Somewhere in the House by Elizabeth Daly Page A

killed. I’ll ask you to come up with me later and look the place over.”
    Gamadge was not enthusiastic at the prospect: “Why?”
    â€œI’d hate to miss anything. Had enough of it, did you?” Nordhall laughed. “But it’s nice up there now, nice and airy. You’ll like it now. The boys poked some of the bricks out of the window. We’ve got a high-powered lamp trained in from the hall; the body’s gone, the sofa’s gone, and the waxwork’s gone too. Just wax head and hands and a sawdust body. Want to see the head?”
    He lifted newspapers from something on the window seat beside him, and placed the something on the table.
    â€œHad to look for buttons inside it,” he said. “We took the hair off and the eyes out.”
    Nonie’s head, bald and eyeless, seemed slightly less repellent to Gamadge than before. Perhaps it had been a death mask; now it looked like one.
    Nordhall asked, gazing at it: “Was the old lady nuts?”
    â€œThey say not.”
    â€œI’d say the girl was. Flat-headed, and a silly smile.”
    â€œShe could play the piano.” Gamadge got off the edge of the table and wandered across to one of the low bookcases. He glanced at shelves and passed on to the next; in no room that contained books could he have refrained from looking at the books. Nordhall went on talking:
    â€œThe jewellery she had on wouldn’t cost twenty-five dollars in a store, and I don’t think it would sell for ten. The old lady wasn’t leaving anything of much value in there.”
    Gamadge picked up a quarto volume from the top of a bookcase, smiled at it, brought it over to Nordhall and opened it. He asked: “Have one?”
    Nordhall peered in at gold-tipped cigarettes. He said: “Well, I’ll be switched. What will they think of next?”
    â€œThis isn’t a new idea; the house is full of them. Mrs. Leeder told me she and Seward Clayborn used to make these boxes.” He closed the solander and looked at the label: “ A Season in the Cotswolds. By Lady Athenia Lewis, 1802 . Fine old mottled calf, but badly eaten by the acids in the colouring. Too bad.” He walked back to the bookcase and bent down. “I think I see another friend, know him anywhere by his spine.” He drew Sir Arthur Wilson Cribb out from between two other books on the shelf, and brought it to the table.
    Nordhall glanced at it without interest. “Funny,” he said, “to put it in among real books.”
    â€œYes. Funny.” Gamadge was smiling.
    But Nordhall frowned. “You mean it was put there on purpose? Why?”
    Gamadge perched himself on the edge of the table, the solander in his hands. “Yesterday,” he said, “when I arrived, this thing was in the sitting-room upstairs, on the table beside my sofa. Mrs. Leeder offered me a cigarette out of it, and I referred to what it had partly been about—when it was a book. It had contained a chapter on the Assassins—the Thugs—of India. They were much talked of when Sir Arthur wrote his journals, and he naturally wrote about them too.”
    â€œWell, what about them?”
    â€œThey were a religious brotherhood, worshippers of the Goddess Kali. They went about strangling people from behind, according to a ritual, while under the influence of hashish.”
    Nordhall stared.
    â€œThe method seldom failed,” said Gamadge.
    â€œIt wouldn’t. Not much harder than tying a parcel, if you could get behind your party.” He continued to gaze into the greenish eyes of his colleague. “You talked about this with Mrs. Leeder?”
    â€œA word or two. Mrs. Leeder had apparently never read Cribb’s journals before they were converted.”
    â€œHow about the rest of the family?”
    â€œNothing was said about Cribb.”
    â€œBut they saw you using it?”
    â€œI didn’t use it after the rest came, but some of