His effigy lay there now, as Caswall did, in memory of the love that dieth not.
And there were other memories, too.
'I, Margot, take thee, Thorley,' the husky contralto voice could barely be heard, 'to my wedded husband.' It rose again, ghostlike. 'To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness, and in
He could see the colors, and hear the organ music.
And, as they approached, there was the little iron fence close along the east side of the church: its gate now hanging open and a little rusty. Beyond was the low square tower, the church door being around at the other side. When you turned to the left past the tower, there was the path where he had met Celia.
On his left, now, the rough west wall with its pointed windows. On his right, arching over, the beech trees which guarded an ill-kept churchyard. The same breath of dry-baked mud and dew-wet grass, touching one's nostrils with even the scent of the past. Moonlight filtered down through the leaves, whose shadows were trembling where no wind seemed to stir.
And it was not only Celia's image. It was all the vastness of time. Dr. Fell, at his elbow, spoke softly. 'What are you thinking?'
'But, Mother of God, where are they, then? And where are the snows of yesteryear?' '
There was a silence. The old words seemed to ring softly, gently, in this gentle place.
Dr. Fell nodded without speaking. He led the way past the beeches into a little expanse of unkempt grass where many headstones, some at crooked angles and black-worn by time, stood amid a thickness of cypresses. Westward the churchyard stretched up into a hill; by some illusion of moonlight, there seemed to be fewer gravestones than there were trees.
Holden had a sudden recollection of an Italian churchyard, and of a face over a Luger pistol peering at him around a headstone. But this was swept away. In the flat ground ahead, facing them at the end of a crooked little lane of flat graves raised two or three feet above ground, loomed up a shape he had never noticed before.
It had been built between two cypresses; they did not shade it, but they threw shadows straight ahead on either side. It was square, of heavy gray stone, squat, with a little pillar on each side of a paneled iron door.
'Is that'—Holden's voice seemed to burst out, against thick silence, before he lowered it to a mutter—''is that
'The new vault? Yes.' Dr. Fell breathed ponderously; either from quick walking or from some emotion. 'The old one,' he added, 'is up on that hill there.'
'What exactly are we going to do?'
'As soon as my excellent friend Crawford gets here, we are going to unlock and unseal the door.'
'Unseal it?'
'Yes. Merely to take one brief look inside. We shall do no more.'
'But Mr. Reid! The old vicar! Will he like this?'
'The vicarage,' returned Dr. Fell, 'is on the other side of that hill. He will not know. As for one Mr. Windlesham, who is supposed to look after these premises, I have every reason to hope that he is now too full of beer to interfere.'
'What do you expect to see in the vault?'
Dr. Fell did not answer this.
'Hear now,' he said, 'my story.'
The crooked little alley leading up to the tomb, with its raised graves on either side, was paved with tiny pebbles. Dr. Fell's canes rattled among the pebbles as he sat down on the big flat stone of one of the raised graves. It was just inside the shadow thrown by the cypress on the right-hand side of the vault.
'I am the sport of fates and devilry,' observed Dr. Fell, removing his shovel hat and putting it beside him. 'At Christmas (yes, last Christmas) I was the guest of Professor Westbury at Chippenham. Two days after Christmas it occurred to me to go over and pay a call on Mrs. Andrew Devereux.'
'On . . . ?'
'Yes. On Mammy Two, who had been dead for several years. That,' said Dr. Fell bitterly, 'is how we kept in touch with our friends during wartime. Unless they had been blitzed or otherwise hurt by some Satan's toy, we imagined them still as healthy as ever.
'With my customary careful presence of mind, I even neglected to send a telegram or any message. I merely hired a car and was driven the few miles to Caswall. In front of the house, among other motorcars, I saw a hearse.'
Dr. Fell paused, putting up his hands to his eyes.
'My dear Holden, I didn't know what to do. My arrival on a social call seemed a little out of place. I was telling the driver of the car to turn round, when someone ran over the bridge and motioned to me. It was—'
'Celia?'
'Yes.'
Again for a moment Dr. Fell pondered in silence.
'Now that girl was in a badly disturbed state of mind. One moment! I don't mean what you are thinking. I merely mean that she was not herself; and it worried me badly.
'She asked me if I would please come inside for a few minutes, on a matter of very vital importance. She further said we must on no account be seen. And we were not seen. She led me in through the back way. She led me through a maze of those short little staircases that connect the galleries, up to an old playroom, or nursery, or something of the sort, on the top floor.'
A light wind, sweeping up from the south, set rippling the grass in the churchyard and made a dry scratching sound among cypresses. There was a brief rain of shadows until the wind died. What alarmed Holden most was the evident disquiet of Dr. Fell, who kept glancing round at the door of the new vault as though he half- expected to see something come out
The devil of it was, perhaps something would. 'That playroom, yes,' Holden muttered. 'Celia mentioned it last night Anyway, did she tell you anything about... ?' 'The circumstances of her sisters death?' 'Yes!'
'She told me very little,' grunted Dr. Fell. 'And we can see now why she didn't On Christmas Day she had gone to Dr. Shepton and poured out her whole story. And Shepton, a trusted old friend, dismissed her very kindly and gently as a psychopathic case.' Dr. Fell added, very quietly: 'Curse him.’
All Holden's nerves throbbed in agreement with this.
'Dr. Fell, have you seen Shepton?'
'Yes.'
'Do yon think he's crooked? Or a fool?' Dr. Fell shook his head.
'The man,' he answered, 'is neither crooked nor a fool. He is merely very obstinate and very closemouthed; so infernally closemouthed, in fact that. . .'
'Yes? Go on!'
'That,' said Dr. Fell, with subdued violence, 'he has nearly wrecked half a dozen lives.'
'But you were saying? About Celia?'
'She told me,' replied Dr. Fell, lowering his head, 'that her sister's funeral was that afternoon. She begged me, implored me, pleaded with me to help her with something, —er—hardly needed to tell the young lady,' said Dr. Fell with a guilty air, 'that if it would help her in any way she could have the shirt off my back.
'She pointed out that we should not be doing anything against the law. That we should not be hurting anybody, or interfering with anything. She even added, with a kind of naivete which troubled me much as it touched me, that it wouldn't even be dark and we needn't be afraid. In short...' 'Please let me tell him, Dr. Fell,' interposed Celia's voice. Again the wind came rustling and seething across the churchyard. Celia had not come up the path from the church. She had taken a shorter cut, from the north side. They saw her stumbling among gravestones, catching at them to steady herself, among flying shadows.
Celia reached Dr. Fell's side. She looked at Holden, looked at the vault, and faltered. 'Dr. Fell,' Celia said, 'couldn't we call it off?' For a long time Dr. Fell stared at the ground. 'Why should you want to call it off, my dear?' 'I was frightfully nervous.' Again Celia looked at Holden, and smiled uncertainly. 'I—I may have been dreaming.'
