The Burning Court

by John Dickson Carr

  “As for disposing of the body, his intentions had been simple. Once the body was out of the crypt, he intended—as soon as he could—to get rid of Stevens and Partington. The first he would send home, the second he would send to the house, drunk. Henderson alone remained, and the body was at the time concealed in Henderson’s bedroom. But that was not difficult. We have heard at great length about the theft of some morphia tablets. Mrs. Stevens took them—but, as a matter of fact, she took only one tablet. Two more had been abstracted by Mark himself, with or without his accomplice’s knowledge.

  “As soon as he had got rid of Messrs. Stevens and Partington, Mark intended to give Henderson a strong drug in a drink of liquor. When the old man slid out of sight and tension, Mark could then take the body up out of the bedroom and destroy it——”

  “Destroy it?” Edith spoke out suddenly.

  “By fire, appropriately enough,” said Cross. “In the roaring blaze which has been going so hard for the last two days in that furnace downstairs; you have all, I think, noticed the pall of smoke over this house outside, and the extreme heat inside. … But there was a hitch in the plan. For Mrs. Despard and Miss Despard, summoned by telegrams, unexpectedly appeared on the scene. That threw the scheme out of gear; the body was still hidden in that bedroom; but the scheme, after all, was only deferred. When everyone had retired for the night, and the visitors were gone, Mark prevailed on Henderson to go down alone and cover the crypt with a tarpaulin. … But, in order to get that tarpaulin (as both of them thought) Henderson would have to walk several hundred yards through a wood to a field on the other side of the estate. This would be time enough for Mark to get the body out of Henderson’s house and ready for the furnace.

  “Unfortunately, Henderson remembered that the tarpaulin was not near the tennis court, but in his house. When Henderson returned, Mark was actually in that little stone house. Fortunately, however, he had taken one precaution—he had given Henderson a drink drugged with morphine, and its effects were already being felt. A light unscrewed in its socket… a corpse propped up in a chair, used as a doll or dummy for a ghost scare… a man behind, rocking that chair and even lifting the hand of the corpse… it all had its effect on a man already frightened half out of his wits; and the morphia took care of the rest. Mark was then free to carry the body to the fire”

  Cross paused, and turned on them a broad smile of urbanity and charm.

  “I may add something which you have doubtless already noticed: the house is unusually cold this afternoon. That is why I thought we should remain upstairs. Captain Brennan’s men are now engaged in dragging out that furnace. They may not find anything, but——”

  Myra Corbett took two steps forward, and it was apparent that her knees were shaking. She was clearly so horrified that it produced in her a drawn ugliness.

  “I don’t believe that! I don’t believe it,” she said. “Mark never did that. If he did, he’d have told me. …”

  “Ah,” said Cross. “Then you do admit that you poisoned Miles Despard. By the way, my good friends, there is just one point remaining in connection with our friend Jeannette. It is true that she told a story yesterday which appeared to incriminate Mrs. Stevens. To the surprise of everyone (including herself), Mrs. Stevens really did ask where arsenic could be bought; just as Miss Edith Despard actually bought some. But don’t you see the significance of the story, the part our nurse was trying to stress? Who actually began that conversation, who asked ten thousand questions about poisons and their effects? She said it was Lucy Despard; she corrected you sharply and insisted on that. She was still being consistent. And her accusations were only shifted when it became apparent that Mrs. Despard had an unmistakable alibi. So, if she admits that she poisoned…”

  Though she marred the gesture with something very like a snarl, Myra Corbett put out her hands as though she were praying.

  “I didn’t kill him. I did not. I never thought of it. I didn’t want any money. All I wanted was Mark. He didn’t run away because he did anything like that. He ran away because of that——that’s his wife. You can’t prove I killed the old man. You can’t find the body, and you can’t prove it. I don’t care what you do to me. You can beat me till I die, but you won’t get anything out of me. You know that. I can stand pain like an Indian. You’ll never——”

  She broke off, choking. She added, with sudden rather terrifying misery: “Doesn’t anybody believe me?”

