'And still, you understand, I could not see the false face, because his back was to that bright light on the stairs, which shows up all this end of the hall and Charles's door. But he said, in French, "Madame, you cannot keep me out like that," and turned down his collar and put his cap in his pocket. I opened the door because I knew he would not dare face Charles, just as Charles opened it from inside. Then I saw the mask, which was a pinkish colour like flesh. And before I could do anything he made a horrible jump inside, and kicked the door shut, and turned the key in the lock.'
She paused, as though she had got through the worst part of the recital, and could breathe more easily now.
'And then?'
She said, dully: 'I went away, as Charles ordered me to do. I made no fuss or scene. But I did not go far. I went a little way down the stairs, where I could still see the door to this room, and I did not leave my post any more than poor Stuart did. It was - horrible. I am not a young girl, you understand. I was there when the shot was fired; I was there when Stuart ran forward and began to pound the door; I was even there when you people began to come upstairs. But I could not stand it. I knew what had happened. When I felt myself going faint, I had just time to get to my room at the foot of that flight when I was - ill. Women sometimes are.' The pale lips cracked across her oily face in a smile, shakily. 'But Stuart was right; nobody left that room. God help us both, we are telling the truth. However else that horror left the room, he did not leave by the door ... And now, please, please, will you let me go to the nursing - home to see Charles?'
CHAPTER 5
THE JIG - SAW WORDS
IT was Dr Fell who answered. He was standing with his back to the fire - place, a vast black - caped figure under the fencing - foils and shield of arms. He seemed to fit there, like a baron out of feudalism, with the book - shelves and white busts towering on either side of him. But he did not look like a very terrible Front de Boeuf. His eye - glasses were coming askew on his nose as he bit off the end of a cigar, turned, and expectorated it neatly into the fire - place.
'Ma'am,' he said, turning back with a long challenging sound in his nose, like a battle cry,' we shall not detain you very long. And it is only fair to say that I don't in the least doubt your story, any more than I doubt Mills's. Before getting down to business, I will prove that I believe you ... Ma'am, do you remember what time to - night it stopped snowing?'
She was looking at him with hard, bright, defensive eyes. She had evidently heard of Dr Fell.
'Does it matter? I think it was about half - past nine. Yes! I remember, because when I came up to collect Charles's coffee - tray I looked out of the window and I noticed that it had stopped. Does it matter?'
'Oh, very much, ma'am. Otherwise we have only half an impossible situation ... And you are quite right. H'mf. Remember, Hadley? Half - past nine is about the time it stopped. Right, Hadley?'
'Yes,' admitted the superintendent. He also looked at Dr Fell suspiciously. He had learned to distrust that blank stare over the several chins. 'Granting that it was half - past nine, what then?'
'Not only had it stopped snowing fully forty minutes before the visitor made his escape from this room,' pursued the doctor, with a meditative air, 'but it had stopped fifteen minutes before the visitor even arrived at this house. That's true, ma'am? Eh? He rang the door - bell at a quarter to ten? Good ... Now, Hadley, do you remember when we arrived at this house? Did you notice that, before you and Rampole and young Mangan went charging in, there wasn't a single footprint on the flight of steps leading up to the front door, or even the pavement leading up to the steps? You see, I did. I remained behind to make sure.'
Hadley straightened up with a kind of muffled roar. 'By God! that's right! The whole pavement was clean. It - ' He stopped and swung slowly round to Mme Dumont. 'So this, you say, is your evidence of why you believe madame's story? Fell, have you gone mad too? We hear a story of how a man rang the door - bell and walked through a locked door fifteen minutes after the snow had stopped, and yet - '
Dr Fell opened his eyes. Then a series of chuckles ran up the ridges of his waistcoat.
'I say, son, why are you so flabbergasted? Apparently he sailed out of here without leaving a footprint. Why should it upset you to learn that he also sailed in?'
