The Seat of the Scornful by John Dickson Carr

Author:John Dickson Carr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

CHAPTER XI

That was the night of Saturday, April twenty-eighth. On Sunday morning it was past noon before Inspector Graham could reach Dr. Gideon Fell.

For many persons it had been a night touched with dreams.

Inspector Graham read through his notes, smoked a last pipe, and slept soundly afterwards.

Herman Appleby, the solicitor—who spent the night at a place nobody expected—went to bed commendably early, after winding up his watch and putting his false teeth in a glass of water.

Fred Barlow dreamed of Jane Tennant, and of the idea Connie Ireton had put into his head. His subconscious mind moved in the direction for which it had always been intended from the first.

In the big white house outside Taunton, Jane Tennant herself moved in restless sleep, turning from side to side.

Constance Ireton slept only after getting up to take two Luminal pills from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. On her way back she paused outside Jane’s door. She listened to the muttering inside. She opened the door. She sat down softly on a chair beside the bed, and listened again. Afterwards she slipped away to her own room, and drowsed off among many fancies.

Some distance away, in a private sanatorium, a girl named Cynthia Lee lay and stared with wide-open eyes at the ceiling.

Mr. Justice Ireton, in black silk pyjamas, sat up in bed reading Francis Bacon. The jewelled sentences pleased him. When he saw that he had read for the scheduled quarter of an hour, he turned out his light, slept, and did not dream at all.

Last of all to turn out his light was Dr. Fell. As the clock went on chiming through the night he sat behind the table in his hotel bedroom, smoking a black pipe which he frequently replenished with tobacco tasting like the steel-wool that is used to clean kitchen sinks. The room was poisonous with smoke, and dawn had begun to come up over the sea when he opened his windows before turning in.

So it was well past noon when the shrilling of the telephone-bell beside his bed roused him.

He stretched out a hand for it.

“Good morning, sir,” said Inspector Graham’s voice, with austerity. “I rang before, but they said you’d given orders never to disturb you before noon.”

“You are now going to tell me,” wheezed Dr. Fell, getting the morning cough out of his throat, “what Napoleon said. ‘Six hours for the man, seven for the woman, and eight for the fool.’ Blast Napoleon. I must have SLEEP.”

Inspector Graham did not refer to Napoleon.

“The bullet that killed Mr. Morell,” he reported, “was fired from that revolver. Captain Ackley says there’s no doubt about that.”

“Had you ever any doubt of it?”

“No; but you know how these things are. Next, we’ve traced Mr. Morell’s movements. The eight o’clock train from London last night was seven minutes late. At eight-ten or a little later, Morell asked to be put right for the coast road. The witness remembers particularly because he was peeling the wrapper off a stick of chewing-gum, and wolfing at it like he wanted to eat it.

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