He Who Whispers Read online

  ‘I don’t see how I can be of any use now,’ she cried. ‘I don’t see how I can be of any use now!’

  With a grind of gears into neutral, with the whush of tyres erratically scraping a kerb, the taxi drew up. Ahead loomed the cavern of Piccadilly Circus from the mouth of Shaftesbury Avenue, murmurous and shuffling with a late crowd. Instantly Barbara was across the cab and outside on the pavement.

  ‘Don’t get out!’ she insisted, backing away. ‘I can go straight home in the Underground from here. And the taxi’s going your way in any case. – Berkeley Hotel!’ she called to the driver.

  The door slammed just before eight American G.I.’s, in three different parties, bore down simultaneously on the cab. Against the gleam of a lighted window Miles caught a glimpse of Barbara’s face, smiling brightly and tensely and unconvincingly in the crowd as the taxi moved away.

  Miles sat back, holding Professor Rigaud’s manuscript and feeling it figuratively burn his hand.

  Old Rigaud would be furious. He would demand to know, in a frenzy of Gallic logic, why this trick had been played on him. And that was not funny; that was only just and reasonable; for Miles himself had still no notion why. All of which he could be certain was that Barbara Morell’s motive had been a strong one, passionately sincere.

  As for Barbara’s remark about Fay Seton …

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

  What infernal nonsense!

  Had the mystery of Howard Brooke’s death ever been solved, by the police or by Rigaud or by anyone else? Had they learned who committed the murder, and how it was done? Evidently not, from the tenor of the professor’s remarks. He had said he knew what was ‘wrong’ with Fay Seton. But he had also said – though in queer, elusive terms – that he did not believe she was guilty. Every statement concerning the murder, through all that tortuous story, rang the clear indication that there had been no solution.

  Therefore all this manuscript could tell him … Miles glanced at it in the semi-darkness … would be the routine facts of the police investigation. It might tell him some sordid facts about the character of a pleasant-faced woman with red hair and blue eyes. But no more.

  In an utter revulsion of feeling Miles hated the whole thing. He wanted peace and quiet. He wanted to be free from these clinging strands. With a sudden impulse, before he should think better of it, he leaned forward and tapped the glass panel.

  ‘Driver! Have you got enough petrol to take me back to Beltring’s Restaurant, and then on to the Berkeley? – Double fare if you do!’

  The silhouette of the driver’s back contorted with angry indecision; but the cab slowed down, slurred, and circled Eros’s island back into Shaftesbury Avenue.

  Miles was inspired by his new resolution. After all, he had been gone from Beltring’s only a comparatively few minutes. What he proposed doing now was the only sensible thing to do. His resolution blazed brightly inside him when he jumped out of the taxi in Romilly Street, hurried round the corner to the side entrance, and up the stairs.

  In the upstairs hall he found a dispirited-looking waiter occupied with the business of closing up.

  ‘Is Professor Rigaud still here? A short stoutish French gentleman with a patch of moustache something like Hitler’s carrying a yellow cane?’

  The waiter looked at him curiously.

  ‘He is downstairs in the bar, monsieur. He …’

  ‘Give him this, will you?’ requested Miles, and put the still-folded manuscript into the waiter’s hand. ‘Tell him it was taken by mistake. Thank you.’

  And he strode out again.

  On the way home, lighting his pipe and inhaling the soothing smoke, Miles was conscious of a sensation of exhilaration and buoyancy. To-morrow afternoon, when he had attended to the real business which brought him to London, he would meet Marion and Steve at the station. He would return to the country, to the secluded house in the New Forest where they had been established for only a fortnight, as a man plunges into cool water on a hot day.

  That was disposed of, cut off at the root, before it could really trouble his mind. Whatever secret appertained to a phantom image called Fay Seton, it was no concern of his.

  To claim his attention there would be his uncle’s library, that alluring place hardly as yet explored during the confusion of moving in and settling down. By this time to-morrow night he would be at Greywood, among the ancient oaks and beeches of the New Forest, beside the little stream where rainbow trout rose at dusk when you flicked bits of bread on the water. Miles felt, in some extraordinary way, that he had got out of a snare.

