Death and Letters Read online

  “Oh yes, I drive up to the park with them, and—everybody talks to you. Every kind of person talks to you if you have unusual dogs. So interesting. But four times a day! The vet said so, and it seems excessive, don’t you think so? But there are the men downstairs, and I have my chauffeur.”

  Gamadge waited while the maid brought in a tray of outsize old-fashioneds and canapés. She drove the little dogs out of the room in front of her, and Gamadge and Mrs. Blagdon raised their fat amber glasses and drank.

  “Like the rest of us now,” said Gamadge, “I’m hipped about money. Did Glendon’s share of the family fortune go to his wife?”

  “Yes, I know that much; my husband told me at the time. I mean after Glendon lost so much on the market. After that he tied up what he had left for Sylvia. But he didn’t speculate with his clients’ money, I’m glad to say! My husband said so. He simply hasn’t the touch—hadn’t, I mean. What fun Sylvia and he had together—Winter sports and everything. It seems too sad. No wonder she broke down. I offered to drive up and see her, but they said not. I wonder if I could now? I might take the loulous and give them a run.”

  “Big place, is it?”

  “Oh no, just two or three acres running along the cliff. Nice big trees, and there used to be gardens. I don’t think they keep much outside help now. Just one visiting gardener, I think Georgette told me,” said Mrs. Blagdon, enjoying this subject and putting down her glass to give it her full attention. “And no chauffeur. What did she say about the inside staff? I met her at a cocktail party just before Christmas, and what was it she said? They gave up their manservant. Cook, parlor-maid and kitchen-maid is all they have to run that house with! Well, some of them are always going away, so that makes it easier. But you wouldn’t catch me spending my money on a place like that. However, they can’t sell. Not for what Ira wants, anyway.”

  Gamadge rose. “I can’t tell you how much obliged I am to you for letting me stop in, and for the drink and everything,” he said. “And it was such a pleasure meeting you.”

  Mrs. Blagdon again took his hand in hers. “I loved it. Wish I had any real news for you. When I get settled down next Fall I do hope you’ll bring your wife.”

  “She’d be delighted.” He added as Mrs. Blagdon half rose: “Now do finish your drink in peace. I can see myself out.”

  “Well then—and be sure you let me know what you hear, and then I’ll tell you. I hope she’s gone off somewhere; or if you get in touch with her, tell her she could come to me. Just for a little change, you know; I’d love to put her up, and she could be quite independent. It’s so quiet here.”

  “I’ll tell her—if my wife and I can make contact.”

  “If you just could!” Mrs. Blagdon gazed up at him with the anxious expression of one who is always trying to get somebody to take something off her burdened shoulders. “Make contact, and tell her, and everything. I’d be so grateful!”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You are an angel; I’m so relieved. Say anything. Make her come. She needn’t even write.” That was certainly the last and greatest benefit—not to have to write.

  Gamadge found a harried-looking chauffeur in the hall, rolling up a small rug. There was a distant playful snarling and yapping, and a voice from the back premises cried: “It was filly minions, and I said so over the tillyphone.”

  Gamadge, on his way down in the elevator, thought that Mrs. Blagdon’s place wouldn’t be the worst place in the world to get over a depression. He also felt a renewed admiration for his client; what a reference! Unprejudiced, disinterested and chatty, with no time to waste in asking questions. But as he turned into a drugstore on the corner, he felt baffled, puzzled and at a loss.

  He went into a booth, called a number, and got an immediate response to his ring.

  “Bantz speaking.”

  “Harold—thank goodness. Glad you didn’t go out to lunch yet.”

  “Out to lunch, Boss?” Gamadge’s ex-assistant was mildly surprised. “I went and came back.”

  “It’s proletarian to eat so early. You have money in the bank now.”

  “It hasn’t changed my appetite.”

  “I hope it hasn’t changed your nature. Are you too much of a family man, stake in the country and all, for deeds of dreadful note?”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t quite know, but you’re the only living creature I can ask. It may be no more than a scouting job. It may mean a little—er—interference. Just bring your avoirdupois along and take a ride with me tomorrow night.”

