The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17

by John Dickson Carr

  "He's a year older than you," said Thorley.

  "I always say," observed Doris, elaborately turning her eyes away, "that a person is as old as they feel." Again her tone changed. "Go on, Mr. Holden! Say 'as old as they feel' is shocking grammar. You were always like that. Go on! Say it!"

  Holden laughed.

  "It's bad grammar, Miss Locke. I don't know about the 'shocking’ part."

  But the girl was regarding him strangely. Something different, something straightforward and likable, looked out of the blue eyes.

  "You—you were the one," she added suddenly, "who was so keen about Celia. And thought you were keeping your secret so well, only everybody knew it. And she was absolutely scatty about you. And now, things being what they are ... oh, God!" said Doris, her fingers tightening round her handbag. "I must go. Excuse me."

  And, startlingly, she almost ran for the door.

  "Wait!" cried Thorley, a bulky figure coming to life. "Let me send you in the car! Let me . . ."

  But the door had closed. They heard a quick, agitated rapping of high-heeled shoes fading away down the hall; then the hollow slam of the front door, which made one or two prisms tingle in the chandelier.

  ('Things being what they are," Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore, M.P.?)

  Thorley, solid and stolid looking, took half a dozen indecisive paces toward the door. Then he swung round, the lamp light sleek on his black hair, and stood jingling coins deep in his pockets. He began talking in a very hurried way.

  "Er—that was Doris Locke," he explained rapidly. "Daughter of old Danvers Locke. He's got a big place down in the country near Caswall. Fellow collects masks; all sorts of masks; even got a metal one worn by a German executioner hundreds of years ago; crazy hobby. But filthy with money— absolutely filthy—and, of course, in with all the right people in the business world. He ..."

  "Thorley! Oi!"

  Thorley broke off. "What did you say, old man?"

  "I know all that," Holden said gently. "I'm acquainted with Locke too, you know."

  "Yes. Of course. So you are." Thorley passed a hand across his forehead. "It's damn difficult," he complained. "Putting things back in their places again."

  "Yes. I've found that out."

  "Then you weren't killed in that famous attack? And didn't get a DSO?" "I'm afraid not."

  "You've rather let me down, young fellow," said Thorley, with the ghost of his jovial laugh. "I've been bragging about you all over the place." He frowned. "But look here: what did happen to you? Were you a prisoner of war or something? Even so, why did you stop writing? And why turn up like this when the war's been over for so long?"

  "I was in Intelligence, Thorley."

  "Intelligence?"

  'Yes. Certain things had to be done, and certain other things printed in the newspapers. ‘I’ll explain later. The point is . . ."

  "I suppose," Thorley said gloomily, "it was all eyewash, too, about your getting that baronetcy. Ah, well. Doesn't matter now. I remember thinking, though, it was a bit of bad luck: getting knocked off in the field only a couple of months after you'd come into a pot of cash, and could arrange your life in any way you liked. Poor old Celia . . ."

  "For Christ's sake, stop talking about it/"

  Thorley, startled and hurt, opened his eyes wide. For a moment he looked like an overgrown child.

  "I beg your pardon," said Holden, instantly getting a grip on himself. "I seem always, from the best of motives, to be doing or saying the wrong thing. No offense?"

  "Lord, no! Of course not!"

  "As you say, Thorley, that doesn't matter now. My story can wait. The point is, how are things with you?"

  For a moment Thorley did not reply. He wandered over to the large sofa beside which the lamp was burning, and sat down. He put his hands on his knees, and contemplated the floor. His face, with the handsome features rather too small for it, was as blank as the dark eyes. The house seemed very still, uncannily still. Not a breath of wind stirred in from the darkening garden.

  Holden laughed. "As I came in here tonight," he remarked, suddenly conscious that he was trying to make light conversation and wondering why, "as I came in here tonight, I was thinking about Mammy Two."

  "Oh?" Thorley glanced quickly sideways. "Why?"

  "Well," smiled Holden, "have you and Margot got any children yet? I think it was always a source of disappointment to Mammy Two that you didn't at least begin a family. Hang it all, Thorley, how's Margot? And, by the way, where is Margot?"

