He Who Whispers Page 5

  ‘By a what?’

  The question was fired back so quickly, while Professor Rigaud lowered his lands and leaned forward, that Miles felt an eerie and disturbing twinge of nerves. It seemed to him that Professor Rigaud was trying to tell him something, trying to lead him, trying to draw him on, with that sardonic amusement behind it.

  ‘I was going to say,’ Miles answered, ‘by some sort of supernatural being that could float in the air.’

  ‘How curious for you to use those words! How very interesting!’

  ‘Would you mind if I interrupted for a moment?’ asked Barbara, fiddling with the tablecloth. ‘The main thing, after all, is about – is about Fay Seton. I think you said she had an appointment with Mr Brooke for four o’clock. Did she keep that appointment at all?’

  ‘She was, at least, not seen.’

  ‘Did she keep that appointment, Professor Rigaud?’

  ‘She arrived there afterwards, mademoiselle. When it was all over.’

  ‘Then what was she doing during that time?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Professor Rigaud, with such relish that both his auditors half dreaded what he might say. ‘Now we come to it!’

  ‘Come to what?’

  ‘The most fascinating part of the mystery. This puzzle of a man alone when he is stabbed’ – Professor Rigaud puffed out his cheeks – ‘it is interesting, yes. But to me the great interest of a case is not in material clues, like a bright little puzzle-box with all the pieces numbered and of a different colour. No! To me it lies in the human mind, the human behaviour: if you like, the human soul.’ His voice sharpened. ‘Fay Seton, for example. Describe for me, if you can, her mind and soul.’

  ‘It might help us,’ Miles pointed out, ‘if we learned what she had been doing which upset people so much, and changed everybody’s feelings towards her. Forgive me, but – you do know what it was?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was clipped off. ‘I know.’

  ‘And where she was at the time of the murder,’ continued Miles, with questions boiling inside him. ‘And what the police thought about her position in the affair. And what happened to her romance with Harry Brooke. And, in short, the whole end of the story!’

  Professor Rigaud nodded.

  ‘I will tell you,’ he promised. ‘But first’ – like a good connoisseur, tantalizingly, he beamed as he held them in suspense – ‘we must have a glass of something to drink. My throat is as dry as sand. And you must drink too.’ He raised his voice. ‘Waiter!’

  After a pause he shouted again. The sound filled the room; it seemed to draw vibrations from the engraving of the skull hung over the mantelpiece, it made the candle-flames curl slowly; but there was no reply. Outside the windows the night was now pitch-black, gurgling as though from a water-spout.

  ‘Ah, zut!’ fussed Professor Rigaud, and began to look about for a bell.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ ventured Barbara, ‘I’m rather surprised we haven’t been turned out of here long ago. The Murder Club seem to be very favoured people. It must be nearly eleven o’clock.’

  ‘It is nearly eleven o’clock,’ fumed Professor Rigaud, consulting his watch. Then he bounced to his feet. ‘I beg of you, mademoiselle, that you will not disturb yourself! Or you, either, my friend: I will get the waiter.’

  The double-doors to the outer room closed behind him, again whisking the candle-flames. As Miles got up automatically to anticipate him, Barbara stretched out her hand and touched his arm. Her eyes, those friendly sympathetic grey eyes under the smooth forehead and the wings of ash-blonde hair, said silently but very clearly that she wanted to ask him a question in private.

  Miles sat down again.

  ‘Yes, Miss Morell?’

  She withdrew her hand quickly. ‘I … I don’t know how to begin, really.’

  ‘Then suppose I begin?’ said Miles, with that tolerant and crooked smile which so much inspired confidence.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t want to pry into anything, Miss Morell. This is entirely between ourselves. But it has struck me, once or twice to-night, that you’re far more interested in the specific case of Fay Seton than you are in the Murder Club.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Isn’t it true? Professor Rigaud’s noticed it too.’

  ‘Yes. It’s true.’ She spoke after a hesitation, nodding vigorously and then turning her head away. ‘That’s why I owe you an explanation. And I want to give you an explanation. But before I do’ – she turned back to face him – ‘may I ask you a horribly impertinent question? I don’t want to pry either; really I don’t; but may I ask it?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want to know?’