  His taxi dropped him at the Piccadilly entrance to the Berkeley: he paid the driver in an expansive mood. Seeing that the lounge inside was still pretty well filled at its little round tables, Miles, with his passionate hatred of crowds, deliberately walked round to the Berkeley Street entrance so that he might breathe solitude a little longer. The rain was clearing away. A freshness tinged the air. Miles pushed through the revolving doors into the little foyer, with the reception desk on his right.

  He got his key at the desk, and stood debating the advisability of a final pipe and whisky-and-soda before turning in, when the night reception clerk hurried out of the cubicle with a slip of paper in his hand.

  ‘Mr Hammond!’

  ‘Yes?’

  The clerk scrutinized the slip of paper, trying to read his own handwriting.

  ‘There’s a message for you, sir. I think you applied to the – to this employment agency for a librarian to do cataloguing work?’

  ‘I did,’ said Miles. ‘And they promised to send an applicant round this evening. The applicant didn’t turn up, which made me very late for a dinner I was attending.’

  ‘The applicant did turn up, sir, eventually. The lady says she’s very sorry, but it was unavoidable. She says could you please see her to-morrow morning? She says things are very difficult, since she’s only just been repatriated from France …’

  ‘Repatriated from France?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The hands of a gilt clock on the grey-green wall pointed to twenty-five minutes past eleven. Miles Hammond stood very still, and stopped twirling the key in his hand.

  ‘Did the lady leave her name?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Miss Fay Seton.’

  CHAPTER 6

  ON the following afternoon, Saturday, the second of June, Miles reached Waterloo Station at four o’clock.

  Waterloo, its curving acre of iron-girdered roof still darkened over except where a few patches of glass remained after the shake of bombs, had got over most of the Saturday rush to Bournemouth. But it still rang with a woman’s spirited voice over a loud-speaker, telling people what queues to join. (If this voice ever begins to say something you want to hear, it is instantly drowned out by a hiss of steam or the thudding chest-notes of an engine.) Streams of travellers, mainly in khaki against civilian drabness, wound back among the benches behind the bookstall and, to the ladylike annoyance of the loudspeaker, got mixed up in each other’s queues.

  Miles Hammond was not amused. As he put down his suitcase and waited under the clock, he was almost blind to everything about him.

  What the devil, he said to himself, had he done?

  What would Marion say? What would Steve say?

  Yet if anybody on this earth represented sanity, it was his sister and her fiancé. He was heartened to see them a few minutes later, Marion laden with parcels and Steve with a pipe in his mouth.

  Marion Hammond, six or seven years younger than Miles, was a sturdy, nice-looking girl with black hair like her brother but a practicality that he perhaps lacked. She was very fond of Miles and tirelessly humoured him; because she really did believe, though she never said so, that he was not mentally grown up. She was proud, of course, of a brother who could write such learned books, though Marion confessed she didn’t understand such things herself: the point was that books had no relation to serious affairs in life.

  An
d, as Miles sometimes had to admit to himself, perhaps she was right.

  So she came hurrying along under the echoing roof of Waterloo, well dressed even in this year because of new tricks with old clothes, her hazel eyes at ease with life under their dark straight brows, and intrigued – even pleased – by a new vagary of Miles’s nature.

  ‘Honestly, Miles!’ said his sister. ‘Look at the clock! It’s only a few minutes past four!’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘But the train doesn’t go until half-past five, dear. Even if we’ve got to be here early to have a prayer of getting a seat, why must you make us get here as early as this?’ Then her sisterly eye caught the expression on his face, and she broke off. ‘Miles! What’s wrong? Are you ill?’

  ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I want to talk to both of you,’ said Miles. ‘Come with me.’

  Stephen Curtis took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Ho?’ he observed.

