In the ensuing silence, while he continued to blink at Dick with an air of concern, you could hear a dog barking from very far away.
'Good news?' Dick repeated.
'Despite the fact,' pursued Dr Fell, replacing his hat and peering round at Middlesworth, 'despite the fact that on our way here we met a certain Major ... Major -?'
'Price,' supplied Middlesworth.
'A certain. Major Price, yes, who told us of this morning's occurrences and somewhat abated our triumph, I still think you will find it good news.'
Dick stared from Dr Fell to Middlesworth. Middles-worth, with his lined forehead and his thinning brown hair, remained as usual non-committal; but the expression of his eyes, even of the deep lines round his mouth conveyed a puzzling reassurance.
'We can settle it, anyway,' said Middlesworth, taking the pipe from his mouth and knocking it out against his heel. He went to the sitting-room window and tapped its glass. 'Dr Fell,' he added, 'who is that dead man?'
Growling from deep in his throat, Dr Fell lumbered forward and approached the window as closely as the mountainous ridges of his waistcoat would allow. He adjusted his eyeglasses, bending forward as though for intense concentration. But it was no more than a few seconds before he swung round again.
'Sir,' replied Dr Fell, with the same air of subdued wrath, 'I have not the slightest idea who he is. But he is not Sir Harvey Gilman.'
CHAPTER 11
Too many shocks, numbing the emotions, produce a kind of torpor in which it is easy to pretend calmness.
‘What's the joke?' asked Dick Markham.
He: became conscious of three faces looking at him: of Earnshaw open-mouthed, of Middlesworth bitterly wry, of Dr Fell in such a genuine glory of rage that his upthrust under-lip seemed to meet the bandit's moustache.
'There's no joke,' answered Middlesworth.
Then.Dick shouted:'Not Sir Harvey Gilman?'
' He's an impostor,' Middlesworth said simply..' I couldn't tell you last night what I suspected, because I didn't want to raise false- hopes. But ..„...' Middlesworth woke up. 'Excuse me, Bill’ he said to Earnshaw, 'but won't you be-needed at the bank?'
No hint could have been plainer and yet, in Middlesworth's mild voice, containing less offence. It says much too for Earnshaw's urbanity, or his good nature, or both, that the bank-manager merely nodded.
'Yes he agreed, 'I'm late already. I shall have to excuse-myself, I'm afraid. See you later.'
And he. turned round and marched off like a man in a trance, though he must have been boiling with curiosity..
Middlesworth waited until the straight back, the Anthony Eden hat, the trim dark-blue suit had got some distance away.
'Tell him, Dr Fell,' Middlesworth suggested.
Dr Fell wheeled round, a mighty galleon, to face Dick.
'Sir,' he intoned, setting his eyeglasses more firmly, 'you have been made the victim, I can't say why, of as cruel and brutal a hoax as comes within my experience. I wish to reassure you about this Miss ... Miss ...?'
'Lesley Grant,' supplied Middlesworth.
'Oh, ah. Yes.' Dr Fell's face was fiery; his cheeks puffed out,' Miss Grant is not a poisoner. She is not, so far as I am aware, a criminal of any kind. I will itemize exactly what I mean.'
He checked off the points on his fingers.
'She never married, or murdered, or in fact had any concern with an American lawyer called Burton Foster, for the excellent reason that no such person ever existed -'
'What?'
Dr Fell waved him to silence.
' She is guiltless of poisoning the elderly Mr Davies of Liverpool in a locked room or anywhere else, because Mr Davies never existed either. She never invited Mr Martin Belford of Paris, to an engagement-celebration dinner at her house, and then sent him home to die, because he is a figment of the imagination too. In short, sir: the whole story against Miss Grant is nothing but a pack of lies from start to finish.'
If pain can be felt in a detached way, that was how Dick Markham felt the bite that seared between the first two fingers of his right hand. He woke up partly to the fact that his cigarette had burnt down against them. He stared at the cigarette, and then threw it away.
'Steady, now!' came Middlesworth's voice out of the mist.
And it was Middlesworth's homely, heartening grin which broke the spell.
'Then,' said Dick, 'who in God's name is he? I mean, who was he?'
