Nothing Can Rescue Me (15 page)

“I'll explain as well as I can.” Gamadge produced Chapter Nine, and handed it to him. Then he sat down, Windorp sat down, and between them they studied the case of Poe, Herbert, Ford, and Christopher Marlowe vs. Florence Hutter Mason.

“It's a queer set-up,” said Windorp at last, “queer from the word go. Is Mrs. Deedes in her right mind?”

“Yes; but seeking distraction in byways of the spirit.”

“You mean spirits. All this about that planchette board and Mr. Hutter's wooden idols. And I understand she has her divorced husband living with her secretly.”

“Yes. Miss Burt just now informed us that she had been saving trouble for you.”

Windorp looked sharply at him. “Think she's telling the truth?”

“So far as she knows it, and so far as it concerns others.”

“She says Miss Wing, the secretary, put these things into Mrs. Mason's novel out of spite.”

“That is probably not true. They weren't put in out of spite by Miss Wing; they may have been put in to raise Miss Wing's legacy from thousands to millions.”

Windorp sat back to stare.

“That's why, Hutter being dead and the millions at Mrs. Mason's disposal, I persuaded her to make yet another will. Robert Macloud, her lawyer, is coming up to-night; I thought he might as well inform the beneficiaries that Mrs. Mason's death wouldn't make a millionaire of anybody.”

“Burbage told me your ideas about the nurses and the specially prepared food. I get it. But this—” he fingered the pages of Chapter Nine—“this will business means that the Wing girl is guilty.”

“No; a friend may have been working for her, or Mason may have thought himself still the residuary legatee.”

“Miss Wing says she was down in that walled garden from a quarter to three until five past, when she saw Percy. But it's no alibi for either of them; the whole murder could have been over and done with in five minutes, and the doctor thinks it happened, or probably happened, at the early end of that forty minutes—between the time you left Hutter and the time you found him.”

“I'm beginning to feel more and more certain that it was over as early as three o'clock.”

“As for Wing and Percy—why should the murderer go down to that place at all?”

“That's what I'm asking myself. Look here; Miss Wing wouldn't have said she saw Percy if she didn't think she saw him; he had only to contradict her, as he has contradicted her. She saw somebody, though. I wish you'd have Percy in and ask him to show us his hat and coat.”

Windorp, after a frowning look at Gamadge, went to the door; he spoke to Sergeant Morse, who was stationed just outside it, and came back again. A minute later Percy entered the library.

“Mr. Percy,” said Gamadge, “Lieutenant Windorp and I would be very much obliged if you'd introduce us to your coat and hat.”

Percy, his hands in his trouser pockets, looked from him to Windorp. “Delighted,” he said. “Follow me.”

They went, a procession of three, out of the library and down the hall. Percy opened a door next the office, and led the way into a large cloakroom, from which opened a flower room and a commodious lavatory.

Percy went to the row of hangers, above which a long shelf held an assortment of hats. He pushed tweeds and finer cloths aside, glanced at the shelf, rummaged thereon, and at last turned a blank face to the others. “They're not here.”

“In your room, perhaps?” Windorp was not taking the matter too seriously.

“They're not in my room. And if they'd been taken away and brushed, they'd have been put back again.”

“Call Thomas,” suggested Windorp.

“No need to call him,” said Gamadge. “I thought they'd be missing, and I think I know where they are.”

“Well, then, where are they?” Percy looked completely puzzled. “I'm rather interested, you know, because the dear old coat is the only winter coat I have.”

“I suppose they're in the walled garden, Miss Wing saw somebody in them, over a hedge, perhaps, and thought it was you.”

“Saw somebody?”

“The murderer, you know.”

Windorp, suddenly galvanized into passionate interest, said:

“But that means Mason, if it doesn't mean Mr. Percy here.”

“A lady can wear a man's coat and hat.”

“Wore a man's coat over her skirt? That would be a fine disguise, I must say!”

“A lady can wear slacks. I dare say she could roll up her skirt and wear it too; in fact, that's what she must have done if my theory's correct. I don't insist on a woman, you know; it may,” he said, glancing at Percy, “have been a man.”

