The Burning Court

by John Dickson Carr

  Abruptly he had strode off down the avenue.

  That was a week ago; and Stevens, thinking over the interview in the train that was carrying him to Crispen now, touched the puzzle-bits without much attention. He was considering merely isolated instances—the talk with Morley at the office, the talk with Mark Despard in the road—and wondering not how they could be explained, but how they could be fitted together in the form of a story. Granted that they bore no relation to each other, any more than separate newspaper items. But here they were: a recluse of an author, Gaudan Cross, who had a passion for seeing his own photograph, not from motives of vanity; a recluse of a millionaire, Miles Despard, dying of stomach inflammation, and under his pillow a piece of string tied into nine knots; finally, a woman in old-fashioned clothes (date not specified) who was alleged to have walked out of a room through a door that had been bricked up for two hundred years. Now, how would a skilled story-teller tie together those unrelated facts or fancies into one pattern?

  Stevens gave it up. But, still curious about Cross, he opened the briefcase and drew out the manuscript in its container. It was fairly bulky; it would run, he estimated, about a hundred thousand words; and, like all Cross’s manuscripts, it was neat with an almost finicky preciseness. The chapters were punched together with brass fasteners; the prints, photographs, and drawings affixed with paper-clips. After running his eye down the table of contents, he glanced at the heading of the first chapter—but that was not what made his grip on the manuscript loosen, so that it almost slid off his knee.

  Fastened to the page was an old but still very clear photograph of a woman. Under it in small neat letters had been printed:

  Marie D’Aubray: Guillotined for Murder, 1861.

  He was looking at a photograph of his own wife.

  II

  For a time he sat quiet, insistently examining the name, insistently examining the features. All the while that he went over and over them, he was hazily conscious that he still sat in the smoking-car of the 7:35 train for Crispen. But he still seemed to be in a great void.

  Presently he looked up, settled the manuscript more firmly in his lap, and looked out of the window. His feeling (it was a commonplace one) was something like that of sitting up in a dentist’s chair after an extraction: a little light-headed, conscious of a little quicker heartbeat; nothing more. He was not even conscious of being startled now. He saw that they were flashing through Overbrook, with a clackety-roar of rails, and a few street lamps shining on asphalt below.

  There was no possibility of coincidence or mistake. The name was hers: Marie D’Aubray. The features were hers, even to an expression he knew. The woman in the picture, the woman who had gone to the guillotine seventy years ago, had been a relation of his wife’s—say her great-grandmother, which would make the dates about right. But the throwback to her features was uncanny, when the great-grand-daughter even caught a shade of expression.

  It did not matter a tinker’s damn, of course. It would not have mattered if her fathers or mothers or uncles had themselves been tipped under that evil plank. And in this age seventy-year-old devilry has already a flavor of the historic: we are apt to take it with a sort of casual and indulgent approval, as unrelated to the business of ordinary life as a papier-mâché skull on a desk. Nevertheless, it was startling; because in the picture there was even indicated the very tiny mole just below the angle of the jaw, and the antique bracelet he had seen Marie wear a hundred times. Furthermore, it was not going to be very funny if his own publishing firm issued a book with his wife’s photograph plastered opposite the title-page in a gallery of poisoners. Was that what Morley had meant, “You might come in and see me first thing Monday morning?”

  No, it was of no consequence. All the same——

  Turning back to study the picture again, he detached it from the page to get a better look. Now, why should he have a queer feeling when he touched it? Actually, though he could not have analyzed it, the realization that came over him in such a rush was the realization of how thoroughly and violently he remained in love with her. The photograph was of very thick cardboard, its grey stiplings touched in places with brown. On the back, with letters indented in the cardboard, was the photographer’s name, “Perrichet et Fils, 12 rue Jean Goujean, Paris vii.” Sprawled across this in curly handwriting, the ink now faded to brown, someone had written, “Ma très, très chère Marie; Louis Dinard, le 6ième Janvier, 1858.” Lover? Husband?

