The House without the Door (2 page)

Colby followed Gamadge's look about the room. He said: "She just brought some things out of the Bellfield house."

"Apparently."

"She doesn't take much interest in fixing places up any more. She's hardly touched the house and grounds up at Pine Lots, and she doesn't bother with the garden there. She had quite a garden at Bellfield."

"She hadn't much scope here. You might have left her a fireplace, old man."

Colby was again irritated. "People don't want them. They make dirt, and the wood has to be brought up. Besides, we needed the flues for our pipes."

"I bet you did."

"You're not in the real estate business."

That's true.

"She doesn't really live at all, not what you and I would call living," muttered Colby. "She's out of it; out of it."

Gamadge looked at a round marble-topped table with spreading legs; he imagined a family seated about it, reading, sewing, playing draughts. He turned as a door in the north wall opened. Colby said: "Mrs. Gregson, this is my friend Henry Gamadge."

A medium-sized woman came forward and lighted the yellow lamp. Then, after a moment during which she stood silent, looking at Gamadge, she spoke in a rather high, monotonous voice. "I'm very glad you could come, Mr. Gamadge. Won't you and Mr. Colby sit down?"

She seated herself at the end of a velvet-covered sofa. Gamadge and Colby disposed of their hats and coats on a settee, and moved chairs to face her. There was a pause, during which Gamadge politely studied the woman who had been photographed so often two and a half years before. But those photographs had shown a conservative small-town matron, her clothes just escaping dowdiness, her personality obscured by rigid conformity to type. The features of the celebrated Mrs. Curtis Gregson had been commonplace, even under stress.

He was looking at a Mrs. Gregson transformed. She had indeed made an effort to change herself, and the effort had been a success. Her thick dark hair was dressed plainly and fashionably off her high forehead, her eyebrows had been shaped into a soaring line. Her straight mouth had been given form by a very slight application of colour; but her squarish face, which Gamadge had read or been told of as rosy, was now pale. She was perfectly groomed, her dark dress beautifully made and fitted. Her fine stockings and delicate shoes had not been bought in Bellfield, Connecticut. The bag she carried matched her shoes, and no doubt had been made to match them. Mrs. Gregson, in adopting a disguise, had forced herself out of the ranks into elegance.

But the squarish face, if no longer commonplace, was no longer anything. It was a blank, except for the look in her dark, well-shaped eyes. There was blankness in them, too, but it was not the blankness of mental vacuity; after three years they showed amazement; the shock of a great surprise.

"So this is how they look afterwards, is it?" Gamadge asked himself the question, and answered it: "They've looked into the abyss; it's all they see."

There were only two objects in the room that might be supposed to express her personal tastes; a woman's magazine, lying open on a table, and a book beside it. The magazine showed a full-page picture in colours of people feeding peacocks on a green lawn, with a lake and mountains in the distance; the book was Osbert Sitwell's
Escape With Me
.

Colby's voice recalled him to a second contemplation of his hostess. "So Gamadge is taking it up as a favour to me," Colby was saying. "He's had some great successes. It's good of him, you know."

"Not at all," said Gamadge. He thought: "Her skin's like satin. She has time to try all the lotions. She can spend weeks planning and ordering a dress like that. She's probably learned to do her own hair—she wouldn't go to hairdressers."

"…don't know how I can thank him," said Mrs. Gregson.

"But I have no facilities, Mrs. Gregson," explained Gamadge. "I can only form opinions, and act on them to the best of my ability."

"If you'd only had him three years ago!" lamented Colby. "He'd have formed opinions then! The trouble is that he hadn't done any of this work three years ago. He didn't know he could."

"I am glad he knows now," said Mrs. Gregson.

Gamadge's eyes interrogated her quiet mask. It told him nothing; but if she had humour, and was being amused, he couldn't let her think him too conceited to see the joke.

"Satire," he said, "is called for. Colby exaggerates."

"Satire?" Her dark eyes questioned him. "What did I say?"

