CHAPTER XLII.A Revelation“How in blazes could I know it?” Sam said. “What’s more, I don’t believe it. I think that she was murdered outside, and carried in, afterwards.”“My word! Weren’t you present when the body was moved?”“No. I—well, I didn’t care about being.”“The fingers of her right hand were clutching the stair tread with the grasp of death. Nothing can disprove that. Dead fingers can not be made to clutch.”“How do you know that?” Sam demanded. “About her fingers, I mean.”“To prove to you,” she said, after an instant’s hesitation, “that my refusal to answer questions is not merely an attempt to appear wise and mysterious, I am going to answer this question.“When I saw the body in the crematory in San Francisco——”“What!”“I always do that, when I can. Before I sent you my telegram, I had gone to see the body.”“Did—does Danny know that?”“No. It might be better not to tell her. It is a necessary part of my profession. The crematory people realize that; but, since people are often very sensitive about it, they prefer that the relatives should not know that they allow it. As I was saying, I saw, then, that the fingers on the right hand had been broken. The undertaker had done that, you understand, in order that they might look natural to fold.“When I had received your telegram engaging me to take the case, I telephoned to the coroner and the undertaker in Telko. I asked them to come to the train and talk with me for the twenty minutes that the train stops in Telko. I took a drawing-room for the purpose; so that we could talk undisturbed and unnoticed. That will be the reason for the day’s drawing-room charge on my expense account, Mr. Stanley. I don’t want you to think that I was unduly extravagant.”“Extravagant! Hell!” Sam exploded, forgetting himself. “What do I care about a drawing-room? What I want to know is, what those fellows told you, and why they didn’t tell me.”“They corroborated the opinion I had formed, from the fingers, about the death clutch, among other things. I don’t know why they didn’t tell you that. Probably, because they assumed that you already knew it. What information I got from them, they gave with extreme reluctance, due, I think, to their long-standing friendship with you, and their desire not to incriminate any member of your household. I got nothing from them—or, to put it more fairly, perhaps, they were able to tell me nothing except the facts concerning the position of the body. Those facts proved that she had been killed on the stairs, by someone who had been coming downstairs behind her. How did it happen that you did not know this?”“As soon as I realized what had occurred,” Sam explained, “I cleared everybody right out and locked the door. I knew that it was necessary for the coroner to examine the body before it had been disturbed.”“How very, very sensible,” Miss MacDonald said. But I did not quite like the way she said it.“If you mean,” I spoke up, “how unfeeling, I want to say that, though she had been living here for two months, she had not exactly endeared herself to any of us.”“No? I had understood that Chadwick Caufield was deeply in love with her; that Mr. Hand was more or less enamoured. There can be no doubt that her sister loved her devotedly. That leaves Mr. Stanley, his son and daughter, Mrs. Ricker and yourself, as the people to whom she had not endeared herself.”Sam and I received that in silence. It was one of those odd things that was true, but that did not sound so.I looked at my watch and said that it was time for me to be starting to get dinner. She asked if she might help me. I thought that she was trying only to be polite, and I was making my refusal just as polite, when she interrupted me.“Please, Mrs. Magin,” she urged. “You mentioned at breakfast that you had only one inefficient girl to help you, just now. I love housework, of all sorts. And I want to get intimately acquainted with this house. The best way to do that is to work in it, isn’t it? You know—you can’t know a stove until you have cooked on it, nor a room until you have cleaned it. Won’t you let me help you, as a special favor to me?”Sam winked at me. “She isn’t going to let you out of her sight, Mary.”Miss MacDonald tried to smile, but she made a failure of it.“But you don’t need to worry, Mary,” Sam went on, “because one thing, now, is dead certain. If Gaby was murdered there on the steps, it is impossible that any member of this household could have done it. It was, anyway. But now it is sure. That clears us all.”Miss MacDonald flashed out, in one of her rarely shown tempers. “What utter nonsense,” she said.
