The House without the Door (3 page)

"At about seven I started for the cellar, to get some strawberry preserves that Minnie and I made in June. I slipped on the top stair, and fell all the way down the flight to the cement floor. Fortunately, my knitted skirt had caught on a splinter half-way down, and it broke my fall. I got a bump on my head, and I hurt my knee, nothing worse than that. I think I was unconscious for a minute or two, but I'm glad to say that I woke up in time to hear Minnie coming along the passage from the kitchen. Before she got to the cellar stairs I screamed at her—I remember how I screamed."

Gamadge asked: "Where exactly was this splinter that appears to have saved your life?"

"On one of the posts. There's only one rail, and the stairs are very steep. It's a dangerous flight."

"Did you and Mrs. Stoner investigate the top step immediately, or were you too badly shaken up?"

"We both looked then. It wasn't exactly the top step, Mr. Gamadge; it was the sill of the door."

'And you found that there was some kind of grease on the sill?"

"Yes. We couldn't make out what it was—butter, or lard, or floor wax, or what. Minnie had been waxing the floors, so we couldn't go by the smell. There wasn't much of the grease."

"Just enough. How long could it have been there?"

"Quite long. Minnie hadn't been down to the cellar since noon." She added: "Minnie thought
I
must have dropped it there, but I knew I hadn't. She isn't young, and sometimes she does drop and spill things; I thought it was an accident, and I was a little annoyed. Perhaps it was, you know."

"An accident?" Colby laughed.

"That first time."

"Four times is too much! They were none of them accidents!"

"Perhaps three of them were. Well. Benny came in his car a little after seven—it's an hour and a half by car from New York, you know. Celia arrived in a station cab about half-past seven; she had caught the six-seventeen from New York, and got to Burford at seven twenty-two."

Gamadge said: "I have several questions, but I'll reserve them. How did the evening go?"

"I had had such a shaking that I went to bed before supper. Celia brought mine up to me on a tray. She was a good deal disturbed about my fall, and she made Benny fix the broken post. He isn't very good at that sort of thing," said Mrs. Gregson, with her faint smile. "Celia talked to me again about having a younger woman in the house. She begged me to. But she doesn't understand how I feel about strangers. I don't know whether you do, Mr. Gamadge?"

"I think I understand very well."

"She didn't have my experience after the trial. She went away and was protected by that Mrs. Smiles she works for— nobody even knew where she was. And they wouldn't have cared so much if they had known; but I____" She paused. "I couldn't stay in Bellfield even one night; I couldn't stay in a hotel anywhere. The newspapers—you don't know what it's like. I've been worried about having Celia and Benny come up together, for fear they'll be connected with me and followed. You know I'm still in the papers some times, and somebody's put me in a book. I'm often," said Mrs. Gregson, with an odd movement of her head from side to side, "in the magazines."

Gamadge thought: "She'll always be in some book or some magazine—
Problems Unsolved. Great Murder Cases. Who killed Curtis Gregson?"

"I felt better on Saturday," she went on after a moment. "All right, in fact, except for my stiff knee. Minnie Stoner rubbed it. I came down for breakfast after the others. We had mackerel—those little ones. About an hour after I'd eaten mine I began to feel sick, and then I had an awful pain. We had no doctor up there, but I'd seen a sign in the village, and Benny went for him—a young man, Dr. Roder—very nice. He wanted to take me to a hospital, but Minnie wouldn't allow it. She thought it would kill me."

"Kill you?

"To find myself in a strange place among strangers. She wouldn't let me go, and he—I thought
he
would kill me," said Mrs. Gregson, with her shadowy smile. "The things he did to me!"

"I can imagine."

"He said it must be fish poisoning."

"But hadn't the others eaten mackerel too?"

"We each had one—I told you they were quite small. At least, Minnie didn't; she had an egg. She never eats fish. By late evening I felt better, and I was all right the next day."

"Did Roder take specimens for analysis?"

"Oh, no. He thought it was the fish, and it may have been."

"He didn't even take the fish?"

"The fish?" Mrs. Gregson was surprised. "I had eaten it!"

"Did he take the remains of it, I mean?"

"No, he didn't."

"Fish poisoning isn't too common, you know."

