The Wrong Way Down (9 page)

“And just to make it harder, I think they were all introduced to me by false names.”

“False names?”

“They all seemed to know one another pretty well, but they never used a name—a Christian name—except Iris Vance's, and except when she made one slip and called Mr. Simpson Jim. He nearly made a slip too; he began to call Miss Higgs something that also began with a J, but he stammered over it and said something else. He never stammered again.”

“Their real names would have given you some warning, then.”

“If they can't face inquiry they've all left by this time, Miss Higgs and all.”

The car had entered the dark and quiet upper reaches of Park Avenue. Harold said: “You might have telephoned Miss Paxton.”

“I could never have got her out of the house by telephone, and perhaps she wouldn't have heard the telephone. She may be asleep, and the telephone is on the floor below her bedroom.”

“Why will she hear the doorbell, then?”

“If she doesn't, I'll stay there and you can get cops.” He added: “One thing—she'd never let anybody in at this time of night without mighty careful scouting.”

“And they didn't get much of a start. And they wouldn't care to make much of a fuss trying to get in. I'm inclined to think,” said Harold, “that your terrible experience on the staircase shook up your brains a little.”

“Perhaps so. I don't like it when people who are not crazy act as if they were.”

They had reached the Ashbury block. Gamadge drove to the upper corner, rounded the island, and came down on the West side of the street. He got out of the car, and then stood still. He was facing a uniformed policeman who looked at him from the dark of the portico.

After a moment Gamadge asked: “Something wrong here?”

“Accident.”

“Accident? What kind of—I know the lady in this house.”

“Fatal accident.” The policeman jerked his head upwards. Gamadge lifted his eyes and saw that the iron railing in front of the old doorway was askew, and that one of the doors was open. Another policeman came out on the ledge, tugged the rail straighter, went back into the house, and shut the door behind him with a boom.

“What in God's name happened?” asked Gamadge.

“She fell out.”

“Fell out!”

“That's right.”

“When?” Gamadge's tone was so harsh and peremptory that the policeman took offense at it. He said: “Read it in the morning papers.”

Gamadge spoke more quietly: “Just tell me when.”

“The body was found about a quarter past nine. It couldn't have laid out here long without being seen.”

“Thanks.”

Gamadge turned and walked back to the car. Harold had been hanging out of the window; he withdrew his head as Gamadge walked around the car and got in.

The car started with what seemed like a leap. Harold said: “Watch it. No use getting pinched.” He sat with his eyes fixed on Gamadge's profile. After a minute he said: “She was dead an hour before you ever got to the Vance apartment house.”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“Precinct. They'll have what information there is.”

Harold said after another pause: “I suppose Vance had to let you come tonight—take a chance on it. If she hadn't let you come you might have tried to get in touch with Miss Paxton.”

“Whatever happened, this changes everything.”

“I
T WAS A PECULIAR ACCIDENT,”
said Detective-Lieutenant Nordhall, “but I think they got it all doped out, how and why it happened.”

He and Gamadge sat in a little office, facing each other across the scarred top of a desk. Gamadge was leaning back in his hard chair, his eyes closed, his legs stretched out, his feet crossed, his hands clasped on his waistline. Nordhall had papers before him.

“The boys here would have given you all the details,” continued Nordhall. “I don't know why you dragged me out. But I understand you're interested, want to tell your wife all about it. Sorry this Miss Paxton was a friend of her folks.

“Well, here's everything, and probably a little more than you expected; when there's a fatality like this we make a point of notifying the family. We don't wait till they read it in the paper.

“The reason the accident was peculiar is because the house is peculiar, as you know. Old Mr. Lawson Ashbury—well-known business character in New York, wholesale cotton goods—he was quite sore when the city made him take off his front stoop. Said he wasn't going to put a lot of money into remodeling a house that might get blasted out from under him the next time some improvement fanatic took a whim. So he did the job the way you saw, and a lot of other householders did the same. Economy with some of them, not with Mr. Lawson Ashbury. He was very well fixed.

“We got this dope from his son James Ashbury of San Francisco, the Department called him up long distance at a little after ten o'clock.” Nordhall took a small red leather notebook out of an envelope. “This is Miss Paxton's address book; that's how the Department got James Ashbury's address. The old lady's handbag was on her sitting-room table, the only lighted room in the house at the time of the accident; had her identification card in it, Tarrytown address and telephone numbers, everything. We called up some Tarrytown people too.”

Gamadge had half opened his eyes to look at the address book. Now he felt for a cigarette.

“Ashbury was upset,” continued Nordhall. “Seems a very nice kind of feller, and free with his money. He don't want to come East, no reason why he should, and he's given us carte blanche for all expenses. Wiring us money, in fact.

“Mr. Ashbury and the Department got it all straightened out, what happened to the poor old lady tonight. Ashbury wrote and asked her to go to the house and stay there while the agents were selling off and closing up—you know that. She decided to do most of the work herself, see purchasers and dealers and so on. Wrote him that the change and the visit to New York would be a treat for her. But you know all that. Ashbury hardly remembers her, but he knew she knew the house well—used to stay there with his parents in the old days—and he thought she'd be an ideal person for the job if she wasn't too old for it. She wrote him she wasn't. How did she strike you?”

Gamadge had not lighted his cigarette. He held it in his fingers, slowly rolling it between them. “Not too old,” he said.

“Ashbury thought so too, from the way she wrote. He's upset now, thinks he showed poor judgment.

“Well, tonight she was evidently writing business letters to all these various people, making appointments for them to come and look at the stuff there, appraise things and so on. There was a stack of letters ready on her desk. One letter—to some art dealer—she decided to mail tonight. Had she said anything about picture dealers to you?”

