Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (20 page)

"That's the trouble: this whole case is too infernally personal. The idea I had, if it can be dignified with the name of idea, is in the abstract; it's not meant to apply to any particular person. But it won't seem abstract. As soon as I mention it, somebody will jump up and say, 'You mean So-and-so, don't you? You're accusing So-and-so of the murder?' So I'd better keep quiet, for the moment at least. And, anyway, that's not the main consideration."

"Well, what is the main consideration?"

"It's you, Camilla. You seem in a different mood tonight. What shall I call it? Pliant? Approachable? Almost . . ."

"You think so too, do you?"

"Think what?"

"What Madge thinks. Oh, now you
are
being stupid!"

"Maybe I am; maybe not. I don't know what Madge thinks; does it matter? Allow it's the wrong time; allow you're worried about her and everything that's happened. But, while Dr. Fell communes with the law, couldn't we go for a stroll outside? There's a moon of sorts, and the grounds have a certain charm of their own. Camilla, will you walk?"

She had turned away, with the light of many lamps on glossy brown hair worn almost at shoulder-length. Then the blue eyes swam up at him as she looked over her shoulder.

"Well!" Camilla whispered. "We'll be eaten alive by mosquitoes; you must know that. Still! If you feel you can bear my presence, and bear to be alone with me . . ."

"Bear your presence? Bear to be
alone
with you? Camilla . . ."

"Yes?"

They were not destined to say more. Both had been too preoccupied to hear a car approach the house. Both were taken off guard when footsteps rapped through the hall and onto the little platform of the steps into the library. Valerie Huret, who had changed her flowered dress for a dark one, stood there like a tragedy queen. Carefully she closed the door behind her and descended the steps.

There were dark circles under Valerie's eyes; she breathed as though she had been running. But it did not seem to be shortness of breath, or any kind of excitement except one. So far as Alan could see, it was stark fear.

"How many times," she began, "can any woman make an idiot of herself in one day? Rushing back and forth? Running in and out? I'm sure I don't know why I came back here at this hour of the night. And now I wish I hadn't, because I've just seen something up there." Her gesture indicated the ceiling. "Somebody with a tiny little flashlight, somebody so furtive I hate to think who it may be, is creeping through the rooms on the top floor."

11

"Maybe that's an exaggeration," Valerie continued, beginning to address Camilla but speaking past her at Alan. "I didn't actually see the light in any room except the one poor Henry used as a study. It was the awful
furtiveness!
Is—is that captain of detectives still with us?"

"Yes. He's in there talking to Dr. Fell."

"Then I'd better get him at once, hadn't I?"

Alan caught her left arm as she started towards the door of the weapons-room.

"Frankly," he said, "I don't advise it."

"Are you stopping me from going into that room?"

"I won't stop you if you insist. It's just that I don't advise it. Captain Ashcroft's blood-pressure is dangerously high now. If you barge in when Dr. Fell is telling him who had the best motive for killing Madge's father, he may blow up."

" 'Who had the best motive for . . .' Oh, God, this is worse than ever! Do you understand what's happened and is still happening? With a murderer loose now?"

"It's not yet midnight, Mrs. Huret." "Do you need to be so formal, Alan? Can't you call me Valerie?"

"It's not yet midnight, Valerie. So far, when there has been dirty work during the dark hours, it's never been before one-thirty
a.m
., or at least at a time when everybody could be expected to be asleep. Just because somebody goes into a room with a flashlight, it's not necessarily the murderer a-prowl. Anyway, I'll go up myself and have a look. Care to come along?"

"I wouldn't
dream
of it!"

"May I
go with you, Alan?" asked Camilla. "I don't like this any better than she does; I loathe it; but I don't mind so much if I'm with you. May I go too?"

"Yes, of course."

"Pl
ease!" cried Valerie. "What am I
to do?"

"Stay close to the door of the weapons-room. If any maniac comes in brandishing a baseball bat, you've only got to yell and they'll be out in half a second. This way, Camilla."

The lower hall, bathed in soft light from its crystal chandelier, had a hollow, unreal look at the turn of the night. The hands of the grandfather clock stood at three minutes to twelve; the painted eyes of ancestor Richard Maynard seemed to turn in that direction. Through the doorway of the dining-room they could see Bob Crandall at the sideboard, putting down a tall glass with the appearance of one who has just finished a second large drink and has decided to call it quits. They were halfway up the first flight of stairs, treading softly by instinct, when Camilla spoke.

"You know, Alan, you're a callous devil."

"I'm not in the least callous. Whether this is wise may still be a debatable matter. Maybe you'd better not go after all."

"Don't send me away now!
Don't
send me away now!
" "Take my arm, then."

Camilla did so. The second floor was dark; they passed it through thick shadow and struggling moonlight. In the enclosed stairway to the top floor, where the eye of the moon penetrated through a solitary window, Alan could not deny that his pulses were jumping or that his legs felt light. But he did not speak; neither did Camilla.

There were two corridors on the top floor: one parallel with the front, past a wall pierced by the door to Henry Maynard's study, the other corridor stretching back west through the servants' quarters. Here, too, only the moon entered. But inside the open door of the study showed the reflection of a motionless firefly glow.

Now on tiptoe over a floor carpeted in straw matting, his right hand gripping Camilla's left arm, Alan edged sideways along the front corridor. After one glance into the study, he stopped with a shock of what might have been anticlimax or relief.