“Kindly tell me,” begged Percy, “why the murderer should have taken a walk in the garden in slacks and my coat and hat.”

“Well—to dispose of the slacks.”

Windorp's complexion of old brick slowly reddened to the colour of new brick. He said after a moment: “I suppose you mean they may have been worn to commit the murder in, and got bloodstained.”

“Yes, and they'd make too bulky a bundle to be carried around the place under an arm, or disposed of indoors. What I think is that the shorter raincoat—Hutter's, I believe—was worn because the other, Mason's, is one of those heavy rustling affairs that would make considerable noise in a quiet room. The bloodstains on it are low; one of the griffons seems to have got blood on its paw, which may mean that the stains were even lower than the hem of the raincoat—those little dogs don't jump high. When the murderer opened the cupboard door a second time—”

“I get it, I get it.”

“My idea is that the murderer disposed of the slacks in the walled garden, left Percy's coat and hat there, and returned to the house undisguised. Why not? Miss Wing did so, Miss Hutter did so, Mason did so—”

Windorp swung to the door of the cloakroom, and pushed through.

“And nobody saw any of them come home.” Gamadge seized his own hat and coat and followed him into the back hall. “The murder didn't take five minutes, Windorp; it must have taken all of thirty-five, counting the trip to the walled garden and the disposal of the slacks.”

Percy also snatched a topcoat from a rack. “I only hope my things weren't disposed of too,” he said anxiously, hurrying after the others through the swing door.

Scandinavian accents issued from the servants' sitting-room of the passage on the left, but no servant was in sight. The procession—Windorp, Gamadge, and Percy, the latter struggling into a coat too small for him—passed the kitchen door and the pantry service window, and through the back door of the house into wet darkness. “Beaver?” called Windorp.

A torch flashed in their faces. Beaver's huge bulk, towering behind it, stood solid for a moment and then moved aside.

“Take us down to that walled garden,” said Windorp. The torch lighted slippery bricks, and guided the party down an inclined walk which ran straight for twenty yards and then forked to the left. This bypath led them between great yew hedges, dripping wet. Except for the steady gleam of Beaver's light it was in utter darkness, the dark of a narrow tunnel whose roof is a clouded night sky.

“The path down to this alley isn't overlooked from the kitchen,” said Gamadge, “because the kitchen yard is hedged in too. It's overlooked by the dining-room, but who looks out of dining-room windows at three in the afternoon? Mrs. Mason's back windows are heavily curtained, and she doesn't sit beside either of them; she uses the ones on the north and south sides of her room. Miss Hutter and Mr. Percy were not looking out of their windows between three and three-thirty, I presume.”

“I wasn't,” said Percy.

“Miss Hutter says she came back from her walk at three-fifteen, or about that,” growled Windorp. “Didn't see anybody at all. Came in the back way and went up the back stairs to her room and took a nap.”

They were steadily descending, and bearing to the south; the watery murmur of the stream increased to a subdued roar. “The walled garden must practically overhang the old swimming-pool,” said Gamadge.

“It does,” Percy told him. “How I implored Mrs. Mason to have the place open on the water-side; but no, she had seen something in Istanbul.”

“The Hutters see such unfortunate things,” said Gamadge. “Old Benjamin saw a country house on Long Island, didn't he?”

“Within driving distance of the city. Yes, he did. Sylvanus used to laugh about the geraniums and the grape-vine trellis,” replied Percy, “but I thought that a walled garden was far less suitable to the scene. However.”

“They incinerate down here some place,” rumbled Beaver. Windorp stopped dead. “What's that you say?”

“They burn rubbish. I smelt it when we got there this afternoon, but it's damped out now.”

Windorp, with a kind of howl, bumped into him. But with only one torch, and that in the hand of the guide, there was small hope of mending the pace. Beaver introduced them cautiously into an ambiguous region of arched walls and hedges, wide grey spaces, and looming spires of evergreen.

“Here we are in the middle,” said Percy, as they passed beneath still another dripping arch, “and there's the pool.”

They stood looking down into a deep, oblong excavation surrounded by shallow steps. From the middle of the concrete rose a bronze group which seemed, by the light of Beaver's torch, to represent somebody fighting a large fish.

