Nothing Can Rescue Me (23 page)

“If she's the murderer,” said Gamadge, “she won't plant them on anybody.”

“How do you know?”

“There isn't a person in the group,” said Gamadge, “who wouldn't take cyanide rather than go to the electric chair.”

“Well, you're responsible for her, don't forget that.” The luncheon gong sounded as he rose. “Morally responsible,” he added dourly. “But if she kills somebody else, or herself, you won't be blamed; I will.”

Corinne Hutter had not only kept order in the pantry and kitchen, she had actually argued or persuaded the entire party at Underhill into coming to lunch. They drifted, one after the other, into the white and mirrored dining-room, and Corinne took charge of them; if she had not, Gamadge thought, they would probably have drifted away again. Corinne, as she placed them, had a firm hold on Mason's arm.

“Cousin Tim,” she said, “you sit in Cousin Florence's place, and Mr. Macloud can sit opposite you. Greta, isn't Lieutenant Windorp going to eat with us?”

This question showed less than her usual dry tact; unless she had asked it in the sure and certain knowledge that he wasn't, and merely to show that nobody, so far as she could guess, needed to be afraid of the law.

“He's going to have a tray in the library,” said Greta, the biggest parlourmaid.

“Then let's sit down.”

Corinne Hutter could make them sit down, but she could not make even Percy talk; and she could not make Evelyn Wing eat. It was Macloud who took over, much to Gamadge's admiration. He began immediately to discourse on the laws of the Saxons, kept up his lecture through the first two courses, and had reached (by some process Gamadge could not follow) a disquisition on English court procedure under James I by the time they were finishing the squabs.

By this strategy he had driven Mason to begin a low-voiced conversation about air defence with Mrs. Deedes; and Percy, without much spirit, was explaining to Evelyn Wing—who took no notice of him—that he had had a prejudice against Germany ever since he had seen a certain worm at the Falls of the Rhine; which he declared to have been the size and colour of a small cooked lobster, and covered with black spots.

Coffee was served at table. When it had been swallowed Mason excused himself, and disappeared through the side door. The others melted away, and Macloud, Gamadge, and Corinne Hutter were left standing together, looking relaxed.

“You're a genius, Corinne,” said Macloud.

“Well, if I am, you're a hero. I thought it was perfectly terrible for Cousin Tim to keep going without his meals, and if he could come down the others certainly ought to be able to stand it. People have to eat.”

“You certainly cast a spell over the servants. I thought they'd have been in a huddle by now,” said Gamadge, “with two policemen taking care of them.”

“Mr. Macloud helped me. He went right up yesterday and told them about their legacies, and said he'd get their wages paid for six weeks if they'd stay till we didn't need them.”

“No difficulty at all,” said Macloud. “The cook was sitting on her packed trunk, and I helped her unpack it again.”

“I ought to see about a caretaker. Will you talk to the stableman that always did it, Mr. Macloud? I don't know what to tell people about their wages. I don't know exactly who the place belongs to right now. Can Evelyn Wing give orders about it? Cousin Tim won't; he won't settle a thing. He seems to think he hasn't any right even to sleep here one night.”

“He has to,” said Macloud, “until Windorp breaks up the party. I'll see the men.”

“Evelyn Wing—she looks as if she'd had a sickness. Is—I hope nothing's going to happen to her?”

“Don't worry about it,” said Macloud. “Go ahead with your own job. I suppose you wouldn't care to stay on and look after the place for the time being? I can get you appointed for the estate until things are settled.”

“You wouldn't say that unless Evelyn Wing—this is terrible.”

“Of course it's terrible. The whole thing is terrible,” said Macloud, irritated.

“I have to be at the library to-morrow morning, if Lieutenant Windorp will let me; but I could drive back and forth for a while. Doctor Burbage thinks Thomas ought to go to the hospital, or he might have a stroke. It's been too much for him.”

“I'll talk to Burbage on the telephone this afternoon.”

Gamadge left them discussing ways and means, and walked through the deserted drawing-room. Florence and Sylvanus had made it, and without them it seemed already to be fading; but the Danes had made up the fire and filled the vases with fresh hothouse flowers—the blight, if there were one, could not be any fault of theirs.

