The Book of the Dead by Elizabeth Daly Page B

suggest—some people don’t care to do it—would you like to see Mr. Crenshaw?”
    â€œYes. I would.”
    Mr. Buckley seemed pleased. “Of course. If you’ll wait a few minutes.”
    He disappeared down the hall. Idelia said: “He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?”
    â€œYes. What did I tell you? He’s delighted. You will note that although Mr. Crenshaw’s body travels to Vermont by an early morning train, and it’s now nearly half past nine, the body hasn’t even yet been hermetically sealed in its coffin.”
    â€œMr. Gamadge, that’s all so silly—about its not being Mr. Crenshaw’s body at all. When could somebody else have taken his place? Never.”
    â€œOn the trip from Stonehill?”
    â€œWhy, but they must have known him at the apartment. He engaged it himself, the last of May.”
    â€œEngaged it in person?”
    Idelia was silent.
    â€œI can find out tomorrow,” said Gamadge. “But even if he did engage it in person, how about the switch being made in the cab?”
    â€œWhat cab?”
    â€œDr. Billig seems to have taken him to the hospital in a cab; not an ambulance.”
    Idelia, looking astounded, said: “I never heard of such a—such a—”
    â€œI really think that in any case I’d better see Dr. Billig.”
    Young Mr. Buckley returned, and with an added solemnity in his manner ushered them along the inner hall, through double doors, and into a kind of secular chapel. There was a dais at one end of it, but Crenshaw’s draped coffin stood on its bier in the center of the tesselated floor. It might have stood there all day; if, as Gamadge suspected, it had just been wheeled in from some much smaller place, that fact was nothing against Buckley’s.
    Young Buckley remained in the doorway. Idelia, with Gamadge beside her, went up to the coffin and looked down at the dead face within. Then she laid the purple flowers on the more brilliant purple of the pall, and turned away. She said: “Poor Mr. Crenshaw. He looks wonderful. You wouldn’t think he’d even been sick.”
    Buckley spoke from the doorway, in the accents of one who has received a valued compliment: “It’s that disease, Miss Fisher. You wouldn’t know until the very end that there was anything the matter with the patient, and nothing shows much afterwards.”
    Gamadge had lingered beside the coffin to study the calm, pleasant, sleeping face of the dead man. Light hair was brushed back from an intelligent forehead, the nose was fine, the mouth kind, the lower part of the face insignificant, but not noticeably weak. Crenshaw’s was certainly not the face of a common swindler.
    Gamadge rejoined the others. Idelia was saying: “Thank you ever so much, Mr. Buckley.”
    â€œWe’re always only too glad.”
    Buckley accompanied his visitors to the very steps of his establishment; he even stood in the light from the hall and watched them to the corner. Then he turned and went in, while Idelia gave her investigator another piece of her mind: “I hope you’re satisfied!”
    â€œQuite satisfied. It’s always a satisfaction to get firsthand evidence.”
    â€œYou’ve seen him now; can you imagine him cheating anybody out of money?”
    â€œNo; I can’t. But it isn’t a strong face, Idelia; he wasn’t a strong character.”
    Idelia shifted her ground: “You didn’t see him until after he was dead.”
    â€œThey’re off their guard when they’re dead.”
    â€œHe didn’t seem weak to me.”
    â€œIf we’re right about those underlined passages he seemed weak to himself.”
    â€œYou ought to have heard him talk.”
    â€œOh, bless you, they can talk your ear off.”
    â€œWho can?”
    â€œThose charming bookish people. I don’t want to speak ill of him, but we must analyze him for good