Dr Fell frowned.
'You understand, don't you,' he asked, 'the most important consideration in this case?'
CHAPTER 15
IT was late in the afternoon, outside the evil-looking cottage in Gallows Lane, when Dr Fell asked that same question again.
After lunch at Ashe Hall, Dr Fell and Hadley and Dick Markham made a little tour of the village. Dick had wanted to go home with Lesley, but Dr Fell would not hear of this. He seemed interested in meeting as many persons as possible.
No word had as yet slipped out that the dead man was not Sir Harvey Gilman, or that the police had any reason to suspect anything but suicide. You could almost feel the lure of the trap, the invitation of the deadfall, the whistling summons to a murderer. Faces of bursting curiosity were directed towards them, though only the averted eye asked a question. Dick had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.
And they met many people.
An attempt to interview Cynthia Drew was frustrated by Cynthia's mother, a sad little woman who pointedly refrained from speaking to Dick Markham. Cynthia, she explained, had sustained a bad fall on some stone steps, bruising her temple. She was in no condition to see anyone; nor should anyone expect - raising of eyebrows here - to see her.
But they encountered Major Price coming out of his office. They were introduced to Earnshaw making some purchases at the post office. Dr Fell bought chocolate cigars as well as real ones at the sweet-and-tobacconist's; he exchanged views on church architecture with the Rev. Mr Goodflower; he visited the saloon-bar of the 'Griffin and Ash-Tree' in order to lower several pints before closing-time.
The low, yellow-blazing sun lay behind the village before they turned back again towards Gallows Lane. Passing Lesley's house, Dick remembered her last words to him. 'You will come to dinner to-night, just as we planned?' and his agreement with some fervency. He looked for her face at a window, and didn't see it. Instead he presently saw, looming ahead beside a darkling orchard, the low-pitched black-and-white cottage with the defaced windows.
The body of Sam De Villa, alias Sir Harvey Gilman, had long ago been removed to the mortuary at Hawkstone. Bert Miller the constable now patiently stood guard in the front garden. Hadley addressed him as soon as they were within hailing distance.
'Any post-mortem report ?'
'No, sir. They've promised to phone when there is one.' 'Any luck with tracing that telephone-call ?' Bert Miller required to have things explained. His large face was impassive under its imposing helmet. 'Which telephone-call, sir?' Hadley looked at him.
'An anonymous telephone-call,' he said, 'was put through to Mr Markham at his cottage very early this morning, asking him to come here in a hurry. You remember that ?'
'Yes, sir.'
' Have they traced that call ?' 'Yes, sir. It was put through from this cottage.' 'From this cottage, eh?' repeated Hadley, and glanced at Dr Fell.
'From the phone in there,' explained Miller, nodding towards the open hall door behind him, 'at two minutes past five in the morning. Exchange said so.'
Again Hadley glanced at Dr Fell
'I suppose you're going to say,' he remarked dryly, 'you anticipated that?'
'Dash it all, Hadley!' Dr Fell complained querulously. 'I am not trying to stand here like a high-priest of hocus-pocus, making mesmeric passes over a crystal as Sam De Villa did. But certain things do emerge because they can't help emerging. You understand, don't you, the most important consideration in this case ?'
Hadley remained discreetly silent
'Look here, sir,' said Dick. 'You asked that question once before. Then, when we tried to answer you, you never supplied your own answer at all. What is it?'
'The most important consideration, in my humble opinion,' said Dr Fell, 'is how Sam De Villa spent the last six hours of his life.'
Dick, who had been expecting something else altogether, stared at him.
'You took leave of him here,' pursued Dr Fell, 'at about eleven o'clock last night. Good! You found him dead - very recently dead - at about twenty minutes past five this morning. Good! How did he spend the interval, then? Let us see.'
Dr Fell lumbered up the two stone steps into the little front hall. But he did not go into the sitting-room, for the moment at least. He stood turning round and round in the hall, with majestic slowness suggesting a battleship at manoeuvres, while his vacant eye wandered.
