Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22

by John Dickson Carr

  "Well!" Camilla said.

  Except for themselves, the dusky restaurant was deserted. With a lithe motion Camilla rose to her feet. She took half a dozen steps towards another table, then swung round and stood looking at them with eyes strained and lips half parted.

  "We may be out of the woods; I hope so. Nothing unpleasant has happened since last Friday. Unless it happens tonight or tomorrow night, on Sunday we shall be off home with no more to worry about. But I do wish I could have made my story more convincing! I'm not silly and I'm not hysterical—not, at least, about things like that. Doesn't anybody believe me?"

  "I believe you, Camilla," said Alan.

  "Oh, dear God! If you start again, Alan Grantham-—!"

  Alan got up and went over to look down at her.

  "Women, Camilla," he said, "don't seem to be half as perceptive as they have a reputation for being. Should it occur to you that I am sneering or being facetious or speaking anything except the literal, painful truth, you can't see what's there to see and has been there for some time. I believe you because you're you; it couldn't be any other way. Whatever you say, I am solidly on your side."

  Briefly she looked him full in the eyes.

  "And if I could believe that—I"

  "Camilla . . ."

  "I also," boomed another voice, "may be enlisted solidly on Miss Brace's side."

  All of them jumped; Alan retreated.

  Dr. Gideon Fell, who had almost walked straight into the doorpost on entering the coffee-shop, altered his direction in time. Hat in one hand and stick in the other, he loomed majestically with eyeglasses again lopsided and big mop of hair over one ear.

  "The word 'solid,'" pursued Dr. Fell, surveying the slopes of himself, "is perhaps superfluous. And I stray from the point. Teenage girls in America, we are told, will freeze to the telephone for hours at a time. They can go on at no greater length, I fear, than Henry Maynard of Maynard Hall, even when he ends by communicating very little. Might I trouble you, Alan, to drive this old carcass to James Island? He would like to see us as soon as may be convenient. And if he failed to credit Miss Brace's story of a week ago, he may now be persuaded to change his mind."

  "Change his mind? Why?"

  "It would seem," said Dr. Fell, "that something else has happened."

  4

  "This way, please," requested Henry Maynard.

  The time, Alan afterwards remembered, was almost half-past three. And the weather seemed to be changing a little.

  Captain Ashcroft had not accompanied them; he had other business, he explained, which wouldn't wait. With Camilla beside him, with Dr. Fell again in the back, Alan drove by way of Calhoun Street and the Ashley River Bridge. James Island, though largely residential, bustled with traffic at the beginning of Folly Road. Once you had made a left-hand turn off the main thoroughfare, and driven for five minutes through the countryside, its whole aspect changed.

  How long had it been since anybody grew cotton here? At either side of them, great trees bearded with Spanish moss reared a canopy through which stipplings of sunlight danced on the road. They might have been miles from any human habitation, shut away as though by walls.

  "I say, my dear fellow!" wheezed Dr. Fell. "Have you visited Maynard Hall before?"

  "I've driven past the grounds, that's all. I've never been inside them."

  "How much farther now?"

  It was Camilla who answered.

  "Fifteen minutes or so," she said, craning round. "There's another left turn at a little crossroads store; then straight on along Fort Johnson Road. We pass real-estate developments with some good-looking new houses, most of them not finished yet. We pass a high school. Just before the road ends in the fence around the research station, Maynard Hall is down on the left and sideways to the beach. Dr. Fell!"

  "Oh, ah?"

  "Since questions seem in order again, what did Mr. Maynard tell you? What's happened there since this morning?"

  "My dear young lady, you are acquainted with your host"

  "Am I? Sometimes I wonder!"

  "Let me repeat," said Dr. Fell, "that he communicated very little. The man has positive genius at evasion; for politics he would be what you call a natural. But he must speak out soon, by thunder! When the Sphinx propounds a riddle, we have a right to demand just what the devil the riddle is. If he had not been so urgent, I should have preferred to spend the afternoon exploring Charleston or visiting Fort Sumter. However!"

  "Did he seem—upset?"

  "Such was my impression, at least."

