Death and Letters Page 15

  Ames lifted his head suddenly to look at Gamadge with a sort of pale hope in his eyes: “But my niece found that outfit, and she didn’t know what it was. Had no idea at all.”

  “You noticed that? So did I, and I can’t say it didn’t influence me at the time. But later on I asked myself why she should know what it was. We have no idea of course what your brother Glendon told her about the proof he had against her, and she had no knowledge of his fingerprint set—it was brought into the house and played with and discarded before she was born. The box had no label on it, the outfit looks as much like some kind of utility desk equipment as anything else. There was ink, there was a little roller like those roller blotters you used to see, and inkpads are used for rubber stamps. If she didn’t notice the bottle of powder—but what if she did? Do you suppose that Susan Coldfield reads the kind of literature that familiarizes people with fingerprinting?”

  “No.”

  “At first glance she wouldn’t know it; then she would wake, and remember, and understand. But your brother Glendon,” said Gamadge, “wouldn’t like me to quote poetry.”

  Ames didn’t hear this. He said in bitter reminiscence: “I noticed, but I wasn’t concentrating on Susan. I was watching them all. Why do you think I performed those antics, Mr. Gamadge? Took you up there at all?”

  “I had some idea that you were under a compulsion to demonstrate your own innocence—not especially to me.”

  “I wanted to find out who the criminal was. I wanted to frighten and disturb the criminal. I wanted evidence to take to poor Ira. Now—now—” he stopped, drank brandy, wiped his lips. “Am I to tell him? This Venner: what—”

  “He couldn’t deny having been the agent in the sale of the letters,” said Gamadge. “I took him by surprise at first, and then he had to know what I was after; he couldn’t find out by showing me the door. But he knew that if I had the proof I wanted I shouldn’t be there talking to him, and he asked for time. He wanted to consult his principal, and he did consult her. He had to find out where she was from her mother, with whom he was lunching in New York.”

  Ames glanced at him half furtively.

  “He’d want to keep in touch with her family,” said Gamadge, replying to the glance. “Why should your sister-in-law refuse a date with a personable man? But Venner was interested elsewhere. As soon as he found out where Susan was lunching, he called her and got her promise: to return to him in payment for his silence. They arranged to meet later in the afternoon.

  “Did he know what he was asking? He realized that it would be a frightful wrench for her to give up Waterton and her marriage and all the money; he knew he wasn’t offering her much in the way of a future. There might not be proof against either of them, but they were going to have a lot of trouble first and last, and if her family didn’t stand by her she and Venner might be very hard up indeed. But he only wanted Susan Coldfield, and she had loved him once; perhaps she might love him again.

  “But she’s as much in love with Waterton now as Venner is with her, and she knows something that Venner doesn’t; she knows she may be facing an inquiry much more serious than an investigation into the sale of the Garthwain letters. By this time she has no illusions about what’s behind my investigation—and she can’t tell Venner. She’s in a trap.”

  Ames had his head buried in his hands; his voice came as if from a distance: “Hard as stone. All of us in the family knew it, but an outsider like Glendon’s wife wouldn’t. She could be very charming. It will be Ira’s death.”

  The telephone rang, and Gamadge stood up. He said: “That might be for me. Shall I go?”

  Ames made a slight, indeterminate gesture, and Gamadge went out into the hall.

  The voice over the telephone was Bardo’s, but Gamadge could barely recognize it; Bardo’s aplomb was shattered, he was gasping:

  “Mr. Gamadge—”

  “Yes. What—”

  “Geegan said I was to call you myself, explain we couldn’t help it.”

  “Is it Venner? What happened to him?”

  “My God, he’s killed a woman.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEENWarning

  BARDO GOT NO ANSWER. Recovering his breath, he spoke louder: “You hear me, Mr. Gamadge?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “Mr. Gamadge, I can’t believe it yet. I’m here at Geegan’s, he wanted me to call you right away; tell you myself. I’ve had the shock of my life, and Shaff has too, and we’ve seen some things. But this—well, here’s the way it was.

