“I’ve heard about it, Toby.”
“Look,” insisted Toby. “When the police finished measuring and photographing and taking casts of Brenda’s footprints, I did some measuring myself.”
Edmund Ireton smiled. “Are you attempting to solve this mystery, Mr. Curtis?”
“I didn’t say that.” Toby spoke coolly. “But I might have a question or two for you. Why have you had your knife into me all day?”
“Frankly, Mr. Curtis, because I envy you.”
“You—what?”
“So far as women are concerned, young man, I have not your advantages. I had no romantic boyhood on a veldt-farm in South Africa. I never learned to drive a span of oxen and flick a fly off the leader’s ear with my whip. I was never taught to be a spectacular horseman and rifle shot.”
“Oh, turn it up!”
“Turn it up?”
“Ah, I see. And was that the sinister question you had for me?”
“No. Not yet. You’re too tricky.”
“My profoundest thanks.”
“Look, Dan,” Toby insisted. “You’ve seen that rock formation they call King Arthur’s Chair?”
“Toby, I’ve seen it fifty times,” Dan said. “But I still don’t understand—”
“And I don’t understand,” suddenly interrupted Joyce, without turning round, “why they made me sit there where Brenda had been sitting. It was horrible.”
“Oh, they were only reconstructing the crime.” Toby spoke rather grandly. “But the question, Dan, is how anybody came near that chair without leaving a footprint?”
“Quite.”
“Nobody could have,” Toby said just as grandly. “The murderer, for instance, couldn’t have come from the direction of the sea. Why? Because the highest point at high tide, where the water might have blotted out footprints, is more than twenty feet in front of the chair. More than twenty feet!”
“Er—one moment,” said Mr. Ireton, twitching up a finger. “Surely Inspector Tregellis said the murderer must have crept up and caught her from the back? Before she knew it?”
“That won’t do either. From the flagstones of the terrace to the back of the chair is at least twenty feet, too. Well, Dan? Do you see any way out of that one?”
Dan, not normally slow-witted, was so concentrating on Joyce that he could think of little else. She was cut off from him, drifting away from him, forever out of reach just when he had found her. But he tried to think.
“Well. . . could somebody have jumped there?”
“Ho!” scoffed Toby, who was himself a broad jumper and knew better. “That was the first thing they thought of.”
“And that’s out, too?”
“Definitely. An Olympic champion in good form might have done it, if he’d had any place for a running start and any place to land. But he hadn’t. There was no mark in the sand. He couldn’t have landed on the chair, strangled Brenda at his leisure, and then hopped back like a jumping bean. Now could he?”
“But somebody did it, Toby! It happened!”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You seem rather proud of this, Mr. Curtis,” Edmund Ireton said smoothly.
“Proud?” exclaimed Toby, losing color again.
“These romantic boyhoods—”
Toby did not lose his temper. But he had declared war. “All right, gaffer. I’ve been very grateful for your hospitality, at that bungalow of yours, when we’ve come down here for weekends. All the same, you’ve been going on for hours about who I am and what I am. Who are you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“For two or three years,” Toby said, “you’ve been hanging about with us. Especially with Brenda and Joyce. Who are you? What are you?”
“I am an observer of life,” Mr. Ireton answered tranquilly. “A student of human nature. And—shall I say?—a courtesy uncle to both young ladies.”
“Is that all you were? To either of them?”
“Toby!” exclaimed Joyce, shocked out of her fear.
She whirled round, her gaze going instinctively to Dan, then back to Toby.
“Don’t worry, old girl,” said Toby, waving his hand at her. “This is no reflection on you.” He kept looking steadily at Mr. Ireton.
“Continue,” Mr. Ireton said politely.
“You claim Joyce is in danger. She isn’t in any danger at all,” said Toby, “as long as the police don’t know how Brenda was strangled.”
“They will discover it, Mr. Curtis. Be sure they will discover it!”
“You’re trying to protect Joyce?”
“Naturally.”
“And that’s why you warned Dan not to say he was in love with her?”
“Of course. What else?”
