Somewhere in the House (22 page)

“So she had to think up a defence that would satisfy him.”

“She had twenty years to think one up, and when she finally decided on one it was brilliant. A striking illustration,” said Gamadge, pushing the bits of hashish about the table thoughtfully, “a striking and ironic instance of the limitations of a warped and brilliant mind. The egocentric brain wishes to use other peoples' brains, and can't realize that in every intellect there's a personal variation from the norm—call it the unknown quantity. She called me in to use my intelligence, probably because her attention had been drawn to me by you. I suited her purposes admirably, or so she thought; but if I hadn't been at hand she would have managed with somebody else whose special knowledge in the matter of books wasn't as convenient as mine, but whose intelligence she would have helped along. Allsop, perhaps.”

“What was this defence of hers?”

“Take it from the beginning. Of course she must have read the Cribb journals before they were made into a cigarette box; and to have used them afterwards as she did she must have had a strong conviction that nobody else in the house had ever read them. Some years later she applied the method of strangling used by the Assassins of India, fully described by Cribb, when she killed Aggie Fitch. No reason for her to destroy the solander on that account; to destroy it would be to call attention to it, and nobody would ever connect it with the Fitch murder or with her.

“But it was always about the house, it was often under her eye. At some time she conceived the idea of using it to exonerate herself, while fixing guilt on someone else in the family.

“Not Leeder—anybody but Leeder. It was for Leeder's benefit that the scheme was to be contrived. She fixed on Seward, for obvious reasons. He would be a logical suspect, in any case, to the police. He had taught her to make the solanders, he might well have read the Cribb journals before he converted them, he had contacts with art dealers and connoisseurs, some of whom might be unscrupulous—I'm afraid the tribe has that reputation—when it came to getting unique objects of art at a bargain. And Seward was a nervous invalid; mightn't he be taking stronger drugs than those prescribed for his headaches?

“Well, she had decided to use the solander by calling my attention to it, and then by hiding it in the library. Nordhall followed the lead like a lamb, and made all the proper deductions: if she had let me see it, if she had discussed Thuggee with me—or rather had let me think of Thuggee—she had no guilty associations with the solander or with Thuggee, and it wouldn't have done her any good to hide it afterwards. For Nordhall she was out.

“And she didn't undeceive him at the time. I had no more than the faintest wisp of theory then, I had nothing remotely approaching evidence against her until I saw the Sillerman files. When I saw them I immediately told Nordhall what my theory was, and we immediately put it to the test.”

“But I don't know why you didn't agree with Nordhall—that the murderer had hidden it after your unexpected visit on Saturday, hoping you hadn't noticed it.”

“There was an alternative to that theory, an alternative which removed a faint suggestion of coincidence—the bane of logic.”

“If you accepted the whole thing at its face value there was no coincidence. Why didn't you?”

“There was no coincidence,” agreed Gamadge, “except in the fact that when I sat at tea in the sitting-room yesterday, Sir Arthur Cribb was at my elbow.”

“But that was where it had always belonged—in the sitting-room. I've seen it there myself.”

“Where?”

“On a table just across from the fireplace, beside a big lamp, where people sit and smoke.” Malcolm suddenly stared.

“And not,” said Gamadge, “on a little crowded table at my elbow, where Mrs. Leeder could call my attention to it naturally, simply, and without calling attention to her own insistence. When Garth Clayborn came in, you know, he seemed to look for it on that table across the room.

“It was just possible that my attention had deliberately been called to the subject of Thuggee; with a victim of something very like Thuggee lying dead upstairs, to be discovered the following day. And I was to be present at the discovery.

“And coincidence can only be explained away by purpose. Whose purpose? Only Mrs. Leeder's, since only Mrs. Leeder knew that I was to be there on Saturday. And Mrs. Leeder had heard of me, she knew my interests, she could hope that I would know the Cribb journals and that I might see them among the other books in the library. She might not have to help me along at all, and that would be so much the better for her.