  “We were right there at that beer joint, me at the back in a booth, Shaff outside in the car, off to the left of the entrance, reading a paper. The subject is sitting at the table in the window, making his beer last and smoking.

  “Pretty soon along comes a very swell-looking young dame, she’s on foot. I’d say she dismissed her cab at the corner. She’s in her middle twenties, streamlined, riding high, she’s—”

  “I know who it was, Bardo.”

  “It’s a comfort to me you know anything about it. Well, the subject got up and went to the door to meet her, and Shaff will bear me out that there was great enthusiasm on both sides. They came in and sat down, he’s facing my end of the room; and his face was all lit up. I was thinking you couldn’t very well pick out a more private spot to meet anybody in than this little joint in Yorkville.

  “A waiter got their order—the waiter, I should say—two beers. Good bitter stuff they serve there, I was enjoying mine. I was acting half asleep, hat pulled down and all like that, you know. I could see she wasn’t settling herself there, she was in a hurry. He argued it, but no, she couldn’t stay long at all. He had two beers, she’d only drink one. He hadn’t more than started on his second when she called for the check, and she fairly made him gulp the second drink down. Then he paid, and they started to go, and she actually had him under the arm urging him out. Talking to beat the band. He laughed, but he seemed to see it her way, she was saying something about her train.

  “They went across the sidewalk to his car, and she shook her head, no, she was getting a cab. I suppose she meant she couldn’t be seen with him. Anyway, he opened the door and he got a foot inside. I was paying my check by this time, but I saw it all. He stopped, half in and half out, as if he’d suddenly thought of something; and she kind of gave him a little shove.

  “He backed out and turned his head and looked at her, and he had a smile on his face as if something had put him wise. And then he had his two hands on her neck, and before we even knew what he was doing…it was Judo or something, unarmed combat, what they learned in the war; a little jerk and a twist, and her head snapped back and she was down on the sidewalk like a bag of sawdust.”

  Bardo sounded as if he wanted to cry: “Right on the street, and I thought they were such friends. I was running, the waiter was ahead of me, the bartender was coming around the counter. Shaff was half out of the car, but Venner was back behind his wheel, door slammed, driving away. Shaff took after him. I merely ran. People were yelling now, the Third Avenue light was against him, he’d never get far, and his bus was weaving as if he was drunk. I figured, let the cops do the shooting.”

  “Yes,” said Gamadge.

  “You said it was confidential, but of course we’d do what was necessary if we had to. We didn’t have to, Mr. Gamadge. This Venner was out of his mind, all right—he tramped on the gas and straightened out, and shot his car right into the traffic on the avenue. You never saw such a…you’d have thought he was doped.”

  Gamadge said something. “What?”

  “Go on.”

  “I could hardly look,” said Bardo. “You never saw such a smash in your life, he must be in pieces. That El pillar; a bus hit the tail of his car, a big truck rammed him amidships. His car turned over. He was—I faded into the crowd.”

  “Right.”

  “You think so?” asked Bardo anxiously. “Geegan—”

  “Absolutely the right thing.”

  “I figured you might want it that wa
y. Cops’ whistles were blowing by that time, and I got in the car with Shaff and sat till we were moved along. By the time we travelled round the block and back through the street again, she’d been covered up with some newspapers and a bystander told us—there was a big crowd by then—that the wagon was coming. We didn’t know whether you’d want more information about the two of them?”

  “No, the assignment’s over. Tell Geegan so, and you get your full time.”

  “Well, thanks, Mr. Gamadge. Thanks. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it.”

  “Perhaps. Goodbye,” said Gamadge, “and thanks for calling.”

  He put the receiver down and walked slowly back into the study. Ames sat waiting for him, and greeted him with an inarticulate question and a frightened stare.

