'You cleaned your teeth. And then?" "I went back into my bedroom and slammed the door and went to bed. But that’s the trouble. I wasn't tight enough." "Go on!"
"It wasn't one of those nights where the bed swings around and you fly out into nowhere: dead asleep. I Just dozed heavily, and partly woke up, and dozed again. All confused. But I must have fallen off pretty heavily, because there seemed to be an interval. Then something woke me."
"What woke you? Think! Was it noise?"
"I don't know." Thorley, in a dream, shook his head. "Then I thought I heard Margot’s voice, sort of moaning and groaning and calling for help a long way off."
"Go on."
"I sat up and switched on the light I felt sick and headachy but a good deal more sober. It was two o'clock by the bedside dock. The voice moaning—it was awful. I climbed out of bed and went over and opened the bathroom door."
(Not a soul in that window embrasure moved, or even seemed to breathe.)
"Was the light on in the bathroom?"
"No, but I turned it on. The door to Margot's bedroom was wide open. Oh, yes! And while I'd been asleep, Margot’d taken a bath."
"She'd taken a bath?"
"Yes. There was a towel across the edge of the tub, and the floor was wet. God, how it annoyed me: that wet floor, and me in my bare feet! I went back and got my slippers, and came in again. Everything seemed quiet I looked into Margot’s bedroom."
Not a muscle or a fold of flesh moved in Dr. Fell's face or body. His propped elbow and pointing hand remained steady. Yet his eyes flashed round; moved with an unnerving furtive air, as though he were remembering and summing up. But the spell remained unbroken. Both their voices grew thicker, as Thorley walked back further and further into that night
"I looked into her bedroom. The light wasn't on, but I could tell she wasn't there." "Were the curtains drawn?"
"No; that's how I could tell she wasn't there. There was a little light from outside, stars or something. The bedspread was smooth and hadn't been touched. It was all quiet, and as cold as hell. Then the moaning and crying started again, so loud it nearly made me jump out of my skin. I saw the line of light under the door to her sitting room."
"Go on!"
Thorley spoke loudly and quickly.
"I opened the door. It was warm in there, with a fire still burning in the grate. All the wall lamps were burning too. A little way back from the middle of the room, with a table beside it, there's one of those chaise-longue things with cushions."
"Go on!"
"Margot was lying on it on her back, only a bit sideways. Her mouth sort of jabbered. I said, 'Margot!' but she just moaned and twisted; her eyes didn't open. I hoisted up her shoulders against the back of the chaise longue—she wasn't any lightweight—and her head fell forward. I shook her, but that wasn't any good either. Then I was really scared. I rushed back into the bathroom."
"Was the poison bottle in the medicine cabinet at that time?"
"No, it was gone. Margot must have . .." Dead silence.
Thorley realized what he had said. His voice stopped in midflight, faltered, slowly repeated, "must—have," and then trailed away. He stood there, shocked awake but petrified, his dark eyes glazed.
Dr. Fell let his arm fall on the table.
"So we perceive," Dr. Fell remarked, without satisfaction or even without any inflection at all, "that there had been in that cabinet a small brown bottle labeled poison. Just as Miss Devereux said."
Still nobody moved. On that group around the table, one of whom at least had been holding his breath until he felt suffocated, remained a strange and terrifying numbness. They seemed in a void, among the portraits of the Long Gallery.
"That was a trick," Thorley said. His voice rose. "A dirty, filthy trick!"
"No," returned Dr. Fell.
He laid down his crutch-handled stick across the glass top of the table.
"Sir," continued Dr. Fell, "I had reasons of my own for looking on you with an eye of extreme suspicion. If you had known of that brown bottle in the medicine cabinet, your first impulse at finding your wife in a dying condition would have been to rush back and look for the bottle. I—harrumph —merely led you to it You follow me?"
Danvers Locke, elegant and aloof, rose to his feet
"It's getting rather late," he observed. "I think, Doris, we had better go."
Celia was standing up, her eyes glistening with tears.
"I'm not going to crow over you, Thorley," she said. "But don't you ever, ever, ever, as long as you live, go about telling people I'm insane." Celia's whole manner changed. She ooked at Holden, trying to keep her face straight against the tears, and held out her hands to him.
