Dunbar said after a moment: “I never saw such a fellow as you are. You’d persuade anybody of anything. What on earth is your interest in it, for Heaven’s sake?”
“I’m a jelly of sentiment. I hate to think of Osterbridge’s family and friends—bracing themselves for a criminal’s obsequies and following him to a suicide’s grave, when he hasn’t done anything but play the piano well and sing annoyingly.”
“I rather hate it too.”
“You’re really staying? I’d like another witness.”
“Of course I am.”
“Then,” said Gamadge, leaning back as if relaxed in his chair, “I’ll tell you why Bishop killed Alice Dunbar.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Red Raincoat
“YOU CAN HELP me set the stage for this drama,” said Gamadge, settling back and crossing his knees. “You knew Alice Dunbar and I didn’t. I gather that she was a quiet type, repressed and lonely?”
“More than that,” said Dunbar. He was sitting back too, his elbow on the table, his other hand, with a cigarette in it, resting on the table’s edge. His thinnish face was still sceptical, but it showed more interest. “She was a disappointed woman; thwarted, you know. Ever since her engagement was broken—I didn’t know her then, but Gail told me—she hadn’t shown any spirit at all. I hate the jargon, but don’t they call it frustrated?”
Gamadge said: “I’d go farther. I’d say that that dressing up and running away shows something like madness in a type like hers; I’d say she was over the edge.”
“Well, it looked so.”
“The bitterness of a poisoned heart. Let’s go back to her first acquaintance with Mr. Fuller. She fell in love again, and it seemed to be reciprocal; what it must have meant to her! Everything: happiness, freedom, the sense of being important to someone she cared about, of having a place again in a living world. But Mr. Fuller warned her—he wouldn’t subject her to a life of comparative poverty, he was too generous a soul for that. They’d wait until they were sure of the Woodworth money. Until then, not a word to anyone; they could meet somewhere, he’d find a place.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Dunbar. “Woodworth money? What money? She wasn’t getting that.”
“She thought she was. All the Dunbars thought she was, and Mr. Fuller was counting on it. It’s a fact, Mr. Dunbar; Abigail Tanner admits it.”
“I’ll be jiggered.”
“But Fuller was a very cagey man, and he never counted on anything until it was in his hand. These gamblers—they hope, but they know enough not to count on the cash till the ball stops rolling. So, quite unknown to Alice Dunbar, he went up to the Woodworth place in September, put on a very good show as a freelance landscape gardener, interested the old lady—she was used to entertaining young men by that time—and did some fishing. Mrs. Woodworth didn’t tell him her financial arrangements, he got no information about her will; but all the same he killed her.”
Dunbar jerked upright in his chair. “Is that a fact?”
“No, we touch on fantasy there. Few doubt it now. He shoved her down a long flight of stairs, and she had a shock and her second stroke and died. If she had fallen herself, the result would have been the same.
“She had given Fuller a reference to Mr. Scale, her old friend, and he had established himself in the Scale apartment. He was of course seldom there, but he managed to meet Alice Dunbar there somehow—the police suggest the middle of the night.”
Dunbar raised his eyebrows and tapped the table with his free hand.
“Think,” said Gamadge, “what he had come to mean to her. And by the end of that week, she knew she wasn’t going to get the Woodworth million. He knew it too, through her or through the newspapers; but he had an engagement with her at the Scale apartment on the following Friday afternoon, and he judged it wise to be there. He had to be there. He was used, perhaps, to dealing with broken hearts, and he was good at it; he could remind her of their bargain, and he could send her away comforted with those touching assurances of undying love and regret that keep broken hearts from flying to pieces and littering up the whole landscape.
“But he knew something about Alice Dunbar; more than anyone else knew; what he had meant to her, what a long and empty life without him would mean to her. She might kill herself, it was possible. Didn’t she have that gun that Richfield Tanner gave her when he went to the war?”
Dunbar said sharply: “I didn’t know he’d given it to her.”