  Barbara tapped the photograph of Fay Seton, lying between them beside the folded sheaf of manuscript.

  ‘You’re fascinated by that, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Well – yes. I suppose I am.’

  ‘You wonder,’ said Barbara, ‘what it would be like to be in love with her.’

  If her first remark had been a trifle disconcerting, the second took him completely aback.

  ‘Are you setting up as a mind-reader, Miss Morell?’

  ‘I’m sorry! But isn’t it true?’

  ‘No! Wait! Hold on! That’s going a bit too far!’

  The photograph had been having a hypnotic effect; he could not in honesty deny it. But that was curiosity, the lure of a puzzle. Miles had always been rather amused by those stories, usually romantic stories with a tragic ending, in which some poor devil falls in love with a woman’s picture. Such things had actually happened in real life, of course; but it failed to lessen his disbelief. And, in any case, the question didn’t arise here.

  He could have laughed at Barbara for her seriousness.

  ‘Anyway,’ he countered, ‘why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because of something you said earlier this evening. Please don’t try to remember what it was!’ Humour, a wryness about the mouth to contradict the smile in her eyes, showed in Barbara’s face. ‘I’m probably only tired, and imagining things. Forget I said it! Only …’

  ‘You see, Miss Morell, I’m a historian.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her manner was quickly sympathetic.

  Miles felt rather sheepish. ‘That’s a highfalutin’ way of putting it, I’m afraid. But it does happen to be true, in however small a way. My work, the world I live in, is made up of people I never knew. Trying to visualize, trying to understand, a lot of men and women who were only heaps of dust before I was born. As for this Fay Seton …’

  ‘She is wonderfully attractive, isn’t she?’ Barbara indicated the photograph.

  ‘Is she?’ Miles said coolly. ‘It’s not a bad piece of work, certainly. Coloured photographs are usually an abomination. Anyway,’ fiercely he groped back to the subject, ‘this woman is no more real than Agnes Sorel or – or Pamela Hoyt. We don’t know anything about her.’ He paused, startled. ‘Come to think of it, we haven’t even heard whether she’s still alive.’

  ‘No,’ the girl agreed slowly. ‘No, we haven’t even heard that.’

  Barbara got up slowly, brushing her knuckles across the table as though throwing something away. She drew a deep breath.

  ‘I can only ask you again,’ she said, ‘please to forget everything I’ve just said. It was only a silly idea of mine; it couldn’t possibly come to anything. What, a queer evening this has been! Professor Rigaud does rather cast a spell, doesn’t he? And, as far as that’s concerned’ – she spoke suddenly, twitching her head round – ‘isn’t Professor Rigaud being a long time in finding a waiter?’

  ‘Professor Rigaud!’ called Miles. He lifted up his voice powerfully. ‘Professor Rigaud!’

  Again, as when the absent one had himself called for a waiter, only the rain gurgled and splashed in the darkness. There was no reply.

  CHAPTER 5

  MILES rose to his feet and went over to the double-doors. He threw them open, and looked into an outer room sombre and deserte
d. Bottles and glasses had been removed from the improvised bar; only one electric light was burning.

  ‘A queer evening,’ Miles declared, ‘is absolutely right. First the whole Murder Club disappears. Professor Rigaud tells us an incredible story,’ Miles shook his head as though to clear it, ‘which grows even more incredible when you have time to think. Then he disappears. Common sense suggests he’s only gone to – never mind. But at the same time …

  The mahogany door to the hall opened. Frédéric, the head-waiter, his round-jowled face aloof with reproach, slipped in.

  ‘Professor Rigaud, sir,’ he announced, ‘is downstairs. At the telephone.’

  Barbara, who had stopped only long enough, apparently, to pick up her handbag and blow out one candle which was fluttering and flaring in a harsh gush of wax-smoke, had followed Miles into the outer room. Again she stopped short.

  ‘At the telephone?’ Barbara repeated.

