Unexpected Night (28 page)

“And she lay down flat on Mrs. Baines' bed, and shut her eyes. She was in that plain white dress—mourning for the boy, you know. My God.”

Ormville cleared his throat. “This is without prejudice: I feel inclined to hope that you were right in your suggestion,” he said. “She wouldn't face it. Nobody who knew her could imagine her facing it. She's better—ah—out of it for good.”

“I don't believe Mitchell or the sheriff will ask awkward questions. At any rate, not of me. Look here, Mr. Ormville, what about Alma?”

“Well…she is a minor, she was subjected to pressure from her legal guardian, and she has been in danger of her life—after putting herself on record as intending to make restitution. I don't think those French people—who must have seemed to her like semi-mythical Ho-Ho birds—will bestir themselves in the matter, since they are getting their money. Really, it was most intelligent of you, Gamadge, to make her sign that paper.”

“She suggested it herself, I keep telling you.”

“If the worst comes to the worst,” said Mr. Ormville, “I shall have you subpœnaed as a witness for the defence.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
LMA COWDEN SAT
up in bed at the Bailtown Hospital, partaking of a light lunch. In spite of a slight wanness, a puffiness about the eyes, and a stringy look to her hair, and also in spite of the fact that she wore an unbleached muslin hospital shirt, fastened at the back of her neck with a safety pin, her appearance was not forlorn. She looked, in fact, better than she had done since her first arrival at the beach.

She was entertaining two visitors. Lieutenant Barclay sat on her right, mixing highballs in two graduated glasses; Gamadge, on her left, was slumped well down in his chair, hands in pockets, and eyes shut.

“Here you are.” Fred Barclay handed him a glass, after giving the ice in it a final stir with a drinking tube.

“Thanks.” Gamadge rose to receive it across the high bed. “You still don't seem to be in on the orgy, Miss Cowden. Too bad.”

“I know all about that.” Young Barclay swallowed some whisky. “Trying to get the witness tight, weren't you, so that she'd give the show away?”

“Something of the sort. Her one chance was to give it away, and I knew she wouldn't, not if she knew it.”

“Well, we ought to be damned grateful to you. You know, I thought for a while that you were trying to horn in on me. I may have been a little rude.”

“Not at all,” said Gamadge, gravely.

“I'd better explain the whole thing, or you may get Alma and me wrong. You're such a moral guy.”

“So are you a moral guy,” said Alma, morosely. “Everybody seems to be moral, except me.”

“Never mind, we'll save you yet.” Young Barclay gave her a slow smile, and she gave him a dim one in return. “It was this way, Gamadge. It all goes back to poor Mum being so dead set on my getting some of that money. She always thought I was morally entitled to at least half of it, and that somebody must have got after Aunt Mattie—that was the one that married the Frenchman—and done me out of it. She's had a hard time of it herself, and she wanted me to have an easier one—that's all. So she concentrated on my marrying Alma. I'm afraid she got to be one of the people that just sat and watched poor old Amberley with an eagle eye, finger on his pulse, you know, praying he'd live long enough to make us all rich. It wasn't entirely her fault; the situation was enough to ruin anybody's character, except Dad's, of course.

“I don't know whether you've noticed it,” continued young Barclay, “but I don't show my feelings, much.”

“Something of the sort has occurred to me, once or twice,” confessed Gamadge, in a serious tone.

“Especially when other people are making a great show of affection, and so on, that they don't feel. Alma's the same way. I dare say we overdid it, sometimes. We were both fond of the poor old boy, but the family made us sick. We never had any idea of marrying anybody but each other; and when I say never, of course I mean for the last couple of years, since Alma more or less grew up. But Aunt Eleanor had other ideas for her—I wasn't much of a catch, you know, and we were first cousins, and all that rot; and Mother's rage at Aunt El was such that her own methods got infernally crude. In fact, neither Alma nor I ever heard a word about anything else. I was slightly annoyed to be put in the fortune-hunter class; and it reacted unfavourably on my manners.”

