Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (14 page)

"Forgive me, Miss Maynard," interrupted Dr. Fell. "On our way here, hardly a very long stone's throw from this house, we passed rather an elaborate high school building of orange-yellow brick, with the date 1920. Did your group of seniors come from that particular school?"

"From the Joel Poinsett? No, of course not!"

" 'Of course' not?"

"Nobody goes there now; it's closed, though a man in a nearby cottage keeps an eye on the place. It's past use, they say, and they've got funds for a modern building on the same site. Next month they'll begin tearing it down, and replace it . . ."

'T know; don't tell me!" Camilla cut in. "They'll replace it with one of those ghastly one-storey structures we see everywhere, as cheap-looking and flimsy-looking as somebody's henhouse, but very popular because they're mostly glass and cost a fortune to build."

"Camilla," said Alan, "is it possible there's something modern you don't like?"

"Alan," cried Camilla, "is it possible there's anything modern you
do
like?"

"Yes. That's a personal subject I'd like to discuss with you in private."

"I see. You want to sneer at me in private as well as in public, do you? Well, you won't get the chance!
You
were saying, Madge?"

Madge remained intent, as though buoyed up by some inner spirit.

"I was telling you," she answered, "about the lecture on old weapons to the high-school seniors. Six rather nice children, three girls and three boys with their history teacher, were here in the afternoon. Daddy loves lecturing, although he'll never admit he does; he loved standing at that blackboard and explaining things with figures and diagrams. When he'd finished he told George the blackboard could stay where it was, for the time being; and it's been there ever since. I heard that lecture too; that's how I know tomahawks were once a part of colonial troops' equipment." She broke off. "For heaven's sake, Rip, what's the matter with you?"

"There's nothing the
matter,
Madge. But don't you see this just leads us around in the same old circle?"

"Leads us where?"

"Straight back to Pa Maynard. Look, Madge: don't get me wrong. I'm not saying a word against your old man—!"

"You'd better not!"

"But are you sure you understand him?"

"Do
you
understand him, son?" asked Yancey Beale.

"I flatter myself I know human nature." Again there was an aggressive set to Rip's shoulders. "Madge says he'd rather be dead than crude, and she's right. But suppose (just suppose, Stonewall!) he's got it in for you, or for me, or for anybody else you can think of? And suppose he's figured out some way a man can walk over mud or wet sand without leaving a trace?
That'd
be subtle enough, wouldn't it?"

"Mr. Hillboro," interposed Dr. Fell, "are you making a serious accusation against the gentleman whose hospitality you have accepted?"

"Good God, no! Since Madge is so very literal-minded, I'd better repeat that this isn't to be taken seriously at all."

"Yes?"

"In a question of
reading individual character, I’
m just suggesting what he
might
do if he were driven far enough.

When I say he's tricky or slippery, I don't mean tricky in the way we usually mean it. There's a whole lot of things he wouldn't and couldn't do. Pa Maynard wouldn't cheat you: he wouldn't sell you a worthless stock or a used car you couldn't depend on. But if he thought he had cause he might just possibly slip poison into your bourbon when he was sure you weren't looking. I'll go further than that; I'll say—"

"Yes, young man?"
demanded a harsh voice. It was as though the room had been struck with physical chill.

On the little platform inside the library door stood Valerie Huret. with her red hair and her white skin. But they hardly noticed Mrs. Huret now. They all looked at Henry Maynard, who stood just in front of her.

His wide-open eyes had acquired such fixity that a ring of white showed entirely around the iris. He hardly seemed to breathe. Shoulders back, elbows at his sides, he stood rigid, drawn up, the picture of a perfect gentleman holding in check the flaming temper of a fiend.

"Yes, young man?" he repeated. "Let's both go further, shall we? Since you insist on theorizing about my many shortcomings and my basically murderous impulses, hadn't you better share the theory with me?"

8

Early evening light, with a broad red glow in the west, was settling over James Island as Alan drove back the way he had come. Again Dr. Fell occupied the rear of the car; there was nobody else. The trees of Fort Johnson Road sped past overhead; the clock on the dashboard pointed to ten minutes past six.

And a certain feverishness was still on Alan.

"Do you see the time, Dr. Fell? Actually, it hasn't been a full ten minutes since the old boy turned up at that door like an avenging ghost. I thought there was going to be the great-grandmother of all rows!"

"The same thought occurred to me," c
onfessed Dr. Fell. "But young Hil
lboro, it would seem, is not quite the indomitable figure he tries to be. Faced with a direct challenge, you remember, he covered confusion by laughing and apologizing, and a reminder of his careful preface that he had been joking all the time."

"Which Mr. Maynard accepted, to everybody's surprise, without protest and with only one comment." Here
Alan mimicked Henry Maynard. " I
t will decrease friction, Rip, if you and Yancey see less of each other from now on; and if I see still less of you too.' They both said, 'Yes, sir,' like obedient schoolboys. Back upstairs he went, with some remark about a book he'd forgotten.

"And that was all. But
was
it all? Valerie Huret stalked over like Juno to capture the attention of Bob Crandall; you instantly made excuses to get us out of there . . ."

"Promising," supplied Dr. Fell, "that the old duffer would be on tap if they needed him. In candor, I was concerned to avoid more rows. What did you write on that card you gave Miss Bruce?"

"The name of the restaurant where we're going now, one I particularly want you to visit. I asked Camilla to go with us; she wouldn't. It's not quite six-fifteen at the moment, but it will be nearer seven when we get there. Do you mind an early dinner?"

