“How long had it been since you looked in that drawer last?”
“Probably three weeks.”
“Go on,” said Hadley quietly.
Gay’s voice grew cold. “You are not a fool, my friend. You know what I thought and what I still think. It was a plain, barefaced attempt to saddle me with the blame for these crimes. You wish to know why I burst out against my guests this afternoon? This is the reason. Somebody had put that there. In a very short time somebody would have had it ‘found.’ That is how some genial friend repays hospitality.” His fingers twitched, and he put them flat on his knees. “Wasn’t it obvious? I am the only person with a key to that drawer. Yet someone else had got one. How, I don’t know. Why, I know only too well. If you can think of any better evidence of a premeditated attempt to throw the blame elsewhere, I should be interested to hear it.”
“And so——”
“Well, there is an ancient truism about beating someone to the punch. Possibly I acted like a fool. I don’t know. I know that I was more furious in that moment than I can remember being since the days of my encounters with official stupidity in the Government. I compressed several years’ rage into my feelings then, nor have I even yet recovered my usual child-like good temper.”
He exhibited very little sign of child-like good temper. Yet it seemed evident that he sincerely believed in this quality as belonging to himself. Nobody commented; and, after a wheezy breath Gay went on:
“If I had known who put the picture in the drawer——”
“A picture,” interrupted Dr. Fell dreamily, “on which the message had been printed two weeks ago.”
“And a fact,” replied Gay, “which I did not know. There was certainly a prowler in my study just after eleven, and up to no good. I repeat: if I had known who did it, I should have been after him with great pleasure. I should have tried my hand at counter-framing. But I did not know, and I was unwilling to make a guess which might be wrong. You see, I am more charitable in several ways than the real murderer. But above all I was exceedingly curious to mark the effect if I should fight back with a return stroke against ‘somebody.’ Perhaps it would have been more sensible to have got rid of the picture and the torn fragments. But I was not willing to have the matter drop altogether. Being innocent, I wanted the police to find such clues. But, by God, gentlemen, I was unwilling for the police to find such clues in my desk!”
“It didn’t occur to you to come to us and tell the truth?”
“It did not,” said Gay quite simply. “That was the only course which did not occur to me.”
“Go on.”
Gay cocked his head on one side. Amusement crept into his wizened face, the sort of amusement which had been absent from it for some hours.
“I concede that I was a trifle too spectacular. The donkey’s tail, too, was an error; and I am not sure that I gained much by ruining the inside of the drawer with red ink. But I wanted to draw attention to it. Believe me, gentlemen, there was absolutely no thought in my mind of making the snapshots in the drawer unrecognisable. I admired, even when I felt my hair rise on my scalp, the ingenuity with which you dove-tailed these bits of evidence to-day. Can you understand this?—that I was stunned into a kind of detached interest, a contemplation of myself, by the way in which you spun a case out of nothing? I was Pickwick listening to Sergeant Buzfuz, and hearing my chops and tomato sauce used against me.”
He paused.
“I think that’s all I have to say. You understand, I did not have to create a prowler. There really was someone in my study. You have got a valuable piece of evidence, even if you got it in a way for which I am heartily sorry. I have no dark and terrible secrets connected with the past of Mrs. Kent. There is my story; you may believe it or not; and (just between ourselves) be damned to you.”
Hadley and Dr. Fell looked at each other. Hunching his neck into the upturned collar of his overcoat, Gay blinked at the fire.
“You don’t find the atmosphere so hostile now, do you?” asked Dr. Fell amiably.
“Well—no. To tell the truth, no.”
“Just a question or two,” suggested the doctor, as Hadley scowled at his note-book. “Can you think of any reason why this person should have torn up all the pictures in that drawer?”
“No. I cannot. That could not be for throwing suspicion on me. Or at least I don’t see how.”
“H’mf, no. Would it be easy to have got a duplicate key to the drawer?”
