Ogden whistled two notes and his manner grew much calmer; yet Stevens had a feeling that he was suddenly on the defensive. “Well, well, well. I imagine they were all up late last night, and that’s why they’re sleeping in. Never mind; I’ve got a key here somewhere. I live here. I’m Ogden Despard. And what would you be wanting with us this morning, Inspector?”
“Captain,” said Brennan, looking at Ogden. Ogden did not seem to be making himself popular with anyone this morning. “I believe it’s your brother I want to see, Mr. Despard. If——”
The front door opened so suddenly that Brennan’s hand over the knocker was left in the air. The hall inside looked even bleaker and gloomier than the mist-filled porch, despite a heavy sooty drizzle from the chimneys which filled the mist with grit. Partington, fully dressed and shaven so closely that he looked scrubbed, was surveying them from the doorway.
“Yes?” he said.
The captain cleared his throat. “My name is Brennan,” he repeated. “I’m from police headquar——”
At this point Stevens became convinced that the whole world was wrong. Partington’s face had turned a muddy color. He put his hand on the post of the door, sliding it down for a better grip; and if he had not held to the door it seemed that his knees might have buckled under him.
XII
“Anything the matter?” asked Brennan, in an ordinary tone. It was so completely matter-of-fact that it helped. Partington pull himself together in a second, as though you had jerked the wires of a loose doll.
“Police headquarters,” he repeated, in a noncommittal growl.
“Yes. Of course. No, nothing’s wrong. Or, if I told you what it was, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why not?” asked Brennan practically.
Partington blinked a little. He seemed so puzzled that for a moment Stevens wondered whether he was drunk; but Partington dispelled that idea as a new thought appeared to strike him.
“Brennan!” he said. “I knew that name was—Look here, are you the man who sent those messages to everybody, asking them to come home?”
The captain looked at him. “We seem to have got the wires crossed,” he said, patiently. “Can I come in and talk this over before we get ’em more crossed? I didn’t send any messages. What I want to know is who sent me one. I want to see Mr. Despard, Mr. Mark Despard. The Commissioner sent me to see him.”
“I don’t think the doctor is quite himself this morning, Captain Brennan,” said Ogden, with unction. “In case you’ve forgotten me, Doctor Partington, I’m Ogden. I was at school when you—left us. Also, in case you’ve forgotten, this is Ted Stevens, whom you met last night. This is Miss Corbett, who nursed Uncle Miles.”
“I see,” said Partington. “Mark!”
Yellow light penetrated into the hall as the door to the big front room opened, and Mark stood in the doorway. Behind every move that was made now there was a curiously repressed and muffled significance, like a note of warning. It was like seeing the edge of some crisis whose meaning just eluded the spectator. Mark stood loosely, and yet drawn up, with the light along the side of his face. He wore a heavy grey sweater with a rolled collar, which gave his shoulders a top-heavy look.
“Well, well, well, well,” said Ogden. “We seem to have run into some trouble, brother. This is Captain Brennan of the Homicide Bureau.”
“I’m not from the Homicide Bureau,” said Brennan, a faint roar beginning to be distinguishable under his voice. “I’m attached to the staff of the Commissioner of Police. Are you Mr. Mark Despard?”
“Yes. Come in here, please.”
He stood to one side. He might have added, “The-doctor-will-see-you-in-a-minute” in the same tone of voice; it was not like Mark, and it was a bad sign.
“We’re a little disorganized here this morning,” he went on. “My sister has had a rather bad night. (Miss Corbett, will you go up and see her?) Also, the cook and the maid are away, and we’ve been trying to get breakfast in the best way we can. This way. Ted—Partington—will you come in here, too? No, Ogden, not you.”
Ogden could hardly believe his ears. “Oh, tut, tut! What’s the matter with you, Mark? Of course I’ll come in. Don’t try to pull any of that stuff on me. After all——”
“There are times, Ogden,” Mark continued, “when I feel for you a true brotherly affection. There are times when you are the life and soul of the party. But there are also times when your presence is definitely an encumbrance. This is one of them. Go on out to the kitchen and get yourself something to eat. Now I warn you.”