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘But’ – the words sounded almost comic as she flung them out – ‘he was looking for someone to serve us drinks!’

  ‘Yes, miss. The call came through while he was downstairs.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘I believe, miss, from Dr Gideon Fell.’ Slight pause. ‘The Honorary Secretary of the Murder Club.’ Slight pause. ‘Dr Fell learned Professor Rigaud had been ringing up from here earlier in the evening; so Dr Fell rang back.’ Was there a dangerous quality, now, about Frédéric’s eye? ‘Professor Rigaud seems very angry, miss.’

  ‘Oh, good Lord!’ breathed Barbara in a voice of honest consternation.

  Over the back of one of the pink-brocaded chairs, chairs ranged as stiffly round the room as in an undertaker’s parlour, hung the girl’s fur wrap and an umbrella. Assuming an air of elaborate unconcern which would have deceived nobody, Barbara picked them up and twisted the wrap round her shoulders.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said to Miles. ‘I shall have to go now.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘But, look here! You can’t go now! Won’t the old boy be annoyed if he comes back and finds you’re not here?’

  ‘Not half as annoyed,’ Barbara said with conviction, ‘as if he comes back and finds I am here.’ She fumbled at her handbag. ‘– I want to pay for my share of the dinner. It’s been very nice. I –’ Confusion, utter and complete, overcame her down to the finger-tips. Her handbag overflowed, spilling coins and keys and a compact on the floor.

  Miles restrained an impulse to laugh, though certainly not at her. A great dazzle of illumination came into his mind. He bent down, picked up the fallen articles, dropped them into her handbag, and closed it with a snap.

  ‘You arranged all this, didn’t you?’ he asked her.

  ‘Arranged? I …’

  ‘You dished the meeting of the Murder Club, by God! In some way you put off Dr Fell and Mr Justice Coleman and Dame Ellen Nye and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all! All except Professor Rigaud, because you wanted to hear his first-hand account about Fay Seton! But you knew the Murder Club had never entertained any guests except the speaker, so you hadn’t bargained on my turning up …’

  Her dead-serious voice recalled him.

  ‘Please! Don’t make a fool of me!’

  Wrenching loose from the hand he had put on her arm, Barbara ran for the door. Frédéric, a stony eye on one corner of the ceiling, slowly moved aside for her as one who calls attention to the fact that he could have sent for the police. Miles hurried after her.

  ‘Here! Wait! I wasn’t blaming you! I …’

  But she was already flying down the soft-carpeted hall, in the direction of the private stair to Greek Street.

  Miles glanced round desperately. Opposite him was the illuminated sign of the gentleman’s cloakroom. He snatched up his raincoat, crammed his hat on his head, and returned to face the speaking eye of Frédéric.

  ‘Are the dinners of the Murder Club paid for by somebody in a lump sum? Or does each person pay for his own?’

  ‘It is the rule for each person to pay for his own, sir. But to-night –’

  ‘I know, I know!’ Miles thrust banknotes into the man’s hand, with pleasurable exhilaration at the thought that he could nowadays afford to do so. ‘This is to cover everything. Present my distinguished compliments to Professor Rigaud, and say I’ll ring him in the morning to apologize. I don’t know where he’s staying in London,’ this was an impasse he swept aside, ‘but I can find out. Er – have I given you enough money?’

  ‘More than enough money, sir. At the same time …’

  ‘Sorry. My fault. Good night!’

  He dared not run too hard, since his old illness was apt to claw at him and make his head swim. But his pace was tolerably fast all the same. As he got downstairs and outside, he could just see the glimmer of Barbara’s white dress, under the short fur wrap, moving in the direction of Frith Street. Then he really did run.

  A taxi rolled down Frith Street in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, its motor whirring with great distinctness in the hollow-punctuated silence of London at night. Miles shouted at it without much hope, but to his surprise it hesitatingly swerved in towards the kerb. With his left hand Miles caught at Barbara Morell’s arm; with his right he twisted open the handle of the cab door before someone else should appear, ghostly out of the rain-pattering gloom, to lay claim to it.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said to Barbara, with such a warmth of sincerity that her arm relaxed, ‘there was no reason to run away like that. You can at least let me drop you off at home. Where do you live?’

