“Keep at it!” urged Dr. Fell. “You’re going great guns. That’s the point on which I very badly need help. Why?”
“Symbolic meaning in a uniform?”
“Harrumph—well. Maybe.”
“I believe I’ve got it,” said Francine, putting down her cigarette and looking at the lamp in a startled fashion. “Did Hardwick know Dan had booked rooms for all of us at the Royal Scarlet?”
“Yes, naturally. Dan arranged it a long time ago, before any of us left South Africa.”
“The murderer,” she told them, “was seen at Northfield in a uniform because he wanted to be seen. That was the reason for it! He wanted to draw attention to the uniform. If he hadn’t been observed by the drunk on the sofa, he’d have said Boo to someone else. Think of him walking straight down the hall, like—like someone behind footlights, do you see? It was easy. He shook the drunk by the shoulder, and then let himself be seen much too obviously. But that must mean—no, don’t say anything, Chris!—that must mean he was preparing everybody’s mind for his appearance later, when he came to kill Jenny—preparing our minds to see—but where is there any indication in just a coat and a pair of trousers?” She paused. “I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”
Dr. Fell studied her with an odd frown. “I should not be surprised,” he commented, “if that remark came closer to the truth than anything we have heard.”
“Meaning?” asked Kent.
“Meaning that Hadley and I are trying to work out a plan of campaign. To-morrow we are going down to Northfield; and we’re—h’mf—well, we’re going to ask all your party to go down there as well. In the first place, Sir Gyles Gay’s house interests me. In the second place, I want to go to the jail and see Mr. Ritchie Bellowes; specifically, I want to find out what he was really supposed to see.”
“Supposed to see?”
“Yes. Isn’t it fairly obvious?” inquired Dr. Fell, opening his eyes. “I think you’re quite right in one respect, Miss Forbes. There had to be a witness to see our figure in uniform walking down the hall. What do you think of the theory that Ritchie Bellowes was deliberately chosen?”
“Hold on,” protested Kent; “I don’t follow that. How do you mean, deliberately chosen? The murderer couldn’t have known that the village toper would have come wandering in conveniently on the very night of the murder.”
“Oh, yes, he could,” said Dr. Fell, “if the village toper had been summoned.”
For a time he remained wheezing, his eyes half-shut, and then he went on in an abstracted tone:
“Very well, I’ll give you a hint; and you can see what you make of it. Not enough attention, I think, has been paid to the first murder. First tell me this: did any of your party ever meet Bellowes before he was found in the house that night?”
“No, we didn’t exactly meet him,” said Francine. “Our amiable host brought him in one night during the first week we were there, as a sort of hired entertainer, to show us his mental tricks. You’d riffle through a pack of cards in front of him and he’d afterwards tell you each of the cards in the order he saw them. You mix up several dozen articles on a table, and he identifies them all after one second’s look; that sort of thing. Tall, hollow-eyed chap, very pleasant-spoken. He talked to us casually. Then our host took him out to the kitchen and sent him home full of whisky. I thought it was rather rotten of Sir Gyles, because that used to be Bellowes’s home, you know. That was why, when Rod was killed, we thought at first——”
Dr. Fell shook his head, fiery with argumentativeness.
“Now consider the following indications! I pointed out to Hadley this morning Bellowes’s importance in the case. You see, his presence there on the very night of a particularly brutal murder was a little too fortuitous. The man himself was unquestionably dead drunk and incapable of mischief. His presence there might be a coincidence, a somewhat painful tearing of coincidence; but there were certain indications against it.
“First (you recall), when he was found on the sofa at two o’clock in the morning he had a key to the house in his pocket. That meant either that someone had given him a key, or it was an old one of his own; but, in either case, it meant he had left his lodgings early that evening intending to go to his old home—and intended it before he had taken a drop to drink! What, then, becomes of the homing pigeon reeling back by instinct?
