Till Death Do Us Part

You'll probably find boxes of them all over the house. You didn't live here in Colonel Pope's time, did you?' ‘No.’

'Colonel Pope,' said Earnshaw, 'used to use them for the wasps.'

Dick felt that that he could not have heard properly.

'He used drawing-pins for the wasps?'

'Waspy place,' explained Earnshaw, nodding in the direction of the fruit-orchard. 'Colonel Pope said he couldn't keep the windows open in summer without being devilled half to death.'

'Well? What about it?'

'Somebody mentioned an American thing called "screens". We don't have 'em in England, but we ought to have. You know: wire-mesh things with sliding wooden frames. You prop 'em in the windows to keep out insects. Colonel Pope couldn't get any, but it gave him an idea. He used to take pieces of cloth netting, gauzy stuff, and fasten 'em round the edges of the window-frames with a lot of drawing-pins. He did that solemnly every day.'

Earnshaw pointed to the writing-table.

'You'll undoubtedly find more of the things in the drawer there,' he went on. 'But what they mean lying beside a dead man's hand ...'

Dick restrained an impulse to answer that the points of those drawing-pins would make just the same sort of puncture as a clumsily administered hypodermic. But this was only a meaningless fancy, of no value. An odour of prussic acid, still exhaling from the dead man's pores, tinged the thickening heat of the sitting-room. It was affecting Earnshaw too.

'Let's get out of here,' he said curtly.

They were in the garden again when Earnshaw added:

'Seen Lesley this morning?'

'Not yet' ('Here we go again,' Dick thought desperately; 'by God and His earth and altars, here we go again)') 'Why do you ask, Bill?'

'No reason at all. I mean,' laughed Earnshaw, 'she'll be glad to hear she didn't -' This time his nod indicated the sitting-room. 'Incidentally, Dick, I don't want you to think I pay any attention to gossip. No fear!' 'No, of course not!'

'But I can't help feeling, sometimes, that there is a bit of a mystery about Lesley.' 'What sort of mystery?'

'I remember,' Earnshaw said reflectively, 'the first time I ever saw her to speak to her. She's one of our clients, you know.'

' So are most of the rest of us. What's so very sinister about that?'

Earnshaw paid no attention to the question.

'What I am telling you is no secret, of course. She'd come to Six Ashes about a fortnight before and taken the Farnham house. She came to my office and asked whether I'd mind transferring her account from our Basinghall Street branch in London to the branch here. I said, naturally, that I'd be only too pleased.' Earnshaw looked complacent. 'Then she said, "Do you have safe-deposit boxes here?"'

Again Earnshaw laughed. Dick Markham took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Earnshaw, who shook his head.

' I said no, if she meant the sort of thing we have at the bigger branches in London. But, I said, we always accommodated customers by keeping valuables for them in a sealed box in our strong-room. She gave me an oddish look, and said she hadn't anything valuable; but there were one or two things that would be better off in a safe place.'

‘Well?'

'Then she said, "Do you have to know what's in the box I give you?" I said, on the contrary, that we prefer not to know. The receipt we give is always marked, "contents unknown". Then, old man, I'm afraid I made a diplomatic howler. I said - meaning it as a joke - "Of course, if I became suspicious, it would be my duty to investigate." She never mentioned the matter again.'

'Contents unknown.'

Dick lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl up. He could picture that little office in the High Street: Earnshaw behind the desk, with his finger-tips together and his sleek head bent forward. And the eternal, torturing riddle of what was not valuable, yet had to be kept secret from all eyes; the riddle of Lesley herself; seemed to reach its final point.

' Hullo!' muttered Earnshaw.

The clanking noise of a motor-car, approaching eastwards along the lane, was followed by die appearance of Dr Middlesworth's dusty Hillman. It drew up outside the cottage. Middlesworth, a pipe in his mouth, climbed out from under the wheel and opened the back door of the car.

'Good Lord!' exclaimed Earnshaw. 'Isn't that ...?'

From the back of the car, like a very large genie out of a very small bottle, there slowly emerged an immensely tall and immensely stout figure wearing a box-pleated cape and a clerical shovel-hat It was a complicated business in which this figure clutched the hat to its head, kept firm a pair of eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon, manoeuvred itself with many wheezes through the restrictions of the door, and at the same time supported itself by leaning forward on a crutch-handled cane.

Then the figure upreared in the road, its cape and eyeglass-ribbon flying, to take a broad survey of the cottage. The face with its several chins and bandit's moustache was pinker from exertion. But its war-cry remained, making every chin quiver, when the stout gentleman cleared his throat.

'Yes,' said Dick, who had seen the Gargantuan presence many times in illustrated papers. 'That's Gideon Fell.'

And now he remembered the meaning of the reference to Hastings.

Middlesworth had said last night - during one of those odd little spurts of speech which punctuated Middlesworth's thoughtful silence - that Dr Fell was spending the summer at Hastings not far away. Middlesworth had driven over to fetch Dr Fell at a crazily early hour. Why?

It didn't matter. Dr Fell knew just as much about this business as Superintendent Hadley. Lesley's story would be out now; and in front of Bill Earnshaw. He was feeling even sicker when he saw Middlesworth exchange a word with Dr Fell, after which the Gargantuan doctor lumbered forward towards the cottage.

Dr Fell, in fact, seemed possessed of a subdued and savage wrath. He cut at the grass with his crutch-handled stick. Immense, like a sailing galleon in his cape, he towered a good head over any man there. He stopped in front of Dick Markham, wheezing heavily, and regarded Dick with an extraordinary air of concern.

Again he cleared his throat.

'Sir,' intoned Dr Fell, removing his shovel-hat, with old-fashioned stateliness, 'am I addressing Mr Richard Markham?'

'Yes.'

'Sir,' said Dr Fell, 'we have come to bring you good news.'

In the ensuing silence, while he continued to blink at Dick with an air of concern, you could hear a dog barking from very far away.

'Good news?' Dick repeated.

'Despite the fact,' pursued Dr Fell, replacing his hat and peering round at Middlesworth, 'despite the fact that on our way here we met a certain Major ... Major -?'

'Price,' supplied Middlesworth.

'A certain. Major Price, yes, who told us of this morning's occurrences and somewhat abated our triumph, I still think you will find it good news.'

Dick stared from Dr Fell to Middlesworth. Middles-worth, with his lined forehead and his thinning brown hair, remained as usual non-committal; but the expression of his eyes, even of the deep lines round his mouth conveyed a puzzling reassurance.

'We can settle it, anyway,' said Middlesworth, taking the pipe from his mouth and knocking it out against his heel. He went to the sitting-room window and tapped its glass. 'Dr Fell,' he added, 'who is that dead man?'

Growling from deep in his throat, Dr Fell lumbered forward and approached the window as closely as the mountainous ridges of his waistcoat would allow. He adjusted his eyeglasses, bending forward as though for intense concentration. But it was no more than a few seconds before he swung round again.

'Sir,' replied Dr Fell, with the same air of subdued wrath, 'I have not the slightest idea who he is. But he is not Sir Harvey Gilman.'

CHAPTER 11

Too many shocks, numbing the emotions, produce a kind of torpor in which it is easy to pretend calmness.

‘What's the joke?' asked Dick Markham.

He: became conscious of three faces looking at him: of Earnshaw open-mouthed, of Middlesworth bitterly wry, of Dr Fell in such a genuine glory of rage that his upthrust under-lip seemed to meet the bandit's moustache.

'There's no joke,' answered Middlesworth.

Then.Dick shouted:'Not Sir Harvey Gilman?'

' He's an impostor,' Middlesworth said simply..' I couldn't tell you last night what I suspected, because I didn't want to raise false- hopes. But ..„...' Middlesworth woke up. 'Excuse me, Bill’ he said to Earnshaw, 'but won't you be-needed at the bank?'

No hint could have been plainer and yet, in Middlesworth's mild voice, containing less offence. It says much too for Earnshaw's urbanity, or his good nature, or both, that the bank-manager merely nodded.

'Yes he agreed, 'I'm late already. I shall have to excuse-myself, I'm afraid. See you later.'

And he. turned round and marched off like a man in a trance, though he must have been boiling with curiosity..

Middlesworth waited until the straight back, the Anthony Eden hat, the trim dark-blue suit had got some distance away.

'Tell him, Dr Fell,' Middlesworth suggested.

Dr Fell wheeled round, a mighty galleon, to face Dick.

'Sir,' he intoned, setting his eyeglasses more firmly, 'you have been made the victim, I can't say why, of as cruel and brutal a hoax as comes within my experience. I wish to reassure you about this Miss ... Miss ...?'

'Lesley Grant,' supplied Middlesworth.

'Oh, ah. Yes.' Dr Fell's face was fiery; his cheeks puffed out,' Miss Grant is not a poisoner. She is not, so far as I am aware, a criminal of any kind. I will itemize exactly what I mean.'

He checked off the points on his fingers.

'She never married, or murdered, or in fact had any concern with an American lawyer called Burton Foster, for the excellent reason that no such person ever existed -'

'What?'

Dr Fell waved him to silence.

' She is guiltless of poisoning the elderly Mr Davies of Liverpool in a locked room or anywhere else, because Mr Davies never existed either. She never invited Mr Martin Belford of Paris, to an engagement-celebration dinner at her house, and then sent him home to die, because he is a figment of the imagination too. In short, sir: the whole story against Miss Grant is nothing but a pack of lies from start to finish.'

If pain can be felt in a detached way, that was how Dick Markham felt the bite that seared between the first two fingers of his right hand. He woke up partly to the fact that his cigarette had burnt down against them. He stared at the cigarette, and then threw it away.

'Steady, now!' came Middlesworth's voice out of the mist.

And it was Middlesworth's homely, heartening grin which broke the spell.

'Then,' said Dick, 'who in God's name is he? I mean, who was he?'

Words alone could not express what poured through his mind. Dick Markham fell back on pantomime, like a child. He pointed to the sitting-room window, to the evil exhibits and the leering corpse beyond.

'As to who he is,' replied Dr Fell,' I can only repeat that I don't know. I never saw him before, in spite of the fact that he seems to have claimed acquaintance with me. But he was, I suspect, a good deal of a genius.'

'And why,' yelled Dick, 'did he tell that pack of lies? Why? What was his purpose?'

Dr Fell scowled.

'I refuse to imagine, you know, that the whole thing was an elaborate joke.'

'It wasn't a joke,' Middlesworth agreed dryly. 'You should have watched his face last night.'

Again Dr Fell turned to Dick, with a sort of massive and cross-eyed benevolence which had in it a note of apology.

'You see, my lad, that story of his was in its own way a minor work of art. It was directed solely and simplyat you: at every chink in your armour, every receptive part of your mental make-up.'

(True! True! True!)

'Each word was designed to get its own particular response from you. On to this young lady he grafted a psychological character in which you could believe, an irony that would strike you as right, a situation which your own imagination would compel you to accept It was the perfect picture of - ahem - a dramatist hoist with his own petard. But I'm rather surprised ...'

Dr Fell's big voice trailed off, and he frowned. Dick, to whom certain small indications were now coming back, looked at Middlesworth.

' I'd rather like to shake your hand, Doctor,' he said.

"That's all right,' said Middlesworth, embarrassed.

' You thought he was a wrong ‘un from the start?'

'We-el,' said Middlesworth, 'not exactly that'

'But your behaviour last night...'

' I shouldn't have gone so far as to say I thought he was a wrong ‘un, no. But I haven't been altogether happy about it- When Major Price first introduced, him to, me, and said Sir Harvey made, us all promise to keep his real identity a secret for a while -'

' I'll, bet he made you promise,' observed Dr Fell grimly. 'By thunder, but wouldn't "Sir Harvey" make you promise!'

'I was interested,' said Middlesworth. 'I asked him about one of his famous cases. He answered me all right. But he made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit. Because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers. And then those stories he told last night.'

Dick spoke with a very bitter taste in his mouth.

'Did he catch me,' Dick, asked, 'with some wild absurdity in a crime story?'

Middlesworth reflected;.

'Not absurd, no. Nothing impossible. Just unlikely. Such as a pathologist being called on to act as. police surgeon in the London area.. Or, in the Liverpool story holding the inquest at St George's Hall when, the crime took place in a suburb like Prince's Park.. I'm only a. G.P.,' explained Middlesworth; apologetically, 'but - hang it all!'

He put his, empty pipe into his mouth and. drew at it.

'Anyway,' Middlesworth added hunching up his shoulders, ' I thought it might be a good idea to get in touch with Dr Fell.' His mild eye twinkled towards Dick, 'Feeling better, old son?'

Better?

How, to explajn that, he hadn't got rid of the nightmare even yet?" And that the- hypnotic eye of the alleged Sir Harvey Gilman - a much-too-hypnotic eye., he now realized - still, bored into his mind? Over the fields now reminding him, drifted; the sound of the church clock-striking-ten in the morning.

'It's just exactly twelve hours,' answered: Dick, 'since I got pitched into this nightmare. It seems like twelve days or twelve years. I've got to get used to the idea that Lesley

isn't a murderess, and that these "murdered men" never existed. There never was any prussic-acid poisoning! There never was any locked room!' Dr Fell coughed.

' I beg your pardon,' he observed, with polished courtesy. 'But there is very much a prussic-acid poisoning. And there is very much a locked room. Kindly glance into the sitting-room and see.'

The church clock ended its striking. \

And the three of them looked at one another wildly.

'Dr Fell,' said Dick, 'what does the whole mess mean?'

A long sniff rumbled in Dr Fell's nose. He took a few lumbering steps up and down the garden, cutting at the grass with his crutch-handled stick. He seemed in his own mind to be addressing a ghostly parliament; you saw the gestures even if the words were inaudible. When he did in fact turn to address his two companions, he reared back his head so that the eyeglasses should remain firmly on his nose.

