Henry Gamadge 09 Any Shape or Form by Elizabeth Daly

Author:Elizabeth Daly [Daly, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937384180
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

The Best Room

IT WAS DIM UPSTAIRS, but Gamadge remembered the arrangement of the rooms very well. Before the wings had been put on, a broad hall had run from the front to the back of the square house, with two bedchambers and a bath on one side of it, two smaller rooms, a series of cupboards and the stair landing on the other. The attics had accommodated such help as lived in; but Redfield now used them for storage, thinking them too hot in summer for human occupation. Now a cross corridor bisected the main hall and ran north and south, giving access to the rooms in the new wings.

But though these rooms were modern, some of them luxurious, none was as impressive as the old best chamber over the dining room. It had always been the best bedroom in the Redfield house, and it retained its fine solid furniture and its great fourpost curtained bed. Redfield, Gamadge thought, would certainly have put his Aunt Josephine in it. She would have respected it of old.

He was surprised to find its door open; for, dim as the light was, he could see that it was indeed a chamber of death. The shaded lamp on a dresser hardly brought out the subdued colors in the handsome flowered hangings and upholstery, and the bed curtains hung to the carpet, but he made out the sheeted figure of the dead woman.

He went across and looked down on it. The sheet was turned back from the face, which was enclosed in bandages like cerements. A strip crossed the forehead, concealing the bullet hole, and another bound up the chin. Like ancient cerements; there should have been tapers here, and watchers. But the sun worshiper had none.

Or had she none? Gamadge liked to describe himself as a mere bundle of nerves, but if the description had been accurate he might now have shrieked and fainted. Instead, he stood motionless as a figure detached itself from the shadows at the bed’s head and looked at him across the body.

After some moments he put out his hand and turned the switch of a lamp on the bedside table beside him. This was no wraith or fetch, but a decidedly human being; a youngish woman, rather tall and buxom, with a white skin and a high color, and yellow hair surmounted by a jaunty hat. She was eying him coolly. At last she spoke in a sharp voice slightly subdued: “Are you Mr. Redfield?”

“No. I’m a guest.”

She gave him no time to ask his question, but went on to explain her presence: “I saw people in the dining room when I passed the windows. I didn’t care to mix with a party—I was looking for somebody I wanted to talk to privately. So I just came in and upstairs.”

“You just…Excuse me. You’re not here professionally, then?”

“Professionally?” She looked surprised, then amused. “Oh—you mean am I from the morticians? No.”

Gamadge said: “I really must get this straight. Stromer was in the dining room, we didn’t expect callers.

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