  They all fell silent. Glimpses of greenery flashed past and fell away. So did several real-estate developments, elaborate but skeletal amid gravel To the right of the road, set well back, a two-storey building of orange-yellow brick had carved across its facade the letters Joel Poinsett High School and the date 1920.

  Alan wondered about this, but had no time to indulge the speculations in his mind. Less than a quarter mile beyond the school loomed a wire fence with signboards forbidding you to enter. To the left of the road . . .

  Down a dirt lane that curved between live-oaks, trailing creepers of the gray moss that would strangle them, Alan drove through iron-grilled gates set open in a brick wall. Beyond this, beyond magnolia-tree sentinels inside the wall, a very broad sanded path ran fifty yards straight ahead to Maynard Hall.

  The car had been idling; Alan stopped it when they were still some distance away, and indicated the four tall columns of the portico.

  White shutters were folded back from windows on the ground floor, against dark-red brick and thick wisteria; black shutters were folded back from smaller windows of the floor above; the little mansard-roof top floor displayed no shutters at all. The whole front rose up darkish against a westering sun, and at that moment the sun slid behind cloud.

  "Feels a little clammy, doesn't it?" Camilla asked of nobody in particular. "Did I—did I mention atmospheres?"

  "Oh, atmospheres!" growled Dr. Fell, who had been muttering to himself. "The atmosphere, which does very much exist, seems mainly a pressure of piled-up emotions; I keep wondering what emotions. Harrumph! Over on our right, now . . ."

  On their right, beyond a lawn clipped to putting-green smoothness, the terrace overlooking the beach stretched for some thirty-six feet between a row of half a dozen poplar trees and the side of Maynard Hall's north wing. Below it the beach sloped steeply out to the froth of the receding tide. Separated from the slope of the beach only by a miniature chain fence with dwarf posts less than six inches high, the terrace was half as broad as it was long, In the middle stood an iron chair and a little iron table, both painted green. It was this terrace which had caught Dr. Fell's fancy.

  "Archons of Athens!" He pointed with his stick. "It's not paved; at least, not with flagstones or the like. The surface of that terrace has every appearance of sand. It is white, pure white, unlike the gray beach we see out there. And yet it must be sand, surely?"

  "Not sand," Alan corrected. "It's bleached and crushed oyster-shell."

  Dr. Fell gaped at him. "Bleached and . . . what’s that?"

  "In the earliest records of Charles Town," said Alan, "you'll find the tip of the peninsula referred to as 'White Point' or 'Oyster Point' from quantities of bleached oyster-shells that had accumulated there. The name has been preserved in White Point Garden to this day. According to the guide-books, some Maynard at the end of the eighteenth century had a notion to use an oyster-shell surface for his terrace. He put down a thick layer of the stuff, manufactured for him; it's been added occasionally since then . . ."

  "And the gardener smooths it down every day," interjected Camilla. "If these old things have any interest for you, Dr. Fell . . . ?"

  "Madam, they interest me."

  "Then I can add one or two. Look at the north wing of the Hall. Almost at the end of the wing!" Rather excitedly Camilla pointed ahead. "You see the flagstaff? Planted in the ground a little way out from the house, on the side towards us?"

  "Ye
s?"

  "From that flagstaff—no, not from that flagstaff; from one like it; don't confuse me, Alan!—they had to haul down the Confederate banner when Union forces entered Charleston in February of 1865. Past the flagstaff and the end of the wing, there," she swept out her arm, "a flight of wooden steps led down to the beach. And from the beach, a century ago, there was a jetty built well out into the water. That's where they carried the cotton for shipment across to the big docks at Charleston."

  "I see no jetty now."

  "No, Dr. Fell; it's been gone for many years, Madge says. There are still steps down to the beach, though of course I can't say whether they're the original ones. And there's somebody on the beach now!" She looked at Alan. "If any persons are down there, you can't see them from this position unless they walk out toward the surf. But a moment ago I was sure I heard voices: Madge's and Yancey's and Rip's."

  Alan touched her shoulder. "Do they use the beach for swimming, Camilla?"

