The Crooked Hinge

by John Dickson Carr

  Yet the fact is—as you very well know—that there never was an impossible crime.

  I simply went up to the fellow; I pulled him down; I killed him by the pool with the clasp-knife you later found in the hedge; and that is all.

  Knowles, by either bad or good luck, saw the whole affair from the window of the Green Room. Even then, had I not bungled the whole affair with my one great error, the scheme would have been doubly secure. Knowles not only swore to the world that it was suicide: he went out of his way to give me a gratuitous alibi which astonished me not a little. For he, as you have observed, always disliked and distrusted the late incumbent; he never really believed the man was a Farnleigh; and he would have gone to the gallows rather than admit that the real John Farnleigh had killed the fraudulent one who had stolen his patrimony.

  I killed the fellow, of course, minus my artificial legs. That was only common sense, since I can move with rapidity and ease only on my leather pads; and in the artificial legs I could not have bent down so as not to be seen by anybody behind those waist-high hedges. The hedges afforded an admirable screen, as well as innumerable alleys of escape in case of danger. In the event that anybody should see me, I took along under my coat the sinister-looking Janus-mask from the attic.

  I came on him, actually, from the north side of the house: that is, from the direction of the new wing. I must, I think, have been a sufficiently unnerving sight. It so paralyzed our impostor that I pulled him down before he could move or speak. The strength developed in my arms and shoulders through these years, doctor, is not negligible.

  Afterwards, regarding this part of it—the attack on him—the testimony of Nathaniel Burrows gave me a few uneasy moments. Burrows was standing at the garden door some thirty-odd feet away; and, as he himself admits, his eyesight is not good in semi-darkness. He saw unusual occurrences which he could not explain even in his own mind. He could not see me, since waist-high hedges intervened; yet the victim’s behavior worried him. Read over his testimony again and you will see what I mean. He concludes: “I cannot give an exact description of the movements he made. It was as though something had got hold of his feet.”

  And something had.

  Nevertheless, this danger was negligible compared to what Welkyn almost saw from the dining-room a few seconds after the killing. Doubtless it has been apparent to you that what Welkyn saw, through one of the lower glass panels of the French window, was your obedient servant. It was foolhardy of me to let anyone get so much as a fleeting glimpse of me, but at that time (as you shall see) I was upset over the ruin of my plan; and, fortunately, I had my mask on.

  His actual glimpse of me was not so dangerous as the interpretation of a shade of words—an impression—put on this incident when it came to be discussed next day. Here my old tutor Murray, that eternal trafficker in words, was the offender. In Welkyn’s description of the incident Murray caught an echo of what Welkyn was (gropingly and uncertainly) trying to convey. And Murray said to me: “On your homecoming you are greeted by a crawling legless something in the garden______”

  That was disaster fine and full. It was the one thing which nobody must suspect, the one suggestion which must not be implanted. I felt my face contract, and I know that I lost color like a spilled jug, and I saw you looking at me. I was foolish enough to flare out at poor old Murray and call him names for a reason which must have been inexplicable to everybody but you.

  All the same, I feared that by this time I was finished in any case. I have referred to the colossal blunder I made at the outset, which ruined the case I was attempting to build up. It was this:

  I used the wrong knife.

  What I had intended to use was a common clasp-knife I had bought for the purpose. (I took this one out of my pocket and showed it to you next day, pretending it was my own knife.) I then intended to press his hand on it and leave it by the pool, completing the picture of suicide.

  What I actually found in my hand, when it was too late to draw back, was my own clasp-knife—the knife I have owned since I was a boy—the knife a thousand people have seen in my hand in America, with Madeline Dane’s name cut into the blade. You remember that your most diligent efforts could not trace that knife to the impostor. But you would have traced it to me fast enough.

  It was all the worse because, on the very night of the murder, I had gone so far as to mention this same knife to the group in the library. In telling my story of the affair aboard the Titanic, I told how I had met the real Patrick Gore, how we had fought at sight, and how I had been with difficulty prevented from going for him with my clasp-knife. A surer indication of character and weapon it would be difficult to beat. It came of trying to make too artistic a lie, and of telling all the truth except the part you mean to suppress. I warn you against the practice.

  So here was I, with the infernal thing in my gloved hand by the pool, after pressing his fingerprints on it; and people running towards me. I was compelled to make a snap-decision. I dared not leave the knife. So I wrapped it in my handkerchief and put it into my pocket.

  Welkyn saw me when I went to regain my harness at the north side of the house. I therefore thought it best to say I had been at the south side. I didn’t dare carry the knife about with me, so I had to hide it until I could find an opportunity to get it away undetected. And I maintain that, theoretically, I chose an undetectable hiding-place. Your Sergeant Burton acknowledges that except for one chance in a million he would never have found the knife in the hedge without systematically rooting up every foot of hedge in the whole garden.

  Were the Parcae, do you say, giving me some particularly nasty breaks? Oh, I don’t know. It is true that I was obliged to alter my whole plan at the outset and express a belief in murder. Yet Knowles, with noble instincts of sacrifice, straightway provided me with an alibi; he conveyed a hint before I had left the house that night; and I was ready for you next day.

