Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 Read Free Page A

of a hotel. You won't mind seeing Alan Grantham again, will you?"
    "No, I won't mind a bit. Alan's nice, and he can be entertaining when he tries. But there's somebody else who'll want to see him a good deal more than I ever would or could."
    Yancey touched her cheek. "No foolin', pet? Who'll want to see the fellow as much as all that?"
    "Camilla will. Oo-er!" breathed Madge, cradling her arms and then extending them. "Camilla's supposed to be the brainy one and she really is, but—oo-er! She's got it so badly for Alan you'd be embarrassed if I told you. And of course, Daddy, Valerie Huret's been making eyes at you; Valerie doesn't like being a widow . . ."
    "Now really, Madge!"
    ". . . but she'd have to do a strip-tease in your study before you noticed. I was talking about Camilla, though. Oo-er! If I ever lost my head over a man, do you think I'd be willing to shout it from the housetop and let everybody know?" She stamped her foot. "I'd be too proud to demean myself, so there!"
    "Your naivet6, Madge, is refreshing in a jaded age. However! Since you are scarcely an authority on anybody's affairs of the heart . . ."
    "Daddy, why do you want advice from Alan Grantham? He's concerned with literature and history; he's on the arts side, which you've always distrusted. Why do you want advice from Alan?"
    "I don't want advice from him; I include him as a matter of courtesy. The man whose counsel I must have is the friend who will accompany him to Charleston.'*
    "Oh? And who's that?"
    "A distinguished travelling Englishman, Dr. Gideon Fell. You must remember, my dear. He lectured at Goliath in February; you met him at tea afterwards."
    "Madge, there are your ghost-guns again," Yancey Beale interposed, as the sky seemed to tremble with distant noise. "Hear 'em, honey?"
    "Ghost-guns?" Madge's voice poured with scorn. "Currents and cross-currents, you mean! All of us bumping together in the water, not for a moment knowing where we're being carried!"
    "Madge . . ."
    "Yes, I remember Dr. Fell. He lectured on Murderers I Have Met. And there'd just been the most awful murder in Westchester County, outside New York, some actress shot with a crossbow or whatnot, and Dr. Fell was the one who . . . Daddy, what is all this? Do you think there's going to be a murder here? Or do you just want him to explain how Commodore Maynard died on the beach a hundred years ago? Sometimes I feel it's not worth . . ."
    A kind of convulsion crossed the older man's face. "Madge, stop! For God's sake, stop!"
    The cry boomed and rang under the magnolias. Then, instantly, Henry Maynard had himself under control.
    "Who said anything about murder, my dear? The advice I need concerns you."
    "Me? How can it concern me?"
    A tortured figure looked down at her.
    "Everything I do," he s aid, "is for you and your happin ess. You may not appreciate that, you may not even understand it, but by this time you must have some cause to believe it." His voice sharpened. "Let's have no more of the other talk: do I make myself clear?"
    "Yes," Madge whispered after a pause.
    "Yancey!"
    "Sir?"
    "I had almost forgotten the weather hereabouts. Tonight has seemed too warm for the beginning of May. But a change is coming; it will be chilly before long; Madge and I had better go in. Have you any questions, my boy?"
    "Plenty of questions, sir. What follows people and crushes their skulls without any trace to show how?"
    "Good night, Yancey! We shall see you tomorrow."
    "Something funny goin' on here, I said!" muttered Yancey Beale.
    Ghost-guns rolled and tingled along the sky.
    2
    Friday, May 14th.
    At nine o'clock in the morning the Imperial convertible, open, bowled out of Pearis by way of Pinckney Road to Highway 276, which presently would become Interstate 26 past Columbia, the state capital, south-east to the coastal plain and Charleston.
    Alan Grantham who, had he known it, was spiritual kin to Yancey Beale—d rove at a steady legal 65. Moun tainously piled into the back, too large