He Who Whispers (24 page)

Miles sprang from the edge of the bed.

‘Never mind D'Artagnan, Professor Rigaud. How did
you
get here?'

‘Dr Fell and I,' said the other, ‘have arrived back by car from the New Forest. We have telephoned his friend the police superintendent. Dr Fell goes to the hospital, and I come here.'

‘You've just come from the New Forest? How's Marion?'

‘In health,' returned Professor Rigaud, ‘she is excellent. She is sitting up and eating food and talking what you call twenty to the dozen.'

‘Then in that case,' cried Barbara, and swallowed before she went on, ‘you know what frightened her?'

‘Yes, mademoiselle. We have heard what frightened her.'

And Professor Rigaud's face slowly grew pale, paler than it had been when he talked of vampires.

‘My friend,' he pounced out at Miles, as though he guessed the direction of the latter's thoughts, ‘I gave you theories about a certain supernatural agency. Well! It would appear that in this case I was misled by facts intended to mislead. But I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. No! For I would say to you that one case of an agency proved spurious no more disproves the existence of such supernatural agencies than a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England. Do you concede this?'

‘Yes, I concede it. But …'

‘No!' reiterated Professor Rigaud, wagging his head portentously and rapping the ferrule of the cane against the floor. ‘I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. I put myself in ashes and sackcloth because – in fine, because this is worse.'

He held up the sword-cane.

‘May I make to you, my friend, a small present? May I give you this treasured relic? I do not, now, find as much satisfaction in it as others find in the headstone of Dougal or a penwiper made of human flesh. I am human. My gorge can rise. May I give it to you?'

‘No, I don't want the infernal thing! Put it away! What we're trying to ask you …'

‘
Justement
!' said Professor Rigaud, and flung the sword-cane on the bed.

‘Marion
is
all right?' Miles insisted. ‘There can't be any relapse of any kind?'

‘There cannot.'

‘Then this thing that frightened her.' Miles braced himself. ‘What did she see?'

‘She saw,' replied the other concisely, ‘nothing.'

‘
Nothing
?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Yet she was frightened as much as that without being harmed in any way?'

‘Exactly,' assented Professor Rigaud, and made angry little frightened noises in his throat. ‘She was frightened by something she heard and something she felt. Notably by the whispering.'

The whispering …

If Miles Hammond had hoped to get away from the realm of monsters and nightmares, he found that he had not been permitted to move very far. He glanced at Barbara, who only shook her head helplessly. Professor Rigaud was still making the little seething noises in his throat, like a kettle boiling; but the noises were not funny. His eyes had a strangled, congested look.

‘This thing,' he cried, ‘is a thing that could be managed by you or me or Jacques Bonhomme. Its simplicity horrifies me. And yet –'

He broke off.

Outside in Bolsover Place, with a squeal of brakes and a bumping on the uneven paving-stones, a motor-car drew up. Professor Rigaud stumped over to one window. He flung up his arms.

‘Dr Fell,' he added, turning round from the window again, ‘arrives back from the hospital sooner than I expected him. I must go.'

‘Go? Why must you go? Professor Rigaud!'

The good professor was not permitted to go very far. For the bulk of Dr Gideon Fell, hatless but in his box-pleated cape, impelled mightily on the crutch-handled stick, had the effect of filling up the stairs, filling up the passage, and finally filling up the doorway. It had the effect of preventing any exit except by way of the window, which presumably was not Professor Rigaud's intention. So Dr Fell stood there with a gargantuan swaying motion rather like a tethered elephant, still rather wild-eyed and with his eyeglasses coming askew, controlling his breathing for Johnsonesque utterance to Miles.

‘Sir,' he began, ‘I bring you news.'

‘
Fay, Seton
–?'

‘Fay Seton is alive,' replied Dr Fell. Then, with a clatter you could almost hear, he swept that hope away. ‘How long she lives will depend on the care she takes of herself. It may be months; it may be days. I fear I must tell you she is a doomed woman, as in a sense she has always been a doomed woman.'

For a little time nobody spoke.

Barbara, Miles noted in an abstracted way, was standing just where Fay had stood: by the chest of drawers, under the hanging lamp. Barbara's fingers were pressed to her lips in an expression of horror mingled with overwhelming pity.

