Nothing Can Rescue Me (22 page)

“Mrs. Deedes heard me say that I know who the murderer is. She'll spread it. I thought the party might want a chat with me.”

“Never heard anything so idiotic in my life. You asking to get killed?”

“It's extremely hard to kill anybody who's expecting to be.”

“Not with a gun.”

“There'll be no gun, and no noise. Don't forget that we have a patrol. I'm rather expecting to be garrotted!”

Macloud said: “Look here. I'd better be in the offing.”

“Your job is to keep the coast clear for me as well as you can by staying downstairs, and engaging Windorp in conversation. No lurking, remember; our friend isn't going to let people spring out on him or her from closets.”

“I bet nothing happens. You idiot, Clara would like this!” Macloud referred to Gamadge's wife.

“She'll never hear of it. Will you stay downstairs and talk to Morse and Windorp?” Macloud, observing that he would rather be in a cage of rattlesnakes than in this house, jammed the sponge-bag into his valise. Gamadge, leaning against the wall, said in a colourless tone: “Good deal depends on catching out this murderer. Money. Doesn't that appeal to you?”

“All right, all right. Silly, childish trick. Wash my hands of it.” Macloud nearly sent the valise off the bathroom stool to the floor. A new trooper, announcing himself as Officer Poultney, came in to say that Lieutenant Windorp wanted to see Mr. Gamadge and Mr. Macloud right away.

“Hope this means Windorp has real evidence,” grumbled Macloud, on their way downstairs. “If not, think I'll turn informer.”

Gamadge said a little awkwardly: “I don't want to be sentimental; but perhaps you'll agree with me that I owe Florence something.”

“Not your life,” growled Macloud.

“Just a slight risk.”

Macloud said no more. Officer Poultney had preceded them to the library; he shut them into it and withdrew, leaving them to confront a Sergeant Morse whose expression was one of subdued triumph, and a Lieutenant Windorp who sat regarding them with a kind of grudging satisfaction.

“Well, Mr. Gamadge,” he said, “I hand it to you.”

“Hand what to me?”

“This.” Windorp held out a small, oblong slip of greyish paper. It was scrawled with hieroglyphics in blue crayon, through which printed matter was discernible. Gamadge took it, looked at it, and passed it to his friend.

It was a cash sales slip, recording the purchase of one pair of navy-blue slacks at a large department store in New York. On the back of it was pencilled: “Miss E. Wing. To be called for.”

“And where do you think we found it?” Windorp was grinning from ear to ear. “Among Sylvanus Hutter's old bills and cancelled cheques. She was working on 'em last Fall, and this got mixed in. How does it feel to have your notions come true?”

Gamadge took the slip back from Macloud and examined it.

“You're thorough, Windorp.”

“Routine.”

“I owe you a piece of corroborative evidence. Miss Wing came into Hutter's room last night just before dinner. She didn't expect to find me there; I think she was going to look for this in Syl's desk.”

“She never had a chance. We cleared the desk out first thing.”

“So I intimated to her. I don't know,” said Gamadge, looking at the pencilled notation on the back of the slip, “why a customer's name should be written on a sales slip for a cash purchase.”

“We'll ask her. Morse, get her in here.” He turned to Macloud. “Thought you'd be willing to sit in on this as a neutral observer. Keep the record straight, so Miss Wing won't be able to plead coercion or anything.”

“I can't act for her, Windorp; I represent the other side—the Hutter-Mason estate.”

“You don't mind standing by?”

“Not at all, if you won't mind my butting in, when and if it seems expedient.”

“Butt in all you want to.”

Macloud went to a chair on the other side of the fireplace; Gamadge once more retired to the window embrasure.

“I dare say you'd like to arrest her on the strength of this?” Macloud, crossing his legs, leaned back in his chair and pointed to the sales slip, now in Windorp's fingers again.

“I dare say I would; but we'll give her a chance to explain.”

“She can't very well explain away her having lied about the possession of other slacks.”

“That's what I thought.”

