Till Death Do Us Part

'Middlesworth decided’ Dr Fell said simply, 'that De Villa was going to die. And Middlesworth very nearly got the opportunity to kill him just after the garden-party on Thursday afternoon. Now watch the events take form!'

Adjusting his eyeglasses, spilling much cigar-ash, Dr Fell took the typewritten confession and ran his fingers down its lines. His lips moved growlingly as he searched for the proper place. Then he read aloud from it.

'... De Villa so upset Miss Grant in the fortune-teller's tent that she screamed and pulled the trigger of the rifle when Major Price happened to joggle her arm. I'm sure it was an accident.'

' It was an accident!' cried Lesley.

'... I saw at once De Villa had only got a flesh-wound. But he fainted from shock, and everybody thought he was dying. I saw how I could kill the swine then, if only I could get him alone. That's why I sneaked the rifle into my golf-bag and kept the bag slung over my shoulder when Major Price and I carried him to the car. I meant to take him home, put him under an anaesthetic, extract the real bullet, and fire one from the same rifle which should kill him. People would think it was the same bullet, the result of an accident...'

'And they ruddy well would have!' said Dick Markham.

'... but it was no good, it wouldn't work, because I couldn't get rid of Major Price no matter what I said. So I had to think of something else.'

Dr Fell weighed the confession in his hand, and then put it down beside him on the sofa.

'And,' Dr Fell commented, 'he did think of something else. The real scheme was handed to him - handed to him on a plate - while he and Dick Markham and Sam De Villa sat here in this very room on Thursday night. Sam was telling the terrible story of the notorious poisoner, and laying plans to snaffle that safe full of jewels. Middlesworth sat quietly by. But someone suggested how he could kill De Villa and get away with it'

'Who suggested it to him?' asked Dick.

' Sam De Villa himself.'

'Sam De Villa?'

'So Middlesworth says. Will you cast your mind back to that scene?'

It was very easy to recreate: De Villa in the easy-chair, with the light of the tan-shaded lamp shining down. Middlesworth silent and thoughtful in the basket-chair drawing at an empty pipe. The summer night outside the windows, rustling, with the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close. And the very thoughtfulness of Middles-worth's face returned with ugly clarity now,

'You were violently discussing the mystery of locked, sealed rooms,' pursued Dr Fell. 'De Villa remarked,a propos the bullet fired at him through the tent, that you couldn't have such a thing as a locked room when a bullet-hole appeared in the wall. Is that correct?' 'Yes!'

'Shortly afterwards Middlesworth heard a noise outside. He got up, went to the window, threw back the curtains, and looked out. Then he drew his head back - and stood staring at that window, with his back to you, as though something had just occurred to him. Is that correct too?'

'Yes.'

'Well?' prompted Dr Fell gently. 'When Middlesworth looked at the window, what did he see ?'

With some effort Dr Fell hoisted himself to his feet. He lumbered across to the window, still locked, where the clean-drilled bullet-hole showed in the lower pane below and to one side of the metal catch.

Dr Fell pointed to it

'Colonel Pope, as we know, always used to fasten gauze screens to these windows - sometimes the upper, sometimes the lower part - using drawing-pins to fasten the screens there. Consequently, what do we find? We find, as Earnshaw has been so fond of pointing out, innumerable tiny little holes made by the points of drawing- pins. We find those little pin-pricks peppered all over the wooden frame of the window. Is that clear?'

'Naturally! But...'

'You could push another drawing-pin into the frame anywhere, couldn't you? And, when it was plucked out again, the mark it left would never be noticed?'

'Of course not But...'

'Middlesworth,' said Dr Fell, 'had a double inspiration. I will now tell you exactly what he did.

'He could be morally certain Sam De Villa would take a large dose of luminal before going to bed. So he left this cottage and drove you home in his car, showing alarm only when you mentioned whisky, and asking you for God's sake not to get drunk...'

‘Why?'

'Because he vitally needed you in his plan. Middlesworth then drove home himself, and made certain preparations. Who would be the likeliest person to have a hypodermic syringe at hand? A medical man. We discovered in the Sodbury Cross poisoning case that prussic acid can be distilled from separately non-poisonous elements; but who would be the likeliest person to have the acid ready at hand? A medical man. These particular preparations, however, did not concern him at the moment. He had other things to attend to first.

'At shortly past midnight, when Six Ashes was asleep,' Dr Fell picked up the confession, and put it down again, 'he walked slowly out to this cottage once more.

'The house was dark. He had no trouble getting in: the place was not locked, and a window would always have served if it had been. He found Sam De Villa, as he expected, in a drugged sleep upstairs in the bedroom. So far, excellent!

'He came into this sitting-room, where he switched on the light. He set about arranging the room - notably that big easy-chair where Hadley is sitting now - exactly as he wanted it for the events that were to happen at daybreak next morning. He closed both windows, but drew back the curtains widely from both.

'You see, of course, what his next move was? Middlesworth, carrying that Winchester 61 rifle, walked across the lane, climbed over the stone wall opposite, worked out his position carefully, and then - time still shortly past midnight - he fired a bullet through this window into a lighted, empty room.

' That was when the real shot was fired. That Was when a bullet drilled through this window, smashed the Battle-of-Waterloo picture over the fireplace there, and buried itself in the wall.

'This is the loneliest of neighbourhoods after midnight. He didn't think it likely that anybody would hear the shot. Sam De Villa, in a drugged sleep upstairs, certainly wouldn't As a matter of fact, Lord Ashe up at the Hall did happen to hear the shot in the middle of the night, because he tells me he mentioned it to you...' Again Dr Fell looked at Dick.

'... when he saw you early next day. But Lord Ashe confused it in his mind with another shot he heard at shortly after five o'clock in the morning. As for Middlesworth, the first part of his game was now secure. He closed the curtains on all the windows in this cottage, switched on all the lights so they would be certain to burn out before morning, and then went quietly home.

' No harm had been done. Not yet.

'Chance might have wrecked Middlesworth, because he got a sick-call in the small hours of the morning. But the sick-call was to Ashe Hall, where one of the maids was taken ill; and it was admirable for his purpose. He could keep an eye on things.

'He left Ashe Hall at twenty minutes to five in the morning - speaking rather wildly to Lord Ashe about his intention of driving straight to Hastings - and drove his car to the High Street There he abandoned the car for the moment, and walked once more into Gallows Lane. I can imagine him coming along here through the first ghostly grey of morning; and I can imagine that his heart was as cold as his hands.

'Long ago, of course, he had glanced in through a lighted wall of windows at Mr Markham's, and seen Mr Markham asleep on the sofa with a full, untouched whisky-bottle and syphon on the desk. I fancy he glanced in once again, to make sure. Then he went on to this cottage here.

'The electricity here had burned itself out long before. The place was dark; it was chilly; it was almost the hour of the murder and the illusion. Middlesworth found De Villa still in a drug-sleep upstairs. If the victim had been awake, Middlesworth was ready to tie him with a soft dressing-gown-cord which would leave no marks, and gag him with a handkerchief and sticking-plaster.

' But it wasn't necessary. He carried De Villa downstairs -

De Villa was a little chap, and Middlesworth a big man -and propped him up in that easy-chair, so that the