He Who Whispers (11 page)

Reflected in the little panes of the windows, black illuminated glass, he saw her begin to laugh before he heard a sound. He saw Fay throw back her head and shoulders, he saw the white throat working, the closed eyes and the tensely out-thrown arms, before her almost hysterical laughter choked and sobbed and rang in the quiet library, dazing him with its violence from so passive a girl.

Miles swung round. Over him, penetrating to his inner heart, flowed such a wave of sympathy and protectiveness – dangerously near love – that it unstrung his nerves. He blundered towards her, putting out his hand. He knocked over a toppling heap of books, with a crash and drift of dust which floated up against the dim light, just as Marion Hammond opened the door and came in.

‘Do you two,' inquired Marion's common-sense voice, cutting off emotion as a string is snapped, ‘do you two have any idea what time it is?'

Miles stood still, breathing rapidly. Fay Seton also stood still, as placid-faced now as she had ever been. That outburst might have been an illusion seen in glass or heard in a dream.

Yet there was a sense of strain even about the bright-eyed, brisk-looking Marion.

‘It's nearly half-past eleven,' she went on. ‘Even if Miles wants to stay up for most of the night, as he generally does, I've got to see to it that all of us don't lose our sleep.'

‘Marion, for the love of …!'

Marion cooed at him.

‘Now don't be so snappish, Miles. Can you imagine,' she appealed to Fay, ‘can you imagine how he can be almost
too
sympathetic towards everyone else in the world, and yet an absolute beast to me?'

‘I expect most brothers are like that, really.'

‘Yes. Maybe you're right.' Wearing a house-apron, trim and sturdy and black-haired, Marion wormed with dislike and distrust through the morass of books. With a firm managing gesture she picked up Fay's lamp and pressed it into her guest's hand.

‘I like my lovely present so much,' she told Fay cryptically, ‘that I'm going to give you something in return. Yes, I am! A
box
of something! It's upstairs in my room now. You run along up and see it, and I'll join you in just one moment; and afterwards I'm going to send you straight downstairs to bed. You – you know your way?'

Holding up the lamp, Fay smiled back at her.

‘Oh, yes! I think I could find my way anywhere in the house. It's awfully kind of you to … to …'

‘Not at all, my dear! Run along!'

‘Good night, Mr Hammond.'

Giving Miles a backward glance, Fay closed the door as she went out. With only one lamp left, it was a little difficult to see Marion's face as she stood over there in the gloom. Yet even an outsider would have realized that a state of emotion, a dangerous state of emotion, was already gathering in this house. Marion spoke gently.

‘Miles, old boy!'

‘Yes?'

‘It was frightfully overdone, you know.'

‘What was?'

‘
You
know what I mean.'

‘On the contrary, my dear Marion, I haven't the remotest idea what you're talking about,' said Miles. He roared this out in what he recognized to be a pompous and stuffed-shirt manner; he knew this, he knew that Marion knew it, and it was beginning to make him angry. ‘Unless it by any chance means you've been listening at the door?'

‘Miles, don't be so
childish
!'

‘Would you mind explaining that rather offensive remark?' He strode towards her, sending books flying. ‘What it actually means, I suppose, is that you don't like Fay Seton?'

‘That's where you're wrong. I
do
like her! Only …'

‘Go on, please.'

Marion looked rather helpless, lifting her hands and then dropping them against the house-apron.

‘You get angry with me, Miles, because I'm practical and you're not. I can't
help
being practical. That's how I'm made.'

‘I don't criticize you. Why should you criticize me?'

‘It's for your own good, Miles! Steve – and heaven knows, Miles, I love Steve a very great deal –!'

‘Steve ought to be practical enough for you.'

‘Under that moustache and that slowness, Miles, he's nervy and romantic and a bit like you. Maybe all men are; I don't know. But Steve rather likes being bossed, whereas you won't be bossed in any circumstances …'

‘No, by God, I won't!'

‘… or even take a word of advice, which you must admit is silly of you. Anyway, let's not quarrel. I'm sorry I brought the subject up.'

