The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17

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The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17 Page 8

by John Dickson Carr


  "Ah," whispered the devil, "but believe what?"

  For in whichever direction he wrenched them his thoughts always snapped back, an elastic released, to that scene of last night: of the playground, and Obey mumbling out, "Ifs true." Of Celia, though he tried to stop her, rushing out of the place and running for home without another word. Of Obey lumbering after her. Of Dr. Shepton, mortally offended, speaking only to wish him a freezing good night before marching away.

  And how he himself (as somehow the villain of the piece) had tried to get a word with Celia, only to be met at the front door of Number 1 Gloucester Gate by an injured-looking Thorley who tactfully barred his way. Even so, Thorley's first words had been those of business.

  "Look, Don," Thorley had said confidentially. "Are you seriously thinking of buying Caswall?"

  "What’s that?—Oh! Yes, of course."

  "Then here's the point" Thorley, guarding his voice, peered into the hall behind him; the light shone on his sleek black hair. "Would you mind going down in the train like Obey and Cook? There's plenty of room in the car, of course; only Doris Locke to go with us. But if s better you don't see Celia for a little while. You've played Old Harry with her tonight"

  'I’ve played Old Harry with her?"

  "Yes. Speaking as a friend of yours .. ."

  "A friend of mine, eh? After all those lies you rattled off tonight? 'Celia isn't at home.' 'Celia's forgotten all about you.'"

  "One day, old man," said Thorley, looking at him very steadily, "you may realize it was for Celia's good and yours. However," he shrugged, "just as you like. It's your funeral."

  His funeral.

  Standing now under the beech tree, with evening coming on and Caswall reflected dingy yellow-brown in the waters of its moat, Holden faced an issue which was quite clear-cut. It might be maddening, it might be incomprehensible; but it was quite clear-cut

  Either Thorley Marsh, whom he had once considered his closest friend, was an unctuous hypocrite who had married Margot Devereux for her money, turned on her savagely, and then, for some motive as yet not established, had either killed her or driven her to suicide.

  Or, on the other hand, Celia Devereux—whom he loved; whom he would continue to love—had dreamed all these accusations out of a diseased fancy, and was an unbalanced person who might become dangerously insane.

  There was no alternative. You had to take your choice.

  God!

  Holden banged his fist against the rough, gnarled bark of the beech tree. He fished another cigarette out of his pocket, lit it rather unsteadily, and blew out smoke while he considered.

  Of course, there could be no doubt on which side he stood. He loved Celia. But reason backed him up as well. He could tell himself, calmly and with no trace of wishful thinking, that he knew Celia to be in no way abnormal and that he believed everything she said...

  "Are you sure?" whispered the devil.

  Well, almost sure; but that was just the difficulty in this matter. Last night, or during the thin morning hours when he had sat wide awake at the window of his hotel room, he had tried to find the factor in this affair which had kept him (normally an even-tempered person) always in a state of exasperation.

  And it was this: that nobody would listen to evidence.

  You said, "This case"; and they said, "What case?" If they began with the assumption of Celia's malady, then any word she spoke became suspect. Lucidly she had given a detailed account—of anger between Thorley and Margot, of a poison bottle in a cupboard, of Margot's changing a silver gown for a black velvet one in the middle of the night, of a burned diary, of the poison bottle's disappearance—and all this Dr. Shepton smiled away to nothingness.

  Interpret that account, then! Explain it how you like, but try to explain it! Say it is moonshine, summer shadow, man-dragora dream; but at least, in the name of decency, give it the fairness of an investigation! He himself had heard his friend Frederick Barlow, the eminent K.C. speak of a certain sharp-witted gentleman named Gideon Fell. If only ...

  At this point in his meditations, slumped back again against the tree, Holden heard someone call his name.

  He looked up, and saw Miss Doris Locke.

  She was standing almost to her knees in the thick grass, some distance away from him in the field, a vivid little figure against the massed trees of the carriage drive westward. Doris was smiling at him rather archly; but the smile faded.

  For a moment they appraised each other. Doris, he remembered, had come down from London in the car with Celia and Thorley; she must have heard a good deal about last night's events.

