The Matron ushered them into a small room that was comfortably furnished as an office, and Dr. Preston rose from behind a large desk to greet them.
He was a little man, with a round red face and an enormous pair of shell-rimmed glasses, the lenses of which were so powerful that they gave him an odd, blind appearance. Rolls of fat bulged over his tight-fitting collar, and his paunch thrust itself aggressively between the fronts of his jacket. He had the appearance of having been as well scrubbed and polished as the hall, and his teeth, which he displayed generously at the slightest provocation, were so suspiciously white and even that they could not possibly have been real.
“My dear Ferrall,” he exclaimed, with the hint of a lisp, “I’m delighted to see you. Shocking news about poor Meriton—shocking.” The genial expression changed to one of conventional distress and, as quickly, changed back again. It was, thought Alan, like the rapid application and removal of a mask. “Mrs. Meriton knows nothing,” went on Dr. Preston. “I considered it better not to tell her.”
“She’ll have to know,” interrupted Ferrall. “She’ll wonder why he doesn’t come to see her.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” agreed Preston, “but it must be done gently, gently...” He beamed at them with a great display of teeth.
Alan discovered that he had taken an instantaneous and violent dislike to Dr. Preston. There was something completely insincere about him. The real man, behind the succession of masks which he assumed at will, was, he thought, hard and calculating and a little unscrupulous. He had an idea that Simon Gale was rather of the same opinion.
“You will, naturally, wish to see Mrs. Meriton as soon as possible,” said Preston, when Ferrall had introduced them. “The lounge, I think, would be the best place. You can be quite undisturbed there.” He pressed a bell on his desk, and after a short delay, the woman who had admitted them came in. “Bring Mrs. Meriton down to the lounge, please,” he said, and when she had gone: “Will you come this way, gentlemen?”
Rather like a procession in a department store, they followed him across the hall to a large room that reminded Alan of the lounge of an hotel. Everything was spotless and completely impersonal. You got the impression that nobody lived here, or ever had lived here.
“Mrs. Meriton won’t be long,” said Dr. Preston, taking up a position before the empty fireplace. “You will, no doubt, like to be left alone with her. It will be easier that way, perhaps, to—er— break the sad news.”
Alan felt a tingle of excitement run through him.
Fay Meriton, whose elusive personality had been gradually building up in his mind, was about to emerge out of the mists and take concrete shape. What was she really like, this woman with the queer streak in her which had led to murder?
A footstep sounded from the hall outside. There was a pause, and then the woman of the picture came quietly into the room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She was dressed in a simple black frock of angora wool with touches of white at the neck and wrists. It enhanced the creamy complexion and the heavy, dark red hair. She was pale, but it was a paleness that glowed with an inner warmth, as though there was sunlight somewhere under the smooth skin.
There flowed from her, as she stood just within the doorway, an aura of femininity that was like a physical touch.
No wonder, thought Alan, Paul Meriton had been crazy about her. Only there was a queer look in the greyish-green eyes...
“Simon!” she exclaimed, as she saw Gale. “Why have you come here?” Her voice was low and a little husky, but there was a slight vibration in it that suggested it might suddenly run high. “Peter, why did you bring Simon?”
Her eyes flickered from one to the other, completely ignoring Preston, who, with all his teeth bared, was gently rubbing his hands.
“Simon wanted to see you, Fay,” said Ferrall. “So I—”
“You told him I was here?” she interrupted sharply. “Paul doesn’t want anyone to know. Where is Paul? Why didn’t he come with you? Who’s this?”
The tone of her voice had risen. It was not shrill, but there was a hint of shrillness underlying it. She looked at Alan with eyes that had suddenly become suspicious and wary.
“He’s a friend of mine,” said Simon Gale. He introduced Alan without any of his usual boisterousness. “He’s staying with the Onslow-Whites.”
Fay Meriton’s eyes shifted uneasily and she gave a queer little twitch to one shoulder. She said:
“Why didn’t Paul come? Why didn’t he...?”
