Nothing Can Rescue Me (26 page)

“I was frightened and worried, of course; but Corinne told me Tim and Susie had done it, she had proof, but she wouldn't say what it was on Florence's account.”

“No wonder you put it on the spirits! Did Corinne Hutter think Miss Wing was going to stick to that agreement with you, and that you would stick to yours with her, when the basis of the transaction rose from a few hundreds a year to a good many thousands?”

“Evelyn would have been glad to stick to hers with me, and I had to stick to mine with Corinne!”

“And how was Miss Wing to be persuaded to turn Underhill over to you, and what would she have thought when you turned it over to Miss Corinne Hutter?”

“It would have seemed natural enough to her—Corinne is a Hutter, and Evelyn feels very grateful to me, and is fond of Bill.”

“Where the devil are these precious agreements, Sally? Will the police find them?”

“Oh, no. Mine with Evelyn is here in my bag, and Corinne's is in a book in the Erasmus library.”

“And why shouldn't somebody take the book out, since Miss Hutter isn't there to sit on it?”

“Oh, nobody would take it out. It's the
Proceedings of the Erasmus Bible and Foreign Mission Society
for 1910; they had a pageant, and took pictures, and Sylvanus had it bound up for them.”

“Nothing even distantly allied to regional Americana is safe from research in these days. You must get the book out to-morrow.”

“I meant to get it this afternoon.”

“And now give me that thing you made your cousin sign in her hour of need.”

She fumbled in her bag and got out a paper. He looked at it in disgust, burned it over an ash-tray, and dropped the last charred corner into the fireplace. “There,” he said. “That's all I can do. If Evelyn Wing should get into trouble about this, you know, you will have to face the music.”

“Of course I shall.”

“If you refuse, I'll have to talk to Bill.”

He left her, still shaking his head, and went along the hall to Evelyn Wing's room. She was sitting up in bed, pale but smiling, and the high white bandage around her neck made her look like a young gentleman of the Regency. Percy, established on the bed's edge, contemplated her fondly.

“Don't get up.” Gamadge pressed his shoulder, and moved past him to draw up a chair.

“Mr. Gamadge”—she put out her hand—“I'm so grateful.”

“I don't know why you should be; it was only by accident that I saw Corinne Hutter's footprints on my rug; and your friend here will tell you that I brought your name into the discourse with which I tried to convince Miss Hutter that she must plead insane.”

“I thought of that agreement that I signed with Sally; but I never signed any with Corinne Hutter.”

“Of course not, and you can swear you didn't, and Corinne Hutter will swear you didn't. I think the authorities will decide that the whole thing was a figment of her imagination, and the murders committed from pure spite. I hoped you might be willing to assist in the rescue of poor Sally, who after all wasn't grafting for herself.”

“They won't ask me about the agreement with Sally?”

“Not a word. No such agreement now exists.”

“Sally was always saying that if we ever had money we must do something for Corinne, and that it would be so nice to keep Underhill in the Hutter family. When I knew that Mrs. Mason had left it to me in her will I began to be awfully worried about Sally, and at last I was afraid she had actually killed Mrs. Mason and Mr. Hutter, and might be going to kill you.”

“So you came in to assist with planchette, and watch the door. I was annoyed, I can tell you.”

“When I felt that leash around my neck I knew it couldn't be Sally. I knew it!”

“And then you knew no more.”

Percy snatched her hand from Gamadge's, and clasped it, with her other one, between his own. “Let's just quietly expunge the incident from our tablets of memory,” he said. “Let's forget the whole thing. For two days I've been going around in a kind of mental strait jacket, afraid to show feeling because I thought I would be supposed to be covering up for my friend here; and all the time I was sure Mason had done it, with Susie scouting for him, and that he'd never be found out and Evelyn would take the rap. When did Corinne get that leash off its hook in the servants' sitting-room?”

“Two minutes after she put it there, I suppose,” said Gamadge. “As soon as the coast was clear.”

“I suppose she used to drive over when we were in New York and go through the house and all our things,” said Evelyn Wing. “I suppose she found my blue slacks in the box in my closet. I did say something about them to Cousin Sally.”

Percy, looking at her through half-closed eyes, said: “You've got square with your Cousin Sally now. Curse that thousand dollars!”

“I don't know what would have become of me if she hadn't lent me the money to take that business course. Mr. Gamadge, you don't know what it's like to have nothing, absolutely nothing. It's easy to say you'd rather starve than do things, but I wanted to pay Sally back, and I was fond of Mrs. Mason, and I had to live.”

“So you solemnly typed at her novel, and let her think it would get by. Perhaps it would have got by,” said Gamadge. “I don't know.”

“I did worse than that, I—”

“Let her abuse you when she felt cross at somebody else. We know,” said Percy. “We knew Mrs. Mason. I don't know why Corinne went on with her scheme after you got into the house, though,” he added, turning his dark glance on Gamadge. “I don't think I should have risked it myself.”

“I never seemed very formidable to Corinne Hutter,” replied Gamadge, “and you must remember that she was pressed for time. You and Miss Wing might have decided to run off and get married, the Masons might have made up their differences, and Florence might have drafted another will. What on earth were you two bickering about, anyway?”

