He Who Whispers Read online

  It was not necessary to go and find her. Fay, who had dressed herself in the same grey frock as she had worn earlier in the evening, was coming towards them now. In the uncertain light it seemed to Miles that she had put on a great deal of lipstick, which she did not ordinarily use.

  Her white face, composed now, floated towards them.

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Dr Fell in a curious rumbling voice, ‘good evening.’

  ‘Good evening.’ Fay stopped short. ‘You are …?’

  ‘Miss Seton,’ introduced Miles, ‘this is an old friend of mine. Dr Gideon Fell.’

  ‘Oh. Dr Gideon Fell.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she spoke in a slightly different tone. ‘You caught the Six Ashes murderer,’ she said. ‘And the man who poisoned all those people at Sodbury Cross.’

  ‘Well …!’ Dr Fell seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m an old duffer, ma’am, who has had some experience with the ways of crime.’

  Fay turned to Miles.

  ‘I – wanted to tell you,’ she said in her usual soft voice of sincerity. ‘I made rather an exhibition of myself downstairs. I’m sorry. I was – upset. And I didn’t even sympathize with what happened to poor Marion. Can’t I be of service in any way?’

  She moved tentatively towards the bedroom door not far behind her, but Miles touched her arm.

  ‘Better not go in there. Professor Rigaud is acting as amateur doctor. He won’t let anybody in.’

  Slight pause.

  ‘How – how is she?’

  ‘A bit better, Rigaud thinks,’ said Dr Fell. ‘And that, ma’am, brings us to a matter I should rather like to discuss with you.’ He picked up his pipe from the window-sill. ‘If Miss Hammond recovers, this matter will of course be no concern of the police …’

  ‘Won’t it?’ murmured Fay. And across her lips, in that unreal moonlit hall outside the bedroom door, flicked a smile which struck cold to the heart.

  Dr Fell’s voice sharpened. ‘You believe the police should be concerned in this, ma’am?’

  The curve of that terrifying smile, like a red gash in the face, was gone in a flash along with the glassy turn of the blue eyes.

  ‘Did I say that? How stupid of me. I must have been thinking of something else. What did you want to know?’

  ‘Well, ma’am! As a formality! Since you were the last person presumed to be with Marion Hammond before she lost consciousness …’

  ‘I was? Why on earth should anyone think that?’

  Dr Fell regarded her in apparent perplexity.

  ‘Our friend Hammond here,’ he grunted, ‘has – harrumph – given me an account of a conversation you had with him down in the library earlier to-night. You remember that conversation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At about half-past eleven, or thereabouts, Marion Hammond came into the library and interrupted you. Apparently you had given her a present of some kind. Miss Hammond said she had a present for you in return. She asked you to go on up to her room ahead of her, and said she would join you after she’d had a word with her brother.’ Dr Fell cleared his throat. ‘You remember?’

  ‘Oh. Yes! Yes, of course!’

  ‘And therefore, presumably, you did go?’

  ‘How stupid of me! – Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Straight away, ma’am?’

  Fay shook her head, rapt and intent on his words.

  ‘No. I supposed Marion would have – personal things to talk over with Mr Hammond there, and I thought it might be a little while before she left him. So first I went to my own room, and put on a nightgown and wrap and slippers. I came up here afterwards.’

  ‘How long afterwards?’

  ‘Ten or fifteen minutes, maybe. Marion had already got there before me.’

  ‘And then?’

  The moon was setting, its light grown thin. It was the turn of the night, the hour when to sick people death comes or passes by. All about them, south and east, towered the oaks and beeches of William the Conqueror’s hunting forest, a forest old before him, seamed and withered with age; all night quiet, yet now subtly murmurous with a rising breeze. By moonlight the colour red becomes greyish-black, and that was the colour of Fay’s moving lips.

  ‘The present I had given Marion,’ she explained, ‘was a little bottle of French perfume. Jolyeux number three.’

  Dr Fell put up a hand to his eyeglasses.

  ‘Oh, ah? The same little red-and-gold bottle that’s on the bedside table now?’