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Dr. Preston, moving between them and going over to the door, “I’ll leave you to have a little chat together. I shall be in my office if you should want me.” His teeth flashed with dazzling whiteness as he gave them a farewell beam, and then the door closed gently behind him.
With a swift movement that was almost a glide, Fay went to Ferrall and caught his sleeve.
“Why are you here?” she demanded, almost in a whisper. “What has happened to Paul? Something’s happened to Paul—what is it?”
Ferrall gently pulled his arm away. He took her hand and led her over to a chair.
“Sit down, Fay,” he said. “You mustn’t excite yourself.” She sat down, but without taking her eyes from his face. “Paul’s dead, isn’t he?” she said suddenly. “That’s why you’ve come!”
“What makes you think that?” Simon Gale said.
“How did he die?” she asked, as though he hadn’t spoken, still staring at Ferrall. “Did it kill him too?”
It was the tone of her voice more than the actual words that made Alan’s flesh creep. There was a breathless and rather horrible eagerness in it.
“Did what kill him?” demanded Gale quickly.
She turned half round in the chair to face him.
“The thing at the house,” she said. “The thing that killed the tramp and that girl.”
“Now, Fay,” began Ferrall, much as he might have spoken to a child, “you know that—”
“I didn’t kill them.” She swung back to him with a quick, sharp jerk of her supple body. “You all believed I did—Paul was certain I did—but I didn’t...”
“I know,” said Ferrall gently.
“But you don’t believe that I didn’t,” she interrupted. “You think I did kill them—like Paul did. I told him I didn’t but he wouldn’t believe me. He was sure, sure, sure…”
Her voice rose at each repetition of the word until that underlying shrillness came very near the surface. She’ll go over the edge in a minute, thought Alan. Every nerve is vibrating at a dangerous pitch.
But she didn’t. Somehow she managed to keep a thin margin of control.
“I told Paul, over and over again, that I didn’t kill those people,” she went on, her voice dropping to its normal low huskiness. “I found them…like that...”
Simon Gale came round to the chair opposite to her and perched himself on one arm. He said, almost tonelessly:
“Why did you let them bring you here, then?”
“I was afraid,” she answered. “I was horribly afraid... If Paul and Peter wouldn’t believe me, was it likely that anyone else would?”
“You were ill, Fay,” said Ferrall. “You’d been ill for a long time. You didn’t know, sometimes, what you were doing.”
“You see?” She looked at Gale and smiled, a mirthless smile that twisted the corners of her mouth without touching the greyish-green eyes. “What chance would I have had with—with the police? It was the lesser of two evils. Sometimes I’ve wondered if it was the lesser.”
“It was the only thing to do,” said Ferrall.
“Tell me about Paul,” she said. “When did it happen?”
There was no emotion in her voice, no expression on her face. Only the tightly clasped hands with the skin white over the knuckles showed any evidence of strain. And a little jerky movement of one foot.
Gale raised his eyes to Ferrall’s and the latter shrugged his shoulders in reply to the inquir
y he saw there. It was not so much an acquiescence as an acceptance of the inevitable. Briefly, and with as little detail as possible, Simon Gale told her.
Fay listened quietly. There was no movement now. She sat so utterly still that she might have been a figure in wax. Once, towards the end of Gale’s recital, her lips moved but no sound came from them, and when he stopped speaking she still remained silent. The uncomfortable silence lasted for barely a minute, but Alan thought it was the longest minute he had ever experienced. Then she said, in a whisper that was almost inaudible:
“Poor Paul... Poor, poor, Paul...”
With a sudden, swift movement she got up and faced them. There was a glitter in her eyes and a tinge of colour in her cheeks. Her mouth, which had been beautiful, was suddenly ugly and distorted.
“For two years I’ve been shut up here for nothing,” she cried, and at last the shrillness which had been so near the surface burst through. “Do you understand, Peter? You and Paul shut me up here for nothing. For nothing, for nothing, for nothing!” She was screaming at them now and her eyes looked as though they had been varnished. “Paul’s dead…he’s dead! And he was killed the same way as those others. You can’t say I did that, can you? Can you? I didn’t kill them, either. Do you hear—I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t…!”
