They had heard no sound in the Long Gallery, no creak of footstep. A little way behind Thorley, looking full at him, stood Celia.
CHAPTER X
Celia, just as she had looked last night: even to being dressed in white. Celia, with the beauty of the imaginative fine-drawn face untouched by any emotion, even anger. Her gray eyes, with the black pin-point pupils perhaps dilating a little, were fixed on Thorley. But just beyond Celia...
Looming up beyond her, his hand under her elbow in a proprietary way, was a tall man in some mysterious season between youth and middle age. A man with a confident bearing, a dental smile, wearing a gray suit of such admirable cut and newness as only influence can procure nowadays, and having hair the color of a lion's mane with a wave in it.
Thorley, as though warned by a telepathic instinct, had swung round toward them.
"Derek!" he exclaimed. "What the devil are you doing here?"
(At last, thought Holden, Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore! But he didn't need Thorley’s words to guess it The hair did that - Ugh, you swine!)
Now in this, as anyone could have told him, he was doing Mr. Hurst-Gore a complete injustice. Everyone knew that Mr. Hurst-Gore was a fine fellow, who meant well in everything he did.
"Doing here?" Mr. Hurst-Gore repeated, in a rich confident voice. "Oh, I'm everywhere." He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I came down with Dr. Fell. We're both staying at the Warrior's Arms."
Despite his smile, Mr. Hunt-Gore kept looking at Thorley in a fixed, meaningful, heavily significant way.
"Thorley!"
"Well?"
"There must be no scandal," said Mr. Hunt-Gore, very slowly and in the same significant tone. "But, listen, Derekl They're now saying it was murder!" "I know." "But—!"
"Remember the Frinley by-election?"
Holden couldn't see Thorley's face. But he sensed a change in the broad back, and the movement as though Thorley would put up his hands to shield his eyes.
"There is one thing," said Mr. Hurst-Gore, still holding Celia's elbow in a proprietary way, "that a man in public life mustn't do. He mustn't show himself a fool."
Thorley stood for a moment motionless. Then, with affection and tenderness rushing out of his voice, he turned to Celia.
"My dear Celia!" he said reproachfully. "My dear girl! You shouldn't have come downstairs tonight! Here!"
Hurrying to one side, Thorley rolled forward an easy chair whose casters squeaked abominably on the wooden floor and strip of brown carpet Though Celia shrank as though she had been burnt when he touched her, she was so amazed that she allowed him to push her down into the chair.
"If you do this sort of thing often," he added, with a sort of reproachful beam, "Old Uncle Thorley will have to speak severely to you. Did I tell you, by the way, that I brought down a special vintage of port for you? Never mind where I got it Sh-h!" Thorley winked. "But you won't find a wine like it anywhere in London."
Celia looked up at him helplessly.
"Thorley," she said," I don't understand you!"
"I'm the Inimitable, my dear. I'm the Sparkler. But why . don't you understand me?"
"One minute you're shouting for my blood. And the next minute you're—you're pouring port over me."
"Live and let live," shrugged Thorley. "That’s my motto. After all, Celia, we did live in the same house for six months with a flag of truce between us."
"Yes! But that was only because—" Celia stopped.
"Why did you come down tonight, Celia?"
"I have an appointment with Dr. Fell."
Thorley looked startled. "You know Dr. Fell?"
"Oh, yes. Very well." Now for the first time Celia's eye met Holden's; an intense awareness sprang between them across that gap, as Celia had seemed last night; but she colored and turned away.
"I think," Celia swallowed, "that everyone here knows everyone else. Except: Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore ... Sir Donald Holden."
And up went the emotional temperature still higher. The two men shook hands.
"A pleasure!'' declared Mr. Hunt-Gore, flashing his dental smile. Seen at close range, the countenance under the wavy hair seemed older, and harder, and shrewder. "You mustn't mind me, you know; I'm everywhere. An old, old friend of Celia's. We've had some very good times together in the past"
(You have, have you?)
"She spoke to me about you just now," continued Mr. Hurst-Gore, cordially breezy, "when I went up to her room and had a talk with her."
"Indeed."
"I was thinking," pursued Mr. Hurst-Gore, "that meeting you was like meeting some character out of a play. With you playing the Mysterious Stranger."
"Oddly enough," said Holden, "I was just now thinking the same thing about you."
"Were you, my dear fellow? How?"
"With you," said Holden, "playing Mephistopheles to Thorley's Faust."
Mr. Hurst-Gore's eyes narrowed. "That’s rather perceptive of you."
"Well try to be perspective, won't we? In a murder case?"
"Oh, that!" Mr. Hurst-Gore dismissed it with a really friendly laugh. "Well soon explode all that nonsense, about suicide and murder too, when Dr. Fell looks into it The birds will sing again. You'll see. In fact, if I may say so in this assembled company..."
"Hey!" boomed a thunderous voice.
It was that of Dr. Fell who was also rapping the ferrule of his crutch-handled stick against the floor. He loomed above them, turning his head from side to side with a piratical air and vast sniffs above the bandit's moustache.
"Sir," he said, "I am deeply gratified to hear that the birds will sing again. It also gratifies me (by thunder, it does!) that outward amiability has been restored. We are sitting in a cosy little alcove of hatred, with all drafts blowing. Control it; or we shall get nowhere."
'You were," Celia said, "you were questioning witnesses!"
"There is only one witness I want to question."
"Oh?" demanded Thorley. "And who's that?"
"You, confound it!" said Dr. Fell.
All his piratical air dissolved. He leaned forward, his left elbow on the table.
"Up there," and Dr. Fell slightly raised the crutch-handled stick toward the ceiling, "a woman died. She died by means so well-contrived that under the circumstances (I repeat, under the circumstances, any doctor would have been fooled into calling it a natural death. We are now immediately underneath the bathroom where a bottle of poison was, or was not, in the medicine cabinet."
"It was!" cried Celia.
"It was not," Thorley said smoothly.
Dr. Fell paid no attention to this.
"For nearly three mortal hours—between half-past eleven, when you all went to bed; and a quarter-past two, when Dr. Shepton arrived for the first time—Mr. Marsh was apparently the only person who saw his wife, touched her, went near her, or was even within calling distance of her.
"If he tells the truth, we can reconstruct what happened. But, if, as seems likely, the gifted Mr. Hurst-Gore has persuaded him to keep silent..."
While Mr. Hurst-Gore uttered an astounded protest, Thorley came quickly around from behind Celia's chair and stood in front of the table.
"I promised to tell you what happened that night," he declared. "And, so help me, I will!"
"Excellent! Admirable!" observed Dr. Fell. With one elbow on the table, he pointed a finger at Thorley. "Now picture the scene again. The four of you arrived back from the Lockes'. What happened then?"
"Well, we went up to bed ..."
"No, no, no!" groaned Dr. Fell, making a hideous face and snapping his fingers. "Please be more detailed than that. Presumably you didn't just open the front door and rush frantically upstairs?"