Much depressed, he walked slowly up to the second floor, and could have embraced Officer Poultney when the latter advanced towards him from the rear of the hall. “You're alive, anyway,” said Gamadge. “I salute you.”

“It is kind of dead up here, isn't it?” Poultney glanced over his shoulder. “They all shut themselves up soon as they came upstairs. All these doors, I'm getting to hate the sight of them. That linen closet there—last time I looked in, a big roll of blackout stuff fell off a shelf on me.”

“In your place I should have screamed aloud.”

“I might've if I hadn't been in uniform.”

Poultney went on down the stairs, and Gamadge was about to open his door when the griffons dashed around the corner from the back passage, to fling themselves upon him, wheezing.

“Why, you poor little beggars,” Gamadge looked down at them with some sympathy. “Lonely, are you? Looking for Florence and Syl? No, you can't come in with me—I'm busy.”

But they could and did. They rushed through his room and into the communicating bath; a squeal and a clatter brought Gamadge after them, to find that Bobo, trying for a short cut into Hutter's room, had brought Macloud's valise down from the bath stool and himself sprawling on the tiles. Dodo, concerned for her partner, stood panting.

Bobo was not hurt. Gamadge shooed both animals into the hall, closed his door, and possessed himself of a couple of sheets of notepaper and planchette. Then he went into the bathroom and inspected the damage. There was not much. None of the bottles and small toilet articles which strewed the floor was broken, but a tin of superior talcum had lost its top and shed part of its contents on the tiles. He fanned powder to right and left, replaced the things in the valise and the valise on the stool, and went through into the next room, shutting the door after him.

He arranged the paper and planchette on a small table, lowered the blinds, drew the curtains, and placed a chair at the table with its back to the bathroom. Then he sat down and poised his fingers on the board.

Almost immediately he felt a fullness in his head. Funny, he thought, it was my hands yesterday; and wondered afresh at the effect of ritual on mankind. “And what you fellows don't know about that!” he muttered, raising his eyes to the little black misshapen figures on the mantelpiece.

The hall door opened. Evelyn Wing came in, closing it behind her, at the same moment that Gamadge heard the heavy steps of the patrol in the upper hall.

Gamadge, frowning heavily, shook his head, made a face at her, and formed silent words: “Go away.”

She moved forward instead, put another chair opposite him, and sat down on it. “Had to speak to you,” she said, below her breath.

“No. Later. Can't listen now.” He pushed planchette about the paper, and then pointed. She read in large block letters what he had written upside down: “Go now.”

She looked at him, and down at the board. She seemed to be asking herself whether he could really be taking this mumbo-jumbo seriously, whether she ought to revise her opinion of him after all. Her face, seen as an almost expressionless mask in the gloom, told him nothing; but as she in turn put her hands on planchette, her head came up, and she was suddenly rigid. Gamadge also had heard the faint, very faint, click of a lock—the lock belonging to the hall door. He smiled at her.

She wrote, slowly and painfully, as if with frozen fingers. He read her message: LOOK OUT.

“Thanks,” he murmured, still smiling, and they sat gazing at each other, poised, tense, waiting.

There was a change in the room, impalpable as air; in fact, it might have been air that caused it—the faintest draught. Gamadge rested his chin on his hand; Miss Wing stared beyond his shoulder; and suddenly she rose. Gamadge put out a hand to seize her wrist, but she had gasped:

“The bathroom door!”

He swung out of his chair sidewise, and his elbow swept planchette from the table. He reached the bathroom door as if catapulted against it, but the latch had clicked, and the bolt shot home.

“Well.” He stood for a moment looking at it, and then turned to look at her. “Something of an anti-climax,” he said. “You have spoiled my experiment, Miss Wing, and done yourself no good. And I'm not grateful for your kind solicitude.” Walking past her, he pulled back the curtains and drew up the blinds. “And I really think,” he said, coming back to look down at the splintered remains of planchette, which he seemed to have put his foot on, “that the only satisfactory part of the entire transaction is this.”