“If you try to connect that slip with the ashes in the urn, though, you'll have a fight on your hands, starting in the coroner's court. A jury may try to draw an inference, but they'll be charged not to draw it. We don't know that the ashes in that urn ever were slacks.”

“There's such a thing as an overwhelming probability.”

“Slacks were originally nothing but an emanation of my friend Gamadge's ever-fertile brain; there's a gap a mile wide between his theory that slacks were burned in the garden yesterday, and the slacks that Miss Wing bought in September.”

Windorp's satisfaction at seeing navy-blue slacks all but materialize as a result of Gamadge's incantation, survived this legal quibbling. He said: “Let the jury hear about those ashes being wool, probably navy-blue wool—”

“And matters will proceed as I say. You didn't even find the slip while seeking confirmation of the slacks theory.”

Gamadge, a shoulder propped against the window embrasure, looked out of the window. He said without turning his head: “Put off the arrest, Windorp; put it off a few hours. I may be able to dig up something better for you.”

“I wouldn't put it past you to dig up anything; but she may be dangerous.”

“She has her money, all she can expect now; why should she be dangerous?” asked Gamadge, while Macloud glowered at him.

“She may be partly crazy.”

“Miss Wing is sane enough. Give her the run of the second floor, Windorp, until I have a try at new evidence.” He added: “You have your patrol working.”

Windorp looked down at the sales slip. “With this in evidence she ought to be locked up.”

“Just a few hours.”

“That'll give me time to look up a lawyer for her,” said Macloud. “I don't know much about Bethea talent. Perhaps I ought to find somebody in New York.”

Gamadge, looking out at the grey-and-blue mottled sky, did not hear Miss Wing brought in; but the timbre of her voice made him turn and look at her. It was a younger, higher voice than he had heard from her before, and her face was younger; all its maturity, its self-possession, had been washed away by a fear come true. She sat passive, almost childlike, in front of Windorp, and said: “I can explain it.”

“Wish you would. Sergeant Morse here will take notes of what you say, and it might be used in evidence; so you have your choice of talking or not talking. But I hope you'll talk.”

“I'd rather explain now. I got the slacks at a bargain sale in September, but I couldn't wear them here; I got them to wear next summer when I went on my vacation. Mrs. Mason didn't like me or anybody to wear slacks, and I didn't want to upset her; so I said nothing about them to her or anybody. I left them in their package in my closet. I never thought of them again until you asked me about slacks. I went and looked, and they were gone.”

“Somebody took them?”

“Yes; I don't know who could have known about them.”

“You bought 'em for cash?”

“Yes.”

“Why is your name on the back of the slip, then?”

“I left them to be picked up, and went and did some other shopping. The girl wrote my name down so that I shouldn't have to wait if she wasn't at the counter when I got back.”

“And you did Mr. Hutter's accounts, in October, I think, and mixed up this sales slip with them?”

“Yes.” If she could be paler, she was now.

“You never thought of the slacks until after we talked about them a little while ago. Then why were you looking for this sales slip in Hutter's room last evening, a short time after the ashes were found in the garden?”

She said after a pause: “I'm sorry. I did begin to worry about the slacks, then. Somebody told me they were looking for slacks, and that they thought the ashes in the garden...” she stopped. Unable to go on, for the moment, Gamadge thought.

“Who told you?”

“It had got around.”

“Not unless Percy spread it. Did he tell you? Rush right up to your room and tell you they'd found the ashes of your slacks?”

“He didn't rush up. He stopped and told me.”

“Why couldn't you admit that at first? Why did you try to conceal it?”

“I dragged him in before.”

“Oh, yes; the hat. Percy knew you wore slacks on your vacations?”

“He may have heard me say so.”

“So instead of coming to me about these missing slacks of yours, you wait till you're questioned about them, and then you have a direct falsehood ready; that you had no other slacks up here but the grey ones.”

“I thought it would look so badly—my having concealed them.”

