Death and Letters Read online

  Hildreth remarked: “I can send for the stuff, Gray, if you ever get sick of me and want me to set up in a place of my own.”

  Gray said with a dryness unusual to him where his brother and sister were concerned: “I don’t think Uncle’s bequest would run to two establishments.”

  “Darling Gray, you know I was joking. And as a matter of fact some of that furniture isn’t bad.”

  “Wouldn’t fit in here,” said Jerome, looking around him and smiling.

  Gray said: “Throw it out as far as I’m concerned. This may be as bad as you and Hil say, but it suits me.”

  “Bad but fascinating,” said Hildreth, “and very comfortable. Oh, the wonderful beds.”

  “Thank God Uncle liked you, old boy,” said Jerome.

  Nobody was paying any attention to Rena—did anybody ever? She went quietly out of the library, along the passage, and up the stairs.

  It was a steep flight, and at the head of it, just before the turn for the upper hall, there was a railed landing. Access was gained to it by a gate from the hall, and it was lighted dimly by a ruby lamp in a lantern hanging by a chain. A big piece of imitation tapestry covered the whole wall space behind it, from ceiling to floor. It had been an “improvement,” contrived at the turn of the century; it was in fact nothing but a large clothes closet with the rear wall taken away—the old door, opening into the sitting-room, could be seen behind the tapestry if anybody looked. It could be seen in the sitting-room, too, rather unfortunately extending up above the secretary that now stood against it.

  Well, perhaps it did open out the view a little, thought Rena, climbing the stairs; and the legend was that stringed orchestras played on the railed landing in the old days of receptions, no doubt behind palms. It was of no use now, and it was like the rest of the house; something useless and rather ugly had been superimposed everywhere, or almost everywhere, on honest late-Victorian foundations.

  Rena climbed to the upper hall, and turned in to the sitting-room. She put her coat and hat away in one of the two tall closets that flanked the built-in bookshelves, and went on back through the bedroom into the little dressing-room beyond it. She had taken off her dress in order to wash for dinner, when the dumb-waiter doors began to rattle—they seemed to catch every draught. They had kept her awake half the night before. She must find something to stuff up the big gap between them, caused no doubt by the warping of the old wood. They were half-doors, coming together with a flimsy bolt.

  A couple of circulars might stuff up the crack, or thick letters, or folded newspaper. But when Rena went back through the blue-satin and walnut bedroom to the sitting-room, she found nothing of the kind anywhere. A thin paper-bound book, perhaps? She had seen one or two on those shelves. Here were two thin books, one paper-bound and one in morocco, tied together with faded old pink tape, crushed between The New Newgate Calendar and The Trial of the Stauntons.

  She took them out; very dusty, quite old. The bound book was in half-morocco, red, faded; the paper book was faded too, coloured like dust itself. She came over to the light, laid the bound book on the table and began to clap the pages of the other, holding it well away from her slip.

  Gray was coming up the stairs; she stopped, the book open in her hands, while he slowly climbed to the hall and slowly came into the sitting-room. He had her book in his hand, and he threw it aside on the table without looking at her.

  “Don’t think much of that,” he said. Very well then, she wasn’t going to inform him that she had met the author. He was always bored when she said anything about her work, anyway.

  “I mean,” he said, “who cares?”

  “It seemed interesting to me.”

  “Morbid.” He glanced then at the open book in her hand; and when he raised his eyes to hers, Rena had never seen such a look on anybody’s face before. It was murderous. He snatched the thing out of her hand, looked down and saw the other, snatched that up too. He read the title, which was more than Rena had done. Putting one on top of the other, he raised his eyes again to meet hers.

  “Doing a little research?” he asked. One hand fell away to his side, and she saw almost without believing her eyes that it clenched into a fist.

  She stepped back. “Gray, what’s the matter with you?” His pale face was flushed now to his forehead. He looked down at the books again, and at her. She was completely terrified.

  “Gray, are you going crazy? Why shouldn’t I read them? And I wasn’t reading them; I don’t even know what they’re about. I was dusting them.”

  He swallowed after a moment, and said in a husky voice: “Dusting them?”

  “I was going to stuff up the crack in the dumbwaiter doors. You know how it rattles.”

  After another pause, in a different tone, he said: “No, I don’t. I sleep at night.”

  It was at last too much for her; she said: “Gray, let me go. You don’t want me. It isn’t as if you really needed me. If you did, I’d stay. But I won’t stay now.”

  If she had been frightened before, that was nothing to what she felt now. He took a step towards her, and the clenched hand at his side rose a little; then he suddenly turned, went out of the room, and slammed the door behind him. She heard the key turn in the lock.

  Twice in the last few minutes she had been in actual fear of her life; this was as bad but different; she had never dreamed what it would feel like to be locked up anywhere. There was horror in it. To be helpless, to wait for that door to open again, to see that maniac’s face of his—no. All in a moment she was galvanized into action by plain rage.

