Any Shape or Form (16 page)

Griggs had paused in his march. He said with a smile: “Perhaps Mr. Gamadge is thinking that if anything happened to Malcolm his wife could come into half the Malcolm money.”

“She would,” agreed Gamadge, “if anything short of conviction of murder happened to him.”

“Don't worry. Even if she's the homicidal maniac Redfield's friends have been hoping for,” said Griggs dryly, “she wouldn't try anything until the house was quiet. It isn't quiet yet. They all went up early, just after half-past nine, and it isn't a quarter past ten.”

Gamadge said: “Not much in the idea, I agree with you, but I'll go up now.”

Griggs said irritably: “Mr. Gamadge, I think you're—”

But Gamadge was never to know what Griggs thought of him. A broken, rising scream made them all jerk up their heads to stare at the ceiling, and then they made a run for the studio door. Gamadge was nearest it, and was on Stromer's heels as he dashed up the stairs.

The screaming came from the south wing. Drummond appeared in his doorway as Gamadge passed it, clad in pajamas and looking half awake. He joined the runners. Cora Malcolm, standing in
her
doorway, gazed after them. David Malcolm ran down the north corridor.

“Blanche!” shouted Drummond. “Blanche! That's Blanche!”

Stromer had reached her door, and hammered on it. He panted: “She don't answer. And it's locked.”

“Break it down,” shouted Drummond, pushing forward.

“No, no,” gasped Redfield. “Quicker through Mrs. David's room.”

They streamed back to the main hall, and around an angle. Griggs was first at a door opposite Cora Malcolm's; he turned the knob and went in.

He stopped short for a moment, and Gamadge could see over his shoulder. Blanche Drummond stood in the bathroom doorway and across the room; her hands clasped her head, her mouth was open, her hair tumbled on her shoulders. She wore a tailored satin robe, long and trailing. Her staring eyes were fixed on the body of Mrs. David Malcolm, which lay face downwards between her and the bed. It was fully dressed, except for the hat, which lay with her handbag on a table near the windows, and its arms were outstretched and pointing towards the bath. The yellow hair, thick and curly, was matted and stained.

The bed extended from the wall beside the doorway; near it and on the floor lay a bronze, vase-shaped lamp, its cord still attached to the plug in the baseboard. Its shade had fallen off, and Griggs had stepped on it.

B
LANCHE DRUMMOND
lifted her eyes from the body that lay almost at her feet, but her witless stare did not fix itself on Griggs or on the crowd pressing behind him; it wandered. She put her arms out in front of her as if she were groping, and her knees gave way. Drummond shouldered past Griggs and caught her as she fell.

He carried her through the bathroom, and kicked the door of her bedroom shut behind him. Griggs watched him go with a scowl, but did not protest. He knelt down on one knee beside the dead woman, while Stromer shoved Gamadge aside and stood with his arms across the doorway.

But Gamadge had seen the long and narrow bed jutting out on the right, the night table which had held the lamp, the fallen lamp itself. A murderer need have been only a step within the room to strike Mrs. Malcolm down as she turned away.

Gamadge had seen something else. A light candlewick spread had covered bed and pillow loosely; it now lay in a crumpled mass, as if it had been snatched up and flung down again.

Bright light came from a wall bracket over the dresser, and fell on flowered wallpaper, white curtains, white-painted furniture. Not a guest room of the first class, according to Redfield's standards, but a pleasant one, and spotless until now. Not a big room, since the bath had been sliced off it when it had been incorporated into the guest suite of the new wing.

Centrally located, too, opposite Cora Malcolm on the main corridor. Drummond's room was not far along at the head of the stairs, Malcolm's down the north wing, a few yards away.

Griggs looked over his shoulder: “Stromer, get these people downstairs. No: telephone. Then get hold of the outside man, and come back and get the crowd into the studio. Nobody's to leave the hall until you're back. Redfield?”

“Yes.” Johnny stood in the hall beside the Malcolms, his face vacant and pale.

