'll just oblige with the name of the boat she came on, and hand over her papers—”

“She will, eventually. Good heavens,” said Duncannon, in a drawl of disgust, “give her time. After such experiences as she may have had, it's a wonder that she remembers her own name. When I saw her, she seemed very vague, hardly normal. Trouble is, Gamadge, the whole family is so terrified of the old codger down there that they won't ask him a question about her. If they did, he might let it all out, in time. As a matter of fact, I don't think he's mentally sound—haven't thought so for some time.”

“I don't think you're mentally sound,” said Dick Vauregard. “Did she impress you as a suffering angel, Mr. Gamadge?”

“To be quite frank,” answered Gamadge, “and without meaning to hurt anybody's sensibilities, I thought she would make an excellent understudy for your aunt, Mrs. Morton, in her new play.”

Mr. Duncannon stared at him with a sort of furious disgust. Young Vauregard gently whistled.

“Not as bad as it sounds,” continued Gamadge, smiling. He took a wallet out of his pocket, and removed the fragment which he had cut from the
Observer
. “Here's what Ivor Brown, the English critic, says about Vittoria Corombona—or rather, Accorambona; which he says was the lady's right name: ‘She loved passionately, lived dangerously, offended the Medici and died young.' Not quite Webster's white devil, is it? Miss Smith might go back to history, and give us a new reading.”

Dick Vauregard looked at him under knitted brows. “Did you like the zombi?”

“No, I did not; and she knows it.”

The house man, more harassed even than before, brought in a tray of cocktails. Miss Vauregard refused one. Gamadge accepted a glass, and young Vauregard seized one, emptied it, and seized another. “I'll have yours, Aunt Robbie,” he said. “I need it.”

“Your manners are very bad, dear.”

“Don't make a sissy of me. This highbrow theater stuff makes me feel weak.”

Duncannon, sipping his cocktail, said: “Very young, still, aren't you? Don't try so hard to be a he-man.”

“You don't have to try, do you?” Vauregard's irony was so bitter as to startle Gamadge; it made Duncannon flush.

“Company present,” was all he said, in a tired voice.

“Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

The house man had gone out of the room; he now returned with a small silver jug, which he placed on the tray. As he did so, Angela Morton swept in from the hall.

She was a tall, large-boned woman, long-limbed and graceful, with large dark eyes, almost classical features, and a brilliant smile. Like many other actresses of her period she seemed to have no physical vanity in private life; her graying hair was carelessly arranged off her forehead, in a large untidy knot on her neck; and her green silk robe or tea gown was made for comfort; moreover, it lacked freshness. She strode up to Gamadge, her arm outstretched to its full length, her head back and her eyes fixed upon his own.

“Dear Mr. Gamadge, how very good of you, and what a comfort to have somebody we can trust, to help us! Have you had a cocktail? Luigi, where is my vegetable juice? Oh, thank you. Don't bother—I shall wait on myself.”

But Mrs. Morton did not have to wait on herself. Her husband lunged forward and settled her on the little sofa opposite Miss Vauregard, with a stand at her elbow. He poured out her drink, brought it to her, and sat down at her side. Gamadge was sinking back into his chair, but she waved him nearer.

“Sit beside Robina,” her mellifluous voice besought him, “and let us talk our family scandal over quietly. Where is Clara, Robina? Late, as usual; we must try to get on without her advice. Pull up your chair, Dickie. What did you think of the young woman, Mr. Gamadge? I would not see her, but my husband tells me she has looks. Do you agree with him?”

Gamadge said: “She is very good looking. About my taking the case, Mrs. Morton; it's absurd, really. I'm not a detective. I have no organization, and no facilities for this kind of work. I can't watch people, and I can't trail them. I can't even look them up, properly. Nobody but the police can really do that.”

“The police are out of the question, Mr. Gamadge; didn't my sister explain that? Your observations are what we want.”

“They may be worthless to you, and a waste of time.”

