Arrow Pointing Nowhere (27 page)

“My mother and Alden were at the villa back of Cannes; peasant nursemaid with them, and a couple of servants that slept out. Cort Fenway had left for America. Alden had a turn for the worse, mentally and physically. Mother arranged for a specialist to come down from Paris, a visiting big shot from Russia; I may as well say now that he went to Sweden soon afterwards, and died there.

“He doomed Alden; growth on the brain, nothing to be done, matter of a few weeks. It had always been a possibility, it was part of the original diagnosis of Alden's case. Mother didn't say a word about it to her servants—she wasn't that sort; and it's lucky she wasn't, because she got word from America that Cort was seriously ill. You know what that meant to her—everything. If Alden died first, and Cort followed him, the Fenway money went back to the estate. She took no chances.”

Blake Fenway's muffled voice interrupted him: “I would have taken care of her.”

“But my mother wasn't sold on that idea, Mr. Fenway; an allowance from you might have kept her going, but she wanted more than that for me; she wanted what Alden would have come in for after his father died. For I was always in the offing; at that time I was boarded out with country people
in the vicinity—she came to see me regularly, under an assumed name. And let me tell you that your brother sometimes came too!

“I don't believe anybody could honestly blame her for what she did. She was a general. She told the nursemaid that Alden needed trained care, had been ordered it by the specialist, and that he must be taken to Switzerland; she sent the girl home to her family in the north of France. When Alden died the other servants didn't know it; my mother buried him herself—in the grounds. Beautiful spot, she told me, under big trees. Anything so terrible about that?

“Then she left money for the servants and a letter and money for the agent; and a
poste-restante
address in Geneva. She said she was taking Alden to Switzerland, orders from the doctor. The villa was to be closed. Then she simply bundled herself and her traps into a car and came to me. She took me direct to a little place near Geneva, and drove in to the post office every day.

“When the cable arrived saying that Cort was dead, we went to Austria. There we stayed, travelling about, until I was old enough to pass as Alden. I was only three years and a little over, you know, and we both looked like her. You and Caroline met me for the first time in Paris when I was fifteen, Mr. Fenway; you may have thought me a little overgrown for my age, but you weren't unprepared to find me out of the ordinary, physically as well as mentally. No: we were perfectly safe. We didn't suppose that that Russian would ever hear of us or check up on us again, and he didn't; and by the time we were ready to go to Paris he was dead.”

Gamadge asked mildly: “She had no trouble at all, even at first, with a child of your age—no trouble at all? You could keep such a secret even then, and learn to play such a part?”

“All I had to do for a long time was keep my mouth shut; and I was quite capable of doing that! It didn't take me long to realize the difference between a small income and a large one, I can tell you. Children are the greatest snobs in the world—next to dogs.”

“If they're trained to be.”

“Not much training required, my dear Mr. Gamadge. And now, I really think that's all.” Mrs. Fenway's son, master of himself and—so proudly did he bear himself—apparently master of the situation, seemed about to turn away; but Gamadge, hands in pockets and eyes fixed on him in a kind of dark amusement, said: “Well, no; not quite all. We don't even now know who you are.”

“Who I am?”

“Who you are. Or don't you care to say?”

“Of course I care to say. My father was a thorough-going sport; I come by my adventurous disposition from both sides of my family. He was a charming person and a sport, and the only human being except me that my mother ever cared a hang about. His name was Bargrave, Clyde Bargrave, and that's my name too. They met at a dude ranch. Her mother was going to break it up, so they ran off to Mexico; he was in the money at the time, I don't know why, but his luck changed and he cleared out. She never did know what became of him.

“Her mother was wild, of course; got her to Europe, and got right in touch with the faithful swain Cort Fenway. He behaved like the gentleman he was, and I'll say this—it seems to be a family of gentlemen. He knew all about me, of course, and he helped with money and visas, and I was smuggled into the world without anybody being the wiser from that day to this—anybody who mattered, I mean. You can imagine that Mrs. Kane was only too glad to have my mother marry him in those circumstances—marry anybody!”

Gamadge asked: “What if Cort Fenway hadn't died, Mr. Bargrave?”

“Hadn't died?”

“What if he had survived his illness, and come back to France to find his child dead and illegally buried?”

“Oh—that wasn't more than a remote possibility; but my mother said he wouldn't have done anything. You don't know how he felt about her, but perhaps Mr. Blake Fenway will tell you. He wouldn't have allowed her to pass me off as Alden, naturally; but he'd have helped her conceal the circumstances of Alden's death. She would have told him that she hadn't been responsible at the time; out of her head with grief for Alden and worry about him. She wouldn't have told him that she had designs on the Fenway property. He'd have brought her home, and told people that Alden had died in France and was buried there. He'd have said that he knew all about it. Perfectly safe. In those post-war times nobody would have bothered to ask questions. He'd have adopted me, and I'd have been a member of the family. Please try to remember, sir, that what she did was only a technical misdemeanor. As for Mott's death, I'm really sorry; but he was an old man and useless, and he'd been a drag on you for years.”

Fenway said: “You are not competent to judge the value I placed on my cousin; such values are not in your power of reckoning. I can't meet you on the common ground of ordinary human feeling. I can only ask you—since you will be able to understand that question, at least what advantage it would have been to you to be confined in some institution for life? As you would have been, if Mr. Gamadge had not found the picture of Fenbrook.”

“I had no choice, sir; from the moment Mrs. Grove decided to talk it was confinement in an institution or—well, what I face now. But my mother and I had plans for the
future. I wasn't going to wait in an observation ward for an overhaul by specialists, you know; I would have escaped tonight. It wouldn't have been much of a job; Craddock and Thurley had convinced the police that I was an amiable child, and they were all awfully sorry for me and handling me with gloves. I had a place all ready to go to, and I wasn't afraid of being recognized. Would you recognize me?”

