Nothing Can Rescue Me (8 page)

“Funnily arranged, Underhill,” he remarked.

“Is it?”

“Don't you think so? It has only two entrances, front and back; and the back one is a continuation of this hall we're standing in. Or has it been changed?”

“No, it's just the same.”

“With the kitchen on one side and the pantry on the other?”

“Yes. The dishes do have to be carried across the hall.”

“And the only entrance to the dining-room is at the end of a transverse passage—with the servants' sitting-room opposite the kitchen at the other end?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Poor Thomas.”

Sylvanus Hutter appeared from around the front stairs.

“There you are, you two,” he said. “Cocktails.”

Gamadge was delighted with the new drawing-room of Underhill; it had been formed from the old front and back parlours, and was now long and wide, with four windows to the north and two to the east. It was full of colour. Chinese flowers and birds were on the walls, on the soft-upholstered chairs and sofas, on the porcelains that contained dark red roses. “Nice, isn't it?” agreed Sylvanus.

“Lovely.”

“Rather an improvement on the cabbage roses and the malachite. We've kept practically nothing but the mantelpiece.” They advanced on the group around that fine elevation of white marble. Mrs. Mason sat in front of the fire in a bluish-purple costume, long and trailing; she had a cocktail glass in her hand, and beckoned to Gamadge with a festive sweep of it. The others looked at him.

“Come and meet people, Henry,” she called. “But first get your drink, do.”

Thomas and a large blonde maid supplied Gamadge with a cocktail and a canapé. He came forward, looking amiable.

“This is Susie Burt.” A pretty girl with red hair, who stood behind the sofa talking to Mason, nodded. “You knew her mother,” continued Mrs. Mason. “Susie, Mr. Gamadge knew your mother.”

“And father,” said Gamadge.

Miss Burt, who did not reach to Mason's shoulder, turned large blue eyes on him. They had a fine, bold gaze, more mature than one would have expected at first sight of her round face, with its delightful nose that turned up and its childlike mouth that turned down. But a second glance told Gamadge that she was in her late twenties. Wish I could have seen her ten years ago, he thought, returning the blue stare with one of benevolence.

“How do you do?” said Miss Burt. She did not look as though she cared to be cherished on account of her parents.

“Miss Wing,” said Mrs. Mason, “Mr. Gamadge.”

A dark girl with a pale face bowed to him. A thin face it was, with delicate features; and her eyes, after all, were not dark but grey-blue. Her thick, fine hair was cut short, and made a long neck seem longer. She wore tweeds and a yellow-silk shirt.

Good at sports, thought Gamadge, noting the long, well-muscled figure and the easy pose of it. Or was, he added, until she got ill and then had to work for a living indoors. Seen trouble.

“How do you do?” said Miss Wing, and turned her eyes away.

“And Glen Percy,” said Mrs. Mason, with a smile for the dark young man who stood with his elbow on the mantelshelf. “He's a perfect darling when he's behaving himself, and you'll simply love him.”

“What I say is,” said the young man in a tone of deprecation, “let's keep our heads, even if we are tight.”

“You horrid child, I am not tight!”

Gamadge was not quite sure of it; Mrs. Mason was undoubtedly bolstering up her courage with the aid of excellent Martinis. She took another from the tray, as Gamadge shook hands with Mr. Percy and looked at him with some interest.

Percy's voice had proclaimed him a Southerner, and something—some elegance, some native languor that was probably by no means a languor of the spirit—belonged to the Southern legend. But he had an ironic humour; it showed in the tone of his drawl, the droop of his eyelids and his mouth. He was one of the handsomest young men Gamadge had ever seen. His face and his long hands were slightly tanned, his tweeds and shoes of English cut and by no means new.

He had been talking, or trying to talk, to Miss Wing; but the secretary seemed to wish to ignore him; he was forced to address the back of her head.

“...allergic to it,” he went on, as Gamadge turned away. “Completely allergic to it. So at the dance I said: ‘My dear girl, you'll have to take it off.' She took it off, and caught the most fearful cold, and was in bed for a week. I warned her—I can't be within a mile of Angora, but she would wear the thing. I don't mind other furs so much, but I always feel the effects of a long session with disguised rabbit.”