"Darling!" Celia said. Then he was beside her, gripping her hands tightly enough to hurt, looking down at her eyes as he had looked last night, under the trees beside the park. "Listen, for God's sake," shouted Thorley.
There was so much pleading urgency in it that they swung round in spite of themselves.
"I want to answer that," gritted Thorley. "I've got a right to answer it." He swallowed. "It's true I did lie about that one little point, yes! But I thought it was for a good reason. I .. ."
" 'That one little point?'" echoed Holden. He could not even hate Thorley now; he could only regard the man with awe. "You know, Thorley, you're a beauty! You really are a beauty! You told the truth about everything else, I suppose?"
'Yes, I did!"
"It won't do, Thorley. You've been maintaining it was a delusion of Celia's that Margot changed her gown in the middle of the night, and put on a black velvet dress instead of the silver one. Whereas there's a witness to prove that's exactly what Margot did."
"Oh?" inquired Thorley coolly. "You think you're getting smart, like all the rest of them. And who's the perjurer who says that?"
"Your strongest supporter. Doris Locke."
Doris let out a cry. Her father immediately and blandly stepped in front of her chair, as though to shield Doris even from their sight
"I think, Doris, we had really better be going."
Along the gallery had creaked the footsteps of Obey, Obey in a hurry, yet so deftly did she move, leaning over and whispering earnestly to Dr. Fell, that they were not conscious of her presence until Dr. Fell uttered an exclamation and surged to his feet, thrusting the long envelope into his pocket.
"O Lord! Oh Bacchus!" muttered Dr. Fell. "The appointment! I had completely forgotten. I sincerely trust the sexton is drunk. Er—my dear Holden!"
"Yes?"
Dr. Fell, completely scatterbrained now that he was not concentrating on anything, blinked round him in distress.
"My corporeal shape, while perhaps majestic," he said, "is not altogether suitable for bending and touching the floor. In some mysterious manner," he rumbled at his eyeglasses, "my hat and my other cane seem to have fallen off the table. If you wouldn't mind? ... Ah! Thank 'ee. Yes. That's better! Let me remind you that we have an urgent appointment"
And he lumbered out of the embrasure, supporting himself on two canes. It was so unexpected, it left them so much in mid-air, that even Locke spoke in protest
"Dr. Fell!"
"Hey?"
"May I ask," inquired Locke in a voice brittle with anger, "whether this inquiry is ended?"
"Ended. H'mf. Well. Not precisely ended." Dr. Fell shook his head. "But I think, you know, the situation is fairly dear."
"Clear!" said Locke. "In some respects, yes. You said you could solve our problem, and to a great extent I think you have. What do you propose to do?"
"Do?"
"Our friend Marsh here," stated Locke, "has been caught in at least one flat lie of utterly damning quality. Must I repeat the rest of the tag about falsus in uno? What do you propose to do?"
"Do?" again repeated Dr. Fell, with sudden ferocity. "God bless the police, what can I do? The man's quite innocent"
Holden felt, not for the first time in this affair or yet the last that his wits were turning upside down.
"Innocent?" said Locke. "Innocent of what?"
"Mr. Marsh," replied Dr. Fell, "never mistreated or abused his wife in any way. He didn't drive her to suicide. And he didn't kill her."
Celia's hands, in Holden's, had first tightened and then gone limp. She snatched her hands away, and pressed them over her face. Celia began to rock back and forth, soundlessly, while he gripped her shoulders and tried to steady her.
Then occurred something which was almost worse. Across the face of Mr. Dereck Hurst-Gore, who had been lounging there almost unnoticed, moved an airy and serene smile. He glanced at Thorley, and the glance said as plainly as print: You see? Didn't I tell you there'd be no trouble? I arranged this.
"Dr. Fell," said Holden, "are you trying to maintain, in spite of all the evidence, that Celia isn t—isn't in her right senses?"
"Great Scott, No" thundered Dr. Fell. "Of course she's in her right senses!"