Words alone could not express what poured through his mind. Dick Markham fell back on pantomime, like a child. He pointed to the sitting-room window, to the evil exhibits and the leering corpse beyond.
'As to who he is,' replied Dr Fell,' I can only repeat that I don't know. I never saw him before, in spite of the fact that he seems to have claimed acquaintance with me. But he was, I suspect, a good deal of a genius.'
'And why,' yelled Dick, 'did he tell that pack of lies? Why? What was his purpose?'
Dr Fell scowled.
'I refuse to imagine, you know, that the whole thing was an elaborate joke.'
'It wasn't a joke,' Middlesworth agreed dryly. 'You should have watched his face last night.'
Again Dr Fell turned to Dick, with a sort of massive and cross-eyed benevolence which had in it a note of apology.
'You see, my lad, that story of his was in its own way a minor work of art. It was directed solely and simplyat you: at every chink in your armour, every receptive part of your mental make-up.'
(True! True! True!)
'Each word was designed to get its own particular response from you. On to this young lady he grafted a psychological character in which you could believe, an irony that would strike you as right, a situation which your own imagination would compel you to accept It was the perfect picture of - ahem - a dramatist hoist with his own petard. But I'm rather surprised ...'
Dr Fell's big voice trailed off, and he frowned. Dick, to whom certain small indications were now coming back, looked at Middlesworth.
' I'd rather like to shake your hand, Doctor,' he said.
"That's all right,' said Middlesworth, embarrassed.
' You thought he was a wrong ‘un from the start?'
'We-el,' said Middlesworth, 'not exactly that'
'But your behaviour last night...'
' I shouldn't have gone so far as to say I thought he was a wrong ‘un, no. But I haven't been altogether happy about it- When Major Price first introduced, him to, me, and said Sir Harvey made, us all promise to keep his real identity a secret for a while -'
' I'll, bet he made you promise,' observed Dr Fell grimly. 'By thunder, but wouldn't "Sir Harvey" make you promise!'
'I was interested,' said Middlesworth. 'I asked him about one of his famous cases. He answered me all right. But he made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit. Because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers. And then those stories he told last night.'
Dick spoke with a very bitter taste in his mouth.
'Did he catch me,' Dick, asked, 'with some wild absurdity in a crime story?'
Middlesworth reflected;.
'Not absurd, no. Nothing impossible. Just unlikely. Such as a pathologist being called on to act as. police surgeon in the London area.. Or, in the Liverpool story holding the inquest at St George's Hall when, the crime took place in a suburb like Prince's Park.. I'm only a. G.P.,' explained Middlesworth; apologetically, 'but - hang it all!'
He put his, empty pipe into his mouth and. drew at it.
'Anyway,' Middlesworth added hunching up his shoulders, ' I thought it might be a good idea to get in touch with Dr Fell.' His mild eye twinkled towards Dick, 'Feeling better, old son?'
Better?
How, to explajn that, he hadn't got rid of the nightmare even yet?" And that the- hypnotic eye of the alleged Sir Harvey Gilman - a much-too-hypnotic eye., he now realized - still, bored into his mind? Over the fields now reminding him, drifted; the sound of the church clock-striking-ten in the
morning.
'It's just exactly twelve hours,' answered: Dick, 'since I got pitched into this nightmare. It seems like twelve days or twelve years. I've got to get used to the idea that Lesley
isn't a murderess, and that these "murdered men" never existed. There never was any prussic-acid poisoning! There never was any locked room!' Dr Fell coughed.
' I beg your pardon,' he observed, with polished courtesy. 'But there is very much a prussic-acid poisoning. And there is very much a locked room. Kindly glance into the sitting-room and see.'
The church clock ended its striking.
And the three of them looked at one another wildly.
'Dr Fell,' said Dick, 'what does the whole mess mean?'
A long sniff rumbled in Dr Fell's nose. He took a few lumbering steps up and down the garden, cutting at the grass with his crutch-handled stick. He seemed in his own mind to be addressing a ghostly parliament; you saw the gestures even if the words were inaudible. When he did in fact turn to address his two companions, he reared back his head so that the eyeglasses should remain firmly on his nose.
'Why, sir,' he replied, shaking the crutch-handled stick in the air, 'the main outline of the affair would appear to be before us. This impostor's story was not true. But somebody made it come true.'
