He Who Whispers dgf-16

by John Dickson Carr

  “Will you think again, ma'am?” said Dr. Fell gently.

  “Besides,” said Barbara, “I liked her!”

  And Barbara turned away.

  Dr. Fell tapped the photograph. The pictured eyes-with their faint irony, their bitterness under the far-away expression—made Fay Seton's presence live and move in this room as strongly as the discarded handbag still on the chest-of-drawers, or the fallen identity card, or the black beret on the bed.

  “That is the figure, good-natured an well-meaning, we must see walking in bewilderment—or apparent bewilderment—through the events that follow.” Dr. Fell's big voice was raised. “Two crimes were committed. Both of them were the work of the same criminal . . .”

  “The same criminal?” cried Barbara.

  And Dr. Fell nodded.

  “The first,” he said, “was unpremeditated and slap-dash; it became a miracle in spite of itself. The second was planned and careful, bringing a bit of the dark world into our lives! Shall I continue?”

  Chapter XIX

  Absently Dr. Fell was filling his meerschaum pipe as he spoke, the manuscript and the photograph and the letter still on his knee, and his eye fixed drowsily on a corner of the ceiling.

  “I should like, with your permission, to take you back to Chartres on the fateful twelfth of August when Howard Brooke was murdered.

  “Now I am no orator, as Rigaud is. He could describe for you, in stabbing little phrases clustered together, the house called Beauregard, and the winding river, and Henri Quatre's tower looming over the trees, and the hot thundery day when it wouldn't quite rain. In fact, he had done so.” Dr. Fell tapped the manuscript. “But I want you to understand that little group of people at Beauregard.

  “Archons of Athens! It couldn't have been worse.

  “Fay Seton had become engaged to Harry Brooke. She had really fallen in love—or had convinced herself she had—with a callow, coldhearted young man who had nothing to recommend him except his youth and his good looks. Do you remember that scene, described by Harry to Rigaud, in which Harry proposes marriage and is at first rejected?

  Again Barbara protested.

  “But that incident,” she cried, “wasn't true! It never happened!”

  “Oh, ah,” agreed Dr. Fell, nodding with some violence. “It never happened. The point being that it might well have happened in every detail. Fay Seton must have known, in her heart of hearts, that with all her good intentions she couldn't marry anybody unless she wanted to wreck the marriage in three months by her . . . well, let it pass.

  “But this time—no! This time is different. We have changed all that. This time she is really in love, romantically as well as physically, and it will work out. After all, nobody has been able to say a word against her since she has come to France as Mr. Brooke's secretary.

  “And all this time Harry Brooke—never seeing anything, drawing on what Harry thinks is his imagination—had been driving his father to distraction with anonymous letters against Fay. Harry's only concern was to get his own way; to get to Paris and study painting. What did he care for a rather silent, passive girl, who tended to draw away from his embraces and remained half cold when he kissed her? Thunderation, no! Give him somebody with a bit of life!

  “Irony? I rather think so.

  “And then the figurative storm broke. On the twelfth of August, somebody stabbed Mr. Brooke. Let me show you how.”

  Miles Hammond turned round abruptly.

  Miles walked over and sat down beside Professor Rigaud on the edge of the bed. Neither of these two, though for different reasons, had spoken a word in some time.

  “Yesterday morning,” pursued Dr. Fell, putting down his filled pipe to pick up the sheaf of manuscript and weigh it in his hand, “my friend Georges Rigaud brought me this account of the case. If I quote from it at any time, you two others will perhaps recognize that Rigaud used exactly the same words when telling it you verbally.

  “He also showed me a certain sword-stick of evil memory.” Dr. Fell blinked across at Professor Rigaud. “Have you—harrumph--by any chance got the same weapon here now?”

  With an angry, half-frightened gesture Professor Rigaud picked up the sword-cane and flung it across the room. Dr. Fell caught it neatly. But Barbara, as though it had been attack, backed away against the closed door.

  “Ah, zut!” cried Professor Rigaud, and shook his arms in the air.

  “You doubt my remarks, sir?” inquired Dr. Fell. “You did not doubt when I gave you a very short sketch earlier today.”