'Why, sir,' he replied, shaking the crutch-handled stick in the air, 'the main outline of the affair would appear to be before us. This impostor's story was not true. But somebody made it come true.'

'Meaning?'

Again Dr Fell paced.

'We shall not be in any firm position,' he went on, 'until we learn who the impostor is, and what his game was, and why he spun this appalling yarn merely to ... do what? Merely, as I understand it, to be present in the house while Mr Markham has dinner with Miss Grant! Is that correct?'

Both Dick and Middlesworth nodded. Dr Fell blinked at the latter.

'But one suggestion you made, when we heard of this morning's work from a certain Major Price,' he resumed, 'does seem to me to be whang in the bull's-eye. Oh, ah. Yes. Whatever explanation we put on the situation, the centre of the whole plot is still Miss Lesley Grant.'

Dick spoke sharply.

'How do you work that out?'

A radiant beam appeared in Dr Fell's eye, illuminating his pink face like the glow of a vast furnace, and going down in chuckles over the ridges of his waistcoat. Then he became preternaturally solemn.

'The centre of the whole plot,' he repeated, 'is still Miss Lesley Grant. Now a very important question. Regarding this little tale of locked rooms and hypodermic syringes - did the impostor tell this story to anybody except you two?'

'I don't know,' said Dick.

'Nor I,' admitted Middlesworth.

'While he was telling you the story, could anybody have overheard him?'

Very vividly Dick recalled that scene last night: the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close over the windows, and one window pushed fully open. He recalled Middlesworth suddenly getting up, in the course of the so-called Sir Harvey's recital, and putting his head out of that window. Dick related the incident now.

'Was there somebody out here?' he asked Middlesworth.

'Yes.'

'Could you see who it was?' 'No. Too dark.'

'There are two alternatives,' grunted Dr Fell. 'You can say, if you like, that the impostor went through all his masquerade as Sir Harvey Gilman, spun his grotesque yarn, made all his arrangements, just so that he could lock himself in here later and give himself a dose of poison.

"That may be true, gentlemen. It may be true. But unless the fellow was an escaped lunatic, which I consider unlikely, it does not sound a very feasible explanation. H'mf, no. The other alternative -'

'Murder?'

'Yes. And you see where that leads us?' Dr Fell resumed his pacing, addressed his ghostly parliament, and finally came to a stop once more.

'The whole point, d'ye see, is this. Last night a crime was reproduced here, line for line like a fine drawing. The joke being that the original crime didn't exist! It was imagined, a piece of pure fantasy, by the impostor calling himself Sir Harvey Gilman. Yet it was reproduced. Why? Because, of course, the murderer believed he was reproducing a real crime.

'The people of Six Ashes believed - and still believe -that this fellow is Sir Harvey Gilman, the Home.Office pathologist. What Sir Harvey says is gospel. What Sir Harvey mentions as a real case is a real case. Why should the good people doubt it?

'Either he told this prussic-acid story to somebody in private, or else somebody overheard it last night. Somebody believes, firmly believes, that Lesley Grant is a murderess who has killed three men. Somebody, with joy in the heart, suddenly thinks of a way to commit this "impossible" crime. And therefore somebody commits it, serene in the belief that Lesley Grant will be blamed.'

Dr Fell paused, drawing a wheezy breath. He added, somewhat less eloquently:

'That's the ticket, gents. You can bet your shirts on it'

'Are you saying,' Dick demanded,' that somebody hates Lesley enough to commit murder in order to ...?'

Dr Fell looked distressed.

' My dear sir,' he protested, 'we can't say anything about motive. We don't know the identity of the dead man. Before you begin saying so-and-so had a motive, it is just as well to know whose murder you are investigating.'

‘Then-?'

'AH we do see with certainty is that Lesley Grant presented a convenient scapegoat. The murderer didn't doubt, probably doesn't doubt to this minute, that the dirty work will be attributed to her, since she is a real poisoner.' He blinked at Dick. 'You believed that yourself, I think, until a few minutes ago?'

'Yes. I'm afraid I did.'

'Tut, now!' rumbled Dr Fell, and again the chronic chuckle ran over him. 'There is no need for this hangdog look, and this violent inner cursing of yourself !’ ‘I think there is.'

'When, as I understand it from Middlesworth, you were prepared to shield this lady no matter what she had done? Sir, that was very reprehensible of you. It makes me cluck my tongue. It was not the act of a good citizen. But, by thunder, it was the act of a true lover!' Dr Fell struck the ferrule of his cane on the ground. 'However, with regard to the present difficulties ...'

'Well?’

'You must remember, sir, that I've had only the outline of yesterday's events from Dr Middlesworth, and the barest outlines of to-day's events from Major Price via the constable. But one other thing does emerge. If the blame for this crime is intended for Miss Lesley Grant, it follows as a corollary that...'

Again he paused, sunk fathoms deep in obscure musing. Then he said:

'Who, by the way, was the gentleman here a moment ago?'

'I ought to have introduced you,' Dick apologized, 'but I was too flummoxed to think of it. That was Bill Earnshaw, the bank-manager.'

' Oh, ah. I see. Did he want anything in particular?'

'He was worried about this infernal rifle. Also, he supplied at least a partial explanation as to why a box of drawing-pins should turn up in the sitting-room.'

Dick gave a sketch of Earnshaw's information. Dr Fell gave close attention to the account of Colonel Pope's habits with drawing-pins. He gave equally close attention to the account of yesterday's garden-party and the inexplicable disappearance of the rifle under everybody's eyes. Something in this latter secondary mystery appeared to interest Dr Fell very much indeed, for the doctor eyed him with a hideous face of speculation. But, instead of saying what was really in his mind, Dr Fell went off on another tack.

'Tell me,' he mused. 'When our friend the impostor acted as fortune-teller, was he a good fortune-teller? Did he appear to have made shrewd guesses about people in general?'

'His information seems to have paralysed everybody. Including -'

Back again, sharp and quick as the jab of a needle, came the recollection that something had been said to Lesley about which she patently lied afterwards. Dr Fell saw this.

'May I suggest,' he said, 'that you don't plunge back into the horrors again? Archons of Athens! If he so thoroughly hypnotized you with a false story, isn't it possible he may have done the same thing with her?'

'You mean told Lesley some walloping yarn ...'

'That,' Dr Fell pointed out, 'appears to have been his speciality.'

More and more was a strengthening sanity emerging, to explain away all difficulties. Dick spoke with fervour.

'As soon as the constable comes back, and I can be let off standing guard, there's just one thing I want to do. I want to go straight to Lesley and apologize.'

Dr Fell was delighted.

'Apologize,' he inquired, 'for shielding her?'

'Apologize for everything! Tell her what a swine I am! Have the whole thing out with her!'

'If you want to go now,' said Dr Fell, 'I can stand guard. It will interest me very much to make an examination of that room. Later, if you please, I want you to tell me EVERYTHING. I have a feeling' - he groped at the air -'that my present information is not only incomplete, but misleading. When you return, by the way, you will probably find me at Ashe Hall.'

'At Ashe Hall? Do you know Lord Ashe?'

Dr Fell pointed with his cane.

"Those, I take it, are the grounds of the Hall?'

'Yes. You can go through the coppice up over a field, and get to it by a short cut.'

'I am acquainted with Lord Ashe,' resumed Dr Fell, 'only through correspondence. But his antiquarian researches interest me. The first Ashe was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth. The last Ashe, before this present one, was a sizzler who upset half Europe with the most notorious bawd of her day. Between those two he plans a family history which shall be, in actual fact, a history of England for three and a half centuries. If he had enough money to ...' Dr Fell woke up.' Never mind! Shall I stand guard for you, sir?'

Middlesworth touched Dick's arm.

'Come along,' he said, 'and I'll give you a lift. I've got to be back myself for surgery at half-past ten.'

Utterly oblivious of them now, Dr Fell lumbered up the two stone steps into the cottage. In the last glimpse they had of him, as Middlesworth backed the car round in the lane, they could see him inside the sitting-room. They could see him first owlishly examining the shattered window on the left, and then examining the other window with its bullet-hole below and to one side of the metal catch.

Dick rode in Middlesworth's car with very different feelings from last night. While they bumped along Gallows Lane - it was no very great distance from here to the High Street, and to Lesley's house - each of them made only one remark. Dick said, 'Thanks!' and Middlesworth said, 'Not at all.' But it was as though they had shaken hands.

When Middlesworth dropped him off in front of Lesley's house, Dick stood for a time looking north along the sedate High Street. The daze of the nightmare had not quite passed, but he wanted to execute a dance, or throw a stone through the post office window, as a sheer explosion of relief. He took pleasure, physical pleasure, even in the sight of the High Street.

There were the familiar houses. There was the post office, with its temperamental postmistress and no stamp-machine. There were the shops, the public-house 'Griffin and Ash-tree', the three or four offices, the trim brick premises of the City and Provincial Bank. Beyond rose-the low grey spire of the church, presided over by the Rev. Arthur Goodflower; and its clock was now striking the quarter-hour after ten.

The clock-note had a melody not noticeable to anybody except Dick Markham. He strode up the path towards Lesley's house.

Nobody answered his ring at the door-bell. He rang again, still without effect, before he noticed that the front door was not quite closed.

Pushing it open, he put his head into the cool, dusky, pleasant hall.

'Lesley!' he called.

How the devil was he going to face up to her now? How to tell her, in so many words, that he had last night suspected her of being an angelic murderess with poison, or a diary, or some unnamed horror hidden away in a wall-safe? But the only thing to do was to tell her straight out, ending this nightmare in one gust of laughter.

For the fact remained that yesterday's business with the rifle had been an accident after all.

Lesley, rattled by some weird story - for all Dick knew, maybe even that he was a murderer himself - had loosed off that rifle without meaning it. And the fraudulent Gilman had instantly and glibly used this to his own advantage.

Still no reply from the house.

'Lesley!' he called again.

The grandfather clock in the hall ticked with its metronome-note. Mrs Rackley, in all probability, would be out marketing at this hour. But Lesley - He was about to turn away, and close the door after him, when he caught sight of Lesley's handbag, with her front-door key beside it, lying on a small table in the hall.

Shouting her name, he wandered into the sitting-room. Then he glanced into the dining-room opposite, and investigated the kitchen behind that. One look through the back kitchen-windows told him that she was not in the garden either.

He told himself that he had no reason to feel disquiet. She might only have gone a step or two down the road. Standing in the middle of the tidy white kitchen, where a tap drizzled with hollow effect in the silence, he told himself this; but he had now reached such a state of mind that he wanted the reassurance of merely seeing her.

As a last resort he peered into the little room, hardly more than a cubicle, where Lesley was accustomed to have breakfast Its furniture was of bright-painted blue and white wood, like nursery furniture. On the table, set for one with precise array of silver and china, the bacon and eggs had turned stone cold. The toast had withered to hardness in its rack. No coffee had been poured out into a waiting cup.

Dick hurried out of that room, returned to the hall again, and started upstairs three steps at a time.

So thoroughly were the proprieties observed in this house that he had never so much as looked inside her bedroom, though he knew which room it was. He halted outside the closed door. He knocked once without reply, hesitated, and opened the door.

The two windows of the bedroom faced the High Street. Between them showed, like a scar, an, evilly significant wall-safe with its steel front swung wide open. That was not all he could see, when three strides took him forward. The inside of the safe, not much bigger than a large biscuit-barrel, was empty.

Passing the foot of the bed, Dick swung round.

Huddled on the floor near the foot of the bed, her left cheek against the carpet, lay Cynthia Drew. One knee was partly drawn up, and Cynthia's arms in the pinkish-coloured jumper were thrown wide. A purplish bruise on her right temple had split a little to let dark blood trickle and congeal down the cheekbone. She did not move.

CHAPTER 12

AN empty safe.

Cynthia, waxen of complexion and with her yellow hair disarranged.

Dick picked her up - Cynthia's sturdiness made her no light weight, despite the fact that she was not tall - and carried her to the bed, where she lay as limply as a doll.

There could be no question, thank God, about her being alive. She was not even, he hoped, seriously hurt. Her half-parted lips stirred to an audible if jerky breathing. But she was pale, and the devil's brush of the bruise showed ugly against the very fair skin.

Another door opposite the windows displayed a thoroughly modern, even sybaritic bathroom. Dick plunged into it, turned on the cold-water tap with a rush into the washbasin, soaked a face-cloth, wrung it out, and rummaged in the medicine-chest for smelling-salts and iodine. In doing so he confronted his own reflexion - stubbly-bearded, not even washed, a spectre to affright decent people - in the mirror over the wash-basin. He found neither smelling-salts nor iodine, but there was a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of cotton-wool.

He went back to Cynthia, and he was just pressing the wet cloth to her forehead when he heard, from downstairs, the hollow slam of the front door.

Lesley?

But it was not Lesley. When he hurried downstairs, taking them at mountaineering jumps, it was to find Mrs Rackley: in a regrettable hat, with a market-basket over one arm and a bulging paper carrier in the other hand.

'Mr Markham!' exclaimed Mrs Rackley. Her eyes added, 'Now, then!' as plainly as any Metropolitan police-constable.

'Where's Miss Lesley?'

'She's 'ere, sir.'

' She's not here, Mrs Rackley!'

'I left 'er 'ere,' the other pointed out, dumping the parcels on the hall table with something of alarm. ' When did you leave her ?'

'An hour ago, it might be.' Mrs Rackley's eyes moved to the clock.' Miss Cynthia -' ' What about Miss Cynthia ?'

A flustered cook-maid-housekeeper was having some trouble with the parcels in market-basket and carrier, which seemed to be developing a tendency to roll like billiard-balls.