Her voice cracked and she began to laugh, harshly, with a rising cadence that was punctuated by spasmodic sobs. The glazed eyes grew smeary and her face seemed to dissolve into a puckered ruin as she flung herself down into a chair and huddled there, alternately laughing and crying convulsively.
*
Simon Gale thrust a tankard of beer into Alan’s hand and began to fill another for himself.
“Y’know, young feller,” he said, straightening up from the barrel beside the fireplace and glaring ferociously at his drink, “I don’t like it—I don’t like any of it. There’s something wrong.”
They had just come back from Shilford, a dreary and depressing journey with the rain still drenching down and visions of Fay Meriton crouched in the big armchair, shaking and shivering as though stricken with an ague.
Dr. Preston, hurriedly sent for, had had to give her an injection to quieten her.
Ferrall had dropped them at Gale’s house and gone home, refusing to come in for a drink on the plea that Avril would be expecting him. It was a palpable excuse to avoid discussing the matter any further that night, and he knew that they were aware of it. Alan would have liked to go, too, but Gale was insistent.
“I want to talk,” he said. “I’m worried. Let’s have some beer.”
Sitting now, with the tankard balanced on his knee, Alan looked up at the huge figure, straddle-legged in front of the fireplace.
“You mean,” he said, “that now you’ve seen Fay Meriton you’re not so sure?”
“Got it in one,” said Gale. He swallowed a prodigious draught of beer. “I’m not sure—not sure at all. There’s something wrong, d’you see? Oh, she’s as cracked as a coot,” he went on, as Alan opened his mouth to speak. “It’s not that. But did she kill those two—the tramp and the girl?”
“If she didn’t, who did?” asked Alan. “It’s unlikely there would be two crack-brained people floating about the district.”
“Ah!” cried Gale, waving the half-empty tankard about, “if Fay killed ’em, you don’t need a motive. But if it was somebody else, unless, as you say, we’re dealing with two crack-brains, we’ve got to find a motive.”
“That’ll cover the murder of Meriton, too,” broke in Alan.
“Exactly!” Gale finished his beer and refilled the tankard. “Look here, let’s go over it all and see if we can’t find the bit that’s wrong. There’s a queer streak in the Ayling family—Fay Meriton’s family—and it pops up again in Fay. Nothing much at first—one or two little oddities, perhaps, that nobody takes any notice of—nothing to warn them of the bug that’s gnawing away at the brain. She marries Meriton and still nobody guesses that there’s anything wrong. But she’s a hysteric with the potentialities of a dangerous hysteric. The oddities increase—nothing that the outside world knows anything about. She’s highly strung, that’s all, and a bit over-imaginative. The room in the old, ruined house is just a rather childish game, like playing pirates, but Meriton begins to get uneasy. There are scenes and tempers over silly trifles or over nothing at all. He begins to suspect that his wife may be suffering from something more serious than over-strained nerves and arranges for Ferrall to take over old Dr. Wycherly’s practice—just in case; it’s a good idea to have a doctor whom he can rely on close at hand.
“And then the tramp is killed...”
Gale paused and took a long drink of beer. Alan sat silent, the tankard untouched on his knee. Before his eyes rose a picture of Fay Meriton as he had last seen her, shivering and shaking in the big chair, racked by gulping sobs and a horrible witless laughter...
“Meriton thinks that Fay’s ‘oddities’ have taken a homicidal turn,” Gale went on, “and Ferrall agrees with him. But he’s not sure. She swears, black, blue, and all the colours of the spectrum, that she didn’t kill the man, and Meriton isn’t sure. But, a little while after, a poor, bloody girl on a cycling holiday is killed in exactly the same way, and Meriton is sure. The wife he adores is a homicidal maniac and nobody’s safe while she remains at large. But he’s not going to let her go through all the muck and scandal of a trial for murder. He buries the girl’s body under the tiles, and the bicycle under the rockery, and, with Ferrall’s help, he whisks Fay off to a mental home, explaining her sudden disappearance by letting it be thought that she’s run away with some man or other, and producing a letter, which he’s got her to sign, to bolster up the lie. Fay goes, because she’s scared to death of what may happen to her if she doesn’t, and for a time everything’s peaceful. An’ that’s the end of part one. Part two, as they used to say in the old days, will follow immediately.”