  The rest of it is simply indicated. Molly insisted on trying to make our case better by stealing the Thumbograph, once I had privately made it clear that this must be murder: for, you observe, I could not be accused of stealing a Thumbograph with evidence of my own identity. We were going to return it anyway, and with double quickness when it was discovered to be a dummy.

  Molly acted well all the way through, don’t you think? That little scene in the garden just after the discovery of the body (“Damn him for being right!”) had been carefully rehearsed beforehand. Interpreted, it was meant to convey that I had been right when I said before all the company she had never been really in love with her husband (another rehearsed scene), and that she had always been in love with an image of me. We could not have the widow too inconsolable, you know. We could not have her so prostrated with grief that she might be expected to retain an enmity towards me forever. It was a far-sighted plan, directed towards bringing us together when animosities had been smoothed down in the future—and yet how we wrecked it!

  For there was that final unfortunate business next day, when Betty Harbottle caught me tinkering with the automaton in the attic. I must mutter mea culpa again. As a matter of strict fact, I had gone up to the attic to get the Thumbograph. But it suddenly occurred to me, when I saw the hag, that I could bring her to life at last. As a boy I knew her secret; but at that time I had not been small enough to get inside the box. So nothing would do but that I must tinker about with it, like a respectable husband with a respectable clock in a respectable attic.

  Molly, finding me gone an unconscionable time, came upstairs. She was just in time to find Betty Harbottle investigating the book-closet. And at this time I was actually inside the automaton.

  Molly, I honestly believe, thought that I would deal with the little girl as I had dealt with another person. Molly saw that Betty was inside and locked the door. But I had no wish to hurt her. The girl could not, of course, see me: yet I was most badly afraid she would see my harness, propped into the corner behind the machine. I think you know what happened. Fortunately it was not n
ecessary to hurt her; a few movements sufficed; though I could have sworn she saw my eyes through the peep-holes in the automaton. Afterwards Molly and I were in no vast danger. Had you pressed us too hard as to our whereabouts at the time, we should simply have provided each other with a reluctant and grudging alibi. Still, it was a mistake to forget that girl’s apron—the hag’s claws tore it off as part of the pantomime—and leave it behind when we cleared out.

  Well, I had been foolish; and there you are. I saw as soon as the day after the murder that I was, in the simple phrase, for it. You found the knife. Though I made light of it as one the impostor had taken from me years ago, and though Murray assisted me with some unconsciously helpful suggestions designed to make you suspicious of the knife as a real weapon, I was following you and I knew that you had seen through the absence of legs.

  You brought up the subject of Ahriman the Egyptian. Inspector Elliot followed with his questioning of Welkyn about the hopping thing in the garden. You returned with some pressing questions on the subject of witchcraft, and neatly brought Molly into it. I questioned in reply; and you conveyed some suggestive hints. Next you stressed the connection between all these points, beginning with Victoria Daly, passing to the late Patrick Gore’s behavior on the night of his murder, and going on to trace Betty Harbottle to the book-closet in the attic.

  Your remarks when you saw the automaton were the penultimate give-away. You intimated that the murderer had been doing something here with the automaton which would betray him; and yet at the same time Betty Harbottle had not seen him at all—in the sense that it was not necessary for the murderer to silence her. I then challenged you to show how the automaton worked. You paid little attention, merely remarking that you supposed the original exhibitor wore the traditional magician’s costume. And you concluded with a few words designed to show Molly’s private witch-cult was about to be discovered. That was when I pushed the automaton downstairs. Believe me, my friend, I had no thought of damage to your person. But I did definitely want to damage the automaton beyond repair, so that one guess as to how it worked would be as good as another.

  The inquest showed two more points next day. Knowles was obviously lying, and you knew it. Madeline Dane knew much more about Molly’s doings than we could afford.

  I am afraid Molly does not like Madeline. Her scheme was to ensure silence on the latter’s part by terrorization, followed by real trouble if it became necessary. Hence Molly’s not altogether inspired device of a faked telephone-call purporting to come from Madeline, and asking for the automaton at Monplaisir: she knew Madeline’s rooted horror of the machine, and made me promise to bring it to life again for Madeline’s edification. I did not do that; I had better fish to fry.

  Fortunately for Molly and myself, I was in the garden at Monplaisir when you and the inspector had dinner there with Madeline and Page. I overheard your conversation; and I knew that it was all over as regards your knowing everything—the question was what you could prove. When you and the inspector left the house, I thought it much more profitable to follow you through the wood and listen.

  After contenting myself merely with pushing out the harmless old hag by the windows, I went after you. Your conversation, properly interpreted, showed me that what I had feared about your manner of proceeding was correct. I now know fully what you did, though I had more than a glimmer then. I knew your objective: Knowles. I knew my weak link: Knowles. I knew where there was a witness who could hang me: Knowles. I knew that he would be tortured rather than admit under mere ordinary pressure who had committed the crime. But there was one person he could not see touched or even breathed upon: Molly. There was only one way to make him speak. That was to make a garrotte for her neck and tighten the screw by degrees until he could not stand the sight of it any longer. That was what you were going to do; I was intelligent enough to read evidence as well as you; and it occurred to me with some realism that we were done for.