“How in blazes could I know it?” Sam said. “What’s more, I don’t believe it. I think that she was murdered outside, and carried in, afterwards.”
“My word! Weren’t you present when the body was moved?”
“No. I—well, I didn’t care about being.”
“The fingers of her right hand were clutching the stair tread with the grasp of death. Nothing can disprove that. Dead fingers can not be made to clutch.”
“How do you know that?” Sam demanded. “About her fingers, I mean.”
“To prove to you,” she said, after an instant’s hesitation, “that my refusal to answer questions is not merely an attempt to appear wise and mysterious, I am going to answer this question.
“When I saw the body in the crematory in San Francisco——”
“What!”
“I always do that, when I can. Before I sent you my telegram, I had gone to see the body.”
“Did—does Danny know that?”
“No. It might be better not to tell her. It is a necessary part of my profession. The crematory people realize that; but, since people are often very sensitive about it, they prefer that the relatives should not know that they allow it. As I was saying, I saw, then, that the fingers on the right hand had been broken. The undertaker had done that, you understand, in order that they might look natural to fold.
“When I had received your telegram engaging me to take the case, I telephoned to the coroner and the undertaker in Telko. I asked them to come to the train and talk with me for the twenty minutes that the train stops in Telko. I took a drawing-room for the purpose; so that we could talk undisturbed and unnoticed. That will be the reason for the day’s drawing-room charge on my expense account, Mr. Stanley. I don’t want you to think that I was unduly extravagant.”
“Extravagant! Hell!” Sam exploded, forgetting himself. “What do I care about a drawing-room? What I want to know is, what those fellows told you, and why they didn’t tell me.”
“They corroborated the opinion I had formed, from the fingers, about the death clutch, among other things. I don’t know why they didn’t tell you that. Probably, because they assumed that you already knew it. What information I got from them, they gave with extreme reluctance, due, I think, to their long-standing friendship with you, and their desire not to incriminate any member of your household. I got nothing from them—or, to put it more fairly, perhaps, they were able to tell me nothing except the facts concerning the position of the body. Those facts proved that she had been killed on the stairs, by someone who had been coming downstairs behind her. How did it happen that you did not know this?”
“As soon as I realized what had occurred,” Sam explained, “I cleared everybody right out and locked the door. I knew that it was necessary for the coroner to examine the body before it had been disturbed.”
“How very, very sensible,” Miss MacDonald said. But I did not quite like the way she said it.
“If you mean,” I spoke up, “how unfeeling, I want to say that, though she had been living here for two months, she had not exactly endeared herself to any of us.”
“No? I had understood that Chadwick Caufield was deeply in love with her; that Mr. Hand was more or less enamoured. There can be no doubt that her sister loved her devotedly. That leaves Mr. Stanley, his son and daughter, Mrs. Ricker and yourself, as the people to whom she had not endeared herself.”
Sam and I received that in silence. It was one of those odd things that was true, but that did not sound so.
I looked at my watch and said that it was time for me to be starting to get dinner. She asked if she might help me. I thought that she was trying only to be polite, and I was making my refusal just as polite, when she interrupted me.
“Please, Mrs. Magin,” she urged. “You mentioned at breakfast that you had only one inefficient girl to help you, just now. I love housework, of all sorts. And I want to get intimately acquainted with this house. The best way to do that is to work in it, isn’t it? You know—you can’t know a stove until you have cooked on it, nor a room until you have cleaned it. Won’t you let me help you, as a special favor to me?”
Sam winked at me. “She isn’t going to let you out of her sight, Mary.”
Miss MacDonald tried to smile, but she made a failure of it.
“But you don’t need to worry, Mary,” Sam went on, “because one thing, now, is dead certain. If Gaby was murdered there on the steps, it is impossible that any member of this household could have done it. It was, anyway. But now it is sure. That clears us all.”
Miss MacDonald flashed out, in one of her rarely shown tempers. “What utter nonsense,” she said.