“You'll have to go with the rest. I'm no doctor, but I've seen a lot of bodies and I've seen a lot of blood. This woman has been dead nearer three-quarters of an hour than one, and you were upstairs just after nine-thirty, and you didn't join me in the studio until a couple of minutes before ten.” He rose. “And she hadn't had time to take her clothes off.” He cast a stony look at the hat and handbag on the table, and at the silk wrapper, a rosy affair of thin figured material, which hung over a chair.

Redfield said confusedly: “Of course. My God. Anything.”

Stromer had already pounded down to the hall, and was dialing.

“Gamadge,” said Lieutenant Griggs. “Yes.”

“Go and rout that Wirtz woman out and send her along to see after Mrs. Drummond. Tell Drummond he's to go down to the studio. If he objects, let me know. Time's past for that kind of thing and making exceptions.”

Gamadge turned. Redfield stood listless as if incapable of thought or motion; he did not look at the Malcolms. They seemed quite stunned themselves. Shoulder to shoulder, dressed in dark robes over pajamas—silk robes of the same Chinese brocade pattern, though his was brown, hers plum-colored—they were like two youths from another century, brothers of the Renaissance.

Malcolm said: “You didn't hear anything, Cora?” She shook her head. “We were talking, you remember.”

“Talking, talking,” said Malcolm, with a faint smile.

“You wouldn't hear anything,” muttered Johnny. “Thick walls, thick doors; oh Lord, oh Lord.”

Gamadge went down the north corridor. He glanced into Malcolm's open doorway as he passed it. There were books on a table, and most of them were paper-covered and French. Not Redfield's. Redfield's tastes were limited. Malcolm was evidently one of those persons who doesn't travel, even for a night, without his books.

It was difficult to make Tilly hear his knock; very difficult—when she did open the door—to make her understand what had happened and what was wanted of her. Aghast, she stood in her magenta woolen dressing gown and her red felt slippers with pompoms, her hair in a pink net, and looked at him from glassy, watering, pale-blue eyes. But when she did understand, she accepted the situation in a way that Gamadge could only think of as cosmopolitan. Anything can happen in Middle Europe, everything has happened; why not here?

“Who killed the lady?” was her only question, and it was asked with more interest than anxiety. Whoever it was wouldn't kill
her,
if she kept out of the way.

“The police will find out. Did you see her, Tilly?”

“No, but Alice said she was de wife Mr. Malcolm peeked up in Europe.” Tilly added: “Dey peek dem up sometimes, de young men.”

The comment was adequate, and covered all that had been said in the kitchen about the late Mrs. David Malcolm.

Gamadge waited in the hall until Tilly was dressed, and then took her past Stromer to the first door in the south wing. He waited outside until she had gone in, heard her sympathetic voice murmur that something was too bad, and heard Drummond reply.

Gamadge called: “Sorry, Walter; we're wanted downstairs.”

Drummond came out; he looked ghastly.

“Blanche is knocked right out,” he said. “She ought to have a doctor, but she won't let me send for one. She ought to go home. Two dead women in the house, and now a lot more policemen. They can't ask her questions. She ought to be sent home.”

Gamadge made no reply. They went downstairs, found an officer in the lower hall, the one Gamadge had met that afternoon in the grounds, and were formally passed by him into the living room. Griggs was standing in front of the fire, Redfield sat collapsed on the settee.

“Oh—Drummond,” said Griggs, “will you go on into the studio?”

Drummond went into the studio and shut the door.

“I got them all down here,” said Griggs in his new angry tone, “so that Stromer could go through their rooms and baths. But they all had plenty of time to get off any blood they got on themselves—whatever can be got off. There's none on that spread; I suppose it was grabbed up and used as a screen, but it wasn't needed. We're having people up to make a regular search, a woman for Mrs. Drummond and Cora Malcolm. No use. Well, Mr. Gamadge: Mrs. David Malcolm didn't kill her stepmother-in-law, and she wasn't intending to kill her husband. And nobody got in this time!”

“No,” said Gamadge. He sat down opposite Redfield and got out his cigarettes.

“It's right in the family this time. The woman did come here earlier today than she said she did, and she was down in the grounds, and she saw enough to tell her who killed Mrs. Archibald Malcolm. After she went upstairs she got a word with the party, and I suppose she tried blackmail. Would you put that past her?”