'Well, sir, it was while Major Price was here. Miss Cynthia, she come to the back door and said, could she slip up the back stairs to Miss Lesley's room, because she had something she wanted to surprise her with? I said yes, she could, Miss Cynthia being a Nice Girl and holding no offence towards you and Miss Lesley for ... I beg-pardon-I'm-sure!'

‘ Well ? What happened then ?'

' Sir, what's wrong ?'

' Never' mind that! Go on!'

"Then Major Price left, and Miss Lesley went upstairs too, and I heard them talking up there.' 'Yes?'

' I went upstairs myself, and tapped on the bedroom door, and said, "Miss, your breakfast's ready." And she called out and said, "I'll come down straightaway; please go out and do your marketing." Speaking up very sharp, which she's never done before. And so I marched straight out like she said.' Mrs Rackley's sense of bitter offence melted into concern as the possibility of a new enormity occurred to her.' Don't you tell me, sir, she didn't get her breakfast ?'

Dick ignored this.

'I'm afraid there's been an accident' He hesitated. ' Miss Cynthia fell and hurt her head. If you could -'

It was unnecessary to say any more. Though a heavy woman, Mrs Rackley ascended the stairs with surprising agility, holding a hand under her heart as though to prevent it from falling out. Her treatment of Cynthia was deft and effective.

After bathing the bruise, sponging away blood, she applied restoratives of her own which she fetched from an upper floor. Cynthia, coming out of the faint, began to fight. Cynthia writhed and squirmed and muttered and kicked out; and Mrs Rackley held her shoulders patiently until she quietened.

'Now, now!' urged Mrs Rackley. 'Now, now!' Her neck craned round. 'Do you think, sir, as we ought to send for the doctor?'

'No.’

' 'Ow did this 'appen, sir ?'

' She - she slipped and hit her head on the foot of the bed.'

' Was you here, sir ?'

'Thank you, Mrs Rackley. That will be all. If you could let me speak to Miss Cynthia alone for a moment...'

'I don't know,' said Mrs Rackley deliberately, 'as I ought to do that.'

'What she needs,' said Dick, 'is tea.' He had no idea whether this might be the right measure, but he counted on the effect on Mrs Rackley of suggesting anything prepared in the kitchen. 'Hot black tea,' he declared with assurance, 'without any sugar or milk. If we could have some of that...'

It worked.

Then he sat down on the edge of the bed beside Cynthia, who hastily smoothed down her skirt and must have felt the pain burn through her head as she tried to get up. Cynthia breathed hard. The blue eyes, becoming less cloudy, grew fixed,' she went red under the eyes, and then pale again.

‘ It's all right, Cynthia. What happened ?'

'She hit me. It sounds a-absurd, but she hit me. With that mirror.'

'What mirror?'

Cynthia tried to struggle up in order to point; as soon as her shoulders left the coverlet she caught sight of the open safe; and she caught in manifest dizziness at Dick's arm.

‘Dick! That safe!'

'What about it?’

' It's empty. What was in it? ‘

'Don't you know?'

'No! I tried to -' Abruptly Cynthia checked herself. Her face smoothed itself out to utter, pretty stolidity; without the prettiness, it would have been bovine. She attempted a light laugh. ' My dear old boy,' she added in her tennis-court voice, 'we're being rather absurd. Please let me get up.'

‘Oe still, Cynthia.'

'Just as you like, of course!'

'Where did you hear that there was something, anything at all, supposed to be in that safe ?'

'My dear Richard, I didn't! That safe is the mystery of the whole village. Half of Six Ashes talks about it, thank you. And, s-since we've got so many mysteries on our hands - !' Again Cynthia checked herself. 'She hit at me, Dick. I walked towards her, intending to reason with her. And she hit out at me like a snake striking. With that mirror.'

Dick glanced round.

On the dressing-table was a silver toilet-service: plain, unobtrusive, but costly and very heavy. Its hand-mirror, which would have made a murderous weapon, now lay balanced on the edge of the dressing-table as though hastily put down.

Dick Markham - he felt it himself with surprise - was no longer the mentally dazed and drugged person of yesterday. He had torn loose from evil, or so he thought; he had become again an alert, alive young man with more than his fair share of intelligence.

'Why did she do that, Cynthia ?'

' I've told you! I asked her to open the safe.'

' Was she standing in front of you ?'

'Yes. With her back to that dressing-table, and her hand behind her. And she lashed out with the mirror before I could lift a finger.'

' Cynthia, are you sure you're telling me the truth ?'

'Why shouldn't I be telling you the truth?'

'Lesley's right-handed. If she hit out at you with the mirror while you were facing her, that bruise ought to be on your left temple. How is it that the bruise is on your right temple?'

Cynthia stared at him.

' Don't you believe me, Dick Markham ?'

'I'm not saying I don't believe you, Cynthia. I'm trying to find out what happened here.'

'Of course,' Cynthia said with sudden fierce bitterness, 'you'd take her part.' And then, disregarding appearances, this girl who was always so careful of appearances rolled over on her face and began passionately to sob.

Dick, with a hot and cold feeling of- embarrassment, made the mistake of trying to touch her arm; she shook him off with a gesture of intense loathing. He got up, went to the window, and stared out blankly at the High Street.

Across the road, and to the left, loomed the entrance-gates of Ashe Hall. Nothing stirred in the High Street except a tall military-looking man - a stranger in the village, Dick vaguely noticed - who was crossing the street on this side in the direction of the post office.

Dick was fond of Cynthia, very fond, though not in the same way as his feeling for Lesley. The thought which flashed through his head was so ugly that it turned him cold: the more so as Cynthia's emotional storm spent itself immediately. With a calm and amazing change of mood, she sat up and put her feet down to the floor.

' I must look a sight,' she observed.

He whirled round.

' Cynthia, where is Lesley?'

' How on earth should I know ?'

' She isn't here. She isn't in the house. And, as you said, that safe is empty now.' ' You don't think I've done anything to her, surely ?' 'No, no! But-'

'But you admit,' interposed Cynthia, with careful coldness, 'that she does have something to hide. In the safe, which she's taken away now. I see!'

'For God's sake listen! The thing I'm trying to get at is this. What excuse did you have for asking her to open the safe ? What made you do it ?'

' If you'd heard the dreadful things that are being said about her-'

in

' Is that all, Cynthia ? You weren't by any chance listening outside the windows last night?' ' What windows, Dick ? What is all this ?' No: it was absurd.

The puzzled straightforwardness of her manner made him put the thought away from him. He touched the little door of the safe, which swung gently shut He picked up from the carpet a picture which had evidently hung in front of the safe. Replacing its wire on the picture-hook, he saw that it was a black-and-white Aubrey Beardsley drawing: a sly mosaic of evil whose inner design did not become immediately apparent but, when it did become apparent, struck you in the face.

' I insist,' cried Cynthia,' on knowing what you mean!'

Dick groped for excuses.' I mean,' he lied,' that you were there this morning. Near the cottage. You might have heard or seen something that would help us.'

He had meant nothing by this, he was merely flinging out words at random, but to his surprise Cynthia's voice changed.

'As a matter of fact, Dick, I did see something.' ' What?'

Cynthia's fingers plucked at the quilted coverlet of the bed.

' I meant to tell you earlier. But we were in such an awful flap that it completely slipped my mind. It's not important, anyway, because Sir Harvey Gilman killed himself.' Her eyes moved up.' Didn't he ?'

' Never mind! What did you see ?'

' I saw somebody running,' answered Cynthia.

'When? Where?'

Cynthia reflected.' It was a minute or so before the rifle was fired at the window.'

' Before the rifle was fired at the window ?' .

'Yes. I was coming along the lane from the east, you remember? Whereas you were coming from the west? I hadn't seen you yet, and naturally I couldn't tell there was anything wrong. But I saw somebody dodge across the lane in front of me.'

' Dodge across the lane in front of you ?'

'That's right. From the fruit-orchard beside the cottage, across to the wall opposite and over the wall into the coppice.'

' Could you see who the person was ?' ' No. Only a shadow. It was that queer funny light just at sunrise.'

'Any description at all ?' ' No, I'm afraid not.' 'Man or woman?'

Cynthia hesitated. 'I can't say, really. And now, Mr Richard Markham, if you've quite finished your interrogation and your various suspicions of me, I think I'd better go home.'

' Yes, of course. Steady on! You're still groggy. I'll take you home.'

'You'll do nothing of the kind, Mr Richard Markham,' said Cynthia, with a cold concentration of anger which kept her voice at a steady level ' If you think I'm going to walk along the High Street looking as though - well, as though heaven knows what! - and if you think you're going to take me home to my parents in this state, all I can say is you're very much mistaken. Please keep away from me.'

'Don't be a fool, Cynthia!'

' So now,' said Cynthia,' I'm a fool.'

' I didn't mean that, exactly. I meant...'

' It’s not as though you showed any concern about me to begin with. Oh, no. All you could think about was her. That's very proper, I'm sure; I'm not in the least blaming you for it; but when you first call me a liar and then a fool, and only think of showing any scrap of concern for me when you realize how it may look in public, then I must really ask you to excuse me.'

Dick walked forward to expostulate. He took her by the arms, with something in his mind between kindly reasoning and an impulse to shake her until her teeth rattled. Then, he could never afterwards remember how, Cynthia was in his arms, very warm and tight-holding so that he could feel the firm muscles of her body, crying against his shoulder.

And this was the exact moment when Mrs Rackley walked in with the tea-tray.

"Thanks awfully, Dick,' murmured Cynthia, disengaging herself and giving him her friendly smile. "Thank you too, Mrs Rackley. You're not to see me home. I shall be quite all right Good-bye.'

Then she was gone.

Though Mrs Rackley did not actually say, ‘Well' her eyebrows expressed much. She creaked over and put down the tea-tray with something of a bang on the bedside-table.

' Mrs Rackley,' said Dick,' where has she got to ?'

'May I ask, sir,' inquired Mrs Rackley, keeping her eye carefully away from him, 'who you're referring to?'

' Miss Lesley, of course.'

'If you'll excuse the liberty, sir, I was just a-wondering whether it mattered to you where she'd got to.'

'For the love of Mike, Mrs Rackley, don't get the wrong impression of any thing you saw!'

'For Miss Lesley's sake, sir, I did not see it. That's for Miss Lesley's sake,' explained Mrs Rackley, still keeping her eye on a corner of the ceiling. 'What's past should be past, if you know what I mean; not that it's any of my business.'

'There never was anything...'

'I don't wish to 'ear,' said Mrs Rackley, 'about what is not none of my business. Isn't anybody going to drink this tea?'

' No, I'm afraid not Miss Cynthia...'

'This tea,' said Mrs Rackley, lifting up the tray about two inches and then slamming it down on the bedside table again, 'was distinctly ordered.'

'All right! All right! I’ll drink the damn tea!'

'Mr Markham,' said Mrs Rackley, 'I have always thought of you as a gentleman. Though it seems that men which is gentlemen and gentlemen which is others are not one and the same thing.'

Breathing a curse on all women, Dick held hard to his temper and set about pacifying her. The situation would have been grotesque if it had not been for his genuine worry about Lesley.

And he could submit that he had cause for worry. The open safe, the inexplicably empty safe, provided that In her concern for Cynthia, Mrs Rackley had evidently not noticed that open safe when she first came in; and it was closed, with the picture again hanging before it, at her second entrance.

But it was a dangerous cavity, an ugly gap with its secret gone, when you related it to Lesley's disappearance. A dozen possibilities, most of them melodramatic but all diabolically vivid, presented themselves to Dick Markham. Of the scenes from criminal history which occurred to him - laughable, no doubt - most lifelike was that of Mrs Pearcey playing the piano in a blood-spattered parlour while the police searched for the body of Phoebe Hogg. Dick had just decided to try a round of telephone-calls when, downstairs, the telephone rang.

Disregarding Mrs Rackley's further protests, Dick got down to the phone ahead of her. His hands were not very steady when he picked it up. Over the wire, making carbon crackle, came the unmistakable voice of Dr Fell.

'Ah!' said the doctor, clearing his throat with earthquake violence to the phone. 'I rather hoped to find you there. I'm at Ashe Hall. Can you come up here straightaway?'

' Is it about Lesley?'

'Yes.'

He gripped the telephone tightly, and muttered something like a prayer before he spoke. 'She's all right, isn't she?'

'All right?' thundered Dr Fell. 'Of course she's all right! She's sitting here in the room with me now.' 'Then what- ?’

' But we have, as a matter of fact,' pursued Dr Fell,' some rather important news. We've identified the dead man.'

CHAPTER 13

IN the northern wing on the ground floor at Ashe Hall, along a musty dark little passage carpeted with matting, was a room which Lord Ashe used as a study. Four persons were waiting here when Dick arrived.

A green-baize door muffled this room from domestic noises. Over the small cavern of the fireplace hung a portrait now so age-darkened, even where the light splashed it, that little emerged except a spindle-shanked ghost with a curious collar. A line of narrow windows, of crinkly bottle-glass with ancient rings, looked out on a walled garden which had once been a Ladies' Retiring Garden. Against these windows, pushed so that the light would fall across the left shoulder of anyone sitting there, was a big table covered with papers.

In a creaky swivel-chair at this table sat Lord Ashe, half turning out into the room.

Across from him, bolt upright, sat Lesley Grant.

Dr Fell was enthroned in a huge wooden chair, a very emperor's chair, which gave him some resemblance to Old King Cole. And with his back to the fireplace stood 'a tall military-looking man - Dick had seen him in the High Street not half an hour before - with hard eyes and a hard jaw, whistling between his teeth.

Lesley jumped to her feet.

' If you don't mind,' Lesley observed,' I shall just go out while you tell him. You can call me in afterwards. I just don't want to be here when you tell him.'

