Nothing Can Rescue Me (18 page)

Mason looking up as the newcomers entered the room, seemed for the first time to notice what Mrs. Deedes was doing, and addressed her harshly: “Stop that ghastly nonsense, Sally, or I'll put the thing in the fire.”

“Does it annoy you? I'm sorry, Tim.” She moved away from the console.

“Annoy me? It bores me. There's nobody to read those messages of yours now,” he said, looking at her with a smile. “Nobody to act on their suggestions any more.”

“I don't know what you mean.” She walked slowly to the sofa, and sat down in the corner opposite Susie Burt. Percy turned, left the hearth as Macloud approached it, and found himself a chair. Gamadge joined Corinne Hutter on the piano bench. She glanced at him, raised her eyebrows in a faint but expressive look of doubt or bafflement, and then concentrated her interest on Macloud.

That gentleman had a long, narrow face, a long nose, eyes set well back under thick brows, and a square chin; he was the scourge of venal or shifty witnesses, and an abomination to tricky lawyers. He said: “Sorry to keep you people out of your beds, but I thought you might as well hear Florence's will.”

Mason said carelessly, like a man no longer concerned with civilities: “I thought Syl and Florence got rid of you.”

Macloud looked at him calmly. “Florence re-engaged me to-day, after Sylvanus was murdered.” He took the will from an inside breast-pocket.

Corinne Hutter asked: “Do you want me here, Mr. Macloud? I'm not down in Cousin Florence's will.”

“Excuse me, Corinne, you are.”

“I am?”

“You're down for a nice little annuity—a thousand dollars a year.”

Gamadge had seldom seen anyone more surprised:

“There's some mistake.”

“None, I assure you.”

“I can't take it. I promised my father—”

“Accept the advice of a seasoned man of law, Corinne, and forget all that old history. It belongs to another world,” said Macloud. “You'll be glad of this money. Anything can happen in these days, and the library in Erasmus may very well change into something else over night.” He opened the will, but he was again interrupted. Percy addressed him in his soft, unemphatic voice:

“At least I'm not down for anything, sir; am I to sit in on this? I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you.”

“You stay right here, Glen Percy.” Gamadge wondered, hearing those tuneless accents, how the owner of Corinne Hutter's voice and the owner of Percy's could possibly belong to the same race.

“I beg your pardon?” Percy turned to look at her as at a minor portent.

“Oblige the lady.” Macloud's saturnine mouth curved upwards at a corner.

“Glad to,” said Percy, “and glad, if I may say so, to hear Miss Hutter's voice raised at last in authority. I take off my hat to her—or would if I were wearing one. I don't think anybody else could have kept this establishment in order to-day, upstairs and down.”

“Thanks,” said Corinne drily.

A shadow, imperceptible except to a watcher, had moved across the shadowy depths of the dining-room. Macloud saw it, and addressed Mason: “I'm extremely sorry to disturb you, but this room is a big one, you're rather far away, and one doesn't care to shout. Would you draw up a bit?”

Mason, with a lurch and a stumble, got himself out of his chair and across the room. He sank down on the sofa between Mrs. Deedes and Miss Burt, ignoring both of them. Suddenly, as Macloud flattened the scrawled pages of Mrs. Mason's last will, he asked in a loud voice:

“What's that?”

“What's what?” Macloud looked down at him.

“That thing in your hand. That's not Florence's will. Her will is typed—you drew it up yourself.”

“That's ancient history, Mason,” said Macloud, viewing him steadily. “The will you refer to was made three years ago; there have been two since then, neither of them drawn up by me. This one was signed and duly witnessed this afternoon, within an hour of Hutter's death.”

“She made a new will to-day?” Mason's voice caught in his throat.

“Naturally. Her nephew's death changed her financial status. She had a large fortune to dispose of from the moment he died.”

Mason seemed dazed. He turned to look over his shoulder at Gamadge, and asked thickly: “Is that what you were up to?”

Macloud admonished him: “I wish you'd let me get on with it. I repeat that Florence had every reason to make a new will, and without loss of time. I pass over the bequests to the servants; they are generous, and they have not been changed since I drafted the will she made three years ago. I pass over Miss Corinne Hutter's annuity, and I arrive at the specific bequests.

