"Doris Locke? What has Doris Locke got to do with it?"
"She was the person who gave me the address." Holden narrated the incident, while Dr. Fell's eyes grew rounder and rounder behind the lopsided glasses.
"How very interesting'" he said in a hollow voice, and puffed out his cheeks. "How very interesting that it should be the woman's intuition of Doris Locke to light on so much. Harrumph, yes."
"All the same, Margot has been dead for more than six months. By this time those fortune-telling premises have been taken over by somebody else!"
"On the contrary." Dr. Fell shook his head. "I have reason to think the place is still intact. And that vital evidence may be there. I would go myself. But I must remain here, I tell you I must remain here, to find out whether anyone has discovered the real secret of the tomb."
"Yes," Holden cried out bitterly, "and that’ s just it!"
"What is?"
"That infernal vault! Look at it!"
And he pointed out of the window, though Dr. Fell was not in a position to see.
Just ahead of and beneath him, as he looked out from the northwestern side, Holden could look out over the quadrangle of stables and bakehouses and brewhouses: the diamond-paned windows that were dusty yet fiery, the cobblestoned court where pigeons fluttered, the gilt hands of the stable clock. Beyond yellow-green meadows, in Caswall churchyard, he could even pick out the tomb between the cypresses. Aside from the old vault on the hill, it was the only one there.
Holden clenched his fists.
"Ifs got into my head," he declared. "It may be simple to you. But ifs got into my head. It muddles up every attempt to think. Something got through a sealed door, and threw the coffins about without leaving a footprint in sand. In Satan's name, what was it? Will you tell me?"
For a long time Dr. Fell regarded him somberly.
"No," answered Dr. Fell, "I will not And there are two reasons why I will not."
"Oh?"
"The first reason," said Dr. Fell, "is that you must start your wits working again, or you will be of no use to us. I propose (by thunder, I do!) that you shall start them working by solving that little problem for yourself. And, if you like, I will give yon one very broad hint"
Here Dr. Fell closed his eyes briefly.
"Do you remember," he asked, "the moment when the tomb door was opened?"
"Very vividly."
"The lower hinge, if you recall, squeaked and rasped as it opened?"
"I seem to remember the noise, yes."
"Yet the lock, when Crawford turned that key, opened with a sharp, clean click?'
"Then there was some crooked work about that lock! Crawford was right! There was some ... I don't know! The seal had been tampered with."
"Oh, no," said Dr. Fell. "It was the original, untouched seal."
And he blinked at the seal ring on his finger.
"That," he went on in the same heavy tone, "is my hint. Now for my second reason for not telling you. You are not really thinking about that tomb at all."
"What the devil do you mean? I'm—"
"Only with the surface of your mind!" said Dr. Fell. "Only as an excuse! Only to avoid thinking about something else! Shall I read your mind?"
The sun, past its meridian now, was striking into these windows. Holden did not reply.
'You were thinking about Celia Devereux."
Holden made a fierce gesture as the other went on.
'You were thinking: 'I know she's not guilty of murder; I know she didn't poison Margot; but is she mad?'"
"God help me. I.. ."
" 'How to reconcile,' you were thinking, How to reconcile with the facts Celia's insistence that Margot desired death, that Margot once swallowed strychnine, that Thorley Marsh's brutality drove her to it? How to reconcile with the facts Celia's behavior now, and her story about the ghosts in the Long Gallery?' Have I read your mind correctly?"
Holden, who had lifted his fists, dropped them at his sides.
"Look here," he said. "I'm going in now and have it out with Celia."
Dr. Fell did not try to prevent him.
'Yes," Dr. Fell assented. "That would probably be best. And I tell you again: that girl is no more mad than you are. But I warn you ..."
The other, who had started for the door, stopped short.
"A part of the police's case against her," returned. Dr. Fell, "is damning because it is perfectly true. On one point, and one point alone, that girl has been telling lies. That has caused a good deal of the trouble. She loathes telling lies in front of you."
"I’ll see her! I’ll . . ."
"Very well. But—what time is it now?"
Holden craned his neck to see the stable clock.
"A few minutes past twelve. Why?"