‘Couldn't we,' said Miles, clearing his throat, ‘couldn't we go over to the hospital and see her?'

‘No, sir,' returned Dr Fell.

For the first time Miles noticed that there was a police-sergeant in the hall behind Dr Fell. Motioning to this sergeant, Dr Fell squeezed his way through and closed the door behind him.

‘
I
have just come from talking to Miss Seton,' he went on. ‘I have heard the whole pitiful story.' His expression was vaguely fierce. ‘It enables me to fill in the details of my own guesses and half-hits.' As Dr Fell's expression grew more fierce, he put up a hand partly to adjust his eyeglasses and partly perhaps to shade his eyes. ‘But that, you see, causes the trouble.'

Miles's disquiet had increased.

‘What do you mean, trouble?'

‘Hadley will be here presently, with – harrumph – a certain duty to perform. Its result will not be pleasant for one person now in this room. That's why I thought I had better come here first and warn you. I thought I had better explain to you certain matters you may not have grasped even yet.'

‘Certain matters? About – ?'

‘About those two crimes,' said Dr Fell. He peered at Barbara as though noticing her for the first time. ‘Oh, ah!' ‘breathed Dr Fell with an air of enlightenment. ‘And you must be Miss Morell!'

‘Yes! I want to apologize …'

‘Tut, tut! Not for the famous fiasco of the Murder Club?'

‘Well … yes.'

‘A small matter,' said Dr Fell, with a massive gesture of dismissal.

He lumbered to the frayed armchair, which had been pushed near one window. With the aid of his crutch-handled stick he sat down, the armchair accommodating him as best it could. After rolling back his shaggy head to take a reflective survey of Barbara, of Miles, and of Professor Rigaud, he reached into his inside breast pocket under the cape. From this he produced Professor Rigaud's sheaf of manuscript, now much crumpled and frayed at the edges.

And he produced something else which Miles recognized. It was the coloured photograph of Fay Seton, last seen by Miles at Beltring's Restaurant. With the same air of ferocity overlying bitter worry and distress, Dr Fell sat studying the photograph.

‘Dr Fell,' said Miles. ‘Hold on! Half a minute!'

The doctor rolled up his head.

‘Eh? Yes? What is it?'

‘I suppose Superintendent Hadley's told you what happened in this room a couple of hours ago?'

‘H'mf, yes. He's told me.'

‘Barbara and I came in here and found Fay standing where Barbara is now, with
the
brief-case and a bundle of bloodstained banknotes. I – er – shoved those notes into my pocket just before Hadley arrived. I needn't have bothered. After asking a lot of questions which seemed to tend towards Fay's guilt, he showed he knew about the brief-case all along.'

Dr Fell frowned. ‘Well?'

‘At the height of the questioning, this light went out. Somebody must have thrown the main-switch in the fuse-box just outside in the passage. Someone or something rushed in here …'

‘Someone,' repeated Dr Fell, ‘or something. By thunder, I like the choice of words!'

‘Whoever it was, it threw Fay to one side and ran out of here with the brief-case. We didn't see anything. I picked up the brief-case outside a minute later. It had nothing in it but the three other packets of notes and a little gritty dust. Hadley took the whole lot away with him, including my concealed notes, when he left with Fay in the – in the ambulance.'

Miles gritted his teeth.

‘I mention all this,' he went on, ‘because so many hints have been made about her guilt that I'd like to see justice done in one respect. Whatever reason you had for asking me, Dr Fell, you did ask me to get in touch with Barbara Morell. And I did, with sensational results.'

‘Ah!' murmured Dr Fell in a vaguely distressed way. He would not meet Miles's eye.

‘Did you know, for instance, that it was Harry Brooke who wrote a series of anonymous letters accusing Fay of having affairs with men all over the district? And then, when that charge fell flat, Harry stirred up superstition by bribing young Fresnac to slash marks in his own neck and start this nonsense about vampirism? Did you know that?'

‘Yes,' assented Dr Fell. ‘I know it. It's true enough.'

