Below Suspicion (29 page)

"W'Tien you were acquitted on the 20th," he said, "what did you do after you left the coffee-room? Did you get in touch with Luke Parsons? Or with Gold-teeth? Or with both?"

"Gold-teeth? Oh, you mean poor George! I 'phoned them both, yes. But I was thinking about you."

"Possibly you were, at that time. But next morning, when you came to see me and I threw you out without ceremony—wasn't that when you began to hate me?"

"I may have been a bit annoyed. At the time."

"Wasn't that really the reason why you got Gold-teeth and Em to go for me with knuckle-dusters last night? Or try to?"

"Not . . . I'm Sony- about that! You did annoy me."

"Yesterday aftemoon," Butler used words like a whip, without the least apparent effect, "I visited Luke Parsons and bribed him to give me a little information (two hundred quid it cost) about where I might find Gold-teeth and Em. Didn't Parsons ring you up immediately afterwards and tell you he'd done it?"

"Yes."

Joyce was sitting back lazily, the gleam of the wall-lamps on her sleek black hair, her face one of serene gravity except for certain movements of the lips and eyes.

"Was that why he was killed?"

"The person who will betray you in the very smallest thing," said Joyce, looking full at him and pressing the reversed cross against her breast, "m\\ betray you in anything." Then the grey eyes opened wide. "That's a law of faith."

"It was a woman's crime. Luke Parsons was old and frightened and not very strong. A man would have taken him by the neck, from the front or the back. A woman would have stunned him first, as he was stunned, and then applied the garter in the form of a tourniquet. Did you enjoy killing him?"

"Dearest darling," said Joyce, "it had to be done."

"Was he a member of your—faith?"

"Well! A private inquir)' agent—don't you see?—is so useful when you want information about people."

"And Gold-teeth?"

"George? Oh, George is a very special friend of mine." Joyce's teeth gleamed; her slow smile suggested much. Then her face darkened. "But I never once thought—" She stopped. "When he slipped off those gold shell-teeth he used for a disguise, he wasn't unattractive."

"Not very fastidious, are you?"

"Don't be jealous. I'm not jealous of poor silly Lucia. The most dreadful thing I ever had to do," said Joyce, who would have raged if her self-control had not been so great, "was to give George orders to set fire to the temple under that chapel!"

"Then why did you have to do it?"

"Lucia was going there with you, wasn't she? One of George's men found her handbag, with the key and a cardboard label attached, in that club. He told George, even if he didn't understand; George 'phoned me; and—

"George," and now Joyce w^s fighting so hard for self-control that the flame-coloured gown writhed, "didn't know you were at Balham. But he saw the light through the shutters, and wondered. Then he went on to get very dangerous papers and do . . . the rest of it. The burning. The awful thing.

"What else could I do? I knew Lucia already suspected something. In court, when Dr. Bierce was talking about 'The Priory' being what he called an unhealthy place, I saw her get up and make shushing gestures. But I couldn't guess how much she knew."

Butler hit her, only verbally, but hard.

"Lucia knew nothing," he said. "If it hadn't been for Dr. Fe— if it hadn't been for me, we might never even have found the secret trap to go downstairs."

For several seconds Joyce was quiet, very quiet.

"You're lying," she smiled at him.

"No."

"I should hate you." Joyce regarded him thoughtfully, but her eyes in their steady look were as fascinating to him as fire to a child. "I can't hate you. I never could. I feel just as I said I felt at that coffee-room. Only—more so. I knew it as soon as I saw you again."

Then Joyce's smile widened, with both the cruelty and the allure.

"Did you get much pleasure from Lucia," she asked softly, "when you kept thinking of me?"

"I didn't say I 'kept' thinking of you! It only just—"

Again her expression made him pause.

"And I know you won't give me away/' Joyce said. "Because I've known, all along, you were one of us."

"WTiat the hell do you mean, one of us?"

"Oh, you think you're not! You like to pretend it shocks you. But look into your real character, and see if it's not true!"

Joyce rose from the chair. She walked slowly towards him as he stood with his back to the fireplace.

"You know in your heart," Joyce breathed, "that he really exists."

"Don't talk like an idiot! This 'Satan' of yours is an allegorical m\i:h, intended to represent—"

"Then why do you fear him?" asked Joyce. "Why do your churches fear him? Why do they cr)- out with one voice, but in helplessness? WTiy, since the beginning of time, has he remained unconquered?"

Patrick Butler had ceased to think. The perfume of Joyce's hair and flesh, her nearness, the sense about her of diabolic possession— He felt now that all he wanted, in this world or the next, was Joyce Ellis. He hit out with one last speech.

"D'you think I'd be a rival to Gold-teeth?"

There was a faint little laugh.

"George?" she said. "Oh, George needn't trouble you. He's dead."

"Dead?"

Butler's hand fell from Joyce's shoulder, which was warmer than blood-heat.

"Dead?" he repeated. "How did he die?"

"Oh, darling, does it matter?"

"Probably not. All the same, how did he die?"

Joyce's voice, low-pitched and full of genuine contrition, was muffled as she lowered her head.