And she was smiling.

People would not, Dick was reflecting, behave as you expected them to behave.

Only a short time ago he had seen the rather unimaginative Cynthia Drew go through such an emotional tumult as you might not have believed possible. The nerve-strain of the day considered, its effect on Lesley should have been much worse. And yet this was not so.

Nerve-strain existed, certainly. But most of all you felt a lessening of tension, a radiance of relief, which touched on the borders of happiness. Lesley walked straight towards Dick.

'Hello, darling,' she said. Laughter twinkled in the brown eyes. 'You have been having fun and games with my career as a murderess.'

And, after ducking a mocking curtsy to Dr Fell - who responded by waving the crutch-handled cane and chuckling with an alarming violence which threatened to become a coughing-fit - Lesley slipped demurely out of the room, closing the green-baize door after her.

'Ah, well, gentlemen!' remarked Lord Ashe, and drew a deep breath.

'Admirable!' roared Dr Fell. 'Admirable!'

'Idiotic,' curtly commented the military-looking man by the fireplace. 'And damned risky too. But women are like that.'

Dick held hard to reason.

'I don't want to butt in, Dr Fell,' he said; 'but you asked me over here, and here I am. If you could manage to tell me...'

Dr Fell blinked at him.

' Eh, my boy ? Tell you what ?'

' Tell me what this is all about!'

'Oh, ah! Yes!' cried Dr Fell, enlightened. The Gargantuan doctor was not trying to be mystifying; he had merely slipped ahead into some obscure mental calculation, and forgotten all about what had been on his mind a few minutes before. 'By the way, let me introduce you to my friend Superintendent Hadley. Mr Markham, Superintendent Hadley.'

Dick shook hands with the military-looking man.

'Hadley, of course,' pursued Dr Fell, 'recognized the dead man as soon as he clapped eyes on him.'

'I'm rather sorry to lose Sam, in a way,' said Hadley, chopping his teeth together in a way that meant trouble for somebody. 'He had his points, Sam had. Though I sometimes wanted to kill him myself, I admit.' Then Hadley grinned.' Steady, Mr Markham! You want to know who this fellow really was ?' 'Yes!'

'He was a professional crook named Samuel De Villa,' replied Hadley. 'Probably the cleverest confidence-man in the business.'

'Imagination, Hadley,' said Dr Fell, shaking his head. ' Imagination! Oh, my eye!'

'Too much imagination,' retorted Hadley. 'It killed him.'

' Confidence-man ?' yelled Dick Markham.

'Perhaps, my dear boy,' interposed the thoughtful voice of Lord Ashe,' it would interest you to see this.'

Pushing back the creaky swivel-chair, he pulled open the long drawer of the table at which he was sitting. From the drawer he took out a largish square of dark-coloured velvet, folded together like a bag, and spread it out on the table.

' Gaudy, eh ?' inquired Dr Fell.

'Gaudy' was a mild word. Outside a musical comedy, Dick had never seen anything like the objects which lay against that dark square of velvet There were only four of them: a triple-tiered necklace, a bracelet, a single earring, and what looked like a collar. But they stunned the eye with their antique combination of what can only be called beauty with vulgarity.

And now Dick realized why a certain heraldic device seemed to have been haunting him. He had seen the Ashe arms, a griffin and ash-tree, often enough on the entrance-gates of the Hall. He had seen it on the small signet-ring which Lord Ashe usually wore. He had even seen it, heaven knew, on the sign of the local public-house.

But it was all over these exhibits as a convict's uniform used to be starred with broad-arrows. It decorated the clasp of the bracelet, it was woven into the design of the gold collar. It marked and stamped them as the property of the Ashe family.

Of course, Dick thought to himself, such flamboyant jewels couldn't possibly be real. The pearls of the triple-tiered necklace, opalescent and alive when light through the windows fell on them; the intense hard malignant glitter of diamond on the bracelet; the fluid red glow of ruby on that antique, curiously wrought gold collar...

Interpreting his expression, Lord Ashe glanced up.

'Oh, yes,' said Lord Ashe. 'The jewels are real enough.'

Delicately he touched first the necklace and then the bracelet.

'These,' he continued, 'are early eighteenth century. This,' he touched the earring, ' I suspect of being modem and spurious. But this,' he touched the collar, 'this is what tradition describes as a gift to George Converse, in the year fifteen seventy-six, from Gloriana herself.'

And Lord Ashe raised his eyes to the portrait above the fireplace, that black portrait through which only a shadow-image could be discerned.

There was a long silence.

Outside, in the walled garden, stood a solitary plum-tree. As in a dream Dick saw the sunlight filling that garden, pouring through the tall narrow windows on the blaze of these coloured fires. He saw the dingy room with its rows of brown books round the walls. He saw the portrait, breathing of English soil at a time when such finery as these gauds decorated arm and throat and ear as a matter of everyday wear.

But most of all he saw the face of Lord Ashe - that combination of the scholar and the outdoor man, with evasive-looking eyes - as Lord Ashe's hand hovered over the jewels. And Dick at last broke the silence.

'Yours, sir?'

The other shook his head.

'I wish I could say they were,' he answered regretfully. He looked up and smiled. 'They belong, now, to Miss Lesley Grant.'

'But that's impossible! Lesley doesn't own any jewellery!' ' I beg your pardon,' said Lord Ashe.' She hates jewellery, yes. She never wears jewellery, yes. But this is a question of owning things in spite of herself.'

He meditated for a time, and then looked at Dr Fell.

'You don't mind, sir, if I explain matters as Miss Grant explained them to me this morning ?'

‘No,'said Dr Fell.

'It's a foolish story,' said Lord Ashe, 'and in many ways it's a pathetic story. It's the story of this girl's - what shall I say? - frantic search for respectability. Did you ever hear, Mr Markham, of a woman called Lily Jewell ?'

'No,' said Dick.

But more than a suspicion grew in his mind nevertheless.

' Oddly enough, I mentioned her to you only this morning. It would be an understatement,' said Lord Ashe, 'to describe her as a lady of easy virtue. My elder brother Frank ruined himself and others for her just before the fourteen-eighteen war. Among other things he gave her those trinkets there. Are you beginning to follow me now?'

'Yes. I think so.'

'Lily Jewell died in obscurity a few years ago. But she died a violent death. She was an elderly woman, paying young lovers to attend her-'

'Yes.'

'She threatened one of them with a gun, for being unfaithful to her. In the scuffle and accident, she was herself shot. She was the mother, by a certain Captain Jewell, of the young lady whom you know as Lesley Grant'

Lord Ashe paused.

Dick turned away and stared out into the walled garden. A hundred pictures returned to him. Every word, every gesture, every inflexion now took on significance out of what had hitherto been so meaningless. Dick nodded.

'I - er - live somewhat out of the world,' explained Lord Ashe, ruffling his finger-tips across his temples. 'I was hardly prepared for it when she burst in here this morning, and threw this lot of trinkets on the table, and said, " Please take the damned things, if you think you're entitled to them." '

Again Lord Ashe paused. Dr Fell cleared his throat.

'After her mother's death’ pursued Lord Ashe, 'her one idea was to cut off from the previous life and to be as unlike her mother as possible in every way. Do you follow that too, Mr Markham ?'

'Yes. Very easily.'

' The girl, I judge, is highly strung..." Lesley! Lesley! Lesley!

' ... and it was something of a shock when she settled down here and found out what family was living just opposite.'

‘She didn't know?'

'No. When she was a small girl, my brother had been known officially as "Mr Converse" or "Uncle Frank" rather than by his title. The name of Ashe meant nothing to her. It was customary in my day' - Lord Ashe spoke dryly -' to suppress names.'

' Then by pure chance... ?'

' Oh, no. A spiteful friend.'

' How do you mean ?'

'A spiteful friend suggested that, if she left the Continent and settled down in England, she would probably find it pleasant to live in a village called Six Ashes. She came here. She liked the place. She saw a suitable house. She had been living here for several weeks before she properly noticed the design on the gates opposite.' Lord Ashe reached out to touch the necklace. 'And compared it,' he added.

'I see.'

'She could have left, of course. But she liked the people. She liked' - he looked at Dick - 'one in particular. And I gather that this, our humdrum little life, was what she wanted. Desperately wanted. And wouldn't give up.

'What really maddened her, I gather also, was a morbid sense of guilt. Guilt towards us. Guilt towards any of my family. I'm sure I can't say why. As I told her this morning, she had no concern with her mother's affairs.'

Lord Ashe hesitated.

He picked up first the collar, then the bracelet, and then the necklace, weighing each in his hand and putting it down as though his fingers loved it.

'But it's also true that there was some question, at the time, as to whether my brother had any right to give these things to Lily Jewell. Whether they were not, in fact, part of an entailed estate. This girl, in addition to her fear of what the village-ladies would say if they learned she was the daughter of Lily Jewell, even had cloudy visions of the police coming to arrest her.

'She was desperately afraid somebody would see these things and recognize the Ashe arms: as, of course, everybody would have. But she wouldn't part with them, wouldn't keep them at a bank. Hence the wall-safe. Which showed at least some sense of reality, considering how valuable the articles are.'

Superintendent Hadley threw in a question.

'How valuable?'

'My dear Superintendent!' said Lord Ashe, and again showed signs of running down like a clock. 'Their historic interest...'

'In cash, I mean?'

' I can't appraise them, I'm afraid. Very many thousands, as you can judge for yourself.'

Lord Ashe again addressed himself to Dick Markham.

'When I first set eyes on - er - Miss Grant, some six months ago, I noticed her resemblance to Lily Jewell. It puzzled me. It bothered me. But, on my word of honour, I never actually connected her with Mrs Jewell I They seemed so utterly different, so - !' Lord Ashe waved his fingers in the air. 'Well, my dear fellow! If you had ever been acquainted with Lily Jewell, you would understand what I mean.'

'But Lesley thought...?'

'She thought, I'm afraid, I might have guessed who she was. This small foolish fear, the dread of being talked about, had grown and grown. She was already in a somewhat morbid state of mind. And you well recollect the events of yesterday.'

Superintendent Hadley uttered a short, sharp laugh.

' Sam De Villa,' Hadley said.

Line by line, image by image, with colour where only shadow had lain before, Dick saw the picture take form. Each inconsistency was fitting into place now.

'De Villa, alias Sir Harvey Gilman,' he asked, 'was after that load of jewellery ?'

'What else do you think he was after?' inquired a sardonic but admiring Hadley. He jingled coins in his pocket. 'And, by George, Sam never played a part better! When I first got to that cottage down there with your local P.O. - what's his name - ?'

'Bert Miller?'

‘Miller, yes. I gave Dr Fell a little sketch of Sam De Villa's life and achievements.'

' You did,' agreed Dr Fell very thoughtfully.

'Sam was a confidence-man. He wasn't a burglar. He could never in the world have cracked a Florida Bulldog safe, and wouldn't have tried. But he could coax the stuff out of that safe, as slick as a whistle. There was only one way to get at jewels which Miss Grant wouldn't even admit were there. That was to get the help of Mr Markham. And Sam did it. He was an artist.'

'He's an artist', Dick said viciously, 'who - I hope -is burning in hell at this minute. Go on '

Hadley lifted his shoulders.

'Simple as simple. Sam usually worked the Continent, you understand. He traced Lily Jewell's daughter to Six Ashes, and decided on the best way. First of all he carefully cased the district...'

' Cased it?' repeated Lord Ashe.

' Studied, it. Got as much information as he could about everybody concerned. One of his devices was first to go about in some inconspicuous role, like a salesman...'

' Bibles!' exclaimed Lord Ashe.

They all stared at him.

' I beg your pardon, gentlemen,' said Lord Ashe, shifting in the creaky chair, 'but I told our young friend this morning that the fellow reminded me of a man who was here long ago selling Bibles. You mean this was the - er -criminal figure you call Sam ?'

Hadley nodded.

'Always a good device, Bibles,' he declared. 'It gives the salesman access to the family Bible and to family history, if anybody's willing to talk.'

Dr Fell, whose several chins were propped over his collar while he stared at the floor, appeared vaguely disturbed. Internal rumblings disturbed his bandit's moustache.

'I say, Hadley,' he muttered, 'I'm rather curious to know, in fact I want very much to know, whether he visited any other house at Six Ashes except this one.'

' I imagine he had a good thorough round of it,' the Superintendent said grimly. 'It accounts for his great success as a fortune-teller. Naturally he consented to do that. Sam had what he called a sense of humour -'

'God damn his sense of humour,' said Dick Markham, with quiet sincerity.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Hadley's voice grew quiet

'I know, Mr Markham. I know!' Hadley smiled as though he had gone a trifle too far. 'But you've got to understand that these gentry will use anything, any weapon at all, when they think they can bring off a good haul. The garden-party gave him a heaven-sent opportunity to upset Miss Grant, and, consequently, upset you in preparation for his plan.'

' What did he actually say to her, by the way ?'

Hadley grunted, continuing his wry friendly smile.

' Can't you guess, Mr Markham ?'

'References,' said Dick, 'to the fact that he, the great fortune-teller, knew all about her past life? And her mother's past life?'

'That's it. With the practical certainty, you see, that she wouldn't tell you: at least, not yet. He was a great psychologist, Sam was.' 'A great psychologist. Yes.'

'Which,' Hadley pointed out, 'put you in the position to be upset by the hint of even more sinister secrets. Oh, yes. He couldn't know an accident would play into his hands when that rifle went off. But he used that too, with smacking good effect.

' I don't think there's much more to tell you, Mr Markham. His whole game, the story about the terrible poisoner and the diary or poison or something locked up in a safe, was to get that safe open. And how to do that? Easy! He told you, if I've got the story straight from Dr Fell, that he wanted to be present unseen while you had dinner with Miss Grant? And that he was very anxious to see what was in the safe?'

