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

by John Dickson Carr

  “You also heard what the other maid, Letty King, said? She said that she prepared a bath for Mrs. Reaper at shortly after eleven o’clock: that Mrs. Reaper remained in the bathroom until five minutes to twelve: that she knows this because she kept an eye out in case the bathroom should have to be tidied up afterwards.”

  Their host looked puzzled. “Naturally. I don’t deny any of that. When I told you I found the photograph there within the last ‘ten minutes,’ perhaps I should have consulted my watch. Perhaps I should have said five. But I did not consult my watch. I went downstairs and questioned Letty about whether the photograph had been there when she laid out the towels earlier.”

  “Therefore your position is that Mrs. Reaper put the photograph there?”

  “Come, come, man!” said Gay, as though mildly disappointed. “My position is nothing of the kind. I don’t know who put it there; I wish I did. To put the photograph there would have taken perhaps ten seconds—after Mrs. Reaper left, if you like. Or whenever you like.”

  After a pause there was a certain sort of amusement in Hadley’s tone; it was not pleasant to listen to.

  “Sir Gyles, I wonder if you think everyone who opposes you is blind. I wonder if you think we’ve been blind from the beginning of this case. Now, I’ve had instructions not to trouble you more than was necessary. You know, you’re being favoured. So I’ve hesitated to come out with it until I had enough to trouble you a whole lot. But, after what you’ve said this morning, I’ve got no choice. The plain fact is that you’ve been telling me a pack of lies.”

  “Since when?” inquired the other, interested.

  “Since yesterday. But we’ll begin with to-day. Your story about this ‘donkey’s tail’ on Fell’s door was rubbish. Don’t try to play with flourishes like that. Had you told any of your other guests that you expected to entertain either Fell or myself here overnight? Think before you answer. They will remember, you know.”

  “No, I suppose I didn’t.”

  “Of course you didn’t—sir. Then how could any of the others be expected to know even that he would be here at all; let alone what room you had ‘set aside’ for him?”

  It is a sober fact that a reddish patch showed across Gay’s forehead, though he kept the atmosphere of a business discussion.

  “I think it was well known,” he answered without hesitation, “that you both were coming down here. This house, as you know, boasts eight bedrooms. The others would have their old rooms; and I assuredly would not put anyone in the room where Mr. Kent was murdered. That leaves only two. There is not much margin for error. It is possible, you know, that the donkey’s tail was meant for you.”

  “Just between ourselves, do you still stick to that flapdoodle?”

  “There is nothing ‘between ourselves.’ You will see to that. Incidentally, I stick to the truth.”

  The fire was built of somewhat slaty coal; it crackled and popped, distorting the light on Gay’s calm, interested face. Hadley leaned down beside his chair, picking up the photograph.

  “Let’s take this printing on the back. Even without calling in a handwriting man, I think we can decide that this was written by the same hand that wrote ‘Dead Woman’ on another card. Do you agree? Yes, so do I. Was this message written this morning between eleven and twelve?”

  “Obviously.”

  “It was not. That’s definite, Sir Gyles,” Hadley returned. “Fell noticed it—maybe you saw him scrape his little finger across the ink. This thick stuff takes a very long time to dry. And this particular printing was not only dry; it was so flaky that it shredded off when he touched it. You saw that. That message has been written on the card for well over a week, if not more.”

  Again Gay would not be drawn. A dawning anger showed in his eyes, as (Kent remembered) he had shown before in that odd impression of a man foozling an easy golf-stroke, and knowing it. But he regarded his clasped hands from several angles.

  “I gave an opinion, my friend.”

  “I give a fact—sir. Unless that writing was really done this morning, there seems no point at all to torn photographs and splattered ink. And it was not made this morning. So far, I understand, Fell and I disagree about this case. But we both agree about this, I think…. We’ll go on to something else. Your maid swears that you always keep that particular drawer locked. You maintain that it is always open. Fair enough. But, when you were asked to open it and get the photographs out, you automatically reached for the key—in your right-hand pocket—before you remembered the drawer was supposed to be unlocked. You then jabbed your hand, much too ostentatiously, into the drawer, in order to get red ink on it and show how surprising the thing was. Anybody would have looked before doing that. You didn’t. I know two burglars and a screw-man who made the same mistake.”

