Nothing Can Rescue Me (16 page)

Mrs. Deedes, looking up, met Gamadge's incredulous gaze with a disarming smile. She said; “It amuses her.”

“Oh? I hope she's doing it reverently. Sally, I think you're mad.”

“Oh, Henry,” exclaimed Mrs. Mason, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed, “I almost got a word!”

“Where did you get planchette?”

“That nice Ridley found it somewhere for us.” Gamadge, remembering where planchette had last been used at Underhill, frowned heavily. Mrs. Deedes said: “Don't be cross,” and Miss Mudge said that it couldn't possibly hurt Mrs. Mason to play Ouija, it was lots of fun.

“Planchette isn't Ouija,” said Gamadge. “Planchette has been writing for nearly a hundred years—before Ouija was ever heard of. Louise wants to come in and do some packing or something, Florence.”

“Why, Louise, where have you been? You haven't been near me.” Mrs. Mason did not take her eyes from planchette, and Louise, scuttling past Gamadge, immediately buried herself in the depths of a large dress-closet. The griffons pranced across the room and scrambled up on the bed; Mrs. Mason welcomed them rapturously and planchette slid to the floor.

“Louise is a privileged party,” Gamadge explained to Miss Mudge. She nodded, and said in a low voice: “Mrs. Mason will see people. At first she wouldn't, but now she lets everybody come.”

“Keep an eye on them; don't let anything worry her.”

“No, we won't.”

Gamadge went to his room, and found that somebody had found time to lay out his evening clothes; life, it seemed, was to go on as usual at Underhill. Reflecting that Sylvanus would have approved, Gamadge enjoyed a hot bath and a leisurely toilet; then he wandered through into Sylvanus's large corner room. He switched on a light.

Sylvanus, like many other collectors, had cared little for schemes of decoration. His best things were no doubt crated and waiting for burial; the few treasures he had kept about him here were not arranged according to any period or plan. Paintings—in their original gilt frames—hung crowded on the walls; the floor was covered—more than covered, for one end of it had had to be rolled under the window seat—by an old and ugly Persian rug. Buhl, oak, and marquetry furniture—each piece no doubt a bargain—showed that Sylvanus's tastes ran to the remarkable rather than to the beautiful. On the mantelpiece two black and ancient wooden figures, primitive and horrifying, stood among jade tear-bottles and ornaments of Sèvres and Saxe.

Gamadge went up and studied the African images. They were symbols, no doubt, but of what? Those misshapen limbs and features that melted so indistinguishably into one another had been vividly rendered; one could hardly believe that they had not been seen with waking eyes, or imagine what experience could have transmuted them into a dream. He wondered whether the sculptor had known what the effect of them would be, and whether he could have understood evil, as modern people understand it, at all.

At a sound from the doorway he turned. Evelyn Wing stood there, very handsome in a dark-green dinner dress with a high neck and long sleeves; it made her look older than she had looked in day clothes, or perhaps it was Hutter's death that had given her that gravity, that mature, careworn expression.

She asked: “Ought they to leave this room unlocked? I thought they locked rooms up, when people died—like that.”

“They lock up the rooms they die in.”

“Mr. Hutter worked at this desk.” She put her hand on a big carved-oak secretaire.

“Weren't his important papers downstairs in the office files?”

“I don't know what he had here. I could see.”

“You may be sure that the police have seen.”

“Would they mind my looking? I did his accounts for him.”

“Windorp might be glad of your help.”

She still hesitated, and he waited in silence. At last she said:

“There seem to be so many strangers in the house. I shouldn't like the servants to be blamed if anything disappeared.”

“I fancy Hutter's valuables are safe enough.”

“Nobody but dealers will care about them now. Poor, kind little man.”

“You're the first person I've heard speak of him like that.”

“They're probably too much distressed to speak of him. I'm an outsider. He was always nice to me.”

“The extraordinary part of it, though,” said Gamadge, leaning up against the footboard of the canopied bed, “is that the manner of his going seems to distress them so little. It doesn't impress you, so far as I can see. Yet there's a murderer—a ferocious and brutal murderer in the house, whose motive for murder is obscure.”

