Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22

by John Dickson Carr

  "Well, I meditated; by thunder, I did! Standing beneath that portrait and with my back to it, I pursued an elusive memory. Now, Henry Maynard had blue eyes. Probably you noted the blue eyes of the woman in the portrait. You can hardly have failed to observe that Madge Maynard, their presumed daughter, has eyes of a vivid and luminous brown.

  "Standing beneath the portrait, then, I tracked down my elusive memory, put a name to it, and said one word. Miss Bruce was playing the piano; no doubt my pronunciation leaves much to be desired; I paid the penalty in misunderstanding. I was believed—" "Yes?" demanded Alan.

  "I was believed to have said, 'Mendelssohn,' though from me any allusion to classical music is as unlikely as a reference to the higher mathematics. It must be pointed out with the humblest possible apologies, that what I actually said was 'Mendelism.'"

  "Mendelism?" exclaimed Yancey, as though righting for breath. "That seems to mean something to you, Grand Goblin, but I don't get it at all. What's Mendelism?"

  "A theory of heredity," answered Dr. Fell, "deriving from experiments in plant and vegetable life made by the Abbe Gregor Mendel of Austria (1822-1884). His followers, applying the same science to human beings, gave us Mendel's law. And Mendel's law, once or twice under attack but never successfully disputed, has established for all time the axiom that blue-eyed parents cannot produce a brown-eyed child. If I somewhat ill-manneredly roared out in triumph, there seemed good reason. This was something that could be proved."

  "And was it proved?"

  "Yes. On Friday night I took counsel with Captain Ashcroft. A telephone-call to the French police early Saturday morning, followed by their return call with detailed information later in the day, provided confirmation.

  "Here," continued Dr. Fell, digging into the brief case and producing several sheets of typewritten flimsy, which he laid on the desk, "is a copy of the full police report. Maynard's wife really had died in Paris in '39, as he said. But no birth of a child had been recorded at the Hotel de Ville, at the mairie of any arrondissement, or at the American Church aforementioned. The 'daughter’ was a myth; Q.E.D.

  "Passing over the then-still-vexed question of who Madge was and how she had entered his life, let us return to the situation at Maynard Hall towards the beginning of this month, and to a man now half insane from jealousy. She was straying from him; she had found someone else!

  Should you still doubt the intensity of his feeling for the girl who passed as his daughter," again Dr. Fell dived into the brief case, "I have here a packet of letters showing his state of mind."

  The letters, still bound round with broad pink ribbon, he put down beside the typewritten report.

  "Postmarked at Polchester, Massachusetts, dated between September and Christmas of 1961, they were written to Madge in Goliath by an elderly worshipper who had accepted an academic post at which he refused to stay because he had to return to her. I need not embarrass you by reading extracts; they are lyrics of infatuation. He had forgotten that dangerous legal tag, 'The written word remains.' Madge had forgotten it too; she kept the letters. They were found by someone we have been calling the joker, someone who intuitively suspected what was going on between these two bedevilled souls, someone who stole the letters and deliberately left them in this room for the police to find."

  "Yes, the joker!" cried Camilla. "Who is the joker?"

  "May I crave your indulgence for a moment?"

  "Well . . ."

  "The letters, it is true, were written four years ago. But it can hardly be doubted that his feelings were the same when he planned his house-party for the first week in May. We can go further: his feelings were a hundredfold magnified. Four years ago there had been no rival on the horizon. There was a rival now. He knew this, hovering over Madge as he did, though he never guessed who it was. She, in turn, could only beat her fists against apparent impassivity. If we think back with a retrospective shiver to that scene under the magnolias on the night of Sunday, May 2nd, it is evident that Madge's interrupted outburst would have been, "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth going on with this masquerade?'

  "Well, he thought it was. The masquerade should go on forever. And to that end, he decided, somebody was going to die."

  Alan sat up straight. "He decided somebody was going to die? Are you saying—?"

  "Henry Maynard committed no crime. I doubt that he would ever have carried out his design. But he was in a state of mind to think murder, and most ingeniously he planned one. Look here!"

