Below Suspicion (20 page)

"The old religion!" Dr. Fell glowered with satisfaction. "That's better! I thought as much!"

"You don't mean to say.... ?"

"It is the name given by many adepts to the Anti-Christ and his worship," said Dr. Fell. "As for the second important question I asked you, and was satisfied of your innocence when it seemed to puzzle you— listen!"

Dr. Fell gave a half-chuckle which had no mirth in it. He raised his old greyish head, heavy with the weight of learning, and looked in turn at each of the four persons who surrounded him.

"Let me repeat a little story," he said. "You all know it. It has been printed in half the schoolbooks, and read by most of the nation, with this curious additional fact: that neither the writers who prepared it, nor the readers who memorized it, ever had the slightest idea what it really meant.

"The story goes that during the reign of Edward the Third, in the fourteenth century, a certain Lady (most versions identify her as the Countess of Salisbury) danced at a court-ball given by the king. While dancing, she dropped her garter and was overcome with confusion. King Edward instantly picked up the garter, fastened it on his own leg with the words 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' and on this incident founded the Order of the Garter, the highest of knightly Orders in all Europe."

Dr. Fell puffed out his lips under the bandit's moustache, making a wry and satiric noise.

"Now the interest of that little tale lies not in whether it is true or partly legendary. But centuries of repetition have made it lose its point."

Here Dr. Fell made a still more satiric face.

"It took very much more than a dropped garter, believe me, to shock a lady of the fourteenth century. In fact, the incident would have caused only mild embarrassment under Queen Victoria. Any child today can translate 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' as 'Evil to him who evil thinks.' Where on earth could there have been any suggestion of evil?

"But King Edward knew. He knew what overcame Lady Salisbury and terrified the guests. His quick thinking, as Miss Murray has pointed out,* probably saved her life. For the garter, then used as cord or string or lace. ..."

Lucia Renshaw rose to her feet. With the same unconscious grace of movement, she stepped back a few paces with the palms of her hands pressed to her face under the eyes.

"Go on!" said Patrick Butler.

"The garter," said Dr. Fell, "was the mark of the witch-woman. It designated the creature, skilled in lechery and murder, who stood out against the lurid sky of the Middle Ages. And the red garter, above all, meant the head of a group, or coven; high in unholy councils, closest of all to the person, usually a man, who towered over them in the role of Satan."

A deeper chill had settled on them, as though the globe-lamp itself contained no heat and dead Mrs. Taylor had joined the group.

"Yes, you can look at me!" Lucia spoke clearly and defiantly. "I've been wearing the beastly things, at one time or another, for over a year. I was even wearing them last night,"

Dr. Fell exhaled a deep breath.

"Ma'am," he growled, again distressed, "I'm glad you told me that. In your dressing-table drawer, the police found. . . ."

"Yes, of course! That's why I was so frightened when Agnes said they'd searched the house. They were searching for—"

"No, no, no, no!" Dr. Fell grunted testily. "They were searching for something more important, I assure you, than five gaudy sets of red garters. But why did you lie to me last night?"

"Because I didn't know what they meant! You made it sound so horribly mysterious and important that I shied away from it by—oh, call it instinct! Dick made me do it, you know."

"Your husband made you wear the garters?"

* Margaret Alice Murray, The God of the Witches (Sampson Low, Marston & Co.), pp. 71-76.

"Yes! It seemed to be some kind of joke. But with something underneath it. Often he'd say, *Is my dear wearing her adornments?' He always called them 'adornments/ and he always laughed. I could never tell when he was going to ask about it."

Lucia moistened her lips.

"I—I said, you remember," her glance strayed towards Butler, "that Dick always chose all my clothes. That was as close as I dared to hint at it. But I didn't know what it meant! I swear I didn't! Pat, dear!" She started to put out her arms to him, but dropped them. "Don't you believe me?"

"Of course I do." Butler's laugh rang in the ugly room, without any response. "So will everybody else. What do you say. Miss Cannon?"

Miss Cannon, who had removed her pince-nez to dab at her eyes, regarded him in a nearsighted way.

"I say," she replied in her most genteel voice, "that if I hear any more of these improprieties I shall leave the house. I consider the whole subject improper and unfit for discussion."

