He Who Whispers (15 page)

The illuminated windows of Marion's room – four little windows set together, with two of their lights open – threw out bright light against pale green at the back of the house. Underneath was a blank wall fifteen feet high. Underneath also, which he had forgotten, ran an unplanted flower-bed nearly as broad as the wall was high: a flower-bed smooth and newly watered, of earth finely crushed and hoed, on which a cat could not have walked without leaving a trace.

But a fury of doggedness persisted in Miles Hammond.

‘I still say,' he declared, ‘we'd better not be hypnotized.'

‘How so?'

‘We know Marion fired a shot, yes. But how do we know she fired it at something
outside
the window?'

‘Aha!' chortled Dr Fell, and a kind of glee breathed towards Miles out of pipe-smoke. ‘My compliments, sir. You
are
waking up.'

We don't know it at all,' said Miles. ‘We only assume it because it came after all this talk of faces floating outside windows. Isn't it much more natural to think she fired at something
inside
the room? Something perhaps standing in front of her at the foot of the bed?'

‘Yes,' Dr Fell assented gravely, ‘it is. But don't you see, my dear sir, that this doesn't in the least explain our real problem?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Something,' replied Dr Fell, ‘frightened your sister. Something which – without Rigaud's timely aid – would quite literally have frightened her to death.'

Dr Fell spoke with slow, fiery emphasis, stressing every word. His pipe had gone out, and he put it down on the sill of the open window. Even his wheezing breath snorted louder with earnestness.

‘Now I want you to think for a moment just what that means. Your sister is not, I take it, a nervous woman?'

‘Good Lord, no!'

Dr Fell hesitated.

‘Let me – harrumph – be more explicit. She's not one of those women who
say
they're not nervous, and laugh at the supernatural in daylight, and then show very different feelings by night?'

A very vivid memory returned to Miles.

‘I remember,' he said, ‘when I was in hospital, Marion and Steve used to come there as often as they could' – how good they'd been, both of them – ‘with any jokes or stories they thought would amuse me. One was a haunted house. A friend of Steve's (that's Marion's fiancé) found it while he was on Home Guard duty. So they made up a party to go there.'

‘With what result?'

‘It seems they did find a lot of unexplained disturbances; poltergeist disturbances, not very pleasant. Steve freely confessed
he
had the wind up, and so did one or two others. But Marion only enjoyed it.'

‘Oh, my eye!' breathed Dr Fell.

He picked up the dead pipe, and put it down again.

‘Then again I ask you,' Dr Fell went on earnestly, ‘to remember the circumstances. Your sister was not touched or physically attacked in any way. All the evidence shows she collapsed of nervous shock because of something she
saw
.

‘Now suppose,' argued Dr Fell, ‘this business was not supernatural. Suppose, for example, I wish to scare someone by playing ghost. Suppose I clothe myself in white robes, and daub my nose with phosphorescent paint, and stick my head through a window and thunderously say, “Boo!” to a group of old ladies in a Bournemouth boarding house.

‘It may, perhaps, give them quite a start. They may think that dear old Dr Fell is getting some extraordinary ideas of humour. But would it really
scare
anyone? Would any rigged-up contrivance, any faked ingenuity of the supernatural, produce nowadays more than a momentary jump? Would it induce that shattering effect which – as we know – drains the blood from the heart and can be as deadly as a knife or a bullet?'

Beating his fist into the palm of his left hand, Dr Fell broke off apologetically.

‘I beg your pardon,' he added. ‘I did not wish either to make ill-timed jokes or alarm you with fears about your sister. But … Archons of Athens!'

And he spread out his hands.

‘Yes,' admitted Miles, ‘I know.'

There was a silence.

‘So you observe,' pursued Dr Fell, ‘that the previous point you made ceases to be of importance. Your sister, in an excess of terror, fired a shot at something. It may have been outside the window. It may have been inside the room. It may have been anywhere. The point is:
what frightened her as much as that
?'

Marion's face …

‘But you don't fall back on the assumption,' cried Miles ‘that the whole thing comes back to a vampire after all?'

‘I don't know.'

Putting his finger-tips to his temples, Dr Fell ruffled the edges of the thick mop of grey-streaked hair which had tumbled over one ear.

