Donald Holden could not have said whom or what he expected to find there: human being, beast, or devil. Yet certainly not these two. He backed away several paces, clutching Margot’s letter.
"Are you—are you all right?" cried Celia.
'Yes, of course I'm all right. What are you doing here?"
"You look terribly rumpled up. Has there been a fight or something?"
'Yes. There's been a fight right enough. But I haven't been in it."
Celia edged through the doorway. Her eyes, roving round this front room which might have been a fashionable doctor's waiting room, were furtive yet burning with curiosity. Dr. Fell, a wild-haired mammoth who had left behind hat, cloak, and one walking stick, breathed gustily as he lumbered in.
"Sir," he began, getting his voice level after a vast throat clearing, "our friend Inspector Crawford has discovered how the trick of moving the coffins was worked in the vault"
'Yes. I know."
"You know?"
"Danvers Locke told him. Locke's here now."
Dr. Fell's eyes flashed open. "Here?"
"Not in these rooms, no. He's downstairs, buying masks, at a place called Sedgwick & Co. Or he was. Anyway, he told Crawford."
"So it seemed advisable," grunted Dr. Fell, drawing a hand across his forehead, "to spirit the young lady away from police questioning until we could, or could not prove something." He paused. "Mr. Hurst-Gore very kindly drove us to town. But he (harrumph) was compelled to drop us at Knightsbridge, and we have been more than an hour in getting here." Again Dr. Fell mopped his forehead, as though reluctant to approach what he must approach. "Well, my friend? What has been happening?" . Holden told them.
"Thorley," whispered Celia. "Thorley!"
"Celial Please don't go into the other room!"
"A-all right, Don. Whatever you say."
Dr. Fell listened without comment. Yet, though he seemed no less grave, relief radiated from him like steam from a furnace.
"Thank you," he said, lifting his hand to shade his eyeglasses. "You have done well. Now will you please wait here for a moment: both of you. Er—better leave this front door open. In addition to your nursing-home people, I'm expecting our friend Shepton."
Holden stared at him. "Dr. Shepton?"
"Yes. I practically kidnapped the good gentleman from Caswall village. At the moment he is buying tobacco downstairs."
And Dr. Fell, without a word more of explanation, moved into the inner room. Holden and Celia were looking at each other in the hot, airless semi-gloom of the waiting room. Then Celia spoke in a low voice, dropping her eyes.
"Don."
"Yes?"
"That letter in your hand. Dr. Fell's been telling me a good deal about this. Is the letter one of Margof s?" 'Yes."
"May I read it?" Celia extended her hand.
"Celia, I'd rather you didn't! I . . ."
The slow smile, with the twitch of weariness or mockery at one comer of the Up, crept up into the clear tenderness of her eyes.
"Do you, of all people," she said, "think I mustn't be told about such things? I'm Margof s sister, you know. I can fall in love terribly too; and I have. Oh, Don!"
"All right. Here you are."
Now there were two persons to watch, in the silence that followed.
Celia took the letter and went to the window. She drew back one set of curtains with a wooden rattle of rings. Yet she hesitated, eyelashes lowered, with the letter pressed against her side, before she began to read.
In the adjoining room, the black-draped room with the crystal, Dr. Fell's tread could be heard all this time like the tread of an elephant. First he had blinked carefully down, through glasses that wouldn't stay straight, at the black fragments Holden had raked out of the fireplace.
Next he approached the back of the room, where curtains screened two doors set side by side. Billowing among the curtains, Dr. Fell opened the left-hand door, snapped on a light, and glanced into the kitchenette by which Holden had entered. Then he unlocked the right-hand door: a bathroom, as Holden could now see for himself as Dr. Fell switched on the light
Celia began reading the letter. Her color rose and deepened, but her expression never changed and she did not raise her eyes.
Dr. Fell, after standing for some time in mountainous immobility at the door of the bathroom, switched off the light and closed the door. He wheeled round, his shaggy head lifted. And . . .
"Nol" cried Celia. "No, no, no!"
Holden, who had been trying to watch both of them at once, felt his flesh go hot and cold at the suddenness of that exclamation.
"I'm sorry," said Celia, controlling herself. "But this name!" "What name?"
"The man Margot was in love with." Amazement incredulity was there a slight disgust as well?) trembled in Celia's voice. " 'Sometimes I get pleasure just from repeating your name, over and over.' And here it is, about six times."
Celia stared at the past
"But that explains—oh, that explains everything! Don! Didn't you read this letter?"
"I started to read it yes. But that was when you and Dr. Fell knocked at the door. Who is the swine, anyway?"
Up the stairs out in the passage, with the effect of a competent quiet invasion, came a brisk young bachelor of medicine followed by two men carrying a folded stretcher. The young doctor made a feint of rapping on the inside of the open door.
"Emergency case?"
Holden nodded toward the back room. The deputation was met by Dr. Fell, who closed the door after them; and they could hear Dr. Fell's voice upraised in rapid speech as he did so.
Someone had followed the newcomers up the stairs. Old Dr. Eric Shepton, panting a little from the climb, his Panama hat in his hands and his white hair fluffed out round the bald head, loomed up big and stoop shouldered in the doorway. The kindly eye, the stubborn reticent jaw, had an air subtly different from his bearing in the playground.
"Celia, my dear!" he began.
Celia was paying no attention.
"At first it seems utterly incredible!" she said, taking a quick look at the letter and then folding it up into small creases. "And yet," she added, "is it so incredible? When you think of Margot? No. It's dreadfully right."
"Er—Celia, my dear!"
Celia woke up.
"You wouldn t speak to me," Shepton told her in a half-humorous tone, "all the way up in the car. And I hardly liked to speak in front of a stranger like Mr. Hurst-Gore. But I'm only a country g.p. I make more mistakes than I like to think, let alone admit If I've made a mistake in your case ..."
"Dr. Shepton!" Celia's eyes opened wide. "You don't think I'm holding that against you?"
The other looked startled. "Weren't you?"
"I told lies," said Celia, with a calmness which concealed misery. "What could you, or any decent person, possibly think? They'll probably arrest me; and heaven knows I shall deserve it" She put her hands over her eyes, and then flung them away again. "But why, oh, why couldn't you have told me about the other matter?"
"Because I was right not to do so," retorted the other, with a good deal of the kindliness vanishing under a hard shell. "And, London detectives or no London detectives, I still think I was right"
"Dr. Shepton, if you'd only told me!"
The door to the rear room opened.
Holden had no time to think about the meaning of the cryptic speeches he had just heard, though pain and anguish rang in Celia's voice.
Thorley Marsh, muffled to the head in a white covering, was gently and dexterously moved out on the stretcher. Thorley was still unconscious. But he was sobbing, in great gulping sobs which shook the white cloth.
The young physician from the nursing home, whose face was very grave, turned and addressed Dr. Fell.
"You understand, sir, that this will have to be reported to the police?"
"Sir," returned Dr. FelL "by all means. You also have my assurance that I will report it myself. Exactly—how is he?"