Till Death Do Us Part dgf-15 Read online

  'Dick,' breathed Cynthia's voice at his elbow. ' That bullet didn't hit him.'

  It was true.

  In the back wall of the room, facing them as they looked through the window, was the brick fireplace with its overmantel ornaments of Benares brass. Above this hung a big coloured print depicting some phase of the battle of Waterloo. The rifle-bullet had drilled through the window, passed close to the top of Sir Harvey's head, and shattered the lower edge of the picture - which now hung askew -before burying itself in the wall. But it had not touched him.

  There had been urgency in Cynthia's voice, and bewilderment, and something like relief. Dick turned to stare at her. 'Then what the devil's the matter with the fellow?' 'I don't know.'

  ' Sir Harvey!' yelled Dick, putting his mouth close against the window.' Sir Harvey Gilman!'

  There was no reply.

  Dick glanced from one window to the other. He inspected the first, then the second. Since the cottage was built rather low against the ground, the lower sills of the windows were not much above the level of his waist. They were ordinary sash-windows, fastening with metal catches on the inside. By putting one knee on the outer sill, and hauling himself up with a hand on the frame at each side, Dick was able to see through the glass that both windows were locked on the inside.

  A very ugly notion began to creep through his mind now.

  'Wait here a minute,' he said to Cynthia.

  Hurrying to the front door, he found it unlocked and only partly on the latch above two stone steps. He threw it open, and found himself in the small modern-looking hall he remembered from last night.

  On his left, he also remembered, was the door leading into the sitting-room. If he opened this door now, it would bring him into the sitting-room at a point behind the back of the motionless figure seated at the table. But he was not able to open this door, though he wrenched with violent hands at the knob. It was fastened on the inside.

  He tore out into the front garden again, where Cynthia was still staring through the window.

  'You know,' she declared, 'there's something awfully queer about him. His face seems a funny colour. Bluish? Or is that the effect of the light? And there's something about his mouth: is it froth? And ... Dick! what on earth are you doing?'

  With a hazy idea that the bullet-hole might be required as evidence, Dick did not touch that right-hand window. Instead he went to the other window. From the unkempt grass of the garden he picked up half a brick, and flung it at the window with a crash that brought glass rattling down in shards.

  From that stuffy room, very distinct in morning air, stirred a breath which drifted out of the window with a small but perceptible odour of bitter almonds. It came at their faces in a wave. Cynthia, beside him, put a hand on his arm.

  'It - it smells like finger-nail varnish,' she said. 'What is it?'

  'Prussic acid.'

  Reaching inside the shattered window, Dick put up his hand, unlocked the catch of the window, and pushed it up. Then he hauled himself up across the sill and dropped into the room amid crunching glass.

  The bitter-almonds odour was more distinct now. It required some effort to go close and touch that body, but Dick did it. The man he knew as Sir Harvey Gilman had been dead for only a few minutes, since the body was still almost at blood-heat. It was still dressed in pyjamas and dressing-gown; the velour-covered easy-chair supported it upright except for the lolling head, and gave an appearance of ease to the arms along the arms of the chair. But the cyanosis and froth of prussic-acid poisoning, the half-open eye, showed with hideous plainness when you went closer.

  Dick glanced across at the door leading to the hall.

  Frantically he went over and inspected it. The key was turned in the lock, and a small tight-fitting bolt was solidly pushed fast on the inside.

  Of the two windows which constituted the only other entrance, one window now had its lower glass shattered, and the other bore a bullet-stamp a few inches below the joining of the sashes. But there could be no doubt - Dick himself could swear, however much the police might disbelieve him - that both windows had been locked on the inside too.

  'So,' Dick remarked aloud, 'he said it couldn't possibly happen to him?'

  It was only then that he noticed something else.

  The light of the hanging lamp caught a faint gleam near the floor beside the easy-chair: a smallish hypodermic syringe, with slender glass barrel and nickelled plunger. It had dropped beside the chair, sticking point upwards in the carpet, as though it had fallen there from the dead man's relaxing fingers. It set the seal of finality on this wicked scene, while the odour of hydrocyanic acid seemed to grow even more overpowering in a stuffy room, and daylight broadened fully outside the windows. Another suicide.

