He Who Whispers (13 page)

‘So!' breathed Professor Rigaud, with an air of refreshed interest. ‘You, among her victims' – the word struck Miles like a blow in the face – ‘you, among her victims, at least have courage! You introduced the subject and questioned her about it?'

‘I didn't exactly introduce the subject, no.'

‘
She
volunteered the information?'

‘Yes, I suppose you could call it that.'

‘Sir,' said Dr Fell, sitting back in the chair with the manuscript and sword-cane across his knees and a very curious expression on his face, ‘it would help me enormously – by thunder, how it would help me! – if you told me everything the lady said to you. If you told me here, at this moment (forgive me) without prejudice and without editing.'

It must, Miles thought, be growing very late. Such an intensity of stillness held the house that he imagined he could hear a clock strike far back in the kitchen. Marion would be fast asleep, up there over the library; Fay Seton would be fast asleep downstairs. Through the windows moonlight strengthened with deathly pallor, dimming the mere spark of the lamp and rearing on the opposite wall shadow-images of the little oblong panes.

Miles began to speak out of a dry throat, slowly and carefully. Only once did Dr Fell interrupt with questions.

‘“Jim Morell!”' the doctor repeated, so sharply that Professor Rigaud jumped. ‘A great friend of Harry Brooke, to whom Harry regularly wrote once a week.' He turned his big head towards Rigaud. ‘Were you acquainted with any James Morell?'

Rigaud, perched on the edge of a side-table, bending forward eagerly with his hand cupped behind his ear, returned a violent negative.

‘To the best of my knowledge, dear doctor, this name is completely new to me.'

‘Harry Brooke never even mentioned him to you?'

‘Never.'

‘Nor' – Dr Fell tapped the manuscript – ‘is he mentioned in this admirably clear narrative of yours. Even the attached affidavits, of other witnesses concerned, make no reference to him. Yet Harry Brooke was writing to him on the very day –' Dr Fell was silent for a moment. Was it an effect of the light, that momentary expression about his eyes? ‘Never mind!' he said. ‘Go on!'

Yet Miles saw the same expression there again, briefly, before he finished his story. Dr Fell's look had been that of a man dazed, startled, half blinking at the sight of truth, and yet in it there were elements of sheer horror. That was what was so unnerving. All the time that Miles went on speaking, mechanically, frantic thoughts ran across the inner screen of his mind.

Dr Fell couldn't believe, of course, in this nonsense about vampires. Professor Rigaud might sincerely credit the reality of evil spirits inhabiting flesh, evil spirits that could leave the body and materialize high in the air, with their white faces outside windows.

But not Dr Fell. That could be taken for granted! All Miles wanted was to hear him say so.

All Miles wanted was a word, a gesture, a twinkle in the eye, which should blow away this poisonous mist which Georges Antoine Rigaud would call the mist of the vampire. ‘Come, now! Come now! Archons of Athens!' – in uproarious delight. A twitch of the several chins, a shaking of the huge waistcoat, the old-time familiar amusement as Gideon Fell rolled back in the chair, hammering the ferrule of a stick against the floor.

And Miles was not getting that word.

Instead, as Miles finished speaking, Dr Fell sat back with a hand shading his eyes, and the bloodstained sword-stick across his lap.

‘That is all?' he inquired.

‘Yes. That's all.'

‘Oh, ah. And to you, my friend' – Dr Fell had to clear his throat powerfully before he addressed Rigaud – ‘I should like to put a vitally important question.' He held up the manuscript. ‘When you wrote this, of course, you chose your words with care?'

Professor Rigaud drew himself up stiffly.

‘Is it necessary to say that I did?'

‘You wouldn't wish to change any of it?'

‘No, I assure you! Why should I?'

‘Let me read you,' said Dr Fell persuasively, ‘two or three lines from your account of the last time you saw Mr Howard Brooke, on top of the tower, before he was attacked.'

‘Well?'

Dr Fell moistened his thumb, adjusted his eyeglasses on the black ribbon, and leafed back through the manuscript.

‘ “Mr Brooke,” ' he read aloud, ‘ “was standing by the parapet, his back uncompromisingly turned. On one side of him –” '

‘Excuse me for interrupting,' said Miles, ‘but those sound like exactly the same words Professor Rigaud used last night when he was telling it instead of writing it.'