She frowned at him. “I suppose we can't take it in; if it's true.”

“It's true enough.”

“I supposed that somebody had had a terrible quarrel with him. That can happen, but it doesn't seem exactly like murder to me.”

“It's usually manslaughter; but this wasn't. Hutter was struck down from behind, with every circumstance of premeditation.”

She put out a hand and steadied herself against the door frame. “I meant the quarrel must have been earlier.”

“Still, I should think you'd all feel very uncomfortable with such a violent party loose on the premises. I'm not comfortable about this murder, I can assure you. I have a very nasty feeling about it. Cold-blooded sort of thing, and sly—very sly. Elements of desperation about it, too; the party cut it very fine. Unpleasant to know that it must be connected with that business about Mrs. Mason's novel.”

She raised her eyes slowly to his. “It simply can't be.”

“It simply must be. And that hocus-pocus with her novel—do you know how it affected me from the time I first heard of it?” He jerked his head towards the mantelpiece. “Like those African images there. Pure evil. A murder, a brutal murder, is no more than the natural outcome of evil like that, and not half so frightening.”

She said faintly: “You exaggerate. You don't understand what extraordinary things some people do when they're angry. They're like children, smashing things. Those sculptures—they're like that; just done for their own sake.”

“They weren't done for their own—or art's sake; and neither was that business with Mrs. Mason's book. Murder followed it. Really, Miss Wing, I don't understand you people at all. I congratulate you all on your nerve. I'm going down the hall to say good-night to Mrs. Mason, and I assure you I hate the idea of all the closed doors I shall pass on my way—two of them belonging to cupboards, you know.”

She forced a smile. “I don't know why you should be in any danger; or why I should.”

“No, and that's a very interesting thing too, because it looked, on the face of it, as if you were meant to be injured by that trick with Mrs. Mason's book.”

“But you said it really wasn't done to injure me.”

“I theorized. Can you be so sure why it wasn't done?”

She turned away, and he followed her into the hall. Mrs. Deedes, coming out of her room across the landing, faced them droopingly. She wore a long, filmy grey dress with frill sleeves, and the antique pearls were in her ears and around her neck. She said: “I do want a cocktail. Will you see that we get a cocktail, Henry?”

“I will, if I have to mix them myself.”

Susie Burt came along from her room. Her flaming hair was thickly curled on her shoulders, and she wore a long white dress with a round neck. She said: “Oh, I'm glad you all dressed. I didn't know what to do.”

“One changes for dinner, I suppose. This thing is for any hour of the day.” Mrs. Deedes spoke vaguely, and began to descend the stairs.

“It's lovely.” Susie Burt followed. Miss Wing stood aside for her, and then went down in her turn. Gamadge started for Mrs. Mason's room; half-way along the hall Mason came hurrying towards him, his fingers at his tie. He said sharply, “Gamadge, I wish you'd be good enough to tell me what all this is about. They're boiling eggs in Florence's room, and heating soup out of cans. They've had special milk in. Has Burbage gone crazy?”

“Don't you really see any sense in it?” asked Gamadge mildly.

“Not unless Burbage thinks she's in for a serious illness, and needs a diet of slops.”

“She'll be all right when she's away from here.”

“She's not going away.”

“Why should you object to her going?”

“We'll both clear out in a few days. She'll not go without me. I won't have it.”

“You can't go yet, Mason, as you know very well. Do you want your wife in the same house with a maniac?”

Mason opened his mouth, closed it, and plunged off down the hall. Percy came around the corner from the back stairs; beautiful in his dinner clothes, his black hair shining.

“My next-door neighbour Miss Hutter,” he told Gamadge, “is nibbling food from a tray on her bureau. Isn't she allowed at table? I feel as though I were sharing the attic with the family idiot.”

“Not having been invited to the house-party,” said Gamadge, “Miss Hutter probably wishes to efface herself.”

“At least she can't decently share my bath. If there's one thing I abominate,” said Percy, “it's the sight of other people's tooth paste.”

“I hope the police got her some tooth paste.”

“It's ridiculous to coop poor old Corinne up with the rest of us murderers.”