“Second, he concluded his evening at the pub, contrary to custom, by drinking whisky and going away with a pint of it. Now, I don’t know whether you know anything about the habits of village pubs. I, to my joy, do. The drink there is beer, because spirits are too expensive. Whisky is a luxury reserved for rare and mystic occasions. Bellowes, we know, was almost penniless; his usual tap was beer; but on this occasion, with a key to the house in his pocket, he orders whisky. It looked as though someone had been supplying him with extra cash. Why?
“Third, you recall that Bellowes’s finger-prints were actually found in the room where Rodney Kent was murdered—which made it look very bad for him—although Bellowes absolutely denied ever having been in that room. He had at least looked in there, since the prints were round the light-switch. But he didn’t remember it.
“Suppose Bellowes had been summoned or invited to the house at a certain hour. But why? It assuredly was not to be a scapegoat for the real murderer. If this had been so, he would have been made a far more thorough-going scapegoat. The poker, instead of vanishing mysteriously from the house, would have been found in his hand. There would have been blood on him; and finger-prints in more damning places than merely round the light-switch. Furthermore, the real murderer would have known—stop; or would he wonder?—that Bellowes’s nearly paralysed left arm would make it impossible for him to have strangled Rodney Kent in the crushing two-handed grip that was used.
“Yet, the more I turned it over, the more it seemed to me certain that Bellowes had been invited there. In short, he was to be a witness: as he was. A far from sober witness: as he was. An incurious witness: as he was. A witness with a photographic memory: as he was. And a complete witness to some skilful and evil design for strangling, planned to throw suspicion on the wrong person: as, alas, he was not. He got too drunk. What might he have seen when he looked into the room where Rodney Kent was killed? In other words, what lies just under the surface of this first crime, which is rather more devilish than the second? Bellowes saw part of what he was meant to see. But was there anything else? Archons of Athens! I wish I knew! And we are going down to Sussex to find out.”
Ending on a note of some savagery, Dr. Fell drew out a large red bandana handkerchief, mopped his forehead with it, and blinked at the other two from under its folds. He added:
“I trust you take my meaning?”
“But if someone invited or got Bellowes to the house,” muttered Kent, “it must have been the murderer. Consequently, Bellowes must know who the murderer is?”
Dr. Fell put away the bandana. “I wish it were as simple as that. But I’m afraid it’s not. Bellowes, you see, could hardly have been paid to keep silent when he himself was in danger. I don’t think he suspects at all; if he did, perhaps it’s just as well that he’s safely in jail. What I am going to do, you perceive, is find out what he was supposed to see on the night of January 14th. I am going to dig into the subconscious; and digging into the subconscious, we are assured by the tenets of the newest science, inevitably produces a nightmare. Shall we have a final brandy?”
Their cab prowled up Piccadilly, the chains on its wheels clanking faintly. Dr. Fell had gone home, more silent than was usual with him; and Kent had told the driver to take a turn anywhere he liked. It was warm enough to be pleasant inside the cab. Pale lamps looked in on them; the street was churned to slush, but by the time they turned into the high dimness of the Park, there were lawns of snow outside the windows and the bare trees wore bonnets. Francine, a bundle of furs topped by yellow hair that fluffed out over them, leaned against his shoulder and stared straight ahead. He had just put his han
d on a cold hand when she spoke.
“Chris, do you know who he suspects?”
“Who—?” For a moment Kent was puzzled; it seemed incongruous at such a time. Though she pressed his hand, she did not turn round. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Harvey Wrayburn seems out of the running, and my elaborate case against Hardwick was, I admit, sheer fireworks. I don’t like to think of anyone else.”
“He suspects Melitta Reaper.”
It was so abrupt and so startling that he dropped her hand. Of her face he could so far see only the tip of her nose; now she moved, turning towards him squarely.
“Meli—rubbish!”
“It’s not, Chris. I know. I can feel these things.” She spoke with fierce intensity. “You think a minute and you’ll realise it. Do you remember? I was maundering along, trying to find a reason for someone wearing the uniform. I hardly knew what I was saying—but I saw his eyes. I said, ‘But where is there any indication in just a coat and a pair of trousers?’ A pair of trousers, Chris; it was as though I had made some kind of slip of the tongue. And he didn’t thunder out. He just said it was closer to the truth than anything else. It was enough to give me goose-flesh, because I saw. Why would a murderer be so horribly anxious every time to print a picture in our heads of a man, a man in an especially mannish land of uniform? You see? Because it’s a woman.”