  Delving once more into the brief case, Dr. Fell held up two folded sheets of note-paper. So far as Alan could tell from a distance, they seemed to be covered with figures and with firm, neat handwriting.

  "The famous 'calculations,'" said Dr. Fell, instantly returning them to the brief case. "The notes at which Maynard had been working for some time. The papers about which he was so secretive, about which he lied to me, and which, finally, he concealed in a secret drawer of the Sheraton desk in his study. A detective-constable named Wexford, Captain Ashcroft's authority in the antique-furniture line, found the secret drawer and its contents on Saturday. You have just seen the contents.

  "What Maynard had worked out was a complete blueprint, with measurements and specifications, for as effective a murder-device as lies within my experience. Not an 'impossible' murder; that was far from the plan! Something mathematical, as was suggested of him; something eminently practical, which could be worked by anyone with moderate skill of the proper sort. This same device, in the hands of the actual murderer, came boomeranging back to kill Henry Maynard himself. Maynard never saw the danger, never thought to guard against it. As he had drawn up his scheme, it was to be used against . . ."

  Yancey Beale, with a face of near-collapse, still stood beside the little piano. As Dr. Fell spoke Yancey moved one shaky step forward.

  "Yes?" he prompted. "I thought I could take anything you had to say against Madge. Now I'm not so sure. But what's all this about Pa Maynard as a potential murderer? Who was to be his victim?"

  "As originally planned, I submit, the victim was to have been either Rip Hillboro or yourself. You have not forgotten Mr. Hillboro's speculations on the same subject?"

  "No, but . . ."

  "Whether he was serious or not, he struck dangerously near truth when he said you had both better take care. Madge, you recall, immediately flared up to ask what her 'father' could possibly have against either of you. You could not answer the question then. Can you answer it now?"

  "Yes, but . . ."

  "Consider! You and Mr. Hillboro were Madge's two known suitors. You are both young, both presentable; he hated you cordially. Though Madge seemed to favor neither of you, might this not be a blind to conceal passion for one or the other? Such an idea must forcefully have occurred to Maynard. Indeed, when we ourselves look for the real murderer . . ."

  "Easy, Grand Goblin! Just you take it easy! Are you sayin' the murderer must be either Rip or me?"

  "One moment, sir. We see this through no unprejudiced eyes; we see it through the eyes of Henry Maynard, a man past his prime and tortured by jealousy. If you yourself have ever been jealous . . ."

  "If I have ever been jealous, for God's sake!"

  "And yet, in his heart, did Maynard ever really mean murder? I indulge conjecture, but I doubt it. He loved tinkering with plans and figures; the brutal reality of action was another matter. For what happened? The famous Sunday evening under the magnolias, with guests arriving next day, found Madge in the arms of—whom? You, Mr. Beale, said it was you. He doubted that; he had reason to doubt it. But if not you, then who? He didn't know; he couldn't guess. Alan Grantham and I can testify that the thought maddened him.

  "And what else happened?

  "On Wednesday, May 5th, he flew to Richmond. A hitherto-depressed man returned on Saturday in a very different mood: gay, buoyant, almost carefree. Clearly, on reflection, he had abandoned the murder-project and put it from him. Perhaps some belated sense of humor awoke to absurdity: could he plo
t the death of every man at Madge's elbow? Perhaps it was only Maynard common sense. 'Let the future take care of itself,' his thoughts must have run. ‘I can't live forever. But I have her now, and I'll make the best of her while there's still time.' No instinct told him, on Saturday morning of the 8th, that he had less than a week to live.

  'For just here we see the cross-currents, the cross-purposes, which made a bad situation worse. Let me try to clarify this.

  "Two persons had already entered the case and seized events. One, the murderer, found Maynard's blueprint and did mean business. The other, whom we have agreed to call the joker, subsequently wrote messages on the blackboard. Between these two, once the crime had been committed, began a constant tug of war. And yet each misunderstood the other. And we misunderstood too."

  "I asked before," Camilla cried, "but I'm afraid I've got to ask again. If you won't say anything about the murderer, who's the joker?"

