Night Walk Read online

  “To begin with, I told Miss Wakefield at the Inn that I had an uncle at Edgewood. That was so she’d take me as a transient, but I think she’d have taken me anyway. It was a kind of joke, I suppose,” said Yates gloomily. “It more or less slipped out, I don’t know why. I thought Edgewood was off somewhere, never imagined she’d check up or know.”

  “I think it was the damndest silly—”

  “Never mind what you think; I think so too. It didn’t really matter, because as soon as we had the prowler incident, and you certainly read about all that in the papers—”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I knew there’d be a checkup if the state police got into it, so I beat them to it and told Miss Wakefield that I was there on false pretenses. She’s a wonderful sport—descended from an original settler and rides an enormous bay horse—he’s a descendant of original stock too. The local gentry built themselves and their retainers a tavern, wasn’t that an idea? The Bay Horse. Somewhere to go of an evening, I suppose, get away from their families and play checkers and swap news—and bet on their favorites. Their breeding-stable specialty was these bays. Well, Miss Wakefield saw the point, that I was just trying to get a lodging for the night; there’s a fair at Westbury, you know, and holiday crowds everywhere. The Tavern, which is now a boardinghouse upstairs and the post office and drugstore beneath—it was full of traveling salesmen. By the way, they were playing poker on Thursday evening, and they’ve been allowed to go.”

  Gamadge said he was glad of it, poor devils.

  “I showed my credentials to Miss Wakefield,” continued Yates, “and the nice old girl agreed to say nothing to anybody about my whopper. Everything would have been all right, but then came this ghastly murder at the Carringtons’—next door. There are two big lawns between, but it’s no distance away.”

  Gamadge said: “I don’t know how on earth they could involve you in it, if that’s your trouble. You can prove you were at the Inn by the merest accident, can’t you?”

  “Yes, the Tavern and the places I tried in Westbury back me up there.”

  “And even if you’d had time to get to the Carringtons’ and back after Miss Wakefield settled you in your room and before you called her about the prowler—”

  “I had, of course.”

  “You can’t have had time to make those other visits first—at Edgewood and the Library. As I remember it, the Edgewood call was at about ten twenty-five, the Library call at ten thirty. You got to the Inn at ten o’clock, and you must have talked to Miss Wakefield for a while, arguing your way in.”

  “And putting up my car. It was well after ten twenty-five when she left me.”

  “Well then. Everybody’s agreed that there was only one prowler that night, there really couldn’t have been more. Homicidal maniacs don’t come in threes.”

  Yates looked at him. “You think it’s psychological, then.”

  “Think it’s what?”

  “Think it’s a maniac.”

  “I don’t think anything. I spoke according to general opinion. It looks like a psychopathological crime.”

  “It has to be. There’s no motive. There can’t be one.”

  “So I gather from what the newspapers say. They haven’t gone into details.”

  “I know the details. There’s no possible sane connection between old Mrs. Norbury at Edgewood, and Miss Bluett, the librarian, and old Mr. Compson or me, and Carrington.”

  “Well, as I say, even a maniac can’t be in two places at once, and even a maniac—this kind of maniac—doesn’t go out of his way to call attention to his own crime.” Gamadge dropped the end of his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. “So what’s your trouble, and why did you get me up here at great personal inconvenience and in distress of mind on your account? I thought I’d find that you had an important private date on Tuesday, and wanted to get out of attending the inquest. I wouldn’t put it past you. What I can’t understand is why you were so determined to stay in Frazer’s Mills that night. It’s only a two hour and a half run to New York. What were you doing up here anyway?”

  Yates picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the pond to an island of lily pads. He watched the ripples broaden in its wake. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I didn’t tell Miss Wakefield that. I haven’t told anybody. But they may find out. I came up to see Rose Jenner.”

  Gamadge whistled softly between his teeth. This exasperated Mr. Yates to violence.

