The Wrong Way Down (2 page)

“A lot of money.”

“I should think so. And James sent his and his wife's congratulations, they really sounded pleased. He can hardly remember me, he went West when he was so young a man, so long ago. He has two children, a son and a daughter, whom I've never seen, and this second wife. Really I'm very glad that he's a successful man with plenty of money of his own. If he wasn't I might be conscience-stricken. Nearly a third of the estate! Another third went to Cousin Lawson's church, and the rest, and this house, to James. But what can James do with this house? They tell me it's worth very little as it is, and the other houses in the row aren't for sale, so nobody can buy them and put up an apartment. And it costs so much to remodel into flats.”

“Don't lose sleep over Mr. James Ashbury.”

“There's somebody else I do worry about a little.”

“Who's that?”

Miss Paxton frowned at her thoughts. “Cousin Lawson had one other relative—a great-niece named Iris Vance. Her parents are dead, and except for the Ashburys she seems to be quite alone in the world. But Cousin Lawson didn't leave her anything at all.”

“Why not?”

“There was a family quarrel, if you could call it that.”

“And Mr. Ashbury deceased took it out on this girl?”

“She was in it. The quarrel was on account of her.”

“Something she did?”

“And she was only ten years old at the time. Still…” Miss Paxton sat twirling her sherry glass, a peculiar look of doubt and distaste in her eye. “Her father and mother always seemed such cultivated, pleasant people, too. I never could understand it. I knew them quite well; they used to come here long ago when I was staying in the house, and we'd all go to the theatre; Iris' mother used to come here, of course, long before she was married. It was all so cheerful and gay in those days. I can see us going down the front steps—the stoop wasn't gone then—to the carriage or the car, on our way to some theatre. The Ashburys were always giving us treats.”

“What turned out to be the matter with the Vances?” asked Gamadge, who was sitting back and idly smoking.

“The Ashburys always knew that the Vances were devout spiritualists. That wasn't the trouble, although Lawson and Marietta didn't approve. Mr. Vance was an artist, so well-bred and agreeable; his wife seemed flighty to me, but pleasant too. They weren't mediums themselves, you know, just devout believers.

“But that poor little Iris! Brought up to it, taking it all for granted, and encouraged when she was supposed to develop what they called psychic gifts. She was a medium from babyhood! It just made it all too horrible. Not for money, you know, but somehow that makes it worse—more
real
.”

“The parents exploited her?”

“They didn't call it that, they said it would be criminal to suppress her powers. They were never allowed to mention the subject to the Ashburys. They came here on the understanding that it never must be mentioned.”

“What was the little girl like?”

“A very pretty red-haired child, always dressed in white, and with something so eerie about her. As if she were living on a different plane from ours, a much higher one, and knew things we couldn't know. Really, a most annoying little thing, though she never said anything impertinent. Very good manners.”

“Hard to live with,” agreed Gamadge. “Tough on the unbelievers.”

“But that wouldn't have alienated the Ashburys, who were the kindest people. But one day when her parents brought her here to call with them—she made something happen.”

“What?” Gamadge was interested.

“The Ashburys never would say. They avoided the whole subject, and the Vances never came here again.”

“Drastic.”

“I ought to explain that that kind of thing would seem much more serious to Cousin Lawson and Cousin Marietta than to most people, because they thought that mediums
can
make things happen, but only through the agency of evil spirits. And it happened in the drawing room,” said Miss Paxton, glancing at the partition wall to her right.

“That makes it bad,” said Gamadge. “Evil spirits in the drawing room.”

“And invoked by a child! I mean in the middle of tea,” explained Miss Paxton, “and the parents delighted. Until, of course, Cousin Marietta fainted. It nearly killed her. She was in bed a week. Do you really wonder so much that Cousin Lawson wouldn't leave any of the Vances money to be spent on such things? But I'm afraid they weren't well off, and when I had the news about my legacy and found that Iris Vance wasn't getting a penny—well, I made up my mind to get in touch with her. When I got to town this Fall I looked her up—she's in the telephone book. I asked her to call, and she came last Sunday.”

“What's she like now?”

“A pretty girl, I'm sure anybody would call her that, with beautiful red hair and a fair skin. But her features are not clear-cut; there's a blurriness about them. More like a picture than a person,” said Miss Paxton.

“A French modern portrait?” Gamadge looked pleased at her description. “A Laurencin?”

“Well, yes.”

“Subtle, perhaps?”

“That's the very word.”

“Did you like her? I don't think you did.”

“I had determined to like her, and to—well—you know, find out how she was situated financially. She shocked me inexpressibly by telling me that she was a professional medium now, and making an excellent living by it.”

“Really.”

“And she seemed proud of it. I couldn't help feeling that in her own sly way she was laughing at me all the time.”

“These adepts. Did she say what branch of the profession she particularly went in for? Crystal gazing, polite palmistry? Or is she a regular trance medium, with all the trimmings? There's a lot of difference.”

“I didn't ask.”

“There's one thing I hope you did ask.”

Miss Paxton laughed in spite of herself. “I asked her what happened in the drawing room that day—I couldn't help it.”

“But she wouldn't say?”

“Henry Gamadge, I could have shaken her; she said she was in trance at the time and didn't know!”

“I
would
have shaken her. Here I'm dying of curiosity.”

“So am I. Do you know what I've sometimes thought? Only you couldn't think it of her father and mother.”

“What?”

“That they put her up to it, whatever it was, to try to convince Cousin Lawson and Cousin Marietta and get them into the fold!”

