Somewhere in the House (21 page)

“They never would have found it. Admit that they never would have.”

“Well—perhaps not.”

“Do you know what I wished, when you told me?”

“That you'd never asked me to come to this house?”

“Yes,” she said dryly. “And then I realized that if you hadn't found the pistol in that book, I never should have remembered.”

“Remembered what, Mrs. Leeder?”

“I won't say anything until I can say it to the person's face.”

Their eyes met. He said: “You're too scrupulous.”

“Can one be?”

“I thought yesterday that you were too brave. I was actually a little afraid that you mightn't be available when I came back this afternoon.”

“How melodramatic.”

“More so than the facts?”

Gavan Clayborn came slowly in, walking as if he had come to the end of a long journey. He did not look at Gamadge or his niece, but sank into his accustomed chair and frowningly busied himself with cutting and lighting a cigar. Mrs. Leeder dropped ice into a tumbler, her face expressionless.

Miss Clayborn came in with short, tottering steps. She had changed into a negligé, a dark-blue velvet robe bordered with rose, and her hair was bound with a rose-coloured plait of ribbon. Her eyes were blank until they saw the whisky tray; then they took on an avid look. She came and sat at the near end of Gamadge's sofa. Mrs. Leeder put ice into a tumbler.

Seward Clayborn came in, looking a very sick man; yellowish, drawn, with dull eyes. He wore a dark dressing-gown over pyjamas. He was passing behind the sofa to his favourite window, but Mrs. Leeder asked: “Don't you want your drink, Seward? Wait a minute.”

He paused, staring away from her at nothing. She put ice in a third tumbler, poured whisky, filled all the glasses. Gavan picked up a glass to hand it to his sister. Mrs. Leeder asked sharply: “What's the matter, Seward?”

Everybody turned to stare at him. He was standing as he had stood before, gazing vacantly at the picture over the mantel. When she spoke he started, said: “Nothing,” in a low voice, and then, after a moment, took the glass she offered him. He went over to the window, turned his back on the room, and with one knee on the cushioned seat, one hand clutching the edge of the curtain, looked out at the street.

Leeder came in, with Officer Crowley beside him. He stood within the doorway surveying the scene, until Mrs. Leeder poured a drink and held out the glass. He said “Thanks, Harriet,” came forward, and took it. Turning with a smile, he said: “All right, Buddy, I'm coming back.” He returned to Crowley's side. Norris appeared in the doorway.

Gamadge leaned over, reached across Miss Clayborn to pick up the Cribb solander from the table, opened it, and handed it to her. She took out a cigarette with fumbling fingers. Gamadge offered it to Mrs. Leeder, who shook her head. He turned to look at Seward over his shoulder, held out the box, and asked: “A cigarette, Mr. Clayborn?”

Seward started violently. He steadied himself by catching the window curtain, cleared his throat, and said huskily: “Thanks. No.”

Mrs. Leeder's eyes were on him. She said: “Well, here we all are, and there are two policemen to take care of us. Perhaps it will be safe for me to ask you whether you've all heard about that flat that Garth discovered downtown. Mr. Gamadge has just told me about it.”

Nobody answered her, or seemed to breathe.

“And he has just told me,” she went on in a clear, cold voice, “that they found the gun that killed Garth in a book downstairs. One of Grandmother's books, I remember it well; a book about flowers. I didn't make it into a box; I wonder who did?”

Pale faces stared at her; all but Seward's—his was turned away.

“And Mr. Gamadge says,” she went on, “that that gun they found in it is the gun that killed the Sillerman woman all that long time ago.”

Leeder said, or rather shouted: “What do you mean?”

She smiled at him. “You didn't know, did you, Roly? It was here all the time. Now do you understand what's been happening to you all these years?”

“My God, I don't understand anything.”

“No, why should you? But you will. We all ought to drink to your health; the man who always takes the blame.”

Seward, as if in obedience to the suggestion, raised his glass to his lips. She laughed.

“Seward needs that drink,” she said. “He knows what I mean. I can tell you who put that gun in the book in the library.” And then, as the figure in the window swayed, clutched at the curtains, and suddenly pitched to the floor, she screamed: “What has he done? What has he done?”