'Sitting-room on the left.' He pointed. 'Dining-room across the passage on the right' He pointed. 'Back-kitchen and scullery at the rear.' He pointed again. 'I had a look at all of 'em while I was waiting here this morning. Including, by the way, a look at the electric meter in the scullery.' Dr Fell brushed at his moustache, and then addressed Dick again. 'When you left him at eleven o'clock, De Villa said he intended to go to bed ?'
‘Yes.'
'And presumably he did go to bed,' argued Dr Fell, 'since Lord Ashe called here shortly afterwards to see how the wounded man was getting on, and found the place all dark. Lord Ashe told you that, didn't he?'
'Yes.'
' I didn't go upstairs this morning. But it's worth a try now.'
The staircase was a narrow affair with heavy balustrades and a sharp right-angled turn. It led them into the low-ceilinged upper floor. Here, where a shingled roof pressed down with a thick blanket of heat, they found two good-sized front bedrooms as well as a tiny back bedroom and a bathroom. It was the front bedroom just over the sitting-room which showed signs of occupancy.
Dr Fell pushed open a close-fitting door with a latch, which creaked and scraped along the bare floor. Two windows, in the sloping wall facing the lane, admitted late afternoon light to which the shade of the birch-coppice opposite gave a muddy reddish tinge.
The room's furnishings were as austere as its white-plaster walls. A single bed, a chest-of-drawers with mirror, an oak wardrobe, a straight chair, and one or two small rugs on the floor. The room smelt fusty in spite of its open windows; it spoke of haste and untidiness. The bed had been slept in, its bedclothes now thrown back as though the occupant had got up hastily.
So much they noticed in the litter of personal belongings - loose collars, toilet-articles, books, a plaited dressing-gown-cord - which overflowed from two big suit-cases not yet quite unpacked.
'He was only camping here, you see,' observed Dr Fell, and pointed with the cane. 'Ready to cut and run as soon as he got the dibs. A perfect scheme nobly executed. And instead of that... Stop a bit 1'
On the floor beside the bed was an ashtray with two or three cigar-stubs. Beside it stood a tumbler partly full of stale, beaded water, and a tiny bottle. Following the doctor's inquiring glance, Hadley picked up the bottle. It contained a few small white pills, and he carried it to the window to read the label.
'Luminal,' said the superintendent 'Quarter-grain tablets.'
'That's all right,' interposed Dick. 'It was mentioned last night that he'd brought some luminal with him. Middlesworth told him he could take a quarter-grain if his back got very painful.'
Dr Fell reflected.
'A quarter-grain? No more?'
'That's what Middlesworth said, anyway.'
'And I rather imagine his wound was paining him ?'
'Like the devil. He wasn't faking about that much, I'll swear.'
'No!' rumbled Dr Fell, shaking his head violently and making a very dismal face. 'No, no, no, no, no! Look here, Hadley. It's not in human nature for De Villa to have been as moderate as that!'
' How do you mean ?'
'Well, suppose you were in that position? Suppose you're a strung-up, imaginative chap, facing a long night with a painful bullet-wound? And you've got plenty of luminal handy. Would you stop short with a modest quarter-grain? Wouldn't you give yourself a thorough-good dose and make sure you went off heavily to sleep ?'
'Yes,' admitted Hadley,' I suppose I would. But -'
'We are trying,' roared Dr Fell, taking a few lumbering strides to and from the door,' to reconstruct the prelude to this crime. An
d what have we got?'
'Not a hell of a lot, if you want my candid opinion.'
'All the same, follow De Villa's movements. His guests leave him at eleven. He's already in his pyjamas, dressing-gown, and slippers, so he doesn't have to undress. He comes upstairs to this room.'
Here Dr Fell's wandering glance encountered the plaited dressing-gown-cord, which protruded from the suit-case. He stared at it, pulling at his under-lip.
'I say, Hadley. De Villa's body was found this morning in pyjamas and dressing-gown. I didn't notice myself; but do you happen to remember whether the dressing-gown-cord was attached to the dressing-gown?' He looked at Dick. 'What about you, my boy?'
'I don't remember,' Dick confessed.
'Neither do I,' said Hadley. 'But the stuff is at the Hawkstone mortuary now. We can easily ring up and inquire.'
Dr Fell's gesture dismissed the subject.
