Unexpected Night (26 page)

“Hello, there, Mr. Ormville.” The young man came over and shook hands. “Decent of you to travel up here and see us out of our troubles.”

“Not at all, my boy; it's my business, you know.”

“How do you like the look of us, now that you're here?” Lieutenant Barclay, in the process of lighting a cigarette, looked at Mr. Ormville over his cupped hands.

“Not at all. You seem to have been getting yourselves into the most extraordinary mess. How is Alma? Have you had any recent news?”

“I just got on to the hospital again. She's all right, or will be when she gets over the cure she had.”

“Is the child pursued by furies?”

“Looks a little that way. They seem to have been using poor Mum as a medium, you know.”

Colonel Barclay rattled his newspaper, but his son continued, sitting down beside the lawyer. “Many's the dose I've had out of the celebrated bottle, with a licorice gum-drop to follow. I hear Alma says she doesn't know what did happen, Mum came in and gave her the dose, and she drank it. After that, my unfortunate cousin knew no more.”

“This is very awkward—or it might have been, Now, I suppose your poor mother will get off with no worse than a scolding from Eleanor Cowden.”

“Aunt El's cutting up rough, you know. Very rough. I don't know what got into her. As if Mum would intentionally hurt a fly!”

“Still, of course, one doesn't want one's nearest and dearest poisoned, even by mistake. Let us hope Ellie will calm down.”

Doctor Baines rolled in, and Ormville rose to greet him with a slight excess of enthusiasm.

“Glad you're here,” rumbled the doctor. His broad face showed fatigue, and a certain disquietude. “We've had a bad night, as I suppose you've heard.”

“It must have been bad indeed. I'm thankful to hear that the poor girl is out of danger—thanks to you.”

“Thanks to that fellow Gamadge. He has his wits about him, you know.”

“I am beginning to suspect it.”

“If he hadn't noticed that door, and acted promptly, she would be dead, by now; like the rest of 'em.”

“May I ask whether anybody has any notion how her door came to be unlocked?”

“She says she didn't unlock it. It could be opened with any flat object. I tried on ours, this morning; and my wife is now elaborating a system of strings and chairs.” He sat down beside Colonel Barclay.

Lieutenant Barclay observed: “We all owe Gamadge a vote of thanks. I'm quite aware of the fact, and also of another—he gets in my hair.”

Colonel Barclay rattled his paper again, this time violently. Mitchell entered, clasping a large flat parcel in his arms. He was introduced to Mr. Ormville, by the doctor; acknowledged the introduction with a short and absentminded nod; and walked over to the right of the desk. He laid the parcel down on it, cut the string with which it was tied, and put his knife back in his pocket. Ormville, observing him with some interest, thought that he too looked as if he had had a heavy night.

Sanderson and the medical examiner came back. The former went over and sat down beside the Colonel, and Cogswell took a seat near Mitchell. Officer Pottle appeared in the doorway, leaned against the wall to one side of it, crossed his feet and folded his arms. The sheriff came in, nodded all round, and sat behind his desk. After a pause, Gamadge entered, looked about him, saw that all the chairs were occupied, and was about to accommodate himself on a window ledge, when Mitchell's voice halted him: “Mr. Ormville, I'd like to introduce Mr. Henry Gamadge.”

Mr. Ormville once more got resignedly to his feet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
HERIFF ENOS JAMES
, who was a leathery man in late middle life, with a kindly but disillusioned eye, said: “This office has reason to be obliged to Mr. Gamadge.”

“And so have we, so have we. I speak for myself as well as for my clients.” Mr. Ormville, surveying the rather haggard-looking young man in the well-cut grey clothes who shook hands with him unsmilingly, decided that far from being a self-assertive nuisance, the fellow was diffident, and needed encouraging. He continued: “I believe I had the pleasure of knowing your father, Mr. Gamadge. A charming person. Charming.”

“Wasn't he?” Gamadge did smile at that, waited until Mr. Ormville had reseated himself, and then took up an easy position on his window ledge.

