' Great Scott, my dear fellow!' he said in a tone of Gargantuan distress. 'You weren't under the impression ... it hadn't occurred to you...?'
Crash! went Miller's boot for the last time. The lock ripped out; the thin door, buckling, flew open and rebounded with such violence that it tore loose the lower hinge.
Dick did not answer Dr Fell. He put his arms around Lesley, and gripped her so tightly that she cried out for breath.
They heard the creaking of Dr Fell's shoes as he walked slowly down the hall and joined Hadley at the shattered door. Hadley, Miller, and Dr Fell looked into the bedroom. The lights inside showed a faint tinge and mist of powder-smoke which drifted out past those three watching faces. Dr Fell lumbered round, and creaked back again.
' I suppose you'd better go and have a look,' he said. 'Lying in there, almost in the same spot where Cynthia Drew must have been lying when you found her knocked out...'
Dick found his voice.
'Cynthia? Then it was Cynthia after all?'
'Good God, no!' said Dr Fell.
After a look of genuine surprise that such a notion should occur, Dr Fell fastened his hand on Dick's shoulder. He walked him down to the doorway where the bright light poured out, and Hadley and Miller made way for them.
Dr Fell motioned Dick to enter.
Swept and garnished was the bedroom, the curtains on its front windows drawn fully back to the summer night, and neat except for the sprawled figure near the foot of the bed, neat except for the .38 calibre automatic pistol lying beside it, neat except for the spreading blotch on the chest of a human being whose lungs still whistled thinly to draw breath. Dr Fell's voice spoke at Dick's ear.
It said:
"There's the only person who could have committed both murders - Dr Hugh Middlesworth.'
CHAPTER 20
THAT happened on the night of Friday, June nth. It was the afternoon of Sunday the 13th that a little group composed of Dr Fell, Hadley, Lesley Grant, and Dick Markham drove out to a certain ill-omened cottage in a police-car. Hadley was writing his final report; the details had to be checked; and so they heard die whole story.
Neither Lesley nor Dick made any comment until they entered the sitting-room. The face of Dr Middlesworth -harassed, patient, thin-haired on top, very intelligent but cold now in death — remained always before them.
When they entered the sitting-room, where Dr Fell occupied the sofa and Hadley the big chair at the writing-table with his notebook, two voices spoke at last.
'Dr Middlesworth 1' exclaimed Dick. 'But how he did it '
'Dr Middlesworth!' breathed Lesley. 'And why he did it, trying to throw the blame on me...!'
Dr Fell, who had lighted a cigar with great concentration, shook out the match sharply.
'No, no, no!' he protested.
'What do you mean by that?'
'The thing we must grasp,' said Dr Fell, in the same toiling way, 'is that there was never the slightest intention of throwing the blame on Miss Grant. That's what we were expected to believe; that's what we were meant to fall for. We were meant to assume that De Villa's murder was carried out by someone who thoroughly believed in "Sir Harvey Gilman", who accepted him as the original Home Office pathologist, and who believed Lesley Grant to be a poisoner. Therefore - do you see? - therefore the one person we could not possibly suspect was the man who doubted "Sir Harvey" from the first, and, in fact, brought me in to prove him an impostor!
'Therein lies the whole ingenuity of this crime.'
Dr Fell's cigar was not drawing to his liking. He struck another match and lit it more carefully.
'H'mf. Yes. So. Let me tell you about this, step for step, just as the evidence presented itself to me.
'At an unearthly hour on Friday morning, a mild-mannered man of intelligent aspect and harassed ways came rushing over to Hastings in his car. He routed me out of bed, and introduced himself as Dr Hugh Middlesworth, G.P., of Six Ashes. He poured out the story of the night, saying he had reason to suspect "Sir Harvey" of being an impostor.
'Was I acquainted with the real Sir Harvey Gilman? Yes, I was. Was the real Sir Harvey a little thin man of fifty-odd, with a bald head? No, certainly not. And that was that.
'"Well," said Middlesworth to me, "this impostor has been scaring a friend of mine named Markham with a damnable pack of lies about hisfiancée. Will you come over to Six Ashes with me - now - and expose the blighter?’"
Dr Fell made a hideous face.