  After some deliberation, Gay crossed one leg over the other, shifted in his chair, and seemed to grow comfortable.

  “You have talked for a while,” he murmured. “Now let me talk. Do I understand that you accuse me of faking the whole thing? That I put the photograph in the towels; that I tore up the other photographs in my own drawer, and poured ink over them?”

  “Yes, that ink was fresh.”

  “Quite so. Then am I accused of insanity? For there are two sides to your attack, and they won’t fit. First you inform me that I did all this within an hour or so ago. Then you turn round and say that the printing on that photograph was made well over a week ago. Which is which and what is what? I’ll try to meet your charges, Mr. Hadley, if I can understand them.”

  “Very well. To begin with——”

  “Wait. Am I, by the way, accused of stealing twelve shillings of my own money?”

  “No. You were really surprised when you discovered that: it was different from the other acting.”

  “Ah, then you acknowledge that someone else besides myself could have got into that drawer? So far, you’ve been building a good deal on the fact that I’m the only person who has a key to it. Excuse this insistence on small points,” begged Gay, beginning to show his teeth; “but, since all your charges are built on nothing else, I want you at least to be consistent.”

  Hadley’s tone changed again; Kent would not have liked to look him in the eye then.

  “I’ll give you a big one, Sir Gyles. You were acquainted with Mrs. Josephine Kent, then Miss Josephine Parkes, when she was in England four years ago.”

  Again the fire crackled and popped in a gush of light; a grain of burning slate exploded out towards Gay, but he did not notice it. His eyes were wide open.

  “That, I concede, is something; if you think it is true. But what makes you believe even that she had ever been in England? You heard all her friends, her relatives, everyone say that she had never been out of South Africa in her life.”

  “Yes,” said the superintendent grimly, “I heard it. I also heard them swear she never did any travelling at all, that she hated travelling, and could not stand even a short journey in South Africa. Then, yesterday, I saw her trunk—Fell called my attention to it. Have you seen that trunk?”

  “No.”

  “I think you have. It is an old, battered, worn one; it has seen years of good service in trains and ships, as it shows by its handling. That trunk was certainly Mrs. Kent’s own: she did not, for instance, inherit it from someone else who had done the travelling. Her maiden name, Josephine Parkes, was painted in it in chipped, faded lettering that was as old as the trunk; it had certainly got its knocking-about at the same time as the trunk itself. You see what I mean. The trunk had been used by her.”

  At the top of the stairs Kent turned round and glanced at Dan, who was looking guilty in the gloom of the hall. He heard Dan breathe. Nobody hesitated in the ancient practice of eavesdropping; they were listening with all their ears. And Kent remembered only too well the worn lettering on the worn trunk.

  “We heard also how badly she was affected by train and sea-sickness; though she was one of the few who stood up to bad weather on the voyage
out. Never mind that. But we learned that she ‘turned up’ unexpectedly in Johannesburg three years ago: she had come, she said, from her old home in Rhodesia. It surprised everyone that she had a great deal of money, which she had ‘inherited’ from her dead parents.”

  “But still——”

  “Just a moment, Sir Gyles. It was worth looking up. I looked it up. I had her passport: or, rather, a joint husband-and-wife passport made out to Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Kent. Last night I cabled Pretoria about it, and got an answer. In order to obtain that joint one, she had to turn in a previous passport on the Union of South Africa, Number 45695, made out in the name of Miss Josephine Parkes.” Hadley again opened his brief-case, without haste, and consulted notes. “Here I’ve got the immigration stamps on it.

  “She landed at Southampton on September 18th, 1932. She then, at various times, paid any number of visits to France: here are the dates: but she was domiciled in England. She left England on December 20th, and landed again at Capetown on January 6th, 1934.

  Are you satisfied?”

  Gay shook his head a little, as though fascinated.