‘Listen, Marion.' He had himself under control. He spoke slowly, and thoroughly believed every word he was saying. ‘I've got no deep personal interest in Fay Seton, if that's what you think. I'm academically interested in a murder case. A man was killed on top of a tower where nobody,
NOBODY
, could possibly have come near him –'

‘All right, Miles. Don't forget to lock up before you go to bed, dear. Good night.'

There was a strained silence between them as Marion moved towards the door. It irked Miles; it chafed his conscience.

‘Marion!'

‘Yes, my dear?'

‘No offence, old girl?'

Her eye twinkled. ‘Of course not, stupid! And I
do
like your Fay Seton, in a way. Only, Miles: as for your floating murderers and things that can walk on air – I only wish I could meet one of them, that's all!'

‘As a matter of scientific interest, Marion, what would you do if that did happen?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Shoot at it with a revolver, I suppose. Be
sure
to lock up, Miles, and don't go wandering away into the forest with all the doors wide open. Good night!'

And the door closed after her.

For a little while after she had gone, turning over unruly thoughts, Miles stood motionless. In a mechanical way he picked up and replaced the books he had knocked over.

What had these women got against Fay Seton, anyway? Last night, for instance, Barbara Morell had practically warned him against Fay – or had she? There was a good deal in Barbara's behaviour he could not fit into any pattern. He could only be sure that she was emotionally upset. Fay, on the other hand, had denied knowing Barbara Morell; though Fay had mentioned, with a sharp hinting insistence, some man of the same surname …

‘Jim Morell.' That was it.

Damn it all!

Miles Hammond swung himself up again to sit on the window-ledge. Glancing behind at the darkling shape of the New Forest pressing up to within twenty yards of the house, he saw its darkness and breathed its fragrance as a balm for fever. And so, pushing one of the swinging lights wider open, he slid through and jumped down outside.

To breathe this dew-scented dimness was like a weight off the lungs. He climbed up the little grass slope of the terrace to the open space between here and the line of the forest. A few feet below him now lay the long narrow side of the house; he could see into the library, into the dark dining-room, into the sitting-room with its low-glimmering lamp, then the dark reception hall. Most of the other rooms at Greywood were bedrooms, chiefly unused and in a bad state of repair.

He glanced upwards and to his left. Marion's bedroom was at the rear of the house, over the library. The bedroom windows on the side facing him – eastwards – were covered with curtains. But its rear windows, looking south towards another loom of the encircling woods, threw out dim yellow light the edge of whose reflexion he could see as it touched the trees. Though Miles was out of sight of these rear windows, that yellow light lay plain enough at the corner of his eye. And, as he watched, a woman's shadow slowly passed across it.

Marion herself? Or Fay Seton talking to her before she retired?

It was all
right
!

Muttering to himself, Miles swung round and walked northwards towards the front of the house. It was a bit chilly; he might at least have brought a raincoat. But the singing silence, the hint of moonrise beginning to make a white dawn behind the trees, at once soothed and exalted him.

He walked down to the open space in front of Greywood. Just before him lay the stream spanned by the rustic bridge. Miles went out on the bridge, leaned against its railing, and stood listening to the little whispering noises of the water at night. He might have stood there for twenty minutes, lost in thoughts where a certain face kept obtruding, when the jarring bump of a motor-car roused him.

The car, approaching unseen through the trees in the direction of the main road, jolted to a stop on gravel. Two men got out of it, one of them carrying an electric torch. As they toiled up on foot towards the rustic bridge, Miles could see in outline that one of them was short and stoutish, bouncing along with quick little inward-turning steps. The other was immensely tall and immensely fat, his long dark cape making him appear even more vast; he strode along with a rolling motion like an emperor, and the sound of his throat-clearing preceded him like a war-cry.

The smaller man, Miles saw, was Professor Georges Antoine Rigaud. And the immense man was Miles's friend, Dr Gideon Fell.

He called out their names in astonishment, and both of them stopped.

