The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17

by John Dickson Carr

  "I didn't say anythingl" breathed Doris, jumping violently. "Really and truly I didn't!"

  "Harrumph. Well." (It was impossible, from that vast pink face with the lopsided eyeglasses, to tell whether Dr. Fell had heard.) "But can you confirm these versions of Mrs. Marsh's behavior, Miss Locke?"

  "I'm afraid," said Doris, lifting one shoulder, "I can't help you there. I wasn't interested. I scarcely noticed the woman all evening."

  (Be careful, you little fool! thought Holden. Be careful!) Of course," added Doris instantly, before Dr. Fell could speak, "I did 'murder' her in that game. But it was simply because she was the person handiest. You couldn't help spotting that silver gown in the dark."

  Holden intervened just as quickly.

  "That's it, Doris!" he said. "It was a silver dress, wasn't it? You do remember that? Naturally! As a woman would!"

  "Ye-esl" Doris seemed relieved. "Naturally!"

  Dr. Fell looked at Thorley. "Do you agree about the dress, Mr. Marsh?'

  "I suppose so," Thorley said half-humorously. "I never notice what a woman is wearing. Dr. Fell; and I'D bet a fiver you don't either. You can tell whether it becomes 'em, or whether it doesn't; in either case you can't think why, so you let it go at that But—"

  "But?"

  "Well! I do seem in a kind of a way to remember that silver thing without shoulders, because it was so conspicuous. Margot—Margot looked worse in that death mask of Mrs. Thompson than she looked after she was dead."

  And a shiver went through his bulky body.

  "I see," said Dr. Fell. "Now your own party, as I understand it—yourself, Mrs. Marsh, Miss Devereux, and Mr. Hurst-Gore—left Widestairs at about eleven o'clock?"

  "Yes!"

  "At that time your wife still seemed in excellent health?"

  "Yes. Full of beans."

  "Dr. Fell!" interposed Locke very softly.

  "Hey? What's that?"

  "At risk of being rebuked again," said Locke, with his finger tips together, "I am a little disturbed by those words 'still seemed.' Are you implying that this poison, whatever it was, might have been administered in my house?"

  "That," admitted Dr. Fell, "is a possibility we must consider. And yet"—there was a faint roar under his voice, and he puffed out his cheeks and let his fists fall on the table— "no, no, no! In that case, the effect of the poison in question must have come on at a far earlier time." "Ah!" said Locke serenely.

  "But it suggests another point Did Mrs. Marsh by any chance come over to your house that same afternoon? Before the Murder game?"

  A faintly startled expression came into Locke's eyes; then it was gone.

  "Yes! As a matter of fact, she did."

  "Oh, ah? For what purpose?"

  "Presumably," smiled Locke, "to say hello. They'd just driven down from London, you know. Ah, no! One moment I remember now. She said she wanted to see her husband." He seemed puzzled; troubled. 'Yes. Her husband."

  "Did she see him?"

  "No. Our friend Marsh was out at the trout stream with Doris, where I believe he performed prodigies by walking across a log with his eyes shut." Locke's beautifully modulated voice gave an (somewhat ironic?) account of the incident "Mrs. Marsh, I remember, asked my wife and myself to send him home soon; she said she wished to speak to him urgently."

  For a long moment Dr. Fell stared at Locke. Then his shaggy head swung round.

  "And this (harrum!) this urgent message. What was it, Mr. Marsh?"

  "It wasn't anything!" protested Thorley. "I keep telling you, over and over, Margot was like that! She—"

  "Sir," interrupted Dr. Fell, "was it to ask you for a divorce?"

  Long pause.

  (Divorce? Holden was thinking. Divorce? Margot? Nonsense! But wait! If this suggestion of Margot Devereux having a lover were true—as Doris insisted and even Celia had suspected—that altered everything. Margot might have put up with any kind of unhappy home life rather than the alternative of divorce. But if she happened to fall violently in love, and wanted to marry: yes, that altered everything.)

  "I regret the necessity for repeating the question," said Dr. Fell, who was genuinely distressed. "But was it to ask you for a divorce?"

  "No," replied Thorley, with his eye on a corner of the window embrasure.

  "In that case, sir, I must go into matters that will be painful and embarrassing. You are aware," Dr. Fell touched the envelope on the table, "of certain statements made by Celia Devereux?"