“First: To Mrs. Sarah Margaret Deedes, one hundred thousand dollars.”

“Oh, darling, darling Florence!” Mrs. Deedes leaned back in her corner of the sofa and began to cry. Macloud, after a moment's benevolent survey of her, continued:

“Second: To Miss Suzanne Caroline Burt, one hundred thousand dollars.”

Susie Burt did not speak; but her eyes turned sidewise towards Mason, and away again.

“Third: To Miss Evelyn Wing, one hundred thousand dollars, the testator's personal chattels—furniture, clothing, jewellery—and the property known as Underhill.”

Evelyn Wing stood looking at him. As Gamadge had already noted, Mrs. Mason's death had changed her for the time being into a kind of automaton; the news of her legacy was powerless to break through the ice in which she seemed to be enclosed. She looked rather blankly at Macloud, and said nothing.

Mrs. Deedes's cry, “Oh, Evvie, I'm so glad!” drowned Miss Burt's short laugh. Macloud went on:

“To Timothy Mason, one hundred thousand dollars. And the residuary estate to the Bethea Home for Destitute Children, and to Florence's church in New York.”

There was a dead silence. Then Mason asked in a muffled voice: “When did she cut me out, Bob?”

“Cut you out? My dear man! A hundred thousand—”

“Yes, I know.” He shook his head impatiently. “Cut me out as a residuary legatee.”

“I don't know at all.”

“I was residuary in that will you drew up for her three years ago. Is that thing you have there legal?”

“Perfectly.”

Corinne Hutter spoke with some firmness: “I think it's a very fair, nice will. I don't know why anybody should look as if they'd lost their last cent.”

Percy said, with an amused glance at her: “You ought to be residuary legatee. The last of the Hutters.”

“I'd just as soon not be, the way things are now.”

Mason had risen. He went part way to the door, walking like an old man; stopped to say half-audibly: “Underhill,” and then went on out of the room. Mrs. Deedes got up, cast an anxious look towards Evelyn Wing, and followed Mason. Susie Burt followed her. Percy, after a grave nod to Macloud, also sauntered away.

Gamadge went over to the console and picked up planchette. “I'm going to remove this thing from circulation,” he remarked. “It's getting on my nerves.”

Corinne Hutter, her eyes fixed on Evelyn Wing, said: “I don't know why you have to look like that.”

“Of course they all think I did it.” Miss Wing lifted her head to meet the bright, mouselike stare. Macloud asked: “Why should they think so?”

“She's the outsider,” said Corinne. “They'll pretend they think so.”

“She's not an outsider to Mrs. Deedes.”

Evelyn Wing said indistinctly: “Sally doesn't know me so very well.” She added: “I never dreamed that Mrs. Mason was going to leave me all that money, and I don't understand why she left me Underhill. And all the furniture and things. It looks frightful; it looks as though I'd been scheming for years. And I was down in the garden this afternoon, and somebody says something was burned there.”

Corinne Hutter said: “You earned that money and all the rest of it; you held down a job for four years that nobody else could handle—Susie Burt couldn't, and I couldn't. And I don't consider Underhill much of a present in these times—you couldn't hardly give it away. As for everybody thinking you killed Cousin Sylvanus and Cousin Florence, there's one person knows you didn't, and that's the person that did kill them.”

Evelyn Wing shuddered; a shudder so obviously not the result of physical chill that Gamadge was impressed by it; he had never seen one of this kind, so glibly and so often referred to, in his life before. He said: “Look here—you'd be the better for a spot of brandy.”

“No, thanks. I'll go to bed.”

Macloud remained in the drawing-room, no doubt to confer with Windorp; Gamadge, Corinne Hutter, and Evelyn Wing climbed to the second floor. As they reached the head of the stairs Johnny Ridley backed out of Sylvanus Hutter's room, saluted, remarked that he was making rounds, and strode down the hall.

“Lieutenant Windorp and that Morse downstairs,” said Corinne, “and Johnny Ridley patrolling the house, and a man outside; we ought to be quite safe.”

“Mrs. Mason ought to have been quite safe,” replied Gamadge. “There is no safety in numbers in this house, Miss Hutter; I'm quite aware of that now.”