‘Tell me,' he muttered, ‘is there
anything
your sister is afraid of?'

‘She didn't like the blitzes or the V-weapons. But then neither did anyone else.'

‘I think we may safely rule out,' said Dr Fell, ‘the entrance of a V-weapon. A threatening burglar wouldn't do? Something of that sort?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘Having seen something, and partly raised up in bed, she … by the way, that revolver in her hand: it does belong to her?'

‘The Ives-Grant .32? Oh, yes.'

‘And she kept it in the drawer of the bedside table?'

‘Presumably. I never noticed where she kept it.'

‘Something tells me,' said Dr Fell, rubbing his forehead, ‘that we want the emotions and reactions of human beings – if they are human beings. We are going to have an immediate word with Miss Fay Seton.'

It was not necessary to go and find her. Fay, who had dressed herself in the same grey frock as she had worn earlier in the evening, was coming towards them now. In the uncertain light it seemed to Miles that she had put on a great deal of lipstick, which she did not ordinarily use.

Her white face, composed now, floated towards them.

‘Ma'am,' said Dr Fell in a curious rumbling voice, ‘good evening.'

‘Good evening.' Fay stopped short. ‘You are …?'

‘Miss Seton,' introduced Miles, ‘this is an old friend of mine. Dr Gideon Fell.'

‘Oh. Dr Gideon Fell.' She was silent for a moment, and then she spoke in a slightly different tone. ‘You caught the Six Ashes murderer,' she said. ‘And the man who poisoned all those people at Sodbury Cross.'

‘Well …!' Dr Fell seemed embarrassed. ‘I'm an old duffer, ma'am, who
has
had some experience with the ways of crime.'

Fay turned to Miles.

‘I – wanted to tell you,' she said in her usual soft voice of sincerity. ‘I made rather an exhibition of myself downstairs. I'm sorry. I was – upset. And I didn't even sympathize with what happened to poor Marion. Can't I be of service in any way?'

She moved tentatively towards the bedroom door not far behind her, but Miles touched her arm.

‘Better not go in there. Professor Rigaud is acting as amateur doctor. He won't let anybody in.'

Slight pause.

‘How – how is she?'

‘A bit better, Rigaud thinks,' said Dr Fell. ‘And that, ma'am, brings us to a matter I should rather like to discuss with you.' He picked up his pipe from the window-sill. ‘If Miss Hammond recovers, this matter will of course be no concern of the police …'

‘Won't it?' murmured Fay. And across her lips, in that unreal moonlit hall outside the bedroom door, flicked a smile which struck cold to the heart.

Dr Fell's voice sharpened. ‘You believe the police
should
be concerned in this, ma'am?'

The curve of that terrifying smile, like a red gash in the face, was gone in a flash along with the glassy turn of the blue eyes.

‘Did I say that? How stupid of me. I must have been thinking of something else. What did you want to know?'

‘Well, ma'am! As a formality! Since you were the last person presumed to be with Marion Hammond before she lost consciousness …'

‘
I
was? Why on earth should anyone think that?'

Dr Fell regarded her in apparent perplexity.

‘Our friend Hammond here,' he grunted, ‘has – harrumph – given me an account of a conversation you had with him down in the library earlier to-night. You remember that conversation?'

‘Yes.'

‘At about half-past eleven, or thereabouts, Marion Hammond came into the library and interrupted you. Apparently you had given her a present of some kind. Miss Hammond said she had a present for you in return. She asked you to go on up to her room ahead of her, and said she would join you after she'd had a word with her brother.' Dr Fell cleared his throat. ‘You remember?'

‘Oh. Yes! Yes, of course!'

‘And therefore, presumably, you did go?'

‘How stupid of me! – Yes, of course I did.'

‘Straight away, ma'am?'

Fay shook her head, rapt and intent on his words.

‘No. I supposed Marion would have – personal things to talk over with Mr Hammond there, and I thought it might be a little while before she left him. So first I went to my own room, and put on a nightgown and wrap and slippers. I came up here afterwards.'

‘How long afterwards?'

‘Ten or fifteen minutes, maybe. Marion had already got there before me.'

‘And then?'