  “I won’t deny your facts, of course. But still what has it to do with me?”

  “She came to England to see you.”

  “Er—can you prove that?”

  “I have proved it. Here are the papers. You were then, if you recall, Under-Secretary for the Union, and you should recognise this. Mrs. Kent said that she intended to take some kind of employment. She was given a form to fill up. She rather grandly wrote on it just this—here’s the form—‘To see my friend Sir Gyles Gay, who will arrange it for me.’ Would you like to see it? I got it from South Africa House last night.”

  “I wonder, my friend, if you have any idea of just how many people passed through my office, in the course of a season, while I was on executive duty?”

  “She was not a friend of yours?”

  “No, she was not. I never saw the woman in my life.”

  “Then just take a look at this. They tell me it’s a very unusual thing, nearly unheard-of, and shows direct personal intervention. Across here is written, ‘Personal interview, satisfactory,’ written and signed by you. Will you acknowledge this as your handwriting?”

  Gay did not take the paper which Hadley was holding out. Instead he got up from his chair with an abrupt movement, and began to walk up and down the room under the dead marble busts on the bookshelves. The fire was simmering now, its light not so bright. Stopping by a humidor on a side-table, Gay tapped his fingers on the lid, opened it, and took out a cigar. He did not seem so much alarmed as very thoughtful. He spoke without turning round.

  “Let me see. You think I knew, before Reaper’s party got here, that a certain Mrs. Josephine Kent was really a certain Miss Josephine Parkes?”

  “You might or might not. She had a different surname.”

  “Yet I must have known who she was? I had the photographs there, which Reaper sent on recently.”

  Hadley allowed a pause before he answered.

  “Yes, you had the photographs, Sir Gyles. That was why they all had to be torn up and made unrecognisable with red ink.”

  “I confess I don’t follow that.”

  “I mean,” said Hadley, raising his voice a little, “that the photographs Mr. Reaper sent weren’t the only ones you had in that drawer. There were a lot of old ones belonging to you, in your album. I’m suggesting that some of them showed you and Mrs. Kent together. That’s why they had to go.”

  Gay closed the humidor with a snap and turned round.

  “Damn your ingenuity. All very clever, all very beautiful, and—basically—all wrong. Whatever I am, I’m not as much of a lunatic as all that. It won’t hold water, my friend. If what you say is true, I had week upon week’s time to destroy everything long beforehand. Yet you say I waited until this very morning to do it; and then I went out of my way deliberately to call attention to it. How do you explain that?”

  “I’m waiting for you to explain it.”

  “You mean that you cannot? Then there is that photograph with the obvious threat written on the back of it. According to you, the ink has been dry for over a week. Yet I am supposed to make use of it this morning, for some purpose which escapes me. Have you anything else?”

  Evidently he was recovering his mental wind, after a bad attack of cramp, and had begun to fight back. But, in clipping the end off the cigar, he almost got his own finger. Hadley was not impressed.

  “I have. We were rather busy last night. Sergeant Betts, following this lead, went down to Dorset to see Mrs. Kent’s two aunts. We can rule them out so far as suspicion goes. They really never had seen her before. She hadn’t thought it necessary to visit them when she was in England before: it seems she had other business. But they were very convenient. When she wanted to avoid meeting you, and keep up her pretence that she had never been in England, she decided to stay with them——”

  “Curse it all,” said Gay, in such a melodramatic way that he seemed to be shaken clear through, “why should she want to pretend she had never been in England before? Answer that, if you can. Had she committed a crime? Also, I think you forget that I did meet her, on the evening before last.”

  “The night she was murdered,” agreed Hadley, as though merely confirming the fact. “Yes. I told you we had something else. While she was with her aunts, Mrs. Kent received two letters written from here. One was from her husband—the aunts had seen that handwriting before. One was in a handwriting they did not know.”

  “You have the letters, of course?”

