The Burning Court

by John Dickson Carr

  “They understood this. Nine, as we have seen, is the mystic number, the multiple of three, and it occurs over and over again in connection with magical ceremonies everywhere. The tying of nine knots in a string is believed to put on the victim a spell which places him entirely in the power of the sorceress.

  “When the authorities descended on her house, they found the girl La Voisin in the wood near by, under a thicket, without clothes and with what one of them describes as ‘the eyes of a wolf.’ Taken to Paris and questioned, she made a statement. She screamed at the sight of fire. Though her parents said she could not read or write, she could do both; and spoke like a court lady. She admitted committing the murders. Asked the meaning of the spell put on them, she said:

  “ ‘They are now one of us. There are so few of us, and we have need of others. They are not truly dead; they are alive again now. If you do not believe me, open their coffins and you will see. They are not in the coffins. One was at the Grand Sabbath last night.’

  “It seems to have been true that the coffins were empty, at least. Another strange feature of the affair was that, at her trial, the girl’s parents came near proving something like an alibi for one of the crimes: resting on the fact that she must have walked two kilometers in a remarkably short time, and in some fashion penetrated a locked house. La Voisin is said to have replied:

  “ ‘That is of no consequence. I went into the bushes, and I put the ointment on myself, and I put on the dress I had before. Then I had no trouble.’ Asked what she meant by the ‘dress she had before,’ she said: ‘I had many dresses. This was a beautiful dress, but I did not wear it when I went to the fire.’ At mention of the fire she seemed suddenly to recollect herself, and fell into a fit of screaming. …”

  “I’ve had about enough of this,” interrupted Brennan, heavily. He passed a hand over his face, as though to make sure it was still there. “Excuse me, Miss Despard, but I’ve got work to do. This is April, not Halloween. Women on broomsticks are a little out of my line. If you tell me that a woman put a spell on Mr. Miles Despard, and rubbed herself with ointment, and got into a dress several hundred odd years old, and consequently walked through that wall—well, all I’ve got to say is, I want a case that’ll at least get past the grand jury.”

  Edith, though a trifle supercilious, was not put out.

  “You do?” she said. “Then here is one. The part I wanted you to read, really, comes next. But if you can’t derive profit from it, I won’t bother to read it. It’s about a woman named Marie D’Aubray (the same maiden name, I can tell you, as the Marquise de Brinvilliers) who was guillotined in 1861. Whatever you think of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, I presume you don’t think they were quite so unenlightened in the eighteen-sixties.”

  “You don’t mean she was executed for witchcraft?”

  “No. She was executed for murder. The details aren’t pleasant, and I don’t want to go over them. But I should just like to read you the description of her, written by a contemporary reporter, as she stepped into the dock. It says: ‘The case attracted wide attention, not only because of the good looks and comparative wealth of the accused woman, but by the modesty of her bearing; a modesty so great that when, on one occasion, the procurer-general put certain blunt words to her, she colored like a schoolgirl.’ And here we are: ‘She stepped into the dock bowing timidly to the President of the Tribunal. … She wore a boat-shaped hat of brown velvet, with a drooping plume and a gown of brown silk. In one hand she carried a silver-topped smelling bottle, and on the other wrist she wore a curious antique gold bracelet, with a clasp like a cat’s head, and a ruby in the mouth of the clasp. When witnesses began to testify as to the details of the Black Mass in the upper room of the villa at Versailles, and the poisoning of Louis Dinard, several over-excited spectators shouted, “No, no!” It was observed that her only sign of agitation was to finger this bracelet on her wrist.’ ” Edith closed the book with a snap. “Truth will out, Ted. You know who’s got a bracelet just like that.”

  Stevens did know it. He remembered seeing that bracelet in the photograph of the Marie D’Aubray of 1861, which had disappeared that night. But by this time he was in such a state of black befuddlement that he could say nothing.

  “Yes,” Mark interposed, in a dull voice. “That’s what I thought, too. But,” said Mark, “now it’s out, I can’t face it.”

