He Who Whispers dgf-16

by John Dickson Carr

  “And when I hear of a woman who seems to have impressed you so much, naturally I'm interested!” Marion's eyes remained steady. “What was the trouble she was mixed up in?”

  Mile's gaze wandered out of the window.

  “Six years ago she went over to Chartres as private secretary to a wealthy leather manufacturer named Brooke. She became engaged to be married to the son of the house....”

  “Oh.”

  “... a young neurotic name Harry Brooke. Afterwards there was a row of some kind.” Inwardly Miles choked over the words. He couldn't, physically couldn't, tell Marion about Howard Brooke's determination to buy of this girl.

  “What kind of a row, Miles?”

  “Nobody knows; or at least I don't. One afternoon the father climbed up to the top of a tower that's a landmark in the district, and ...” Miles broke off. “By the way, you won't mention any of this to Miss Seton? You won't gibe her any intimation you know?”

  “Do you think I could be so tactless, Miles?”

  “It was a wild, rainy, thundery day over the tower, like a scene in a German ghost-story. Mr. Brooke was found stabbed through the back with his own sword-stick. But that's the amazing part of the whole business, Marion. The evidence showed he must have been alone when he died. Nobody cam near him or could have come near him. It almost seemed that the murder, it it was murder, must have been committed by someone who could rise up unsupported in the air....”

  Again he paused. For Marion was contemplating him in a strange, wide-eyed, searching way, bursting and balanced on the edge of laughter.

  “Miles Hammond!” she cried. “Who's been stuffing you full of this awful rubbish?”

  “I am simply,” he said through his teeth, “stating the facts of the official police investigation.”

  “All right, dear. But who told you?”

  “Professor Rigaud of Edinburgh University. A distinguished man in the academic world. You must have come across his Life of Cagliostro?”

  “No. Who's Cagliostro?”

  (Why is it―Miles had often pondered the question―that in debates with you own family you are inclined to lose your temper over questions which from an outsider would be greeted with mildness, even amusement?)

  “Count Cagliostro, Marion, was a famous wizard and charlatan o the eighteenth century. Professor Rigaud takes the line that Cagliostro, though he was a thundering fraud in most respects, really did possess certain psychic powers which ...”

  For the third time he checked himself. Marion was whooping. And, hearing what his own voice must sound like, Miles had enough sense of proportion left to agree that possibly he might have made a better choice of words.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “It does sound a bit funny, doesn't it?”

  “It certainly does, Miles. I'll believe that sort of thing when I see it. But never mind Count Cagliostro. Stop pulling my leg and tell me about this girl! Who is she? What's she like? What sort of influence does she have?”

  “You can find out for yourself, Marion.”

  Still gazing down out of the window, Miles rose to his feet. He was looking at one of the green-painted signs opposite the platform gates, the sign where travellers already drifted by ones and twos in readiness for the five-thirty train to Winchester, Southampton Central, and Bournemouth. And with great deliberation Miles nodded towards it.

  “There she is now.”

  Chapter VII

  Grey twilight hung over Greywood in the New Forest, that evening which afterwards was to be so well remembered.

  Off the main motor-road from Southampton branches another motor-road. Follow this into tall green depths where forest ponies browse at the edges. Presently turn left at a broad wooden gate, down the curve of a gravel path dusky even at noonday, cross a rustic bridge over the stream which winds through the estate, and just ahead is Greywood―set against a green law, encircled by the might of beeches and oaks.

  Long and narrow-built, not large, its narrow side faces you as you cross the rustic bridge. You must climb up a few stone-flagged steps, and go round a flagged terrace to what seems the side of the house, in order to reach the front door. Built of wood and of brick plastered over,it stands out brown and white against the sun-dusted forest. It has friendliness and it is touched with magic.

  One or two lights gleamed in the windows tonight. They wee paraffin lamps, since the electric power-plant of Sir Charles Hammond's day had not yet been put in order.