  "On this side of the island? No! The water's filthy, Madge says. It's going to rain shortly, you know. But I'd better go down and join the others; Madge will need support, or at least a referee between those two. May I get out here?"

  "Sit still for a moment," said Alan, putting the car into gear. "I'll drop you off at the porch, and you can go down the famous steps. Steady, now!"

  The car rolled forward to the house, where the sanded drive divided in two before the front steps. Camilla slipped away and almost ran. Dr. Fell and Alan descended on the other side, Dr. Fell with considerable effort. He then reared up majestically, waving his crutch-headed stick.

  "For the life of me," he said, "I can't see the place as an ogre's den. but its impressiveness I grant you. Whatever awaits us, have at it!"

  A dignified elderly Negro in a house-coat admitted them to a lofty and spacious hall, all polished white-painted wood, with a graceful black-and-white staircase curving up at the rear. Large doors opened off the hall left and right. The door on the right led to the dining-room; Alan glimpsed a vista of mahogany and silver against pale-green walls. Over a fireplace in the same wall as the right-hand door hung a three-quarter-length painting of a man in the full-bottomed periwig of the later seventeenth century.

  Then Henry Maynard himself emerged from the door on the left.

  Alan had not forgotten that spare figure, the thin face and high-bridged nose dominated by chilly-looking blue eyes under silver hair. If Henry Maynard had strained nerves, he did not betray it.

  "Thank you, George; that will be all," he said to the majordomo, and rather stiffly shook hands with his visitors. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. It was very kind of you to come."

  Dr. Fell and Alan made appropriate noises.

  "Considering the circumstances," their host continued, "I won't bore you with a guided tour of the house. However! Here behind me . . ."

  He set the door partway open. Briefly Alan saw, down four steps, one room Camilla had described. Confederate-gray walls set off ceiling-height bookcases with wire doors and rosewood furniture upholstered in yellow. Henry Maynard closed the door again.

  ". . . behind me is the library, which has been much photographed, and it would be churlish if I avoided the subject of the Hall."

  Here his eye caught Dr. Fell gaping like an idiot between the portrait over the fireplace and chandelier like a glass castle.

  "Dismiss from your minds, gentlemen, any notion that the original settlers in this part of the country had greatly to rough it even at the beginning. (Yes, that is the first Richard in the portrait; we believe Kneller painted it.) They brought luxuries from England; here on the spot they could buy and train slaves. Barring Indians, pirates, and Spanish enemies to the south, barring plague or fire or crop-failure, they led a comparatively easy life. By the time this house was completed by the first Richard's great-grandsons in 1787, Maynard Hall bore much the same outward aspect it bears today.

  "That is enough, I think. If you see anything that interests you or stirs your curiosity, don't hesitate to ask questions. Otherwise, since we have at least one matter to discuss, I will ask you to accompany me to my lair on the top floor. This way, please."

  In single file, Alan following their host and Dr. Fell bringing up the rear, they mounted the staircase to a floor with ceilings almost as high as those below. At the top of a second stairway—narrow, enclosed within walls—Dr. Fell was puffing heavily. Outside the windows the sky had grown dark, and tingled with distant noise.

  "Thunder," remarked Henry Maynard. "What my daughter calls ghost-guns. But it will be a brief shower, if it comes at all. Here we are."

  "I think, sir," panted Dr. Fell, "you said your lair?"

  "I did. The house-servants sleep on this floor at the back. I myself have a self-contained suite of rooms (why, in South Carolina, will they say suit of rooms or suit of furniture?) running all the way along the front. You see this door towards the front, in the middle of a long blank wall?"

  "Oh, ah?"

  "It is the door to my study. Beyond the wall, as you shall see, two rooms open off the central one on either side. To the right of the study, bedroom and dressing-room with bathroom attached. To the left of the study, billiard-room and lumber-room. And now, with appropriate conjuring, for the study itself. Behold!"

  He threw open the door, an unexpectedly and unnecessarily dramatic gesture. Perhaps he thought the study was empty. It was not empty.

