'The real murderer did write a note, all right. I've got the proof here in my hand. The real murderer slipped into my cottage and wrote the blasted thing on my typewriter...'
Lesley drew away from him. She could not seem to believe her ears, and she dashed her hand out as though trying to push something away.
'On your typewriter?' she exclaimed.
'Yes. But that's no clue, I'm afraid. I haven't been at my place all day. Anyway, half the neighbourhood walks in and out of there without bothering to knock. Cynthia Drew, Major Price -'
'And myself,' smiled Lesley.
'Don't joke about this!' Dick said sharply.' The murderer wrote this note accusing Lesley of being a famous poisoner, and probably showing how De Villa had been killed. The murderer posted it. Then somehow he, or she, tumbled to it that a trap had been set He, or she, tried to get the letter back by waiting until Laura Feathers cleared the box, and then begging it on some excuse. But Laura was a wily old bird; she knew, and let the murderer know she knew. And so ...'
Dick made the motion of one who pulls a trigger. He turned to Dr Fell. 'Is this true, sir, or isn't it?' Dr Fell's face was very serious.
Blinking, he removed his eyeglasses, stared at them reflectively, and pinched at the deep red mark they made across the bridge of his nose before putting them on again.
'Oh, yes,' he admitted. 'It's true enough.'
The tension went out of Dick's muscles, and his lungs relaxed in a long breath of relief.
'That was your game with the post office, sir?'
'Yes.' Dr Fell brooded. 'It was a long shot, of course.'
'Howso?'
'Well, dash it all!' complained Dr Fell. 'It's simple enough to use that trick on a poison-pen writer, who writes numbers of letters and therefore requires numbers of stamps. But suppose your quarry has a casual stamp in his pocket or at home, and doesn't have to buy one? Still, it was worth trying. And it worked. Archons of Athens' -a curious violent look overspread his face - 'Archons of Athens, how it worked!'
'I don't follow that, sir.'
'Almost too soon, don't you think? Almost' - Dr Fell snapped his fingers - 'like that All the same, I agree, it did work. And it cost a human life.'
' You couldn't have helped that I'
' I wonder,' said Dr Fell.
'Anyway, however that game worked out, there's one thing these two bits of paper and the whole evening's events definitely do prove. I hope you'll at least agree with that?'
'With what?'
'The original theory! You said this might happen, and it has happened! You said Lesley might be accused by an anonymous communication, and she's been accused! You said the real murderer might take this line, and he has taken this line! What more can we want? I submit that this proves the murder of Sam De Villa was a deliberate attempt to fasten the blame on Lesley Grant! Don't you agree?'
Dr Fell blinked at the floor. His hands, clasped over his cane, seemed to draw his whole huge frame closer together. Then he rolled up his head.
'Well, no,' he answered reluctantly. 'I can't say I do agree.'
CHAPTER 19
'What's that?'
'I don't agree,' Dr Fell explained mildly, 'that the explanation you've just given is the only possible one.' 'But your own theory -!'
'I beg your pardon.' Dr Fell spoke very sharply. 'If you think back far enough, I imagine you'll agree it was not my theory at all.'
'But you distinctly said -'
'I said,' Dr Fell raised his big voice, 'I said we must consider the evidence. I said that, if we did consider the evidence, this was die conclusion to which we must come. I challenged Hadley to cite any other conclusion from the facts as presented to us.'
'Well? What's the difference? That's the same thing, isn't it?'
'But I also said, if you remember,' Dr Fell observed gently, 'that it took a bit of believing.'
The whole weird, unnatural situation had begun to turn Dick Markham's nerves.
'What is all this?' he demanded. 'What are you leading up to?'
'I asked him,' said Lesley, 'I asked him the same thing this morning!' ' Laura Feathers is shot,’ said Dick.' You ring the door-bell.
1 tell you there's a murderer in the house - I tell you I've seen the murderer run in here - and I expect at least you'll want to do something about it Instead you say you'd rather sit down and talk a bit. May I repeat that there's a murderer in the house?' ' Is there ?' asked Dr Fell.