  Then Doris hurried toward him, swishing in the long grass. In her light blue frock, with the elaborately dressed hair golden in the gold evening light, she had the round chin of a girl but very much the round figure of a woman. She had assumed an air of brightness and alertness, a careless poise; but behind this he sensed (why was it there?) a strong nerve tensity.

  "Hello, Don Dismallo," she said.

  He returned her smile.

  "Hello, Mrs. Pearcey," he answered.

  Doris looked at him, startled, the blue eyes narrowing. Then her eyes opened wide, and she laughed.

  "You mean," she exclaimed, "the night I played the part of Mrs. Pearcey in the Murder game at home? Yes. They tell me I was rather good." She glanced down over herself, not without approval. "That was last Christmas. It was the night when—" Doris stopped.

  "Yes," he agreed, without the appearance of much interest, "it was the night Margot Marsh died."

  "So very sad, wasn't it," murmured Doris in a perfunctory voice. "When did you get here?"

  Holden studied her.

  Doris Locke unquestionably knew that Celia Devereux was supposed to be suffering from some sort of mental distress; probably many others knew this as well. But that the details of Celia's accusations were known to Doris (or Sir Danvers, or Lady Locke, or Derek Hurst-Gore, for that matter) Holden very much doubted. Celia hadn't told this to anybody except Dr. Shepton and "the family," meaning Thorley and Obey and Cook; and these people were interested only in hushing it up.

  Remember the old service rule: Handle with gloves until you're sure of your evidence!

  "When did I get here?" he repeated. "By the six o'clock train. Thorley met me with the car."

  Doris looked at the ground. "Have you—have you seen Celia today?"

  "No."

  "Not at all?"

  "No." His burnt-down cigarette had begun to scorch his fingers; he threw it away into the hot grass, where it sent up a straight line of smoke. "Celia is resting, by doctor's orders. Thorley and I have just finished dinner alone."

  "I . . . I . . ." Despite her inner emotional preoccupation, quick sympathy made Doris's Up tremble. "By the way, what do I call you?"

  "Call me Don Dismallo. It's as good a name as any. Lord knows I feel like it."

  Doris's sympathy increased.

  "About—Celia?" she asked.

  "Yes, that. And things. Just things!"

  "I know," Doris nodded wisely. She stepped softly into the cleared space under the big tree. It was as though, with those few words, a deep understanding had been established between them.

  "There are other people who feel like that, Don Dismallo," Doris said.

  "Incidentally, Doris: on that night of the Murder game, you don't happen to remember what Margot was wearing?"

  Doris stiffened. "Why do you want to know that?"

  "Well, Celia"—he saw her sympathy return again—"Celia said Margot bad never looked more beautiful than on that night, in what she was wearing."

  "Oh?" murmured Doris.

  "So I just wondered what she was wearing. But," he gestured, that was over six months ago, so naturally you wouldn't remember. Since you had no special reason for remembering."

  "I remember perfectly well," Doris told him coldly. "Mrs. Marsh was wearing some kind of silvery thing. It didn't suit her at all. I don't mean she wasn't very good looking; of course she was, for her
age; I simply mean it didn't suit her."

  "A silvery dress. You're sure it wasn't a black velvet one?"

  "I'm positive it wasn't Positive! But..."

  A cloudy memory stirred at the back of Doris's blue eyes. Holden, with a flash of instinct, was after it

  "Margot’s death must have been a great shock to Thorley," he said. "And to your family, since you were all such great friends. I suppose he rang up your parents, after it happened?"

  "Oh, yes." Her eyes were far away. "Early in the morning!"

  "And perhaps you all went over to Caswall?"

  "Yes. Straightaway. Father and mother," the pretty face darkened, "didn't want me to go. Funnily enough, Don Dismallo," she laughed a little, "that's exactly what I was thinking about! While they were talking to—to Thorley . . ."

  "Yes, Doris?"

  "I ran up the back stairs and peeped into That Woman's room. Just for a second, you know. And there was a black velvet dress on a chair at the foot of the bed. And gray stockings. Nylons. I noticed them, you see; they were nylons."