"You have just ten minutes," said Dr. Fell, "before you need leave here to catch that train."
The door to the passage opened. It was not flung open, since Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore caught it before it could strike the wall. Mr. Hurst-Gore, in his fine gray suit, his tawny hair agitated like his affable countenance, stood in the doorway looking from one to the other of them.
"Er—forgive this intrusion," he began. "But I heard voices. I could find nobody in the house." He took a few steps into the room, trying to smile and failing. "Dr. Fell! Have you heard this report that the police have applied for an order to exhume Margot's body?"
"I have."
"But why didn't you prevent it?"
Dr. Fell reared back; even in the chair he towered demonically. "Prevent it, sir?"
"You're a great husher-up," said Mr. Hurst-Gore, spreading out his hands. "I've heard how you hushed up everything in the case where the high-court judge was involved, and that business in Scotland at the beginning of the war. I —I was counting on you as a husher-up! Besides," he complained, "if s nonsense!"
"What is nonsense?"
"This! All this. I know the facts." Mr. Hurst-Gore's small, shrewd eyes grew hard and steady. "Dr. Fell, where's Thorley Marsh?"
"Hey?"
"Where's Thorley Marsh?"
"When I last saw him, sir, he was at Widestairs deep in conversation with Doris Locke. Isn't he still there?" "Oh, no," replied Mr. Hurst-Gore, shaking his head. "He's gone tearing off to London in his car. Where's he gone, exactly?"
If Derek Hurst-Gore had expected to produce an effect on Dr. Fell, he must have succeeded far beyond his hopes. Dr. Fell's mouth hung open. His eyes became fixed and glazed. It is not possible for a man of his complexion to become pale, yet he showed an approach to it now.
"Oh, Lord!" whispered Dr. Fell. "I heard it. With my own ears I heard it. He looked at Holden. "You told me. Yet with my scatterbrain on other matters, I never thought of the possibility that—" His bandit’s moustache puffed in agitation. "My dear Holden! Listen! You have no time to lose. You must be sure of catching that train. Holden! Wait!"
But Holden was not listening. He was off in search of Celia.
The inner walls of those long galleries had windows which looked out over the center quadrangle, weedy and overgrown, of the cloisters where once nuns had walked. The bedroom doors, in this gallery, had outer doors of stuffed leather, edged with brass nailheads, to deaden sound. Holden threw open the leather door of Celia's room, knocked at the inner door, and opened it
In a small bedroom with an oriel window, Celia sat before the mirror of a Queen Anne dressing table in the window embrasure. She had just finished dressing, and she was brushing her hair. Their eyes met in the mirror.
Holden took the two steps down into the room, amid a beauty of furniture whose polished age and grace showed brown-dark against white walls. There were little woven rugs on the floor.
"Celia," he said, "have you been telling lies?"
"Yes," answered Celia quietly.
She put down the brush. She got up, turned round, and stood facing him with her back to the dressing table.
"I invented that whole story," not a syllable was blurred in the clear voice, "about
what happened in the Long Gallery on Christmas Eve. Not a scrap of it is true, and I don't believe in ghosts myself. Please wait, before you say anything!"
Though the gray eyes remained steady, utter self-loathing colored Celia's cheeks. Her fingers touched the edges of the dressing table behind her, and gripped the edges. So intense was the silence that he could hear a ring on her finger scrape against the dressing table.
"I wanted to tell you," she went on, "in the playground on Wednesday night But I kept away from it because I was so ashamed. Then—Dr. Shepton got there, before I could tell you the truth. And you heard things from him.
"That's been between us, Don. I kept away from you on Thursday because I was ashamed. Then, when Dr. Fell broke down Thorley's story in front of the Lockes and absolutely smashed him to bits, I thought it didn't matter any longer and I could tell you. But immediately Dr. Fell said Thorley was all innocent and holy; things turned upside down again. So I said to myself: All right; I will go through with the business of opening the tomb."
He could see the rigidity of her shoulders, under a thin gray silk dress.
"When I told you people that ghost story, Don, I was acting. Every bit of it. Now hate me. Go on: hate me! I deserve it!"
