To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9)

by John Dickson Carr

  “Thank you,” said Francine. Her chilly manner was in contrast to the fervour with which she had spoken last; but in spite of herself she smiled under the beam of Dr. Fells presence. “I didn’t say it was my theory.”

  “H’mf, no. That odious burden shall rest elsewhere. But in this theory, how did that bracelet fit into it?” He pointed his stick towards the table where the bracelet lay. “Was it a kind of pledge or token given by this X, this unidentified man, to Mrs. Kent?”

  “Well—yes.”

  “Do you believe that to be actually the case?”

  “Yes. I—oh, I don’t know! That’s just it: I don’t know anything! I’ve already said a dozen times more than I intended….”

  “Yes,” agreed Hadley placidly, “I thought you would.” He seemed to gain his point by ignoring her. “Mr. Reaper: let’s get back to the subject we started on, before we continue about this. What do you know about Mrs. Kent? I met her only once, and she was ill then, or said she was; so it’s little enough I got out of her. For instance, where was she from? Johannesburg?”

  “No, she was born up country, Rhodesia. I knew her parents well, when she was a kid in curls. Good old stock; gentlemen-farmers; not very go-ahead.”

  “Are her parents living?”

  “No. I lost touch with them some years ago. They left her very well provided for, though I shouldn’t have suspected that. She came to Johannesburg about three years ago; she and Rod have been married for two.”

  Dr. Fell interposed a sleepy question. “I say, was she fond of travelling? Did she do much of it?”

  “No,” said Dan, sighting behind his pipe. “Funny you should ask that. She detested it; never did any. Trains and ships made her sick, or something; even coming from Salisbury to Johannesburg was something to set her teeth about. Didn’t want to make this trip, either. As it happens,” he added, staring down at the packed tobacco with a heavy and lowering embarrassment, “I wish she hadn’t. I wish nobody had. And then—” He spoke quietly. “Right down to brass tacks: did you mean all that about A. and Mrs. B.?”

  “That was Sir Gyles’s suggestion.” Hadley was still prodding, and he saw Dan look sideways with abrupt suspicion. “I’m merely trying to get at the truth. But do you think someone in your party is a homicidal lunatic?”

  “My God, no!”

  “Then we’ve got to look for a motive, if you’ll help. Think. Was there any reason why someone should have killed both Mr. and Mrs. Kent? By this time you’ve all got to face it: it wasn’t an outsider or a member of the hotel staff. So was there any reason? Money? Revenge? You shake your head—you all do. Then, Mrs. Kent being the sort of person some of you think she was, the only indication we’ve got is a possible affair in which Rodney Kent is killed by X in collusion with Mrs. Kent, and X later kills Mrs. Kent herself. If,” Hadley’s tone grew sharper, “Miss Forbes will now tell us what she knows….”

  “Which is still nothing,” said Francine. “The sum and substance of it is this. I wasn’t actually told a word. I inferred, from the way she talked, that some man she was very much interested in had given her the bracelet; someone she either loved or——”

  “Or——?

  “Feared, I was going to say. There you are. I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t want to sound silly,” she drew in her breath with hard effect, “like one of Chris’s melodramatic novels. Maybe I was imagining it all, because it seems a little too melodramatic to be true. But I did understand that if I looked hard enough at that bracelet I might learn something.”

  “About what? About the person who gave it to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is why you wanted me to give it to you a while ago?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Hadley picked up the bracelet and turned it over in his hand. “You can see for yourself that there’s not a scrap of writing, or place for writing, or any secret hanky-panky, except that Latin inscription. Do you mean there’s a secret hidden in that, like an acrostic or some such thing? Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt. This is more in your line, Fell.”

  “I still think,” Gay urged, “that you’re making too much of a small thing. If I may suggest it, the inquiries should be broader. If there has been a man in the case, there ought to be traces of him. Find that man, and you’ll be a good deal closer to finding the murderer.”

  “No, you won’t,” said a new voice.