'Anyway, follow our reconstruction of the dark hours before the murder. De Villa comes up here to bed. He fetches a glass of water. He takes a thorough-good dose of luminal, and sits up in bed to finish a cigar - vide ashtray - while the drug takes effect. And then...'
Hadley snorted derisively.
'And then,' said Hadley, 'he gets up and goes downstairs at five o'clock in the morning?' 'Apparently, yes.' 'But why?'
'That,' Dr Fell said abruptly, 'is what I hope Mr Markham can tell us here and now. Come downstairs.'
The sitting-room below looked far less repulsive when no motionless figure sat at the writing-table. The Hawkstone technical men had already covered the room for photographs and finger-prints. And the hypodermic syringe had been removed, though the .22 rifle still stood propped up by the fireplace and the box of spilled drawing-pins lay on the floor beside the easy-chair.
Hadley, who had already said some powerful, realistic words to Dick on the subject of touching exhibits and interfering with evidence, did not comment except by a significant look. And Dr Fell did not comment at all. Folding his arms, the doctor set his back to the wall between the two windows. On one side of him was the bullet-hole in the lower pane, on the other side an empty window-frame with shattered glass lying strewn beneath. Outside the windows loomed the helmet of Bert Miller, endlessly passing and repassing as the constable paced.
' Mr Markham,' began Dr Fell, with such fiery earnestness that Dick felt a few qualms, 'if ever in your life you concentrated, I want you to concentrate now.'
'On what?’
' On what you saw this morning.'
It required no effort of concentration. Dick wondered if that infernal odour of bitter almonds would ever fade, even weeks afterwards, so that images did not pop up from corners of the sitting-room.
'Listen, sir! Let's get one thing straight first. Do you think I'm lying to you ?'
'Why should I think that?'
'Because everybody, from Miller out there to Superintendent Hadley and Lord Ashe, seems to think I must have been lying or eke dreaming. I tell you, those windows were locked on the inside! And the door was locked and bolted on the inside: Do you doubt that?'
' Oh, no,' said Dr Fell.' I don't doubt it.'
'Yet the murderer did get - what's the word I want? -did get his physical body in and out of this room in order to kill Dc Villa? In spite of the locked door and windows?'
'Yes,'said Dr Fell.
Across the line of the windows passed Miller's figure, like a shadow of the law.
Superintendent Hadley, hitching up the easy-chair to the writing-table, sat down where the dead man had sat, and got out his notebook. Dr Fell added:
' I mean that, Hadley. I mean quite literally that.'
1 Go on!' said Hadley.
'Let's begin,' growled Dr Fell, holding his folded arms more tightly, 'with this mysterious telephone-call at two minutes past five. You've heard, now, that the call came from this house?'
‘Yes.'
'It couldn't, for instance, have been De Villa's voice speaking?'
' It might have been, yes. I can't say whose voice it was. It whispered.'
'Yet it did convey' - Dr Fell tilted up his chin, squaring himself - 'an impression of urgency ?' 'Of very great urgency. Yes.'
'Right. You ran out of your cottage, and along the lane. When you were still some distance from this house, you saw a light switched on in this sitting-room.'
Dr Fell paused, with cross-eyed concentration behind his eyeglasses. 'How far were you away when you saw that light?'
Dick considered.
'A little over a hundred yards, I should say.'
' So you couldn't actually see into this room at that time ?'
'Lord, no! Nothing like that! I was too far away. I just saw the light shine out when the sky was still pretty dark.'
Without a word Superintendent Hadley got to his feet. The only light in the room was the bright tan-shaded hanging lamp over the writing-table. Its switch was in the wall beside the door to the hall. Hadley walked over to this; he clicked the switch down, and then up again, so that the lamp flashed on and off; afterwards, still without a word, he returned to his notebook at the writing-table.
Dr Fell cleared his throat.
'You then,' he resumed, 'walked more slowly along the lane? Yes! A little later, I understand, you saw this .22 rifle poked over the wall? Yes. How far were you away when you saw that?'
Again Dick reflected.
'Well... say thirty yards. Perhaps less.'
'So you still couldn't see into this room here?'
'No. Naturally not.'
'But you distinctly saw the rifle?'
'Yes.'
