An envelope, used as a book-mark, was already in the volume at the page containing the tetanus article.
"Somebody's been looking it up already," he observed, flattening out the book.
"Nothing in that," said Ann. "Maybe someone wanted to know — how bad it was. It's convulsions, isn't it?"
"In the final stages, yes. Excuse me." "And you did it," said Ann.
"Young woman," said Rich, raising a quietly haggard face as his finger followed the words of the text, "I have had much trouble in my life. I don't deserve this."
The door opened, and Sir Henry Merrivale lumbered in.
H.M., still wearing his white flannels and shirt, had his big fists on his hips. His manner had grown even more uneasy. Ann and Courtney regarded him questioningly.
"No better," he growled. "If anything, a little worse. And goin' on," His scowl deepened. "Y'know," he seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to the others, "I'm glad I didn't have the responsibility for diagnosin'. Every symptom exact; rusty pin on dressing table… Oh, Lord love a duck, what's wrong?"
"Sir Henry!" said Rich sharply.
H.M. woke up.
"Hullo. You here, son?"
"In time—" Rich closed up the book with a bang— "to hear that I'm supposed to be in trouble again. But I tell you frankly, I don't propose to be — what is the word? — framed for the second time. I don't believe it! Fourteen hours! No, sixteen hours; but it's the same. Those symptoms came on too quickly."
"I know, son," agreed H.M., expelling his breath. "That's what worries me too."
Rich's eyes narrowed.
"I wasn't aware you were a medical man, sir." "Uh-huh. Yes. In a small way.' "What have they done?" "Tetanus antitoxin…" "How much?"
"A thousand units. Injected intrathecally by lumbar puncture. Morphia for the pain. Quiet and dark. What else can they do? And yet, d'ye know—!"
H.M. wandered across the room. He lowered his big bulk of fifteen stone into a carved chair, where he sat glowering.
"When you get to thinkin' about it," he went on, "you can see the symptoms, the real bad symptoms, came on too quick. Unless, of course—" he spoke slowly—"that pin had been dipped into tetanus bacilli to begin with."
The library was so quiet that they could all hear the creaking footsteps which tiptoed in Vicky Fane's bedroom just overhead. It was a physical quality of stillness; it took listeners by the throat. Rich took a step away from the desk. Rich struck his right hand on the globe-map, setting the globe spinning like their wits.
"Are you suggesting," he said, "deliberate murder?"
"I dunno, son. Hardly seems probable, does it? But that'd seem the only explanation. Unless—"
H.M. stopped abruptly. His expression grew fixed and far away, his hand poised in die air. An incredulous look began to dawn behind the big spectacles. He snapped his fingers.
"Excuse me," he muttered hastily, and hauled himself up from the chair. "I got to go."
He was out of the room, and the door had closed behind him, before anyone could speak. They heard his footsteps in the hall.
"Tetanus baccilli," murmured Ann. Her own look was startled, incredulous, and frightened. "But that couldn't be!" She appealed to Rich. "Could it?"
"Don't ask me. I refrain, Miss Browning, from pointing out—" About to say something eke, Rich paused. "There's a trap here," he added.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"If Vicky's going to die, when will she die?"
"How can I tell? Death from tetanus rarely takes place within twenty-hours after the onset.
Ann looked at the closed door.
"Twenty-four hours," she repeated. "Five o'clock in the morning. Dawn. Breakfast-time, maybe. Oh, it's horrible!"
Rich said nothing more. Without a glance at them he quietly left the library.
The minutes dragged on. With an instinct of neatness, Ann replaced the volume of the encyclopedia on its shelf.
"I think I'll go home," she decided in a colorless voice. "There's nothing I can do here, and I've got to be up early tomorrow morning. Will you — will you walk part of the way with me?"
"I'll walk all the way with you."
"I go out the back. It's only in Drayton Road, near here.-You go up Elm Lane, behind the house, and turn into Old Bath Road."
