He Who Whispers (28 page)

‘Mademoiselle,' said Professor Rigaud, with an air of powerful gloom like Napoleon at St Helena, ‘he got it from ME. And I have received it from an incident in the life of Count Cagliostro.'

‘Of course!' breathed Barbara.

‘Madernoiselle,' said Professor Rigaud in a fever, beginning to hammer the flat of his hand on the table, ‘will you oblige me by not saying “of course” on the wrong occasions? Explain, if you please' – the rapping grew to a frenzy – ‘how you mean “of course” or how you could possibly mean “of course”!'

‘I'm sorry.' Barbara looked round helplessly. ‘I only meant you told us yourself you kept lecturing to Harry Brooke about crime and the occult …'

‘But what's occult about this?' asked Miles. ‘Before you arrived this afternoon, Dr Fell, our friend Rigaud talked a lot of gibberish about that business. He said that what frightened Marion was something she had heard and felt, but not seen. But that's impossible on the fate of it.'

‘Why impossible?' asked Dr Fell.

‘Well! Because she must have seen something! After all, she did fire a shot at it …'

‘Oh, no, she didn't!' said Dr Fell sharply.

Miles and Barbara stared at each other.

‘But a shot,' insisted Miles, ‘
was
fired in that room when we heard it?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘Then at whom was it fired? At Marion?'

‘Oh, no,' answered Dr Fell.

Barbara put a soothing hand gently on Miles's arm.

‘Maybe it would be better,' she suggested, ‘if we let Dr Fell tell it in his own way.'

‘Yes,' Dr Fell sounded fussed. He looked at Miles. ‘I think – harrumph – I am perhaps puzzling you a little,' he said in a tone of genuine distress.

‘Odd as it may sound, you are.'

‘Yes. But there was no intention to puzzle. You see, I should have realized all along your sister could never have fired that shot. She was
relaxed
. Her whole body, as in all cases of shock, was completely limp and nerveless. And yet, when we first saw her, her fingers were clutched round the handle of the revolver.

‘Now that's impossible. If she
had
fired a shot before collapsing, the mere weight of the revolver would have dragged it out of her hand. Sir, it meant that her fingers were carefully
placed
round the revolver afterwards, in a very fine bit of misdirection, to throw us all off the track.

‘But I never saw this until this afternoon when, in my scatterbrained way, I was musing over the life of Cagliostro. I found myself touching lightly on various incidents in his career. I remembered his initiation into the lodge of a secret society at the King's Head Tavern in Gerrard Street.

‘Frankly, I am very fond of secret societies myself. But I must point out that initiations in the eighteenth century were not exactly tea-parties at Cheltenham to-day. They were always unnerving. They were sometimes dangerous. When the Grand Goblin issued an order of life-or-death, the neophyte could never be sure he didn't mean business.

‘So let us see!

‘Cagliostro – blindfolded and on his knees – had already had something of an unnerving time. Finally they told him he must prove his fidelity to the order, even if it meant his death. They put a pistol into his hand, and said it was loaded. They told him to put the pistol to his own head, and pull the trigger.

‘Now the candidate believed, as anyone would, that this was only a hoax. He
believed
the hammer would fall on an empty gun. But in that one second, stretching out to eternity, when he pulled the trigger …

‘Cagliostro pulled the trigger. And instead of a click there was a thunderous report, the flash of the pistol, the stunning shock of the bullet.

‘What had happened, of course, was that the pistol in his hand
was
empty after all. But, at the very instant he pulled the trigger, someone else holding another pistol beside his ear – pointing away from him – had fired a real shot and rapped him sharply over the head. He never forgot that single instant when he felt, or thought he felt, the crash of the bullet into his own head.

‘How would that do as an idea for murder? The murder of a woman with a weak heart?

‘You creep up in the middle of the night. You gag your victim, before she can cry out, with some soft material that will leave no traces afterwards. You hold to her temple the cold muzzle of a pistol, an empty pistol. And for minutes, dragging terrible minutes in the small hours of the night, you whisper to her.

‘You are going to kill her, you explain. Your whispering voice goes on, telling her all about it. She does not see a second pistol loaded with real bullets.