  The door to the hall had opened and Harvey Wrayburn came in. He did not come with his usual bounce or bustle. In appearance he was stoutish and undistinguished, except when some enthusiasm animated him—as it often did. Then his gingery hair and moustache, his alert eyes under a bump of a forehead, would all take on a vividness of self-assurance in which few could disbelieve. He had a fondness for wearing old grey worsted suits, and a habit of jamming his fists into the coat-pockets so that the coat always looked bulging and long. At this time he was self-assured enough, except for a look of strain round his eyes. He seemed poised on the edge of speech, as though he had just been put in front of a microphone and told that the red light would flash on in half a second.

  “For the last five minutes,” he said, “I’ve been listening outside that door. Who wouldn’t?” he added, raising his neck up a little. “The question was whether I should get our friend Hadley in a corner and explain, or else get it all off my chest in front of all of you—and have done with it. I’ve decided to get it off my chest. All right: I’m the man you want.”

  Hadley jumped to his feet. “Mr. Wrayburn, you may make a statement if you like, but I must caution you——”

  “Oh, I didn’t kill her,” said the other rather irritably, as if he had been robbed of an effect. “I was going to marry her; or she was going to marry me. Your grand reconstruction also misfires on one other point: that bracelet. I didn’t give the bracelet to her. She gave it to me.”

  10

  Shipboard Idyll

  WRAYBURN’S NEXT STATEMENT WAS in a slightly different key. “I feel better,” he said in a surprised tone. “No balloon or aneurism seems to have burst. You don’t look any different. Oh, hell.”

  After a violence of expelled breath, he perched himself on the edge of the table as though he were addressing a class, and went on:

  “I know about the penalty for suppressing evidence. And that’s not all. I’ve always hated the silly fathead who shoves an important clue into his pocket and causes everybody trouble because he (or usually it’s a she) won’t speak; and then, when you find it, it’s not worth the hunt. All right, here I am. And here’s your clue.”

  From his waistcoat-pocket he took a Yale key with a chromium tag bearing the number 707, and tossed it across to Hadley.

  “You mean,” said Dan, “that you and Jenny have been——”

  “Have been what? Six kisses,” said Wrayburn gloomily. “I counted ’em. She said the last one was for luck.”

  Hadley was curt.

  “I think we’d better hear about this from the beginning,” he said, only less satisfied than exasperated. “You didn’t say anything about it when Mr. Rodney Kent was murdered.”

  “No, of course I didn’t. Why should I? I didn’t kill him.”

  “And yet, if you intended to marry her, his being dead must have simplified matters, didn’t it?”

  “This isn’t going to be as easy as I had hoped,” said Wrayburn, fixing his eyes grimly on the door-knob after a quick look at Hadley. “Try to understand this. I didn’t think about it simplifying matters at all. I thought about it as an infernal shame and a piece of senseless brutality done by that fellow Bellowes when he was drunk. That’s all I thought. It—woke me up.”

  “How long has this been going on? I mean the affair with Mrs. Kent.”

  “Well—it only really started on shipboard. Oh, Lord, these ships. The weather was cutting up rough, and only Jenny and I, and sometimes Dan, had our sea-legs. You know how these things happen.”

  “Mrs. Kent wasn’t sea-sick?”
>
  “Not a bit.”

  “We heard just a minute ago that she couldn’t stand ships in any kind of weather.”

  Wrayburn glanced over his shoulder. As a rule, Kent knew, he was fond of the limelight; but he seemed to regret that he had perched on the table.

  “Then all I can say,” he retorted querulously, “is that somebody is mistaken. You ought to have seen her. That old tub was jumping about like a ball in a roulette-wheel, and Jenny would stand as cool as though she had just walked into a drawing-room. It was the—the humanest I ever saw her. How that woman liked to see things smashed up! Once the wicker furniture, and the gramophone, and all the rest of the stuff got loose in the palm-room when the ship was pitching badly. It sailed round from one side to the other, and simply busted the whole show to blazes. It was one of the few times I ever saw Jenny really laugh.”

  There was a stony kind of silence, while some members of the group shifted in their chairs. Dr. Fell was the first to speak.

  “You ought to know, Mr. Wrayburn,” he said, “that you’re making rather a bad impression. That look on Hadley’s face—I know it. In other words, you don’t show any signs of being a broken-hearted lover.”

  “I’m not,” said Wrayburn, moving off the table. “Now we’re getting down to it.”

  He looked round the circle.