  Bang had gone the shot, straight to the center of the target

  Holden, trying to breathe freely and easily, glanced toward the yellowish-brown front of Caswall. The flap of a pigeon's wings, in a white flicker from the stable courtyard long disused except for one garage, rose distinctly across the field. There was a small splash and ripple from the moat.

  Here was Celia's story—"unbalanced" Celia, damn them! —confirmed by a girl who doubtless had no idea she was confirming it, and who would be the one witness (for reasons of her own) to remember everything about Margot

  "Thorley..." he began.

  "What about Thorley?" Doris asked quickly.

  (

  He smiled. "You're rather fond of Thorley, aren't you?"

  "Ye-es. I dare say I am." She spoke offhandedly, with that nineteen-year-old reluctance, combined with the rush of blood to the face, which conceals sheer adoration. It disquieted Holden and rather frightened him.

  'You—you say," Doris added, "Thorley’s over there now. You've finished dinner?"

  "Yes. And a very lavish dinner it was."

  "Of course. It would be." Then Doris let herself go. "Thorley knows his way about, thanks. He tells me he's got the black market lined up just like that." She drew an invisible line in the air. "If there's something he wants, then nothing will stop him from getting it And I don't think there's anything he can't do, either. Even to—walking on logs."

  "Even to... what?"

  "If s nothing, really. But it was on the day you were talking about, the afternoon before the Murder party. You remember the trout stream that runs through our grounds?"

  "I think I've seen it."

  "Well, Thorley and Ronnie and I were out after the big blue trout that hangs about in the deep pool under the sycamore." (Now it was the girl speaking, rather than the poised, arch, alert young lady.) "That blue trout, you can't catch him; he's too wily; but you can have some fun with him. There was a thin log over the pool. Ronnie tried nonchalantly to walk across it, and only fell in with a splash. Thorley said, 'Come, nowl' And Thorley walked across the log, and then turned around and walked back with his eyes shut Mind you, with his eyes shut."

  Holden only nodded gravely.

  "I mean," said Doris, pulling herself together, "that’ s how I like a man to be!" She surveyed Holden. "You know, Don Dismallo," she said abruptly, "you're sort of," she groped for a word, "sort of sympathetic."

  "Am I, Doris? Thanks."

  "And I never used to think you were."

  "Weill You've grown up now."

  "Of course I have." Though she still held one shoulder elaborately high, as though aloof, she came closer. The blue eyes were angry. "You—you said you were down in the dumps about Celia."

  "Yes. But you've helped me."

  "I've helped you?"

  "By George, you have!"

  "Anyway," Doris disregarded this, "I told you you weren't the only one. I mean, it was too utterly absurd of my father and mother to be absolutely livid just because I chose to go to London on my own for a few days!" Doris laughed. Her whole face and expression became genuinely, subtly mature. "The things I could teach my own mother!" she said.

  "I see. But..."

  "But," interrupted Doris, with a short gesture, "their getting into a flat spin about a few days in town was the last straw. It was, really. And, what’s more, tonight I'm going to end it."

  "End what?"

  "You'll see," answered Doris, nodding her head in a meaning fashion. "There are certain secrets about certain people, and maybe dead people as well, that ought to have an airing. And they're going to get one. Tonight."

  "Meaning what?"

  "You'll see," Doris promised again. "I'm off now, Don Dismallo. You're nice." "Here! Doris! Stop a bit!"

  But she was already running lightly through the long grass toward the house, her short skirt swinging at her knees.

  There was going to be trouble, an explosion of some kind. Under that assumption of casualness Doris was in a feverish state of mind. Holden's eyes strayed toward the left. Far over there westward, hidden now by the trees of the carriage drive, lay Caswell Church of so many memories, and the churchyard sloping up into a hill; and, a mile or more beyond that hill on the road to Chippenham, the large modern house called Widestairs.

  Doris Locke had stamped over here, flaming. "It was too utterly absurd of my father and mother to be absolutely livid just because I chose to go to London on my own for a few days!" And then that look as she laughed and added: "The things I could teach my own mother!"

  Trouble!

  Dusk was settling softly in clear, warm air. Caswall's narrow windows had lost their reflected light. The floor of the stone bridge across the moat, built there when the south front had been remodeled in the eighteenth century, showed whitish against darkening water.