“You'll be glad you're cooped up when to-morrow comes. Underhill will be in a state of siege.”

Percy gave the characteristic hunch of his shoulders that was not quite a shrug, and went on down the hall to the front stairs. Gamadge knocked at Mrs. Mason's door; the smiling Miss Mudge opened it, and invited him in.

All lights were on, and Miss Boylan, the stout nurse, was preparing Mrs. Mason's supper with the help of the electric plate. Mrs. Mason, a tray across her knees, looked happy and childlike in the pink jacket and the lace cap, of which the strings were now tied under her chin. She waved her fruit spoon at Gamadge.

“I'm ever so much better, Henry,” she cried, “but Dr. Burbage wants me to be careful for a day or two, so Miss Boylan's cooking for me.”

“Pretty nice, by the smell of it.” Gamadge went up to the bed, and leaned on the footboard to look at her.

“And Louise has found me something black to wear, isn't it lucky?”

Louise, her arms heaped with delicate black raiment, ducked her head at him, smiling.

“And we were out of sugar and things; Johnny Ridley had to go to Erasmus for them. Imagine!” Mrs. Mason swallowed a spoonful of grapefruit. Gamadge thought: Sylvanus wouldn't have behaved like this if Florence had died; no, he wouldn't. But Florence had had an additional quarter of a century in which to be so petted and pampered that she no longer cared what people thought of her; even so, she was not perhaps entirely frivolous—there was perhaps no middle course for her between delirious high spirits and utter collapse.

He said: “I'm glad you're so cheerful here.”

“If people would only understand that it does no good to any one to be depressed! Corinne stopped in to see me, but she's the type that loves to talk about death and funerals, and I couldn't bear it. That reminds me, Louise; you'll have to find something of Miss Wing's for her to wear to-night. They're making her stay.”

“Mees Wing has gone downstairs. Must I—”

“No, just get something out of the dresser and closet and bathroom.” Louise trotted away, and Florence went on: “Dr. Burbage says I simply mustn't be worried. He's making all the arrangements.”

“That's good.”

“Tim was so difficult about my going to town to-morrow. He's so selfish.” Mrs. Mason consumed grapefruit, and continued plaintively: “Somebody must stay here to look after the place, especially if rowdies and lunatics are going to break in. I'm sure it was a rowdy or a lunatic, Henry.”

“Windorp will round the rowdies and lunatics up.”

“Evelyn came and sat with me a long time. She always knows just what to say and do; she's such a comfort to me.”

Gamadge's eye fell upon planchette, retrieved from the floor, and now perched—he thought with a rather watchful and alert look about it—on top of the desk. He said: “And isn't Sally?”

“Yes, but I always think young people are so much more stimulating; when one's in trouble, you know. Glen Percy came in to cheer me up. He's always so sweet and so funny.” The nurses began to giggle, and Mrs. Mason, giggling herself, went on: “Those pets of his he's always talking about—I know he makes them up! He told us about two lovebirds he had once that hated each other, and he couldn't understand it, and finally they both laid an egg!”

Gamadge joined in the hearty laughter that followed. “And then Susie came,” said Mrs. Mason, “all dressed up for dinner. Rather bad taste, I thought, and I think it's absurd for a girl of her age to wear her hair down her back.”

“Perhaps you told her so?”

“Yes, I did; she has no mother to tell her things. I only wish she had; I only wish Caroline were alive to keep her in order.”

Gamadge dimly remembered ferocious combats between Florence Mason and her friend the late Mrs. Burt. He echoed Florence's sigh.

“Now, eat your grapefruit,” said Miss Boylan. “Then you'll have consommé, and I'm making you a lovely sauce for your egg.”

“You'll do, Florrie,” smiled Gamadge. “Good night, and I'll see you in the morning.”

“You see how they're spoiling me,” she said gleefully; and added—perhaps to herself, perhaps to the nurses—as he left the room: “Oh dear, I forgot again. Well, I'll just do it now, that's all!”

Miss Mudge closed the door. As Gamadge moved away from it, Officer Ridley came down the back stairs.

“On patrol, are you?” asked Gamadge. “That's good.”