‘They
are
the same words,' smiled Professor Rigaud. ‘It flowed trippingly, yes? It was memorized. Anything I spoke to you, young man, will also be found in that manuscript. Continue, continue, continue!'

Dr Fell eyed him curiously.

‘ “On one side of him” – you are still describing Mr Brooke – “on one side of him his cane, of light yellowish-coloured wood, was propped upright against the parapet. On the other side of him, also resting against the parapet, was the bulging brief-case. Round the tower-top this battlemented parapet ran breast-high, its stone broken, crumbling, and scored with whitish hieroglyphics where people had cut their initials.” '

Dr Fell closed up the manuscript and tapped it again.

‘That,' he demanded, ‘is all accurate?'

‘But perfectly accurate!'

‘Only one other small thing,' begged Dr Fell. ‘It's about this sword-stick. You say in your lucid account that the police, after the murder, took away the two halves of the sword-stick for expert examination. I presume the police didn't fit them together before removing them? They were taken away just as found?'

‘But naturally!'

Miles couldn't stand it any longer.

‘For God's sake, sir, let's get things straight! Let's know at least what we think and where we are!' His voice went up. ‘
You don't believe all this, do you
?'

Dr Fell blinked at him. ‘Believe what?'

‘Vampires!'

‘No,' Dr Fell said gently. ‘I don't believe it.'

(Miles had known it all along, of course. He told himself this, with a small inner laugh, while he settled his mental shoulders and prepared to laugh aloud. But the breath rushed out of his lungs, and he felt a hot wave of relief over his whole body, at the realization that there could be no terrors now.)

‘It is only fair to say that,' Dr Fell went on gravely, ‘before we leave. This wild night ride to the New Forest, on a – harrumph! – a sudden romantic impulse of Rigaud's, who also wanted to see your uncle's library, is one that two elderly gentlemen will regret when they arrive back in London. But before we do go …'

‘By the powers of all evil,' said Miles with some vehemence, ‘you're not going back to-night!'

‘Not going back to-night?'

‘I'm going to put you up here,' said Miles, ‘in spite of the shortage of habitable bedrooms. I want to see you both in daylight and feel sane again. And my sister Marion! When she hears the rest of the story …?'

‘Your sister already knows something about it?'

‘A little, yes. Come to think of it, I asked her to-night what she would do if
she
met a … well, a supernatural horror that could walk on air. And that was even before I'd heard this vampire story.'

‘Indeed!' murmured Dr Fell. ‘And what did she say she would do?'

Miles laughed.

‘She said she'd probably fire a revolver at it. The only sensible thing is to be just as amused as Marion was.' He bowed to Professor Rigaud. ‘I thank you deeply, sir, for coming all this distance to put me on my guard against a vampire with white face and blood-bedabbled mouth. But it seems to me that Fay Seton has had a hard enough time already. And I scarcely think …'

He broke off.

The sound they all heard then came from upstairs and a little distance away. But it was magnified by the night stillness. It was shattering and unmistakable. It made Professor Rigaud stiffen as he sat on the edge of the little side-table. It caused a twitch through Dr Fell's vast bulk, so that his eyeglasses tumbled off his nose and the pieces of the sword-cane slowly slid to the floor. All three men were motionless, not lifting a hand.

It was the sound of a pistol-shot.

P
ROFESSOR
R
IGAUD
spoke first, kicking his heels. The sardonic expression flickered in his face before it was veiled, and he looked at Miles.

‘Yes, my friend?' he suggested politely. ‘I beg of you to continue this interesting statement! Your sister is amused, much amused, when she thinks of …' But he could not keep on in this strain. His gruff voice grew shaky as he glanced at Dr Fell. ‘Are you, dear doctor, thinking what
I
am thinking?'

‘No!' thundered Dr Fell, and broke the tensity. ‘No, no, no, no!'

Professor Rigaud shrugged his shoulders.

‘For myself, I find it seldom helpful to call a thing improbable after it has actually happened.' He looked at Miles. ‘Does your sister own a revolver?'