Gamadge glanced at Miss Wing; she was still oblivious of Percy, or seemed to be, and he addressed his further remarks to Mrs. Mason: “I wish you'd call these creatures off, I really do. Somebody's been giving them bacon, and they're getting it on my shoes.” He looked down at the griffons, which were pawing him.

“Now, Glen, they're so devoted to you!”

“And I'm devoted to them, when they don't dribble. They remind me of a monkey I once had; Susie, do you remember Tinkabella?”

Miss Burt also seemed to be annoyed with Mr. Percy. She glanced away from Mason long enough to say: “No, I certainly do not,” and then looked back at Mason again.

Gamadge met the dark, glinting eyes. “You are fond of Barrie?” he inquired with gentle interest.

“Barrie?”

“Your pet's name is somewhat reminiscent...”

Percy, with a stricken look, warded off the suggestion with a long, bronzed hand. “Please,” he begged. “Don't misjudge me like that. I never dreamed of such a—I am completely allergic to Peter Pan.”

Luncheon was announced. Gamadge, finding himself at the end of the procession with this young man who wished to be thought a silly ass, wasted no time.

“You perhaps know that I'm here on business, Mr. Percy,” he said.

“Glad you are here,” said Percy civilly, “no matter why. I did understand that you were to be consulted about the poltergeist.”

“I'm trying to get you people sorted out.”

“Morally or intellectually?” Percy smiled at Gamadge.

“Just your relationships at first. Do I gather that you are here as a friend of Miss Burt's?”

“Susie and I are old friends, sure enough; but it would be more accurate to say that I'm here because her parents and my parents were great friends. When I was left alone in the world Mrs. Burt used to look more or less after me; not financially, of course—we all had money then. Excuse my mentioning the word; I'm completely allergic—” he stopped, and added as they went into the glittering, mirrored dining-room: “I don't know why I keep on using that repulsive phrase. I've been saying nothing else all day.”

“Perhaps you're like me,” said Gamadge. “I always become inane when I have something on my mind.”

The black eyes swivelled towards him. “Whatever else you do to us,” he implored, “don't psychoanalyse us. I'm com—I mean it's a game I have no confidence in.”

“I have no qualifications for playing it,” said Gamadge.

As he stood waiting to take his place between Miss Burt and Evelyn Wing he caught a glimpse of Corinne Hutter starting out on her walk. She came around the back of the house and passed the west and then the north windows; doubtless on her way to the old trail, up the hill that sheltered the Hutter place and gave it its present name. She plodded stoutly forward, a self-contained small figure in a cheap plaid coat.

“She'll get rained on, I'm afraid,” said Gamadge. Miss Burt, following his glance, remarked that that hat could stand it, and then sat down and began to talk to Sylvanus Hutter; who, rather to Gamadge's surprise, was at the end of the table opposite Florence Mason. Mason sat at her left hand.

Miss Wing proved a pleasant, if reserved, table companion. She talked readily about books and plays, but seemed to have missed seeing
Julius Caesar
in modern dress, the more recent
Hamlets
, and a memorable performance of
Doctor Faustus
.

When at last Miss Burt turned to him, she responded to his conversational efforts without animation. She had put Gamadge down as merely benevolent, and therefore a weariness and a waste of time.

“Mrs. Mason says you used to be her secretary, Miss Burt,” said Gamadge at last.

“I was no good at it. I never could type properly, and I never was any good at arithmetic.”

“I'd forgotten the typing. I can't type properly myself, never shall.”

“Neither shall I.”

“Do you use one finger, as I do?”

“Yes, and I break my nails.”

The nails in question were lacquered cunningly to match her hair; Gamadge, looking at them with awe, asked: “What do you like to do?”

“I like to play bridge. Now that you're here I hope we can get up two tables. It's so awful cutting in.”

“I can only stay until to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” She looked surprised and pleased.

“Yes. Pretty hopeless, solving this problem of the typescript in that length of time?”

