Any Shape or Form (11 page)

“You know Mr. Malcolm pretty well, Mrs. Drummond? You sound as though you did.”

Her color heightened. “We all try to do what we can for him. He needs amusement. He's been through so much. Didn't you know?”

“I heard something. Well, you don't seem to have information that's likely to be of use to us. You didn't see a soul going through that wicket gate or coming out of it after you came out of it yourself. That right?”

“Yes.”

“That'll be all for now.”

She got up, stood there a moment as if trying to make up her mind to say something more, and then walked slowly across the studio to the door. Mosson held it for her.

“Well,” he said, returning to his seat, “she had a little fun with you at first, Griggs. I hope she isn't disappointed in the professionals.”

“She ought to trust us to remember Miss Malcolm,” said Griggs. “That was a raw steer.”

“I must say I shouldn't have thought she could work out the thing as well as she did.”

“I bet she'd have Malcolm,” said Griggs, “whether he'd done it or not. She's in love with him, all right. Ten years younger, is he? That makes it worse. She wouldn't tell us if she'd seen him go in there and come out on the dead run.”

“Who would tell us what?” asked Mosson. “Would Drummond give her away? Or give Miss Malcolm away? Would the Malcolms give each other or the Drummonds away? Would Redfield give any of them away? Oh, how I hate this case.”

“And if it was both the Malcolms,” said Griggs, “how do we show collusion?”

“And if anybody else tells us that it was an insane person from somewhere,” said Mosson, “I'll certainly show temper. Why didn't you keep on at her about Malcolm, Griggs? Here Alice the maid gives you a nice tip, and you don't take it.”

Griggs said angrily: “All the evidence points to Malcolm being tired of Mrs. Drummond. Why should she kill his stepmother so he'd get the money, and divorce his wife, and marry
her
—after she'd divorced Drummond—if he's tired of her?”

“I'm surprised at you. Malcolm pretends to be tired of her so that when she does commit the murder they won't be suspected of conspiracy.” Mosson turned his cynical smile upon Gamadge, who had resumed his seat and was looking at the fire. “What do you say to that, Gamadge?”

“Don't ask me questions yet,” said Gamadge, without moving. “I'm trying to adjust my mind to all this. I'm trying to make myself believe that one of these people may be a murderer. It's not so easy, you know. I didn't imagine it this afternoon, when I allowed the deceased to stand up against a tree and wait to be shot at. And yet I knew the obvious motive for the murder then, and could have guessed at less obvious ones; I knew the gun was there, loaded. There was ill feeling in the air, plenty of it, too. But I didn't feel murder in the air, Mosson.”

“It doesn't as a rule advertise itself,” said Mosson, looking ironically at him.

“Well, it often does.”

“We'll have Drummond in.” Griggs went over to the door, opened it a crack, barked: “Mr. Drummond!” and waited. If he feared that remarks from the studio might seep out among the occupants of the living room he need have been under no such apprehension. Gamadge and Mosson waited in silence.

Walter Drummond came in with long, lurching strides, stopped, and looked at Officer Ames, at Gamadge, and at Mosson. Gamadge returned the look with a new interest. Drummond's sunburn was the kind that repeats itself at every weekend; peels, and blisters. His nose was peeling now, but in spite of the disfigurement Gamadge realized that he was a very good-looking man. But his clipped moustache concealed the length of a long and obstinate upper lip, which looked more than ever obstinate now.

He said rather loudly: “The party needn't have been inside the rose garden at all; might have stood at the corner outside and then thrown the gloves and rifle over the trellis. Those squares of turf—Johnny doesn't remember anything about them. That woman—the dead woman—just crazy enough to go down there and dig them herself. Nobody could follow
her
line of thought. I mean, it's unfair to assume that the gun was fired by a small person trying to make it look as though it might have been a taller person. It isn't fair.”

Gamadge had never seen him so eager.

“Well, Mr. Drummond,” said Griggs, “it would have been a big risk. Won't you sit down?”

Drummond looked about him vaguely, and then came forward and sat in the middle chair in front of the table. He said: “It was an outside job, and the party was insane.”

