Somewhere in the House (9 page)

“I didn't bring a rake, or any implement but a torch.”

“Too bad that Harriet felt she had to make all this commotion. There's a magpie in the house,” said Leeder. “A hoarder. No theft intended, since the lost articles belong to all. Probably the loss will be made up later when the legacies are paid up; some unobtrusive adjustment. Such loot is never found in a house if there's no organized search; it's moved from place to place.”

Gamadge said: “If the buttons are found, we might have to face the possibility that the other things were taken by one of the young people.”

Leeder raised his eyebrows.

“Never too young to be a magpie,” said Gamadge. “And the history of the objects might be an additional attraction.”

“That's a charming theory. Why not extend it?” asked Leeder. “If the buttons are not found, I mean. Kleptomania in the family, handed down from one generation to the next—or the next but one. I ought to embrace the idea—it lets me out. Well, you're here, full of useful theories; but why are you here?”

“You know why, Mr. Leeder.”

“I know what Harriet's asked you to do; and I wish she hadn't. She's allowed the family to get on her nerves. They've been getting on her nerves for years, and this is the final blow-up. But what I should like to know is, how did she persuade you to take on the job? You're a busy man and a man of standing. You probably are not at all used to the kind of thing Gavan and Cynthia and Seward must have treated you to in the way of manners.”

“Would you have expected me to go reeling from the house?” Gamadge smiled at him.

“Not if you were determined to see it through. But why were you so determined to see it through?”

“I have my natural quota of curiosity.”

“Perhaps. I shouldn't have thought it would lead you along such by-ways as this one.”

“It leads me along strange paths. I might ask
you
a question, Mr. Leeder, if I wanted to risk offending you.”

Leeder was amused. “I don't take offence.”

“Then why did
you
come back?”

“You mean to-day? I'm legally in on it.”

“I mean ten years ago.”

Leeder moved for the first time. He stepped forward, took a cigarette out of Dante's
Paradise
, and lighted it. Then he held it out towards Gamadge. “This kind of thing.”

“Free cigarettes?” Gamadge smiled.

“All the fleshpots. Food and drink are served opulently to all comers. Have you ever eaten regularly in drugstores?”

As Gamadge continued to smile at him sceptically, he went on: “And light conversation. Everything kept light. These people are one's own people; it's relaxing. Nothing painful discussed—not even buttons, until Harriet broke the rules. Nothing real.”

“That makes it restful?”

“As a day in the country. Old Gavan, poor old buffer, what's his life? His club, his stockbroker, somebody else's yacht. Cynthia plays bridge with her cronies, nothing changes for them; they're as important to one another as they always were, and they do the things they've always done. Seward lives in his studio, still trying to paint like Renoir—on the sly.”

“Mrs. Leeder?”

Leeder frowned at his cigarette. “Harriet travels a lot, or did. She oughtn't to have been here as much as she has been since the war. Nerves, just nerves.”

“Who wouldn't be nervous with valuables going out of the house under Allsop's nose?”

“I don't think the old boy would have done anything.”

“He has a great sense of his responsibility towards his late client.”

“One thing,” said Leeder, “I'm convinced of. There's nothing of value in the music room unless the buttons are there and are valuable. They'd have told me.”

“Who?”

“Old Mrs. Clayborn and Nonie. If Nonie had a pearl necklace, she'd have told me. They let me in on their secrets—they knew I wouldn't give them away, even to Harriet. I knew from the day Nonie died that there was going to be a wax figure; I was nothing but a kid in school, but Mrs. Clayborn told me that. You know I'm glad the poor girl died before her mother. God knows what would have happened to her if she'd lived—she was nearly thirty years old, and had the mentality of sixteen. No place for her in the world.”

Elena came rushing into the room and seized Leeder's arm. “Come on,” she said, “you two. They're all up there waiting to begin.”

“As one of the heirs,” said Leeder, as she dragged him towards the door, “I protest against your being in on this. I won't have your great-aunt Nonie made a show of to little brutes like you.”

