Unexpected Night (12 page)

“They say summer folks like to explore.” Mitchell sniffed the pine and salt laden air. “Smells nice, anyhow.”

Bayberry and wild rose mingled with sea-beach odours as the car emerged from the lane and came out in a large clearing. This was bounded on three sides by forest, on the fourth by dazzling blue water; at the edge of the trees on the right was a group of trailers—neat houses on wheels, their steps facing the woods. Opposite them, across the clearing, were tents, and a long row of cars. A narrow gangway led from the shore out to a big, barnlike structure, whence proceeded sounds of immense activity; hammering, shouting, and the metallic bray of barbaric music. The old pier was completely surrounded by water, which came up to within a foot or two of its floor beams; the tops of the piles on which it had been built looked as fragile as cobwebs.

“So that's the theatre.” Sanderson, having climbed out of the coupé, stood staring at the weatherworn façade, with its gaping doorway.

“That's it. I suppose, with all this water around, they don't feel the need of any fire laws up here.” Mitchell walked to the left, and thoughtfully surveyed the row of glassless, shuttered windows. “You jump in the water, or you climb down the piles to the sand depending on the state of the tide. No gallery, nor anything; just that door. Well, well.”

He turned, and glanced curiously about him. The only human beings in sight were some men in jeans, working at a telephone pole behind the last trailer, down by the shore; and a solitary female figure in the middle of the clearing, sitting motionless on a stump.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
S THEY APPROACHED
, she watched them steadily; but she showed no other sign of interest until, evidently recognising Sanderson, she called out in a deep contralto voice with a rasp in it: “Where's the boy?”

“I'm sorry to bring you bad news, Mrs. Atwood.” Sanderson was abrupt, though civil enough. “He's dead.”

Mrs. Atwood's expression, which seemed normally to be one of faint disgust, did not alter. She was a woman in her late thirties, thin, large-boned, with a long, narrow face. Her features were badly modelled, her teeth lightly prominent, and her hair a dull and improbable yellow; but somehow she contrived to look handsome. She had made no concession whatever to the picnic conditions about her; being dressed in a figured silk costume, pale silk stockings, high-heeled slippers without toes, and an extraordinary hat like a fragment of rolled-up towelling. She was brilliantly made up, and long green earrings hung from her ears.

After a moment she remarked: “Well; it was bound to happen.”

“If you hadn't encouraged him in this theatre idea, perhaps it might not have happened quite so soon, or in quite such a ghastly way.” Sanderson's tone was bitter.

“You think I encouraged him?” She allowed her gaze to wander from him to Mitchell and Gamadge. “I don't know what you're talking about. Instead of throwing blame around, you might explain.”

“And you might introduce us,” suggested Mitchell. Sanderson did so, without amenities. A pretty little girl in a gingham play suit and sandals ran up, and called: “Hello, Mr. Sanderson. Where's Amby?”

Sanderson got out his handkerchief, and mopped his forehead with it. “I'm sorry, Miss Baker…”

“Oh, dear, couldn't he come after all?”

“No, he couldn't.”

“Arthur Atwood said he'd been sick again. Is it serious?”

“I'm awfully sorry; he died last night.”

Miss Baker gave a childlike wail, and then burst out crying. Mrs. Atwood put out a large, ringed hand, and patted her shoulder. “Now, kid,” she said, “you knew it was bound to come. You go get hold of Arthur, and tell Callaghan.”

The girl ran off to the gangway, swerving, as she reached it, to avoid a slight figure that had just emerged from the entrance to the pier. Mrs. Atwood raised her voice to a volume of sound capable, Gamadge thought, of overflowing Madison Square Garden.

“Come up here, Art,” she called, “and see how your racket turned out.”

