Holden blew out the lighter flame, which was sizzling and scorching the wick. He knelt there in semidarkness, partly lifting the topmost letter, yet feeling an intense reluctance now to read it Dead Margot with her brown eyes and her dimples, seemed to walk in the room.
He got up, and dropped the lighter back in his pocket. He went back to the desk, where he spread out that letter on the funeral pall beside the dim lamp. The words lived again, the personality lived again, in what Margot had written:
Mv dearest:
I'm not going to post this to you, or even give it to you, any more than any of the other letters. Is that silly? And yet it's the only way I have of being with you when you're not here, not here, not here. This time tomorrow, or two days from now, it will all be settled. Whether we many, or whether we die. But—
Holden's eyes stopped. Here, in part at least was ringing confirmation of a certain theory. The next part of the letter he dodged over. It was composed of intimacies explicitly described and set down. And then:
Sometimes I think you don't love me at all. Sometimes I think you almost hate me. But that couldn't be, could it? If you're willing for what we plan? Forgive me for thinking that! Sometimes I get pleasure just from repeating your name, over and over. I say to myself—
Holden raised his head quickly.
The outer door of this flat the solid Yale-locked door giving on the passage outside, was in the front room. But the sound penetrated very distinctly. Someone was softly rapping on that door.
CHAPTER XVIII
It might be the ambulance men, of courae. He didn't associate that soft hesitant almost furtive rapping with any such errand. All the same, it might be the ambulance men.
Hurrying round the desk, Holden saw against the carpet the blood-smeared crystal with which, presumably, Thorley Marsh had been struck down. The people from the nursing home mustn't see it or hear about it—yet.
Regardless of fingerprints he picked it up, cradling it in Margof s letter, and carried it to the desk. When you straightened the pall cover, setting the crystal back in its holder and turning it round, the few blood smears were scarcely visible.
At the outer door, that soft rapping began again.
Holden set the desk lamp a Utile farther away on the table cover. Then, straightening his shoulders, he went into the front room. Drawing a deep breath, he twisted the knob of the Yale lock and opened the door.
Outside, with frightened faces, stood Celia Devereux and Dr. Gideon Fell.
Donald Holden could not have said whom or what he expected to find there: human being, beast, or devil. Yet certainly not these two. He backed away several paces, clutching Margot’s letter.
'Are you—are you all right?' cried Celia.
'Yes, of course I'm all right. What are you doing here?'
'You look terribly rumpled up. Has there been a fight or something?'
'Yes. There's been a fight right enough. But I haven't been in it.'
Celia edged through the doorway. Her eyes, roving round this front room which might have been a fashionable doctor's waiting room, were furtive yet burning with curiosity. Dr. Fell, a wild-haired mammoth who had left behind hat, cloak, and one walking stick, breathed gustily as he lumbered in.
'Sir,' he began, getting his voice level after a vast throat clearing, 'our friend Inspector Crawford has discovered how the trick of moving the coffins was worked in the vault'
'Yes. I know.'
'You know?'
'Danvers Locke told him. Locke's here now.'
Dr. Fell's eyes flashed open. 'Here?'
'Not in these rooms, no. He's downstairs, buying masks, at a place called Sedgwick & Co. Or he was. Anyway, he told Crawford.'
'So it seemed advisable,' grunted Dr. Fell, drawing a hand across his forehead, 'to spirit the young lady away from police questioning until we could, or could not prove something.' He paused. 'Mr. Hurst-Gore very kindly drove us to town. But he (harrumph) was compelled to drop us at Knightsbridge, and we have been more than an hour in getting here.' Again Dr. Fell mopped his forehead, as though reluctant to approach what he must approach. 'Well, my friend? What has been happening?' . Holden told them.
'Thorley,' whispered Celia. 'Thorley!'
'Celial Please don't go into the other room!'
'A-all right, Don. Whatever you say.'
Dr. Fell listened without comment. Yet, though he seemed no less grave, relief radiated from him like steam from a furnace.
'Thank you,' he said, lifting his hand to shade his eyeglasses. 'You have done well. Now will you please wait here for a moment: both of you. Er—better leave this front door open. In addition to your nursing-home people, I'm expecting our friend Shepton.'
Holden stared at him. 'Dr. Shepton?'
'Yes. I practically kidnapped the good gentleman from Caswall village. At the moment he is buying tobacco downstairs.'
And Dr. Fell, without a word more of explanation, moved into the inner room. Holden and Celia were looking at each other in the hot, airless semi-gloom of the waiting room. Then Celia spoke in a low voice, dropping her eyes.
'Don.'
'Yes?'
'That letter in your hand. Dr. Fell's been telling me a good deal about this. Is the letter one of Margof s?' 'Yes.'
'May I read it?' Celia extended her hand.
'Celia, I'd rather you didn't! I . . .'
The slow smile, with the twitch of weariness or mockery at one comer of the Up, crept up into the clear tenderness of her eyes.
'Do you, of all people,' she said, 'think I mustn't be told about such things? I'm Margof s sister, you know. I can fall in love terribly too; and I have. Oh, Don!'
'All right. Here you are.'
Now there were two persons to watch, in the silence that followed.
Celia took the letter and went to the window. She drew back one set of curtains with a wooden rattle of rings. Yet she hesitated, eyelashes lowered, with the letter pressed against her side, before she began to read.
In the adjoining room, the black-draped room with the crystal, Dr. Fell's tread could be heard all this time like the tread of an elephant. First he had blinked carefully down, through glasses that wouldn't stay straight, at the black fragments Holden had raked out of the fireplace.
Next he approached the back of the room, where curtains screened two doors set side by side. Billowing among the curtains, Dr. Fell opened the left-hand door, snapped on a light, and glanced into the kitchenette by which Holden had entered. Then he unlocked the right-hand door: a bathroom, as Holden could now see for himself as Dr. Fell switched on the light
Celia began reading the letter. Her color rose and deepened, but her expression never changed and she did not raise her eyes.
Dr. Fell, after standing for some time in mountainous immobility at the door of the bathroom, switched off the light and closed the door. He wheeled round, his shaggy head lifted. And . . .
'Nol' cried Celia. 'No, no, no!'
Holden, who had been trying to watch both of them at once, felt his flesh go hot and cold at the suddenness of that exclamation.
'I'm sorry,' said Celia, controlling herself. 'But this name!' 'What name?'
'The man Margot was in love with.' Amazement incredulity was there a slight disgust as well?) trembled in Celia's voice. '
