Holden stared at him.
"Paradox," he said politely, "is doubtless admirable . .."
"It is not paradox, my dear sir. It is the literal truth."
"Well, take the next bit. You say it's nonsense to think Celia has ever been out of her senses, which is fine and grand. But you instantly qualify it by some—some half-suggestion .. ."
"Dash it all!" said Dr. Fell.
"Then the position is," asked Holden, "that both Celia and Thorley have been telling the truth? And that somehow they've just been misunderstanding each other, all through these bitter months. Is that it?"
Dr. Fell's shovel hat was stuck forward on his head, the eye-glasses faintly gleaming under it by moonlight. He struck at the grass with his right-hand cane.
"Apparently," he assented, "that is it"
"But that’ s impossible!"
"How so?"
"Those two long statements of Celia and Thorley, covering a period of years and concerning Margot simply won't reconcile. They're oil and water. They won't mix. Either a person is telling the truth, or he isn't"
"Not necessarily," said Dr. Fell.
"But—!"
"Before too long a time, when I propose to tell you the whole story," said Dr. Fell, "you may have reason to change your mind. In the meantime, we have an errand."
"Yes! And, if you'll forgive my insistence, that's another thing."
"Oh?"
"Dr. Fell, how is it that you know so much more of this affair than you could possibly have learned from any letter of Celia's to Scotland Yard? What sort of game is being played between you and Celia? I’ll swear there is one. Did she tell you the story of Margot's death?"
"No!" roared Dr. Fell, and viciously cut at the grass with his cane. "If only she had! Oh, my hat, if only she had!" He lowered his voice, wheezing less noisily. He looked very steadily at Holden. "You may have heard, perhaps, that Celia Devereux has been seeing ghosts?"
"Yes. But Celia doesn't suffer from delusions!"
"Exactly," agreed Dr. Fell. "It was just because she seemed to be seeing ghosts, you understand, that I knew she wasn't suffering from delusions."
Again Holden stared at him.
"Dr. Fell I'm like Thorley. I'm afraid I can't take it. That's the second paradox in two minutes. But you don't want to hear someone talk like that, and play with words, when you're waiting for the hangman and yet hoping for a reprieve. I'm getting as desperate as Celia."
Dr. Fell pointed with the cane.
"I say to you," he declared, with extraordinary intensity, "that it is neither paradox nor playing with words. You should have realized it, from evidence placed squarely in front of you. And now," he hesitated, we are going to open the tomb. And—"
"And?"
"It is the one part of this affair," said Dr. Fell, "which really frightens me. Come along."
In silence they walked across the drive, under trees again, and into the west meadow. A little distance away, rising up among oaks and beeches and a few cypresses, was the low square tower of Caswall Church.
In that gray church, ageless now, lay the stone effigy of Sir Walter D'Estreville, in stone chain mail, with his feet resting on a stone lion to show that he had been to the Crusades. When he died, in Palestine, under the Black Cross of the Templars, Lady D'Estreville took the veil to quit this world, and Caswall House became Caswall Abbey. His effigy lay there now, as Caswall did, in memory of the love that dieth not.
And there were other memories, too.
"I, Margot, take thee, Thorley," the husky contralto voice could barely be heard, "to my wedded husband." It rose again, ghostlike. "To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness, and in health. Till..."
He could see the colors, and hear the organ music.
And, as they approached, there was the little iron fence close along the east side of the church: its gate now hanging open and a little rusty. Beyond was the low square tower, the church door being around at the other side. When you turned to the left past the tower, there was the path where he had met Celia.
On his left, now, the rough west wall with its pointed windows. On his right, arching over, the beech trees which guarded an ill-kept churchyard. The same breath of dry-baked mud and dew-wet grass, touching one's nostrils with even the scent of the past. Moonlight filtered down through the leaves, whose shadows were trembling where no wind seemed to stir.
And it was not only Celia's image. It was all the vastness of time. Dr. Fell, at his elbow, spoke softly. "What are you thinking?"
"But, Mother of God, where are they, then? And where are the snows of yesteryear?' "
There was a silence. The old words seemed to ring softly, gently, in this gentle place.
Dr. Fell nodded without speaking. He led the way past the beeches into a little expanse of unkempt grass where many headstones, some at crooked angles and black-worn by time, stood amid a thickness of cypresses. Westward the churchyard stretched up into a hill; by some illusion of moonlight, there seemed to be fewer gravestones than there were trees.
Holden had a sudden recollection of an Italian churchyard, and of a face over a Luger pistol peering at him around a headstone. But this was swept away. In the flat ground ahead, facing them at the end of a crooked little lane of flat graves raised two or three feet above ground, loomed up a shape he had never noticed before.
It had been built between two cypresses; they did not shade it, but they threw shadows straight ahead on either side. It was square, of heavy gray stone, squat, with a little pillar on each side of a paneled iron door.
"Is that"—Holden's voice seemed to burst out, against thick silence, before he lowered it to a mutter—''is that.. .?"
"The new vault? Yes." Dr. Fell breathed ponderously; either from quick walking or from some emotion. "The old one," he added, "is up on that hill there."
"What exactly are we going to do?"
"As soon as my excellent friend Crawford gets here, we are going to unlock and unseal the door."
"Unseal it?"
"Yes. Merely to take one brief look inside. We shall do no more."
"But Mr. Reid! The old vicar! Will he like this?"
"The vicarage," returned Dr. Fell, "is on the other side of that hill. He will not know. As for one Mr. Windlesham, who is supposed to look after these premises, I have every reason to hope that he is now too full of beer to interfere."
"What do you expect to see in the vault?"
Dr. Fell did not answer this.
"Hear now," he said, "my story."
The crooked little alley leading up to the tomb, with its raised graves on either side, was paved with tiny pebbles. Dr. Fell's canes rattled among the pebbles as he sat down on the big flat stone of one of the raised graves. It was just inside the shadow thrown by the cypress on the right-hand side of the vault.
"I am the sport of fates and devilry," observed Dr. Fell, removing his shovel hat and putting it beside him. "At Christmas (yes, last Christmas) I was the guest of Professor Westbury at Chippenham. Two days after Christmas it occurred to me to go over and pay a call on Mrs. Andrew Devereux."
"On . . . ?"
"Yes. On Mammy Two, who had been dead for several years. That," said Dr. Fell bitterly, "is how we kept in touch with our friends during wartime. Unless they had been blitzed or otherwise hurt by some Satan's toy, we imagined them still as healthy as ever.
"With my customary careful presence of mind, I even neglected to send a telegram or any message. I merely hired a car and was driven the few miles to Caswall. In front of the house, among other motorcars, I saw a hearse."
Dr. Fell paused, putting up his hands to his eyes.
"My dear Holden, I didn't know what to do. My arrival on a social call seemed a little out of place. I was telling the driver of the car to turn round, when someone ran over the bridge and motioned to me. It was—"