'Yes.'

'And that he would give you his "final instructions" about it next morning ?'

'Yes. Those were the exact words.'

Again Hadley lifted his shoulders.

'You were to get the combination of the safe for him,' the Superintendent said. 'The combination of that impregnable safe. He'd have told you that this morning - if he'd been alive.'

' Wait a minute! Do you think Lesley would have... ?'

'Given you the combination? You know ruddy well she would have, if you pressed her! She meant to tell you about the whole thing, anyway, at this dinner she projected for to-night.'

Words floated back to him, words which Lesley had spoken in his own cottage the night before:' I want everything to be perfect to-morrow. Because I've got something to tell you. And I've got something to show you.' He saw her sitting in the lamplight, stung and brooding.)

'But would you have believed anything she'd told you, by that time?'

'No. I suppose not'

(He was glad Lesley wasn't here, now.)

'You'd have got that combination during the day. And while you were at dinner, Sam would have cleaned out the safe and quietly faded away. That's all there is to it, Mr Markham. Only -'

' Only,' interposed Dr Fell,' somebody murdered him.'

CHAPTER 14

THE words fell with a heavy chilling weight.

And the cautious Hadley, thrusting out his jaw, made formal protest.

'Stop a bit, Fell! We can't say for certain this is murder. Not at the present stage of the game.'

' Oh, my boy! What do you mink ?'

'And I, perhaps,' interposed Lord Ashe, 'can answer one of your questions now.'

Both Hadley and Dr Fell, surprised, turned to look at him. Lord Ashe, who was again weighing the gold ruby-studded collar in his hand, made a deprecating noise as though warning them not to expect too much.

'You were asking a while ago,' he said, 'whether this fraudulent Bible-salesman visited any other house except mine. The matter is hardly very important. But I can tell you. He didn't I made inquiries about him.'

' So!' muttered Dr Fell.' So!'

Hadley regarded him suspiciously - the doctor's scatter-brain had been having this effect on his friend for twenty-five years - though Hadley said nothing.

'But surely, gentlemen!' protested Lord Ashe, putting down the gold collar. 'Come, now! You make use of the word "murder"?'

'I use it,' affirmed Dr Fell

'For myself, I know little of such matters,' said Lord Ashe. 'Though I used to read those novels of the gentleman who wrote them over the weekend, about mysterious deaths in ancestral mansions. But surely now!

As I understand it, this man De Villa died of poison in a room with the doors and windows locked up on the inside.'

'Yes,' agreed Dr Fell. 'That,' he added, 'is why I must repeat that the centre of the whole plot, apparently, is Miss Lesley Grant.'

'Wait a minute, please!' urged Dick, and appealed to Lord Ashe. 'You say, sir, that Lesley came here this morning, and threw those jewels at you, and poured out this story about her mother ?'

' Yes. Rather to my discomfort'

'Why did she do it, sir?'

Lord Ashe looked bewildered.

'Because, apparently, little Cynthia Drew had come to her and accused her of being a poisoner.'

Lesley herself slipped into the room now, closing the green-baize door softly after her. Though outwardly composed, she was clearly nerving herself to meet this interview. She stood at the corner of the windows, her back to the light, and faced them.

'You'd better let me answer that,' she said. 'Though I loathe telling it!' A little curving smile, the smile Dick Markham found so irresistible, flashed round her lips and was gone in concern. 'It's all right, Dick,' she added. 'I'll - I'll talk to you about it later. But it was rather dreadful for me.'

'Cynthia?'

'Yes! She turned up in my room this morning. Heaven knows how she got there, but she was trying to open the safe.'

' I’ve - er - heard about it'

Lesley's arms were straight down at her sides, her breast heaving.

'Cynthia said to me, " I want to know what's in this safe. And I mean to find out before I leave here." I asked her what she was talking about. She said, "That's where you keep the poison, isn't it? The poison you used on those three men who were in love with you before ? "

'Well!' cried Lesley helplessly, and turned out her hands. 'Steady, now!'

' I ‘d been thinking,' she went on, ' that the whole village must be saying or at least imagining some terrible things about me. But never in my wildest dreams did I think it could be anything like that! Especially as she went on to say Dick knew all about it, and the police were coming for me because I'd got poison or something locked up in that safe. I -I rather lost my head.'

'Just a minute. Did you hit her ?'

Lesley blinked.

'Hit her?'

' With a hand-mirror off the dressing-table.' 'Good gracious, no!' The brown eyes widened. 'Did she say I hit her?' 'What happened?'

'Cynthia ran at me, that's all. She's stronger than I am and I didn't know what to do. I dodged, and she tripped and went over like a sack of coals against the footboard of the bed.

'When I saw she was just knocked out, not badly hurt at all' - the full lips compressed, and Lesley looked elaborately out of the window - ' maybe it was callous of me, but I just let her stay there. Wouldn't you?'

'Go on!'

' I thought to myself, " This is too much; I can't stand any more." So I got those things out of the safe, and rushed over here to Lord Ashe, and told him the true story. While I was telling it, Dr - Dr Fell, isn't it? - and Superintendent Hadley got here. So I thought I might as well tell everybody.' Lesley moistened her lips. 'There's only one thing I'm curious about, Dick,' she added with great intensity. 'Did you tell Cynthia?'

'Tell her what?'

'This horrible story about the three husbands, and -and the rest of it.' Lesley coloured. 'She kept repeating, "Till death do us part, till death do us part," like a mad woman. That's all I care about, that's all I'm concerned about! Did you tell Cynthia, in confidence, something that you wouldn't tell me?' ‘No.'

'Do you swear that's true, Dick? You were messing about out there with her this morning. Major Price said you were.'

'On my word of honour, I never said one word to Cynthia'

Lesley drew the back of her hand across her forehead. ' Then where did Cynthia get the story ?' 'That,' observed Dr Fell, 'is something which interests all of us.'

Reaching into his hip pocket under the folds of the big cape, Dr Fell drew out a large red bandanna handkerchief. He mopped his forehead with such thoroughness that his big mop of grey-streaked hair tumbled over one eye. Then, assuming an argumentative pose which made Hadley instinctively bristle, he pointed to the chair on the other side of Lord Ashe's desk.

' Sit down, my dear,' he said to Lesley.

Lesley obeyed.

'If you're going to lecture - !' began a very suspicious Hadley.

' I am not,' said Dr Fell with dignity, ' going to lecture. I am going to ask Miss Grant whether she has, in this village, any very deadly enemy.'

"That's impossible!' cried Lesley.

There was a silence.

'Well,' said Dr Fell, returning the handkerchief to his pocket, Met us consider the evidence. Sam De Villa, may he rest in peace, came to Six Ashes as an outsider. He had, it would seem' - here Dr Fell hesitated slightly - 'no connexion with anybody in this village. Agreed, Hadley?'

' So far as we know at the moment, agreed.'

'Therefore Sam, qua Sam, ceased to become important in the scheme of murder.'

' If it was murder,' Hadley said quickly.

'If it was murder. Oh, ah. Very well. It is now inescapable, as we agreed this morning, that the whole reproduction of an imaginary crime - hypodermic syringe, prussic acid, locked entrances - was a deliberate attempt to throw the blame on Lesley Grant, whom somebody believed to be a murderess. Otherwise there is no point to it'

' Now look here!' Hadley began.

'Otherwise,' inquired Dr Fell politely but firmly, 'do you see any point to it?'

Hadley jingled coins in his pocket. He did not reply.

' Consequently,' pursued Dr Fell, blinking across at Lesley, 'we must face the question. Is there anyone who hates you enough to want to see you charged with murder? Or, putting the matter more broadly, is there anyone who would profit by it if you were put in an extremely sticky position?'

Lesley regarded him helplessly.

'There isn't anybody,' she replied. 'Except - but that's utterly impossible!' Dr Fell remained imperturbable.

'This,' he continued, 'is the conclusion to be drawn from our facts. The corollary to that conclusion...'

' Is there a corollary ?' demanded Hadley.

'Oh, yes. It shines with great light' Dr Fell peered at Dick. 'By the way, my boy. In the excitement of the moment, while we were at that cottage, I forgot to warn you about being very, very discreet. When you left me this morning to go and see Miss Grant, I gather you did meet Miss Cynthia Drew ?'

'Yes.’

'Did you - harrumph - enlighten her? Did you tell her that Miss Grant was not, in fact, an evilly disposed character suspected of three murders ?'

'No. She wouldn't admit she'd heard anything at all about Lesley. So I didn't say anything, naturally.'

' Did you tell anybody else ?'

'No. I haven't seen anybody else."

'What about your friend Dr Middlesworth? Is he likely to spill the beans that Miss Grant is not a poisoner ?'

'Hugh Middlesworth,' answered Dick, 'is as close-mouthed a chap as you'll find anywhere. He'll be especially close-mouthed about this. You can bet your shirt he won't talk.'

Dr Fell mused for a moment

'Therefore,' he went on, 'there is somewhere within reach a person who STILL believes this yarn. This person killed Sam De Villa, arranged all the trappings to suggest murder by Lesley Grant, and is now hugging himself or herself for sheer joy. Except in the unlikely event that the murderer is our friend Lord Ashe...'

' Good God!' exclaimed Lord Ashe.

Totally taken aback, he dropped on the table the pearl necklace which he had been examining. His grey eyes, with their darkish eyebrows in contrast to the iron-grey hair, wore behind the pince-nez a look of consternation. His mouth was open.

"That, sir,' growled Superintendent Hadley, 'was just an example of Dr Fell's own peculiar idea of humour.'

' Oh. A joke. I see. But...'

'Except in that unlikely event,' pursued Dr Fell, 'I repeat that the real murderer still believes this yarn. Now come on! Use your very capable intelligence, Hadley! Having provided us with a problem, it follows as a corollary that the real murderer must do what ?'

'Well?'

'Why, damn it,' thundered Dr Fell, rapping the ferrule of his cane against the floor,- 'he must now provide us witha solution.'

Wheezing, Dr Fell looked from one to the other of them.

'Sam De Villa's corpse,' he emphasized, 'is found in a room locked up on the inside. So far, so good. Lesley Grant, argues the murderer, will be blamed for doing this. But how did she do it?

'Remember, these imaginary crimes were supposed to have been unsolved. You, the police, were supposed to have been baffled. Very well: but it won't do to have you baffled this time. If the blame is to be placed on Miss Grant, we must learn how the thing was done or we still can't touch her. The murderer's whole design against her fails unless it is proved how the locked room worked. Do you follow me now?'

Dick Markham hesitated. 'Then you think... ?'

'I rather think,' responded Dr Fell, 'we shall get a communication of some kind.'

Hadley's face wore a suspicious frown.

'Hold on!' the superintendent muttered. 'Was that why you asked me, a while ago, to -'

He checked himself as Dr Fell gave him a warning glance of portentous entreaty. To Dick Markham it seemed that this was a little too obvious a warning glance, a litde too portentous; and Dick had an uncomfortable sense of a battle of wits being fought, somehow, under the surface.

' I mean,' amplified Dr Fell, ' that we shall get a communication from A Friend or a Well-Wisher that will hint at, if not ruddy well indicate in detail, how the locked-room trick was worked. The police were supposed to have been duffers once. It won't do to risk their being duffers again.'

'A communication - how ?' asked Dick.

' Why not by telephone ? ‘

After a pause during which Dr Fell again addressed his ghostly parliament, the doctor scowled at Dick.

'You had a telephone-call early this morning,' he said, 'which interests me very much. The local policeman gave me a summary of your evidence. But I should like to question you rather closely about it, because ... Archons of Athens! Wow, wow, wow!'

The latter dog-like noises, made by a scholar of international reputation, caused Lord Ashe to survey him in perplexity.

Lesley bit at her under-lip.

'I don't understand any of this,' she burst out. 'But I don't believe it, because it's more hateful than anything else yet. You don't mean, you can't possibly mean' - all Lesley's appeal went into her voice -' that anybody on earth would do a thing like this just to throw the blame on me ?'

' It does take a bit of believing, doesn't it?' asked Dr Fell, with his eye on vacancy. 'Yes, it does take a bit of believing.'

' Then, please, what are you getting at?'

'Exactly,' snapped an exasperated Hadley, 'what I want to know myself.'

' I must confess,' said Lord Ashe, ' that this kind of thing is a little beyond me too.' He looked at his wrist-watch and added hopefully: You'll all stay to lunch, of course ?'

Lesley jumped to her feet.

'Thanks, but I won't,' she said. 'Considering my new status in the community, as the daughter of Lily Jewell -'

'My dear girl,' said Lord Ashe gently, 'don't be a fool.'

Setting the four glittering trinkets together in the middle of the dark-velvet cloth, he folded it together like a bag and held it out to her.

' Take them,' he said.

'I won't take them I' retorted Lesley, as though she were about to stamp her foot. The tears rose to her eyes again. 'I never want to see them again I They're yours, aren't they? Or, at least, your family always said so. Then take them, take all of them, and please for heaven's sake let me have a little peace!'

' My dear Miss Grant,' said Lord Ashe, insistently shaking the bag at her,' we mustn't stay here arguing over who will or won't take anything as valuable as this. You might tempt me too much. Or, if you'd rather my wife didn't see them until after lunch-'

' Do you think I could ever face Lady Ashe again ?'

'Frankly,' replied the husband of the lady in question, 'I do.'

'Or anyone else here in the village, for that matter? I'm glad it's all over. I'm free, and relieved, and a human being again. But, as for facing people again...!'

Dick went over and took her by the arm.

'You're coming with me,' he said, 'for a walk in the Dutch Garden before lunch.'

