‘I’m going out,’ I whispered back. ‘I’ve got to.’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind why. And please don’t talk out loud.’
‘Doc, you can’t go out!’ The whispering voice was almost crying. ‘I mean – did you drink that Ovaltine?’
‘Yes.’
‘It had dope in it,’ said Belle.
Such is the power of suggestion, the effect of mere words, that the bright brown silhouetted curls seemed to swim round.
‘Tom gave it to me, but I thought you needed it more than I did. So I put it in that Ovaltine to give you a good night’s rest. You ought to be sleeping like a baby this minute.’
I took my own pulse, and there could be no doubt it was slowing down.
‘What was it,’ I said, ‘and how much?’
‘I don’t know! It was a little red capsule.’
‘One capsule?’
‘Yes.’
Secconal, probably. I held tightly to the back of the desk-chair, and then straightened up.
It is possible, within limits, for the power of the human will to fight a sleeping-drug. We find this in cases of hysterical patients who have a phobia that they can’t sleep. And, since I had taken the drug only a few minutes ago, its full effect would not lay hold and drag down the wits, as into a whirlpool, for many minutes longer. But it sickened me just the same, a physical nausea to have victory perhaps snatched away now.
‘I’m going out just the same.’
‘Doc, I won’t let you!’
My face must have scared her, for she drew back. I patted her shoulder reassuringly as I passed her, feeling a little light and shaky at the knees, but reasonably clear in the head. At the front door I put on my shoes, having a bad wave of dizziness when I lowered my head, and slipped out.
The night air was cold and pleasant. I got into the car, let it coast downhill in the opposite direction until I was some distance from the house, and then started the motor. I backed around, started up again, and – once clear of the dark houses lining the High Street – I travelled that night at a pace I never want to travel again.
What was more, I knew the murderer. It sickened me to think how easily we had been fooled by someone we all knew and liked; but there it was.
The moon was round, bright, and clear white: what they later came to call the bombers’ moon. It was while I was bucketing round a curve past Shire Oak that the ‘unreal’ feeling started to creep over me: a sense of flying through time and space, of being alone with the moon and the hedgerows. I flashed past a car which seemed vaguely familiar, doing about seventy miles an hour. Alone here with …
Look out!
A tree sprang up at me. I felt the thudding lurch of the car, the screech and squeal of brakes, coming from far away. Then I was back on the road again, and flying once more.
Darkness on its way.
Unconsciousness coming.
Steady.
Ahead was the entrance to the Baker’s Bridge road, turning off to the right. I pulled up the car and stopped.
H.M. wasn’t here. He could hardly have got here in this time, but I didn’t think of that. I climbed out, buoyed and upheld by some mysterious force which made me seem to float along, very pleasant except for a tingling in scalp and finger-tips.
Also, I was talking to myself like a drunken man. Every idea that come into my head had to bubble out at the lips. H.M. wasn’t here. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I remember saying aloud. It seemed fiercely important to impress some invisible auditor with this. ‘Doesn’t matter at all! He’ll follow me.’
It never occurred to me that he couldn’t possibly follow. When I said, ‘Meet me at the corner of the main road and the Baker’s Bridge road,’ he must have thought I meant to go to the old studio where so much of terror and anguish had already taken place.
But I wasn’t going there at all.
Instead of turning right, I turned left and crossed the road in the direction of the sea. Between the main road, and the cliffs running parallel with it, lies a vast waste of open ground. It is hilly and hummocky, with sparse scrub trees bent to a permanent slant by the force of the wind. As I staggered over the hummocks, I remember praying aloud – like a wandering seventeenth-century parson – that my wits shouldn’t be pulled away, down a dark and whirling drain, before I could reach the tunnel leading down into the Pirates’ Den.
The caves along our coast were never, contrary to popular belief, smugglers’ caves. For that you must go to South Devon or Cornwall. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it would have been awkward for a smuggler from France to reach North Devon. The caves are natural phenomena honeycombing the cliffs. They have been given picturesque names: Dark-Lantern Hole, Inferno, Caves of the Winds, Pirates’ Den.