  “I can,” snapped Brennan. “I see what you’ve been getting at, and the one I sympathize with is Mr. Stevens. I wouldn’t let it worry you, my friend, if that’s what you’re looking so queer about. It’s a funny thing. Mr. Despard strongly defended her until he heard or thought of this guff. I strongly attacked her until I heard of it.”

  Edith’s voice grew sharp. “Do you deny that witchcraft has been practised in the past?”

  “Of course I don’t,” said Brennan unexpectedly. “It’s being practised right here in modern America. I know all about that nine-knots-in-a-piece-of-string curse. It’s called the witch’s ladder.”

  Mark stared. “But, good God, man! You said——”

  “Have you forgotten where you are?” inquired Brennan. “Don’t you read the newspapers, even? You’re right on the edge of the territory of the Pennsylvania Dutch, where the local witch still makes wax images and puts spells on a cow. Why, there was that hex murder up there not very long ago. One of our boys went up to advise ’em about it. You remember, a while ago I put some emphasis on the fact that your maid here, Margaret, was originally Pennsylvania Dutch; and you asked me what that had to do with it. It may have a whole lot to do with it, though I don’t think the maid has. As soon as I heard of that piece of string with the knots, I thought some yokel rainmaker was trying to hex, or pretending he was trying to hex, your uncle. And—when I think over Mr. Stevens’s theory about the Hendersons—I think I see who it might have been. That’s why I wanted to ask you: where are the Hendersons from?”

  “Reading, I think,” said Mark, “originally. Part of the family moved to Cleveland.”

  “Well, Reading’s a nice town,” said Brennan, mildly, “and it’s far from being full of yokels. But still it’s Pennsylvania Dutch.”

  “I’m hanged if I understand this, Captain. You’re full of surprises,” growled Mark. “Then you do believe witchcraft can be practised? For, if you do——”

  Brennan folded his arms and contemplated Mark with his head a little on one side. The reminiscent light was back in his eye.

  “When I was a kid,” he said, “I wanted a revolver. Wow! how I wanted a revolver!—a big Ivor-Johnson six-shooter with an ivory handle. I wanted that revolver more than anything else in the world. They told me at Sunday school that, if you wanted anything bad enough, all you had to do was pray for it and you’d get it. Well, I prayed. I prayed and prayed for that revolver. I bet nobody ever did pray as much as I did for that revolver. In those days my old dad used to tell me a lot about the devil, specially when he was recovering from the horrors and was resolving never to touch another drop. My dad was very religious, and once he said the devil stuck his head round the corner of the sitting-room door, and pointed at him, and said, ‘Shamus Brennan, if you take just one more little drink of whisky, I’m coming for you.’ He said the devil was all in red and had curved horns a foot long. But, all the same, I thought if the devil would appear and offer to swap me my soul for the big ivory-handled six-shooter in Clancy’s window, I’d do it. And yet, no matter how much I wanted it and how much I prayed, I didn’t get that revolver.

  “It’s the same thing here. Practise magic? Sure I can practise magic, as much as I want to. I can make wax images of all the people I don’t like—which is the Republican Party, mostly—but that doesn’t say they’ll die if I stick pins in the images. So, when you tell me your uncle was murdered and bewitched so that he’s joined a gang of ghouls… that he walked out of his coffin in the crypt, and might walk into this room at any minute… I must take leave to——”

  The door of the room banged
open with a crash which made them all jump, and brought Mark round with a ringing oath. Ogden Despard, looking somewhat greenish and sweaty, leaned against the door-post. At his very appearance, and for no tangible reason, Stevens experienced a feeling of horror worse than any that had yet crept on him. Ogden drew the back of his overcoat sleeves across his forehead.

  “Henderson—” he said.

  “What about Henderson?” demanded Mark.

  “You sent me out there,” said Ogden, “out to his house, to get Henderson and have him bring some tools up here. I’ve been trying to bring him round. No wonder he didn’t show up here early this morning. He’s had a fit, or something. He can’t, or won’t, talk straight. I wish the rest of you would go down to him. He says he’s seen Uncle Miles.”

  “You mean,” said Brennan, back to crisp matter-of-factness again—“you mean he’s found the body?”

