Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (9 page)

"It is not the first time, I believe, you have changed your mind in the past fortnight May I revert to that presently?"

"If you insist Meanwhile, you are thinking . . . ?"

"It would be difficult," grunted Dr. Fell, puffing out his cheeks, "properly to formulate such thoughts as exist. 'Blow hot, blow cold,' or perhaps blow the whole business. This won't do; it won't do at all! Is my quest of a thousand miles to end in moonshine and wild geese? And you were so very urgent! If you had not been so urgent, I told my friends on the way here, I should have preferred to spend the afternoon exploring Charleston or visiting Fort Sumter."

"Oh, Fort Sumter!" Henry Maynard said abruptly. "Come with me, please."

All his tight-lipped reserve had gone. Beckoning them to their feet, he conducted them to a door in the left-hand wall. This opened into a good-sized billiard-room, also oak-panelled, with a covered table, a rack of cues, and a padded seat under the two windows facing front. With a conspiratorial air their guide led the way through it into the farthermost room on the top floor at the front of the north wing.

A lumber-room of dingy white-plaster walls and bare board floor, it was as littered with old trunks, with discarded household effects, as the other rooms had been swept and neat. Unlike study or billiard-room, there was an air-conditioner in neither of two windows. Both were open, with fine-mesh screens hooked into place.

"The rain has stopped," said Henry Maynard. "It lasted hardly more than ten minutes, as I predicted; the sun is coming out. Look here!"

He bustled to the far window, and put the tip of an extended forefinger against the wire screen.

"There
is
Fort Sumter, Dr. Fell."

"Where?"

"Where I am pointing. Over the top of that flagstaff below the window, take a line bearing slightly left out across the harbor. You see the smallish dark-gray mass against the water? One moment!"

Opening the top of a cabin trunk near the window, he fished out a pair of heavy field-glasses in their leather case. He took the glasses from the case and handed them to Dr. Fell.

"Put these to your eyes; adjust the focus . . ."

"The focus, sir, is already adjusted."

"Then take the line I have indicated. Move the glasses to your left. . .so! Have you got it now?"

"Oh, ah!" Dr. Fell was puffing with concentration. "I have got the fort; I see it clearly. Some kind of small steamer appears to be drawing away from it"

"That's the excursion-steamer returning. You would have been too late for it today in any case; it leaves the Municipal Yacht Basin at two o'clock. You can always go tomorrow, of course. Meanwhile, if a distant view will suffice . . . ?"

"The distant view," said Dr. Fell, "will do admirably. Harrumph! A Union officer named Major Anderson, I understand, surrendered Fort Sumter to the Confederates in April of '61? When did Federal forces retake it?"

"They never did 'retake' it in the sense you mean."

"Oh?"

"At the beginning of '65 the fort was a wreck. It had been under heavy bombardment for almost two years, notably from a monster Parrott gun on Cummings Point. But it was still defensible, with a garrison of six hundred. In February Sherman marched north from Georgia. Sumter's garrison, fearing they might be cut off if Sherman struck at Charleston—which he never did—slipped out and joined what remained of the Confederate Army. And Brigadier General Anderson, formerly Major Anderson, returned to raise the flag he had lowered four years before."

Henry Maynard swept out his hand.

"I set little store by history, gentlemen. The past is dead; let it remain buried; don't rattle the bones! And yet certain comments are called for."

"What comments, sir?"

"To the Union, from the very start of the war, Charleston and Fort Sumter had been symbols of Southern defiance they would have given anything to recapture. And they were always trying.

"But by water they hadn't a hope. Any attacking ship could be caught in a murderous crossfire between Sumter and Moultrie. In April of '63 Admiral Du Pont tried to force a passage with nine Federal Ironclads. The ironclads took a beating without even getting close; five were disabled and one destroyed. This led to the combined land-and-sea attack by General Gillmore and Admiral Dahlgren. In August they tried again with ironclads; again they failed, as they failed in every direction until the defenders had abandoned all works. Your own comments, Dr. Fell?"

Dr. Fell lowered the glasses and straightened up.

"For one so scornful of the past, sir," he said, "you seem remarkably well informed about it."

"I am conscientious; no more than that. I consider it my duty to be informed."

"And have you no other duty?"

"To whom?"

"Come!" Dr. Fell inclined his head towards the window. "Look down there, I beg, much closer at hand than Fort Sumter."

"Yes?"

"There is the beach spread ou
t below us, dark gray from rain
. On that stretch of beach, only two years after the time about which you have been so glib, an ancestor of yours was brutally done to death in unmarked sand. But you won't discuss this; you won't touch it, you won't go near it!"

"Did I say I would not discuss it?" Henry Maynard drew himself up. "I said only, if memory serves, that the subject need not detain us. We lack full evidence for a solution. Lacking such evidence, which has been distorted or suppressed, we can do little more than travel in a circle. However! If you insist on rattling
those
dead bones for our present pleasure, I shall be happy to supply you with what few details I have beyond the sketch in the newspaper account. Is there anything else?"

"Is there anything else?" thundered Dr. Fell. "Archons of Athens, is there anything
else?
Well, yes. There is the situation in this house.

"Last Friday night a scarecrow was stolen from the garden. Call that ludicrous, if you like. Miss Bruce saw, or claims to have seen, some prowler entering or leaving a downstairs room. Call that ludicrous too; say she was drugged or dreaming. Today you yourself are thrown almost into a fit by the report of someone 'skulking' in your study.