“From what I saw of her, no.”

“Tough enough for that, wasn't she? And that's why she was so pleased with herself. She didn't lose a minute, and neither did he. A minute? He didn't lose a second. She probably hadn't more than got the words out of her mouth before he brained her.”

“He waited for her to turn away,” said Gamadge.

“And if you'll excuse me, Griggs,” said Johnny, “you're not thinking clearly. How could she blackmail David Malcolm? She couldn't give him away—he'd lose the money if she did.”

“Then who did she blackmail, Mr. Redfield?” asked Griggs, and Redfield was silent. “Drummond? If you don't mind, let's stick to the man who always had the big motive, and no strings to it. I suppose you'll admit that Malcolm would have liked to get rid of her?”

“But it would be madness—”

“It was madness for anybody to do it. Now let's have your story again. You went up to her room with her. What exactly happened then?”

“She took off her hat, and put it and her bag down somewhere. Then while I poked around seeing that she had magazines to read, and cigarettes, and so on, she stood in front of the dresser and did something to her hair. Then Blanche came in and gave her the dressing gown; and she made some joke or other, you know that disagreeable kind of humor she had, about their both being blondes, and Blanche using a darker shade of dye than Mrs. David cared for. Blanche was very cool and civil. She went off, and I looked into the bathroom and then left.”

“You turned on that light when you first came in?”

“Yes. There's a switch just beside the door.”

“How long were you in there, would you say?”

“Five minutes, not much more.”

“Now I expect frankness, Mr. Redfield: did she say anything about wanting a word with her husband?”

“No, I swear she didn't, Griggs. She said she was tired. No wonder.”

“It was early.”

“She said she was going to read. Something or other—one of the fashion magazines, I think—caught her fancy.”

“So far as you know, then, she was in there for the night?”

“Yes.”

“And Mrs. Drummond hadn't acted as if she intended to go back and have a chat with her?”

“Good heavens, no.”

“But she did go back.”

“Blanche will explain that.”

“I hope so. You went along to your rooms, then. You couldn't hear anything, if there had been anything to hear?” As Redfield looked inquiring, Griggs added: “The murderer would think you were in your suite for the night.”

“Oh—yes. No, I wouldn't hear anything. The suite is self-contained, you know, only one door. You go in by way of the study, and there's the bath and then my bedroom. Planned so that I
shouldn't
hear anything—the servants, or the vacuum cleaner, or my guests if they played the radio downstairs.”

“You were in there at least twenty minutes, Mr. Redfield, before you came down to the studio to talk to me and wait for Gamadge.”

“It was early, Griggs, as you reminded me just now. I couldn't think of bed. I had plenty of things to occupy me. I tried to listen to my radio, and I tried to look up papers and memoranda about the family plot, you know; I supposed I should bury my poor aunt in the plot in Old Bridge cemetery. I didn't know what arrangements she had made elsewhere, but I thought she probably had made none. I tried to write out a list of things I ought to do tomorrow. No good. I gave up and came downstairs.”

“
You
didn't want to talk to the Malcolms?”

“No; I didn't. I thought they'd prefer to be left to themselves.”

Griggs tapped the mantelshelf with heavy fingers.

“The killer came to that room as soon as you'd been watched into your suite. Knocked, and was let in. Just a step or two, and she came out with her news and the suggestion of blackmail. I dare say she'd given him the high sign earlier—plenty of chances down here while he was giving her a light for her cigarette or something. She turned away, and he grabbed up the vase. By its neck. It's a big, heavy thing, that lamp.”

“I got it in Italy,” said Redfield in his tired voice. “I bought it for an original, but they told me here that I'd been fooled. So I had it made into a lamp, and I put it in that bedroom—where it didn't belong—because the lamp that did belong there got broken.”

“Broken? When?”

“Oh, several years ago.”

“Did Malcolm know the bronze lamp was there?”

“He may have noticed it. Does a male guest notice such a thing?”

“Slept in that room, has he?”

“Sometimes, when we've had another guest in the room he usually has—the one he has now. When possible I put him in that suite in the north wing with his sister.”