“This poor child, Alma Cowden, apparently owes her life to your keenness of observation.”

“No credit to me,” replied Gamadge. “I merely happened to be on the spot.”

“If I used the language of the underworld,” said Mr. Ormville, “which I am seldom inclined to do, I should say that Alma has every appearance of being ‘on the spot' herself. We know, of course, that that is nonsense—”

“Yes, it undoubtedly is,” agreed Gamadge.

“I am glad to find that one more sensible person has come to that conclusion. Why complicate the situation,” asked Mr. Ormville, glancing about him with raised eyebrows, “by assuming for a moment that the golf-course incident, and now this sad mistake about the medicines, were anything but accidents?”

“Well, they weren't accidents,” said Gamadge.

“Not accidents? My dear young man, you have already said that you agreed they were not deliberate attempts on her life.” Mr. Ormville raised his head, the better to contemplate Gamadge disapprovingly through his glasses.

“They weren't attempts on her life,” said Gamadge.

“I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir. There is really no alternative.”

“Well, yes, there is, I'm afraid.”

“Would you be so kind as to state it?”

“Yes. Somebody was needed to take the blame for meeting Amberley Cowden on the cliff; Arthur Atwood filled that requirement to perfection, but unfortunately somebody was going to be needed to take the blame for killing
him
—if the suicide theory didn't work out. Problem: To provide a suspect who had a motive for making away with both Cowdens and Arthur Atwood. I thought the golf-ball incident very ingenious; don't you?”

Mr. Ormville sat back in his chair and contemplated Gamadge with the air of one who has stroked the house cat, and had his thumb bitten. The tone of patronage had departed from his voice, as he asked:

“In what way ingenious? If murder was not intended, I should have thought the risk frightful.”

“You're a golfer, Mr. Ormville?”

“I was.”

“You must surely realise the fact that nobody could be sure of killing, or even hitting, anybody with a golf ball at a distance of a hundred yards; but a good player could
miss
killing somebody with a golf ball, and make it the deuce of a near thing, too; especially if the player didn't particularly care whether he injured the victim or not. It was a close shave, I tell you! Mrs. Cowden, whose nerves are stronger than mine, was frightened almost sick, and I don't blame her.”

“You are absolutely convinced, from your observations at the time, that the affair was premeditated?”

“Oh, absolutely. Go out there, yourself, and look at the terrain, noting the line of retreat.”

“Extraordinary. And the attempt with the morphia?”

“Quite simple, as planned; but there was an unfortunate complication, which almost led to fatal results. The dose had been carefully gauged; it was to knock Miss Cowden out, give everybody a scare, and place the blame where it would do most good. But by a really remarkable piece of bad luck, Mrs. Barclay had innocently contrived, by adding an extra grain of morphia herself, to make the stuff lethal.”

There was a slight commotion in the room; Colonel Barclay, trembling and inarticulate, had half risen from his chair, and his son had crossed the room to him, and was patting him on the back and laughing.

“There, Dad,” he said gaily. “What did I tell you? Mum's in the clear. Sit down before you fall down, and take it easy.”

“I want to go and telephone to your mother.”

“She's sleeping the sleep of the just. Why wake her up? I'll telephone, later.”

Mr. Ormville, displaying outrage, said: “I should indeed think that Mrs. Barclay was ‘in the clear'! Nobody but a fool could possibly suspect her of anything worse than—ah—a slight carelessness in matters of detail. Mr. Gamadge, have you evidence to support this theory?”

“None, Mr. Ormville; but I might call these facts to your attention: Miss Cowden's door was unlocked; but Mrs. Barclay came and went by the door that communicates with the next room—Mrs. Cowden's. In this she is corroborated by several persons, including Miss Cowden herself. Moreover, Hoskins would certainly have seen her coming out of Room 19; he has missed certain things, but he would not have missed that. Moreover, there had been a first performance on the golf course; I expected, and tried to guard against, more of the same.”