“She was a romantic, and he was kind to his sister-in-law. If she asked for it as a characteristic reminder of a fighting man, he’d let her have it. He had his own service gun. Doesn’t that solve the mystery of the Tanner thirty-eight?”
Dunbar said slowly: “It does, I suppose.”
“So Mr. Fuller,” continued Gamadge, “not wanting to run the risk of leaving her dead body on the Scale premises (we know now what kind of risk it would have been), dug a grave.”
Dunbar raised his eyes. “You’re ingenious.”
“No; logical. He dug a grave, and when she came he was ready for her; he’d prevent tragedy if he could. But even Fuller didn’t quite understand the bitterness of that poisoned heart. Alice Dunbar wasn’t going to lose another man to any other woman; she wasn’t intending to kill herself if he abandoned her—she was going to kill him. He realized it just in time.”
Dunbar said with a half laugh: “Fantastic.”
“Certainly not; there’s good evidence. But first let’s dispose of the big scene: the Tanner gun is pointed at Mr. Fuller, but he’s a man who thinks fast, and as I said, he was ready for her. She’d never killed anyone before, you know—she wasn’t an expert, and perhaps she didn’t really want to kill him. He got hold of the gun, and he got her arm behind her back.” Gamadge lighted a cigarette and looked at it. “Would you say that the rest of the scene was an accident?”
“In your drama,” said Dunbar, after a pause, “it couldn’t be an accident.”
“Not very well. He buried her, and he thought her body would never be found. Wasn’t that a curious thing, the way it was found?”
Dunbar said slowly: “I suppose it was. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I mean a stranger dropping in looking for a flat, and then fading out forever?”
“People don’t want to be mixed up in a murder case. You could try it sometime,” said Dunbar, with a faint smile.
“Still, it was odd. Very odd. He must have been a dowser who finds graves. Well, the body was found, and so Mr. Osterbridge was murdered to give us a killer and close up the case.”
Gamadge lapsed into silence. Dunbar said at last: “It sounds a little flimsy without some of that evidence you mentioned.”
“Oh yes,” said Gamadge, with a start. “I forgot. It’s that disguise she was wearing.”
“You mean the red raincoat and everything?” asked Dunbar with surprise.
“And everything. As Mrs. Tanner said last night, she wanted to look different; but would a woman going to meet a man she loved and run off with him, would a woman even planning only to run off, dress herself up in a cheap and nasty way? If she’d planned the elopement she could have saved up and got herself better things to wear; if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, she could still have found decent quiet things, things that wouldn’t startle a man out of his wits, things that wouldn’t make her a sight.”
Dunbar reflected, his fingers playing with the gift cards. “She wanted to be out of character,” he said at last. “An entirely different type.”
“Mr. Dunbar,” said Gamadge, his eyes on the other’s frowning face, “why does a man or a woman put on that kind of disguise—the kind of disguise that changes them so basically they simply can’t be recognized? Why did Fuller, up at the Woodworth place? They don’t do it for keeps—for the fun of it. They do it as a temporary precaution when they’re going to commit a crime.”
Dunbar looked up. He said: “That’s pure conjecture.”
“Is it? Then what
became of her gloves?”
“Gloves?”
“Did you see a list of what she was wearing when she was found, and what was in that shopping bag?”
“Yes, they had one at the house, I—”
“All her own things she put into that big paper bag, because she wanted to keep them; they cost money, she was on an allowance; she wasn’t going to throw them away: her stockings, her hat, her handbag—the large bag she carried the gun in, you know—her gloves.
“She didn’t wear gloves in that grave, and none have been found. If they’d been found they’d have been listed.”
“Nonsense; she simply didn’t buy gloves.”
“Alice Dunbar didn’t buy gloves? They’re a second skin to people like Alice Dunbar, and if she could have imagined herself without them, she’d have imagined herself without stockings and a hat, bought a cotton scarf and saved money. Now why have those gloves disappeared? Because they had gun-grease on them, perhaps powder too?”
