He Who Whispers Read online

It was more than the flash of illumination which sometimes comes from strung-up emotion: it was a fitting-together of facts.

  ‘That’s why, last night, you started to laugh in that crazy way when I asked you whether you and Harry Brooke had got married after all. That’s why you brought up the subject of anonymous letters against you, though Rigaud had never mentioned any. That’s why you talked about Jim Morell, the great friend Harry wrote to every week; though Rigaud never heard of him either. – You’ve known all along! Haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve known all along.’

  It was little more than a whisper. The tears still welled out of her eyes, and her lips had begun to shake as well.

  ‘Are you insane, Fay? Have you gone completely off your head? Why didn’t you ever speak out and say so?’

  ‘Because … oh, God, what difference does it make now?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Miles swallowed hard. ‘With this damned thing – !’ He strode over to the chest of drawers and picked up the packet of banknotes, feeling repulsion in the touch of them. ‘There are three more packets in the brief-case, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fay. ‘Three more. I only stole them. I didn’t spend them.’

  ‘Come to think of it, what else is in that brief-case? What makes it bulge like that?’

  ‘Don’t touch that brief-case! Please!’

  ‘All right. I’ve got no right to badger you like this. I know that. I’m only doing it because – because it’s necessary. But you ask what difference it makes? When for nearly six years the police have been trying to find out what happened to this case and the money inside it?’

  The footsteps outside in the passage, which they had been too preoccupied to hear until now, approached the door with a casual air. But the tap on the door, though not loud, had a peremptory sound which could not be disregarded.

  It was Miles who spoke; neither of the two women were capable of it.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘I’m a police-officer,’ said the voice outside, with that same combination of the casual and the peremptory. ‘Mind if I come in?’

  Miles’s hand, still holding the banknotes, moved as fast as a striking snake when he thrust those notes into his pocket. It was, he thought to himself, just as well. For the person outside did not wait for an invitation.

  Framed in the doorway, as he swung the door wide open, stood a tall square-shouldered man in a raincoat and a bowler hat. All of them, perhaps, had been expecting a uniform; to Miles at least this was rather more ominous. There was something vaguely familiar about the new-comer’s face: the close-cropped moustache turning grey, the square jaw, with muscles conspicuous at the corners, the suggestion of the military.

  He stood looking from one to the other of the persons in front of him, his hand on the knob; and, in the passage behind him, the light reared and lowered a shadow of the opening and closing of teeth.

  Twice those teeth opened and closed before the newcomer cleared his throat.

  ‘Miss Fay Seton?’

  Fay rose to her feet, turning out her wrist by way of reply. Superbly graceful, unconscious of the tear-stains on her face; drained of violence, past caring.

  ‘My name is Hadley,’ the stranger announced. ‘Superintendent Hadley. Metropolitan C.I.D.’

  And now Miles realized why this face was vaguely familiar. Miles had moved over to the side of Barbara Morell. It was Barbara who spoke.

  ‘I interviewed you once,’ said Barbara shakily, ‘for the Morning Record. You talked a good deal, but you wouldn’t give me permission to print much of it.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Hadley, and looked at her. ‘You’re Miss Morell, of course.’ He looked thoughtfully at Miles. ‘And you must be Mr Hammond. You seem to have got yourself pretty thoroughly soaking wet.’

  ‘It wasn’t raining when I left home.’

  ‘Always wise,’ said Hadley, shaking his head, ‘to take a raincoat when you go out in these days. I could lend you mine, only I’m afraid I’m going to need it myself.’

  The studiedly social air of all this, with its element of deadly danger and tension underneath, couldn’t go on for long. Miles broke it.

  ‘Look here, Superintendent!’ he burst out. ‘You didn’t come here to talk about the weather. The main thing is – you’re a friend of Dr Fell.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Hadley. He came in, removed his hat, and closed the door.

  ‘But Dr Fell said the police weren’t going to be brought into this!’

  ‘Into what?’ Hadley asked politely, with a slight smile.

  ‘Into anything!’

  ‘Well, that depends on what you mean,’ said Hadley.

