He Who Whispers (5 page)

‘ “But, mademoiselle – !”

‘ “Please excuse me!”

‘Then she was gone, keeping her face turned away from me. One or two raindrops stung the wind-blown grass, followed by others.

‘I put my head inside the doorway. As I told you, that tower was no more than a stone shell, up whose wall a spiralling stone staircase climbed to a square opening giving on the flat roof. It smelt inside of age and the river. It was empty, as bare as your hand, except for a couple of wooden benches and a broken chair. Long narrow windows along the staircase lighted it fairly well, though there was a wild enough stormlight flying over the sky now.

‘Angry voices were speaking up there. I could hear them faintly. I gave them a shout, my voice making a hollow echo in that stone jug, and the voices stopped instantly.

‘So I plodded up the corkscrew stair – a dizzy business, also very bad for one scant of breath – and emerged through the square opening on to the roof.

‘Harry Brooke and his father stood facing each other on a circular stone platform, with a high parapet, well above the trees. The father, in his raincoat and tweed cap, had his mouth set implacably. The son pleaded with him; Harry was hatless and coatless, in a corduroy suit whose wind-blown tie emphasized his state of mind. Both of them were pale and worked up, but both seemed rather relieved it was I who had interrupted them.

‘ “I tell you, sir – !” Harry was beginning.

‘ “For the last time,” said Mr Brooke in a cold buttoned-up voice, “will you allow me to deal with this matter my own way?” He turned to me and added: “Professor Rigaud!”

‘ “Yes, my dear fellow?”

‘ “Will you take my son away from here until I have adjusted certain matters to my own satisfaction?”

‘ “Take him where, my dear fellow?”

“Take him anywhere,” replied Mr Brooke, and turned his back on us.

‘It was now, as I saw by a surreptitious glance at my watch, ten minutes to four o'clock. Mr Brooke was due to meet Fay Seton there at four o'clock, and he meant to wait. Harry was beaten and deflated; that leapt to the eyes. I said nothing about having met Miss Fay a moment before, since I wanted to pour ointment on the situation instead of inflaming it. Harry allowed me to lead him away.

‘Now I wish to impress on you – very clearly! – the last thing we saw as we went downstairs.

‘Mr Brooke was standing by the parapet, his back uncompromisingly turned. 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.

‘That is clear? Good!

‘I took Harry downstairs. I led him across the open space of grass, into the shelter of the big wood of chestnut trees stretching westwards and northwards. For the rain was beginning to sprinkle pretty heavily now, and we had no cover. Under the hissing and pattering leaves, where it was almost dark, my curiosity reached a point of mania. I begged Harry, as his friend and in a sense his tutor, to tell me the meaning of these suggestions against Fay Seton.

‘At first he would hardly listen to me. He kept opening and shutting his hands, this handsome mentally unformed young man, and replied that it was all too ridiculous to be talked about.

‘ “Harry,” said Uncle Rigaud, lifting an impressive fore-finger like this. “Harry, I have spoken to you much of French literature. I have spoken to you of crime and the occult. I have covered a broad field of human experience. And I tell you that the things which cause the most trouble in this world are the things which are too ridiculous to be talked about.”

‘He regarded me quickly, with a strange, sullen, shining eye.

‘ “Have you,” he asked, “have you heard about Jules Fresnac, the market gardener?”

‘ “Your mother mentioned him,” I said, “but I have yet to hear what is wrong with Jules Fresnac.”

‘ “Jules Fresnac,” said Harry, “has a son of sixteen.”

‘ “Well?”

‘That was the point where – in the twilight woods, out of sight of the tower – we heard a child screaming.

‘Yes: a
child
screaming.

‘I tell you, it scared me until I felt my scalp crawl. A drop of rain filtered through the thick leaves overhead, and landed on my bald head, and I jumped throughout every muscle in my body. For I had been congratulating myself that trouble was averted: that Howard Brooke and Harry Brooke and Fay Seton were for the moment separated, and that these three elements were not dangerous unless they came together all at once. And now …

‘The screaming came from the direction of the tower. Harry and I ran out of the woods, and emerged into the open grassy space with the tower and the curve of the river-bank in front of us. That whole open space now seemed to be full of people.