"These ludicrous instances are piling up. Do you ask me to whom you owe a duty? To your daughter! To your guests! Even to yourself! Your daughter is reported as jumpy; Camilla Bruce is jumpy; Mrs. Huret is distinctly jumpy; you, sir, are as jumpy as any of them. Surely there is something here worth investigating? And yet all you can do is tell me to forget it entirely!"

"Now, there," retorted Henry Maynard, touching the careful knot of his tie, "there again I must correct you. I said to forget the
phone call;
I said no more than that. I distinctly recall observing, just before we came upstairs, that we had at least one matter to discuss. And so we have: the source of all my worry to begin with. Back to the study, please."

Taking the field-glasses from Dr. Fell, he replaced them in their case and returned the case to the trunk. With some dignity he led the way through lumber-room and billiard-room, carefully closing each door when Dr. Fell had maneuvered through sideways. In the study, after switching off the floor-lamp by the chess-table, he went to the antique desk below the colored photograph of Commodore Maynard, and ran his fingertips over its sloping lid.

"In here," he went on, "I have an old exercise-book containing a diary for the year 1867 kept by Miss India Keate of Charleston, then eighteen years old.

"Luke Maynard was not ray great-grandfather, as some suppose. He was my great-grandfather's younger brother, and a bachelor. In '67 the head of the family, my great
-
grandfather Henry, seems to have been a character even more stern than Luke. But he was hospitable, as stern characters of the day so often could be.

"India Keate, a close friend of great-grandfather Henry's youngest daughter, spent part of the month of April in this house. Her diary contains the only supplementary details we have about Commodore Maynard's death. 1 will give you the diary, Dr. Fell, for your consideration at leisure."

Then his voice sharpened.

"But that must wait! My own constant worry, which goes on and on interminably, may be expressed in one word. Madge."

"And my question," returned Dr. Fell, "may also be expressed in one word. Why?"

"It's not easy to explain."

"Will you try to explain?"

Henry Maynard turned from the desk and faced them, his eyes growing unsteady.

"Madge is so innocent!" he said. "Or, if not altogether innocent in thought, let's agree she is warm-hearted, well-meaning, and rather naive.

"She was born in Paris in 1938, registered at the American consulate, and baptized at the American church in the Avenue George V. Her mother, whose portrait hangs above the mantelpiece in the library downstairs, died about a year later. Early in 1940 I brought the child to America in charge of an English nurse who remained with us only for a year or two. Madge was brought up in New York; we moved to Connecticut just under a decade ago.

"But I never know what the girl is thinking, or quite how to deal with her. I feel constrained; today they would say inhibited. Am I over-protective too?

"Young men have been flocking around Madge since she reached her teens. Recently the field, if I may so express this, has narrowed itself down to two: Rip Hillboro and Yancey Beale. I want her to marry, of course. But
I
want her to make the right choice. It is bound to be Rip or Yancey; who else is there? Unless—" he stopped.

"Sir," demanded Dr. Fe
ll, "may I ask just what is wor
rying
you so much? The situation confronting you has confronted every father since time began. If it is only a question of finding a suitable husband . . ."

"Oh, suitable!" the other said with some bitterness. "Both young men are suitable enough. For my own reasons I should prefer Yancey. He has certain natural advantages denied the other. But I should give my blessing to Rip too; I am no snob. Rip worked his way through my own college and through law school. He is with the best legal firm in Hartford and has a brilliant future. If sometimes he seems a little too aggressive for quiet tastes, shall I hold this against a young man making his way in the world?

"What happens next, I ask myself? Where are we going? Where will it end? It is enough to
...
it is enough to
..."

"No!" roared Dr. Fell. "It is
not
enough to haunt and hag-ride you as so obviously it does. What else is there? Out with it, man! Have you brought me a thousand miles merely to act as marriage counsellor? And is it the young lady or the father who can't decide?"

Henry Maynard, who had been pacing beside the writing-table, stopped short.

"With your permission, Dr. Fell, I will now address myself to Mr. Grantham.
You
don't mind, young man?"

"No, of course I don't mind. What is it?"

"Forgive me," said their host, "if I seem abominably ill-mannered. Forgive me also if I sound like prosecuting counsel at a trial. Mr. Grantham, where were you on the night of Sunday, May 2nd?"

Alan stared at him.

"Sunday, May 2nd," repeated the other, "just twelve days ago. About ten o'clock at night, say. Where were you then?"

"I'm trying to remember, that's all!"

"Were you by any chance in the grounds of this house?" Henry Maynard pointed. "Under some magnolia trees by the front gate? Embracing my daughter there?"

"Good God, no!" said the flabbergasted Alan. "And I've just remembered where I was."

"Yes?"

"In Pearis, two hundred miles away. At ten o'clock I had just fini
shed having dinner with Dr. Leff
ingwell, the President of King's College, his wife, and three members of the faculty."

"You're sure of that?"

"If I had to prove it in court, Mr. District Attorney. I could bring at least five witnesses. I wasn't embracing Madge or anybody else. What makes you think I was?"

"I don't think you were. It was an unworthy suggestion, and again I apologize. But it did strike me that once upon a time you seemed
rather
interested in Madge. For want of another candidate, I wondered."

Candidate? Candidate? Now just how, Alan was thinking, is anybody supposed to answer a remark like that?