Elliot vaulted over the counter and plunged for the door. It was instinctive, the training of the Force. But it was also because he did not want to meet Marjorie Wills’s eyes.
He threw open the door, his feet crunching in broken glass. He was suddenly so furious at the malice of that stone that he almost dodged out through the shattered panel. Then he stood looking up and down the street.
The street was empty. The only person in sight—too far away to have thrown the stone—was a delivery-boy on a bicycle, who toiled along on plodding pedals and stared virtuously up at the sky. The High Street lay serene and righteous in its proper business.
Steady, now.
Even with the blood in his head, he felt the cool of the wind and got a grip on himself. He must not make a false move. He must not go rushing wildly about, or he would only make a fool of himself; and then they would have an opportunity to laugh as well as to throw stones. Should he shout after the boy? Or rout out the greengrocer across the street? No; better not, for the moment. When in doubt, play a waiting game and let the other fellow wonder what you are up to: that alarms him more than anything else. But for the first time he knew the force of the secret, dumb-faced dislike centering round Marjorie Wills. For perhaps twenty seconds Elliot stood looking quietly up and down the street.
Then he went back into the shop.
Marjorie Wills was leaning against the counter with her hands over her eyes.
“But why?” she said piteously. “I—I haven’t done anything.”
“They can’t smash my windows like that,” said Stevenson, who was rather pale. “
I
haven’t done anything either. They can’t smash my windows like that. I don’t call it right. Aren’t you going to do anything about it, Inspector?”
“Yes,” said Elliot. “But just now——”
Stevenson hesitated, confused between several ideas. “Er—would you like to sit down, Miss Wills? A chair? In the back room? Or upstairs? That is,” his caution slipped up, “I hadn’t realised it was quite as bad as it is. I don’t think it would be very wise for you to go out again——”
This was too much for Elliot.
“Oh, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Where are we, anyhow? In England? Or Germany? What are we?—a bunch of non-Aryans cooped up in a citadel? Just tell me where you want to go; and, if anybody as much as looks crooked at you, I’ll have him in the cooler before you can say Dr. Nemo.”
She looked at him, turning her head quickly; and certain things were made as clear as though they had been printed on all the endless cardboard containers round the shop. It was not what he had said. It was that atmosphere which the emotions give out as palpably as the body gives out heat. Again he became intensely aware of her: of every detail of the face, from the line of the eye to the brushing of her hair back from the temple. It is what is called communication.
“Steady,” said Dr. Fell.
The doctor’s quiet, rumbling tones restored sanity. He sounded almost cheerful.
“After all,” he continued, “I hardly think we’re as badly off as all that. Does Miss Wills want to sit down? By all means! Does she want to go anywhere? By all means! Why not, hey? Did you come here for anything, ma’am?”
“Did I—?” She was still looking at Elliot, with fixed eyes; now she roused herself.
“Soap, tooth-paste, bath-salts——”
“Oh. I—I came to get the Inspector.” She did not look at him now. “Major—Major Crow wants him at Bellegarde. At once. They—couldn’t find him from eleven o’clock on, and nobody knew where he was. We tried to get Stevenson’s on the ’phone, because Major Crow said you—he—was to be here at one o’clock; but there wasn’t any answer; and in my state of mind I thought it would be a kind of spiritual exercise to drive through Sodbury Cross. My car’s outside, if they haven’t cut the tyres.”
“Major Crow? But why at Bellegarde? He was supposed to be here at one o’clock.”
“You mean you haven’t
heard?
Nobody’s told you?”
“Told us what?”
“Wilbur’s dead,” said Marjorie.
Dr. Fell reached up to the brim of his shovel-hat and pulled it a little farther forward over his eyes. His big hand remained there, shading the eyeglasses.
“I am sorry,” he growled from behind it. “The concussion was fatal, then?”
“No,” said Marjorie. “Uncle Joe says someone came into the room in the middle of the night, with a hypodermic with prussic acid in it; and—and injected it into his arm; and he died in his sleep.”
There was a silence.
Dr. Fell extricated himself from behind the dispensary. He lumbered towards the door, where he stood with his head lowered; then he got out a large red bandana handkerchief and blew his nose violently.