  His eyes wandered round the room: at Fay’s handbag and black beret on the bed, at the big dusty tin box drawn out from under the bed, at the drawn curtains on the two little windows. His gaze rested, without apparent curiosity, on the brief-case lying there conspicuously under the light over the chest of drawers.

  Miles, his right hand tightly clutching the sheaf of banknotes in his pocket, watched him as you might watch a tame tiger.

  The fact is,’ Hadley pursued easily, ‘I’ve had a very long phone conversation with the maestro …’

  ‘With Dr Fell?’

  ‘Yes. And a good deal of it wasn’t quite clear. But it seems, Mr Hammond, your sister had a very bad and dangerous scare last night.’

  Fay Seton moved round the big tin box and picked up her handbag from the bed. She went to the chest of drawers, tilted the mirror above it so as better to catch the light, and set about with handkerchief and powder to remove the traces of tears. Her eyes in the mirror were blank, like blue marbles; but her elbow quivered frantically.

  Miles clutched the banknotes.

  ‘Dr Fell told you what happened at Greywood?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the police have to be called in?’

  ‘Oh, no. Not unless we’re asked. And in any case you’d approach the police of the district; not London. No,’ said Hadley in a leisurely way, ‘what Fell really wanted was to know the name of a certain test.’

  ‘Certain test?’

  ‘A scientific test to determine … well, what he wanted to determine. And whether I could tell him anyone who knew how to carry it out. He said he couldn’t remember the name of the test, or anything much about it except that you used melted paraffin.’ Hadley smiled slightly. ‘He meant the Gonzalez test, of course.’

  Then Superintendent Hadley moved forward.

  ‘Dr Fell also asked me,’ he went on, ‘whether we had any means of finding out Miss Seton’s address, in case you? – he looked at Miles – ‘in case you by any chance missed her. I said naturally we had, since she must have taken out an identity card.’ Hadley paused. ‘By the way, Miss Seton, have you got your identity card?’

  The reflexion of Fay’s eyes regarded him in the mirror. She had almost finished making up; her hands were steady.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Fay.

  ‘As a matter of form, may I see it?’

  Fay took the card out of her handbag, gave it to him without comment, and turned back to the mirror. For some reason the look of wild strain was returning to her eyes as she picked up the powder compact again.

  (What, thought Miles, is going on under all this?)

  ‘I notice, Miss Seton, that this doesn’t give any last address.’

  ‘No. I’ve been living for the past six years in France.’

  ‘So I understand. You’ve got a French identity card, of course?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I lost it.’

  ‘What was your means of employment in France, Miss Seton?’

  ‘I had no fixed means of employment.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Hadley’s dark eyebrows went up, in contrast to the polish of his steel-grey hair. ‘Must have been a bit difficult to get rations there, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I had no – fixed means of employment.’

  ‘But I understand you’ve
trained professionally both as librarian and as secretary?’

  ‘Yes. That’s true.’

  ‘In fact, come to think of it, you were employed as secretary by a Mr Howard Brooke before his death in nineteen thirty-nine. Now there,’ observed Hadley, as though suddenly struck by a new idea, ‘there’s a case where we should be glad of a bit of help, to pass on to our French colleagues.’

  (Watch the immense cat approach! Watch its devious courses!)

  ‘But I was forgetting,’ said Hadley, dismissing this so instantly that all three of his listeners jumped, ‘I was forgetting the real reason why I came here!’

  ‘The real reason why you came here?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Seton. Er – your identity card. Don’t you want it back?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Fay was compelled to turn round. She took the card from him; and then, in her grey dress and long damp tweed coat, she stood with her back to the chest of drawers. Her body now hid the brief-case, which seemed to shout to heaven. If Miles Hammond had been a thief with every seam of his pockets lined with stolen property, he could not have felt guiltier.

  ‘Dr Fell asked me,’ pursued Hadley, ‘in a strictly unofficial way, to keep an eye on you. It seems that you ran away from him ...’

  ‘I don’t think I quite understand. I didn’t run away.’

  ‘With the intention of coming back again, of course! That’s understood!’