  Their light grew stronger, yellow and tremulous, as the cool dusk deepened. Perceptible now, almost unnoticed by day, was the silky splash of water over the miniature dam. Dusk blurred the outlines of the bright-canopied garden swing, with wicker chairs and a table for serving tea, which stood on the open lawn westwards towards the curve of the stream.

  And in a long room at the rear of the house―a room after his own heart―stood Miles Hammond, holding a lamp above his head.

  “It's all right,” he was saying to himself. “I didn't make a mistake in bringing her here. It's all right.”

  But he knew in his heart that it wasn't all right.

  The flame of the little lamp, in ts tiny cylindrical glass shade, partly drew the shadows from a mummified world of books. It was strong, of course, to call this place a library. It was a stack-room, a repository, an immensely long dust-heap for the two or three thousand volumes accumulated like dust by his late uncle. Books old and broken, books newish and shiny, books in quarto and octavo and folio, books in fine bindings and books withered black: breathing their exhilarating mustiness, a treasure-house hardly yet touched.

  Their shelves reached to the ceiling, built even round the door to the dining-room and enclosing the row of little-paned windows that faced east. Books piled the floor in ranks, mounds, and top-heavy towers of unequal height, a maze of which the lanes between were so narrow that you could hardly move without knocking books over in a fluttering puff of dust.

  “It's all right!” he fiercely said aloud.

  And the door opened, and Fay Seton came in.

  “Did you call me, Mr. Hammond?”

  “Call you, Miss Seton? No.”

  “I beg your pardon. I thought I heard you call.”

  “I must have been talking to myself. But it might interest you to have a look at this confusion.”

  Fay Seton stood there framed in the doorway, with the many-hued books on either side of her. Rather tall and soft and slender, her head a little on one side. She herself was carrying a paraffin lamp; and, as she lifted the lamp so that it illuminated her face, Miles was conscious of a sense of shock.

  In daylight, at the Berkeley and later on the train journey, sh had seemed … not older, though in fact she was older; not less attractive … but subtly and disquietingly different from the image in his mind.

  Now, by artificial light, under the softened radiance of the lamp, it was as though for the first time the photographic image of last night had sprung to life. It was only a brief glimpse, of eye and cheek and mouth, as she raised the lamp to glance round her. Bu the very passiveness of those aloof features, with their polite smile, flowed out and troubled the judgment.

  Miles held up his own lamp, so that the light of the two clashed in an unsteady shadow-play, slow and yet wild, across the walls of books.

  “The place is a mess, isn't it?”

  “It's not nearly as bad as I'd expected,” answered Fay. She spoke in a low voice and seldom raised her eyes.

  “I'm afraid I haven't dusted or cleaned up for you.”

  “That doesn't matter, Mr. Hammond.”

  “My uncle,if I remember correctly, bought a card-index cabinet and an incredible number of reference cards. But he never did any cataloguing. The things are somewhere in this jumble.”

  “I can find them, Mr. Hammond.”

  “Is my sister―er―making you comfortable?”

  “Oh, yes!” She gave him a quick smile. “Miss Hammond wanted to move out of her bedroom up there”―she nodded towards the ceiling o
f the library―and move me in there. But I couldn't have her do that. Anyway, there are reasons why I much, much prefer to be on the ground floor. You don't mind?”

  “Mind? Of course not! Won't you come in?”

  “Thank you.”

  The piles of books on the floor ranged from breast-high to waist-high. Obediently Fay moved forward, with the extraordinary and unconscious grace of hers, edging sideways among the lanes so that her rather shabby dove-grey dress hardly brushed them. She set down the little lamp on a heap of folios, raising a breath of dust, and looked round again.

  “It looks interesting,” she said. “What were your uncle's interests?”

  “Almost anything. He specialized in medieval history. But he was also keen on archaeology and sport and gardening and chess. Even crime and― Miles checked himself abruptly. “You're sure you're quite comfortable here?”

  “Oh, yes! Miss Hammond―she asked me to call her Marion―has been very kind.”

