The Book of the Dead (12 page)

“I can find you the number of her rooming house; but won't it be better for you to talk to her yourself?”

“I meant to.”

Gamadge consulted his notebook, and then, escorted by Mrs. Crenshaw, stepped within the doorway of a big, cool bedroom. He dialled, waited for a reply, and then handed the receiver to his hostess; he was turning away, but she detained him with a gesture.

“I want Miss Fisher,” she said. “Miss Idelia Fisher…On business…What?…
What?
…For Heaven's sake…When?…No, thank you.”

She put the receiver down, faced Gamadge, and exclaimed: “That Fisher woman has been killed! She's dead!”

Lucette Daker came to the doorway and stood staring.

I
T WAS CHARACTERISTIC
of Mrs. Crenshaw's type to lose no time in pointing a moral.

“Now!” she said, in a tone of triumph. “Now you see, Lucette! Miss Fisher was robbed and murdered right on the steps of her rooming house. You'll believe me now when I keep saying that it isn't safe for you to wander around New York alone.”

“People aren't murdered every single night,” retorted Miss Daker. “Are they, Mr. Gamadge?”

“If they live on a lighted thoroughfare they're not likely to be murdered at all. I think Miss Fisher's place was on a dark side street. This is very bad news, Mrs. Crenshaw.”

“I should think it was!” Mrs. Crenshaw's mind pursued its ant-like course. “Now I can't find out anything more about Stonehill, or what people up there thought about that Pike.”

Miss Daker, leaning against the frame of the doorway, spoke without sympathy: “I could write to you. I'll see him myself, if he's at the funeral.”

“You wouldn't know how to manage it or what to ask.” Mrs. Crenshaw, followed by Gamadge and her step-niece, returned slowly to the sitting-room. She sank down on her settee. “I do think it's the queerest coincidence,” she said. “Just like Fate. The rooming-house woman was upset—frightfully upset. She wanted me to leave my name. I rang right off; they might have put me in the papers. I can't make out anything about this Fisher girl, Mr. Gamadge. How well did my husband know her? How did they come to be so friendly?”

“They talked about books and things, as people will. He lent her a book, Mrs. Crenshaw; a book, I suppose, from your library at home; a bound volume of Shakespeare.”

“So that's where it went to! I noticed the gap on the shelf right after he left. I thought it must be lying around somewhere. I couldn't imagine him taking it with him East. Where is it now?”

“As a matter of fact I have it; Miss Fisher left it with me last night; she was trying to get into touch with your husband, you know, to return it.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Crenshaw looked relieved.

“He left Stonehill in a great hurry, you know; because he'd been taken ill. He forgot his book, and I'm afraid he forgot Miss Fisher too.”

Mrs. Crenshaw, gratified, said, “No wonder.” Then she bethought herself: “It's one of a set, Mr. Gamadge; perhaps if you'd return it—”

“I'll send it on.”

“The set might be worth something; you never know, with those old books.”

“Well, as a matter of fact you do.”

“Do? Do what?” she was puzzled.

Lucette Daker said impatiently: “People know all about old books, Aunt Genevieve; what they're worth.”

“Oh.”

“But I'm afraid your Shakespeare has no market value, Mrs. Crenshaw,” said Gamadge. “The edition is American, and a bad period at that—1839; and the binding is in bad condition. But your husband's grandfather had his name stamped on the covers, and so you may prize it.”

“I never noticed that. Perhaps you'd better send it, Mr. Gamadge, if you don't mind.”

“Not at all.”

“How did
you
come to meet Miss Fisher?”

Lucette said: “I think that's Mr. Gamadge's business, isn't it, Aunt Genevieve?”

Gamadge said: “Everything connected with her is of general interest now. I met her for the first time last night, when she came to me for professional advice. Came to me at night because she worked in the daytime, you know. My work brings me all sorts of clients: let us say that a lady finds a book or an autograph in the attic; it may be worth something, nothing, a great deal. You know: Button, Button, who's got the Gwinnet?”

Mrs. Crenshaw gazed at him foggily.

