Nothing Can Rescue Me by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online Page A

“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.”
    â€œWhere is Mr. Percy?”
    â€œRight 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.”
    â€œNow, 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.”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œOh, he does,” said Florence. “He’s not at all well off, poor boy. He writes, I think; doesn’t he, Tim?”
    â€œAdvertising copy at present,” replied Mason.
    â€œWho else is upstairs?” asked Gamadge.
    â€œThere’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.”
    â€œEight bathrooms; that’s something.”
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œExcuse me,” said Gamadge. “Would you mind telling me who you are?”
    â€œI’m Corinne Hutter.”
    â€œStupid of me; I didn’t know there were any Hutters except Florence and Syl.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œYounger branch of the family?” he asked.
    â€œYes. My father was Joel Hutter.”
    â€œFlorence didn’t tell me you were staying in the house.”
    â€œThey probably don’t know I’m here to-day. I drive over sometimes to take a walk in the woods.”
    â€œWell! I’ve known the Hutters for twenty years, and I didn’t know they had a cousin in these parts.”
    â€œThere’s nothing funny