He closed the door as the other three went into the front room. The shutters were still on the windows as they had been last night, the lamps still burning; there seemed hardly a hiatus in time. At Mark’s gesture Brennan sat down in an overstuffed chair, where he put his hat and briefcase on the floor beside him. Without his hat Brennan was revealed as a middle-aged, shrewd-looking man with grizzled hair carefully brushed to hide the bald spot, a pleasant jaw, and a young face. He seemed hesitant about how to get down to business. Then he took a deep breath and unlocked his briefcase.
“I suppose you know why I’m here, Mr. Despard,” he said, “and I suppose I can talk in the presence of your friends here. I’ve got something I want you to read.” From the briefcase he took an envelope and a sheet of notepaper neatly typed. “I got that letter just about this time yesterday morning. As you can see, it was addressed to me personally, and mailed from Crispen on Thursday night.”
Mark unfolded the letter without haste. At first he seemed to be studying it without reading it. Then, without lifting his eyes, he began to read it aloud.
“Miles Despard, who died at Despard Park, Crispen, on April 12th, did not die a natural death. He was poisoned. This is not a crank letter. If you want proof, go to Joyce & Redfern Analytical Chemists, 218 Walnut Street. The day after the murder, Mark Despard brought them a drinking-glass that had contained milk, and a silver cup that had contained a wine-and-egg mixture. The cup had arsenic in it. This cup is now locked up in Mark Despard’s desk at home. He found it somewhere in Miles Despard’s room after the murder. The body of a cat formerly belonging to the house is buried in a flower-bed to the east of the house. Mark Despard buried it there. The cat had probably drunk some of the mixture with arsenic in it. Mark did not do the murder, but he is trying to cover up.
“The murder was done by a woman. If you want proof of this, see Mrs. Joe Henderson, who is the cook. She saw the woman in Miles Despard’s bedroom on the night of the murder, handing him the same silver cup. You can catch her away from the house and make her tell you. But go easy, as she does not know it is murder, and you will learn a lot. You will find her staying with friends at 92 Lees Street, Frankford. It is to your advantage not to disregard this.
AMOR JUSTITIAE.”
Mark put the letter down on the table. “I like that business about Amor Justitiae. It’s not much as a model of composition, is it?”
“I don’t know about that. The point is, Mr. Despard, it’s true.— Now just a minute,” Brennan added, more sharply. “I’ve got to tell you that we had this Mrs. Henderson at City Hall yesterday. And I’ve been sent here by the Commissioner, because he’s a personal friend of yours, to help you.”
“You’re a damned funny sort of detective,” said Mark. And suddenly he began to laugh.
Brennan grinned broadly in reply. Stevens thought he had never seen a more complete puncturing of tension, a more sudden cessation of hostilities. The real reason for it occurred to him at last; and it occurred to Brennan too.
“Yes, I could feel what you were thinking the minute I walked in here,” he declared. His startled grin became a chuckle. “Let me ask you something. Did you expect me to come charging in here, pointing my finger in everybody’s face, insulting people right and left, and roaring for blood? Listen, Mr. Despard. I can tell you this: the cop who acted like that would get his pants thrown out of the police department so quick you couldn’t see ’em for dust. E
specially if the party concerned happened to have an ounce of influence, or was a personal friend of the Commissioner’s: like you. When people write those stories, there’s one thing they seem to forget—and that’s politics. But we can’t forget it. And there’s more to it. We have a job to do. We try to do it as well as we can, and I think we do it pretty well. We’re not a side-show or a monkey-house. And the ambitious young fellow who tries to turn us into one, and make a splash for himself, is the one who doesn’t get on with the department. That’s only common sense. As I say, I’m here representing Mr. Cartell, the Commissioner——”
“Cartell,” repeated Mark, and sat up. “Of course. He was——”
“So,” concluded Brennan, with a broad gesture, “what about telling me the whole truth? I’ve told you this so that you’ll see where I stand; and the Commissioner wants me to help as far as I can within the law. Is it a deal?”
