'Doctor,' said Holden, 'I thank you for your very kind offer. I'm afraid I can't accept. Only: could you answer, here and now, the question about Margot Marsh's death?'
‘I could, sir,' Dr. Shepton retorted. His eye strayed toward Celia. 'But I don't propose to do so.'
'Very well. Then we know where we stand. Celia, she tells me, has already written the police ...'
Dr. Shepton's stooped shoulders quivered. 'She's written to the police?'
'The day before yesterday,' Celia told him.
'And in any case,' Holden was desperately trying to make this interview friendly, when he could see it was reaching a dangerous pitch of tensity, 'tomorrow morning I intend to go to Scotland Yard. I also have a friend at the War Office, Frank Warrender, who may be able to pull a few strings.'
'Young man,' quavered Dr. Shepton, with age and weariness breaking through that formality, 'you don't understand what you're doing. You're in love. It's bad for the judgment 'This is a tragic affair. A very tragic affair.'
'I quite appreciate that, Doctor. I was very fond of Margot myself.'
'Are you forcing me to tell you, in this young lady's presence, something that concerns her? Something that can only cause you pain? And that will distress her stfll more?'
Holden was taken aback. 'Well! If you put it like that...'
From somewhere close at hand, yet muffled by trees and hedges, there rose up at that moment a calling and clamoring voice. It was so close, indeed, that they could also hear the noise of heavy footsteps clumping on gravel in the path outside the playground: footsteps starting, stopping uncertainly as though someone were peering around, and moving on. What the apprehensive voice kept crying was:
'Miss Celia! Miss Celial Miss Celia!'
It was Obey’s voice.
Holden would have known it anywhere. Obey, surname remotely rumored to be O'Brien, but long since lost to any trace of Irish speech; Christian name unknown, but never called anything except Obey since either of the Devereux children could speak. Obey, short of breath, her hair still done in the style of the First World War, who loved Celia and Margot as she had loved no other persons on earth.
'Yes,' announced Celia, as the voice called out. 'It’s Obey. Thorley's got her to such a state, unfortunately, that she's alarmed if I even go for a walk. Don't answer her,' and then, as Holden was about to protest, 'don't answer her, I tell you! She may not think of the playground. Dr. Shepton!'
'Well, my dear?'
'Didn't you have something to tell Don?'
'If it will stop Scotland Yard and the other powers that be,' returned Dr. Shepton, wiping his sleeve across his forehead, 'very well. Celia has told you, young man, about Mr. Marsh's brutality toward his wife? How this went on and on? How, on one occasion, she saw Mr. Marsh attack his wife and try to strangle her?'
Holden flung the answer back at him.
'Celia's told me that, yes! What about it?'
'Only,' said Dr. Shepton, 'that there is not one word of truth in the whole story.'
'Miss Celia!
Dr. Shepton held up a hand, palm outward.
'Mr. Marsh,' he stated, 'never did any such thing. On the contrary. I am in a position to testify that his conduct throughout the whole distressing affair was that of,' the old voice shook, 'what my generation would have called a perfect gentleman. Toward his wife he was kindness itself.'
'Miss Celia! Miss Celia! Miss Celia!'
'Next, young man, there was the so-called attempt of Mrs. Marsh to kill herself by means of 'strychnine poisoning.' It never occurred. Nobody had any strychnine; nobody took any strychnine. I tell you that simply.'
'For God's sake,' said Holden, suddenly whirling round in the direction of Obe/s voice, 'will somebody shut that woman up?' He inflated his lungs for a shout 'In here, Obey! In the playground!' He whirled back to Dr. Shepton, taking a step forward and almost pitching headlong into the sandbox.
'Mrs. Marsh's complaint on the occasion referred to,' continued Dr. Shepton, 'was a simple illness. I attended the case. You will concede that I ought to know. The strychnine was a sheer delusion of Celia's.
'If,' he added, 'it had been only that!' Dr. Shepton fumbled at his watch chain; he sounded even more troubled. 'If it had been only that I mightn't have taken the romancing so seriously. For it's true that once or twice there may have been . . . well, certain unavoidable misunderstandings.'
'Ah!' said Holden. 'Misunderstandings! So we're hedging, are we? We now admit that there may have been something to misunderstand?'
'Sir, will you allow me to finish?'
'Go on.'
'Celia's delusion that Mrs. Marsh actually died from some unnamed poison, out of a bottle which (I assure you) did not exist grew out of the other fancies. It was caused by them. It's dangerous.'
'To Thorley Marsh?'
'To herself. Nor, unfortunately, have you heard the worst. Has Celia told you about the night immediately after her sister's death, when she saw ghosts walking in the Long Gallery?'
Again a silence, painful to the eardrums, stretched out into hollow night.
'Well!' said Dr. Shepton. 'It was probably caused by those infernal murderers' masks, which made so deep an impression on her at the Lockes'. But—has she told you?'
'No,' said Holden.
Celia, with a convulsive movement turned her back.
'My dear girl!' Dr. Shepton exclaimed unhappily. 'Nobody's blaming you. Don't think that You can't help yourself. That's why we want to cure you. And I,' his big face wrinkled up, 'I'm only an old-fashioned country GP. I'm certain this gentleman, when he gets the rage out of him, will agree with us. What do you say, Miss Obey?'
'Yes!' muttered Holden, and snapped his fingers. 'Yes! Yes! Obey!'
A few steps behind him, her red face showing grayish in this light, her eyes popping, the wheezing of her breath rising from a vast bosom, hovered Obey.
'Look at me, Obey!' Holden said. 'Do you recognize me?'
'Mr. Don!' She first gulped, and then was reproachful. 'As if I wouldn't know you! Besides, Mr. Thorley told me you were here. He—oh, dear!' Obey clapped her hands to her mouth. 'Mr. Thorley told me I was to be sure to call you 'Sir Donald,' because he was going to do a business deal with you and we'd got to play up to you. Oh, dear, that's worse than ever! If you'll excuse me, now, sir, I really must get Miss Celia home and . . .'
'Listen, Obey.' His gaze stopped her, as though she had run into a wall. 'I'm not sure how much you've heard of this poisonous nonsense Dr. Shepton has been talking. But I know how you feel about Celia. I know how you've always felt. I trust you. What Dr. Shepton says isn't true, is it?'
The trees whispered; one of the swings stirred with faint spectral creaking; and Obey whimpered like a hurt animal. But she could not, physically could not, turn away from his gaze.
'Yes, Mr. Don,' she said brokenly. 'It's true.'
CHAPTER VII
HIGH grew the grass in the fields round Caswall Moat House, at Caswall in Wiltshire, on that following evening of the eleventh of July.
It was no longer necessary, after another day of fiery sun, to stand in the shade of one of the few beech trees in the field on the south side or front of the house. But Don Holden still stood there, his back propped against the tree, a twentieth cigarette between his lips, trying to think.
Rich land, watered by underground springs, stretched away in thick grass exhaling summer drowsiness. Westward, where the trees of the carriage drive curved up from the south not quite to the main door, the sky was pale gold. Caswall, low and dun-colored, prepared for sleep.
It was not really a vast place, consisting only of narrow galleries built on two floors round and above an inner quadrangle where the cloisters lay. But, its long twinkling-windowed court of what had once been stables,
