He Who Whispers dgf-16

by John Dickson Carr

  “Dr. Fell told you what happened at Greywood?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So the police have to be called in?”

  “Oh, no. Not unless we're asked. And in any case you'd approach toe police of the district; not London. No,” said Hadley in a leisurely way, “what Fell really wanted was to know the name of a certain test.

  “Certain test?”

  “A scientific test to determine . . . well, what he wanted to determine. And whether I could tell him anyone who knew how to carry it out. He said he couldn't remember the name of the test, or anything much about it except that you used melted paraffin.” Hadley smiled slightly. “He meant the Gonzalez test, of course.”

  Then Superintendent Hadley moved forward.

  “Dr. Fell also asked me,” he went on, “whether we had any means of finding out Miss Seton's address, in case you”--he looked at Miles--”in case you by any chance missed her. I said naturally we had, since she must have taken out an identity card.” Hadley paused. “By the way, Miss Seton, have you got your identity card?”

  The reflection of Fay's eyes regarded him in the mirror. She had almost finished making up; her hands were steady.

  “Yes,” answered Fay.

  “As a matter of form, may I see it?”

  Fay took the card out of her handbag, gave it to him without comment, and turned back to the mirror. For some reason the look of wild strain was returning to her eyes as she picked up the powder compact again.

  (What, thought Miles, is going on under all this?)

  “I notice, Miss Seton, that this doesn't give any last address.”

  “No. I've been living for the past six years in France.”

  “So I understand. You've got a French identity card, of course.”

  “I'm afraid not. I lost it.”

  “What was your means of employment in France, Miss Seton?”

  “I had no fixed means of employment.”

  “Is that so?” Hadley's dark eyebrows went up, in contrast to the polish of his steel-grey hair. “Must have been a bit difficult to get rations there, wasn't it?”

  “I had no—fixed means of employment.”

  “But I understand you've trained professionally both as librarian and as secretary?”

  “Yes. That's true.”

  “In fact, come to think of it, you were employed as secretary by a Mr. Howard Brooke before his death in nineteen thirty-nine. Now there,” observed Hadley, as though suddenly struck by a new idea, “there's a case where we should be glad of a bit of help, to pass on to our French colleagues.”

  (Watch the immense cat approach! Watch its devious courses!)

  “But I was forgetting,” said Hadley, dismissing this so instantly that all three of his listeners jumped, “i was forgetting the real reason why I came here?”

  “The real reason why you came here?”

  “Yes, Miss Seton. Er—your identity car. Don't you want it back?”

  “Thank you.”

  Fay was compelled to turn around. She took the card from him; and then, in her grey dress and long damp tweed coat, sh stood with her back to the chest-of-drawers. Her body now hid the brief-case, which seemed to shout to heave. If Miles Hammond had been a thief with every seam of his pockets lined with stolen property, he could not have felt guiltier.

  “Dr. Fell asked me,” pursued Hadley, “in a strictly unofficial way to keep an eye on you. It seems that you ran away from him . . .”

  “I don't think I quite understand. I didn't run away.”

  “With the intention of coming back again, of course! That's understood!”

  Fay's eyes closed spasmodically, and opened again.

  “Just before then, Miss Seton, Dr. Fell was going to ask you something very important.”

  “Oh?”

  “He instructed m to tell you that he hadn't put the question last night,” continued Hadley, “because he didn't guess then what he guesses at the present time. But he wants very much to have an answer to that question.” Hadley's tone changed only slightly; it was still polite, still casually inquiring; but the whole room seemed to grow warmer as he added:

  “May I ask that question now?”

  Chapter XVII

  The hanging light over the chest-of-drawers shone down on Fay's hair, and brought out the warmth of it in contrast to the apparent coldness of her face and body.

  “A question about . . .?” Her hand—Miles could have shouted a warning—instinctively moved toward the brief-case behind her.

  “A question,” said Hadley, “In connection with the frightening of Miss Marion Hammond last night.” (Fay's hand darted back again; she straightened up.)