"Nothing; I'm always afraid people will think I take my investigating too seriously. You mustn't bank on me, Mrs. Gregson. I'm a bungling amateur. As I was saying to Colby, this case entails a tremendous responsibility on the investigator; I hardly dare embark on it."

"I must consult someone. I hoped you'd do what you could."

"Are you sure you won't consult the police? They have facilities, you know, and they can be discreet."

Mrs. Gregson was about to reply, but Colby spoke for her with some violence; his short, reddish moustache seemed to bristle as he said: "She's had enough of that! She wants a decent, intelligent human being to work for her, not a system that nearly wrecked her, or a cynical, hard-boiled lawyer!"

"Applegate is a bit tough," agreed Gamadge.

"I have plenty of money, Mr. Gamadge." The irony of the words had probably ceased to impress her, but they impressed her listeners. "I'll pay you whatever you ask."

"No results, no bill." Gamadge smiled at her. "If I can't help you solve this problem, I won't ask for anything."

She looked shocked. "You'll have expenses!"

"I'll keep a record of them." Gamadge leaned back, crossed his knees, and got out a notebook and a pencil. "Colby's given me an outline; will you fill it in?"

"One minute." Colby turned his head to frown at the open lobby door. "Do we want Mrs. Stoner in on this?"

Mrs. Gregson asked drily: "Do you think she's been stifling in that kitchenette all this time? She was just going out when you came. I wish you'd stop worrying about poor Minnie Stoner, Mr. Colby; really I do."

"I don't know how you have the nerve to keep the woman in the house with you."

"She doesn't sleep here," said Mrs. Gregson, smiling a little. "She sleeps in a boarding-house."

"You're not to take her back to Pine Lots with you, mind!" He got up, went into the lobby, looked about him, and returned, closing the door after him. "She's gone, all right," he said.

"Of course she's gone. I might as well suspect you, Mr. Colby, as Minnie Stoner."

"You don't want to suspect anybody."

"No, I don't. That's why I'm consulting Mr. Gamadge."

"You'd have the lot of them here with you if you had room for them, even now."

Mrs. Gregson glanced at her other guest with resignation. "Mrs. Stoner's in a dreadful state about it all," she said. "Mr. Colby doesn't know her."

"You let Gamadge be the judge of all that sort of thing from now on," Colby admonished her.

'As far as suspecting people goes," said Gamadge, "you'll find me no better than the police. Now, let's see: it was in July, wasn't it, that you got that letter?"

"I
T WASN'T THE FIRST,"
said Mrs. Gregson. "I've had one every year since they let me go."

Gamadge made a note in his book, and then looked up at her. She was leaning back against a cushion of old-gold satin with brown velvet corners; it was a well-preserved relic, and it made an excellent background for her pallor and the fine black of her dress. She wore no ornaments. Her ringless hands lay clasped loosely on her lap, her feet in their exquisite shoes were crossed. Gamadge thought: "That's where her calendar begins—'since they let her go. She had travelled a fearful road, and now she was resting beside a milestone; hoping, perhaps, that she might not have to go on.'" Resting physically, at least; but who knew whether there was mental rest in stupor?

"So this is the third?"

She picked up her bag and opened it. "Yes. I have it for you."

"Didn't you keep the others?"

"No, I thought they were from a crank. I threw them away." She handed Gamadge a greyish envelope, oblong, ugly, and crookedly stamped. The address was printed neatly in block letters.

"Did you get many crank letters?" Gamadge studied the envelope, opened it, and took out a single sheet of cheap paper.

"Yes, but most of them came before the trial. They weren't like these. The first two of these only said: 'Curtis Gregson's murderer is still at large.'"

The rather high, naïve, monotonous voice spoke the words as if familiarity had removed the horror from them. Colby mumbled something. Gamadge looked once more at the envelope. He said: "This is addressed to Mrs. Curtis Gregson, Bellfield, Connecticut. It's postmarked July 15th, New York City, Station Y—that's in the East Sixties. Was it forwarded to you as an enclosure?"

