He paused. Dr. Fell, mouth open, was regarding him with a face of dismay.
"God alive!" whispered Dr. Fell. "Then you don't understand!"
"Understand what?"
"You have the wit," said Dr. Fell, pointing toward the crumpled paper in the grate, "to work that out The difficult point doesn't escape you. Yet looming up, overshadowing everything, you don't see . . ."
"See what? What is an this?"
"My dear sir," Dr. Fell said gently. "Don't you see that in a few days the police will probably arrest Celia for murder?" Dead silence.
There is a phrase about the room seeming to swim around in front of someone's eyes, which is often derided. Yet, perhaps from the physical effect of the heat the closeness, the nerve strain of the past two days, something like that happened to Donald Holden now.
As though through blurred transparency, he saw the scuffed walls, the blackened matting, the fireplace with its biblical riles, the wardrobes and doll houses, move out or up from their places, waveringly dissolve in line, and settle back again., The glass eye of the rocking horse seemed alive. Yet the effect of Dr. Fell's statement was such as to keep Holden outwardly calm.
"That,'' he said, "is too nonsensical to be talked about"
"Is it, my dear sir? Think! Try to think!"
"I am thinking." (He lied.)
"Don't you see the strength of the case that can be built up against Celia?"
"There is no case against her."
"Sit down," said Dr. Fell in a heavily wheezing voice.
Beside the nearer of the doll houses there was an old chair. Putting away notebook and pencil—that brave notebook and pencil!—Holden brought back the chair and planted it across the hearth from Dr. Fell.
He found and lit a cigarette, with a steady hand, before sitting down.
"Just a moment!" he interposed, as Dr. Fell started to speak. "You don't believe—?"
"In Celia's guilt? No, no, no!" said Dr. FeD. "My belief is; the same as yours. And I think, if you use your wits, you; will see the face of the real murderer."
Here Dr. Fell hitched his chair forward, earnestly.
"But if s not a question," he went on, "of what I believe.; If s a question of what Hadley and Madden believe. That long; letter of hers, her conversation with you in the playground on Wednesday night (which was overheard), and above all. the events of last night, have played the very devil."
Holden took a deep draw at the cigarette.
"These gentlemen," he said calmly, "believe that Celia poisoned Margot?"
"They're inclined to. Yes."
"Then the charge is absurd on the face of it. Celia loved Margot"
"Exactly! Yes! Granted!"
"Well, then? Where's your motive?"
Dr. Fell spoke quietly, his eyes never leaving the stony face across from him.
"Celia," he said, "really believed her sister was being led, by Thorley Marsh, a life which no humane person could call fit enough for a dog. Celia believed this, and still believes it. You grant that?"
"Yes."
"Celia believed her sister to be the unhappiest mortal on earth. She believed Mrs. Marsh would never get a divorce, never get a separation, never go away. She believed that Mrs. Marsh sincerely and even passionately wished for death, as Mrs. Marsh told her. And so ..."
The cigarette shook slightly in Holden's fingers.
"Are you telling me," he said, "that these police supermen think Celia poisoned Margot out of a kind of mercy?'"
"I fear so."
"But an act like that would be sheer insanity!" "Yes," assented Dr. Fell quietly. "That is what they think it is." Pause.
"Now one moment!" Dr. Fell's big voice rang out with authority, an authority which kept his companion still. His eyes never left Holden's face. "I see precisely what is going on in that brain and heart of yours. Oh, ah! And I sympathize. But, if you lose your head now, we are done for.
"I tell you," added Dr. Fell, "that of legal evidence I have nothing, I have not that, to rebut the strong evidence of the other side. Unless you and I can get Celia Devereux out of this, there will be nobody to do it. We are (I trust?) rational men, sitting quietly in an old nursery among toys, and discussing rational evidence. Shall we consider that evidence?"
"Dr. Fell," Holden said huskily, "I beg your pardon. It won't happen again."
"Good! Excellent!" said Dr. Fell.
Yet the doctor, though he tried to seem cheerful, got out a red bandana handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"First I ask you," he proceeded, "to look at this."