  “No, no, no!” said Professor Rigaud. “What you say about this woman Fay Seton is right, is absolutely right. I claim a point when I said to you that the characteristics of the vampire are also in folklore the characteristics of eroticism. But I kick me the pants because I, the old cynic, do not see all this for myself!”

  “Sir,” returned Dr. Fell, “you acknowledge yourself that you are not much interested in material clues. That is why, even when you were writing about it, you failed to observe . . .”

  “Observe what?” said Barbara. “Dr. Fell, who killed Mr. Brooke?”

  Outside there was a distant crash of thunder, which made the window-frames vibrate and startled them all. The rain, in this wet June, was going to return.

  “Let me,” said Dr. Fell, “simply outline to you the events of that afternoon. You will see for yourselves, when you dovetail the story of Professor Rigaud with the story of Fay Seton herself, what deductions are to be drawn from them.

  “Mr. Howard Brooke returned to Beauregard from the Credit Lyonnais bank about three o'clock, carrying the brief-case with the money. The events of the murder properly begin then, and we can follow them from there. Where were the other members of the household at this time?

  “At just before three o'clock Fay Seton left the house, carrying bathing-dress and towel, to go for a walk northwards along the river bank. Mrs. Brooke was in the kitchen, speaking to the cook. Harry Brooke was—or had been—upstairs in his own room, writing a letter. We know now that it was this letter.”

  Dr. Fell held up the letter.

  With a significant grimace he continued:

  “Mr. Brooke, then, returned at three and asked for Harry. Mrs. Brooke replied that Harry was upstairs in his own room. Harry in the meantime, believing his father would be at the office (as Rigaud did too; see testimony) and never dreaming he might be on his way home, had left the letter unfinished and gone to the garage.

  “Mr. Brooke went up to Harry's room, and presently came down again. Now we see—just here—the curious change in Howard Brooke's behavior. He wasn't frantically angry then, Howard Brooke's behavior. He wasn't frantically angry then, as he had been before. Listen, from the evidence, to his wife's description of his manner as he came down the stairs: 'so pitiful he looked, and so aged, and walking slowly as though he were ill.'

  “What had he found, up there in Harry's room?

  “Oh Harry's desk he saw an unfinished letter. He glanced at it; he glanced at it again, startled; he picked it up and read it through. And his whole honest, comfortable universe crashed down in ruins.

  “Carefully outlined, in closely written pages to Jim Morell, was a resume of Harry's whole scheme to blacken Fay Seton. The anonymous letters; the discreditable rumours; the vampire hoax. And all this was written down by his son Harry—his absolute idol, that hearty innocent—so that the father should be filthily tricked into giving Harry his own way.

  “Do you wonder that it struck him dumb? Do you wonder that he looked like that as he walked downstairs, and slowly—how very slowly!--out along the river-bank towards the tower? He had made an appointment with Fay Seton for four o'clock. He was going to keep that appointment. But I see Howard Brooke as a thoroughly honest man, a straight-forward man who would loathe this worse than anything Harry could have done. He would meet Fay Seton at the tower, all right. But he was going there to apologize.

  Dr. Fell paused.

  Barbara shivered. She glanced at Mil
es, who sat in a kind of trance, and checked herself from speaking.

  “Let us return, however,” pursued Dr. Fell, “to the known facts. Mr. Brooke, in the tweed cap and raincoat he had been wearing at the Credit Lyonnais, went towards the tower. Five minutes later, who turned up? Harry, by thunder!--hearing that his father had been there, and asking where he was now, Mrs. Brooke told him. Harry stood for a moment 'thinking to himself, muttering.' Then he followed his father.”

  Here Dr. Fell bent forward with great earnestness.

  “now for a point which isn't mentioned by Rigaud or in the official records. It isn't mentioned because nobody bothered with it. Nobody thought it was important. The only person who has mentioned it is Fay Seton, though she wasn't there when it happened and couldn't have known it at all unless she had special reason for knowing.

  “But this is what she told Miles Hammond last night. She said that, when Harry Brooke left the house in pursuit of Mr. Brooke, Harry Brooke snatched up his raincoat.”

  Dr. Fell glanced over at Miles.