This, Stevens reflected, was probably the one course which would have won over Mark Despard. Captain Brennan was not only a representative of the head of the department; he was a clever man. Mark nodded, and Brennan opened the briefcase again.
“First of all, though,” he said, “you’ll want to know about my end of the business, to show that this isn’t any bluff.
“As I told you, I got that letter early yesterday morning. Now, I know all about you here; I’ve got a cousin who lives down in Merion. So I took that letter straight to the Commissioner. He didn’t think there was anything to it, and neither did I. But I thought I’d better go round and see Joyce and Redfern, the chemists. And,” said Brennan, running his finger down a typed sheet, “that part of it was right, anyway. You went to them on Thursday, April 13th. You took a glass and a cup for analysis. You said you thought your cat had been poisoned, and the cat had been lapping some stuff out of one of these two. You asked them not to say anything about it if anybody asked. You came back next day and got the report. Glass O. K., but two grains of arsenic in the cup. Description of cup: about four inches in diameter, three inches high; solid silver; a design like flowers round the top; very old.” He raised his eyes. “Correct?”
In the ensuing minutes Brennan demonstrated that, beyond doubt, he had a way with him. Mark always said afterwards that it was like being lured into a purchase by an expert salesman: so painlessly, so imperceptibly, that before you knew what you were doing it suddenly occurred to you that you had promised to buy the article. Brennan—with a bland and catlike pleasantness, his ear inclined, his grizzled head bent over his notes—was as confidential as a Balkan diplomat. He could mention even the weather in terms of one imparting a grave secret. But he received as much information as he gave. Imperceptibly he got Mark to tell the story of Miles’s illness, of Miles’s death and the events of that night, of the finding of the cup in Miles’s room; and he established that, if poison had been drunk at all, it must have been drunk out of that silver cup.
Then Brennan went on to tell how Mrs. Henderson came to give her evidence. This part of it was not clear. But, Stevens guessed, Brennan had probably gone to Frankford in the guise of a friend of Mark’s, had seen Mrs. Henderson, and had encouraged her in her natural tendency to gossip. For—Brennan admitted—Mrs. Henderson had no suspicion that anything was wrong until she was invited to come to City Hall and repeat her statement to the Commissioner of Police. Afterwards, Brennan also admitted, she had departed in tears and hysterics, swearing that she had betrayed the family and that she could never bring herself to look on their faces again.
From a typed copy Brennan read the statement made by Mrs. Henderson about the night of April 12th. And, in essentials, it was exactly the same thing she had told Mark. There was only one thing absent from the police record—the intangible quality of atmosphere. This record contained no suggestion of anything supernatural or even supernormal. It contained merely the statement that Mrs. Henderson, at 11:15 p.m., had peeped through a gap in the curtain and seen a woman in Miles’s room. At this time Miles had been in perfect health. The visitor was a small woman who wore “queer old-fashioned clothes,” or fancy dress. Mrs. Henderson had supposed that it was Mrs. Lucy Despard or Miss Edith Despard. She knew that both had gone to a masquerade that night; but she had just returned from a visit to Cleveland, had not seen either, and did not know what costumes they were wearing. The visitor in “queer old-fashioned clothes” had been carrying a silver cup whose description corresponded with that later found to have contained arsenic, and had given this cup to Miles Despard. Miles was seen to have the cup in his hand, although he was not actually seen to drink from it.
So far, the record had sounded all the more damning since it was shorn of atmosphere and suggestion. All the same, Stevens wondered how Brennan’s matter-of-factness would treat the end of the story—the visitor’s exit through a door which did not exist.
Then Brennan came to it.
“Now, Mr. Despard,” he confided, “the only part of it that wasn’t just straight was right there. Mrs. Henderson says that this woman ‘walked through the wall.’ It’s right here—‘walked through the wall.’ She couldn’t or wouldn’t make it clearer than that. She said the wall ‘looked like it changed, and then changed back again.’ Get me? All right. Well, the Commissioner said to her, ‘I think I know what you mean. You mean the door to a secret passage, don’t you?’ That made sense, naturally. I know myself that this is a very old house.”