Mr. Atwood, who was clothed lightly in a pair of bathing shorts and a bath towel, advanced in a series of bounds and leaps across the short, dry grass. He sprang into the air with almost inhuman agility, and came down like a feather; arriving finally in a swift rush, and ending it on one knee. He then rose, removed sand from the knee with a corner of the towel, draped it about his shoulders with one wide and wing-like gesture, and said, glancing bird-like from one face to the other:

“Mr. Sanderson and two strangers. Something tells me that the news is going to be bad. Is that what you meant, darling?”

“Don't be an ass,” said his wife roughly. “The boy's dead.”

“Oh dear me,” said Mr. Atwood. In spite of his prowess as a dancer, he did not look young; there were wrinkles at the corners of his dark, half-closed eyes, and the hair above his narrow, sloping forehead was thin. He smiled widely at Sanderson, took a pair of sunglasses from a pocket in his shorts, put them on, and blinked behind them. “That's a blow,” he went on in his reedy voice.

“It certainly is,” said his wife, drily. “I knew I was a fool when I turned down that tour with the musical show; but Callaghan isn't as well prepared as I was. He won't like it.”

“My dear child!” Atwood addressed her in a tone of mild rebuke. “It's all very well to be a realist; I hope I am one myself; but, after all, the blow is not, to me, financial. When did it happen?” He spoke to Sanderson, but his eyes, behind the dark glasses, were on Gamadge. They moved from him to Mitchell, and back again.

Mitchell answered: “Probably about two this morning.”

“Well, I'm thankful it didn't happen up here,” remarked Mrs. Atwood. “I always said the whole idea was crazy. His family would have sued us for manslaughter.”

“My idea,” explained Atwood, who seemed to be strung on wires, so continual and puppet-like were the movements of his hands, arms, legs and feet, “my considered opinion was that it didn't really matter where it happened, just so that the unfortunate kid got a little fun. He agreed with me, but hardly anyone else did.”

“Well, I'm glad he died in his bed,” declared Mrs. Atwood, harshly.

“He didn't die in his bed, Mrs. Atwood,” said Mitchell.

“Didn't?” Atwood gazed up at him, the changing mask of his face all interest. “How did it happen, then?”

“The boy fell off a cliff.”

“Fell off a cliff!” The lithe figure became rigid, and the eyes behind the sunglasses widened to a stare. “What in the world was he doing on a cliff at two in the morning?”

“We hoped you could tell us that.”

“Me?” Atwood stepped back a pace, and looked from one to the other of them, finishing with a bland gaze at his wife, who ignored it stonily.

“Yes. It has been suggested that he was waiting down there for you to pick him up.”

“My dear man, you've got it all wrong. There was no arrangement of that sort; naturally not. He was to come up to-day. My goodness me!” Atwood's voice, expressing hurt amazement, turned to a bleat. “Who was kind enough to suggest that idea? You, perhaps?” and he whirled on Sanderson. “Or my cousin Fred? You two knew all about our plans.”

“Nobody can imagine why he went down there to that rock,” answered Sanderson, coldly. “We thought he might have made some other arrangement with you. When he telephoned, you know. Yesterday.”

“Oh. Do you know,” said Atwood, his head on one side and an indescribably coy expression on his face, “I thought that telephone call was a private one.”

“Nothing stays private in an investigation like this,” Mitchell informed him.

“It's an investigation, is it? Oh, I see; he was killed by the fall. Now that is what I call one of life's major ironies; don't you agree with me, Floss?”

“He was probably dead before he went over the cliff, Mr. Atwood; but there will be an inquest, and, of course, we want information.”

“Of course you do; so do I. The thing is so dashed queer that I feel completely dazed by it. Where was this cliff?”

“Just below the hotel.”

“I don't know Ford's Beach; don't know it at all. He telephoned me—as you probably know already—that the party was getting in late; I suppose as late as midnight?”

“Later.”