“Well, after all, that's just the kind of thing fanatical persons are accused of doing from the highest motives.”

After a pause Miss Paxton asked: “There's a good deal of so-called evidence for that kind of thing, isn't there?”

“For spiritualistic manifestations? Oceans of it.” He added: “If you study it you may find yourself in the fold before you know where you are. The human mind is fearfully and wonderfully made.”

“I shan't study it. But…will you laugh?”

“At anything you seriously tell me? Certainly not.”

“Since she was here something else has happened—or I think it has. And I can't help wondering whether she made it happen, just to show me she could.”

Gamadge sat up. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Of course I'm not young, and I do forget things now and then.”

“Not as many things as I do, I'd be willing to bet on it.”

“I'm so sure about this.” Miss Paxton rose. “Will you just let me tell you about it in my own way?”

“Any way you like.”

She stood looking at him oddly. “I think I'd better lead up to it. I shouldn't like you to think my brain is going.”

“I'll bet against that, too.”

“Clara wrote me that you liked mysteries.”

“I do, very much.”

“If you can just explain this without bringing the spirits into it!”

“However I explain it, if I explain it at all, the spirits won't be the explanation.”

“You're so comforting.”

She went in front of him across the room and into the hall, which was carpeted in red and lighted by tulip-shaped globes set in the gilt foliage of the wall brackets. Gamadge's eyes wandered over the pictures—framed etchings, engravings, an old-fashioned water color or two that looked as if someone in the family had had a little talent for sketching.

“James doesn't want any of these,” said Miss Paxton. “He wouldn't let me send him an itemized list. He's sure they're almost worthless. But he's never properly seen them at all, he admits it; and I'm getting the right people to look at them, of course.”

“At first glance I'm inclined to agree with him that there won't be much of value found here. One or two of the engravings, perhaps…”

“Cousin Lawson and his father liked to buy pictures of places they visited abroad, and reproductions of paintings they liked in the galleries. There are more in the book-room. I haven't been through those cupboards yet.” Miss Paxton, who had turned to the left after they came out of the dining room, stood with her eyes fixed on an engraving which hung just above the level of her eyes. “Will you look at this one?”

G
AMADGE MOVED TO
Miss Paxton's side and looked at the engraving, which was framed in black and gold. He said: “Now that might be a nice little value. It's a good copperplate. Who's it a portrait of? Let's see: ‘The Lady Audley.'”

“Cousin Lawson's father, my Uncle Vincent, bought it because he thought it looked like his wife. Will you take it down and bring it into the sitting room, please, and tell me all you can about it?”

“You mean describe it as if for an inventory?”

“If you can.”

“It tells a good deal about itself; I could add a little more, perhaps.”

He lifted it off its hook and carried it into the sitting room. Miss Paxton cleared a space for it on her table, and he laid it face upward in the full light of the lamp.

“We have here,” said Gamadge, “an aquatint engraving—”

“What's an aquatint?” asked Miss Paxton, who stood beside him with a look of intense interest on her troubled face.

“An engraving etched on copperplate with aqua fortis—nitric acid. Etched in what you might call a dotty way—with dots instead of lines. By the way, it isn't very dusty. Good housekeeping here.”

Miss Paxton looked surprised and amused.

“Etched on pink paper,” continued Gamadge.

“Pink?”

“Pinkish, what they call pink. It's eighteenth century—I'm not cheating, I haven't looked at the inscription yet—and a good deal older than its frame. It was engraved by a master. It's a portrait—head and shoulders—of a lady in the costume and headdress of the first half of the sixteenth century. She is not exactly beautiful, but she has a delicate, highbred face, and by the cut of the mouth alone I should say she had been painted by Holbein. Shall I go on to the lettering?”

“Please,” said Miss Paxton in a dry voice.

Gamadge read aloud:

THE LADY AUDLEY

From the original by Hans Holbein

Engraved by F. BARTOLOZZI, Historical Engraver to

His Majesty

Published as the Act directs Oct. 1, 1793

By I. Chamberlaine

“His Majesty,” remarked Gamadge, looking up at Miss Paxton, “must have been King George the Third. Bartolozzi—who
was
a master—seems to have been engaged by this Chamberlaine to engrave a series of portraits for a book. What series? Well, Holbein painted portraits of court ladies and gentlemen for King Henry the Eighth. Lady Audley must have been one of them, and at some time or other one of the books was looted of its portraits—often occurs.”

“Very interesting indeed,” said Miss Paxton, still dryly. “My cousin Lawson always said he wished he knew who the portrait was of.”

“You mean he wished he knew who Lady Audley was?”

“No. He didn't know it was a portrait of Lady Audley.”

“But—” Gamadge, puzzled, ran his finger along the glass at the bottom of the picture—“it says
Lady Audley
here, in letters a quarter of an inch high.”

“Yes. Now I'll tell
you
something interesting: Until yesterday evening, when I looked at that picture closely for the first time in some years, there has not been one word of writing on it. Not one word.”

Gamadge straightened himself, looked down at her, and asked mildly: “No letters?”

“Letters? No writing. I have looked at it often in the past, because as I said it was supposed to resemble Cousin Lawson's mother, of course in youth. I never saw the resemblance myself, but I only remembered my aunt as a middle-aged woman. I hadn't looked at it closely since I came here two weeks ago, but I looked at it. It was just as it has always been. And then on Sunday evening, after I finished a letter to a picture dealer, I came out into the hall with my pad and pencil to make a sort of list of all these pictures. It had developed the inscription. Well, I'm not a nervous woman.”