“One moment, Mr. Gamadge.” Ormville's bloodless detachment, as he became interested in the exposition, might well have chilled the blood of anyone present who had expected him to disdain the improbable. “You had formed a theory about the death of Amberley Cowden? You said that someone would be required to take the blame for meeting him on the cliff. Do you imply—”

“I don't imply anything, Mr. Ormville; I assert that the circumstances of his death necessarily predicate a crime. Mind you, I considered it at first none of my business; and I shouldn't have interfered at all, only…”

“Well, Mr. Gamadge?” Ormville's voice dropped into a pause so vibrant with expectation that he glanced about him at the circle of blank, expressionless faces before he repeated: “Well?”

“Well, I didn't like what was happening to Alma Cowden; and I thought she could be pulled out of the mess before the consequences got too serious. And then, when I saw the photograph of the boy's body, I didn't like the way his face had been bashed in.”

“‘Bashed in,' Mr. Gamadge! I understood that he had been injured when he fell on the rocks.”

“Oh, no; I don't think so. I think it was done so that Sam, the night watchman at the Ocean House, shouldn't get to wondering, if by any chance he saw the body.”

“Get to wondering, Mr. Gamadge? Wondering what?”

“Wondering why it wasn't the same young man that had arrived at the Ocean House the night before.”

“You cursed interfering fool!” Sanderson sprang to his feet. “Do you know what you're saying! What
are
you saying? I can't make head or tail of it. Amberley died a natural death—”

“I know he did.”

“Then what do you mean by saying it wasn't his body?”

“It was. But he died on the way up from the Barclays, before twelve o'clock standard time; and the young man who took his place, and left the hotel an hour later—the young man Sam saw—was Arthur Atwood.”

There were faint indications of pandemonium in the office, and Pottle uncrossed his feet; but he crossed them again, as the hubbub died.

“Sit down, Hugh,” said Mr. Ormville, “and let us get to the bottom of Mr. Gamadge's delusions. What is your idea of the procedure on that night, Mr. Gamadge? Have you a coherent story to tell us?”

“I have, Mr. Ormville. Amberley Cowden died before he was of legal age; therefore he could not inherit his fortune; therefore someone else had to be substituted for him, and exhibited before a disinterested witness, well after the hour of midnight. The substitute was on the spot; he had been ready for the emergency, and had driven down to Portsmouth in response to an S.O.S. from Sanderson, who sent the message in Amberley Cowden's name from the Harbour Inn. The boy had been so ill that they were taking no chances.

“Atwood arranged his alibi at Seal Cove, and left soon after eight o'clock. He followed the Cowden car, and when it stopped, and Sanderson went back and told him the boy was dead, he had only to make up, and put on the overcoat, the hat and the gloves. Amberley Cowden's face was partially disfigured, and his body thrown over the cliff; and the party proceeded to the hotel, not later than could be accounted for by the alleged illness
en route
of a very sick young man.

“Atwood never took his gloves off at all. He made the call to Seal Cove that was to avert suspicion from himself, and to identify himself further with young Cowden; he then left the hotel, impressing himself upon Sam as being at the time alive and in presumably fair condition, and went back to the rocks, by way of the beach. He replaced the overcoat as well as he could, without moving the corpse, leaving the gloves in the pocket of it, and the hat near by; found his car, where he had parked it; and drove back to Seal Cove.”

There was dead silence. Then Sanderson asked, quietly: “You wish people to believe that Alma Cowden was a party to this conspiracy? You should have allowed her to die last night.”

Gamadge looked at him sombrely. “She was not a party to it,” he said, “until it was all but a
fait accompli.
She was in a state of shock after the sudden death of her brother, pressure was brought to bear on her, and she thought at the moment that her whole future happiness was at stake. It was, but not as she supposed; she has been wretched ever since; and not only wretched, she has been terrified. She realised almost immediately what life would be under the régime of her three accomplices; she realised that they had planned the thing long before, and she understood what they must be capable of, and what money meant to them. She realised that her life stood between Arthur Atwood and a fortune. Do you wonder that within twenty-four hours she was ready to give the fortune away?”