  CHAPTER 8

  DICK was still standing by the door, trying to arrange thoughts that would not cohere, when he heard a scraping noise at the window. Cynthia with supple agility had swung herself through, and landed on her feet lightly, like a cat, amid broken glass.

  Her face was composed but concerned - concerned, you would have said, more for Dick Markham than for the shrivelled figure in the chair.

  ' This is dreadful!' she said, and then, as though conscious of the weakness of these words, added, 'Simply dreadful!' in a flat positive tone before going on: 'You said prussic acid, Dick. Prussic acid's a poison; isn't it?'

  'Yes. Very much so.'

  Cynthia cast a glance of repulsion at the chair.

  'But what on earth happened to the poor man?'

  'Come here,' requested Dick. 'Er - are you all. right?'

  'Oh, dear, yes. Perfectly all right.’ It would take more than this to upset Cynthia. She went on with vehemence: 'But it is horrible and ghastly and everything else! You mean someone gave him some poison?'

  'No. Look here!'

  As she circled round the writing-table, he pointed to the hypodermic needle stuck point upright in the floor. Then - which required more steeling of the nerves - he leaned across the body and lifted the left arm from the elbow. Its loose dressing-gown and pyjama sleeves fell away, exposing a thin hickory-like arm streaked with blue congested veins. The injection with the hypodermic had been clumsily made: you could see the tiny fleck of dried blood against the forearm.

  'Dick! Wait! Ought you to be doing that?' ‘Doing what?'

  'Breaking windows, and touching things, and all the rest of it? In those books you've loaned me ... heaven knows some of them are difficult to understand; nasty people!... but they always say you must leave everything as it is. Isn't that right ?'

  'Oh, yes,' he said grimly. 'I'm going to catch the devil for doing this. But we've got to know!'

  The blue eyes studied him.

  'Dick Markham, you look absolutely frightful. Didn't you go to bed at all last night ?' 'Never mind that now!'

  'But I do mind it. You never get any proper rest, especially when you're working. And there's something on your mind that's worrying you. I could tell that last night.'

  ' Cynthia, will you please look at this ?'

  'I am looking at it,' answered Cynthia, though she looked away instead, and clenched her hands.

  "This is suicide,' he explained, impressing it on her by fashioning the words with careful violence. 'He took a hypodermic full of hydrocyanic acid - there it is! - and injected it into his left arm. You yourself can testify,' he swept his arm round, 'that this room is locked up on the inside? So that proves (don't you see) that nobody tried to kill him?'

  'But, Dick! Somebody did try to kill him! Somebody shot at him with a rifle!'

  'The bullet didn't hit him, did it?'

  'No,' returned Cynthia, 'but that jolly well wasn't for want of trying!' Her breast rose and fell. She added: 'Is it about Lesley?'

  Dick swung round.

  'Is what about Lesley?'

  'This thing that's worrying you,' said Cynthia with simple feminine directness. ' Why should you think it's about Lesley ?' 'What else could it be?' inquired Cynthia. S
he did not stop to explain the logic of this remark, but went on: 'That horrid little man,' and .she pointed to the figure in the chair, 'has been upsetting everything and everybody at Six Ashes. First there was the accident with the rifle yesterday afternoon. Of course it was an accident' - briefly, the blue eyes seemed to ponder - 'but it does seem queer that somebody deliberately tried to shoot him this morning. And, on top of that, you say he poisoned himself with what's-its-name acid'

  'There's your evidence, Cynthia.'

  She spoke abruptly. 'Dick, it just isn't good enough.'

  'How do you mean, isn't good enough?'

  ' I don't know I That's just the point. But - did you hear about the row between Major Price and Mr Earnshaw, late last night? Over somebody stealing the rifle?'

  'Yes. Lord Ashe told me.'

  Again Cynthia pointed to the figure in the chair.

  'Dick, what did he tell you about Lesley?'

  'Nothing! Why in God's name do you think he said anything about Lesley?'

  'He was reading things in the crystal about everybody else. I bet he read something about Lesley, and that's what's worrying you.'

