Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (5 page)

"Camilla!"

"Alan!"

"It's all right, isn't it? They haven't been using a tomahawk, I hope?"

"No, not lately," said Camilla. She seemed a trifle flustered, no doubt from the warmth of the day. "If you're referring to those horrible old stories, there's a tomahawk in the weapons-room. But it's gone out of fashion nowadays, even as something for you to use on me."

"On
you?"

For the first time Alan noticed somebody else, and caught himself at once. Behind Camilla towered a burly man in dark suit and dark tie, beginning to put on weight as his years neared fifty. He had a hard jaw but a good-natured eye; his manner was deliberate and ruminating. Camilla's attention remained with Alan.

"1
haven't done anything wrong, have I?" she asked. "You said you'd be at this hotel, and get here about twelve-thirty. Oh! Forgive me! This is Mr. . . . Lieutenant . . . Captain . . ."

"Captain Ashcroft," interposed the burly man, "Charleston County Police." His eye woke up. "Mr. Grantham? Dr. Gideon Fell?"

In the back of the car Dr. Fell arose and bowed, an impressive spectacle. Captain Ashcroft addressed him with great formality.

"When you've checked in, sir, you and Mr. Grantham, I'd be right glad of a word off the record. Fair enough, sir?"

"The word, sir," Dr. Fell returned with even more powerful formality, "shall be obtained at lunch. Meanwhile, allow me to frame the question with which my young friend has been struggling. Has there been any disturbance at Maynard Hall?"

Captain Ashcroft deliberated.

"Well . . . now!" He extended a hand as though to make mesmeric passes. "Nothing to get excited about, maybe. But you
could
call it a disturbance if you wanted to. Anyway, somebody stole a scarecrow."

3

"Would you mind repeating that, Camilla? About last Friday night?"

"The whole story?"

They had finished lunch in the air-conditioned coffee-shop at the hotel. Camilla Bruce, Alan Grantham, and Captain Ashcroft sat at a table for four. Across the road, beyond a wall of plate-glass window giving on King Street, amid Marion Square's greenery and flowers. John C. Calhoun on his tall column looked south over a city of what

Dr. Fell had called pastel colors and graceful church-spires.

Alan, across the table from Camilla, was very conscious of her nearness. Complexion cream and rose, rich brown hair worn almost to her shoulders, dark-blue eyes straying towards the window whenever he tried to catch them, Camilla fidgeted badly. He had been wrong about the formal appearance of her dress; at close range Camilla's figure made it anything but formal.

'The whole story?" she repeated. "Really—!"

Captain Ashcroft put his elbows on the table.

"Now, ma'am," he was insidiously persuasive, "you just do what Mr. Grantham tells you to do. Yes, the whole story; I'd like to hear it again myself. Not about the scarecrow, maybe. To my way of thinking that's not important The no-counts of this world would steal anything! They got your scarecrow, ma'am; nobody else did."

"The scarecrow," Alan interjected, "wasn't in a cornfield, then?"

Camilla's gentle voice held a note of pain. "Oh, Alan, you're thinking of
The Wizard of Oz!"
"Am I?"

"How often have you seen a scarecrow in a cornfield? People put up scarecrows wherever they think the birds may do some damage. This one, as I've tried to explain, was in the garden at the back of the Hall. Madge put it up when they first came there in April; I helped her. She found a bag of salt that was just the right size for the head. She took one of her father's good suits and hats. Mr. Maynard didn't like that; he didn't say much, but you could feel him breathing annoyance as soon as he saw it."

"I don't blame him, Camilla. Dandyism in a scarecrow seems out of place."

"Realism isn't out of place, surely? The colored gardener gave us a kind of bib-thing to hold it together. Madge and I stuffed the scarecrow with straw; maybe
we
were thinking of
The Wizard of Oz.
We pinned the bib-thing inside the coat, and tied the arms and legs togther with twine. It was a
beautiful
scarecrow."