  'Yes. God knows I am"

  "That on one occasion you were seen to slash your wife across the face with a razor strap?" "Yes!" cried Thorley. "But that was only—" "Only what?"

  Statement and question were flung at each other with such quickness that they seemed to clash like physical forces.

  Dr. Fell had partly surged up, the ridges of his waistcoat jarring out the table with a scratch of wood and a rattle of the red-shaded lamp. But he did not seem to be towering or threatening: only, in a curious way, imploring. Thorley had slid off the chair arm and stood up.

  "Only what, Mr. Marsh?"

  "Only a lie," said Thorley. "Only a lie."

  Dr. Fell sank back, a mountain of dejection.

  "And that on another occasion, because of your conduct, your wife attempted to kill herself by swallowing strychnine?"

  "That’s a lie too."

  The grisly story was pouring out now. Locke and his daughter sat as though paralyzed.

  "And that, on the night your wife died, there was a bottle labeled poison in the medicine cabinet of your joint bathroom?"

  "There never was any such bottle, so help me!"-"And that—"

  "Stop," said Thorley. His hand went to his collar, running a finger around inside it; then he cleared his throat, and spoke in a perfectly normal voice. "I've had enough," he added. "I've had more than any man can take."

  ‘Yes?" said Dr. Fell.

  "Look here, sir." Thorley addressed Dr. Fell, though a little breathlessly, with his quiet and easy charm. "These charges against me are all guff. What's more, I can prove they're all guff at any time I like. I haven't done it up to now, I've put up with everything, because I wanted to be decent. That’s finished."

  And then, just when as a man cornered and down-and-out he had the utter sympathy of nearly everyone there, the illusion was shattered. Thorley's tone changed.

  "By God," he said, "I've had enough of a family with one ice-cold daughter and one crazy daughter. As for this house, I hope it rots. Those pictures over there," he gestured toward the wall behind him, "let them do something about it; as Celia says they can. I've liked Celia. I've done my best for Celia. I've put up with it when she's told me these things in private. But, from now on, just let her dare say the same things in front of anyone else! Just let her dare do it!"

  They had heard no sound in the Long Gallery, no creak of footstep. A little way behind Thorley, looking full at him, stood Celia.

  CHAPTER X

  Celia, just as she had looked last night: even to being dressed in white. Celia, with the beauty of the imaginative fine-drawn face untouched by any emotion, even anger. Her gray eyes, with the black pin-point pupils perhaps dilating a little, were fixed on Thorley. But just beyond Celia...

  Looming up beyond her, his hand under her elbow in a proprietary way, was a tall man in some mysterious season between youth and middle age. A man with a confident bearing, a dental smile, wearing a gray suit of such admirable cut and newness as only influence can procure nowadays, and having hair the color of a lion's mane with a wave in it.

  Thorley, as though warned by a telepathic instinct, had swung round toward them.

  "Derek!" he exclaimed. "What the devil are you doing here?"

  (At last, thought Holden, Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore! But he didn't need Thorley’s words to guess it The hair did that - Ugh, you swine!)

  Now in this, as anyone could have told him, he was doing Mr. Hurst-Gore a complete injustice. Everyone knew that Mr. Hurst-Gore was a fine fellow, who meant w
ell in everything he did.

  "Doing here?" Mr. Hurst-Gore repeated, in a rich confident voice. "Oh, I'm everywhere." He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I came down with Dr. Fell. We're both staying at the Warrior's Arms."

  Despite his smile, Mr. Hunt-Gore kept looking at Thorley in a fixed, meaningful, heavily significant way.

  "Thorley!"

  "Well?"

  "There must be no scandal," said Mr. Hunt-Gore, very slowly and in the same significant tone. "But, listen, Derekl They're now saying it was murder!" "I know." "But—!"

  "Remember the Frinley by-election?"

  Holden couldn't see Thorley's face. But he sensed a change in the broad back, and the movement as though Thorley would put up his hands to shield his eyes.

  "There is one thing," said Mr. Hurst-Gore, still holding Celia's elbow in a proprietary way, "that a man in public life mustn't do. He mustn't show himself a fool."

  Thorley stood for a moment motionless. Then, with affection and tenderness rushing out of his voice, he turned to Celia.