“We'll risk it. What did you think of Miss Smith?”

“I thought her very dangerous.”

“Did you really? In what way?” Mrs. Morton glanced at her husband, whose arm was lying along the back of the settee, and whose hand occasionally patted her shoulder. “Not as a siren, I gather,” she went on, smiling. “Tom and Dickie complain that she looked straight through them.”

“Still uninterested in gentlemen.” Gamadge also smiled. “I mean that she represents something dangerous; something crooked; something—well, let us not be melodramatic, but shall I call it something evil? I'm afraid your husband is too generous in his estimate of her. She has studied a part, and is playing it very well.”

“I really think I must see her, after all. She must be very clever. Imagine going through all that, day after day, without breaking down! But then I speak as one who cannot act off the stage, Mr. Gamadge. I never could.”

Gamadge, who was convinced that Mrs. Morton never stopped acting unless she was sound asleep, said “It may be possible to frighten her away.”

“You won't do that,” exclaimed Dick Vauregard. “She's as hard as nails.”

Mrs. Morton gave her famous chromatic laugh. “You think so because she didn't respond to your blandishments, Dickie. Tom finds her more sympathetic.” She patted her husband's hand, and went on, with a fond look at him: “Tom is always for the underdog, Mr. Gamadge. He thinks the girl is a sort of victim. I don't know…Uncle must be protected, whoever she is. Miss Smith might run off with the Georgian silver.”

“Tom won't love you, if you talk like that, Aunt Angie,” said young Vauregard.

“Just try to forget about me and my emotions,” said Duncannon, in his weariest drawl. “Angela, you must see for yourself. I don't believe there's an ounce of malice in her. Gamadge is looking for a plot, so of course he finds one. The trouble is, your uncle is mildly insane.”

“Nonsense, Tommy! Uncle isn't mad. What do you think, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Far from it. He thinks he has weighed the evidence and come to a logical conclusion. Unless we can show him definitely that it's false evidence, he won't be amenable to reason.”

“But can we show him that?”

“I think we probably can, if we try. Tell me, Mrs. Morton; has he made a will, and do you know the terms of it?”

“He made one in 1920, just after Mother died—she was his only sister. It was a nice will, but a good deal of money went toward keeping up the old house as a museum—in perpetuity, you know.” Mrs. Morton looked out of the corners of her eyes at Gamadge—the celebrated mischievous look that had once enraptured audiences. “We all believed in perpetuity then, didn't we? Of course, none of us minded his diverting half his fortune to the house, because his estate was then assessed at about two million. We aren't so largehearted, now.”

“You get the rest of it?”

“Yes. Robina and I are down for about five hundred thousand apiece; my nephew and niece each get a hundred thousand.”

“To show you how fair Uncle is,” said Miss Vauregard, firmly, “the family gets paid first. If the estate has shrunk, so much the worse for the New York Historical Society.”

“What about John and Eliza?”

“They're part of the museum endowment,” said Mrs. Morton. “They stay on as caretakers until they die. It's in the bond.”

Dick Vauregard said gloomily, “Perhaps he'll give the house and John and Eliza to the zombi; for old time's sake, you know.”

“I do wish you wouldn't call her that, Dickie. It gives me the horrors.” Mrs. Morton contracted her shoulders in a comic shudder.

“We got used to the term at college. Used it a good deal in reference to people we considered below par.”

Duncannon said, looking bored, “The whole thing's at a deadlock. You can't expect Gamadge to make bricks without straw.”

“Well, I have a straw or two,” said Gamadge. “By the way, Mr. Vauregard informed us that on the day Miss Wagoneur disappeared, there was a Mrs. Dykinck in the house. Friend of his grandmother's.”

“Now I think of it,” said Mrs. Morton, after a pause for reflection, “I believe she was there.”

“I gather that there are still Dykincks living in New York.”

“Yes—old Mrs. Kilaean Dykinck and her daughter. They are still in East Thirty-fourth Street, where they've been for ages.”