“I did see the solander among books in the library; and while Nordhall followed the deductions that Mrs. Leeder had laid out for him, I told myself that it might indeed exonerate Mrs. Leeder; but that it might on the other hand
be
there to exonerate her.

“If it was, then she was guilty of the Fitch murder. If it was, then everything obscure about the case took on coherence—the Sillerman murder, Mrs. Clayborn's failure to deprive Leeder of his legacy, his return, and his curious attitude towards Mrs. Leeder. My mind, in fact, didn't work as she had every reason to expect it to.

“And it betrayed her again later, when I guessed that the Sillerman gun was in
Floral Belles
. She thought it never would be found.”

“It wouldn't have been, if you hadn't thought of its being in another of those book boxes.”

“She had introduced me to them. She had reminded me what handy and deceptive receptacles they can be, so when the gun wasn't to be found I naturally thought of another solander. It gave her a hideous shock when I told her the gun was found; she knew nothing about bullet markings, and thought the gun by itself would betray her to Leeder. That brilliant and resourceful mind—it worked fast. I told her the whisky tray was in the sitting-room as usual, and she saw her great chance and seized it—she could pour the drinks herself. She'd have tried some other way, of course, if the whisky tray hadn't been there; put the stuff in Seward's bedside water-jug, or in his medicine; I don't know. But when I mentioned the tray, she went straight to her dressing-table and got the poison ready in her handkerchief.”

“Kept the other dose for herself if things went wrong?”

“Yes, under flesh-coloured courtplaster, on the inner side of the first finger of her left hand. Nordhall doesn't blame me for letting myself be out-guessed about it. He was outguessed himself.”

“She did out-guess you?” Gamadge looked at him, and he said: “If she hadn't, would you have tipped Nordhall off?”

“That's the kind of question no man is obliged to answer.”

“I mean I wouldn't have tipped him off. But I've known her longer than you have—the whole thing is a staggering shock to me.”

“My own part at the last was odious, but I can't say I feel remorse. She'd killed three people and was ready to kill another, she'd exploited Leeder in a way that can only be described as savage, and she was the coldest hypocrite I ever saw or heard of. Of course the long wait for the discovery of Fitch's body had dehumanized her; Garth drove her into action again, and by the time the gun was found she was on the edge of madness.”

“I don't know how you ever got the Clayborns to go through it tonight.”

“Nordhall and I had to explain what we thought she was trying to do to Seward; even then, it wasn't easy to persuade them to play the game. They were terrified of the poison—I was, at the last; there was a moment when only Nordhall could see what she was doing with it—and I think they were afraid she'd manage to get it into somebody somehow, no matter how careful they were. But she'd martyrized them in the matter of the loot from Pekin, and Seward's life was in danger from her, and she'd never given any of them much reason to love her. We shall probably never know the full details of their life with her in that house. Uneasy, I feel sure.”

“I suppose Leeder could fill in a lot of gaps,” said Malcolm, after another interval for reflection.

“He never will. Tonight, of course, he couldn't be asked anything; he was practically out on his feet. The Commissioner really did come later, and a couple of other bigwigs that knew Gavan, and Gavan had the family doctor in. Among them they settled it that Leeder could stay there until he got his wits back. There's nothing the Clayborns won't do for him; they know a gentleman when they see one. They always thought he killed the Sillerman woman; they didn't know a thing about Mrs. Leeder's connection with her. Nobody did except Leeder—after old Mrs. Clayborn died.” Gamadge rose. “Time for you to go home, time for me to get to bed. Where have they put Ena?”

“Where do you suppose? On a trestle in the laboratory? There was only one place for her, the chesterfield in the library.”

“Oh, the devil. Has she been told she's got to get up early? I need my library myself after breakfast.”

“I'm coming for her at half-past eight. She'll have to be told what happened—tough for her.”

“Not so very,” objected Gamadge. “She liked Leeder a good deal better than she liked Mrs. Leeder, and now she'll have him. And if she is able to get you up at any such hour in the morning as the hour you imply, she seems to have got you too.”