'Naturally I agreed. Oh, ah! My chivalry was stirred. I rose and roared to the relief of a lady in distress and a young man racked by horrors. So we bowled back into the High Street of Six Ashes: only to be greeted by Major Price with the news that Sir Harvey Gilman had been found dead in exactly the same circumstances as his own imaginary cases.
'Wow, ladies and gentlemen! I repeat: wow!
' Middlesworth seemed dumbfounded. So was I.'
Here Dr Fell, assuming a look of powerful earnestness, pointed the end of the cigar at Dick and leaned forward on the sofa.
' Please note,' he said,' that first-off this original theory -Miss Grant to be made scapegoat by somebody who had swallowed "Sir Harvey's" yarn - came from Middlesworth. He and I drove out here to this cottage at shortly past nine o'clock, where we met you and Mr Earnshaw. And I distinctly recall announcing that the suggestion came from Middlesworth. Do you remember?'
Dick nodded.
'Yes. I remember.'
' I accepted that theory,' said Dr Fell, spreading out his hands. ' I took it unto myself. At first glance it seemed the only possible explanation. Only one small thing about it bothered me; and I started to mention this before thinking it more prudent to hold my tongue.
'Now, Mr Markham, "Sir Harvey's" tale of a notorious female poisoner was hand-tailoredfor you. It was scaled for you. It was directed solely at you. It was spun for somebody who would be ... would be ...'
'Go on,' Dick interrupted bitterly. 'Say it. Gullible.'
Dr Fell considered this.
'Not gullible, no. But emotionally concerned, emotionally strung-up, and imaginatively receptive to just such a horror-tale as you heard. Very well! That's fair enough! But why is the impostor so casual about telling all this nonsense in front of the local G.P., who isn't emotionally concerned or receptive, and who might upset his apple-cart?
'His attitude towards Middlesworth was rather curious, even by Middlesworth's own showing. He didn't try to hypnotize Middlesworth as he tried to hypnotize you. He didn't try to impress Middlesworth. He didn't seem to care about Middlesworth. He didn't even seem to notice Middlesworth.'
Dick sat up.
'That's true!' Dick declared, remembering the scene in this same room on Thursday night. 'De Villa treated the fellow as a piece of furniture. He got annoyed when Middlesworth spoke, and tried to - what do I want to say? - brush him off.'
Dr Fell smoked reflectively.
'Thus it occurred to my low suspicious mind,' he said, 'briefly to wonder whether Middlesworth might not know a good deal more than he pretended. Whether he might not be, in short, a kind of accomplice.'
'Accomplice?' cried Lesley. Dr Fell waved her to silence.
'At this time, of course, I couldn't guess what the impostor's game was. But this wonder about Middlesworth was strengthened only a few minutes later, when you' - he looked at Dick - ' prompted by Earnshaw's worries about the rifle, told me the full story of the garden-party the day before.
'Two things emerged from that recital. The first was the impostor's phenomenal success as a fortune-teller. And, mind you, he didn't say to his clients such vague things as, "You are good-natured but strong-willed; beware of business ventures during Lent." No, by thunder! He had real information, facts in plenty about everybody! Where did the impostor get all that information, unless we presupposed someone also in on the secret? In short, an accomplice.
'The second thing to emerge from the account of the garden-party was rather damning. I mean the mystery of the vanishing rifl
e.'
Dick took Lesley's hand.
'But the rifle did vanish, confound it!' he protested. 'I suppose you're going to say the person who stole it was Middlesworth?'
'Oh, yes.'
'But how? The only people who came anywhere near that shooting-range were Major Price and Bill Earhshaw and Dr Middlesworth and Lesley and myself. And we're all willing to swear none of us could have taken the rifle. As for Middlesworth, he helped carry De Villa to the motorcar in plain sight of everybody when he went away from there! How did he manage to pinch the rifle? As I said to Bill Earnshaw, you can't stick a rifle in your pocket or shove it under your coat.'
'No,' agreed Dr Fell. 'But you can shove it into a bag of golf-clubs, and carry it away absolutely unnoticed. And Middlesworth, you informed me, was carrying a bag of golf-clubs.'
