The Burning Court

by John Dickson Carr

  “The dance wasn’t a great success. For a masquerade, it was a tame and much-too-sober affair. I was frankly bored stiff, and spent most of the time sitting round, while Lucy did the dancing. We left at a little past two o’clock. It was a fine night, with a moon, and I felt cool and comfortable for the first time in hours. Edith had torn her lace trousers, or whatever they call those things under the hoopskirts, and she was inclined to be pettish; but Lucy sang all the way home. The house seemed to be all dark. When I ran the car in the garage, the Ford was there, but Ogden’s Buick hadn’t come in yet. I gave the key of the front door to Lucy, and she ran on ahead to open it, with Edith. I stood out in the drive and just breathed. That’s my domain, and I like it.

  “Then Edith called out from the porch. I went round, up the steps and into the hall. Lucy was standing with one hand on the light switch, half looking up at the ceiling, and she was frightened.

  “She said to me: ‘There was some sort of horrible noise. There was! I heard it just a second ago.’

  “That hall is very old, and sometimes it gives you notions at night; but this was nothing of the sort. I went upstairs in a hurry; I wasn’t encumbered with a sword then. The upstairs hall was dark, and there was something wrong in it. I don’t mean with it or about it, but in it. Did you ever have the feeling—something has passed this way, trailing, and the something is bad? I don’t suppose you have. …

  “I was just going towards the light-switch when there was a bumping sort of noise, a sound like that of a key turned in a lock, and the door of Uncle Miles’s room bumped open about half-way. There was a dim light burning inside, and it half illuminated Miles and half silhouetted him. He was still on his feet, but he was bent far over forwards, with one hand pressed across his stomach, and the other hand holding to the door-post. I saw the big veins. He hung there wobbling, very nearly doubled, and then he managed to look up. His skin was like oiled paper across the bridge of the nose, his eyes seemed about twice as big as normal, and his forehead was wet. Every breath he drew seemed to shake clear down inside him: you could hear it. Then he looked up in a glazy sort of way. I suppose he saw me, but, when he spoke it didn’t seem to be to anyone in particular.

  “He was muttering: ‘I can’t stand it any longer, I can’t stand the pain any longer. I tell you I can’t stand it any longer.’

  “And he was mumbling this in French.

  “I ran over and caught him before he tumbled. I picked him up—for some reason he flapped and fought as much as he could with the cramp—and I carried him to the bed in his room. He seemed to be trying to look at me, and haul back to look, and… what’s the word I want?… disentangle me in his mind, to straighten me out of the mist. First he said, like a very scared child, ‘Not you too?’ I tell you very simply it went through me hard. But evidently he came to himself, for his eyes cleared up a good deal, and he seemed to see my face in the dim reading-lamp over the bed; he stopped shrinking away like a child. It was a complete transformation I can’t describe; but he spoke dazedly, in English. He said something about ‘those tablets in the bathroom that would take the pain away,’ and cried out to me to get them. He said he hadn’t strength to get to the bathroom.

  “They were the veronal tablets we had used when he had a bad attack before. Lucy and Edith were standing in the door, dead white. Lucy had heard what he said, and she ran off down the hall to get them. We all knew he was dying. Mind, there was no idea of poisoning then. It seemed like the old trouble; and when a man gets as far gone as that, you can’t do anything; you can only give him his medicine and grit your teeth. I told Edith quietly to phone for Doctor Baker in a hurry and she was quiet and efficient. All I wondered was about that expression on his face—what he had seen, or thought he had seen, that was so horrible. Why the expression of a scared child jumping away from you?

  “I said, maybe with some idea of distracting his mind (from that pain), ‘How long have you been like this?’

  “ ‘Three hours,’ he answered, and did not open his eyes. He lay on his side, pulled up together. I could hardly hear him for the pillow.

  “ ‘But why didn’t you call out, or go to the door…?’

