The Book of the Dead (6 page)

Gamadge turned away in order to do so, and Mr. Thompson for the first time caught sight of Idelia on her bench. He paused, looked in considerable astonishment from her to Gamadge, gave it up, and with a backward glance of some perplexity removed himself from the scene.

The receptionist had settled down to her reading again; Gamadge, satisfied that she was out of earshot, sat beside Idelia and put out his hand. He touched hers in its brown fabric glove, withdrew his own, and said: “I'm sorry. But he's all right now.”

Idelia's response was to turn a stony look upon him. She said “Drugs!” and repeated it. “Drugs!”

“It wasn't a bad guess.”

“What is this leukemia, anyway?”

“I know a little more about it than I seemed to know; I wanted Thompson to hand out information. It's a disintegration of the white blood corpuscles, and when it's acute it's fatal.”

“Are you sick a long time?”

“Not always. The length of time varies.”

“Mr. Gamadge, he knew all the time that he was going to die.”

“Crenshaw knew it while he was in Stonehill?”

“That's why he acted the way he did; I can see it now! As if he was done with everything.”

“His doctor told them here that the first diagnosis was made by him in New York on the sixth of July.”

“There's some mistake. Mr. Crenshaw knew it before. Pike was his nurse; he wasn't afraid of him, he was afraid Pike would think he was tiring himself out, talking to strangers. Perhaps he forgot how sick he was while we were talking, and when he saw Pike that reminded him—that he was going to die. No wonder he looked frightened!”

Gamadge said nothing.

“And of course he forgot all about me and the book,” said Idelia. “He had that terrible attack. After he got to New York he had another. No wonder he forgot everything.”

“Except business.”

“Things remind you of business.”

“There's one thing in favor of your theory, Idelia:
The Tempest
. It occurred to me from the first that that was just the play to take with you on a last journey. But why should Mr. Crenshaw have concealed the fact that Pike was his attendant, and told you and everyone that he had picked him up in Unionboro?”

“Perhaps he did pick him up in Unionboro. Perhaps he didn't want anybody to know how sick he was.”

“Then we're dropping the inquiry?” Gamadge smiled at her. “You don't want to know why your friend underlined those passages, what your friend wrote in the margins of his Shakespeare?”

Idelia, taken aback by the reminder, said after a moment: “I forgot about them. Perhaps he rubbed them out because they were something about dying, and he didn't want me to know.”

“The underlined passages weren't about dying. The first one is about hanging, but that was a kind of joke.”

There was a long pause. Then Idelia said in a voice that had sunk to a whisper: “Something was wrong. What could it be?”

Gamadge replied as softly: “We might try to find out. I suppose he really did die of leukemia.”

Her eyes grew rounder.

“They took tests and blood samples here—I was careful to ask. Tomorrow,” said Gamadge, “I'll find out whether leukemia can be faked or induced. As for some insurance racket, we don't know whether Crenshaw was insured; but he wasn't cremated, so perhaps insurance doesn't come into it.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Say that a man named Crenshaw insures his life in favor of a man named Pike. A collaborator is found who wants his heirs provided for; in this case, a collaborator who is dying of leukemia. The collaborator is buried under the name of Crenshaw, and the real Crenshaw and his accomplices—Billig would have to be one of them—split the insurance. But in such cases there is always, or nearly always, complete destruction of the body; often by cremation.”

Idelia, her face a mask of incredulity, asked: “Why?”

“Because insurance companies are skeptical and cautious, and they employ trained investigators to protect them against that very type of fraud. My friend Schenck was an insurance investigator before he joined the F.B.I. If there's the least cause for suspecting the parties, there's an investigation; the body may be exhumed, and no insurance crooks risk that.”

“Mr. Gamadge,” said Idelia in a violent whisper, “you can just forget it. Mr. Crenshaw wouldn't have cheated anybody out of money, not even an insurance company.”

Gamadge said: “We can prove or disprove the theory ourselves.”

“We can?”