There was a long silence. Superintendent Hadley, writing away methodically at the table, lifted his head to smile slightly. Dick, remembering only too well Dr Middlesworth, tramping back from the golf-hazard with that heavy bag slung over his shoulder - the conspicuous, unnoticed golf-bag - Dick Markham swore with some comprehensiveness.
'The old blighter,' observed Hadley, indicating Dr Fell, 'does get an idea or two sometimes. That's why I let him rampage on.'
'Thank'ee,' said Dr Fell, with absent-minded dignity. He squinted in cross-eyed fashion at his cigar, and turned back to Dick.
‘Middlesworth, even at that early hour, already appeared in very curious and fishy colours. He was the only one who could have stolen the rifle. And then...
'You and Middlesworth drove back to the village in his car, he to his surgery and you to see Miss Grant. I went into this cottage here' - he swept his hand round - 'to look my first on the scene of the crime. Here I discovered something which spiritually raised my hat to human ingenuity; for I discerned a way in which the locked-room trick might have been worked.'
‘Well ?' asked Lesley.' How ?'
Dr Fell did not immediately answer this.
'While I was tinkering with various things in this room,' he continued, 'Hadley arrived. Hadley took one look at the corpse and said," My God, it's Sam De Villa" He then went on, as you afterwards heard, to give me a sketch of De Villa's career. And he told me something which made me certain the person we were after was Middlesworth. For, do you see, Sam De Villa really had studied medicine.'
'Came within six months,' Hadley amplified, 'of getting his degree.'
Again Dr Fell pointed the cigar at Dick.
'Think back,' he requested. 'I asked Middlesworth, very early in the morning, and you yourself asked him in my hearing, what was the first thing which made him suspicious that "Sir Harvey Gilman" was an impostor. Remember?’ 'Yes.'
'Middlesworth's reply went something like this. He said he had questioned the supposed Sir Harvey about one of the tatter's famous cases. And "Sir Harvey," Middlesworth informed us, "made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit," Middlesworth declared, "because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers."
'Now that just wasn't possible. Sam De Villa, impersonating Sir Harvey Gilman in earnest, never would and never could have made such a medical howler as that. It wasn't in character; it wasn't in sense!
' Therefore Middlesworth himself was lying.'
'But why?'
Here Dr Fell glanced across at Hadley, whose pencil continued to travel across the pages of the notebook.
'Have you got Middlesworth's confession there, Hadley?'
From beside the chair Hadley picked up a brief-case and opened it He took out a flimsy typewritten sheet, enclosed in a blue folder and signed at the bottom with a blurred wavering scrawl. He carried this across to Dr Fell, who weighed it in his hand.
Against the bright sunshine which poured into the room through two windows, one shattered and the other with a bullet-hole, Dr Fell's countenance was heavy and depressed and lowering.
' Middlesworth dictated this,' he explained, 'just before he died on Friday night It's an ugly story, if you like. But it's an understandable and sincere and horribly human story.'
'Damn it all,' Dick Markham burst out, 'that's the trouble. I liked Hugh Middlesworth!'
'So did I,' said Dr Fell. 'And in a way you were very right to like him. Anyone who rids the world of slugs like Sam De Villa deserves no small degree of gratitude. If he hadn't lost his head and shot that inoffensive post-mistress-'
'You'd have covered up for him, I suppose?' inquired Hadley with sardonic dryness. 'As it was, you let him commit suicide?'
Dr Fell ignored this.
' Middlesworth's story,' he said, 'is a very simple one. Do you recall Hadley saying that gentry like Sam De Villa will use any weapon, anything, including blackmail,- when they think they can bring off a big haul ?'
'You mean it was blackmail in this case?' asked Lesley.
Dr Fell weighed the typewritten sheet in his hand.
'Hugh Middlesworth was in a position of painful respectability. But he liked respectability. He liked it almost as much as -' Dr Fell looked at Lesley, coughed, and looked away again. 'He had a "county" wife, a good-sized family, and many obligations.
' But he hadn't got to that state without pain. Nine years ago, when he was hard up and desperate, before Six Ashes and respectability, he took a certain job. It was a job in a rather squalid London nursing-home specializing in illegal operations. Middlesworth was the doctor who performed those operations. Sam De Villa knew that, and could prove it.
