saying, You see what this is? Let me go, or I'll drink it tonight Let me have Ronnie; or I’ll die.'
'And Thorley Marsh didn't believe her.
'She had cried, 'Wolf too often. She had threatened suicide too much. Here he saw a fake label clumsily printed on a toy press from the nursery. (You recall, I asked whether he knew about that printing press?) After her threat she put the bottle more or less openly in the medicine cabinet. And, in an atmosphere of horrible strain, your party started for Widestairs.'
Dr. Fell's cigar had gone out He put it down on the little table with the decanter, the glasses, and the glass water jug. He eyed the water jug before continuing.
'We needn't recapitulate the events of that night, except for the actual murder. Ronnie Merrick got a bad fright when he was unexpectedly faced with the part of Dr. Buchanan at the party. But he had gone too far to retreat
'The party was over. The hours went on striking. Widestairs was now asleep. Well before one o'clock, the time ranged for both of them to drink poison, Merrick dipped away from Widestairs to Caswall. Under a greatcoat he wore the sodden-wet clothes of the trout stream.
'He removed the greatcoat swam across the moat, and / swung himself up the pipe. From outside he could see his victim, wherever she happened to be in her suite; as I discovered by questions, an the curtains were wide open and a ledge along the wall runs underneath them. He saw her in one of those rooms, now wearing a black velvet gown.'
'Dr. Fell,' said Celia, 'what is the explanation of that gown? None of us had ever seen it! It was ...'
'A black velvet gown,' said Dr. Fell, 'for a black velvet room.'
'What?'
'You of course appreciate that your sister, before everything else in her life faded out under the stress of her passion for Merrick, had set up as a fortune teller as other women have done before her? It was an outlet for her hysteria, her frustration, her hatred of life.
'Once the affair began with Merrick, all that was forgotten. Madame Vanya disappeared. Her clients' cards were destroyed. The door was locked. The inner room became sacred to the love affair that destroyed her. But it was the dress she had worn as Madame Vanya; and in it Merrick painted her portrait.'
Holden stared back. 'He painted—?'
'Dash it all!' complained Dr. Fell. 'Didn't you notice what was burned in the fireplace? Didn't you smell burning canvas?'
'Yes. Yes, I did!'
'And the burned sticks, arranged in a rectangle, with what might have been shreds of cloth attached? And the broken lengths of varnished wood, which had been the easel before he smashed it up? The room had a skylight, you know; a north light; an artist's light That was why you saw me looking for the marks of the easel on the carpet But that big velvet-covered divan . . . well, never mind.'
Celia seemed about to comment on this last remark, but changed her mind.
'You—you were telling us,' she said, 'about the murder. About Ronnie crawling up out of the moat. And poor Margot getting dressed to die. What then?'
Dr. Fell pondered.
'For that' he said, 'we have the testimony of no living person. Let me tell you what I think happened in those rooms.
'Merrick hasn't wanted to do this, you know. But he has got to the point of believing he must dispose of this woman, must take one last step, or he will never get Doris Locke.
'Clinging to the drainpipe outside, he peers through that never-quite-closed window into the bathroom. He sees his victim standing in front of the mirror, holding up a glass that contains an alcohol solution of morphine and belladonna. He sees his victim, with a swaggering gesture which does not quite mean business, lift the glass and drain it.
'But he means business. And he climbs through the window.
'He ran very little risk. The husband, drunk, can be heard snoring in the next room. Everyone else is far away. If she is startled by that specter, face twitching and sodden wet, then the hysterical brain will assume he has come to die with her and it will seem absolutely right
'He stops only long enough to mop head and hands on a towel. She points toward the other rooms, her bedroom and sitting room beyond, and leads the way. He follows her. In the bedroom, while her back is turned, he can snatch up a weapon ...
'Of course you guess what it was?
'It was a weapon from among the fire irons in the bedroom. It was the brass-handled poker which you, Celia, described as being in the sitting room on the following morning. A supernumerary fire iron, the touch of the murderer.
'As she steps into the sitting room, she collapses from a frantic blow across the back of the skull. Not hard enough to kill; not hard enough to leave a mark under that heavy hair. But hard enough to stun until the morphine can make her helpless.
'He drags that handsome, inert body over to the chaise longue, in the warm room with the lights burning. He must find and destroy her diary, that famous diary in the Chinese Chippendale desk. He finds the diary unlocked; he burns the pages.
'Young Bryon is freezing cold and nearly fainting. But he goes back to the bathroom, rinses out the glass she has drunk from, and puts the poison bottle in his pocket. He switches off the light in the bedroom and the bathroom. And down he crawls again into the moat'
Dr. Fell paused, wheezing heavily.
'But Margot Marsh, don't you see, still had the will to live? Now we can say 'did' instead of 'perhaps' or
'And, by thunder, but this man got a jolt! The moaning woman may be in a hysterical attack, yes. Of course! No doubt! But that brown bottle labelled 'poison.' My God, can she have meant what she said about suicide? Thorley Marsh rushed back to the medicine chest. The bottle had gone.'
Dr. Fell drew a deep breath, puffing out the ribbon on his eyeglasses.
'That,' he said, 'was what I had to establish when I first questioned our friend Marsh. It had seemed clear from the first, by his incessant harping to everybody on the subject of a certificate of death from natural causes, that he at least suspected the possibility of suicide. So to avoid scandal, he lied.”
'But, if I could trip him up and get him to verify what I believed to be the truth, then I should be on safe and certain ground. And I did so. Will you concede that what I once told you was no paradox? It was because Marsh had been telling lies that I then knew he was telling the truth.'
'And yet,' Holden demanded, 'Thorley didn't even tell Dr. Shepton he suspected Margot might have poisoned herself?'
'No. Because Dr. Shepton (if you recall) instantly told him it was a hysterical attack and probably not even very serious. Afterward it was too late. So he lied.'
'I can't make Thorley out!' Holden said desperately. 'I still don't know whether I ought to apologize to him or wring his neck!'
'And yet,' said Dr. Fell, 'he is the easiest person of all to understand. Thorley Marsh is a genuinely good- natured person, who likes his friends and will go to any amount of trouble for them, provided only his own self- interest is not seriously threatened.' He paused. 'There, but for the grace of God . . .'
There was a silence.
'Yes,' said Holden. 'There, but for the grace of God, go we all.'
'And yet,' Celia spoke softly, 'I hate him. I hate him even when I know Margot was . . . was like that, and he never mistreated her. Maybe it's a dreadful thing to say,
'Oh, ah?' rumbled Dr. Fell. 'How is he?' - 'They don't know yet. Doris is at the nursing home now. We're expecting her.' Celia hesitated. 'But I hate him,' she said, 'for telling you I was crazy and Margot died a natural death and there wasn't any poison bottle, when all the time he knew better! Don, dear! I know what I did was very silly. But do you blame me?' /4No! Of course I don't!'
'Nor I,' said Dr. Fell 'But, by thunder, young lady, you gave me some very apprehensive moments!'
