Till Death Do Us Part

'how to create the illusion that a light Is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'

He was not now concerned with keeping secrets. He wanted to blurt out with emphasis this particular secret.

Real interest appeared in Major Price's rather prominent eyes. After a hasty glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was listening, the major came in and closed the study door. Dick remained engrossed and enwrapped.

' I was thinking last night,' Dick swept on,' that all three cottages in this lane have shilling-in-the-slot meters. By God, that's why he did it! That's why the lights down there were turned on and left burning half the night!'

Major Price looked fussed.

'You'd better stop a bit, my dear chap! That's why who did what?'

'Bert Miller,' said Dick, 'rode past on his bike last night and saw that all the lights down there were burning behind closed curtains.'

' Did he, my dear chap ? Well ?'

'Somebody,' said Dick, 'switched on all the lights and left them like that until the current was used up.'

'I say! If you wouldn't mind ...?'

'The lights went out Then, somebody turned off all the switches except the switch in the sitting-room, which was left pressed down. At the proper time in the morning, somebody had only to drop a shilling into the electric meter in the scullery. And a light went on, as though switched on, in the sitting-room.'

Major Price gave a puzzled little chuckle.

Peering round at the playbills on the walls - Poisoner's Mistake, Panic in the Family, andI Never Suspected, which always afforded the major quiet amusement though he had seen them so often before - he went over and sat down in tweedy untidiness on the sofa.

'Mind telling me about it?' he suggested. 'I'm afraid I haven't got the slightest idea what you're getting at'

Then Dick saw the flaw.

This business about the light was true. Dr Fell knew it was true, since the doctor had made special and curious reference to that electric meter in the other cottage.

But it still didn't explain the problem.

'It doesn't explain,' Dick declared aloud, 'how the murderer got his physical body out of a locked room, leaving Sam De Villa there! And the room is still locked. And Sam, I'll take my oath, had been dead only a very few minutes when I arrived.'

Just as before. The puzzle remained unchanged.

In a leisurely way Major Price got out pipe and tobacco-pouch. His cropped sandy head, like a Prussian's, was inclined forward; his eyes grew keen with interest

'Who,' he asked in a sharper tone, 'is Sam De Villa?'

And Dick woke up.

'Look here, Major: you've got to excuse met I was so jarred by something that's just happened that I've been babbling away aloud. And the fact is, you know, I've got no right to be talking. If you understood why ...'

'My dear chap! None of my business! Unless -'

‘Unless?'

'Unless it concerns one of my clients, of course.' Major Price punched tobacco into the pipe-bowl with a large thumb. 'Village opinion now seems about divided between suicide and murder. I - er - can't say.'

'It was just a brain-wave of mine,' Dick explained. 'But I'm afraid it doesn't amount to anything. No, confound it! The only person who's made an intelligent suggestion so far is Bill Earnshaw.'

Major Price's whale-like back grew rigid.

' Earnshaw,' he said,' made an intelligent suggestion ?'

'Yes! And I wonder why Dr Fell hasn't looked into it! Earnshaw said -'

'My dear chap,' the major interposed stiffly, 'I really don't think I care to hear about it All that surprises me is that Earnshaw made what you call an intelligent suggestion.'

'Look here, Major! Are you and Bill still at loggerheads?'

The sandy eyebrows went up.

'Loggerheads? I don't understand that. But it does seem a pity, after all, if a chap who prides himself on his sense of humour can't take a harmless joke without wanting to make a personal issue of it.' - 'Was this the joke you played on Earnshaw at the shooting-range yesterday? What was the joke, by the way?'

'Doesn't matter! Doesn't matter at all!' The pipe was filled to Major Price's satisfaction, but a red bar showed across his amiable forehead. He still held himself stiffly as he sat on the sofa.' I didn't come here to talk about that. I did come here - if you'll excuse me-'

' I'm afraid, Major, you'll have to excuse me. I'm overdue at Lesley's for dinner, and I haven't even got dressed yet.'

'Exactiy,' said Major Price, and consulted the pipe. Then he looked up. 'Do you know what time it is now?'

Dick glanced at a useless wrist-watch.

'It's twenty minutes to nine,' Major Price told him. 'And I think you were due at the gal's place, for cocktails, at half-past seven ?

'Now stop a bit!' urged the major, lifting his hand as Dick began to make a beeline to get upstairs. 'It's all very well to start hurrying now. All very well! But the question is, my dear chap: will you find her at home when you do get there?'

Dick stopped dead.

'Meaning what?'

With a shake of his head Major Price devoted close attention to the top of the pipe.

'I speak,' he said, 'as a man old enough to be the father of both of you. And as a friend. No offence meant. But, dash it all, you know, I wish to blazes you'd do the thing right one way or the other! Is it true, or isn't it, that Mrs Rackley saw you and Cynthia Drew up to no good in Lesley's blasted bedroom to-day?'

It was the very grotesqueness of this, at a time like the present, which took Dick aback.

' I tell you,' he said,' there was absolutely no ...!'

'Of course not, my dear chap! I quite understand! At the same time -'

'Mrs Rackley told Lesley about it?'

'Yes. Especially when you didn't turn up at half-past seven, or at eight, or even at half-past eight. And another thing.' Major Price put the pipe in his mouth. 'Has Cynthia been down there,' he nodded his head towards the other cottage, 'down there with you all this time?'

'Cynthia left, with Bill Earnshaw, an hour ago.'

'If you'd only telephoned, my dear chap!'

'Listen, Major Price. There have been some very serious developments in this business, which threaten to turn the whole case upside down again. I can't tell you any more than that, except that Hadley may be descending on Lesley at any minute' - he saw Major Price's thick-set figure stiffen - ' to ask her some questions.'

'Really? You don't tell me!'

' I only got away myself because Hadley and Dr Fell are in the middle of an argument, and ..." 'Argument about what?'

'For one thing, about distillation of prussic acid. And how easy it is from non-poisonous ingredients you can buy at any chemist's. But most of it wasn't either audible or clear. Anyway, I can easily explain to Lesley!'

Major Price spun the wheel of a lighter and lit his pipe.

'My dear chap,' he said, 'all I can tell you is that the girl is very upset and rather hysterical. She must have been through a lot to-day, though she won't' - his forehead darkened '- she won't even confide in her legal adviser. If you want to do her a good service, you'll cut along there straightaway.'

'Looking like this?'

The major was emphatic.

'Yes. Looking like that. It's a bit diplomatically late, you know, to use the phone now.' Dick went.

As he turned out into the lane again and headed west towards the village, he could faintly hear a murmur of voices approaching behind him. They were the voices of Dr Fell and Superintendent Hadley, still arguing.

If these two were on their way to Lesley's themselves at this minute, with further questions for a girl whom Major Price described as already very upset and rather hysterical, then Dick meant to get there first. And then - what?

He didn't know. No doubt there was some innocent explanation of why Bert Miller swore he saw Lesley beside the cottage in the middle of the night; Dick shut up his mind and refused to think about this, because he told himself he would not go through the same anguish, only to have it naturally explained, twice in one day. But he quickened his step nevertheless.

Three or four minutes brought him to the High Street. Lesley's house was very close now.

A wraith of pink sunset lingered behind these roof-tops, making a slate gleam here or silhouetting chimney-stacks there. But dusk filled the High Street, which lay entirely deserted. Those inhabitants of Six Ashes not to be found at the 'Griffin and Ash-tree' would be at home, getting ready to switch on the nine o'clock news.

Dick turned to the right out of Gallows Lane, crossed the road, and walked at long strides along the brick-paved path which served as a pavement for the High Street.

Here was Lesley's house, set back behind its chestnut trees, with a good stretch of grass on each side as well. No lights showed now behind its thick, drawn curtains except upstairs in the bedroom; but a tiny porch-light shone out over the front door. Dick halted at the front gate, looking left and right.

The only dwelling nearby (if it could be called a dwelling at all) was the post office next door. Dick, looking towards his right, saw this weather-boarded little building in all its lack of dignity.

Two dingy plate-glass windows, with a door between and slots for letters and parcels under one window, faced the High Street. In the front premises, Miss Laura Feathers combined her postal duties with a sketchy drapery-business which never seemed to sell anything. In the straggling back-premises, Miss Laura Feathers made her home. The post office always closed at six - malcontents said before six - and it was closed now, dark blinds drawn down on door and windows, with an air of defying customers as a fort would defy attackers.

Dick looked at it without curiosity in the mild summer dusk.

From somewhere not far away, a late lawn-mower was whirring drowsily. Dick put Miss Laura Feathers out of his mind. He opened the front gate. He started up the path to see Lesley.

And then, inside the post office, somebody fired a shot There is somewhere a nightmare story of two lovers for ever condemned to push through the revolving doors of the same hotel. Something of the same quality, a sense of doors revolving only to shut him in again with the same nightmare scene, welled up in Dick Markham's heart and soul.

It had been a firearm, right enough. A pistol or maybe even a rifle. And he knew where the noise had come from.

Dick wanted to run away, to run blindly, to get away from what eternally pursued him. But he knew with equal clarity that he couldn't do it. He must go where it led him, if only because of Lesley. He turned back, and raced along the brick pavement to the post office. The noise of his own footsteps on brick made flat clamour; it was the only sound in the High Street

Close at hand, you could see a faint pale edge of electric light behind the close-drawn blinds of windows and door.