  "My dear Celia!" he said reproachfully. "My dear girl! You shouldn't have come downstairs tonight! Here!"

  Hurrying to one side, Thorley rolled forward an easy chair whose casters squeaked abominably on the wooden floor and strip of brown carpet Though Celia shrank as though she had been burnt when he touched her, she was so amazed that she allowed him to push her down into the chair.

  "If you do this sort of thing often," he added, with a sort of reproachful beam, "Old Uncle Thorley will have to speak severely to you. Did I tell you, by the way, that I brought down a special vintage of port for you? Never mind where I got it Sh-h!" Thorley winked. "But you won't find a wine like it anywhere in London."

  Celia looked up at him helplessly.

  "Thorley," she said," I don't understand you!"

  "I'm the Inimitable, my dear. I'm the Sparkler. But why . don't you understand me?"

  "One minute you're shouting for my blood. And the next minute you're—you're pouring port over me."

  "Live and let live," shrugged Thorley. "That’s my motto. After all, Celia, we did live in the same house for six months with a flag of truce between us."

  "Yes! But that was only because—" Celia stopped.

  "Why did you come down tonight, Celia?"

  "I have an appointment with Dr. Fell."

  Thorley looked startled. "You know Dr. Fell?"

  "Oh, yes. Very well." Now for the first time Celia's eye met Holden's; an intense awareness sprang between them across that gap, as Celia had seemed last night; but she colored and turned away.

  "I think," Celia swallowed, "that everyone here knows everyone else. Except: Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore ... Sir Donald Holden."

  And up went the emotional temperature still higher. The two men shook hands.

  "A pleasure!'' declared Mr. Hunt-Gore, flashing his dental smile. Seen at close range, the countenance under the wavy hair seemed older, and harder, and shrewder. "You mustn't mind me, you know; I'm everywhere. An old, old friend of Celia's. We've had some very good times together in the past"

  (You have, have you?)

  "She spoke to me about you just now," continued Mr. Hurst-Gore, cordially breezy, "when I went up to her room and had a talk with her."

  "Indeed."

  "I was thinking," pursued Mr. Hurst-Gore, "that meeting you was like meeting some character out of a play. With you playing the Mysterious Stranger."

  "Oddly enough," said Holden, "I was just now thinking the same thing about you."

  "Were you, my dear fellow? How?"

  "With you," said Holden, "playing Mephistopheles to Thorley's Faust."

  Mr. Hurst-Gore's eyes narrowed. "That’s rather perceptive of you."

  "Well try to be perspective, won't we? In a murder case?"

  "Oh, that!" Mr. Hurst-Gore dismissed it with a really friendly laugh. "Well soon explode all that nonsense, about suicide and murder too, when Dr. Fell looks into it The birds will sing again. You'll see. In fact, if I may say so in this assembled company..."

  "Hey!" boomed a thunderous voice.

  It was that of Dr. Fell who was also rapping the ferrule of his crutch-handled stick against the floor. He loomed above them, turning his head from side to side with a piratical air and vast sniffs above the bandit's moustache.

  "Sir," he said, "I am deeply gratified to hear that the birds will sing again. It also gratifies me (by thunder, it does!) that outward amiability has been restored. We are sitting in a cosy little alcove of hatred, with all drafts blowing. Control it; or we shall get nowhere."

  'You were," Celia said, "you were questioning witnesses!"

  "There is only one witness I want to question."

  "Oh?" demanded Thorley. "And who's that?"

  "You, confound it!" said Dr. Fell.

  All his piratical air dissolved. He leaned forward, his left elbow on the table.

  "Up there," and Dr. Fell slightly raised the crutch-handled stick toward the ceiling, "a woman died. She died by means so well-contrived that under the circumstances (I repeat, under the circumstances, any doctor would have been fooled into calling it a natural death. We are now immediately underneath the bathroom where a bottle of poison was, or was not, in the medicine cabinet."

  "It was!" cried Celia.

  "It was not," Thorley said smoothly.

  Dr. Fell paid no attention to this.

  "For nearly three mortal hours—between half-past eleven, when you all went to bed; and a quarter-past two, when Dr. Shepton arrived for the first time—Mr. Marsh was apparently the only person who saw his wife, touched her, went near her, or was even within calling distance of her.