  “And I'm afraid,” continued Hadley, “I must preface it by getting the situation clear. Don't mind my notebook, Miss Seton! It's not official. I've only put down what Fell asked me to put down.” His eyes strayed o the identity card in her hand. “Or do you refuse to answer questions, Miss Seton?”

  “Do I ever—refuse?”

  “Thank you. Now then: with regard tot the frightening of Miss Marion Hammond . . .”

  “I didn't do it!”

  “You may not be always conscious,” sad Hadley, “of what you do or the effect it has.”

  Hadley's voice remained quiet when he said this.

  “However!” he added quickly, and there was a penetrating quality about his gaze which made the eyes seem to grow larger. “We're not talking now about your conscious guilt or innocence in anything. I'm only trying (what shall I say?) to get this picture clear. As I understand it, you were the last person known to be with Marion Hammond before she was—frightened?”

  Fay gave a quick, hypnotized nod.

  “You left her alone in the bedroom in good health and spirits, at . . . about what time?”

  “About midnight. I told Dr. Fell so.”

  “Ah, yes. So you did— Had Miss Hammond undressed at this time?”

  “Yes. She was in blue silk pyjamas. Sitting in a chair by the bedside table.”

  “Now, Miss Seton! Considerably later, a shot was fired in Miss Hammond's room. Do you remember what time that was?”

  “No. I'm afraid I haven't the remotest idea.”

  Hadley swung around to Miles.

  “Can you help us, Mr. Hammond? Everyone, including Dr. Fell himself, seems vague about times.”

  “I can't help you,” answered Miles, “except in this one thing.” He paused, with the scene coming back to him. “After the shot, I ran up to Marion's bedroom. Professor Rigaud joined me, and a few minutes later Dr. Fell. Professor Rigaud asked me to go downstairs, to sterilize a hypodermic and do some other things in the kitchen. When I got to the kitchen, the time was twenty minutes to two. There's a big clock on the wall, and I remember noticing it.”

  Hadley nodded. “So the time of the shot, roughly, was round about half-past one or a little later?”

  “Yes. I should think so.”

  “You agree with that, Miss Seton?”

  “I'm afraid”--Fay lifted her shoulders--”I simply don't remember. I never paid any attention to the time.”

  “But you did hear this shot?”

  “Oh, yes. I was dozing.”

  “And afterwards, I understand, you slipped upstairs and looked in at the bedroom door?--Excuse me, Miss Seton? I'm afraid I didn't quite catch that answer?”

  “I said: yes.” Fay's lips shaped themselves with rounded distinctness. Something of last night's atmosphere returned to her, of heightened breathing and expression of eye.

  “Your room is on the ground floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you heard this shot it the middle of the night, what made you think the noise came from upstairs? And from that room in particular?”

  “Well! Soon after the shot I heard people running in the upstairs hall. Every sound carries at night.” For the first time Fay seemed honestly puzzled. “So I wondered what was wrong. I got up and put on a wrap and slippers, and lighted a lamp,
and went upstairs. The door of Miss Hammond's room was wide open, and there was light inside. So I went there and peeped in.”

  “What did you see?”

  Fay moistened her lips.

  “I saw Miss Hammond lying half in bed, holding a gun. I saw a man named Professor Rigaud—I'd known him before—standing on the far side of the bed. I saw,” she hesitated, “Mr. Miles Hammond. I heard Professor Rigaud say this was shock, and that Miss Hammond wasn't dead.”

  “But you didn't go in? Or call out to them?”

  “No!”

  “What happened then?”

  “I heard someone who sounded awfully heavy and clumsy start to walk up the front stairs at the other end of the hall,” answered Fay. “I know now it must have been Dr. Fell on his way to the bedroom. I turned out the lamp I was carrying, and ran down the back stairs. He didn't see me.”

  “What was it that upset you, Miss Seton?”

  “Upset me?”

  “When you looked into that room,” Hadley told her with careful slowness, “You saw something that upset you. What was it?”

  “I don't understand!”