  “You must be Dr. Fell. Will you explain what happened, even if I can’t? I don’t know exactly how it came about on that ship. The trouble with sirens, like Jenny, is that they win half their victories by their reputations. They’re attractive; you know they’re attractive; but you have no intention of being attracted by them. Then they let you know—inadvertently—how much interested they are in you; and you’re so flattered that, like a chump, you wonder if you’re not falling. Then you do fall. Finish. You’re anaesthetised; for the time being.”

  “You needn’t look so crushed about it,” rumbled Dr. Fell cheerfully. “It happens, you know. When did you begin to wake up?”

  His manner was so casual that Wrayburn stopped pacing.

  “‘Begin.’ ‘Begin.’ Yes, that’s the word,” he admitted. He dug his hands into the usual pockets; and once his animation had gone, he looked undistinguished again. “Let’s see. It was—maybe just after the ship docked. Maybe it was when she told me she wasn’t going down to Sussex because she couldn’t trust herself to be with me. All of a sudden that struck a wrong note. Bing! I looked at her and knew she was lying. Finally, maybe it was when Rod died.”

  Dan had been waving a hand for silence.

  “Will somebody explain this business about Jenny’s ‘reputation’?” he insisted. “What reputation? All I can say is that it’s complete news to me.”

  “Of course,” said Melitta.

  “You mean to say you knew it?”

  Melitta’s thin voice kept to its monotone. “Of course, my dear, you will not listen to anyone; and you say everything is gossip, as it often is, and you’re so terribly concerned with your own ideas—you and Chris, too—that naturally nobody ever tells you anything.” Melitta was full of impatience. “All the same, I stick to my opinion, and I don’t alter it. Jenny was a Sweet Girl. Of course, I know there has been a certain amount of gossip, and my grandfather always used to say that most gossip is probably true because it is what the people would like to do even if they are not doing it. But in Jenny’s case there was absolutely nothing against her, and I was quite sure she could be trusted not to do anything foolish. And it was really most interesting to see what happened.”

  “Murder happened,” said Hadley.

  A wrathful superintendent had been trying to break through this screen of talk.

  “It won’t be necessary to explain your state of mind, Mr. Wrayburn. Just tell me what you did. Were you in Mrs. Kent’s room last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well; let’s get that clear. What time did you go in?”

  “About twenty-five minutes to twelve. Just after the maid left, anyhow.”

  “At what time did you leave the room?”

  “Midnight—I was also in there at seven, and again at eight o’clock this morning.”

  “And you tell us you did not commit this murder?”

  “I did not.”

  During a strained pause of about ten seconds he met Hadley’s eye. Then Hadley turned briskly and nodded to Dr. Fell and Kent.

  “Good. Then just come across the hall with me to 707, and explain how you managed it. No! The rest of you, with the exception of these two, will remain here.”

  He very quickly shut off the protests. Opening the door for the other three, he ushered them out ahead of him and closed the door with a snap. Wrayburn, breathing hard, went out with a stiff gait which suggested that he might have been walking through a more evil doorway than this. In the corridor Hadley beckoned to Sergeant Preston, who was just coming out of the Reapers’ suite. From room 707 the body had now been removed, leaving only a few stains on the floor.

  “We’ve nearly finished searching, sir,” Preston reported. “And so far, there’s not a sign of that unif——”

  “Shorthand,” said Hadley. “Mr. Wrayburn, your statement will be taken down, and you will be asked to initial it afterwards. Now let’s hear just what happened in here.”

  After looking round quickly, Wrayburn leaned against the foot of the nearest twin-bed and seemed to brace himself. His moustache was not now brushed up, either literally or metaphorically; he looked heavy and a little shabby.

  “Well, it was like this. It’s no good saying I was entirely out from under the ether. That’s partly camouflage for the benefit of—” he jerked his head towards the other side of the hall. “But I was beginning to wonder whether I might have made a fool of myself aboard ship. Besides, we had had a roaring good time at Gay’s.”

  “Wait. Had there been any talk of marriage between you and Mrs. Kent?”

  “No, not then. She wouldn’t bring it up, and I didn’t. You understand, there was always Rod.” He looked at Kent. “I swear, Chris, I never meant any harm to him.”

  “Go on.”