He rapped the ferrules of both canes against the floor. For the first time he looked fully at Celia. In that look, jumbled up, were affection and kindliness and yet disquiet
"Though Thorley Marsh quite sincerely won't believe it" Dr. Fell said, "there isn't a psychopathic trait in that girl's nature. But I must make sure (curse it, if you could only see!) that she isn't. . ."
‘Isn’t what?’ Locke asked sharply.
"Sir," said Dr. Fell, with an enormous wheeze of breath, "I have an appointment."
And he wheeled around, the great cloak billowing behind him, and lumbered at his ponderous pace toward the steps to the Painted Room.
CHAPTER XI
Under the brilliance of a full moon, in a sky without cloud, the south fields in front of Caswall still held a tinge of green-gray.
Donald Holden, hurrying out across the stone bridge, saw some distance ahead of him the figure of Dr. Fell stumping westward toward the tree-lined drive. Beyond that lay another immense meadow, and then the precincts of Caswall Church. Holden raced after him through the long grass.
But Dr. Fell did not hear.
He was completely absorbed, talking to himself aloud in a way which might have made his own sanity suspect, and occasionally flourishing one cane in the air by way of emphasis. Holden caught the end of this address.
"If only he hadn't worn his slippers!" groaned Dr. Fell. The cane flourished again. "Archons of Athens, if only the fellow hadn't worn his slippers!"
"Dr. Fell!"
The shout at last penetrated. Dr. Fell swept around, just under one of the chestnut trees lining the white gravel of the drive. He was now wearing his shovel hat.
"Oh, ah!" he said, peering to recognize Holden. "I—har-rumph—imagined you weren't coming."
"And I wouldn't have come," retorted Holden, "if Celia hadn't begged me to go after you. Seriously, Dr. Fell: you can't get away with it."
"Get away with what?"
Holden nodded toward the house. "There's merry blazes to pay back there!"
"I feared as much," admitted Dr. Fell, adjusting his features with an extremely guilty air. "Are they—er—at each other's throats?"
"No! They're just sitting and looking half-wittedly at each other. That's the point You can't leave it at that You've said either too little or too much."
"Bear witness," said Dr. Fell, pointing one cane, "that I tried to get out of there without answering questions. But you were all too upset. I couldn't put you off by spouting mystical hocus-pocus. I had to tell the truth."
"But what is the truth?"
"We-ell . . ."
"Let me see if I understand your position. Thorley Marsh tells a string of whoppers, especially about the two most important points, in the case: the poison bottle and the changing of the gown. You then announce that Thorley is guiltless, sweet scented, innocent of everything from wife-beating to murder!"
"But hang it all!" protested Dr. Fell, and screwed up his face hideously. "It was just because he told lies, don't you see, that I knew he was telling the truth."
Holden stared at him.
"Paradox," he said politely, "is doubtless admirable . .."
"It is not paradox, my dear sir. It is the literal truth."
"Well, take the next bit. You say it's nonsense to think Celia has ever been out of her senses, which is fine and grand. But you instantly qualify it by some—some half-suggestion .. ."
"Dash it all!" said Dr. Fell.
"Then the position is," asked Holden, "that both Celia and Thorley have been telling the truth? And that somehow they've just been misunderstanding each other, all through these bitter months. Is that it?"
Dr. Fell's shovel hat was stuck forward on his head, the eye-glasses faintly gleaming under it by moonlight. He struck at the grass with his right-hand cane.
"Apparently," he assented, "that is it"
"But that’ s impossible!"
"How so?"
"Those two long statements of Celia and Thorley, covering a period of years and concerning Margot simply won't reconcile. They're oil and water. They won't mix. Either a person is telling the truth, or he isn't"
"Not necessarily," said Dr. Fell.
"But—!"
"Before too long a time, when I propose to tell you the whole story," said Dr. Fell, "you may have reason to change your mind. In the meantime, we have an errand."
"Yes! And, if you'll forgive my insistence, that's another thing."
"Oh?"
"Dr. Fell, how is it that you know so much more of this affair than you could possibly have learned from any letter of Celia's to Scotland Yard? What sort of game is being played between you and Celia? I’ll swear there is one. Did she tell you the story of Margot's death?"