  “She’s a wonderful girl, I never met such a girl. It isn’t our fault that I’ve been seeing her on the quiet. The Carringtons don’t like her friends. She does collect some queer ones, but that’s because she likes intelligent people—I’m the only lowbrow she ever bothered with. We thought it would be a good plan for me to come up over Labor Day and stay in the neighborhood, so that we could see something of each other and drive around the backcountry. We met in Westbury at a roadhouse—she told them she was going to a movie. We thought we’d better not come back here together—I tried to get a room at Westbury and couldn’t, so she suggested the Tavern here. I came along first. She went to the movie, the end of it, so she’d be able to say what it was about, and get home at the right time. I haven’t seen her since, I haven’t dared to telephone, I don’t know what happened; I suppose there was a big crowd that night, and that’s why nobody saw her go in—I mean nobody remembers it. If she left by the side exit, as she says, nobody’d see her go out. Of course she’d worry about her guardian when she realized from what the others said that the maniac had had time to get across to the house from the Wakefield Inn. She was fond of Carrington. Why shouldn’t she go in and investigate? That’s what Lawrence and Miss Carrington ought to have done.”

  The rush of words ended at last, and there was a silence. When Gamadge spoke it was mildly:

  “Let me try to understand all this. I gathered from the newspapers that Miss Jenner, for all anybody seemed to know, might have come home much earlier from Westbury, and driven in by way of Green Tree; or she might never have gone to Westbury at all. The papers simply left that to be inferred, and they implied that she seemed convinced, when she did get home, that something had happened to George Carrington. They didn’t make much of either suggestion, and they seem to think that there was no financial motive for anybody’s killing him.”

  “There is none. Nobody but a maniac can have killed him, and for that matter nobody but a maniac would have risked those other calls—at Edgewood and the Library and the Inn. He might easily have been caught coming or going. I’d have caught him myself, if I’d had my wits about me.”

  “That’s true, you might.”

  “And why make those other calls, if the object of the whole thing was George Carrington’s murder? It was some kind of maniac, that’s absolutely sure.”

  “But not a case of acute mania; we can rule that out.”

  Yates looked at him keenly. “Because there was all that creeping around beforehand?”

  “It must have been beforehand; no time for it after the murder. And rudimentary precautions taken, like that blurring of footprints on the Carrington steps and porch.”

  “Something tied over the fellow’s shoes.” Yates mused grimly.

  “Well.” Gamadge sat up, took out his cigarette case, chose a cigarette, and lighted it. “You came up here and met Miss Jenner at this roadhouse. For reasons not quite clear to me, your friendship with her was a secret; after all, you’re presentable.”

  “But I can’t support her yet. I’m only just able to support myself. I couldn’t start in on anything until this year, like everybody else my age who went to war.”

  “Still—but we’ll return to that. I suppose you had made these efforts to find a place to stay in Westbury before you met her at the roadhouse?”

  “Yes. So she suggested the Tavern here.”

  “You arrived at the Wakefield Inn, and you made a mystery of yourself.”

  “There was no reason to tell Miss Wakefield that I was here to see
Rose Jenner. Every reason why I shouldn’t. And after the murder it would only have meant big extra publicity for her—I don’t matter, I don’t care about myself. It wouldn’t hurt me, anyhow.”

  “But you think it may come out—that you know her, and that you met her at the roadhouse on Thursday evening when she was supposed to be at a movie in Westbury?”

  “It might come out any time,” said Yates drearily. “Her picture’s in all the papers—she found the body. Mine may be in the papers too, after that inquest.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  “What of it?” Yates met his eyes; they exchanged a long look.

  “Yes, what of it? Extra publicity won’t hurt Miss Jenner. Discovery of a love interest—you—won’t hurt her. If she had none she’d be—er—exceptional. How old is she?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “You say there was no financial motive for Carrington’s murder, and we agree—with everybody else—that it wasn’t and couldn’t have been a case of acute mania—sudden brainstorm, result of a quarrel, result of goodness knows what. What did you expect me to do for you—or her?”