  “There’s a little fat on me now.”

  “You can still walk? Run a little if necessary?”

  “If necessary. I was going to work late here at the lab, but—”

  “All the better, Arline won’t miss you. I have every hope that we’ll both come out of it alive.”

  “That’s fine. Tomorrow, is it?”

  “Thursday. It has to be Thursday.”

  “Something unusual about Thursdays?”

  “You wouldn’t know,” said Gamadge, laughing, “but you may some time. I’ll pick you up at your place, say at a quarter past seven. That suit you?”

  “Suits me, but how are you going to swallow down anything in the way of dinner at any such hour? It’s too late for you to change now. You’ll choke.”

  “Shows you how important the mission is.”

  Gamadge, his face not so gloomy as it had been, left the store and took a taxi down town. He gave the driver an address in the Forties, sat back and lit a cigarette. He got out in front of an old converted brownstone house, with books in the second-floor window, and a small gilt sign: “J. Hall.”

  He climbed stairs, entered the outer room, and greeted J. Hall’s clerk, the dusty Albert. Albert ushered him through into the sanctum, where J. Hall was having his ham sandwich and his whiskey and soda. A coal fire burned in the grate. J. Hall was in the habit of saying that he was going to retire; he practically had retired, but still came to his office every day and spent eight hours there. Albert kept him company, sent out the few bills and circulars, and brought his employer mid-morning coffee, lunch and tea.

  Gamadge said: “I won’t sit down, Hall; just came in to ask a favor of you.”

  Hall, chewing, raised his eyebrows.

  “I wanted you to let Albert make an out-of-town telephone call for me.”

  Hall swallowed, took a drink of whiskey, and asked: “Why?”

  “I have to communicate with a client in code.”

  Hall sat looking up at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Albert leaned against one of the folding-doors instead of shutting it, eyes on Gamadge, one hand smoothing back his mousy hair. Gamadge had taken a notebook and pencil out of his pocket, and seemed to be making notes with the calmest concentration.

  Hall said at last: “Gamadge, you are a case of delayed adolescence. You will be kind enough to leave Albert and myself out of your pantomimes. If you actually have a code, use it yourself.”

  Gamadge looked up from his notes. “The opposition might check up on it; the code involves your having accepted an order—importation from England. But now the customer’s dead, and you’re calling to know whether you’re to cancel or deliver.”

  Albert listened impassively; Hall seemed incapable of speech. When he spoke it was with restraint: “And why should I cancel, in those circumstances?”

  “It would be the humane thing to do. Not a big bill—say twenty dollars or so.”

  “And the opposition, as you call it, will check up on us, and we’re to maintain this deception or take the consequences?” Hall laughed shortly. “We have a reputation to lose here.”

  “That’s just it,” said Gamadge with incredible simplicity; or so it sounded to J. Hall—but Albert smiled. “Nobody’d question your bona fides.”

  “And now I’m to trade on it—after forty unblemished years in the rare-book business, which has its full complement of crooks?”

  “There wouldn’t b
e any consequences, Hall. I’m not getting you into trouble. They may check, though I doubt it; if they do, they’ll leave it at that. In a day or so it won’t matter—they’ll drop it forever.”

  “So you say.”

  “It’s a serious matter, Hall,” said Gamadge. “Very serious matter for my client. Life and death, perhaps; or life and reason. I can make the call myself, and then you’ll be able to say afterwards, if you like, that you didn’t know anything about it. But I think Albert would be more convincing.”

  Hall had sat back in his deep chair, and his eyes were on Gamadge’s. There was something in the expression of that old friend and customer that changed his truculent mood. After a long silence, he said without turning: “Albert, find out what this idiot wants, and do it—if it won’t prejudice the business.”

  Albert came into the room. Gamadge said: “Albert, I want you to get this out-of-town number, and ask for Mrs. Glendon Coldfield. Give your occupation and this address, on request. They’ll probably say that she can’t come to the telephone; so then you leave this message: Mr. Glendon Coldfield’s order has arrived from England. We have the crossword puzzle books, and the out-of-print novels; all the Shearings and that Chesterton—The Man Who Was Thursday. We now hear that Mr. Glendon Coldfield has died. Will Mrs. Coldfield accept delivery, or would she like us to dispose of the consignment? We may be able to do so. The bill amounts to about—”

  “Twenty dollars?” barked Hall. “Twenty dollars? Are you out of your mind, Gamadge?”

