The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17

by John Dickson Carr

  "To young Merrick, writhing, it had become simply intolerable. He is more than shying away from this older woman; he is frightened of her. She may do anything. Doris will hear of this! Hell never marry Doris! It will ruin his life!”

  "Youth, when frightened, can become insensately cruel. Merrick, as I met him later at Widestairs, was a likeable sort But he was jumpy, unsteady (surely you saw that for yourself?) and blind to the matter in its right perspective. Like many another young man in a love affair from which he hasn't the experience to extricate himself, he could see only one way. He lost his head and decided to kill her.

  "Margot suggested the suicide pact. And he, at the unnoticed suggestion of Locke, had been reading about another hysterical woman: Mrs. Buchanan. Mrs. Buchanan dies of morphine-and-belladonna poisoning, and the doctors call it a natural death.

  "Could it be done? Can it be done? I see him gnawing his fingernails over the question, and deciding to try.

  "So I attempted to discover just when Merrick might have given the prepared poison bottle to his victim. She had visited Widestairs mat afternoon; but apparently she hadn't met Merrick.

  "It was not until last night that I learned Merrick had been seen trudging back from the trout stream, with a greatcoat over his sodden clothes, meeting her in the fields near Widestairs . . ."

  "And giving her the poison bottle!" interrupted Holden, "Locke saw him do it!"

  Dr. Fell blinked at him.

  "True," he grunted. "So I was informed by Locke last night But how did you know it?"

  "From overhearing Locke talking to a certain Mademoiselle Frey. Locke had been putting two and two together, with a suspicion which terrified him. Yes! And when he gave that fierce lecture about the 'utter callousness' of young people, he wasn't talking about Doris at all. He was thinking of Ronnie Merrick."

  "But—Margot?" asked Celia.

  "Your sister," returned Dr. Fell, "went back to Caswall with a plain (I repeat, a plain) brown bottle. She was going to make a last fiery appeal to her husband. And so she . .."

  "She printed a label," whispered Celia.

  "A label" said Dr. Fell, "dramatically crying poison. I think I can see her holding it up before Thorley and saying, You see what this is? Let me go, or I'll drink it tonight Let me have Ronnie; or I’ll die.'

  "And Thorley Marsh didn't believe her.

  "She had cried, 'Wolf too often. She had threatened suicide too much. Here he saw a fake label clumsily printed on a toy press from the nursery. (You recall, I asked whether he knew about that printing press?) After her threat she put the bottle more or less openly in the medicine cabinet. And, in an atmosphere of horrible strain, your party started for Widestairs."

  Dr. Fell's cigar had gone out He put it down on the little table with the decanter, the glasses, and the glass water jug. He eyed the water jug before continuing.

  "We needn't recapitulate the events of that night, except for the actual murder. Ronnie Merrick got a bad fright when he was unexpectedly faced with the part of Dr. Buchanan at the party. But he had gone too far to retreat

  "The party was over. The hours went on striking. Widestairs was now asleep. Well before one o'clock, the time ranged for both of them to drink poison, Merrick dipped away from Widestairs to Caswall. Under a greatcoat he wore the sodden-wet clothes of the trout stream.

  "He removed the greatcoat swam across the moat, and / swung himself up the pipe. From outside he could see his victim, wherever she happened to be in her suite; as I discovered by questions, an the curtains were wide open and a ledge along the wall runs underneath them. He saw her in one of those rooms, now wearing a black velvet gown."

  "Dr. Fell," said Celia, "what is the explanation of that gown? None of us had ever seen it! It was ..."

  "A black velvet gown," said Dr. Fell, "for a black velvet room."

  "What?"

  "You of course appreciate that your sister, before everything else in her life faded out under the stress of her passion for Merrick, had set up as a fortune teller as other women have done before her? It was an outlet for her hysteria, her frustration, her hatred of life.

  "Once the affair began with Merrick, all that was forgotten. Madame Vanya disappeared. Her clients' cards were destroyed. The door was locked. The inner room became sacred to the love affair that destroyed her. But it was the dress she had worn as Madame Vanya; and in it Merrick painted her portrait."

  Holden stared back. "He painted—?"

