The Wrong Way Down (18 page)

“Beautiful.”

“It's a Mr. Gamadge,” said Mrs. Oldgate, reading from his card.

The old lady gave Gamadge the most coquettish bow he had had in twenty years.

“If young gentlemen are startin' to come into this bo'dnhouse,” she said, “I won't be in such a hurry to get down home.”

“I shouldn't think you'd be in a hurry, Mrs. Beaupré.” Gamadge looked from the vast mahogany bed to the padded chaise longue, from the sizzling radiator to the glowing fireplace, from the parrot in his cage to the cracker crumbs on the floor. “I should think you'd be too comfortable to move out.”

“There's a private bath,” said Mrs. Oldgate, moving her lizard head to the right.

There was, and a colored maid was puttering about in it.

“And the view is very pleasant; your friend would get the morning sun.”

Gamadge went over to the parrot's window and looked out on a series of tended gardens, divided by low hedges and fences.

“The householders on the block put their gardens together at one time,” said Mrs. Oldgate. “Of course there are fences now.”

“But low ones. Very pleasant indeed.” Gamadge studied the layout; an alley ran from the last garden on the left between apartment houses, to Park Avenue.

“We get a few cats,” admitted Mrs. Beaupré, “and that wakes up the dogs.”

“But in the country,” said Gamadge, “
everything
wakes up the dogs.”

Mrs. Beaupre cackled. The colored maid—she looked like a personal maid, she was so commanding of presence and yet so old—came in from the bathroom with a pile of undergarments. She went over to a wardrobe trunk in a corner and began to stow them away.

“High time for me to be leavin' this cold town,” said Mrs. Beaupré, “and with travelin' what it is I ought never to have come North at all this year; but I can't miss my visit to New York.”

“You stay on,” said Gamadge, joining Mrs. Oldgate at the door. “Buy some more of those nice hats. I'll tell Winterberry you're here on a mission to gladden the heart of humanity.”

Mrs. Beaupré's cackle of laughter was so nastily echoed by the parrot that even its mistress seemed taken aback; the colored maid looked at it as one retainer looks at another who has stepped out of line. Mrs. Oldgate, with something like a smile, ushered Gamadge into the hall and closed the door.

“Cheap at any price,” said Gamadge.

“A hundred a week.”

“Quite satisfactory.”

“I'll let you know Mrs. Beaupré's plans.”

“You know how to treat them.”

“Only the best people,” murmured Mrs. Oldgate, as they began the descent of the stairs.

Yes, thought Gamadge, and I bet the ones that haven't a hundred a week can come for less. All the Bourbon they want, and sleep it off afterwards. What a sanctuary for the elect!

A sanctuary; not only for the elect, but for those recommended to Mrs. Oldgate's mercy by the elect. That unreconstructed rebel would face down all the forces of law and order, the entire Homicide Squad, if necessary, in their behalf. If necessary she could arrange a hurried departure by way of those gardens and the alley to Park Avenue. She could, and Gamadge thought she would. Any person who tried to get private information about her clients' affairs from Mrs. Oldgate was licked before he began.

There was only one thing Gamadge could do, and it was hardly necessary, but it would be a satisfaction; and it would be another fragment of evidence, evidence that he needed very much. As they began the descent of the lower stairs, he said: “I think I saw young Ashbury coming out of here, while I was parking my car.”

She stopped, turned her head, and looked up at him; and he could see, positively see the image of old Mr. Winterberry, his fur-lined coat, his valet, his brindled bull, melt from her belief as a snow image dwindles in the sun.

She said, going on down the stairs, “Nobody of that name called today. Raymond?”

Raymond materialized from the shadows below.

“The gentleman is going.”

Going for good, thought Gamadge, but he had his information. He turned at the open front door to make his farewells, but Mrs. Oldgate wasn't there.

A cab took him up Park Avenue. It was not quite three o'clock when he stood for the third time in less than twenty-four hours and looked up at the front of the Ashbury house. It was stark in the light of midafternoon, with its shuttered windows and its scrawled door, with the dust drifting up to its threshold. The iron rail of the balcony stood leaning inward, a little awry; it said in its own language: “Something terrible has happened here.”

Gamadge stood thinking of what had happened until steps came flapping along the pavement, and he turned to confront the homely figure of the cleaning woman.

N
OT WISHING TO RAISE
the echoes of this desert neighborhood by shouting, Gamadge waited until the cleaning woman shuffled up to join him under the portico. Several patrons might have contributed to her wardrobe—the well-worn ulster that was too short for her, the brown cloth skirt that was too long, the large felt hat perched on top of her gray hair. From her grimy paper shopping-bag the heels of working shoes protruded.

“Well, Mrs. Keate,” said Gamadge, “here you are on the dot. Glad you turned up.”

“Turned up? It's my time for Miss Paxton.”

“I mean I was afraid you might have seen the papers and stayed away.”

“Papers?” The instant reaction of cleaning women to the unexpected—in any form—is defiance. Anything may be a threat, a threat of oppression, to the touchy ego of a cleaning woman. She stood eyeing Gamadge with reserve, both hands in their brown fabric gloves clutching the string handles of her shopping-bag.

“Poor Miss Paxton is dead.”

“Dead!”

“She fell.”

“My soul. Was it a stroke?”

“No, the fall killed her.”

“Terrible. I did think she was quite an old lady to be here all alone by herself. Trip on the stairs?”

“No, it was a peculiar accident. I wanted to ask you—” Gamadge stepped back to look up at the balcony. “She fell from that ledge.”

The cleaning woman also stepped back, stared up, and then looked at Gamadge. “From
there
?”

