Somewhere in the House (18 page)

“The sublet only drinks a little whisky now and then,” said Maria, “with water and no ice.”

Gamadge and Malcolm looked into a clean and tidy kitchen-pantry, with a polished copper sink. Maria showed them shelves full of curly china.

“No!” said Malcolm, backing away from a row of Bohemian glasses with blue and pink blobs on them. “No!” He shut his eyes.

“I have never broken one,” said Maria. She led the party through the big room to a doorway in the south wall.

“No wall safe, I suppose,” suggested Gamadge, “since you say there's no silver.”

“Oh, no, there never was any wall safe.”

The bedroom was almost a square, with two east windows. Once the elevated had crashed past Mr. Raschner's pillow, but perhaps Mr. Raschner had slept sound after his little parties. He had had a good bed to sleep on—wide and low, a copy of an Italian four-poster; with curtains, and a spread, of heavy silk as good as new.

It was not a large bedroom, and the bed, a chest of drawers, a night table, and two chairs pretty well filled it. Maria opened a deep closet, where hangers and shoe-rails waited.

“Mr. Raschner left beautiful robes and pyjamas here, and his slippers,” said Mr. Spitano. “And a set of razors and toilet things. The sublet, no.”

“I put soap in the bathroom always,” said Maria, “but the sublet brings his own.”

“Ghosts don't need razors,” observed Malcolm.

Maria put up a hand. Spitano laughed. “The sublet is not Mr. Raschner's ghost. We have heard footsteps.”

“And found the dregs of whisky.” Gamadge went into the bathroom; sure enough, there was a large pink cake of scented soap on the pedestal washstand, another in the holder on the ledge of the spotless built-in tub. Mahogany encased the tub, and the interloper walked on mosaic.

“The plumbing is in good order,” said Mr. Spitano. “We never had it modernized.”

“It would suit me,” said Malcolm. He opened the hanging cabinet, and saw empty glass shelves.

“Many a man,” remarked Gamadge, “has been traced by his toothpaste; or a hair from his comb.” He looked around, at the glistening walls where sea nymphs and dolphins disported themselves in swirls of foam, at the long mirror above the tub, at the glass light fixtures, up at the blue-green ceiling. “Very nice indeed.”

They came back into the big room, and Mr. Spitano addressed Gamadge haltingly: “I hope you will get in touch.”

“I'll try, Mr. Spitano; but I'm beginning to think I shan't succeed. Might I say that you are probably right in wanting a change?”

“It would be better to have things regular. I am so old, and there are so many changes everywhere.”

“You know, I don't believe this place was ever down in Mr. Raschner's inventories at all.”

“If it had been, perhaps there would have been inquiries when his estate was settled.”

“I really think so.”

Mr. Spitano looked up at Gamadge anxiously. “I didn't want to lose my sublet. When the depression came, who else would ever have paid that rent?”

“Who, indeed?”

“Who would anyway, in this neighbourhood? And if I tried to rent it as a loft, there are so many new fire laws.”

“I don't blame you a bit, Mr. Spitano; I don't think it was up to you to inquire. But I think you're right to want the thing regularized now.” Gamadge put a bill into Maria's hand; she closed the hand tightly and smiled.

As they parted on the landing below, Mr. Spitano made one last halting observation: “I always wondered why nobody came to look over the furniture. All that fine damask linen, all monogrammed.”

The two supposed victims of the housing shortage went downstairs and out on the street. Across the avenue a cab was lumbering northward; they hailed it and boarded it. Gamadge asked the driver to go up Fifth and stop at the corner below the Clayborns'.

“Less of a crowd at the alley,” he explained to Malcolm.

After a pause Malcolm said: “The old man isn't a crook.”

“No.”

“I hope he won't get into any trouble over this.”

“Why should he? Lots of landlords in New York don't know much more about sublets than he does about this one. But of course the old boy always knew he was taking a chance, dispensing with formalities.”

“Pretty damn ghostly, wasn't it, that hideout? Who
is
the sublet? Old Gavan? He's the right age to have known Raschner, but
would
he have known Raschner?”

“On the quiet he might very well have known him as a pal of the night life.”