The "prowler," so-called, was Madge Maynard. But this provided a shock and a puzzle of its own. She had put down the little flashlight on the writing-table in the middle of the study, so that its beam shone across at the antique Sheraton desk against the right-hand wall. The lid of the desk had been lowered. In bare feet and a thin nightgown, her golden hair dishevelled and her head turned away, Madge was running her fingers over the little doors and pigeon-holes revealed inside. Her voice, soft and stupefied, went wailing up against stillness.

"Where is it?" she said to nobody at all. "Where's the drawer and how does it open? He never told me!"

As that frantic note reached him, Alan became aware that Camilla had seized his right arm and was urging him insistently back towards the enclosed stairs. He yielded and followed her. Once inside the shelter of the staircase, Camilla put both arms around his neck, dragging his head down for a fierce whisper.

"How did she get there? What is it?"

Woodwork creaked and cracked; Alan's own whisper was barely audible.

"They gave her too much sedation, that's all. She woke up in a drug-fog, not knowing what she was doing, and wandered up here on some wild idea of her own. We can't leave her there; we've got to get her back to her room."

"Won't it be dangerous to wake her up?" "She's not sleep-walking, you know; she's semi-conscious now."

"Alan, what's she
after?"

"I don't know. Looking for the secret drawer in the desk, probably; her father said there was one. But why bother about that? Anyway, we can't leave her there; she may fall and hurt herself!"

Still moving quietly, though with less secrecy now that small need for it remained, they returned to the door of the study. How, Alan was wondering, did you handle a situation like this? Did you treat Madge as though she were in her right senses, with the no-nonsense attitude of a policeman telling the crowd to move along? Or did you pick her up without ceremony and carry her downstairs?

Both moon-silvered windows were closed; he heard the buzz of the air-conditioner. And then, suddenly, Madge faced round from the desk and saw them.

"I can't find it!" she said, extending her arm towards Camilla. "Maybe it's not important; maybe it's only a silly idea of mine; but I do so wish I could find it!"

Whether she recognized them in semi-darkness nobody could have told. It was a creepy business, and became more so.

Little comprehension shone in Madge's eyes: only the edge of a thought that eluded her. Forgetting the desk, she floated across in her white nightgown and picked up the flashlight from the edge of the writing-table. Camilla and Alan had come into the room; by this time Alan was willing to swear Madge recognized them both.

"Silly old Commodore Maynard!" she continued, directing the beam of light at the colored photograph above the desk. "Silly old Commodore Maynard, and the silly old bell from his silly old ship! Why must everything be so complicated for
me?
—There you are, my dear!" she broke off to add.

The thin beam was pointed through the doorway into the corridor, at a point past Alan's left shoulder. He whipped round; there was nobody behind him.

"You're not really there, I know!" Madge almost sang. The light was switched off; then it reappeared, dancing wildly across the ceiling. "And
you
wouldn't have hurt him, would you? But you wouldn't speak to him either! I begged you to be frank and tell him everything. What harm could there have been in that, even if things
were
as they are?"

"Madge . . ." Camilla began.

"Yes, Camilla, I know you! You and Alan have come to help me, haven't you? But you can't help me. Nobody can help me, though I've only done what I had to do, and not so very much at that. You might think good intentions would count for something in this world, mightn't you?"

"It's all right,
Madge," Camilla assured her; "yo
u
'
re
among friends, and it's all right!"

"It's not all right," cried Madge, sending the beam of light wabbling into Camilla's face. "And they don't count; they don't count one bit!"

It was at this point that Alan heard a trampling of feet somewhere below, the voice of Captain Ashcroft and the voice of Dr. Fell; but above both, crying out in an enclosed space, the voice of Valerie Huret.

"I'll say it again," Valerie was declaring. "I'm most awfully sorry if I came in and interrupted you. But Alan Grantham's up there, probably getting himself killed; and poor Camilla
would
go too.
Please
hurry!"

Madge heard none of this. She had reached a kind of exaltation, but she was faltering.

"Isn't it ridiculous," she cried, "that the road to hell should be paved with them? They told me so when I was a little girl; I never believed it, any more than I believed most things. And yet it seems to be true! That's where I am; that's where I'll stay; that's where . . . that's where
..."

Her voice faltered too. The electric torch slipped through nerveless fingers and dropped to the floor without breaking. Madge swayed, her knees giving way; the whites of her eyes rolled up; Alan took a long stride forward and caught her just before she collapsed.

Small, sleek of body, she lay inert in his arms as Captain Ashcroft and Dr. Fell appeared in the doorway across the path of light from the torch, with Valerie Huret lurking behind them.

"What's happening?" Valerie blurted. "Is the murderer. . .?"

Alan held out the inert figure.

"There's no murderer here. Only a girl too full of sedatives and wandering in both senses."

Rapidly, with Camilla's assistance, he explained what had happened. Captain Ashcroft, finding no switch inside the door, first picked up the fallen flashlight and then turned on a green-shaded lamp on the writing-table.

"Nice goings-on, I must say! Henry at the morgue, this girl here, and ten generations of 'em probably turnin' over in their graves! We'll take her down to her room; better get the doctor again, just in case; then we can use this room while old King Cole finishes what he's got to say. Want
me
to take her, young fellow?"

"No; she's easy enough to carry." Momentarily Alan blinked against the light. "If you and Dr. Fell will stand away from the door . . . ?"