  “Miss Seton,” explained Hadley, putting away the notebook he had taken out of his inside breast pocket, “I've had to make all these elaborate inquiries to ask you just one question. You saw something, and it upset you so much that later you apologized to Mr. Hammond in Dr. Fell's presence for making what you called a disgraceful exhibition of yourself. You weren't frightened; the feeling wasn't in the least connected with fear. What upset you?”

  Fay whirled round towards Miles. “Did you tell Dr. Fell?”

  And Miles stared at her. “Tell him what?”

  “What I said to you last night,” Fay retorted, her fingers twitching together, “when we were there in the kitchen and twitching together, “when we were there in the kitchen and I—I wasn't quite myself.”

  “I didn't tell Dr. Fell anything,” Miles snapped, with a violence he could not understand. “And in any case what difference does it make?”

  Miles took a step or two away from her. He bumped into Barbara, who also moved back. For a fraction of a second, as Barbara's head turned, he surprised on Barbara's face a look which completed his demoralization. Barbara's eyes had been fixed steadily on Fay for some time. In her eyes, slowly growing, was an expression of wonder; and of something else which was not dislike, but very near dislike.

  If Barbara turns against her too, Miles thought, we might as well throw up the brief for the defense and retire. But Barbara of all people couldn't be turning against Fay! And Miles still fought back.

  “I shouldn't answer any questions,” he said. “If Superintendent Hadley isn't here officially, he's got no blasted right to come barging in and hint that there'll be sinister consequences if you don't answer. Upset! Anybody would have been upset after what happened last night.” He looked at Fay again. “In any case, all you said to me was that you'd just seen something you hadn't noticed before, and . . .”

  “Ah!” breathed Hadley, and rapped his bowler hat against the palm of his left hand. “Miss Seton had just seen something she hadn't noticed before! That's what we thought.”

  Fay let out a cry.

  “Why not tell us, Miss Seton?” suggested Hadley, in a tone of great persuasiveness. “Why not make the full confession you intended to make? If it comes to that, why not hand over the brief-case”--casually he pointed in the direction of it--”and the two thousand pounds and the other things as well? Why not . . .”

  That was the point at which the light over the chest-of-drawers went out.

  Nobody was prepared for danger. Nobody was alert. Everything was concentrated in that little space where Fay Seton faced Hadley and Miles and Barbara.

  And, though nobody had touched the electric switch by the door, the light went out. With heavy black-out curtains drawn on the little windows, a weight of darkness descended on them like a hood over the face, blotting out rational thoughts as it blotted out images. There was a faint flicker of light from the passage outside as the door swiftly opened. And something rushed at them out of the passage.

  Fay Seton screamed.

  They heard the noise of it go piercing up. They heard a cry like, “Don't, don't, don't!” and a crashing sound as of someone falling over the big tin box in the middle of the floor. In a few seconds when Miles had forgotten a certain malignant influence, that influence had caught up with them. He lunged out in the darkness, and felt somebody's shoulder slip past him. The door to the passage banged. Somewhere there were running footsteps. Miles heard a rattle of rings as someone —it was Barbara—drew back the curtain of one window.

  Grey rain-filtered light entered from Bolsover Place, along with the light from the moving teeth across the way. Superintendent Hadley ran to the window, flung it up, and blew a police-whistle.

  Fay Seton, unhurt, had been thrown back against the bed. She clutched at the counterpane to save herself from falling, and dragged it with her as she sank to her knees.

  “Fay! Are you all right?”

  Fay hardly heard him. She whipped round, her eyes going instinctively towards the top of the chest-of-drawers.

  “Are you all right?”

  “It's gone,” said Fay in a choked voice. “It's gone. It's gone.”

  For the brief-case was no longer there. Ahead of anyone else, ahead of either Miles or Hadley, Fay jumped over the heavy tin box and ran towards the door. She ran with a headlong madness and an agility which carried her half-way down the passage, in the direction of the stairs, before Miles went racing after her.

  And even the brief-case could not stop that crazy flight.