  Yates said without looking at him: “I thought you might find out somehow who this maniac really is, or where to find him. They’re digging up all kinds of stuff about Rose’s father. He was erratic, she had a tough time when she was a child. They lived in Europe—did I say?—knocked around, no money. When she was ten years old he had her playing in exhibition chess matches. He was an amateur champion himself, and he taught her.”

  Gamadge said nothing.

  “They say chess has an awful history,” said Yates somberly.

  “Chess masters do go off their heads now and then.”

  “She hates chess,” exclaimed Yates. “Hates it. Always did.”

  “No wonder.”

  “She never plays, except when the Carringtons want a game. Of course she’s right out of their class. She says she’s really not much good at it, not since she stopped being a prodigy; but that’s just her way of talking—she hates it so.”

  “Did her father die insane, Yates?”

  “She says not; but he drank and I think took some drug.”

  “What relation is she to the Carringtons?”

  “None at all, not even adopted. Her mother died when she was only a few years old, and then George Carrington’s older daughter married Jenner, one of those infatuations, very much against her father’s wish. After she died—Rose said they really didn’t have the necessities of life then—Rose and her father lived together alone. The war was on, and they’d been in Switzerland. When she was fifteen he died too, and some friends wrote to Carrington that she was practically destitute, and enclosed a letter her stepmother had left for him, asking him to take care of Rose.”

  “Must have been fond of the child.”

  “They were devoted; Rose thinks all the Carringtons are perfect. Carrington got her over here somehow, and he’s looked out for her ever since. Sent her to a good school, wanted her to go to college. You see he had nothing to leave her.”

  “I don’t see, you haven’t explained.”

  “In nineteen thirty-two he put everything he had into an annuity. It gave him a fine income, and his son and daughter approved—they have some money of their own from their mother. But they’ll never be able to live in the same style now. They had every reason for wanting him to live forever, and he more or less intended to.”

  “I’m beginning to understand the situation. The papers haven’t gone into it.”

  “No, because nobody can suspect the Carringtons of murdering him. Even if they weren’t fond of him, they had every reason, as I said, for keeping him alive. They have the house, I think, but Rose—she told me all this—Rose says land isn’t valuable up here at present, and the house isn’t even wired for electricity; needs everything. It wouldn’t bring much. The Edgewood property and the old Compson house—where the school is now—went for a song.”

  “Miss Jenner thinks the Carringtons are perfect, but she had to see her friends secretly?”

  “She didn’t have to. You ought to understand that she was brought up to be absolutely independent, and here she feels tied down. It was a middle-aged household, and she felt that her friends were a disturbance; and some mighty queer ones she did collect. And Carrington had this horror of bad marriages—on account of this other daughter of his, Jenner’s wife, and because he had no money to leave. And not much to give, either; he was the greatest spender on earth, Rose said; she thought it was wonderful of him to spend so much on her school and give her an allowance.”

  “She didn’t want to present an admirer who couldn’t afford to marry out of hand?”

  “I wasn’t very anxious to be taken there and looked over, I must admit. I suppose it was adventure, to meet on the quiet.”

  “Carrington couldn’t have stopped the marriage.”

  “Of course not, she’s of age to marry. In two years I may be making decent money.”

  “When did you meet her?”

  “Last Christmas holidays, in a bar. She liked to go off by herself, away from the Carringtons’ formal existence, and see life. She isn’t wild, Gamadge; for instance she drinks like a civilized European, not the way we pour it down. Her father was a cultivated man, I’ll say that for him. Next winter, if she decided against college and tried for a job, the Carringtons were going to introduce her socially. She hated the idea. So did I. I might have lost her. I’m not much, and she might have found somebody she liked better. Gamadge—I’m not giving you the right impression of her. She’s never criticized these people. She was delighted when Carrington had that attic cleared out for her—the attic the books came from that Miss Bluett was working on late on Thursday night. After all, it’s pleasanter to have a place of your own. Rose isn’t a secretive type at all. Can’t you understand that when you’re her age and been on your own, you don’t want a lot of questions? Carrington felt responsible for her, and he was old-fashioned, and he asked a lot of questions.”

