John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

Again Hadley lifted his shoulders.

'You were to get the combination of the safe for him,' the Superintendent said. 'The combination of that impregnable safe. He'd have told you that this morning - if he'd been alive.'

' Wait a minute! Do you think Lesley would have... ?'

'Given you the combination? You know ruddy well she would have, if you pressed her! She meant to tell you about the whole thing, anyway, at this dinner she projected for to-night.'

Words floated back to him, words which Lesley had spoken in his own cottage the night before:' I want everything to be perfect to-morrow. Because I've got something to tell you. And I've got something to show you.' He saw her sitting in the lamplight, stung and brooding.)

'But would you have believed anything she'd told you, by that time?'

'No. I suppose not'

(He was glad Lesley wasn't here, now.)

'You'd have got that combination during the day. And while you were at dinner, Sam would have cleaned out the safe and quietly faded away. That's all there is to it, Mr Markham. Only -'

' Only,' interposed Dr Fell,' somebody murdered him.'

CHAPTER 14

THE words fell with a heavy chilling weight.

And the cautious Hadley, thrusting out his jaw, made formal protest.

'Stop a bit, Fell! We can't say for certain this is murder. Not at the present stage of the game.'

' Oh, my boy! What do you mink ?'

'And I, perhaps,' interposed Lord Ashe, 'can answer one of your questions now.'

Both Hadley and Dr Fell, surprised, turned to look at him. Lord Ashe, who was again weighing the gold ruby-studded collar in his hand, made a deprecating noise as though warning them not to expect too much.

'You were asking a while ago,' he said, 'whether this fraudulent Bible-salesman visited any other house except mine. The matter is hardly very important. But I can tell you. He didn't I made inquiries about him.'

' So!' muttered Dr Fell.' So!'

Hadley regarded him suspiciously - the doctor's scatter-brain had been having this effect on his friend for twenty-five years - though Hadley said nothing.

'But surely, gentlemen!' protested Lord Ashe, putting down the gold collar. 'Come, now! You make use of the word "murder"?'

'I use it,' affirmed Dr Fell

'For myself, I know little of such matters,' said Lord Ashe. 'Though I used to read those novels of the gentleman who wrote them over the weekend, about mysterious deaths in ancestral mansions. But surely now!

As I understand it, this man De Villa died of poison in a room with the doors and windows locked up on the inside.'

'Yes,' agreed Dr Fell. 'That,' he added, 'is why I must repeat that the centre of the whole plot, apparently, is Miss Lesley Grant.'

'Wait a minute, please!' urged Dick, and appealed to Lord Ashe. 'You say, sir, that Lesley came here this morning, and threw those jewels at you, and poured out this story about her mother ?'

' Yes. Rather to my discomfort'

'Why did she do it, sir?'

Lord Ashe looked bewildered.

'Because, apparently, little Cynthia Drew had come to her and accused her of being a poisoner.'

Lesley herself slipped into the room now, closing the green-baize door softly after her. Though outwardly composed, she was clearly nerving herself to meet this interview. She stood at the corner of the windows, her back to the light, and faced them.

'You'd better let me answer that,' she said. 'Though I loathe telling it!' A little curving smile, the smile Dick Markham found so irresistible, flashed round her lips and was gone in concern. 'It's all right, Dick,' she added. 'I'll - I'll talk to you about it later. But it was rather dreadful for me.'

'Cynthia?'

'Yes! She turned up in my room this morning. Heaven knows how she got there, but she was trying to open the safe.'

' I’ve - er - heard about it'

Lesley's arms were straight down at her sides, her breast heaving.

'Cynthia said to me, " I want to know what's in this safe. And I mean to find out before I leave here." I asked her what she was talking about. She said, "That's where you keep the poison, isn't it? The poison you used on those three men who were in love with you before ? "

'Well!' cried Lesley helplessly, and turned out her hands. 'Steady, now!'

' I ‘d been thinking,' she went on, ' that the whole village must be saying or at least imagining some terrible things about me. But never in my wildest dreams did I think it could be anything like that! Especially as she went on to say Dick knew all about it, and the police were coming for me because I'd got poison or something locked up in that safe. I -I rather lost my head.'

'Just a minute. Did you hit her ?'

Lesley blinked.

'Hit her?'

' With a hand-mirror off the dressing-table.' 'Good gracious, no!' The brown eyes widened. 'Did she say I hit her?' 'What happened?'

'Cynthia ran at me, that's all. She's stronger than I am and I didn't know what to do. I dodged, and she tripped and went over like a sack of coals against the footboard of the bed.

'When I saw she was just knocked out, not badly hurt at all' - the full lips compressed, and Lesley looked elaborately out of the window - ' maybe it was callous of me, but I just let her stay there. Wouldn't you?'

'Go on!'

' I thought to myself, " This is too much; I can't stand any more." So I got those things out of the safe, and rushed over here to Lord Ashe, and told him the true story. While I was telling it, Dr - Dr Fell, isn't it? - and Superintendent Hadley got here. So I thought I might as well tell everybody.' Lesley moistened her lips. 'There's only one thing I'm curious about, Dick,' she added with great intensity. 'Did you tell Cynthia?'

'Tell her what?'

'This horrible story about the three husbands, and -and the rest of it.' Lesley coloured. 'She kept repeating, "Till death do us part, till death do us part," like a mad woman. That's all I care about, that's all I'm concerned about! Did you tell Cynthia, in confidence, something that you wouldn't tell me?' ‘No.'

'Do you swear that's true, Dick? You were messing about out there with her this morning. Major Price said you were.'

'On my word of honour, I never said one word to Cynthia'

Lesley drew the back of her hand across her forehead. ' Then where did Cynthia get the story ?' 'That,' observed Dr Fell, 'is something which interests all of us.'

Reaching into his hip pocket under the folds of the big cape, Dr Fell drew out a large red bandanna handkerchief. He mopped his forehead with such thoroughness that his big mop of grey-streaked hair tumbled over one eye. Then, assuming an argumentative pose which made Hadley instinctively bristle, he pointed to the chair on the other side of Lord Ashe's desk.

' Sit down, my dear,' he said to Lesley.

Lesley obeyed.

'If you're going to lecture - !' began a very suspicious Hadley.

' I am not,' said Dr Fell with dignity, ' going to lecture. I am going to ask Miss Grant whether she has, in this village, any very deadly enemy.'

"That's impossible!' cried Lesley.

There was a silence.

'Well,' said Dr Fell, returning the handkerchief to his pocket, Met us consider the evidence. Sam De Villa, may he rest in peace, came to Six Ashes as an outsider. He had, it would seem' - here Dr Fell hesitated slightly - 'no connexion with anybody in this village. Agreed, Hadley?'

' So far as we know at the moment, agreed.'

'Therefore Sam, qua Sam, ceased to become important in the scheme of murder.'

' If it was murder,' Hadley said quickly.

'If it was murder. Oh, ah. Very well. It is now inescapable, as we agreed this morning, that the whole reproduction of an imaginary crime - hypodermic syringe, prussic acid, locked entrances - was a deliberate attempt to throw the blame on Lesley Grant, whom somebody believed to be a murderess. Otherwise there is no point to it'