“I should say it did,” said Alma.

“Whereupon Alma began to favour me with high-minded moral talks, and at last damned if she didn't start holding up for my admiration the noble and disinterested figure of Mr. Hugh Sanderson.”

“I didn't,” protested Miss Cowden, flushing. “I only said—”

“You only said
he
wasn't waiting for Amby's money. You said he loved him for himself alone, and he loved you for yourself alone, and he had refused to be down in Amby's will for more than a thousand dollars. The truth being, as I very well knew, that Sanderson was going to get an annuity. It was a dark secret; but Amberley told me all about it. You can imagine how I felt!”

“Very annoying for you,” said Gamadge.

“Amberley told me, and he told Aunt Eleanor. And she told Sanderson. I knew he knew all about it, while he was going around refusing legacies. He and Aunt Eleanor were pretty thick, from the start; as business partners, of course. I suppose she must have sounded him out long ago, to find out whether he'd help her try to save the money from the French.”

“Fred—” began Alma.

“I know, old girl; but you'll have to make up your mind to it—I'm never going to be sentimental about Aunt Eleanor.”

“If she hadn't left that letter, I should have been in terrible trouble now.”

“It was the least she could do.”

“Alma is right,” said Gamadge. “That letter spiked Sanderson's guns. You can't exaggerate its importance. He isn't likely to exonerate anybody. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Cowden, Alma would certainly be in a fix. But suppose you get on with the horror story.”

“Well, that was the situation; Alma beginning to think that I was an unfeeling cad in my attitude about Amby, and beginning to wonder whether I wasn't a fortune hunter after all—since Mother seemed to be qualifying for the part; Aunt Eleanor telling her that I was no good, and that Sanderson was the boy for her; myself in a state of righteous indignation all round—mad at Alma, furious at Aunt Eleanor, seething at Sanderson, and hardly able to keep my temper with poor Mum; Dad fed up with the whole thing, and getting ready to think Mother and I would do about anything for money. Amberley, being no fool, had Aunt Eleanor's number, but he couldn't cope with Sanderson, and he thought Arthur Atwood was a living wonder. It would have made you sick, Gamadge, to watch them working on him.

“I hadn't seen Alma for ages; you know I'm stationed out at the back of beyond. I thought the only thing for it was a quiet talk with her, a few apologies, and one thing and another.”

“That was undoubtedly the only thing for it,” said Gamadge.

“I had to get her off somehow by herself; not so easy. It was a thing I hadn't had a chance to do since my winter leave. I get one month, you know, and I take two weeks in the summer, and two weeks at Christmas.”

“I see.”

“So on Sunday night I told the parents that I'd wash up and clear away; at which they nearly fainted. But they went up to bed, and when they quieted down I walked up to the hotel—via the golf course. It cuts off a quarter of a mile, that trail does. Are you getting excited?”

“Very much excited. How did you imagine that you would be able to get a quiet talk with your cousin at 1 a.m., in the Ocean House, with her aunt in the next room?”

“Simplest thing in the world. I know the old barn from roof to cellar, and I was planning to go up to the first floor by way of the fire escape. I knew they would be on the first floor, because of poor old Amby. I knew they'd take some time to register, and get settled; and I thought that with any luck I could reconnoitre through the glass at the end of the corridor and see what room she was in. If that didn't work, I could drop in and ask Sam for cigarettes, and get a look at the register.”

“Very simple,” said Gamadge.

“I was desperate,” continued young Barclay, looking particularly calm. “I thought I'd wait a while, and then go and shove a note under her door. Then she could come out and join me on the fire escape. Many's the nice chat,” said young Barclay, in a reminiscent and sentimental tone of voice, “that I have had, after the ball, on the Ocean House fire escape.”

“I can imagine,” said Alma, drily.

