Nothing Can Rescue Me (14 page)

“Yes, I was. You better go down,” said Corinne “and tell them I was overlooked in the excitement.”

“You ought to be in the dining-room,” muttered Ridley.

“I guess I can take my time about it. You did.” She rose. “Any chance of my getting back to Erasmus for supper?”

Gamadge and Ridley exchanged a glance. Gamadge said: “None. I should say that you would be here all night.”

“Then somebody'll have to lend me a nightgown. Can't one of you boys drive down to Erasmus and buy me a toothbrush?” Office Ridley had recovered his official tone: “You will please go down to the dining-room, wait there, and see Lieutenant Windorp in the library. Then you go to the parlour where the others are.”

“Trouble is, I'm getting hungry.”

“They re having a big tea.”

She raised her hands to do her hair, skewered back a wisp or so, and walked out of the room.

Ridley asked with annoyance: “Where in time was she all afternoon?”

“Out for a walk, and then having a nap.”

“She's just the way she used to be when she gave us books out of the library.” He went on, leading the way down the back stairs and switching lights on at every switch he came to: “The body's been taken to Bethea, and they've locked up the office. We got a matron from the Bethea jail, but she can't find any bloodstains on any of the women's clothes. She'll have to go over Corinne Hutter.”

“Corinne Hutter will love that.”

“The servants are out of it, anyhow. The indoor ones were together out back and there weren't any men on the place to-day, as it's Saturday, except a groom and a boy. They were together in the stables. Mr. Mason finally got home. Say, Mr. Gamadge, these are nice folks; did one of 'em go crazy?”

“There are so many ways of going crazy, Officer.”

They went down to the first floor, Ridley turning on light switches all the way.

When Gamadge entered the drawing-room he found Mason, highball glass in hand, walking back and forth as if for a wager; while Percy, ensconced behind a colossal silver tray, poured himself a cup of tea. As Gamadge approached the sofa Percy uncovered a muffin dish and offered it to him.

“It makes me hungry to be grilled,” he said. “How about you? Or haven't you been grilled yet?”

“I've been grilled.” Gamadge sat down beside him.

Mason stopped in the middle of the room. “What's all this about my not being allowed to see Florence?” he demanded in a loud voice.

Gamadge, teapot in hand, looked up at him. “I suppose the nurse won't let her see anybody.”

“I ought to be with her at a time like this. I shall insist on being with her. Nurse? She has two nurses. Aren't there enough women in the house now without getting in two nurses?”

Percy murmured: “He doesn't use his head.”

“Use my head? What do you mean?” Mason glared at him. “If somebody in the house has gone crazy and started swinging at us, a man's better protection for Florence than a trained nurse is.” He drained his glass. “Sally's the only person around here who ever seemed crazy to me,” he went on, “and I don't think she's crazy enough to kill anybody.

Percy remarked to his teacup: “They say you can go mad without knowing it; an eerie notion, and one I never believed in. If I were going mad, I'm sure I should have a nagging suspicion that something was wrong.”

Mason stopped beside a console near the doorway to pour whisky into his glass from a decanter. He said: “I don't know what's got into Windorp. I came home from my walk, and the trooper hustled me into the library without telling me a word of what had happened; naturally I refused to answer questions. When I did explain that I'd simply been for my usual hike up-stream, you'd have thought by the way Windorp looked at me that people hadn't the use of their legs. I'm a walker, always was.” He swallowed the neat whisky in his tumbler at a gulp.

Percy glanced at him over his shoulder. He said: “You need food, not whisky. I understand how you feel, though; it's a jolt to find oneself being ordered about for the first time since school.”

“Whatever I need,” replied Mason, “I don't need advice from you—or sympathy, either.”

Percy said, with a faintly humorous look at Gamadge, “Few tears are being shed for poor Sylvanus Hutter. The truth is, one hardly knew him; he was so utterly absorbed in himself and his hobbies that one couldn't get near him at all. I often think that persons who care exclusively for the inanimate become only half animate themselves.” He added with some annoyance, as Mason resumed his restless pacing: “I don't know why you should be in this state, I'm sure. If you have no alibi, neither has any of the rest of us.”

