Somewhere in the House (2 page)

Gamadge turned as Mrs. Leeder came into the room, her hand held out to him. She was a very tall, slender, dark and handsome woman in her forties, with a white skin; she had a look of settled melancholy. She wore a long dress, the skirt black and the bodice of shimmering purple. Antique silver and diamond ear-rings were brilliant below her black hair. She said: “I know how good this is of you, Mr. Gamadge. Please don't ask me who urged me to beg this favour of you.”

“Are you afraid I'd reproach them?” He smiled. “I wouldn't.”

“I hope they'll forget all about it and never ask me whether I did call you.”

“Perhaps they'll ask
me
.”

“No, they won't do that.” She turned to lead the way across the room, then stopped. “Will you have a cup of tea with me, or shall Roberts bring you something more fortifying?”

“I'd like tea very much.”

She went on, but instead of going directly to her place at the tea tray she glanced first behind the screen. When she faced him again she showed embarrassment. “So silly of me,” she said, “but I can't break myself of doing that. Will you sit opposite me and make yourself comfortable on that sofa?”

They sat down, Gamadge at the end of the sofa, where he had a small table beside him.

“When my cousin Garth was a little boy,” she explained, pouring hot water into the tea-pot, “he used to hide behind that screen and listen to conversations. Since he's twenty-five years old, or will be tomorrow, he's probably outgrown the habit. But I still look behind the screen.”

“A mild obsession,” said Gamadge, “unless you're not really sure that he has broken himself of the habit.”

“Perhaps I'm not sure that people ever really change. They may seem to, but…” She emptied the tea-pot, put tea into it, and poured on boiling water. She sat back. “He's supposed to be out for the afternoon with Elena, and the others won't turn up until five at the earliest.” She paused and looked at Gamadge: “Sugar? Lemon? Cream?”

“Just sugar, please. One spoonful.”

She poured out his tea. Roberts came in with cakes and sandwiches, saw that Gamadge was supplied, left the plates on a stand beside the table, and handed Gamadge his cup. Then he retired.

“He won't come back until I ring,” said Mrs. Leeder, “and
he
won't listen. He knows all our secrets, and he loves us all. What was I saying? Oh—about the plans of the family for this afternoon. Uncle Gavan plays bridge at his club on Saturday; afterwards he's going to pick Aunt Cynthia up—she's at the first Clayborn Quartette concert of the season. Did you know that Grandmother founded the Quartette?”

“I knew she did a lot for string music in New York.”

“None of us cares much for it any more, but Aunt Cynthia thinks one of us ought to go to the concerts. I'm afraid art is dying out among the Clayborns, though Seward still does some designing; but he resigned from the firm in 1934. Graff Textiles.”

“Beautiful work they turned out.”

“He really ought to have been an artist, but he's never been quite strong. He rests in the afternoons until Roberts calls him for tea, and that”—she gave him her dim smile—“accounts for Seward. Elena is his only child, and I suppose I ought to explain that Garth was the only child of another Clayborn, now dead. Both his parents died when he was a baby, and he was installed here then.”

Gamadge felt in his pockets; she said: “Won't you try one of our cigarettes?”

“Thank you, I'll stick to mine. But let me—” Gamadge followed her glance, which was directed towards the little table at his elbow. It was crowded with objects, including his cup of tea, but he saw no cigarette box there.

Mrs. Leeder smiled again. “You're looking at one of Seward's and my masterpieces. He has a splendid studio and work-room on the top floor, and he used to have lots of hobbies. So did I, before I was married.”

A book, nicely bound in old morocco, lay on the little table. Gamadge picked it up, opened it, and found it no longer a book; its pages had been glued together and neatly hollowed out into a box. It held cigarettes.

“You made this? A nice job,” he said, offering it to her. “I like these things.”

She took a cigarette, and Gamadge lighted it for her. Then, after lighting one of his own, he turned the box in his hands.

“We made lots of them,” said Mrs. Leeder, “out of old books of Grandfather's that the family said we could use. The house is full of solanders, and we gave them to people for Christmas.”