  ‘St John’s Wood. But …’

  ‘Can’t do it, governor,’ said the taxi-driver in a fierce voice of defiance mingled with martyrdom. ‘I’m going Victoria way, and I’ve only just got enough petrol to get home.’

  ‘All right. Drop us at Piccadilly Circus tube-station.’

  The car door slammed. There was a slur of tyres on wet asphalt. Barbara, in the far corner of the seat, spoke in a small voice.

  ‘You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘For the last time, my dear girl: no! On the contrary. Life has been made so uncomfortable for us that every little bit helps.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘A high-court judge, a barrister-politician, and a number of other important people have been carefully flummoxed at something they’d arranged. Wouldn’t it delight your heart if you heard – as you never will – of an Important Person who couldn’t make a reservation or got thrown back to the tail-end of a queue?’

  The girl looked at him.

  ‘You are nice,’ she said seriously.

  This threw Miles a little off balance.

  ‘It isn’t a question of what you call niceness,’ he retorted with some violence. ‘It’s a question of the Old Adam.’

  ‘But poor Professor Rigaud –! ’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit rough on Rigaud. We must find a way to make amends. All the same! – I don’t know why you did it, Miss Morell, but I’m very glad you did it. Except for two reasons.’

  ‘What reasons?’

  ‘In the first place, I think you should have confided in Dr Fell. He’s a grand old boy; he’d have sympathized with anything you told him. And how he would have enjoyed that case of the man murdered while alone on a tower! That is,’ Miles added, with the perplexity and strangeness of the night wrapping him round, ‘if it was a real case and not a dream or a leg-pull. If you’d told Dr Fell …’

  ‘But I don’t even know Dr Fell! I lied about that too.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘It does matter,’ said Barbara, and pressed her hands hard over her eyes. ‘I’d never met any of the members. But I was in a position, you see, to learn all their names and addresses, and that Professor Rigaud was speaking on the Brooke case. I phoned everybody except Dr Fell as Dr Fell’s private secretary, and said the dinner had been postponed. Then I got in touch with Dr Fell as representing the President. And hoped to heaven tho
se two would be away from home to-night if someone did ring up for confirmation.’

  She paused, staring straight ahead at the glass partition behind the driver’s seat, and added slowly:

  ‘I didn’t do it for a joke.’

  ‘No. I guessed that.’

  ‘Did you?’ cried Barbara. ‘Did you?’

  The cab jolted. Motor-car lamps, odd in newness, once or twice swept the back of the cab with their brief unaccustomed glare through dingy rain-misted windows.

  Barbara turned towards him. She put out a hand to steady herself against the glass partition in front. Anxiety, apology, a curious embarrassment, and – yes! her obvious liking for him – shone in her expression as palpably as her wish to tell him something else. But she did not speak that something else. She only said:

  ‘What was the other reason?’

  ‘Other reason?’

  ‘You told me there were two reasons why you regretted this – this foolishness of mine to-night. What’s the other one?’

  ‘Well!’ He tried to sound light and casual. ‘Hang it all, I was a good deal interested in that case of the murder on the tower. Since Professor Rigaud probably isn’t on speaking terms with either of us –’

  ‘You may never hear the end of the story. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘I see.’ She was silent for a moment, tapping her fingers on her handbag, her mouth moving in an odd way and her eyes shining almost as though there were tears in them. ‘Where are you staying in town?’

  ‘At the Berkeley. But I’m going back to the New Forest to-morrow. My sister and her fiancé are coming up for the day, and we’re all travelling back together.’ Miles broke off. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Maybe I can help you.’ Opening her handbag, she drew out a folded sheaf of manuscript and handed it to him. ‘This is Professor Rigaud’s own account of the Brooke case, specially written for the archives of the Murder Club. I – I stole it from the table at Beltring’s when you went to look for him. I was going to post it on to you when I’d finished reading, but I’ve already learned the only thing I really wanted to know.’

  Insistently she thrust the manuscript back into his hands.