Gamadge stopped in the hall to get his torch out of his overcoat; then he followed them upstairs.

G
AMADGE FOUND THE
top storey bright with sunshine from the skylight, and its east end full of people. Three of them, however, were somewhat dissociated from the rest; Mrs. Leeder stood against the wall beyond the stairhead, while Leeder and Elena Clayborn, like supporting statues, faced each other from either side of the studio doorway. Leeder seemed to be keeping his young friend where she was entirely by the power of the eye.

Roberts was laying newspapers in front of the section of wall that masked the hidden door, and had already covered several yards of carpeting along the corridor. An empty wooden crate and a basket of tools stood on newspapers beside the stair-well railing. To be out of the way, the rest of the group had withdrawn to right and left of the masked door; Mr. Allsop, Gavan Clayborn and his sister on the right, Seward and Garth on the left. Both of these last were in slacks and shirtsleeves.

Roberts finished his job and stood up. He asked: “Would you wish me to stay, Mr. Clayborn?”

“No, thanks,” said Gavan. “We'll ring when we want help in clearing away.”

“I have more baskets ready, Sir.”

“All right. Good.” Gavan spoke shortly; he looked angry and baffled, and he held a large bronze key in his hand, gripped tight.

Roberts went down the hall. He opened a door some few yards beyond where Mrs. Leeder stood, and went through it, closing it after him.

Gamadge maintained himself at a polite distance from the center of the proceedings, against the stair rail.

Seward stepped forward; he looked bored with his job, but he had a workmanlike air. He carried a big screwdriver.

“Take the statuette, Garth,” he said. “I've unscrewed it.”

Garth lifted the pottery figure with its mass of trailing ivy, and carried it into the studio. Then he came back and stood beside Seward, who was working on the bracket.

“Want help?” he asked.

“No. It isn't as much of a job as it was to put them in.”

Garth held the bracket until it was free, and then walked off with it and deposited it also in the studio. He returned to find that Seward had picked two chisels and two hammers from the tool basket. He handed Garth one of each.

“Lightly, now,” he said. “You get the library steps and work from the top. If we crack the plaster away in big pieces there won't be so much of a mess.”

Garth brought the steps. In a short time the whole thin coat of plaster was cracked and peeled away, exposing the wooden surface of the false door.

“Shall we clear off?” asked Garth, looking down at the fragments of plaster around his feet.

“Not yet; we have the putty to get out. Tough stuff, that wood putty, but it'll chip out.”

The edges of the false door were sealed with a substance that came out under the blades of the chisels like sections of hard wood; but the sections were long, and the work went on fast.

Mr. Allsop cleared his throat. “No doubt,” he said, “some of the others would be glad to assist.”

Seward answered shortly: “Thanks, it won't take long.

This is the worst of it. Only a minute or so more.”

At last he inserted the blade of the chisel into the thin crack that ran up the left side of the false door. Garth lifted the steps aside, and returned to shove his own chisel in. The whole inset moved, and fell forward. Garth caught it in his arms.

“Gad, that was a nice piece of carpenter work,” said Gavan. “Look at it come! Smooth as glass.”

Garth carried the big arched slab down the hall and set it up against a door frame. Then he came back, and he and Seward shovelled debris into the crate. Then he dragged the crate away, while Seward crumpled up the newspaper and its dust and wadded it into the tool basket.

“Well, I must say!” Miss Clayborn was impressed. “I wish I'd known that you two were so handy around the house.”

“Men can do everything better than women can,” said Garth, who seemed eager and excited. “If they want to.”

“Yes, that's the catch,” said Miss Clayborn.

“What I plan the construction of I can demolish,” said Seward. He stood looking at the dark and polished panelling of the oak door that now stood exposed. “Not even marred, and we can get a man to take the cream paint off the moulding. Garth, hand me that spike you'll find in the basket.”

Garth fumbled about under the wadded newspaper, and produced a wooden-handled spike. Seward took it, examined the plugged keyhole, neatly removed the plug, and stepped aside.

“All right, Uncle Van,” he said.