With no foreboding of what was to come within the next half-hour, Courtney opened the door for her. They tiptoed across the hardwood floor of the hall to the dining room. Some sort of subdued argument now seemed to be going on in the hall upstairs. Two words, "continuous contraction," emerged in H.M.'s voice, followed by the fierce shushing tones of Dr. Nithsdale.
The dining room was dark, but the white-tiled kitchen beyond was lighted. A clock ticked with homely effect on a shelf over the refrigerator. Daisy Fenton, her eyes red with weeping, sat rigidly on a kitchen chair and occasionally wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron.
By the sink stood a stout gray-haired woman whom Courtney supposed to be Mrs. Propper, the cook. Though she held herself like a grenadier, her own eyebalk had a strained look which indicated emotion not far off.
A swing door (which, unexpectedly, did not creak at all) admitted Ann and Courtney to this warm domestic interior.
"Good evening, Mrs. Proppe'r," Ann said politely. "Evening, Miss Ann." "You're up late."
"First time I've been out of me bed after nine o'clock," declared Mrs. Propper, balancing herself with one hand on the drain-board, "since that grand dinner-party when they wanted the bomb-a-la-rain for a sweet. (Oh, Daisy, do stop sniveling; there's a good girl!) Miss Ann, who's that wild man?"
"What wild man?"
"That man with the bald head."
"You mean Dr. Rich?"
"Oh, him? Not that hypnotist fellow. I know him. He came walking through here only a few minutes ago, and out the back door to the garden, without so much as by-your-leave. No, I mean the other man. Big stout man in his shirt-sleeves, if you please, who came in before the hypnotist, and started asking all the questions."
"You mean Sir Henry Merrivale?"
Mrs. Propper was taken aback.
"Lord! Got a title, has he?" Visibly, H.M.'s stock shot up in her estimation. "Now whoever would 'a' thought it? No offense meant, I'm sure. But he did carry on like as if he wasn't right in the head. And then there's that Captain Sharpless. I say it's a disgrace!"
"Auntie!" cried Daisy. "Auntie!"
"I say it's a disgrace," affirmed Mrs. Propper, whacking her hand down on the drain-board. "And I'm sure Miss Ann agrees with me. Him coming here the day after, with Mr. Fane not cold in his coffin. And going up to Mrs. Fane's bedroom: ber bedroom, if you please: at four o'clock in the afternoon. He's out in the garden now, and I say it's a disgrace."
"Really, Mrs. Propper—!" said Ann.
But, since she refused to show grief at death or illness, Mrs. Propper took it out in another way. The tears did start to her eyes with the strength of her opinions here.
"Mind you, Miss Ann, I'll not say Mr. Fane was all I like a gentleman to be. He did look at my household accounts as though he thought I might cheat him, and tick off every little thing with a pencil. I like a gentleman to be free with his money, or else why is he a gentleman?"
"Mrs. Propper, please!"
"But speak no ill of the dead: that's what I've always been taught, and what I always say. There's Mr. Hubert now. Not that he's free with his money, but at least it's always a good word and a, 'Surely that's a lot of trouble for you, Mrs. Propper?' You don't mind it," continued the cook, with her jaws working and the tears now running down her face, "if you're appreciated in this world. But speak no ill of the dead; and, after all, he was her lawfully wedded husband—"
This was having its effect on Ann.
Courtney, powerfully embarrassed, was afraid that this might end in an orgy with all three of them weeping. And another idea had come to him as well.
"Mrs. Propper!" he snapped, in so sharp and peremptory a tone that she instinctively
straightened up.
"Yes, sir?"
"You said that Sir Henry Merrivale was here asking you some questions?" "Yes, he was." "Questions about what?" He roused a new grievance.
"About what food Mrs. Fane had eaten today, that's what." "Oh?"
"Yes, it is. When Daisy here can tell you that not a mouthful of food has passed her lips today, not a mouthful, except the grapefruit that Captain Sharpless took up to her at four o'clock in the afternoon. That's all she'll ever touch when she feels poorly (as you very well know, Miss Ann), 'and a thousand times I've told her that it's no food to keep body and soul together." "Yes, of course, Mrs. Propper, but—" "And anyway, when the poor lady's dying, in convulsions they say, then what I say is, what difference does it make what she did or didn't eat? That's what I say."