  Fay’s eyes closed spasmodically, and opened again.

  ‘Just before then, Miss Seton, Dr Fell was going to ask you something very important.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He instructed me to tell you that he hadn’t put the question last night,’ continued Hadley, ‘because he didn’t guess then what he guesses at the present time. But he wants very much to have an answer to that question.’ Hadley’s tone changed only slightly; it was still polite, still casually inquiring; but the whole room seemed to grow warmer as he added:

  ‘May I ask that question now?’

  CHAPTER 17

  THE hanging light over the chest of drawers shone down on Fay’s hair, and brought out the warmth of it in contrast to the apparent coldness of her face and body.

  ‘A question about …?’ Her hand – Miles could have shouted warning – instinctively moved towards the brief-case behind her.

  ‘A question,’ said Hadley, ‘in connexion with the frightening of Miss Marion Hammond last night.’ (Fay’s hand darted back again; she straightened up.)

  ‘And I’m afraid,’ continued Hadley, ‘I must preface it by getting the situation clear. Don’t mind my notebook, Miss Seton! It’s not official. I’ve only put down what Fell asked me to put down.’ His eyes strayed to the identity card in her hand. ‘Or do you refuse to answer questions, Miss Seton?’

  ‘Do I ever – refuse?’

  ‘Thank you. Now then: with regard to the frightening of Miss Marion Hammond …’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘You may not be always conscious,’ said Hadley, ‘of what you do or the effect it has.’

  Hadley’s voice remained quiet when he said this.

  ‘However!’ he added quickly, and there was a penetrating quality about his gaze which made the eyes seem to grow larger. ‘We’re not talking now about your conscious guilt or innocence in anything. I’m only trying (What shall I say?) to get this picture clear. As I understand it, you were the last person known to be with Marion Hammond before she was – frightened?’

  Fay gave a quick, hypnotized nod.

  ‘You left her alone in the bedroom in good health and spirits, at … about what time?’

  ‘About midnight. I told Dr Fell so.’

  ‘Ah, yes. So you did. – Had Miss Hammond undressed at this time?’

  ‘Yes. She was in blue silk pyjamas. Sitting in a chair by the bedside table.’

  ‘Now, Miss Seton! Considerably later, a shot was fired in Miss Hammond’s room. Do you remember what time that was?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t the remotest idea.’

  Hadley swung round to Miles.

  ‘Can you help us, Mr Hammond? Everyone, including Dr Fell himself, seems vague about times.’

  ‘I can’t help you,’ answered Miles, ‘except in this one thing.’ He paused, with the scene coming back to him. ‘After the shot, I ran up to Marion’s bedroom. Professor Rigaud joined me, and a few minutes later Dr Fell. Professor Rigaud asked me to go downstairs, to sterilize a hypodermic and do some other things in the kitchen. When I got to the kitchen, the time was twenty minutes to two. There’s a big clock on the wall, and I remember noticing it.’

  Hadley nodded. ‘So the time of the shot, roughly, was round about half-past one or a little later?’

  ‘Yes. I should think so.’

  ‘You agree with that, Miss Seton?’

  ‘I’m afraid’ – Fay lifted her shoulders – ‘I simply don’t remember. I never paid any attention to the time.’

  ‘But you did hear this shot?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was dozing.’

  ‘And afterwards, I understand, you slipped upstairs and looked in at the bedroom door? – Excuse me, Miss Seton? I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that answer?’

  ‘I said: yes.’ Fay’s lips shaped themselves with rounded distinctness. Something of last night’s atmosphere returned to her, of heightened breathing and expression of eye.

  ‘Your room is on the ground floor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you heard this shot in the middle of the night, what made you think the noise came from upstairs? And from that room in particular?’

  ‘Well! Soon after the shot I heard people running in the upstairs hall. Every sound carries at night.’ For the first time Fay seemed honestly puzzled. ‘So I wondered what was wrong. I got up and put on a wrap and slippers, and lighted a lamp, and went upstairs. The door of Miss Hammond’s room was wide open, and there was a light inside. So I went there and peeped in.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  Fay moistened her lips.