  But what really came up as though in a wave from this picture, what grotesquely mingled the old-fashioned and the modern, was the woman’s expression. It survived even the stilted photography. The picture was a large half-length, having for its background a landscape with trees—and doves. The woman stood unnaturally, as though she were about to wobble over to one side, and her left hand rested on the top of a little round table which was chastely draped with an antimacassar. Her high-necked dress was of some darkish taffeta material, which gleamed in bunches. And from this high collar the head was carried a little back.

  Even though the dark-golden hair seemed somewhat differently arranged (there were a couple of curls which gave it a stiff archaic look), still it was Marie’s. She faced the camera, but looked slightly past it. Her grey eyes, with the somewhat heavy lids, large pupils, and dead-black irises, wore what he had often called her “spiritual” expression. The lips were open and faintly smiling. The eyes fixed on you before you noticed it, like a painter’s trick. Framed in these surroundings of doves and trees and antimacassars, it had an almost unpleasantly sugary appearance. Yet to the senses it conveyed something altogether different. The thing was alive. It had become a sort of Monkey’s Paw in Stevens’s hand, and he found his wrist joggling.

  His eyes went back to the words, “guillotined for murder.” Women were very rarely guillotined for murder. If they were, it was because what they had done was such that no other course could be taken.

  Stevens said to himself: This whole business is a joke or a hoax of some kind. Damn it, this is Marie. Somebody is putting something over on me.

  He said this to himself, although he knew quite well it was not true. After all, these startling resemblances of descendants to their forebears did crop up sometimes; there was nothing strange in that; it was a fact. Her great-grandmother had been executed, but what of it?

  After all, he knew very little about her, although they had been married for three years. He had not been particularly curious. He knew that she came from Canada, out of a moldering house rather like Despard Park. They had met in Paris and had been married in a fortnight. They had met (with a sort of accidental romance) in the courtyard of an old empty hôtel near the cabbage-stalls of the rue St. Antoine. What he could not remember was the name of the street, or why be had strayed there during some explorations through Old Paris. It was the rue… the rue… Hold on! He associated it somehow with a suggestion made by his friend Welden, who held a chair in English at the College, and was also a murder-trial-fancier. Over three years ago Welden had said:

  “You’ll be in Paris this summer? Then, if you’re interested in scenes of violence, look up number blank in the rue Blank.”

  “What’s there?”

  “See,” said Welden, “if anyone in the neighborhood can tell you. Or there’s a puzzle; work it out.”

  He had never found out, and he had forgotten to ask Welden since; but he had met Marie there, apparently roving like himself. She said that she did not know what the place was. She said that she had seen doors half open into a curious Old World court, and she had gone in. When he first saw her, she was sitting on the rim of a dead fountain in the centre of the court, where rank grass grew. Round her on three sides were the railings of the galleries, and the chipped stone faces carved on the walls. Though she did not look French, still he was surprised to hear her address him in vigorous and ordinary English, and to see how her rather “spiritual” good looks were made suddenly vigorous by her own smile. It was, in a way, an allure of sheer health.<
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  But why hadn’t she ever told him? Why the unnecessary secrecy? That house, probably, was where the Marie D’Aubray of 1858 had lived. Afterwards the family must have gone out to Canada; and now Marie, a descendant, was revisiting evil scenes with a natural curiosity about the elder Marie. Her life had been humdrum enough, to judge by the occasional letter she received from Cousin This or Aunt That. She sometimes supplied an anecdote of her family; but, to tell the truth, he had never very much thought about it. There were odd corners and unexpected ideas in her nature: why, for instance, could she never bear the sight of a funnel, an ordinary kitchen funnel? Then again——

  This would not do. All the while he had been aware that the picture of Marie D’Aubray the First was looking up at him, with something like a jeer behind its ethereal smile. Why didn’t he get down and read what this first Marie D’Aubray had done, and not be half afraid of an Easter-card angel whose head had dropped into the guillotine basket? Why put it off? He picked up the manuscript again, thrusting the photograph behind the first chapter. Cross’s genius, he reflected, was assuredly not for titles. After giving the whole book some ponderous title, this writer had attempted to freshen it up with more sensational story-heads. Each was called “The Affair of the—Something”; and in this instance he had called it, “The Affair of the Non-dead Mistress,” which gave a nasty jar.