She had sunk back upon her chair. “You mean you were expecting—”

“My poor dear Miss Wing. I was expecting evidence that was to save you from the county jail. Now to jail you will probably go; and I hoped you wouldn't even have to undergo the ignominy of an arrest.” He picked planchette up from the floor, and tossed its halves into a waste-basket. “Perhaps, though, you will now tell me whom you were expecting when the bathroom door opened.”

“I just heard the latch, and saw it come ajar.”

“And do you think I didn't hear the latch? I've been waiting patiently to hear it.”

“I didn't come to warn you of anything. I came to ask you whether they'll just go on now and—and convict me, without ever doing anything more to find out who really killed Mrs. Mason and Mr. Hutter.”

“As soon as you're arrested the entire country will begin to try and find out who really committed the murders. As soon as anybody is arrested the entire population—with a few hard-headed exceptions—decides that that party must be innocent. Don't ask me why.”

“But will the police stop looking?”

“Why should they waste time and the taxpayers' money trying to help a person who won't help herself?” He stood looking down at her.

“I can't be sure.”

“You want somebody else to do the dirty work? Well, if the worst happens, I'll write you an epitaph: ‘When I am dead, my dearest, O do not Ouija me.' Apologies to Christina Rossetti.”

She said in an agonized voice: “I can't do it! I don't know anything! I don't believe it's true.”

“You might consult me; I am famous for keeping harmless secrets.”

She shook her head.

“Very well, then, let us put our minds on the immediate problem of getting ourselves out of this without a stain on our characters. Do I hear the footsteps of Officer Poultney?”

When the footsteps came abreast of the door Gamadge knocked on it. A key turned, and Poultney's surprised face confronted him.

“Thanks,” said Gamadge. “A vulgar joke, perpetrated no doubt by my friend Macloud.”

“Mr. Macloud locked you and her in here?” Poultney seemed incredulous.

“These reserved characters, you never know where they're going to break out.”

He and Poultney watched Miss Wing go down the hall and into her room. When its door closed, Gamadge continued: “We were playing planchette, but it was a stormy session, and the medium ended by being dashed from the table to the floor. All right, Poultney; and thanks again.”

Poultney went down the front stairs. Gamadge, frowning dejectedly, entered his own room. Afterwards he tried to remember how many seconds it was before, on his way to the communicating bath to unlock its farther door, he stopped short, gaped, uttered a sound resembling a bellow, and turned to make for the hall. But although he had doubts about that short interval, he had no doubts as to what went through his mind as he ran shouting to Miss Wing's room. He was thundering on the panels of her door when Poultney, gun in hand, lumbered up beside him. Poultney was a man of action; he put the gun away and rammed his foot against the wood over the knob.

Morse and Windorp, pistols out, came running up. Mason, looking bewildered and half awake, peered from his room opposite; Corinne Hutter arrived from the back passage; Susie Burt put her head out of her room, and Mrs. Deedes came towards them shrieking: “What is it? What is it?” Percy had materialized from the back passage, and Macloud from the first floor by the time Poultney had kicked the door in and followed it, stumbling.

Windorp and Gamadge were behind him, and again Morse was barring the crowd out with stretched arms. He shut the door on it, and then turned to face—as the others did—an empty, quiet room. Windorp, moving his head from side to side like a frustrated buffalo, gazed at the unruffled bed, the neatly placed furniture, the orderly dressing-table. He glared at Poultney. Poultney, staggered by this tame ending to pandemonium, could only mutter:

“Mr. Gamadge told me to bust the door.”

Morse was trying to fit the burst door into its frame. Gamadge lurched past him to the closet. “If this is locked,” he began, but the knob turned. Gamadge, falling back as the door jerked open, did not see the huddled figure lying among bags and boxes in the dark.

And when Poultney had got it on the bed, Gamadge could only see the broad backs of the two policemen. He stood breathing hard, until Windorp turned to him with something thin and snaky in his hand. “Dog's leash,” he said, panting, too.

“Yes. It's been missing.”

“She's alive.” Poultney spoke over his shoulder. “Needs air.” Windorp crossed the room and flung up the window. “Go to it,” he said. “You're the first-aid man.”