He Who Whispers

romantically as well as physically, and it will work out. After all, nobody has been able to say a word against her since she has come to France as Mr. Brooke's secretary.

“And all this time Harry Brooke—never seeing anything, drawing on what Harry thinks is his imagination— had been driving his father to distraction with anonymous letters against Fay. Harry's only concern was to get his own way; to get to Paris and study painting. What did he care for a rather silent, passive girl, who tended to draw away from his embraces and remained half cold when he kissed her? Thunderation, no! Give him somebody with a bit of life!

“Irony? I rather think so.

“And then the figurative storm broke. On the twelfth of August, somebody stabbed Mr. Brooke. Let me show you how.”

Miles Hammond turned round abruptly.

Miles walked over and sat down beside Professor Rigaud on the edge of the bed. Neither of these two, though for different reasons, had spoken a word in some time.

“Yesterday morning,” pursued Dr. Fell, putting down his filled pipe to pick up the sheaf of manuscript and weigh it in his hand, “my friend Georges Rigaud brought me this account of the case. If I quote from it at any time, you two others will perhaps recognize that Rigaud used exactly the same words when telling it you verbally.

“He also showed me a certain sword-stick of evil memory.” Dr. Fell blinked across at Professor Rigaud. “Have you—harrumph--by any chance got the same weapon here now?”

With an angry, half-frightened gesture Professor Rigaud picked up the sword-cane and flung it across the room. Dr. Fell caught it neatly. But Barbara, as though it had been attack, backed away against the closed door.

“Ah, zut!” cried Professor Rigaud, and shook his arms in the air.

“You doubt my remarks, sir?” inquired Dr. Fell. “You did not doubt when I gave you a very short sketch earlier today.”

“No, no, no!” said Professor Rigaud. “What you say about this woman Fay Seton is right, is absolutely right. I claim a point when I said to you that the characteristics of the vampire are also in folklore the characteristics of eroticism. But I kick me the pants because I, the old cynic, do not see all this for myself!”

“Sir,” returned Dr. Fell, “you acknowledge yourself that you are not much interested in material clues. That is why, even when you were writing about it, you failed to observe . . .”

“Observe what?” said Barbara. “Dr. Fell, who killed Mr. Brooke?”

Outside there was a distant crash of thunder, which made the window-frames vibrate and startled them all. The rain, in this wet June, was going to return.

“Let me,” said Dr. Fell, “simply outline to you the events of that afternoon. You will see for yourselves, when you dovetail the story of Professor Rigaud with the story of Fay Seton herself, what deductions are to be drawn from them.

“Mr. Howard Brooke returned to Beauregard from the Credit Lyonnais bank about three o'clock, carrying the brief-case with the money. The events of the murder properly begin then, and we can follow them from there. Where were the other members of the household at this time?

“At just before three o'clock Fay Seton left the house, carrying bathing-dress and towel, to go for a walk northwards along the river bank. Mrs. Brooke was in the kitchen, speaking to the cook. Harry Brooke was—or had been—upstairs in his own room, writing a letter. We know now that it was this letter.”

Dr. Fell held up the letter.

With a significant grimace he continued:

“Mr. Brooke, then, returned at three and asked for Harry. Mrs. Brooke replied that Harry was upstairs in his own room. Harry in the meantime, believing his father would be at the office (as Rigaud did too; see testimony) and never dreaming he might be on his way home, had left the letter unfinished and gone to the garage.

“Mr. Brooke went up to Harry's room, and presently came down again. Now we see—just here—the curious change in Howard Brooke's behavior. He wasn't frantically angry then, Howard Brooke's behavior. He wasn't frantically angry then, as he had been before. Listen, from the evidence, to his wife's description of his manner as he came down the stairs: 'so pitiful he looked, and so aged, and walking slowly as though he were ill.'

“What had he found, up there in Harry's room?

“Oh Harry's desk he saw an unfinished letter. He glanced at it; he glanced at it again, startled; he picked it up and read it through. And his whole honest, comfortable universe crashed down in ruins.

“Carefully outlined, in closely written pages to Jim Morell, was a resume of Harry's whole scheme to blacken Fay Seton. The anonymous letters; the discreditable rumours; the vampire hoax. And all this was written down by his son Harry—his absolute idol, that hearty innocent—so that the father should be filthily tricked into giving Harry his own way.

“Do you wonder that it struck him dumb? Do you wonder that he looked like that as he walked downstairs, and slowly—how very slowly!--out along the river-bank towards the tower? He had made an appointment with Fay Seton for four o'clock. He was going to keep that appointment. But I see Howard Brooke as a thoroughly honest man, a straight-forward man who would loathe this worse than anything Harry could have done. He would meet Fay Seton at the tower, all right. But he was going there to apologize.

Dr. Fell paused.

Barbara shivered. She glanced at Miles, who sat in a kind of trance, and checked herself from speaking.

“Let us return, however,” pursued Dr. Fell, “to the known facts. Mr. Brooke, in the tweed cap and raincoat he had been wearing at the Credit Lyonnais, went towards the tower. Five minutes later, who turned up? Harry, by thunder!--hearing that his father had been there, and asking where he was now, Mrs. Brooke told him. Harry stood for a moment 'thinking to himself, muttering.' Then he followed his father.”

Here Dr. Fell bent forward with great earnestness.

“now for a point which isn't mentioned by Rigaud or in the official records. It isn't mentioned because nobody bothered with it. Nobody thought it was important. The only person who has mentioned it is Fay Seton, though she wasn't there when it happened and couldn't have known it at all unless she had special reason for knowing.

“But this is what she told Miles Hammond last night. She said that, when Harry Brooke left the house in pursuit of Mr. Brooke, Harry Brooke snatched up his raincoat.”

Dr. Fell glanced over at Miles.

“You remember that, my boy?”

“Yes,” said Miles, conquering a shaky throat. “But why shouldn't Harry have taken a raincoat? After all, it was a drizzling day!”

Dr. Fell waved him to silence.

“Professor Rigaud,” Dr. Fell continued, “followed both father and son to the tower some considerable time afterwards. At the door of the tower, unexpectedly, he met Fay Seton.

“The girl told him that Harry and Mr. Broke were upstairs on top of the tower, having an argument. She declared she hadn't heard a word what father and son were saying; but her eyes, testifies Rigaud, were the eyes of one who remembers a horrible experience. She said she wouldn't interrupt at that moment, and in a frantic state of agitation she ran away.

“On top of the tower Rigaud found Harry and his father, also very agitated. Both were pale and worked up. Harry seemed to be pleading, while his father demanded to be allowed to attend to 'this situation'--whatever it was—in his own way, and harshly told Rigaud to take Harry away.

“At this time Harry certainly wore no raincoat; he was hatless and coatless, in a corduroy suit described by Rigaud. The sword-stick, untouched with blade screwed into sheath, rested against the parapet. So did the brief- case, but for some reason it had become a bulging brief-case.

“That extraordinary word struck me when I first read the manuscript.

“Bulging!

“Now the brief-case certainly hadn't been like that when Howard Brooke showed its contents to Rigaud at