  Well, yes: yes, Miles supposed, she had been kind. During the train journey, and afterwards while she and Fay prepared a scratch meal in the big kitchen, Marion had talked away twenty to the dozen. Marion had almost gushed over their guest. Yet Miles, who knew his sister, was uneasy in his mind.

  “I'm sorry about the servant situation,” he told her. “They can't be obtained in this part of the world for love or money. At least, by newcomers. I didn't want you to have to . . . to . . .”

  Her tone was deprecating.

  “But I like it. It's cozy. We three are all alone here. And this is the New Forest!”

  “Yes.”

  Hesitantly, with that same sinuous grace, Fay edged through the lanes over to the row of small-paned windows―themselves framed all round with books―in the east wall. The stationary lamp threw an elongated shadow of her. Two of the window-lights stood open, propped open on catches like little doors. Fay Seton leaned her hands on the window-sill and looked out. Miles, holding his own lamp high, blundered over to join her.

  Outside it was not quite dark.

  A grass terrace sloped up a few feet to another open space of grass bounded by a straggling iron fence. Beyond that―remote, mysterious, ash-grey turning to black in that unreal light―the tall forest pressed in on them.

  “How large is the forest, Mr. Hammond?”

  “About a hundred thousand acres.”

  “As large as that? I hadn't realized . . .”

  “Very few people do. But you can walk into the forest, over there, and get lost and wander about for hours, so that they have to send out a search-party for you. It sounds absurd in a small country like England, but my uncle used to tell me it happened time after time. As a newcomer, I haven't liked to venture too far myself.”

  “No, of course not. It looks . . . I don't know! . . .”

  “Magical?”

  “Something like that.” Fay moved her shoulders.

  “You see where I'm pointing, Miss Seton?”

  “Yes?”

  “Not a very great walk from here is the spot where William Rufus, the Red King, was killed with an arrow while he was out hunting. There's an iron monstrosity to mark it now. And―you know The White Company?”

  She nodded quickly.

  “The moon rises very late tonight,” said Miles. “But one night soon you and I―and Marion too, of course―must take a walk by full moonlight in the New Forest.”

  “That would be awfully nice.”

  She was still leaning forward, the palms of her hands flat on the window-sill; sh nodded as though she had hardly heard him. Miles was standing close to her. He could look down on the soft line of her shoulders, the whiteness of her neck, the heavy dark-red hair glistening under lamplight. Th perfume she used was faint but distinctive. Miles became aware of the disturbing nearness of her physical presence.

  Perhaps she realized this; for abruptly, but in her unobtrusive way, she moved away from him and threaded a path back through the books to where sh had left the lamp. Miles also turned abruptly and starred out of the window.

  He could see her reflection, ghostly in the window-glass. Picking up an old newspaper, she shook it out for dust, opened it, and put it down on a pile of books. Then she sat down, beside the little lamp.

  “Careful!” he warned without turning round. “You'll get yourself dirty.”

  “That doesn't matter.” She kept her eyes lowered. “It's lovely here, Mr. Hammond. I imagine the air is very good?”

  “Excellent. You'll sleep like the dead tonight.”

  “Do you have difficulty in going to sleep?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Your sister said you'd been very ill.”

  “I'm all right now.”

  “War?”

  “Yes. The peculiar and painful and unheroic form of poisoning you get in the Tank Corps.”

  “Harry Brooke was killed in the retreat to Dunkirk in nineteen-forty,” remarked Fay, with absolutely no change of tone. “He joined the French Army as liaison-officer with the British―being bi-lingual, you see―and he was killed in the retreat to Dunkirk.”

  During a thunderclap of silence, while Mile's ears seemed to ring and Fay Seton's voice remained exactly the same, he stood staring at her reflection in the window-glass. Then she added:

  “You know all about me, don't you?”

  Miles put down the lamp on the window-sill, because his hand was shaking, and he felt a constriction across his chest. He swung round to face her.

  “Who told you . . .?”

  “Your sister intimated it. She said you were moody and had imaginative fits.”

  (Marion, eh?)