  ‘I – I suppose so.’ There was that infernal smile again, curling. ‘Anyway, she put it on the bedside table by the lamp. She was sitting in a chair there.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘It wasn’t much, but she seemed awfully pleased. She gave me nearly a quarter of a pound of chocolates loose in a box. I have them downstairs in my room now.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I – I don’t know what you want me to say, really. We talked. I was restless. I walked up and down …’

  (Images crowded back into Miles Hammond’s mind. As he himself had left the library, hours ago, he remembered glancing up and seeing a woman’s shadow pass across the light, lonely against the screen of the New Forest.)

  ‘Marion asked me why I was restless, and I said I didn’t know. Mostly she did the talking, about her fiancé and her brother and her plans for the future. The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you? And the bottle of perfume. All of a sudden, about midnight it was, she broke off and said there! – it was time we were both turning in and getting some sleep, so I went downstairs to bed. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Miss Hammond didn’t seem nervous or alarmed about anything?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Dr Fell grunted. Dropping the dead pipe into his pocket, he deliberately removed his eyeglasses and held them a few feet away from his eyes, studying them with screwed-up face like a painter, though in that light he could scarcely have seen them at all. His wheezings and snortings, a sign of deep meditation, grew even louder.

  ‘You know, of course, that Miss Hammond was nearly frightened to death?’

  ‘Yes. It must have been dreadful.’

  ‘Have you any theory, ma’am, to account for what frightened her?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, at the moment.’

  ‘Have you any theory, then,’ pursued Dr Fell in exactly the same tone of voice, ‘to account for the equally mysterious death of Howard Brooke on Henri Quatre’s tower nearly six years ago?’

  Without giving her time for a reply, still holding up the eye-glasses and appearing to scrutinize them with intense concentration, Dr Fell added in an offhand tone:

  ‘Some people, Miss Seton, are very curious correspondents. They will pour out in letters to people far away what they wouldn’t dream of telling someone in the same town. You have – harrumph – perhaps noticed it?’

  To Miles Hammond it seemed that the whole atmosphere of this interview had subtly changed. For Dr Fell spoke again.

  ‘Are you a good swimmer, Miss Seton?’

  Pause.

  ‘Fairly good. I daren’t do much of it because of my heart.’

  ‘But I should hazard a guess, ma’am, that if necessary you do not object to swimming under water?’

  And now a wind came whispering and rustling, sinuously, through the forest; and Miles knew the atmosphere had changed. Not subtly, but on Fay Seton’s part charged with emotion, perhaps deadly. It was the same silent outburst he had sensed and felt a while ago, in the kitchen, over boiling water. It engulfed the hall in an invisible tide. Fay knew. Dr Fell knew. Fay’s lips were drawn back from her teeth, and the teeth glittered.

  It was then, as Fay took a blundering step backwards to get away from Dr Fell, that the door to Marion’s bedroom opened.

  The opening of the door poured yellow light into the hall. Georges Antoine Rigaud, in his shirt-sleeves, regarded them in a state of near-raving.

  ‘I tell you,’ he cried out, ‘I cannot keep this woman’s heart beating m
uch longer. Where is that doctor? Why does not that doctor arrive? What is delaying …’

  Professor Rigaud checked himself.

  Past his shoulder, past a wide-open door, Miles by moving a little could see into the bedroom. He could see Marion, his own sister Marion, lying on a still more tumbled bed. The .32 revolver, useless against certain intruders, had slipped off the bed on to the floor. Marion’s black hair was spread out on the pillow. Her arms were thrown wide, one sleeve pushed up where a hypodermic injection had been made in the arm. She had the aspect of a sacrifice.

  In that moment, by a single gesture, terror rushed on them out of the New Forest.

  For Professor Rigaud saw Fay Seton’s face. And Georges Antoine Rigaud – Master of Arts, man of the world, tolerant watcher of human foibles – instinctively flung up his hand in the sign against the evil eye.

  CHAPTER 12

  MILES HAMMOND dreamed a dream.