'I don't know,' the other admitted stubbornly.' But, hang it, it does! In my experience with locked - room murders, getting in and getting out are two very different things. It would throw my universe off balance if I found an impossible situation that worked sensibly both ways. Never mind! You say -'
'Please listen. I say,' Mme Dumont interposed, pale but with the bunched muscles standing out at the corners of her jaws, 'that I am telling the absolute truth, so help me God!'
'And I believe you,' said Dr Fell. 'You mustn't let Hadley's stern Scotch common sense overawe you. He will believe it, too, before I'm through with him. But my point is this. I have shown you, haven't I, that I have strong faith in you - if I can credit what you have said? Very well. I only want to warn you not to upset that faith. I should not dream of doubting what you have already told me. But I fancy I shall very strongly doubt what you are going to tell me in a moment.'
Hadley half closed one eye. 'I was afraid of that. I always dread the time when you begin to trot out your damned paradoxes. Seriously, now -'
'Please go on,' the woman said stolidly.
'Humph. Yarrumph. Thanks. Now, ma'am, how long have you been Grimaud's housekeeper? No, I'll change that. How long have you been with him?'
'For over twenty - five years,' she answered. 'I was more than his housekeeper - once.'
She had been looking at her interlocked fingers, which she moved in and out; but now she lifted her head. Her eyes had a fierce, steady glaze, as though she wondered how much she dared tell. It was the expression of one peering round a corner at an enemy, ready for instant flight.
'I tell you that,' she went on quietly, 'in the hope that you will give me your word to keep silent. You will find it in your alien records at Bow Street, and you may make unnecessary trouble that has nothing to do with this matter. It is not for myself, you understand. Rosette Grimaud is my daughter. She was born here, and there had to be a record. But she does not know it - nobody knows it. Please, please, can I trust you to keep silent?'
The glaze over her eyes was changing to a different one. She had not raised her voice, but there was a terrible urgency in it.
'Why, ma'am,' said Dr Fell, a wrinkle in his forehead, 'I can't see that it's any of our business. Can you? We shall certainly say nothing about it.'
'You mean that?'
'Ma'am,' the doctor said gently, 'I don't know the young lady, but I'll bet you a tanner you're worrying yourself unnecessarily, and that you've both been worrying yourselves unnecessarily for years. She probably knows already. Children do. And she's trying to keep it from you. And the whole world goes skew - whiff because we like to pretend that people under twenty will never have any emotions, and people over forty never had. Humph. Let's forget it. Shall we?' He beamed. 'What I wanted to ask you. Where did you first meet Grimaud? Before you came to England?'
She breathed hard. She answered, but vacantly, as though she were thinking of something else.
'Yes, in Paris.'
'You are a Parisienne?'
'Er - what -? No, no, not by birth! I am of the provinces. But I worked there when I met him. I was a costumier.'
Hadley looked up from jotting in his note - book. 'Costumier?' he repeated. 'Do you mean a dressmaker, or what?'
'No, no, I mean. what I say. I was one of the women who made costumes for the opera and the ballet. We worked in the Opera itself. You can find record of that! And, if it will save you time, I will tell you that I was never married and my maiden name was Ernestine Dumont.'
'And Grimaud?' Dr Fell asked sharply. 'Where was he from?'
'From the south of France, I think. But he studied at Paris. His family are all dead, so that will not help you. He inherited
their money.'
There was an air of tension which these casual questions did not seem to warrant. Dr Fell's next three questions were so extraordinary that Hadley stared up from his notebook, and Ernestine Dumont, who had recovered herself, shifted uneasily, with a wary brilliance in her eyes.
'What is your religious faith, ma'am?'
'I am a Unitarian. Why?'
'H'm, yes. Did Grimaud ever visit the United States, or has he any friends there?'
'Never. And he has no friends that I know of there.'
'Do the words "seven towers" mean anything to you" ma'am?'
'No!' cried Ernestine Dumont, and went oily white.
Dr Fell, who had finished lighting his cigar, blinked at her out of the smoke. He lumbered out from the hearth and round the sofa, so that she shrank back. But he only indicated the big painting with his cane, tracing out the line of the white mountains in the background of the picture.