  “ ‘I didn’t try,’ he said to the pillow. ‘I knew it had to be sooner or later; I thought it was better now than waiting for it; but I found I couldn’t stand it.’ Then he seemed to pull himself together. He looked up at me, as though he were looking up out of a hole. He was still a little scared, and his breathing was still shakily noisy. And he said, ‘Look here, Mark, I’m dying.’ He wouldn’t listen to my platitudes. ‘Don’t talk; listen. Mark, I’m to be buried in a wooden coffin. Do you understand: a wooden coffin. I want you to swear you’ll see to that.’

  “He was too insistent; he wouldn’t look anywhere except straight at me, even when Lucy brought in the tablet and a glass of water. He hung to my cloak, talking of a wooden coffin, over and over. He had a difficult time swallowing the pill, for he’d been vomiting a good deal; but I got it down him at last. Then he muttered something about being cold, and wanting a quilt, and closed his eyes. There was a folded quilt at the foot of the bed. Lucy, without saying anything, picked it up and tucked it around him.

  “I got up and looked for something else to put over him. There’s a big cupboard in the room, where he kept most of his fancy wardrobe, so I thought there might be a blanket on the top shelf. The door of the cupboard was a little ajar. There was no blanket, but there was something else.

  “On the floor of the cupboard, just before a line of shoes neatly arranged in their trees, was the tray that had been brought up earlier that night. So was the glass, empty but for a blur of milk. So was a thing that had not been brought up: a fat silver cup, about four inches in diameter—curious embossed thing, of no special value so far as I know. It’s been downstairs on the sideboard for as long as I can remember. I don’t know whether either of you has ever noticed it? Well, in the cup were the dregs of some sticky-looking substance. And stretched out beside it was the body of Joachim, Edith’s cat. I touched the cat, and found that it was dead.

  “Then was when I knew.”

  V

  For a minute or two Mark Despard remained quiet, regarding his clasped hands.

  “I suppose,” he reflected, “it’s possible for suspicions to accumulate at the back of a man’s mind, and pile up and up intangibly, without his ever being aware that they’re there; then something crystallizes, or a door opens all of a sudden——

  “Yes, I knew. I turned round to see whether Lucy had seen what I had seen. Evidently she hadn’t. She was standing with her back nearly turned towards me, at the foot of the bed, her hand on the bed-rail; and I thought she looked pretty helpless in contrast to her usual briskness. There was only one light in the room, the dim one at the head of the bed, but it brought out her costume—a reddish-colored silk thing with blue and diamonds in it, and a wide skirt.

  “While I was standing there everything came back to my mind in Uncle Miles’s past symptoms. His trouble in eating; his catarrh of the nose and eyes—the reddish puffed way he looked at you—the husky voice; the rashes and thickening of the skin; even the way he walked, so that his legs seemed too rickety to support his body. Arsenic poisoning. You could hear Miles breathing heavily under the covers, and from out in the hall you could even hear Edith’s low, savage voice sizzling at the telephone operator.

  “I didn’t say anything. But I closed the door of the cupboard; there was a key in the lock, so I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. Then I went out in the hall and down to the landing where Edith was telephoning. We’d got to get a doctor, that was all. The nurse wouldn’t come back until next morning. I tried to think what in God’s name you did in cases of arsenic poisoning, but I couldn’t remember. Edith had just put down the phone; still calm, though her hands looked shaky; she couldn’t get Doctor Baker at his house, and we knew nobody else within striking distance. But I knew there was a doctor at the residential hotel about a mile down the
road, though I couldn’t remember his name. I started to ring up the hotel, while Edith hurried up to Miles’s room—she always has an idea she can do something in sickness, although she isn’t sure what it is—but Lucy came out into the hall before I’d got the number.

  “ ‘You’d better come up here,’ she said. ‘I think he’s gone.’

  “He had. No convulsions; his heart simply stopped, and he wasn’t hurt any longer. While I was turning him over to make sure, my hand went under the pillow and I found the piece of string you’ve probably heard about. It was an ordinary piece of wrapping-string, about a foot long, and tied at equal intervals into nine knots. I didn’t know what it means; I still don’t.”

  “Go on!” Partington prompted, sharply, as he stopped. “What then?”