Dunbar said nothing.
“Of course she wore them,” added Gamadge, crushing out his half-smoked cigarette, “because she wasn’t going to leave prints in the Scale apartment. I mean she didn’t take them off there. And I swear I don’t think Fuller ever took his off either, except to wash his hands. Not that afternoon, anyhow. Handled each other with gloves, didn’t they? Poison to each other from the day they met. Well, they came of the same stock.”
Gamadge had the feeling that Dunbar was looking at him with bright eyes through a clay-coloured mask.
“And now, Mr. Dunbar,” he said, “shall I tell you the real reason why you came to see Miss Bransome this evening?” He leaned forward across the corner of the table. “Why I sent her away? Why I got the police?”
Dunbar’s face did not change, but his hand disappeared under the fold of the topcoat on the table, his shoulders stiffened.
“What will that get you?” asked Gamadge gently. “The police are there now.”
“I’ll take a chance on them,” said Dunbar, and his voice cracked. He had his big gun half-way out of the topcoat when Nordhall’s hand came down on his wrist; two seconds later the sergeant had his other arm in a double grip—he was unable to move either hand an inch. He didn’t need to. Gamadge saw the grey mask change, wrenched into the semblance of another—the insane mask of Greek tragedy; then he ducked his head down as if listening, and pulled the trigger of his gun.
It sounded like a cannon, even through the cloth of the coat. Gamadge was on his feet; the three stood gazing down at the visible half of Dunbar’s face, no longer recognizable as a face, as anything. There was a silence that seemed absolute.
The sergeant broke it: “You got them across so fast he couldn’t take care of them. He thinks quick, but I’d say he was somebody that died of fright.”
Nordhall wasn’t philosophizing. He said with realistic calm: “We’re going to catch hell for this.”
“Why?” Gamadge was propped against the side of the table. “You couldn’t do anything till he started to pull the gun.”
Nordhall was leaning over. “His service forty-five.”
The sergeant had moved back a little. “Messed himself up worse than Osterbridge.” His eyes went in bewilderment to the gift cards, and what remained in the cardboard box: “There’s got to be something on one of those things, to break him down that way. But I could have swore he was surprised when you mentioned them. But there’s got to be something.”
Nordhall stood up and took his hand off Dunbar’s wrist. He asked: “Where’s the telephone?”
“Front room,” said Gamadge. “I want a drink.”
Nordhall met his eyes. “You do at that. Go ahead, beat it, but be on hand by the time the big shots get here, or I’ll be in real trouble, and you too.”
“There’s one waiting for me not far off.”
Gamadge leapt down the flights of stairs, and hurried to the nearest bar. He had his drink, and then sought the telephone. He called the Welsh number; Miss Bransome answered.
“Hello, Miss Bransome, know my name now?”
“Mr. Gamadge. What—”
“It’s all right, and it’s all over. You can come home tomorrow. I wouldn’t advise tonight, they’ll be mopping up in your place until late.”
“Mop… You caught him?”
“The police did.”
“Who was it? Who was it?”
“I’m not allowed to say. You’ll see it in the paper. They may call you tonight, it’s possible; so I got in ahead of them. Not a word about me, you understand, and not too many words about anything else. They think he came to your place to look at those cards Alice Dunbar painted. Gift cards.”
“I never thought of them from the day last spring she put them away for the summer. What—”
“They’ll tell you all about it. It’s just your bad luck that he wanted a look at them and came and killed himself in your flat. But you’ll never know it by the looks of the place when you get back—unless they go smearing everything with fingerprint powder.”
“Mr. Gamadge… I can’t even say it. I don’t know how. I—”
“No words needed, Miss Bransome. I’ll consider them all said. Good night.”
He hastened back, and was considerably disgusted at having to argue himself in, past uniforms. But the elevator was now working in its own erratic way, and he found the door of the Bransome flat open. He went in, noted activity in the studio, and retired to the living-room. Functionaries in conference looked up to stare at him; but he made himself comfortable on the couch, lighted a cigarette, and waited.