"It wasn't the fish!" insisted Colby.

"Let us keep our minds open while we can. What next, Mrs. Gregson?"

"Nothing for a long time. Benny left early in the afternoon, when I began to feel better; Celia stayed all night, and the next day the man she's engaged to—a man named Belden—called for her in his car and drove her home."

"Where does Mr. Belden live, and what does he do?"

"He lives in New York. He's an architect and landscape designer, or something. They've always known each other. She was his stenographer before—before the trial."

"And now they re engaged. Where does Mr. Locke live, and what does
he
do?"

"I told you he lives in New York. He's a dancer."

"I remember now—so he is."

"That's all he ever wanted to be."

"Is he engaged, or married?"

"No, I don't think he is. He used to go around with a girl in Bellfield, but she wasn't—I never thought he wanted to
marry
Arline Prady. She worked in a drugstore." There spoke the Bellfield matron, dormant but still alive beneath her disguise. Mrs. Gregson did not sound as if she much approved of Miss Prady.

"Well," said Gamadge, "we now skip two or three months, don't we? There's a change of scene."

"Yes. I come down to this little apartment in the autumn. I go out a little. I wear a veil."

"You aren't afraid that Mrs. Stoner will lead people's attention to you?"

"No, her picture wasn't in the papers much, and she doesn't go out much, herself. She likes the movies, though. She doesn't think people notice her in the little dark ones."

"Who takes care of your country house while you're away?"

"Mr. Hotchkiss, that farmer."

"You're sure
he
doesn't know who you are?"

"Oh, no. He hasn't a notion of it. There are only six people—seven, now, counting you—who know I'm Mrs. Gregson, unless Celia has told Mrs. Smiles. The ones you know already, and Dr. Goff—he used to be our doctor in Bellfield."

"Yes. I remember."

"We drove down here on the 11th. This is Tuesday, the 25th, isn't it?"

"Tuesday, the 25th."

"We came two weeks ago. I have a car, and we both drive it. On Wednesday evening Minnie Stoner went to this little place—the moving picture theatre. She went quite late, after we'd done the supper dishes. We said good night—she was going from the picture show to her boarding-house. It isn't far."

"You apparently don't mind being alone, Mrs. Gregson."

"No, I like it. I always felt so safe here."

Colby made a growling sound. She turned to him, apologetic at once. "You couldn't help it, Mr. Colby—nobody could." Her hand, lifted in an indescribably hopeless gesture, fell to her lap. Then she faced Gamadge again. "My bed room's there, Mr. Gamadge, through that door in the north wall; and the bathroom's behind it. There's no way to get to them except from this room, and the only way into the flat is through the front door. My bedroom windows look out on the street; I don't mind the noise from the avenue, it's cheerful. I lock the front door, and I always felt so safe. The only trouble is that when I'm in bed I can't hear much that happens out there in the lobby."

"Do you read much, Mrs. Grcgson?" Gamadge looked at the Sitwell book.

"Yes." She also glanced at it. "Especially travel. I always wanted to travel."

"You'll travel some day," muttered Colby.

'A week ago Wednesday," said Mrs. Gregson, "I was reading in bed, and I thought I heard the front door close. It closes with a snap. I thought Minnie had come back, and I called out: 'Is that you?' But the door had shut, and whoever it was had gone. Nobody answered. Being rather nervous, I thought I'd get up and investigate."

Colby said: "I wish I had nerves like yours!"

"They're not as good as they were. I got up, and I went into the lobby. The door was shut and latched—nobody but Mrs. Stoner and myself has a key, not even the superintendent; so I wasn't frightened. But I thought I'd look into the kitchen. The door was shut tight. When I opened it, there was a strong smell of gas; then I was frightened, terribly frightened, because of the pilot."

"By Jove," said Gamadge.

"It's always burning, you know, a little tiny flame under the stove lids. I don't know how I had the presence of mind, but I rushed over and pried up a lid and blew the flame out."

"Good for you."

"My knees were shaking. I looked at the taps, and the oven tap was full on—the gas smell was coming through the oven door. I shut off the tap, and then I went and opened all the windows."

Colby said heavily: "These pilots—there have been accidents."