'An excellent idea,' approved Lord Ashe. Opening the table-drawer, he dropped the velvet cloth with its contents inside. As an afterthought, he selected a small key off a much-crowded key-ring and locked the drawer. 'We can settle afterwards the vexed question of - er - taking your own property. In the meantime, if country air is to do you any good at all, you must get rid of these morbid ideas.'

Lesley whirled round.

'Are they morbid ideas, Dick ? Are they ?'

' They're morbid nonsense, my dear.'

' Does it matter to you who I am ?'

Dick laughed so uproariously that he saw her self-distrust shaken.

'What did Cynthia say to you?' Lesley persisted. 'And how is she? And how did it happen she was with you early in the morning?'

'Will you please prove it, Lesley?'

'Exactly,' said Lord Ashe. 'But one thing does seem to be evident, Mr Markham.' His face hardened a little, with an expression about the eyes Dick could not read. 'Miss Grant has more than one very spiteful friend.'

' How do you mean ?' cried Lesley.

'One of them,' Lord Ashe pointed out, 'sends you here to live at Six Ashes. Another, if we can credit what we've just heard, is trying to get you hanged for murder.'

'Don't you see,' urged Lesley, holding tightly to Dick's arm, 'that's just what I can't face? And won't face? The idea that somebody, anybody, could hate you as much as that is the most terrifying thing of all. I don't even want to hear about it!' ' Lord Ashe reflected.

'Of course, if Dr Fell has by any chance some notion of how and why this extraordinary locked-room crime was committed-?'

'Oh, yes,' said Dr Fell apologetically. 'I think I might manage that, if I hear one or two answers I expect.'

A sense of new danger, hidden danger, darted along Dick Markham's nerves.

Turning round half a second before, he surprised between Dr Fell and Superintendent Hadley a kind of pantomime communication. It was only a raising of eyebrows, a sketched motion of lips; yet it vanished instantly, and he had no idea of its meaning. Hitherto he had regarded both Dr Fell and Hadley as allies, as helpers, here to tear away phantom dangers. No doubt they still were allies. At the same time...

Dr Fell frowned.

'You understand, don't you,' he asked, 'the most important consideration in this case?'

CHAPTER 15

IT was late in the afternoon, outside the evil-looking cottage in Gallows Lane, when Dr Fell asked that same question again.

After lunch at Ashe Hall, Dr Fell and Hadley and Dick Markham made a little tour of the village. Dick had wanted to go home with Lesley, but Dr Fell would not hear of this. He seemed interested in meeting as many persons as possible.

No word had as yet slipped out that the dead man was not Sir Harvey Gilman, or that the police had any reason to suspect anything but suicide. You could almost feel the lure of the trap, the invitation of the deadfall, the whistling summons to a murderer. Faces of bursting curiosity were directed towards them, though only the averted eye asked a question. Dick had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.

And they met many people.

An attempt to interview Cynthia Drew was frustrated by Cynthia's mother, a sad little woman who pointedly refrained from speaking to Dick Markham. Cynthia, she explained, had sustained a bad fall on some stone steps, bruising her temple. She was in no condition to see anyone; nor should anyone expect - raising of eyebrows here - to see her.

But they encountered Major Price coming out of his office. They were introduced to Earnshaw making some purchases at the post office. Dr Fell bought chocolate cigars as well as real ones at the sweet-and-tobacconist's; he exchanged views on church architecture with the Rev. Mr Goodflower; he visited the saloon-bar of the 'Griffin and Ash-Tree' in order to lower several pints before closing-time.

The low, yellow-blazing sun lay behind the village before they turned back again towards Gallows Lane. Passing Lesley's house, Dick remembered her last words to him. 'You will come to dinner to-night, just as we planned?' and his agreement with some fervency. He looked for her face at a window, and didn't see it. Instead he presently saw, looming ahead beside a darkling orchard, the low-pitched black-and-white cottage with the defaced windows.

The body of Sam De Villa, alias Sir Harvey Gilman, had long ago been removed to the mortuary at Hawkstone. Bert Miller the constable now patiently stood guard in the front garden. Hadley addressed him as soon as they were within hailing distance.

'Any post-mortem report ?'

'No, sir. They've promised to phone when there is one.' 'Any luck with tracing that telephone-call ?' Bert Miller required to have things explained. His large face was impassive under its imposing helmet. 'Which telephone-call, sir?' Hadley looked at him.

'An anonymous telephone-call,' he said, 'was put through to Mr Markham at his cottage very early this morning, asking him to come here in a hurry. You remember that ?'

'Yes, sir.'

' Have they traced that call ?' 'Yes, sir. It was put through from this cottage.' 'From this cottage, eh?' repeated Hadley, and glanced at Dr Fell.

'From the phone in there,' explained Miller, nodding towards the open hall door behind him, 'at two minutes past five in the morning. Exchange said so.'

Again Hadley glanced at Dr Fell

'I suppose you're going to say,' he remarked dryly, 'you anticipated that?'

'Dash it all, Hadley!' Dr Fell complained querulously. 'I am not trying to stand here like a high-priest of hocus-pocus, making mesmeric passes over a crystal as Sam De Villa did. But certain things do emerge because they can't help emerging. You understand, don't you, the most important consideration in this case ?'

Hadley remained discreetly silent

'Look here, sir,' said Dick. 'You asked that question once before. Then, when we tried to answer you, you never supplied your own answer at all. What is it?'

'The most important consideration, in my humble opinion,' said Dr Fell, 'is how Sam De Villa spent the last six hours of his life.'

Dick, who had been expecting something else altogether, stared at him.

'You took leave of him here,' pursued Dr Fell, 'at about eleven o'clock last night. Good! You found him dead - very recently dead - at about twenty minutes past five this morning. Good! How did he spend the interval, then? Let us see.'

Dr Fell lumbered up the two stone steps into the little front hall. But he did not go into the sitting-room, for the moment at least. He stood turning round and round in the hall, with majestic slowness suggesting a battleship at manoeuvres, while his vacant eye wandered.

'Sitting-room on the left.' He pointed. 'Dining-room across the passage on the right' He pointed. 'Back-kitchen and scullery at the rear.' He pointed again. 'I had a look at all of 'em while I was waiting here this morning. Including, by the way, a look at the electric meter in the scullery.' Dr Fell brushed at his moustache, and then addressed Dick again. 'When you left him at eleven o'clock, De Villa said he intended to go to bed ?'

‘Yes.'

'And presumably he did go to bed,' argued Dr Fell, 'since Lord Ashe called here shortly afterwards to see how the wounded man was getting on, and found the place all dark. Lord Ashe told you that, didn't he?'

'Yes.'

' I didn't go upstairs this morning. But it's worth a try now.'

The staircase was a narrow affair with heavy balustrades and a sharp right-angled turn. It led them into the low-ceilinged upper floor. Here, where a shingled roof pressed down with a thick blanket of heat, they found two good-sized front bedrooms as well as a tiny back bedroom and a bathroom. It was the front bedroom just over the sitting-room which showed signs of occupancy.

Dr Fell pushed open a close-fitting door with a latch, which creaked and scraped along the bare floor. Two windows, in the sloping wall facing the lane, admitted late afternoon light to which the shade of the birch-coppice opposite gave a muddy reddish tinge.

The room's furnishings were as austere as its white-plaster walls. A single bed, a chest-of-drawers with mirror, an oak wardrobe, a straight chair, and one or two small rugs on the floor. The room smelt fusty in spite of its open windows; it spoke of haste and untidiness. The bed had been slept in, its bedclothes now thrown back as though the occupant had got up hastily.

So much they noticed in the litter of personal belongings - loose collars, toilet-articles, books, a plaited dressing-gown-cord - which overflowed from two big suit-cases not yet quite unpacked.

'He was only camping here, you see,' observed Dr Fell, and pointed with the cane. 'Ready to cut and run as soon as he got the dibs. A perfect scheme nobly executed. And instead of that... Stop a bit 1'

On the floor beside the bed was an ashtray with two or three cigar-stubs. Beside it stood a tumbler partly full of stale, beaded water, and a tiny bottle. Following the doctor's inquiring glance, Hadley picked up the bottle. It contained a few small white pills, and he carried it to the window to read the label.

'Luminal,' said the superintendent 'Quarter-grain tablets.'

'That's all right,' interposed Dick. 'It was mentioned last night that he'd brought some luminal with him. Middlesworth told him he could take a quarter-grain if his back got very painful.'

Dr Fell reflected.

'A quarter-grain? No more?'

'That's what Middlesworth said, anyway.'

'And I rather imagine his wound was paining him ?'

'Like the devil. He wasn't faking about that much, I'll swear.'

'No!' rumbled Dr Fell, shaking his head violently and making a very dismal face. 'No, no, no, no, no! Look here, Hadley. It's not in human nature for De Villa to have been as moderate as that!'

' How do you mean ?'

'Well, suppose you were in that position? Suppose you're a strung-up, imaginative chap, facing a long night with a painful bullet-wound? And you've got plenty of luminal handy. Would you stop short with a modest quarter-grain? Wouldn't you give yourself a thorough-good dose and make sure you went off heavily to sleep ?'

'Yes,' admitted Hadley,' I suppose I would. But -'

'We are trying,' roared Dr Fell, taking a few lumbering strides to and from the door,' to reconstruct the prelude to this crime. And what have we got?'

'Not a hell of a lot, if you want my candid opinion.'

'All the same, follow De Villa's movements. His guests leave him at eleven. He's already in his pyjamas, dressing-gown, and slippers, so he doesn't have to undress. He comes upstairs to this room.'

Here Dr Fell's wandering glance encountered the plaited dressing-gown-cord, which protruded from the suit-case. He stared at it, pulling at his under-lip.

'I say, Hadley. De Villa's body was found this morning in pyjamas and dressing-gown. I didn't notice myself; but do you happen to remember whether the dressing-gown-cord was attached to the dressing-gown?' He looked at Dick. 'What about you, my boy?'

'I don't remember,' Dick confessed.

'Neither do I,' said Hadley. 'But the stuff is at the Hawkstone mortuary now. We can easily ring up and inquire.'

Dr Fell's gesture dismissed the subject.

'Anyway, follow our reconstruction of the dark hours before the murder. De Villa comes up here to bed. He fetches a glass of water. He takes a thorough-good dose of luminal, and sits up in bed to finish a cigar - vide ashtray - while the drug takes effect. And then...'

Hadley snorted derisively.

'And then,' said Hadley, 'he gets up and goes downstairs at five o'clock in the morning?' 'Apparently, yes.' 'But why?'

'That,' Dr Fell said abruptly, 'is what I hope Mr Markham can tell us here and now. Come downstairs.'

The sitting-room below looked far less repulsive when no motionless figure sat at the writing-table. The Hawkstone technical men had already covered the room for photographs and finger-prints. And the hypodermic syringe had been removed, though the .22 rifle still stood propped up by the fireplace and the box of spilled drawing-pins lay on the floor beside the easy-chair.

Hadley, who had already said some powerful, realistic words to Dick on the subject of touching exhibits and interfering with evidence, did not comment except by a significant look. And Dr Fell did not comment at all. Folding his arms, the doctor set his back to the wall between the two windows. On one side of him was the bullet-hole in the lower pane, on the other side an empty window-frame with shattered glass lying strewn beneath. Outside the windows loomed the helmet of Bert Miller, endlessly passing and repassing as the constable paced.

' Mr Markham,' began Dr Fell, with such fiery earnestness that Dick felt a few qualms, 'if ever in your life you concentrated, I want you to concentrate now.'

'On what?’

' On what you saw this morning.'

It required no effort of concentration. Dick wondered if that infernal odour of bitter almonds would ever fade, even weeks afterwards, so that images did not pop up from corners of the sitting-room.

'Listen, sir! Let's get one thing straight first. Do you think I'm lying to you ?'

'Why should I think that?'

'Because everybody, from Miller out there to Superintendent Hadley and Lord Ashe, seems to think I must have been lying or eke dreaming. I tell you, those windows were locked on the inside! And the door was locked and bolted on the inside: Do you doubt that?'

' Oh, no,' said Dr Fell.' I don't doubt it.'

'Yet the murderer did get - what's the word I want? -did get his physical body in and out of this room in order to kill Dc Villa? In spite of the locked door and windows?'

'Yes,'said Dr Fell.

Across the line of the windows passed Miller's figure, like a shadow of the law.

Superintendent Hadley, hitching up the easy-chair to the writing-table, sat down where the dead man had sat, and got out his notebook. Dr Fell added:

' I mean that, Hadley. I mean quite literally that.'

1 Go on!' said Hadley.

'Let's begin,' growled Dr Fell, holding his folded arms more tightly, 'with this mysterious telephone-call at two minutes past five. You've heard, now, that the call came from this house?'

‘Yes.'

'It couldn't, for instance, have been De Villa's voice speaking?'

' It might have been, yes. I can't say whose voice it was. It whispered.'

'Yet it did convey' - Dr Fell tilted up his chin, squaring himself - 'an impression of urgency ?' 'Of very great urgency. Yes.'

'Right. You ran out of your cottage, and along the lane. When you were still some distance from this house, you saw a light switched on in this sitting-room.'

Dr Fell paused, with cross-eyed concentration behind his eyeglasses. 'How far were you away when you saw that light?'

Dick considered.

'A little over a hundred yards, I should say.'

' So you couldn't actually see into this room at that time ?'

'Lord, no! Nothing like that! I was too far away. I just saw the light shine out when the sky was still pretty dark.'

Without a word Superintendent Hadley got to his feet. The only light in the room was the bright tan-shaded hanging lamp over the writing-table. Its switch was in the wall beside the door to the hall. Hadley walked over to this; he clicked the switch down, and then up again, so that the lamp flashed on and off; afterwards, still without a word, he returned to his notebook at the writing-table.

Dr Fell cleared his throat.

