Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22

by John Dickson Carr

  "One moment!" Dr. Fell blinked. "We have already crossed two bridges, including the one you said was over Shem Creek. Isn't there another looking just ahead?"

  "Yes.—That was the Ben Sawyer Bridge, and the last of them," Alan added thirty seconds later.

  "When do we reach Sullivan's Island?"

  "This is Sullivan's Island."

  Dr. Fell gaped like an idiot, the cigar slipping through his fingers.

  "Sullivan's Island? But it can't be!" "Why not?"

  "These wide, swept streets and trim villas? This air of suburban prosperity a-doze? Forgive me," bumbled Dr. Fell, groping as though for sanity, "if my notions of the island are derived solely from Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold Bug, and that wild, desolate spot where they dug up Captain Kidd's treasure.

  " "The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish.' (I quote from memory, but I think with accuracy.) 'No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.'

  "Poe, it is true, wrote that story for the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in 1843. Common sense suggests that a hundred and twenty-odd years must have brought one or two changes. Yet the dream is lost, the illusion a mockery! I return to woolgathering, and to Mr. Beale."

  For some time Yancey had not spoken a word. Now, stretching his legs, he sat up with the air of one who would have preferred to sleep.

  "I was kidnapped," he said. "I'm not complainin', mind; but let the record show I was kidnapped. I'm a lone lorn creature, and there's only one reason you brought me along at all. Whenever the maestro remembers it, he hammers me with another question about a certain Sunday night almost two weeks ago. Yes, I was there! Yes, there was a moon!"

  "Dark of the moon, I think?" suggested Dr. Fell.

  "What do you mean, dark of the moon? The moon that's waning now wasn't quite full at the time. I remember it distinctly, moonlight and mosquitoes and everything, because—"

  "Figuratively speaking," Dr. Fell said impressively, "every act of this drama has been played out at deepest dark of the moon. Dark motives, dark deeds, creep side by side from the same cave. Imagine, please, that you are again approaching Maynard Hall on the night of May 2nd. What then?"

  "Hold it, Maestro! I've already told you everything!"

  "Everything, sir?"

  "Well, almost everything."

  Once more Alan swung to the right. As the car went bowling along Middle Street towards Fort Moultrie, Dr. Fell with intense concentration made mesmeric gestures at Yancey Beale.

  "The little more, and oh, how much it is! Let me beg you to dig into your memory. Again, I say, you are approaching Maynard Hall on Sunday night. You stop your car in the lane outside the gate. You hear voices. Madge is there. And someone is with her."

  "I've told you two or three times, I don't know who it was! Somebody about her own age, to judge by the voice."

  "Had you ever heard the voice before?"

  "I think so; can't be sure. It was a Yankee voice, I thought. But lots of people in this part of the world talk like Yankees. Anyway, wasn't much more'n a whisper. Wait, though! There was something else!"

  "Yes?"

  "I could have sworn I heard Madge beg him not to leave her. And he said, ‘I've got no choice; it's a hell of a thing, but I've got no choice.' Then he skedaddled, and I went in. There stood Madge under the moonlight, in a state I can't describe and won't try to. I asked who'd been with her; she said nobody, and I pretended to believe it There, Maestro! I haven't told you up to now, because . . ."

  "Because you forgot?"

  A spasm crossed Yancey's face.

  "No!" he shouted. "Because I was so goddamn jealous that I—sorry, Camilla—!"

  "Please don't apologize, Yancey. There are others of us," Camilla said in her clear voice, "who can be equally jealous at times, and yet have to hide it as you did. You did hide it, I gather?"

  "I tried to, though it wasn't easy. Ol’ Yance isn't much of a ladies' man, I reckon. Madge never looked and talked as distracted as that after she'd spent a few minutes in my company. And I didn't know who the man was. I could have slaughtered the bastard then and there; but I didn't know who he was and I still don't. Madge wasn't much help either. She started in about the loneliness of her life; how she was too young to be a hermit, and couldn't bear it. I tried to soothe her there too, but I didn't get very far. Down came the old man, also in a dither and worried about Madge . . ."