  Ogden Despard, smashed and ugly, put out his hand. “I’m beginning to think I do,” he said. He looked at them. “Whatever I’ve done in the past,” he added, coolly, “I’ve had a perfect right to do, and I advise none of you to question it. But there’s one thing I must correct you on. This woman at least never made any telephone call to St. Davids, on the night of the masquerade party. I did that. It struck me that it would be amusing to see Lucy’s reactions when she heard Mark had picked up his old affair again. You can’t do anything to me, you know, so you might as well take it calmly.”

  Brennan stirred and stared. Cross, with an air of simian courtesy, lifted his glass of sherry, saluted Ogden, and drank.

  “I drink your health,” he said, “on the pretext of what I am compelled to recognize as the one time in your doubtless useless life when you have attempted to do anyone a service. Though I am never wrong in my diagnoses, I can assure you that I preserve a mind sufficiently open to acknowledge an error. If it were the last word I ever——”

  He stopped, making a slight gesture with his glass. They had looked at the nurse, who was coming forward, when they heard a small bumping sound. Cross had gone forward across the radio, and seemed to be trying to writhe over on his back. They saw his eyeballs; he seemed to be trying to draw air through lips too thick for him. He succeeded at last in writhing over, but resistance was gone, for he fell on his back. It seemed to Stevens’s stupefied wits a long time before anyone moved. Cross lay convulsed in a fawn-colored suit, spilled beside the radio, with the glass in his hand; but he had stopped moving by the time Partington reached him.

  “This man is dead,” Partington said.

  Stevens thought afterwards that if the doctor had made any other statement in the world, however incredible, any horror of fantasy or reality, then he might have believed it. But he could not believe this.

  “You’re crazy!” shouted Brennan in the midst of a pause. “He slipped. He fainted, or something. He couldn’t just—like that——”

  “He’s dead,” said Partington. “Come and see for yourself. By the smell of him I’d say it was cyanide. It’s as nearly instantaneous as anything in the codex. You had better preserve that glass.”

  Brennan put down his briefcase very carefully, and came over. “Yes,” Brennan said—“yes, he’s dead.” Then he looked at Myra Corbett. “He took that glass from you. You were the only one who touched either the decanter or the glasses. He took that glass from you, and walked over there to the radio by himself. Nobody was near him, nobody could have put cyanide there except you. But he didn’t drink immediately, as you hoped. He was too much of an actor. He waited until he could get a good excuse for a toast.—You devil, there wasn’t enough jury-evidence against you before. But there is now. You know what’ll happen to you? You’ll fry in the electric chair.”

  The woman was smiling, weakly and foolishly and almost incredulously. But her former self-control had almost gone, and when Brennan’s men came upstairs they had to give her a supporting hand while she walked down.

  V

  VERDICT

  “The tendency has gone so far that one is led to ask oneself, not without the gravest apprehension, ‘Is there, then, no evidence of extreme depravity?’ For the wholesale elimination of the utter villain from history could hardly be regarded save in the light of an aesthetic calamity.”

  —THOMAS SECCOMBE, Twelve Bad Men

  EPILOGUE

  The brittle, bright autumn weather had faded from dusk into night. A few leaves, shaded like the colors of a vase, sti
ll clung to the trees when the wind rose; the bowl of the valley was brown. A desk calendar in the nest, snug room showed in red figures that it was the 30th of October, which is the night before All-Hallow’s Eve.

