Murders in, Volume 2 (5 page)

“That's the dining room.”

He followed Miss Vauregard past the high brick wall, and along the house front to the pillared portico. Miss Vauregard pulled a shining brass handle, and produced a soft, faraway jingle. A pale old man in a striped waistcoat opened the door and smiled at her.

“Well, John; how is Uncle?”

“Quite well, thank you, Madam. He is waiting for you in the library.”

“Don't come up.” She stepped past him into a white-paneled hall, Gamadge following.

“Thank you, Madam.” He closed the front door, and stood with his hand on the knob of it, regarding her in a melancholy, questioning way.

“How is Miss Smith?” she asked brightly.

“Much better, Madam. If you have time, Eliza would like to speak to you before you go.”

“I'm always delighted to see Eliza.”

“We are a little worried about Mr. Vauregard, Madam.”

“Oh dear. Why?”

“He seems a little restless and nervous; I don't think he is sleeping very well.”

“He isn't used to guests in the house, you know, John.”

“No, Madam.” His look said, “Neither are we.”

Gamadge followed Miss Vauregard up the shallow stairs with their delicate white rail, along a wide hallway, and into a large room which ran across the back of the house. High windows with summer curtains of glazed flowery chintz admitted light on the east, south and west. A gray marble chimneypiece stood against the west wall. The other wall spaces were filled by gray-painted bookcases, each a little temple with fluted columns and pediment. Glass wall brackets held candles. There was an old French rug on the mirrorlike floor, and a portrait over the mantel represented a self-satisfied young man in a white wig, pointing to a row of lawbooks. His coat was blue, his buttons gilt; and his little finger displayed a ring with a big red stone in it.

Old Mr. Vauregard came forward, a pleased smile on his face, and held out his hand. The original of the seal ring was on his little finger, and his long, narrow, high-nosed face looked like that of the portrait, grown old. His pale ivory skin was hardly lined, and his bright, dark eyes as clear as Gamadge's own. He stooped a little—a tall man, he now seemed to be of little more than medium height. He was perfectly turned out in gray flannel trousers and a thin, unlined, woolen house jacket, russet-brown.

“How very pleasant this is,” he said. “Robina, my dear child, how did you persuade Mr. Gamadge?”

“He may not want to see the books, Uncle Imbrie,” replied Miss Vauregard, embracing her uncle affectionately, “but he does want to see the house—everybody does.”

“And he shall see it. Sit down, Mr. Gamadge; or would you prefer to glance at my poor little collection, and get it over with, before we have our coffee?”

“I'm afraid it can't be much more than a glance, this afternoon, sir,” said Gamadge. “You'll have to turn me loose in it some time when you can spare the library, if you want an opinion that's worth anything.”

“It has only one merit.” His host led the way across the room to the bookcase on the right of the northeast window. “We Vauregards have never been great readers; but my great-great-grandfather brought these in this case from England with him, somewhere about the middle of the eighteenth century, and my great-grand-father bought what was known as a ‘gentleman's library,' the usual classics, and installed them with the others. Here they are, in the next sections. Then my grandfather built this house—we lived first on Battery Place, and this neighborhood was quite rural. He added to the library—not very wisely, I dare say. You'll find plenty of rubbish. The point is that it's a family collection, and will remain with the house when I die and turn it over to the public.”

Gamadge passed from section to section of the bookcases, hands in pockets. He paused occasionally, and once or twice he asked to see a book.

“Congratulations on your Early Americana,” he said. “Very nice, very complete. Lacks one or two of the most marketable items, I'm afraid.”

They had reached the shelves, glassed as were all the others, which stood between the east windows. Gamadge paused, and Mr. Vauregard, hovering, showed signs of mild excitement. “American editions of English poets,” he said. “Worthless, I believe.”

“Unless you have any association books among them.”

“Well…I might say that I have.” Mr. Vauregard's eye sought that of his niece. “Do you notice that little set—the Byron—which is so badly faded, except for one volume? Prettily gilded, isn't it? That was a presentation set, but not presented by the author, I'm afraid!”

