“He saw quite clearly he couldn't get down that steep spiral stair, forty feet above ground, without pitching forward into space. He would be found fainting here—if nothing worse—wearing Harry's raincoat and his own pierced bloodstained raincoat in the brief-case. Questions would be asked. The facts, properly interpreted, would be utterly damning to Harry.
“Now that man really loved his son. He had got two dazing revelations that afternoon. He meant to be very severe with the boy. But he wouldn't see Harry, poor idolized Harry, really in serious trouble. So he id the obvious thing, the only possible thing, to show he must have been attacked after Harry left.
“With his last strength he took his own raincoat out of the brief-case, an put it on again. Harry's now blood-stained too, he thrust into the case. He must get rid of that brief-case somehow. In a sense that was easy, because there was water just below.
“But he couldn't simply drop it over the edge, though the police of Chartres in their suicide theory thought he might accidentally have knocked it over. He couldn't drop it, for the not-very-abstruse reason that the brief-case would float.
“However, on the battlements of the parapet facing the riverside were big crumbling fragments of loose rock. These could be wrenched loose and put into the brief-case, fastened in with the straps, and the weighted case would sink.
“He managed to drop it over. He managed to take the sword-cane from ts scabbard, wipe its handle free from any trace of Harry's touch—that of course was why only his own fingerprints were found on it—and throw the two halves on the floor. Then Howard Brooke collapsed. He was not dead when the screaming child found him. He was not dead when Harry and Rigaud arrived. He died in Harry's arms, clinging pathetically to Harry and trying to assure his murderer it would be all right.
“God rest the man's soul,” added Dr. Fell, slowly putting up his hands to cup them over his eyes.
For a time Dr. Fell's wheezing breaths were the only sound in that room. A few drops of rain splattered outside the windows.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Dr. Fell, taking his hands away from his eyes and regarding his companions soberly, “I submit this to you now. I submit t, as I could have submitted it last night after reading the manuscript and hearing the report of Fay Seton's story, as the only feasible explanation of how Howard Brooke met his death.
“The stains inside the sword-stick, showing the blade must have been put back in the sheath and then taken out again before it was found! The bulging brief-case! Harry's disappearing raincoat! The missing fragments of rock from the parapet! The curious question of fingerprints!
“For the secret of this apparent miracle—which was not intended to be a mystery at all-lies in a very simple fact. It is the fact that one man's raincoat looks very much like another man's raincoat.
“We don't write our names in raincoats. They are not of a distinctive colour. They are made only in a few stock sizes; and we know that Harry Brooke “in height and weight,' as Rigaud says, was like his father. Among Englishmen especially it is a point of pride, even of caste and gentlemanliness, for his raincoat to be as old and disreputable as possible without becoming an actual eyesore. When next you go into a restaurant, observe the line of bedraggle objects hanging on coat-pegs and you will understand.
“Our friend Rigaud here never dreamed he had sen Mr. Brooke in two different coats at two different times. Since Mr. Brooke was actually dying in his own coat, nobody else ever suspected. Nobody that is, except Fay Seton.”
Professor Rigaud got to his feet and took little short steps up and down the room.
“She knew?” he demanded.
“Undoubtedly.”
“But after I saw her for a moment at the door of the tower, and she ran away from me, what did she do?”
“I can tell you,” Barbara said quietly.
Professor Rigaud, fussed and fussy, made gestures as though he would try to shush her.
“You mademoiselle? And how would it occur to you to know?”
“I can tell you,” answered Barbara simply, “because it's what I should have done myself.” Barbara's eyes were shining with a light of pain and sympathy. “Please let me go on! I can see it!
“Fay went for a swim in the river, just as she said she did. She wanted to feel cool; she wanted o feel clean. She'd really-really fallen in love with Harry Brooke. IN circumstances like that it'd be easy” Barbra shook her head, “to convince yourself . . . well! That the past was the past. That this was a new life.
“And then she'd just crept up to the tower, and heard. She heard what Harry had said about her. As though instinctively he knew it was true! As though the whole world could look at her and know it was true. She'd seen Harry stab his father, but she didn't think Mr. Brooke was seriously hurt.