'Hello!' he called. 'Hello there!’

He expected no reply, but in a sense he received one. Behind that closed door, footsteps on bare boards moved away: quick footsteps, tiptoe and stealthy, retreating towards the living-premises behind.

Dick took hold of the door-handle. Though this door never opened after six - except when Henry Garrett the postman came at nine for the evening mail-collection which Miss Feathers put ready for him in a canvas bag - still the door was unlocked now.

An image of Miss Feathers, who would talk of nothing but her gastritis and the enormities of her customers, rose in Dick's mind now. He flung the door open, and smelled burnt powder-smoke.

Inside the little dingy premises of the post office, a dusty electric bulb shone down on the wire-grilled postal counter along the right, and the drapery counter with its shelves along the left. Its floor-boards, worn smooth and black after so many years, reflected that light At the rear Dick saw an open door leading to the living-premises, from which he could hear the singing and knocking of a boiling tea-kettle.

But he did not look at that, first of all.

The inside of the letter-and-parcels box was under the window on the same side as the drapery counter. Its little wooden door stood wide open. You dropped letters through those slots facing the street, and they fell into the box on this side; but few of them remained in the box now.

The floor on that side, in fact, was scattered with trampled envelopes of all sizes, as though they had been blown wide by a gust of wind. A tightly rolled magazine in its wrapper still bumped along the uneven floor, its blue stamp turning over and over until it lodged against the counter opposite.

And behind the drapery counter, swaying on her feet, stood Miss Laura Feathers herself.

Her dark eyes, though they were glazing and could have seen little, nevertheless had an electric wildness. Incredibly ugly, incredibly dingy she looked, with the greyish hair drawn up in a knot from her ravaged face, and the shapeless dark dress. Shot through the body at close range, she kept the fingers of her right hand, bloodied fingers, pressed hard under her left breast. She must have had some dim comprehension of a newcomer. For with her left hand, which seemed to clutch a fragment of paper, she kept shaking and pointing with frantic vitality towards the door at the rear.

For a second more she kept gaspingly pointing and shaking that hand, trying to speak before she fell over in a heap behind the counter.

Then there was silence, except for the singing and knocking of the tea-kettle in the back room.

CHAPTER l8

IN his dreams, for long afterwards, Dick Markham remembered those eyes fixed on him. They had a pathos, a sick realization of her plight, an appeal which Miss Feathers had never exercised in life. For she was dead now.

Dick found her lying behind the counter, the eyes wide open. She lay on a drift of scattered envelopes, her left hand still pointing forward. But the fingers had relaxed a little before they tightened, suddenly, in the pinching grip of death. The piece of paper she had been holding, slightly bloodstained along the edges, lay beside her hand.

Dick picked it up mechanically, when Miss Feather's body jerked like a fish and then lay still. He could not have told why he picked it up. Yet, subconsciously, something had caught his eye.

The piece of paper was a narrow fragment of the top of an envelope, torn lengthwise and upwards, just missing the stamp. Inside it stuck an even smaller fragment of a sheet of notepaper which had been inside the missing envelope. Typewritten words, a few words which had been left behind of the original note, struck up at him. The torn strip said:

why be such fools? If you want to know how Lesley Grant did it

No more. And nothing on the opposite side. But Dick stared at the words as though they were enlarging before his eyes.

For they had been written on his own typewriter.

No mistaking that cranky 'y', which always gave him so much trouble, or the black 'w', which he could never get properly clear. Dick lived for and at and with typewriters;

he would have known his own Underwood anywhere. For seconds he stood looking at this nightmare fragment before something else made him jerk up his head.

Somewhere in the living-premises at the rear, stealthy footsteps again began to run.

He never knew until afterwards how near he came to getting a revolver-bullet through his own heart. For he acted mechanically, without thinking of consequences. Still tightly holding the shred of note and envelope, he vaulted over the counter and ran for the door at the rear.

Three straggling rooms, one behind the other in a straight line, ran out ahead of him. In the first, a sitting-room-kitchen of greasy wallpaper, the table was set for supper and the banging kettle on the hob sent up a cloud of steam. The room was empty. Beyond, another door led to a bedroom - and across this, as he plunged in, he saw an opposite door to the scullery sharply close.

He was chasing the murderer, no doubt of that. The bedroom was dark. Somebody, on the other side of the door in the scullery, was frantically fumbling to turn the key on that side; frantically fumbling to lock the door against him.

And the key wouldn't turn.

Dick, racing for that door, fell at full length over a clothes-horse of underwear set straight in his path. He came down with ajar that bit needles into the palms of his hands, and struck his wits as though with a blow across the brain. But he was up again like an india-rubber cat, kicking the clattering clothes-horse out of his way.

The scullery was empty too.

Smelling of stale water and soap-suds, it was not quite so dark as the bedroom. Its back door, glass-panelled, still quivered against the wall where somebody had flung it open after running out only a few seconds before.

Got away?

No! But...

Grey light outlined against black the oblongs of the scullery windows. Dick emerged from the back door into a sweet-scented dusk rustling with the leaves of chestnut trees, and realized with a start where he had come.

The length of this narrow post office building carried him over fifty feet back from the High Street. Beyond a waist-high stone wall which surrounded the grounds, he could see across from him the side and part of the back of Lesley Grant's house.

The running shadow of the murderer, a shadow blurred to shapelessness, streaked across the lawn. It melted into the outline of a tree, hesitated, and moved softly towards the back door of Lesley's house. No light showed from the kitchen there; no light illuminated a face. Dick was just able to see the edge of the back door open and close, soundlessly, as the figure melted inside.

Into Lesley's house. That meant...

Hold on!

Panting, Dick climbed over the low wall into the grounds. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, other figures swam towards him. For some seconds he had been conscious of a bumping, rattly sound, the noise of a lawn-mower upended and rolled through grass.

He could now identify the lawn-mower he had heard a while ago. It had been pushed by McIntyre, Lesley's gardener, whose tall gaunt figure now appeared near the back door. Glancing to the left, towards the front of the house, Dick saw the vast, the unmistakable figure of Dr Gideon Fell, in cape and shovel-hat, advancing along the path towards the front door.

Dr Fell and Hadley had been walking not far behind him. They must have heard that gunshot too.

But this was not what caused the rush of elation which flooded through Dick's nerves as his intelligence began to work again. He held up the torn shreds of notepaper and envelope in his hand. His mind suddenly fitted together a number of isolated facts. And he breathed for joy and relief at what he had to tell himself. The murder of Laura Feathers was the final, convincing proof of Lesley Grant's innocence.

He could demonstrate it

Yet it brought the shock of new dangers. The real murderer, bolting out at the rear of the post office, had unexpectedly been penned in on three sides. McIntyre was approaching from one direction, Dr Fell from another direction, and Dick from still a third. The murderer had taken refuge in Lesley's house. Since Lesley was there alone, with only Mrs Rackley to attend her ...

It was an unnerving thought. Dick ran hard across the lawn to the back door.

'Stand in front of this door!' he shouted to an astounded Mclntyre. 'Don't let anybody get out! Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir. But -'

He did not stop to inquire into McIntyre's astonishment Opening the back door, he entered a dark kitchen heavy with the smell of cooking, saw a line of light shining under the swing-door to the dining-room, and hurried through.

Lesley, in a light-green dinner-dress frilled at the shoulders, got up hastily from the other side of the table. The chandelier lights shone down on the polished mahogany of that table: on the round lace mats, on the china and cutlery for a meal which had not been served, on the silver candlesticks with tall white candles which had not been lighted.

Lesley herself, after the start she could not help giving, stood with her arms straight down at her sides. He saw the sleekness of the brown hair, the soft line of chin and neck, the brown eyes suddenly turned away.

'Your dinner's out there,' she said, and nodded towards the kitchen without looking at him. ' It's cold. I - I told Mrs Rackley to go. When you came to face it, couldn't you bear to eat with the daughter of Lily Jewell?'

Yet, even in the midst of the morbid thoughts which he guessed must have been torturing her, she could not help noticing his expression.

'Lesley,' he said, 'who came into this house just now?'

Her hand tightened on the back of a chair. She looked away for a second, as though to clear her head of angry and and half-tearful confusion, before turning back to him in perplexity.

' Into this house ? Nobody!'

'Through the back door. Not half a minute ago.'

'Nobody came in except you. I've been here all the time! I ought to know!'

'There's that breakfast-room,' said Dick. 'He, or she' - a fleeting glimpse of Cynthia Drew's face appeared to his imagination - 'or whoever it is, could have gone through there into the front hall without your knowing it.'

'Dick, what on earth is all this?'

He didn't want to alarm her, but it had to be told.

' Listen, my dear. Laura Feathers has been killed. Somebody got into the post office and shot her only a few minutes ago.' He saw Lesley's slim fingers tighten on the back of the chair; she swayed, her head thrown back under this final bedevilment. 'What's more, the murderer is the same person who killed Sam De Villa. And I'm afraid he's in the house now.'

The shrill pealing of the front door bell, whose buzzer was in this room, made them both jump like the whirr of a rattlesnake.

Lesley stared at him.

' It's all right!' Dick assured her. "That's Dr Fell. He was coming up the front path; I saw him. You say Mrs Rackley isn't here?'