'Meaning?'
Again Dr Fell paced.
'We shall not be in any firm position,' he went on, 'until we learn who the impostor is, and what his game was, and why he spun this appalling yarn merely to ... do what? Merely, as I understand it, to be present in the house while Mr Markham has dinner with Miss Grant! Is that correct?'
Both Dick and Middlesworth nodded. Dr Fell blinked at the latter.
'But one suggestion you made, when we heard of this morning's work from a certain Major Price,' he resumed, 'does seem to me to be whang in the bull's-eye. Oh, ah. Yes. Whatever explanation we put on the situation, the centre of the whole plot is still Miss Lesley Grant.'
Dick spoke sharply.
'How do you work that out?'
A radiant beam appeared in Dr Fell's eye, illuminating his pink face like the glow of a vast furnace, and going down in chuckles over the ridges of his waistcoat. Then he became preternaturally solemn.
'The centre of the whole plot,' he repeated, 'is still Miss Lesley Grant. Now a very important question. Regarding this little tale of locked rooms and hypodermic syringes - did the impostor tell this story to anybody except you two?'
'I don't know,' said Dick.
'Nor I,' admitted Middlesworth.
'While he was telling you the story, could anybody have overheard him?'
Very vividly Dick recalled that scene last night: the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close over the windows, and one window pushed fully open. He recalled Middlesworth suddenly getting up, in the course of the so-called Sir Harvey's recital, and putting his head out of that window. Dick related the incident now.
'Was there somebody out here?' he asked Middlesworth.
'Yes.'
'Could you see who it was?' 'No. Too dark.'
'There are two alternatives,' grunted Dr Fell. 'You can say, if you like, that the impostor went through all his masquerade as Sir Harvey Gilman, spun his grotesque yarn, made all his arrangements, just so that he could lock himself in here later and give himself a dose of poison.
"That may be true, gentlemen. It may be true. But unless the fellow was an escaped lunatic, which I consider unlikely, it does not sound a very feasible explanation. H'mf, no. The other alternative -'
'Murder?'
'Yes. And you see where that leads us?' Dr Fell resumed his pacing, addressed his ghostly parliament, and finally came to a stop once more.
'The whole point, d'ye see, is this. Last night a crime was reproduced here, line for line like a fine drawing. The joke being that the original crime didn't exist! It was imagined, a piece of pure fantasy, by the impostor calling himself Sir Harvey Gilman. Yet it was reproduced. Why? Because, of course, the murderer believed he was reproducing a real crime.
'The people of Six Ashes believed - and still believe -that this fellow is Sir Harvey Gilman, the Home.Office pathologist. What Sir Harvey says is gospel. What Sir Harvey mentions as a real case is a real case. Why should the good people doubt it?
'Either he told this prussic-acid story to somebody in private, or else somebody overheard it last night. Somebody believes, firmly believes, that Lesley Grant is a murderess who has killed three men. Somebody, with joy in the heart, suddenly thinks of a way to commit this "impossible" crime. And therefore somebody commits it, serene in the belief that Lesley Grant will be blamed.'
Dr Fell paused, drawing a wheezy breath. He added, somewhat less eloquently:
'That's the ticket, gents. You can bet your shirts on it'
'Are you saying,' Dick demanded,' that somebody hates Lesley enough to commit murder in order to ...?'
Dr Fell looked distressed.
' My dear sir,' he protested, 'we can't say anything about motive. We don't know the identity of the dead man. Before you begin saying so-and-so had a motive, it is just as well to know whose murder you are investigating.'
‘Then-?'
'AH we do see with certainty is that Lesley Grant presented a convenient scapegoat. The murderer didn't doubt, probably doesn't doubt to this minute, that the dirty work will be attributed to her, since she is a real poisoner.' He blinked at Dick. 'You believed that yourself, I think, until a few minutes ago?'
'Yes. I'm afraid I did.'
'Tut, now!' rumbled Dr Fell, and again the chronic chuckle ran over him. 'There is no need for this hangdog look, and this violent inner cursing of yourself !’ ‘I think there is.'