Still, all about him, the silence seemed to make an island. "Why don't you speak, Don? Why do you just stand there and look at me? Don't you understand. I've been telling lies." "Thank God," said Holden.
He spoke so softly, in such a deep and heart-felt relief, that it hardly whispered across the dazzling sunlit space between them.
"What's... that?" Celia whispered back.
"I said, thank God."
Celia's knees shook. Her fingers relaxed on the edge of the dressing table. She sank down abruptly on the brocade-covered seat in front of the table, staring at him.
"You mean," she cried, "you don't care?"
"Care?" shouted Holden. "I never was so delighted with any news in all my born days." In a dizziness of relief, he addressed the ceiling oratorically.
"The Cimmerian night," he said, "o'ershadows us. Howling monsters in outer darkness rage. But Celia has been telling lies; the sun shines again; and all is gas and gaiters."
"Are you j-joking?"
"Yes! No! I don't know!"
In four strides he covered the distance between them.
"I knew," he told her, "that what you said wasn't true. I knew it in my heart But I was afraid you believed it yourself. So I was afraid it might be—something else. And now, glory be, I hear it's only . . ."
"Don! For heaven's sake! Don't hold me back over the dressing table! Mind the mirror! Mind the powder bowl! I mean—I don't care; hit 'em all over the place if you like. But. . ."
"But," he demanded, lifting her to her feet again, "Dr. Fell's told you what the police think of this?"
"Oh, the police?" said Celia, with weary indifference. "That doesn't matter. What does matter, don't you see, is that I can't ever look you in the face again?"
"Celia. Look at me now."
"I won't! I can't!"
"Celial"
Presently, after a considerable interval, he added:
"Now listen. Whether you like it or not, we have got to get you out of this. You did put that bottle there, before the vault was sealed? Just as Dr. Fell suggested?" "Yes."
"Why did you do it Celia?"
"To prove, replied Celia, writhing in self-disgust "that g-ghosts were denouncing Thorley for driving Margot to suicide. Because that’ s what Thorley did, Don! That’s true!" She broke off. "I know it was silly. I told you Wednesday night it was silly. But I was desperate. It was all I could think of."
"Where did you get the bottle?"
"Don, I had no idea it was the real bottle!"
"The strongest part of the case against you, Celia, and so far the unanswerable part, is that you alone could have been in possession of the poison bottle after Margot’s death."
"But I wasn't in possession of it I found it"
"You found it?"
"All those bottles look alike, don't they? Or, at least I thought they did. I thought if I got hold of a fake bottle, that just looked like the original bottle, it would do just as well. You remember how dusty and dirty it was, so that you could hardly read the label?"
"Yes?"
"It was in the cellar," Celia told him, "among dozens and dozens of other discarded bottles. All dirty. I never thought. . ."
"The cellar here at Caswall, you mean?"
"Don! No! There's no cellar here, except the nun's rooms, ind they're not really cellars. I mean at Widestairs. That was why I never dreamed of associating it with the real bottle, because I thought Margot’d thrown the real bottle into the moat"
"You found it in the cellar at Widestairs?"
"Yes."
Holden stepped back, away from the blaze of sun at the oriel window and the loom of a stableyard clock whose hands now pointed to fifteen minutes past twelve.
It was, he thought, exactly the sort of bitter and ironical situation he might have expected. Celia, in frantic search of an imitation bottle, finds the original and doesn't know it. Back comes boomeranging the evidence against this wily mistress of crime, who hasn't even the detective-story knowledge to remove her fingerprints from the bottle.
Celia finds the bottle (significantly?) at Widestairs. But could they prove that? Would the police believe it?
(It seemed to him that, somewhere in the galleries beyond the padded door, Dr. Fell was bellowing his name.)
"And, Don!" Celia put her hand on his arm. "I—I didn't know it until last night. It was only a guess or a joke before then. But Margot really did have a lover."
"How did you learn that?"
"In Margot's sitting room last night," Celia shivered, "in that Chinese Chippendale writing desk, we found the receipted bill."
"What receipted bill?"