  Hitherto Dick had always considered Cynthia as a good fellow but not exactly as a model of intelligence. To avert this danger-point now, he laughed until it seemed to him that the military prints round the walls rattled in their frames.

  'If there is anything,' insisted Cynthia, with a sort of coaxing motherliness, 'tell me. Do tell me!'

  'Look here! You don't think Lesley had anything to do with this?'

  'But why ever should I think that?' asked Cynthia, with her eye on a corner of the carpet. Faint colour tinged her face. 'Only ... it's all so queer! Hadn't we better report this to the police? Or do something about it?'

  'Yes. I suppose so. What time is it?'

  Cynthia consulted a wrist watch.

  'Twenty minutes past five. Why?'

  Dick walked round, to the front of the desk. The motionless figure,, one eye partly open, surveyed him with so sardonically lifelike an expression that this dead man might have been laughing in hell.

  'I've got to phone Bert Miller, of course.'

  Miller was the local constable, and it should take him no great time to get here. Though Gallows Lane technically ended in open fields a few hundred yards eastwards - a gallows had stood there in the eighteenth century; Dick's stomach turned over at the thought - still there was a path over the fields to Goblin Wood. Bert Miller lived near there.

  'But the person I must get on to,' he insisted, 'is Dr Middlesworth.' ‘Why Dr Middlesworth?'

  'Because he's heard about the other cases. And we've got to decide -' ‘What other cases, Dick?'

  As near a slip, as near a betrayal, as made no difference! Dick pulled himself together.

  ·I mean, criminal cases in general!'

  'But you said this wasn't a criminal case,' pointed out Cynthia, who was watching him fixedly and seemed to be breathing faster. 'You said he killed himself. Why do you say something different now ?'

  That he did not answer this question was due less to being concerned than to the fact that his attention was caught by something else, which added a touch of the grotesque to the dead man's expression. Again he went forward to inspect the body, this time from the opposite side.

  On the carpet at the side of the chair, this time as though fallen from die victim's left hand, lay a spilled box of drawing-pins.

  A little cardboard box, with drawing-pins or thumbtacks spilled on the carpet. Hypodermic syringe near the right hand, drawing-pins near the left It made the wits whirl even more, with its neat arrangement. Dick picked up one of the drawing-pins, pressing its sharp point against his thumb and noting in an idle sort of way that it would have made much the same sort of puncture in a human arm as (say) a clumsily administered hypodermic ...

  'Dick!'cried Cynthia.

  He scrambled hastily up off his knees.

  'Telephone,' he said, to forestall the torrent of questions he saw in her eyes. 'Excuse me.'

  The telephone, he remembered, was out in the hall. He unlocked and unbolted the door, observing both the weight of the lock and the small tight-fitting closeness of the bolt.

  Talking to Middlesworth, he thought, was going to be infernally difficult with Cynthia in the next room. The ringing-tone buzzed interminably, before it was answered by the unmistakable bedside voice of a woman just roused from sleep.

  'Sorry to trouble you at this hour, Mrs Middlesworth! But -’

  'The doctor's not in,' said the voice, controlling itself. 'He's up at the Hall.' 'At the Hall?'

  'At Ashe Hall. One of the maids was taken badly in the night, and Lady Ashe was worried. Isn't that Mr Markham speaking?'

  'Yes, Mrs Middlesworth.'

  ' Can I take a message, Mr Markham ? Are you ill?'

  'No, no! Nothing like that! But it's rather urgent'

  ' Indeed. I am sorry he's not here,' murmured the voice, with restrained suspicious pleasantness. A G.P.'s wife learns how to manage this.' If it's urgent you could ring him there. Or walk across the park and see him. Good-bye.'

  Walk across the park and see him.

  That would be better yet, Dick decided. If he cut through the coppice and'up over South Field, he could reach Ashe Hall in two minutes. He hurried back to the sitting-room, where he found Cynthia biting uncertainly at her pink under-lip. He took her hands, though she seemed reluctant to extend them, and pressed them firmly.

