He Who Whispers

by John Dickson Carr

  Grey rain-filtered light entered from Bolsover Place, along with the light from the moving teeth across the way. Superintendent Hadley ran to the window, flung it up, and blew a police-whistle.

  Fay Seton, unhurt, had been thrown back against the bed. She clutched at the counterpane to save herself from falling, and dragged it with her as she sank to her knees.

  ‘Fay! Are you all right?’

  Fay hardly heard him. She whipped round, her eyes going instinctively towards the top of the chest of drawers.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Fay in a choked voice. ‘It’s gone. It’s gone.’

  For the brief-case was no longer there. Ahead of anyone else, ahead of either Miles or Hadley, Fay jumped over the heavy tin box and ran towards the door. She ran with a headlong madness and an agility which carried her half-way down the passage, in the direction of the stairs, before Miles went racing after her.

  And even the brief-case could not stop that crazy flight.

  For Miles found the brief-case lying discarded on the floor of the passage, dimly seen in the light of the opening and shutting teeth. Fay must have run straight across it; she could not even have noticed it. Miles shouted to her as she gained the top of the steep stairs leading down to the ground floor. He snatched up the brief-case, holding it upside down as though to gain her eye by pantomime. From inside the gaping leather there fell out three white packets of banknotes like the other in the bedroom. These landed on the floor, along with a pouring of some dry gritty substance like mortar-dust. There was nothing else in the brief-case.

  Miles flung himself at the head of the stairs.

  ‘It’s here, I tell you! It’s not gone! It’s been dropped! It’s here!’

  Did she hear him? He could not be sure. But, at least briefly, she paused and looked up.

  Fay was about half-way down the stairs, steep stairs covered with ragged linoleum. The front door of the house stood wide open, so that light from the window across the street filtered weirdly up the staircase.

  Miles, leaning perilously over the balustrade along the passage and holding up the brief-case, was looking down into her face as she raised it.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ he shouted. ‘There’s no need to run like that! Here is the brief-case! It’s …’

  Now he could have sworn she hadn’t heard. Fay’s left hand rested lightly on the stair-rail. Her neck was arched, the red hair thrown back as she looked up. On her face was a faintly wondering look. Her heightened colour, even the glitter of her eyes, seemed to fade into a deathly bluish pallor which put a gentle expression on her mouth and then took away all expression at all.

  Fay’s legs gave way at the knees. Softly, like a dress falling from a hook, so bonelessly that it could not even have caused a bruise, she fell sideways and rolled over and over to the foot of the stairs. Yet the crash of the fall, in contrast to that terrifying limpness …

  Miles Hammond stood still.

  The stifling, mildewy air of the passage had got into his lungs like the sudden suspicion in his mind. He seemed to have been breathing that air for a very long time, with the bloodstained banknotes in his pocket and the cracked brief-case in his hand.

  Out of the corner of his eye Miles saw Barbara come up beside him and look down over the railing. Superintendent Hadley, muttering something under his breath, bounded past them and went downstairs with long strides which shook and thumped on every tread. He jumped over the figure lying at the foot of the stairs with its cheek against the dirt of the floor. Hadley went down on one knee to examine that figure. Presently he raised his head to look up at them. His voice sounded hollowly up the stairs.

  ‘Wasn’t this woman supposed to have a weak heart?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miles calmly. ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘We’d better ring for an ambulance,’ the hollow voice replied. ‘But she shouldn’t have got worked up and run like that. I think it’s finished her.’

  Miles walked slowly downstairs.

  His left hand rested on the balustrade where Fay’s hand had rested. He dropped the brief-case as he walked. Across the street, seen now through an open front door, the ugly bodiless teeth very slowly opened and closed, opened and closed throughout all eternity, as he bent over Fay’s body.

  CHAPTER 18

  IT was half-past six o’clock on that same Sunday evening, though it might have been days later as regards the apparent passage of time, when Miles and Barbara sat in Fay Seton’s bedroom up on the first floor.