And the cave called the Pirates’ Den was the one I wanted.
Its entrance, on the land side, was a tunnel sloping down gently some forty feet underground. Its other entrance, in the outer face of the cliff, was some thirty feet or more above the rocks below. And it was fully half a mile away from the Wainrights’ house along the line of the cliffs.
I took one bleared look back over my shoulder, across the moonlit waste where nothing moved. There was my car in the distance. There was the main road and the Baker’s Bridge road. Then I started to descend.
At first it was a nightmare. You have to crawl into what seems the side of a hill, twist round, and go down three wooden steps that the authorities have put there for sightseers. I had my electric torch, but its light seemed dim.
The entrance here is about a hundred yards from the edge of the cliff. At the foot of the wooden steps you can walk along the tunnel, provided you keep your head down.
This was the worst part, keeping my head down and having black waves come sweeping up across the brain. Once I fell flat. But I didn’t break the torch, and the pain of bruised hands helped to keep me steady. The air in the tunnel was quite fresh, except for its earthy smell; the slope of ground made you stagger and slide on sand, but you could brace yourself with one hand against the damp wall.
Then a strong salt breeze fanned over my face, gushing out of the dark. I could even hear the faint slap-slap of water. It must be close on one o’clock – high tide against the face of the cliff.
Ten steps more, and I was in the Pirates’ Den.
The opening giving on the sea showed as a jagged bluish-white arch of moonlight. Beyond moved sullen black water, reflecting back the light of my torch. It was cold and perishing damp here. Roughly circular, with ribbed and hollowed walls moisture-plastered, this Pirates’ Den might have been fifteen feet across by ten feet high. A rock formation on the wall, vaguely suggesting a skull and cross-bones, had given the place its name.
The light of my torch was growing dim. I played it round, and saw nothing.
Nothing.
The chuckle of the water echoed back hollowly from uneven walls; the skull and cross-bones formation, scratched with people’s initials; the candle-grease on the uneven stone floor, where my footsteps rasped on sand: nothing else.
‘But there’s got to be something!’ a voice cried out, and I heard it din in my ears from echoes. ‘There’s got to be something!’
I couldn’t hold out much longer. Even I recognized that, from far away. The skull and cross-bones blurred; the light of the torch grew more dim. All I could find was the stump of a candle stuck in one ribbed niche of the walls, sheltered from the breeze which blew straight in.
I tried to light the candle, and got it burning on the fifth match. A blurring of eyesight caused its flames to appear several, and to move round each other in slow procession. The skull and cross-bones got more vivid, on the other hand, and became a real death’s head.
‘An automatic pistol,’ the voice started repeating beside my head, ‘ejects its cartridge-cases high and to the right. An automatic pistol ejects its cartridge-cases high and to the right.’
I put the to
rch in my pocket, shrieked aloud for the strength to hold on to consciousness five minutes more, and began to feel – like a blind beetle – along the walls. The ridges and pits and crevices seemed interminable.
This hundred-to-one chance didn’t seem much. My fingers crept and poked and fumbled and blundered. When I did touch that tiny metal object, lodged away in a furrow of the rock where it had been flung from an exploding .32, it rolled away from me. I had to chase it, frantically fumbling, clear along the crevice before I got it.
Holding it enclosed in two hands, as you might hold a captured insect. I backed and stumbled away from the wall. I closed one eye, steadied the other in a swimming head, and looked at it.
It was the brass cartridge-case of a .32 bullet.
But that wasn’t all. Some dim recollection of another surface brushed, another kind of feeling momentarily under my fingers, sent me back to the wall again. Presently I dragged out – they were as hard to pull as weeds – two objects which I had dreamed of finding but never expected to find. They had been pushed down deep into one crevice. They showed guilt. The cartridge-case was sagely in my waistcoat pocket. I stumbled away still further from the wall, holding one of these new finds in each hand.