“You don't mean you think anybody else is going to be murdered, do you?” She looked at him in surprise. “Why should they be?”

“You have satisfied yourself as to the motives of this murderer, have you?”

“Well, everybody got money. Even me,” she said, with her dry smile.

“The police won't bother you on the score of your legacy,” said Gamadge. “Don't worry about that. I can swear as often as necessary that you couldn't possibly have known you were to get a penny under any of Mrs. Mason's wills.”

“Well, it still might be a maniac,” said Corinne, “so I shall lock my door. And you'd better lock yours, Evelyn, and the one to your bathroom.”

Evelyn Wing had walked down the hall to her own door. They joined her as she opened it, went in, and turned on a light; it was a pleasant little oblong room, with a white-curtained window at the end of it, white woodwork, bright-patterned chintz and plain modern furniture. She said: “I'm not afraid of Susie Burt.”

“You share a bath with Miss Burt?” asked Gamadge.

“Yes.” She glanced at an open doorway on her right, just within the room.

“Is that a closet?” he looked at another door opposite the bath.

“Yes.”

“Oblige me by looking into it.”

She seemed to wonder whether he could be in earnest; then, without smiling, opened the closet door.

“Thanks,” said Gamadge. “Shall I go up with you, Miss Hutter, and watch you do the same?”

“I guess nobody could hide very long in my closet,” replied Corinne; “it's about a foot deep.”

“You are more solicitous about others than about yourself.”

“I said I'd lock my door, and I have five servants on the same floor with me—six, because the kitchenmaid is staying—and a policeman tramping past every few minutes. And I can yell out of the window.”

“And Mr. Percy is next door to you,” said Gamadge.

“I guess I won't bother him,” said Corinne. “If he's anything like he used to be when he was younger, I'd have to throw water on him to wake him up.”

Evelyn Wing said good-night, and shut them out. Gamadge went along the passage with Corinne, to meet Johnny Ridley coming back from the third floor. He looked in need of sleep.

“Aren't you going to be relieved for night duty?” asked Gamadge.

“Have to make out till six to-morrow,” said Johnny. “We don't have a regiment, Mr. Gamadge—that was a funny thing, Mrs. Mason making that will, and getting it witnessed and everything, just in time.”

“Yes, wasn't it?”

“Can I tell about it now? My mother'd like to hear about it. It's not the kind of thing happens every day.”

“Tell anybody you want to,” said Gamadge. “Why not? I dare say it'll be in all the Monday morning papers.”

He bade Corinne Hutter good-night, and came back to his room. Macloud was making himself comfortable there, and greeted his host with the remark that there was ice in the wash-basin.

“Ice?” Gamadge laid planchette down on a table and stared.

“Louise, God bless her, put off her grief long enough to get me some. Have you whisky? But I needn't ask.”

Gamadge got a flask out of his bag, and mixed highballs. “Windorp is dead set on Mason, assisted by Susie Burt,” said Macloud. “He thinks Mason shows all the signs of post-murder reaction, and that Susie's capable of anything. I don't think he was favourably impressed by the way she split on all her friends this afternoon.”

“How did she assist?” asked Gamadge.

“Typed the things in the book; Mason pretended to think Wing had done it, and got this boomerang—the change of will.”

“If I were Mason, the change of will would be quite enough to flatten me out. Why should he have cooked up a case against Evelyn Wing, if he still thought he was residuary legatee?”

“Afraid she'd cut him out; which of course she did.”

“Miss Wing's your candidate, isn't she?”

“Well, I never did like these undue influences. I've seen too many of 'em in my law practice. It's a brute of a case, Gamadge. If it isn't solved all these people are pretty well ruined for life. I wish you had something in mind.”

“I have.” Gamadge swallowed part of his highball. Macloud sat up in his chair.

“You have?”

“Evidence, no; proof, no; but I think I've spotted the murderer.”

“Can't you do anything?”

“I'm going to try to do something; but whether it will work, I have no ghost of an idea.”

Macloud, his saturnine gaze wandering about the room, said that Gamadge might consult planchette for advice.

“I may, to-morrow.”

“Are you daft, too? Mason seems to think that Sally Deedes has been less so than she seemed. Getting fake messages and passing them along to Florence. I hope not.”