“I shouldn’t have thought so. It’s something of an elaborate and intricate lock, for a desk drawer. But it’s quite possible, since it was done. I am not exactly aware how these things are done. From a wide acquaintance with sensational fiction, I know that it is customary to use wax or soap; but if somebody handed me a sheet of wax or a bar of soap and said, ‘Get on with it,’ I don’t think I should know how.”
“You say you heard footsteps when someone was in your study. Light or heavy footsteps?”
“The best I can do,” answered Gay, after reflection, “is the old and unhelpful ‘medium’ of this whole affair.”
“It could not have been one of the maids?”
“Why should it be? They would have told me.”
“Has your staff of servants been with you for a long time?”
“Oh, yes. They came with me from Norfolk. I—er —well, yes, I trust them absolutely, in so far as I trust anybody in this world.”
“I think you told us you were living in Norfolk at the time Mrs. Kent was in this country?”
“Yes, if I have the dates down right.”
“H’mf. Well—just at a guess, Sir Gyles, have you any notion as to who is responsible for all this?”
Gay shook his head without taking his gaze from the fire. An odd smile twisted his mouth. “That is your business. Mine, too, I acknowledge; but in a different way. Will you answer me, truly and freely, one question?”
Hadley was cautious, and interposed before Dr. Fell could speak. “All depends on what it is, Sir Gyles. What question?”
“Why,” said Gay, still without taking his eyes from the fire, “why have you two got a police-officer watching Miss Forbes?”
18
Hands Across a Gravestone
KENT REMEMBERED THE THUMP as he put his own tankard of beer down on the table. He glanced quickly round the little group; and he realised by the quiet that Hadley and Dr. Fell had taken the words with the utmost seriousness.
“What makes you think that?” Hadley asked.
“I see,” said Gay, half humorously. “Don’t you ever give anybody information on any subject whatever? When Miss Forbes and Mr. Kent here went for a walk this afternoon, you had a man following them. I am not certain who it was, but it was one of the sergeants I saw at the Royal Scarlet Hotel. When they came back to Four Doors, he followed Miss Forbes. I’m inclined to suspect that the reason why you—hum— lured me here to the pub tonight, instead of coming to my home, was for the purpose of getting a man inside. I don’t object. But if my house is to be used for any purpose, I think I have a right to know what is going on. The place seems to be full of policemen. There was another in the bar to-night. You can’t expect to disguise things like that in a village, you know; and I’ve been wondering what is going on.”
“You’d better tell him, Hadley,” said Dr. Fell. “I’ve been urging it all along. He could give us a lot of help; and, if things went wrong in any way, he might wreck the plan.”
“Why,” interposed Kent, “have you been having Miss Forbes watched?”
Hadley smiled without enthusiasm. “Not for the reason you think. Just to see that she doesn’t get into any trouble. As she might.” He turned to Gay. “Very well. The whole story is that, with luck, we may get the murderer to-night.”
Gay whistled two notes and sat up. “Interesting—also attractive! Where and how?”
“Your house is unusual,” said Hadley. “It really lives up to its name. Unlike Seaview and Parkside, it really does have four doors,
one on each side of the house. All those doors must be watched. If Fell is right, we hope to meet someone coming out of the house by one of those doors in the middle of the night.”
“Leaving the house? Why?”
“That,” said Hadley, “is as far as the story goes now.”
Gay looked puzzled. “But I still don’t follow this. If you merely caught somebody sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, would that, per se, prove it was the murderer? I have always thought”— he frowned in a meditative manner—“that, when these traps were laid and someone is caught suspiciously prowling, the person caught is almost too ready to break down and admit his guilt. Suppose he were to fold his arms and say, ‘This is a frame-up; I refer you to my solicitors?’ Where would your evidence be?”
“We’ve got reason to hope,” said Hadley, “that it would still exist.” His tone changed. “What I’d like to ask of you, Sir Gyles, is this. If you should happen to see a police-officer in the house: in fact, no matter what you do see or however suspicious it appears: do nothing and say nothing to anybody. Let the household go to bed in the ordinary way, just as usual. At some time early in the morning you may be waked up; but by that time, if we have any luck, it may be all over. Will you promise that?”