“Seward and Leeder would have been old enough to know Raschner; and after Raschner's death Seward could have stored his loot there—the mandarin robe, the emperor's seal, the tea-pot, the buttons. The Spitano woman would have dusted them and thought nothing of it; everything in the place is authentic art to the Spitanos. But…” Malcolm frowned.

Gamadge smiled. “But Leeder knew the sporting world?”

“It does tie up with the Sillerman thing, doesn't it? I gather from what you tell me that Raschner would have been likely to know the Sillerman girl.”

“If we did research we might even find that Raschner's wife and the Sillerman girl were alumnae of the same schools of dancing.”

“It's a solemn thought,” said Malcolm, “that the Sillerman girl may have been at parties in Raschner's flat.”

“If she was prominent in Broadway circles Raschner would certainly have known her.”

“Young Garth knows who the sublet is,” said Malcolm. “Will he tell us, though?”

“I'm only afraid he may tell the sublet first. I shouldn't care to be in his shoes when he breaks the news to one of those people up there—that the Sixth Avenue hang-out is discovered. I telephoned to Nordhall to watch over him.”

“You did?”

“Before I sat down to supper.”

“Oh. But look here—why does the sublet keep the place on? There are no rowdy parties, no parties of any kind; the Spitanos would hear them through the ceiling. There's very little drinking. Is it drugs, Gamadge?”

“Well, you saw the incense burner.”

“Of course! Joss sticks would kill anything else. But there's no cache there.”

“The sublet is very careful to leave nothing there.”

“But Raschner left a good deal. Did he just forget about it, or did he mean to donate it to Spitano, or did he just pass the whole outfit along to his society pal without benefit of notary?”

“He died suddenly of a stroke, and the wife married again in England. She may not have known or cared what happened to the stuff at Spitano's, or the flat either; Raschner left her very rich.”

“Well, it's something out of the
Arabian Nights
.”

“New York's full of such mysteries; all big cities are full of them.”

They had reached their corner. Gamadge paid off the cab, and he and Malcolm walked east. They passed the big apartment house, whose entrance was on the avenue, and came to the narrow entrance of the alley. Beyond it was the fence and side yard of the little old rustic house, a left-over from the time when this part of the island was rural. It was two storeys high, with a flight of wooden steps to a latticed porch, and a deep basement. It had been white, but was now oyster-coloured.

Activity boiled about it. There were two men on the roof, two policemen stood in the alley and bawled at them, and an old lady craned up at them over the porch rail. She had the look that unsheltered old ladies get in New York—alert but fatalistic.

“Tell them the fire isn't here, Officer,” she was saying.

The men on the roof—one of them impeded by a camera—climbed down to the roof of the porch reluctantly. Then they began to swarm down the porch post nearest them, one after the other. The old lady retired through her fan-lighted doorway and shut the door.

The two men favoured the police officers with a stare of unutterable contempt, and walked away. One of the officers went back along the dark alley, lighting himself with his torch; the other turned to look unamiably at Gamadge and Malcolm.

“No admittance,” he said.

“I thought I'd try for a short cut,” said Gamadge. “Lieutenant Nordhall expects me.”

“Then go around to the front, and send in your name.”

“No reason on earth why you should believe me, of course,” said Gamadge. “But would you mind telling me whether Mr. Garth Clayborn came home?”

The policeman looked at him silently. After a long pause he said: “Came home a good while ago.”

“Thanks.”

They turned away; as they rounded the Fifth Avenue corner, Gamadge said: “We're too late.”

“What do you mean?” Malcolm looked shocked.

“Didn't you see the way that officer gazed at me when I asked about Garth? Everybody but us has the news by this time.”

“But, great Heavens, you telephoned to Nordhall as soon as I told you—”

“Garth simply drove down to the next block when you lost him, turned east, and came back up here. He may have been here several minutes before you called me from that drugstore. The officers had no reason to report on him, and there are back stairs. Nordhall and Mulvane were on the ground floor, and the Nagles and Elena—and Leeder, if he hadn't left—were in the dining-room. They'd been there ages, though; but I have a kind of feeling that they'd stay there as long as they were let alone. From Nordhall's account I gather that there was a tremendous spread, and I can't see Nagle hurrying away from his drinks and his supper. Elena was going to stand by, I think. But Nordhall will have all that by this time.”

