"Celia?"
"Yes."
Again for a moment Dr. Fell pondered in silence.
"Now that girl was in a badly disturbed state of mind. One moment! I don't mean what you are thinking. I merely mean that she was not herself; and it worried me badly.
"She asked me if I would please come inside for a few minutes, on a matter of very vital importance. She further said we must on no account be seen. And we were not seen. She led me in through the back way. She led me through a maze of those short little staircases that connect the galleries, up to an old playroom, or nursery, or something of the sort, on the top floor."
A light wind, sweeping up from the south, set rippling the grass in the churchyard and made a dry scratching sound among cypresses. There was a brief rain of shadows until the wind died. What alarmed Holden most was the evident disquiet of Dr. Fell, who kept glancing round at the door of the new vault as though he half-expected to see something come out
The devil of it was, perhaps something would. "That playroom, yes," Holden muttered. "Celia mentioned it last night Anyway, did she tell you anything about... ?" "The circumstances of her sisters death?" "Yes!"
"She told me very little," grunted Dr. Fell. "And we can see now why she didn't On Christmas Day she had gone to Dr. Shepton and poured out her whole story. And Shepton, a trusted old friend, dismissed her very kindly and gently as a psychopathic case." Dr. Fell added, very quietly: "Curse him.’
All Holden's nerves throbbed in agreement with this.
"Dr. Fell, have you seen Shepton?"
"Yes."
"Do yon think he's crooked? Or a fool?" Dr. Fell shook his head.
"The man," he answered, "is neither crooked nor a fool. He is merely very obstinate and very closemouthed; so infernally closemouthed, in fact that. . ."
"Yes? Go on!"
"That," said Dr. Fell, with subdued violence, "he has nearly wrecked half a dozen lives."
"But you were saying? About Celia?"
"She told me," replied Dr. Fell, lowering his head, "that her sister's funeral was that afternoon. She begged me, implored me, pleaded with me to help her with something, —er—hardly needed to tell the young lady," said Dr. Fell with a guilty air, "that if it would help her in any way she could have the shirt off my back.
"She pointed out that we should not be doing anything against the law. That we should not be hurting anybody, or interfering with anything. She even added, with a kind of naivete which troubled me much as it touched me, that it wouldn't even be dark and we needn't be afraid. In short..." "Please let me tell him, Dr. Fell," interposed Celia's voice. Again the wind came rustling and seething across the churchyard. Celia had not come up the path from the church. She had taken a shorter cut, from the north side. They saw her stumbling among gravestones, catching at them to steady herself, among flying shadows.
Celia reached Dr. Fell's side. She looked at Holden, looked at the vault, and faltered. "Dr. Fell," Celia said, "couldn't we call it off?" For a long time Dr. Fell stared at the ground. "Why should you want to call it off, my dear?" "I was frightfully nervous." Again Celia looked at Holden, and smiled uncertainly. "I—I may have been dreaming."
"My dear," began Dr. Fell, and started to fire up again. "We could have forgotten all about it, yes, if only you hadn't written that letter to the police. In it you stressed evidence, direct evidence, which would be found if you and I opened the vault tonight."
(Exactly, Holden thought, what Celia had told Dr. Shepton last night in that playground. But there had been no mention of a vault.)
Celia, drawing a deep breath, went up to him. Her eyes searched his face, intently and questioningly.
"I couldn't tell you, Don," she said. "I couldn't! That’s what's been worrying me all day; that's why I couldn't see you. But I want you to listen now. And don't laugh at me. Call me mad, if you like. Only: please don't laugh at me." "Of course I won't laugh at you." "Two days after Christmas, when Margot was—put in that place," she swung her head round, the soft brown hair flying, to look at the vault, and turned back again, "Dr. Fell and I attended to certain things.
"After the funeral was over, and everybody had left the churchyard, we came here just about dusk. I had the key of the vault it was supposed to be Thorley's key, but I knew where he kept it Call me a beast if you like, but don't laugh at me.
"Dr. Fell and I unlocked the vault. After we'd—we'd attended to something inside, we shut it up again and locked it Then Dr. Fell was to do what I'd asked him. He was to seal up the lock, with modeling clay pressed through the keyhole until it was filled. He was to stamp that clay with some private seal or mark of his own, so he'd know it Then ..."
"Go on, Celia."
"Then," answered Celia, "he was to go away, with both the key and the seal, and not speak about it until I wrote to him. And that’ s what he did."
Abruptly Celia turned away, stamping her foot on the ground.
"I can't think now what made me do it," she said. "I must have been distracted. Anyway, that's what we did." "But why did you do it?"
"Because of what happened in the Long Gallery," said Celia, "on the night after Margot died." Still she would not look at him.
But, as though needing someone near her, she sat down beside Dr. Fell. Surprisingly, Celia did not seem at all frightened. She looked merely resolute, her chin up and a fixity of conviction in her eyes. She was just inside the shadow of the right-hand cypress: sideways to the vault, in the little crooked path of pebbles, and perhaps twenty feet from its door.
"It started as a dream," Celia said. "I knew that, as you always do, and I admit it
"It was Christmas Eve, remember, though not exactly the sort of Christmas we had planned. Margot was dead, and she had committed suicide, and before our generation that was thought to be a fearful sin. And I was in bed, asleep, on Christmas Eve.
"I dreamed I was in the Long Gallery, standing on the lowest step down from the Blue Drawing Room, looking straight along the gallery from the north end. It was all dark, except for bright starlight. Then I realized, in my dream, that there was not a stick or shred of furniture in the gallery. On my right ran the bare wall where the portraits ought to have been. On my left was the wall with the three oriel windows, and the stars outside.
"I wondered, with that sense of being m both the present and the past at once, whether the gallery had been cleared for the old Christmas dances and games. And then, far away from me, by the third oriel window, I saw half of a white face.
' "It was the side half, with the eye wide open. I saw a curve of hair out to the cheekbone, and a high uniform collar, and part of a red coat. And I thought: Why, that's the portrait of Lieutenant General Devereux, who died at Waterloo! "And then . ...”
"Something gave me a shock and a start, with a gasp in it, and a sensation of cold all over. Then I realized I was awake. Dazed and frightened, but awake.
"I was in the Long Gallery. I was standing on that lowest step, in blackness and starlight, after all. It was bitterly cold, because I had nothing on but my nightgown. I could feel the rough carpet of the step under my feet, and my heart beating to suffocation. I reached out and touched the side of the arch around the stairs. It was real.
"Then I looked down the gallery again.
"And the real house, all quiet and shadowy, it was looking at me. Something seemed to close up my throat, like fingers, when I saw that. I looked again, and it wasn't alone. There were others standing near it. They were the faces and figures that should have been in the portraits, but with one difference.