He looked at the white face over the furs, with the large, long brown eyes shifting slightly. The run and crossing of car-lamps among the trees shifted like her eyes; and the wheels seemed to hammer loudly.
“But that’s crazier than any of my guesses! You don’t believe it, do you?”
“No; I suppose I don’t, really, but——”
“But what?”
“Chris, I’ve been a beast. I suppose, from now on, I’ll tell you every thought that’s in my head; because I’d like to; but I’m always having them.” She seemed rather incoherent from the strain of the past weeks, but she spoke in a quiet voice, looking up now and again. “Suppose it’s Dan himself who’s been tied up with Jenny? It’s quite possible, you know: living in the same house, and Jenny being what she was. To say nothing of the fact that Dan’s close to being a millionaire. You saw how queer Dan was to-day when we talked about Jenny’s real nature, didn’t you? And didn’t it strike you that Melitta was just a little too quick to defend Jenny, and say bah-bah-my-dears-there’s-nothing-in-it, and act in a way that’s not exactly like her? If Dan is the man in the case, the one from whom Jenny has been getting all the cheques——”
He felt cold, though he would have nothing to do with the idea.
“Well, old girl, in my opinion it’s still raving lunacy. Melitta: definitely not. Why should she?”
“You say I’m mad on economics. But you know how Melitta is about plain money.”
“But how does Rod fit in?”
“Jenny lived off Dan; Rod was supposed to live off Jenny——”
“Come here,” he ordered. “And forget that gibberish. If we go on like this, there’ll be nobody at all we can dare trust. We can’t go on feeling that everybody round us is a hobgoblin. Why not Dan himself? Why not me? Why not you?”
“Why not?” she said, and plucked at a button of his overcoat. The bundle of furs stirred; the cab jolted slightly, and moved on into the darkest curve of the park. “I wonder,” she added in a small voice, “just what that chap Bellowes will say?”
13
A Welcome at Four Doors
“ALL I CAN SAY,” replied Ritchie Bellowes, “is what I have said. I’m sorry I went there, but I don’t see that I did any great harm.”
He sat back on the bunk of the cell and regarded his visitors with an air of polite cynicism which was not even marred by the stubble on his face. He was that rare product, a gentleman; and it was all the more odd to meet him in a jail in Sussex. Tall, with dark hair in a wide parting, he looked even more hollow-eyed from his fortnight’s enforced sobriety. He wore a grey shirt open at the neck, and a pair of brown braces with one button missing made him hitch his shoulder frequently.
They had gone down to Sussex early on the morning of February 1st, Christopher Kent accompanying Dr. Fell and Hadley, and the others arranging to follow on a faster train. The nine-fifteen from Charing Cross idled through the succession of tunnels which make the Kentish hills seem to shut away London as though with a wall. The flat lands beyond were stiff with snow. Dr. Fell was occupied with a vast series of notes, spreading over from one small piece of paper to the other, so Hadley gave up any attempt to talk to him and settled down glumly with a crossword puzzle. They changed at Tonbridge; and, the nearest station to Northfield being Eglamore, a police car was waiting for them there.
Northfield, an attractive enough village in summer, now carried out its reputation sufficiently to look like something off a Christmas-card. Great pillars of yew-hedge before the church, and arching over the lych-gate, were powdered with snow. The village green, hard earth, sloped down to the public-house of the Stag and Glove, as though tilting its inhabitants there; it was fronted by low houses of white weather-boarding and others of that faded half-timbering which looks brittle to the touch. The visitors, after having been inside several of the houses, thought that they had never seen so many oak beams; oak beams seemed to sprout and crowd, to the manifest pleasure of the owners; but living inside too many oak beams, Kent decided, must be like living inside the stomach of a zebra.