  Farther down, where sparrows hopped, another and smaller bridge spanned the moat to the stable yard. Holden moved slowly forward toward the house. The dingy gilt hands of the stable-yard clock, facing eastward and only to be seen when you drew near, indicated twenty minutes to nine.

  "There are certain secrets about certain people that ought to be given an airing."

  Confound it, why worry about Doris? After all, hadn't she given good proof that Celia had been telling the truth?

  Holden's footsteps crunched on the white gravel of the drive. Beyond the bridge across the moat, thirty feet broad and faintly rippling, a double flight of stone stairs led up to an arched front door. Those stairs were necessary. Caswall's inhabited floors lay above the semi-underground rooms and cloisters, bleached museum pieces now, where the first abbess had held office over her nuns.

  And, as Holden crossed the bridge and ascended the steps, the whole breath and atmosphere of the past reached out and drew him in. When he had closed the front door (which worked on a ponderous mechanism of bars and bolts always locked at nightfall), the atmosphere rose about him like water. Caswall, despite its antiquity, was not dead. It breathed; it stirred in sleep; it inspired dreams.

  Dreams. Celia's dreams...

  The renovated great hall, all scrubbed white in carven stone, contained a few bits of more modern furniture to relieve its chill. But several carpets only patched it; a big wine-colored sofa looked lost in it; a brass candelabrum became a mere toy. Margot and Thorley, Holden reflected, had held their wedding reception here. So had other Devereux girls, amid stringed music plucked and twanging, years before the accession of Queen Elizabeth.

  Nobody here now; nobody stirring.

  He turned to his right, and walked down the echoing length into the high, echoing Painted Room: green paneled except for its murals, the colors of whose figures were almost lost in the fading light.

  Nobody here, either. But over there across from him, in the north-east comer, a short flight of carpeted stairs in an embrasure led up to the Long Gallery.

  "Has Celia"—Dr. Shepton's voice returned t
o him as clearly as though the stoop-shouldered doctor, no fool, were here in the flesh—"has Celia told you about the night, immediately after her sister's death, when she saw ghosts walking in the Long Gallery?"

  Celia wasn't mad! She wasn't! Celia was here now, amid the spell and the dreams of Caswall: "resting," they said. If she had beheld anything (anything, say, that crept out of these walls between the lights), it had been no delusion. Suppose he, Donald Holden, were to go over there now; and slip up the carpeted stairs to the Long Gallery; and suppose he were to see ... ?

  He went, making hardly a sound on the steps.

  The gallery, appearing narrow because of its great length, stretched from south to north. A single drugget of brownish carpet ran along the wooden floor to where, at the far end, another short flight of steps under an arch led up into the Blue Drawing Room. The Long Gallery was lighted, on the eastern side, by three very large oriel windows, deeply embrasured, with tall lights and diamond panes.

  Modem upholstered chairs and smoking tables—as a rule in the window embrasures—were set out to give the effect of a bunging room. There were bookcases. But dominating the Long Gallery, vivid and powerful, loomed the line of portraits which stretched along the western wall. The light was still clear, though fading; nothing seemed to move or stir.

  What Holden did hear, what stopped him dead in his tracks, was a real voice: a young voice, crying out in a tone of such utter and abject misery that Holden's nerves shrank from it. The owner of the voice imagined himself alone; he was not really speaking loudly, but the acoustics of the Long Gallery carried it

  "God, please help me!" the voice said, in the form of a prayer. "God, please help me! God, please help me!"

  It was a little naive, and utterly sincere. A lanky, leggy young man in sports clothes, who had been sitting in a chair just outside the embrasure of the middle window, bent forward and pressed his hands over his eyes.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Holden very softly crept back down the stairs again. When anybody feels as deeply as that, whatever the cause, you cannot let him know you have overheard him. So Holden waited for long seconds, in the Painted Room, before making loud shuffling noises, coughing, and going up the steps again with a heavy and obvious tread. He strolled slowly along the gallery: disturbingly, the eyes of the portraits seemed fixed steadily on him as he passed.

 

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