Nothing Can Rescue Me (5 page)

“Or that Mason didn't come back from Palm Beach when you had flu.”

“Or—or anything,” said Mrs. Mason, turning her head away. She looked at Gamadge again to add sharply: “It's all none of Bob's business. His business was to follow my instructions.”

Gamadge rose, folded the few pages of Chapter Nine lengthwise, and put them in his pocket. He said: “I'll see all these people. I'll hold a conference after lunch from which you will be rigorously excluded. Then I'll report to you. I suppose you don't know whether the authors quoted in your script are available here—in the library?”

“No, I don't.”

“And nobody, not even Syl, admits knowing that the extracts are quotations?”

“No.”

“And Sally blames the spirits.”

“She says a mischievous spirit sometimes gets through. She says it's a slight risk we run.”

“This was a mischievous spirit indeed.”

“She says it can't harm me, and that if we pay no attention to it, it will go away. Like a child, you know.”

“She is optimistic. You can discard that theory Florence; discard it for ever. Poe, John Ford, and Christopher Marlowe may have turned into troublesome ghosts, and they may have entered into a conspiracy to confuse and annoy authors of light fiction; I wouldn't put it past them; but count George Herbert out of it. He wouldn't spend eternity like that—he wouldn't dream of it.”

Mrs. Mason gave him a watery smile. “Oh, Henry, I'm so glad you're here. You're not very spiritual, you know, but you can make me laugh.”

“Oblige me by laughing, then.”

She had begun to laugh, rather hysterically, when Timothy Mason emerged from the communicating bathroom. He was in his shirt sleeves. Two small griffons pranced behind him; at sight of Gamadge they exploded in a shrill chorus of barking.

Mason had been working on his thick, light hair with a military brush. As he crossed the room he transferred the brush to his left hand, and flung out the right in a buoyant gesture of welcome.

“Hello, there, Gamadge!” He almost shouted it. “Glad to see you. You're evidently the doctor my wife needed.”

Gamadge rose, smiled, and held out his own hand; but he stayed where he was. He had no sympathy with the race of griffons—it usually bit him. He allowed his fingers to be crushed again in Mason's iron paw. “Hope I'll be of use here,” he said.

“You've cheered Florence up—that's all I ask. Excuse my appearance; I'm changing—had a ride.”

“You look fit.”

Mason looked very fit; he was solid and muscular, with no sign of superfluous fat. His white-yellow hair, lashes and almost invisible eyebrows, his bulldog face—blunt nose and square jaw, sanguine skin and wide mouth—certainly forbade handsomeness, but there was something about him. Life, zest, physical power and durability, easy good humour—these had captivated Florence Mason. They captivated her still. When Mason bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek, and Gamadge saw the look in her eyes, he knew that while her husband troubled to placate her she would never get rid of him. She might scold him, punish him, even hate him, but she would not do without him. Gamadge was sure that her rage at her own weakness was what made her implacable towards Bill and Sally Deedes. They, at least, should part! I could shake her, he thought, and listened to Mason.

“Now we'll get the mystery solved. Until a couple of days ago I didn't want you up here on the job, Gamadge—I'll be frank with you. I always think the less fuss made about these private rows the better. But I didn't like the tone of that last crack Florence found in her manuscript; the sooner we get rid of the joker now the better I'll be pleased.”

Gamadge had relaxed into an easy posture, one hand in a trouser pocket and one shoulder drooping, which took an inch off his height; it permitted Mason to look down on him. “Can't promise results,” he said. “The problem may be insoluble.”

“Oh, don't give up before you start, old man! I'd hand you a tip to set you going, but Florence doesn't think much of it.”

“I'll be glad of it, if you think it's worth something.” Gamadge avoided Mrs. Mason's angry eye.

“Well, I'm a dumb sort of feller, only see what's in front of my nose; but it strikes me the joker is a neurotic. Not entirely responsible. Lots of young people are, and get over it. They write poison-pen letters, and a psychiatrist cures 'em.”

“We've been over that, Tim,” said Mrs. Mason coldly. “Mr. Gamadge doesn't think much of the idea, and he doesn't think much of Syl's, either—that I wrote the things in myself.”

