Free Death-Watch by John Dickson Carr

lot more crooked. But it’s fairly clear now why you thought there was a man on that roof, and that the blonde was going up to meet him …”
    Dr. Fell scowled. “The first part of it,” he admitted, “is easy. She said her bedroom door was slamming in a draught; that she thought the front door might be slamming, and got out of bed to see about it. But—to do this—she had carefully decked out her face in fresh cosmetics. That seemed unusual, as though a man were to rise from his bed and array himself in evening-clothes to throw a boot at a yowling cat. She didn’t turn on any lights whatever, although this would be the natural thing to do; and she hastily rubbed out the make-up when somebody suggested waking up the others in the house. It naturally suggested a clandestine appointment … where? “Now,” said Dr. Fell, vigorously, “comes the interesting part. She crept up those stairs, hearing Boscombe say, ‘My God, he’s dead’; she, saw a body lying on the floor and immediately became so hysterical that she kept on wildly accusing Boscombe of murder long after she saw he wasn’t guilty. Ça s’explique, Hadley. It wasn’t just the shock of seeing a dead burglar.” The chief inspector nodded.
    “Yes, that’s evident. She expected to find it was somebody else. H’m. But, with that light shining on his face, she would have seen Ames wasn’t the man she thought had been hurt or killed—unless one of the doors had been so half-closed that the shadow hid his face. Hence the shock and terror. So you made her reconstruct the scene … Not bad, confound you!” said Hadley, grudgingly, and beat his fist into his palm. “Not at all bad, for a quick guess.”
    “Guess?” roared Dr. Fell, removing his cigar. “Who said anything about a guess? I applied principles of the soundest lo—”
    “All right, all right. Carry on.”
    “H’mf! Ha! Burr! Very well. Which brings us to the whole crux of the matter. Although she was rather startled to find this man (presumably the one with whom she had the appointment) in the house at all, nevertheless she wasn’t surprised to find him upstairs. She was going upstairs, to begin with, and the very fact that she did mistake him for the dead man proves it. When I see, not six feet from the dead man, a door leading straight to the roof, and when this girl makes determined efforts to steer me away from it at my first sign of curiosity, then I begin to have a strong suspicion. When I reflect that the girl, although alluringly got up with regard to cosmetics and pyjamas, nevertheless wears a dusty, shabby leather coat with a warm fleece lining …”
    “I see all that,” returned Hadley, with some dignity. “Except that the whole thing’s still far from sensible, and only a lunatic would—”
    Dr. Fell shook his head benevolently.
    “Heh,” he said. “Heh-heh-heh. It’s our old difficulty again. You don’t mean that only a lunatic would spend hours of rapture on a breezy roof. You only mean that you wouldn’t. I am willing to venture a small wager that, even in your courting days, the present Mrs. Hadley would have been a trifle astonished to see you swinging up to her balcony through the branches of a maple tree …”
    “She’d have thought I was balmy,” said Hadley.
    “Well, so should I, for that matter. Which is the point I am patiently trying to make. But there are young men, aged twenty and twenty-one—I shrewdly suspect Eleanor of being older and wiser, but what of it?—who would. And try to drive it through your head that this crazy comedy is the most desperately serious thing in their lives. Why, man,” boomed Dr. Fell, his face fiery with controversy, “the young fellow isn’t worth his salt who doesn’t want to show off his muscles climbing trees in romantic situations, and half hoping he’ll break his damnfool neck, but very much surprised if he does. You’ve been reading too many modern novels, Hadley … The ironical part is that in the