“Well, what was it?”
“It was a sober-stone,” said Dr. Fell.
After a pause Wrayburn struck the table more softly. “Of course,” he said. “By Xenophon’s ten thousand, of course! Why didn’t I ever think of it? To wear a sober-stone ring was the mark of the well-bred Roman at banquets. Suetonius is very serious about it.” He grew excited. “Hang it, it’s such a good and practical device that it ought to be revived to-day. The sober-stone was a semi-precious jewel of any land on the flat surface of which could be engraved a few lines of writing. Some good text: this one was especially applicable, and in clear but small print. The noble Roman began drinking at a banquet, and from time to time he consulted his ring. Whenever he could not clearly read the text written on it, he knew he had got over the line of being sober and that it was time to stop. ‘Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt.’ ‘Stop singing; enjoyment has been taken.’ And, ‘Only if you can read it; that’s the whole secret.’ Oh, my eye!”
“Exactly,” said Dr. Fell with benevolent placidness, “though the device, far from commending itself to me, is so conscientious that it makes my flesh creep. The interesting point is that Ritchie Bellowes gave it to her. They plighted their troth to each other with the stones. It was her good influence, you know, her sweetness and light, which turned Bellowes from a potentially sound and likeable man into a murderer with a fixed idea. I don’t think I blame him, morally.”
Dan Reaper drew a deep breath. “All I’ve got to say is,” he declared, “that I wouldn’t go through that again for—well, for a lot of money. I didn’t know what to think. Half the time——”
“Whom did you suspect, my dear?” asked Melitta placidly.
They all started a little, and looked at each other. It was the letting out of a secret, a releasing of tension, which made them all sit back with a jerk. And then, gradually, a shamefaced grin appeared on several faces.
“Yes,” said Wrayburn. “Let’s have it. Who?”
“I suspected you, you cuss,” Dan told him with some violence. “Maybe I had been reading too many of Chris’s tomfool ideas. But, since you had a cast-iron alibi and were ruled out of it practically from the start after having been once suspected—well, it looked funny. Sorry about my rotten manners——”
“Oh, that’s all right. Here, what about another glass of wine? To tell you the truth, I should have voted for our good host——”
“The notion,” agreed Gay, “seems to have occurred to several persons. For myself, since frankness seems not to be resented, I first favoured Mr. Kent there. But I very quickly shifted to Miss Forbes——”
“Me?”
“Especially since,” insisted Gay, “it was you who were prowling about in the study yesterday, just before I found that long-lost photograph in the desk. I saw you closing the door at the top of the stairs——”
“But I was only looking in there to see what had happened to everybody! I never even thought of it afterwards.”
“—and, when I saw the police had a man following you,” pursued Gay, “I was sure of it. I should have been very sorry. You observe that I shielded you. Have you any views, Mrs. Reaper?”
Melitta, almost beaming, had already wound herself up. “Well, of course, I shouldn’t like to venture any opinion, but I felt sure my husband must have something to do with it. I do not say, mind you, that he is any worse than other men; but then that is what other men do, and I have felt most horribly unhappy about it. As my grandfather used——”
“So now I’m guilty,” said Dan. “Well, you’re luckier, old girl. With Chris’s case against the hotel-manager, that makes a pretty big round, and you’re the only one who has escaped suspicion.”
“No, she hasn’t,” Kent pointed out. “Melitta has been suspected by Francine here——”
Francine looked at him sadly. She said: “Chris, you didn’t really believe that?” and she stared at him in genuine perplexity.
“Believe it? Why, you told me yourself——”
“Chris, you are a blockhead! Of course I thought it was you. Why do you think I’ve been acting like such a harridan? I thought you were carrying on with her. I always thought so. That’s why I was so terribly anxious to get that bracelet and find out if it concerned you. And at the restaurant, and afterwards much harder in the taxi, I was trying and trying to get you to tell me if you had killed her by saying it might be Melitta——”
Kent stared round.
“Let me understand this,” he said. “Things have come to a fine pass. You don’t know what people are thinking even when they tell you. What do you call that?”
From the head of the table Dr. Fell put down his glass and spoke.
“I call it,” he said, “a detective story.”
About the Author
John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) was one of the most popular authors of Golden Age British-style detective novels. Born in Pennsylvania and the son of a US congressman, Carr graduated from Haverford College in 1929. Soon thereafter, he moved to England where he married an Englishwoman and began his mystery-writing career. In 1948, he returned to the US as an internationally known author. Carr received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of the few Americans ever admitted into the prestigious, but almost exclusively British, Detection Club.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1938 by John Dickson Carr
Copyright © renewed 1966 by John Dickson Carr
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4804-7280-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THE DR. GIDEON FELL
MYSTERIES
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To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9) Page 24