“And the railing gave. She evidently liked to come out on that little balcony; she came out there yesterday when I left, to see me off. You do remember me, Mrs. Keate? Remember my coming yesterday to call?”

“Certainly I do. My goodness.” She looked up at the railing. “I've been out there myself. I swept it up.”

“What I wanted to ask you was whether you noticed that the rail was loose.”

“I never touched it—thank goodness. That's the most dangerous thing I ever heard of. Who'd be responsible?”

“In your case? Heaven knows. I don't know the law on empty houses. The owners, I suppose, unless there's accident insurance.”

“I never heard of anything so careless—to leave a railing loose!”

“Well, of course it was only for ornament. Nobody's supposed to use that balcony.”

“Work people have to.”

“That's so.”

After a pause during which she seemed to ponder the damage in dollars that she might have caused the Ashbury family, she asked: “I'm not wanted any more, then?”

“You're wanted very much today. I'm—my wife's an old friend of Miss Paxton's. They want me to close up the house and get her things packed up to send home. And to pay you, of course. Could you help out on the closing up and the packing?”

She considered it. “I could if it wouldn't take too long after five. I have four places a day, and by five I'm ready to quit.”

“No wonder. We ought to get through it in two hours, I should think. Let's go in.”

She got a key out of a large shabby handbag which hung in safety between her person and the shopping-bag, its handle over her left wrist. “You might take this now,” she said, “before I forget it.”

“Thanks.” Gamadge inserted it into the keyhole. “Where did Miss Paxton get it—this extra key? Do you know?”

“She got it from the agents when they gave her hers.” The cleaning woman followed him into the dark hall, and stood while he closed the door after them, shutting them into silence and a gray twilight. “I knew this house before,” she said. “I cleaned for Mr. Ashbury. Of course there were servants then. After he died and the household broke up I left my key with the lawyer. And now I'm leaving it again.”

“Miss Paxton told me what a convenience it was, getting someone she could trust.”

“It was a kind of an accident. I was going by from my one o'clock place up the Avenue and I saw that the house was open. I had two hours free in the afternoons between three and five, one of my families went South for the Winter. I stopped in to inquire, and Miss Paxton engaged me right away. Only a couple of weeks ago, but I feel as if I'd known her longer. Such a nice lady. It's sad.”

“It is sad. Suppose we settle up the money question here and now, Mrs. Keate.”

“I might be a little overtime,” she said anxiously.

“I'm going to ask you to accept a couple of dollars extra anyway, for your special job of sorting and packing up, and for the accommodation.”

Mrs. Keate adopted the proper look and tone of reluctance; but she accepted the couple of dollars over and above the three dollars owing her for the Monday and Tuesday, and the dollar-fifty to be earned that afternoon.

“Now let's see,” said Gamadge. “How do we go about this? I'll go over the house and lock windows and turn off the furnace.”

“I'll do any picking up there is since yesterday, and strip the bed and put the laundry together; and put out the garbage.”

“What about a laundry?”

“She had Campbell's, around on Lexington.”

“I'll call Campbell's.” Gamadge made a note.

“We can put the bundle down by the front door. There's never much garbage, Miss Paxton used to give it to the man next door in the mornings.”

“We'll leave it out front today, the dickens with it.”

“That's the man for you,” said Mrs. Keate with dry amusement.

“And when you get all that out of the way,” said Gamadge, “I'll help you sort out Miss Paxton's things. I suppose she had a trunk?”

“There's one in her bedroom. She always left it open. I'd like you to come up and look around for any valuables she had. I don't want to be responsible.”

“She had none—only what she was wearing at the time of the accident.”

The cleaning woman hesitated midway up the stairs: “What time—was she laying there long, sir, before they found her?”

“Last night. Not long.”

“Might have been robbed!”

“Wasn't.”

She went on upstairs. Gamadge opened a door on the right and entered a room with barred windows fronting on the street. It contained a huddled collection of furniture that included a sewing machine, and had probably been the servants' dining and sitting room.

Gamadge poked about, uncovered the sewing machine, opened closets. He went back to the laundry and kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards on the way. In both the back rooms he continued his search, even peering under the stationary tubs and among the cooking utensils. No portable flat surfaces here of the proper size and dimensions. It occurred to him again how few such implements are in general use. He fastened windows and the yard door.

He went down to the cellars; no portable flat surfaces there, not even a leftover coal shovel of any size.

He switched off the furnace, locked up, and went upstairs. In the front hall he examined the mosaic flooring; not a flaw or a crack for fluids to settle in, and the mosaic looked well scrubbed.

On the first-story landing he paused to listen; the cleaning woman was in the pantry beyond Miss Paxton's chosen sitting room. He went to the front drawing room and searched it, but found no detachable flat surface nor any practicable chair leg. In the book-room he stood and shook his head at the books; no book could have been used to strike that killing blow; hadn't the weight for it, and there was no purchase. He opened all the tip-out cupboards and ran his arm down to the bottom of them; could hardly get his arm down, so closely were they packed with their contents.

He heard the cleaning woman go upstairs, and went back to Miss Paxton's room to search it and the pantry. There was a bronze paperweight on the table, but it was round and hollow, like a muffin tin.

He gathered up all the things that looked as if they were, or had been, Miss Paxton's—knitting bag, spectacle case, writing case; he picked up the golf cape from the back of the chair and hung it on his arm. Then he went up to the second story, left his hat and coat on the stair rail, and entered Miss Paxton's bedroom—the large, dark, handsomely furnished room that had been Mr. and Mrs. Lawson Ashbury's. Miss Paxton's open wardrobe trunk stood in a corner. The cleaning woman was rolling up laundry in a sheet.