  ‘I saw Miss Hammond lying half up in bed, holding a gun. I saw a man named Professor Rigaud – I’d known him before – standing on the far side of the bed. I saw,’ she hesitated, ‘Mr Miles Hammond. I heard Professor Rigaud say this was shock, and that Miss Hammond wasn’t dead.’

  ‘But you didn’t go in? Or call out to them?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I heard someone who sounded awfully heavy and clumsy start to walk up the front stairs at the other end of the hall,’ answered Fay. ‘I know now it must have been Dr Fell on his way to the bedroom. I turned out the lamp I was carrying, and ran down the back stairs. He didn’t see me.’

  ‘What was it that upset you, Miss Seton?’

  ‘Upset me?’

  ‘When you looked into that room,’ Hadley told her with careful slowness, ‘you saw something that upset you. What was it?’

  ‘I don’t understand!’

  ‘Miss Seton,’ explained Hadley, putting away the notebook he had taken out of his inside breast pocket, ‘I’ve had to make all these elaborate inquiries to ask you just one question. You saw something, and it upset you so much that later you apologized to Mr Hammond in Dr Fell’s presence for making what you called a disgraceful exhibition of yourself. You weren’t frightened; the feeling wasn’t in the least connected with fear. What upset you?’

  Fay whirled round towards Miles. ‘Did you tell Dr Fell?’

  And Miles stared at her. ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘What I said to you last night,’ Fay retorted, her fingers twitching together, ‘when we were there in the kitchen and I – I wasn’t quite myself.’

  ‘I didn’t tell Dr Fell anything,’ Miles snapped, with a violence he could not understand. ‘And in any case what difference does it make?’

  Miles took a step or two away from her. He bumped into Barbara, who also moved back. For a fraction of a second, as Barbara’s head turned, he surp
rised on Barbara’s face a look which completed his demoralization. Barbara’s eyes had been fixed steadily on Fay for some time. In her eyes, slowly growing, was an expression of wonder; and of something else which was not dislike, but very near dislike.

  If Barbara turns against her too, Miles thought, we might as well throw up the brief for the defence and retire. But Barbara of all people couldn’t be turning against Fay! And Miles still fought back.

  ‘I shouldn’t answer any questions,’ he said. ‘If Superintendent Hadley isn’t here officially, he’s got no blasted right to come barging in and hint that there’ll be sinister consequences if you don’t answer. Upset! Anybody would have been upset after what happened last night.’ He looked at Fay again. ‘In any case, all you said to me was that you’d just seen something you hadn’t noticed before, and …’

  ‘Ah!’ breathed Hadley, and rapped his bowler hat against the palm of his left hand. ‘Miss Seton had just seen something she hadn’t noticed before! That’s what we thought.’

  Fay let out a cry.

  ‘Why not tell us, Miss Seton?’ suggested Hadley, in a tone of great persuasiveness. ‘Why not make the full confession you intended to make? If it comes to that, why not hand over the brief-case’ – casually he pointed in the direction of it – ‘and the two thousand pounds and the other things as well? Why not …’

  That was the point at which the light over the chest of drawers went out.

  Nobody was prepared for danger. Nobody was alert. Everything was concentrated in that little space where Fay Seton faced Hadley and Miles and Barbara.

  And, though nobody had touched the electric switch by the door, the light went out. With heavy black-out curtains drawn on the little windows, a weight of darkness descended on them like a hood over the face, blotting out rational thoughts as it blotted out images. There was a faint flicker of light from the passage outside as the door swiftly opened. And something rushed at them out of the passage.

  Fay Seton screamed.

  They heard the noise of it go piercing up. They heard a cry like, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ and a crashing sound as of someone falling over the big tin box in the middle of the floor. In the few seconds when Miles had forgotten a certain malignant influence, that influence had caught up with them. He lunged out in the darkness, and felt somebody’s shoulder slip past him. The door to the passage banged. Somewhere there were running footsteps. Miles heard a rattle of rings as someone – it was Barbara – drew back the curtain off one window.