'When, as I understand it from Middlesworth, you were prepared to shield this lady no matter what she had done? Sir, that was very reprehensible of you. It makes me cluck my tongue. It was not the act of a good citizen. But, by thunder, it was the act of a true lover!' Dr Fell struck the ferrule of his cane on the ground. 'However, with regard to the present difficulties ...'
'Well?’
'You must remember, sir, that I've had only the outline of yesterday's events from Dr Middlesworth, and the barest outlines of to-day's events from Major Price via the constable. But one other thing does emerge. If the blame for this crime is intended for Miss Lesley Grant, it follows as a corollary that...'
Again he paused, sunk fathoms deep in obscure musing. Then he said:
'Who, by the way, was the gentleman here a moment ago?'
'I ought to have introduced you,' Dick apologized, 'but I was too flummoxed to think of it. That was Bill Earnshaw, the bank-manager.'
' Oh, ah. I see. Did he want anything in particular?'
'He was worried about this infernal rifle. Also, he supplied at least a partial explanation as to why a box of drawing-pins should turn up in the sitting-room.'
Dick gave a sketch of Earnshaw's information. Dr Fell gave close attention to the account of Colonel Pope's habits with drawing-pins. He gave equally close attention to the account of yesterday's garden-party and the inexplicable disappearance of the rifle under everybody's eyes. Something in this latter secondary mystery appeared to interest Dr Fell very much indeed, for the doctor eyed him with a hideous face of speculation. But, instead of saying what was really in his mind, Dr Fell went off on another tack.
'Tell me,' he mused. 'When our friend the impostor acted as fortune-teller, was he a good fortune-teller? Did he appear to have made shrewd guesses about people in general?'
'His information seems to have paralysed everybody. Including -'
Back again, sharp and quick as the jab of a needle, came the recollection that something had been said to Lesley about which she patently lied afterwards. Dr Fell saw this.
'May I suggest,' he said, 'that you don't plunge back into the horrors again? Archons of Athens! If he so thoroughly hypnotized you with a false story, isn't it possible he may have done the same thing with her?'
'You mean told Les
ley some walloping yarn ...'
'That,' Dr Fell pointed out, 'appears to have been his speciality.'
More and more was a strengthening sanity emerging, to explain away all difficulties. Dick spoke with fervour.
'As soon as the constable comes back, and I can be let off standing guard, there's just one thing I want to do. I want to go straight to Lesley and apologize.'
Dr Fell was delighted.
'Apologize,' he inquired, 'for shielding her?'
'Apologize for everything! Tell her what a swine I am! Have the whole thing out with her!'
'If you want to go now,' said Dr Fell, 'I can stand guard. It will interest me very much to make an examination of that room. Later, if you please, I want you to tell me EVERYTHING. I have a feeling' - he groped at the air -'that my present information is not only incomplete, but misleading. When you return, by the way, you will probably find me at Ashe Hall.'
'At Ashe Hall? Do you know Lord Ashe?'
Dr Fell pointed with his cane.
"Those, I take it, are the grounds of the Hall?'
'Yes. You can go through the coppice up over a field, and get to it by a short cut.'
'I am acquainted with Lord Ashe,' resumed Dr Fell, 'only through correspondence. But his antiquarian researches interest me. The first Ashe was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth. The last Ashe, before this present one, was a sizzler who upset half Europe with the most notorious bawd of her day. Between those two he plans a family history which shall be, in actual fact, a history of England for three and a half centuries. If he had enough money to ...' Dr Fell woke up.' Never mind! Shall I stand guard for you, sir?'
Middlesworth touched Dick's arm.
'Come along,' he said, 'and I'll give you a lift. I've got to be back myself for surgery at half-past ten.'
Utterly oblivious of them now, Dr Fell lumbered up the two stone steps into the cottage. In the last glimpse they had of him, as Middlesworth backed the car round in the lane, they could see him inside the sitting-room. They could see him first owlishly examining the shattered window on the left, and then examining the other window with its bullet-hole below and to one side of the metal catch.
Dick rode in Middlesworth's car with very different feelings from last night. While they bumped along Gallows Lane - it was no very great distance from here to the High Street, and to Lesley's house - each of them made only one remark. Dick said, 'Thanks!' and Middlesworth said, 'Not at all.' But it was as though they had shaken hands.
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