Mark had been sitting back rather stiffly, his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the detective. His face was as inscrutable as Brennan’s. “And what,” he asked at this point, “did Mrs. Henderson say to that?”
“She said, ‘Yes, I guess that’s what it must have been.’ And it’s the thing I wanted to ask you. I’ve heard a lot about secret passages, but, to tell you the truth, I never actually SAW one. A friend of mine claimed he had one in his attic, but it was a fake; it was only the place where they kept the fuse-box, and you could see the door if you looked close. So, naturally, I was pretty interested. There’s one in that room all right, isn’t there?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Yes, but there is one? You could show it to me, couldn’t you?”
For the first time Mark seemed to feel that he was fighting on his own ground, with words rather than facts.
“Sorry, Captain. They didn’t have fuse-boxes in the seventeenth century. Yes, there was once a door there. It led to another part of the house, which has been burned down since. The trouble is, I’ve never been able to find the catch or spring that opens it.”
“All right,” said Brennan, eyeing him. “The only reason I asked was that, if you could have shown Mrs. Henderson was lying beyond any doubt, we wouldn’t have needed to be suspicious of anybody but her.”
After a pause, during which Mark seemed to be cursing inaudibly, the captain went on.
“So that was the situation we had on our hands. If we believed her, we had a cut-and-dried case. And there’s no use saying we didn’t believe her. I can sort of smell a liar the minute I see one.” He gave a slight wave of his hand, looking round the room. “We had the time of the murder fixed at about 11:15. We had the cup containing arsenic, seen in your uncle’s hand. We had a description of the dress worn by the woman——”
“You had everything, in short,” said Mark, “except any actual evidence that murder had been committed at all.”
“That’s right!” Brennan agreed, instantly, and tapped the briefcase. He seemed pleased that Mark should have appreciated the point. “So you see how we were situated. First we phoned Doctor Baker and asked privately, what he thought of the idea of Mr. Miles Despard being poisoned. He said we were crazy. He said it was impossible, though he admitted that the symptoms with which Mr. Despard died might have been the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. Of course his attitude was plain. No family doctor wants to start trouble of that kind if he can help it. If there’s an exhumation order, and an autopsy, and it turns out that he was wrong—well, it’s just too bad for him. Next the
Commissioner tried to get in touch with you, to see what you had to say to all this. But he couldn’t locate you, at either your office or your home. …”
“No,” said Mark, who was regarding him with a hard and wary stare. “I was in New York. I went to meet a friend of mine just arriving from England. Mr. Partington over there, as a matter of fact.”
Partington, who had been sitting by the fireplace with his clasped hands on his knees, looked up. The shadows showed deep wrinkles in his forehead, but he did not comment.
“Yes. We found that out,” Brennan answered, briefly. “Now face the facts,” he went on. “A woman in masquerade costume was in the room. We knew from Mrs. Henderson that your wife and your sister, and you as well, were at a masquerade at St. Davids on that night. It looked as though it must have been one of the two: pretty certainly your wife, because Mrs. Henderson—the day afterwards—saw the costume Mrs. Despard had been wearing, and admitted it was like the dress worn by the woman in that room. Easy now! I’m just telling you.
“But yesterday we couldn’t get hold of either your wife or your sister because both of ’em were in New York too. So the Commissioner decided to check up on all your movements for the night of the 12th. He could do it without kicking up a rumpus, because he knows the man who gave the party, and knows a lot of the people who were there.—Now. Mr. Despard, I’ve got a full report on all of you, particularly for those critical times around 11:15. If it’s all right with you, I’ll give you the gist of it.”
There was a sort of bursting pause. It was very hot in the room, where two centuries seemed to wait and listen. Out of the corner of his eye Stevens had seen the door move; somebody must have been listening from the first. He thought it was Ogden. But, as the door opened still farther, he saw that it was Lucy. Lucy Despard came in very softly and stood in the corner by the door, her hands straight down at her sides. She was so pale that the faint freckles stood out on her face; and her hair, parted at one side as though with an angry sweep of the comb, showed dead black against it; but she looked mutinous.
The Burning Court Page 13