“Difficult question,” said Percy, “but I think you might as well know all the answers. First: when I met Evelyn, and recognized her as my fate, Susie Burt had just lost the remains of her parents' money. It wasn't the moment to break with her.”

“But wasn't she breaking with you? She seemed to me sincerely preoccupied with Mason.”

“The trouble is, so few people seem to understand Susie's type. People like Susie don't fall in love much, and even when they do, they want to keep all their men around them still. Susie Burt cannot, absolutely cannot, give up a man; if she had five hundred men, she'd go through anything to keep the five hundred and first. A couple of weeks ago I told her she cared for Mason, and it was all off with me; I wouldn't play second fiddle to a married guy. She wanted me to string along, and we had an uproar.”

“And Corinne Hutter was always telling me,” said Evelyn Wing, “that Glen really liked Susie best.”

“And she tried to annoy Mr. Mason into turning him out for good,” suggested Gamadge, “by telling her that he was annoying you with his attentions.”

“I'll annoy you with my attentions from now on.” Percy took her face gently between his hands. “Until I get you married to me. Then I'll be off your hands—flying.”

She put her arms around his neck. Gamadge quietly retired, and found when he reached his room that his bag was packed and ready. Macloud joined him on the stairs, and the two Danes, calmly insistent, followed them with the luggage.

Macloud said gloomily: “I had to let Susie Burt drive down with us.”

“Curses. Is she leaving?”

“Yes, and she looked very glum; I couldn't refuse to give her the lift, but I told her we had weighty matters to discuss, and that she'd have to sit with the bags.”

“How about Sally? Isn't she ready to come?”

“She got the invitation Susie didn't get—from Mason. She's staying.”

“Staying? She was packing up a quarter of an hour ago.”

“Five minutes ago Louise came in to say good-bye, and tell me that she'd been engaged to stay and look after Mrs. Deedes. I'm glad poor old Sally can have a maid again.” He gave Gamadge a sidelong look.

“So am I.”

“Louise said she always hated Corinne, who had what amounted to powers of life and death over them all; but they were too afraid of her to complain.”

Mason awaited them at the foot of the stairs. Macloud took leave of him, and went on out to the car, but he kept hold of Gamadge's arm. “Can't express my gratitude,” he mumbled. “I thought—Lord knows what I thought. I was blaming myself.” He glanced out at Macloud's Sedan, and Susie Burt's flaming hair against the dark interior.

“Never mind. It's all over now.”

“This thing has shaken me, though; I can't help feeling that it was partly my fault. I'm not proud of myself.”

Gamadge looked down at the upturned face of the griffons, who sat close together beside Mason's left foot. He said: “Thank these little creatures, not me.”

“They're good little devils. Gamadge—Windorp says he thinks you're right; he thinks Corinne Hutter's crazy. He says he'll never forget the cool way she took it when you sprung the evidence.”

“If she's not crazy now, I think she soon will be.”

“She was going to take that stuff she was carrying around in that thimble—wasn't she?” Mason's face expressed a childlike horror.

“Well, I suppose so. She wouldn't like the idea of sitting through her own trial. But she'll be all right now,” said Gamadge. “Now she'll be a mental invalid, and an interesting case. Nothing humiliating about that.”

“Damn; when I think of Florence and Syl—”

“She thought of them. Thought of them too long.”

Mrs. Deedes rushed down the stairs and threw herself into his arms. “Henry, darling Henry, Bill's coming! Evelyn doesn't want Underhill, Tim; you can have it for a nominal price, and Bill and I will stay as long as you like.”

“Glad of company,” said Mason.

“Splendid.” Gamadge, released, settled his tie. When he at last got away, and down the front steps of the house, he turned for a last look at Underhill. Its rosy face was in shadow, and there was something mortified and forlorn about the look of it, decked out as it was in the trappings that had been meant to save it from its old pomposity.

“I wouldn't live there now,” he told Macloud, getting into the car, “for a good deal.”

Macloud started the engine. “It will be lived in, though,” he said, “but by people with thicker skins than yours, and shorter memories.”

“I should always be remembering how Corinne Hutter wanted it.” He looked out of the car window at frowning slopes of hemlock. “Sally had better be careful; sometimes she may get a glimpse of an astral body on the stairs.”

 

 

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

NOTHING CAN RESCUE ME

A Felony & Mayhem mystery

PUBLISHING HISTORY

First U.S. print edition (Farrar & Rinehart): 1943

Felony & Mayhem print edition: 2008

Felony & Mayhem electronic edition: 2012

Copyright © 1943 by Elizabeth Daly

Copyright renewed © 1971 by Frances Daly Harris, Virginia Taylor, Eleanor Boylan, Elizabeth T. Daly, and Wilfrid Augustin Daly, Jr. All rights reserved.

E-book ISBN: 978-1-937384-25-8

 

You're reading a book in the Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” category. These books were originally published prior to about 1965, and feature the kind of twisty, ingenious puzzles beloved by fans of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. If you enjoy this book, you may well like other “Vintage” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press.

“Vintage” titles available as e-books:

The Poisoned Chocolates Case,
by Anthony Berkeley

The “Henry Gamadge” series, by Elizabeth Daly

The “Roderick Alleyn” series, by Ngaio Marsh

“Vintage” titles available as print books:

The “Albert Campion” series, by Margery Allingham

The “Gervase Fen” series, by Edmund Crispin

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