“Are they the only Dykincks left?”

“So far as I know, they are—thank goodness. They're rather stuffy. The Dykincks intermarried too much; they thought nobody but a Dykinck was good enough for a Dykinck. I always said poor Rose wasn't allowed to marry because there was no Dykinck left for her.”

Dick Vauregard remarked that not even a Dykinck would probably have been willing to marry Posy.

“She's just a pathetic, silly creature, and she's always been suppressed by that mother of hers,” said Miss Vauregard, who had been watching Gamadge in some bewilderment.

“Did you see her at the Billings wedding?” asked Dick. “You weren't there, Aunt Angela, were you?”

“No, dear, I have given up weddings, and all formal functions. After all, one needn't persist in boring oneself all one's life.”

“You were there, Tom. I saw the old girl tackling you, too.”

Duncannon said that he vaguely remembered her.

“Nothing vague about my memory of Posy!” declared young Vauregard. “She came up and asked me if I wasn't a Vauregard, and said the families used to be so intimate in the old days, and wasn't it a shame to lose sight of old friends. Then she went off and cornered Cam Payne. I think I saw her interviewing Clara, too. The old freak must be well over forty.”

“She can't help that, Dickie,” protested Miss Vauregard.

“I mean, she was got up like one of the Floradora sextet. Ostrich feathers, all kinds of trimmings.”

Gamadge said: “I should rather like to meet the Dykyncks. They might have family legends, too—connected with the arbor mystery.”

“Well, perhaps I might give you a letter. I don't know what excuse there could be—and old Mrs. Dykinck is an invalid. She doesn't leave her room, I believe.” Mrs. Morton gave him a puzzled look.

“Say I'm thinking of writing a book on the unwritten history of New York. Something of that kind. And if you'd be so good, you might also give me a letter to the Chandors. Tell 'em I'm putting cults and occultism into the book.”

“Well, that I'm afraid I can hardly do,” said Mrs. Morton. “The Chandors wouldn't take kindly to it at all. I went into New Soul just for fun, and the Chandors weren't any too pleased when I got out of it, about six months ago. They were afraid I should drag Uncle off with me. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't be dragged. He loved it. But he's been too busy with Miss Smith to go on with it since May—or with any other outside interest.”

“Aunt Angie's a caution when she gets going on a new fad,” said Dick Vauregard. “Remember how you used to try to convert us to New Soul, Aunt Angie? ‘All is illusion, and the veil is lifted.' I don't think you got a customer, though, not even Tom.”

“Unfortunately,” said Duncannon, with a teasing but affectionate look at his wife, “she got old Mr. Vauregard into it.”

Mrs. Morton clasped her bosom. “I have repented in sackcloth and ashes, you know I have, dearest! These Chandors went all out for poor Uncle, Mr. Gamadge; they're very clever, very sympathetic, and lots of important people consult them.”

“May I use the Vauregard name?”

“Of course, but it may not get you an audience! They live at the Palazzo, Central Park West.”

“Does the Chandor system include ancient sorceries? Table tipping, materializations, and so forth?”

“Oh, no, nothing so primitive. They're not even astrologers. It's all on a very high plane: mystical reunion with nature. You regain physical and spiritual youth. I never got very far with it, because I couldn't make out what any of it was all about. It was rather fun, for a while—one felt uplifted.”

“I wondered whether Miss Smith might have been an answer to prayer—conducted by the Chandors.”

“I wondered, myself. But they're intensely respectable, and I understand that they're prosperous. I hardly think they'd mix themselves up in a thing like this. I'll go and write you the Dykinck letter, but it may not get you into the presence. The Dykincks are almost too good for daily use, you know.”

“Miss Dykinck seems to have been chatty at the wedding your nephew talked of. Perhaps a telephone call would do, Mrs. Morton. I hate to put you to the trouble—”

“They have no telephone,” said Miss Vauregard. “I discovered that when I tried to get in touch with them about war work.”