  "Dash it all!" complained Dr. Fell. "Didn't you notice what was burned in the fireplace? Didn't you smell burning canvas?"

  'Yes. Yes, I did!"

  "And the burned sticks, arranged in a rectangle, with what might have been shreds of cloth attached? And the broken lengths of varnished wood, which had been the easel before he smashed it up? The room had a skylight, you know; a north light; an artist's light That was why you saw me looking for the marks of the easel on the carpet But that big velvet-covered divan . . . well, never mind."

  Celia seemed about to comment on this last remark, but changed her mind.

  'You—you were telling us," she said, "about the murder. About Ronnie crawling up out of the moat. And poor Margot getting dressed to die. What then?"

  Dr. Fell pondered.

  "For that" he said, "we have the testimony of no living person. Let me tell you what I think happened in those rooms.

  "Merrick hasn't wanted to do this, you know. But he has got to the point of believing he must dispose of this woman, must take one last step, or he will never get Doris Locke.

  "Clinging to the drainpipe outside, he peers through that never-quite-closed window into the bathroom. He sees his victim standing in front of the mirror, holding up a glass that contains an alcohol solution of morphine and belladonna. He sees his victim, with a swaggering gesture which does not quite mean business, lift the glass and drain it.

  "But he means business. And he climbs through the window.

  "He ran very little risk. The husband, drunk, can be heard snoring in the next room. Everyone else is far away. If she is startled by that specter, face twitching and sodden wet, then the hysterical brain will assume he has come to die with her and it will seem absolutely right

  "He stops only long enough to mop head and hands on a towel. She points toward the other rooms, her bedroom and sitting room beyond, and leads the way. He follows her. In the bedroom, while her back is turned, he can snatch up a weapon ...

  "Of course you guess what it was?

  "It was a weapon from among the fire irons in the bedroom. It was the brass-handled poker which you, Celia, described as being in the sitting room on the following morning. A supernumerary fire iron, the touch of the murderer.

  "As she steps into the sitting room, she collapses from a frantic blow across the back of the skull. Not hard enough to kill; not hard enough to leave a mark under that heavy hair. But hard enough to stun until the morphine can make her helpless.

  "He drags that handsome, inert body over to the chaise longue, in the warm room with the lights burning. He must find and destroy her diary, that famous diary in the Chinese Chippendale desk. He finds the diary unlocked; he burns the pages.

  "Young Bryon is freezing cold and nearly fainting. But he goes back to the bathroom, rinses out the glass she has drunk from, and puts the poison bottle in his pocket. He switches off the light in the bedroom and the bathroom. And down he crawls again into the moat"

  Dr. Fell paused, wheezing heavily.

  "But Margot Marsh, don't you see, still had the will to live? Now we can say 'did' instead of 'perhaps' or ‘might" have.' An hour later she struggled to semiconsciousness: morphine poisoned, dying, but calling for help. Thorley Marsh heard her. He stumbled into the sitting room—

  "And, by thunder, but this man got a jolt! The moaning woman may be in a hysterical attack, yes. Of course! No doubt! But that brown bottle labelled 'poison.' My God, can she have meant what she said about suicide? Thorley Marsh rushed back to the medicine chest. The bott
le had gone."

  Dr. Fell drew a deep breath, puffing out the ribbon on his eyeglasses.

  "That," he said, "was what I had to establish when I first questioned our friend Marsh. It had seemed clear from the first, by his incessant harping to everybody on the subject of a certificate of death from natural causes, that he at least suspected the possibility of suicide. So to avoid scandal, he lied.”

  "But, if I could trip him up and get him to verify what I believed to be the truth, then I should be on safe and certain ground. And I did so. Will you concede that what I once told you was no paradox? It was because Marsh had been telling lies that I then knew he was telling the truth."

  "And yet," Holden demanded, "Thorley didn't even tell Dr. Shepton he suspected Margot might have poisoned herself?"

  "No. Because Dr. Shepton (if you recall) instantly told him it was a hysterical attack and probably not even very serious. Afterward it was too late. So he lied."

  "I can't make Thorley out!" Holden said desperately. "I still don't know whether I ought to apologize to him or wring his neck!"