  "Suppose you tell me?" suggested Dr. Fell. "You were not present in the attic on Friday afternoon when a certain person, slightly offstage on the stairs, was heard to exclaim, 'You don't know what's going on here; I can't bear it.' But other facts have, been before us all.

  "The same person subsequently left Maynard Hall, drove away in a hurry, and was absent when Captain Ashcroft received an anonymous phone call (from the Poinsett High School, it now seems certain). The same person returned shortly before six o'clock, at which time she pitched into Henry Maynard and called him a fraud. On Saturday afternoon she pitched into Madge, and for the same reason."

  "You mean Valerie Huret, don't you?"

  "I do. A most intuitive lady, as I have already remarked. Intense, somewhat frustrated. How conveniently she was present, on two occasions, and 'found' messages that were believed to have frightened her so much!"

  "Then Valerie did all that herself? And she was always right?"

  "Oh, no," said Dr. Fell.

  Fishing the filled pipe from his pocket, he lit it with a kitchen match and blew out a great gust of smoke.

  "She was quick to sense the true relationship between supposed father and daughter. But she thought it was incest, which horrified her. That has been Mrs. Huret's motivation throughout. Because she seemed right in so much, and led us straight to the murder-method when she herself had only a glimmer of the right idea, we missed the different (and erroneous) interpretation she had tried to convey.

  'Take the chalked messages, beginning with the second one where accusations commence. 'The man to be sought is Madge's lover. Find him; don't so easily be put off questioning her. And, if you would learn about the murder, more tomorrow.'

  "We interpreted that as being a reference to the unknown lover, the elusive boyfriend of the magnolia trees, who was also the murderer. And we were thunderingly right so to interpret it; it is the truth.

  "But does the message actually say that? Did it mean that? Before 'if you would learn about the murder,' note its qualifying 'and.'

  "The third and fourth communications complete an accusation and show what Mrs. Huret was really trying to tell us. The third sent us to Fort Moultrie. "There is a photograph which may prove enlightening.' And, 'Yours in homage to the great one.' Mrs. Huret, a former schoolmistress, had her wits stimulated by Edgar Allan Poe. For she was on the right track there."

  "But not on the right track about anything else?" asked Alan.

  "Not on the right track about anything else. After stealing the packet of letters from Madge so that we should find them here, she wrote her fourth message in valedictory. When she spoke of Madge's lover, she did not mean an elusive boyfriend or a murderer either. She meant Henry Maynard and what she thought to be a wickedly incestuous relationship. Maynard was Madge's lover, of course. But it seems doubtful that Mrs. Huret ever so much as suspected another lover, the more important lover, who—"

  "Well, really!" exclaimed Camilla. "One lover; two lovers; is there somebody else too? I'm not accusing Madge of being a Messalina, which I know she isn't, but how many men did she want?"

  "You let her alone!" snapped Yancey. "Madge only did what she had to do, because that old devil forced her. She didn't like it, you know!"

  "I wonder. And - will you please tell us, Dr. Fell," Camilla said on a note of the frantic, "just what Valerie really meant?"

  "We know what she meant," replied Dr. Fell, taking more typewritten sheets from the brief case and letting them fall on the other papers. "Here is a copy of the statement she made to Captain Ashcroft in hospital, which adds impressively to our list of documentary evidence.

  "Her main purpose was to expose the incestuous relationship and blow it sky-high. She would not come out openly and accuse those two. She must play ghost; she must hide; she must whisper in the ear of the law. But it became necessary to remove the mask, and she had chosen her own candidate for the role of murderer. When she came here last night in a state so overwrought, she was concerned with something else besides incest. If the bullet had not silenced her in mid-flight, she would have denounced Madge Maynard for a deed still more dark."

  "Madge?"

  "Against all plausibility, against all reason, she maintained to Captain Ashcroft—probably she still maintains —that Madge herself must have set a death-trap for the victim. No matter! She hates Madge, you know. And let it be repeated that she is now past all reason.

  "But we must never underestimate Mrs. Huret's contribution to this investigation. Though she was mistaken in every respect except that thundering hint about Edgar Allan Poe, she has given invaluable help from the start. Her errors have been our gain. In being wrong, she set us right. That paradox will be appreciated at the proper time."