Lieutenant Griggs and Gamadge shot a quick look at the State's Attorney; but Mosson restrained himself from unprofessional behavior. He merely put his fingertips together, and looked at Drummond with a faint smile.

Drummond's large and square hands clasped the arms of his chair. He sat forward, as if he might at any moment spring up again. How old was he? Forty or more? He went on talking:

“The woman was daft. How do we know what enemies she had? I mean you can't go by guesswork. Any good lawyer—”

“We haven't got as far as the trial yet, Mr. Drummond,” said Griggs. “Or as far as lawyers; unless you want one.”

“I don't want a lawyer.”

“You'll tell us what you did this afternoon, from the time you left the house with Miss Malcolm?”

“Certainly. We went straight down to the flower garden.”

“You didn't care to watch your wife and Mr. Malcolm shoot crows?”

“No. We heard the shots. But Miss Malcolm didn't stay—she went off to see about her croquet game.”

“You didn't care for that idea?”

“I'll explain.” Drummond's hands slid back and forth along the arms of his chair. “I was going to cut flowers for Redfield. The thing is, we've been neighbors—his family and mine have—for generations. Good neighbors, you know. Obliged each other with produce and so on when needed. We always made a point of swapping stuff in season—and flowers. Perhaps you know what flowers mean in the country? In these old houses?”

Griggs making no reply, he went on:

“Redfield sent snapdragon and things over to us earlier in the season, picked it himself. We were going to reciprocate with dahlias and zinnias, we thought it was going to be a good crop. But they didn't pan out to much after all, and the frost finished them. So today I thought I could at least cut some of his own things for him, if there should happen to be any. The cosmos—I didn't care for the look of it. Ragged, fading. That stuff has to be fresh, and I never did think it was much in the house. Not showy enough. There aren't many flowers except roses that look like anything in a small vase, either; but those button chrysanthemums are useful anywhere.”

Talkative, Drummond was; extraordinarily talkative for him.

Griggs listened to his horticultural information with patience. When he came to a stop, however, Griggs was tapping his papers with a knotty finger.

“You're not here much nowadays, Mr. Drummond, I think?”

“No, only weekends and holidays. The younger men in the office are overseas.”

“You were down there in that garden from about five minutes past five until five thirty-five or more. That's a long time to spend picking a bunch of chrysanthemums.”

“I wandered around, smoked a couple of cigarettes, looked the place over. The way anybody does in a garden.”

“Or a greenhouse.”

Drummond gazed at him blankly.

“But the important point for us is that you happened to be behind that cosmos so often. You were there when your wife and Malcolm came through after they shot the crows. You were there when Malcolm went back on his way down to the swimming pool. You didn't see them, and they didn't see you.”

“That's so.”

“And you must have been there again later; since you don't volunteer any statement to the effect that Malcolm never passed through the place again. Such a statement would clear him.”

Drummond, still gazing at Lieutenant Griggs, said: “I didn't see him. Naturally I'd clear him if I could.”

“Naturally.”

“You don't get the layout of the place. If I was at the far end of it with my back turned—looking at a border, and so on—I wouldn't see anybody. I wouldn't have to be behind the cosmos. I wouldn't hear anybody, either; those paths are all turfed. It's only a few yards—the trip from the gate to where you go down into the orchard.”

Mosson said: “Too bad.”

Drummond turned to look at him: “I don't think the boy did it.”

“Any reason for thinking so?”

“He'd just been using the rifle. Wouldn't use it again to commit a murder; or anyhow, in his place I shouldn't have.”

“But he's supposed to be such a clever young man; cleverer than you or I.”

Drummond said nothing.

“He knew where the rifle was,” continued Mosson. “He knew that Mrs. Malcolm was wandering around the place. He needn't have planned a shot through the vines; that was luck—seeing her at that spot in the rockery, with light coming down just there through the trees. He could have got her anywhere on the place, and at longer range. Gamadge couldn't have prevented it, or found him later. He'd have his line of retreat all ready. But he or somebody did fire from the rose garden—I'm sorry to reject your theory of the party standing where Gamadge
could
have seen him, outside the place. And if it was Malcolm—well, you'll forgive the suggestion; this is an investigation of a murder—perhaps he thought that his friend's husband and his sister's friend would swear he hadn't gone through the flower garden twice again.”