  “She seems to have had liberty and the use of a car.”

  “She’s a natural with cars, and these roads were always safe until now.”

  “Did she ever tell you anything about her own mother?”

  “Hardly remembers her. She was from Budapest, but part English. On the stage, I think.”

  “Jenner was an American?”

  “Yes, expatriate. Lived in Paris till the war. He’d had money, but he’d spent it. No profession. I’m afraid he lived by his wits after his first wife died.”

  “She supported him?”

  “I suppose so. He may have thought Carrington’s daughter would have money.”

  “He sounds a little as though he ought to have been boiled in oil.” Gamadge was remembering a scene from his own past—a hollow square within which a very small pale boy walked from chess table to chess table, glancing at each for a moment, putting out a delicate little hand to move a piece or to castle, passing on. Afterwards he had looked like collapsing, but members of the club had wanted autographs and the father had made him write them.

  “She can’t bear to talk about her chess, Gamadge.”

  “No. You haven’t met any of the Carringtons?”

  “I haven’t, but Rose talked about them. Carrington was a very impressive person, elegance personified. He was about sixty-five, I think, this summer. Rose got on with him from the start. I think myself he had remorse about letting his oldest daughter die in want, and was glad to carry out her wishes for Rose. He never knew how badly off the Jenners were, but that was his own fault—he wouldn’t communicate after the daughter went off. They met Jenner abroad, and Carrington couldn’t bear him. Rose says she wasn’t surprised at that, her father wasn’t the kind of man Carrington would understand.”

  “What are the younger Carringtons like?”

  “Not so young. Lawrence is or was an art critic, Miss Carrington’s a first-class amateur pianist. Rose says they all had a great life together, seeing people a
nd doing things, very happy. But she was too young to enjoy it. She doesn’t get much out of things—or books either.”

  “I suppose that you’re afraid some kind of case may be built up against her, founded on her lack of alibi?”

  “I don’t know what kind of case they’re building. They might pretend to think anything.”

  “That she wanted Carrington to finance the marriage, for instance, and that he threatened to cut off supplies now if she didn’t drop the idea? It’s what he did with his daughter, you say.”

  “But what good would it do Rose to kill him? She’d get nothing out of that.”

  “A certain amount of satisfaction, perhaps, if she were an unbalanced person; a paranoiac, say.”

  “Gamadge, can’t you do anything before they—”

  “Before they find out that Miss Wakefield’s transient and Rose Jenner’s love interest are one? Garry, I don’t know a thing about paranoia, or schizophrenia, or plain murder for the fun of it. I never in my life could deal with anything but evidence, and there doesn’t seem to be much here. If this murder really was the result of an attack of intermittent homicidal mania I won’t solve it. But I’m staying, of course.”

  “You are?”

  “Over Labor Day anyhow.”

  “At the Inn? Where? Are you going to let people know you’re interested in the case?”

  “Not unless it’s necessary to tell them. I’m staying at Edgewood.”

  “At Edgewood?” Yates was astounded.

  “My doctor, Hamish,” said Gamadge, smiling at him, “who is a very big man indeed, has sent me up to Edgewood because I’m suffering from a slight attack of overwork. Miss Studley is very glad, he informs me, to find that he and I are so sensible. There’s a case against Edgewood, you know.”

  “I should think there was!”

  “The patients there are not supposed to be maniacs, intermittent, potential or reformed; but Miss Studley kindly supplied Hamish with the names of their doctors—least she could do—and Hamish, of course, will be able to get details that no layman could ever hope to get. He’ll call me up today. He’s in town, by the way, on an emergency case, and in a terrible rage about it. But he’s rather interested, like everybody else, in the maniac of Frazer’s Mills.”