“She had the Shakespeare with her,” continued Gamadge, “and I suggested that she leave it behind while we went to the hospital. I had business uptown myself, that's why I went too. She seemed rather lonely and unsupported; a nice, simple, unsophisticated girl. Well, the hospital told us that your husband had died, and we went to Buckley's.”

“You went to Buckley's?” Mrs. Crenshaw's cold eyes expressed astonishment; Lucette Daker went over to the nearest window and stood there, looking down at the burning scarlet of the geraniums in the window box.

“Yes. She had the impression that everybody had, you know, Mrs. Crenshaw; that your husband was alone in the world. She was oldfashioned and punctilious. She even bought him flowers.”

Mrs. Crenshaw said in a low voice: “Inhuman.”

Gamadge raised his eyebrows.

“What he did to me,” said Mrs. Crenshaw. “The position he's put me in.”

Lucette Daker spoke in a choking voice: “He was too sick to think of that. He was always kind.”

“Kind? Kind?”

“At least,” continued Gamadge, “you may feel sure that Buckley's fulfilled their end of the contract. I saw him. He hadn't suffered much, Mrs. Crenshaw. He was pale, of course; but I think that was his natural coloring. Fair hair, white skin.”

Mrs. Crenshaw said something inarticulate. Then she turned to look at her niece. “You pretend to think so much of him,” she said. “How would he have liked your leaving me and coming here and looking for work? You need never work. You never have.”

“I'm only trying to be independent,” replied Lucette, in the soft voice that was too sweet to be a drawl. “You've taken care of me long enough. It isn't that I'm ungrateful, Aunt Genevieve.”

“Your uncle wouldn't have liked it.”

“He wouldn't have minded.”

“I know what your uncle would have minded and what he would not have minded better than you do.” Lucette's expression seemed to query this statement. “And where are you going to stay,” asked Mrs. Crenshaw, “since the Y.W.C.A. isn't lively enough for you?”

“The Fontainebleau.”

“The Fontainebleau! Your money won't last long there.”

“It can't be so very expensive; it's full of girls earning salaries.”

“From what I've heard it's full of all kinds of queer people. What was it Mrs. Osterley's daughter was telling us, about a girl nearly getting boiled in a bathtub?”

To save his life Gamadge could not have helped smiling; and Lucette Daker's coral lips quivered. Two charming dents, not quite dimples, appeared for a moment in her cheeks.

“And what,” continued Mrs. Crenshaw, oblivious, “are you going to do until your midnight train goes? Sit in the station? You can't stay here; I want it to be ready for inspection, if tenants come.”

Gamadge said with some diffidence that he would be glad to take charge of Miss Daker. “I'll see that she gets some dinner,” he added, “and we might take in a movie.”

Lucette glanced at him shyly from beneath long lashes. She said: “I
would
like to see Radio City.” She was well used, Gamadge thought, to such offers from the opposite sex.

He seemed to have inspired Mrs. Crenshaw with ill-deserved confidence. “Very kind of you,” she said.

“Then what if we start off now? Miss Daker might like to see something of New York by daylight.”

“I'm ready.” She ran out of the room to get her bag, and Mrs. Crenshaw looked after her with a frown.

“These young people,” she said. “I don't like it.”

“She'll probably be all right here, Mrs. Crenshaw.”

“It's very selfish of her. I took her in when my sister died; my step-sister—I had no obligation. That was six years ago, and Lucette was only sixteen. My husband let me send her to a good school; there was no question of her earning her living.”

“Perhaps that was the trouble. They get restless, especially in these times, when they haven't enough to do.”

“Yes, and now the boys are all going away or gone. There really isn't much for her to do in Sundown, I suppose, but she seemed well enough contented until now. It's a nice little suburb, such lovely people, and plenty of war work.”

“Shall you be staying there now?”

“Yes, but I'll move into a smaller house. There's one for sale—a little modern house that I simply love. It will be just right for me, if Lucette really insists on staying away. Do you suppose she
will
get work of some kind, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Not a doubt of it.”

“She may not stay when she finds out what work is really like. If she comes back I shall take her in, of course.”

“Has she—did your husband leave her anything in his will, if I may ask?”