“You must excuse me,” he said. “I have met the powers of hell before; but never where they moved with such reasoned and loving care. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know; nobody knows.” Marjorie was evidently holding tight to her nerves. “We didn’t get to bed until very late, and we weren’t up until nearly eleven this morning. Uncle—Uncle Joe said it wouldn’t be necessary for anybody to sit up with Wilbur. This morning Pamela went into his room and just—just found him.”
She lifted her hands slightly from the sides of her skirt, and dropped them.
“I see. Mr. Stevenson!”
“Doctor?”
“Is your telephone out of order?”
“Not that I know of,” replied the other, worried. “I’ve certainly been here all morning, and I don’t understand it.”
“Good.” Dr. Fell turned to Elliot. “Now I will offer a suggestion. You must ring up Bellegarde. You must tell Major Crow that, far from your going to Bellegarde, he must come here at once——”
“Hold on! I can’t do that, sir,” protested Elliot “Major Crow is the Chief Constable, you know. Bostwick——”
“I
can do it,” said Dr. Fell mildly. “I happen to know Crow very well, since that case of the Eight of Swords. In fact, to tell you the strict and guilty truth,” here his red face became more conspicuous, “Crow asked me to look into the Mrs. Terry affair when the first of these damnable things happened. I declined. I declined because the only explanation I could think of at the time sounded so wild and wool-gathering that I didn’t even put it forward. But now, by thunder, I begin to see it wasn’t wild at all. It was the obvious: the plain, dull, dead obvious. That, I fear, is why I was so immediately and infernally ready with explanations for you this morning.”
He shook his fist savagely.
“And because I emulated the modest violet—
herrr!
—two more persons have died. I want you here. I want Crow here. I want to see that film, now, more than anything else I can think of. I want to point out to you, in cold black and white on a screen, just what I think happened. Therefore I am going to telephone and issue orders like a buccaneer. But while I am telephoning”—here he ceased to thunder; he looked very steadily at Elliot—“I suggest you ask Miss Wills what happened at another chemist’s shop.”
Marjorie stiffened. Elliot appeared not to notice; he spoke to Stevenson.
“You live above the shop here? Have you got a room you could turn over to me for a few minutes?”
“Yes, of course. It’s the room where I’m going to show you the film.”
“Thanks. Lead the way, will you? Miss Wills, will you go on ahead?”
She did not comment. Stevenson led them upstairs to a comfortable, old-fashioned sitting-room overlooking the street. Double-doors (again) communicated with what was presumably a bedroom) they were open, but a sheet had been fastened in the space with drawing-pins to form a motion-picture screen. The heavy curtains were half drawn, and there was a bright fire in the grate. A large ciné-projector, its round film-spools in place, stood on the table.
Still without comment, Marjorie went over to a sofa and sat down. Elliot was now suffering from a severe reaction; his conscience was at work again.
Marjorie looked round the firelit room, as though to make sure they were alone. Then she nodded and said coolly:
“I told you we had met before.”
“Yes,” agreed Elliot. He sat down by the table and took out his notebook, which he flattened out with great deliberation. “To be exact, last Thursday, Mason & Son, Chemists, 16 Crown Road, where you tried to buy cyanide of potassium.”
“And yet you never told anybody.”
“What makes you think I didn’t, Miss Wills? Why do you suppose I was sent down to this part of the country?”
This was a stinger. He did it deliberately, throwing more meat to his conscience. He wondered how much he had betrayed himself downstairs; how much she had noticed; whether she would try to make use of it, as she seemed to be doing by that abrupt, inspired guess; and he was not standing any of that.
If he hoped for an effect, he got one. The colour drained out of her face. Her eyes, which had been fixed widely and steadily on him, now blinked; she could not make him out; and afterwards would come anger.
“Oh. So you
did
come down to arrest me?”
“That depends.”
“Is it a crime to try to buy cyanide even when you don’t get it?”
Elliot picked up his notebook and let it fall flat on the table.
“Honestly, Miss Wills, and between ourselves, what’s the good of talking like that? What sort of interpretation could anybody put on it?”
