Nothing Can Rescue Me (17 page)

“Yes, sir. I'm spelling Beaver while he eats his supper.” Gamadge entered the drawing-room to find that cocktails had been served, and that the well-dressed group about the fire-place seemed to be consuming them in absolute silence. Percy alone sat apart; he was striking low chords on the piano, his cocktail balanced in front of the music rack. Gamadge went to the console on which the shaker had been left, and poured himself a brimming glassful of Martini.

Percy looked up to remark in an undertone: “What a fellow you are. You have dreams, and the dreams come true. Those ashes are on their way to Windorp's laboratory in Bethea.”

“Did you get your coat and hat back?” asked Gamadge.

“Hat, yes; coat, no. The ridiculous creatures are looking for bloodstains on it; they think it may have rubbed on the slacks. They say it's longer than Hutter's mackintosh. I don't know why you're so set on the idea of slacks.”

“Do you prefer the idea of an extra skirt, worn outside the usual one? Slacks have no gender; I'm leaving the question open to include the men.”

“Gallant of you,” said Percy, and was going to add something, when he, as well as Gamadge and the whole party turned a shocked face towards the hall. For ten seconds it was a roomful of waxwork; then Gamadge was out of the door and up the stairs, and the frightful cry had ceased. What a cry it had been, he thought, to reach them through Florence Mason's door; he had no doubt, not for an instant, that it was her voice which had uttered it.

As Windorp and Sergeant Morse burst from the library a succession of louder, more human shrieks came to them from the upper hall: “Doctor. Telephone. Somebody.” Miss Mudge stood outside Mrs. Mason's door and repeated the words wildly, in crescendo. Gamadge, hurtling past her, almost ran into Corinne Hutter; she was in the room at his heels.

At first all Gamadge could see were the broad backs of Ridley and Miss Moylan, leaning over the bed. Miss Mudge, pushing her way in with Windorp, who had her by the arm, was now crying; “She can't be gone. Not in two seconds, she can't be gone.”

“Gone? Gone?” Windorp dropped her arm and made for the bedside. He shouted over his shoulder: “Get that door shut,” and Morse herded the crowd back and closed the door in their faces. “Gone?” repeated Windorp, staring down at the bed.

“She was just starting her soup, a new can of soup,” sobbed Miss Mudge. “She just screamed—screamed and died.”

“For God's sake”—Windorp addressed the stout nurse, who seemed to be in a state of iron calm—“what happened to her?”

“Nothing,” sobbed Miss Mudge, and Miss Moylan turned on her in violent contempt. “Nothing but cyanide,” she said. “You fool, couldn't you smell?”

Ridley shifted a little, and Gamadge had a glimpse of the destruction on the bed before Miss Moylan pulled the eiderdown over it. “She must have taken something,” barked Windorp.

“Only what we gave her,” replied Miss Moylan. “I couldn't believe my senses. She didn't have one thing.”

“Except those capsules,” sobbed Miss Mudge.

“Capsules?” Windorp rounded on her “What capsules?”

“That's so.” The stout nurse looked suddenly shaken. “But they were just iron pills, Mudge told me.”

“Her iron pills; Dr. Burbage gave them to her last year when she had flu, and she's taken them ever since. Four a day,” Miss Mudge gabbled. “Two after breakfast and two after dinner, and she always forgot the dinner ones, and she took them when she remembered, and she—”

“That's right.” Miss Moylan's expression of astonishment and doubt was almost ludicrous. “She took two just when this gentleman here left the room.”

Gamadge nodded. Miss Mudge went babbling on: “It's Dr. Burbage's own prescription, you can read it on the bottle. She kept them in her night-table drawer.”

The bottle was produced from the night-table drawer; it contained a few large red capsules, and Windorp, holding it by the tips of his fingers, said: “There are four in this.”

“Yes, she said she'd have to get it filled; I mean, get another bottle.” Miss Moylan had regained her stony calm.

“A couple of nurses in the room,” said Windorp, “and a trooper outside the door, and this happens.”

Corinne Hutter, her face chalk-white, had stood beside Gamadge without moving. Now she spoke, looking at him:

“I didn't know anything could kill anybody like that.”

