'It's—it's absurd!' cried Celia. 'Margot loathed cold. I remember telling you so myself, when we were in the churchyard.'
'Ah!' grunted Dr. Fell. 'And what else did you tell us?'
'What else?'
'In your original statement You said, I think, that the bathroom window couldn't be locked?'
'Y-yes! It’s a swing-together window that never would fit or latch properly.'
'And what,' inquired Dr. Fell, 'is just outside that bathroom window?'
It was Holden who answered.
'A vertical terra-cotta drainpipe. A heavy one.' He stared at the past. 'I remember noticing it from the oriel window in the Long Gallery, just under that bathroom, when I was reading the note you gave me!'
'Should you (hurrum!) should you say that Ronnie Merrick, as a young man, is probably an agile climber?'
'He damn well is an agile climber. He can go all over Caswall Church.'
'So we perceive,' observed Dr. Fell, 'that the wet floor wasn't caused by anyone taking a bath. But unfortunately, Thorley Marsh put on his slippers before going on to his wife's bedroom and sitting room. Archons of Athens,' groaned Dr. Fell, 'if only he hadn't worn his slippersl
'For then, you see, he would have stepped in more wet tracks. The tracks of someone who came in through that unlocked window. The tracks of someone from the moat. The tracks of a desperate youth, half-screaming with hatred for his mistress, and bent on murder.'
Celia slipped off the arm of Holden's chair and stood up.
'Dr. Fell,' she breathed, 'you really are a devil.'
Dr. Fell, who resembled nothing so much as a perturbed Old King Cole, blinked at her over .his eyeglasses.
'Hey??'
'You build up a case,' Celia shivered, 'bang, bang, bang, point after point as complete and awful as—I was going to say, as a hangman's rope. But please! Never mind your evidence. What I want to know is: why?'
'Oh, ah,' said Dr. Fell.
'Why did they all behave like that? Why did Ronnie do such an awful thing? Why did Margot ... oh, everything! The human motives!'
'Ah, yes,' murmured Dr. Fell. 'Ronnie Merrick.' - He was silent for a long time, his thoughts far away.
'Here is a young man,' he said, 'Byronicaly handsome, very callow but admittedly of great talent who has been indulged in every whim of his life. Everything he has wanted has been given to him. And now he wants Doris Locke.
'Please understand that He was sincerely, blindly, idealistically in love with Doris. He exalted, of course, a girl who did not exist; but that is of no matter, because it happens to all young men. Very deeply he loved Doris; and hoped to marry her; never forget it; it is the mainspring of the murder.
'As for your sister ...' Dr. Fell hesitated. 'Dr. Fell' said Celia. 'Please. No delicacy. I want to know.'
'The story of their affair you may read in that long series of letters she wrote, and never posted; like a diary. I read them all today. But I suggest you don't read them. By thunder, it's a good thing they won't have to be read in court!”
'As for the boy, he was at fust flattered. Proud of being a conqueror! Captivated, too, for a time; because he was dizzy with the strongest of all stimulants in this world. But then—and it always will happen to immature people brought up in public-school traditions—he began to feel debased. He contrasted this with what he felt, or believed he felt, toward Doris Locke.
'And he began to hate Margot.”
'On her side, the infatuation was only increasing. As he grew lukewarm, she grew more obsessed. To the boy's horror, she began talking about marriage.
'Thorley Marsh, who quite manifestly had learned of the whole thing, was only a little less horrified.
'Didn't you two ever wonder why Thorley Marsh always felt so intensely bitter toward young Merrick? When he was first giving you,' Dr. Fell looked at Holden, 'an account of his wife's death, he burst out into a tirade against Merrick in the middle of it You may recall other occasions as well.'
'Yes,' agreed Holden. 'Even when Thorley and Doris were telling Locke they meant to get married, Thorley noticed Merrick and got as black as thunder. Thorley as good as ordered him out of the house.'
'Oh, ah? But why should he feel like that? Because of any jealousy he may have felt for Merrick as a rival in Doris's affections? Great Scott, no! He knew he was the favored suitor. Nobody could mistake that. When you are the one-and-only, you don't detest the fallen rival. You are more inclined to think him an excellent fellow who is a little to be pitied. I (harrum!) indicated as much to you with a question about your own attitude towards Derek Hurst-Gore.
'Do you see now why Thorley Marsh wanted to keep everything hush-hush, and would never have agreed to a divorce?'
'I think I see,' murmured Celia. 'It—it would have made him look a fool.'
'A thundering fool, in his own eyes! Whether she officially divorces him, or he divorces her, the truth will be flying round for the amusement of all his acquaintances and mends.
' 'Marsh's wife,' he could hear them saying at his club, with whoops of hilarity, 'is throwing him over for a boy not quite twenty. What ho! If ever he tried to explain that his wife is a hysteric who can't stand his touch, at best it will sound caddish and at worst it will provoke more amusement.'
Another scene returned to Holden in sharp colors of memory.
' 'Show himself a fool,'' he repeated. 'That was what Hurst-Gore said! It was when you were deviling Thorley to admit the whole truth, and nearly did get him to admit it. Hurst-Gore intervened, and shut Thorley up. Do you think our Derek knew everything?'
'That is my belief. He was Thorley's tutor in that gentleman's political ambitions. However, consider the situation just before Margot Marsh's death.
'To young Merrick, writhing, it had become simply intolerable. He is more than shying away from this older woman; he is frightened of her. She may do anything. Doris will hear of this! Hell never marry Doris! It will ruin his life!”
'Youth, when frightened, can become insensately cruel. Merrick, as I met him later at Widestairs, was a likeable sort But he was jumpy, unsteady (surely you saw that for yourself?) and blind to the matter in its right perspective. Like many another young man in a love affair from which he hasn't the experience to extricate himself, he could see only one way. He lost his head and decided to kill her.
'Margot suggested the suicide pact. And he, at the unnoticed suggestion of Locke, had been reading about another hysterical woman: Mrs. Buchanan. Mrs. Buchanan dies of morphine-and-belladonna poisoning, and the doctors call it a natural death.
'Could it be done? Can it be done? I see him gnawing his fingernails over the question, and deciding to try.
'So I attempted to discover just when Merrick might have given the prepared poison bottle to his victim. She had visited Widestairs mat afternoon; but apparently she hadn't met Merrick.
'It was not until last night that I learned Merrick had been seen trudging back from the trout stream, with a greatcoat over his sodden clothes, meeting her in the fields near Widestairs . . .'
'And giving her the poison bottle!' interrupted Holden, 'Locke saw him do it!'
Dr. Fell blinked at him.
'True,' he grunted. 'So I was informed by Locke last night But how did you know it?'
'From overhearing Locke talking to a certain Mademoiselle Frey. Locke had been putting two and two together, with a suspicion which terrified him. Yes! And when he gave that fierce lecture about the 'utter callousness' of young people, he wasn't talking about Doris at all. He was thinking of Ronnie Merrick.'
'But—Margot?' asked Celia.
'Your sister,' returned Dr. Fell, 'went back to Caswall with a plain (I repeat, a plain) brown bottle. She was going to make a last fiery appeal to her husband. And so she . ..'
'She printed a label,' whispered Celia.
'A label' said Dr. Fell, 'dramatically crying poison. I think I can see her holding it up before Thorley and