Mr. Vauregard opened the glass door of the center compartment, and took Volume I down from the shelf. “Rather an amusing little family story connected with it—if you can bear family stories?”

“They are the breath of life to one of my profession, if they are in any way connected with books.”

Miss Vauregard, looking rather bewildered, sat on the davenport beside the fireplace, nervously playing with her gloves.

“It's trifling, but so characteristic of the period.” Mr. Vauregard opened the book and handed it to Gamadge, who read on the flyleaf the following inscription, in a bold and ornamental hand:

To Fanny Vauregard
from
…A Friend

“Fanny Vauregard was my grandmother,” said Mr. Vauregard. “She had a very dear friend—school friend; they attended The Van Korn Female Academy, and they were very sentimental. At that time, you must know, young ladies were not permitted to read Byron's poems.”

“Or much besides, I suppose,” said Gamadge.

“But Byron was taboo—absolutely taboo. She and Cornelia Dykinck—by the way, Robina, do you ever see the Dykincks nowadays?”

“Well, Uncle, I'm afraid not. Old Mrs. Dykinck is an invalid, and the girl is such a bore.”

“Wrong of you, very wrong; you shouldn't lose sight of the old family friends. Not,” said Mr. Vauregard, archly, “that I have seen anything of them myself, for the last twenty years or so; but then, bachelors are privileged.”

“They are, indeed,” said his niece, tartly. “I don't remember anything about this story you're telling, Uncle Imbrie.”

“You young people would never listen to any of my old stories. No wonder family traditions die out. Well, my grandmother and her friend—Cornelia Petrie, she was then—swore a mutual covenant that the moment they married, which they proposed to do the moment they left school, they would instantly purchase and read the whole of Byron.”

“Leaving the spouses to their own devices for a week or so?”

“No doubt. They married, and settled down; and of course I need not tell you that they quite forgot Lord Byron.”

“And all his works.”

“And all his works,” repeated Mr. Vauregard, laughing heartily at this mild witticism. “But my Great-uncle Charles, who was something of a wag, heard the story; and on the next Christmas—the Christmas of 1839—he picked up two little sets of Byron, exactly alike, and presented them to my grandmother and to Mrs. Dykinck.”

“Delightful,” said Gamadge, refraining from a glance at Miss Vauregard, who seemed suddenly to have lost much of her vivacity.

Mr. Vauregard said: “We have other odd memories connected with the set. We—ah—lost the second volume a century ago, and if you will believe me, Mr. Gamadge, it was not until last month that I was able to replace it!”

“How very odd—and how lucky,” said Gamadge. “I see that it looks much fresher than the others. Might I look at it?”

Mr. Vauregard's fingers trembled as he took it from the shelf and handed it to Gamadge. The latter examined it with interest, and asked casually: “Where did you find it?”

“Well…you mayn't ask. The details of my discovery are a secret.”

“The details of such discoveries so often are.” Gamadge produced a little leather case containing a reading glass, and inspected Volume II without and within; he then repeated the process with Volume I.

“One would swear they came out of the same set,” he declared, “if it were not for the fresher binding on your discovery.”

“Wouldn't one?” Mr. Vauregard beamed.

“Only, the top edges of Volume II are a little rubbed.” Gamadge peered at a double row of tiny scars, which seemed to say that Volume II had been squeezed into a space too narrow for it.

“I saw no rubbing.” Mr. Vauregard peered anxiously over his shoulder.

“Microscopic. And Volume II is not foxed; Volume I is; rather badly, too, I'm afraid. And so,” continued Gamadge, taking out Volumes III and IV, “are your others.”

“Extraordinary,” murmured Mr. Vauregard, with a dreaminess in his dark eyes which suddenly gave him the “psychic” look that Gamadge had missed before.

“You really ought to write up your story of the lost Byron. I'm sure I could get it printed for you in
End Pieces
,” he said.

Mr. Vauregard looked wistful. “I wish I dared.”

John the butler brought in a big silver tray and coffee service. When he had placed it beside Miss Vauregard's sofa, her uncle said: “I hope Miss Smith will come down, John?”

“Yes, Sir. I asked her, and she is coming.”