‘What had happened we learned soon enough.

‘Inside the fringe of the wood there had been, for some half an hour, a picnic-party composed of a Monsieur and Madame Lambert, their niece, their daughter-in-law, and four younger children aged from nine to fourteen.

‘Like true French picnickers, they had refused to let the weather put them off an appointed day. The land was private, of course. But private property means less in France than it does in England. Knowing that Mr Brooke was supposed to be crotchety about trespassers, they had hung back until they had seen the departure first of Fay Seton and then of Harry and myself. They would assume the coast was clear. The children erupted into the open space, while Monsieur and Madame Lambert sat them down against a chestnut-tree to open the picnic-basket.

‘It was the two youngest children who went to explore the tower. As Harry and I rushed out of the wood, I can see yet that little girl standing in the doorway of the tower, pointing upwards. I hear her voice, shrill and raw.

‘ “
Papa! Papa! Papa! There's a man up there all covered with blood
!”

‘That was what she said.

‘Myself, I cannot say what the others said or did at that moment. Yet I remember the children turning faces of consternation towards their parents, and a blue-and-white rubber ball rolling across the grass to splash into the river. I walked towards that tower, not quite running. I climbed the spiral stair. A strange, wild, fanciful thought occurred to me as I went: that it was very inconsiderate to ask Miss Fay Seton, with her weak heart, to climb up all these steps.

‘Then I got out on to the roof, where the wind blew freshly.

‘Mr Howard Brooke – still alive, still twitching – lay flat on his face in the middle. The back of his raincoat was soaked and sodden with blood, showing a half-inch rent where he had been stabbed through the back just under the left shoulder-blade.

‘I have not yet mentioned that his own cane, the cane he always carried, was really a sword-stick. It now lay in two halves on either side of him. The handle-part, with its long thin pointed blade stained with blood, was lying near his right foot. The wooden sheath had rolled away to rest against the inside of the parapet opposite. But the brief-case containing two thousand pounds had disappeared.

‘All this I saw in a kind of daze, while the family of Lambert screamed below. The time was exactly six minutes past four o'clock: I noted this not from any police sense, but because I wondered whether Fay Seton had kept her appointment.

‘I ran over to Mr Brooke, and raised him up to a sitting position. He smiled at me and tried to speak, but all he could get out was, “Bad show.” Harry joined me among the smears of blood, though Harry was not much help. He said, “Dad, who did this?” but the old man was past articulation. He died in his son's arms a few minutes later, clinging to Harry as though he himself were the child.'

Here Professor Rigaud paused his narrative.

Looking rather guilty, he lowered his head and glowered down at the dinner-table, his thick hands spread out on either side of it. There was a long silence until he shook himself, impatiently.

With extraordinary intensity he added:

‘Remark well, please, what I tell you now!

‘We
know
that Mr Howard Brooke was unhurt, in the best of health, when I left him alone on top of the tower at ten minutes to four o'clock.

‘Following that, the person who murdered him must have visited him on top of the tower. This person, when his back was turned, must have drawn the sword-cane from its sheath and run him through the body. Indeed, the police discovered that several fragments of crumbling rock had been detached from one of the broken battlements on the river-side, as though someone's fingers had torn them loose in climbing up there. And this must have occurred between ten minutes to four and five minutes past four, when the two children discovered him in a dying condition.

‘Good! Excellent! Established!'

Professor Rigaud hitched his chair forward.

‘Yet the evidence shows conclusively,' he said, ‘that during this time not a living soul came near him.'

‘Y
OU
hear what I say?' insisted Rigaud, snapping his fingers rapidly in the air to attract attention.

Whereupon Miles Hammond woke up.

