Till Death Do Us Part

' I beg your pardon,' he observed, with polished courtesy. 'But there is very much a prussic-acid poisoning. And there is very much a locked room. Kindly glance into the sitting-room and see.'

The church clock ended its striking.

And the three of them looked at one another wildly.

'Dr Fell,' said Dick, 'what does the whole mess mean?'

A long sniff rumbled in Dr Fell's nose. He took a few lumbering steps up and down the garden, cutting at the grass with his crutch-handled stick. He seemed in his own mind to be addressing a ghostly parliament; you saw the gestures even if the words were inaudible. When he did in fact turn to address his two companions, he reared back his head so that the eyeglasses should remain firmly on his nose.

'Why, sir,' he replied, shaking the crutch-handled stick in the air, 'the main outline of the affair would appear to be before us. This impostor's story was not true. But somebody made it come true.'

'Meaning?'

Again Dr Fell paced.

'We shall not be in any firm position,' he went on, 'until we learn who the impostor is, and what his game was, and why he spun this appalling yarn merely to ... do what? Merely, as I understand it, to be present in the house while Mr Markham has dinner with Miss Grant! Is that correct?'

Both Dick and Middlesworth nodded. Dr Fell blinked at the latter.

'But one suggestion you made, when we heard of this morning's work from a certain Major Price,' he resumed, 'does seem to me to be whang in the bull's-eye. Oh, ah. Yes. Whatever explanation we put on the situation, the centre of the whole plot is still Miss Lesley Grant.'

Dick spoke sharply.

'How do you work that out?'

A radiant beam appeared in Dr Fell's eye, illuminating his pink face like the glow of a vast furnace, and going down in chuckles over the ridges of his waistcoat. Then he became preternaturally solemn.

'The centre of the whole plot,' he repeated, 'is still Miss Lesley Grant. Now a very important question. Regarding this little tale of locked rooms and hypodermic syringes - did the impostor tell this story to anybody except you two?'

'I don't know,' said Dick.

'Nor I,' admitted Middlesworth.

'While he was telling you the story, could anybody have overheard him?'

Very vividly Dick recalled that scene last night: the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close over the windows, and one window pushed fully open. He recalled Middlesworth suddenly getting up, in the course of the so-called Sir Harvey's recital, and putting his head out of that window. Dick related the incident now.

'Was there somebody out here?' he asked Middlesworth.

'Yes.'

'Could you see who it was?' 'No. Too dark.'

'There are two alternatives,' grunted Dr Fell. 'You can say, if you like, that the impostor went through all his masquerade as Sir Harvey Gilman, spun his grotesque yarn, made all his arrangements, just so that he could lock himself in here later and give himself a dose of poison.

'That may be true, gentlemen. It may be true. But unless the fellow was an escaped lunatic, which I consider unlikely, it does not sound a very feasible explanation. H'mf, no. The other alternative -'

'Murder?'

'Yes. And you see where that leads us?' Dr Fell resumed his pacing, addressed his ghostly parliament, and finally came to a stop once more.

'The whole point, d'ye see, is this. Last night a crime was reproduced here, line for line like a fine drawing. The joke being that the original crime didn't exist! It was imagined, a piece of pure fantasy, by the impostor calling himself Sir Harvey Gilman. Yet it was reproduced. Why? Because, of course, the murderer believed he was reproducing a real crime.

'The people of Six Ashes believed - and still believe -that this fellow is Sir Harvey Gilman, the Home.Office pathologist. What Sir Harvey says is gospel. What Sir Harvey mentions as a real case is a real case. Why should the good people doubt it?

'Either he told this prussic-acid story to somebody in private, or else somebody overheard it last night. Somebody believes, firmly believes, that Lesley Grant is a murderess who has killed three men. Somebody, with joy in the heart, suddenly thinks of a way to commit this 'impossible' crime. And therefore somebody commits it, serene in the belief that Lesley Grant will be blamed.'

Dr Fell paused, drawing a wheezy breath. He added, somewhat less eloquently:

'That's the ticket, gents. You can bet your shirts on it'

'Are you saying,' Dick demanded,' that somebody hates Lesley enough to commit murder in order to ...?'

Dr Fell looked distressed.

' My dear sir,' he protested, 'we can't say anything about motive. We don't know the identity of the dead man. Before you begin saying so-and-so had a motive, it is just as well to know whose murder you are investigating.'

‘Then-?'

'AH we do see with certainty is that Lesley Grant presented a convenient scapegoat. The murderer didn't doubt, probably doesn't doubt to this minute, that the dirty work will be attributed to her, since she is a real poisoner.' He blinked at Dick. 'You believed that yourself, I think, until a few minutes ago?'

'Yes. I'm afraid I did.'

'Tut, now!' rumbled Dr Fell, and again the chronic chuckle ran over him. 'There is no need for this hangdog look, and this violent inner cursing of yourself !’ ‘I think there is.'

'When, as I understand it from Middlesworth, you were prepared to shield this lady no matter what she had done? Sir, that was very reprehensible of you. It makes me cluck my tongue. It was not the act of a good citizen. But, by thunder, it was the act of a true lover!' Dr Fell struck the ferrule of his cane on the ground. 'However, with regard to the present difficulties ...'

'Well?’

'You must remember, sir, that I've had only the outline of yesterday's events from Dr Middlesworth, and the barest outlines of to-day's events from Major Price via the constable. But one other thing does emerge. If the blame for this crime is intended for Miss Lesley Grant, it follows as a corollary that...'

Again he paused, sunk fathoms deep in obscure musing. Then he said:

'Who, by the way, was the gentleman here a moment ago?'

'I ought to have introduced you,' Dick apologized, 'but I was too flummoxed to think of it. That was Bill Earnshaw, the bank-manager.'

' Oh, ah. I see. Did he want anything in particular?'

'He was worried about this infernal rifle. Also, he supplied at least a partial explanation as to why a box of drawing-pins should turn up in the sitting-room.'

Dick gave a sketch of Earnshaw's information. Dr Fell gave close attention to the account of Colonel Pope's habits with drawing-pins. He gave equally close attention to the account of yesterday's garden-party and the inexplicable disappearance of the rifle under everybody's eyes. Something in this latter secondary mystery appeared to interest Dr Fell very much indeed, for the doctor eyed him with a hideous face of speculation. But, instead of saying what was really in his mind, Dr Fell went off on another tack.

'Tell me,' he mused. 'When our friend the impostor acted as fortune-teller, was he a good fortune-teller? Did he appear to have made shrewd guesses about people in general?'

'His information seems to have paralysed everybody. Including -'

Back again, sharp and quick as the jab of a needle, came the recollection that something had been said to Lesley about which she patently lied afterwards. Dr Fell saw this.

'May I suggest,' he said, 'that you don't plunge back into the horrors again? Archons of Athens! If he so thoroughly hypnotized you with a false story, isn't it possible he may have done the same thing with her?'

'You mean told Lesley some walloping yarn ...'