Death and Letters

by Elizabeth Daly

  “I’m an antiquarian myself,” said Gamadge, resigned to his new spate of free information. “If you’ll show me the relics, I promise I won’t try to buy any of them.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing; they’d bore you,” said Georgette. She finished her drink and walked off into the library. They followed her, Ira dodging ahead to push back the doors to the drawing-room.

  Three young people were standing around the malachite table, on which was a tray containing a shaker and glasses. Susan had changed to a pink ankle-length woolen dress; she turned: “Mr. Gamadge, this is Zelma Smyth—and Jimmie Waterton.”

  The slim girl who had worn the aquascutum with the hood was dressed in a yellow sweater and a yellowish tweed skirt. She was pale, with short dark hair, and she had a look of not much caring what impression she made. Her eyes were extraordinary—the blackest Gamadge had ever seen, and diamond-bright. She nodded shortly to Gamadge without speaking. Young Waterton was a fine-looking boy; big and blond, physically as hard as nails, and very friendly. He was wearing country clothes. He shook hands with Gamadge and smiled broadly at him.

  “Susie says you’re the tops, sir. Write, do you?”

  “Er. You seem pretty well on the top of the world yourself, Mr. Waterton. Let me congratulate you.”

  “I guess you can.” His hand went out to Susan’s shoulder, but Mrs. Coldfield smilingly took his arm:

  “Now let’s just postpone it and come to dinner. We’re all late.”

  They crossed the hall to the long dining-room, which had retained its pale old oak panelling and its faded, stamped-velvet wallpaper. There were portraits at each end of the room and between the windows; the one behind Georgette was a half-length of a stolid-looking man with flowing whiskers, the one behind Ira a three-quarter length of a woman.

  Gamadge, sitting at his hostess’s left, asked: “May I inquire who that lady was?”

  Ames laughed. “He’s fallen for her. That, Mr. Gamadge, is our legend—Serene. Mrs. Deane Coldfield. In fact my grandmother.”

  “Who was the artist?”

  “Faulkner of London; not a particularly well-known man now, but Grandfather picked a winner, didn’t he? I suppose somebody who knew told him to get that man and nobody else for Grandmother.”

  Gamadge let his mind wander into realms of fancy as he looked at the portrait. Had it been Garthwain who chose that artist? If so he knew what he was doing when he chose him. Grandmother Coldfield—but no grandmother in those days—had a rather long, delicately pointed face, questioning blue eyes, the smile of a wicked child. She was posed with her head tilted down a little and sideways, and the eyes were looking up aslant; she wore a little flowered bonnet on her curling hair, and the bonnet was set well back to show her deep curled fringe—it curled almost to her eyebrows. Her dress was a white veiling of some kind, with a square cut-out neck filled in with ruching. She had seed-pearl earrings and broad bracelets, and one hand rested on the crook of a lace parasol.

  “Well!” said Gamadge, turning away as his soup was put before him. “She ought to have made that painter’s fortune.”

  “I’m going to have those seed pearls,” said Susan.

  “And you can see the very parasol, if you like,” said Ames, “in the attic.”

  “I shall insist.”

  Ames sat next to Miss Smyth on Gamadge’s side of the table, at his brother’s right. He said: “The trouble is, she lived too long.”

  “You know,” grumbled Ira, “that kind of talk always goes against me. What can they do? Are we to take them out and shoot them?”

  “But Ira,” objected the titular head of the family, smiling, “think what a comfort it will be, when we know people are saying it about us, to remember how often we said it about people ourselves.”

  Waterton, opposite Gamadge on Mrs. Coldfield’s right, said with a deferential look at Ames, “I don’t know; I’m rather fond of Granny.”

  “Your granny, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Coldfield, “is a perfectly charming old lady with lots of interests. My husband’s granny was a horrid ex-beauty who had no interests except Patience—oh, those awful dog-eared cards!—and had to be carted to Greenbriar White Sulphur every Summer, and never opened her mouth unless she had a complaint to make or remembered some tiresome old scandal.”