‘We have here' – Miles gestured to Barbara, who opened her handbag – ‘a letter written by Harry Brooke on the very afternoon of the murder. He wrote it to Barbara's brother, who,' Miles added hastily, ‘isn't at all concerned in this. If you still have any doubts …'

Dr Fell reared up his shoulders with sudden acute interest.

‘You have that letter?' he demanded. ‘May I see it?'

‘With pleasure. Barbara?'

Rather reluctantly, Miles thought, Barbara handed over the letter. Dr Fell took it, adjusted his eyeglasses, and slowly read it through. His expression had grown even more lowering when he put it down on one knee on top of the manuscript and the photograph.

‘It's a pretty story, isn't it?' Miles asked bitterly. ‘A very fine thing to hound her with! But let's leave Harry's ethics out of this, if nobody gives a curse about Fay's side of it. The point is, this whole situation came about through a trick played by Harry Brooke …'

‘No!' said Dr Fell, in a voice like a pistol-shot.

Miles stared at him.

‘What do you mean by that?' Miles demanded. ‘You're not saying that Pierre Fresnac and this grotesque charge of vampirism – ?'

‘Oh, no,' said Dr Fell, shaking his head. ‘We may leave young Fresnac and the manufactured teeth-marks entirely out of the picture. They are irrelevant. They don't count. But …'

‘But what?'

Dr Fell, after contemplating the floor, slowly raised his head and looked Miles in the eyes.

‘Harry Brooke,' he said, ‘wrote a lot of anonymous letters containing accusations in which he didn't believe. That is the irony! That is the tragedy! For, although Harry Brooke didn't know it – didn't dream of it, wouldn't have believed it if you'd told him – the accusations were nevertheless perfectly true.'

Silence.

A silence which stretched out unendurably …

Barbara Morell put her hand softly on Miles's arm. It seemed to Miles that between Dr Fell and Barbara flashed a glance of understanding. But he wanted time to assimilate the meaning of those words.

‘Behold now,' said Dr Fell, rounding the syllables with thunderous emphasis, ‘an explanation which presently will fit so many puzzling factors in this affair. Fay Seton
had
to have men. I wish to put this matter with delicacy, so I will merely refer you to the psychologists. But it is a form of psychic illness which has tortured her since youth.

‘She is no more to be blamed for it than for the heart-weakness which accompanied it. In women so constituted – there are not a great number of them, but they do appear in consulting-rooms – the result does not always end in actual disaster. But Fay Seton (don't you see?) was emotionally the wrong kind of woman to have this quirk in her nature. Her outward Puritanism, her fastidiousness, her delicacy, her gentle manners, were
not
assumed. They are real. To have relations with casual strangers was and is torture to her.

‘When she went out to France as Howard Brooke's secretary in nineteen-thirty-nine, she was resolved to conquer this. She would: she would, she would! Her behaviour at Chartres was irreproachable. And then …'

Dr Fell paused.

Again he took up the photograph and studied it.

‘Do you begin to understand now? The atmosphere which always surrounded her was an air of … well, look into your own memory! It went with her. It haunted her. It clung round her.
That
was the quality which touched and troubled everywhere the people with whom she came in contact, even though they did not understand it. It was a quality sensed by nearly all men. It was a quality sensed, and bitterly resented, by nearly all women.

‘Think of Georgina Brooke! Think of Marion Hammond! Think of …' Dr Fell broke off, and blinked at Barbara. ‘I believe you met her a while ago, ma'am?'

Barbara made a helpless gesture.

‘I only met Fay for a very few minutes!' she protested quickly. ‘How on earth could I tell anything? Of course not! I …'

‘Will you think again, ma'am?' said Dr Fell gently.

‘Besides,' said Barbara, ‘I liked her!'

And Barbara turned away.

Dr Fell tapped the photograph. The pictured eyes – with their faint irony, their bitterness under the far-away expression – made Fay Seton's presence live and move in this room as strongly as the discarded handbag still on the chest of drawers, or the fallen identity card, or the black beret on the bed.

‘That is the figure, good-natured and well-meaning, we must see walking in bewilderment – or apparent bewilderment – through the events that follow.' Dr Fell's big voice was raised. ‘Two crimes were committed. Both of them were the work of the same criminal …'