  Thorley's glance rested on him for a moment, and then moved across to the white marble mantelpiece on the other side of the room.

  "Margot's dead," he answered.

  CHAPTER III

  The shock of that announcement, the vague sense that Thorley had really said something else and that he had misheard the word, kept Holden dumb.

  No clock ticked in the room. There was an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, in front of the great dim Venetian mirror with its arabesques of tarnished goldwork, but that clock had been silent for many years. Holden's eyes moved over to the mirror, and across to a cabinet of Sevres porcelain against another walL and then back again to Thorley sitting there—his hands flat on his knees, his head again lowered— under the light of the buff-colored lamp.

  And now for the first time Holden noticed something else. Thorley's dark suit was a black suit; and his necktie, against the shiny white collar and white shirt, was also black.

  "Dead?"

  "Yes." Thorley did not look up.

  "But that’s impossible!" cried Holden, as though desperately trying to persuade him out of an unreasonable attitude. "Margot never had a day's illness in her life. How . . . when. . . ?"

  Thorley cleared his throat.

  "At Caswall. More than six months ago. Just before Christmas. We were all down at Caswall for Christmas."

  "But—what.. . ?"

  "Cerebral hemorrhage."

  "Cerebral hemorrhage? What's that?"

  "I don't know," Thorley said querulously. "If s something you die of." Holden could see that Thorley was moved, deeply moved, and his voice had thickened; but what sounded in that voice was a kind of irritation. "Confound it, talk to Dr. Shepton! You remember old Dr. Shepton? He attended her. I did all I could." He paused. "God knows I did."

  "I'm sorry, Thorley." Holden also spoke after a pause. "I know you don't want to talk about it So I won't say anything more, except that I haven't any words to express how . .. how . . ."

  "No, ifs all rightl" For the first time Thorley looked up. He said huskily: "Margot and I were—very happy."

  "Yes. I know."

  "Very happy," insisted Thorley, his fist clenched on his knee. "But it's all over now, ana I don't see any practical good to be gained by brooding on the matter." After breathing heavily for a few seconds, breathing noisily through small nostrils, he added: "I don't mind talking about it now. Only: don't ask me too much."

  "But what was it all about, Thorley? What happened?"

  Thorley hesitated.

  "It was at Caswall; did I tell you? Two days before Christmas. Margot and Celia and I, and a very fine chap named Derek Hurst-Gore—did you say something?"

  "No. Go on."

  "Anyway, the four of us drove over in the evening to Widestairs—that's Danvers Locke's house—for dinner and a bit of a party. There was Locke, and his wife, and Doris; and, by the way, an insufferably self-opinionated young ass who thinks he can make a living by slinging paint on canvas. His name's Ronald Merrick. He's got a calf-love for Doris; and, for some reason or other, Locke wants her to marry him."

  "Never mind about that, Thorleyl What about Margot?"

  Thorley's fist clenched tighter.

  "Well, we were a bit late in getting there; because the good old hot-water heater at Caswall, as usual in cold weather, went on strike; and Obey didn't get it repaired until next day. But the party was grand fun. We played games." Again he hesitated. "I didn't notice anything wrong with Margot. She was excited an
d overhearty, but that usually happened when she got involved in games. You know?"

  Holden nodded.

  The image in his mind of Margot—brown eyed, with the dimples in her cheeks—grew achingly clear. In his philosophy Margot was one of those simple souls, easily moved to laughter or tears, always blurting out something that shouldn't be blurted out, in connection with whom the idea of death is utterly incongruous.

  "Anyway," muttered Thorley, "we left the party very early. Eleven o'clock or thereabouts. We were all stone-cold sober, or near enough, at least. By half-past eleven we'd all turned in, or I thought we had.... Have—have you been to Caswall since the war?"

  "No. Not since your wedding. Somebody told me, in the summer after the blitz, it was to be taken over by the military."

  Thorley shook his head.

  "Oh, no," he said. He did not exactly smile, but a curious expression of complacency, almost of smugness, crept round his jowls; Holden had never seen it there before. "Oh, no. I saw to that. None of my relatives got hoicked into the services, either. You can wangle anything, my boy, if you know your way about.