Malcolm said: “I don't know why you're so sure that something's happened to the poor idiot.”

“I've had him on my mind; all I needed was that policeman's look when I mentioned Garth's name.”

They turned the Clayborn corner. There were more cars in front of the house, a sort of van waited at the kerb, and a milling crowd besieged the vestibule. They shoved their way through and as far as the front door. The officer guarding it took their names.

“Who's this with you?” he asked Gamadge.

“My assistant.”

They were passed in. Elena Clayborn dashed forward to meet them, and cast herself into Malcolm's arms.

“David,” she gasped, “Garth's dead.”

M
ALCOLM RECEIVED THE
onslaught with aplomb. He patted Elena affectionately on the head and said he knew, and that it was too bad.

“But, David, what shall we do? It isn't like a murder that happened a long time ago. I feel as if I were going crazy. It happened right here, right upstairs, while the Nagles and I were in the dining-room.”

“And Mr. Leeder?” Malcolm was looking at Gamadge above Elena's topknot.

“Roly'd gone off again somewhere. He's sitting in there with the Nagles now, in the library, and he won't say a word; I never saw him like this. They're all different. Uncle Gavan is wandering around all bent over like an old man. Aunt Cynthia is in her room crying. Crying! I didn't know she could. Father's in an awful state; he's lying down, and he won't let me in.”

“You ought to get out of here.”

“But I can't leave them.”

Nordhall was coming down the stairs. Recognizing Malcolm and catching his eye, he jerked his head in the direction of the reception-room; Malcolm nodded, stood Elena gently on her feet, and put an arm round her shoulders. He urged her along the hall and through the arched door.

When they had gone, Nordhall came the rest of the way down the flight and stood for a moment looking at Gamadge. Then he said: “I didn't lose a minute.”

“Neither did I.”

“He got here before you telephoned me, contacted his party, and was shot dead. Shot twice. Know why nobody heard the gun?”

“Why?”

“Because the shots were fired in a sound-proof room that I didn't lock behind me.”

“Oh.”

“Come on up.”

They mounted two flights of stairs through a silent house. On the top landing Nordhall paused to dismiss a young policeman whom he addressed as Matty, and then stopped in front of the closed music-room door.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

Gamadge told the story. Nordhall listened, nodded once or twice, asked a question or two, and then reflected, chewing on his lower lip.

When he finally spoke it was in the conversational tone of one who abandons surprise: “By the time I got to the dining-room—that was while you were taking Malcolm's call—Garth was already in the house. We get that from the men out back; he came in in a hurry. I went into the dining-room and settled to a meal; the Nagles and Elena Clayborn were there, Leeder had left. Leeder says he had a sandwich and a drink, and then went up to talk things over with his ex-wife; but she wasn't having any—she'd gone to her room. He didn't like to knock, afraid of disturbing her; so he went and sat in the sitting-room and thought things over by himself. You can't see the stairs from where he says he was.

“I took my time in the dining-room, had supper and coffee and went over my report—such as it was. It was as good as a play, listening to the Nagle girl putting on airs to Elena Clayborn; telling her about the big shots her father knew, and how she would do modelling if she didn't think office work was more realistic, and how girls all ought to do something. Elena Clayborn didn't say anything, just listened to her blow. It seems Elena Clayborn does hospital work morning, noon and night.

“The old folks were sitting down to their supper, no stand-up buffet for them; tucking in a big meal, and Nagle trying to pass wisecracks with old Roberts—who brushed him off like a fly. Nagle was putting away plenty of Scotch, probably thinking of how much Gavan Clayborn was going to come across with.

“Mulvane put his head in and said I was wanted on the telephone; that was you. I rounded up Sergeant Crowley and young Matty, and we went through the house. But would you believe it, we looked in there”—he jerked his head—“last of all. Logical in a way. The door was shut, the wire from the hall had been detached and slung inside. The men thought I'd locked the place before I left. I was hunting around for the boy downstairs; when I came up here and saw the closed door, I went for it naturally. But I didn't even then think I was looking for a dead body.