Two bathing-suits.
To be exact, one was a pair of men’s bathing-trunks, coloured dark blue, with a white belt and metal buckle. The other was a woman’s bathing costume, light green, which half of Lyncombe could identify. Both were now grimy, dark-coloured, and still damp.
‘We’ve got it, H.M.,’ I said aloud. ‘We’ve got the murdering devil now as sure as I’m alive.’
Behind me, from the shelter of the tunnel, somebody fired a shot.
I didn’t, in that second, identify the explosion as a shot. But the whing of a bullet ricocheting from rock – a hideous wiry noise like the singing of a metallic whip or snapping piano-wire – can be recognized by anybody who has ever been under fire.
As the cavern blasted with echoes, a little white nick appeared in the face of the skull carved on the wall. Somebody fired again, and the flame of the candle went out.
I suppose I should have been grateful for that. But I don’t recall thinking about anything much, or even feeling anything much. I held those two bathing-suits against my chest, hugging them as though they were my most cherished possessions. I took a couple of steps forward on the uneven floor, and fell.
It was dark here, except for the moonlight streaming through the sea-opening of the cave. The water, gurgling and slapping, black tinged with gleams of grey, reached up to two feet or less below the mouth of that opening.
When the whirlpool got me at last, I grabbed at consciousness with both hands. I tried to roll over, but the ribbed floor was damp and slippery. I concentrated fiercely as the dark world swung round. I just managed to turn over on my side, and get the electric torch out of my pocket. Though I was completely helpless – as helpless as a man drained of blood – I did have strength enough left to press the button of the torch.
Its beam, as dazzling to my eyes now as though it were a headlamp, swung round crazily before I got it focused on the entrance to the tunnel.
There was somebody standing there.
NINETEEN
AN old Morris chair, and the edge of a lace curtain with sunlight against it, were the first two things to emerge.
I failed to recognize the chair, or even my own bedroom overlooking the back garden, for a little while after I opened my eyes. I felt refreshed, completely rested, and at peace. The bed under me might have been made of swans-down. Then I saw the face of Sir Henry Merrivale looking down.
‘Morning, Doctor,’ was all he said. Casually.
While I propped myself up on one elbow, H.M. dragged out a chair and sat down, wincing, by the side of the bed. He carried a cane on which he rested his folded hands, and he sniffed.
‘You’ve had a good long sleep,’ he went on, ‘and it’s done you a lot of good. Belle Sullivan did you a good turn, more of a good turn than she knew, when she shoved that secconal into your Ovaltine.’
This was when recollection smote me fully.
‘Oi! Now don’t try to get up!’ H.M. said warningly. ‘Just sit back comfortably until they bring you some food.’
‘How did I get here?’
‘I brought you here, son.’
‘It’s tomorrow morning, isn’t it? The inquest! What time is the inquest?’
‘Oh, son!’ said H.M. dismally. ‘The inquest has been over hours ago.’
The windows were open, open and peaceful. I could hear hens clucking in the fowl-run next door. I leaned on one elbow, wondering if ever the Good Lord would send me a bit of luck and not put the last drop of bitterness into everything I did.
‘Our friend Craft,’ pursued H.M., ‘says it’s a good thing you weren’t in shape to testify after all. You’d have been in an awful mess if you had. You know that as well as I do.’
‘What was the verdict of the inquest?’
‘Double suicide while the balance of their minds was disturbed.’
I sat up in bed, propping pillows behind me.
‘Sir Henry, where are the clothes I was wearing last night?’
He moved his big head without taking his eyes from me.
‘Hangin’ up across that chair there. Why?’
‘If you’d like to look in the lower right-hand waistcoat pocket, you’ll find out why.’
‘There’s nothing in any of the pockets, Doctor,’ answered H.M. ‘We looked.’
After a light tap at the door, Molly Grange put her head in. She wore a house apron, and looked radiant. Behind her appeared the anxious face of Belle Sullivan.
