The Wrong Way Down (22 page)

A
T THE NAME
she paused. Then, with her back to him, she asked harshly: “Time for what?”

“For me to make up my mind about something. Before Bowles gets here. He can't be far behind us.”

At the name she cringed, and Gamadge, watching her, looked suddenly interested, suddenly surprised. But she pulled herself together and went into the kitchenette, Gamadge close behind. She picked up the bottle of whiskey and came back past him with it. She sat down on the day bed, poured a great splash from the bottle into the glass, and drank it off neat. Gamadge returned to the door; he closed it, and leaned up against the side of the frame. She sank back with closed eyes. When she opened them she looked different—cold, competent, alert.

“What business is it of yours,” she asked, “if I try to win a bet?”

“Is
that
your defense?”

“I don't need one. People will back me up.”

“You mean poor Ashbury?”

“I tell you it was a bet. It was a joke. He wouldn't come East to look after his own property, and I said I'd come to see whether this old lady, Miss Paxton, was honest and capable. Some people—rich women, too—think nothing of taking commissions from dealers. It was my idea—to pretend to be a cleaning woman. That was the best way to watch her. The rooming house, the whole thing, was my idea. James didn't like it, but he'll back me. I soon found, of course, that Miss Paxton wasn't going to take graft; so I was going home.”

“You keep this flat for holidays?”

“Yes, of course I do. I've had it for years. James approves. Everybody has to have
some
private life.”

“Mr. Ashbury knew about this flat?”

“He didn't know where it was. Lots of people have some little place where they can go and not be bothered by telephones and letters. Everybody needs a rest cure now and then. They'd go crazy without one.”

“You've led them an awful chase, Mrs. Ashbury; for some reason they've been trying hard to find you. Bowles nearly caught you last night after you tried to shoot me on the stairs outside the Vance apartment, but I suppose you wedged that ladder in the fire exit up against the door, and had a chance to get away from him.”

“What are you talking about? I never was at the Vance apartment.”

“No, you were in San Francisco. Why did Ashbury's butler have orders to pretend you were there when Nordhall telephoned your husband last night? To protect your privacy while you were on your private cure?”

“Of course. They never told when I was away.”

“Why did they want to find you this time?”

“I didn't know they were looking for me. I suppose it was on account of Miss Paxton's accident. I read about it this morning, and I was greatly shocked.”

“So were the Ashburys and Bowles and Mrs. Spiker. They were so shocked that Bowles disappeared, and the Ashburys couldn't get in touch with him. Tried to find him at an apartment belonging to some people named Smiley, and then tried to get news of him at a Mrs. Oldgate's. Bowles would inquire there for you, evidently. Are you from the South, Mrs. Ashbury?”

“My mother's family came from the South.”

“You stayed at Mrs. Oldgate's in other days?”

“Everybody knows we all—all my mother's people—always stayed at Mrs. Oldgate's when they were visiting in New York. I haven't seen her for years; I don't even know where her place is now.”

“Bowles is a private investigator employed by your husband?”

“I never heard of anybody named Bowles. My husband wouldn't employ a private investigator to look for me.”

“Not even if he wanted to find you very much? The whole family's here to look for you, and they let in another relation on it—a Miss Vance. And of course poor Mrs. Spiker.”

“I never heard of—”

“You've simply been on vacation, and impersonating Mrs. Keate the cleaning woman in order to watch the activities of Miss Paxton?”

“Yes, and if you make any scandal about it you'll regret it to the last day you live.”

“There's been too much fear of scandal in your family, Mrs. Ashbury. The young Ashburys and Bowles and Mrs. Spiker were to find you and get you home without scandal—somehow they had a lead on you this time, some clue to your hideaway. When Miss Paxton was killed they knew who'd done it, but their only desire was to get you out of it without scandal. Bowles and I have been neck and neck, but
I
didn't want to save the Ashburys from scandal; the question was, who should catch up with you first.”

“That's nonsense. I was going home myself.”

“They were afraid you mightn't be able to manage it, with me so anxious to prevent it. Well, I caught up with you first, but Bowles is right after me. He must have traced you to this street, after the shooting on the Vance stairs last night; but I suppose the Keate disguise and the two houses baffled him. He traced you up to the Ashbury house this afternoon, though; he was there, but when he saw me he vanished. His presence would give the show away—to me.”

“I don't believe he was there!”

“You don't even believe there's any such person. He hoped I hadn't guessed the identity of the cleaning woman, and by Heaven I almost didn't. Not until this afternoon. I was pretty nervous alone in that house with you—pretty careful; but I was more or less banking on the hope that you wouldn't shoot me while we were alone together, and perhaps known by the police to be alone together there. While I was talking to Miss Vance in the drawing room, I stood with my eye on the door to the hall and stairs, and I had to talk for your benefit as well as for hers.
Did
you listen, I wonder?”

“If you were so sure of yourself,” she said with a furious, baffled look, “why didn't you say all this up there?”

“Not for worlds. Now I have you in your own person—or is this another disguise too?—with Mrs. Keate's outfit in that suitcase at your feet. And I couldn't give you any cause to suspect that I knew who you were; if I had, you'd have put a bullet into your own head. That's why you hung on to the thirty-two, in spite of the fact that you've been leaving bullets from it all over the place. But how could you know that you wouldn't have a chance to get rid of it with the Keate identity? If I'd been in your place, though, I'd have left it in that rubbish basket with the garbage.”

Leaning back again, her eyes half closed, she was a painted scarecrow—ageless and lifeless.

“But you felt so safe,” said Gamadge. “And but for my obstinacy, you
were
so safe. Even now Bowles wouldn't have caught up with you; he'd have bungled over those two houses until you were gone, and you were going immediately. He won't bungle this time, because I left the trap doors open behind me.”