  “I think it was awfully decent of you, Mr. Hammond, to give me this position―and I am rather badly off!―without asking me anything about it. They very nearly sent me to the guillotine, you know, for the murder of Harry's father. But don't you think you ought to hear my side of it?”

  Long pause.

  A cool breeze, infinitely healing, crept in through the window-lights and mingled with the fustiness of old books. From the corner of his eye Miles noticed a black strand of cobweb swaying from the ceiling. He cleared his throat.

  “It's none of my business, Miss Seton. And I don't want to upset you.”

  “It doesn't upset me. Really it doesn't.”

  “But don't you feel . . .?”

  “No. Not now.” She spoke in a very odd one. The blue eyes, their whites very luminous in lamplight, turned sideways. She put on hand against her breast, a hand very white in contrast to the grey silk dress, and pressed hard there. “Self-sacrifice!” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What we won't do,” murmured Fay Seton, “if we get a chance to sacrifice ourselves!” She was silent for a long time, the wide-spaced blue eyes expressionless and lowered. “Forgive me, Mr. Hammond. It doesn't really matter, but I wonder who told you about this.”

  “Professor Rigaud.”

  “Oh. Georges Rigaud.” She nodded. “I heard he'd escaped from France during the German occupation, and taken a university post in England. I only asked that, you see, because your sister wasn't sure. For some reason she seemed to think the source of your information was Count Cagliostro.”

  They both laughed. Miles was glad of an excuse to laugh, glad to relieve his feelings by shouting at the top of his lungs; but the noise of that laughter went up with inexplicable eerieness under the towering walls of books.

  “I―I didn't kill Mr. Brooke,” said Fay. “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hammond. I . . .”

  (God knows, Miles thought to himself, I do want to hear your story! Go on! Go on! Go on!)

  “I went out to France,” she told him in her low voice, “to be Mr. Brooke's personal secretary. I wasn't what you might call,” she looked away from him, “experienced.”

  Miles nodded without speaking, since she had paused.

  “It was awfully pleasant there. The Brookes were pleasant,
or so I thought. I . . . well, you've probably heard that I fell in love with Harry Brooke. I really did fall in love with him, Mr. Hammond, from the start.”

  Mile's question, a question he had not meant to ask, was wrung out of him. “But you refused Harry the first time he proposed marriage?”

  “Did I? Who told you that?”

  “Professor Rigaud.”

  “Oh, I see.” (What was that strange, secret, inner amusement about her eyes? Or did he imagine it?) “In any case, Mr. Hammond, we did become engaged. I think I was very happy, because I've always been domestic-minded. We were making plans for the future, when someone began circulating report about me.”

  Miles's throat felt dry.

  “What sort of reports?”

  “Oh, of gross immorality.” Faint colour stained the smooth white cheeks; still she kept her eyelids lowered. “And something else which is really,” Fay half laughed, “too stupid to bother you with. I never heard any of this, of course. But Mr. Brooke must have been hearing for some weeks, though he never said anything. First of all I think he had been getting anonymous letters.”

  “Anonymous letters?” exclaimed Miles.

  “Yes.”

  “Professor Rigaud didn't say anything about that!”

  “Perhaps not. It's―it's only what I think, of course. Matters were awfully strained at the house: in the study when Mr. Brooke was dictating, and at meals, and in the evening. Even Mrs. Brooke seemed to guess something had gone wrong. The we came to that awful day of the twelfth of August, when Mr. Brooke died.”

  Backing away, never taking his eyes from her, Miles Hammond hauled himself up to sit on the wide ledge of the windows.

  The tiny lamp-flames burned clearly; the shadows were steady. But in Miles' imagination this long library might have been swept away. He was again outside Chartres beside the Eure, with its backgrounds at the villa called Beauregard and the stone tower looming above the river. The old scenes took form again.

  “What a hot day it was!” Fay said dreamily, and moved her shoulders. “Damp and thundery, but so hot! Mr. Brooke asked me after breakfast, privately, whether I would meet him at Henri Quatre's tower about four o'clock. Of course I never dreamed he was going in to the Credit Lyonnais in Chartres and get the famous two thousand pounds.