'No. I sent her away because ... . '

'Then come along with me,' said Dick, taking firm hold of her wrist. 'There probably isn't any danger, but I don't want you out of my sight while I answer that door.'

A voice in his mind said: You're a liar, my lad. There's a very great deal of danger when a person who hates Lesley Grant as the devil hates holy-water is trapped and cornered with a loaded gun in that same girl's house. Every corner of a familiar house, every curtain and stair-landing, was fanged and poisoned with danger. Dick held even more tightly to Lesley's wrist, despite her struggles to get away.

’I’d really rather you didn't touch me,' Lesley said breathlessly. 'When you and Cynthia -' 'Don't mention Cynthia!' 'Why not?'

Half dragging her into the front hall, Dick opened the door; and saw, as he had hoped, the reassuring immensity of Dr Fell outside.

'Laura Feathers -' Dick began.

' I know,' said Dr Fell. His waistcoat rose and fell wheezily; his voice was subdued. 'We heard the shot and saw you run in. Hadley's there now. May I ask, sir, just what devil's wasp-nest you've overturned now?'

'That,' said Dick, 'is exactly what you can call it. In the first place, I can prove Lesley had no hand in any funny business at all. In the second place, I don't have to prove it, because if you give a shout for whatever policemen you've got at hand, we can nail the murderer in this house.'

In three sentences he outlined the story. Its effect on Dr Fell was rather curious. The Gargantuan doctor stood motionless on the doorstep, his shovel-hat still on his head and his hands folded over his cane, breathing noisily. He kept his eyes fixed on the two tiny scraps of paper Dick held out to him.

This phlegmatic attitude, when Dick Markham half expected somebody to fire a bullet from the direction of the stairs, drove Dick into a frenzy.

'Don't you understand, sir?' he repeated, with a sort of wild patience. 'In the house!'

'Oh, ah,' said Dr Fell. His eyes moved over the hall behind. 'In the house. Can he get out the back way?'

'I hope not. Anyway, Joe McIntyre the gardener is there.'

'And he can't get out the front way,' said Dr Fell, moving his bulk to peer round behind him, 'because Bert Miller is there, and a man who's just come down from the Criminal Records Department at Scotland. Harrumph, yes. Excuse me for just one moment.'

He lumbered off into the gloom, where they saw him conferring with two shadows in the path. One of these shadows slipped away towards the back of the house; the other remained where it was; and Dr Fell returned.

'Look here, sir!' protested Dick. 'Aren't we going to search the place?'

'At the moment,' answered Dr Fell, 'no. With your permission, I should much prefer to come in and talk for a little.'

'Then for God's sake let me get Lesley away from here while ...'

' It would be better, I assure you, if Miss Grant remained.' 'Even with the murderer in the house?' 'Even,' replied Dr Fell gravely, 'with the murderer in the house.'

And he stepped into the hall, sweeping off his shovel-hat and thrusting his cane under his arm.

The brightly lighted dining-room attracted his attention. Ponderously gesturing Lesley and Dick to precede him, he followed them into the dining-room. He blinked round him with abstracted interest. He murmured some excuse about the heat. Rather clumsily emphasizing this excuse - it was warm in the room - Dr Fell threw open the thick curtains of the opened windows.

Under these two front windows stood a heavy Florentine oak chest. Dr Fell sat down on it, again propping his hands over his cane.

'Sir,' he began, 'those two shreds of paper, as you very properly remark, must go to Hadley. But I gather from your recital you believe you have discovered the meaning of what happened at the post office? Of that murder, in short?'

'Yes. I think I have.'

' Very well,' said Dr Fell.' Suppose you tell me what it is ?'

' Hang it, Doctor! At a time like this ...!'

' Yes, by thunder!' said Dr Fell. 'At a time like this I'

Lesley, though plainly she understood not one word of this, was trembling. Dick put his arm round her shoulders. The whole house seemed full of unaccountable creaks and cracks, as though it were poised; and the metronome-clock ticked in the hall.

'Just as you like,' said Dick.' When I met Superintendent Hadley at Ashe Hall this morning, that wasn't the first time I'd seen him.'

'Aha! Well?'

'The first time I saw him, I was standing at the window of Lesley's bedroom upstairs,' Dick pointed to the ceiling, 'and I saw him cross the road towards the post office.'

'Go on,'said Dr Fell.

'Then,' continued Dick, 'we had that conference in Lord Ashe's study at the Hall. You explained how this whole murder-scheme was an attempt to frame Lesley for the job-'

Dr Fell intervened.

'One moment,' he said. 'What I did, if you recall, was to challenge anyone to say what else it could be. But continue.'

'You said the real murderer had provided us a problem. Now he'd got to provide a solution, a solution for the locked room, or the police couldn't touch Lesley. You suggested there would be a "communication".'

‘I did.'

'When you told us that,' Dick went on, 'Superintendent Hadley looked up all of a sudden and said, "Was that why you asked me, a while ago, to -?" And you shut up very quickly. You suggested it might be a telephone call.

'But Hadley never for a second believed in that "telephone-call". He mentioned it later, at the dead man's cottage. He pointed out it would be too risky, and added "But your other idea, I admit -" Whereupon you cut him off again. Not long afterwards, up cropped still another reference to your other scheme, and this time in flat-out connexion with the post office.

'I'm a' cloth-headed goop,' Dick concluded bitterly, ' for not guessing it long ago. Of course it's the old poison-pen trick.'

Lesley peered up at him in bewilderment.

'Poison-pen trick?' she repeated.

'Yes. If the real murderer wanted to get in touch with the police, then the obvious and safest anonymous way would be to write. And there's no stamp-machine at the post office, if you remember?'

'Stop a bit!' cried Lesley. 'I think I do begin to...'

'Anybody who wants stamps must buy 'em from Laura over the counter. Dr Fell,' said Dick,' believed this morning that one person, or maybe one of a small group of persons, would drop a line to explain how you committed the murder.'

'You mean-?'

'So he asked Hadley to do what the police often do when there's a plague of poison-pen letters. With the co-operation of whoever's in charge of the post office, every stamp sold to a suspected person or persons has a private mark on it. Then, when the anonymous letter arrives, the police can infallibly prove who wrote it.

'Would Laura Feathers have enjoyed helping in a trick like that? She'd have cackled and loved it! Dr Fell had a shot at the same trick for trapping this murderer. And it very nearly worked.

'The real murderer did write a note, all right. I've got the proof here in my hand. The real murderer slipped into my cottage and wrote the blasted thing on my typewriter...'

Lesley drew away from him. She could not seem to believe her ears, and she dashed her hand out as though trying to push something away.

'On your typewriter?' she exclaimed.

'Yes. But that's no clue, I'm afraid. I haven't been at my place all day. Anyway, half the neighbourhood walks in and out of there without bothering to knock. Cynthia Drew, Major Price -'

'And myself,' smiled Lesley.

'Don't joke about this!' Dick said sharply.' The murderer wrote this note accusing Lesley of being a famous poisoner, and probably showing how De Villa had been killed. The murderer posted it. Then somehow he, or she, tumbled to it that a trap had been set He, or she, tried to get the letter back by waiting until Laura Feathers cleared the box, and then begging it on some excuse. But Laura was a wily old bird; she knew, and let the murderer know she knew. And so ...'

Dick made the motion of one who pulls a trigger. He turned to Dr Fell. 'Is this true, sir, or isn't it?' Dr Fell's face was very serious.

Blinking, he removed his eyeglasses, stared at them reflectively, and pinched at the deep red mark they made across the bridge of his nose before putting them on again.

'Oh, yes,' he admitted. 'It's true enough.'

The tension went out of Dick's muscles, and his lungs relaxed in a long breath of relief.

'That was your game with the post office, sir?'

'Yes.' Dr Fell brooded. 'It was a long shot, of course.'

'Howso?'

'Well, dash it all!' complained Dr Fell. 'It's simple enough to use that trick on a poison-pen writer, who writes numbers of letters and therefore requires numbers of stamps. But suppose your quarry has a casual stamp in his pocket or at home, and doesn't have to buy one? Still, it was worth trying. And it worked. Archons of Athens' -a curious violent look overspread his face - 'Archons of Athens, how it worked!'

'I don't follow that, sir.'

'Almost too soon, don't you think? Almost' - Dr Fell snapped his fingers - 'like that All the same, I agree, it did work. And it cost a human life.'

' You couldn't have helped that I'

' I wonder,' said Dr Fell.

'Anyway, however that game worked out, there's one thing these two bits of paper and the whole evening's events definitely do prove. I hope you'll at least agree with that?'

'With what?'

'The original theory! You said this might happen, and it has happened! You said Lesley might be accused by an anonymous communication, and she's been accused! You said the real murderer might take this line, and he has taken this line! What more can we want? I submit that this proves the murder of Sam De Villa was a deliberate attempt to fasten the blame on Lesley Grant! Don't you agree?'

Dr Fell blinked at the floor. His hands, clasped over his cane, seemed to draw his whole huge frame closer together. Then he rolled up his head.

'Well, no,' he answered reluctantly. 'I can't say I do agree.'

CHAPTER 19

'What's that?'

'I don't agree,' Dr Fell explained mildly, 'that the explanation you've just given is the only possible one.' 'But your own theory -!'