Toby straightened up, his hand inside the bulky tweed jacket.
“Then why didn’t you take him outside, rain or no, and tell him on the quiet? Why did you shout out that Dan was in love with Joyce, and she was in love with him, and give’em a motive for the whole house to hear?”
Edmund Ireton opened his mouth, and shut it again.
It was a blow under the guard, all the more unexpected because it came from Toby Curtis.
Mr. Ireton stood motionless under the painting of The Lovers. The expression of the pictured Brenda, elusive and mocking, no longer matched his own. Whereupon, while nerves were strained and still nobody spoke, Dan Fraser realized that there was a dead silence because the rain had stopped.
Small night-noises, the creak of woodwork or a drip of water from the eaves, intensified the stillness. Then they heard footsteps, as heavy as those of an elephant, slowly approaching behind another of the doors. The footfalls, heavy and slow and creaking, brought a note of doom.
Into the room, wheezing and leaning on a stick, lumbered a man so enormous that he had to maneuver himself sideways through the door.
His big mop of gray-streaked hair had tumbled over one ear. His eyeglasses, with a broad black ribbon, were stuck askew on his nose. His big face would ordinarily have been red and beaming, with chuckles animating several chins. Now it was only absentminded, his bandit’s moustache outthrust.
“Aha!” he said in a rumbling voice. He blinked at Dan with an air of refreshed interest. “I think you must be Mr. Fraser, the last of this rather curious weekend party? H’m. Yes. Your obedient servant, sir. I am Gideon Fell.”
Dr. Fell wore a black cloak as big as a tent and carried a shovel-hat in his other hand. He tried to bow and make a flourish with his stick, endangering all the furniture near him.
The others stood very still. Fear was as palpable as the scent after rain.
“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” said Dan. His voice rose in spite of himself. “But you’re rather far from home, aren’t you? I suppose you had some—er—antiquarian interest in King Arthur’s Chair?”
Still Dr. Fell blinked at him. For a second it seemed that chuckles would jiggle his chins and waistcoat, but he only shook his head.
“Antiquarian interest? My dear sir!” Dr. Fell wheezed gently. “If there were any association with a semi-legendary King Arthur, it would beat Tintagel much farther south. No, I was here on holiday. This morning Inspector Tregellis fascinated me with the story of a fantastic murder. I returned tonight for my own reasons.”
Mr. Ireton, at ease again, matched the other’s courtesy. “May I ask what these reasons were?”
“First, I wished to question the two maids. They have a room at the back, as Miss Ray has; and this afternoon, you may remember, they were still rather hysterical.”
“And that is all?”
“H’mf. Well, no.” Dr. Fell scowled. “Second, I wanted to detain all of you here for an hour or two. Third, I must make sure of the motive for this crime. And I am happy to say that I have made very sure.”
Joyce could not control herself. “Then you did overhear everything!”
“Eh?”
“Every word that man said!”
Despite Dan’s sig
nals, Joyce nodded toward Mr. Ireton and poured out the words, “But I swear I hadn’t anything to do with Brenda’s death. What I told you today was perfectly true: I don’t want her money and I won’t touch it. As for my—my private affairs,” and Joyce’s face flamed, “everybody seems to know all about them except Dan and me. Please, please pay no attention to what that man has been saying.” Dr. Fell blinked at her in an astonishment which changed to vast distress.
“But, my dear young lady!” he rumbled. “We never for a moment believed you did. No, no! Archons of Athens, no!” exclaimed Dr. Fell, as though at incredible absurdity. “As for what your friend Mr. Ireton may have been saying, I did not hear it. I suspect it was only what he told me today, and it did supply the motive. But it was not your motive.”
“Please, is this true? You’re not trying to trap me?”
“Do I really strike you,” Dr. Fell asked gently, “as being that sort of person? Nothing was more unlikely than that you killed your cousin, especially in the way she was killed.”
“Do you know how she was killed?”
“Oh, that,” grunted Dr. Fell, waving the point away too. “That was the simplest part of the whole business.”