They did not go to Four Doors, Sir Gyles’s house, since Gay himself had not arrived. After (at Dr. Fell’s insistence) testing the local brew at the Stag and Glove, and finding it good, they went on to the district police-station on the road to Porting. The station consisted of two converted semi-detached houses, and was presided over like a householder by Inspector Tanner. Dr. Fell—one or two of whose great sheaf of notes had suffered from having fallen into the beer—was determined to conduct the examination of Bellowes. After a great unlocking of underground doors, they found Bellowes reasonably courteous, but apathetic and cynical.
“Look here, I’ll be frank,” said Dr. Fell, getting down to business with a directness which pained Hadley. “We’re here because we’re not satisfied you told the whole truth about the night of January 14th.”
“Sorry,” said Bellowes. “But I’ve already said it a hundred times. I—did—not——”
“Now, steady!” urged Dr. Fell, with a redder tinge in his face. “The question is not what you did; the question is why you did it. Quick! Did someone tell you to go to Four Doors on that night?”
Bellowes had been reading a well-thumbed Wild West magazine. Now he put it down on the floor beside the bunk; and, stirred out of his apathy, regarded the doctor with what Kent could have sworn was genuine surprise.
“No,” he said.
“You’re sure of that, now?”
“I’m certain of it. What’s all this? Why should—well, why should anybody want me there? Why should anybody want me anywhere?” he added, with a rush of bitterness which was dangerously near self-pity.
“You still maintain you wandered there of your own accord, while you were drunk, and had no intention of doing it beforehand?”
“I don’t know why I went there. Yes, I suppose I do know; but you understand what I mean. But I hadn’t any intention of doing that early in the evening. I honestly don’t go about breaking into people’s houses as a rule, and I can’t understand how it happened.”
“How do you explain the fact that there was a key to the house in your pocket?”
“Key? But I always carry that key; I’ve carried it for years,” replied Bellowes, bringing his heel down with some violence on the floor. “Ask my landlady. Ask anybody. I don’t suppose I’m entitled to it; but Sir Gyles knows I have it——”
“Forgive my mentioning this; but you were rather in funds on the night of the fourteenth?”
The other’s face grew pinched. I was.
“Well?”
“You may have heard,” said Bellowes gravely
, “that I gave a little tame conjuring entertainment for the guests at Four Doors. As I was leaving Sir Gyles pushed an envelope in my pocket. There was more in that envelope than I deserved; and, just between ourselves, than I had—hoped for. We used to learn a lot of tosh about people being too proud to accept charity. I was not.”
“Damn and blast!” said Dr. Fell. He opened and shut his hands; he would have surged up with oratorical thunder had the size of the place permitted it. After a curt remonstrance from Hadley, he subsided to mutterings, and pursued the subject with almost ghoulish hopefulness.
“Would you maintain in court that nobody prompted you to go to that house?”
“I would.”
“Humph. Ha. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you over that statement of yours. But, first, as a general thing: you know Sir Gyles Gay fairly well?”
“I’m acquainted with him. That is, I’ve been to the house two or three times in the past year.”
“When you went there to entertain the guests, I suppose you met all of them?”
Bellowes frowned. “Yes, I was introduced to all of them—I think. I didn’t talk much to them, barring when they asked questions: except to Mr. Reaper. I liked him,” said Bellowes, staring at the past. “He’s my style, somehow. He asked me if I’d like to get a new start in South Africa, and I think he meant it.”
“Did you meet Rodney Kent, who was later——”
“It’s a queer thing about that. I suppose he must have been there, because he was one of the party: as I have good reason to remember, God knows. But I can’t remember seeing him at all.”
“Did you ever see any of the others on any subsequent occasion?”
“Yes, but not to speak to. Mr. Reaper dropped in at the pub one evening later, but he was in the private bar and I was in the public. I didn’t have—have the nerve to walk in and say good evening. Then another of them was in the pub early on the night— the night it all happened; but that was very early in the evening.”
To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9) Page 14