  Ames was laughing. “She kept some myths alive. Poor dear, I always enjoyed her conversation. She was more amusing than Grandfather would have been at her age. And if any of us Coldfields have amusing qualities, James”—he addressed young Waterton benignly—“we get them from her, not from him. We needed her in our family.”

  The soup course was over, and Mrs. Coldfield turned to her future son-in-law. She and Susan and young Waterton were immediately in deep discussion—Summer plans, wedding plans, plans about a house that Waterton senior was going to build for the young couple on the estate, about a division of the camp in the Adirondacks. Ira and his brother seemed to have a subject of their own, the upkeep and final disposal of The Maples. Gamadge and his partner were left to entertain each other, and nobody paid the slightest attention to them.

  She had been quiet and detached all along, saying nothing and not raising her brilliant eyes. Gamadge said: “Bad night to come out to dinner in.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” She raised the eyes to his. “The party was to have been at our place, you know. At Grandfather’s.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Just supper—just the four of us. Grandfather’s away. When the plan was changed my brother wouldn’t come, so I just…came…alone.” Her voice dragged and ceased. If she had thought explanation necessary, she began to regret the impulse.

  Gamadge said: “Some reason for the shift, I suppose; cook have a seizure? Refrigerator collapse? Bath water come through the ceiling? I’m remembering past calamities in my own house.”

  She gave him a bright unamused smile. “Oh no, but Susie didn’t want to come out in the rain, and she hasn’t been able to have anybody while her aunt was here sick, and they have a game room downstairs.”

  “But what happened to the chicken salad and stuff at your house?” asked Gamadge, reacting no doubt as she had hoped. She had spoken out of the bitterness of a burdened heart, and she had to go on:

  “Lobster. It was just a buffet supper, and we were getting it ourselves—my brother and I were. The woman that works for us is out—it’s her night off.”

  “Lobster for four and trimmings? That can mean a lot of fixing,” said Gamadge, shocked.

  “Oh well, Sam can eat a good deal of it.”

  “Hanged if I blame him for staying home for it. Of all the nerve,” said Gamadge, his eyes on the couple opposite.

  “Oh well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “In my day it would have been called damn bad manners.”

  “Oh, it just happened; Jim wouldn’t think—it wouldn’t make any difference at the Waterton house.”

  “Susie Coldfield ought to know better.”

  “She wouldn’t think either; it wouldn’t be much fun down at our house, just playing cards, the four of us. They have darts in the game room. Susie likes to jump around on the spur of the moment, you know, not keep tied down to anything.”

  “That’s a silly pose, old stuff.”

  “They have a little roulette wheel downstairs.”

  “I gather,” said Gamadge, after they had done some eating in silence, “that the four of you are on pretty easy terms—old friends and neighbors?”

  “Yes, we always knew the Watertons and the Coldfields. Our house is right in Cliffside village.”

  “Must be very pleasant up here in Summer—tennis, golf, everything.”

  “Sam and I haven’t so much time any more. Sam’s in medical school at Columbia, and Grandpa got me a job as receptionist in a doctor’s office—three doctors, in fact.”

  “Shouldn’t think you’d have time to eat, if you do all the appointments and everything.”

  “I keep the books, too; I had a course.”
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br />   Another silence, which Gamadge broke: “Your brother was absolutely right; I don’t know why you bothered to come.”

  “I had to; everybody knows Sam and what he’s like, but if I’d refused—I think it would have hurt their feelings.”

  Their eyes met again, hers black and bold. “People get absorbed,” he said, “at certain times in their lives.”

  “Yes, but I wish I’d had time to dress.”

  “You were cracking those lobsters. Nobody really dressed, on account of me. I hadn’t meant to stay for dinner.”

  “Oh, is that why Susie didn’t dress?” She gave him the bright smile. “I rather wondered.”

  “Wonder not, nor admire not. Take things as they come, and if possible shoot them back.”

  “You’re very nice, aren’t you?” Miss Smyth sat back as Agnes removed her plate.

  “Me? No. Not particularly.”

  “I don’t see why Susie never mentioned you before.”

  “She never heard of me before. I’m a friend of Mrs. Glendon Coldfield’s. I just came up to get some luggage for her.”