“Lovely in summer,” Percy informed them. “Goldfish, pond lilies, everything. The flower-beds around the brim—”

“I want the incinerator,” said Windorp.

“It was over there, I thought.” Beaver gestured towards the south-west corner of the garden, and Percy remarked that something could have been burned in one of the urns.

“There are four,” he said, “one at each corner, just inside the wall. The outer hedge and the wall form a nice broad walk. Shady in summer; this whole place is overhung with trees.”

“I remember the trees down here,” said Gamadge, “and I hate to think that any of them were rooted up.”

“Oh, they were,” said Percy.

He preceded Beaver across the wide central space, through the inner hedge, and through the outer one; then, turning right, he led the party to a tall and broad-based urn, set into the angle of the wall. Stumbling, he complained: “Here's the tarpaulin. The urns are covered by tarpaulins all winter.”

Windorp peered over the fluted brim of the great vase, while Beaver directed the beam of his torch upon a dense and bitter-smelling heap of black ashes.

“I guess you win, Mr. Gamadge,” said Windorp. “Beaver, you cover this up. Perhaps there's something left of the thing, whatever it was.”

Beaver said: “The stone in there looks greasy to me. I think benzine was used perhaps.”

“A lot can be done with ashes.”

Percy had been hunting along the hedges; he now emitted a loud, wailing cry, and exclaimed: “My coat and hat! Stuffed under the hedge here, and the hat's sopping! Sopping!”

“I'll take those.” Windorp snatched the garments out of his arms.

“Enough to ruin them,” said Percy, “and what's more, enough to ruin the hedge. Of all the vandals!”

Gamadge said: “If there's a garden tap about—”

“There is; right here.”

“Then perhaps water was carried to the smouldering ashes in your hat.”

“Well,” said Percy, “one thing at least is fairly obvious; I wasn't the party who wore the coat and hat down here this afternoon, and was seen by Miss Wing. I can't afford to stuff my clothes under hedges and carry water in my only hat.”

Windorp looked at him; in the light of Beaver's torch both faces flickered oddly—pale, distorted masks. “The thing that's obvious to me,” he said, “is this: only one person knew that this garden wasn't a place to be seen in this afternoon; and that person would deny being seen here. Miss Wing might think it was an alibi; one person knew it was exactly the opposite.”

Beaver's moving torch gave Percy a crooked smile. “I can go you one better,” he said. “If I wore my own coat and hat down here, why didn't I wear them back to the house again? They constituted no disguise for me.”

Gamadge did not wait to hear what Windorp would make of this; he found his way as well as he could through the hedges, across the open space, through hedges and wall on the farther side, and up the yew walk. He entered the house, reached the back stairs via the swing door, and mounted to the second story. On that landing he paused; sounds of woe came to him from Louise's room above.

He climbed to the third floor, and looked in at her open doorway. She had comfortable quarters, nicely furnished, and equipped with a radio, a phonograph, an electric heater, and a sewing machine. Louise sat in her armchair, crying.

“Don't feel like that!” he begged her.

She raised a crumpled yellow face to him. “Still zey won't let me see Madame!”

“Who won't?”

“Les infirmières. Les infirmières.”

“You know what nurses are.”

“If Madame is to travel to-morrow, I must get her zings ready. I must look over her underzings and her stuggings.”

“Why not?”

“We are shut out—Dodo and Bobo and I.”

Gamadge now saw that the griffons were curled up together beside the radiator. He said: “Great friends, the three of you. Belgian, aren't they? I suppose you converse with them in French.”

“And take zem for walks.”

“You come along with me, the lot of you!”

They made a bustling progress downstairs to Mrs. Mason's door. Miss Mudge opened it to Gamadge's rap, disclosing a scene of cosiness amounting to gaiety. Firelight danced, lamps shed a rosy glow; a second and stouter nurse was busy over an electric plate in a corner. Mrs. Deedes, on a chair between the twin beds, supervised the activities of Mrs. Mason; and Mrs. Mason, prettily dressed in a pink bed-jacket and wearing a lace cap with lace strings, was working hard at planchette; the board which supported it was propped across her knees.