  Stephen’s age might have been in the late thirties. He was almost completely bald – a sore subject with him – though personable-enough looking and with much stolid charm. His fair moustache gave him a vaguely R.A.F. appearance, though in fact he worked at the Ministry of Information and Strongly resented jokes about this institution. He had met Marion there two years ago after being invalided out very early in the war. He and Marion, in fact, were themselves an institution already.

  So he stood looking at Miles with interest from under the brim of a soft hat.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Stephen.

  Opposite platform number eleven at Waterloo there is a restaurant, up two steep flights of stairs. Miles picked up his suitcase and led the way there. When they had installed themselves at a window table overlooking the station platform, in a big imitation-oak-panelled room only sparsely filled, Miles first ordered tea with care.

  ‘There’s a woman named Fay Seton,’ he said. ‘Six years ago, in France, she was mixed up in a murder case. People accused her of some kind of unnamed bad conduct which set the whole district by the ears.’ He paused. ‘I’ve engaged her to come to Greywood and catalogue the books.’

  There was a long silence while Marion and Stephen looked at him. Again Stephen took the pipe out of his mouth.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Miles answered honestly. ‘I’d made up my mind to have absolutely nothing to do with it. I was going to tell her firmly that the post had been filled. I couldn’t sleep all last night for thinking about her face.’

  ‘Last night, eh? When did you meet her?’

  ‘This morning.’

  With great carefulness Stephen put down the pipe on the table between them. He pushed the bowl a fraction of an inch to the left, and then a fraction of an inch to the right, delicately.

  ‘Look here, old man –’ he began.

  ‘Oh, Miles,’ cried his sister, what is all this?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you!’ Miles brooded. ‘Fay Seton was trained as a librarian. That’s why both Barbara Morell and old What’s-his-name, at the Murder Club, both looked so strange when I mentioned the library and said I was looking for a librarian. But Barbara was even quicker-minded than the old professor. She guessed. What with the present terrific labour shortage, if I went to the agencies for a librarian and Fay Seton was in the market for a job, it was twenty to one Fay would be sent to me. Yes. Barbara guessed in advance.’

  And he drummed his fingers on the table.

  Stephen removed his soft hat, showing the pinkish bald head above an intent, worried-looking face set in an expression of affection and expostulation.

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ he suggested. ‘Yesterday morning, Friday morning, you came to London in search of a librarian –’

  ‘Actually, Steve,’ Marion cut in, ‘he’d been invited to a dinner of something called the Murder Club.’

  ‘That,’ said Miles, ‘was where I first heard about Fay Seton. I’m not crazy and this isn’t at all mysterious. Afterwards I met her …’

  Marion smiled.

  ‘And she told you some heart-rending story?’ said Marion. ‘And your sympathies were roused as usual?’

  ‘On the contrary, she doesn’t even know I’ve heard a word about her. We simply sat in the lounge at the Berkeley and talked.’

  ‘I see, Miles. Is she young?’

  ‘Fairly young, yes.’

  ‘Good-looking?’

  ‘In a certain way, yes. But that wasn’t what influenced me. It was –’

  ‘Yes, Miles?’

  ‘Just something about her!’ Miles gestured. ‘There isn’t time to tell you the whole story. The point is that I have engaged her and she’s travelling down with us by this afternoon’s train. I thought I’d better tell you.’

  Conscious of a certain relief, Miles sat back as the waitress came and clanked down tea-things on the table with a wrist-motion suggestive of someone throwing quoits. Outside, under the dusty windows beside which they sat, moved the endless sluggish knots of travellers in front of black white-numbered gates leading to the platforms.

  And it suddenly occurred to Miles, as he watched his two companions, that history was repeating itself. There could be no persons more conventional, better representing the traditions of home life, than Marion Hammond and Stephen Curtis. Exactly as Fay Seton had been introduced into the Brooke family six years ago, she would now enter another such household.

  History repeating itself. Yes.

  Marion and Stephen exchanged a glance. Marion laughed.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she observed, in the musing tone of a woman not altogether displeased. ‘It might be rather fun, in a way.’

  ‘Fun?’ exclaimed Stephen.