  Only one thing was left to us, which was to get away. Had I been the bowelless and altogether unbelievable person you will probably hear described, I should without doubt have decided to kill Knowles as casually as paring an onion. But who could kill Knowles? Who could kill Madeline Dane? Who could kill Betty Harbottle? These are real persons I have known, not dummies to pad out a chapter; and they are not to be treated like stuffed cats at a fair. I was tired and a little ill, to tell you the truth, as though I had got into a maze and could not get out again.

  Following you and the inspector, I came to the Close and saw Molly. I told her our only course was to get away. Remember, we believed we had ample time; you and the inspector had intended to go to London that night, and we did not fear disclosure for some hours. Molly agreed it was the only thing to do—I am given to understand that you saw her leaving the Close, with a suitcase in her hand, when you looked down from the windows of the Green Room. I think it was unwise, though, deliberately to let us get away so that we should damn ourselves by quick flight. Such a course is wise, doctor, only if you are certain of nailing the quarry when you want him.

  In one respect, to conclude this account, I had difficulty with Molly. She did not find it easy to go without a final word to Madeline. When we were driving away in the car she was filled with fantastic notions (I can say this because the lady knows I love her) for getting back at the “cat” at Monplaisir.

  I could not prevent her. We arrived there within a very few minutes, leaving the car in the back lane by Colonel Mardale’s old house. We arrived, in short—and stopped to listen. For we were being treated to a very lucid account, heard through the half-open window of the dining-room, of the death of Victoria Daly and the probable character of the witch-mistress responsible for it: it was being delivered by Mr. Page. The automaton was still there; and I pushed it back into the coal-house only because Molly wanted to smash it through the windows at Madeline. Such behavior is childish, no doubt; yet my lady’s quarrel with Madeline is of a personal nature—as mine was with the late Patrick Gore; and I tell you that nothing which had occurred so far in the case infuriated her as much as that talk in the dining-room.

  I did not know, at the time, that she had brought a pistol with her from Farnleigh Close. I realized this only when she took it out of her handbag and rapped it against the window. Whereupon I realized, doctor, that immediate action was necessary for two reasons: first, that we wanted no women’s flaming row at this moment; and, second, that a car (Burrows’s) had just stopped at the front of the house. I put Molly under one of my arms and I urged her away with some haste. Fortunately a wireless was going inside and we escaped detection. It was, I am convinced, only a subsequent love-scene of outstanding incoherence—a scene taking place in the window—which caused her to escape my vigilance and fire into the dining-room as we were about to leave. My lady is a good shot and she had no intention whatever of hitting anyone; she wishes me to say that she meant it merely as a comment on poor Madeline’s morals, and that she would jolly well do it again.

  I stress these unimportant and even ludicrous goings-on, in conclusion, for one very good reason: the reason with which I began. I do not want you to think that we went away in an atmosphere of high tragedy under the dark mutterings of the gods. I do not want you to think that nature held its breath at the evil of our passing. For I think, doctor—I rather think—that in order to make Knowles confess you must have deliberately painted Molly’s character as much more stiff with wicked impulse than it really is.

  She is not crafty; she is the reverse of crafty. Her private witch-cult was not the coldly intellectual effort of a woman interested in watching minds writhe; she is the reverse of coldly intellectual, and well you know it. She did what she did because she liked it. She will, I trust, continue to like it. To speak of her as though she killed Victoria Daly is nonsense; and anything concerning the woman near Tunbridge Wells is so cloudy as to be beyond proof or even accusation. That she has much of the Lower Plane in her nature I concede, as I have in mine; but what else?
Our departure from Kent and from England was not, as I have tried to indicate, a curtain to a Morality Play. It was very much like the jumbled rush of the ordinary family to the seaside, where father cannot remember what he did with the tickets and mother is certain she left the light burning in the bathroom. A similar haste and overset, I suspect, attended the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Adam from a more spacious garden; and this, the king may say without denial from Alice, is the oldest rule in the book.

  Yours Sincerely,

  John Farnleigh (whilom Patrick Gore).

  * Mr. Gore is telling the truth. I first came across this explanation in an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition, published in 1883). The writer, J. A. Clarke, says: “The first player was a Polish patriot, Worousky, who had lost both legs in a campaign; as he was furnished with artificial limbs when in public, his appearance, together with the fact that no dwarf or child travelled in Kempelen’s company, dispelled the suspicion that any person could be employed inside the machine. This automaton, which made more than one tour to the capitals and courts of Europe, was owned for a short time by Napoleon I, was exhibited by Maelzel after the death of Kempelen in 1819, and ultimately perished in a fire at Philadelphia in 1854.”—Vol. XV, p. 210.

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