  “You remember that, my boy?”

  “Yes,” said Miles, conquering a shaky throat. “But why shouldn't Harry have taken a raincoat? After all, it was a drizzling day!”

  Dr. Fell waved him to silence.

  “Professor Rigaud,” Dr. Fell continued, “followed both father and son to the tower some considerable time afterwards. At the door of the tower, unexpectedly, he met Fay Seton.

  “The girl told him that Harry and Mr. Broke were upstairs on top of the tower, having an argument. She declared she hadn't heard a word what father and son were saying; but her eyes, testifies Rigaud, were the eyes of one who remembers a horrible experience. She said she wouldn't interrupt at that moment, and in a frantic state of agitation she ran away.

  “On top of the tower Rigaud found Harry and his father, also very agitated. Both were pale and worked up. Harry seemed to be pleading, while his father demanded to be allowed to attend to 'this situation'--whatever it was—in his own way, and harshly told Rigaud to take Harry away.

  “At this time Harry certainly wore no raincoat; he was hatless and coatless, in a corduroy suit described by Rigaud. The sword-stick, untouched with blade screwed into sheath, rested against the parapet. So did the brief-case, but for some reason it had become a bulging brief-case.

  “That extraordinary word struck me when I first read the manuscript.

  “Bulging!

  “Now the brief-case certainly hadn't been like that when Howard Brooke showed its contents to Rigaud at the Credit Lyonnais. Inside, in 'solitary state'--I quote Rigaud's own words—were four slender packets of banknotes. Nothing else! But now, when Rigaud and Harry left Mr. Brooke alone on the tower, there was something stuffed away inside it . . .

  “Look here!” added Dr. Fell.

  And he held up the yellow sword-cane.

  Treating it with extraordinary care, he unscrewed the handle, took the thin blade from the hollow stick, and held it up.

  “This weapon,” he said, “was found after the murder of Mr. Brooke lying in two halves: the blade near the victim's foot, the sheath rolled away against the parapet. The two halves were not joined until long afterwards days after the murder. The police took them away, for expert examination, just as they were found.

  “In other words,” explained Dr. Fell with thunderous fierceness, “They were not joined together until long after the blood had dried. Yet there are stains of blood inside the scabbard. O tempora! O mores! Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

  Raising his eyebrows in hideous pantomime, Dr. Fell peered round at his companions as though urging them on.

  “I've got a horrible half-idea I do know what you mean!” cried Barbara. “But I—I don't quite see it yet. All I can think of is . . .”

  “Is what?” asked Dr. Fell.

  “Is Mr. Brooke,” said Barbara. “Walking out of the house after he'd read Harry's letter. Walking slowly towards the tower. Trying to realize what his son had done. Trying to make up his mind what to do.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Fell said quietly. “Let us follow him.

  “Harry Brooke, I dare swear, must have felt a trifle sick when he learned from his mother about Mr. Brooke's unexpected return home. Harry remembered his own unfinished letter lying upstairs, where Mr. Brooke had just been. Had the old man read it? That was the important point. So Harry put on a raincoat—let's believe he did—and rand out after his father.

  “He reached the tower. He found that Mr. Brooke, for that solitude we want when we're hurt, had climbed up to the top. Harry followed him there. One look at his father's face, in that dark, windy, drizzling light, must have shown him that Howard Brooke knew everything.

  “Mr. Brooke would hardly have been slow to pour out what he had just learned. And Fay Seton, on the stairs, heard the whole thing.

  “She had returned from her stroll northwards along the river-bank, as she tells us, about half-past three. She had not yet gone in for a swim; her costume was still over her arm. She wandered into the tower. She heard frantic voices coming from above. And softly, on her openwork rubber-soled sandals, she crept up the stairs.

  “Fay Seton, poised on that curving staircase in the gloom, not only heard but saw everything that went on. She saw Harry and his father, each wearing a raincoat. She saw the yellow cane propped against the parapet, the brief-case lying on the floor, while Howard Brooke gesticulated.

  “What wild recrimination did the father pour out then? Did he threaten to disown Harry? Possibly. Did he swear that Harry should never see Paris or painting as long as his life lasted? Probably. Did he repeat, with a kind of incredulous disgust, all that beautiful Harry had done against the reputation of the girl who was in love with him? Almost certainly.