"No!" roared Dr. Fell, and viciously cut at the grass with his cane. "If only she had! Oh, my hat, if only she had!" He lowered his voice, wheezing less noisily. He looked very steadily at Holden. "You may have heard, perhaps, that Celia Devereux has been seeing ghosts?"
"Yes. But Celia doesn't suffer from delusions!"
"Exactly," agreed Dr. Fell. "It was just because she seemed to be seeing ghosts, you understand, that I knew she wasn't suffering from delusions."
Again Holden stared at him.
"Dr. Fell I'm like Thorley. I'm afraid I can't take it. That's the second paradox in two minutes. But you don't want to hear someone talk like that, and play with words, when you're waiting for the hangman and yet hoping for a reprieve. I'm getting as desperate as Celia."
Dr. Fell pointed with the cane.
"I say to you," he declared, with extraordinary intensity, "that it is neither paradox nor playing with words. You should have realized it, from evidence placed squarely in front of you. And now," he hesitated, we are going to open the tomb. And—"
"And?"
"It is the one part of this affair," said Dr. Fell, "which really frightens me. Come along."
In silence they walked across the drive, under trees again, and into the west meadow. A little distance away, rising up among oaks and beeches and a few cypresses, was the low square tower of Caswall Church.
In that gray church, ageless now, lay the stone effigy of Sir Walter D'Estreville, in stone chain mail, with his feet resting on a stone lion to show that he had been to the Crusades. When he died, in Palestine, under the Black Cross of the Templars, Lady D'Estreville took the veil to quit this world, and Caswall House became Caswall Abbey. His effigy lay there now, as Caswall did, in memory of the love that dieth not.
And there were other memories, too.
"I, Margot, take thee, Thorley," the husky contralto voice could barely be heard, "to my wedded husband." It rose again, ghostlike. "To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness, and in health. Till..."
He could see the colors, and hear the organ music.
And, as they approached, there was the little iron fence close along the east side of the church: its gate now hanging open and a little rusty. Beyond was the low square tower, the church door being around at the other side. When yo
u turned to the left past the tower, there was the path where he had met Celia.
On his left, now, the rough west wall with its pointed windows. On his right, arching over, the beech trees which guarded an ill-kept churchyard. The same breath of dry-baked mud and dew-wet grass, touching one's nostrils with even the scent of the past. Moonlight filtered down through the leaves, whose shadows were trembling where no wind seemed to stir.
And it was not only Celia's image. It was all the vastness of time. Dr. Fell, at his elbow, spoke softly. "What are you thinking?"
"But, Mother of God, where are they, then? And where are the snows of yesteryear?' "
There was a silence. The old words seemed to ring softly, gently, in this gentle place.
Dr. Fell nodded without speaking. He led the way past the beeches into a little expanse of unkempt grass where many headstones, some at crooked angles and black-worn by time, stood amid a thickness of cypresses. Westward the churchyard stretched up into a hill; by some illusion of moonlight, there seemed to be fewer gravestones than there were trees.
Holden had a sudden recollection of an Italian churchyard, and of a face over a Luger pistol peering at him around a headstone. But this was swept away. In the flat ground ahead, facing them at the end of a crooked little lane of flat graves raised two or three feet above ground, loomed up a shape he had never noticed before.
It had been built between two cypresses; they did not shade it, but they threw shadows straight ahead on either side. It was square, of heavy gray stone, squat, with a little pillar on each side of a paneled iron door.
"Is that"—Holden's voice seemed to burst out, against thick silence, before he lowered it to a mutter—''is that.. .?"
"The new vault? Yes." Dr. Fell breathed ponderously; either from quick walking or from some emotion. "The old one," he added, "is up on that hill there."
"What exactly are we going to do?"
"As soon as my excellent friend Crawford gets here, we are going to unlock and unseal the door."
"Unseal it?"
"Yes. Merely to take one brief look inside. We shall do no more."
"But Mr. Reid! The old vicar! Will he like this?"
"The vicarage," returned Dr. Fell, "is on the other side of that hill. He will not know. As for one Mr. Windlesham, who is supposed to look after these premises, I have every reason to hope that he is now too full of beer to interfere."
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