“With pleasure. I—er—take it you accept my own story as being true?”
“If I didn’t accept it, would I confide this to you?”
“I don’t know,” said Gay, with candour. “However, you can depend on me. If I scent the presence of dirty work, I also like the presence of dirty work. Good night, gentlemen. I hope I shall see you soon.”
He pulled down his soft hat on his forehead, got up, and put the stick under his arm. By the door—the same door as that by which he had entered—he studied them for a moment before he made a brief salute and slipped out. The night, which remained cold and almost absolutely still, sent in hardly a chill after him.
Hadley looked at his watch.
“I’d better see the landlord,” the superintendent commented. “We want none of that interference.”
And he reached up and switched off the electric lights.
While the uncertain firelight rose up, and they heard Hadley blundering out into the bar, Kent looked at Dr. Fell. Dr. Fell drained his tankard without comment; he seemed to be listening for the sound of the church clock, which should be close on the half-hour.
“Am I allowed to know what’s up?” demanded Kent, yet speaking a little above a whisper. “What’s this about Francine? I’ve got a right to know——”
He could not see the doctor clearly, though he heard the wheezy breathing. “Miss Forbes,” declared Dr. Fell, “is in no danger of being hurt. Set your mind easy about that.”
“But if she’s in any danger I want to——”
“H’mf, yes. That, I believe, is a part of the idea.”
“I mean, I want to be on the spot to——”
“No,” said Dr. Fell. “Never again. I allowed it in that case of the Eight of Swords; and I swore a mighty oath that it should never happen again. It merely meant tragedy. It’s a professional’s job, my lad; and a professional’s doing it. But you can make yourself useful, if you will. We want two men on each of the four doors, and we’re short-handed. If you like, you can share the watch. Without stretching the matter in the least, I can tell you that we may run foul of someone who is apt to turn infernally nasty if certain schemes go wrong.” The church clock struck the half-hour. Hadley returned with the tankards filled. Very few words were passed. Sitting down close to the fire, so that he could keep his eyes on his wrist-watch, Hadley bent over it. Nor were there many sounds except the scrape of pewter on wood, the watch ticking, and the fire: which had turned to a red-glowing bank. The quarter-hour rang, and then the hour. Northfield was asleep.
At a few minutes past eleven Hadley, who had been going from one window to the other to pull back the curtains, moved across to the door opening on the stable-yard. He opened the door wide and stood peering out. A patch of cold crept over the floor like a carpet, widening against the walls, while the smoke of Hadley’s breath blew back over his shoulder. There was a creak in the stable-yard, and a whisper.
“Tanner!”
“Superintendent?”
“Men in position?”
“All ready, sir.”
“Hold on.”
Hadley moved out on to a creaking board, and there was the mutter of a conference. When he returned he picked up his own overcoat from a chair. He faced Kent.
“Your beat,” he said, “will be with the inspector at the back door of the house. He’s got his instructions, so you just follow the leader. You’re not to go into the back garden. Miss Forbes’s room overlooks the back, and you might be seen if the moon should come out. Stay just outside the iron gates to the back garden, on the edge of the churchyard. You’ll have a clear view of the back door from there. Haven’t got the wind up, have you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“In any case—” Hadley bent down, picked up the poker from the hearth, and handed it to him. “In any case, just take this along. You’re a private citizen, so you can be armed. All right.”
Hadley went with him to the door. Inspector Tanner was waiting, his flat cap looking belligerent; but he muttered little beyond issuing directions. They moved out quietly through a gate opening on the green.
