Somewhere in the House by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online Page B

and she very much disliked the eldest son’s wife.
    â€œHer brother died one spring, and she was allowed the summer to pack and arrange her affairs. She couldn’t have stayed on, too many servants were required there for her means; and she wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing the house with any of the heirs.
    â€œShe had unfortunately got it into her head that certain items in the inventory belonged to her personally; and those items, to the dismay of the heirs, began to disappear. There was little doubt that when she left they would leave with her, in her trunks and boxes. It was a delicate situation: nobody wanted a scandal or a lawsuit, and nobody wanted to be accused of having killed her—she had a heart attack whenever the matter of the lost items came up. She said that they had never been in the house at all, or that they had disappeared long before, or that Great-uncle must have given them away. The fact was, of course, that she had settled it with herself—her right to the objects—but didn’t dare submit her cause to earthly justice.
    â€œThe objects were valuable, and they were heirlooms; some silver, a piece of lustreware, and a coral necklace. The necklace was antique and beautiful; fifty-one carved, matched, graded beads, ranging in size from a pea to a chestnut, and with a bloom on them that I can’t describe. Great-aunt Myrtle knew who wanted to wear that , and she couldn’t stand it.
    â€œFinally, in despair, the family got her own lawyer—a small-town crook if there ever was one—to ask her whether she’d allow an impartial person, duly authorized, to make a search for the things. They—and he, I think—hoped that would scare her. Great-aunt Myrtle said certainly, only she would pick out the impartial person. She thought it was a tremendous joke on them all when she picked me—I was thirteen years old at the time, and still with her on my vacation. She said I was the only impartial member of the family that she could think of—our branch didn’t inherit—and that whatever I found I could turn over to the bank which represented the estate.
    â€œThe heirs were distraught at first; but my father and mother, knowing my propensity to plod, were amused. They wrote and told the others to leave it to me.
    â€œI of course considered the hunt an indoor sport of the first magnitude, and the fact that I wasn’t to be paid”—Gamadge paused here a moment and looked at the end of his cigarette—“didn’t dishearten me in the least. The first thing I found, sensibly enough, was her bunch of keys; and I unpacked and repacked her trunks in the attic with the greatest care. I also did a good deal of climbing and ladder work, ripped and pried things up as neatly as I could, and didn’t neglect the hints that I had been given by Edgar Allan Poe and Sherlock Holmes.
    â€œOf course the family row had been conducted over my head, and I thought the hunt was approved on all sides. When I found the coral necklace in the course of my activities I didn’t find it in one piece, but in fifty-one pieces; each bead separately; and as I discovered a bead I would place it with some pride in a glass jar on the sitting-room mantel—where Great-aunt Myrtle and I could both look at the results every evening. I shall never forget the curious expression on her face as she sat and gazed at the bloomy growth in the jar.
    â€œHer worst error, poor thing, lay in forgetting that her heart attacks affected me very slightly. She had one or two when she looked at the jar of coral beads, and I was sympathetic; but if she had given up the ghost at my feet I shouldn’t naturally have felt guilt or remorse.
    â€œWell, all the things were found. The heirs wanted to give me something really monumental as a reward, but my father and mother wouldn’t allow it. They said I had been chosen because I was impartial, and impartial I must