'Sam, with designs on Miss Grant's jewellery, came here and tackled Middlesworth. Middlesworth hadn't the ghost of a notion that Sam was really a medical man like himself. He knew Sam merely as a crook, and a smooth one.
'" Look here," said Sam. " I’m coming to Six Ashes impersonating somebody or other; I'm going to get that jewellery; and you're going to help me." The already-harassed Middlesworth was rather desperate. "I'm not going to sponsor you," said Middlesworth. "When you disappear with the jewellery they'll know I was implicated; I'd just as soon you blew the gaff about the other thing. So I'm ruddy well not going to sponsor you."
'"Maybe not,'‘ says Sam coolly. "But you're going to help me, and first of all you're going to tell me everything about this district and its people." So the background unrolled itself to this clever, pouncing Mr De Villa. Richard
Markham, wildly in love with Lesley Grant. Engagement imminent! Engagement certain! Young man a writer of sensational imaginative plays dealing with the minds of. murderers, especially poisoners...
'Sam constructed his scheme with slickness and ease. He took this cottage. And with dazzling cheek he introduced himself, under terms of the deepest secrecy, to the Chief Constable of the county as Sir Harvey Gilman.
"Then came the garden-party. News of the engagement of Lesley Grant to Richard Markham was winging through the place: even, assisted by Mrs Rackley, news of the invitation to dinner for Friday night. At the garden-party where he played fortune-teller, Sam decided it was time to act.
'What the self-confident Sam didn't realize was that in Hugh Middlesworth he was dealing with a man every bit as intelligent as himself. And Middlesworth was sick and desperate. He'd thought the past was forgotten: but De Villa turned up out of it. Here was this albatross round his neck, likely to continue there. Always threatening! Always disturbing his sleep! Always a nightmare, absent or present, always threatening respectability...'
Again Dr Fell, in some discomfort, coughed loudly as he glanced away from Lesley.
' Can't you understand that feeling, Miss Grant?'
'Yes,' said Lesley. And she shivered.
'Middlesworth decided’ Dr Fell said simply, 'that De Villa was going to die. And Middlesworth very nearly got the opportunity to kill him just after the garden-party on Thursday afternoon. Now watch the events take form!'
Adjusting his eyeglasses, spilling much cigar-ash, Dr Fell took the typewritten confession and ran his fingers down its lines. His lips moved growlingly as he
searched for the proper place. Then he read aloud from it.
'... De Villa so upset Miss Grant in the fortune-teller's tent that she screamed and pulled the trigger of the rifle when Major Price happened to joggle her arm. I'm sure it was an accident.'
' It was an accident!' cried Lesley.
'... I saw at once De Villa had only got a flesh-wound. But he fainted from shock, and everybody thought he was dying. I saw how I could kill the swine then, if only I could get him alone. That's why I sneaked the rifle into my golf-bag and kept the bag slung over my shoulder when Major Price and I carried him to the car. I meant to take him home, put him under an anaesthetic, extract the real bullet, and fire one from the same rifle which should kill him. People would think it was the same bullet, the result of an accident...'
'And they ruddy well would have!' said Dick Markham.
'... but it was no good, it wouldn't work, because I couldn't get rid of Major Price no matter what I said. So I had to think of something else.'
Dr Fell weighed the confession in his hand, and then put it down beside him on the sofa.
'And,' Dr Fell commented, 'he did think of something else. The real scheme was handed to him - handed to him on a plate - while he and Dick Markham and Sam De Villa sat here in this very room on Thursday night. Sam was telling the terrible story of the notorious poisoner, and laying plans to snaffle that safe full of jewels. Middlesworth sat quietly by. But someone suggested how he could kill De Villa and get away with it'
'Who suggested it to him?' asked Dick.
' Sam De Villa himself.'
'Sam De Villa?'
'So Middlesworth says. Will you cast your mind back to that scene?'
It was very easy to recreate: De Villa in the easy-chair, with the light of the tan-shaded lamp shining down. Middlesworth silent and thoughtful in the basket-chair drawing at an empty pipe. The summer night outside the windows, rustling, with the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close. And the very thoughtfulness of Middles-worth's face returned with ugly clarity now,
Till Death Do Us Part dgf-15 Page 19