"One moment!" said Dr. Fell very sharply.

Lucia made a slight gesture which begged Butler to go over and stand beside her. He did so, unobtrusively touching her arm. Now he saw Dr. Fell's wide-open eyes, a clear grey, undimmed by time or vast quantities of beer.

"Your husband, Mrs. Renshaw, had been an ordained clergyman. That," said Dr. Fell, "was discovered very quickly by routine police-work. Did you know it?"

"No. Not until tonight. Dr. Bierce told me. But I had (how can I explain it?) vague kinds of suspicions. . . ."

"Did you suspect—as I firmly beheve—that he was the head of a witch-cult?"

("So I was right!" thought Butler.)

"No!" cried Lucia. "Never! All I ever thought.. . well, there are all kinds of funny religious cults that haven't any harm in them. Like worshipping trees or the sun or something."

"Did your husband ever initiate you into any rites necessary for entrance to the vdtch-cult?—There is no need to blush like a schoolgirl, Mrs. Renshaw. If he had, believe me, you would have remembered."

"I don't remember. That is, no."

"Did he ever hint at it?"

"Must I answer that question?"

"My dear lady, you need answer me nothing. Walk out of the house, as Miss Cannon wants to do; go your way in peace. I am only, as I told you, an old duffer who wants to help you."

Butler, whose hatred of Dick Renshaw had reached a new height or depth, jogged Lucia's arm in intimation that she ought to reply. Dick Renshaw surrounded them and clouded them as with black wings.

"Maybe"—Lucia interlocked her delicate fingers—"maybe I only think of it as a hint because of what I know now. But once he said to me," she hesitated, "he said, 'My dear, you are only Venus in appearance; at heart you are the curate's aunt.' I said, 'And maybe you're the wrong man.' That was one of the times when he hit me. Oh, can't we stop this!"

"In just a minute. I don't like it, by thunderl Did you know that only an ordained clergyman can celebrate the Black Mass?"

"Dr. Fell, I never even heard of the Black Mass, except in one or two supernatural stories where they never said what it was about." Evidently despite herself, curiosity struggled in Lucia's gaze. "What do they do?"

"You never knew," persisted Dr. Fell, ignoring the question for an explosive one of his own, "that its rites were being celebrated here?"

Again two voices snapped out, one after the other.

"Here?" exclaimed Miss Cannon.

"In this house?" demanded Dr. Bierce.

Bierce, his fists clenched, walked slowly round to the other side of the bed and faced Dr. Fell.

"Not in this house," said Dr. Fell, letting his eyes rove round the dingy room still faintly exhaling Mrs. Taylor's perfume. "But very close to here. In a little building belonging to Mrs. Lucia Renshaw."

Again, as Miss Agnes Cannon shrank back. Dr. Fell turned to Lucia.

"I think I told you," he went on, "that I spoke to Mr. Charles Den-ham about Mrs. Taylor's will. Mrs. Renshaw inherited three houses, 'The Priory,' 'Abbot's House,' and a third called. The Chapel.' "

"Well?"

"Someone has pointed out. Dr. Bierce, our grotesque way of naming houses. We put up a little box of a villa, with no tree within a hundred yards; we call it, 'The Elms,' and nobody thinks twice about the name. This house is not a priory. No monk ever entered the 'Abbot's House.' But—fine irony, by thunder!—this place called 'The Chapel' really is a chapel."

Bierce's high framework of bones seemed to stand out beneath the skin of his face. With a violent effort he controlled himself.

"If you tell me it's a Nonconformist chapel," he said thickly, "I tell you at once that you lie."

"No, nol I mean a private chapel, one attached to a great house torn down long ago. But it was consecrated. It can be, and is being used for the worship of Satan."

On Bierce's lips, it seemed to Butler, there trembled again those words, "Let it burn and be destroyed!" But the physician only pointed to the bed and said in the same harsh voice:

"Mrs. Taylor?"

"In my opinion, sir, she was the chief assistant to the head of the witch-cult, Richard Renshaw."

"And she went to the rites at this—chapel?"

"My dear sir," said Dr. Fell, "you yourself testified at the trial that she could have walked to China and carried her own suitcase. She was no invalid."

