Till Death Do Us Part

Dick took Lesley's hand.

'But the rifle did vanish, confound it!' he protested. 'I suppose you're going to say the person who stole it was Middlesworth?'

'Oh, yes.'

'But how? The only people who came anywhere near that shooting-range were Major Price and Bill Earhshaw and Dr Middlesworth and Lesley and myself. And we're all willing to swear none of us could have taken the rifle. As for Middlesworth, he helped carry De Villa to the motorcar in plain sight of everybody when he went away from there! How did he manage to pinch the rifle? As I said to Bill Earnshaw, you can't stick a rifle in your pocket or shove it under your coat.'

'No,' agreed Dr Fell. 'But you can shove it into a bag of golf-clubs, and carry it away absolutely unnoticed. And Middlesworth, you informed me, was carrying a bag of golf-clubs.'

There was a long silence. Superintendent Hadley, writing away methodically at the table, lifted his head to smile slightly. Dick, remembering only too well Dr Middlesworth, tramping back from the golf-hazard with that heavy bag slung over his shoulder - the conspicuous, unnoticed golf-bag - Dick Markham swore with some comprehensiveness.

'The old blighter,' observed Hadley, indicating Dr Fell, 'does get an idea or two sometimes. That's why I let him rampage on.'

'Thank'ee,' said Dr Fell, with absent-minded dignity. He squinted in cross-eyed fashion at his cigar, and turned back to Dick.

‘Middlesworth, even at that early hour, already appeared in very curious and fishy colours. He was the only one who could have stolen the rifle. And then...

'You and Middlesworth drove back to the village in his car, he to his surgery and you to see Miss Grant. I went into this cottage here' - he swept his hand round - 'to look my first on the scene of the crime. Here I discovered something which spiritually raised my hat to human ingenuity; for I discerned a way in which the locked-room trick might have been worked.'

‘Well ?' asked Lesley.' How ?'

Dr Fell did not immediately answer this.

'While I was tinkering with various things in this room,' he continued, 'Hadley arrived. Hadley took one look at the corpse and said,' My God, it's Sam De Villa' He then went on, as you afterwards heard, to give me a sketch of De Villa's career. And he told me something which made me certain the person we were after was Middlesworth. For, do you see, Sam De Villa really had studied medicine.'

'Came within six months,' Hadley amplified, 'of getting his degree.'

Again Dr Fell pointed the cigar at Dick.

'Think back,' he requested. 'I asked Middlesworth, very early in the morning, and you yourself asked him in my hearing, what was the first thing which made him suspicious that 'Sir Harvey Gilman' was an impostor. Remember?’ 'Yes.'

'Middlesworth's reply went something like this. He said he had questioned the supposed Sir Harvey about one of the tatter's famous cases. And 'Sir Harvey,' Middlesworth informed us, 'made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit,' Middlesworth declared, 'because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers.'

'Now that just wasn't possible. Sam De Villa, impersonating Sir Harvey Gilman in earnest, never would and never could have made such a medical howler as that. It wasn't in character; it wasn't in sense!

' Therefore Middlesworth himself was lying.'

'But why?'

Here Dr Fell glanced across at Hadley, whose pencil continued to travel across the pages of the notebook.

'Have you got Middlesworth's confession there, Hadley?'

From beside the chair Hadley picked up a brief-case and opened it He took out a flimsy typewritten sheet, enclosed in a blue folder and signed at the bottom with a blurred wavering scrawl. He carried this across to Dr Fell, who weighed it in his hand.

Against the bright sunshine which poured into the room through two windows, one shattered and the other with a bullet-hole, Dr Fell's countenance was heavy and depressed and lowering.

' Middlesworth dictated this,' he explained, 'just before he died on Friday night It's an ugly story, if you like. But it's an understandable and sincere and horribly human story.'

'Damn it all,' Dick Markham burst out, 'that's the trouble. I liked Hugh Middlesworth!'

'So did I,' said Dr Fell. 'And in a way you were very right to like him. Anyone who rids the world of slugs like Sam De Villa deserves no small degree of gratitude. If he hadn't lost his head and shot that inoffensive post- mistress-'

'You'd have covered up for him, I suppose?' inquired Hadley with sardonic dryness. 'As it was, you let him commit suicide?'

Dr Fell ignored this.

' Middlesworth's story,' he said, 'is a very simple one. Do you recall Hadley saying that gentry like Sam De Villa will use any weapon, anything, including blackmail,- when they think they can bring off a big haul ?'

'You mean it was blackmail in this case?' asked Lesley.

Dr Fell weighed the typewritten sheet in his hand.

'Hugh Middlesworth was in a position of painful respectability. But he liked respectability. He liked it almost as much as -' Dr Fell looked at Lesley, coughed, and looked away again. 'He had a 'county' wife, a good-sized family, and many obligations.

' But he hadn't got to that state without pain. Nine years ago, when he was hard up and desperate, before Six Ashes and respectability, he took a certain job. It was a job in a rather squalid London nursing-home specializing in illegal operations. Middlesworth was the doctor who performed those operations. Sam De Villa knew that, and could prove it.

'Sam, with designs on Miss Grant's jewellery, came here and tackled Middlesworth. Middlesworth hadn't the ghost of a notion that Sam was really a medical man like himself. He knew Sam merely as a crook, and a smooth one.

'' Look here,' said Sam. ' I’m coming to Six Ashes impersonating somebody or other; I'm going to get that jewellery; and you're going to help me.' The already-harassed Middlesworth was rather desperate. 'I'm not going to sponsor you,' said Middlesworth. 'When you disappear with the jewellery they'll know I was implicated; I'd just as soon you blew the gaff about the other thing. So I'm ruddy well not going to sponsor you.'

''Maybe not,'‘ says Sam coolly. 'But you're going to help me, and first of all you're going to tell me everything about this district and its people.' So the background unrolled itself to this clever, pouncing Mr De Villa. Richard

Markham, wildly in love with Lesley Grant. Engagement imminent! Engagement certain! Young man a writer of sensational imaginative plays dealing with the minds of. murderers, especially poisoners...

'Sam constructed his scheme with slickness and ease. He took this cottage. And with dazzling cheek he introduced himself, under terms of the deepest secrecy, to the Chief Constable of the county as Sir Harvey Gilman.

'Then came the garden-party. News of the engagement of Lesley Grant to Richard Markham was winging through the place: even, assisted by Mrs Rackley, news of the invitation to dinner for Friday night. At the garden- party where he played fortune-teller, Sam decided it was time to act.

'What the self-confident Sam didn't realize was that in Hugh Middlesworth he was dealing with a man every bit as intelligent as himself. And Middlesworth was sick and desperate. He'd thought the past was forgotten: but De Villa turned up out of it. Here was this albatross round his neck, likely to continue there. Always threatening! Always disturbing his sleep! Always a nightmare, absent or present, always threatening respectability...'

Again Dr Fell, in some discomfort, coughed loudly as he glanced away from Lesley.

' Can't you understand that feeling, Miss Grant?'

'Yes,' said Lesley. And she shivered.