"Yes, Mr. Canning at the Mandeville Trust attends to all my affairs; he's the only one there that knows my new name or where I live now. He puts all my Gregson letters into envelopes and sends them up to Burford."

Gamadge laid the envelope down and read aloud from the sheet of paper:

"Curtis Gregson's murderer must remain at large no longer." He glanced at her. "These things must have frightened you very much."

"Well, I thought they were just from cranks. But this last one—I thought I'd better show it to Mr. Colby when I saw him. I hate to bother him, he's been so good."

"May I keep it?"

"Of course."

"It looks rather like a fixed idea, you know, and fixed ideas are pretty close to madness." Gamadge put the letter into its envelope, and the envelope into his breast pocket. "You received it on what date?"

"July 18th."

"Mailed to you on the 15th, reached Bellfield the next day, and the bank on the 17th. Colby's notes tell me that the first episode you wish to consult me about occurred on August 15th. Did you connect these three letters with it?"

"Not then. I did later. I didn't connect anything with the first episode. I thought the second one was an accident, too."

"Tell me about the first one. It and the second occurred in the country, I think?"

"Yes, we were up at Pine Lots. Minnie Stoner and I live together there. I've bought her a little annuity; she's quite independent, but she wants to stay with me. Pine Lots is about two miles beyond Burford, and the country is beautiful. We live alone—I never have servants. A farmer down the road takes care of the place, and sells us milk and eggs and things. He's the only other person on the road—between us and Burford, I mean; or rather, between us and the highway. Burford is farther down."

Colby said: "I never liked you to shut yourselves up there. Apart from all the rest of it, Mrs. Stoner is the last person you ought to be with; she's a constant reminder—"

"Who else is there, Mr. Colby? I can't face strangers."

"There isn't any chance that you'd be recognized."

"I'm afraid there is. I can't risk it."

"Well, all that's to be changed now. Mrs. Stoner is thick with the Warren girl and Benton Locke."

"She was always fond of them."

Gamadge's hand had gone automatically to his pocket; and had extracted a cigarette case from it. He was about to replace the battered silver relic, but Mrs. Gregson had seen it.

She said: "Oh, I'm so sorry. Won't you and Mr. Colby smoke?"

There was no ashtray in the room, but Gamadge fetched a cut-glass bonbon dish from a table, gratefully lighted his cigarette, and watched Colby gratefully light one. He thought it very characteristic of Mrs. Gregson that cigarettes, tea, and afternoon refreshments should not be part of her daily scheme of life.

"My cousin Cecilia Warren comes up to see me, sometimes," she went on, "and so does my husband's adopted son, Benny Locke. They're too busy to come often, but they manage it two or three times a year."

Colby burst out: "I should think they would manage it!"

"Well, it's dull, you know, and they can't always get off. They sometimes come together, in Benny's car—they both live in New York. I suppose you've heard of them, Mr. Gamadge?"

"They lived with you and your husband in Bellfield."

"Yes. The night he died they, and Minnie Stoner, and the cook, were the only people in the house except me."

"They both gave evidence at the trial, I believe."

Mrs. Gregson said yes, they had given evidence.

"Good friends, are they?"

"They always got on well enough; she's older, you know. She's twenty-nine. Benny is only twenty-two."

"How old is Mrs. Stoner?"

"Sixty-five."

"She is no relation, I think?"

"No, she was a great friend of my mother-in-law's. My husband was fond of her, and when he realized that she was in poor circumstances he took her to live with us. She insisted on doing a great deal of housework. She's very conscientious." Gamadge made a note, and Mrs. Gregson paused for a moment, and then took up her story: "On Friday, August 15th, we expected Celia and Benny for supper and the weekend. Benny was driving up, but Celia had to come by train. She didn't know whether it would be the one that gets to Burford at seven-three, or the seven twenty-two. She is secretary-companion to an old lady, and her time isn't her own.