“Oh, yes,” said Malcolm calmly. “She's got me.”

“Good.”

“And I have a ghastly kind of suspicion that the Nagle girl's got both of us for life.”

“Better and better. Just what you need. A little roughage in your diet and more acidity. Ena ought to be nice to the Nagles; they stood by Leeder. To tell you the truth, I rather liked them.”

“You like a lot of funny people.”

“Don't I?”

Malcolm, in the doorway, stopped and turned. “You didn't have to remind Mrs. Leeder that she needn't look behind the screen tonight, did you?”

“Because Garth was dead?”

“Yes. She wouldn't forget that Garth was dead.”

“But if it had really been an obsession she would have looked behind the screen just the same—or started to. When she didn't, I knew that it hadn't been an obsession; it was just a part of the build-up.”

“You don't think he hid there as a small boy?”

“I'm pretty sure he did. But he hadn't got on her nerves to the extent of making her still look for him behind the screen when he was grown up and out for the afternoon. She was building herself up as a victim, and the build-up was a success. That touch about the screen almost broke my heart.”

“I suppose when Garth handed Nordhall that stuff about Leeder, and all the rest of it, he was throwing a smoke screen over his blackmail victim?”

“Yes. She had to be kept safe for him. Nobody but Roberts will mourn him, I'm afraid. Good-night.”

L
EEDER DID IN
fact speak to Gamadge about the Sillerman case, but not until the summer of 1945, when they met again for the first time. It was in the Malcolms' apartment, where they had been invited for supper. The Malcolms had been married for three months. Malcolm was still in the Navy, and his wife and Clara, Gamadge's wife, were in the kitchen preparing supper for four. Gamadge and Leeder had been requested to stay out of it and finish the cocktails.

Leeder was much as he had been, except that his thin grey flannels and his bench-made shoes were new. He said: “Ena thought I mightn't want to meet you. As it happens, I'm glad of a word or two.”

“That's gratifying to me, Mr. Leeder.”

Leeder poured out the last of the cocktails into the glasses. He said without introduction: “That Raschner gang was her finish. Not that I want to cast Raschner as the villain of the piece; he was just an old sport that liked 'em younger and younger the older he got, and thought all the little girls were able to look out for themselves and were on the make anyhow. I don't know how Harriet came to go to his parties, but she was always looking for trouble in those days, and at last she found it. Raschner's weren't dope parties, he didn't know a thing about Sillerman's side line. And I don't know what arrangement Harriet can have made about keeping his flat on. I was out of the picture long before he was dead.

“She met Sillerman at the parties, and got into debt with her for various things, including the hashish. That was before we were married. I knew she was rather wild, but so was I. We meant to have a high old time.”

Leeder drained his glass, put it down, and went on:

“Harriet never told me anything about the blackmail, when it started. She knew I didn't have anything like the kind of money to meet the bill. She went to her grandmother, who did have the money, and said the claim was for old bridge debts. Mrs. Clayborn would understand bridge debts, she played all games for stakes and wasn't stiff about such things. But she didn't like the amount owed, and made Harriet say who it was for. She didn't like the Sillerman set-up. She spoke to me; gave me the money, and asked me to go down and look into the whole thing.

“I went, as everybody knows; but first I inquired around about this woman. I got a lot of nods and winks, and I was worried. There had been certain things I didn't understand, though I never would have said Harriet took drugs, and in fact I don't think she ever did regularly. I saw Sillerman, who stuck to it that the money was for cards. She wouldn't show me Harriet's I.O.U.s, wouldn't deal with me at all.

“By the way she talked, and by the look of her, I knew it was serious. I guessed dope. When I went back and talked to Harriet she was furious with the woman—never thought it was going to be a real shakedown. Wouldn't tell me anything. I had to go back to poor old Mrs. Clayborn—nobody else in the family knew a thing about it—and say nothing doing. Did she want to hold out on Sillerman and risk a show-down or stuff in the scandal sheets? Should we risk a private detective or the police?”