  “Then? Nothing. We didn’t rouse the rest of the house. It wasn’t necessary: there were only a few more hours until morning. Lucy and Edith tried to go to bed, though they didn’t sleep. I said I would stay up: a gesture of respect or something. That was how I put it, though actually I wanted a chance to get that cup out of the room. Also, Ogden wasn’t in yet. I said I had better stay up on guard, in case he came home with a few under his belt at the wrong time… you know.

  “Lucy locked herself in our room. Edith cried a little. What we were all doing, in a stupefied sort of way, was blaming ourselves for negligence, but I knew it wasn’t that. After they had gone I went back into Miles’s room and put a sheet over his face. I took the silver cup and the glass out of the cupboard, and wrapped them both up in a handkerchief. Don’t ask me about fingerprints! My only instinct… I suppose it’s always like that with me… was to hide the evidence until I could decide what to do.”

  “Didn’t you have any idea of revealing it?” asked Partington.

  “If we could have reached a doctor in time to help Miles—yes, naturally. I’d have said, ‘Never mind this gastritis business; he’s been poisoned.’ But we couldn’t. And so—no.” Mark seemed almost fanatical, and Stevens studied him as he held tight, stiffly, to the arms of the chair. “You ought to understand that, Part. You remember how I almost——”

  “Steady,” said Partington, and cut him off sharply. “Go on with the story.”

  “I took the cup and the glass downstairs, and locked them up in a drawer of my desk in the library. You understand, so far there wasn’t an ounce of proof. And I had to dispose of the cat somehow, so I wrapped it up in my cavalier cloak and took it outside, by the side door, so as not to wake up the Hendersons at the back. There were some newly turned flower beds on the other side of the lawn, across the drive; and I knew that Henderson often kept a spade in the little closet as you go out the side door. I got the cat and buried it very far down. Edith doesn’t know what happened to it yet; they all suppose it wandered away. By the time I was finishing my job, I saw the lights of Ogden’s car coming up; for a second I thought he had seen me, but I got inside ahead.

  “That was all, for the moment. The next day—after I’d heard Mrs. Henderson’s story—I took the glass and the cup to town, to an analytical chemist I could trust absolutely, for a confidential report. It didn’t take long. The glass was harmless. The cup contained the dregs of some concoction made of milk and port wine, with an egg beaten into it; and in the dregs were two grains of white arsenic.”

  “Two grains?” repeated Partington, turning his head.

  “Yes. That’s a lot, isn’t it? I’ve been reading up——”

  “For the dregs,” said the other, grimly, “it’s a devil of a lot. There’s a case recorded of death ensuing from taking two grains. It’s the lowest amount recorded, yes; but if there was so much in the remains of the cup the full drink must have been loaded with it”

  “What’s the ordinary fatal dose?”

  Partington shook his head. “There’s no ‘ordinary’ fatal dose. As I say, death has ensued from taking two grains. On the other hand, a victim has been known to swallow two hundred grains, the largest known dose, and recover afterwards. You’ve got a pretty broad range between. For instance, you’ve heard of the case of Madeleine Smith, the Glasgow beauty who was accused of poisoning her French lover in 1857? Yes. There were eighty-eight grains of arsenic in L’Angelier’s stomach. Counsel at the trial, therefore, argued that the death must have been suicide, for no person could have swallowed such an enormous dose without noticing it at the time. Undoubtedly it had an effect on the verdict—the Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven,’ which they say is the equivalent of ‘Not guilty, but don’t do it again.’—Still, six years after that business a woman named Hewitt was tried at Chester for the murder of her mother. The old lady had died without suspicion; the doctor said death was due to gastro-enteritis; and it wasn’t until the body was dug up that they discovered a hundred and fifty-four grains of arsenic in the stomach alone.”

  Partington’s tongue was loosened; he even seemed to be enjoying himself; though the judicial expression remained on his blue-jowled face.

  “Then again,” he went on, waggling an empty glass, “there was the case of Marie D’Aubray at Versailles, in the early ’sixties. A bad business. Very little motive to her various bumpings-off, it would seem… just the pleasure of watching them die. … One of the victims got as little as ten grains of arsenic, another as much as a hundred. She wasn’t as lucky as Madeleine Smith. She got the guillotine.”