“And we're just in time. You wouldn't mind a visit to Buckley's funeral establishment? You won't mind saying goodbye to your friend?”

“I'd give anything to!”

“That's the talk; I see that you were brought up in a stern and pious school, to look your last upon the dead.”

“But will they let me see him?”

“Thompson spoke as if they might. They may be very glad to see you, you know. Places like Buckley's love an identification; they know all about the insurance racket.”

“But will they be open?”

“Places like Buckley's are open all night.”

T
HE RECEPTIONIST SUPPLIED
Gamadge with Buckley's address, not far south and west of St. Damian's. It was a big remodeled corner house, stately and not too sad, with a columned and pedimented white doorway. It had its own garage on the side street, and there was a florist's conveniently located on its ground floor.

Idelia stopped at the florist's window. She said: “I'd like to get a few flowers.”

“They're so
damned
expensive in this part of town, Idelia. Crenshaw wouldn't have wanted you to spend money on him.”

“Those double petunias don't look expensive.”

They weren't, because while she inspected them Gamadge engaged the clerk's eye, raised one finger, and displayed bills in his other hand. The clerk nodded, told her that the petunias would be one dollar, delivered them to her unwrapped, and then joined Gamadge in front of a floral masterpiece made of lilies and six feet high. Two more dollars changed hands.

Gamadge and Idelia walked the few steps to Buckley's vestibule, and looked through the open doors at a black-and-white hallway where an attendant in a morning coat paced thoughtfully.

“Just as if they expected us,” said Idelia.

“In a sense they do. They gather all things mortal—”

“—With cold immortal hands,” finished Idelia. “Mr. Crenshaw liked that poem. He often said it to me.”

“Upon my word, I'm beginning to think that you were right; Crenshaw may not have known at Stonehill that he was going to die, but even if he didn't, the news can't have been much of a shock to him. The question is: was he lying to Billig about having had no former diagnosis, or did Billig know he had had one, and did Billig lie to St. Damian's?”

The attendant turned, saw them, and advanced.

“We were sent on here by St. Damian's hospital,” said Gamadge. “They inform us that Buckley's has charge of funeral arrangements for the late Mr. Howard Crenshaw.”

“Yes, sir.” The attendant showed more than a polite interest. “You are friends of the deceased?”

“This lady knew Mr. Crenshaw.”

“If you'll wait in the lounge here I'll get young Mr. Buckley down.”

There was nothing funereal about the lounge, unless an etching of Ely cathedral might be considered a reminder of man's ultimate fate. Idelia sat in a chintz-covered chair, her eyes alert. Presently she said: “It's funny.”

“Funny?”

“Now that he's dead they'll tell us anything.”

“Now that he's dead he's safe from annoyance from us or anybody.”

An elevator gate clashed, and young Mr. Buckley arrived from an inner hall. He was a personable youth, smartly but quietly dressed, dark and grave. He looked gratified.

“We're very glad indeed,” he said, “to meet friends of the late Mr. Crenshaw.”

Gamadge introduced himself and Idelia. “I didn't know Mr. Crenshaw,” he explained, “and Miss Fisher only met him this summer; but she was greatly shocked at St. Damian's this evening to hear that he had died. She didn't know that he was seriously ill until they told her—the people at his apartment house told her—that he had been taken to a hospital.”

Mr. Buckley, addressing Idelia with respectful sympathy, said that the final collapse had been sudden. “We understood,” he went on, “that Mr. Crenshaw was entirely alone in the world. He never mentioned friends, so far as I know.”

“I only knew him up in Vermont this summer,” said Idelia.

“I see. That accounts for it. But we're very glad you
are
in the city, Miss Fisher. We always like it when friends come in. We have followed Mr. Crenshaw's instructions to the letter, and we like friends of the deceased to see what we are doing and have done. We're in communication with Stonehill, Vermont—in fact, we have paid them.”

Gamadge looked politely surprised.