She was extraordinarily acute. Elliot admired her intelligence even when he cursed it. She was still watching, waiting, wondering what to make of him; and her ear had instantly caught that faint shade of come-on-hang-it-why-don’t-you-help-me which he could not help putting into the last exasperated question. The rapid rise and fall of her breast grew slower.
“If I tell you the truth, Inspector—if I tell you really and truly why I wanted that poison—will you believe me?”
“If you tell me the truth, yes.”
“No, but that isn’t the point. That isn’t the real thing. If I tell you the real honest truth, will you promise,
promise
not to tell anyone else?”
(That, he thought, was genuine.)
“Sorry, miss. I’m afraid I can’t make any promises like that. If it concerns this investigation——”
“But it doesn’t.”
“All right: what did you want with the cyanide?”
“I wanted it to kill myself with,” said Marjorie calmly.
There was a slight pause, while the fire crackled.
“But why should you want to kill yourself?”
She drew a deep breath. “If you must know, because I was so utterly and horribly sick at the idea of being home again. Now I’ve told you. I’ve told somebody.” She looked at him curiously, as though she wondered why she had told him.
Unconsciously Elliot had slipped from the attitude of a detective asking official questions into an attitude somewhat different; but neither of them noticed it.
“Yes, but look here! Was there any reason why you should want to kill yourself?”
“Try being exposed to what I was exposed to—here. Poisoning people; poisoning them like that; expecting to be arrested every minute of the day, and only getting out of it because there wasn’t enough evidence. Then try going away on a gorgeous Mediterranean cruise, the sort of thing you’ve never had in your life in spite of the fact that your uncle is a millionaire. Then try coming back again—to what you left. Try it. Try it! And see what you feel.”
She clenched her hands.
“Oh, I’ve got over it now. But all I felt, the minute I stepped off that ship, was that I simply could not go through with it. I didn’t stop to think. If I had, I could have got some plausible story together, so that I didn’t stammer and stumble and go panicky when the chemist started to ask me questions. I thought of that afterwards. But all I thought of at the time was that I’d heard potassium cyanide was so quick and it was painless; all you had to do was taste it and you were dead. And I thought that in the East End of London they’d never know or remember me. I think it was coming back up the river on the ship that did it—seeing the houses, and everything.”
Elliot put down his pencil. He asked:
“But what about your
fiancé?”
“My
fiancé?”
“Do you mean to tell me you wanted to buy poison to kill yourself with when you were coming home to be married?”
She made a despairing gesture. “I told you it was a mood! I told you. Besides, that was another thing. Everything had been so wonderful before all this happened, and I hoped things were turning out right for me. When I met George in London——”
Elliot said:
“When you met him in
London?”
“Oh, damn,” whispered Marjorie, and put her hand over her-mouth. She remained staring at him; then an expression of weariness and cynicism came into her face. “Never mind. Why shouldn’t you know? It’s doing me a lot of good—a lot of good—to get this off my chest.
“I’ve known George for ages and ages and ages. I met him at a party in London, one of the rare occasions when Uncle Marcus let me go to town alone, and I fell for him terribly. I used to sneak up to town to meet him. Oh, we didn’t do anything about it. I suppose I didn’t have the nerve: that’s me.”
She stared at the floor.
“But we decided it wasn’t wise to introduce George to Uncle Marcus just yet. In the first place, Uncle Marcus never—never—encouraged—people, that is, people to come and see me. I’m a really good housekeeper, and it was much more convenient and everything to keep me—you know what I mean.” She flushed. “In the second place, George knew all about Uncle Marcus’s reputation. There would be a dreadful row if Uncle Marcus knew what had been going on behind his back. You can see that?”
“Yes. I can see it.”
“It would be better if we seemed to meet casually. Preferably abroad; and, besides, George said he needed a holiday anyway. Of course George hasn’t got much money, especially for a trip like that. But I had a couple of hundred in insurance, that my mother left me, and I got rid of that and so George was able to take the trip.”
(Swine, said Andrew Elliot to himself. Damned swine. Clever swine.)
She opened her eyes.
“He isn’t,” cried Marjorie. “I mean, he’s clever, but he isn’t the other thing. He’s the most brilliant man I ever met, and sure of himself: that’s what I loved: sure of——”