'I beg your pardon.' Dr Fell spoke very sharply. 'If you think back far enough, I imagine you'll agree it was not my theory at all.'

'But you distinctly said -'

'I said,' Dr Fell raised his big voice, 'I said we must consider the evidence. I said that, if we did consider the evidence, this was die conclusion to which we must come. I challenged Hadley to cite any other conclusion from the facts as presented to us.'

'Well? What's the difference? That's the same thing, isn't it?'

'But I also said, if you remember,' Dr Fell observed gently, 'that it took a bit of believing.'

The whole weird, unnatural situation had begun to turn Dick Markham's nerves.

'What is all this?' he demanded. 'What are you leading up to?'

'I asked him,' said Lesley, 'I asked him the same thing this morning!' ' Laura Feathers is shot,’ said Dick.' You ring the door-bell.

1 tell you there's a murderer in the house - I tell you I've seen the murderer run in here - and I expect at least you'll want to do something about it Instead you say you'd rather sit down and talk a bit. May I repeat that there's a murderer in the house?' ' Is there ?' asked Dr Fell.

And now Dick noticed something which made the roots of his scalp stir. Dr Fell, in the doctor's own heavy way, was no less strung-up, no less poised and tense, than he was himself. Dick had a nervous sensation that something moved, something lurked in ambush: that, any moment now, the whole case might turn upside down again with the most appalling crash yet

'At risk of perhaps deserved assault and battery' - Dr Fell's voice seemed to come from far away - ' I should like to try your patience a little further.'

'Why should you do that?'

'Because I'm waiting for something.'

'You're waiting for what?'

Dr Fell ignored the question.

'A moment ago,' he continued, 'you made some precise and accurate deductions from the post office trap and its ugly sequel. Have you made any other deductions?'

Dick's throat felt dry.

'I think I've found out how an electric light can be made to go on in a room when the room's locked up on the inside.' He related the incident at his own cottage. 'Is that true too, Doctor?'

'Oh, yes,' returned Dr Fell, blinking at him with refreshed interest. 'Whang in the gold once more. But, come now!' He rapped the ferrule of his cane on the floor. 'If you get that far, isn't it possible to spur just a little farther and see the truth - the whole truth - about the murder of Sam De Villa?'

'No!'

'Why not?'

'Because the room remains locked up on the inside, whoever puts a shilling in the electric meter outside it!'

'True, of course. And yet...' Dr Fell's manner became vague. He puffed out his cheeks. 'What,’ he asked in an off-handed way, 'did you make of the row yesterday between Mr Earnshaw and Major Price?'

'Does that business matter, sir?'

'As evidence, no. As an interesting lead, yes. I think it does.'

Dick shook his head.

'I've heard that there was a row between Bill and Major Price at the shooting-range, because the major played a joke on Bill. But I haven't even heard what it was about.'

‘I have,' said Dr Fell. 'From Lord Ashe. I heard some very interesting things from Lord Ashe. Mr Earnshaw, I believe, rather fancies himself as a crack shot?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'He arrived at the shooting-range early yesterday afternoon, to show off his prowess before Mrs Earnshaw and a group of other ladies.' Dr Fell scratched the side of his nose. ' Major Price, with a very grave face, handed him a rifle loaded with blank cartridges. Mr Earnshaw blazed away six times at the target without scoring a hit on any part of it.'

Dr Fell eyed the floor as he went on:

'Major Price said, "Bad luck, my dear chap; you're off your form to-day." It was several minutes before Mr Earnshaw tumbled to the joke. And he didn't like it a bit. It was some time afterwards, you recall, that Mr Earnshaw accused Major Price of stealing the Winchester 61 rifle from the range - whereas the major intimated that the thief must have been Mr Earnshaw. Don't you find something rather suggestive in all that ?'

'No. I can't say I do. It's the sort of joke Major Price is always playing.'

'So!'said Dr Fell.

'But, if you're on the subject of Bill Earnshaw, it seems to me he made die most intelligent suggestion so far with regard to the locked room. I tried to sketch it out to you

this morning, but you didn't seem to pay much attention toil.'

'Forgive my scatterbrain,' apologized Dr Fell. 'What was the suggestion?' Dick waved his fists in the air.

' Who fired that damned rifle at Sam De Villa, at very nearly the same lime Sam was poisoned?' he demanded. 'Bill suggested -and I agree with him - that, aside from the actual murderer, the person who fired the rifle is the most important figure in the case. Don't you agree?’

' In a way. Yes.'

'The marksman,' persisted Dick, 'could see into that room. He had a clear view of what went on in that sitting-room. All right! But you haven't tried to find out who he was, you haven't asked a question about him, you don't even seem to have any curiosity concerning him!'

Dr Fell raised a hand and called for silence.

'Now there,' he pointed with satisfaction, 'we have the crux of the whole matter. There we see the point at which the light went out, figuratively speaking. There we have the place at which a cloud of obfuscation (pray excuse me if I sound like a leading article in The Times), a cloud of obfuscation misted the wits of all detectives, and sent them hareing off in the wrong direction.'

He pointed at Dick with his cane.

'You say to me, "This is gross negligence. Why don't you try to find that marksman with the rifle, as well as trying to find the murderer?" Very good! Yes! But I can reply, with my hand on my heart, that this would be a waste of effort.'

Dick stared at him.

'A waste of effort? Why?'

'Because the marksman with the rifle, and the poisoner who killed De Villa with prussic acid, are one and the same person.'

Again the summons of the front door-bell shrilled out strongly, from the buzzer over their heads. Dick's own head was spinning. Dr Fell's words seemed quite literally to make no sense. He had a mad vision -derived from the cheaper thrillers, where anything is possible - of the murderer firing at Sam De Villa some fantastic bullet containing a hypodermic injection of prussic acid to pierce the victim's arm.

Again the door-bell shrilled. Lesley hastened to answer it; and, though Dick had meant to seize her arm and restrain her, she got away from him. From the corner of his eye he saw, as Lesley opened the front door, that the visitor was only Superintendent Hadley, and he could relax his vigilance. For he was blindly obsessed now, concentrated on Dr Fell, trying to grope closer to an explanation which he sensed as there yet always eluding him.

'Let's get this quite straight!' Dick pleaded. 'You say that the murderer ...'

Dr Fell spoke with toiling patience.

'The murderer,' he said, 'killed Sam de Villa by injecting a hypodermic of prussic acid into his arm.'

'In the sitting-room?'

'Yes. In the sitting-room.'

'And then?'

'Then the murderer slipped out of the sitting-room ...' 'Leaving the room all locked up behind him?' 'Yes. Leaving the room all locked up.' 'But how?'

'We're coming to that,' said Dr Fell imperturbably. 'I ask you merely to follow this elusive person's movements. The murderer injected the prussic acid, which would render De Villa unconscious almost at once but would take two minutes or more to render life extinct. The murderer then left the room -'

(Windows locked. Door locked and bolted.)

'- and put through a phone call to you, summoning you there, from the telephone outside in the hall. The murderer waited until you were on your way, and dropped a shilling into the electric meter: thus turning on the light in the sitting-room.

'Having now a good light to see by, the murderer ran across the lane, hid behind the wall, and with the stolen Winchester 61 fired in the direction of the window.'

'At a dead man?'

'At a dead or dying man, yes.'

'Even though die room was already locked up on the inside?' 'Yes.'

'But why?'

'Because the whole scheme could never have succeeded otherwise,' replied Dr Fell.

'Hoy!' interposed the bellow of an angry voice, which for some seconds had been trying to attract their attention. Dick was only now conscious of it.

Superintendent Hadley came into the dining-room. Over his shoulder they heard him say, 'Stand by,' before he closed the door after him. Hadley's countenance was grim and hard under the bowler hat, even with a suggestion of pallor which scared Dick still more. Hadley put his big hands together and cracked the knuckle-joints.

'Fell,' he said harshly, 'are you insane?'

Dr Fell, who had been keeping on Dick Markham eyes almost as hypnotic as those of the bogus Sir Harvey Gilman last night, did not reply.

' I've been expecting you,' Hadley went on,' to come over to the place where that woman was murdered. I came over here to find out what the devil was the matter with you. And it's a good thing I did.' It was not pallor in Hadley's face so much as an evil greyish tinge. 'Because I discover -'

'Not yet, Hadley,' said Dr Fell, turning his head round briefly. ' For God's sake not yet!'

'What do you mean, not yet? Miller tells me...'

Dr Fell got to his feet, with the imploring gestures of one who urges calm and serenity. He seemed trying to ignore Hadley, to shoo the superintendent away, to pretend that Hadley did not even exist And still he addressed Dick Markham.

'When I first came in here,' he said, 'I remarked - er - that it was a trifle warm. Harrumph. Yes. So it was. I drew back the curtains on these windows. But that, I am afraid, was not the main reason why I drew back the curtains from the windows, which, you notice, are open. Please observe the windows!'

Yet, as the big voice grew more rapid, Dick had an eerie conviction that Dr Fell was not in the least interested in the windows as such. He was talking at them, talking out of them, making his voice carry; any topic of conversation, it seemed, would do.

'You observe,' he insisted, 'the windows?'

'Look here!' roared Hadley.

'What about the windows?' demanded Dick Markham.

The three speeches seemed to rattle on top of each other.