And now Dick noticed something which made the roots of his scalp stir. Dr Fell, in the doctor's own heavy way, was no less strung-up, no less poised and tense, than he was himself. Dick had a nervous sensation that something moved, something lurked in ambush: that, any moment now, the whole case might turn upside down again with the most appalling crash yet
'At risk of perhaps deserved assault and battery' - Dr Fell's voice seemed to come from far away - ' I should like to try your patience a little further.'
'Why should you do that?'
'Because I'm waiting for something.'
'You're waiting for what?'
Dr Fell ignored the question.
'A moment ago,' he continued, 'you made some precise and accurate deductions from the post office trap and its ugly sequel. Have you made any other deductions?'
Dick's throat felt dry.
'I think I've found out how an electric light can be made to go on in a room when the room's locked up on the inside.' He related the incident at his own cottage. 'Is that true too, Doctor?'
'Oh, yes,' returned Dr Fell, blinking at him with refreshed interest. 'Whang in the gold once more. But, come now!' He rapped the ferrule of his cane on the floor. 'If you get that far, isn't it possible to spur just a little farther and see the truth - the whole truth - about the murder of Sam De Villa?'
'No!'
'Why not?'
'Because the room remains locked up on the inside, whoever puts a shilling in the electric meter outside it!'
'True, of course. And yet...' Dr Fell's manner became vague. He puffed out his cheeks. 'What,’ he asked in an off-handed way, 'did you make of the row yesterday between Mr Earnshaw and Major Price?'
'Does that business matter, sir?'
'As evidence, no. As an interesting lead, yes. I think it does.'
Dick shook his head.
'I've heard that there was a row between Bill and Major Price at the shooting-range, because the major played a joke on Bill. But I haven't even heard what it was about.'
‘I have,' said Dr Fell. 'From Lord Ashe. I heard some very interesting things from Lord Ashe. Mr Earnshaw, I believe, rather fancies himself as a crack shot?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'He arrived at the shooting-range early yesterday afternoon, to show off his prowess before Mrs Earnshaw and a group of other ladies.' Dr Fell scratched the side of his nose. ' Major Price, with a very grave face, handed him a rifle loaded with blank cartridges. Mr Earnshaw blazed away six times at the target without scoring a hit on any part of it.'
Dr Fell eyed the floor as he went on:
'Major Price said, "Bad luck, my dear chap; you're off your form to-day." It was several minutes before Mr Earnshaw tumbled to the joke. And he didn't like it a bit. It was some time afterwards, you recall, that Mr Earnshaw accused Major Price of stealing the Winchester 61 rifle from the range - whereas the major intimated that the thief must have been Mr Earnshaw. Don't you find something rather suggestive in all that ?'
'No. I can't say I do. It's the sort of joke Major Price is always playing.'
'So!'said Dr Fell.
'But, if you're on the subject of Bill Earnshaw, it seems to me he made die most intelligent suggestion so far with regard to the locked room. I tried to sketch it out to you
this morning, but you didn't seem to pay much attention toil.'
'Forgive my scatterbrain,' apologized Dr Fell. 'What was the suggestion?' Dick waved his fists in the air.
' Who fired that damned rifle at Sam De Villa, at very nearly the sa
me lime Sam was poisoned?' he demanded. 'Bill suggested -and I agree with him - that, aside from the actual murderer, the person who fired the rifle is the most important figure in the case. Don't you agree?’
' In a way. Yes.'
'The marksman,' persisted Dick, 'could see into that room. He had a clear view of what went on in that sitting-room. All right! But you haven't tried to find out who he was, you haven't asked a question about him, you don't even seem to have any curiosity concerning him!'
Dr Fell raised a hand and called for silence.
'Now there,' he pointed with satisfaction, 'we have the crux of the whole matter. There we see the point at which the light went out, figuratively speaking. There we have the place at which a cloud of obfuscation (pray excuse me if I sound like a leading article in The Times), a cloud of obfuscation misted the wits of all detectives, and sent them hareing off in the wrong direction.'
He pointed at Dick with his cane.
'You say to me, "This is gross negligence. Why don't you try to find that marksman with the rifle, as well as trying to find the murderer?" Very good! Yes! But I can reply, with my hand on my heart, that this would be a waste of effort.'