Suddenly she sat up and slung the handbag across the floor. It landed at his feet.

“That's right.” Gamadge stooped and picked it up.

“Get me out of here,” she said thickly, “before he comes.”

“I'll take care of him. Just tell me one thing, Mrs. Ashbury: why in the name of everything that's ridiculous did you ever take that proof before letter of the aquatint?”

As she said nothing, he went on: “You brought it back this afternoon under the cape of your ulster; but too late, much too late. It started all the trouble. You realized that, of course, when you hung about yesterday afternoon and heard Miss Paxton talking to me about it. You couldn't retrieve that error; it wasn't in order to retrieve it that you listened in on my telephone call to Miss Vance, and went to her apartment and waited for me in the fire exit; I know that. That's not why you tried to kill me.”

She was looking away from him as if she had lost interest in what he said.

“You don't kill people for any such foolish reason as that,” said Gamadge. “You have the wider vision and the long view. I must die because I was probably the only living person—Miss Paxton being dead—who had ever seen you in the Ashbury house. You went there at a time when the furnace man next door wouldn't, when there wasn't a chance, you thought, of any stray visitor. Miss Paxton knew no one. I was the great surprise. I was the only one who might at some future time meet Mrs. James Ashbury, or see her picture, and remember the Mrs. Keate who stood aside for me to pass on the Ashbury stairs.

“For perhaps Mrs. James Ashbury, when she's at home, doesn't look so unlike Mrs. Keate as Mrs. Brant the buyer does.”

Still she was silent.

“Why did you take that Holbein engraving, Mrs. Ashbury?” Gamadge asked it almost plaintively. “A hundred thousand dollars—your very life—at stake, and you commit an act of almost pathological greed. You took it on Monday morning, I suppose? Because Miss Vance had been there the day before and could be blamed if anybody did notice a difference?”

She poured another inch of whiskey into the glass and drank it. “Yes,” she said, “I took it on Monday morning. I didn't know there was anything special about it, apart from its being a proof before letter. My husband never said it was supposed to look like anybody, I don't believe he knew.” She turned her head and looked at him, a bitter look. “Pathological greed? You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Perhaps I don't.”

“It's not greed to try to protect yourself from poverty and slavery and misery. It's not greed to try to be sure of three meals a day, a roof over one's head, heat in Winter and fresh air in Summer, decent clothes, security for one's old age. I was brought up comfortably, I wasn't trained to do anything. I had to make a living without knowing how, without ability or desire to work. I was a schoolteacher—you can imagine the kind of school, and the salary I got.

“I taught the things you can make up yourself or learn in a minute from some book. I walked the creatures, and looked after them like a nursemaid. Was it greed for me to marry that dolt James Ashbury? As for that engraving, apart from the fun of taking it after I found the other in that book place, I knew where I could sell it in San Francisco. I didn't get too much pocket money, you know.”

“I suppose not,” said Gamadge.

“But I was to have all the Lawson Ashbury money, all of it, in trust. That was the least James could do for me after losing his business in that stupid way. Jim can take care of himself, and the girl was sure to make a good marriage. She's going to make one—those Fredericks are rich.

“Then we got that ghastly news about the will—a third of the money gone for good, another third tied up perhaps for ten years, more; and nobody knowing how the fund would be administered or what would happen to money by that time. A bank is going to take care of that fund—was going to. My father lost everything he had when banks failed once, and he killed himself.

“A hundred thousand dollars? That's all I was getting, and it isn't enough nowadays.”

“So you came East to collect another hundred thousand.” Gamadge stated it in flat wonder.

“She was old. She'd never had money. She didn't need it,” shrieked Mrs. Ashbury.

There was a violent pounding on the door. Gamadge opened it and stood in the entrance; Bowles confronted him, looked past him at the woman cowering against the cushions of the day bed, and looked at Gamadge again. He said: “Thanks.”

“Y
OU MIGHT PUT AWAY
that gun,” said Gamadge. “I have hers.”

“That's good.” Bowles dropped his gun into his pocket. Gamadge stepped aside to let him into the room, and closed the door on the blank and stunned countenance of Mrs. Ferris the landlady.

Bowles stood looking at Mrs. Ashbury, feet spread and hands in his pockets. He still had his hat on, and he needed a shave. Presently he turned and looked at Gamadge over his shoulder. He said: “I wouldn't have said ‘thanks' to you two hours ago.”

“You'd have come on into the house uptown, I suppose, instead of disappearing like a spook in a movie.”

“I was still working for Ashbury then. Now I'm working for myself. I ducked over to Lexington to get away from that dick who was after Miss Vance, and I bought a paper. You wouldn't think I'd wait till five o'clock in the afternoon to buy an evening paper. I did, though; and I saw what had happened to my wife.”

Gamadge said: “It's tough, Bowles. I didn't know myself that she was—I only guessed it a few minutes ago.”

“My name's Mitchell. When I saw the paper I went over to the morgue—hell with Ashbury. I knew where this woman hung out, I could get after her later. I don't have to tell her what Mollie looks like now.”

Gamadge said: “Easy, Mitchell.”

Mitchell relaxed, took his hands out of his pockets and took off his hat. “Anything you say. She might have got away if it hadn't been for you, and she might have got rid of the gun. That fixes her.” He turned to address Gamadge, his heavy face scowling. “I'll tell you what happened. Ashbury's a nice guy, I often worked for him in the past on business assignments, here and in the Far East. Mollie used to be an operative too, that's how I met her first, but now she is—was—in cosmetics, like Miss Vance said.