'They are, as you see, ordinary sash-windows. Such as you or Hadley or I might have in our own homes. This one here is raised. But I pull it down... so.'

The window closed with a soft thud.

'When the window is unlocked, as it is now, you note that the fastening of the metal catch lies flat back: parallel with the window glass and the joining of the sashes, turned to the right. But suppose, my dear boy, I wish to lock the window?'

This was the point at which Dick noticed for the first time that Lesley Grant was not in the room.

She had not returned; she had not come with Hadley. And the Superintendent, with his hard face grim under its greyish complexion, stood like a man who intends trying a wrestling-bout with the devil. A sudden suspicion, which he thought he had fought successfully away from him, flowed back into Dick's mind ...

'Dr Fell,' he said, 'where is Lesley?'

Dr Fell pretended not to have heard. Perhaps he did not hear.

'Suppose, my dear boy, I wish to lock the window? I take hold of the thumb-grip of this metal catch. I pull it towards me and turn it towards my left. Like this! The catch swings round into its socket; it now projects straight out towards me, at right angles to the sash; and the window is locked.' 'Dr Fell, where is Lesley?'

'You observe, my dear boy, that the catch projects straight out towards me? And, therefore -'

He paused, having now no need to go on. For the last time in this case, but with a shattering distinctness which made the whole house shake, they heard the explosion of a gunshot.

Dr Fell, his big red face reflected with nightmare quality in the black shining glass of the window, did not turn round. They stood there for a second or two like three men paralysed. Then Dick slowly raised his eyes to the ceiling.

He knew where the explosion of that shot had come from. It had come from Lesley's bedroom, just overhead.

'You bloody idiot!' shouted Hadley. He stared at Dr Fell, and more than suspicion dawned in his eyes. 'You let this happen!'

Dr Fell's voice sounded muffled against the glass of the window.

' I let it happen. God help me, yes.' 'Suicide?'

' I rather think so. There was no other way out, you see.'

'No!' cried Dick Markham. 'No!'

He was not sure whether he could move, for his legs seemed turned to water and he could not even trust his eyesight. The image of Lesley, of Lesley's brown eyes; the thought of Lesley, and how much he loved her, and would continue to love her until - the iron phrase rang again - until death did them part; these things caught at him and maddened him and spun his nerves into a whirlpool that would not let go.

Then he found himself running for the door.

Hadley was running too; they crashed into each other in the doorway as Hadley got the door open, but the events took place in such a void that Dick could not even hear what the superintendent was saying.

Bright lights shone in the hall. Bert Miller, moving rapidly for so heavy a man, was already on his way up the staircase at the rear. Bert's footsteps made no noise on the staircase carpet, or perhaps Dick Markham could not hear it.

In the same dreamlike state, amid a .blur of colour and light, he raced after Hadley up the stairs. They found Bert Miller, his mouth open, standing before the closed door of Lesley's bedroom. Neither Miller nor Hadley spoke loudly.

'This door's locked, sir.'

'Then break it in!'

'I don't know, sir, as we ought to do ...' 'Break it in, I tell you!'

It was a thin door. Miller stood back, opening his large shoulders. Then he studied the door, and had a better idea. As he assumed the position for a football kick-off, Dick Markham turned away. When the sole of Miller's number eleven boot struck that door just under the knob, Dick did not even hear it.

For Dr Fell was lumbering up the stairs, slowly and heavily, wheezing as he set his weight on the crutch-handled cane. And ahead of him, running lightly, came Lesley Grant.

Lesley stopped abruptly, her hand on the post at the top of the stairs. Her eyes widened.

'Dick!' she cried. 'What on earth is the matter with you?'

Crash! went the sole of Miller's boot, for the second time against that door.

'What's the matter with you, Dick? Why are you looking at me like that?'

Crash! went the sole of Miller's boot.

It was Dr Fell, painfully heaving himself up the last few steps and pausing to get his breath, who got the first inkling of what Dick might have been thinking. Dr Fell's vacant gaze sharpened into focus as he looked from Lesley to Dick Markham, and back again. His mouth fell open under the bandit's moustache, and his head drew back so far that another chin appeared.

' Great Scott, my dear fellow!' he said in a tone of Gargantuan distress. 'You weren't under the impression ... it hadn't occurred to you...?'

Crash! went Miller's boot for the last time. The lock ripped out; the thin door, buckling, flew open and rebounded with such violence that it tore loose the lower hinge.

Dick did not answer Dr Fell. He put his arms around Lesley, and gripped her so tightly that she cried out for breath.

They heard the creaking of Dr Fell's shoes as he walked slowly down the hall and joined Hadley at the shattered door. Hadley, Miller, and Dr Fell looked into the bedroom. The lights inside showed a faint tinge and mist of powder-smoke which drifted out past those three watching faces. Dr Fell lumbered round, and creaked back again.

' I suppose you'd better go and have a look,' he said. 'Lying in there, almost in the same spot where Cynthia Drew must have been lying when you found her knocked out...'

Dick found his voice.

'Cynthia? Then it was Cynthia after all?'

'Good God, no!' said Dr Fell.

After a look of genuine surprise that such a notion should occur, Dr Fell fastened his hand on Dick's shoulder. He walked him down to the doorway where the bright light poured out, and Hadley and Miller made way for them.

Dr Fell motioned Dick to enter.

Swept and garnished was the bedroom, the curtains on its front windows drawn fully back to the summer night, and neat except for the sprawled figure near the foot of the bed, neat except for the .38 calibre automatic pistol lying beside it, neat except for the spreading blotch on the chest of a human being whose lungs still whistled thinly to draw breath. Dr Fell's voice spoke at Dick's ear.

It said:

"There's the only person who could have committed both murders - Dr Hugh Middlesworth.'

CHAPTER 20

THAT happened on the night of Friday, June nth. It was the afternoon of Sunday the 13th that a little group composed of Dr Fell, Hadley, Lesley Grant, and Dick Markham drove out to a certain ill-omened cottage in a police-car. Hadley was writing his final report; the details had to be checked; and so they heard die whole story.

Neither Lesley nor Dick made any comment until they entered the sitting-room. The face of Dr Middlesworth -harassed, patient, thin-haired on top, very intelligent but cold now in death — remained always before them.

When they entered the sitting-room, where Dr Fell occupied the sofa and Hadley the big chair at the writing-table with his notebook, two voices spoke at last.

'Dr Middlesworth 1' exclaimed Dick. 'But how he did it '

'Dr Middlesworth!' breathed Lesley. 'And why he did it, trying to throw the blame on me...!'

Dr Fell, who had lighted a cigar with great concentration, shook out the match sharply.

'No, no, no!' he protested.

'What do you mean by that?'

'The thing we must grasp,' said Dr Fell, in the same toiling way, 'is that there was never the slightest intention of throwing the blame on Miss Grant. That's what we were expected to believe; that's what we were meant to fall for. We were meant to assume that De Villa's murder was carried out by someone who thoroughly believed in "Sir Harvey Gilman", who accepted him as the original Home Office pathologist, and who believed Lesley Grant to be a poisoner. Therefore - do you see? - therefore the one person we could not possibly suspect was the man who doubted "Sir Harvey" from the first, and, in fact, brought me in to prove him an impostor!

'Therein lies the whole ingenuity of this crime.'

Dr Fell's cigar was not drawing to his liking. He struck another match and lit it more carefully.

'H'mf. Yes. So. Let me tell you about this, step for step, just as the evidence presented itself to me.

'At an unearthly hour on Friday morning, a mild-mannered man of intelligent aspect and harassed ways came rushing over to Hastings in his car. He routed me out of bed, and introduced himself as Dr Hugh Middlesworth, G.P., of Six Ashes. He poured out the story of the night, saying he had reason to suspect "Sir Harvey" of being an impostor.

'Was I acquainted with the real Sir Harvey Gilman? Yes, I was. Was the real Sir Harvey a little thin man of fifty-odd, with a bald head? No, certainly not. And that was that.

'"Well," said Middlesworth to me, "this impostor has been scaring a friend of mine named Markham with a damnable pack of lies about hisfiancée. Will you come over to Six Ashes with me - now - and expose the blighter?’"

Dr Fell made a hideous face.

'Naturally I agreed. Oh, ah! My chivalry was stirred. I rose and roared to the relief of a lady in distress and a young man racked by horrors. So we bowled back into the High Street of Six Ashes: only to be greeted by Major Price with the news that Sir Harvey Gilman had been found dead in exactly the same circumstances as his own imaginary cases.

'Wow, ladies and gentlemen! I repeat: wow!

' Middlesworth seemed dumbfounded. So was I.'

Here Dr Fell, assuming a look of powerful earnestness, pointed the end of the cigar at Dick and leaned forward on the sofa.

' Please note,' he said,' that first-off this original theory -Miss Grant to be made scapegoat by somebody who had swallowed "Sir Harvey's" yarn - came from Middlesworth. He and I drove out here to this cottage at shortly past nine o'clock, where we met you and Mr Earnshaw. And I distinctly recall announcing that the suggestion came from Middlesworth. Do you remember?'

Dick nodded.

'Yes. I remember.'

' I accepted that theory,' said Dr Fell, spreading out his hands. ' I took it unto myself. At first glance it seemed the only possible explanation. Only one small thing about it bothered me; and I started to mention this before thinking it more prudent to hold my tongue.