“Every detail,” said Mr. Buckley, in reply to this, “was settled by Mr. Crenshaw before he died. His estimate was very generous. St. Damian's had an advance in cash, part of it came to us, and out of our share we have paid Stonehill. He is to be buried in the old family plot there; the sexton of the Congregational church there is attending to the funeral. It takes place day after tomorrow.”

“I know that cemetery,” said Idelia. “We have a plot there too.”

Buckley seemed to think that this was a rather touching coincidence. He said: “They inform us that there had been no burial in the Crenshaw plot for a long time until Mr. Crenshaw's uncle was buried there last spring. The family was scattered; Mr. Crenshaw himself came from California. That—” he looked at Gamadge—“more or less explains the unusual cash arrangements made by him. He had no legal representatives here in the east, no business representatives except the Western Merchants bank here. He didn't want delay in settling his estate in California after his death.”

“A business man indeed.”

“I understand that he was once in the building business.”

“The hospital told you so?”

“I think his doctor had had that information from him.”

Mr. Buckley looked at the bunch of petunias in Idelia's hand “You wished to leave these, Miss Fisher?”

“If I could.”

“I was going to suggest—some people don't care to do it—would you like to
see
Mr. Crenshaw?”

“Yes. I would.”

Mr. Buckley seemed pleased. “Of course. If you'll wait a few minutes.”

He disappeared down the hall. Idelia said: “He's awfully nice, isn't he?”

“Yes. What did I tell you? He's delighted. You will note that although Mr. Crenshaw's body travels to Vermont by an early morning train, and it's now nearly half past nine, the body hasn't even yet been hermetically sealed in its coffin.”

“Mr. Gamadge, that's all so silly—about its not being Mr. Crenshaw's body at all. When could somebody else have taken his place? Never.”

“On the trip from Stonehill?”

“Why, but they must have known him at the apartment. He engaged it himself, the last of May.”

“Engaged it in person?”

Idelia was silent.

“I can find out tomorrow,” said Gamadge. “But even if he did engage it in person, how about the switch being made in the cab?”

“What cab?”

“Dr. Billig seems to have taken him to the hospital in a cab; not an ambulance.”

Idelia, looking astounded, said: “I never heard of such a—such a—”

“I really think that in any case I'd better see Dr. Billig.”

Young Mr. Buckley returned, and with an added solemnity in his manner ushered them along the inner hall, through double doors, and into a kind of secular chapel. There was a dais at one end of it, but Crenshaw's draped coffin stood on its bier in the center of the tesselated floor. It might have stood there all day; if, as Gamadge suspected, it had just been wheeled in from some much smaller place, that fact was nothing against Buckley's.

Young Buckley remained in the doorway. Idelia, with Gamadge beside her, went up to the coffin and looked down at the dead face within. Then she laid the purple flowers on the more brilliant purple of the pall, and turned away. She said: “Poor Mr. Crenshaw. He looks wonderful. You wouldn't think he'd even been sick.”

Buckley spoke from the doorway, in the accents of one who has received a valued compliment: “It's that disease, Miss Fisher. You wouldn't know until the very end that there was anything the matter with the patient, and nothing shows much afterwards.”

Gamadge had lingered beside the coffin to study the calm, pleasant, sleeping face of the dead man. Light hair was brushed back from an intelligent forehead, the nose was fine, the mouth kind, the lower part of the face insignificant, but not noticeably weak. Crenshaw's was certainly not the face of a common swindler.

Gamadge rejoined the others. Idelia was saying: “Thank you ever so much, Mr. Buckley.”

“We're always only too glad.”

Buckley accompanied his visitors to the very steps of his establishment; he even stood in the light from the hall and watched them to the corner. Then he turned and went in, while Idelia gave her investigator another piece of her mind: “I hope you're satisfied!”

“Quite satisfied. It's always a satisfaction to get firsthand evidence.”

“You've seen him now; can you imagine him cheating anybody out of money?”

“No; I can't. But it isn't a strong face, Idelia; he wasn't a strong character.”

Idelia shifted her ground: “You didn't see him until after he was dead.”

“They're off their guard when they're dead.”

“He didn't seem weak to me.”