  It began abruptly, with one of Cross’s hand-grenades flung into the camp of fiction:

  “Arsenic has been called the fool’s poison; never was anything less aptly named.”

  This is the pronouncement of Mr. Henry T. F. Rhodes, editor of The Chemical Practitioner, and Dr. Edmond Locard, director of the Police Laboratory at Lyons, agrees with him. Mr. Rhodes goes on:

  “Arsenic is not the fool’s poison, nor is it true that its popularity is due to the unimaginativeness of the criminal. The poisoner is seldom stupid or unimaginative. On the contrary, the evidence is all the other way. As a poison, arsenic is still used for the reason that it is still the safest poison to use.

  “In the first place, a physician has the greatest difficulty in diagnosing arsenical poisoning unless he has some reason to suspect it. If carefully graduated doses are administered, the symptoms almost exactly resemble those of gastro-enteritis. …”

  Stevens’s eyes stopped there. The type grew to a meaningless blur, because his brain was suddenly full of other things. You couldn’t help the thoughts that came into your mind. You might sneer at yourself; call yourself insane or plain disloyal; but who can keep out a random thought? Gastro-enteritis, of which Miles Despard had died two weeks ago. What he was thinking was a joke, a not-very-funny joke. …

  “Evening, Stevens,” said a voice just behind his shoulder, and he became aware that he had jumped a little.

  He looked round. The train was slowing down for its first express stop at Ardmore. Dr. Welden of the College was standing in the aisle, his hand on the back of the seat, and looking down with an expression as near curiosity as his solid well-trained face would permit. The lean face had a high framework of bones, like an ascetic’s; the jaws were sharp-angled; he wore a clipped moustache and a rimless pince-nez; he remained expressionless except for an occasional chuckle or roar when he told a story. At such times he would open his eyes wide, and point with the cigar he was usually smoking. Welden was a New Englander, a brilliant man at his job, and friendly behind his reserve. He was always soberly well dressed, and carried, like Stevens, a briefcase.

  “I didn’t know you were in the train,” he observed. “Everyone keeping well? Mrs. Stevens?”

  “Sit down,” said the other, glad that he had pushed the photograph out of sight. Welden was getting out at the next stop, but he compromised by sitting down gingerly on the arm of the seat. “Oh — fine, thanks,” added Stevens, somewhat vaguely. “And your family?”

  “Pretty well. The girl’s had a touch of flu; but we’ve all had it, in this weather,” replied Welden, complacently. During this exchange of the usual Stevens was concentrated on wondering what Welden would have said if he had opened this manuscript and found a picture of his own wife.

  “By the way,” Stevens said, with some abruptness, “about your hobby of noted murders: did you ever hear of a poisoner named Marie D’Aubray?”

  Welden took the cigar out of his mouth. “Marie D’Aubray? Marie D’Aubray? Ah! I see. That was her maiden name, of course.” He turned round and began to grin, throwing into higher relief the bony framework of his face. “Now you mention it, I’ve always forgotten to ask you——”

  “She was guillotined in 1861.”

  Welden stopped. “Then we can’t be thinking of the same person.” He seemed a little ruffled that the conversation had gone so suddenly from influenza to murder. “In 1861? Are you sure of that?”

  “Well, it’s in here. I only wondered, that’s all. This is Gaudan Cross’s new book. You remember there was a rumpus a couple of years ago, about whether or not he was inventing his facts. Just out of curiosity––—”

  “If Cross says it’s so,” declared Welden, looking out of the window as the train gathered speed again, “I should take his word for it; but it’s a new one on me. The only ‘Marie D’Aubray’ I’ve ever heard of is much better known under her married name. In fact, she’s a classic. You must have read the case somewhere. Don’t you remember, I sent you to see her house in Paris?”