"I'll bet it was."

"Alan Grantham, will you please stop sitting there and sneering every time I open my mouth?" "I wasn't sneering, Camilla."

"You were; you know
you were; you always do! I can’
t say one word without being picked up on it!"

Captain Ashcroft made a massive and pacifying gesture.

"Now, ma'am," he said at his most fatherly, "you forget the scarecrow. What bothers me is all that hoo-ha in the middle of the night. Yes, yes, I know the others have given me their versions! Suppose you tell us yours again, as you told Dr. Fell a while ago?"

"Where
is
Dr. Fell?"

"You've not forgotten, ma'am, he was called to the phone hardly three minutes ago? And that reminds me. Mr. Grantham, do you know a man named Spinelli, Lieutenant Carlo Spinelli, in Westchester County outside New York?"

"I don't know him. I've heard Dr. Fell mention him."

Captain Ashcroft shook a graying head.

"Twenty years ago and more I was in the Army with Carlo Spinelli. You ought to hear
him
about Dr. Fell! Thinks the world of that blundering man-mountain, Spinny does; and now I've met the man I'll go along with it. Come on, Miss Bruce! You don't mind telling me, do you?"

"I don't mind telling
you,
Captain Ashcroft. You're very easy to talk to, not like some people I could mention."

"Now, now, ma'am!"

"But I didn't think you were going to be like this at all." Camilla pushed back a lock of hair. "Rip Hillboro persuaded Mr. Maynard to get in touch with the police, which he didn't want to do. When Madge said there was a d
etective coming from Charleston
. . ."

"Scared you, di
d it?"

"I was frightened to death; I wanted to run and hide. In the stories . . ."

"I know, ma'am, I know! If we carried on like what they do in those detective stories we'd be in a heap of trouble every time we turned around. Lots of people seem to have it in for us: police always wrong, any old crook always right It's a hard job and a thankless job and it don't pay hardly anything, but we're not such a bad bunch in the long run; you hear?"

"Captain Ashcroft," Camilla said gently, "may I ask
you
a question? You know Mr. Maynard fairly well, don't you?"

Captain Ashcroft may have been a strong man; he was not a silent one.

"I've known the Maynards," he answered, "almost since I can remember anything at all. They've been gentry for near on to three hundred years; I'm not that, exactly, though my great-granddaddy
was
chief gunnery-officer of the
Palmetto
when Henry's great-granddaddy commanded her."

Here, with a motion of apology to Camilla, he bit off the end of a King Edward cigar and lighted it.

"In the last generation there were only two of 'em, Richard and Henry. Richard, the older one, died unmarried a couple of months ago; he had inherited the property, and there was still plenty of property to inherit.

"But Henry, who's eight or ten years older than I am, never had to worry. He was his mother's favorite; you know what that means. They sent him to a swell preparatory school up north, then to Williams or Amherst or one of those places; I wouldn't know. His mother left him so well fixed he could suit himself and live abroad, which he did almost until Hitler walked into France.

"That's my part of the story, and I'm right happy to tell it. Early last Saturday afternoon, the 8th, we get a call at the office; there'd been a rumpus on James Island the night before. 'Joe,' the chief says to me—I don't let this get out usually; my first name's Joscphus for Jose-phus Daniels of North Carilina—'Joe,' he says, 'we can't tell what this is, probably nothing at all. Still, you know the folks. You're no Lord Chesterfield or Beau Brummell, but you won't throw soup in their faces or jump up in the air just to land on somebody's toes. You hike out and see.'

"Now, little lady, it's
your
turn. You've got no call to be scared, anybody as sweet and pretty as you are. It happened 'most a week ago, didn't it, and you've already told it once this morning? I don't want to crowd you, believe me! But I agree with young Mr. Beale: something mighty damn funny goin' on over there, and I'd be grateful for any extra help you can give." "All right," Camilla agreed.