Nordhall came in after a while, saw him, and advanced with a torn fragment of tracing paper in his hand. He said, “I guess you had the right idea. We found this at the bottom of the box. She had a try, anyway.”
Gamadge wasn’t allowed to handle the fragment, but Nordhall held it in front of him to look at. It had a neatly pencilled oblong on it, which was marked off into small squares. There were old English letters in the squares on the left.
Gamadge said: “She was going to trace it over watercolour paper; if she’d managed to finish it. That lettering is tricky, I told you so.”
“Do I care? What was tricky was fixing up the valentine. Makes gooseflesh to think of it, don’t you say so too?”
Gamadge read:
Behind the
Rainbow
Under the
Cloud
Eternal brightness
He nodded, leaned back wearily against Miss Bransome’s cushions, and shut his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Best Motive of All
“I DON’T KNOW myself, exactly,” said Bishop, “but I figured you out as a smart guy, and a kind of a pleasant guy too. And you were on the sidelines, no bets on anything.”
He sat on the chesterfield in Gamadge’s library, one of Theodore’s best juleps in his hand; dressed conservatively enough in dark blue to have satisfied even Bruce Dunbar’s taste. He sat straight up in his corner, self-contained and serious of mien as usual, but with amusement in his eyes.
“I’m afraid I didn’t do the errand very well,” said Gamadge. “I was too tired. But I realized you were on a spot, and as I had already decided, as I explained to you, that you were not Fuller—”
“You did fine,” said Bishop, smiling. “All I wanted was to be up on the platform leading the band when the news broke. I thought it would look better. When I heard that somebody had phoned in about finding Osterbridge, I hoped I’d get an opportunity to express my appreciation.”
“You expressed it by leaving me out of the picture, and telling Miss Bean to leave me out.”
Bishop looked surprised. “You weren’t in it. I wouldn’t want to make trouble for somebody that had done me a favour.”
“I suppose you didn’t see the body until you got back from your trip to the bar?”
“Doped that out, did you?”
“I did the stretch from the side door to the gate and back again, yes. On the sec
ond trip I acted as I thought you might have done when you came in—I lighted a cigarette, and I just got a glimpse of his white sleeve.”
“That’s how it happened to me. I went over and looked at him, and I didn’t like to leave him there. But this was a frame I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t afford any part of it. I wonder how Dunbar figured it.” He looked at Gamadge over the rim of his frosted silver cup. “Have an idea myself.”
“I’d be grateful for it.”
Bishop drank, put the cup down, and studied the tip of his cigarette. “I’ll tell you if you’ll pass it along as yours. It’s just a whim of mine, but I never did enjoy the society of those law enforcement boys, and I’ve had a good deal of it lately.”
“Count on me,” said Gamadge, laughing.
“I imagined that Dunbar must have been down at the Stanton a good deal, calling on Gail—Mrs. Tanner. He might have been there for lunch; they have it in the garden from June to October, every day that the weather’s fine, with the windows into the dance room open so that the customers can hear the band. During the intermissions Osterbridge and I would be very likely to step out of the side door for a gasp of air and a cigarette.”
“He certainly may have noticed that.”
“So the other night, seeing his way clear past the parking lot feller, he might take a look. If he didn’t have any luck, he could go home, come back again later, and follow Osterbridge back to his place. If Osterbridge took a cab, he could even go up and pay him a call; or have another try another night. As I understand it, it wasn’t life and death for Dunbar; just setting up somebody to take the rap.”
“I suppose Osterbridge would walk down to the gate with him, and off behind that tree if Dunbar wanted a talk about—say, Mrs. Tanner?”
“I guess he would.”
Gamadge put his hand in his pocket and brought it out holding the black valentine. “Something of yours; they didn’t bother with it after they found the sketch for Dunbar’s.”
And Dangerous to Know Page 15