  "I see," observed Dr. Fell. "Will you endeavor to amplify that part of the story as well?"

  "All right; have it your own way. In for a penny, in for the whole bankroll! To an accompaniment of ghost-guns in the background, Madge and her old man flew out at each other with more words that made no sense."

  In some detail Yancey recounted the scene under the magnolias.

  "Of course," he went on, "I said I must have shouted the words Pa Maynard overheard, about what a disaster it'd be if he caught me with Madge. I did it to make Madge feel better. But it didn't make her feel better, and I don't think Pa believed it for a minute. Then there was all the byplay. Why did Madge burst out with, 'Sometimes I think it's not worth—' and what did she mean? What was eatin' the old man? So help me, Dr. Fell, there's not a word or an inflection I've left out. You don't want me to go on about Sunday night, do you?"

  "No," agreed Dr. Fell. "The picture of Sunday night, I fear, is as complete as it is revealing. What of last night?"

  "Last night?"

  Dr. Fell indicated Camilla and Alan.

  "It was you, Mr. Beale, who drew their attention to the second message on the blackboard. Almost your first words to me this morning were that you did not understand it. Yet the message was direct, not to say stark. What was it you failed to understand?"

  "Look!" said Yancey, as though holding hard to reason. "You and Camilla have quoted the third message, the one that brought us sky-hootin' out here. Let me quote the second one. 'The man you want,' meaning the murderer, 'is Madge's lover.' Remember that, Maestro? You seem to think this joker with the blackboard can call the shots pretty accurately."

  "Well?"

  "Excuse me if I make it personal," said Yancey, "but what did the joker mean by 'lover'? Did he mean it in the romantic or Victorian sense, of a follower who's just devoted to his lady? Or did he mean it in the modern sense, of a conqueror who stalks in and bowls her over and takes her to bed with all the privileges appertainin' thereto? If the joker's right, dollars to doughnuts it?s the second. But what about Madge herself? I'd hate to think that sweet-faced little gal was . . . was . . ."

  "Less than perfect?"

  "Oh, perfect! Who wants perfection, for God's sake?"

  "Then what are you trying to say? Would it upset you very much, sir, if the image you have created in your mind turned out to have attributes other than sugar-candy?"

  "Don't ask me what I mean, because I don't know myself! Upset me? Yes, reckon it would; I'm only human. But who am I to give Madge orders and tell her what she's to do, or go out and chew worms if she can't see the sterling qualities of ol' Yance?

  "Keep your eyes on the left of the road, ladies and gentlemen. In about thirty seconds, past a cross street, you'll see the brick bastion of Fort Moultrie as they built it for the Spanish-American War. What we expect to find there absolutely beats me, but then the whole business beats me. I give you a motto: To hell with everything!"

  A minute or two later, parking on the right-hand side of the road because the left-hand side was already cluttered with cars, they crossed Mid
dle Street to Fort Moultrie.

  The central wall, red brick faced with concrete, was set well back behind a stretch of grass, with wings projecting at either side. Visitors moved in and out through the arch of the front entrance, which opened into a kind of tunnel through the wall. But Alan did not go towards the front entrance. Camilla, for some reason in a mood almost like the mood of late last night, linked her arm through his. Drifting to the left, past the immense black barrel of a rifled cannon, circa 1863, they ascended some outer steps to what in time of siege would have been the rear parapet away from the sea.

  The sky had grown still darker, smokily tinged. Distant thunder rippled and rumbled beyond that curtain. Below Camilla and Alan the open interior of the fort, hummocks of grass and hard-packed earth, sloped down and then up again to the sea-wall, where gun emplacements without guns faced south-west towards Fort Sumter. The whole place boiled with an invasion, from serious-minded sightseers aiming cameras to children who screamed as they ran. The stars and stripes on its flagstaff curled out in a damp breeze from the sea.

  Alan, leading Camilla downhill towards the door of what had once been a bombproof shelter for storing ammunition, glanced back. Up over the parapet rose the head and shovel-hat of Dr. Gideon Fell. Yancey Beale loomed beside him, stabbing a finger down towards something they had left.

