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

by John Dickson Carr

  He lifted the stopper out of a bottle of black ink. To the stopper, inside, was attached a broad pen-nib—a feature common to bottles of drawing-ink—for testing it before use. He waggled it at them. Kent did not like the expression of his face now.

  “I suppose you can guess where that staircase leads? The door at the top of it is beside the bathroom door upstairs. This humourist, this slim fellow, can simply walk down here, scrawl on that photograph like a child on a wall, and walk up with it.”

  For the first time Hadley was indecisive. Apparently he did not like it either, and there had been a strain ever since they entered the house, but he was studying Gay in a very curious way.

  “Do you keep the desk locked?”

  “No; why should I? There’s nothing of value in it. Half the time the top is not even closed, as it is now.”

  “But where are the photographs?” asked Dr. Fell. “I’ve come a long way to see those photographs, you know.”

  Gay turned round quickly. “I beg your pardon? You’ve what?”

  “Come a long way to see the photographs. Where are they?”

  Their host reached towards his trouser-pocket; then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled open a drawer in a tier at the right-hand side of the desk. “I am afraid you will not be well rewarded,” he said sardonically. “There is very little to—good God!”

  He had jerked back his hand quickly. What oozed out from between his fingers, what he moved back to avoid in case it should splatter on his clothes, was not blood. It looked like blood. But it was red ink. Gathering round him, they saw that the inside of the drawer was what Dr. Fell literally described as an incarnadined mess. In the drawer there had been photographs: some loose ones of all sizes, and others which had obviously been taken of or by Gay himself, for they had been pasted into an album. All were ripped and torn into many shreds, a kind of pudding, over which had been poured some half a bottle of red drawing-ink.

  Dr. Fell groaned. Sir Gyles Gay did not. Standing with his hand stiffly outstretched while he swabbed at the fingers with a handkerchief, he began to curse. He cursed with such careful, cold-voiced, measured authority that it showed a new side to the man, a new use for marble teeth. He cursed in English, Afrikaans and Kaffir, the sort of thing which would have skinned the hide either from an offending houseboy or a Government department: yet Kent could not help feeling he had heard exactly the same tone of voice on a golf-course when someone has just foozled about the sixth easy stroke. Kent saw the veins in his neck.

  “I hope,” Gay continued, without changing his even tone, “I can be called a good host. I like my guests. I have enjoyed their presence immensely. But this—by God! this is going too far. That ink is still running in the drawer. It hasn’t been put in for much more than half an hour. And where are my guests now? Why, I’ll tell you. Without a doubt each is sitting or standing in his own room. Without a doubt nobody has ventured out, as on other occasions. It is all beautifully quiet; by the so-and-so it is.”

  Dr. Fell scratched his chin. “Do you mind my saying,” he observed, “that you’re rather a rum sort of bloke?”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “No, I mean it. When a murder is committed—even one in your own house—you are helpful, philosophical, and all good things. It is an intellectual problem. It stimulates you. But you go off the deep end, with one majestic volplaning sweep, when someone plays a senseless practical joke that makes you mess up your hands. You don’t mind a throat being cut; but you can’t stand a leg being pulled.”

  “I can understand murder,” said Gay, opening his eyes. “I cannot understand this.”

  “You don’t see any meaning in it?”

  “Ah, there I am not qualified to judge. But I want to know what has been going on. Up to this time ‘somebody’ has confined his or her inane scribblings to nighttime. Now this humourist walks about in the light of day and writes—Chequebook!” said Gay, breaking off.

  Now not minding the confusion in the drawer, he began to grub in it. With some relief he produced a leatherbound cheque-book on the Capital Counties Bank; it was by some chance not stained at all, and he put it gingerly on the desk. Then he drew out a small leather purse, of the sort used by countrymen for carrying loose change, and snicked it open.

  “Something wrong here,” he added in an altered tone—a natural tone. “There’s some money missing.”

  “Money?” said Hadley. “I thought you said you kept nothing valuable in that desk.”