'Now, Mr Markham, "Sir Harvey's" tale of a notorious female poisoner was hand-tailoredfor you. It was scaled for you. It was directed solely at you. It was spun for somebody who would be ... would be ...'

'Go on,' Dick interrupted bitterly. 'Say it. Gullible.'

Dr Fell considered this.

'Not gullible, no. But emotionally concerned, emotionally strung-up, and imaginatively receptive to just such a horror-tale as you heard. Very well! That's fair enough! But why is the impostor so casual about telling all this nonsense in front of the local G.P., who isn't emotionally concerned or receptive, and who might upset his apple-cart?

'His attitude towards Middlesworth was rather curious, even by Middlesworth's own showing. He didn't try to hypnotize Middlesworth as he tried to hypnotize you. He didn't try to impress Middlesworth. He didn't seem to care about Middlesworth. He didn't even seem to notice Middlesworth.'

Dick sat up.

'That's true!' Dick declared, remembering the scene in this same room on Thursday night. 'De Villa treated the fellow as a piece of furniture. He got annoyed when Middlesworth spoke, and tried to - what do I want to say? - brush him off.'

Dr Fell smoked reflectively.

'Thus it occurred to my low suspicious mind,' he said, 'briefly to wonder whether Middlesworth might not know a good deal more than he pretended. Whether he might not be, in short, a kind of accomplice.'

'Accomplice?' cried Lesley. Dr Fell waved her to silence.

'At this time, of course, I couldn't guess what the impostor's game was. But this wonder about Middlesworth was strengthened only a few minutes later, when you' - he looked at Dick - ' prompted by Earnshaw's worries about the rifle, told me the full story of the garden-party the day before.

'Two things emerged from that recital. The first was the impostor's phenomenal success as a fortune-teller. And, mind you, he didn't say to his clients such vague things as, "You are good-natured but strong-willed; beware of business ventures during Lent." No, by thunder! He had real information, facts in plenty about everybody! Where did the impostor get all that information, unless we presupposed someone also in on the secret? In short, an accomplice.

'The second thing to emerge from the account of the garden-party was rather damning. I mean the mystery of the vanishing rifle.'

Dick took Lesley's hand.

'But the rifle did vanish, confound it!' he protested. 'I suppose you're going to say the person who stole it was Middlesworth?'

'Oh, yes.'

'But how? The only people who came anywhere near that shooting-range were Major Price and Bill Earhshaw and Dr Middlesworth and Lesley and myself. And we're all willing to swear none of us could have taken the rifle. As for Middlesworth, he helped carry De Villa to the motorcar in plain sight of everybody when he went away from there! How did he manage to pinch the rifle? As I said to Bill Earnshaw, you can't stick a rifle in your pocket or shove it under your coat.'

'No,' agreed Dr Fell. 'But you can shove it into a bag of golf-clubs, and carry it away absolutely unnoticed. And Middlesworth, you informed me, was carrying a bag of golf-clubs.'

There was a long silence. Superintendent Hadley, writing away methodically at the table, lifted his head to smile slightly. Dick, remembering only too well Dr Middlesworth, tramping back from the golf-hazard with that heavy bag slung over his shoulder - the conspicuous, unnoticed golf-bag - Dick Markham swore with some comprehensiveness.

'The old blighter,' observed Hadley, indicating Dr Fell, 'does get an idea or two sometimes. That's why I let him rampage on.'

'Thank'ee,' said Dr Fell, with absent-minded dignity. He squinted in cross-eyed fashion at his cigar, and turned back to Dick.

‘Middlesworth, even at that early hour, already appeared in very curious and fishy colours. He was the only one who could have stolen the rifle. And then...

'You and Middlesworth drove back to the village in his car, he to his surgery and you to see Miss Grant. I went into this cottage here' - he swept his hand round - 'to look my first on the scene of the crime. Here I discovered something which spiritually raised my hat to human ingenuity; for I discerned a way in which the locked-room trick might have been worked.'

‘Well ?' asked Lesley.' How ?'

Dr Fell did not immediately answer this.

'While I was tinkering with various things in this room,' he continued, 'Hadley arrived. Hadley took one look at the corpse and said," My God, it's Sam De Villa" He then went on, as you afterwards heard, to give me a sketch of De Villa's career. And he told me something which made me certain the person we were after was Middlesworth. For, do you see, Sam De Villa really had studied medicine.'

'Came within six months,' Hadley amplified, 'of getting his degree.'

Again Dr Fell pointed the cigar at Dick.

'Think back,' he requested. 'I asked Middlesworth, very early in the morning, and you yourself asked him in my hearing, what was the first thing which made him suspicious that "Sir Harvey Gilman" was an impostor. Remember?’ 'Yes.'

'Middlesworth's reply went something like this. He said he had questioned the supposed Sir Harvey about one of the tatter's famous cases. And "Sir Harvey," Middlesworth informed us, "made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit," Middlesworth declared, "because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers."

'Now that just wasn't possible. Sam De Villa, impersonating Sir Harvey Gilman in earnest, never would and never could have made such a medical howler as that. It wasn't in character; it wasn't in sense!

' Therefore Middlesworth himself was lying.'

'But why?'

Here Dr Fell glanced across at Hadley, whose pencil continued to travel across the pages of the notebook.

'Have you got Middlesworth's confession there, Hadley?'

From beside the chair Hadley picked up a brief-case and opened it He took out a flimsy typewritten sheet, enclosed in a blue folder and signed at the bottom with a blurred wavering scrawl. He carried this across to Dr Fell, who weighed it in his hand.

Against the bright sunshine which poured into the room through two windows, one shattered and the other with a bullet-hole, Dr Fell's countenance was heavy and depressed and lowering.

' Middlesworth dictated this,' he explained, 'just before he died on Friday night It's an ugly story, if you like. But it's an understandable and sincere and horribly human story.'

'Damn it all,' Dick Markham burst out, 'that's the trouble. I liked Hugh Middlesworth!'

'So did I,' said Dr Fell. 'And in a way you were very right to like him. Anyone who rids the world of slugs like Sam De Villa deserves no small degree of gratitude. If he hadn't lost his head and shot that inoffensive post-mistress-'

'You'd have covered up for him, I suppose?' inquired Hadley with sardonic dryness. 'As it was, you let him commit suicide?'

Dr Fell ignored this.

' Middlesworth's story,' he said, 'is a very simple one. Do you recall Hadley saying that gentry like Sam De Villa will use any weapon, anything, including blackmail,- when they think they can bring off a big haul ?'

'You mean it was blackmail in this case?' asked Lesley.

Dr Fell weighed the typewritten sheet in his hand.

'Hugh Middlesworth was in a position of painful respectability. But he liked respectability. He liked it almost as much as -' Dr Fell looked at Lesley, coughed, and looked away again. 'He had a "county" wife, a good-sized family, and many obligations.

' But he hadn't got to that state without pain. Nine years ago, when he was hard up and desperate, before Six Ashes and respectability, he took a certain job. It was a job in a rather squalid London nursing-home specializing in illegal operations. Middlesworth was the doctor who performed those operations. Sam De Villa knew that, and could prove it.

'Sam, with designs on Miss Grant's jewellery, came here and tackled Middlesworth. Middlesworth hadn't the ghost of a notion that Sam was really a medical man like himself. He knew Sam merely as a crook, and a smooth one.

'" Look here," said Sam. " I’m coming to Six Ashes impersonating somebody or other; I'm going to get that jewellery; and you're going to help me." The already-harassed Middlesworth was rather desperate. "I'm not going to sponsor you," said Middlesworth. "When you disappear with the jewellery they'll know I was implicated; I'd just as soon you blew the gaff about the other thing. So I'm ruddy well not going to sponsor you."

'"Maybe not,'‘ says Sam coolly. "But you're going to help me, and first of all you're going to tell me everything about this district and its people." So the background unrolled itself to this clever, pouncing Mr De Villa. Richard

Markham, wildly in love with Lesley Grant. Engagement imminent! Engagement certain! Young man a writer of sensational imaginative plays dealing with the minds of. murderers, especially poisoners...

'Sam constructed his scheme with slickness and ease. He took this cottage. And with dazzling cheek he introduced himself, under terms of the deepest secrecy, to the Chief Constable of the county as Sir Harvey Gilman.

"Then came the garden-party. News of the engagement of Lesley Grant to Richard Markham was winging through the place: even, assisted by Mrs Rackley, news of the invitation to dinner for Friday night. At the garden-party where he played fortune-teller, Sam decided it was time to act.

'What the self-confident Sam didn't realize was that in Hugh Middlesworth he was dealing with a man every bit as intelligent as himself. And Middlesworth was sick and desperate. He'd thought the past was forgotten: but De Villa turned up out of it. Here was this albatross round his neck, likely to continue there. Always threatening! Always disturbing his sleep! Always a nightmare, absent or present, always threatening respectability...'

Again Dr Fell, in some discomfort, coughed loudly as he glanced away from Lesley.

' Can't you understand that feeling, Miss Grant?'

'Yes,' said Lesley. And she shivered.

'Middlesworth decided’ Dr Fell said simply, 'that De Villa was going to die. And Middlesworth very nearly got the opportunity to kill him just after the garden-party on Thursday afternoon. Now watch the events take form!'