“Oh, goodness, no—that will was made before he ever heard of her. She has a few hundreds from her father. She actually ran out and cashed a check for it before we took our train. And never said one word to me until we were practically here. That's very sly.”

“At that age they take a lot for granted.”

“Mr. Gamadge—I wonder whether there can't have been some mistake about letters. My husband's letters.”

“Some mistake?”

“This man Pike may have forgotten to mail a letter. I can't—I simply cannot believe that my husband meant to do such a thing as this to me. It doesn't make sense.”

Gamadge met her eyes, and after a moment she turned her head away.

“It doesn't make sense,” she repeated, less firmly.

Lucette Daker came back, her little flower-hat on her head, her coat on her arm, her dressing-bag in her hand. Gamadge took the bag from her, shook hands with Mrs. Crenshaw, and went out into the hall. Presently Lucette joined him, looking angry, and they stood in silence until the elevator came. When they were at last in the lobby downstairs, she spoke: “Aunt Genevieve is glad I'm not going back.”

“But she won't admit it,” said Gamadge, “to her dying day.”

The manager, Mr. Humbert, took Gamadge aside.

“The young lady isn't going back to California?”

“No.”

“I don't blame her.”

“Don't let us forget,” said Gamadge with a smile, “that the aunt has had a shock.”

“At first I thought myself that she'd had a raw deal; but now I've changed my mind. I don't blame her husband for grabbing his chance to die in peace. Imagine her at your deathbed, beating down the doctor and getting advance discounts from the drugstore and the undertaker!”

“Talking of doctors, was the doctor with Mr. Crenshaw when they left here for the hospital?”

“Right on the job; I saw them off in the cab myself, with Pike standing beside me. Crenshaw wouldn't let him come along; he went back up to the apartment, and he didn't say a word to me; but I could see that he was all broken up.”

“Good sort, was he?”

“Kind of a rough diamond, no real training; but worth his weight in gold to us. We're desperate for service sometimes. Of course Pike didn't know any better than to run out that first afternoon and pick up the first doctor he saw—off the street, you might say. We could have recommended plenty. The doctor was a queer old guy, not our class, but it turns out that he knew what he was about after all. Excuse me for keeping you.”

“Not at all,” said Gamadge, his eye on Lucette Daker; she was standing out in front, under the awning, talking to the old doorman—a little figure of liberty. With her fluttering skirts and her fluttering curly hair she looked free as a bird.

“I wanted to ask your advice. Old Mulqueen, our night man—there he is now, talking to Miss Daker; nice old guy—informed me when he came on duty and heard about Mrs. Crenshaw's arrival that there was a telephone call for Mr. Crenshaw about two weeks ago, and another the evening Mr. Crenshaw went to the hospital. We have no switchboard—our tenants all have their telephones; but we're down in the book under our city address, of course, and once in a while somebody gets in touch with a tenant that way. But we had strict orders from Mr. Crenshaw—through Pike—not to ring the apartment; Mr. Crenshaw being sick. Mulqueen just told the party—some woman—that he couldn't make the connection. All she had to do was write, you know. The second time, he said Mr. Crenshaw had gone to St. Damian's.

“He thought nothing of it. They have a lot of new girls now in drugstores and business offices, and he thought it might be one of them, calling up about some package or something. That's what she sounded like to Mulqueen, and it's hard to fool an old Irishman about voices.

“Well, now there's all this new excitement about Mr. Crenshaw having a wife, and lots of people belonging to him after all. It's the darndest thing; I can't understand it myself. Mulqueen remembered the telephone calls and got worried; should he report them to Mrs.? And if he does, will she kick up a row because poor Mulqueen didn't get the name or take a message?”

“I know what those calls were about,” said Gamadge. “You needn't worry. I've already discussed the matter with Mrs. Crenshaw.”

Humbert looked relieved. “Thanks very much. I'll tell Mulqueen. To tell you the truth, I don't want any more dealings with that lady upstairs than I can help, and I'm glad she isn't staying on. I hope we'll collect the rest of the summer rent from Mr. Crenshaw's estate; it isn't worth a lawsuit. Our tenants signed the lease, but of course we feel responsible as agents—morally responsible.”