Dr Fell, absent-mindedly turning the light of the torch on his own fare as he whirled it round to seek the source of the voice, stood briefly revealed as being even more ruddy of face and vacant of eye than Miles remembered him. His several chins were drawn in as though for argument. His, eye-glasses on the broad black ribbon were stuck wildly askew on his nose. His big mop of grey-streaked hair seemed to quiver with argument like the bandit's moustache. So he stood peering round, huge and hatless, in every direction except the right one.

‘I'm here, Dr Fell! On the bridge! Walk forward.'

‘Oh, ah!' breathed Dr Fell.

He came rolling forward majestically, swinging a cane, and towered over Miles as his footsteps thundered and shook on the planks of the bridge.

‘Sir,' intoned Dr Fell, adjusting his eyeglasses as he peered down like a very large djinn taking form, ‘good evening. You may safely trust two men of – harrumph – mature years and academic pursuits to do something utterly harebrained. I refer, of course …'

Again the planks of the bridge quivered.

Rigaud, like a barking little terrier, achieved the feat of worming past Dr Fell's bulk. He stood gripping the railing of the bridge, staring at Miles with that same inextinguishable curiosity in his face.

‘Professor Rigaud,' said Miles, ‘I owe you an apology. I meant to ring you up this morning; I honestly meant it. But I didn't know where you were staying in London, and …'

The other breathed quickly.

‘Young man,' he replied, ‘you owe me no apology. No, no, no! It is I who owe you one.'

‘What's that?'

‘
Justement
!' said Professor Rigaud, nodding very rapidly. ‘Last night I had my merry joke. I teased and tantalized the minds of you and Mees Morell until the very last. Is it not so?'

‘Yes, I suppose it is. But –'

‘Even when you mentioned casually that you sought after a librarian, young man, it struck me as no more than an amusing coincidence. I never guessed, not I, that this woman was within five hundred miles of here! I never knew – never! – that the lady was in England!'

‘You mean Fay Seton?'

‘I do.'

Miles moistened his lips.

‘But this morning,' pursued Professor Rigaud, ‘comes Mees Morell, who
does
ring up on the telephone with confused and incoherent explanations about last night. Mees Morell further tells me that she too knows Fay Seton is in England, knows her address, and believes the lady may be sent to you for employment. A call to the Berkeley Hotel, tactfully made, confirms this.' He nodded over his shoulder. ‘You see that motor-car?'

‘What about it?'

‘I have borrowed it from a friend of mine, a Whitehall official, who has the petrol. I have broken the law to come and tell you. You must find some polite excuse to get this lady away from your house at once.'

White glimmered Professor Rigaud's face under the rising moon, his patch of moustache no longer comical and a desperate seriousness in his manner. Under his left arm he gripped the thick yellow sword-stick with which Howard Brooke had been stabbed. Long afterwards Miles Hammond remembered the tinkling stream, the loom of Dr Fell's huge outline, the stout little Frenchman with his right hand holding tightly to the railing of the bridge. Now Miles took a step backwards.

‘
Not you too
!'

Professor Rigaud's eyebrows went up.

‘I do not understand.'

‘Candidly, Professor Rigaud, every single person has been warning me against Fay Seton. And I'm getting damned sick and tired of it!'

‘It
is
true, of course? You did engage the lady?'

‘Yes! Why not?'

Professor Rigaud's quick eyes moved over Miles's shoulder towards the house in the background.

‘Who else is here to-night besides yourself?'

‘Only my sister Marion.'

‘No servants? No other person?'

‘Not for to-night, no. But what difference does that make? What
is
all this? Why shouldn't I ask Miss Seton to come here and stay as long as she likes?'

‘Because you will die,' answered the other simply. ‘You and your sister will both die.'

E
VEN
more white, very white, glimmered Rigaud's face under the rising moon, whose light now touched the water beneath them.

‘Will you come with me, please?' Miles said curtly.

And he turned round and led the way back towards the house.

Towards the western side of Greywood lay the broad flat stretch of lawn, as close-clipped as a bowling green, where you could dimly make out the wicker chairs, the little table, and the bright-canopied garden swing. Miles glanced towards that side of the house as he walked. No lights showed there, though Fay Seton had been given a bedroom on the ground floor. Fay must have turned in.