‘At the proper time (so runs your own plan) you will fire a bullet close to her head, but not so close that the expansion of gases will leave powder-marks on her. You will then put the revolver into her own hand. After her death it will be believed that
she
fired at some imaginary burglar or intruder or ghost, and that no other person was there at all.

‘So you keep on whispering, multiplying terrors in the dark. The time, you explain, is at hand now. Very slowly you squeeze the trigger of the empty gun, to draw back the hammer. She hears the oily noise of the hammer moving back . . slowly, very slowly … the hammer creaking farther … the hammer at its peak before it strikes, and then …'

Whack
!

Dr Fell brought his hand down sharply on the table. It was only that, the noise of a hand striking wood; and yet all three of his listeners jumped as though they had seen the flash and heard the shot.

Barbara, her face white, got up and backed away from the table. The candle-flames, too, were still shaking and jumping.

‘Look here!' said Miles. ‘Damn it all!'

‘I – harrumph – beg your pardon,' said Dr Fell, making guilty gestures and fixing his eyeglasses more firmly on his nose. ‘It was not really meant to upset anyone. But it was necessary to make you understand the
diablerie
of the trick.

‘On a woman with a weak heart it was not at all problematical; it was certain. Forgive me, my dear Hammond; but you saw what happened in the case of a sound woman like your sister.

‘None of us (let us face it) has too-steady nerves nowadays, especially where bumps or bangs are concerned. You said your sister didn't like the blitzes or the V-weapons. That was the only sort of thing that might have frightened her, as it did.

‘And, by thunder, sir! – if you are worrying about your sister, if you are feeling sorry for things, if you are wondering how she will take it when she hears of all this, just ask yourself what she would have been let in for if she
had
married “Stephen Curtis”.'

‘Yes,' said Miles. He put his elbows on the table and his temples in his hands. ‘Yes, I see. Go on.'

‘Harrumph, ha!' said Dr Fell.

‘Once having tumbled to the trick early this afternoon,' he continued, ‘the whole design unrolled itself at once. Why should anyone have attacked Marion Hammond like that?

‘I remembered the interesting reaction of “Mr Curtis” to the announcement that it was
Marion
who had been frightened. I remembered your own remarks about bedrooms. I remembered a woman's figure in nightgown and wrap, walking back and forth in front of uncurtained windows. I remembered a perfume bottle. And the answer was that nobody had tried to frighten Marion Hammond. The intended victim was Fay Seton.

‘But in that case …

‘First of all, you may remember, I went up to your sister's bedroom. I wanted to see if the assailant might have left any traces.

‘There would have been no violence, of course. The murderer wouldn't even have needed to tie his victim. After the first few minutes he wouldn't have needed to hold her at all; he could use his two hands for his revolvers – one empty, one loaded – because the pistol-muzzle at the temple would have been enough.

“But it was just possible that the gag (which he
had
to have) might have left some traces on her teeth or on her neck. There were none, nor were there traces of anything left on the floor round the bed.

‘In the bedroom, a study in frightened woe again presented itself in the person of “Mr Stephen Curtis”. Why should “Stephen Curtis” be interested in trying to kill a total stranger like Fay Seton, with a trick taken from the life of Cagliostro?

‘Cagliostro suggested Professor Rigaud. Professor Rigaud suggested Harry Brooke, whom he had tutored in matters of …

‘O Lord! O Bacchus!

‘It wasn't possible “Stephen Curtis” might
be
Harry Brooke?

‘No, fantastic! Harry Brooke was dead. A truce to this nonsense!

‘At the same time, while I vainly looked round the carpet for traces left by the murderer, some whisk of scatterbrained intelligence kept on working. It suddenly occurred to me that I was overlooking evidence which had been under my nose since last night.

‘A shot was fired in here, the would-be murderer using for business gun the .32 Ives-Grant he must have known Marion Hammond kept in the bedside table (“Curtis” again), and for empty gun any old weapon he brought along. Very well!

‘At some time following the shot, Miss Fay Seton slipped up to this bedroom and peeped in. She saw something which upset her badly. She wasn't frightened, mind you. No! It was caused by …'

Miles Hammond intervened.

