He Who Whispers

“So-oftly!” urged Dr. Fell, waving a mesmeric hand before eyeglasses coming askew. “But here—oh, here!-- is the point at which I want you to jog your memory. During that conversation, when you and your sister and the so-called Curtis were present, was anything said about rooms?”

“About rooms?”

“About bedrooms!” persisted Dr. Fell, with the air of a monster lurking in ambush. “About bedrooms! Eh?”

“Well, yes. Marion said she was going to put Fay in her bedroom, and move downstairs herself to a better ground-floor room we'd just been redecorating.”

“Ah!” said Dr. Fell, nodding several times. “It did seem to me I heard you talking at Greywood about the bedroom situation. So your sister wanted to put Fay Seton in her bedroom! Oh, ah! Yes! But she didn't do it?”

“No. She wanted to do it that evening, but Fay refused. Fay preferred the ground-floor room because of her heart. Fewer stairs to climb.”

Dr. Fell pointed with his pipe.

“But suppose,” he suggested, “you believe Fay Seton will be in the upstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Suppose, to make dead sure of this, you keep a watch on the house. You hide yourself among the trees at the rear of the house. You look up at a line of uncurtained windows. And, at some time before midnight, what do you see?

“You see Fay Seton—wearing nightgown and wrap—slowly walking back and forth in front of those windows.

“Marion Hammond can't be seen at all. Marion is sitting in a chair over at the other side of the room, by the bedside table. She can't even be seen through the side of eastern windows, because they're curtained. But Fay Seton can be seen.

“And further suppose, in the black early hours of the morning, you creep into that dark bedroom intent on a neat and artistic murder. You are going to kill someone asleep in that bed. And, as you approach, you catch a very faint whiff of perfume; a distinctive perfume always associated with Fay Seton.

“You can't know, of course, that Fay has made the present of a little bottle of this perfume to Marion Hammond. The perfume bottle stands now on the bedside table. But you can't know that. You can only breathe the scent of that perfume. Is there any doubt in your mind now?”

Miles had sen it coming, seen it coming ever since Dr. Fell's first remark. But now the image seemed to rush out at him.

“Yes!” said Dr. Fell with emphasis. “Harry Brooke, alias Stephen Curtis, planned a skilful murder. And he got the wrong woman.”

There was silence.

“However!” added Dr. Fell, sweeping out his arm in a gesture which sent a coffee cup flying across the little dining-room, but which nobody noticed. “However! I am again indulging in my deplorable habit of anticipating the evidence.

“Last night, let it be admitted, I was royally stumped. With regard to the Brooke murder, I believed Harry had done the deed. I believed Fay Seton had afterwards got the brief-case with its damning raincoat, and still had it; in fact, I hinted as much to her with a question about underwater swimming. But nothing seemed to explain this mysterious attack on Marion Hammond.

“Even an incident on the following morning did not quite unseal these eyes. It was the first time I ever saw 'Mr. Stephen Curtis.'

“He had returned, very brisk and jaunty, apparently from London. He strolled into the sitting-room while you”--Dr. Fell again looked very hard at Miles—“were speaking on the 'phone to Miss Morell. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” said Miles.

“I remember the conversation,” said Barbara. “But . . .”

“As for myself,” rumbled Dr. Fell, “I was just behind him, carrying a cup of tea on a tray.” Dr. Fell furrowed up his face with intense concentration. “Your words to Miss Morell, in 'Stephen Curtis's' hearing, were (harrumph) almost exactly as follows:

“'There was a very bad business here last night,' you said to Miss Morell. 'Something happened in my sister's room that seems past human belief.' You broke off at the beginning of another sentence as 'Stephen Curtis' came in.

“Instantly you got up to reassure him in a fever of care that he shouldn't worry. 'It's all right,' you sad to him; Marion's had a very bad time of it, but she's going to get well.' You recall that part of it too?”

Very clearly Miles could se “Steve” standing there, in his neat grey suit, with the rolled-up umbrella over his arm. Again he saw the colour slowly draining out of “Steve's” face.

“I couldn't see his face,”--it was as though Dr. Fell, uncannily, were answering Miles' thoughts—“but I heard this gentleman's voice go up a couple of octaves when he said 'Marion?' Just like that!

“Sir, I tell you this: if my wits worked better in the morning (as they do not) that one word would have given the whole show away. 'Curtis' was completely thunderstruck. But why should he have been? He had just heard you announce that something very bad had occurred in your sister's room.

“Suppose I return home, and hear someone saying over the telephone that something very bad has occurred in my wife's room? Don't I naturally assume that the accident, or whatever it is, has occurred to my wife? Am I bowled over with utter astonishment when I hear that the victim is my wife, and not my Aunt Martha from Hackney Wick?

“That tore it.

“Unfortunately, I failed at the moment to see.

“But do you remember what he did immediately afterwards? He deliberately lifted his umbrella, and very coolly and deliberately smashed it to flinders across the edge of the table. 'Stephen Curtis' is supposed to be—he pretends to be—a stolid kind of person. But that was Harry Brooke hitting the tennis-ball. That was Harry Brooke not getting what he wanted.”

Miles Hammond stared at memory.

“Steve's” personable face: Harry Brooke's face. The fair hair: Harry Brooke's hair. Harry, Miles reflected, hadn't gone prematurely grey from nerves, as Professor Rigaud said he would; he had lost the hair, and it was for some reason grotesque to think of Harry Brooke as nearly bald.

That was why they thought of him as older, of course, “Steve” might have been in his late thirties. But they had never heard his age.

They: meaning himself and Marion . . .

Miles was roused by Dr. Fell's voice.

“This gentleman,” the doctor went on grimly, “saw his scheme dished. Fay Seton was alive; she was there in the house. And you gave him, unintentionally, almost as bad a shock a moment afterwards. You told him that another person who knew him as Harry Brook, Professor Rigaud, was at Greywood; and was, in fact, upstairs asleep in 'Curtis's' own room.

“Do you wonder he turned away and went over towards the bookshelves to hide his face?

“Disaster lurked ahead of every step he took now. He had tried to kill Fay Seton, and nearly killed Marion Hammond instead. With that plan gone . . .”

“Dr. Fell!” said Barbara softly.

“Hey?” rumbled Dr. Fell, drawn out of obscure meditation. “Oh, ah! Miss Morell! What is it?”

“I know I'm an outsider.” Barbara ran her finger along the edge of the tablecloth. “I have no real concern in this, except as one who wants to help and can't. But”--the grey eyes lifted pleadingly—“but please, please, before poor Miles goes crazy and maybe the rest of us as well, will you tell us what this man did that frightened Marion so much?”

“Ah!” said Dr. Fell.

“Harry Brooke,” said Barbara, “is a poisonous worm. But he's not clever. Where did he get the idea for what you call an 'artistic' murder?”

“Mademoiselle,” said Professor Rigaud, with an air of powerful gloom like Napoleon at St. Helena, “he got it