  It was a room with fat-bowled lamps on the tables, and chairs covered with bright reddish-orange material, and a good copy of a Rembrandt—The Lovers—above the fireplace. On the divan lay an open newspaper, whose headlines showed along with a part of the story:

  DEMON NURSE ESCAPES CHAIR

  Innocent, Says Myra, as Life Term Begins

  Still declaring her innocence, Myra Corbett, the “demon nurse,” who was sentenced to death on October 9th for the murder of Gaudan Cross, author, heard today that the pardon board had commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. G. L. Shapiro, her attorney, admitted that no trace had yet been found of the “phantom accomplice,” Mark Despard; but said that——

  The firelight flickered on black headlines, for the fire was the only light in the room. It distorted and made unfamiliar common objects. By the rear window a woman stood looking out into the garden. Her face was reflected in the dark glass. It was a plump, pretty face, with ringlets of dark-yellow hair. The reflection, slightly blurred, showed heavy-lidded grey eyes set in an expression which might be called spiritual, and a very faint smile. She was thinking:

  Upon the whole, I am sorry she is not to die, after all. She deserved to die, if only for telling tales about me. I was incautious that day when I asked after the old man’s receipt; but then I had not used it for a long time. Also, it is a pity she was not really guilty; she should have been, for she would have made an addition to our number. W must be very numerous now.

  Outside, in the dark garden, the October wood smoke drifted lightly. The sky was dark also, except for three bright stars; and, in the fields beyond, a mist was on the wigwams of the corn. One fine hand of the woman’s moved out and touched a small desk between the windows, although she did not turn her head.

  It is well that I am beginning to remember. At first I could remember only faintly, as I see my reflection in this glass now. Once, when the smoke lifted in the Mass at Guibourg, I thought I remembered—an eye there, a tip of a nose there, or ribs with a knife through them. I wonder, now, when I shall see Gaudin again. His was a crooked reflection; perhaps the headgear was different, but I knew him at once. At least I knew quite clearly that I must go to him for help. It is true that, this time, I was in no danger from their lawyers. But I did not wish my husband to guess, not yet. I love him, I love him; he will be one of us presently, if I can transform him without pain. Or too much pain.

  The hand moved across the writing-desk, and there was a key in the hand. It began to unlock some curious compartments, one beyond the other; although still her head did not turn. The hand seemed to move with a life and volition of its own. Inside the last compartment there was a teakwood box, and a little jar.

  Yes, I knew Gaudin. He had been seeking me, too, it seems. Nor have I-denied his cleverness. It was clever of him to pluck a physical explanation, a thing of sizes and dimensions and stone walls, out of all those things which had no explanation I was prepared to give them. I wondered that he could do it so cunningly, for I am not clever. I am sorry, too, he must accuse Mark Despard, for I liked Mark.

  If I am not clever, as they say, still I think I had the better of Gaudin, after all. Gaudin asked Gaudin’s price for what he did, and it was unfortunate that he wished to return to me. He would have been impossible as a lover. And Gaudin was flesh and bone, until the ointment was used. He will return to flesh and bone presently, but I have the better of him now.

  The white hand, moving fluent and snakelike, touched first the box and then the jar; still the plump face was reflected without motion in the glass, though it smiled curiously. … There was the noise of a key in the outer door of the cottage, the opening of a door, and the sound of footsteps in the hall. Whatever luminousness, or even transparency, seemed to move round wall or window—this was now gone when she ceased to touch the jar. Her face became the face of a pretty wife, and she ran out to meet her husband.

  As she passed, her skirt brushed to the floor the newspaper on the divan, turning it over and exposing the continuation of a news item:

  … that no trace had yet been found of the “phantom accomplice,” Mark Despard; but said that no effort would be spared to trace him. It is understood that Attorney Shapiro has produced new evidence. High-lights in the trial of the “demon nurse” will be recalled in Attorney Shapiro’s attempt to prove that Author Cross—determined to convict the nurse of a poisoning-charge he could not prove—might himself have dropped cyanide into his own glass.

  “If the defence,” said District Attorney Shields, “seriously means that any man will drop four grains of potassium cyanide into his own glass in order to prove a theory, the state is content to rest at this moment.”

  “The defence means,” retorted Shapiro, “that Cross may have had a confederate who supplied him with this poison, telling him that it was only a little arsenic which would make him sick, but really intending to kill him. In capsule form——”

  At this point there was some commotion, and Judge David R. Anderson said that if any more laughter were heard in a court of justice, he would order the court to be cleared.