  “Some lucky bargains,” said Gamadge mildly.

  “And we can’t fill any such order.”

  “I’ll fill it—all but the crosswords, which got held up somehow and aren’t in the package. But you won’t be required to fill it. You can put in any trimmings you like, Albert; just what you’d say normally. Delay, slow going through the customs, and so on.” He added, as Albert accepted the paper, “I’ll be at your elbow.”

  “I guess it’ll be all right, Mr. Hall,” said Albert, who was not allowed to use the expression O.K.

  Hall leaned his head back against the cushion of his chair. “Where’s the code?” he asked with annoyance.

  “I didn’t dare put in the best part of it,” said Gamadge gloomily. “The Passing of the Third Floor Back.” He followed Albert into the front office. Albert was already calling Information. Gamadge hung over him while he got The Maples, Cliffside.

  “Mrs. Glendon Coldfield?” asked Albert. A rather rough, husky female voice answered:

  “This is Mrs. Ira Coldfield. Who’s speaking? Mrs. Glendon Coldfield can’t come to the telephone just now.”

  Albert droned: “Speakin’ for J. Hall, Bookseller. I have a message here for Mrs. Glendon Coldfield—I’m Mr. Hall’s clerk, in charge of orders.”

  “Oh,” said the husky voice. “You can give the message to me. I’ll tell Mrs. Coldfield. What is it?”

  “It’s this English consignment finally came in,” said Albert. “There was a good deal of delay on it, and now we hear that Mr. Coldfield—Mr. Glendon Coldfield—died.”

  “Yes, he did. What’s this consignment?” asked Mrs. Ira Coldfield impatiently.

  “We have the crossword puzzle books, and all the Shearings, and the other out-of-print novels—the Chesterton, too—Man Who Was Thursday. You got that, Mrs. Coldfield?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it. Are they paid for?”

  “No, they had to pick them up, you know. Secondhand. Takes quite some time to locate those things, if you can at all.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “We got some bargains. The bill won’t be much more than say thirty dollars. But Mr. Hall says to tell Mrs. Glendon Coldfield that if she don’t care to accept delivery, we might be able to dispose of the lot elsewhere.”

  “Oh. You could?”

  “There’s quite a demand.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you,” said Mrs. Coldfield. “I’d better speak to my sister-in-law.”

  “Have you a pencil, Madam? She might not remember what the order was; she might not know.”

  “That’s all right,” said Mrs. Ira Coldfield, still more impatiently. “I’ve got what you said. Hold the wire.”

  Albert looked up at Gamadge, put his hand over the receiver, and said: “She sounds dumb. We might put in that part of the code you left out.”

  “Better not,” said Gamadge. “There are other people in the family, and they’re not so dumb—or so I’m told.”

  The husky voice soon returned. “My sister-in-law says to thank you very much, but she’ll accept delivery. Understands all about it. Make out the bill in her name. Goodbye.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Albert looked up to find that Gamadge was smiling. He said: “Tell me the toll, Albert, and sell me a book. I’m in a buying mood.”

  All was proceeding merrily in the back room, with Hall urging bound sets and scarce copies on Gamadge, and Albert getting down plugs from top shelves, when the telephone rang. The three fell silent, and Gamadge and Albert looked at each other. They hurried into the front room, while Hall, leaning over the arm of his chair, scowled after them.

  This time it was a man’s voice with a finicking accent which came over the wire:

  “Is this J. Hall’s bookshop?”

  “Yes, his clerk speaking,” said Albert, looking pitifully up at Gamadge. “Mr. Hall isn’t in.”

  “I just wanted to know—just a check-up,” said the voice. “This is Mr. Ames Coldfield.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I just had your—”

  “Oh, did you? That’s all I wanted,” said the voice blandly. “My sister-in-law wasn’t quite sure of the name of the shop. Now I myself know a little more about these matters; and I wished to be sure that this order is coming from your place. We didn’t know about it, but that’s nothing. My late brother had his own tastes.” The speaker giggled.