Adjusting his eyeglasses, spilling much cigar-ash, Dr Fell took the typewritten confession and ran his fingers down its lines. His lips moved growlingly as he searched for the proper place. Then he read aloud from it.

'... De Villa so upset Miss Grant in the fortune-teller's tent that she screamed and pulled the trigger of the rifle when Major Price happened to joggle her arm. I'm sure it was an accident.'

' It was an accident!' cried Lesley.

'... I saw at once De Villa had only got a flesh-wound. But he fainted from shock, and everybody thought he was dying. I saw how I could kill the swine then, if only I could get him alone. That's why I sneaked the rifle into my golf-bag and kept the bag slung over my shoulder when Major Price and I carried him to the car. I meant to take him home, put him under an anaesthetic, extract the real bullet, and fire one from the same rifle which should kill him. People would think it was the same bullet, the result of an accident...'

'And they ruddy well would have!' said Dick Markham.

'... but it was no good, it wouldn't work, because I couldn't get rid of Major Price no matter what I said. So I had to think of something else.'

Dr Fell weighed the confession in his hand, and then put it down beside him on the sofa.

'And,' Dr Fell commented, 'he did think of something else. The real scheme was handed to him - handed to him on a plate - while he and Dick Markham and Sam De Villa sat here in this very room on Thursday night. Sam was telling the terrible story of the notorious poisoner, and laying plans to snaffle that safe full of jewels. Middlesworth sat quietly by. But someone suggested how he could kill De Villa and get away with it'

'Who suggested it to him?' asked Dick.

' Sam De Villa himself.'

'Sam De Villa?'

'So Middlesworth says. Will you cast your mind back to that scene?'

It was very easy to recreate: De Villa in the easy-chair, with the light of the tan-shaded lamp shining down. Middlesworth silent and thoughtful in the basket-chair drawing at an empty pipe. The summer night outside the windows, rustling, with the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close. And the very thoughtfulness of Middles-worth's face returned with ugly clarity now,

'You were violently discussing the mystery of locked, sealed rooms,' pursued Dr Fell. 'De Villa remarked,a propos the bullet fired at him through the tent, that you couldn't have such a thing as a locked room when a bullet-hole appeared in the wall. Is that correct?' 'Yes!'

'Shortly afterwards Middlesworth heard a noise outside. He got up, went to the window, threw back the curtains, and looked out. Then he drew his head back - and stood staring at that window, with his back to you, as though something had just occurred to him. Is that correct too?'

'Yes.'

'Well?' prompted Dr Fell gently. 'When Middlesworth looked at the window, what did he see ?'

With some effort Dr Fell hoisted himself to his feet. He lumbered across to the window, still locked, where the clean-drilled bullet-hole showed in the lower pane below and to one side of the metal catch.

Dr Fell pointed to it

'Colonel Pope, as we know, always used to fasten gauze screens to these windows - sometimes the upper, sometimes the lower part - using drawing-pins to fasten the screens there. Consequently, what do we find? We find, as Earnshaw has been so fond of pointing out, innumerable tiny little holes made by the points of drawing-pins. We find those little pin-pricks peppered all over the wooden frame of the window. Is that clear?'

'Naturally! But...'

'You could push another drawing-pin into the frame anywhere, couldn't you? And, when it was plucked out again, the mark it left would never be noticed?'

'Of course not But...'

'Middlesworth,' said Dr Fell, 'had a double inspiration. I will now tell you exactly what he did.

'He could be morally certain Sam De Villa would take a large dose of luminal before going to bed. So he left this cottage and drove you home in his car, showing alarm only when you mentioned whisky, and asking you for God's sake not to get drunk...'

‘Why?'

'Because he vitally needed you in his plan. Middlesworth then drove home himself, and made certain preparations. Who would be the likeliest person to have a hypodermic syringe at hand? A medical man. We discovered in the Sodbury Cross poisoning case that prussic acid can be distilled from separately non-poisonous elements; but who would be the likeliest person to have the acid ready at hand? A medical man. These particular preparations, however, did not concern him at the moment. He had other things to attend to first.

'At shortly past midnight, when Six Ashes was asleep,' Dr Fell picked up the confession, and put it down again, 'he walked slowly out to this cottage once more.

'The house was dark. He had no trouble getting in: the place was not locked, and a window would always have served if it had been. He found Sam De Villa, as he expected, in a drugged sleep upstairs in the bedroom. So far, excellent!

'He came into this sitting-room, where he switched on the light. He set about arranging the room - notably that big easy-chair where Hadley is sitting now - exactly as he wanted it for the events that were to happen at daybreak next morning. He closed both windows, but drew back the curtains widely from both.

'You see, of course, what his next move was? Middlesworth, carrying that Winchester 61 rifle, walked across the lane, climbed over the stone wall opposite, worked out his position carefully, and then - time still shortly past midnight - he fired a bullet through this window into a lighted, empty room.

' That was when the real shot was fired. That Was when a bullet drilled through this window, smashed the Battle-of-Waterloo picture over the fireplace there, and buried itself in the wall.

'This is the loneliest of neighbourhoods after midnight. He didn't think it likely that anybody would hear the shot. Sam De Villa, in a drugged sleep upstairs, certainly wouldn't As a matter of fact, Lord Ashe up at the Hall did happen to hear the shot in the middle of the night, because he tells me he mentioned it to you...' Again Dr Fell looked at Dick.

'... when he saw you early next day. But Lord Ashe confused it in his mind with another shot he heard at shortly after five o'clock in the morning. As for Middlesworth, the first part of his game was now secure. He closed the curtains on all the windows in this cottage, switched on all the lights so they would be certain to burn out before morning, and then went quietly home.

' No harm had been done. Not yet.

'Chance might have wrecked Middlesworth, because he got a sick-call in the small hours of the morning. But the sick-call was to Ashe Hall, where one of the maids was taken ill; and it was admirable for his purpose. He could keep an eye on things.

'He left Ashe Hall at twenty minutes to five in the morning - speaking rather wildly to Lord Ashe about his intention of driving straight to Hastings - and drove his car to the High Street There he abandoned the car for the moment, and walked once more into Gallows Lane. I can imagine him coming along here through the first ghostly grey of morning; and I can imagine that his heart was as cold as his hands.

'Long ago, of course, he had glanced in through a lighted wall of windows at Mr Markham's, and seen Mr Markham asleep on the sofa with a full, untouched whisky-bottle and syphon on the desk. I fancy he glanced in once again, to make sure. Then he went on to this cottage here.

'The electricity here had burned itself out long before. The place was dark; it was chilly; it was almost the hour of the murder and the illusion. Middlesworth found De Villa still in a drug-sleep upstairs. If the victim had been awake, Middlesworth was ready to tie him with a soft dressing-gown-cord which would leave no marks, and gag him with a handkerchief and sticking-plaster.

' But it wasn't necessary. He carried De Villa downstairs -

De Villa was a little chap, and Middlesworth a big man -and propped him up in that easy-chair, so that the course taken by the already-fired bullet passed just across the top of De Villa's head.

.'And then, just as the first eerie glow of dawn was lighting up this room, he rolled back the sleeve of De Villa's dressing-gown and with gloved hands emptied the hypodermic of prussic acid into his victim's left arm.'

Dr Fell paused.

Despite that warm afternoon, Dick Markham was cold to the heart. He seemed to see shadows moving at dawn, evil shadows in this room: the gloved physician, the corpse that jerked once, the stir of birds outside in the trees.

'He next,' said Dr Fell, 'locked up the room. He could do this, don't you see, because there was now a bullet-hole in the window. We kept talking about this room being "sealed". But, by thunder, it wasn't sealed! That's the whole point! De Villa had spoken truly when he remarked that you can't have a sealed room when there's a bullet-hole in the wall.

'Middlesworth took a box of drawing-pins, and spilled it artistically on the floor at the dying man's left hand. He locked and bolted the door on the inside. Finally, he... will you oblige, Hadley?'

Superintendent Hadley nodded with more than a litde grimness. He got up and went out of the room.

'I burbled away on Friday night,' continued Dr Fell, 'with a little discourse on windows. Please observe this particular window and this particular bullet-hole. The bullet-hole - as I face it now - is below the line of the joined sashes, some three inches below and to the left of the metal catch. Very well I

'I take an ordinary drawing-pin, like this one in my hand now. I stick this drawing-pin into the frame of the window - the horizontal frame facing me, marking the line of the joined sashes - above the bullet-hole and a little farther to the left.

' I then take a piece of very heavy black thread, a long piece like this one' - it appeared in conjuring fashion from Dr Fell's capacious side pocket - 'and this I prepare for my trick.'

The figure of Superintendent Hadley appeared outside the window. The lower sill of the window, as Dick had been able to notice before, was not much above the level of a man's waist.

Dr Fell unlocked the window by pushing its metal catch to the right, so that it lay flat back. Folding the long pieces of thread, he fastened its loop round the thumb-grip of the catch. He ran the ends of the thread along to the left and over the drawing-pin, as though over a pulley. Then he ran the ends downwards, threading them both through the opening of the bullet-hole so that they now hung outside the window.

' Since I am of somewhat more than modest dimensions myself,' Dr Fell said apologetically, 'you will excuse me if I don't execute the movement myself. But I raise the window. Like this!'