“Solanders? Well…a solander really means a box made to look like a book; perhaps it's in order to use the term for a book made to look like a box.”

“You have a passion for accuracy, Mr. Gamadge, haven't you?”

“People complain of it.”

“I don't.”

Gamadge looked at the gold letters on the faded crimson spine. He read aloud:
Journals of Sir Arthur Wilson Cribb in the Punjaub
,
1861
.

“Uncle Gavan seemed to think that we shouldn't be vandals,” said Mrs. Leeder, “if we made a solander out of that book.”

“Well, of course Cribb wasn't Sleeman or Sherwood, Shakespeare or Meadows Taylor,” said Gamadge, “but I'm not at all sure that I should have made a box out of his journals in the Punjaub.”

“No? Why not? Do you mean you actually know the book?”

“I'm slightly acquainted with it, or was.”

“Oh dear, what have we done? Was he important? Was he an army man?”

“Civil servant. But we won't,” said Gamadge, laughing, “waste time on him this afternoon; or on Thagi, the Sacrifice of Sugar, and the Consecration of the Pickaxe.”

“What on earth?” Her dark eyes questioned his in pleased wonderment. “You do know everything, don't you? They said you did.”

“They frightfully exaggerate, whoever they are.”

“But I'm so glad you do. You're quite right, Mr. Gamadge—we must put off the Sacrifice of Sugar till another, happier time. Now I must tell you why I asked you to come. I said that tomorrow will be Garth's twenty-fifth birthday. That's the day set in my grandmother's will for winding up a trust. The estate will be divided up amongst her heirs, and we can sell the house; and on Monday an agent's coming to view it. So tomorrow we must open a door.”

“O
PEN A DOOR?”
Gamadge looked at her, his cigarette half-way to his mouth. And as she said nothing, he asked: “Do you mean the door of a safe, Mrs. Leeder? I hope my friends didn't tell you I could do that! I don't even know an obliging cracksman!”

“It isn't a safe; it's a room.” She added as if reluctantly: “It's been shut for twenty years.”

Gamadge, watching her downcast face, offered a short monologue: “I hate them too—attics full of family relics. Some delight in them; to me they represent stuffiness, and they're full of gadgets you can't guess the use of. And moulting stuffed birds are grisly; so are creased garments and pressed flowers.”

“I wish it were an attic. It's just a room that's been sealed since my grandmother died.”

“By her orders?”

“No; we sealed it. Now it must be opened and cleared out, and all the heirs must be here when it's done—my uncle Gavan, my aunt Cynthia, Seward and Garth, and my former husband Rowe Leeder. He's one of the heirs. I want you to be here too—at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why?”

“That's what I find so hard to tell you; but I must, and if I do some explaining first it won't be so difficult for me or seem so queer to you. First I ought to explain that Rowe Leeder comes here quite often. Grandmother never cut him out of her will after that terrible thing that happened to him—that Sillerman scandal; perhaps you've heard of it?”

“I remember something.”

“She only lived for a week or two after it, she died of a stroke; but I think she wouldn't have cut him out of the will anyway. She was very fond of him. None of us, of course, ever thought for one moment that he had anything to do with the girl's death, and he was completely exonerated—he had an alibi.” She was playing with a little silver trident for spearing slices of lemon; and Gamadge noticed that she still wore a wedding ring. She went on after a pause: “But his name got out through some bungling, and it was in the headlines. My father and mother made me divorce him. If I'd been older—but I was only twenty-four. I let them persuade me.”

Her voice died away. Presently she went on: “After they died, he drifted back. As an occasional caller, you know. It seemed to happen quite naturally. I was very glad. And the family—”

She laid down the silver trident and looked at him. “I hope you won't be too shocked at my attitude towards them. They're very cynical; they don't mind what people do—only the scandal. It had died down by the time Rowe came back, and they accepted him quite coolly. As an heir—we all share equally—he had a certain standing; you'll understand why when I tell you about the will.

“And I can't tell you about it without telling you first about Grandmother—and Nonie.”

“Nonie?”