Twelve
The clock ticked loudly.
"I wonder," Courtney said aloud.
Guesses, all without shape or reason, drifted in his mind. The atmosphere of the kitchen was warm and damp, with a prevalent ghost of lamb stew.
"You'll excuse us, I know," he told Mrs. Propper, shutting away his thoughts. "Miss Browning wants to get home."
"And so she should, if she'll take my advice," declared the cook, flinging open the back door. "It's little enough sleep any of the rest of us will be getting in this house tonight. Good night to you, Miss Ann. Good night to you, sir."
"Good night, Mrs. Propper."
As they went down two steps, and the door closed behind them, they were momentarily blinded by the contrast between the moonlight and the light from the unshaded kitchen windows.
They found themselves on a concrete walk which ran along the back of the house, parallel with it, to a garage at the other end. A gravel path at right angles to the concrete one led straight out into the rose-garden. Passing a garden shed, they had gone a little way down the gravel path when Ann spoke.
"Why did H.M. ask about that?"
It was as though he could feel the alert, searching intelligence working beside him. The scent of the rose-garden, without color yet with its suggestion of hot color, closed in around them.
"Is there something in grapefruit," she said, "that would be bad for — well, for lockjaw poisoning?"
"I don't know. Grapefruit's an acid. Or is it an alkaloid? Anyway, it's strong stuff."
Beyond the garden lay a stretch of open lawn with a few apple and plum trees. A gate in the high stone wall led out into the lane of grass. As he opened the gate, Ann turned round.
"Please. It's awfully kind of you to offer to go home with me. But I'd rather you didn't."
— He felt a rush of disappointment.
"It's not that I don't want you to," she told him quickly. "I'd love you to. It's just that there's something I've got to think out. Now. Something I can't talk about, even to you. And then maybe I shall be better company. You don't mind?"
"Of course not."
"Then good night." She extended her hand.
He took the hand. "Good night, and try not to worry too much. You're sure you'll be all right?"
"All right?" She half laughed at him, her eyes widening. "Why on earth shouldn't I be all right?"
"Nothing. Probably just a psychic fit like one of Frank Sharpless's. Pay no attention to it. But I'd hate anything to happen to you."
"You're nice," said Ann, after a pause, and pressed his hand.
Then she left him.
Courtney latched the iron gate, leaned over it, and glanced to his left up the lane. Its soft, unkempt grass deadened footsteps. On one side it was closed in by stone walls like one continuous wall, with the heads of fruit trees drooping above. On the other side, a line of elms closed it in as well, with a screen of bushes and stinging-nettles underneath. An apple had fallen here and there, to rot. It was a narrow little lane, in daytime haunted by wasps and at night full of an eerie oppressiveness.
Courtney watched her print frock move away from him and disappear.
He moved back from the gate, and felt in his pocket after his pipe. Hot tonight. Uncomfortably hot. He hadn't noticed this before.
Far away to his left, Leckhampton Hill rose against the moonlit sky, with the clay face of the quarry along its upper ridges. It was the beginning of the Cotswolds, and from it you could see Cheltenham like a gray toy town in the valley. Through Courtney's mind, incongruously, ran lines of verse her remembered having read in an anthology long ago…
November evenings, damp and still,
That used to deck Leckhampton Hill,
And bring queer winds like harlequins
that seize our elms for violins..
Well, it wasn't November now. No; it was hot. Infernally hot, and the little grass-carpeted lane lay like a tunnel under the over-ripe fruit along the walls.
Phil Courtney filled and lighted his pipe. The little core of light from the match startled him, like a pigmy explosion, when he struck it. He turned back towards the house, realizing that when a match flame made you jump there must be something wrong with your nerves.
Subdued activity seemed to be pulsing in the house. He could tell that, even at this distance away.
He thought of Vicky Fane, pretty, healthy Vicky, with her jaw-muscles rigid as though in a cast, the skin drawn back in the agony of the risus sardonicus, lying on a bed which must not be disturbed or even creak in case it brought on the convulsions.