He drained the tankard and banged it down on the mantelpiece. With his usual dexterity he rolled himself a cigarette, lit it, and expelled a mouthful of acrid smoke.
“Two years elapse,” he continued, striding about the untidy studio. “Our heroine is still shut up in the mental home, and our hero, a little worse for wear under the strain, is visiting her once a week, but otherwise living a quiet and uneventful life. And then, bang! Out of the blue he gets a bat over the bean. Exactly the same as the tramp and the girl. But this time it can’t be Fay. It ought to be, but it can’t be. She’s never been out of that damned mental home since they put her in. It’s a nice little topsy-turvy problem, eh? All the right pieces in the wrong places. Bah!”
He flung himself down in a chair. Alan took a sip of his beer and set the tankard carefully on the floor beside him.
“I guess it’s the motive you want,” he said. “Something that will link the tramp and the girl and Meriton.”
“D’you think I don’t know that?” grunted Gale impatiently.
“It might be easier if we knew the identity of the tramp and the girl,” said Alan.
“If, if, if!” exclaimed Gale, bounding to his feet and striding up and down the big room. “If we knew this, if we knew that, if we knew something else... I keep on thinking I’ve got it and then the blasted thing goes all haywire.” He flung out an arm and sent a small, book laden table crashing to the floor. “I said it was topsy-turvy,” h went on, kicking a book out of the way but otherwise ignoring the accident, “and, by the Seven Seals of St. John, that’s an understatement! I expect to find the body of Fay Meriton hidden in Sorcerer’s House and it turns out to be somebody else. I work out a fine, reasonable, logical theory to account for the murder of the tramp and the girl and that does a back-somersault on me...”
“Steady, now,” broke in Alan. “You can’t be sure of that. Fay may have been responsible for the tramp and the girl.”
“And then somebody else comes along and does the same thing to Meriton, eh?” Gale shook his head violently. “It’s too ragged. It doesn�
�t fit nearly enough. It’s inartistic.”
“Real life often is,” retorted Alan. “Have you thought of it this way: Ferrall knew that Meriton had left him that money didn’t he? Supposing he decided that he’d like a nice little windfall, and plagiarized Fay’s method.”
“Of course, I’ve thought of that. It’s so obvious that it hits you smack between the eyes. But it’s not as simple as that.” He came back to the fireplace, refilled his tankard from the barrel, and straddled the hearth. “There’s a pattern, d’you see? If I can only find the beginning of the design...”
Alan took another sip of his own beer. He said, with a shade of doubt:
“Maybe you’re looking for something that isn’t there.”
“It’s got to be there!” said Gale. “We’ve missed it because we’re looking at the thing the wrong way.”
The buzzer which warned him that there was someone at the front door suddenly began to hum like an angry bee. Gale glared at it, muttered an imprecation and, without apology, strode out of the room. Alan heard the front door open and the sound of a mumbled voice that was instantly drowned by Simon Gale’s deep bass:
“Come in, Hatchard!”
The door slammed, footsteps thudded along the hall, and Gale returned, followed by a tired-looking Inspector Hatchard wearing a soiled raincoat.
“Take your coat off, sit down, and have some beer,” said Gale. He went over to the shelf above the barrel and snatched down a large German beer mug.
“Thank you, sir,” replied Hatchard. “I could do with a drop o’ beer.” He removed the raincoat and deposited it, with his hat, on a vacant chair. “Good evening, Mr. Boyce. My word, what a day it’s been. Coming down in sheets, and plenty more to follow, by the look of it.”
“You didn’t come here to discuss the weather, did you?” demanded Simon Gale, thrusting the now foaming mug into his hand.
“Well, no, sir,” answered Hatchard. He took a long draught of beer and smacked his lips appreciatively. “I thought you might like to know that we’ve discovered the identity of that poor girl.”
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