'I won't ask you whether you know what this represents,' he continued, 'but I will ask you whether Grimaud told you why he bought it. What sort of charm was it supposed to contain, anyhow? What power did it have to ward off the bullet or the evil eye? What sort of weight could its influ - ' He stopped, as though recalling something rather startling. Then he reached out, wheezing, to lift the picture off the floor with one hand and turn it curiously from side to side. 'Oh, my hat!' said Dr Fell, with explosive absent - mindedness. ' O Lord! O Bacchus! Wow!'
'What is it?' demanded Hadley, jumping forward. 'Do you see anything?'
'No, I don't see anything,' said Dr. Fell argumentatively. 'That's just the point. Well, madame?'
'I think,' said the woman in a shaky voice, 'that you are the strangest man I ever met. No. I do not know what that thing is. Charles would not tell me. He only grunted and laughed in his throat. Why don't you ask the artist? Burnaby painted it. He should know. But you people will never do anything sensible. It looks like a picture of a country that does not exist.'
Dr Fell nodded sombrely. 'I am afraid you are right, ma'am. I don't think it does exist. And if three people were buried there it might be difficult to find them - mightn't it?'
'Will you stop talking this gibberish?' shouted Hadley; and then Hadley was taken aback by the fact that this gibberish had struck Ernestine Dumont like a blow. She got to her feet to conceal the effect of those meaningless words.
'I am going,' she said. 'You cannot stop me. You are all crazy. You sit here raving while - while you let Pierre Fley escape. Why don't you go after him? Why don't you do something?'
'Because you see, ma'am - Grimaud himself said that Pierre Fley did not do this thing.' While she was still staring at him, he let the painting fall back with a thump against the sofa. The scene out of a country which did not exist, and yet where three gravestones stood among crooked trees, brought Rampole's mind to an edge of terror. He was still looking at the painting when they heard footsteps on the stairs.
It was a heartening thing to see the prosaic, earnest, hatchet face of Sergeant Betts, whom Rampole remembered from the Tower of London case. Behind came two cheerful plain - clothes men carrying the photographic and fingerprint apparatus. A uniformed policeman stood behind Mills, Boyd Mangan, and the girl who had been in the drawing - room. She pushed through this group into the room.
'Boyd told me you wanted me,' she said, in a quiet but very unsteady voice, ' but I insisted on going over with the ambulance, you see. You'd better get over there as quick as you can, Aunt Ernestine. They say he's - going.'
She tried to be efficient and peremptory, even in the way she drew off her gloves; but she could not manage it. She had those decided manners which come in the early twenties from lack of experience and lack of opposition. Rampole was rather startled to see that her hair was a heavy blonde colour, bobbed and drawn behind the ears. Her face was squarish, with somewhat high cheek - bones; not beautiful, but disturbing and vivid in the way that makes you think of old times even when you do not know what times. Her rather broad mouth was painted dark red, but in contrast to this, and to the firm shape of the whole face, the long hazel eyes were of an uneasy gentleness. She looked round quickly, and shrank back towards Mangan with her fur coat drawn tightly round. She was not far from sheer hysteria.
'Will you please hurry and tell me what you want?' she cried.' Don't you realize he's dying? Aunt Ernestine -'
'If these gentlemen are through with me,' the woman said stolidly, 'I will go. I meant to go, as you know.'
She was docile all of a sudden. But it was a heavy docility, with a half - challenge in it - as though there were limits. Something bristled between these two women, something like the uneasiness in Rosette Grimaud's eyes. They looked at each other quickly, without a direct glance; they seemed to burlesque each other's movements, to become abruptly conscious of it, and stop. Hadley prolonged the silence, as though he were confronting two suspects with each other at Scotland Yard. Then: 'Mr Mangan,' he said briskly, 'will you take Miss Grimaud down to Mr Mills's room at the end of the hall? Thank you. We shall be with you in a moment. Mr Mills, just a second! Wait ... Betts!'