"Last night," she said, "I \\as annoyed with you for getting those papers. I don't feel like that now! But I—I told George to paste those bits of paper on your windows this morning. He didn't seem to like it, but he did it."

"Well?"

"Well! You sent that insulting (it was insulting, darling!) telegram, and dared him to come here with a gun. I was still annoyed, so I told him.... But he wouldn't do it."

"What do you mean by that? Answer me!"

"Darling, it really is frightfully funny." Faint little laughter, mingled with bewilderment, floated up past Butler's shoulder. Joyce Ellis, who

could slip on any mask or assume any voice, glided into pure Commercial-Road Cockney. The voice of Gold-teeth himself might have been shrilling in the room.

" 'E told me I fought fair. He said 'e wouldn't make no charges against me, and 'e kept 'is word, 'E's a real gent, Butler is, and I won't do 'im dirt ii you kill me for it."

Silence.

Butler swallowed hard, and then spoke.

"What happened?" he asked.

Joyce shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, naturally—he died."

Something in the quiver of Butler's shoulders, the tensity that went through him, made Joyce look up. It stabbed through the dreamy haze of Joyce's senses. She backed very slowly away towards her chair, her eyes blank with astonishment. It was several seconds before Butler spoke.

"You swinel" he said.

His tone was not loud. Yet Joyce's bewilderment only increased.

"Darling, what's wrong?"

"I don't know where Gold-teeth is," said Butler. "But I'd like to shake hands with him. I'd like to get drunk with him. That jeering sandy-haired welterweight was a real sportsman. That means the finest breed in the world. And you had him killed!"

"Darling, I never thought—"

"No. You never thought."

Patrick Butler saw no irony in the fact that Gold-teeth, the one man he had hated most, was now the one man for whom he felt the most sympathy. Butler's voice was thick and there was a sting behind his eyes. He reached across and threw the whole dictaphone to the floor with a crash.

"And now, my handsome witch-woman," he roared, "I shall proceed to tell you something. You think I'm the only person who knows the evidence against you? Well, I'm not."

"What did you say?"

"Dr. Fell knows it. Superintendent Hadley knows it. The whole Goddamned police-force know it. I haven't got your papers; the police have 'em. And do you know what will happen tomorrow morning?"

Joyce whipped out of the chair, snatching up her handbag. Her face was not now pleasant to see.

"Kitty Owen," roared Butler, "will be taken to Scotland Yard for questioning. There's nothing in those papers to convict you. But Kitty Owen can convict you with direct evidence.

"She's loyal; I grant that. She worships; I grant that too. But she's voung, my handsome witch-woman; she's young. She'll break like that," he snapped his fingers, "under eighteen hours' questioning. And do you know what'll happen to you then? You'll hang at Holloway—where you came from."

Joyce, who was fumbling frantically at her handbag, had backed away and was facing him from about a distance of ten feet. He saw the edge of the low-calibre automatic.

"It might interest you to know," remarked Butler, throwing back the right side of his dressing gown, "that I've been covering you with this Webley for some rime."

Joyce screamed at him—what words he could not afterwards remember. He looked at her for a moment. Then, drawing a deep breath of self-contempt, he tossed the Webley so that it landed in the seat of the leather chair.

"Ah, the back of me hand to ye!" snapped the Irishman. "I can't shoot a woman."

The automatic was in Joyce's hand now, ten feet away.

"So you knew I was a murderer!" she screamed at him.

Patrick Butler, his back to the mantelpiece, drew himself to his full height.

"Didn't I tell you?" he asked politely. "I am never wrong."

And he made her a bow, in the full mocking style of the eighteenth century, as she shot him twice through the chest.

Being a letter from Gideon Fell, Ph.D., L.L.D., F.R.H.S., to Pahick Butler, K.C.

13 Round-pond Place, Hampstead, N.W. 3, 22nd June, 1947 

My dear Butler,

And so, it seems, you are in trouble again. Not only, as I gather from your letter, with some legal dignitar}' whom you appear to have accused of cheating at poker, but in a case wherein you are convinced of your client's innocence. You are never wrong- I know it; and—yes, I will help. As for your comment about Joyce Ellis: now that the trial is over, I venture to answer it. No, the girl is not insane. She has her religion; there was recently in Germany, and now being expressed in Russia, worship just as fantastic. I think the jury knew she was not insane. But the verdict of 'guilty, but insane' strikes me as being the more merciful as well as the more sensible.

I believe I wrote to congratulate you on your engagement to Mrs. Lucia Renshaw. She is a charming lady, and I congratulate you again. I only trust that your (forgive me) somewhat unconventional temperament will get you both as far as the altar.

Never forget gallantry, my dear fellow! After all, if you had not bowed gracefully to Joyce Ellis when she fired at you, those bullets would have struck your heart instead of just below the collarbone. That you will live for a while to enliven this dull world is the hope of

Yours sincerely, 

Gideon Fell

Photo by Caruso Studio

JOHN DICKSON CARR

author of Beloiv Suspicion

Mr. Carr, who has returned to America after seventeen years in England, is living in Westchester with his wife and three children, his huge library and his collection of swords.

Below Suspicion is the first John Dickson Carr detective novel to follow his recent biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.