Gamadge said: “I think cyanide can, on top of acid. She had been eating grapefruit. I suppose I'm a fool, but I feel as if I'd fed her the stuff with my own hands.”

Windorp said: “We don't know yet if the stuff was...” he removed the screw-top of the bottle, and sniffed. “Can't smell anything. Morse, you get on the telephone. Get Burbage too. Miss Hutter, there's going to be all kinds of an upset in the house from now on, unless somebody takes hold. You say you ran the place once, when you were housekeeper or something. Can you do it again?”

“I guess so.”

“Quiet the servants down, all that. You do the best you can, will you?”

She nodded, cast another strained look at the heap beneath the blue and pink satin coverlet, and walked from the room. Morse had already vanished. Gamadge, watching Lieutenant Windorp wrap the bottle of capsules in a piece of cellophane which Miss Moylan found for him, wasted no thoughts on the irony of the situation. His defences had not crumbled—they had enclosed the victim in an area already mined. He was concerned now only with what was left for him to do; what he must do before he quitted Underhill.

Morse put his head into the room. “You nurses got any brandy? Mr. Mason's collapsed here in the hall.”

“Get my flask out of my bag, Mudge,” directed Miss Moylan. “It won't poison him.”

“And there's a gentleman just come, asking for Mr. Gamadge,” said Morse. “Name's Macloud. Expects to spend the night.”

The next hour or two was afterwards vague to Gamadge; but he at length found himself, his head cleared by coffee, sitting at the round table in the library with Windorp, Macloud, and Dr Burbage. The coffee and sandwiches on the table constituted the only dinner that any of them had had. The bottle containing four red capsules stood in front of Burbage, open; he held one of the capsules in his hand, and a pair of tweezers in the other

“Hydrocyanic acid crystals,” he said, “in every one of these. Not enough to change the colour of the preparation, but enough to kill anybody.”

Macloud, who had been sitting well down on his spine, pipe in mouth, eyes fixed on Gamadge with some commiseration, now said: “I didn't know even hydrocyanic acid killed like lightning.”

“It does when hydrocyanic gas is set free,” Burbage informed him gloomily, “and gas was set free in this case. Mrs. Mason had citric acid in her stomach. When the capsules melted, the cyanide crystals poured into the acid, gas was set free, and she died a death that isn't much slower than lightning.”

“And if she hadn't happened to be eating grapefruit she might have been saved?”

“Doubt it; slim chance. As it was, all the doctors and nurses and hospitals there are couldn't have saved her; but she didn't just happen to be eating grapefruit, Mr. Macloud.”

“No?”

Burbage shook his head. “That's one of the ghastly things about the case. She always did have grapefruit before her dinner. She'd been told it was good for her, she liked it, and the result was that she never missed it.”

Windorp said: “Somebody knew she wouldn't have a chance. Somebody knew her habits, and read up all the dope on the poison. She didn't take two of the capsules you gave her after breakfast, Doctor; she forgot the breakfast ones, and took them after lunch. I have two witnesses for that—her maid, Louise Baugnon, and the girl that brought coffee to her in her room. Those two capsules were all right. When were the poisoned ones substituted? Because of course poisoned ones had been prepared beforehand—there wouldn't have been time to refill.”

Macloud again spoke; “I suppose you can get these capsules without a prescription?”

“Get 'em in these bottles of eighty-four at any drugstore,” said Burbage. “They're put out in this quantity by the wholesalers.”

“And how does one procure hydrocyanic acid for purposes of murder?”

Windorp said: “Sylvanus Hutter was a photographer, and they tell me a mighty good one; his own pictures are in his books. I shouldn't have thought he'd develop, but Thomas says he still did, now and then, when he snapped a view or something around here. He has a dark room in the basement—”

“Remember it well,” said Macloud. “Shouldn't have asked the question.”

“Yes, but there was everything for developing in the cupboard there except cyanide,” continued Windorp. “Thomas said he thought there had been a little bottle with a pinch or two of the crystals in it, but it's gone. The cupboard was locked, by the way; one of those locks you can open with a penknife. Morse did.”

Gamadge broke his long silence. “The capsules were changed,” he said, “between four-fifteen and four-thirty this afternoon, approximate figures; when we had Mrs. Mason downstairs, Windorp, to break the news of Hutter's death to her.”