‘Shall I tell you, Dr Fell?' he suggested. ‘I talked to Fay in the kitchen, where I was boiling water. She'd just come from the bedroom. Her expression was hatred: hatred, mixed with a kind of wild anguish. At the end of the conversation she burst out with, “This can't go on!”'

Dr Fell nodded.

‘And she also told you, as I am now aware,' Dr Fell inquired, ‘that she'd just seen something she hadn't noticed before?'

‘Yes. That's right.'

‘What, then, could she have noticed in Marion Hammond's bedroom? That was what I asked myself in that same bedroom: in the presence of yourself, and Dr Garvice, and the nurse, and “Stephen Curtis”.

‘After all, Fay Seton bad been in that room for quite a long while on Saturday night, talking to Miss Hammond, evidently without seeing anything strange on her first visit to the room.

‘Then I remembered that eerie conversation I had with her later the same night – out at the end of the passage, in the moonlight – when her whole attitude burned with a repressed emotion that made her smile, once or twice, like a vampire. I remembered the queer reply she made to one of my questions, when I was asking her about her visit during which she talked to Marion Hammond.

‘ “Mostly,” said Fay Seton in referring to Marion, “she did the talking, about her fiancé and her brother and her plans for the future.” Then Fay, for no apparent reason, added these inconsequential words:
“The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you
?”

‘Lamp? ‘That reference jarred me at the time. And now …

‘After Marion Hammond was found ostensibly dead, there were two lamps taken into the room. One was carried by you' – he looked at Professor Rigaud – ‘and the other' – he looked at Miles – ‘was carried by you. Think, now, both of you! Where did you set those lamps down?'

‘I do not follow this!' cried Rigaud. ‘My lamp, of course, I placed on the bedside table beside one that is not burning.'

‘And you?' demanded Dr Fell of Miles.

‘I'd just been told,' replied Miles, staring at the past, ‘that Marion was dead. I was holding up the lamp, and my whole arm started to shake so that I couldn't hold it any longer. I went across and put the lamp down – on the chest of drawers.'

‘Ah!' murmured Dr Fell. ‘And now tell me, if you please, what was also on that chest of drawers?'

‘A big leather picture-frame, containing a big photograph of Marion on one side and a big photograph of “Steve” on the other. I remember the lamp threw a strong light on those pictures, though that side of the room had been darkish before, and –'

Miles broke off in realization. Dr Fell nodded.

‘A photograph of “Stephen Curtis”, brilliantly lighted,” said Dr Fell. ‘
That
was what Fay Seton saw, staring at her from the room as she peeped in at the doorway after the shot. It explained her whole attitude.

‘She knew. By thunder,
she knew
!

‘Probably she didn't at all guess how the Cagliostro trick had been worked. But she did know the attempt had been made on her and not on Marion Hammond, because she knew who was behind it Marion Hammond's fiancé was Harry Brooke.

‘And that finished it. That was the last straw. That really did make her white with hatred and anguish. Once more she had tried to find a new life, new surroundings; she had been decent; she had forgiven Harry Brooke and concealed the evidence against him about his father's murder; and destiny still won't leave off hounding her. Destiny, or some damnable force which has it in for her, has brought Harry Brooke back from nowhere to try to take her life …'

Dr Fell coughed.

‘I have bored you with this at some length,' he apologized, ‘though the process of thinking it took perhaps three seconds while I wool-gathered in that bedroom in the presence of Miles Hammond, and the doctor, and the nurse, and “Curtis” himself, who was standing by the chest of drawers then.

‘To determine whether I was right about the Cagliostro trick, it further occurred to me, should be very simple. There is a scientific test, called the Gonzalez test or the nitrate test, by which you can infallibly prove whether a given hand did or did not fire a given revolver.

‘If Marion Hammond hadn't pulled that trigger, I could write Q.E.D. And if Harry Brooke
did
happen to be dead as they claimed, it looked as though the crime must have been committed by an evil spirit.

‘I somewhat imprudently announced this, to the annoyance of Dr Garvice, who responded by slinging us all out of the bedroom. But there were some interesting repercussions immediately afterwards.