Drummond, slowly turning dark red under his sunburn, uttered no word.

“And though you don't say he went through, you don't say he didn't; which cancels out,” said Mosson, “and leaves us where we were.”

Drummond spoke at last: “You're telling me I'm lying?”

“I'm giving you the lawyer's point of view. You should know it as well as I do.”

“I don't know whether he went through or not. I don't think he did it,” said Drummond.

“Let me offer you a theory of my own; it eliminates deliberate murder, and yet it keeps the party who fired the rifle inside that rose garden. I don't know what you'll think of the idea.” Mosson put his fingertips together. “Suppose we imagine a person—young person, unstable temperament, somebody who didn't like Mrs. Malcolm, and—er—a moral coward. The young person comes into, or comes back into, the rose garden at approximately five twenty-five. Sees Gamadge and Mrs. Malcolm walking up to the rockery. Wanders over to that statue, or whatever it is, and picks up the rifle. Thinks of shooting another crow, wanders back to the archway, and dodges along to the right, watching Mrs. Malcolm through the vines. Sights her up there against the tree, and aims the rifle—as a child would, you know. Psychology comes into it. Well: a twig catches in the trigger, or somehow it goes off. Psychopathology now? I think the late Freud says there
are
no accidents.

“Bang! The woman's dead. The joker's life's ruined. Or is it? Perhaps not, if the gardener's gloves are put on and the rifle well rubbed off; if those sods are piled. It would take pluck to wait and do that, but it would have taken more pluck to own up.”

Drummond said after a long silence: “I don't think that happened. I don't think the rifle was put through the vines at all. I say it was done from outside, by an outsider.”

“All right, Mr. Drummond,” said Griggs.

Drummond stood upright and went as if blindly out of the studio.

“No special animus against Malcolm, I should say,” Griggs reflected aloud. He had closed the door, but stood beside it.

“Didn't like Mrs. Malcolm,” said Mosson.
“Might
have had an understanding with Cora Malcolm, and done the job for her. But in that case, why is he so all-fired anxious to keep the shooting out of the rose garden?”

Nobody told him.

C
ORA MALCOLM CAME
into the room, quiet and grave. She walked directly over to the table behind which Griggs was standing with a solemn look on his face, and stood as if waiting for further orders; she did not seem to be aware of Mosson's presence, or of Gamadge's, until the latter introduced the State's Attorney and the lieutenant of state police. Then she nodded to them.

“Please sit here, Miss Malcolm,” said Griggs, “so I can talk to you about this tragedy. Now let's see. You left this house this afternoon with Mr. Drummond. Where did you go?”

She was looking at him intently. “Down to the lower garden. I didn't stay, because Mr. Drummond only had his pocketknife; you can't cut flowers without a knife or clippers.”

“Neither of you thought of that before you started?”

“No, for some reason we didn't. I think we were thinking more of its being a stroll.”

“Mr. Drummond wasn't; he had a long story for us about owing Mr. Redfield snapdragons or something; I can't remember a quarter of it, but Officer Ames there took notes; he'll read them to you if you like.”

“No, thanks. I meant that
I
was thinking of it as a stroll.”

“Mr. Drummond seemed to want to put it over about getting flowers for Mr. Redfield; but perhaps that was because he spent such a long time down there, away from everybody, and wanted to account for it.”

“If that was his explanation, it's the true one.”

“We can absolutely depend on his word, can we?”

“Yes.” She added: “At least
I
think so.”

“Getting the flowers wasn't just an excuse given to get you off for a private talk?”

“No.”

“It looks as if he asked you down for a private talk, and you ran out on him. Afterwards you both kept away from the party for half an hour; I don't know whether I'm imagining things, but it looks funny to me.”