"What is it?"
"It is a list," answered Dr. Fell, fishing up a folded paper from beside him in the chair, "of the real-life murderers who were impersonated in the famous Murder game at Wide-stain on the night of December twenty-third. I have jotted them down chronologically, with dates and place of trial. Please glance at it."
Holden, trying to be very judicial, did so. Dr. Fell watched him steadily. The list of names read:
Maria Manning, housewife. (London, 1849.) Executed, with her husband, for the murder of Patrick O'Connor.
Kate Webster, maidservant. (London, 1879.) Executed for the murder of her employer, Mrs. Thomas.
Mary Pearcey, kept woman. (London, 1890.) Executed for the murder of a rival, Phoebe Hogg.
Robert Buchanan, physician. (New York, 1893.) Executed for the murder of his wife, Annie Buchanan.
G.J. Smith, professional bigamist (London, 1915.) Executed for the murder of three wives.
Henri Desire Landru, same as Smith. (Versailles, 1921.) Executed for the murder of ten women and one child.
Edith Thompson, cashier. (London, 1922.) Executed, with her lover Frederick Bywaters, for the murder of her husband, Percy Thompson.
"I say nothing of the list," continued Dr. Fell, "beyond expressing my belief that Mrs. Thompson was innocent and Mrs. Pearcey should have been sent to Broadmoor. But I call your attention to the first name on the list"
"Maria Manning," said Holden, drawing deeply at the cigarette. "That's the part Celia played in the game."
"Yes. And Celia," continued Dr. Fell, "loathes crime! Hates crime! Won't read a word about itl In fact, because of this well-known tendency she was amusedly tolerated by Sir Danvers Locke for her ignorance in the part of Maria Manning."
"Very well. What about it?"
'Yet, on going home that same night, she had a singularly vivid and horrible dream. You remember: she told you about it?"
"I remember something, yes."
"She dreamed she was standing on a platform in an open space, with a rope round her neck and a white bag over her head, high above a shouting jeering crowd of people who were singing her name to the tune of 'Oh, Susannah.' '
A jab of dread struck at Holden. He was looking round at the scuffed walls where Celia and Margot had played as children. But he said nothing.
"The dream," said Dr. Fell, "described sober truth. In 1849, you see, that tune was a popular song hit. And the mob sang it, with the substitution of the words, 'Oh, Mrs. Manning,' all night long before the woman's execution on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Gaol."
Again Dr. Fell mopped his forehead.
"Now this detail," he went on, "is far from being well known. Charles Dickens mentioned it in a letter to the Times, protesting against the foulness and indignity of public executions. But it is an obscure detail. Anyone who knows it..."
"Is well read in crime?"
"Yes. And is at least fascinated—morbidly so, the police think—by the whole subject" Holden tried to laugh.
'Tuppenny-ha'penny evidence," he said. "Celia might have learned that detail anywhere! From one of the other people at the game! And quite naturally dreamed about it!"
"That" agreed Dr. FelL "is quite true. But it is the sort of thing, don't you see, that rouses suspicion? What really interested Hadley was her insistence, in the letter, that important evidence would be discovered when she and I unsealed the vault on the night of the eleventh
of July.
"Now mark the dates involved! Just after Christmas, at Celia Devereux's impassioned plea, she and I went through that ritual of spreading sand on the floor, locking the door, and sealing it. I went away entrusted with the key and the seal.
"Afterward, for more than six months, nothing! Not a word from her! Then, out of the blue, she writes to me and asks if I will redeem my promise to unseal the tomb. At the same time she writes to the police. What’s up? Why has she waited as long as that? What does she expect to happen? Archons of Athens! Can you wonder, at least that some curiosity was roused?"
"No. I don't wonder."
"And now," said Dr. Fell, "I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you." "All right Let’s have it"
Replacing the bandana handkerchief in his pocket Dr. Fell took out a little wash-leather bag which was only too familiar. He opened it and spilled out on his palm the big gold ring with the seal.
"The sleeping sphinx!" he said.
"What’s that?"