'Sir?'
'I want you to do some dangerous work. Did Mangan tell you to bring ropes and a flashlight? ... Good. I want you to go up on the roof of this place and search every inch of it for a footprint or a mark of any kind, especially over this room. Then go down to the yard behind this place, and both adjoining yards, and see if you can find any marks there. Mr Mills will show you how to get to the roof... Preston! Is Preston here?'
A sharp - nosed young man bustled in from the hall - the Sergeant Preston whose business it was to poke for secret places and who had discovered the evidence behind the panel in the Death - Watch case.
'Go over this room for any secret entrance whatever, understand? Tear the place to bits if you like. See if anybody could get up the chimney ... You fellows carry on with the prints and pictures. Mark out every blood - stain in chalk before you photograph. But don't disturb that burnt paper in the fire - place ... Constable! Where the hell's that constable?'
'Here, sir.'
"Did Bow Street phone through the address of a man named Fley - Pierre Fley? ... Right. Go to wherever he lives and pick him up. Bring him here. If he's not there, wait. Have they sent a man to the theatre where he works? ... All right. That's all. Hop to it, everybody.'
He strode out into the hall, muttering to himself. Dr Fell, lumbering after him, was for the first time imbued with a ghoulish eagerness. He poked at the superintendent's arm with his shovel - hat.
'Look here, Hadley,' he urged, 'you go down and attend to the questioning, hey? I think I can be of much more service if I stay behind and assist those duffers with their photographs...'
'No, I'm hanged if you spoil any more plates!' said the other with heat. 'Those film packs cost money, and besides, we need the evidence. Now I want to talk to you privately and plainly. What's all this wild mumbo - jumbo about seven towers and people buried in countries that never existed? I've seen you in these fits of mystification before, but never quite so bad. Let's compare notes. What did you - yes, yes? What is it?'
He turned irascibly as Stuart Mills plucked at his arm.
'Er - before I conduct the sergeant up to the roof,' said Mills, imperturbably, 'I think I had better tell you that in case you wish to see Mr Drayman, he is here in the house.'
'Drayman? Oh, yes! When did he get back?'
Mills frowned. 'So far as I am able to deduce, he did not get back. I should say he had never left. A short time ago I had occasion to look into his room -'
'Why?' inquired Dr Fell with sudden interest.
The secretary blinked impassively. 'I was curious, sir. I discovered him asleep there, and it will be difficult to rouse him; I believe he has taken a sleeping - draught. Mr Drayman is fond of taking them. I do not mean that he is an inebriate or a drug - user, but quite literally that he is very fond of taking sleeping - draughts.'
'Rummiest household I ever heard of,' decla
red Hadley, after a pause, to nobody in particular. 'Anything else?'
'Yes, sir. There is a friend of Dr Grimaud's downstairs. He has just arrived, and he would like to see you. I do not think it is anything of immediate importance, but he is a member of the circle at the Warwick Tavern. His name is Pettis - Mr Anthony Pettis.'
'Pettis, eh?' repeated Dr Fell, rubbing his chin. 'I wonder if that's the Pettis who collects the ghost stories and writes those excellent prefaces? H'm, yes, I dare say. Now, how would he fit into this?'
'I'm asking you how anything fits into it,' insisted Hadley. 'Look here. I can't see this fellow now unless he's got something important to tell. Get his address, will you, and say I'll call on him in the morning? Thanks.' He turned to Dr Fell. 'Now carry on about the seven towers and the country that never existed.'
The doctor waited until Mills had led Sergeant Betts down the big hall to the door at the opposite end. A subdued mutter of voices from Grimaud's room was the only noise. The bright yellow light still streamed from the great arch of the staircase, illuminating the whole hall. Dr Fell took a few lumbering steps round the hall, looking up and down and then across at the three brown - draped windows. He pulled back the drapes and made certain that these three windows were all firmly locked on the inside. Then he beckoned Hadley and Rampole towards the staircase.
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