All the others were on their feet, Norris had already reached the side of the fallen man. He said sharply to Leeder, who had pulled away from Crowley's restraining hand and was now bending over the window seat: “Don't touch that glass.” Seward's highball tumbler lay tilted on the cushion, its contents dribbling into the velvet.

Gavan stood rooted, his sister had sunk down again on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. Norris, on his knees beside the figure that rolled on the carpet, was shouting orders to Crowley: “Get them here with the ambulance. He isn't dead.”

Mrs. Leeder said in a frozen voice as Gamadge swung back to face her: “He's taken the best way out. Why do they try to save him?”

“You have definite evidence against him?”

“Of course I have. I came into the library once when he thought we were all out; I saw him looking at that old flower book. I mean he was just putting it away.”

Leeder came around the corner of the sofa and stood in front of her, looking down at her. He said: “Harriet, for God's sake
: Seward?
”

“Why do you think he poisoned himself, Rowe? Anybody could see the state he was in before—ever since he came into the room.”

It was the sudden change in his face, as he looked past her, that made her turn and glance up over her left shoulder. Nordhall had come around the edge of the screen, between it and the fireplace. He moved fast, leaned over the back of the sofa to grasp her left wrist, and with his other hand took the crumpled handkerchief from her fingers.

“All right, Mrs. Leeder,” he said. “I saw you drop the stuff out of this into Seward's highball, after you had everybody looking at him and away from you. Even Gamadge had to look away, but he knew what you were up to, and he knew I was on the job and watching through a crack in the screen. He gave Seward the signal, and Seward only pretended to drink. He didn't let all the whisky out of the glass, either—plenty left to analyse.”

She sat for a moment like a woman of stone, then slowly turned her head and watched while Seward got unsteadily to his feet. Crowley had an arm about him, and Norris was lifting the highball glass from the window seat.

Nordhall carefully worked the handkerchief open with the fingers of one hand, and peered into it. “Plenty of crystals here, and you had to use plenty of perfume to cover up the smell. Gamadge was sure you'd grab a chance to clamp the murders on somebody, and so we gave you one. Seward was our best bet, but we warned all the others except Leeder; Crowley would have spilled his whisky for him if he'd started to drink it. This is bad stuff to fool with. Gamadge was sure you'd have something ready for yourself in case something went wrong.”

She sat like an archaic statue, her hands flat in her lap with the fingers pressed together; her features had a primitive look, expressionless, blank and dead.

“But even if you hadn't had your chance now,” continued Nordhall, “you'd have taken it later. Somebody in this house would have got poisoned, and that would have satisfied Leeder. That's all you were afraid of—Leeder.”

His grasp on her left wrist had loosened, now that he had the handkerchief away from her; and the fingers of that hand, still pressed together, rose like lightning to her mouth. Even then he would have been too quick for her, but Leeder lunged against him, across the sofa, with the whole weight of his body. The impact threw Nordhall off balance for a moment, and in that moment her fingers had reached her lips. Leeder, sprawled half on top of her, had her in his arms when she collapsed.

Crowley dragged him to his feet; he did not resist, but stood trembling as Nordhall raised the woman. Norris came over and stood watching. After a moment he said: “Don't think it's any use, Nordhall.”

“Get the ambulance anyway,” snarled Nordhall. “They sometimes live.”

Gamadge said: “She didn't have any dinner.”

“That does it,” said Norris. “Hydrocyanic on an empty stomach—no cure for that.”

Gamadge looked at Leeder. He said in a low voice: “You managed it for her, anyhow.”

“All I could do,” said Leeder. “All I could do.”

Miss Clayborn, her face hidden, sobbed aloud. Gavan came up to Leeder and put a hand on his arm. He said: “Wish I could say something. Wouldn't do now. But we'll stand by you.”

G
AMADGE SAT RELAXED
in a deep armchair drawn up to the office fire, Malcolm sat relaxed in another. The little table between them held whisky, and they had each had a long drink.

“I wouldn't have been in your shoes,” said Malcolm, “when you drank that highball she made you.”

“I had to drink it; I was watching that left hand of hers with the handkerchief in it, watching pretty sharply; but she wasn't going to poison
me
.”