'You then,' he resumed, 'walked more slowly along the lane? Yes! A little later, I understand, you saw this .22 rifle poked over the wall? Yes. How far were you away when you saw that?'

Again Dick reflected.

'Well... say thirty yards. Perhaps less.'

'So you still couldn't see into this room here?'

'No. Naturally not.'

'But you distinctly saw the rifle?'

'Yes.'

' You even' - Dr Fell reached out with his right hand and tapped the window-glass - 'you even made out the bullet-hole when, to use your expressive phrase to the constable, it "jumped up in the window-pane" ?'

Dick gestured helplessly.

'That's a literary way of putting it, I'm afraid. I was thinking of the fortune-teller's tent. But that's exactly what it amounts to. I was watching the rifle; I saw it fired; and even at that distance I could make out the bullet-hole.'

'You've got long eyesight, I take it?'

'Very long eyesight. Yesterday, for instance, when I was target-shooting at Major Price's range, I could tell exactly where my hits were scored without having the target drawn in to the counter.'

Superintendent Hadley intervened.

'If you're thinking there's any flummery about that bullet-hole,' he said, 'you can wash it out. Purvis's people have verified everything: angle of fire, force of projectile, damage to window. And,' he nodded towards the shattered picture over the fireplace, 'checked the bullet they dug out of the wall. It was fired from that rifle, and no other rifle.'

Dr Fell slowly turned a red face.

' My God, Hadley,' he said, with a sudden and far-from-characteristic burst of anger which startled Hadley almost as much as it startled Dick, 'will you please allow me to handle this witness in my own way?'

His face grew even more fiery.

'You, sir, are a superintendent of Metropolitan Police. I am very much at your service. I am merely your consultant on theoutré; or, to put it in a less high-falutin way, the old guy whom you drag in during peculiar, not so loony, cases of this kind. You have done me the honour of consulting me now in a case which we both believe to be murder. May I ask my own questions, sir, or may I not?'

Outside the windows, the moving helmet of Bert Miller stopped for a fraction of a second before Miller resumed his pacing. Not for -nothing had Dick, when he related the story to Miller that morning, insisted on suicide with such a wealth of detail that the constable dreamed of no other contingency. This was the first time Miller had heard mention of the word murder from his superior officers.

But Dick hardly noticed this now; it was swept away by the extraordinary violence of Dr Fell's outburst.

' Sorry if I've stepped on your toes,' Hadley said mildly. ' Carry on.'

'Harrumph! Ha! Very well.' Dr Fell adjusted his eyeglasses, drawing the air through his nostrils with a long challenging sound. 'On hearing the shot, Mr Markham, you ran forward again?'

‘Yes.'

'And met Miss Cynthia Drew in the lane?' 'That's right.'

'How was it, with your long eyesight, that you hadn't seen her before?'

' Because,' answered Dick,' the sun was smack in my eyes. Straight down the lane, and she was coming from the east I could see things on either side, but not in the lane itself.'

'H'm, yes. That accounts for it. What explanation did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

'Look here, sir! You don't think - ?'

'What explanation,' Dr Fell repeated gently, 'did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

Outside, in the hall, the telephone began to ring shrilly.

It made each of these three men, each with his own separate thoughts, start a little to hear that clamouring bell. Was this, Dick wondered, the communication Dr Fell expected? Was the murderer - behind a bland friendly countenance of all the bland friendly countenances at Six Ashes - ringing up to whisper more hatred against Lesley Grant? Hadley hurried out to the phone; they heard him speaking in a low voice. When he returned his face was very grave.

' Well ?' prompted Dr Fell.

'No,' said the superintendent quickly, 'it's not what you're thinking. That telephone-communication idea of yours is rubbish, and you know it. Nobody would take such a fool's risk as that. But your other idea, I admit -'

' Who was it, Hadley?'

'It was the police-surgeon at Hawkstone. He's just done the post-mortem. And it's upset the apple-cart again.'

Dr Fell, with his big bulk propped against the wall, straightened up. His mouth fell open under the bandit's moustache.

'Look here, Hadley! You're not going to tell me Sam De Villa wasn't killed by prussic acid after all ?'

'Oh, yes. He was killed with prussic acid, right enough. About three grains of anhydrous prussic acid, administered in a hypodermic by somebody unskilled in the use of it. But...’

'But what?'

' It's the stomach-contents,' said Hadley. 'Go on, man!'

'About six hours before death,' replied Hadley, 'Sam swallowed what must have amounted to three or four grains of luminal.'

Again Hadley sat down at his desk, and opened his notebook.

'Don't you understand?' he went on. 'If Sam took that much luminal before going to bed at some time past eleven, it's practically impossible that he could have come downstairs under his own steam at five o'clock the following morning.'

CHAPTER l6

'MIND!' added the cautious superintendent. 'We can't say it is impossible.' He picked up a pencil and examined its point. 'There are people capable of resistance to the strongest drugs, and people who shake off their effects very quickly. All we can say is that it's very unlikely. But according to the evidence at least, Sam did come downstairs this morning?' 'Apparently, yes.'

'And, unless we call Mr Markham a liar, a light did go on in this room when he says it did?'

' Undoubtedly.'

'But you think that doesn't upset the apple-cart in any way?'

'No,' answered Or Fell, pushing himself back against the wall so that the front of his shovel-hat rose up as though tilted by an invisible hand, 'no, my lad, I can't say it does. This may become clearer,' he screwed up his face hideously, 'if you let me get on with a few relevant matters. What explanation (may I repeat) did Miss Cynthia Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

Dick looked away.

'She couldn't sleep. She'd been out for a walk.' 'A walk. Oh, ah. And is Gallows Lane the fashionable place for an early morning walk hereabouts ?' 'It could be. Why not?'

Dr Fell frowned. 'The lane, Lord Ashe informed me, ends only a few hundred yards east of here: where, in the eighteenth century, a gallows actually stood.'

'Technically it ends, yes. But there's a hard path across open fields towards Goblin Wood, where everybody goes for a walk. Miller the constable lives near there, as a matter of fact'

'Really, my boy,' said Dr Fell with exceptional mildness, 'you needn't yell. I quite understand. The point is that Miss Drew was also smack on the scene of the crime, or very nearly so. Did she see or hear anything that would help us?'

'No. Cynthia... Wait a minute, yes she did!' exclaimed Dick, catching himself up and obsessed with new, torturing puzzles. 'I didn't mention this in my evidence early this morning, because Cynthia hadn't told me then. She only told me afterwards, when I saw her at Lesley's house.'

'Well?'

'A minute or so before the rifle was fired,' explained Dick, 'Cynthia saw somebody run across the lane from the orchard on this side to the coppice on the other.'

He related the incident

And the effect of this on Dr Fell was electric.

'Got it!' said the doctor thunderously, and snapped his fingers in the air. 'Archons of Athens, but this is almost too good to be true! Got it!'

Hadley, who knew his obese friend of old, pushed back the easy-chair from the writing-table and got up in a hurry.. The movement of the chair - whose rollers slid creakily on the worn brown carpet, past the spilled box of drawing-pins - disclosed something else.

On the floor, open and face down as though it had been shoved under the chair to get it out of sight, lay a cloth-bound book. Hadley, despite his momentary distraction of attention, stooped down to pick up the book.

' I say, Hadley,' remonstrated Dr Fell, with his eye on one drawing-pin which had evidently rolled wide of the others. ' I wish you'd be careful not to step on those drawing-pins. Well? What is it?'

Hadley held out the book. It was a well-thumbed copy of Hazlitt's essays in the Everyman edition, with the name Samuel R. De Villa on the fly-leaf and many annotations in the same neat handwriting. Dr Fell inspected it curiously before throwing it on the table.

'Hadn't Sam,' he grunted, 'rather a sophisticated taste in reading-matter ?'

'Will you get the idea out of your amateur head,' snapped Hadley, 'that the professional confidence-man is. always a flashy hanger-on at fashionable hotels and bars ?'

'All right, all right!'

'Sam's donnish manner, as I kept telling you this-morning, was worth five thousand a year to him. His father was a West Country clergyman; he took honours, at Bristol University; he really did study medicine, and he's, played pathologist before without too many slips. Once, in the south of France, he hooked a hard-headed English lawyer out of a thumping sum just because ...' Hadley paused, himself picking up and throwing down the book. 'Never mind that, for the moment! What's this brain-wave-of yours?'

' Cynthia Drew,'said Dr Fell. 'What about her?'

'What she saw, or claims to have seen, tends to put the lid on it. Somebody has made a bad howler. Now you, my lad' - he blinked at Dick - 'saw no sign of this mysterious prowler in the lane?'

' I tell you, the sun was in my eyes!'

'The sun,' returned Dr Fell, 'has been in everybody's eyes. Look there!'

With a sense of impending disaster, with a sense that the whole affair was now running downhill towards a smash, Dick followed the doctor's nod towards the window. A shiny but conservative black two-seater car, which he recognized as belonging to Bill Earnshaw, rattled along the lane and came to a stop. Cynthia Drew sat with Earnshaw in the front seat

‘We haven't met the lady,’ observed Dr Fell, 'but I think I can guess who that is. Would you like to bet, Hadley, that she's heard Miss Grant is not an evil poisoner after all ? And is coming along here in something like horror to find out the truth from us?'

Hadley whacked his hand down on the table.

'She can't have discovered anything, I tell you!' the superintendent declared. 'Nobody knows but ourselves and Miss Grant and Lord Ashe. Lord Ashe swore he wouldn't say a word. She can't have discovered anything.'

'Oh, yes, she can,' said Dick Markham. 'Earnshaw!'

Hadley looked puzzled.

'Earnshaw?'

'The bank-manager! That fellow who's getting out of the car with her now! He was here this morning, and he stayed long enough to hear Dr Fell say, "That's not Sir Harvey Gilman!" - Don't you remember, Dr Fell?’

There was a silence, while they clearly heard the swishing noise of footsteps in grass as Cynthia and Earnshaw approached the cottage.

Dr Fell swore under his breath.

'Hadley,' he said, in a thunderous whisper like the wind along an Underground-railway tunnel, ‘I am an ass. Archons of Athens, what an outstanding ASS am I! I completely forgot the fellow, in spite of the fact that we met him in the post office this afternoon.'

Here Dr Fell smote his fist against his pink forehead.

' I should keep a secretary,' he roared, 'merely to remind me of what I was thinking about two minutes before. Of course! That erect back! That Anthony Eden hat! That polished hair and dental smile 1 When we met him at the post office, you know, I had a vague feeling I'd seen the blighter somewhere before. Absence of mind, my good Hadley...!'

'Well,' said Hadley unsympathetically, 'don't blame me. But, speaking of post offices, doesn't this dish your other scheme?'

'No, not necessarily. At the same time, I would rather have had it work out in a different way.'

The meaning of this reference to die post office - with its temperamental proprietress Miss Laura Feathers, who shouted lectures at you from behind her wire-guarded counter for the smallest postal infringement - was far from clear to Dick.

But every other consideration went out of his mind, was swept away, in his concern for Cynthia Drew.

' Miller!' called Superintendent Hadley.

Outside the window, Bert Miller wheeled round. He looked as though about to say something on his own account, but altered his mind.

'Sir?'

'You can admit both Miss Drew and Mr Earnshaw,' Hadley told him. 'But ' - here he directed a very significant glance at Dr Fell'- I, my friend, will do the questioning of this witness.'

Cynthia, with Earnshaw just behind her, hurried into the room from the hall and stopped dead. The weight of emotional tensity, while Hadley stood looking politely at Cynthia, could be felt like the warmth of that sitting-room.

Cynthia had almost managed to disguise, with powder, the darkish bruise on her right temple. Other things she could not disguise.

'Miss Cynthia Drew?' Hadley said without inflexion. 'Yes, yes. I -'

Hadley introduced himself, and presented Dr Fell. He did this with deliberation, with smoothness, and with what was, to Dick Markham, a horrible sense of imminent danger.

' You wanted to see us about something, Miss Drew ?'

'My mother told me’ returned Cynthia, with a steady hardness and shine about her blue eyes, 'that you came to see me.' Cynthia made a slight gesture.' She didn't tell me at the time you were there, I'm afraid. She thought she was keeping me from unpleasantness. It wasn't until Mr Earnshaw dropped in -'

'Ah, yes,' Hadley said pleasantly. 'Mr Earnshaw I'

' - dropped in, and mentioned one thing or another,' said Cynthia, fighting to control her breathing but keeping her eyes steadily fixed on Hadley's, 'that I learned you had been there. Did you want to see me about anything, Mr Hadley?'

'As a matter of fact, Miss Drew, I did. Will you sit down?'

And he indicated the heavy easy-chair in which the dead man had been sitting.

If it was meant as a gesture of studied callousness, it had its effect. Yet Cynthia never flinched or took her eyes from his.

' In that chair, Mr Hadley ?'

' In another chair, by all means. If you've got any objection to that one.'

Cynthia went over and plumped down in the easy-chair.

Earnshaw, hesitating and smiling in the doorway, cleared his throat.

'I just happened to tell Cynthia -' he began. But his voice rose with shattering loudness, and then fell away to nothing, because of the silence and the battery of looks directed at him by both Hadley and Dr Fell. Hadley faced

Cynthia across the writing-table, leaning his hands on the edge of it.

'Your mother told us, Miss Drew, that you got that bruise on your temple from slipping and falling on some stone steps.'

' I'm afraid,' answered Cynthia, ' that was just a polite fiction for the benefit of the neighbours.' Hadley nodded.

'Actually, I'm told, you got the bruise when Miss Lesley Grant hit out at you with a hand-mirror ?' 'Yes. I'm afraid that's true.'

'Would it interest you to hear, Miss Drew, that Miss Grant denies hitting you with a mirror or with anything else?'