  She looked greatly surprised. “Oh—are you?” And as her dessert was put down, she asked, her eyes lowered: “Where is she?”

  “Mrs. Glendon Coldfield? You a friend of hers?”

  “I liked her very much; but of course she hardly knew me. I was sorry she had to go to the sanatorium.”

  “Your grandfather tell you about it?”

  “Oh no, Susie did. He never talks about his cases. I just wondered where she’s staying.”

  “Hotel.”

  Georgette Coldfield now turned to Gamadge again, but Miss Smyth was not taken into the conversation anywhere else. She sat quietly eating her frozen custard and fruit, quite ignored. She simply hadn’t been able to stay at home among the ruins of her party. Waterton, the great oaf, thought Gamadge, was perfectly capable of thinking she would have a fine time up here; Susan had thoughts only for him. But the elders were not doing anything for the little Smyth girl.

  Don’t worry, thought Gamadge, she isn’t going to get him back again.

  But what a beating for her to take, just to be able to look at him now and then—without raising her head, an upward glance that he wouldn’t notice or have to respond to. And she wasn’t by any means the clinging vine type, either—perhaps he was her only weakness. She had a firm mouth—a little thin—and a good shape of head, and plenty of width of skull. Not a fool by any means.

  Mrs. Coldfield was speaking to Agnes: “We’ll have coffee here, Agnes, we’ll be going straight down to the game room.”

  Gamadge said: “I mustn’t get into a game, I have to dash for home no matter what the weather’s like.”

  “The rain stopped, sir,” said Agnes confidentially.

  “Oh, has it? That’s good. But Mrs. Coldfield, I was to have a look first at the relics, you know; up attic.”

  Ames asked, highly amused, “You really meant it? I’ll take you myself.”

  “We’ll all go up,” declared Susan.

  Zelma Smyth murmured: “Susie and I used to dress up in the clothes until they had to lock the trunks. I wore that dress lots of times.” The motion of her head indicated Serene’s portrait. “I couldn’t get into it now; tiny little waist, and those slippers—there’s nothing to them. I don’t know how they stayed on.”

  “Perfect ladies didn’t walk around in them,” said Ames. “How glad I am, Mr. Gamadge, that you will only know her as she is there. She ended quite mummified, you know, and not quite a human piece of desiccation either: more like the remains of a bird of prey. Now Ira, don’t frown, you know all about it.”

  Mrs. Coldfield rose, everybody rose. They went out into the hall and climbed the wide staircase—two flights and then they were in the upper hall. There was the third floor back, its door open, and another open door next to it; the Glendon Coldfield suite, empty as a tomb. No more Glendon Coldfields. What was the matter with all these people? They never even glanced that way, and only one of them was a murderer.

  A big attic extended across the front of the house, with windows overlooking the drive. It looked tight and dry, and it was crowded with trunks, furniture and pictures: huge Saratoga trunks, little hoop-lidded trunks, heavy walnut dressers and chests of drawers, a towering headboard and footboard that had once been assembled into a double bed, pale-blue satin chairs and ottomans, engravings in pale-blue velvet frames. One dresser reached the low ceiling, with a full-length mirror between little marble-topped sets of drawers. There was a set of ornate steel fire irons and a painted fire-screen.

  Ames stood in the middle of the place with extended arms. “Serene as she lived. Note the quart-sized perfume bottles, and the glove-box like an infant’s coffin—to hold those long, long gloves unwrinkled.”

  Zelma Smyth had gone over to the row of trunks, and was trying the lid of one: “It’s still locked.”

  “No, no,” said Mrs. Coldfield impatiently, “that’s full of junk of ours now.”

  Zelma opened another trunk and was pulling out lace and silk. Gamadge wandered along the walls, fingering loose objects. He came to a little rosewood writing box.

  “This is nice,” he said. “Better not let Mr. Venner get his hands on it.”

  Ames joined him. “What? Oh, the desk. Ira, here’s the desk with Grandfather’s letters in it.”

  Susan had been rooting in a drawer. “Here are the fans,” she said. “Now they really are something, Mr. Gamadge. But what on earth is this?”