Receiving no answer, he went on: “Mother would have followed me as soon as she could walk, and settled near me. She had what money she'd saved, and she would have had more from you; a dam' sight better than nothing. I should have put in time with the armed forces, but that was all right; I had papers—I got them right here in New York. We should have been all right.”

He paused, and his eye met Gamadge's. He said with a kind of malignant humor: “You were the one that ought to have been eliminated, but I thought that after Mott was dead you'd consult Mr. Fenway, and that he'd send you about your business. I didn't know you had another client in the house. But I had a queer sort of a hunch last night when I met you at the head of the stairs that you were ready for me, and so you were.”

Gamadge said: “I'd like to ask you one more question, Mr. Bargrave.”

“As many as you like.”

“Only one: why have you obliged us with all this detail instead of putting up a fight?”

Bargrave looked very much taken aback. “Putting up a fight? What kind of a fight could I put up? If you mean Mott Fenway's death, what difference would that make in the outcome, since nobody could deny that I'd killed Mrs. Grove? And they told me upstairs that you'd found the picture, which contained proof that I wasn't Alden Fenway, wasn't therefore a half-wit, and was responsible. And how could I plead extenuating circumstances, or lack of premeditation, when you'd had Mrs. Grove's message and could check up on the trap at Fenbrook? She wouldn't tell you where the picture was; we knew well enough that she was saving the family scandal for Mr. Fenway alone; but she certainly told you her life had been threatened, and that there was a conspiracy. You must have the message, though how in the name of all that's wonderful she managed to write one and send it out—”

Gamadge said: “Nothing in any message I received from Mrs. Grove could be used against you in any court of law.”

“No?”

“No.”

Bargrave stood for a moment staring, too angry to speak. Then he pulled himself together. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “I'd have had a long jail sentence, and I don't want that; I prefer to quit, as my mother did, or at least as soon as I can.”

He swung away, but unfortunately for his poise he had at last forgotten the steel on his wrist. It brought him up short, and he was forced to stand tethered while the plain-clothes man exchanged some words with Nordhall. Gamadge wondered whether those few minutes were not the bitterest that Mr. Bargrave would ever know, since while they passed he could not even pretend to be doing as he chose.

But it was not long before he and his custodian were out of the room. The stenographer followed them. Blake Fenway sat looking at the empty doorway, and then put his head in his hands.

“A young fellow like that,” he groaned, “condemned to such a life by his own mother!”

“From what I could make of him, sir,” replied Gamadge, “it was the life he would have chosen for himself.”

“I haven't—” Fenway raised his drawn face—“I haven't thanked you.”

Gamadge could only answer that with a shake of the head. He went out into the hall, put on his hat and coat, and opened the door. He hated to face the street, for he knew what he would find there; Number 24 now belonged to the public. He thought that it would eventually be handed over to them, since no Fenway would ever live there now.

“
B
ARGRAVE!”
said Clara. “You know, it sounds like a
made-up name to me.”

“No doubt it was a made-up name.” Gamadge lay almost flat on the chesterfield, doing his duty by his operatives with the help of a strong highball. Clara sat at his feet, Harold and Arline beside his sofa. The two last-named looked as tired as he did, but they wanted the story. “Mr. Clyde Bargrave senior,” continued Gamadge, “was evidently not the kind of person who wishes to be tied down to bourgeois responsibilities by a permanent address. But he must have had charm; Mrs. Fenway doesn't seem to have resented his behavior in leaving her to her fate after the Mexican escapade.”

“I hope Mr. Fenway will look after Craddock and Hilda Grove.”

“Craddock will be kept on as secretary, I hope,” said Gamadge. “To help Fenway with that memoir he wants to write about his family.”

Arline exclaimed: “He won't want to write it now!”

“Won't he?” Gamadge turned his head to smile at her. “You don't know what the urge is, Arline, when once you've fallen under the enchantments of literature. That memoir will be the solace of Mr. Blake Fenway's declining years, and the view of old Fenbrook, reproduced in color, will serve as the frontispiece. Craddock and Hilda Grove will marry, and Craddock will be the luckiest man—next to me—on earth.”

“I'm going to call,” said Harold, “and explain about that accident. I never felt like such a fool in my life.”

“It's funny,” said Arline, “that Craddock was so fond of that Bargrave.”

“Oh, he put up a wonderful show as Alden Fenway; born mountebank, I presume, like his accomplished father. But Mott Fenway and Caroline, being prejudiced, felt that there was something wrong about him. Craddock felt that there was something wrong, but—being prejudiced—thought the fault lay with Mrs. Grove. But they were all astray.”

Harold said: “I am, still. How did you know your client was Mrs. Grove?”

“How did I know it?” Gamadge stared at him. “You really ask me that?”

“Certainly I ask you that. I don't know now any more than I did yesterday, when I guessed wrong.”

“You knew the client must be either Mrs. Fenway or Mrs. Grove, though.”

“Because everybody else could communicate with the outside world. Nobody else would have had to throw a message out of a window.”

“Neither could be in such a jam without the other knowing it,” said Gamadge, “and neither could be kept in such a jam for a day by the other working alone.”

“Oh.”

“I was looking for the indispensable accomplice a few minutes after I entered the sitting room for the first time.
That accomplice must be someone who could be on the spot twenty-four hours a day, for my client was—must be—watched day and night. I eliminated Blake Fenway, Mott Fenway and Caroline; they were by no means always on the spot. Craddock? His bedroom was on the top floor, and he seemed to come and go pretty freely. If only Alden Fenway had an adult brain, he and his mother could control Mrs. Grove as absolutely as if they had had her in a cell; as in fact they had, at night—I soon discovered that her room was between theirs, with no outlet to the hall.