He lumbered over, reflected in the mirrors, and put down stick and shovel-hat on a table. Afterward he faced them with a mixture of distress and apology.
“It may surprise you,” he said, “that an old scatterbrain like myself can observe anything at all. But I have an unfair advantage over the police. I began life 3s a schoolmaster: I have had more experience with habitual liars. Hang it all, think!”
“Of what?”
“The facts!” said Dr. Fell, making a hideous face. “According to the maids, Sonia and Dolly, Miss Brenda Lestrange went down to swim at ten minutes to seven this morning. Both Dolly and Sonia were awake, but did not get up. Some eight or ten minutes later, Mr. Toby Curtis began practicing with a target rifle some distance away behind the bungalow.”
“Don’t look at me!” exclaimed Toby. “That rifle has nothing to do with it. Brenda wasn’t shot.”
“Sir,” said Dr. Fell with much patience. “I am aware of that.”
“Then what are you hinting at?”
“Sir,” said Dr. Fell, “you will oblige me if you don’t regard every question as a trap. I have a trap for the murderer, and the murderer alone. You fired a number of shots—the maids heard you and saw you.” He turned to Joyce. “I believe you heard too?”
“I heard one shot,” answered the bewildered Joyce, “as I told Dan. About seven o’clock, when I got up and dressed.”
“Did you look out of the windows?”
“No.”
“What happened to that rifle afterwards? Is it here now?”
“No,” Toby almost yelled. “I took it back to Ireton’s after we found Brenda. But if the rifle had nothing to do with it, and I had nothing to do with it, then what the hell’s the point?” Dr. Fell did not reply for a moment. Then he made another hideous face. “We know,” he rumbled, “that Brenda Lestrange wore a beach robe, a bathing suit, and a heavy silk scarf knotted round her neck. Miss Ray?”
“Y-yes?”
“I am not precisely an authority on women’s clothes,” said Dr. Fell. “As a rule I should notice nothing odd unless I passed Madge Wildfire or Lady Godiva. I have seen men wear a scarf with a beach robe, but is it customary for women to wear a scarf as well?”
There was a pause.
“No, of course it isn’t,” said Joyce. “I can’t speak for everybody, but I never do. It was just one of Brenda’s fancies. She always did.”
“Aha!” said Dr. Fell. “The murderer was counting on that.”
“On what?”
“On her known conduct. Let me show you rather a grisly picture of a murder.”
Dr. Fell’s eyes were squeezed shut. From inside his cloak and pocket he fished out an immense meerschaum pipe. Firmly under the impression that he had filled and lighted the pipe, he put the stem in his mouth and drew at it.
“Miss Lestrange,” he said, “goes down to the beach. She takes off her robe. Remember that, it’s very important. She spreads out the robe in King Arthur’s Chair and sits down. She is still wearing the scarf, knotted tightly in a broad band round her neck. She is about the same height as you. Miss Ray. She is held there, at the height of her shoulders, by a curving rock formation deeply bedded in sand.”
Dr. Fell paused and opened his eyes.
“The murderer, we believe, catches her from the back. She sees and hears nothing until she is seized. Intense pressure on the carotid arteries, here at either side of the neck under the chin, will strike her unconscious within seconds and dead within minutes. When her body is released, it should fall straight forward. Instead, what happens?”
To Dan, full of relief ever since danger had seemed to leave Joyce, it was as if a shutter had flown open in his brain.
“She was lying on her back,” Dan said. “Joyce told me so. Brenda was lying flat on her back with her head towards the sea. And that means—”
“Yes?”
“It means she was twisted or spun round in some way when she fell. It has something to do with that infernal scarf—I’ve thought so from the first. Dr. Fell! Was Brenda killed with the scarf?”
“In one sense, yes. In another sense, no.”
“You can’t have it both ways! Either she was killed with the scarf, or she wasn’t.”
“Not necessarily,” said Dr. Fell.
“Then let’s all retire to a loony bin,” Dan suggested, “because nothing makes any sense at all. The murderer still couldn’t have walked out there without leaving tracks. Finally, I agree with Toby: what’s the point of the rifle? How does a .22 rifle figure in all this?”