  “Quite true, superintendent; I don’t. All this purse ever contains is a little silver in case I have to pay for a parcel, or hand out a tip, or the like. There’s never more than a pound here at any time.”

  “How much is missing?”

  “Twelve shillings, I make it,” said Gay with competence. “Is this some more highly subtle humour, do you think?”

  Hadley took a deep breath and studied the room with a vindictiveness that equalled Gay’s own. With his hand in a handkerchief, he picked up the bottle of red drawing-ink from the desk. It had undoubtedly been used to deluge the drawer; it was nearly empty.

  “Yes,” he growled, “yes, I’m taking precautions about finger-prints in going after a practical joker. I remember a time, Fell, in the Mad Hatter case, when the answer to a piece of tomfoolery was the answer to a murder. You know—” Hadley stopped and cooled off. “We’ll settle this up right now. Will someone—will you,” he looked at Kent, “go and round up all the others? No, never mind sending a servant, Sir Gyles; I want all the servants here now, if you’ll send for them. We’ll begin with them. If you’ve got two maids, I don’t see how it’s impossible for someone to have raised the devil like that without anything being seen.” He added to Kent, grimly: “Yes. Tell ’em what you like. It won’t do any harm.”

  Kent went up the inner staircase to the hall of the floor above. He went quickly, because he did not want time to think. Four Doors, according to the plan of its (would-be) period, was severely oblong, with a central hall running broad-wise through the building. And he had no difficulty in finding three out of four of his quarry. Francine, Dan, and Melitta were sitting together in a sort of upstairs den whose big oriel window looked out over the main door. They sat round a gas-fire in an atmosphere of grousing.

  Dan greeted him peevishly.

  “I must say you’re a fine sort of friend. You walked out last night with the wench here—well, that’s understandable enough. But this morning you up and walked out with the police——”

  It was the home atmosphere again.

  “I walked out with the police,” Kent said, “because Dr. Fell countenanced it, and because I wanted to see whether I could find anything to help us out of this mess. And there’s a lot more to say now.” He looked round; Wrayburn’s absence was a noticeable gap. “Where’s Harvey?”

  Dan’s intuition was disconcertingly keen: keener, perhaps, than Melitta’s. He had been sitting with his elbows thrust out and his hands on his knees; now he got up as though he were levering up a boulder. On one side of him sat Melitta in stout discontent and a Chanel dress. On the other, Francine smoked a cigarette and looked properly attentive. He always remembered them at that moment, because of the home atmosphere which seemed to connect this with bright-hued villas in Parktown. What had happened this morning was like a home-bickering become distorted: a clash of wills or a bad joke, like breaking into somebody’s liquor-cabinet or setting a booby-trap. The worst of it was that it was real. It could happen, and did happen—on a scale that ended in murder. And Dan guessed. He was standing so close to the gas-fire that you could smell the fire scorching a tweed suit.

  Dan said: “Harvey? He went up to the pub after cigarettes. What’s up?”

  “Somebody’s been acting the fool.” Kent stopped. It was not actually that, in spite of every ludicrous attempt at a jeer in the actions that had been done this morning. “How long have you three been in here together?”

  “Mel and I just came in. Francine has been here all
the time. What’s up?”

  Kent told them.

  The way in which they received it might or might not have been considered curious. They were very quiet. It was like Melitta’s what-a-holiday mood, as though they had taken seaside lodgings where it rained steadily for two weeks. Only at the end did something appear to rouse Dan.

  “I never heard of such tomfoolery in all my born days!” he said, looking for the perpetrator in corners of the room. “Let me see if I have this straight: somebody takes that photograph, writes on the back of it, and puts it in among the towels. Somebody tears all the other photographs to pieces and douses them with red ink. Then someone steals twelve shil—oh, here! Why steal the money?”