  “So, you see, I saw Jenny again for the first time last night. Considering what had happened—naturally, I didn’t expect her to fly to my shoulder or anything of the sort. I was beginning to wonder whether I wanted her to; I didn’t trust her. But I couldn’t get an opportunity to speak to her alone. She seemed odd. At the theatre she arranged matters so that we were sitting at opposite ends of the row of seats, and between the acts she monopolised Gay. I had never seen her look—brighter.

  “As you can understand, the only time I could get to see her alone was after the others had gone to bed. I waited for fifteen or twenty minutes after we had all closed our doors. Then I nipped across the hall to there,” he indicated the side door, “and knocked.”

  “Yes?” Hadley prompted, as he hesitated.

  “I can tell you this. She was frightened about something. After I knocked there was no answer for a second or two. Then I heard her voice very close to the door, asking who it was. I had to repeat my name twice before she opened the door.”

  “Had she seemed frightened earlier in the evening?”

  “No. At least, not noticeably. There was a stealthy kind of air about this; I don’t know how else to describe it. And the door was bolted—I remember the noise of the bolt when she drew it back.

  “She had changed her shoes for slippers, and was just beginning to unpack her trunk. The trunk, everything, looked just about as it does now. I don’t want you to think I’m any more an ass than necessary. But when I saw her again, I didn’t know what to say. I simply stood and looked at her; and my chest hurt. That’s a devil of a confession to have to make, but it did. She sat down in a chair and waited for me to speak first. She was sitting in that one, over by the writing-desk.”

  He nodded towards it. The room was now grey with early-afternoon shadows, and the maplewood gleamed faintly.

  “So I started in to talk—chiefly about
Rod, and how bad it was. Not a word about ourselves. I knew she was waiting for me to do it. And she was listening with a kind of composed expression, as though she were waiting to have her photograph taken. You know: cool, and the corners of the mouth turning down a bit. She was wearing that bracelet with the black stone and the inscription. It was the first time I had ever seen it. As I told you, I didn’t give it to her; she gave it to me, presently.

  “There’s something else I must tell you, because it fits into the story. I kept on talking, inanely, and wondered why I talked at all. During this time she got up once or twice; in particular, she went over to the dressing-table there, picked up her handbag, and got a handkerchief out of it. I noticed, when she ran through the things in the handbag, that the key to the room—the key with the chromium tag—was inside.

  “By the time I was wondering if I ought to make jokes, she came to a decision. You could see it; all at once. Her face softened up a bit. She asked me straight out, in that trustful way of hers, whether I was in love with her. That broke the barriers. I said I was. I said a whole lot. Whereupon she said she was going to give me a keepsake, a pledge, all that kind of thing. She unhooked that bracelet and handed it to me, and I can remember exactly what she said. She said: ‘You keep that for always. Then nobody will try to wake the dead.’ Don’t ask me what it means. I thought it was a high-flown kind of thing to say. Because, mind, one part of my intelligence was still awake. In these romantic moments—arrh!—I didn’t seem any closer to her than to a clock ticking beside you. Also, she brightened up immediately afterwards. She said it was late, and what would anybody think if I were found there at that hour?

  “I was still fuddled; I wanted to keep on with a good thing. So I had a romantic idea. I said, why shouldn’t we get up early in the morning, and have breakfast together and go out and see the town on our own before any of the rest could join us? It would have to be early, because Dan Reaper is always up and roaring round the place just at the time I like to take the best part of sleep. I recklessly said seven o’clock. You understand. I didn’t really want to go out at seven o’clock. God love you, I wouldn’t want to get up at seven o’clock in the morning to walk through the Earthly Paradise with an unveiled Houri. But I stood there and said fool things. She welcomed the idea, with an out-you-go expression. Finally, she asked me whether I wasn’t going to kiss her good night. I said of course. Instead of grabbing the wench, as I would have grabbed any other woman, I gave her a couple of chaste and tender salutes…. Stop looking so damned embarrassed, coppers; you wanted the truth—and drew away. Then she put out her swan-like neck and said, ‘And one for luck.’ Then was when I saw her eyes sort of slide past my shoulder. There wasn’t much in them; it was an expression like that of a woman in a foyer waiting for the lift to go up; they were blank and blue as marbles. And in that one second the cable was cut. My cable. In short, I saw——”