  "If he tells the truth, we can reconstruct what happened. But, if, as seems likely, the gifted Mr. Hurst-Gore has persuaded him to keep silent..."

  While Mr. Hurst-Gore uttered an astounded protest, Thorley came quickly around from behind Celia's chair and stood in front of the table.

  "I promised to tell you what happened that night," he declared. "And, so help me, I will!"

  "Excellent! Admirable!" observed Dr. Fell. With one elbow on the table, he pointed a finger at Thorley. "Now picture the scene again. The four of you arrived back from the Lockes'. What happened then?"

  "Well, we went up to bed ..."

  "No, no, no!" groaned Dr. Fell, making a hideous face and snapping his fingers. "Please be more detailed than that. Presumably you didn't just open the front door and rush frantically upstairs?"

  "Celia did, anyway. I think the Murder game upset her. I didn't care for it much myself, to tell you the truth."

  "But the rest of you?"

  "Margot and Derek and I came through this gallery here,"

  Thorley moved his neck, "and up those little steps to the Blue Drawing Room. There was a big fire there, and a decanter of whisky. The—the room was decorated with holly, but we weren't going to put up the Christmas tree until next day."

  Very distinctly, beyond the lamp-lit table between Thorley and Dr. Fell, Holden could see the faces of the others.

  Of Sir Danvers Locke, aloof yet intensely watchful. Of Doris, flushed as though she were choking, so upset by recent experience that she could not have spoken if she had wanted to. Of Derek Hurst-Gore, lounging against the window wall beside him. And, above all, of Celia.

  What in Satan's name was wrong with Celia? Why had she refused to see him? Why, even now, did she refuse to look at him? Why did there breathe from her, with that radiation which in one we love we can almost feel with a physical sense, the message of, "Keep away! Please keep away!"

  And yet...

  Something was being woven, something being spun, as Dr. Fell held Thorley fascinated. The spectral image bruit itself up: of Caswall's galleries dark and gusty cold, of dead Margot in her silver gown, and her two companions in white ties and tails, going up to a bright fire in a blue-paneled room where there would be a decanter of whisky.

  "Yes, Mr. Marsh? And then?"

  "I turned on the radio. It was
singing carols."

  "A very important question; and oblige me by not laughing at it. Were you drunk?"

  "No! All of us were only... oh, all right! Yes! I was pretty tight"

  "How tight?"

  "Not blind, or anything like that But muzzy eyed, and uncertain, and hating everything. Liquor," said Thorley in a vague way, "always used to make me feel happy. It never does, now."

  "What about your wife? That night I mean?"

  "Margot’d knocked back quite a lot; but it didn't seem to affect her much, as it usually does. I mean—as it usually did."

  "And Mr. Hurst-Gore?"

  "Old Derek was pretty nearly blind. He started reciting Hamlet or something. I remember he said he hoped there wouldn't be a fire in the night because nobody would be able to wake him."

  "And then?"

  "There wasn't anything. Margot banged down her glass and said, ‘You two don't seem very happy; but I'm happy. Shall we turn in?' So we did."

  "The bedrooms occupied by Celia Devereux and Mr. Hurst-Gore, I understand, weren't near your own suite?"

  "No. They were at the other side of the house."

  "Do you remember anything else about this time?" Dr. Fell's big voice grew even softer and more hypnotic. "Think! Think! Think!"

  "I remember hearing Obey locking up front and back. It makes a devil of a racket with those bolts."

  "Nothing else? When you and your wife reached your rooms? What then?"

  "Margot opened the door of her bedroom and went in. I opened the door of my bedroom and went in. That's all"

  "Did you exchange any words at this time?"

  "No, no, no! Not a word!"

  Thorley was not merely telling this; he was reliving it He was treading the misty steps of that night, his eyes fixed on it "And then?"

  "I felt lousy," Thorley said. "It infuriates you, getting out of evening kit when you're tight You have to tear the collar off; you have to tear the shirt off. You stumble against things. I got my pyjamas on and sort of stumbled into the bathroom to clean my teeth."

  "Into the bathroom. Was the door to your wife's bedroom, on the other side of the bathroom, open or closed?"

  "It was closed and locked on her side."

  "How do you know it was locked?"

  "It always was."