  'Listen, Cynthia. I've got to go up to the Hall; Middlesworth is there now. I don't mean to be gone longer than ten minutes. In the meantime, will you ring Bert Miller and then stand guard? Just-tell Bert that Sir Harvey Gilman has committed suicide, and that he needn't hurry in getting here.'

  'But-!'

  'The old boy did commit suicide, you know.' 'Are you going to trust me, Dick? Tell me about it later, I mean?' 'Yes, Cynthia. I will.'

  It was good to have somebody he could trust, to have Cynthia's straightforwardness and practicality in the mists of nightmare. He pressed her hands again, though she would not look at him. Afterwards - when he left the house - crossed the lane, made his way through the dark birch-coppice and up over the green slope of South Field to Ashe Hall - the image of a very different girl went with him.

  Let's face the ugly fact, now. If Lesley had done this ...

  'But surely,' argued his common sense, 'Lesley wouldn't have killed Sir Harvey Gilman just to keep him from betraying her identity to the people of Six Ashes?'

  'Why not?' inquired a horned and devilish doubt.

  'Because,' said common sense, 'it will only bring in the police, and betray her identity in any case.'

  'Not necessarily,' returned the doubt, 'if it is handled by the local authorities and treated as a featureless suicide.'

  'But Sir Harvey Gilman fa a well-known figure,' common sense insisted. 'This will be in the papers. It will probably meet the attention of someone at Scotland Yard.'

  The doubt took on a kind of evil laughter.

  'You yourself,' it said, 'are a rather well-known young playwright. Your suicide would be in the papers. Yet Sir Harvey himself never doubted that this angel-faced lady might well be arranging to poison you!'

  Here the doubt fastened deeply: it took on claws, tight-holding, as it grew in Dick Markham's imagination.

  'Sir Harvey,' it said, 'obviously hated Lesley Grant. He was pursuing her if any man ever pursued her. He nearly betrayed her yesterday afternoon, when she did try to shoot him. Her attitude towards him would hardly have been one of sweetness and light. If a poisoner's character does hide in that pretty body, she would have been just in the mood to strike back at him - with an undetectable method of poisoning.'

  But that was where you came up with a bump against the final bewilderment. Sir Harvey Gilman certainly hadn't killed himself; and, the one man of all men to be on his guard, he couldn't have been gulled by any trick into injecting a hypodermic into his own arm. This you could swear to. Yet, on the other
hand, it was absolutely impossible for anybody to have murdered him.

  Dick walked blindly up the slopes of South Field.

  Ahead of him now he could see the south wing of Ashe Hall, its ancient bricks showing dark in the polished morning air. Though no smoke went up yet from its kitchen chimneys, all the visible doors stood wide open.

  And the first person Dick saw was Lord Ashe, coming round the side of the house - in his usual corduroys and ancient coat, wearing gardening gloves and with a pair of rose-tree shears in his right hand. He stopped short as he caught sight of Dick, waiting for him to come up.

  'Er - good morning,' said Lord Ashe in a puzzled tone.

  'Good morning, sir. You're up early.'

  ' I'm always up at this time,' said Lord Ashe.

  Dick's gaze strayed along the south wing of the Hall.

  'Don't you ever lock any doors or windows here, sir?'

  Lord Ashe laughed.

  'My dear boy,' he answered, making a slight gesture with the shears and pressing the pince-nez more firmly on his nose, 'there's nothing to steal. The pictures are all copies. My elder brother Frank presented the family jewels to a celebrated - er - lady of easy virtue years ago. There's the plate, of course, what there is left of it; but you'd want a lorry to take that away.'

  Here he pondered, setting his pince-nez more firmly and looking curiously at his companion.

  'If you'll excuse my mentioning it, Mr Markham, you have rather a wild and tousled look. Is anything wrong?'

  Dick let him have it straight. He wanted the reaction of this solid man, with his soft voice and his ruddy complexion and his iron-grey hair, to a situation that would presently have Sue Ashes by the ears.

  'Sir Harvey Gilman has committed suicide.'

  Lord Ashe stared back at him.

  'Good God!'

  'Exactly!'

  'But this' - Lord Ashe looked round for a place to put down the shears, and, finding none, kept them in his hands, ' - this is fantastic!'