The moon was setting, its light grown thin. It was the turn of the night, the hour when to sick people death comes or passes by. All about them, south and east, towered the oaks and beeches of William the Conqueror's hunting forest, a forest old before him, seamed and withered with age; all night quiet, yet now subtly murmurous with a rising breeze. By moonlight the colour red becomes greyish-black, and that was the colour of Fay's moving lips.

‘The present I had given Marion,' she explained, ‘was a little bottle of French perfume. Jolyeux number three.'

Dr Fell put up a hand to his eyeglasses.

‘Oh, ah? The same little red-and-gold bottle that's on the bedside table now?'

‘I – I suppose so.' There was that infernal smile again, curling. ‘Anyway, she put it on the bedside table by the lamp. She was sitting in a chair there.'

‘And then?'

‘It wasn't much, but she seemed awfully pleased. She gave me nearly a quarter of a pound of chocolates loose in a box. I have them downstairs in my room now.'

‘And then?'

‘I – I don't know what you want me to say, really. We talked. I was restless. I walked up and down …'

(Images crowded back into Miles Hammond's mind. As he himself had left the library, hours ago, he remembered glancing up and seeing a woman's shadow pass across the light, lonely against the screen of the New Forest.)

‘Marion asked me why I was restless, and I said I didn't know. Mostly she did the talking, about her fiancé and her brother and her plans for the future. The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you? And the bottle of perfume. All of a sudden, about midnight it was, she broke off and said there! – it was time we were both turning in and getting some sleep, so I went downstairs to bed. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.'

‘Miss Hammond didn't seem nervous or alarmed about anything?'

‘Oh,
no
!'

Dr Fell grunted. Dropping the dead pipe into his pocket, he deliberately removed his eyeglasses and held them a few feet away from his eyes, studying them with screwed-up face like a painter, though in that light he could scarcely have seen them at all. His wheezings and snortings, a sign of deep meditation, grew even louder.

‘You know, of course, that Miss Hammond was nearly frightened to death?'

‘Yes. It must have been dreadful.'

‘Have you any theory, ma'am, to account for what frightened her?'

‘I'm afraid not, at the moment.'

‘Have you any theory, then,' pursued Dr Fell in exactly the same tone of voice, ‘to account for the equally mysterious death of Howard Brooke on Henri Quatre's tower nearly six years ago?'

Without giving her time for a reply, still holding up the eye-glasses and appearing to scrutinize them with intense concentration, Dr Fell added in an offhand tone:

‘Some people, Miss Seton, are very curious correspondents. They will pour out in letters to people far away what they wouldn't dream of telling someone in the same town. You have – harrumph – perhaps noticed it?'

To Miles Hammond it seemed that the whole atmosphere of this interview had subtly changed. For Dr Fell spoke again.

‘Are you a good swimmer, Miss Seton?'

Pause.

‘Fairly good. I daren't do much of it because of my heart.'

‘But I should hazard a guess, ma'am, that if necessary you do not object to swimming under water?'

And now a wind came whispering and rustling, sinuously, through the forest; and Miles
knew
the atmosphere had changed. Not subtly, but on Fay Seton's part charged with emotion, perhaps deadly. It was the same silent outburst he had sensed and felt a while ago, in the kitchen, over boiling water. It engulfed the hall in an invisible tide. Fay knew. Dr Fell knew. Fay's lips were drawn back from her teeth, and the teeth glittered.

It was then, as Fay took a blundering step backwards to get away from Dr Fell, that the door to Marion's bedroom opened.

The opening of the door poured yellow light into the hall. Georges Antoine Rigaud, in his shirt-sleeves, regarded them in a state of near-raving.

‘I tell you,' he cried out, ‘I cannot keep this woman's heart beating much longer. Where is that doctor? Why does not that doctor arrive? What is delaying …'

Professor Rigaud checked himself.

Past his shoulder, past a wide-open door, Miles by moving a little could see into the bedroom. He could see Marion, his own sister Marion, lying on a still more tumbled bed. The .32 revolver, useless against certain intruders, had slipped off the bed on to the floor. Marion's black hair was spread out on the pillow. Her arms were thrown wide, one sleeve pushed up where a hypodermic injection had been made in the arm. She had the aspect of a sacrifice.