"Sir, I enjoy dining at any time; even, malcontents have hinted, at breakfast time. What is the restaurant?"

"A place called Davy's, adjoining the Dock Street Theatre in Church Street."

"No Englishman," said Dr. Fell, "can be stunned to find the Dock Street Theatre in Church Street. At the same time . . . !"

"It's not as confused as it sounds. Queen Street, formerly Dock Street, is just around the corner. By the way, speaking of Camilla—"

"Do you still think she can't bear the sight of you?
Ar
chons of Athens! 'Somebody asked the Sergeant's wife.'"

"Asked the Sergeant's wife what? How did the Sergeant get into this anyway? Are you beginning on cryptic remarks again?"

"No remark of mine, properly considered, is ever cryptic," Dr. Fell informed him with a certain stateliness. "It may be misinterpreted; it is not cryptic. Is there anything you especially want to know?"

"I want to know everything. But I'll be content with such hints as you feel you can drop. Can't we talk about this business at Maynard Hall? Is there any reason why we shouldn't discuss it freely?"

"On the contrary, there is every reason why we must and should discuss it as freely as circumstances permit. What others may think is anybody's guess; but by thunder, sir, it frightens
me!"

"What frightens you?"

"Emotional pressures," said Dr. Fell. "Certain remarks and attitudes of several persons, notably of Henry Maynard himself."

"Do you think Rip Hillboro's right? That the old man might just possibly have some kind of murderous design?"

"Come!" the big voice boomed. "Tut, tut, and out upon it! Are there no emotional pressures but those that lead to murdering somebody? More often, surely, they may be directed to the happier course of not murdering somebody? For the most part, I concede, our information has come from atmospheres, suggestions, innuendoes. But the atmospheres, suggestions, and innuendoes have been extraordinarily revealing!

"As for Henry Maynard, something haunts and hag-rides the man. I told him this in your presence. The twenty-five minutes or so I spent alone with him, after you had gone downstairs and before I myself descended to watch the baseball challenge, I devoted mostly to hammering him with questions about what could be doing the haunting or hag-riding."

"And—?"

"It has something to do with the conduct of his daughter," replied Dr. Fell. "But that, on the surface at least, would seem the most p
ullin
g point of all. She is a well-behaved girl, is she not?"

"Madge is all of that. Even in Goliath (and there's no whispering gallery like a college town) the worst of the damned prying minds had nothing against her. She hasn't liked being kept so much in cotton-wool, like a fair
-
haired princess in a fairy tale. But thaf s not strange; it's only human!"

"Then what can she have been up to that worries or frightens him so much? Does nothing suggest itself?" "No; nothing."

"Perhaps it will help," wheezed Dr. Fell, "if I recount what he told me in reply to my questions. Later this afternoon, I seem to remember, Yancey Beale mentioned an occurrence that took place on the night of Sunday, May 2nd. This is what Henry Maynard had already told me:

"On the night of May 2nd, he says, he was in his study with the air-conditioner turned off and one of the windows raised. Madge and some young man—whom her father supposed to be Yancey Beale because Yancey lives close by in Charleston, and Rip Hillboro had not yet arrived—were under the magnolias out in front.

"He could hear only a distant murmur of talk, and not always that. The situation appeared to be growing a little impassioned, though not at all dangerous, when suddenly the visitor lost his head and cried out something to the effect that it would be disastrous if Madge's father discovered them there.

"It took Henry Maynard off balance, or so he says. If his daughter becomes anybody's wife, he would prefer her to be Yancey Beale's. The notion that the boy should suppose himself unwelcome really shocked our listener on the top floor. Down he went in a hurry. Yancey
was
there. When asked why he had made so strange a remark, Yancey—perhaps carrying chivalry too far, as he is inclined to do—did not deny using the words. He merely said he could not remember saying them.

"But . . .

"Henry Maynard is no fool. He wondered at the time, and afterwards felt certain. Yancey Beale, a highly cultivated young man, affects broad Southern speech; it is the only affectation I myself have discerned in him. There had been, as our friend Maynard put it, 'something different about the voice.' It was not Yancey who had been with his daughter at the time. Who was it?"

"He accused
me,
damn him!" Alan burst out. "He thought / was the one, even though—"

"Tut!" protested Dr. Fell. "He did not really think so. It occurred to him, or so he says, merely because you, once admittedly an admirer of Madge, were a mere two hundred miles away instead of a thousand miles or more.

"And yet this disturbance, surely, is all cry and no wool? The girl was being 'embraced,' his own word; nobody suggests it went further. Truth must be told, as I indicated to Maynard. Queen Victoria is dead; President McKinley has long since departed the White House. Is he afraid she will make an unsuitable marriage? Even so, why the disturbance? What is there about the bearing of this girl, Madge Maynard, to hint at devils howling down the wind or direful voices in the wilderness? So far as we know, nothing whatever. And yet, unless the man has been a complete liar in
everything,
which I refuse to believe, there is an explanation somewhere. That is our problem, or the greater part of it."

"What else did he tell you, Dr. Fell?"

"Nothing germane to the purpose. Stop! It seems almost an irrelevance," bumbled Dr. Fell, fishing out of his capacious side pocket a battered old exercise-book bound in cardboard, "if briefly I execute a flip-flop back over nearly a hundred years, and to Commodore Maynard battered to death on the beach."

He held up the exercise-book. The wind caught and riffled yellowed pages of spidery script in ink that had turned brown.