  "That, Maestro, was the grave of old Osceola, the Indian chief who gave 'em so much trouble during the Second Seminole War." Then Yancey looked ahead. "Well, burn my britches, we're not so far from home after all! There's somebody we know."

  A baseball whacked into a glove. Alan also looked ahead.

  Dr. Mark Sheldon—in Bermuda shorts, a fielder's glove on his left hand—had just thrown the ball to a twelve-year-old youth in Boy Scout's uniform, also be-gloved. His gesture checked the boy's return throw. He advanced towards the newcomers, who had gathered together.

  "Camilla!" he said. "Yancey! And, as I live, Mr. Grantham and Dr. Fell! This is my nephew Benjie. Benjie —" More formally he repeated the four names.

  Benjie, though responding politely, had something on his mind.

  "Uncle Mark, have we got to go now?"

  " 'Fraid so, old son. Your Aunt Annette—"

  "She's kind of crabby, ain't she?"

  "Mind your manners, Benjie! Dr. Fell," continued a harassed uncle, "I'm free at the moment, as you see; not because it's Saturday, but because even a doctor has got to have some time off duty. And yet I can't call this meeting a pleasure. After all—"

  "You've heard what happened last night?"

  "About poor Henry Maynard? It was in the paper this morning. I wonder you're not besieged by reporters!"

  "We almost were. A police-officer named Captain Ashcroft gave them the story and sent them flying. May I ask whether you yourself, sir, have anything to contribute?"

  "To the whole tragic affair? No, I'm afraid not. I left before it happened, you remember. But what could I have done if I had stayed?" Troubled, indecisive, Mark Sheldon drove his fist into the palm of the glove. "We always fret ourselves," he continued, "asking where we went wrong, how we could have done better, and the rest of it. And yet this time I did nothing wrong; I can incur no blame."

  "No blame," Dr. Fell agreed, "but some amount of curiosity. In one respect at least your behavior might be called mysterious."

  "Mysterious?" echoed the other, staring at him. "Mysterious?"

  "Yesterday, if I am correctly informed, you called on Mr. Maynard to tell him something, but changed your mind and left without speaking. Will you pardon my impertinence, sir, if I ask what you wanted to tell him?"

  "Benjie," Dr. Sheldon said sharply, "get on out to the car and wait for me. I'll join you in two minutes. We must go; we ought to have gone already."

  "Uncle Mark, is it about Aunt Annette?"

  "Never you mind what it's about; just get going, you hear me? No arguments, young fellow, and I’ll buy you another bag of popcorn on the way home."

  With only a mild squawk Benjie departed, running out through the deep tunnel of the front entrance. Dr.- Sheldon, shortish and stocky, rumpled up wiry dark-red hair.

  "This is ridiculous!" he exclaimed. "And there's no mystery about it. I was only trying to save Madge—Miss Maynard, I mean—I was only trying to save her embarrassment."

  "In what way?"

  "At least half a dozen times, since the Maynards got here in April, they've invited me to dinner. The last time was the Friday night a week ago, May 7th. When Madge phoned about it, she said, 'Dr. Sheldon,' she said, 'I didn't know you were married; I've just learned you were married; why don't you bring your wife?' I didn't say anything except that I was sorry, Annette couldn't make it. Then I got to thinking.

  "Annette is . . . well, it's not true to say she's an invalid; she's nothing of the kind. But she suffers from nerves, poor girl. She won't go out with me, but she insists on my going—says it'll be good for the practice, as though I cared two hoots about that!—and then she worries and I worry too. Do you follow me?"

  "Not exactly."

  "It would have been too brutally blunt to tell Madge, 'If you don't know my wife never goes anywhere—and doesn't receive at home either, so I can't return your invitations—then you're the only one in Charleston County who doesn't know it.' I couldn't have hit her in the face like that, now, could I?"

  Obscurely agitated, beginning to pace on the grass-plot where another exhibition cannon-barrel was mounted on concrete blocks, Mark Sheldon removed the fielder's glove and thrust it into his hip pocket.