“And he is imagined to have celebrated his coming of age by going out and falling off a cliff. Poor old Amby. Well, I wish I could help you to clarify the situation; but I cannot. I was rehearsing until after ten o'clock, and then I was sunk in a dreamless sleep. We've had a little sickness in camp,” he went on, his thin mouth stretching in a smile, “and it's put extra work on us all. The troupe isn't big; we don't merely double, here; we triple and quadruple.”

“Which tent is yours?”

“That one, down beside the water. Desirable situation; lovely fragrance of dead crab when the tide's out. I'm alone in it; my cousin Amberley was going to share it with me,” he ended, in a tone of melancholy.

“You were going to put that sick feller to sleep in a tent?”

“He was looking forward to it. Twice as comfortable as a trailer. I hoped the family would let him have a day or two of it, before they drove up with a writ of
habeas corpus
.”

“He was of age,” Sanderson reminded him, shortly.

“So he was, so he was. He wasn't banking too heavily on that fact, though; he thought they'd declare him irresponsible, or something, before they let go of him. That reminds me,” and Atwood turned his wide grin on Sanderson. “Did he get around to signing that will, and getting it witnessed? No such luck, I'm afraid?”

“I didn't know you knew about the will.”

“Oh, bless you, he talked of nothing else.”

“He probably never did get it signed or witnessed; but whether or not he did, it's gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Disappeared.”

Atwood gazed at him, took off his glasses to look down at his wife, put them on again, and shook his head. “There goes our old age pension, Flo,” he murmured, “right down the drain. We might have known they'd never let him—ahem. Must be careful not to give voice to unfounded allegations.”

Sanderson, looking very angry, began: “What do you mean?” But Gamadge, speaking for the first time, interrupted him. He had been standing in an easy and relaxed posture, watching Atwood with a good deal of interest and some amusement; and he now said, casually:

“Miss Cowden wishes you to be informed that she is carrying out the bequests.”

Atwood's dark glasses flashed as he turned them on Gamadge. “What's that you say?”

“Miss Cowden will pay the beneficiaries when she has control of the money.”

Atwood immediately seized the towel by both ends, waved it over his head as if it were a scarf, and sprang into the air. He executed an entrechat, and came down on his toes with a delicate precision that somehow made him seem lighter than flesh and blood. This manœuvre was accompanied by a wild yodel in falsetto, the suddenness of which made everybody start. As he stood poised, muscles bunched under a skin which the sun evidently had no power to burn, the sea grass betrayed him; he slipped, clutched at nothing, and landed on all fours.

It may have been a tribute to something or other about Atwood that nobody laughed. He himself seemed rather amused than disconcerted, rose nimbly, and bowed before Gamadge, his towel sweeping the ground.

“Whoever you are, dear old bean,” he said, “you bring fair tidings. Wait, though; I see a cloud on the horizon, and it's a damn' sight bigger than a man's hand. Alma's only nineteen. She won't get hold of her capital for two years. Nobody ever gave money away after thinking it over for two years.”

“If Miss Cowden says she'll do it, she will do it,” Sanderson broke in, sharply.

“Well, you probably know her better than I do, even if I am her nearest living relative, except for Fred. And my aunt Lulu, of course. How does Cousin Fred feel about all this, by the way? Badly cut up, or taking it calmly, as usual? You know,” said Atwood, as if reflectively, “I walloped that big brute, once.”

“Queensberry rules?” enquired Sanderson.

“I was very young at the time, and Queensberry rules were not in my bright lexicon. Ah, well; one hundred thousand dollars, what's that? Illusion. But if you listen closely, you will hear the gnashing of my wife's teeth.”

Gamadge asked: “Is the word
hubris
in your bright lexicon?”

Atwood paused, turned his head, and looked sharply at the speaker. “What's that?” he demanded.

“
Hubris
.”

“Oh, I know what it means; I went to night school. So you think I'm a bit above myself, do you?”

“A trifle, perhaps.”

“You may be right; it's reaction. I've had several shocks, you know; or, rather, you don't. Excuse me, but did I hear anybody mention who you happen to be?”