  Instead of being asleep at Greywood, on that Saturday night passing into Sunday morning – which was actually the case – he dreamed that he was downstairs in the sitting-room, at night under a good lamp, seated in an easy-chair and taking notes from a large book.

  The passage read:

  ‘In Slavonic lands popular folklore credits the vampire with existence merely as an animated corpse: that is, a being confined to its coffin by day, and emerging only after nightfall for its prey. In Western Europe, notably in France, the vampire is a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but capable during sleep or trance of projecting its soul in the form of straw or spinning mist to take visible bodily shape.’

  Miles nodded as he underscored it.

  ‘ “Creberrima fama est multique se expertos uel ab eis,” to quote a possible explanation of the origin of these latter, “qui experto essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset audisse confirmant, Siluanos et Panes, quos uulgo incubos uocant, improbos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earum adpetisse ac perigisse concubitum, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur.” ’

  ‘I shall have to translate this,’ Miles said to himself in his dream. ‘I wonder if there’s a Latin dictionary in the library.’

  So he went into the library in search of a Latin dictionary. But he knew all along who would be waiting there.

  During his work at Regency history Miles had for a long time been captivated by the character of Lady Pamela Hoyt, a sprightly court beauty of a hundred and forty years gone by, no better than she should be, and perhaps a murderess. In his dream he knew that in the library he would meet Lady Pamela Hoyt.

  There was as yet no sense of fear. The library looked just as usual, with its dusty uneven piles of books round the floor. On one pile of books sat Pamela Hoyt, in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a high-waisted Regency gown of sprigged muslin. Across from her sat Fay Seton. Each one looked just as real as the other; he was conscious of nothing unusual.

  ‘I wonder if you could tell me,’ Miles said in his dream, ‘whether my uncle keeps a Latin dictionary here?’

  He heard their reply soundlessly, if it can be expressed like that.

  ‘I really don’t think he does,’ replied Lady Pamela politely, and Fay shook her head too. ‘But you could go upstairs and ask him.’

  There was a flash of lightning outside the windows. Suddenly Miles felt an intense reluctance to go upstairs and ask his uncle about a Latin dictionary. Even in the dream he knew his Uncle Charles was dead, of course; but that wasn’t the reason for his reluctance. The reluctance grew into terror, solidifying coldly through his veins. He wouldn’t go! He couldn’t go! But something impelled him to go. And all the time Pamela Hoyt and Fay Seton, with enormous eyes, sat perfectly motionless like wax dummies. There was a shaking crash of thunder …

  Miles, with bright sunlight in his face, was shocked awake. He sat up, feeling the arms of the chair on either side of him.

  He was in the sitting-room downstairs, hunched up in the tapestry chair by the fireplace. In a momentary backwash of the dream, wildly, he half expected to see Fay and dead Pamela Hoyt walk out of the library door over there behind him.

  But here was the familiar room, with the Leonardo above the mantelpiece, and soft brilliant sunshine. And the telephone was ringing shrilly. The events of last night returned to Miles as he heard it ring.

  Marion was safe. Safe, and going to get well. Dr Garvice had said she was out of danger.

  Yes! And Dr Fell was asleep upstairs in his own room, and Professor Rigaud in Steve Curtis’s: these being the only two other inhabitable bedrooms at Greywood. That was why he had dossed down here in the chair.

  Greywood felt hushed, felt empty and new-washed, in a fresh morning stillness, though he could tell by the position of the sun that it must be past eleven o’clock. Still the telephone kept clamouring on the wide window-sill. He stumbled over to it, stretching his muscles, and caught it up.

  ‘May I speak to Mr Miles Hammond?’ said a voice. ‘This is Barbara Morell.’

  Then Miles definitely became awake.

  ‘Speaking,’ he answered. ‘Are you – I asked you this once before – by any chance a mind-reader?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Miles sat down on the floor with his back to the wall under the windows: not a dignified position, but it gave him a sense of sitting across from the speaker for a heart-to-heart talk.