Dick stared at him.
'A waste of effort? Why?'
'Because the marksman with the rifle, and the poisoner who killed De Villa with prussic acid, are one and the same person.'
Again the summons of the front door-bell shrilled out strongly, from the buzzer over their heads. Dick's own head was spinning. Dr Fell's words seemed quite literally to make no sense. He had a mad vision -derived from the cheaper thrillers, where anything is possible - of the murderer firing at Sam De Villa some fantastic bullet containing a hypodermic injection of prussic acid to pierce the victim's arm.
Again the door-bell shrilled. Lesley hastened to answer it; and, though Dick had meant to seize her arm and restrain her, she got away from him. From the corner of his eye he saw, as Lesley opened the front door, that the visitor was only Superintendent Hadley, and he could relax his vigilance. For he was blindly obsessed now, concentrated on Dr Fell, trying to grope closer to an explanation which he sensed as there yet always eluding him.
'Let's get this quite straight!' Dick pleaded. 'You say that the murderer ...'
Dr Fell spoke with toiling patience.
'The murderer,' he said, 'killed Sam de Villa by injecting a hypodermic of prussic acid into his arm.'
'In the sitting-room?'
'Yes. In the sitting-room.'
'And then?'
'Then the murderer slipped out of the sitting-room ...' 'Leaving the room all locked up behind him?' 'Yes. Leaving the room all locked up.' 'But how?'
'We're coming to that,' said Dr Fell imperturbably. 'I ask you merely to follow this elusive person's movements. The murderer injected the prussic acid, which would render De Villa unconscious almost at once but would take two minutes or more to render life extinct. The murderer then left the room -'
(Windows locked. Door locked and bolted.)
'- and put through a phone call to you, summoning you there, from the telephone outside in the hall. The murderer waited until you were on your way, and dropped a shilling into the electric meter: thus turning on the light in the sitting-room.
'Having now a good light to see by, the murderer ran across the lane, hid behind the wall, and with the stolen Winchester 61 fired in the direction of the window.'
'At a dead man?'
'At a dead or dying man, yes.'
'Even though die room was already locked up on the inside?' 'Yes.'
'But why?'
'Because the whole scheme could never have succeeded otherwise,' replied Dr Fell.
'Hoy!' interposed the bellow of an angry voice, which for some seconds had been trying to attract their attention. Dick was only now conscious of it.
Superintendent Hadley came into the dining-room. Over his shoulder they heard him say, 'Stand by,' before he closed the door after him. Hadley's countenance was grim and hard under the bowler hat, even with a suggestion of pallor which scared Dick still more. Hadley put his big hands together and cracked the knuckle-joints.
'Fell,' he said harshly, 'are you insane?'
Dr Fell, who had been keeping on Dick Markham eyes almost as hypnotic as those of the bogus Sir Harvey Gilman last night, did not reply.
' I've been expecting you,' Hadley went on,' to come over to the place where that woman was murdered. I came over here to find out what the devil was the matter with you. And it's a good thing I did.' It was not pallor in Hadley's face so much as an evil greyish tinge. 'Because I discover -'
'Not yet, Hadley,' said Dr Fell, turning his head round briefly. ' For God's sake not yet!'
'What do you mean, not yet? Miller tells me...'
Dr Fell got to his feet, with the imploring gestures of one who urges calm and serenity. He seemed trying to ignore Hadley, to shoo the superintendent away, to pretend that Hadley did not even exist And still he addressed Dick Markham.
'When I first came in here,' he said, 'I remarked - er - that it was a trifle warm. Harrumph. Yes. So it was. I drew back the curtains on these windows. But that, I am afraid, was not the main reason why I drew back the curtains from the windows, which, you notice, are open. Please observe the windows!'
Yet, as the big voice grew more rapid, Dick had an eerie conviction that Dr Fell was not in the least interested in the windows as such. He was talking at them, talking out of them, making his voice carry; any topic of conversation, it seemed, would do.
'You observe,' he insisted, 'the windows?'
'Look here!' roared Hadley.
'What about the windows?' demanded Dick Markham.
The three speeches seemed to rattle on top of each other.