  “Never mind. Go on.”

  Though he did not ask a question, Welden was puzzled. “She was the celebrated Marquise de Brinvilliers, a fleshly charmer who will probably remain the outstanding example of fascination allied to gentle murder. Read the report of her trial; it’s sensational enough. In her age, the word ‘Frenchman’ was almost synonymous with the word ‘poisoner’; there came to be so much of it that a special court had to be—” He stopped. “Look it up, and read about the teakwood box and the glass mask and the rest of it. Anyhow, she disposed of a pretty large number of people, including her own family, and used to get her hand in by practising on the patients in the hospital at the Hôtel Dieu. Arsenic, I believe it was. Her confession, read at the trial, would be a curious piece of hysteria for psychologists to study nowadays: it contains, among other things, some remarkable sexual statements. So you are warned.”

  “Yes,” said Stevens; “yes, I remember something about it. What were her dates?”

  “She was beheaded and burnt in 1676.” Welden got up, brushing ash off his coat, as the train slowed down again. “Here’s my station. If you’ve got nothing better to do over the week-end, you might ring us up. My wife instructs me to tell you that she’s got hold of that cake recipe Mrs. Stevens wanted. Good night.”

  His own station was only two minutes farther on. Automatically Stevens put the manuscript into its container, and then into the briefcase. This was all wrong, and nonsensical. This unnecessary confusion with the Marquise de Brinvilliers, he thought, only threw him off and had nothing to do with the case. He kept thinking of only one sentence: “If carefully graduated doses are administered, the symptoms almost exactly resemble those of gastro-enteritis.”

  A spectral voice bawled, “Cris-pen!” somewhere at the head of the train, and they pulled to a stop with a clanking sigh. When he got out on the platform he found that this nonsense was blown away by the high, cool night. He went down a flight of concrete steps, and out into the little street. It was rather dim there, for the druggist’s was some way down; but he saw the lights of the familiar Chrysler roadster waiting by the curb.

  Marie was inside, holding the door open for him. The moment he saw her, values shrank and altered; there had been some sort of infernal spell about that photograph, which distorted even ordinary flesh. And it was gone now; so much so that he merely put one foot on the running-board, looked at her, and was amused. She was wearing a brown skirt and a sweater, with a light coat thrown over her shoulders like a cloak. Through a shop window near by, a very faint glow fell on her dark-gold hair. She stared back at him, puzzled. Her voic
e, a contralto despite her apparent slenderness, made the world practical again.

  “What on earth,” she said, with a sort of annoyed amusement, “are you standing there grinning for? Stop it! Have you been having some dri—” She struggled, and then joined in the inane mirth. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here you are disgustingly drunk, and I’ve been dying for a cocktail, but I wouldn’t have one until you got here, so that we could get disgustingly drunk together——”

  “I am not drunk,” he said, with dignity, “disgustingly or otherwise. It was only something I was thinking. You—here!”

  He glanced past her shoulder to see the origin of the very faint glow which was touching her hair and which stood out with such pallor in the dark street. Then he stopped. It came from a shop window. He could see a few small and rather shapeless marble blocks, and black shapeless curtains hung waist-high on brass rings from an iron rail. The pallor appeared to issue from beyond these curtains; it emphasized the iron rather than the brass. Just beyond the curtains, in silhouette, a man was standing motionless. He appeared to be looking out into the street.

  “Good Lord!” Stevens said. “It’s J. Atkinson at last.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re really drunk,” she observed, “but you seem to have got light-headed. Jump in! Ellen has got something special in the way of dinners.” She glanced over her shoulder at the motionless figure in the window. “Atkinson? What about him?”

  “Nothing at all. It’s only that this is the first time I’ve ever seen hide or hair of anyone inside that place. I suppose,” Stevens added, “he’s waiting for somebody.”