  "All right!" he said. "Maybe I'm making too much of myself and my own affairs, which are pretty small potatoes after all. But I had to tell Madge; I had to let her know somehow. So I thought it would be smoother if I dropped a hint to the old man, and he passed it on. Then, when I heard he wasn't in the mood, I backed off. That's all there is to it. If you ask me why I returned to the Hall a second time, last night, I can only answer that I'm damned if I know.

  "The world is too much with us; late and soon' we something-or-other. I liked both Maynards; I still like Madge, though she isn't as easy to talk to as some people think. The old man, if you'll pardon my saying so, was definitely peculiar. Why, for instance, did he hate charity?"

  "Hate charity, sir?"

  "The first time I went there to dinner was in April, after they'd just got here. There were the same guests as are there for the house-party now, with Valerie Huret and myself in addition. I was making conversation. Now that he was back in his old home, I asked, did he mean to patronize my local charity? And he changed color. No joking: he changed color! In a strangled voice he blurted out the oddest words heard at anybody's dinner-table. 'Not St. Dorothy? Not St. Dorothy?' And his hand jerked, and he upset a glass of wine."

  "Well?" prompted Dr. Fell.

  "I'd never heard of any St. Dorothy, and said so. Instantly he had a grip on himself; he explained that he'd been in the clouds again—which, to be fair about it, he often was—and that I'd misunderstood him. Somebody once asked me whether there was a real St. Vitus, who gave the name to chorea or St. Vitus' dance. And there was; I looked it up. But I've got no idea about St. Dorothy. Maybe it wasn't what he said; it didn't mean a thing to anybody else at the table. And that's all I can tell you, even if it's not a bit of good, and I'm afraid I must go now. My sincerest condolences to Miss Maynard; everybody else, good afternoon and good day."

  Off he bustled, almost strutting despite whatever sense of inadequacy he may have felt, and disappeared under the arch. More thunder rolled its echoes down the sky.

  "Now what," Dr. Fell asked abruptly, "are we to make of so delicate-minded a gentleman as that?"

  Yancey Beale pointed a long finger.

  " 'The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.' Mark Sheldon never does finish a quotation, does he? Has it occurred to anybody he's a kind of tragic figure?"

  "What's occurred to me," said Camilla, "is that every word in this affair has
some meaning beyond its apparent meaning on the surface. It's so tantalizing never quite to understand! Mr. Maynard did say St. Dorothy, or something very like it; I was there; I heard him. I never saw him jarred so badly, just for a second or two, as he was then. What he meant, of course . . ."

  "And it occurs to me," observed Dr. Fell, clearing his throat loudly as though in reply to a heavier peal of thunder, "that we had better examine the museum and such photographs as it may contain. Where is the museum?"

  "Continuing that arch where Dr. Sheldon and his nephew went," Alan pointed, "the tunnel of the museum runs through the earth and through the front wall. Follow me."

  A moment later they were inside. And, inexplicably, they had the place to themselves.

  Under a vaulted roof, all whitewashed brick and concrete, glass cases reflected back a glow of lights. At the far end another arch was the front entrance to the fort, with a window embrasure on either side. Nearer at hand, old relics glimmered darkly behind glass.

  "From the small size of the wine-bottles they drank from," said Dr. Fell, "it is clear that the famous three-bottle men of yore had a thirst less heroic than their reputations warrant. Photographs; hang it, where are the photographs? For the life of me I can't imagine how the picture of some object could suggest means of committing an impossible murder. Are there any photographs of people?"

  "There's one," Alan replied, "and I can't imagine why I forgot it completely. Don't you see Edgar Allan Poe?"

  "Where?"

  Alan pointed to the left-hand wall. Also behind glass against the wall, amid canteens and badges and other military debris, peered out the photograph which has adorned so many biographies, clear-eyed but a little sinister. Alan went closer to it.

  "When he ran away from home and joined the Army under the name of Edgar A. Perry, he became regimental sergeant-major here at Fort Moultrie. There he is, Dr. Fell. Does it suggest anything to you?"

  Evidently it did not.