  By this time Stevens had risen and was sitting on the edge of his desk. He tried to nod casually and understandingly, but he was looking across at the white-painted door to the hall. For some moments he had been noticing something about that door. The light in the hall was brighter than the one in here. As an ordinary thing, you could see a glow shining through the large keyhole; but no chink was visible now, for someone must be listening outside the door.

  “However,” said Partington, “that’s not the most important thing: I’ll do the post-mortem. The important thing is when the poison was administered. If you’ve got all your times straight, it was damned rapid. Say a very large dose is given. Ordinarily the acute symptoms will come on anywhere from minutes to an hour afterwards—depending whether it was in solid or liquid form—and death will ensue from six to twenty-four hours afterwards, or even longer. It’s been known to hold off for several days. So you can see how quickly your uncle went. You left him at half-past nine, in at least tolerably good health. You returned and found him on his last legs at half-past two, and he died not long afterwards. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  Partington brooded, “Well, it’s entirely on the cards, of course. It’s even probable. He was already eaten up with the organic disease; he was being slowly poisoned on top of it (if you’re right); so he’d be finished off quickly with a heavy dose. If we knew just when he took the last one–—”

  “I can tell you exactly when it was,” snapped Mark. “It was at a quarter past eleven.”

  “Yes,” put in Stevens, “and that’s this mysterious story Mrs. Henderson told, isn’t it? That’s what we want to know, and you keep putting it off. What the devil was the story? Why don’t you like to talk about it?”

  He was afraid he had shown more excitement, more of a trace of nerves, than he ought to have allowed, but Mark did not notice it. Mark had the air of one coming to a decision.

  “For the moment,” he said, “I’m not going to tell it”

  “Not going to tell it?”

  “Because you’d think I was crazy, or Mrs. H. was,” the other answered, as though he were groping in his mind. He raised his hand. “Wait! Wait a minute, now! I’ve been over this whole thing a hundred times. I can’t sleep for thinking of it. But when I tell somebody for the first time, when I put out each fact as plain as beef… why, I see that the other part of the story would be plain incredible. You might even think I was leading you on a wild-goose chase over opening the crypt. And Uncle Miles’s death has got to be settled. Will you give me a couple of hours’ leeway? That’s all I want, until we can settle the first part of it.” />
  Partington stirred. “You’ve changed, Mark. By George! I don’t understand you! Here: what’s so incredible about this story? What you’ve told us already isn’t anything very wild; bad, if you like, or devilish, or—but not out of the way. It’s plain murder. What’s so incredible about the rest of it?”

  “That a long-dead woman,” said Mark, calmly, “might still be alive.”

  “What damned nonsense…!”

  “No, I’m absolutely sane,” Mark told him, nodding calmly. “Feel my pulse; give me a crack across the knee and watch my leg jump. I don’t believe it, naturally—any more than I believe Lucy had anything to do with it. There are two theories, both impossible. I only tell you it’s a stray idea that’s got stuck in the back of my mind, so I want to drag it out and laugh at it. But, if I told you now, God knows what you’d get to thinking. … Will you help me open that crypt first?”

  “Yes,” said Stevens.

  “What about you, Part?”

  “I haven’t come three thousand miles to back out now,” the doctor grunted. “But understand: you’re not going to keep up this mumbo-jumbo once I’ve done the business. By George! you’re not! I wonder how Edith—” There was a flash of anger in his stolid brown eyes, but he became affable as Mark filled his glass for the third time. “How do we open this crypt?”

  Mark was brisk again. “Good! Good! It’s not a hard job, but it’ll require plenty of time and muscle and elbow grease. It’ll need four men—the fourth is Henderson, who can be trusted and who’s right in his element at this sort of work. He’s the only one in the house now. Besides, his and Mrs. H’s living-quarters are right beside the path going to the crypt: we couldn’t disturb a stone without his knowing it afterwards by one look. … All the rest of ’em I’ve got rid of on one pretext or another; you couldn’t as much as shuffle a couple of stones—let alone what we’ve got to do—without everybody at the back of the house hearing it. As for the work…”