Cynthia raised her head. She put the palms of her hands flat along the arms of the chair. Her blue eyes opened in amazement.

' But that's simply not true!'

' It's not true, Miss Drew, that you fell and struck the side of your head against the footboard of a bed ?'

' I... no, of course not!' After a speculative silence, while they again heard distantly the voice of the church-clock, Cynthia added: 'Let's come straight out with this, shall we? I hate beating about the bush. I hate - crooked things! And I'm pretty sure you know why I've come here to see you. Mr Earnshaw has been telling me...'

Earnshaw intervened before anybody could stop him.

'If you don't mind,' he said with polite sharpness, ‘I'd rather be kept out of this.'

'So?' inquired Dr Fell.

' I came here early to-day,' Earnshaw continued, smiling away unconsciously even as he registered a protest, ' to ask about a rifle. That rifle there by the fireplace. While I was here, I gave Dick Markham a theory about this affair. I also gave him some information.'

'Concerning,' said Dr Fell, 'drawing-pins?'

'Yes!' Earnshaw now poured with volubility. 'Colonel Pope always used to use drawing-pins for his gauze screens, as you can see for yourself if you examine the marks on any window-frame in this house. Though what a box of them should be doing on the floor now I can't say. Never mind 1'

Here Earnshaw raised his hand.

'While I was here,' he went on to Dr Fell, 'I heard a certain thing. About - Sir Harvey Gilman. You said it, Dr Fell. I wasn't sworn to secrecy, if you remember. Nobody asked me not to mention it. All the same, I decided not to mention it. Because of my position; because I didn't understand it; because discretion is discretion.'

Nobody now tried to stop Earnshaw. It was as though he spoke into a void, as though he spoke to Dr Fell round a corner, utterly ignoring the tableau presented by Hadley and Cynthia in the middle of the room. The silent struggle between the eyes of Hadley and the eyes of Cynthia was emphasized and heightened to fever-pitch by Earnshaw's words.

'On my way home from the bank to-day...'

(Cynthia made a short, slight movement)

' On my way home from the bank to-day,' said Earnshaw, ' I stopped at Cynthia's house to give her a message from my wife. She saw me. She broke down a little. She told me an absolutely ghastly story' - here Earnshaw uttered a loud laugh - 'about Lesley Grant.'

'A true story,' said Cynthia, with her eyes on Hadley.

'A ghastly story,' repeated Earnshaw. 'I felt bound to warn her, you know. Discretion or no discretion. I said; "Look here, where did you hear that?"'

'A very interesting question,' said Hadley.

' I said, "Because I'm bound to warn you that Dr Gideon Fell says this Sir Harvey Gilman wasn't Sir Harvey Gilman at all. And Middlesworth claims he was an impostor too.

'Is the story true? The story about Lesley?' demanded Cynthia.

'Is it true?' asked Earnshaw, who was white to the forehead.

Superintendent Hadley remained for a second or two supporting his weight with both hands on the writing-table; his face betraying nothing.

'Suppose I told you, Miss Drew - and you too, Mr Earnshaw - that the story about Miss Lesley Grant is perfectly true?'

' Oh, my God,' murmured Earnshaw in a flat voice.

Cynthia dropped her eyes at last. She seemed to gasp at the air, as though she had been holding her breath for a full minute.

' Officially, mind,' the superintendent spoke in a warning tone, 'I have no information to give you. I merely say "suppose" that. And I think, Mr Earnshaw, I'd rather excuse you while I have a further word with Miss Drew. If you wouldn't mind waiting but in the car ?'

'No, no, no,' Earnshaw assured him. Earnshaw glanced at Dick, and looked away with perplexed embarrassment. 'Lesley Grant a poisoner with - Never mind! Discretion. It's incredible! Excuse me.'

He closed the door firmly after him. They heard his footsteps in the hall, and their tempo seemed to quicken in the grass outside.

For the first time Cynthia addressed herself to Dick Markham.

' I couldn't tell you about it this morning, Dick,' she said in a low, steady voice. There was pity in her gaze: if this were acting, it struck him with honest horror. ' I couldn't bring myself to hurt you that much! When it came to the test, I'm afraid I simply failed it.'

'Yes,' said Dick. His throat felt thick; he did not look back at her.

'I've been wondering all afternoon,' Cynthia went on in a conscience-stricken voice, 'whether I might be doing her an injustice. Honestly, if there had been any mistake about this, I should have gone down on my knees to beg her pardon!'

'Yes. Of course. I see.'

'When Bill Earnshaw told me what he did, I wondered for half a second ...! But there it is!'

'Just one moment, Miss Drew.' Hadley did not speak loudly. 'You couldn't bring yourself to hurt Mr Markham by telling him about this, though you believed he knew it already?' He paused. 'You told Miss Grant, didn't you, that Mr Markham already knew all about it?'

Cynthia uttered a small harsh laugh.

' I'm a rotten bad hand at expressing myself,' she replied. ' Yes. I knew he'd heard it. But J didn't want to be the one who threw it in his teeth and reminded him of it. Can't you understand that ?'

'By the way, Miss Drew, where did you hear the story?'

'Oh, does that matter now? If the story is true?'

Hadley reached over and picked up his notebook.

'It might not matter,' he conceded in an even voice, 'if the story were true. But it's not true at all, Miss Drew. It was a pack of lies invented by a crook who called himself Sir Harvey Gilman.'

Cynthia stared at him.

‘You said-!'

'Oh, no. I carefully said "suppose" that, as any of these gentlemen can testify.' Hadley poised his pencil over the notebook. 'Where did you hear the story?'

Incredulity, defiance, still a straightforward virtuousness all mingled in Cynthia's expression, despite the pallor of her face and the rigidity of her body.

'Don't be silly!' she burst out. And then: 'If this isn't true, why should anybody say it was?'

'Certain people might not like Miss Grant very much. Can't you understand that?'

'No. I like Lesley, or thought I liked her, very much.'

'Yet you attacked her?'

'I didn't attack her,' replied Cynthia, raising her chin with pale calm.

'She attacked you, then? You still maintain you got that bruise on your temple from being hit with a hand-mirror?'

‘Yes.'

' Where did you hear this story, Miss Drew ?' Cynthia still disregarded this.

' It's utterly absurd,' she declared,' that anybody should give all those details unless there was some truth in it. Some truth, don't you see?' She spread out her hands. 'What do you know about Lesley? How many times has she been married ? What does she keep in that safe ?'

'Listen, Miss Drew.' Hadley put down notebook and pencil. Again he balanced his hands on the edge of the table, with powerful patience, as though he were going to push the table towards her. 'I keep telling you there's NO truth in the whole thing.'

'But...!'

' Miss Grant isn't a criminal. She has never been married. What she kept in the safe was perfectly innocent. She was nowhere near this cottage last night or this morning. Let me carry that further. The house here remained dark from eleven o'clock last night until some minutes past five this morning, when a light was turned on in ...'

' Sir!' interposed a new voice.

For some minutes Dick had been aware of what might be called a background difference. The helmet of Police-Constable Miller still passed and repassed outside the windows. But it had been moving a little more rapidly.

And it was Miller's large face which appeared now, poked through the frame of die shattered window: sideways, almost comic-looking if it had not been for Miller's heavy urgency.

'Sir,' he addressed the superintendent huskily, 'can I say something?' Hadley turned in exasperation. 'Later! We're-'

'But it's important, sir. It's about,' he thrust a big arm through the window to point, 'it's about this.'

'Come in,' said Hadley; and not a person in that room moved until Miller had clumped round outside, entered by the hall door, and stood at attention.

'I could 'a' told you before, sir.' A mole beside Bert's nose looked defiantly reproachful. 'Only nobody said nothing to me about what you might call murder.'

'Well?'

'I live over near Goblin Wood, sir.' ‘All right Well!'

' I was out very late last night, sir. Because a drunken man was making trouble at Newton Farm. I always cycle home through this lane, and over the path to Goblin Wood. And,' added Miller, ' I passed these cottages 'ere, on my bike, about three o'clock this morning.'

Silence.

'Well?' prompted Hadley.

' Mr Markham's house, sir,' Miller nodded towards Dick, ‘was all bright-lighted in one room. I could see it plain.'

'That's all right," said Dick. 'I went to sleep on the sofa in the study, and left the lights burning.'

'But,' continued Miller with emphasis, 'this cottage 'ere was much more than that. It was all lighted up like a Christmas tree.'

Hadley took one step round the side of the writing-table. ' What's that you're saying?'

Miller remained emphatic and dogged.

'Sir, it's true what I'm telling you. All the curtains was drawn on the windows, yes. But you could just see lights inside. And practically every room in this cottage - at least, what I could see when I rode past on my bike - had a light burning inside it.'

The open bewilderment of Cynthia Drew, who had craned round from the easy-chair; the more suave perplexity of Superintendent Hadley at this vision of a house lighted in loneliness with a drugged man inside it: both these were lost to Dick's notice in the overwhelming satisfaction which radiated from Dr Gideon Fell. Dr Fell's 'Aha!' - breathed across the room with a melodramatic gusto springing from sheer sincerity - indicated that he was very sure of himself now.

Miller cleared his throat.

'I thinks to myself, "That's all right." Because I'd heard the gentleman had been hurt, and I thinks to myself about nurses and doctors and people. And I thinks to myself,

"Shall I go in and inquire?" But I thinks to myself it's too late, and it can wait.

'But, sir,' continued Miller, raising his voice as though fearful of being interrupted, 'I did see somebody standing by the front door. It was a bit dark, I know. But it was the white blouse or sweater or whatever you call it that made me notice; and I'm pretty sure...'

Hadley stood rigid.

' White blouse ?' he repeated.

' Sir, it was Miss Lesley Grant.'

CHAPTER 17

WAS Cynthia lying? Or was Lesley? Let's face it.

Walking home through the twilight of Gallows Lane, an eerie whispering twilight where the birds bickered before going to sleep, Dick Markham tried to face it out.

It was past eight o'clock. Even if he bathed and shaved in a hurry, he would still be late for his dinner-engagement with Lesley. This seemed a minor treachery, since Lesley put such a romantic store by it. But, in the matter of a little thing like a murder, was Cynthia lying or was Lesley?

The whole damned business was too close! Too personal! Too entwined with emotion! It seemed to resolve itself into a balance of what you believed between Lesley Grant on the one hand and Cynthia Drew on the other. And the balance-weights wouldn't stay still.

One of these girls, reading the matter like that, was clear-eyed and honest, telling the truth with sincere purpose. The other hid many ugly thoughts behind a pretty face, which might wear a very different expression if you caught it off guard.

Both of these girls you know well. Both you have recently held in your arms - though Cynthia only for the purpose of consoling her, of course - and to think of such matters in connexion with either seems fantastic foolery. Yet the hypodermic needle jabbed like a cobra, fanged with poison; and somebody's hand held it, and somebody laughed.

Not that he wavered in his loyalty to Lesley. He was in love with Lesley.

But suppose, just suppose after all... ?

Nonsense! She couldn't have had any motive!

Couldn't she?

Yet, in Cynthia's case, it was almost as bad. He himself had written a good deal of learned balderdash about repressions, very useful if you wanted motives for a play or a book. But if this turned up on the doorstep, if the repressions exploded in your face, you were like a man who dabbles pleasantly in diabolism and then finds the devil really following you.

And, in either event, how had the thing been done in that locked and bolted room?

Or Fell evidently knew, though he would say nothing. Dr Fell and Hadley, in fact, had adjourned to a private conference at the back of the cottage: from which emerged much shouting and banging of fists on tables but no audible explanation. Dick had not been present. He and Cynthia had even been kept in separate rooms, eyed by the watchful Miller. But now... ?

Tramping disconsolately down the lane, Dick turned in at the gate of his own cottage. It loomed up dark ahead of him, the diamond-paned windows dusted with twilight.

Curse it all, he'd got to hurry! Lesley would be waiting. He was badly in need of a shave, he must change his rumpled clothes ...

Dick closed the front door on a dusky hall. In dimness he barged through the passage into the study, where the outlines of books and melodramatic playbills were not quite lost in shadow. He touched the light-switch by the door. He clicked it, and clicked it back again, before realizing that the switch was already down but that the lights failed to work.

That infernal shilling-in-the-slot meter again!

Mrs Bewford, the woman who "did" for him, was usually kept well supplied with shillings to feed this monster. But Dick himself had kept the lights burning all night before; the supply was exhausted, and the lights had gone out.

Groping his way across the study, Dick penetrated through the kitchen and then into the scullery: whose windows were on the east side like those of his study. By rare good luck - this seldom happens - he did manage to find a shilling among the coins in his pocket. Feeling his way blindly under the sink, he found the meter, twisted the catch as he pushed the coin through, and heard it fall inside.

And the light went on in his study.

The light went on in his study.

He was standing by the scullery-sink, raising himself from the meter and staring out through the scullery-window, when he noticed it. He saw a bright glow spring up in his own side garden, just as many hours before he had seen the glow spring up through the windows of that other sitting-room ...

The light was not switched on; but it went on. Dick Markham gripped the edges of the sink. ' Wow!' he said aloud.

He went back to the study, surveyed it, and addressed the typewriter.

'Do you want to know, old son,' he said to the typewriter, ' how to create the illusion that a light is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'

Dick stopped abruptly.

For Major Horace Price, his sandy eyebrows raised in astonishment, was standing by the door to the front hall.

Major Price's round speckled face, with its cropped sandy moustache and light-blue eyes, assumed a tolerant look. His hearty manner conveyed that he rather expected to find a writer of sensational plays talking to his typewriter as to a friend; and that, though it mightn't be his own way, he quite understood.

'What did you say, my dear chap?' asked the major.

'Do you want to know, Major Price,' demanded Dick,