  For Miles found the brief-case lying discarded on the floor of the passage, dimly seen in the light of the opening and shutting teeth. Fay must have run straight across it; she could not even have noticed it. Miles shouted to her as she gained the top of the steep stairs leading down to the ground floor. He snatched up the brief-case holding it upside down as though to gain her ye by pantomime. From inside the gaping leather there fell out three packets of bank-notes like the other in the bedroom. These landed on the floor, along with a pouring of some dry gritty substance like mortar-dust. There was nothing else in the brief-case.

  Miles flung himself at the head of the stairs.

  “It's here, I tell you! It's not gone! It's been dropped ! It's here!”

  Did she hear him? He could not be sure. But, at least briefly, she paused and looked up.

  Fay was about half-way down the stairs, steep stairs covered with ragged linoleum. Th front door of the house stood wide open, so that light from the window across the street filtered weirdly up the staircase.

  Miles, leaning perilously over the balustrade along the passage and holding up the brief-case, was looking down into her face as she raised it.

  “Don't you understand? He shouted. “There's no need to run like that! Here is the brief-case! It's . . .”

  Now he could have sworn she hadn't heard. Fay's left hand rested lightly on the stair-rail. Her neck was arched, the red hair thrown back as she looked up. On her face was a faintly wondering look. Her heightened colours, even the glitter of her eyes, seemed to fade into a deathly bluish pallor which put a gentle expression on her mouth and then took away all expression at all.

  Fay's legs gave way at the knees. Softly, like a dress falling from a hook, so bonelessly that it could not even have caused a bruise, she fell sideways and rolled over and over to the floor of the stairs. Yet the crash of the fall, in contrast to that terrifying limpness . . .

  Miles Hammond stood still.

  The stifling, mildewy air of the passage had got into his lungs like the sudden suspicion in his mind. He seemed to have been breathing that air for a very long time, with the blood-stained banknotes in his pockets and the cracked brief-case in his hand.

  Out of the corner of his eye Miles saw Barbara come up beside him and look down over the railing. Superintendent Hadley, muttering something under his br
eath, bounded past them and went downstairs with long strides which shook and thumped on every tread. He jumped over the figure lying at the foot of the stairs with its cheek against the dirt of the floor. Hadley went down on one knee to examine that figure. Presently he raised his head to look up at them. His voice sounded hollowly up the stairs.

  “Wasn't this woman supposed to have a weak heart?”

  “Yes,” said Miles calmly. “Yes. That's right.”

  “We'd better ring for an ambulance,” the hollow voice replied. “But she shouldn't have got worked up and run like that. I think it's finished her.

  Miles walked slowly downstairs.

  His left hand rested on the balustrade where Fay's hand had rested. He dropped the brief-case as he walked. Across the street, seen now through an open front door, the ugly bodiless teeth very slowly opened and closed, opened and closed throughout all eternity, as he bent over Fay's body.

  Chapter XVIII

  It was half-past six o'clock on that same Sunday evening, though it might have been days later as regards the apparent passage of time, when Miles and Barbara sat in Fay Seton's bedroom up on the first floor.

  The electric light was burning again over the chest-of-drawers. Barbara sat in the frayed armchair. Miles sat on the edge of the bed, beside Fay's black beret. He was looking at the battered tin box when Barbara spoke.

  “Shall we go out an see if there's a Lyons or an A.B.C. Open on Sunday? Or a pub where they might have a sandwich?”

  “No. Hadley told us to stay here.”

  “How long has it been since you last had anything to eat?”

  “One of the greatest gifts with which a woman can be endowed”--Miles tried to manage a smile, though he felt the smile stretch like a sick leer--”is the gift of not mentioning the subject of food at inconvenient times.”

  “Sorry,” said Barbara, an was silent for a long time. “Fay may recover you know.”

  “Yes. She may recover.”

  And then the silence went on for a very long time, while Barbara plucked at the edges of the chair-arms.

  “Does this mean so very much to you, Miles?”

  “That isn't the main point at all. I simply felt that this woman has been given the worst possible raw deal from life. That things ought to be put right somehow! That justice ought to be done! That . . .”