“Fay dived into the river, and floated down towards the tower. There were no witnesses on that side, remember! And—of course!” cried Barbara. “Fay saw the brief-case fall from the tower!” Barbara afire with this new realization, turned to Dr. Fell. “Isn't that true?”
Dr. Fell inclined his head gravely.
“That, ma'am, is whang in the gold.”
“She dived down and got the brief-case. She carried it with her when she left the river, and hid it in the woods. Fay didn't know what was going on, of course; she didn't realize until later what must have happened.” Barbara hesitated. “Miles Hammond told me, on the way here, what her own story was. I think she never realized what was going on until . . .”
“Until,” supplied Miles, with an intensity of bitterness, “until Harry Brooke came rushing up to her, exuding hypocritical shock, and cried out, 'My God, Fay, somebody's killed Dad.' No wonder Fay looked a trifle cynical when sh told me!”
“One moment!” said Professor Rigaud.
After first giving the impression of hopping up and down, though in fact he did not move, Professor Rigaud raised his forefinger impressively.
“In this cynicism,” he declared, “I begin to see a meaning for much. Death of all lives, yes! This woman,”--he shook his forefinger--”this woman now possesses evidence which can send Harry Brooke to the guillotine!” He looked at Dr. Fell. “Is it not so?”
“For you also,” assented Dr. Fell, “Whang in the gold.”
“In this brief-case,” continued Rigaud, his face swelling, “are the stones used to weigh it and Harry's raincoat stained with blood inside where his father has worn it. It would convince any court. It would show the truth.” He paused, considering. “Yet Fay Seton does not use this evidence.”
“Of course not,” said Barbara.
“Why do you say of course, mademoiselle?”
“Don't you see?” cried Barbara. “She'd got to a state of-of tiredness, of bitterness, where she could practically laugh? It didn't affect her any longer. She wasn't even interested in showing up Harry Brooke for what he was.
“She, the amateur harlot! He, the amateur murderer and hypocrite! Let's be indulgent to each other's foibles, and go our ways in a world where nothing will ever come right anyway. I—I don't want to sound silly, but that's how you really would feel about a situation like that.
“I thin,” said Barbara, “she told Harry Brooke. I think she told him she wasn't going to expose him unless the police arrested her. But, in case the police did arrest her, she was going to keep that brief-case with ts contents hidden away where nobody could find it.
“And she did keep the brief-case! That's it! She kept it for six long years! Sh brought I to England with her. It was always where she could find I. Bu she never had any reason to touch it, until . . . until . . .”
Barbara's voice trailed off.
Her yes looked suddenly and vaguely frightened, as though Barbara wondered whether her own imagination had carried her too far. For Dr. Fell, with wide-eyed and wheezing interest, was leaning forward in expectancy.
“Until--?” prompted Dr. Fell, in a hollow voice like wind along the Underground tunnel. “Archons of Athens! You're doing it! Don't s
top there! Fay Seton never had any reason to touch the brief-case until . . .?”
But Miles Hammond hardly heard this. Sheer hatred welled up in his throat and choked him.
“So Harry Brooke,” Miles said, “Still got away with it?”
Barbara swung round from Dr. Fell. “How do you mean?”
“His father protected him,” Miles made a fierce gesture, “even when Harry bent over a dying man and mouthed out, 'Dad, who did this?' Now we learn that even Fay Seton protected him. “Steady, my boy! Steady!”
“The Harry Brookes of this world,” said Miles, “always get away with it. Whether it's luck, or circumstances, or some celestial gift in their own natures, I don't pretend to guess. That fellow ought to have gone to the guillotine, or spent the rest of his life on Devil's Island. Instead it's Fay Seton, who never did the least harm to anybody, who . . .” His voice rose up. “By God, I wish I could have met Harry Brooke six years ago! I'd give my soul to have a reckoning with him!”
“That's not difficult,” remarked Dr. Fell. “Would you like to have a reckoning with him now?”