"Accidents! Explosions and wrecks, you mean," retorted Gamadge. "By Jove, Mrs. Gregson, you had your nerve with you. Most women would have dashed out of the flat and out of the house, and left the pilot to blow up the firemen. The oven door being shut would make the bust-up worse when it came. Your bedroom is just behind?"

"Yes."

"Whoever turned that oven tap on," said Colby, "hoped she'd be in the kitchen when the explosion came."

"No accident about that, Mrs. Gregson." Gamadge stated it as a fact. "I know those oven taps—we have one, and I saw it when it was installed. You have to push the thing in to turn it on."

"Yes, you do." Her pale face turned to his. "But what frightened me most of all was the idea that somebody could get into the flat. I thought of those letters, then. I thought of them right away."

"Naturally you did."

"Minnie was in a dreadful state when I told her next morning. She went and made the superintendent change the locks; at least, she made him change ours. He wouldn't change the street door one, of course, until we rang up Mr. Colby. I was so sorry—all the tenants' keys!"

Colby said: "Don't bother about that. As for anybody getting in, it's just a matter of being able to get hold of your key for ten minutes. There's a locksmith on every other block up and down Third Avenue. Two minutes to reach a hardware store, five to get a key cut, two more to be back in the flat, with the original returned and the duplicate in your pocket."

"I know," said Mrs. Gregson sombrely.

"Who'd been calling on you here, the Tuesday that you came, and the next Wednesday?" asked Gamadge.

"Celia, and Paul Belden, and Benny Locke. They came on Tuesday."

"And of course Mrs. Stoner is always with you. Well: I suppose you did at last begin to count up your accidents?"

"Yes. I mean, I began to think about the letters. I didn't think about the first accidents until the fourth thing happened, six days later; just a week ago."

She rose, went to a little desk in a corner, unlocked it, and from the well of it took a cardboard box eight inches square. She brought it to Gamadge, and then sat down and watched him open it. He first contemplated the inside of the cover with affection.

"Good old Boone," he said. "There's no better cake than his on earth."

"I always did love Boone's fruit cake."

The box contained half a loaf of black fruit cake, heavily iced. The icing had been marked off into generous slices, and three slices had been cut and removed from the box.

"It was delivered by hand last Tuesday," said Mrs. Gregson, in her dry way. "The superintendent told Minnie he found it hanging by its string to the front-door knob; lots of packages are left there if people are out, and nobody seems to steal them."

"We live in a maligned city. Have you the wrapping paper and the string?"

"No, Minnie opened the parcel while I was out—she thought I'd bought the cake. But she remembers that it was addressed to 'Mrs. Greer,' at this address. Boone's doesn't remember who bought it."

"At this festive time of year they wouldn't."

"Minnie says the address was printed."

"I rather wish we had it. Print tells not much, but it's useful for comparison, and I should have liked to compare that specimen with the letter in my pocket."

"When I came home Minnie brought me the box, and I was delighted." Mrs. Gregson's jaw set; after a moment she went on stonily: "I thought Celia had sent it. She knows I love fruit cake. Minnie doesn't eat sweets at all."

'And how did you happen to find out that the cake wasn't as nice a present as it appeared to be? I suppose you did find out something of the sort?"

"Minnie cut three slices. She's very careful about food, and she noticed that some grains like sugar had gone down into the cake through the icing. Then she saw tiny little holes in the icing, several to each slice."

Gamadge peered at the cake. "I see none."

"They were only in the first slices—the ones you have to cut off, you know. People usually buy only a half a loaf, it's so expensive."

"And Mrs. Stoner wouldn't let you eat your cake?" Gamadge was gently poking at it with his forefinger.

"No and I decided to send the slices up to Dr. Goff, in Bellfield. He's always been awfully kind, Mr. Gamadge."

"I remember that he tried to be."

'At the trial, you mean? He couldn't do much, but he was very good to me. He had the slices analysed, and the confidential report came yesterday. So I consulted Mr. Colby, and he consulted you."

"Was the stuff white arsenic?"

"That's exactly what it was."

"Dr. Goff must have been somewhat upset."

"He was. He telephoned, but I told him I was consulting Mr. Colby. How Mr. Colby can suspect Minnie Stoner after this!"