"For a year's rent (yes, a year's! It must have been rather a grand passion) of flat something-or-other at number 56b New Bond Street The fortune-telling place! Dr. Fell seemed awfully excited about it. The bill was dated early in last August. Dr. Fell even put through a call to the London Exchange, and found there's a phone still listed in Madame Vanya's name. I'm not sure what Dr. Fell is after . .."
(Now the distant bellowing voice was plainer.) I'm sure what he's after," said Holden, suddenly waking up. "He wants to send me there, because the place is still intact And he says something devilish will happen unless I catch that train! And the time now ... Celia!"
"Yes?"
"You said once, if I remember correctly, that you'd have been glad if Margot had become somebody's mistress?"
"I did say it," Celia's eyes blazed, "and I do say it"
'You're wrong, my dear. It was the worst move she ever made."
"Why?"
"Because one thing," said Holden, "now seems fairly certain. When we find Margot's lover, we are going to find the murderer."
CHAPTER XVI
Margot's lover . ..
Or, after all, was lie on the wrong track?
New Bond Street, when Holden's taxi set him down at the end of Oxford Street, had a gray-and-white solidity in mid-afternoon sunshine. Once the thoroughfare of fashion, it is now at least the thoroughfare of expense. Though less narrow than Old Bond Street, and with shop numbers less designed to confuse the enemy, it seemed a backwater after the Oxford Street tumult where a terrific walking race seems always in progress by half the population of London.
Nevertheless, even here, traffic plunged. Large if sedate banners, floating from second-floor flagstaffs, waved allurements in colored letters.
Contemporary Paintings said one. Modern Masters! said another. Everything Photographic! rather sweepingly proclaimed a third. Mr. Doc, a fourth said curtly in French, Artist-Hairdresser! Brave but a little dingy, like shop fronts chary of exposing too much glass.
Plate and jewels behind wire netting. Furs. Gowns. Porcelain. Art galleries that showed dim recesses of green walls and gilt frames. L
ong windows displaying antique furniture, of heavy leopardlike magnificence. Holden saw it flow past beyond a dodging screen of pedestrians. 56b, now . . .
55b should be on the left-hand side of the street, unless the London County Council's usual sense of humor suddenly set the numbers running the other way.
56b, Got itl
Holden, walking rapidly on the right-hand side, dodged into a doorway to reconnoiter the address opposite. He was a little surprised to see, on the wall beside him, a brass plate—announcing that upstairs was a Marriage Bureau, personal and confidential introductions performed. At another time he would have been intrigued with wondering what happened if you just walked upstairs and went in. But he had too much on his mind now.All the way up in the train, from Chippenham to Paddington, he had wildly mulled over those last instructions of Dr. Fell.
"I have not time," said Dr. Fell, who would have had plenty of time if only he had ceased his roundabout style of speech, "to explain fully. But I call your attention to the problem of the black velvet gown."
"If you want to catch that train," said Mr. Derek Hurst- . Gore, who had generously offered to drive him there, "you'd better hurry."
"We agree," thundered Dr. Fell so upset he could think of only one thing at a time, "we agree that Mrs. Marsh herself put on the black velvet gown in which she was found dying. | She did it because of some sentimental association. Ah! But what association?"
"It is getting late," Celia urged.
"I have questioned," Dr. Fell pointed at Celia and Mr. Hunt-Gore, "these two here. Early this morning I questioned Sir Danvers Locke, Lady Locke, Doris Locke, Ronald Merrick, Miss Obey, and Miss Cook. Nobody has ever seen Mrs. Marsh wearing the black velvet, though it has been i seen in her dress cupboard."
"That’s perfectly true," agreed Celia. "It’s now twenty-five minutes past noon."
"I have not," Dr. Fell looked at Holden, "a key to the premises at 56b New Bond Street. You (harrumph) are familiar with the technique of breaking and entering?"
"I've been known to employ it," Holden said dryly.
"And you can make a thorough search?"
"Yes! But that’s just it! What am I supposed to be searching for?"
"Dash it all!" said Dr. Fell, drawing a hand across his fore-head. "Didn't I explain?"
The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17 Page 17