An enormous crash of thunder, rolling in broken echoes over the roof-tops, flung ts noise into the room. Raindrops blew past Dr. Fell as he sat by the window: not quite so ruddy of countenance now, with his unlighted pipe in his hand.
Dr. Fell raised his voice.
“Are you out there, Hadley?” he shouted.
Barbara jumped away from the door; staring, she groped back to stand at the foot of the bed. Professor Rigaud used a French expletive not often heard in polite society.
And then everything seemed to happen at once.
As a rain-laden breeze came in at the windows, making the hanging lamp sway over the chest-of-drawers, some heavy weight thudded against the outside of the closed door to the passage. The knob twisted only slightly, but frantically, as though hands fought for it. Then the door banged open, rebounding against the wall. Three men, who were trying to keep their feet while fighting, lurched forward in a wrestling-group which almost toppled over when it banged against the tin box.
On one side was Superintendent Hadley, trying to grip somebody's wrists. On the other side was a uniformed police-inspector. In the middle . . .
“Professor Rigaud”--Dr. Fell's voice spoke clearly—“will you be good enough to identify that chap for us? The man in the middle?”
Miles Hammond looked for himself at the staring eyes, the corners of the mouth drawn back, the writhing legs that kicked out at his captors with vicious and sinewy strength. It was Miles who answered.
“Identify him?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Fell.
“Look here,” cried Miles, “what is all this? That's Steve Curtis, my sister's fiance! What are you trying to do?”
“We are trying,” thundered Dr. Fell, “to make an identification. And I think we have done it. For the man who calls himself Stephen Curtis is Harry Brooke.”
Chapter XX
Frederic, the head-waiter at Beltring's Restaurant—which is one of the few places in the West End where you can get food on a Sunday—was always glad to oblige Dr. Fell, even when Dr. Fell wanted a private room on short notice.
Frederic's manner froze to ice when he saw the doctor's three guests: Professor Rigaud, Mr. Hammond, and small fair-haired Miss Morell, the same three who had been at Beltring's two nights before.
But the guests did not seem happy either, especially at what Frederic considered a very tactful gesture on his part; for he ushered them into the same private dining-room as before, the room used by the Murder Club. He noticed that they seemed to eat rather from a sense of duty than any appreciation of the menu.
He did not se that their looks were even stranger afterwards, when they sat round the table.
“I will now,” groaned Professor Rigaud, “take my medicine. Continue.”
“Yes,” said Miles, without looking at Dr. Fell. “Continue.”
Barbara was silent.
“Look here!” protested Dr. Fell, making vast and vague gestures of distress which spilled ash from his pipe down his waistcoat. “Wouldn't you rather wait until . . .”
“No,” said Miles, and stared hard at a salt-cellar.
“Then I ask you,” said Dr. Fell, “to take your minds back to last nigh at Greywood, when Rigaud and I had arrived on Rigaud's romantic mission to warn you about vampirism.”
“I also wished,” observed the professor a trifle guiltily, “to have a look at Sr Charles Hammond's library. But in all the time I am at Greywood the one room I do not see is the library. Life is like that.”
Dr. Fell looked at Miles.
“You and Rigaud and I,” he pursued, “were in the sitting room, and you had just told me Fay Seton's own account of the Brook murder.
“Harry Brooke, I decided, was the murderer. But his motive? That was where I had the glimmer of a guess—based, I think, on your description of Fay's hysterical laughter when you asked if she had married Harry—that these anonymous letters, these slanderous reports, were a put-up job managed by the unpleasant Harry himself.
“Mind you! I never once suspected the reports were really true after all, until Fay Seton told me so herself in the hospital this evening. It made blazing sense of so much that was obscure; it completed the pattern, but I never suspected it.
“What I saw was an innocent woman traduced by the man who pretended to be in love with her. Suppose Howard Brooke found this out, from the mysterious letter Harry was writing on the afternoon of the murder? In that case the person we must find was the equally mysterious correspondent, Jim Morell.