  "And yet," said Dr. Fell, "he is the easiest person of all to understand. Thorley Marsh is a genuinely good-natured person, who likes his friends and will go to any amount of trouble for them, provided only his own self-interest is not seriously threatened." He paused. "There, but for the grace of God . . ."

  There was a silence.

  "Yes," said Holden. "There, but for the grace of God, go we all."

  "And yet," Celia spoke softly, "I hate him. I hate him even when I know Margot was . . . was like that, and he never mistreated her. Maybe it's a dreadful thing to say,

  "Oh, ah?" rumbled Dr. Fell. "How is he?" - "They don't know yet. Doris is at the nursing home now. We're expecting her." Celia hesitated. "But I hate him," she said, "for telling you I was crazy and Margot died a natural death and there wasn't any poison bottle, when all the time he knew better! Don, dear! I know what I did was very silly. But do you blame me?" /4No! Of course I don't!"

  "Nor I," said Dr. Fell "But, by thunder, young lady, you gave me some very apprehensive moments!"

  And Dr. Fell shook his head, massively.

  "I informed yon in the Long Gallery," he told Holden, "that this girl was in her right senses. Apparently she'd been seeing ghosts; but, when she saw you and knew you were no ghost, it was obvious she hadn't been suffering from delusions. At the same time, I had to make sure she wasn't..."

  "Wasn't what?"

  "Manufacturing evidence!" said Dr. Fell.

  An expression of awe went over his face.

  "When we went out to unseal that tomb," he continued, "I was frightened. Damme, yes! Not because I expected a snpematural occurrence, as you evidently thought But, if this girl had been attempting to manufacture evidence, as seemed likely from that letter, then the police would be after her straightaway.

  "At first glance, when we unsealed the vault, there seemed to be nothing wrong except the disarrangement of the coffins. And I was so relieved, so infinitely relieved, that Inspector Crawford noticed it

  "I had already, in case it became necessary, tried to put Crawford off the track with much hocus-pocus about the impossibility of entering that vault Then, just when I was feeling better, Crawford's light picked up that infernal bottle where only Celia could have put it. Back I sank into the abyss."

  "Dr. Fell," asked Holden, "how in blazes were those coffins moved?"

  "Ah, yes." Dr. Fell looked guilty. "I (harrumph) fear my hocus-pocus talk must have deceived you as much as it deceived Crawford."

  "Hocus-pocus talk nothing! Yesterday Locke cited a fact even more staggering. The two modern coffins, Margot’8 and that of a bloke named John Devereux, were airtight masses weighing eight hundred pounds each. Who could fling them about?"

  "That, you see," explained Dr. Fell, "was the hocus-pocus.

  Flung was the word I suggested. But they were not flung.

  They were lifted." "All right, then! How were they lifted?"

  "Again," said Dr. Fell, "the key clue is Water.'"

  "Water?"

  "The modern coffins were airtight Therefore they were watertight. They would float" Holden stared at him.

  "The country around Caswall, as you've doubtless noticed," said Dr. Fell, is watered by underground springs. The sort of thing the Germans call—"

  "Grundwasser!" muttered Holden, with a sudden realization springing into his mind. "Grundwasser!"

  "Yes. It rises nearly to the surface of the ground in the autumn and the spring, and sinks back quite quickly in the summer and the winter. Anyone who studied the countryside could make a small bet that during autumn and spring that vault would be flooded.

  "It was four feet below ground level, as you saw. As you also breathed, it was distinctly damp. Crawford, when he walked there, left sharp finely printed footprints in the sand, which doesn't happen in completely dry sand; it was damp.

  "The new watertight coffins, lifted up four feet and set drifting, were certain to move all over the place. If s not at all surprising that one of them, its head wedged against the back wall, should remain half propped up when the water subsided.

  "But the oldest coffin, being sixteenth century and rotted, never moved at all; the water got into it. An eighteenth century coffin was only slewed round, partly moved and no more. You—er—you follow me?"

  "Yes," said Holden in a dazed voice.

  "Such an occurrence," grunted Dr. Fell, "had never happened before at Caswall. The vault was new. Aside from the old tomb, which was up in a hill and not likely to be troubled by groundwater, it was the only vault in the churchyard. But the phenomenon has been seen often enough in other places." *

  "Then the sand on the floor.. ?"