  She was holding a cardboard box without a cover, and peering into it. Waterton came to look over her shoulder.

  “Well, what do you know?”

  “What is it, Jimmie, anyway?”

  “Be a detective in ten easy lessons. It’s a fingerprint outfit.”

  Everybody crowded to look. There was a little roller, a glass plate, a bottle of printer’s ink and a bottle of grey powder; all neatly fitted in, and very clean.

  Ames burst out laughing. “You remember, Ira, when Glen sent for it? All the rage, twenty-five years ago. He took all our prints, and the cook’s and his own. Nobody came into the house but he got prints off them. Imagine his keeping it!”

  “But why here?” asked Ira.

  “Oh, things get poked away.”

  Gamadge was looking at the outfit in a kind of dream. Yes, Glendon Coldfield had got his evidence, all right; and then his wife and Gamadge and the cat Junior had gummed it up for him.

  CHAPTER ELEVENWrong Side of the Tracks

  SUSAN PUT THE OUTFIT BACK into the drawer, and Gamadge helped her to close it. He was looking at the spangled, feathered, painted fans, when he heard his name. Turning, he saw Zelma Smyth peering at him over a crumpled, yellowing mass of furbelows. She was smiling like a conspirator.

  “My dear child,” said Ames, coming up behind him, “I beg of you! You look like Miss Havisham.”

  “They didn’t get repacked properly.”

  “You try to do it,” said Georgette.

  Ira was laughing. “I think they must have been dressed up in once or twice too often,” he said. “Perhaps we’d better get rid of the clothes, anyhow, Georgy.”

  “You think anybody’d want the musty things? I’ll have Lefferts burn them.”

  Ames had opened the rosewood desk; it was packed with big, square, shiny white envelopes, tied up with pink tape in packets.

  “Now here, Mr. Gamadge,” he said, looking roguish, “I have a real treat for you. Grandfather Coldfield’s letters to his wife, which—being intensely conventional—she preserved as you see. Glendon and I did have a go at them after she died, but we didn’t get far. However, you as an antiquarian… You observe that there is no deception, I pick one out at random. I have entire confidence in Grandfather, and I am sure you will get the fine full flavor of him in any letter he ever penned.”

  Ames removed the closely written sheets of paper from the envelope, squinted at them and sighed.

  “Old-fashioned man,” he said. “T
hose silly long esses, and that deceptive flow that looks easy to read and isn’t. Here we are.”

  He read in a mincing voice:

  Paris, June fifth, 1880

  My dear Wife:

  I hope you are well and having pleasant weather at home. I had my usual attack of Cramps yesterday, after eating shellfish the night before; I had to dine with those men from the Bourse. But the Cholera mixture in the medicine case put me right.

  I suppose you had better let Jenks mend the kitchen roof, but do not sign anything until we see what happens after the Autumn rains. The estimate may not prove so reasonable after all.

  I executed your commission the other day, or did so as well as I could in the circumstances. You wanted twelve pairs of thirty-button white gloves and twelve pairs of openwork black silk stockings, but prices have gone up, and I am afraid that your dress allowance would not stand the strain. You must have calculated on the old basis. So I am bringing you six pairs of each…

  Shrieks and howls of laughter drowned his voice. He looked up with an expression of hurt surprise, folded the letter, restored it to its envelope, and put it back among the others.

  When he could be heard, he remarked smugly: “Grandfather in a nutshell.”

  “Oh, poor Great-grandmother,” moaned Susan. “I hope she got even with him somehow.”

  “The type has its virtues,” said Ira, still laughing. “He sounds to me like a very sensible man. An allowance is an allowance, after all, isn’t it?”

  “You listen to this, Susie,” said Waterton, his hand in her arm. “Just what you need, perhaps.”

  “You ought to hear the struggles over my allowance!”

  “Well, it was a good roof,” said Ames. “It’s still there.”

  “And now,” said Gamadge, “after a very gratifying experience all round, I must really go.”

  Susan and Waterton shook hands, said it had been nice meeting him, and then rushed out into the hall and could be heard leaping down the stairs. The others followed, and were met by Agnes in the front hall.