  Dr. Fell paused.

  His pipe had gone out. Dropping it into his pocket, he produced a big gunmetal watch, at which he blinked hard.

  "Speaking of the time," he continued, "it is far past midnight and getting on towards one in the morning. Archons of Athens! Surely . . . ?"

  Back went the watch into Dr. Fell's pocket. For some minutes Alan had been conscious that the blacked-out room, in addition to being stuffy, was distinctly chilly as well. He glanced at the closed door to the corridor. So did Dr. Fell, who seemed to be waiting for something. Then Alan looked across at Camilla and at Yancey; they were waiting too.

  Knuckles tapped lightly at the ground-glass panel of the door, which opened. In the aperture stood Sergeant Duckworth, young and hard-jawed, with a manner as conspiratorial as it was urgent He approached Dr. Fell as gingerly as he might have approached a mine-field, and spoke in a low voice.

  "All set, sir. You ready too?"

  "Sergeant, we have been ready for some time."

  "Couldn't get goin' before, sir! The reason—"

  "I understand the reason. But I warned Captain Ashcroft about his idea. This may not work, you know."

  "Well, sir, it's workin' already."

  "What do you want us to do?"

  Sergeant Duckworth looked at Yancey. "You—"

  "Me?"

  "That's right Follow me out; do what I do; make as little noise as you can.—I'm takin' him to the place, sir," Sergeant Duckworth explained to Dr. Fell. "He'll be right on hand for the action."

  "What action?" demanded Yancey.

  "Hard to tell, ain't it? Now, then; this lady and you two others. Count slow up to fifty, then follow us. Go out the side door, and up the three little steps to the edge of the playground. But don't go no further; stay there and watch. Ain' no danger to the lady; ain' no danger to anybody. You'll be hardly more'n a hundred feet from the place; you'll see everything when the lights go on. O.K.?"

  "When I came in here," Dr. Fell said heavily, "there was moonlight of a sort. Won't we be seen?"

  "Not a chance, sir. Sky's clouded over; it's as black as your hat. Wind gettin' up too; there'll be rain before the night's over."

  "Dark of the moon, eh? Will it do any harm to talk?"

  "Talk if you want to; just don't talk loud. Then, when you get word there's somebody in sight do
n't talk and don't move either. O.K., then? Mr. Beale, let's go."

  Clearly feeling less sick with something to occupy him, Yancey followed Sergeant Duckworth and was gone. A few moments later Alan, who had been counting in his head as the others were counting, could restrain himself no longer.

  "Dr. Fell," he said, "Sergeant Duckworth kept referring to 'the place.' What place?"

  In leisurely fashion Dr. Fell took up his stick from the teacher's desk.

  "The place in question—twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—is the junk-yard some forty yards west of this building." He looked at Camilla. "That junk-yard, Miss Bruce, figures not unimportantly in our problem. Don't scorn the junk-yard, I beg."

  "If you mean I was sniffy about it to Captain Ashcroft, I'm not saying anything at all. But Alan is absolutely bursting with questions; aren't you, Alan?"

  "Yes! You yourself, Magister, keep referring to a method of murder you call a death-trap. Are we supposed to understand this method by thinking of Edgar Allan Poe?"

  "If we think of him in relation to The Gold Bug. What happens in that story?"

  "An eccentric character named Legrand solves a cryptogram that leads to buried treasure."

  Dr. Fell finished counting to fifty. He lumbered to the glass-panelled door, with Alan and Camilla following. They were all in the corridor, and Dr. Fell had bent forward to open the side door, when he spoke again.

  "Don't stop there; go on! Having solved the cryptogram, what does Legrand do?"

  " 'A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat.' The 'good glass' is a telescope. He—"

  Once outside the door, all mist was gone before a damp wind raking from the south. Nor had Sergeant Duckworth exaggerated the darkness, a palpable force. They all stumbled on the little steps leading up to ground-level. When they gathered together at the top, with Alan's arm round Camilla, whispers flew back and forth.