'They are, as you see, ordinary sash-windows. Such as you or Hadley or I might have in our own homes. This one here is raised. But I pull it down... so.'
The window closed with a soft thud.
'When the window is unlocked, as it is now, you note that the fastening of the metal catch lies flat back: parallel with the window glass and the joining of the sashes, turned to the right. But suppose, my dear boy, I wish to lock the window?'
This was the point at which Dick noticed for the first time that Lesley Grant was not in the room.
She had not returned; she had not come with Hadley. And the Superintendent, with his hard face grim under its greyish complexion, stood like a man who intends trying a wrestling-bout with the devil. A sudden suspicion, which he thought he had fought successfully away from him, flowed back into Dick's mind ...
'Dr Fell,' he said, 'where is Lesley?'
Dr Fell pretended not to have heard. Perhaps he did not hear.
'Suppose, my dear boy, I wish to lock the window? I take hold of the thumb-grip of this metal catch. I pull it towards me and turn it towards my left. Like this! The catch swings round into its socket; it now projects straight out towards me, at right angles to the sash; and the window is locked.' 'Dr Fell, where is Lesley?'
'You observe, my dear boy, that the catch projects straight out towards me? And, therefore -'
He paused, having now no need to go on. For the last time in this case, but with a shattering distinctness which made the whole house shake, they heard the explosion of a gunshot.
Dr Fell, his big red face reflected with nightmare quality in the black shining glass of the window, did not turn round. They stood there for a second or two like three men paralysed. Then Dick slowly raised his eyes to the ceiling.
He knew where the explosion of that shot had come from. It had come from Lesley's bedroom, just overhead.
'You bloody idiot!' shouted Hadley. He stared at Dr Fell, and more than suspicion dawned in his eyes. 'You let this happen!'
Dr Fell's voice sounded muffled against the glass of the window.
' I let it happen. God help me, yes.' 'Suicide?'
' I rather think so. There was no other way out, you see.'
'No!' cried Dick Markham. 'No
!'
He was not sure whether he could move, for his legs seemed turned to water and he could not even trust his eyesight. The image of Lesley, of Lesley's brown eyes; the thought of Lesley, and how much he loved her, and would continue to love her until - the iron phrase rang again - until death did them part; these things caught at him and maddened him and spun his nerves into a whirlpool that would not let go.
Then he found himself running for the door.
Hadley was running too; they crashed into each other in the doorway as Hadley got the door open, but the events took place in such a void that Dick could not even hear what the superintendent was saying.
Bright lights shone in the hall. Bert Miller, moving rapidly for so heavy a man, was already on his way up the staircase at the rear. Bert's footsteps made no noise on the staircase carpet, or perhaps Dick Markham could not hear it.
In the same dreamlike state, amid a .blur of colour and light, he raced after Hadley up the stairs. They found Bert Miller, his mouth open, standing before the closed door of Lesley's bedroom. Neither Miller nor Hadley spoke loudly.
'This door's locked, sir.'
'Then break it in!'
'I don't know, sir, as we ought to do ...' 'Break it in, I tell you!'
It was a thin door. Miller stood back, opening his large shoulders. Then he studied the door, and had a better idea. As he assumed the position for a football kick-off, Dick Markham turned away. When the sole of Miller's number eleven boot struck that door just under the knob, Dick did not even hear it.
For Dr Fell was lumbering up the stairs, slowly and heavily, wheezing as he set his weight on the crutch-handled cane. And ahead of him, running lightly, came Lesley Grant.
Lesley stopped abruptly, her hand on the post at the top of the stairs. Her eyes widened.
'Dick!' she cried. 'What on earth is the matter with you?'
Crash! went the sole of Miller's boot, for the second time against that door.
'What's the matter with you, Dick? Why are you looking at me like that?'
Crash! went the sole of Miller's boot.
It was Dr Fell, painfully heaving himself up the last few steps and pausing to get his breath, who got the first inkling of what Dick might have been thinking. Dr Fell's vacant gaze sharpened into focus as he looked from Lesley to Dick Markham, and back again. His mouth fell open under the bandit's moustache, and his head drew back so far that another chin appeared.
Till Death Do Us Part dgf-15 Page 18