“She's dead. She was Grandmother's youngest child, and she died ever so long ago, in 1914, just before the other war. There were six children: Uncle Gavan, Aunt Cynthia, Seward's father, my father, Garth's grandfather, and Nonie. They're all dead but Uncle Gavan and Aunt Cynthia, and so are their wives. So the estate is to be divided among us—Uncle Gavan, Aunt Cynthia, Seward, Rowe Leeder, Garth and me. Elena wasn't born until after Grandmother died; she doesn't come into it at all except through her father.

“Grandmother had all the money, you know; she brought it into the family. By that time there wasn't much left among the Clayborns—they never made money themselves, they married it and they spent it. Grandmother was quite used to being surrounded by fortune hunters, she rather liked them. They're always attractive, naturally, and she could manage them.

“She managed everything, and after Grandfather died she simply ruled the house. Her last will was made in 1922, just after I married, to include Rowe Leeder. He amused her, they got on, and he had only his salary in the bond-selling business.

“Now, of course, there won't be so much to go around as she thought there would be. We'll all have enough to live on, but we shall need every penny.

“I ought to explain that the estate has been in trust until now, and the house kept up from a fund paid us annually by the executors; the sole executor now is the bank. One of the agents appointed in Grandmother's will to administer the fund and all our allowances is Mr. Allsop, who was Grandmother's lawyer—so was his father; that firm has been the Clayborn lawyers for generations.

“We've all lived on those allowances ever since Grandmother died, and we couldn't possibly have lived anywhere else on them. We're allowed vacations,” said Mrs. Leeder, with her dim smile, “but we must live here—until tomorrow, when the trust is wound up and the estate is divided among all the heirs. If we had tried to break the will the money would all have reverted automatically to that wretched Clayborn Quartette.”

Gamadge said: “These restrictive clauses in wills are very trying, I might almost say iniquitous.”

“You don't quite know how restrictive the clauses were. Nothing in the house was to be changed or removed, nothing done at all unless in the way of necessary repairs, and Mr. Allsop had to be consulted about those. You must understand that he isn't concerned with
our
interests—all he's concerned with is carrying out the provisions of the will. We never dared to try to break it—we never risked it. So here we are”—she looked vaguely about her—“and here we have been since November, 1924.”

“Your grandmother must have had a tremendous feeling about the house.”

“Oh, it wasn't that. It was all on account of Nonie.”

“You said she died thirty years ago.”

“But not for Grandmother. She was the apple of her eye. The rest of us are assertive in our different ways, all the Clayborns were; all but Nonie, who wasn't except by birth a Clayborn at all. She was a phantom, or rather she was clay in Grandmother's hands. From her infancy she had a little white room next to Grandmother's, and Grandmother chose her clothes and her amusements, her friends and her books. She never went out alone; she was a delicate little thing, I believe. It was all shocking and not quite wholesome. She was Grandmother's obsession, and had no life of her own.

“Except for her music. She had some talent for the piano, and Grandmother took it seriously. Not that Nonie would ever have been allowed to play professionally, of course, but she had the most expensive masters. And when Grandfather—who was the only person with any influence over Grandmother at all—when he complained of the eternal practising, Grandmother had a room at the top of the house sound-proofed at huge expense.”

Gamadge asked suddenly: “Did the sound-proofing include bricking up a window?”

Mrs. Leeder smiled a little. “Not much escapes you, Mr. Gamadge.”

“I happened to notice the paler bricks in it.”

“It wasn't bricked up until afterwards. Well, Nonie died, in the spring before the other war, and at first they thought Grandmother would lose her mind, or die too.

“She shut herself into her rooms for weeks, she wouldn't see anybody but her companion, a sort of distant relative, Aggie Fitch. This Fitch woman was the most awful little sycophant. She lived here, and she encouraged Grandmother in all her whims, and helped to spoil Nonie. I got most of these details from my elders, of course—principally from my mother. I was only fourteen when Nonie died, and at school and keeping early hours. I can just remember my Aunt Nonie: a wraith. A pretty blonde wraith, with Grandmother's colouring—the Clayborns are apt to be big and dark-haired and strong. She was always exquisitely dressed, and she was as spoiled as any other pet.