  The electric light was burning again over the chest of drawers. Barbara sat in the frayed armchair. Miles sat on the edge of the bed, beside Fay’s black beret. He was looking down at the battered tin box when Barbara spoke.

  ‘Shall we go out and see if there’s a Lyons or an A.B.C. open on Sunday? Or a pub where they might have a sandwich?’

  ‘No. Hadley told us to stay here.’

  ‘How long has it been since you last had anything to eat?’

  ‘One of the greatest gifts with which a woman can be endowed’ – Miles tried to manage a smile, though he felt the smile stretch like a sick leer – ‘is the gift of not mentioning the subject of food at inconvenient times.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Barbara, and was silent for a long time. ‘Fay may recover, you know.’

  ‘Yes. She may recover.’

  And then the silence went on for a very long time, while Barbara plucked at the edges of the chair-arms.

  ‘Does this mean so very much to you, Miles?’

  ‘That isn’t the main point at all. I simply feel that this woman has been given the worst possible raw deal from life. That things ought to be put right somehow! That justice ought to be done! That …’

  He picked up Fay’s black beret from the bed, and hastily put it down again.

  ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘what’s the use?’

  ‘In the short time you’ve known her,’ said Barbara, evidently after another struggle to keep silent, ‘did Fay Seton become as real as Agnes Sorel or Pamela Hoyt?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? What’s that?’

  ‘At Beltring’s,’ answered Barbara without looking at him, ‘you said a historian’s work was to take distant people, dead and gone people, and bring them to life by thinking of them as real people. When you first heard Fay’s story, you said she was no more real than Agnes Sorel or Pamela Hoyt.’

  In an inconsequential way, still plucking at the edges of the chair-arm, Barbara added:

  ‘Agnes Sorel I’d heard of, of course. But I never heard of Pamela Hoyt. I – looked her up in the encyclopaedia, but she wasn’t there.’

  ‘Pamela Hoyt was a Regency beauty, suspected of evil courses. A captivating character, too; I read quite a lot about her at one time. By the way: in Latin, what does panes mean beside the plural of bread? It couldn’t have meant bread, from the context.’

  It was Barbara’s turn to blink at him in surprise.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not enough of a Latinist to know. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, I had a dream.’

  ‘A dream?’

  ‘Yes.’ Miles pondered this in the heavy, dully insistent way with which the mind will seize on trifles at a time of emotional disturbance. ‘It was a passage in medieval Latin; you know the sort of thing: peculiar verb-endings and u’s instead of v’s.’ He shook his head. ‘All about something and panes; but all I can remember now is the ut clause at the end, that it would be most foolish to deny something.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  (Why wouldn’t that infernally sickish feeling leave his chest?)

  ‘Well, I dreamed I went into the library looking for a Latin dictionary. Pamela Hoyt and Fay Seton were both there, sitting on dusty mounds of books and assuring me my uncle hadn’t got a Latin dictionary.’ Miles started to laugh. ‘Funny thing, too; I just remembered it. I don’t know what Dr Freud would have made of that one.’

  ‘I do,’ said Barbara.

&n
bsp; ‘Something sinister, I imagine. It would appear to be something sinister no matter what you dream.’

  ‘No,’ said Barbara slowly. ‘Nothing like that.’

  For some time she had been regarding Miles in the same hesitant, baffled, helpless way, the luminous whites of her eyes shining in sympathy. Then Barbara sprang to her feet. Both windows had been opened to the drizzling afternoon, admitting clean damp air. At least, Miles reflected, they had shut off the advertising lights and that dental horror across the street. Barbara turned at the window.

  ‘Poor woman!’ Barbara said, and he knew she was not referring to a dead Pamela Hoyt. ‘Poor, silly, romantic …!’

  ‘Why do you call Fay silly and romantic?’