  “We have the letter from Rodney Kent. The other she destroyed. Why? But she answered both of them.” Hadley leaned forward. “I’m suggesting to you, Sir Gyles, that you recognised Mrs. Kent from the pictures Mr. Reaper sent on. (No wonder she objected to making the trip to England.) You then wrote to her to assure her that you would be prepared to meet her as a stranger. And, the night before last, you did.”

  Gay lit his cigar. He said:

  “You started on me with a charge of playing senseless pranks. Somewhere along the line the gears were shifted. It’s beginning to dawn on me that you’re running me straight into a charge of murder.” He spread out his hands, crisping the fingers, and spoke past the cigar in his mouth. “My God, man, do you really think I”—the fingers opened and shut—“I took these and killed two inoffensive—” His voice ended in a kind of deep yelp. “It’s p-p-preposterous!”

  “I asked you for an explanation of certain things, Sir Gyles. You haven’t so far answered one straight question. If you don’t give me an explanation, I shall have to ask you to come back with me to London for further questioning. And you know what that is apt to mean.”

  Across the room Kent saw the white-painted door leading to the lounge at the front of the house. From outside this door there abruptly began a fusillade of knocks. Kent knew why it startled him: it was the first sign of life, of bouncing movement, that had echoed up in this house. The knocks were not really loud; but they seemed to have a heavy and insistent din in the quiet afternoon. From outside the door rose up Harvey Wrayburn’s hearty voice. He did not stop for replies: he asked the questions and sang out the answers himself.

  “Knock, knock,” said Wrayburn.

  “Who’s there?

  “Jack.

  “Jack who?

  “Jack Ketch,” said Wrayburn, suddenly opening the door and grinning at them. “Sorry; I know it’s a rotten one, and doesn’t even keep to the rules: but I’m just back from the pub, and I thought it was applicable.”

  Gay’s face had gone muddy pale. You could see the Adam’s apple move in his neck.

  The others did not wait to hear what Wrayburn, apparently in careless fettle, would say when he saw Hadley. Behind Kent’s shoulder Dan whispered: “Let’s get out of here,” nor did any of them care for the smell of boiled lamb for lunch, coming up the back stairs across the upper hall. Melitta and Francine were the first to turn back. They all went on tip
toe like thieves: which, in fact, was what Kent felt like.

  And the first thing they encountered behind them, towering up in the hall as though it would block the way, was the vast presence of Dr. Fell.

  16

  The Woman on the Slide

  “I HAVE JUST BEEN looking at the famous Blue Room,” said Dr. Fell amiably. “And I think you’re wise; you’re not really wanted downstairs now, any more than I am. Why not sit down for a minute?”

  He indicated the open door of the den looking out towards the front, and shepherded them in with his stick like a master of ceremonies. Kent, with a vague and warm feeling that he was being made a fool of, followed in some perplexity. For a few seconds nobody commented. Then Melitta Reaper, who had gone by instinct towards the gas-fire, turned round and summed it up (if inadequately) in one explosive word:

  “Well!”

  “You never heard Hadley run out his masked batteries before, eh?” inquired Dr. Fell, settling his chins in his collar. “Yes, it’s an improving process. And anyone who can break down Sir Gyles Gay’s guard has my sincere admiration. I wonder if he’s done it? I wonder if he will do it?”

  Dan regarded the doctor with a wary eye. “You heard all that, did you?”

  “Yes, indeed. I was as interested as you were. Of course I knew what was up his sleeve—in fact, I helped to stuff the sleeve myself—but I wasn’t sure when or how he would produce it. Harrumph.”

  He beamed on them.

  “Then Gay is guilty after all?” demanded Dan, who seemed on the edge of an explosion that never quite came off. “I never thought it. By God, I never did: down inside. And Jenny seems to have made roaring fools out of all of us with her past history. But even if he did it, why should he?”

  Dr. Fell grew quiet. He lowered himself on the edge of the window-seat.

  “Would it make you feel any happier if you knew he was guilty? Eh?”

  “It would clear the air,” said Dan, with a quick glance. “Every time I go round a corner or open a door, I’ve been feeling I ought to look a leedle oudt. The trouble is that it’s nothing you can hit back at.”