John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

'Very long eyesight. Yesterday, for instance, when I was target-shooting at Major Price's range, I could tell exactly where my hits were scored without having the target drawn in to the counter.'

Superintendent Hadley intervened.

'If you're thinking there's any flummery about that bullet-hole,' he said, 'you can wash it out. Purvis's people have verified everything: angle of fire, force of projectile, damage to window. And,' he nodded towards the shattered picture over the fireplace, 'checked the bullet they dug out of the wall. It was fired from that rifle, and no other rifle.'

Dr Fell slowly turned a red face.

' My God, Hadley,' he said, with a sudden and far-from-characteristic burst of anger which startled Hadley almost as much as it startled Dick, 'will you please allow me to handle this witness in my own way?'

His face grew even more fiery.

'You, sir, are a superintendent of Metropolitan Police. I am very much at your service. I am merely your consultant on the outré; or, to put it in a less high-falutin way, the old guy whom you drag in during peculiar, not so loony, cases of this kind. You have done me the honour of consulting me now in a case which we both believe to be murder. May I ask my own questions, sir, or may I not?'

Outside the windows, the moving helmet of Bert Miller stopped for a fraction of a second before Miller resumed his pacing. Not for -nothing had Dick, when he related the story to Miller that morning, insisted on suicide with such a wealth of detail that the constable dreamed of no other contingency. This was the first time Miller had heard mention of the word murder from his superior officers.

But Dick hardly noticed this now; it was swept away by the extraordinary violence of Dr Fell's outburst.

' Sorry if I've stepped on your toes,' Hadley said mildly. ' Carry on.'

'Harrumph! Ha! Very well.' Dr Fell adjusted his eyeglasses, drawing the air through his nostrils with a long challenging sound. 'On hearing the shot, Mr Markham, you ran forward again?'

‘Yes.'

'And met Miss Cynthia Drew in the lane?' 'That's right.'

'How was it, with your long eyesight, that you hadn't seen her before?'

' Because,' answered Dick,' the sun was smack in my eyes. Straight down the lane, and she was coming from the east I could see things on either side, but not in the lane itself.'

'H'm, yes. That accounts for it. What explanation did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

'Look here, sir! You don't think - ?'

'What explanation,' Dr Fell repeated gently, 'did Miss Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

Outside, in the hall, the telephone began to ring shrilly.

It made each of these three men, each with his own separate thoughts, start a little to hear that clamouring bell. Was this, Dick wondered, the communication Dr Fell expected? Was the murderer - behind a bland friendly countenance of all the bland friendly countenances at Six Ashes - ringing up to whisper more hatred against Lesley Grant? Hadley hurried out to the phone; they heard him speaking in a low voice. When he returned his face was very grave.

' Well ?' prompted Dr Fell.

'No,' said the superintendent quickly, 'it's not what you're thinking. That telephone-communication idea of yours is rubbish, and you know it. Nobody would take such a fool's risk as that. But your other idea, I admit -'

' Who was it, Hadley?'

'It was the police-surgeon at Hawkstone. He's just done the post-mortem. And it's upset the apple-cart again.'

Dr Fell, with his big bulk propped against the wall, straightened up. His mouth fell open under the bandit's moustache.

'Look here, Hadley! You're not going to tell me Sam De Villa wasn't killed by prussic acid after all ?'

'Oh, yes. He was killed with prussic acid, right enough. About three grains of anhydrous prussic acid, administered in a hypodermic by somebody unskilled in the use of it. But...’

'But what?'

' It's the stomach-contents,' said Hadley. 'Go on, man!'

'About six hours before death,' replied Hadley, 'Sam swallowed what must have amounted to three or four grains of luminal.'

Again Hadley sat down at his desk, and opened his notebook.

'Don't you understand?' he went on. 'If Sam took that much luminal before going to bed at some time past eleven, it's practically impossible that he could have come downstairs under his own steam at five o'clock the following morning.'

CHAPTER l6

'MIND!' added the cautious superintendent. 'We can't say it is impossible.' He picked up a pencil and examined its point. 'There are people capable of resistance to the strongest drugs, and people who shake off their effects very quickly. All we can say is that it's very unlikely. But according to the evidence at least, Sam did come downstairs this morning?' 'Apparently, yes.'

'And, unless we call Mr Markham a liar, a light did go on in this room when he says it did?'

' Undoubtedly.'

'But you think that doesn't upset the apple-cart in any way?'

'No,' answered Or Fell, pushing himself back against the wall so that the front of his shovel-hat rose up as though tilted by an invisible hand, 'no, my lad, I can't say it does. This may become clearer,' he screwed up his face hideously, 'if you let me get on with a few relevant matters. What explanation (may I repeat) did Miss Cynthia Drew give for her presence in the lane at that hour?'

Dick looked away.

'She couldn't sleep. She'd been out for a walk.' 'A walk. Oh, ah. And is Gallows Lane the fashionable place for an early morning walk hereabouts ?' 'It could be. Why not?'

Dr Fell frowned. 'The lane, Lord Ashe informed me, ends only a few hundred yards east of here: where, in the eighteenth century, a gallows actually stood.'

'Technically it ends, yes. But there's a hard path across open fields towards Goblin Wood, where everybody goes for a walk. Miller the constable lives near there, as a matter of fact'

'Really, my boy,' said Dr Fell with exceptional mildness, 'you needn't yell. I quite understand. The point is that Miss Drew was also smack on the scene of the crime, or very nearly so. Did she see or hear anything that would help us?'

'No. Cynthia... Wait a minute, yes she did!' exclaimed Dick, catching himself up and obsessed with new, torturing puzzles. 'I didn't mention this in my evidence early this morning, because Cynthia hadn't told me then. She only told me afterwards, when I saw her at Lesley's house.'

'Well?'

'A minute or so before the rifle was fired,' explained Dick, 'Cynthia saw somebody run across the lane from the orchard on this side to the coppice on the other.'

He related the incident

And the effect of this on Dr Fell was electric.

'Got it!' said the doctor thunderously, and snapped his fingers in the air. 'Archons of Athens, but this is almost too good to be true! Got it!'

Hadley, who knew his obese friend of old, pushed back the easy-chair from the writing-table and got up in a hurry.. The movement of the chair - whose rollers slid creakily on the worn brown carpet, past the spilled box of drawing-pins - disclosed something else.

On the floor, open and face down as though it had been shoved under the chair to get it out of sight, lay a cloth-bound book. Hadley, despite his momentary distraction of attention, stooped down to pick up the book.

' I say, Hadley,' remonstrated Dr Fell, with his eye on one drawing-pin which had evidently rolled wide of the others. ' I wish you'd be careful not to step on those drawing-pins. Well? What is it?'

Hadley held out the book. It was a well-thumbed copy of Hazlitt's essays in the Everyman edition, with the name Samuel R. De Villa on the fly-leaf and many annotations in the same neat handwriting. Dr Fell inspected it curiously before throwing it on the table.