Miss Vauregard indicated a chair beside the table for Gamadge, who brought the Byrons with him, and laid them on a stand at his elbow.

“The young lady who is staying with me has had a sad time of it. I should warn you,” said the old gentleman. “She has been obliged for some years to support herself as a governess—in Poland, of all tragic places. She is an English girl, with all the courage of her race; but she is now what I think you call a refugee.”

Gamadge murmured something, sympathetically.

“She finds herself alone in a new world,” continued Mr. Vauregard, who seemed to be enjoying his own fabrications very much, “and she is dazed and still shaken by her experiences. Her escape has been in the nature of a miracle. She is shy of strangers, and she cannot yet face crowds. I hope to persuade her—gradually, of course—”

He broke off, rose, went to the door, and came back with a young woman whose hand was on his arm. She was tall, slender, and pale, with a wide, high forehead, a pointed face, and large blue eyes. She wore no vestige of make-up. Her fair hair was dressed in curls on the top of her head, a coiffure which made her long neck seem longer. The short, gentian-blue and white dress which Miss Vauregard had chosen for her became her very well, but Gamadge thought that the cornflower silk in which she had arrived from nowhere would have made her seem even more wraithlike, and far more delicately bred.

“Here is our kind Robina, my dear,” said Mr. Vauregard, with touching gentleness. “And this is Mr. Gamadge. Mr. Gamadge, my ward, Miss Smith.”

M
ISS SMITH BOWED FORMALLY
to Gamadge, and sat down beside Miss Vauregard on the davenport. That lady had described her as very pretty; the description did not do her justice. She was almost beautiful, and she had a beautiful voice.

“I have everything I need, thanks to you, Miss Vauregard,” she was saying.

“But you will want dinner gowns, Lydia.” Mr. Vauregard accepted a cup of coffee from his niece. “Simple dinner gowns. We shall be going away—we must get out of the city. You will want to dress; my niece will find you something.”

Miss Smith said gravely that she had not worn a dinner gown for years. “I am accustomed to nursery tea, you know. I never dined when I was in a situation.”

Gamadge, feeling as if he were struggling through a Jane Austen tea party, and listening avidly to every intonation of Miss Smith's voice, told himself that so far as he was concerned, she might well be English. His ear could not catch the fault, if there were any, in her accent.

“Well, my dear child, all that is over now,” protested Mr. Vauregard.

“But when I am stronger, of course I must earn my living again,” said Miss Smith, looking down at her coffee cup. “That is settled.”

“Time enough to talk of that when you are stronger.” Mr. Vauregard, glancing at the three Byrons at Gamadge's elbow, went on: “I was telling Mr. Gamadge that little story about my grandmother and Mrs. Dykinck.”

Miss Smith said that it was amusing.

“We are not a reading family; but now that I have time,” said Mr. Vauregard, “and a trained taste to choose for me, and a voice like yours to listen to, my dear, I shall be asking to hear some Byron myself.”

Gamadge put down his cup, and took up Volume II. “You are fond of Byron, Miss Smith?” he asked, turning the pages.

“Yes, I am very fond of Byron,” said Miss Smith.

“So am I. Shockingly underrated he is, just now; one can't turn a leaf without coming on something good:

Colossal—isn't he?”

Miss Smith, her head a little on one side, as if her slender neck were not quite strong enough to support it and its mass of pale-gold hair, coughed gently.

Gamadge continued: “How did the original Volume II get lost, if I may ask, Mr. Vauregard? Or is that a secret too?”

There was a pause. “We never knew what became of it,” replied the old gentleman.

“No outsiders in the house at the time?”

“Nobody but Mrs. Dykinck herself, and as she had a duplicate set, one can hardly imagine her taking Volume II, or any other volume.”

“Mrs. Dykinck was here that afternoon?” Miss Vauregard, who seemed to be increasingly depressed, asked the question with a start. “If I ever knew that, I had forgotten.”

“She was, but she did not know,” said Mr. Vauregard, with a fond look at Miss Smith, “that anything had been lost.”

“Mightn't she have lost her Volume II, and had the bright idea of replenishing it from your set?” asked Gamadge, smiling. “Stranger things have happened.”