“You write 'em in? What nonsense. Just like Sylvanus, though. He'd rather make Florence think she was going crazy, Gamadge, than have trouble in the home.”

“And Henry says those things in my book are all quotations.”

“Quotations?”

“Poe, and Christopher Marlowe, and I don't know who all.”

Mason laughed heartily. “The spirits must have been taking a course in English Lit. We ought to tell Sally.” He became grave, and added: “I hope to goodness you will clear the mess up, Gamadge; it's scaring fits out of my wife.”

“Well, I've made a little progress; the spirits aren't responsible, and Mrs. Mason isn't responsible, and it wasn't a joke.”

“Not a joke; you mean it was plain malice?”

“More than malice. I should say a flavour of madness.”

“Oh, come now! If you're going to be an alarmist I won't go on thinking that you're a good doctor for my wife at all.”

“At any rate, I prescribe company at night for her until she's less nervous.”

Mason stood with his arms hanging at his sides, his brows knitted in what seemed perplexity. “You're not pretending she's in any danger, are you?”

“It's certainly dangerous to lose too much sleep. Of course she worries; so would you, so would I in her place.”

“I wouldn't. I thought the best thing for Florrie's nerves would be to make light of the thing. I don't know why she didn't lock up her manuscript after that first happening.”

“I'm rather glad that she didn't dam the flow,” said Gamadge. “It might have burst forth in another place. Your wife oughtn't to be alone at night just now, Mason.”

“Sally can come in. Unfortunately I'm no good as a cure for insomnia; I snore, I get up at seven, and I can't sleep a wink myself if my doors open.”

“How about the faithful Louise?”

“Louise is as nervous as a witch herself. If Florence would have the dogs—” he glanced down at the griffons. They sat side by side, looking from one speaker to the other as if interested in the conversation.

“And listen to them scratching at your door all night?” asked Mrs. Mason crossly. “No, thanks.”

“Have Louise,” said Gamadge.

Mason abandoned the subject without more words. He asked; “How are you going to start the investigation, Gamadge? Are you going to examine the old typewriter for fingerprints?”

“Fingerprints bore me. I'll begin by having a talk with you all after lunch—all but Florence; she's to absent herself from the conference, and I'll report to her afterwards. I might as well know at once where everybody is at night.”

He went and opened the bedroom door. At the other end of the corridor a triple-arched window showed him the bare tops of beeches, a distant ridge of hemlock, a strip of pale, wintry sky. Towards the front of the house the main staircase faced him, rising to the upper floor, and on his immediate left a little passage ran, at right angles, to the back stairs. Four solid doors on the left, five on the right, and between them scenic wallpaper and oak panelling.

“I'm next to Florence, with a bath between,” said Mason. “The next two doors on that side belong to cupboards, and then comes a guest room—yours, I believe—and then Syl's. There's a bath connecting them, too. Sally's across the hall, opposite Syl; her door is just beyond the stairs. She has her own bath, too.”

“Not much like the old days,” said Gamadge, “when we all had our highly decorated bowls and jugs.”

“And splashers,” laughed Mrs. Mason. “There are lots more bathrooms now. Next to Sally is the hall one, and then comes Susie Burt. She shares a bath with Evelyn Wing. Evelyn has the last room on this side, just beyond the back passage.”

“Where is Mr. Percy?”

“Right above our heads,” said Mason, with a look of humorous resignation. “The large north-west room—with bath, of course. He's well dug in.”

“Now, Tim, you know I always love to have Glen here,” protested Mrs. Mason, “and you know he'll soon be leaving for his air-force training. He's just waiting for them to send for him.”

“I hope they'll let me fly,” said Mason. Florence's eyes suddenly filled with tears. Gamadge asked hastily: “What does Mr. Percy do for a living, if he does anything?”

“Oh, he does,” said Florence. “He's not at all well off, poor boy. He writes, I think; doesn't he, Tim?”

“Advertising copy at present,” replied Mason.

“Who else is upstairs?” asked Gamadge.

