Free Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 by John Dickson Carr Page A

spread ou t below us, dark gray from rain . On that stretch of beach, only two years after the time about which you have been so glib, an ancestor of yours was brutally done to death in unmarked sand. But you won't discuss this; you won't touch it, you won't go near it!"
    "Did I say I would not discuss it?" Henry Maynard drew himself up. "I said only, if memory serves, that the subject need not detain us. We lack full evidence for a solution. Lacking such evidence, which has been distorted or suppressed, we can do little more than travel in a circle. However! If you insist on rattling those dead bones for our present pleasure, I shall be happy to supply you with what few details I have beyond the sketch in the newspaper account. Is there anything else?"
    "Is there anything else?" thundered Dr. Fell. "Archons of Athens, is there anything else? Well, yes. There is the situation in this house.
    "Last Friday night a scarecrow was stolen from the garden. Call that ludicrous, if you like. Miss Bruce saw, or claims to have seen, some prowler entering or leaving a downstairs room. Call that ludicrous too; say she was drugged or dreaming. Today you yourself are thrown almost into a fit by the report of someone 'skulking' in your study.
    "These ludicrous instances are piling up. Do you ask me to whom you owe a duty? To your daughter! To your guests! Even to yourself! Your daughter is reported as jumpy; Camilla Bruce is jumpy; Mrs. Huret is distinctly jumpy; you, sir, are as jumpy as any of them. Surely there is something here worth investigating? And yet all you can do is tell me to forget it entirely!"
    "Now, there," retorted Henry Maynard, touching the careful knot of his tie, "there again I must correct you. I said to forget the phone call; I said no more than that. I distinctly recall observing, just before we came upstairs, that we had at least one matter to discuss. And so we have: the source of all my worry to begin with. Back to the study, please."
    Taking the field-glasses from Dr. Fell, he replaced them in their case and returned the case to the trunk. With some dignity he led the way through lumber-room and billiard-room, carefully closing each door when Dr. Fell had maneuvered through sideways. In the study, after switching off the floor-lamp by the chess-table, he went to the antique desk below the colored photograph of Commodore Maynard, and ran his fingertips over its sloping lid.
    "In here," he went on, "I have an old exercise-book containing a diary for the year 1867 kept by Miss India Keate of Charleston, then eighteen years old.
    "Luke Maynard was not ray great-grandfather, as some suppose. He was my great-grandfather's younger brother, and a bachelor. In '67 the head of the family, my great - grandfather Henry, seems to have been a character even more stern than Luke. But he was hospitable, as stern characters of the day so often could be.
    "India Keate, a close friend of great-grandfather Henry's youngest daughter, spent part of the month of April in this house. Her diary contains the only supplementary details we have about Commodore Maynard's death. 1 will give you the diary, Dr. Fell, for your consideration at leisure."
    Then his voice sharpened.
    "But that must wait! My own constant worry, which goes on and on interminably, may be expressed in one word. Madge."
    "And my question," returned Dr. Fell, "may also be expressed in one word. Why?"
    "It's not easy to explain."
    "Will you try to explain?"
    Henry Maynard turned from the desk and faced them, his eyes growing unsteady.
    "Madge is so innocent!" he said. "Or, if not altogether innocent in thought, let's agree she is warm-hearted, well-meaning, and rather naive.
    "She was born in Paris in 1938, registered at the American consulate, and baptized at the American church in the Avenue George V. Her mother, whose portrait hangs above the mantelpiece in the library downstairs, died about a year later. Early in 1940 I brought the child to America in charge of an