“Alibi?” Mason stood rigid to glare at him. “What do you mean? By this time Windorp knows that I left the house before half-past two and never got back until half-past four.”

“We certainly did hear the door slam.” Percy refilled his teacup.

Mason, inarticulate, opened and shut his mouth. Gamadge looked inquiringly at Percy, who responded with a smile. “Merely the retort courteous,” he explained. “Mason has been reminding me that it's common knowledge I said I was going for a walk myself in the walled garden. He also reminds me that people can go in and out of the house by the back door without being seen. He doesn't quite understand that the second fact is in the nature of a boomerang.”

“I didn't say you said you were going for a walk in the walled garden,” snapped Mason. “I said you did go there. Miss Wing saw you there.”

“She is mistaken,” said Percy with serenity. “It began to drizzle, so instead of going out I went up to my room, where I read and dozed until summoned by a cop.”

“She was there herself, so she says,” insisted Mason, “from about a quarter to three until about five after. She saw you in the place just before she left.”

“She is mistaken.”

“Or making it all up?” suggested Mason, with a mirthless smile. “Perhaps she thinks you might give each other an alibi.”

“If she says she was there and saw somebody, she was there and saw somebody; but not me.”

“And it's not much of an alibi,” said Gamadge. “Syl's murderer could have got down there by three, or I'm much mistaken. But why should Syl's murderer have gone there? And does Miss Wing think that this fetch of Mr. Percy's saw
her
?”

“I don't know,” said Mason, “but he needn't have. The place is a perfect maze—you can dodge in and out around the hedges.”

“I don't know what my ghost did,” said Percy in a languid voice, slightly muted by muffin. “They haven't confronted Miss Wing with me yet.”

Gamadge asked: “Is this garden a well-known beauty spot? Is it frequented by tourists?”

“Tourists?” shouted Mason. “Tourists? There's only one way into the place—the Yew Walk; unless you want to climb an eight- foot brick wall.”

“Yew,” murmured Percy. “It's an American variety, but I always said, and I still say, that it isn't the thing to use here; we have plenty of native stuff for hedges. Of course yew is effective against brick, under a bright sky.”

Gamadge was leaning back with half-closed eyes. Presently he opened them to inquire of Percy: “Do you usually keep your hat and coat in the cupboard under the stairs?”

Percy hunched his shoulders together as if shrinking from a physical blow. “Spare me the stair cupboard,” he implored. “I refuse to be reminded of the stair cupboard. No, it held only that fatal raincoat of Hutter's, and one of Mason's. My hat and top-coat are with the other hats and coats, in the new hall closet. Why?”

Mrs. Deedes came into the room. “Tim,” she said, “I think you might try to see Florence now. They let me have tea with her. But those nurses hover like bats.” Mason swung from the room, and she came to sit down on the sofa in the place vacated for her by Percy. “Don't disturb yourselves, children,” she said wearily. “Oh, how I wish we could all go to bed until this is all over. They won't let us have one moment's peace.”

“Let's hope they'll find that it was one of those Jukes up the valley after all,” said Percy, making himself comfortable in another chair.

“Oh, it wasn't.” She turned a drawn and anxious face to him. “I know it wasn't, and I blame myself very much. I didn't know that poor little Syl was going to use planchette; I would have warned him. There have been mischievous influences in the house for a good while, and this afternoon a really evil spirit got through.”

“Why,” asked Percy, in a tone of inexhaustible patience, “should an evil spirit have attacked and killed Sylvanus Hutter, of all people, with a Chinese bronze?”

“Have you seen those African images in his room, Glen?”

“Yes; ancient sorcery, and very interesting.”

“They're evil—really evil. Sylvanus treated forbidden things without respect, and they have turned upon him.”

Percy, after a moment of staring silence, remarked that he didn't think the African images called for respect.

“One respects the awful,” said Mrs. Deedes, “wherever...”