To any person of imagination, he thought, this narrative of the stout little professor – its sounds and scents and rounded visual detail – had the reality of the living present. Momentarily Miles forgot that he was sitting in an upper room at Beltring's Restaurant, beside candles burning low and windows opening on Romilly Street. Momentarily he
lived
amid the sounds and scents and visual outlines in that story, so that the whisper of the rain in Romilly Street became the rain over Henri Quatre's tower.

He found himself emotionally stirred up, worrying and fretting and taking sides. He liked this Mr Howard Brooke, liked him and respected and sympathized with him, as though the man had been a personal friend. Whoever
had
killed the old boy …

And all this time, even more disturbingly, the enigmatic eyes of Fay Seton were looking back at him from the tinted photograph now lying on the table.

‘I beg your pardon,' said Miles, rousing himself with a start at the snapping of Professor Rigaud's fingers. ‘Er – would you mind repeating that last sentence?'

Professor Rigaud uttered his sardonic chuckle.

‘With pleasure,' he replied politely. ‘I said that the evidence showed not a living soul had come near Mr Brooke during those fatal fifteen minutes.'

‘Had come near him?'

‘Or could have come near him. He was utterly alone on top of the tower.'

Miles sat up straight.

‘Let's get this clear!' he said. ‘The man
was
stabbed?'

‘He was stabbed,' assented Professor Rigaud. ‘I am in the proud position of being able to show you, now, the weapon with which the crime was committed.'

With modest deprecation he reached out to touch the thick cane of light yellowish wood, which throughout the dinner had never left his side and which was now propped against the edge of the table.

‘That,' cried Barbara Morell, ‘is –?'

‘Yes. This belonged to Mr Brooke. I think I intimated to mademoiselle that I am a collector of such relics. It is a beauty, eh?'

With a dramatic gesture, picking up the cane in both hands, Professor Rigaud unscrewed the curved handle. He drew out the long, thin, pointed steel blade, wickedly caught by candle-light, and he laid it with some reverence on the table. Yet the blade had little life or gleam; it had not been cleaned or polished in some years; and Miles could see, as it lay there across the edge of Fay Seton's photograph, the darkish rust-coloured stains that had dried along it.

‘A beauty, eh?' Professor Rigaud repeated. ‘There are also blood-stains inside the scabbard, if you care to hold it up to the eye.'

Abruptly Barbara Morell pushed back her chair, got to her feet, and backed away.

‘Why on earth,' she cried, ‘must you bring such things here? And positively gloat over them?'

The good professor's eyebrows went up in astonishment.

‘Mademoiselle does not like it?'

‘No. Please put it away. It's – it's ghoulish!'

‘But mademoiselle must like such things, surely? Or else she would not be a guest of the Murder Club?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course!' she corrected herself hastily. ‘Only …'

‘Only what?' prompted Professor Rigaud in a soft, interested voice.

Miles, himself wondering not a little, watched her as she stood grasping the back of the chair.

Once or twice he had been conscious of her eyes fixed on him across the table. But for the most part she had looked steadily at Professor Rigaud. She must have been smoking cigarettes furiously throughout the narrative: for the first time Miles noticed at least half a dozen stubs in the saucer of her coffee-cup. At one point, during the description of Jules Fresnac's tirade against Fay Seton, she had bent down as though to pick up something from under the table.

A vital, not-very-tall figure – it may have been the white gown which gave her such a small-girl appearance – Barbara stood moving and twisting her fingers on the back of the chair.

‘Yes, yes, yes?' went on the probing voice of Professor Rigaud. ‘You are very much interested in such things. Only …?'

Barbara forced out a laugh.

‘Well!' she said. ‘It doesn't do to make crimes
too
real. Any fiction-writer can tell you that.'

‘Are you a writer of fiction, mademoiselle?'

‘Not – exactly.' She laughed again, trying to dismiss the subject with a turn of her wrist. ‘Anyway,' she hurried on, ‘you tell us
somebody
murdered this Mr Brooke. Who murdered him? Was it – Fay Seton?'

There was a pause, a pause of slightly tense nerves, before Professor Rigaud eyed her as though trying to make up his mind. Then he chuckled.