  ‘If you hadn’t rung me,’ he went on, ‘I was going to try to get in touch with you.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  For some reason it gave him extraordinary pleasure to hear her voice. There was no subtlety, he reflected, about Barbara Morell. Simply because she had played that trick with the Murder Club, it showed her as transparent as a child.

  ‘Dr Fell is here … No, no, he’s not annoyed about it! He hasn’t so much as mentioned the club! … Last night he tried to make Fay Seton admit something, and he had no success. He says now you’re our last hope. He says that if you don’t help us we may be dished.’

  ‘I don’t think’ Barbara’s voice said doubtfully, ‘you’re making yourself very clear.’

  ‘Look here! Listen! If I came in to town this afternoon, could I possibly see you?’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘This is Sunday. I think there’s a train,’ he searched his memory, ‘at half-past one. Yes, I’m sure there’s a train at half-past one. It takes roughly two hours. Where could I see you?’

  Barbara seemed to be debating.

  ‘I could meet your train at Waterloo. Then we might have tea somewhere.’

  ‘Excellent idea!’ All last night’s bewilderment swept over him. ‘The only thing I can tell you now is that there was a very bad business here last night. Something happened in my sister’s room that seems past human belief. If we can only find an explanation …’

  Miles glanced up.

  Stephen Curtis – sober-faced, conscientiously correct from his hat to his grey double-breasted suit, carrying a rolled umbrella over his arm – Stephen Curtis, coming in at a jaunty pace from the reception-hall, caught the last words and stopped short.

  Miles had dreaded telling Steve, dreaded telling the mental counterpart of Marion. It was all right now, of course. Marion wasn’t going to die. At the same time, he spoke hastily to the telephone.

  ‘Sorry I have to ring off now, Barbara. See you later.’ And he hung up.

  Stephen, his forehead growing faintly worried, contemplated his future brother-in-law sitting on the floor: unshaven, wild, and tousle-headed.

  ‘Look here, old man …’

  ‘It’s all right!’ Miles assured him, springing to his feet. ‘Marion’s had a very bad time of it, but she’s going to get well. Dr Garvice says …’

  ‘Marion?’ Steve’s voice went high, and all the colour drained out of his face. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Something or someone got into her room last night, and frightened her very nearly to death. But she’ll be as right as rain in two or three days, so you’re not to
worry.’

  For a few seconds, while Miles could not meet his eye, neither of them spoke. Stephen walked forward. Stephen, that self-controlled man, fastened sinewy fingers round the handle of his rolled umbrella; deliberately he lifted the umbrella high in the air; deliberately he brought it down with a smash on the edge of the table under the windows.

  The umbrella subsided, bent metal and broken ribs amid black cloth: a useless heap, an inanimate object that for some reason looked pitiful, like the body of a shot bird.

  ‘It was that damned librarian, I suppose?’ Stephen asked almost calmly.

  ‘Why should you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I knew at the station yesterday, I felt it in my bones, I tried to warn you both, that there was trouble coming. Some people cause something-or-other wherever they go.’ A blue, congested vein showed at his temple. ‘Marion!’

  ‘We owe her life, Steve, to a man named Professor Rigaud. I don’t think I’ve told you about him. Don’t wake him now; he’s had a long night of it; but he’s asleep in your room.’

  Stephen turned away. He walked over to the line of low white-painted bookshelves along the west wall, with the big framed portraits over them. He stood there with his back to Miles, his hands spread out on the shelf-top. When he turned round a little later Miles saw, with acute embarrassment, that there were tears in his eyes.

  Both of them suddenly spoke with desperation of trivialities.

  ‘Did you – er – just get here?’ asked Miles.

  ‘Yes. Caught the nine-thirty from town.’

  ‘Crowded?’

  ‘Fairly crowded. Where is she?’

  ‘Upstairs. She’s asleep now.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘I don’t know any reason why not. I tell you, she’s all right! But go quietly; everybody else is in bed.’

  Everybody else, however, was not in bed. As Stephen turned towards the door to the reception hall, there appeared in the doorway the vastness of Dr Fell, carrying a cup of tea on a tray and looking as though he did not quite know how it had got there.