  "But I was telling you. You remember the Long Gallery at Caswall? Margot and I," he moistened his lips, "had the suite of rooms on the floor above that. A bedroom and a sitting room each, with a bathroom between the two bedrooms, all in a line. That's where—that's where we were.

  "I didn't sleep very well that night I kept dozing off, and waking up again. About two o'clock in the morning I thought I heard somebody calling, or moaning and groaning, from the direction of Margot's rooms. I got up, and looked in the bathroom. But it was dark. I turned on the light there, and looked in her bedroom; but that was dark too and the bed hadn't been slept in. Then I saw a light under the door to her sitting room.

  "I went in there," said Thorley, "and found Margot, still dressed in her evening gown, lying all sprawled on her back across one of those chaise-longue things. She wasn't conscious, but she was sort of moving and raving. She was a funny color, too."

  Thorley paused, staring at the floor.

  "It scared me," he confessed. "I didn't want to wake anybody else up, so I nipped downstairs and phoned the doctor. Dr. Shepton was there in fifteen minutes. By that time Margot was partly conscious, but with throat constriction; and there was rigidity, you know; and she didn't seem to know much what was going on.

  "The doctor said it was brought on by nervous excitement, and probably not serious. We got her to bed. The doctor gave her a sedative, and said he'd be back in the morning. I sat and held her hand all night

  "But Margot didn't get better: she was worse. At half-past eight the doctor came back; I nipped down again and let him in. Poor old Shepton was looking pretty grim. He said he was afraid of cerebral hemorrhage: breaking of blood vessels in the brain, I think it is. It was very cold. Still nobody in tile house was awake yet At nine o'clock, as the sun was coming up, she just. . . died."

  There was a long silence.

  Thorley's last word fell piteously, with a small and plaintive simplicity. He looked very hard at his companion, as though longing to add something else; but Thorley decided against it Lifting his thick shoulders, he rose to his feet and went to one of the windows, where he stood staring out into the garden.

  "Shepton," he added, "wrote out the death certificate." "Oh?"

  "Never saw one of 'em before," remarked Thorley, jingling coins in his pocket "It's a thing like a gigantic check, with a counterfoil that the doctor keeps when he tears the certificate out and gives it to you. You're supposed to post it on to the registrar, but I forgot to."

  "I see," said Holden, who didn't see in the least

  Had he experienced, ever since he first entered this house tonight, a vague feeling of disquiet? A subconscious sense that something was wrong? Nonsense! Yet there it was: an instinct of black waters swirling, of dangerous images just out of view, and—what was worst and most irrational—the feeling that Celia was involved in it

  "I see," he repeated. "And is that all you have to tell me?"

  "Yes. Except that poor Margot was buried in the new family vault in Caswall churchyard. It was two days after Christmas. We . . ."

  Some strange note in Holden's voice, faintly jarring, had caught Thorley's attention in the midst of his absorption. Thorley stopped jingling coins in his pocket and turned around from the window.

  "What exactly do you mean, is that all I have to tell you?"

  Holden made a despairing gesture. "Thorley, I don't know! It's only ... I never had any idea Margot's health was as bad as that!"

  "She wasn't in bad health. She was in good health. The thing might have happened to anybody. Shepton said so."

  "Death from overexcitement at a party?"

  "Look here, Don. Have you any reason to doubt Dr. Shepton's ability, or his good faith?"

  "No, no, of course not! It's only that. . . that. . ."

  "You're shocked, old chap," said Thorley in a commiserating voice. "Of course you are. So were all of us, at first. It was sudden. It was tragic. It made us remember that," there was almost a blink of tears in his eyes, "that in the midst of life we are in death, and all that sort of business."

  Thorley shifted, as though hesitating to approach some fact that must be approached.

  "And there's another thing, Don," he went on, "I've arranged to go down to Caswall tomorrow. Only for a short visit, of course. This will be the first time any of us has been there since it happened. As a matter of fact, my boy, I'm thinking of selling the place."

  Holden stared at him.

  "Selling Caswall? When you've got the money to keep it up?"

  "Why not?" Thorley demanded.