‘Yes! But …'

Miles got to his feet.

He wouldn't, he said to himself, make a disgraceful exhibition of himself by starting to run: though Rigaud's countenance was a mottled white and even Dr Fell had closed his hands suddenly round the arms of the tapestry chair. Miles walked out of the room into the dark reception-hall. It was on the staircase, the enclosed staircase leading to the upstairs hall, that he did begin to run.

‘
Marion
!' he shouted.

Ahead of him upstairs lay the very long, narrow hall, touched by the yellow speck of a night-light, with its line of mute-looking closed doors on either side.

‘
Marion
!'
Are you all right
?'

There was no reply.

As he faced the rear of the hall, the door of Marion's bedroom was the last door down or the left. Again Miles started to run. He stopped long enough to pick up the night-light, another little lamp with a cylindrical glass shade, from the top of the radiator half-way down. As he patiently fumbled with the wheel of the wick to make it burn brighter, he discovered that his hands were trembling. He turned the knob of the door, pushed it open, and held the lamp high.

‘
Marion
!'

Marion was in bed, partly reclining upwards with her head and shoulders pressed back against the headboard of the bed, in an otherwise empty room. The lamp shook crazily, but it showed him that.

There were two lines of little windows in this room. One line faced eastwards, opposite Miles as he stood in the doorway, and these were still covered by drawn curtains. The other line of windows faced south, towards the back of the house, and white moonlight poured in. As Marion lay in bed – or half lay in bed, shoulders uphunched – she was facing straight towards these southern windows across the length of the room.

‘
Marion
!'

She didn't move.

Miles went forward, edged forward with little slow steps. As the line of light shook and crept on, farther and farther into a blur of gloom, it brought out one detail after another.

Marion, wearing light-blue silk pyjamas in a tumbled bed, had not quite drawn up to a sitting position against the head-board of the bed. At first glance her face was almost unrecognizable. The hazel eyes were partly open, glassy and unblinking when the light touched them. The face was chalk white. Moisture glimmered on her forehead under the lamp. Her lips were drawn back over her teeth for the scream she had never been able to utter.

And in her right hand Marion clutched a .32 calibre Ives-Grant revolver. As Miles glanced towards the right, towards the windows Marion faced, he could see the bullet-hole in the glass.

And so Miles stood there mute, a pulse vibrating down his whole arm, when a rather hoarse voice spoke behind him.

‘You will permit me?' it said.

Georges Antoine Rigaud, pale but stolid, bounced in with little pigeon-toes steps, holding up the sitting-room lamp from downstairs.

At Marion's right hand there was a bedside table: its drawer partly open, as though the revolver had come from there. On this little table – Miles noticed such details with a kind of maniacal abstraction – stood Marion's own bedside lamp, turned out long ago, and beside the water-bottle a tiny one-ounce bottle of French perfume with a red-and-gold label. Miles could catch the scent of perfume. It made him half sick.

Professor Rigaud put down the sitting-room lamp on this table.

‘I am an amateur of medicine,' he said. ‘You will permit?'

‘Yes, yes, yes!'

Circling round to the other side of the bed, catlike of movement, Professor Rigaud picked up Marion's limp left wrist. Her whole body looked limp, limp and flat-weighted. Delicately he pressed his hand under her left breast, high up against the region of the heart. A spasm went across Professor Rigaud's face. He had lost all his sardonic air; he showed only deep and genuine distress.

‘I am sorry,' he announced. ‘This lady is dead.'

Dead
.

This wasn't possible.

Miles could not hold up the lamp any longer; his arm trembled too violently; in another second he would let the whole thing fall. Hardly conscious of his own legs, he moved over towards a chest-of-drawers at the right-hand side of the southern windows, and set down the lamp with a bang.

Then he turned back to face Professor Rigaud across the bed.

‘What' – he swallowed – ‘what did it?'

‘Shock.'

‘Shock? You mean …'

‘It is medically correct,' said Professor Rigaud, ‘to speak of death from fright. The heart (you follow me?) is suddenly deprived of its power to pump blood up to the brain. The blood sinks into, and remains stagnant in, the large veins of the abdomen. You note the pallor? And the perspiration? And the relaxed muscles?'