Murders in, Volume 2 by Elizabeth Daly Page B

what we want to know is—” Eliza’s small round eyes stared distressfully from Miss Vauregard to Gamadge—“could the young lady be a him-poster?” The fact that she had aspirated a vowel for the first time was the measure of her anxiety.
    â€œJust between ourselves, and you, and John,” said Gamadge, leaning his elbow on the table and looking at her seriously, “we are asking ourselves that question. Now, we’re all in the same boat, and we must trust one another. The greatest favor you could possibly do Mr. Vauregard would be to settle the question, once and for all.”
    â€œI’m sure we—”
    â€œJust you get John to help you, and sit down tonight and write out every word you’ve told us today. Every word. The new silk dress, the furnace, the scraping, and the drain. And your impression that Miss Smith is not quite so English as she ought to be. Will you do that?”
    â€œWhat will ’appen to the paper?”
    â€œMiss Vauregard will take charge of it.”
    Eliza turned her head and looked at Miss Vauregard, who nodded vigorously.
    â€œHe’s an old gentleman, you know,” said Gamadge, “eighty years old. He looks so young that one forgets it.”
    â€œI’ll get John to do it, Sir. Tonight.”
    â€œGood for you.”
    Miss Vauregard rose, and handed an envelope to Eliza. “There you are,” she said, “and I can promise you that at least you’ll have another woman in the house.”
    Eliza bobbed them out of the garden door. They followed a very ancient brick path around the grass plot that contained the fountain, which never played any more—its shell was full of leaves, and its basin planted with a fine crop of geraniums. Gamadge had to put aside a trail of wisteria, in order to make his way into the arbor.
    He sat down in a green gloom, and surveyed the back of the old house. Mr. Vauregard appeared at an open window, nodding and smiling at his niece, who stood between the arbor and the fountain; a fair, pointed face looked over his shoulder, but the rather wide lips did not smile. When the window was empty again, Gamadge came out.
    â€œYou wouldn’t go into the arbor for anything, would you?” he asked. “Not even now.”
    Miss Vauregard said: “Of course I would.”
    â€œYou didn’t.”
    â€œWell…” she gave a nervous laugh. “Old habits are hard to break, at my age. How did you like it?”
    â€œGave me claustrophobia.”

CHAPTER SIX
Inside Information
    â€œI KNOW NOW WHAT YOU MEANT, Mr. Gamadge.” Miss Vauregard spoke in a hard, dry voice. They were walking eastward through the quiet back streets of lower New York, where even pedestrian traffic seemed almost to have ceased. Miss Vauregard had insisted on going uptown by subway.
    Gamadge looked down at her sympathetically. “You do?”
    â€œI realized it when Uncle began talking about that other set of books. What a fool I’ve been. Of course Volume II belongs to the Dykinck set!”
    â€œLooks that way. See here, Miss Vauregard—you’d better fire me.”
    She ignored this. “Uncle wouldn’t tell that old story to the Chandors—why should he? And even if he did, how could they, or any outsider, get hold of the Byron?”
    â€œHow, indeed?”
    â€œYou guessed it before you ever heard about the Dykincks from Uncle. I don’t see how.”
    â€œIt just looked to me like an inside job. I couldn’t see Miss Smith having the nerve, or the facilities, to put it over without backing from a member of the clan—someone who knew all the ropes. You thought an outsider was trying to get your uncle’s money away from the family; I wondered whether one of the family wasn’t trying to prevent exactly that. It would have to be somebody who had learned that Mr. Vauregard meant to give property away, and who was determined to keep the old