"The lower part of this design," Dr. Fell scowled at it, "which Crawford described as being 'like a woman asleep.' In occult lore, it has—er—a meaning which is strongly applicable to this case. It is—harrumph—interesting. Yes. I could lecture on it: dignus, I hope, vindice nodus. It.. ."
"Dr. Fell, you're evading the point You're floundering like an old woman! What is this bad news? Let’s have it!"
His companion looked up.
"I told you," Dr. Fell said, "that I had been in touch with the police this morning?" "Yes?"
"Dregs contained in that bottle we found in the vault" said Dr. Fell, "have been analyzed. Madden has applied to the Home Office for authority to exhume Mrs. Marsh's body and hold a post-mortem."
"All right! What about it? How does it affect Celia? If our theory is correct—"
Dr. Fell lifted his hand.
"Celia's fingerprints, and Celia's alone," he said, "have been found on that poison bottle."
After a pause he added;
"There is no doubt, even in my own mind, that she deliberately put it there for us to find."
CHAPTER XV
As you say," observed Holden, depositing his cigarette in the grate with a steady hand, "we are rational men discussing rational evidence. But this has gone beyond the rational. Celia put that poison bottle in the tomb?"
"Yes."
Both of them kept their voices studiously level.
"Celia also, I suppose, managed to get in and out of a sealed vault? And hurled coffins about the place as though they were tennis balls?"
"No," returned Dr. Fell, rounding the syllable, "She had nothing to do with that. It is what I wish to emphasize. She had nothing to do with that. Yet she was expecting it"
"Expecting it?"
"I will go further, sir. She was gambling on it."
Dr. Fell threw up the big gold ring, and caught it against his palm. And Holden remembered. He remembered the elusive memory he had been trying to place last night, of the expression on Celia's face as the tomb was being opened, and of what it reminded him.
Mainz am Rhein! Early in '44!
He and a certain Swiss woman had been standing by a dark window, in an ill-smelling city, just as the siren squalled an alert against British bombers. The woman was opening a little packet; it would contain, she thought, certain information which would gain her a reward from the British and get her smuggled oat of Germany to safety forever. She wasn't sure, but she thought so. She couldn't swear to it, but she was gambling on it .
As the air-raid siren squalled, a distant ack-ack battery cut loose prematurely. Pale-white light lifting in the sky, followed in a few seconds by the hollow shock of the guns, touched the Swiss woman's face. Her whole expression—the shallow breathing, the distended nostrils, the fixed and half-closed eyes—had been Celia's expression as Celia waited for the opening of the tomb.
Holden drew his thoughts back to the present to Dr. Fell throwing up and catching the big gold ring.
"If Celia put the bottle in the tomb," Holden asked, "when did she put it there?"
"Before the tomb was sealed."
"Oh?"
"Before the tomb was sealed," insisted Dr. Fell, "at a time when Celia and I, and only Celia and I, were present That niche was empty when we went in; I can swear to it I didn't see her do it I wasn't expecting anything of the sort But there were a dozen opportunities, in a semi dark place, while the sand was being put down. She was the only one who could have done it"
Holden swallowed. "And afterward ..." he began.
"Go on!" said Dr. Fell.
"Afterward," said Holden, "after the vault had been sealed, Celia expected somebody or something to get in there and do what was done?"
"Yes."
"Are yon plumping for a supernatural explanation?'' "Oh, no," said Dr. Fell.
"But look here! The utter impossibility of explaining how anybody got in and out of a sealed vault..."
"Oh, that?" exclaimed Dr. Fell in astonishment He sat up. He made a gesture of distressed contempt "My dear sir, that’ s the simplest part of the whole problem. I was expecting it before I got here."
Holden stared at him. Dr. Fell, with vast snorb'ngs and head shakings and a movement that made the whole chair creak and crack, was genuinely puzzled and concerned that this little point should have worried anyone.
"Fortunately for us, however," Dr. Fell added, "what we will call the Poltergeist Horror in the tomb has got Madden, Crawford, and Company completely floored. They think the poison bottle was put there at the same time as the coffins were disrupted, apparently by malignant ghosts. And they can't see how it happened.