' You even' - Dr Fell reached out with his right hand and tapped the window-glass - 'you even made out the bullet-hole when, to use your expressive phrase to the constable, it "jumped up in the window-pane" ?'
Dick gestured helplessly.
'That's a literary way of putting it, I'm afraid. I was thinking of the fortune-teller's tent. But that's exactly what it amounts to. I was watching the rifle; I saw it fired; and even at that distance I could make out the bullet-hole.'
'You've got long eyesight, I take it?'
'Very long eyesight. Yesterday, for instance, when I was target-shooting at Major Price's range, I could tell exactly where my hits were scored without having the target drawn in to the counter.'
Superintendent Hadley intervened.
'If you're thinking there's any flummery about that bullet-hole,' he said, 'you can wash it out. Purvis's people have verified everything: angle of fire, force of projectile, damage to window. And,' he nodded towards the shattered picture over the fireplace, 'checked the bullet they dug out of the wall. It was fired from that rifle, and no other rifle.'
Dr Fell slowly turned a red face.
' My God, Hadley,' he said, with a sudden and far-from-characteristic burst of anger which startled Hadley almost as much as it startled Dick, 'will you please allow me to handle this witness in my own way?'
His face grew even more fiery.
'You, sir, are a superintendent of Metropolitan Police. I am very much at your service. I am merely your consultant on theoutré; or, to put it in a less high-falutin way, the old guy whom you drag in during peculiar, not so loony, cases of this kind. You have done me the honour of consulting me now in a case which we both believe to be murder. May I ask my own questions, sir, or may I not?'
Outside the windows, the moving helmet of Bert Miller stopped for a fraction of a second before Miller resumed his pacing. Not for -nothing had Dick, when he related the story to Miller that morning, insisted on suicide with such a wealth of detail that the constable dreamed of no other contingency. This was the first time Miller had heard mention of the word murder from his superior officers.
But Dick hardly noticed this now; it was swept away by the extraordinary violence of Dr Fell's outburst.
' Sorry if I've stepped on your toes,' Hadley said mildly. ' Carry on.'
'Harrumph! Ha! Very well.' Dr Fell adjusted his eyeglasses, drawing the air thr
ough his nostrils with a long challenging sound. 'On hearing the shot, Mr Markham, you ran forward again?'
‘Yes.'
'And met Miss Cynthia Drew in the lane?' 'That's right.'
'How was it, with your long eyesight, that you hadn't seen her before?'
' Because,' answered Dick,' the sun was smack in my eyes. Straight down the lane, and she was coming from the east I could see things on either side, but not in the lane itself.'
'H'm, yes. That accounts for it. What explanation did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'
'Look here, sir! You don't think - ?'
'What explanation,' Dr Fell repeated gently, 'did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'
Outside, in the hall, the telephone began to ring shrilly.
It made each of these three men, each with his own separate thoughts, start a little to hear that clamouring bell. Was this, Dick wondered, the communication Dr Fell expected? Was the murderer - behind a bland friendly countenance of all the bland friendly countenances at Six Ashes - ringing up to whisper more hatred against Lesley Grant? Hadley hurried out to the phone; they heard him speaking in a low voice. When he returned his face was very grave.
' Well ?' prompted Dr Fell.
'No,' said the superintendent quickly, 'it's not what you're thinking. That telephone-communication idea of yours is rubbish, and you know it. Nobody would take such a fool's risk as that. But your other idea, I admit -'
' Who was it, Hadley?'
'It was the police-surgeon at Hawkstone. He's just done the post-mortem. And it's upset the apple-cart again.'
Dr Fell, with his big bulk propped against the wall, straightened up. His mouth fell open under the bandit's moustache.
'Look here, Hadley! You're not going to tell me Sam De Villa wasn't killed by prussic acid after all ?'
'Oh, yes. He was killed with prussic acid, right enough. About three grains of anhydrous prussic acid, administered in a hypodermic by somebody unskilled in the use of it. But...’
'But what?'
' It's the stomach-contents,' said Hadley. 'Go on, man!'
'About six hours before death,' replied Hadley, 'Sam swallowed what must have amounted to three or four grains of luminal.'
Till Death Do Us Part dgf-15 Page 14