“We talked about pictures.”

“That's it, then; she couldn't wait to get things going. She put on a coat and tied a woollen scarf around her head, put the letter in her pocket, and started out with it. Well, she was an old lady, Ashbury thinks she must have been seventy-five years old anyway.”

“She was.”

“There you are. Old people—half the time they're living in the past, and Miss Paxton may have been overdoing it, working too hard on her lists and her correspondence. She used to visit there when the house had the old stoop and the old front door, and tonight she may have forgotten all about the changes. She grabbed up the letter she wanted to mail, put on her coat and her scarf, trotted down the hall, opened one of the old doors and walked out and through the railing. The rail was rusted loose in its sockets, it flattened right down. She took the ten-foot drop, landed here.” Nordhall placed a hand flat on his head, just above the hairline and to the left. “Parietal bone crushed. She must have died instantly. Skull brittle—old bones.”

Gamadge lighted his cigarette and put it in his mouth.

“It's a kind of a desert up there at that hour, and in cold weather,” said Nordhall. “Patrolman says he sometimes doesn't meet anybody up along that way around nine o'clock for over half a mile. People either at home, or still out somewhere. Dark, too—private houses both sides of the way, some empty, like the Ashbury house was. She was found at fourteen and a half minutes past nine, and as luck would have it, by a doctor—name's Barber, he lives in the big apartment on the next corner north, and he was walking home from seeing a patient down the Avenue. He had to stay with the body for six minutes before anybody came by. He says she'd been dead for about say fifteen minutes when he found her, perhaps a little less.

“Barber sent this passer-by up to the apartment to telephone. When the police surgeon got there he more or less agreed with Barber about the time of the accident, but you know what those fellers are. Our doc says she could have been dead less than a quarter of an hour; cold night, aged victim, and of course—but he don't know that's influencing him—the fact that she was lying there on a public street.

“But some people would walk by; you know that, too. Anything not to be delayed away from a date or mixed up in an investigation.

“The body's at the mortuary, but Ashbury wanted her sent to a first class place in the morning. We picked Buckley's—you know Buckley's; no better place in town. She'll be buried in her own family plot in Tarrytown. They tell us up there that she had mighty few friends left in the vicinity, and no relatives.”

After a pause Gamadge said: “Clara's away, you know; but anything I can do—”

“If Mrs. Gamadge was here I might ask her to go up tomorrow and see about getting the old lady's things packed up—Ashbury wants to close up the house again till he can make other arrangements, and he don't want Miss Paxton's things mixed up with Ashbury stuff. He said never mind, he'd think up something, but if we could fix it up for him—tough, though, getting a responsible party to do the work at short notice; any notice.”

“Miss Paxton had a respectable kind of part-time woman,” said Gamadge. “I could oversee her, if she'll do the job. She's there in the afternoons from three to five.”

“Know her name?” Nordhall was opening the little red address book.

“A Mrs. Keate, I think.”

“Here she is, and of course no telephone. They never have a telephone they can use in those rooming houses. But what do we need the address for? She'll be coming anyway. Even if she sees the news in the paper, she'll be coming for her pay. Unless she was paid every day? That's unlikely. You couldn't go up there and meet her tomorrow, could you, and get the job done and settle up? We'll put it on Ashbury's bill.”

“I'll go, of course.”

“You could write to her, but sometimes they get started for the day before the postman gets there.”

“I'll go. How much do they get? Seventy-five an hour now?”

“I hope to God they haven't gone up. You might turn off the oil furnace and lock the windows. Mighty nice of you.” Nordhall again referred to the file on Miss Paxton. “The handbag has thirty-odd dollars in it, we're keeping it for the present until we know what to do with it. She had some jewelry on her—old-fashioned stuff, old watch and chain. You might look for other valuables while you're there. We have Miss Paxton's latchkey; better have it, in case the cleaning woman doesn't come. I'll get it to you.”

“Miss Paxton told me she had no other valuables than what she wore.”

“All right then.” Nordhall looked relieved. “Glad you showed up after all. You know when they called me, damned if I wasn't afraid you thought there was something wrong with the accident.”

“Everything's wrong with it.”

Nordhall threw himself back in his chair. “Oh, for Heaven's sake.”

Gamadge sat up, leaned his arms on the desk, and pointed his cigarette at Nordhall. “Miss Paxton was as likely to walk out of the wrong door as you are.”

“That's what you think. Gamadge—”

“She was killed. But nobody can be sure that a ten-foot drop or a much longer drop will kill anybody, so she wasn't killed by falling from the balcony; she wasn't killed by a fall.”

Nordhall sat scowling at him.

“She had a coat on when she was found, didn't she?” asked Gamadge. “Her head was tied up in a woollen scarf?”

“Coat with a fur collar,” barked Nordhall, “purple woollen scarf.”

“She kept a golf cape in her sitting room for just such short trips. She didn't like stairs, and there probably wasn't a coat closet on that drawing-room floor. She put the golf cape on when she came out on her balcony this afternoon to see me off. Why should she go upstairs and get a coat to mail a letter at the corner?”

“I never heard anything thinner. It's the thinnest piece of guesswork—”

“I'll tell you something she wouldn't wear, to mail a letter or to go anywhere else. She wouldn't wear a woollen scarf on her head. Not on your life she wouldn't. A golf cape, yes—they were worn when she was young, worn by people like herself. A knitted scarf? No. Not even in the country. Only very poor old people wore those in Miss Paxton's young days. You will remind me of ‘fascinators'—”