  “You’ve got it,” said Kent, realising. He knew at last what was wrong with the picture. “I’ve had a feeling that something didn’t ring true, and you’ve got it. It’s the money. The rest of it might have been perverted humour, or there might be an explanation for most of it; I think I can see one. But stealing the money doesn’t fit in.”

  “May not have anything to do with it,” Dan pointed out. “Suppose one of the maids took the money, or something like that?”

  “Jenny had none, you know,” interposed Melitta.

  “Jenny had none of what?”

  “No silver, coppers, small change of any kind,” she answered obediently. “In her handbag at the hotel. I know, because they asked me to go through her things.”

  It was true; Kent remembered having written it down in his notes. Melitta, whose handsome nose was pink this morning, warmed up.

  “Now do not tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I thought it was awfully queer at the time, and I told Mr. Hadley so; because whoever travels, you know, always carries some change, and I am quite sure Jenny always did. When I saw it was not there I felt somebody must have taken it, though of course I knew it was no good saying anything.”

  “But she had thirty pounds in notes, and that wasn’t touched.”

  “So she had, my dear; but how did you know that?”

  “Because I took charge of it,” Dan returned grimly. He had evidently noticed no implication. “Somebody’s got to take the responsibility here. I’m the fellow who cleans up afterwards. That’s all right; I’m the executor; but I want this nonsense stopped. Do you mean that there’s someone who goes around consistently stealing loose silver and coppers, and letting big banknotes alone?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, my dear,” said Melitta with her infuriating placidness, and smoothed her skirt. “As my grandfather used to say——”

  Dan lowered his head for a moment.

  “Mel,” he observed, “there’s something I want to say. And don’t misunderstand me in saying it. I’m your husband. I’m fonder of you than of anyone in the world, if you’d only Snap Out Of It. What I want to say is this, man to man. Damn your grandfather, and your Uncle Lionel, and your Aunt Hester, and your Aunt Harriet, and your cousin Who-is-it, and all their garnered wisdom. There never was a man so afflicted with relatives as I am; and every single one of ’em is dead.”

  “Easy!” Kent urged, as Dan stalked gloomily across to the window. “This thing has got all our nerves to such a pitch——”

  “I suppose so,” admitted Dan. “Sorry, Mel. Only I’d give anything I’ve got just to hear you laugh again. Well, what do we do now?”

  “If you could show, to Hadley’s satisfaction, where you were between the time you arrived here at eleven o’clock and, say, a quarter to twelve——”

  “Library,” said Dan promptly. “I was fooling about with the books, and wondering where everybody else was and why we were here at all.”

  “You don’t mean Gay’s study?”

  “No, no; the library at the other side of the house.”

  “And you say Harvey went to the pub after cigarettes? When did he leave?”

  “Almost as soon as we got here. He walked back with the chauffeur who drove us. So he’s out of it—again.”

  They both looked at Francine, who had been unwontedly silent. “I hope, Chris,” she said, and smiled while she contemplated the fire, “you haven’t got round to suspecting me. I told them all about your grand case against Hardwick, so I imagine nobody’s safe.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” What he meant was that he could not straighten out last night, when each had so very nearly spoken, and then there had come between them the dead wall of her mood. But he was not speaking of what he meant. “The police are going to ask you in about one minute——”

  “Oh. Yes. I was up here, between my old room and this room. I didn’t go downstairs at all.”

  “Melitta?”

  “I was having a bath.”

  There was a silence. “You were having a bath?” repeated Dan. “You always seem to be having baths when these things happen. When? I mean, where?”

  This time she did laugh, an honest and homely sound. “Well, really, my dear, there is only one place I do, usually. Though I remember, when we were first married, you used to have them in the water-butt, and nearly drowned the parrot each time. I was in the bathroom, of course. You got us up so terribly early to come down here, and I didn’t have time at the hotel. I rang for the maid—Letty or Alice; Letty, I think it was—and she drew it for me. That was just after we got here. I know, because she was just finishing tidying up the bathroom, and putting new towels there when I asked her to start the bath running.”

  “Then—” said Kent. “How long were you in the bathroom?”

