"Nonsense!" said Dr. Fell. "I mean, you should have confided in me. Damme, my girl! I could have shown you far better ways of flummoxing the evidence than an ersatz supernatural story like that"
"I was desperate," said Celia. "There was Thorley smirking and calling me mad. So I thought I might as well be mad, and see how he liked it But it only produced evidence against me."
"That of course, was why you had to wait so long before getting in touch with the police? Until the water rose in the spring, and dried back into the ground during the summer?"
"Yes. And it had been such a terribly rainy June I didn't dare gamble, in case there might still be water there. But July began baking hot and continued like that so I risked it. Thorley ..."
She broke off.
The door to the hall opened. Doris Locke, a stanch little figure though with her eyes puffed from weeping, wandered in with a listless air. After her came her father. And the change in Locke was almost shocking; he seemed to have aged ten years in one day.
Celia, deeply concerned, hurried over and pushed out chairs for them. Dons, small and grateful, acknowledged the gesture with a pressure of the hand.
"Thorley's going to get well" Doris said. "And ifs all my fault!"
"Your fault?" Celia asked.
"That Thorley and Ronnie went to the New Bond Street place," Doris burst out "and had the fight." She looked at Holden. "Ifs your fault to Don Dismallo!"
Holden stared at the floor.
"Yes," he admitted. "I suppose it is."
"Never in my life," again the tears came into Doris's eyes, "will I forget walking back to our house on Thursday night, through those meadows, with Ronnie and Don Dismallo!"
Holden remembered it too, with an intolerable vividness now that he could see below the surface.
"Don Dismallo," Doris pointed at him, "asking me about That Woman's boy friend, and me telling him about the New Bond Street place, and saying please go and investigate it! And all while Ronnie was there."
"Doris!" murmured the gaunt, fragile image of Sir Danvers Locke.
"I knew there was something wrong with Ronnie that night!" said Doris. "I could tell it by his voice, and the way his eyes sort of shone. But I never guessed Ronnie, Ronnie of all people, was That Woman's boy friend!" She looked at Holden as though a great oracle had let her down. "You, Don Dismallo!"
"My dear girl," protested Holden, "how could you expect me to guess it either? You kept talking about a 'distinguished-looking middle-aged man.' You said there was a friend of yours, Jane Somebody, who had seen them ..”
"Jane didn't say he was middle-aged!"
"Didn't sav—?"
"Jane Paulton said he was 'distinguished-looking.' It was Ronnie who caught that up, the first time I ever told him, and tacked on 'middle-aged. He kept repeating it over and over. It was Ronnie who told you so that night And it seemed all right," stormed Doris, "because you do think of somebody distinguished looking as being middle-aged."
"Come to think of it..."
"Y-yes, Don Dismallo?"
"The first time I ever met Ronnie," said Holden, "he unnecessarily dragged in a reference to Margot’s lover and kept insisting on the middle-aged part"
How easy, he was thinking, when you have learned the truth! How easy to interpret the moods of young Merrick— whom he had liked, and liked very much—stalking dazed in the Long Gallery, or wandering wild-eyed across the meadows in the moonlight while Doris spoke to him about the murderer!
"She got on his nerves," Holden could hear Doris's voice saying, "so he killed her." And that, in sober God's truth, was the fact
Sir Danvers Locke tugged at his immaculate collar.
"Dr. Fell!" he said. "Sir?"
"Will you be kind enough to interpret one final point for me?" "If I can."
"I take it," Locke was so white that Holden felt apprehensive, "I take it that Mrs. Marsh never really, in her heart of hearts, intended to die? And that was why she didn't give up the New Bond Street premises when the suicide pact was arranged?"
"That’ s my belief."
"But young Merrick never knew that?"
"Never. But he suddenly wondered, when your daughter spoke about it, whether the place might still be there. He had a key, of course. So he traveled up with you in the train next day. But he couldn't go directly to the same address, because you were going to the costumier's shop yourself..." . "Innocently, I swear!"
"And Thorley caught him," Doris said miserably. "I told Thorley next morning about what we'd said. So Thorley went baring up in the car, to see if there might be any evidence. He had a key too, now: That Woman's key. He was still—suppressing things. And there was a fight. Up there in that room, with only the fire burning, there was a fight"
She shivered. The vivid picture was in all their minds.
"You, of course," Locke glanced at Dr. Fell, "sent Holden after both of them when you realized. Yes. Yes. That is plain." He hesitated, a gray-faced shadow. "Let me," he added, "now make my recantation."
"Recantation?" exclaimed Celia.
"Doris," her father said formally, "I did not want you to marry Mr. Marsh. I confess it. I distrusted him. When we heard the first evidence, I believed he was a murderer too. It was only, on thinking things over late that night. . .
"Doris, your father's judgment is not good. I tried to force you into—never mind! I retract. If you now wish to marry this man . . ."
Doris, with absorbed and fierce concentration, was picking at the arm of the chair.
"But I don't think," she said in a small voice, "I do want to marry Thorley."
Locke sat up, shakily. 'You don't wish to? Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know," Doris said. "I just don't Celia!"
"Yes, dear?"
"You've always been in love with Don Dismallo, haven't you?"
"I don't like to say so in public," smiled Celia, and her eyes met Holden's across the back of Doris's head. "But— always and always
"Well," said Doris, "it’s not like that with Thorley and me." She paused. "He's not what I thought he was," she added. "He's just mean in the soul."
There was a long silence.
"I won't say, Doris," observed Locke, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "your decision displeases me. You are young; and we have the authority of an old saw that there are many fish in the sea. At least you have been delivered from—"
"Don't you say anything against poor Ronnie!" cried Doris.
While they looked at her, dumbfounded, Doris bounced up out of her chair. She walked to one of the windows, and stood looking out at the moonlit garden.
"Ronnie," Doris said, and there was a ring of reluctant admiration in her voice, "was a heller. An absolute heller! And I never knew it! I thought he was wishy-washy. I never guessed. Whatever's he's done, that’s how I like a man to be! Oh, I almost wish I had married him, now!"
From the vastness of Dr. Gideon Fell's bulk emerged a murmur which might have been an ironic sigh. He shook his head. Bending over to the little table, Dr. Fell unstoppered the decanter, poured a very strong whisky into a glass, and added a very small amount of water.
The tolerant irony, the far-off twinkle of the eye, all radiated from him as he raised his glass.
“I drink to human nature” he said.
____________________
The Sleeping
Sphinx
Bantam Books · New York
A Bantam Book published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Harper edition published February 1947
Detective Book Club edition published April 1946
Published in the Collier set 1947
Condensation appeared in the Toronto star weekly July 1947