  Gamadge came up to the table, picked up the little glass of brandy that had been ready for him so long, and drank half of it. He said: “It’s all over, Mr. Coldfield. She’s dead.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Venner killed her.”

  Ames seemed to collect his faculties. “Do you mean—will it all have to come out? Even now?”

  “I’d better tell you what happened, then you can judge for yourself. I had two men watching him, as much to protect him as anything else; he met her in a little restaurant, and she seems to have saved out twenty grains of the amytal and somehow managed to get it into his drink. She thought he’d drive away in his car and die in it, or in a traffic accident. Nobody at the restaurant would ever connect such a death with him or with her. But she still didn’t quite realize how fast that stuff works. You’d think, after Sylvia Coldfield’s experience—”

  Ames said with a touch of his old dryness: “They’d spare my niece some of the details.”

  “Anyhow, she thought she’d get him started off in his car. I think he might have made it—far enough to answer her purpose; but I’d warned him. He felt that something was wrong with him, he remembered what I’d said, and he thought he was a dead man. In that moment he may even have believed what he hadn’t allowed himself to believe before, that she was a poisoner already.

  “What poison? He didn’t know. He was going out fast, but he had time to strangle her and drive away. He drove into the traffic on the Avenue—he was doped and dying, only knew enough to keep his foot down. Venner would never try any such ineffectual form of suicide as that.”

  “But was he—”

  “If he wasn’t killed, he must have been badly smashed; he’d die of the amytal before they ever thought of anything but shock and perhaps internal injuries. There’ll be no autopsy, Mr. Coldfield, or if there is, they won’t look for sleeping medicine. There’ll be a terrific scandal, of course, and the case will be closed—a love affair, jealousy, an insane getaway. That’s all,” said Gamadge. “Her father and mother may never know that it might be worse.”

  Ames got himself to his feet. “You won’t tell them?”

  “There’s no reason for me to tell them now. Your niece isn’t a danger any more.”

  Ames looked down at the blue envelope: “You say you were looking for the others in that trunk?”

  “Yes, and they may be there—safe enough. I don’t believe she ever put them through the formalities of a safe-deposit box; a court order can get even a safe-deposit box opened. She may have destroyed them; last night I must have made her very nervous—anything out of the ordinary troubles a guilty conscience, and of course she was always nervous about Mrs. Glendon Coldfield. She would have let her go and been glad to see the last of her.”

  “Georgette has the key of that trunk. I—” he looked cloudily around him. “I shan’t rest easy until they’re found.”

  “Well,” said Gamadge, “at least you can get rid of this one.” Ames stared at him, picked it up, and faltered: “Don’t you—as a man of letters—hesitate…?”

  “I don’t feel that the shade of Mrs. Deane Coldfield needs any further appeasement.”

  Ames grimaced, tore the envelope into fragments, and cast them on the fire.

  Gamadge left him gazing down at the charred paper in the grate, got himself out of the house and into his car, and drove away. What, he wondered, would the girl’s wretched parents make of those clothes in the locked trunk? Years from now, perhaps, they would be found. Presents from Venner? And what would his client make of Susan Coldfield’s end? But Gamadge knew that, of course. Tripped herself up, but who shoved her?

  “They’ll all wish they could give me a decoration,” he told himself, “and nobody will ever dare to say so.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEENPathology

  SOME MONTHS LATER Gamadge was waiting in a downtown bar for a would-be client to meet him and show him an autograph letter.

  “I guess it’s the real thing,” the client had said on the telephone. “But it’s only signed ‘Garthwain.’ It’s just a few lines, thanking some old guy in our family for sending him his umbrella—he lost it on a London bus. It’s been kicking around the house for years. We thought since this boom it might be worth more than it would have brought earlier.”

  “Double, I should say,” Gamadge had told him, “and the poet often signed himself ‘Garthwain.’ ”

  “Well, if you could meet me on my way home from the office—have to take a train home, but I said I might be late.”