  The study, a good-sized room of very fair ceiling-height, was panelled in dark oak. Open shelves of meticulously arranged books occupied much wall-space, where Alan saw pictures of a nautical sort. From its wall-bracket hung a ship's bell, brass surface inscribed with the faded name "C.S.S. Palmetto." There were easy chairs of padded brown leather, straight chairs, a cluttered writing-table, and an antique desk inlaid with ivory. In one of two windows, both closed, an air-conditioner buzzed softly.

  At a chess-table under the other window, where pieces had been arrayed on the board, a meditative man sat peering at the woman opposite. His dark-blue suit, white shirt, and gray tie looked formal enough for a visitor but informal enough for the visit. Though he could not have been much younger than Henry Maynard, there was no gray in his dark hair. He had a sharp profile softened by the tolerance of the eye or the good-humor of the mouth. He also had considerable intensity.

  At the other side of the chess-table, risen from her chair, stood a tall, slender woman with red hair and a coaxing manner. The flower-design dress clung to her body. Before windows dark with threatening rain she had just raised her hand to the chain of a floor-lamp. A switch clicked as the door opened; light flooded the study; both the man and the woman swung round.

  "Why, Henry!" said the woman.

  "Hello, Hank," said the man.

  "Dr. Gideon Fell; Mr. Alan Grantham," he intoned, "Mrs. Valerie Huret; a very old acquaintance of mine, Bob Crandall. And be good enough, Bob, not to call me Hank!"

  "Wounds your dignity, does it?"

  "Bear witness," said Henry Maynard, "that I have never been called a stuffed shirt. Your vulgarisms, those limericks and the collection of typographical errors, have their proper place; at the right time I welcome them. But I object to a personal vulgarism when it's totally unnecessary. You have literary pretensions of a sort, Bob. Would Henry Fielding have been called Hank? Or Henry James either?"

  Mr. Crandall sighted along an extended forefinger.

  "Henry Fielding," he retorted, "signed himself Hen. And don't call me a liar; I can show you a copy of the signature! If that's not worse than Hank in anybody's calligraphy, I'll eat Tom Jones page by page. Why, I remember, when I was a boy on the old Times-Dispatch in La Force, Indiana . . . !"

  "Spare us!" said Henry Maynard. "Spare us another anecdote of wit or wisdom, and the perfection that may be attained with life on a small-town newspaper."

  "Taking the good with the bad, Henricus, it's just about true. All right: I'll be serious. No limericks! No typographical errors! Will you hear wit and wisdom too?


  "Among our literary scenes,

  Saddest this sight to me, The graves of little magazines

  That died to make verse free."

  "Hear, hear, hear!" applauded Alan. "You agree, Mr. Grantham?"

  "Heartily, Mr. Crandall. You must recite that to Camilla Bruce. Afterwards, if she hasn't poisoned my coffee ..."

  "I was quoting a forgotten bard, who learned epigrammatic style on a small-town paper. Believe it or not, Henry, our very best light verse has come from those who began as members of the fourth estate. I'm out of the game now; I've retired, in my sere and yellow, with a bigger chunk of dough than I ever expected or deserved. But one four-line stanza, only part of a long and fine piece, sticks in my head when everything else has gone."

  Bob Crandall rose to his feet. His voice rolled out:

  "Under the broad bright windows

  Of men I serve no more, The grinding of the old great wheels

  Thickened to a throttled roar . . .

  "To anybody who's ever heard the presses begin to roll, especially just before daylight, those are words of description that strike home. And do you know 'The Chop-House in the Alley, When the Paper's Gone to Press'?"

  Valerie Huret stirred, the lamplight kindling her sleek skin and hazel eyes.

  "I don't think he wants to know it, Bob. What are we doing here, anyway?" She appealed to their host. "He asked me for chess; I told him I can't play chess . . ."

  "Neither can Bob," said Henry Maynard.

  "There are lots of things much more interesting than chess. I'll tell him about them, if he asks me nicely. But hadn't we better go downstairs, Bob? In the first place, we're trespassing. We are trespassing, aren't we, Henry?"

  "Frankly, Valerie, I'm afraid you are. Remember, Bob: as usual, one game before dinner, and I'll trim you again. Be here promptly at seven, just as it's beginning to get dark . . ."