"The trouble is, they won't stay floored. If s too simple. In a day or two at most, they'll see through it. Then the fat will be in the fire. And their case against Celia Devereux wfll be as follows:
"Celia poisoned her sister, using a drug whose principal ingredient was morphine—" "Morphine, eh?" said Holden.
"Yes. Which is virtually painless. Celia arranged the crime to look like suicide. For, mark you! Another strong reason for the suicide, which she believed Margot wished for, was to expose Thorley Marsh to the world as a sadistic villain. To show him up! To give him what he deserved!
"And that didn't happen.
"The family doctor said this was a natural death. Celia, crying out that it was suicide and that Mr. Marsh had driven his wife to it, was hastily shushed. Having disposed of the poison bottle, Celia couldn't produce it in any place it should have been: that is, within reach of Margot Marsh.
"So (we are still stating the police case) she determined to go further. Out of a half-crazed imagination she invented this tale of ghosts walking in the Long Gallery, crying against Margot Marsh as a suicide. 'Cast her out!' was what they cried. Cast her out, from sleep among the just or honest dead!
"Nobody would believe that. But she would force them to believe it. So Celia, with my unconscious connivance, slipped the poison bottle into the niche. She gambled—for certain reasons of her own—that there would be poltergeist disturbances there. Then the tomb would be opened. And it would seem, among flung coffins and the poison bottle, that the very dead had cried out against Margot and Thorley Marsh."
Dr. Fell paused, wheezing.
His color had been coming up in spite of himself. He put the sea] ring on his own finger and scowled at it. "But—oh, Bacchus!" he added. "You see what follows?" "I'm afraid I do."
"The police, once they've tumbled to the explanation of the intruder who throws coffins without leaving a footprint, will hardly view the matter as a supernatural occurrence. No, by thunder! Because . .."
"Because?"
Dr. Fell checked off the points.
"Who could have killed Mrs. Marsh, except the sister who had the poison bottle? Its very label was printed on a toy press," he pointed, "which you'll find in the wardrobe over there. Celia's fingerprints are on the bottle. She alone could have put it in the niche where it was found.
"And, heaven help me
," added Dr. Fell "I shall have to testify as much."
There was a long silence.
Holden pushed back his chair and got up. His legs felt light and shaky; heat pressed as oppressively as a cap on the brain. He began to walk about the room: blindly, not seeing it It was all very well for Dr. Fell to talk about keeping your head, but this was bad. This was about as bad as it could be. It fitted in too well with so many things Celia had said and done.
"I do not ask," Dr. Fell observed politely, "what you think of the case against Celia. But you at least perceive we have got a case to answer?"
"My God, yes!—Can you answer it?"
Dr. Fell clenched his fist and scowled at the seal ring on his finger.
"I can answer it," he retorted. "Oh, ah! I can answer it in the sense of replying, 'Sir, thus and thus I believe to be true.' Especially since I put the cards on the table with Celia last night."
"That was what upset her so much?"
"It did, rather. But after you had left us, and Inspector Crawford so very obviously got a set of her fingerprints by handing her a silver cigarette case, it seemed better to warn her of the danger."
"What did Celia say?"
"Very little, confound it! Enough to make me sure I was right All the same . . ." Dr. Fell hammered his fist on the chair arm. "No!" he added. "No, no, no! We are not going to mess about by trying to prove a negative. We establish a positive or die in the attempt."
"If we had any idea of who the murderer actually is—!"
"I know who it is," Dr. Fell said simply. "I've been certain ever since I questioned Thorley Marsh in the Long Gallery last night"
Holden, who had been looking blankly out of the nearer window toward the distant churchyard, whipped round.
"And now," inquired Dr. Fell, "will you go on that errand for me?"
"To the address in New Bond Street?"
"Yes. I can't send a police officer. My views (hurrum!) differ from those of authority. I must withdraw my evil skirts from the case. Will you go?"
"Certainly. But what do you expect to find there? And, as Doris Locke said . . ."
Dr. Fell spoke sharply.
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