  “No, I don’t mean that,” Ogden said, pettishly. “I mean—he says he’s seen Uncle Miles.”

  1 Paulus, Sententiae, v. 21–23.

  2 The Tryal of Anne Turner, Widow, at the King’s Bench Bar, 7th Nov., 1615.

  3 Encyclopædic des Sciences Occultes. Paris, 1924.

  4 Montague Summers, History of Witchcraft.

  5 John Gaule, Vicar of Great Staughton, the exposer of Matthew Hopkins.

  6 Procès de la Marquise de Brinvilliers, 1676. Alexandre Dumas, Crimes Célèbres. Madame de Sévigné, Lettres. Philip Lefroy Barry, Twelve Monstrous Criminals. Lord Birkenhead, Famous Trials.

  7 Le Petit Journal, May, 1925. See also Elliott O’Donnell, Strange Cults and Secret Societies of Modern London.

  8 Henry T. F. Rhodes, Genius and Criminal.

  9 F. Tennyson Jesse, Murder and its Motives. H. M. Walbrook, Murders and Murder Trials, 1812–1912. See also the trials of William Palmer and Dr. Pritchard in the Notable British Trial series. It seems that the victims of both must have known they were being poisoned.

  IV

  SUMMING-UP

  “ ‘And where is your nose?’ quoth Sancho, seeing him now without disguise. ‘Here in my pocket,’ and so saying, he pulled out the nose of a varnished pasteboard vizard, such as it has been described. … ‘Blessed Virgin!’ quoth Sancho. ‘Who is this? Thomas Cecial, my friend and neighbor?’ ‘The same, friend Sancho,’ quoth the squire; ‘I will tell you anon by what tricks and wheedles he was inveigled to come hither.’ ”

  —Life and Achievements of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha

  XVII

  The little stone house under the elm trees, near which ran the broad walk of crazy paving, had its door wide open. All mist had now lifted into a clear, cool day with a freshening breeze that stirred the new leaves of the elms, like green lace. At the end of the pavement the ruined chapel stood up against a pale sky, the door of the chapel boarded over. And, some distance out among a litter of gravel and smashed stones, a tennis-court tarpaulin was spread over the entrance to the crypt, with stones at each corner to hold it firm.

  Inside Henderson’s house, in the little living-room where they had sat last night, Henderson lay on a leather couch and looked with half-open eyes at the ceiling. His expression was one of sullen defiance mixed with genuine physical illness. There was a bad bruise on his hollowed left temple; his scanty hair looked more than ever like a disarranged cobweb. He was fully dressed, just as he had been last night, and he did not seem to have washed. A blanket was drawn up to his breast, and his hands lay on it snake-veined—and shook. When he heard footsteps outside, he twitched up his head suddenly, without seeming to move the body at all; but he lay back again.

  Mark, Brennan, and Stevens stood in the doorway, surveying him.

  “Good morning, Joe,” Mark said, sardonically.

  Some twitch passed over the man’s face, some change which might have been humiliation; yet his expression seemed to say that his particular sufferings were more than a human being ought to bear, and it kept his eyes squeezed up with sullen fixity on the ceiling.

  “Easy, old boy,” Mark told him, not without sympathy. Mark went over and put his hand on Henderson’s shoulder. “You’ve been overdoing it. You’re an old man, and you’ve been working like a dog.—What’s this nonsense about your seeing Uncle Miles?”

  “Look here, Mr. Despard,” said Brennan, quietly: “what’s the idea in having it both ways? Why do you say it’s nonsense? Not five minutes ago you were all for ghosts and non-deads. And then, when this turns up, you turn around the other way.”

  “I don’t know,” said Mark, struck with this. He stared. “Except… that is, I know what you’re going to think about this. You were too much impressed with Ted’s theory. And, directly on top of that, here’s another member of the Henderson family who’s seen a ghost. I know how it will sound to you: it’ll sound a little too fortuitous.” He turned back to the old man and spoke sharply. “Buck up, Joe! No matter how you feel, try to pull yourself together. The police are here.”