He pushed up the window, the long loop of thread running with it but its position remaining undisturbed.

' Imagine, now, that I climb out as Middlesworth did. I climb out, I close the window after me' - down it came with a soft bang - 'and I am all ready. I have only to take diose ends of the thread which now hang outside the window, and pull them downwards as Hadley is doing.

' Pressure on that loop of thread, run over the drawing-pin to act as a pulley, pulls the thumb-catch of the window outwards, towards me, moving slowly outwards until it is at right angles; and the window is now locked.

'Once this is done, a very strong downwards jerk on my drawing-pin-pulley dislodges the drawing-pin from the frame; it falls inwards and bounces somewhere on the floor of the room. I pull one of the ends of my loop of thread, so that I draw the thread outside the window like a snake, and have it outside the window in my hand. No trace now remains. The drawing-pin will be found in the room, of course. But it will not be noticed if I have already spilled a box of drawing-pins on the floor. All right, Hadley!'

The window-catch, pulled over by that thread, had slid into the locked position. Hadley, outside the window, gave now a sharp downwards yank. The drawing-pin, pulled loose, fell upon the inside sill, and flew out into the room. It landed on the carpet...

'Not far, you observe,' said Dr Fell, pointing, 'from another drawing-pin which seemed to have rolled wide from the spilled box we found here Friday morning. You perhaps recall I had my eye on it while we were here during the afternoon? Hadley almost stepped on it.'

Hadley, pulling at one end of the thread, was now drawing it outside the window into his hand.

'That's all there was to Middlesworth's dodge,' said Dr Fell.' It takes a few minutes in the telling; but in execution it can be done in thirty seconds. The room was sealed. Middlesworth was now ready for the last, most important thing - to convince you, Mr Markham, that there was no bullet-hole in the window until you arrived.

'He went to the telephone in the hall, and sent that frantic whispering message. It was certain to draw you, and it did. He imagined how long it would take you to leave the house. He dropped a shilling into the electric meter, having left the switch turned on in this room; and a light came on here. He dodged across the lane - some distance eastwards, from the orchard to the coppice, where Miss Drew saw him - and all was ready.

'When you got well in sight, he made a conspicuous clatter with the rifle by rattling it against the wall. He drew your attention to it. As you shouted out to that marksman, he aimed at the window and fired... ?'

'A blank cartridge,' supplied Dick.

'A blank cartridge,' agreed Dr Fell. 'Inspired by Earnshaw's adventure when Major Price played the famous joke, Middlesworth used it to very good advantage.

'Now you yourself, Mr Markham, were utterly convinced you had seen that bullet-hole, as you put it "jump up" in the window. That was what I had to break down when I questioned you on Friday afternoon. I was perhaps - hurrum! - a little on edge when I questioned you; and, when Hadley interrupted at a critical point, I fear I mentally consigned him to hopeless spiritual ruin.

'But actually you never saw anything of the kind. This became obvious from your own account of the matter. Your actual words to me were, when I pressed you:"I was watching the rifle; I saw it fired; and even at that distance I could make out the bullet-hole in the window."

'"Make out," yes. But that's a different thing. Naturally you had your eyes on the rifle 1 You saw it fired. Good 1 But to say that you also saw the bullet-hole appear in the window presupposes a turn of the head from left to right faster than the velocity of a rifle-bullet. This was an evident impossibility.

' I breathed, sir, with much relief. When, shortly afterwards, I was presented with Miss Cynthia Drew's story of the man - or figure - she saw running across the road, I seemed to see the case complete. But for Hadley's interruption at a difficult time...'

Superintendent' Hadley, who had come back into the room, stopped short in wrath.

'My interruption?' he repeated.

‘Yes.'

'If it had occurred to you,' said Hadley, 'to tell me just what the devil was the line you were working on before that time, things might have gone a little more smoothly. And aren't you running far ahead of your story?'

Dr Fell's cigar had gone out. He blinked at it, and lumbered back to the sofa, where he sat down.

'There is very little more to tell. If I may be allowed to turn back the clock again, to ten o'clock and onwards on Friday morning, I think we shall finish sweeping up any loose pieces. I was - er - inclined to think, on my first examination of this room just before Hadley's arrival, that I could fathom the lines of the locked room. Hadley arrived, as I told you a while ago, with his information about the identity of the dead man; and my attention was already on Dr Middlesworth.

'Just before I started up for Ashe Hall -'

'Why did you want so much to go up there?' inquired Dick.

'The household,' said Dr Fell, 'had been up most of the night with a sick maid. Somebody might have heard something interesting. Lord Ashe, as I told you, had heard that shot at past midnight While I went on there, I asked Hadley to see whoever was in charge of the village post-office ...'

'And,' snarled Hadley, 'put different marks on any stamps bought by four or five people! I didn't know until late in the afternoon you were definitely after Middlesworth. You might have been after Miss Drew, who was my choice; or Major Price or Mr Earnshaw or even...'

'Me?' asked Lesley quietly. . ' Or even Lord Ashe himself,' said Hadley, smiling at her. ' This trick of laying a trap for the whole ruddy crowd -'

'Well, I might have been wrong,' said Dr Fell, unabashed. 'But everything henceforward told me with roaring certainty that I was right I even heard from Lord Ashe, in your presence, that the "Bible-salesman", Sam De Villa, visited only Ashe Hall. I daresay he was scouting by feeling out the nature of his reception: by making an estimate of the leading light in this district But, by the Lord Harry, he could never have got all that information about village-people just from a talk with Lord Ashe. It confirmed belief in an accomplice.

‘I,ve already given you the various indications which led to the certainty, after my interview with Mr Markham late in the afternoon, that we had the thing taped. From Middlesworth's confession we know that he tumbled to the trick about the stamps because he bought a book of stamps; and poor Laura marked them rather clumsily.

'He'd already sent a letter to me, of all people, accusing Miss Grant of being a noted poisoner and dropping hints - not saying anything definite, but dropping hints - about

how the murder might have been committed. Don't you see he had to provide basis for his fictional plot? He had to show there was an enemy of Lesley Grant who still believed in "Sir Harvey Gilman", and was trying to frame her. That was the only way he could do it, and the surest way -in his own estimation - of turning suspicion away from himself.

'He wrote the letter. Then, in horror, he tried to get the letter back. And Laura Feathers died.'

'But his letter,' said Dick, 'didn't actually hint broadly at the real way of committing the murder?'

'Oh, no. That was too dangerous. And also unnecessary. All he had to do was plug, and plug, and plug away, at the idea of someone trying to frame Miss Grant. But he tumbled to the marked book of stamps; he got away; he took refuge in Miss Grant's house because three persons were closing in on him from different sides.

'You see,' Dr Fell hesitated, 'I was rather sure I caught a glimpse of him up in that bedroom when I was coming up the path. Mr Markham's story confirmed it. So I had the house covered. He couldn't get away. But... I talked to him, I let him hear me, and I let him die. I think that explains everything.'

There was a long silence, while the sun lay drowsy in the room.

'Not every thing,' said Dick. 'It was Cynthia, I suppose, who listened outside these windows on Thursday night? And overheard De Villa's tale about Lesley ?'

'Oh, yes. Miss Drew is a good girl. But she's a little erratic'

'And Lesley didn't actually wallop her with a mirror up in that bedroom when they were having the argument?'

'Of course I didn't!' cried Lesley.

They were sitting in chairs not far away from each other. Dick worked up his courage to face a last question.

'Are you thinking,' asked Lesley, 'what I've heard about since? That I was out of the house, and somebody saw me here in the front garden, at three o'clock in the morning?

And you got this horrible idea that I might be the guilty one after all.'

'Well... not exactly the guilty one. But -'

' You did! Don't deny it!'

'All right, darling, I did,'

'And I don't blame you,' said Lesley, 'It's rather sad that the explanation should be so very foolish. But I can't help it! It worries me; it's always worried me. I've been to a number of doctors, but they say not to worry. They say it often happens to people like me: overstrung, tending to brood, making much of a trifle.

'But I did think I'd killed that man, don't you see? I mean I thought I'd killed "Sir Harvey Gilman" when the rifle went off accidentally! And I dreamed about it! I couldn't help dreaming about it! I had an awful night, and woke up very tired. So I knew it must have happened again, though I had only a hazy idea of what had happened or where I'd been. When I saw a different frock across the chair - that is, when I woke up in the morning and saw it -!'

'Look here,' said Dick. 'Are you telling us ... ?'

' It was just another devilment added to the rest,' said Lesley. 'Nothing more or less than sleep-walking. I must have come out here, maybe with an idea of finding out what was wrong or how badly he'd been hurt; but I don't remember it. The horrible thing is that I might even have run into the murderer. But I shouldn't have known it if I had. I'm not much good to you, am I? Lily Jewell's daughter, nervous tantrums, and being afflicted with sleepwalking because ...'

Dick put his hand over hers.

'Your nervous state,' he said, 'is yours and I like it. But one thing I can promise you: as Dr Fell would say, with my hand on my heart. You will not be troubled with sleepwalking again.'

'Why?'

'I,' said Dick Markham, 'will see to that.'

__________________

PENGUIN BOOKS IN ASSOCIATION WITH HAMISH HAMILTON

Penguin Book Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex

Pint published 1944

Reprinted 1953