“Why did you think she was likely to have poison on her?”

“People like Mrs. Leeder always keep an out for themselves, and I knew she'd be jittery after Garth's murder; she hadn't planned for it, she had to work fast. She couldn't be absolutely sure that she hadn't left any traces. There were none, of course—she was so clever.”

“Nothing tangible,” said Malcolm, with a smile.

“I couldn't help noticing, of course,” added Gamadge, “that she kept that handkerchief rolled up in her left hand.”

“Will they have the heart to do anything to Leeder for obstructing justice?”

“I don't think they'll do a thing to him. They ought to call it a conditioned reflex; he'd been protecting her for twenty years, of course he went on doing it. He didn't love her any more, but that didn't come into it.”

“And knowing he didn't love her any more, she wasn't sure he would go on protecting her—with the evidence of the gun against her and somebody else likely to go to jail?”

“That was why she had to have another suspect—so that Leeder would allow somebody else to go to jail. She didn't dare let him go; he might not be obliging enough to die for her. She hoped to persuade him that Seward was guilty. Extraordinary thing,” said Gamadge, “that nobody ever seemed to realize there were two people named Leeder in the Clayborn family when Sillerman was killed.”

“They all assumed it was Leeder because he'd been seen by the janitor.”

“That was what convinced me he wasn't one of Sillerman's clients, and therefore wasn't a regular visitor—because he was seen by the janitor. If he knew the ways of the establishment he wouldn't have been seen. He would have known when it was safe to call.”

“I suppose Mrs. Leeder was being blackmailed by Sillerman, and had to tell him about it?”

“Or had to get money from old Mrs. Clayborn, who consulted Leeder.”

“What was she being blackmailed about, I wonder?”

For an answer, Gamadge took an envelope out of his pocket and emptied it on the table. Hard crumbs of a resin-like substance lay there, and Malcolm peered at them.

“That,” said Gamadge, “is the real thing. None of your home-grown product. That's hashish from India—it's to be bought still, or was before the war, in ports of the Eastern seaboard. Nordhall found it, and more, lying about quite openly among her cosmetics; who but a professional, who'd been on the Narcotics Squad, would be likely to recognize it? She got more than one idea from Sir Arthur Wilson Cribb.”

“She didn't impress me as a drug addict. Did she keep the Raschner flat to take this?” Malcolm fingered some of it.

“I don't think she can ever have been a drug addict in the usual sense of the word; this was something in the nature of an experiment at first, I suppose, a new sensation; then something to have recourse to on occasion when life became too dull. Of late years—certainly this last year, according to Spitano, who had no reason to lie about it—she wasn't resorting to the splendid place more than once in six months.”

“Did she originally take over the Raschner flat simply to take this, I wonder?”

“I doubt it. Perhaps she missed the Raschner parties. She must have known Raschner well, when she was a wild girl in a wild era—that era Theodore likes to tell about—before she was married. If she was blackmailed by the Sillerman woman after she was married, and Leeder went down to settle, and couldn't settle, and afterwards the Sillerman woman was shot—well, what could he do? Inform the police that he had no evidence, but that the murderer was probably his wife? Poor old Mrs. Clayborn must have known the facts; she doesn't seem to have had her stroke the moment after she had talked to Leeder, but she left him his legacy. She might have helped him over those first thin years, but she died. Mrs. Leeder pretended to be suffering from a broken heart on his account, but I don't think there was any pretence about her being against the divorce. As her husband, he couldn't have been called as a witness against her if suspicion ever pointed her way.”

“Why did he come back? To watch her?”

“Miss Clayborn tells me she found out where he was working, and got him to come back. As Gavan intimated, she was very fond of him; and I rather think,” said Gamadge, smiling, “that Miss Clayborn's sort would be inclined to tolerance in the matter of homicide when the victim was a Sillerman and the culprit a Leeder. But Leeder, of course, had terrible reasons for keeping an eye on his ex-wife; he was the only living soul who knew what she might be capable of. She must have been horribly afraid of him. When the Fitch murder broke he'd suspect her first of all; he suspected her of another, he knew what her life had been, and he knew that she had always been hard up. He'd believe at once that she had stolen the buttons and the Pekin loot and sold them.”