  Henderson’s eyes flashed open; the expression of his face seemed to say that this was too much, that this was a final be-devilment. After looking as though he were going to cry, he pushed himself up to a half-sitting position and looked at them with rheumy eyes.

  “The perlice,” he said. “Who sent for ’em?”

  “Your wife,” said Brennan, briefly.

  “She never did! You can’t fool me. I don’t believe it.”

  “Let’s not fight about it,” said Brennan. “What I want to know is what you told Mr. Ogden Despard about seeing his uncle’s ghost. …”

  “It wasn’t any ghost,” protested Henderson, with a wrench in his throat. Stevens, with a twinge of uneasiness, saw that the man was almost literally frightened out of his wits. “Leastways, it wasn’t like any ghost I ever heard tell of. If it had been, I wouldn’t have been a-skeered of it. It was—it was——”

  “Alive?”

  “I dunno,” said Henderson miserably.

  “Whatever you saw,” Mark told him, “just tell us about it. Take it easy, Joe. Where did you see it?”

  “In the bedroom there.” He pointed to a door. “It was this way. I got to think before I forget. Last night, you remember, Miss Edith and Lucy came here while we were—you know. And all of you went up to the house. Miss Edith, she told me to stoke up a big fire in the furnace. So I did. Then you were all talking in the front room, but you broke up before three o’clock. You remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got to get this straight,” said Henderson, nodding. “You and I was going to get the tarpaulin from the shed by the tennis court, and put it over the opening to that place. But then I thought you looked mighty tired, and it wasn’t anything of a job; so I told you to go to bed, and I’d do it. And you said thanks, and gave me a drink. It wasn’t till I went out the back door, and heard you locking it… it sort of came to me that I’d have to go all down that walk, and sleep here alone. What’s more, that tennis court is way over in the south field, and to get there I’d have to go through that little bit of woods I’ve never liked.

  “But I hadn’t no more than got started for the south field when I remembered I wouldn’t have to go there, after all. Because I’d been mending that tarpaulin for this year, and it was right here in my house—under the sewing-machine over there. So I come back, and in here. Then I saw the lights were out in this room, and I tried ’em, and the bulb wouldn’t work. I didn’t like that, but I had my lantern. So I grabbed up that tarpaulin from under the sewing-machine, and ran out again, and started to lay it over the opening. I was working faster all the time, holding it down with stones at the edges. Because I thought: Suppose something should sort of push up that tarpaulin from underneath, like somebody coming up the steps and trying to get out?

  “I got it done, and I was mighty glad. I told you before, I’ve never been a-skeered of things like that. It’s like what I told you, that Mr. Ballinger told me years ago. ‘Joe,’ he says, ‘don’t you be a-skeered of any dead people; it’s these livin’ sons-of-
bitches you want to watch out for.’ But I didn’t like putting down that tarpaulin.

  “So when I was through I come in here, and I locked that door. I tried the lights again, but they still wouldn’t work. Then I thought my lantern wasn’t giving enough light, and I tried to turn up the wick. But I must ’a’ got mixed up, or my hand wasn’t right, because I turned it the wrong way, and the light started to go out. I didn’t have time to monkey with it. I knew there was lights in that bedroom there, and I wanted to get inside with the door locked.

  “So I went over to the bedroom. The first thing I heard when I got in there was the rocking-chair creaking. It has a kind of squeak you can always tell. It’s over by the window. Then I looked, and I seen something sitting in the chair, rocking back and forth.

  “There was enough light for me to see it was your uncle. He was sitting there rocking just like your uncle did when he used to come to see me. I could see his face plain. I could see his hands, too. They was whitish, but they didn’t shine much, and they looked soft. I knew it because he reached out his hand and tried to shake hands with me.

  “I run out of there. Or leastways I run somewhere, and I slammed the door. Only the key was on the other side. Then I could hear him get up and walk across to the door after me.

  “I fell over something in here, and hit my head. After that I don’t remember much, except that I fell against the edge of this couch here, and there was a blanket or something on it. I think I had an idea of rolling over the couch, down to the other side, so it would hide me. But that’s all I can tell you, until your brother Ogden—he climbed through the winder over there, and he was shaking me.”