  "Naturally there was no footprint. Except for disturbances round the coffins, the effect of slowly rising and falling water on sand would be to make it smoother than before.

  "Dash it all! I gave you a hint! The new lock, being far above the reach of the water, turned with a sharp clean click. But the lower hinge of the door, being well within slopping -distance of rising water, squeaked and squealed. It was rusty. Water, water, water!"

  *‘See Oddities, by Lieutenant Commander Rupert T. Gould, R. N. (London, Philip Allan & Co. Ltd., 1928, pp. 33-78.)

  "And that’s all there was to it?"

  "That," agreed Dr. Fell, "was all there was to it"

  "I'm the culprit, Don," Celia said in a stifled voice. "I— I found that in a book. I gambled on it happening. Do you hate me very much?"

  "Don't be an idiot, my dear! Hate you?"

  "But Dr. Fell must resent it"

  "By thunder," said Dr. Fell, "I do resent it!"

  "You've got every right to. I'm awfully sorry. I was looking for a fake poison bottle that resembled the real one; and in the cellar at Widestairs, where Ronnie must have hidden it I got the real bottle without knowing it. I put it in there when you and I sealed the vault Yon have every right to resent being victimized—"

  "Nonsense!" said Dr. Fell. "I mean, you should have confided in me. Damme, my girl! I could have shown you far better ways of flummoxing the evidence than an ersatz supernatural story like that"

  "I was desperate," said Celia. "There was Thorley smirking and calling me mad. So I thought I might as well be mad, and see how he liked it But it only produced evidence against me."

  "That of course, was why you had to wait so long before getting in touch with the police? Until the water rose in the spring, and dried back into the ground during the summer?"

  "Yes. And it had been such a terribly rainy June I didn't dare gamble, in case there might still be water there. But July began baking hot and continued like that so I risked it. Thorley ..."

  She broke off.

  The door to the hall opened. Doris Locke, a stanch little figure though with her eyes puffed from weeping, wandered in with a listless air. After her came her father. And the change in Locke was almost shocking; he seemed to have aged ten years in one day.r />
  Celia, deeply concerned, hurried over and pushed out chairs for them. Dons, small and grateful, acknowledged the gesture with a pressure of the hand.

  "Thorley's going to get well" Doris said. "And ifs all my fault!"

  "Your fault?" Celia asked.

  "That Thorley and Ronnie went to the New Bond Street place," Doris burst out "and had the fight." She looked at Holden. "Ifs your fault to Don Dismallo!"

  Holden stared at the floor.

  "Yes," he admitted. "I suppose it is."

  "Never in my life," again the tears came into Doris's eyes, "will I forget walking back to our house on Thursday night, through those meadows, with Ronnie and Don Dismallo!"

  Holden remembered it too, with an intolerable vividness now that he could see below the surface.

  "Don Dismallo," Doris pointed at him, "asking me about That Woman's boy friend, and me telling him about the New Bond Street place, and saying please go and investigate it! And all while Ronnie was there."

  "Doris!" murmured the gaunt, fragile image of Sir Danvers Locke.

  "I knew there was something wrong with Ronnie that night!" said Doris. "I could tell it by his voice, and the way his eyes sort of shone. But I never guessed Ronnie, Ronnie of all people, was That Woman's boy friend!" She looked at Holden as though a great oracle had let her down. "You, Don Dismallo!"

  "My dear girl," protested Holden, "how could you expect me to guess it either? You kept talking about a 'distinguished-looking middle-aged man.' You said there was a friend of yours, Jane Somebody, who had seen them ..”

  "Jane didn't say he was middle-aged!"

  "Didn't sav—?"

  "Jane Paulton said he was 'distinguished-looking.' It was Ronnie who caught that up, the first time I ever told him, and tacked on 'middle-aged. He kept repeating it over and over. It was Ronnie who told you so that night And it seemed all right," stormed Doris, "because you do think of somebody distinguished looking as being middle-aged."

  "Come to think of it..."

  "Y-yes, Don Dismallo?"

  "The first time I ever met Ronnie," said Holden, "he unnecessarily dragged in a reference to Margot’s lover and kept insisting on the middle-aged part"