“While you were in kindergarten, old dear.” He put out a large hand, and closed it over her arm. “And when I was at West Point. Well, Gamadge, I peered through the door, and I saw the party settling in; pretty close, too. Aunt Eleanor was right in front of me. She disappeared into Room 21, though, and I saw what I thought was Amberley's back, going into 17. Sam was shifting bags, and Sanderson milling around in and out of Room 20. I took a chance; and when the corridor was empty I slid the note under the door of 19.”

“It
was
a chance,” said Alma. “Suppose Aunt Eleanor had seen it? She was in and out all night.”

“When you're desperate…” The two pairs of long dark eyes met, and there was a silence.

“To the deuce with eugenics,” thought Gamadge, tinkling the ice loudly in his glass. “You were saying,” he offered, looking at the busy gyrations of the electric fan over the door.

“Oh…Yes…Excuse us. Well, reading the note gave Alma a chance to pull herself together.”

“No, it didn't,” said Alma.

“I mean, you didn't scream, or faint, or fall into my arms, as you should have done. You merely opened the door, with a face as green as a lime, and said: ‘Go away.'”

“You know why.”

“I didn't, then. I asked, ‘What's the matter with you?' And you said: ‘I've been sick. Aunt El's coming. Go away.' So I went—by the back route.”

“Leaving me nearly crazy.”

“Well, Gamadge, the news about Amberley came in the next morning early; and, on top of that, I heard that Alma was paying the bequests in his will. I never gave a thought to Arthur Atwood; I was sure something queer had happened on this end of the line, and whatever it was, I knew that Alma must be implicated up to the neck. Paying me off like that, without a word—lumping me in with Atwood and Sanderson—it made me wild. I didn't see why she couldn't tell me all about it; she must have known I wouldn't give her away.”

“You would have condoned the fraud?” enquired Gamadge. “If it's a fair question, of course.”

“Well, I—no. I'd have made her drop the whole business, and—to tell you the truth, I haven't worked out what I should have done, and I don't intend to, now.”

“The thing is, she was pretty sure you wouldn't stand for the fraud.”

“
She
didn't stand for it long! Well, I left her a note, expressing some of my feelings, and I decided that if she wouldn't talk, I'd burst in and have a showdown with the whole lot of them. I didn't care for Aunt Eleanor, or for Sanderson, and I was beginning to be scared stiff on Alma's account.”

“I saw the note,” said Gamadge.

“You did?”

“Yes. I got a look at it through an operation of Deputy Sheriff Hoskins, who inserted a foot rule or something under the door and fished it out before Miss Cowden woke up and saw it.”

“Well, I'll be—”

“I am totally unscrupulous. Why wouldn't you have anything to do with your cousin Fred, Miss Cowden?”

“It was Aunt Eleanor. You know, down on the road, when it happened, she and Hugh Sanderson were so kind and sympathetic, talking to me and explaining that the thing wasn't anything but a technicality. They said I was morally entitled to the money. They said it was too unjust, to make me lose it because Amby had died a few minutes too soon. They said I had a case in law. But the second I agreed to go through with it, they changed. They were like different people. It was awful down there, Mr. Gamadge.”

“I can well believe that it was.”

“You don't know. That fog, and Amby dying like that, and Hugh stopping the car. And Arthur Atwood driving up, and pretending he just happened to be there—I actually believed him. And then he offered to take Amby's place, so I could get the money, and the others pretended it was all his own idea. I was so confused and scared, and they all seemed to be doing it just for me. The whole thing seemed to happen in a flash.

“I said I'd do it, and then they all began to work like lightning, as if they'd rehearsed it. And I stood in the road watching for cars, and trying not to see Arthur Atwood making up—oh, how I hated him! He actually seemed to be enjoying it, as if it was a kind of play. And I was trying not to see Hugh Sanderson carrying Amby—and Aunt Eleanor holding his hat and coat, ready for Arthur Atwood to put on. I stood there, and I remembered the man driving past in the little car; I hadn't seen his face, but I knew suddenly that of course it was Arthur Atwood, and that they'd planned the whole thing, in case Amby died. And they acted as if I didn't matter at all; you could see that they were working for the money—
their
money. They knew it really belonged to them.