  ‘Did you tell her, Miles, to be sure to bring her ration-book?’

  ‘No,’ His tone was bitter. ‘I’m afraid that detail escaped me.’

  ‘Never mind, dear. We can always …’ Abruptly Marion sat up, a flash of consternation in her hazel eyes under the sensible straight brows. ‘Miles! Wait! This woman didn’t poison anybody?’

  ‘My dear Marion,’ said Stephen, ‘will you please tell me what difference it makes whether she poisoned anybody or shot anybody or beat in some old man’s head with a poker? The point is –’

  ‘Just a minute,’ interposed Miles quietly. He tried to be very quiet, very measured, and to control the thumping of his pulses. ‘I didn’t say this girl was a murderess. On the contrary, if I have any judgement of human character, she certainly isn’t anything of the kind.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ Marion said indulgently, and leaned across the tea-service to pat his hand. ‘I’m sure you’re quite convinced of that.’

  ‘God damn it, Marion, will you stop misjudging my motives in this thing?’

  ‘Miles! Please!’ Marion clucked her tongue, more from force of habit than anything else. ‘We’re in a public place.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Stephen. ‘Better lower your voice, old boy.’

  ‘All right, all right! Only …’

  ‘Here!’ soothed Marion, and poured tea with deftness. ‘Take this, and try one of the cakes. There! Isn’t that better? This interesting lady of yours, Miles: how old did you say she was?’

  ‘In her early thirties, I should think.’

  ‘And going out as a librarian? How is it the Labour Exchange hasn’t got her?’

  ‘She’s only just been repatriated from France.’

  ‘From France? Really? I wonder if she’s brought over any French perfume with her?’

  ‘Come to think of it,’ said Miles, who in fact could remember it quite well, ‘she was wearing some kind of perfume this morning. I happened to notice.’

  ‘We want to hear all about her past history, Miles. There’s plenty of time, and we can save an extra cup of tea for her in case she turns up soon. It wasn’t poison? You’re sure of that? Steve, darling! – you’re not having any tea!’

  ‘Listen!’ said Stephen, at last in the authoritative
voice of one who calls for the floor.

  Picking up his pipe from the table, he twisted at it and thrust it bowl-upwards into his breast-pocket.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ he complained, ‘is how all this came about. Do they keep murderers at the Murder Club, or what? All right, Miles! Don’t get on your high horse! I like to get my facts in order, that’s all. How long will it take Miss What-is-it to put the books in order? A week or so?’

  Miles grinned at him.

  ‘Properly to catalogue that library, Steve, with all the cross-referencing of the old books, will take between two and three months.’

  Even Marion looked startled.

  ‘Well,’ murmured Stephen, after a pause, ‘Miles will always do exactly what he wants to do. So that’s all right. But I can’t go back to Greywood with you this evening …’

  ‘You can’t go back this evening?’ cried Marion.

  ‘My darling,’ said Steve, ‘I kept trying to tell you in the taxi – only you haven’t the gift of worshipful silence – that there’s a crisis on again at the office. It’s only until to-morrow morning.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose it’s all right to send you two down there alone with this interesting female?’

  There was a brief silence.

  Then Marion chortled with mirth.

  ‘Steve! You are an idiot!’

  ‘Am I? Yes. I suppose I am.’

  ‘What can Fay Seton do to us?’

  ‘Not being acquainted with the lady, I can’t say. Nothing, actually.’ Stephen smoothed at his cropped moustache. ‘It’s only –’

  ‘Drink up your tea, Steve, and don’t be so old-fashioned. I shall be glad of her help about the house. When Miles said he was going to employ a librarian I rather imagined an old man with a long white beard. What’s more, I shall put her in my room, and that will give me an excuse to move into that glorious ground-floor room even if it does still smell of paint. It’s tiresome about the Ministry of Information; but I don’t think the woman will frighten us to death in one night even if you’re not there. What train are you taking to-morrow morning?’

  ‘Nine-thirty. And mind you don’t mess about with that kitchen boiler unless I’m there to help. Let it alone, do you hear?’