“This hypothesis would explain why Harry killed his father. It would show Fay as innocent of everything except—for some reason of her own!--hiding the brief-case that was dropped into the river, and never denouncing Harry. In any case the charge of vampirism was nonsense. I was just announcing this to you when . . .
“We heard a revolver-shot upstairs. We found what had happened to your sister.
“And I didn't understand anything.
“However! Let me now put together certain points I saw for myself, certain information you gave me, and certain other information given by your sister Marion when she was able to make a statement before we left Greywood. Let me show you how the whole game was played out under your eyes.
“On Saturday afternoon, at four o'clock, you met your sister and 'Stephen Curtis' at Waterloo Station. In the tea-room you flung your hand-grenade (though of course you didn't know it at the time) by announcing you had engaged Fay Seton to come to Greywood. Is that correct?”
“Steve! Steve Curtis!” Resolutely Miles shut out of his mind the face that kept appearing between him and the candle-flames.
“Yes,” Miles agreed. “That's correct.”
“How did the alleged Stephen Curtis receive the news?”
“In the light of what we know now,” Miles replied dryly, “t would be a strong understatement to say he didn't like t. But he announced that he couldn't go back to Greywood with us that evening.”
“Had you known he couldn't go back to Greywood with you that evening?”
“No! Now you mention it, it surprised Marion as much as I did me. Steve began to talk rather hastily about a sudden crisis at the office.”
“Was the name of Professor Rigaud mentioned at any time? Was 'Curtis' aware you'd met Rigaud?”
Miles pressed a hand against his eyes, reconstructing the scene. H saw, in blurred colours which sharpened to such ugliness, “Steve” fiddling with his pipe and “Steve” putting on his hat and “Steve” somewhat shakily laughing.
“No!” Miles responded. “Come to think of it, he didn't even know I'd gone to a meeting of the Murder Club, or what the Murder Club was. I did say something about 'the professor,' but I'll swear I never mentioned Rigaud's name.”
Dr. Fell bent forward, with a pink-faced and terrifying benevolence.
“Fay Seton,” Dr. Fell said softly, “still held the evidence which could send Harry Broo
k to the guillotine. But,if Fay Seton was disposed of, there would apparently be nobody to connect 'Stephen Curtis' with Harry Brooke.”
Miles started to push back his chair.
“God Almighty!” he said. “You mean . . . ?”
“So-oftly!” urged Dr. Fell, waving a mesmeric hand before eyeglasses coming askew. “But here—oh, here!--is the point at which I want you to jog your memory. During that conversation, when you and your sister and the so-called Curtis were present, was anything said about rooms?”
“About rooms?”
“About bedrooms!” persisted Dr. Fell, with the air of a monster lurking in ambush. “About bedrooms! Eh?”
“Well, yes. Marion said she was going to put Fay in her bedroom, and move downstairs herself to a better ground-floor room we'd just been redecorating.”
“Ah!” said Dr. Fell, nodding several times. “It did seem to me I heard you talking at Greywood about the bedroom situation. So your sister wanted to put Fay Seton in her bedroom! Oh, ah! Yes! But she didn't do it?”
“No. She wanted to do it that evening, but Fay refused. Fay preferred the ground-floor room because of her heart. Fewer stairs to climb.”
Dr. Fell pointed with his pipe.
“But suppose,” he suggested, “you believe Fay Seton will be in the upstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Suppose, to make dead sure of this, you keep a watch on the house. You hide yourself among the trees at the rear of the house. You look up at a line of uncurtained windows. And, at some time before midnight, what do you see?
“You see Fay Seton—wearing nightgown and wrap—slowly walking back and forth in front of those windows.
“Marion Hammond can't be seen at all. Marion is sitting in a chair over at the other side of the room, by the bedside table. She can't even be seen through the side of eastern windows, because they're curtained. But Fay Seton can be seen.
“And further suppose, in the black early hours of the morning, you creep into that dark bedroom intent on a neat and artistic murder. You are going to kill someone asleep in that bed. And, as you approach, you catch a very faint whiff of perfume; a distinctive perfume always associated with Fay Seton.
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