Or, at least, Kent supposed it must be the green. It was his first experience of that puzzling, disquieting phenomenon, the complete pitch-blackness and silence of an English village at night. We use terms loosely. Few urban streets, few parts of the remotest town in the deadest hour of the night, are ever without any light or any sign of movement. There is always someone awake. The African veldt is lighter and more aware than this core of a well-populated district, a village. Venture into one after night-fall, and you will never know you are there until you are in the middle of it: a house is as startling as a ghost. Your impression is that people must fall into a drugged sleep at nightfall. Even when a public-house remains open until ten o’clock, the blinds are so sealed or the lights so remote that it looks as dead as the rest; it might be a public-house in Pompeii.
Though he walked slowly beside the inspector, Kent heard his own footsteps sound with such distinctness on the frosty ground that he might have been making footprints for trackers to follow. It was a night of smoky cold, in which you could smell mist without seeing any of it. Later there might be a moon. Their own heavy footfalls went ahead of them round the green. There did not seem, Kent thought, to be any dogs in Northfield.
Instead of going down the dim road past the church Inspector Tanner softly opened the lych-gate of the church itself. Kent followed him through under the great pillars of yew. The poker had grown blistering cold in his hand; he was gripping it too tightly; so he thrust the end of it into his deep overcoat pocket and crooked his arm round it. They moved down a flagged path, still slippery with snow, and round the church. Beyond it was so dark that each of them kept a hand out in front. Then they went into the churchyard, which sloped down with some abruptness and in whose maze flat stones made obstructions.
“Which way?”
“Down here. Look sharp!”
Great elms were materialising out of the sky in front of them. Beyond ran a wall pierced by iron gates, and he could see a faint light. Evidently someone at Four Doors was still awake.
Kent, who had had it drilled into him as a boy that you must never step on a grave, had been doing some unusual walking to avoid them. He barked his chilled knuckles several times on the stones. Then, just as they stopped on the edge of the churchyard, the light at the house went out. But his eyesight was now growing accustomed to the dark; he had lost that naked feeling such as is experienced on groping into a dark theatre, and losing the usher with the flashlight half way down the aisle. He could see a sort of shine on the iron gates. Beyond that, the white window-frames and white back door of the house loomed up with some clarity. He could even pi
ck out the line of the chimneys. If it were not so infernally cold——
The church clock struck the quarter-hour.
He was leaning, incongruously, against the headstone of a grave, only a few feet from the gates. Objects were now assuming a night-time clarity; he made out the steps to the back door, the dust-bin, and all white paint seemed to shine. But he wished he had brought a pair of gloves. His hands felt raw, and a shiver went through him. “Walking over somebody’s grave” was the thought that occurred to him: it was the same sort of feeling.
All the same——
What was going on in that house? Who or what did they expect to slip out of a door, when only the church clock was allowed to talk? He put the poker, which was beginning to irk him, down in the rimy grass by the headstone. Bending forward, he made certain that the rear gates had been left unlocked. They creaked softly, and he drew back. It seemed to be the consensus of opinion (good old sober phrase) that there was no danger. But there must be danger inside, or they would not have surrounded the place with a ring of guards. If they had let him go in to Francine, he would have felt better. The roles (he mused) were reversed. Those inside the house, those tucked into stolid steam-heated walls, were the persons who ran a risk; the people outside, in loneliness where there was no cover, were safe.
After touching the padlock on the gates, he crouched back to the headstone. He would get a crick in the back if he stood long like this. Sit down? That would be the easiest thing. The damp headstone, worn to a wafer by time, was scrolled along the top like the bed in the room where Rodney Kent had died. His fingers brushed it as he bent down to pick up the poker. And the poker was not there.
The poker was not there. His fingers groped in sharp patches of snow. He squatted down, moving his hand wide. He remembered just where the end of it had lain, and it was not there.
“What the devil—?” he whispered to his companion beside it.
“I have it,” whispered the other voice.
Kent turned round in relief. His companion was standing just where he had stood when they took up their posts, still motionless and large. Kent’s eyes, accustomed to the gloom, could not pick out details. He saw the blue coat, no overcoat being worn; he saw the silver buttons shining dimly; and he saw something else.
To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9) Page 20