And he had taken a few more steps when he stopped. He heard, distantly, a sound which carried clearly on the still air in these still streets. It might have been a symbol. It was the hurrying clang of an ambulance-bell.
Simultaneously, from somewhere far up the grass lane, a woman began to scream.
Sparks and fire from his pipe spilled to the ground. He tried to knock it out, but thrust it into his pocket without thinking further of it. Subconscious fear returned. The screams, shrill and terrified, were choked off as though by a hand. Then silence, and one more scream.
His fingers were so clumsy that it seemed minutes before he could get the gate open. But he did not hesitate about the direction in which to go. He ran towards the left, his foot sending flying a spongy apple as he ran.
"Ann!" he called. "Ann!"
No reply.
"Ann!"
Somewhere ahead of him, he thought he heard a movement; then a pause of what can only be called awareness, and a tearing sound as though of bushes or stinging-nettles.
Only patches of moonlight penetrated the dank, spongy-soft tunnel. He was some hundred yards or more along the lane when he saw her, or at least a huddle in a print frock, leaning on hands and knees near the stone wall to the left. As she seemed to hear his footfalls swish in the grass, she scrambled up and began to run as though blindly in the other direction.
"Ann! It's me! Phil Courtney!"
The figure hesitated, stumbled, tottered, and then stood still. She was standing with her back to him, hardly recognizable in the splintered moonlight, when he reached her.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. N-nothing!"
He could hear her thin, harsh breathing, shaking the words and stumbling on them with the accents of terror. He struck a match and held it up.
At first she refused to turn round and face him. When she did so, after the first match had burnt down and another was struck, she was smiling — but not very convincingly.
Her thin frock had been ripped down partly from the left shoulder, exposing the white silk slip and outlining the breast. A bruise was beginning to show on her neck under the left ear. Her thick hair, which she wore bound round her head, was slightly loosened; hairpins showed in it. There were grass-stains on her dress at the knees, and on the rumpled tan silk stockings underneath. She was bedraggled, grimy, obviously frightened — but trying to carry it off as though nothing had happened.
"Don't make a noise!" she urged. "I'm p-perfectly all right. Do put out that match. No, don't. Light another."
"But what—"
"It was someone. A man."
&nb
sp; "What man?"
"I d-don't know." She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. "He caught me from behind and put his hand over my mouth. He — anyway, I fought loose and yelled. He got his hand on my mouth again. I think I bit his hand, but I'm not sure. When he heard you coming, he must have…"
"Where did he go?"
"A-across there, most likely. Towards the fields. It's open fields. No, don't! Don't! Come back!"
The darkness was dense, the stinging-nettles a formidable brush. Striking still another match, he held it above his head. There was nothing else here except the unkempt grass and a decayed plum or two.
"Would you recognize him again?"
"No. I never even saw him. Please! Don't make a row! Take me home."
She was trembling badly now.
Holding her arm in his, he took her along the lane for some three hundred yards, to where faint white street-lamps glimmered in the Old Bath Road.
"I shall he all right now," she assured him. "No, don't come any farther. I don't want my father or mother to see you; and I don't want them to see me either; or heaven knows what they'd think. Good night. And thanks."
She was gone, running lightly and holding up the shoulder of her torn frock, before he had time to protest. He saw her turn in at a gate near by, with a quick look up and down the road. Then, more violently disturbed than ever before in his life, Phil Courtney retraced his steps.
Psychic fits, it seemed, had their uses after all. The episode had been so brief and rapid that he wondered whether he might have dreamed it. Stopping again at the place where he had found Ann, which he had' marked by a wooden back gate with a white enameled sign reading, "No hawkers or circulars," he struck matches to see whether any traces might have been left."
No footprints. No convenient cuff-link dropped, or similar clue. Only the trampled grass, the evil lane, the close-pressing elms.
"I'll be a—'' he began aloud.
His last match burnt his fingers, and he dropped it. He returned to the Fanes' house and opened the gate, where a shadow rose up in front of him.
Seeing is Believing shm-12 Page 10