Windorp raised sombre eyes to his. “She was alone in her room after lunch, between the time your conference broke up and about three, when you saw her. She might have had her back turned, or she might have stepped into the bathroom.”

“I don't think anybody would have risked that, Windorp.”

“Every last one of these people was with her afterwards; most of 'em sat in that little chair between the twin beds, with the night-table right beside.”

“And both nurses hovering, as Mrs. Deedes said, like bats; and Florence Mason beside the night-table too. She was very sharp, Windorp; careless and forgetful, but very sharp, and she detested liberties of any kind. I shouldn't back a conjuror to have opened that drawer, and taken out that bottle, and changed the capsules that were in it for poisoned ones. No, it was done during that fifteen minutes when the room was empty; and when all the people concerned were anywhere, so far as we know.”

Windorp looked baffled. “And how am I to save them from one another without locking 'em all up? And how am I to do that? I'll have a steady patrol night and day, and I'll work out something with the county; and I shan't leave the place myself, not with a mass-murderer loose, and no evidence against a soul.”

“Not even a bloodstain on Percy's coat?” asked Gamadge.

“Not a bloodstain on anybody, or anything, except the things we were meant to see. And no cyanide in the house, so far as we can tell without sawing it into slices. I'm not going to do that; it's not hard to dispose of a pinch of cyanide crystals—or hide 'em, either.”

Macloud took his pipe out of his mouth. “I shall have great pleasure,” he said, “in reading Florence's last will and testament to our friends in the drawing-room.”

“They're in there waiting for you.” Windorp added: “And a worse collection of poker faces you never saw.”

“Let us see what impression the will makes on them. There may be rejoicing, but not such as will be known in the Church of SS. Gervase and Protase in New York, and the Bethea Home for Destitute Children. My friend Gamadge thinks that he has made a failure of this case, but I beg to differ with him. Sylvanus and Florence Mason would certainly have been murdered if he hadn't been here, and Miss Evelyn Wing, a young person in no way related to the Hutters, would now be in possession of about ten million dollars and Underhill. Really, Gamadge, I think you ought to be congratulated.”

Windorp said: “Nobody's blaming him. All these people except Percy come in for big legacies, though; bigger than they were before. Mason—he's heading for a breakdown, if you ask me. I don't know—I suppose he did marry Mrs. Mason for her money, and I suppose he's no angel, but I wouldn't have thought he'd use poison. If he did it his motive must have been stronger than money even.”

“You put it delicately, Windorp.” Macloud smiled, and rose.

“I guess it's hard to know what a man will do when he's bowled right over.”

“It's impossible to know; as a lawyer, I can assure you of that.”

“I'll sit in on this will-reading.” Windorp also got to his feet. “I'll be in the dining-room.”

Burbage picked up his bag. “Mind if I give those two unfortunate women a lift home? The nurses.”

“Not at all, if you'll see that they get to the inquest.”

“I only hope this won't hurt professionally,” grumbled the doctor.

“Don't know why it should.”

“If it ever comes to a trial, some defence lawyer will have it that Florence Mason was killed by a mistake on the part of her doctor, her druggist, or her trained nurses. You'll see.”

The party in the drawing-room had resolved itself into its elements. Mason sat tipped back against the wall on the right of the dining-room door, arms folded and chin on chest. His colour was bad; he looked like a man half-stunned. Percy stood facing the hearth. His hands gripped the mantel ledge, and his eyes were on the embers of the neglected fire. Susie Burt had curled down into a corner of the big sofa until only the crown of her head was visible above its rounded back. Evelyn Wing stood beside a table between the east windows; she turned the pages of a magazine slowly, as if counting them. Mrs. Deedes—Gamadge stopped in the doorway to stare at her—was again occupied with planchette. Rescued from yet another chamber of death, it had been placed on the console that had held the cocktail tray; she stood looking down on it, one long hand poised above it like a hand of wax.

Corinne Hutter, upright on the piano bench, brooded over them all—a homely but implacable Fate. In her grey cardigan jacket and brown skirt, her brown stockings and neat Oxfords, she might have been the denizen of another world, come to judge these wasters and parasites. But there was no anger in her face; she studied them dispassionately, with the intelligent gaze whose steadiness Gamadge had come to recognize as formidable.