Susie Burt came into the room, looking, Gamadge thought, like a piece of Florentine enamel in her sapphire sports dress. Her blue eyes were stony, her features rigid as if cut from stone. She walked directly to the bell beside the dining-room door, and pushed it. Thomas came wavering in, pale and vague.

“I'd like a Martini, Thomas,” she said in a cold voice.

“Very well, Miss.” He wavered away.

“Poor Thomas,” said Percy, “it's sporting of him to struggle on with his work. Couldn't you have waited a couple of hours for that drink, Susie, or mixed it yourself?”

“No, I couldn't.” She sat down on the bench in front of the grand piano, an immense instrument, which filled the south-west corner of the room.

Percy, raising his eyebrows, inquired: “Has Lieutenant Windorp been vexing you? Was he annoyed because you also were reading and dozing in your room while Hutter was being murdered? He must be used to the statement by this time. Were you reading and dozing, Mrs. Deedes?”

“I was resting. I wasn't dozing.”

“Corinne Hutter was,” said Gamadge.

Percy said with a smile: “I didn't know Corinne was on the premises. Has she still the anchorite complex, I wonder? All very well, but so many of them seem to have ended up on all fours.”

Mrs. Deedes asked: “Did you go out, Glen? It seems that Evelyn did, and Lieutenant Windorp was very anxious to know whether you did; I couldn't tell him.”

“I didn't go out, but my astral body appears to have taken a stroll in the garden.”

“Somebody's been telling Lieutenant Windorp a lot of things about us all.” Mrs. Deedes frowned. “He kept asking me the queerest questions. I didn't know what he was getting at.”

Susie Burt said, “Yes, he heard stuff about me, too; so I told him things about the rest of you.” She looked at Percy, a straight, cold look. “I told him you'd been reading every one of those books.”

“What books?” he inquired mildly.

“Those books that somebody took quotations from to put in Mrs. Mason's novel. Every night it happened, you left the book out. I saw it after you went up to bed. I remember perfectly well.”

“I remember perfectly well, too; and I remember that by next morning the books were put away.”

Gamadge said: “But you didn't distress Mrs. Mason by telling her that the perilous stuff was coming from her own library.”

“No, I didn't.”

Susie said: “I didn't know the quotations came out of those books, but I do now; I've known ever since Mr. Gamadge said what books they were. I wasn't going to tell, but if people are telling things about me I'll tell things about them.”

“This murder,” said Percy, “is having serious repercussions on our characters.”

“I told Lieutenant Windorp that Mr. Deedes is in Mrs. Deedes's apartment in New York right now,” continued Susie. “Living there.”

Sally looked at her in silence.

“Mrs. Mason sent me around to see how your cold was getting on,” Susie told her, “and the doorman let me go up, and the door was ajar, and Mr. Deedes was in there—asleep. I didn't tell Mrs. Mason, but she might as well know it now.”

“Windorp must be dizzy with all this free information,” said Percy.

“He thinks I'm a splendid witness.”

“Well—that isn't quite the word for it; not in police circles.”

He looked at her through his lashes. She was about to reply, thought better of it, got up from the piano bench and went out through the dining-room into the back hall.

“It's tough, Mrs. Deedes,” said Percy, after a pause. “Very tough.”

“I had to take Bill in,” she answered drearily. “He's been ill, and that woman he was going to marry let him down. Florence won't understand. She'll be so angry—so horrified.”

“I bet Louise spilled the Mason-Susie stuff to Windorp,” said Percy. “She has her knife into Susie, and she'd want to explain that Mason was a dear, sweet fellow and a victim, and wouldn't hurt a fly. I hope she won't start on me; it'll be the ruin of me.”

“She'll tell him charming things,” said Gamadge. “She's told 'em to me.”

“Oh, God.”

Sergeant Morse looked in to say that the Lieutenant would like to speak to Mr. Gamadge.

Windorp stood beside a large round table near the front windows of the library, four books arranged before him in the light of a shaded lamp. He said without preamble: “We found these and the script of some novel, it looked like, in a drawer in the office, locked up.”

“Yes; I locked 'em. They're part of that story I was going to tell you; the job I was called in on.”

“Miss Burt had some mixed-up tale or other.”