She still fidgeted badly, the strain showing in her eyes. Alan had lit a cigarette for her when he lit his own, but she put it out at once. Camilla clasped her hands together. She looked out the window, as though intent on the rap of heels along the sidewalk; then she turned back.

"Mr. Maynard," Camilla began, "was away in Richmond that night. Valerie Huret and Dr. Sheldon came to dinner, and Bob Crandall had arrived from Goliath. After dinner we had coffee in the back garden. When we went indoors about ten o'clock, we can all testify the scarecrow hadn't been touched."

Now it was Josephus Ashcroft who displayed anguish.

"Pardon my language, ma'am, but did you hear what I said about that God-damn scarecrow?"

"It's the theft of the scarecrow you're investigating, isn't it?"

"I don't know what I
am
investigating, ma'am. That's just the trouble. Go on."

"Well, we went indoors about ten o'clock. Valerie Huret and Dr. Sheldon left together at that time. The rest of us, Madge and Yancey and Rip and Bob Crandall and I . . ."

"Whoa, ma'am; whoa there! Take it easy, and not so fast." Captain Ashcroft spoke with a certain excitement. "You're not saying . . . you can't be saying . . . ?"

"Saying what?"

"Mark Sheldon's got a wife of his own; they've been married for less than a year, and a very fine person she is. Blow me down! You're not suggesting there's something between Mrs. Huret and that young doctor?"

Camilla was appalled. "Saying it? Suggesting it?"

"Ma'am?"

"I'm not even
dreaming
it. Neither is anybody else. They're casual acquaintances, that's all. They 'left together' because they live near each other, somewhere down around East Bay in Charleston. She'd be too old for him anyway, even though she doesn't look it. If Valerie's interested in anybody, Madge thinks, she's interested in Madge's father."

"Or in Mr. Crandall, maybe? That'd be my own guess; I could be far wrong. Also, speaking of who's got a fancy for whom, Miss Maynard says that you . . ."

His eye flickered briefly round the table. Camilla's color came up; she held herself rigidly.

"Madge says—what?"

"Nothing, ma'am, ab-so-lutely nothing! However! Since you're in the young lady's confidence and can probably guess . . ."

"I'm not in Madge's confidence. Madge doesn't confide in anybody, really. She's a sweet girl, as you would put it But she has moods. You mustn't take her moods too seriously or regard her as an authority on anything relating to me."

"I won't, ma'am. Still! Even if you did have a fancy, where would be the harm in it?"

"Now listen, Mr. Jehoshaphat Ashcroft . . . !"

"Josephus Ashcroft! Just 'Joe' will do."

"Please!" Camilla begged, more than half docile again. "I don't know anything about policemen, especially policemen like you. But what are we doing, really? Are we discussing some rather frightening experiences last Friday night or are we just fishing for idle gossip?"

"You'd be surprised, ma'am, how much real evidence can be buried in idle gossip. I don't say the funny business at Maynard Hall comes from somebody fooling with the wrong woman, or with any woman at all. But it's much more likely to be caused by that, now, isn't it, than by anything that happened many years ago?"

"Well . . ."

"We can discuss the frightening experiences, ma'am, if you'll just get on and tell 'em while I think."

"I'm sorry, Captain Ashcroft! Where was I? Oh, yes!"

Camilla put her hands flat on the tablecloth and drew a deep breath.

"Madge and Yancey and Rip and Bob Crandall and I came indoors, then. It was warm during the day, but it had turned cool with twilight. A mist rose off the water, as they say it often does. The five of us went to the library, which is the big room to the left of the front door and down four steps, with the books behind wire gratings and early Victorian furniture padded in yellow satin. Then they started telling ghost stories." "Who told the ghost stories?"

"Yancey and Rip. Yancey began on a dreadful one out of M. R. James; Rip countered with the severed hand that has a life of its own and crawls across things to strangle people. Ever since Monday, you see, Rip and Yancey had been trying to top each other's remarks and impress Madge; they're still doing it."