‘Is the doctor,’ Molly asked, ‘ready for breakfast?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said H.M. ‘Better bring it up to him.’
Molly surveyed me for a moment in silence, her hands on her hips.
‘You’ve given us scares before,’ she said at last, ‘but I don’t think you’ve ever given us such a scare as last night. All the same, I think I’ll leave preaching about it until later.’
And she went out, firmly closing the door. I was now in a state so helpless, so beaten and outfaced at every turn, that I could look at the thing calmly.
‘Well, Craft’s had his way,’ I said. ‘He’s got his verdict and he doesn’t have to exert himself any longer, whatever the rest of us do. And that’s a pity. Because I know the true explanation of the whole thing, and it’s not Craft’s explanation.’
H.M. took out a cigar and turned it over in his fingers.
‘You’re quite sure you know how it was done, son?’
‘At one o’clock last night I could have proved it. Now …’
‘At the end of most cases,’ growled H.M., lighting a match by whisking it across the seat of his trousers, and applying it to the objectionable cigar, ‘it’s the old man who sits down and explains to the fatheads where they get off. Let’s reverse the process this time.’
‘Reverse the process?’
‘You,’ said H.M., ‘tell me. Do you also know who the murderer is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well … now. I might have a stab at it myself, Doctor, if a bloke like Masters got mad and challenged me. But we might compare notes. Is it anybody who’s been suspected so far?’
The image of a certain face rose up in front of me.
‘It’s certainly nobody I should have suspected at first glance,’ I told him. ‘But it’s a murdering devil just the same; and I can’t understand how we were all gulled by somebody we knew and liked.’
Again there was a tap at the door. This time it was Paul Ferrars who came in.
‘Glad to see you looking healthy again, Dr Luke,’ he said. It was the first time I had ever seen him wearing a necktie. ‘Molly said you were awake. If you feel up to it, we all want to know what in blazes happened to you.’
H.M. blinked round.
‘Sit down, son,’ he incited Ferrars in a wooden tone. ‘Dr Croxley is just goin’ to te
ll us who did the murders, and how they were done.’
For an instant Ferrars stood motionless, his hand at his necktie. His forehead wrinkled, and he directed a doubtful look at H.M. The latter only made a gesture with the cigar. Ferrars sat down in my Morris chair, dragging it round. The empty cup of Ovaltine was beside him, and my pipe. Ferrars, smiling and clean-shaven, kept his eyes fixed on my face while I talked.
‘I was sitting here last night, mulling over the evidence. It was all out in front of me, as though I had a lot of exhibits in a court-room. But nothing seemed to fit together, until I remembered the cut telephone-wires and the petrol let out of the cars. Who did that, and why was it done?’
H.M. took the cigar out of his mouth.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
I shut my eyes to bring the picture vividly back again, and then I went on speaking.
‘On Saturday evening, as the rain started to fall, Barry Sullivan made quite a point of it that he had to get some beach-chairs in out of the rain. He sent Rita and me ahead to the house, while he stayed behind to attend to it. But he didn’t take in the beach-chairs. I saw them still on the lawn when I went out to “Mon Repos” yesterday. On the other hand, Sullivan did do something; because he came back into the house wiping his hands on a handkerchief. That, I’m almost sure, was when he let the petrol out of the cars.’
Ferrars sat up.
‘Sullivan,’ he queried, ‘did that?’
‘Yes. Just as he and Rita cut the telephone-wires. And why did they do it? They did it so that either Alec Wainright or I would have to walk in to Lyncombe or further to get in touch with the police.
‘Both Alec and I have to walk very slowly. I for obvious reasons, and Alec because he’s got stiff joints. Neither of us could do those four miles in much under two hours. Then, on reaching Lyncombe, we should have to telephone the police further on. The police would have to get themselves together and come on out to “Mon Repos”. For various reasons – including Alec’s collapse and my delay – they didn’t actually get there until one o’clock in the morning.’
She Died a Lady Page 18