"And, when she thought anyone was hiding something from her, she would ransack the whole house for it. The damned woman," snarled Bierce, emphasizing the adjective in its literal sense, "insisted on sleeping alone here, except for a companion-secretary at the very back of the house. If she went out by the front door, not a soul would know of it."

"Yes."

"Dr. Fell, what is your interest in the—chapel?"

"Confound it, don't you see?" Dr. Fell was again distressed and exasperated, as at another obvious point. "We are not investigating a case of Satanism. We are investigating a case of wholesale poisoning. As for the chapel...."

He moved his head round to look at the rest of his companions. He added: "I am taking you all there tonight."

Somewhere in the dark house there was a heavy crash of glass.

All four of them remained motionless. The sound, it seemed to Patrick Butler, had come from fairly close at hand.

"Have you still got your electric torch handy?" he asked Dr. Bierce. "Good! Give it to me!"

The physician brought the torch from the chair where he had put his cap and medicine-case. Lucia took a step forward.

"Pat, what are you going to do?"

"Oh, just have a look round."

"Pat, be careful!"

"Careful? Careful of what?" asked the puzzled Butler, and hurried out into the passage.

For, in leaving that room, it never occurred to him that there might actually be a burglar or a prowler. He merely wanted to be alone for a few minutes, in the dark, shut up with his thoughts so that no facial expression might betray them; and he closed the door after him.

Casually he flicked the beam of the torch round the four doors in the passage, one on each side, and along the faded yellow wallpaper. Then he strolled down the passage.

During the past half-hour he had been in more (unacknowledged) anguish than at any time before. He felt like striking his fist against the walls in helpless sickness of heart.

Satanism. The flesh and the devil. Black candles burning at a human altar, under a reversed cross. Red garters and laces and strings, withered with the evil of the past. The garter, in one Irish superstition, was supposed to possess magical power. And, he remembered from Pepys's Diary, it was a very old custom to fight for the bride's garters at a wedding. ...

Wedding. Lucia. The chapel.

It was to the chapel, unquestionably, that Lucia had been taking him that night. He remembered Lucia at Claridge's: "A real adventure!" Lucia at the Love-Mask Club: "My handbag's got—got a key in it." Lucia in the gloom of a speeding car: "You may find more than you think."

Wait a minute! Was it possible the Black Mass would be celebrated there tonight? Was that why Dr. Fell wanted them to go?

All he knew about this ceremony was that it ended in promiscuous eroticism to whose image he closed his mind quickly, as he might have closed a door.

Nonsense! It wasn't possible!

Lucia was not guilty of anything, particularly of murder. His absolute conviction of this, as he had time to think back on everything, grew still and steady. If he had been compelled to address a jury:

"Did you ever hear," he would have said, "any woman answer more clearly and reasonably and honestly the questions Dr. Fell asked her a few minutes ago? Those infernal garters were a device of Dick Renshaw; and may his soul toast on a griddle at this moment!

"And even suppose she did invite me to this chapel? Her own words contain an explanation, though she never put it forward as an explanation. She had believed her husband of being some kind of parson, perhaps a bogus parson, and, as she said, There are all kinds of funny religious cults that haven't any harm in them.'

"That's it exactly! To explore this third house belonging to her ('It's never been lived in, really') might produce evidence in the case of Ren-shaw's murder and at the same time be a harmless adventure which would appeal to Lucia. It's so easy, when you understand it! It's so. . . ."

Patrick Butler stopped in his tracks, listening.

Where was he, anyway?

His finger had slipped off the button of the electric torch; he must have been in the dark for many seconds. He had become so immersed in silent speech that he hadn't noticed where he was going.

To judge by the freer air, the hardwood floor, the feel of a small rug under one foot, he must be in the large rear hall with the gallery round it. Butler had the momentary panic of one roused out of a dream. It would not be pleasant to meet dead and damned Dick Renshaw, as though meeting his own image in a mirror.

Somewhere close at hand, a footstep creaked.

"Who's there?"

"Who's there?"

The two challenges whipped out together. Butler pressed the button of the torch and swung it upwards. Someone, facing him from a comparatively short distance, did the same. The two beams of light crossed above a table, and just between two silver candelabra exactly like those at Lucia Renshaw's. WTiat Butler saw was the large and reassuring figure of a policeman.