  ‘She knew those anonymous letters, and all the rumours about her, were the work of Harry Brooke. But she never said so to anybody. I suppose,’ Barbara shook her head slowly, ‘she may still have been in love with him.’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘It might have been that. We all – we all are capable of awfully funny things. Or,’ Barbara shivered, ‘there may have been some other reason for keeping silent, even after she knew Harry was dead. I don’t know. The point is …’

  ‘The point is,’ said Miles, ‘why is Hadley keeping us here? And what’s going on?’ He considered. ‘Is it very far to this What’s-its-name Hospital where they’ve taken her?’

  ‘A goodish distance, yes. Were you thinking of going there?’

  ‘Well, Hadley can’t keep us here indefinitely for no apparent reason at all. We’ve got to get some kind of news.’

  They received some kind of news. Professor Georges Antoine Rigaud – they heard his distinctive step long before they saw him – came slowly up the stairs, along the passage, and in at the open door.

  Professor Rigaud seemed an older and even more troubled man than when he had voiced his theory about a vampire. Only a few drops of rain fell now, so that he was comparatively dry. His soft dark hat was jammed down all round his head. His patch of moustache worked with the movement of his mouth. He leaned heavily on the yellow sword-cane which acquired such evil colour in this dingy room.

  ‘Mees Morell,’ he said. His voice was husky. ‘Mr Hammond. Now I will tell you something.’

  He moved forward from the door.

  ‘My friends, you are no doubt familiar with the great Musketeer romances of the elder Dumas. You will recall how the Musketeers went to England. You will recall that the only two words of English known to D’Artagnan were “Come” and “God damn”.’ He shook a thick arm in the air. ‘Would that my knowledge of the English language were confined to the same harmless and uncomplicated terms!’

  Miles sprang from the edge of the bed.

  ‘Never mind D’Artagnan, Professor Rigaud. How did you get here?’

  ‘Dr Fell and I,’ said the other, ‘have arrived back by car from the New Forest. We have telephoned his friend the police superintendent. Dr Fell goes to the hospital, and I come here.’

  ‘You’ve just come from the New Forest? How’s Marion?’

  ‘In health,’ returned Professor Rigaud, ‘she is excellent. She is sitting up and eating food and talking what you call twenty to the dozen.’

  ‘Then in that case,’ cried Barbara, and swallowed before she went on, ‘you know what frightened her?’

  ‘Yes, mademoiselle. We have heard what frightened her.’

  And Professor Rigaud’s face slowly grew pale, paler than it had been when he talked of vampires.

  ‘My friend,’ he pounced out at Miles, as though he guessed the direction of the latter’s thoughts, ‘I gave you theories about a certain supernatural agency. Well! It would appear that in this case I was misled by facts intended to mislead. But I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. No! For I would say to you that one case of an agency proved spurious no more disproves the existence of such supernatural agencies than a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England. Do you concede this?’

  ‘Yes, I concede it. But …’

  ‘No!’ reiterated Professor Rigaud, wagging his head portentously and rapping the ferrule of the cane against the floor. ‘I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. I put myself in ashes and sackcloth because – in fine, because this is worse.’

  He held up the sword-cane.

  ‘May I make to you, my friend, a small present? May I give you this treasured relic? I do not, now, find as much satisfaction in it as others find in the headstone of Dougal or a penwiper made of human flesh. I am human. My gorge can rise. May I give it to you?’

  ‘No, I don’t want the infernal thing! Put it away! What we’re trying to ask you …’

  ‘Justement!’ said Professor Rigaud, and flung the sword-cane on the bed.

  ‘Marion is all right?’ Miles insisted. ‘There can’t be any relapse of any kind?’

  ‘There cannot.’

  ‘Then this thing that frightened her.’ Miles braced himself. ‘What did she see?’

  ‘She saw,’ replied the other concisely, ‘nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Yet she was frightened as much as that without being harmed in any way?’

  ‘Exactly,’ assented Professor Rigaud, and made angry little frightened noises in his throat. ‘She was frightened by something she heard and something she felt. Notably by the whispering.’

  The whispering …

  If Miles Hammond had hoped to get away from the realm of monsters and nightmares, he found that he had not been permitted to move very far. He glanced at Barbara, who only shook her head helplessly. Professor Rigaud was still making the little seething noises in his throat, like a kettle boiling; but the noises were not funny. His eyes had a strangled, congested look.