  “I’m afraid it was well over three-quarters of an hour, really.” She wrinkled her forehead. “I renewed the hot water twice. And then there was that nice church clock, and I think it is so nice that you can hear it from here. It struck the half-hour after eleven, and then the quarter-hour, before I was out of the tub——”

  “Did you use the towels?”

  “Fiddle-dee-dee! Of course I used the towels. Two of them. And that photograph was not there.”

  He spoke slowly. “We got here at just noon by that clock; we heard it strike. Gay met us at the door with the photograph. He said he had found it in the bathroom——”

  “You certainly got here at noon,” interrupted Francine. “I was sitting up here at this window watching you; and I saw him standing down there with the photograph behind his back. But I wasn’t going down to inquire. I didn’t wish to be told to mind my own business.”

  “Wait!” he said, feeling as though he were half mesmerised. “Gay said he had found it in the bathroom ten minutes ago; or, in the exact words, ‘not ten minutes ago.’”

  Melitta smoothed her skirt again. “Well, I’m sure I don’t wish to say anything against anyone’s character; but you remember, Chris, and you too, Dan, I warned you. Of course he may have found it there, but I don’t really see how he could have. Because I wasn’t out of the tub until after I heard the quarter-hour strike: that was what made me get out, now I come to think of it: and then I dried myself, and tidied up the bathroom, and opened the upper part of the window to let the steam out, and actually, you see, I’ve only just got dressed.”

  Dan’s face changed colour.

  “You think the old devil wrote it himself?”

  “I think,” Kent said decisively, “we’d better go downstairs and Melitta had better tell this, before they get the idea that we’re up here inventing a story to stick to. There’s something damned funny about every move that’s been made this morning. Gay’s behaviour was odd. But so was Hadley’s. He’s got something on his mind. He made no objection to my coming up here and telling you everything. In fact, he practically directed me to, though I should think he’d want to spring it on you and see what happened. I tell you, there’s something going on under the surface, and I wish I knew what it was.”

  In just two minutes he found out.

  15

  Duello

  IT WAS HADLEY’S VOICE which made him stop with his hand on the knob of the door. The voice was not raised; it had the unimpassioned tone
of one discussing a business-deal; but Kent had not heard just that different tone in it before.

  The door, at the head of the private stair leading down into the study, was open some two or three inches. He could look down on them with a tilted, theatre-like view, which was yet close enough to follow every movement of a wrinkle or turn of an eye. He saw the brown carpet spread out below, its ancient pattern of roses faded. Past the chandelier he saw Superintendent Hadley’s head. Hadley was sitting by the fire-place, facing outwards, his back to the watcher above. Opposite him sat Sir Gyles Gay—his hands lifted, the fingers lightly interlocked as though he were inspecting them—a business man listening to a business proposition. The firelight shone fully on Gay’s face, on his alert little look. There was no sign of Dr. Fell. Round the house the wind deepened in a winter afternoon; from the back of it drifted the smell of hot food being prepared for lunch.

  What Hadley had said was:

  “—and, since we’re alone, I feel inclined to tell you a little of what I know.”

  It did not need Kent’s fierce gesture to stop and silence the three persons following him. They all waited, and they all listened.

  Gay assented to the proposition with a slight nod.

  “You have just heard the testimony of the maid, Alice Weymiss?”

  Again Gay nodded.

  “You heard her say that that drawer in the desk, where the photographs were kept, is always kept locked by you?”

  “I heard it.”

  “Was it true?”

  “You see, superintendent, Alice has no business to know whether drawers are kept locked or not. If she does know, it puts her trustworthiness in doubt. You can see for yourself that the drawer is unlocked now.”

  Hadley leaned forward.

  “Have you a key to that drawer, Sir Gyles?”

  “I believe so, somewhere.”

  “Are you carrying that key in your right-hand trouser-pocket now?”

  Gay answered neither yes nor no; he waited, and shook his head slightly as though the question were of no consequence.