  So Gamadge waited, leaning up at the bar and absorbing an old-fashioned. He noticed four young people in a booth who were having a fine time; two men and two pretty girls. One of the men detached himself from his party and came up to the bar.

  “Mr. Gamadge: you wouldn’t remember me.”

  “Mr. Smyth. How are you?”

  “I’m all right, thanks. Mind if I talk a minute?”

  “I don’t know how you can bear to leave your friends over there.”

  “Especially the redheaded one?”

  “I’ve been admiring her.”

  “Mrs. Smyth, if I ever get my degree.”

  “Congratulations; that’s good news.”

  “Zelma and I had a little windfall, aged aunt died.”

  “I don’t think I ought to condole, in the circumstances. Tell me if I’m wrong, though,” said Gamadge.

  They were both heartless enough to laugh at this sally, and Gamadge ordered more drinks.

  Sam pondered over his for a minute. Then he said: “Lots of changes since I saw you last.”

  “Yes.”

  “Coldfield house shut up. Gramp retired and lives in Florida. Zel and I have a little place in New York.” He had turned grave. “Gramp was shaken up by what happened, you know. More than we were. Zel and I got a little away from all that, you know; but Gramp—what I wanted to say was, I think he finally caught on to the capsule mystery.”

  Gamadge looked inquiring.

  “So did I,” said Sam. “Not at the time—impossible for me to guess. You must have thought me pretty dumb that night you were at the house.”

  “Far from it.”

  “Of course I don’t know any details,” said Sam. “Only the ones everybody knows. But I suppose Glendon Coldfield and his wife somehow got on to that affair with Venner. Zelma knew about it when it was going on.”

  “Really?” Gamadge was interested.

  “And she told me after it all came out.” Sam looked down into his drink. “She’s pretty good about keeping secrets—Zelma is, I mean. Susie told her all about Venner, she was crazy about the guy for years, but she wouldn’t marry him because he didn’t have money. His business had gone down after his father died. He was a man that had to live a certain way, and he spent too much. So Zelma understood.”

  “I had an idea that he was like that.”

  “Because Susie wouldn’t marry him? Anyhow, she left his letters with Zel after she got engaged to Jim Waterton.”

  “She did? Why?”

  “I don’t know, she was like that,” said Sam. “Pathological, in a way, like wanting Zelma around after she got Jim Waterton away from her. Wanted me around, too, but not feeling about Susie the w
ay poor old Zel felt about Waterton, I wouldn’t play.”

  “So I gathered,” said Gamadge.

  “It all made me very sore. What did you think about the two of them coming down that night to apologize?”

  “I didn’t understand it.”

  “First I thought it was some more pathology, but Zelma told me after the tragedy—Susie came down to get those Venner letters back.”

  Gamadge straightened, drank some of his old-fashioned, and lighted a cigarette. Then he asked: “That so?”

  “Remember she made Zelma take her upstairs?”

  “I remember, yes.”

  “The letters were in a little locked-up case Susie had, and it went into a pocket of her topcoat.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “She was going to have some kind of a showdown with him, I suppose, and it ended by his killing her. I felt very sorry for that unfortunate guy,” said Sam.

  “I feel sorry for Waterton, too.”

  “Oh, old Jim will recuperate. They’re all abroad, you know, Coldfields and Watertons, all of them. What a bust-up, wasn’t it? I’d come to realize that Susie was as cruel as the grave, but I—still, you only had to look at that portrait of her grandmother in the dining-room to realize that the subject was a psychopath.”

  “There was a cruelty there, yes. And you didn’t think Susan’s mother’s influence was good, did you?”

  “Well, no. But Susie was all right when we were children. At least I thought so; you never can tell what’s going on in the human brain.”

  “I wish you’d give your sister a message from me, Mr. Smyth.”

  “Glad to, what is it?”