“Because of its sound.”
Dr. Fell took the pipe out of his mouth. Dan wondered why he had ever thought the learned doctor’s eyes were vague. Magnified behind the glasses on the broad black ribbon, they were not vague at all.
“A .22 rifle,” he went on in his big voice, “has a distinctive noise. Fired in the open air or anywhere else, it sounds exactly like the noise made by the real instrument used in this crime.”
“Real instrument? What noise?”
“The crack of a blacksnake whip,” replied Dr. Fell. Edmund Ireton, looking very tired and ten years older, went over and sat down in an easy chair. Toby Curtis took one step backward, then another.
“In South Africa,” said Dr. Fell, “I have never seen the very long whip which drivers of long ox spans use. But in America I have seen the blacksnake whip, and it can be twenty-four feet long. You yourselves must have watched it used in a variety turn on the stage.”
Dr. Fell pointed his pipe at them.
“Remember?” he asked. “The user of the whip stands some distance away facing his girl-assistant. There is a vicious crack. The end of the whip coils two or three times round the girl’s neck. She is not hurt. But she would be in difficulties if he pulled the whip towards him. She would be in grave danger if she were held back and could not move.
“Somebody planned a murder with a whip like that. He came here early in the morning. The whip, coiled round his waist, was hidden by a loose and bulky tweed jacket. Please observe the jacket Toby Curtis is wearing now.”
Toby’s voice went high when he screeched out one word. It may have been protest, defiance, a jeer, or all three.
“Stop this!” cried Joyce, who had again turned away. “Continue, I beg,” Mr. Ireton said.
“In the dead hush of morning,” said Dr. Fell, “he could not hide the loud crack of the whip. But what could he do?”
“He could mask it,” said Edmund Ireton.
“Just that! He was always practising with a .22 rifle. So he fired several shots, behind the bungalow, to establish his presence. Afterwards nobody would notice when the crack of the whip—that single, isolated “shot” heard by Miss Ray—only seemed to come from behind the house.”
“Then, actually, he was�
�?”
“On the terrace, twenty feet behind a victim held immovable in the curve of a stone chair. The end of the whip coiled round the scarf. Miss Lestrange s breath was cut off instantly. Under the pull of a powerful arm she died in seconds.
“On the stage, you recall, a lift and twist dislodges the whip from the girl-assistant’s neck. Toby Curtis had a harder task; the scarf was so embedded in her neck that she seemed to have been strangled with it. He could dislodge it. But only with a powerful whirl and lift of the arm which spun her up and round, to fall face upwards. The whip snaked back to him with no trace in the sand. Afterwards he had only to take the whip back to Mr. Ireton’s house, under pretext of returning the rifle. He had committed a murder which, in his vanity, he thought undetectable. That’s all.”
“But it can’t be all!” said Dan. “Why should Toby have killed her? His motive—”
“His motive was offended vanity. Mr. Edmund Ireton as good as told you so, I fancy. He had certainly hinted as much to me.”
Edmund Ireton rose shakily from the chair.
“I am no judge or executioner,” he said. “I—I am detached from life. I only observe. If I guessed why this was done—”
“You could never speak straight out?” Dr. Fell asked sardonically.
“No!”
“And yet that was the tragic irony of the whole affair. Miss Lestrange wanted Toby Curtis, as he wanted her. But, being a woman, her pretense of indifference and contempt was too good. He believed it. Scratch her vanity deeply enough and she would have committed murder. Scratch his vanity deeply enough—”
“Lies!” said Toby.
“Look at him, all of you!” said Dr. Fell. “Even when he’s accused of murder, he can’t take his eyes off a mirror.”
“Lies!”
“She laughed at him,” the big voice went on, “and so she had to die. Brutally and senselessly he killed a girl who would have been his for the asking. That is what I meant by tragic irony.”
Toby had retreated across the room until his back bumped against a wall. Startled, he looked behind him; he had banged against another mirror.
Death Locked In Page 35
