John Carr - He Who Whispers

Barbara began to laugh hysterically, but she checked herself.

“It was Professor Rigaud, always preaching to Harry about crime and the occult—he told us so himself—who in all innocence put Harry on to the thing these people really did fear. The thing that would make them talk and even scream. It's silly and it's horrible and of course it worked straight away. Harry deliberately bribed that sixteen-year-old boy to counterfeit marks in his own throat and start a story about a vampire . . .

“You do se now, don't you?”

“Goodge Street!”

“Harry knew, of course, that his father wouldn't have any nonsense about vampires. Harry didn't want his father to believe that. What Mr. Brooke would hear, what he couldn't help hearing in every corner round Chartres, was a story about his son's fiancee visiting Pierre Fresnac so often at night, and . . . and all the rest of it. That would be enough. That would be more than enough.”

Miles Hammond shivered.

Clank-thud went the train, roaring on in its fusty tunnel. Lights jolted on metal and upholstery. In Barbara's story Miles could se tragedy coming as clearly as though he did not already know of its existence.

“I don't question what you tell me,” he said, and he took a key-ring out of his pocket and twisted if fiercely as though he wanted to tear it in two. “But how do you know these details?”

“Harry wrote them all to my brother!” cried Barbara.

She was silent for a moment.

“Jim's a painter, you see. Harry admired him tremendously. Harry thought—honestly thought!--that Jim as a man of the world would approve of his scheme to get away from a stuffy family atmosphere and call him no end of a clever fellow for thinking this up.”

“Did you know all about it at the time?”

Barbara opened her eyes wide.

“Good heavens, no! That was six years ago. Was only twenty at the time. I remember Jim did keep getting letters from France that worried him, but he never made any remark about it. Then . . .”

“Go on!”

She swallowed hard.

“About the middle of August in that year, I remember Jim with his beard suddenly getting up from the breakfast table with a letter in his hand and saying, 'My God, the old man's been murdered.' He referred once or twice to the Brooke case, and tried o find out all he could from anything that was published in the English newspapers. But afterwards you couldn't get him to say a word about it.

“Then the war. Jim was reported dead in 'forty-two; we believed he was dead. I—I went through his papers. I came across this awful story spread out from letter to letter. Of course there wasn't anything I could do. There wasn't much I could even learn, except a few scanty things in the back files of the papers: that Mr. Brooke had been stabbed and the police rather thought Miss Fay Seton had killed him.

“It was only in this last week . . . Things never do come singly, do they? They always heap up on you all at once!”

“Yes. I can testify to that.”

“Warren Street!”

“A press photograph came into the office, showing three Englishwomen who were returning from France, and one of them was, 'Miss Fay Seton, whose peacetime profession is that of librarian.' And a man at the office happened to tell me all about the famous Murder Club, and said that the speaker on Friday night was to be Professor Rigaud, giving an eye-witness account of the Brooke case.”

There were tears in Barbara's eyes now.

“Professor Rigaud loathes journalists. He wouldn't ever before speak at the Murder Club, even, because he was afraid they'd bring in the press. I couldn't go to him in private unless I produced my bundle of letters to explain why I was interested; and I couldn't— do you understand that?--I couldn't have Jim's name mixed up in this if something dreadful cam out of it. So I . . .”

“You tried to get Rigaud to yourself at Beltring's?”

“Yes.”

She nodded quickly, and then stared out of the window.

“When you mentioned that you were looking for a librarian, it did occur to me, 'Oh, Lord! Suppose . . .?' You know what I mean?”

“Yes.” Miles nodded. “I follow you.”

“You were so fascinated by that colour photograph, so much under its spell, that I thought to myself, “Suppose I confide in him? If he wants to find a librarian, suppose I ask him to find Fay Seton and tell her there's someone who knows she's been the victim of a filthy frame-up? It's possible he'll meet her in any case; but suppose I ask him to find her?”

“And why didn't you confide in me?”

Barbara's fingers twisted round her handbag.

“Oh, I don't know.” She shook her head rapidly. “As I said to you at the time, it was only a silly idea of mine. And maybe I resented it, a little, that you were so obviously smitten.”

“But, look here!--”

Barbara flung this away and rushed on.

“But the main thing was: what could you or I actually do for her? Apparently they didn't believe she was guilty of murder, and that was the main thing. She'd been the victim of enough foul lying stories to poison anyone's life, but you can't un-ruin a reputation. Even if I weren't such a coward, how could I help? I told you, the last thing I said before I jumped out of that taxi, I don't see how I can be of any use now!”

“The letters don't contain any information about the murder of Mr. Brooke, then?”

“No! Look here!”

Winking to keep back tears, her face flushed and her ash-blonde head bent forward, Barbara fumbled inside the handbag. She held out four folded sheets of notepaper closely written.

“This,” she said, “is the last letter Harry Brooke ever wrote to Jim. He was writing it on the afternoon of the murder. First it goes on—gloating!--over the success of his scheme to blacken Fay and get what he wanted. Then it breaks off suddenly. Look at the end bit!”

“Euston!”

Miles dropped the key[-ring in his pocket and took the letter. The end, done in a violent agitated scrawl for an after-thought, was headed, “6:45 p.m.” Its words danced in front of Mile's eyes as the train quivered and roared.

Jim, something terrible had just happened. Somebody's killed Dad. Rigaud and I left him on the tower, and somebody went up and stabbed him. Must get this in the post quickly to ask you for God's sake, old man, don't ever tell anybody what I've been writing to you. If Fay went scatty and killed the old boy because he tried to buy her off, I won't want anybody to know I've been putting out reports about her. It wouldn't look right and besides I didn't want anything like this to happen. Please, old man. Yours in haste, H. B.

So much raw, unpleasant human nature cried out of that letter, Miles thought, that it was as though he could se the man writing it.

Miles stared straight ahead, lost now to everything.

Rage against Harry Brooke clouded his mind; it maddened him and weakened him. To think he never suspected anything in the character of Harry Brooke . . . and yet, obscurely, hadn't he? Professor Rigaud had been wrong in estimating this pleasant young man's motives. Yet Rigaud had drawn, sharply drawn, a picture of nerves and instability. Miles himself had once used the word neurotic to describe him.

Harry Brooke had coolly and deliberately, to get his own way, invented the whole damned . . .

But, if Miles had ever doubted whether he himself was in love with Fay Seton, he doubted no longer.

The thought of Fay, completely innocent, sick with bewilderment and fright, was one that neither the heart nor the imagination could resist. He cursed himself for ever having doubts of any kind about her. He had been seeing everything through distorted spectacles; he had been wondering, almost with a sense of repulsion mixed with the attraction he felt for her, what power of evil might lie behind the blue eyes. And yet all the time . . .