  "There are four hundred years of reasons why not."

  "That's just the point," said Thorley in a different voice. "The place is unhealthy. It's unhealthy with age. All those portraits in the Long Gallery—they're unhealthy." He did not explain the reason for this last extraordinary statement "Besides, it can't be staffed properly. And we'll never get as good a price for the place as we'll get now."

  "How does Celia feel about it?"

  Thorley ignored this.

  "So, as I say," he persisted, "Celia and I are going down to Caswall tomorrow." He took a deep breath. "Under any other circumstances, my dear fellow, I'd be only too delighted to invite you to go along with us . . ."

  There was a long silence.

  "Under any other circumstances?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I gather," Holden said with great politeness, "I am not invited to Caswall."

  "Don, for heaven's sake don't misunderstand!"

  "What is there to misunderstand? But if Celia's going with you ..."

  "Don, that's Just it!" Thorley paused. "The fact is, I'd rather you didn't meet Celia." "Oh? Why not?"

  "Not just at the moment, anyway. Afterward, maybe—"

  "Thorley," said Holden, putting his hands in his pockets, "I'm quite aware that for the past few minutes, in your highly diplomatic way, you've been trying to tell me something. What are you trying to tell me? Why don't you want me to meet Celia?"

  "If s nothing, really. If s only . . ."

  "Answer me! Why don't you want me to meet Celia?"

  "Well, if you must know," Thorley replied calmly, "we're a little disturbed about the balance of her mind."

  Now the silence stretched out unendurably.

  Outside the circle of light thrown by the table lamp, the radiance across white-covered sofa and edges of rugs on a polished floor, the rest of the big drawing room had retreated into darkness. The mirror brought back from Italy by a seventeenth-century Devereux, the Sevres porcelain cabinet from the palace of Versailles, the little First Empire settee against another wall, had all faded into shadows. Up over the garden outside, seen through long door-windows, were a few bright stars and the hint of a rising moon.

  Donald Holden turned away and walked slowly round the room, inspecting each article without seeing it. His footsteps sounded with great dist
inctness. Thorley watched him. Still without speaking, Holden circled around until he faced Thorley from beside the lamp.

  "Are you trying to tell me," he said, "that Celia is insane?"

  "No, no, no!" scoffed Thorley, with cheery, false heartiness. "Not as serious as that, of course. Nothing, I'm sure, that a good psychiatrist couldn't cure; that is, if she'd only go to one. At least," he hesitated, "I hope it's no more serious than that."

  Then Holden did what Thorley perhaps least expected. He started to laugh. Thorley was shocked.

  "If you see anything funny in this!" Thorley said reproachfully.

  "Yes. I do see something funny in it."

  "Oh?"

  "In the first place," said Holden, "I don't believe a word of it" The idea of the gentle, gray-eyed Celia as mentally incompetent was so grotesque that he laughed again. "In the second place . . ."

  "Well?"

  "When you started all these devious cat-footed tactics of approach, I thought you were trying to get rid of me so as to leave a clear field for the excellent Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore."

  "I never had any such idea!" cried Thorley, in obviously genuine astonishment "Though, mind you," he added on reflection, "Celia might do worse if—if she were in a state to marry anybody. He kept his seat when the Conservatives went out and he's going to go far. Whereas (if you'll excuse my saying so, old man) you're not much of a catch; now are you?"

  "Agreed," said Holden. A cold shock had gone through him at those words, "if she were in a state to marry anybody." The shock cleared his wits; it stung him alert, and made him very steady. "But never mind Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore. Let's get back to this question of Celia's insanity."

  Thorley made a fussed gesture.

  "Don't say that word! I don't like it!"

  "Well, lef s call it her mental disturbance. What form does that disturbance take?"

  Thorley let his glance stray away; as though he were trying, without turning around, to look out of the window behind him.

  "She's—saying things." "Saying what things?"

  "Things that are impossible. And crazy. And—well, pretty horrible," muttered Thorley. Suddenly he looked back at Holden, his face whitish in gloom. "I'm very fond of Celia, Don. More so than you'll ever guess, if you only knew the whole facts of this business. There mustn't be any scandal.