  “And Fay Seton heard it.

  “But sick as that must have made her, she was to hear and see worse.

  “For such scenes sometimes get out of control. This one did. The father suddenly turned away, past speech; turned his back on Harry as he was to do later. Harry saw the ruin of all his plans. He saw no soft life for himself now. And something snapped in his head. In a child's fury he snatched up the sword-stick, twisted it out of its scabbard, and stabbed his father through the back.”

  Dr. Fell, uneasy through all his bulk at his own words, fitted together the two halves of the sword-stick. Then he put it down quietly on the floor.

  Neither Barbara nor Miles nor Professor Rigaud spoke, during a silence while you might have counted ten. Miles slowly rose to his feet. The torpor was leaving him. Gradually he saw . . .

  “The blow,” Miles said, “was struck just then?”

  “Yes. The blow was struck just then.”

  “And the time?”

  “The time,” returned Dr. Fell, “was nearly ten minutes to four. Professor Rigaud there was very close to the tower.

  “The wound made by the blade was a deep, thin wound: the sort, we find in medical jurisprudence, that makes the victim think he is not at all badly hurt. Howard Brooke saw his son standing there white-faced and stupid, hardly realizing what he had done. What were the father's reactions to all this? If you know men like Mr. Brooke, you can prophesy exactly.

  “Fay Seton, silent and unseen, had fled down the stairs. In the doorway she met Rigaud and ran from him. And Rigaud, hearing the voices upstairs, put his head inside the tower and shouted up to them.

  “In his narrative Rigaud tells us that the voices stopped instantly. By thunder, they did!

  “For, let me repeat, what were Howard Brooke's feelings about all this? He had just heard the hail of a family friend, Rigaud, who will be up those stairs as soon as a stout man can climb them. Was Mr. Brooke's instinct, in the middle of this awkward mess, to denounce Harry? Lord of all domestic troubles, no! Just the opposite! His immediate desperate wish was to hush things up, to pretend somehow that nothing at all had happened.

  “I think it was the father who snarled to the son: 'Give me your raincoat!' And I am sure it was q
uite natural for him to do so.

  “You-harrumph—perceive the point?

  “In the back of his own raincoat, as he saw by whipping it off, was a tear through which blood had soaked. But a good lined raincoat will do more than turn rain from outside. It will also keep blood from showing through from inside. If he wore Harry's coat, and somehow disposed of his own, he could conceal that ugly bleeding wound in his back . . .

  “You guess what he did. He hastily rolled up his own raincoat, stuffed it into the brief-case, and fastened the straps. He thrust the sword-blade back into its scabbard (hence the blood inside); he tightened its threads and propped it up again. He put on Harry's raincoat. By the time Rigaud had toiled to the top of the stairs, Howard Brooke was ready to prevent scandal.

  “But, my eye! How that whole tense shivery scene of top of the tower takes on a different aspect if you read it like this!

  “The pale-faced son stammering, 'But, sir--!' The father in a cold buttoned-up voice, 'For the last time, will you allow me to deal with this matter in my own way?' This matter! And then, flaring out: 'Will you take my son away from here until I have adjusted certain matters to my own satisfaction? Take him anywhere!' And the father turns his back.

  “There was a chill in the voice, a chill in the heart. You sensed it, my dear Rigaud, when you spoke of Harry, beaten and deflated, being led dumbly down those stairs. And Harry's sullen shining eye in the woo, while Harry wondered what in God's name the old man was going to do.

  “Well, what was the old man going to do? He was going to get home, of course, with that incriminating raincoat decently hidden in his brief-case. There he could hide scandal. My son tried to kill me! That was the worst revulsion of all. He was going to get home. And then . . .”

  “Continue, please!” prompted Professor Rigaud, snapping his fingers in the air as Dr. Fell's voice died away. “This is the part I have not followed. He was going to get home. And them--?”

  Dr. Fell looked up.

  “He found he couldn't,” Dr. Fell said simply. “Howard Brooke knew he was fainting. And he suspected he might be dying.