Gavan moved forward, key in hand; but Mr. Allsop was in front of him. He said: “I take over now, Clayborn, as we decided.”

Clayborn hesitated. Then, without a word, he gave Allsop the key.

“Our plan,” said Allsop, “is in the circumstances the best one to follow.” He spoke dryly, with authority, and with a whole lifetime's experience behind him; experience in reconciling differences between recalcitrant heirs. “Mrs. Leeder, one of the residuary legatees under the will of my client deceased, has provided an agent—a man, I may again inform you, of the highest reputation and ability—to look for objects of value in this room.

“I propose to unlock and open this door, enter the room—somebody will kindly provide me with a torch—and stand aside. Mr. Gamadge will then go in, light the candles if necessary, and conduct his search alone. The family, and Mr. Leeder, will remain on this side of the threshold; but the doorway is wide, and they will be able to see exactly what he does and finds. So will I.”

Leeder spoke calmly from where he had propped himself: “Ena and I won't obstruct the view. We'll stay here.”

“And I shall stay here,” said Mrs. Leeder.

“Then there will only be four to watch the proceedings,” said Mr. Allsop. “Quite enough.”

Seward was now looking very tired; he had got out his handkerchief and was wiping his forehead with it. “You understand, Allsop,” he said, “that Harriet has forced us into a position where we can't protest without compromising ourselves?”

“My boy,” said Mr. Allsop coolly, “what I understand or do not understand has, I suppose, no bearing on the matter in hand. Let me simply say that I shall be very glad indeed to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. You have all waited a long time for your money; I shall have great pleasure in handing it over to you as soon as the law allows. Now if someone will hand me a torch…”

Garth took one out of the pocket of his slacks and passed it over.

“Thank you. Mr. Gamadge?”

Gamadge walked down the hall, torch in hand. He stood waiting while Mr. Allsop put the key in the lock and after a short struggle turned it.

Seward spoke dryly: “Might I make a suggestion?”

Allsop, his hand on the bronze door-knob, paused and looked over his shoulder. “Certainly.”

“By this time the place will be practically a vacuum. Mightn't it be as well for Garth to open the skylight before you go on? Then you could wait until the air gets in.”

“Of course. Excellent idea. Of course.”

Allsop straightened and looked up at the skylight. Garth dragged the steps into position, mounted them, and reached for the handle of the long rod. He turned it and pulled; a big triangular pane slowly descended on creaking hinges, and was followed by a surge of cool air.

“Good.” Mr. Allsop turned the knob and pushed. The door opened from left to right inwards, and he went into the room with it. Then he came scuttling back. “Good Heavens!” he gasped.

Gamadge, at his left, and with the torch in his hand still unlighted, saw nothing for the moment but the dark sheen of the curtain over the window; he too stepped back, as Miss Clayborn, who had pushed up to the doorway, shrieked: “Why, it's awful!
Can
a rat have got in and died there after all?”

Gavan growled over her shoulder: “Nonsense. No worse than a closed cellar. Garth, Ena, hurry now. Go and open all the windows on this floor, but keep the door of the servants' wing shut. We'll have the place aired in no time.”

Garth and Elena ran, Leeder silently disappeared into the studio. By the time he had returned the whole corridor was swept by a fresh autumn breeze, and the peculiar deadness from the music room had given way to something more breathable.

Mr. Allsop stepped in again and stood to the right, Gamadge advanced from the left and put on his torch. What he saw was so grotesque and startling that for a moment he could only stand staring at it. The wax figure, demurely clad in its white dress, with its yellow hair and its simpering smile, was in itself mildly horrifying; what made it terrible was the fact of its having been swung about on the revolving piano stool to face the door. Its hands, spread out as if playing upon a keyboard, now clutched the air with crooked fingers that looked ready to claw and rend.

Miss Clayborn shrieked again: “O God! She has moved.”

Gavan, Seward and Garth had crowded up. Gavan said after a moment of consternation: “The piano stool's been turned, that's all.”

“Turned? Turned? When?” Miss Clayborn was stammering.