“There's the other little guest room—the south-west one,” said Mrs. Mason, and all the servants' rooms, and a big bath. Thomas used to be in the garage, you know, but now we've moved him in here; he has the nicest little suite, with his own bathroom.”

“Eight bathrooms; that's something.”

“Oh, we're very comfortable now at Underhill.”

Physically, thought Gamadge. He said: “Well, see you at lunch; I think,” he added, pausing with his hand on the door-knob, “that Syl was right; we may eliminate the servants from our problem. Euclid would call them absurd.”

He went into the hall. Mason closed the door after him, but not in time to prevent the griffons from rushing out at his heels. They turned down the back passage, made for the stairs, and began to scramble up them, loudly barking. Gamadge saw that their objective was a young or youngish woman who stood on the top step of the dark and narrow flight.

His first impression—heightened by the fact that she wore a thimble—was definite; that Florence had a visiting seamstress in the house. But the calmness of the prolonged look she gave him, the careless gesture with which, still meeting his gaze, she repressed the bounds of the griffons, and at last something familiar in the shape of her round, bright eyes, made him readjust his ideas. She wore a grey cardigan sweater, a longish brown skirt, brown stockings, and black Oxford ties of unsportsmanlike cut; she was probably a native, but she was apparently a Hutter.

“Excuse me,” said Gamadge. “Would you mind telling me who you are?”

“I'm Corinne Hutter.”

“Stupid of me; I didn't know there were any Hutters except Florence and Syl.”

“I'm their cousin. I'm the only other one there is.”

Her voice had the regional twang, but it was not unpleasing. There was a note of dry humour in it, and as his eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness of the little hallway and stairs he saw that her smile was dry too. She had a high, domed forehead from which dark hair was drawn tightly back into a topknot; her nose was long, her skin colourless or sallow; she ought to have been plain, she was very nearly plain, but not quite. And she was not insignificant. Gamadge thought that with half a chance to develop it, she would have had a certain distinction that Florence and Sylvanus did not possess.

“Younger branch of the family?” he asked.

“Yes. My father was Joel Hutter.”

“Florence didn't tell me you were staying in the house.”

“They probably don't know I'm here to-day. I drive over sometimes to take a walk in the woods.”

“Well! I've known the Hutters for twenty years, and I didn't know they had a cousin in these parts.”

“There's nothing funny about that,” said Miss Hutter, smiling her dry smile. “I live in Erasmus. I'm one of the librarians in the Erasmus library.”

“Look here; my name's Gamadge, and I'm up here on some business for Florence Mason. I have to talk to everybody in the house. Shall I see you at lunch?”

“Oh, no. I never eat with the house-parties. I had my lunch before I came over.”

“Can I talk to you now? This may be my only chance.”

“Come on up.”

Gamadge climbed the stairs and followed her into the little south-west corner room. He remembered it well as a cubbyhole into which last-minute guests had often been crammed; a neat little place, with muslin curtains at the windows—one of them now had a long rent in it, near the frill, and Miss Hutter's needle was sticking in it—and fumed-oak furniture. It was very much as it had been, even to the brass bed with its muslin valance and the blue rag carpet. A small table was laden with magazines, Miss Hutter's handbag, her driving gloves, and her knitted hat.

She sat down in a rocking-chair. Gamadge took a hard one in front of her, and so small was the floor space that their knees almost touched.

“You were going downstairs when I saw you,” he said. “Had you an errand? I can wait while you do it.”

“Just going down to find Louise and ask her for some finer thread,” she told him. “It can wait.” She took a small sewing kit from her pocket, unrolled it, and got out a spool of white cotton and a minute pair of scissors. While she removed the needle from the curtain and threaded it, Gamadge automatically produced his cigarette case.

“Have one?” he asked, offering it to her, opened.

“I don't smoke.”

“Mind if I do?”

“Yes; but you can if you want to.”

Gamadge, replacing the cigarette case in his pocket, remarked: “Incredible woman; if you were in my will I'd cut you out of it.”

Miss Hutter looked up at him to ask coolly: “Who's been talking to you about wills?”