“It was just a joke; nobody will ever find out who did it.”

“You don't know me. What are you doing now, Miss Burt? When you're in town, I mean.”

“Nothing. There aren't any jobs. Mrs. Mason wanted Mrs. Deedes to give me one in her shop, but there's no room. I wanted to try for the movies long ago, but Mother wouldn't let me, and now I'm too old.”

“Mr. Percy ought to be in the movies.”

She cast a black look across the table at Percy, and said: “He couldn't act.”

“Not even in private?”

“In private he could—with girls. You know how Southern men are.”

“No; how are they?”

“I mean with girls. They always behave as if they were in love with them all.”

“Rather charming.”

“I think it's horrid.”

“I mean, if the girl isn't taken in. I thought Southern men were still rather punctilious about taking people in.”

“They're worse than anybody.”

Luncheon had come to an end. Florence rose, everybody rose; but she did not lead the way out of the dining-room; instead, she looked truculently at her guests, and made a short and shocking speech—the thought hers, but the words dictated by her three cocktails:

“I'm going to have my coffee upstairs, and you're to have yours in the big room. Mr. Gamadge is going to ask you questions; he's going to find out who put those things into my novel. He knows I didn't, and he knows the spirits didn't; that's nonsense. He thinks it was a horrible thing to do, and if anybody doesn't wish to answer his questions and help him find out who did it, that person can stay out of the room; but that person needn't stay in the house.”

Blank faces confronted her; but Sylvanus, greatly embarrassed, was the only one of the party who spoke:

“Florence. Please.”

“I'm not going to be polite about it. I mean everybody.”

Mason looked aghast. He stood gripping the back of his chair, his eyes fixed on his wife.

“I'm serious about this,” said Florence, “and it's time you all were, too. For your own sakes, you'd better do what you can to help him get to the bottom of it.”

She walked around the table, and out of the room by the side door. The two griffons, gambolling after her, tumbled on and off her train. She paid no attention to them, and sent no backward glance to her stupefied family and guests.

When the door had closed—pretty sharply—behind her, Sylvanus muttered: “She's all upset,” and led the way into the drawing-room. The others trooped silently in his wake, and Thomas, with the coffee tray, got them over the first moments of shock. There seemed at first to be some question whether or not Mason would plunge out of the room after his wife; he stood irresolute, looking out into the hall, until Thomas approached him. Then, however, he seized a cup from the tray and gulped hot coffee down. But he remained standing beside the doorway.

Miss Burt, after a long look in his direction, went and sat at the end of the sofa not occupied by Mrs. Deedes. Miss Wing took a low chair at some distance from that lady, and Percy resumed his earlier position at one end of the hearth; he placed his cup on the ledge of the mantel. Sylvanus wandered up and down, muttering.

“Had no idea she felt so strongly,” he said; and then, confronting Gamadge, “You must have worked her up.”

“I hope so; I meant to.” Gamadge walked to the other end of the hearth, got out Chapter Nine, and faced the room.

“Mrs. Mason's speech,” he began, “seems to me to need no apology. A wretched trick has been played on her, a trick which appals me far more than it appals her. It demands the most serious consideration. It wasn't a joke, you know, although the perpetrator certainly wished to amuse him- or herself as well as to frighten the victim.”

Percy took a sip of coffee, and got out a cigarette. “Are you sure, Mr. Gamadge,” he asked with detachment, “if you know how insensitive the practical joker can be?”

“The effect is brutal,” said Gamadge, looking at him, “but it is not humorous. Please note that the additions to the text are not parodies, they are not even comments on it; they are merely echoes. The first and last don't do more than achieve a certain verbal continuity; they don't fit into the sense of the text at all.”

“To have fitted them into the sense of the text,” said Percy; “would have taken some doing.”

“You put your finger on an important point.” Gamadge continued to look at the young man. “A most important point. What was done took some doing; for our friend had to do it all—choose the quotations, you know, before writing them in—after Miss Wing herself had finished work for the evening; for who, except Miss Wing herself, could have known where she would leave off?”