  “Yes, sir,” said Albert, looking annoyed. “We imported the books for Mr. Glendon Coldfield. Have them up there—”

  “No hurry,” said Ames Coldfield. “No hurry at all. Thank you.”

  He rang off. The voice of Hall came from the next room. “I knew it. Whole family about our ears, and I don’t even know the name of the misdemeanor. Or is it a felony?”

  Gamadge said: “I don’t know myself.”

  He walked home with a handsome if battered Molière, tall octavo, four volumes, half calf, Tome 1 missing, to find the lunch table set in the library, and Clara waiting for him.

  “I’m in a kind of a jam,” he said as they sat down, “about a friend of Caroline Fenway’s. She’s out of town, may be coming in tomorrow night; there might be reasons why she couldn’t go to a hotel. Could we possibly put her up here for a night or two?”

  “Miss Mullins wouldn’t mind moving in with Young Henry for once,” said Clara, “and her room’s very nice since we did it over last Fall.”

  “Now you’re in on it,” said Gamadge, “and I’d better tell you the whole thing.”

  CHAPTER FOURKeep It Simple

  THURSDAY EVENING was clear and cool, and the night would be cold; but there was a feel of Spring. Gamadge drew up in front of Harold’s west side apartment house uptown, and Harold came down the steps and got into the car. If he had put on weight it didn’t seem to have made much change in his stocky figure, and it certainly hadn’t changed his dark face, which was as square and bony as ever and as lacking in expression of any sort.

  He was never talkative. They had paid the toll on the George Washington Bridge, and were on their way again, before he made a comment; and that was after Gamadge had finished.

  “Fenway again, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Yes. We lost our client that time.”

  “Thursday means that maid goes out.” He added: “That was a dirty crack. We got a regular sitter.”

  “More than we have.”

  “That Waterton the girl’s engaged to—those the Douglas Watertons?”

  “Yes.”

  �
�Whoo. They wouldn’t want a scandal in that family.”

  “I thought the same. Makes it even stranger.”

  “Unless the client would be trying to make one?”

  “I don’t see it; or anything, yet.”

  “There are four of them besides her? And two men?”

  “The one that checked up on Albert yesterday didn’t sound physically formidable; but you can’t always tell.”

  “How are you timing it?”

  “If the nurse has supper at eight, that may mean that the family has dinner about that time. Our client may be with them downstairs.”

  “Unless she’s locked up in the third floor back.”

  “We can’t hope for such a break as that. If the pretense is that she’s insane, they wouldn’t leave her alone. The nurse wouldn’t take the responsibility.”

  “Unless the nurse is in on it, and helping with the fatal accident.”

  “I don’t think there’d be so many of them—doctor too—in on a fatal accident.”

  “I’ll have to scout.” Harold had had plenty of practice in that, and too much. He went on: “Let’s hope she’s on her feet, that’s all.”

  “She wouldn’t have put it up to me at all if she hadn’t been.”

  Harold lapsed into silence. At a few minutes before eight Gamadge slowed the car to read the lettering on a square stone gatepost: THE MAPLES. There was another pair of gateposts farther north, and a semi-circular driveway led from one to the other entrance, past the recessed door of a stone house. A lantern hanging in the recess gave a minimum of light. All the front windows were closed, and light could be seen through chinks in the heavy draperies of the rooms downstairs.

  Gamadge drove beyond the further gateposts, turned the car, and stopped it. Harold got out and walked on grass into the grounds. Gamadge waited. He had two cigarettes and a period of uneasy thought before Harold came around from the south end of the house, crossed the lawn, and returned to the car. He leaned in at Gamadge’s window.

  “No lights upstairs,” he said gently. “No lights in the garage. Front room on the left is the parlor—side curtains ain’t drawn. Next to that, the library. Back of that a little kind of den, and the nurse is eating supper there. She’s a toad type, and I’d hate myself to fight her in a hospital.