  She looked all round the sitting-room, and her eyes fastened on the foot of disused doorway that showed above the secretary. She ran over and dragged at the side of the secretary—she could hardly move it, but it came out a foot at last. She stood peering in at the old door; the knob had been taken away, and when she put a finger into the big old keyhole and worked the door back and forth a little, or tried to, she was sure it was locked. Those old locks…three closets in the room… three keys?

  No; only the closet nearest her had a key in it, a large heavy key. She got it out and tried it in the disused door, and the lock turned; what was more, the door swung open towards her; when the knob was taken out the spring that controlled the hasp must have been weakened. She could put her hand through and feel the smooth reverse of the machine-made tapestry.

  She backed around the side of the secretary, whirled, and hurried lightly through to the dressing-room. She knew how little time she had; Gray had gone down to consult his brother and sister, those mysterious little books would be shown them. Then something would be done. But he had locked her in, and left her half-dressed and in a paralysis of fear; he might not think it necessary to hurry back.

  She pulled her dress on, came back to the sitting-room and got her coat and hat out of the closet—she mustn’t look too crazy on the street. Gloves and handbag she must have left down in the library. No time to look, no time for anything—she must be gone before Gray even thought she would try it.

  That other girl, she thought, as she squeezed past the secretary, through the door, between the wall and the tapestry: had she been locked in? A thought followed by another, which seemed to come of itself—had she tried to get out by a window, and fallen, and had they hushed it up and called her death pneumonia? But no, Dr. Wolfram wouldn’t—he had been old Mr. Austen’s doctor, and he seemed a pleasant sort of man. She might go to him, but he was their doctor now, and it was too late. She knew where he lived, though.

  Half-way down the stairs she heard voices in the library; Jerome’s, raised in anger: “You obsessed fool, go up there and unlock that door and apologize.” But that didn’t mean they’d let her go. Well, if they tried to stop her now she could scream and make trouble—the servants would hear. They wouldn’t like that.

  She reached the front door, left it open behind her, and ran down to the street. Not a minute to lose now, and it seemed so far to the corner. She was half-running. Mr. Ordway an
d dog, coming along across the way from the direction of the park, saw her and stared. They crossed diagonally and caught up with her.

  Ordway asked: “Trouble? Anything I can do?” and did not break his stride.

  “I have to go. I have to go.”

  “Looks like it.” He took in her set face from which all the bloom had gone, her fixed grey eyes, the bare hands holding her coat together. No worry here; plain funk, to him.

  “You lamming out of there?” he asked as coolly as if such a thing might happen to anybody.

  “Don’t tell. Please don’t tell.”

  “Tell? Certainly I won’t tell. You need a cab.”

  They had reached the corner; a cab was pulling up in front of the apartment house, the doorman letting someone out of it. She gasped: “I haven’t any money for it.”

  “That’s all right, I have cab fare on me.” He signalled the driver, who would have gone on home if Rena had been the one to signal him. He waited at the corner while Ordway followed the doorman up to the entrance, passed him Gawain’s leash and a dollar bill: “Hold on to this boy for me, will you, George? Back in a minute.”

  The doorman knew him by sight, accepted the leash and put a finger up to his cap.

  Ordway put Rena into the cab and got in himself. She said in a stifled voice: “Just make him drive away.”

  Ordway leaned forward: “Grab this light up and over to Park, and then we’ll tell you.” He sat back as the cab swung left. “I’m getting out any time,” he explained in his equable way. “Just say the word. You’d better have a five in ones, wouldn’t you think so?”

  “I don’t know—can’t explain.” She was barely able to talk.

  “You don’t have to. Seen you on the block lots of times,” said Ordway. “Quiet type, minding your own business and being good to the old pup. I feel as if we were old friends. I feel as if you knew what you were about, and wouldn’t run off just for the fun of it.”

  “Oh, it was too much. I had to go. I was too frightened.”

  “No good sticking around and doing nothing if you’re frightened,” said Ordway. “Better to run one way or the other. I’ve done it dozens of times.”

  The cab stopped at Park Avenue for the lights, and the driver looked around. Rena gave him an address.

  For more “Henry Gamadge” and other “Vintage” mysteries from Felony & Mayhem, including titles by Ngaio Marsh and Lenore Glen Offord, please visit our website: FelonyAndMayhem.com

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  All the characters and events in this work are fictitious.

  DEATH AND LETTERS

  A Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” mystery

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  First print edition (Rinehart): 1950

  Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2015

  Copyright © 1950 by Elizabeth Daly

  Copyright renewed 1971 by Daly Harris, Virginia Taylor, Eleanor Boylan, Elizabeth T. Daly, and Wilfried Augustin Daly, Jr.

  All rights reserved

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-073-6