  ‘This thing,’ he cried, ‘is a thing that could be managed by you or me or Jacques Bonhomme. Its simplicity horrifies me. And yet –’

  He broke off.

  Outside in Bolsover Place, with a squeal of brakes and a bumping on the uneven paving-stones, a motor-car drew up. Professor Rigaud stumped over to one window. He flung up his arms.

  ‘Dr Fell,’ he added, turning round from the window again, ‘arrives back from the hospital sooner than I expected him. I must go.’

  ‘Go? Why must you go? Professor Rigaud!’

  The good professor was not permitted to go very far. For the bulk of Dr Gideon Fell, hatless but in his box-pleated cape, impelled mightily on the crutch-handled stick, had the effect of filling up the stairs, filling up the passage, and finally filling up the doorway. It had the effect of preventing any exit except by way of the window, which presumably was not Professor Rigaud’s intention. So Dr Fell stood there with a gargantuan swaying motion rather like a tethered elephant, still rather wild-eyed and with his eyeglasses coming askew, controlling his breathing for Johnsonesque utterance to Miles.

  ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘I bring you news.’

  ‘Fay, Seton –?’

  ‘Fay Seton is alive,’ replied Dr Fell. Then, with a clatter you could almost hear, he swept that hope away. ‘How long she lives will depend on the care she takes of herself. It may be months; it may be days. I fear I must tell you she is a doomed woman, as in a sense she has always been a doomed woman.’

  For a little time nobody spoke.

  Barbara, Miles noted in an abstracted way, was standing just where Fay had stood: by the chest of drawers, under the hanging lamp. Barbara’s fingers were pressed to her lips in an expression of horror mingled with overwhelming pity.

  ‘Couldn’t we,’ said Miles, clearing his throat, ‘couldn’t we go over to the hospital and see her?’

  ‘No, sir,’ returned Dr Fell.

  For the first time Miles noticed that there was a police-sergeant in the hall behind Dr Fell. Motioning to this sergeant, Dr Fell squeezed his way through and closed the door behind him.

  ‘I have jus
t come from talking to Miss Seton,’ he went on. ‘I have heard the whole pitiful story.’ His expression was vaguely fierce. ‘It enables me to fill in the details of my own guesses and half-hits.’ As Dr Fell’s expression grew more fierce, he put up a hand partly to adjust his eyeglasses and partly perhaps to shade his eyes. ‘But that, you see, causes the trouble.’

  Miles’s disquiet had increased.

  ‘What do you mean, trouble?’

  ‘Hadley will be here presently, with – harrumph – a certain duty to perform. Its result will not be pleasant for one person now in this room. That’s why I thought I had better come here first and warn you. I thought I had better explain to you certain matters you may not have grasped even yet.’

  ‘Certain matters? About – ?’

  ‘About those two crimes,’ said Dr Fell. He peered at Barbara as though noticing her for the first time. ‘Oh, ah!’ ‘breathed Dr Fell with an air of enlightenment. ‘And you must be Miss Morell!’

  ‘Yes! I want to apologize …’

  ‘Tut, tut! Not for the famous fiasco of the Murder Club?’

  ‘Well … yes.’

  ‘A small matter,’ said Dr Fell, with a massive gesture of dismissal.

  He lumbered to the frayed armchair, which had been pushed near one window. With the aid of his crutch-handled stick he sat down, the armchair accommodating him as best it could. After rolling back his shaggy head to take a reflective survey of Barbara, of Miles, and of Professor Rigaud, he reached into his inside breast pocket under the cape. From this he produced Professor Rigaud’s sheaf of manuscript, now much crumpled and frayed at the edges.

  And he produced something else which Miles recognized. It was the coloured photograph of Fay Seton, last seen by Miles at Beltring’s Restaurant. With the same air of ferocity overlying bitter worry and distress, Dr Fell sat studying the photograph.

  ‘Dr Fell,’ said Miles. ‘Hold on! Half a minute!’