“And when the sales slip is found you tell another falsehood; that you didn't think about it until this morning. I could hold you on a charge of obstructing justice; and I think if Mr. Gamadge hadn't been in Hutter's room last evening you would have made yourself liable to another charge—destroying evidence.”

She turned her pale, blank face aside. “I'd been down in the garden. I was too frightened to tell the truth.”

“Then what part of your evidence do you expect us to believe? What part of it is likely to be believed in a court of law? Why should we believe you didn't know that Mrs. Mason had you down in that will she made Thursday, as her residuary legatee?”

She was silent.

“You want us to think that somebody poked around in your closet sometime and found your blue slacks. Who was likely to do that? The servants?”

“Oh, no, they wouldn't.”

“That Louise wouldn't? One of my men says she was digging in your closet yesterday, after you went down to dinner.”

Gamadge said: “Mrs. Mason sent her to get clothes for Miss Hutter to wear. A dressing-gown, and so on.”

“Thanks.” Windorp was brusque with his tame magician. “Does she often do that? Prowl in your room?”

“Never. She's incapable of it.”

“We don't know what people are capable of, though, do we?” Gamadge thought that Windorp had been too modest in disclaiming powers of cross-examination. “Somebody looked for slacks in your closet,” he went on. “Knew where to look, too. Wore them to kill Hutter, got bloodstains on them, and wore them down to the garden. Burned 'em in that urn, with cleaning fluid poured over 'em; and left Percy's hat and coat there under a hedge. You were there, by your own account you left the garden just on the minute—just in time to miss the bonfire. You won't tell us where you were standing when you saw Percy's hat. How do you think that adds up, Miss Wing?”

She said: “I can't add it up. I've told you everything, now.”

“I'm giving you a chance to say who knew about your navy-blue slacks. You must have told somebody about them.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Nobody'd hunt in your closet just for the fun of it.”

There was a pause, and then she looked not at Macloud but at Gamadge. “Can they arrest me?”

He said: “Ask Mr. Macloud.”

Macloud said: “They would be justified, I think, in holding you for questioning. If they do, I'll get you a lawyer—anybody you want, or you can leave it to me. To be frank, I think they have a prima-facie case against you; but my line isn't criminal law. You'd better have expert advice.”

“I'll let Miss Wing think it over for a while,” said Windorp, after a visible struggle with himself. “That's all for now.”

She rose; turning an incredulous, pale stare on him, she asked slowly: “You're not arresting me?”

“No. You're free, Miss Wing,” said Windorp drily, “as air; except I don't care to have you leave the house. But so far as I know you don't want to; you didn't ask permission to go and take a walk in the garden this morning, though everybody else did.” He added, over his shoulder, “And you needn't put that down, Sergeant Morse; perhaps the lawyers would call that immaterial.”

“But not irrelevant,” murmured Macloud, as she went out of the room.

Windorp leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head. “My idea is that she wore those slacks and committed the first murder. She was the one that had the best opportunity to go through Mrs. Mason's papers, and Hutter's too; it was her job. Of course she read all the drafts of all the wills, soon as they were put in Mrs. Mason's desk. She came back to the house, waited around for a chance, and changed those capsules—she'd have known all about Hutter's photography and his chemicals. It's a clear case of a penniless woman, in love with a poor man; and now she's started behaving the way she's going to behave in the courtroom—young and helpless; and both of you fell for it. I wish people would ever think of the victims in a murder case.”

Macloud, with his eyes on Gamadge, said that he didn't know why Windorp was attacking them in this manner.

“Because I'm sore at the way this thing is bound to go. She has her story, and unless Mr. Gamadge digs up something more it'll get her off.”

Macloud said: “If it hadn't been for Gamadge she would never have had to tell it.”

“That's why I've turned her loose for the afternoon. If it hadn't been for Mr. Gamadge,” said Windorp, putting his forefinger on the sales slip, “we'd never have looked twice at this thing. I'm glad to oblige him; but I'm not very calm in my mind about her; now's the time for her to plant evidence on somebody else.”

“What has she to plant?” asked Gamadge.

“Couple of pinches of cyanide crystals.”