Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Well, think now. Skager, why did you hate Heston?”

  “Look, Inspector, I had nothing to do with the murder. How could I have killed him?”

  “How do you know how he was killed? I tell you, Skager, I’m prepared to arrest any man who attempts to hide his motives. Now, answer my question.”

  A slight pause of defiance, then—

  “Well, I don’t suppose it makes any difference. I’ve got a girlfriend. Some time ago someone rang her up and told her not to go out with me because I had an incurable disease. It took me weeks before I could get near enough to convince her it was a lie.”

  “And you thought Heston made the phone call?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Maybe it was because he was always talking about my pimples. In any case, it was just the kind of thing he would do.”

  “So you hated him, eh Skager—hated him enough to kill him?”

  “Why do you pick on me, Inspector? Honest, I don’t know anything about the murder. Why don’t you speak to Mrs. Orvin? She said the knife was hers—she said something about a Martian—”

  Joubert asked, very distinctly: “She said something about what?”

  “A Martian.”

  Johnson grinned.

  Mrs. Orvin said: “The knife was mine. My brother-in-law sent it to me from the Belgian Congo.”

  “What did you use it for?”

  “Mainly as an ornament. It was kept on this shelf under the glass of the counter. I’ve used it once or twice as a paper knife.”

  “So anyone could have taken it while you were in the kitchen?”

  “Yes. That’s what must have happened.”

  “When did you find it was missing?”

  “Last Tuesday.”

  “And when had you last seen it previous to that?”

  “A few minutes before. You see, I had been using it to cut some string, and then I put it down to go into the kitchen—”

  “Just a minute, Mrs. Orvin. Was there anyone else in the restaurant at the time?”

  “Yes, quite a few people. There were four or five tourists and Heston and Clobber.”

  “Clobber was here?”

  “Yes, having his tea. He sat at the far corner table.”

  “And Heston?”

  “At first he was on the balcony, but when I came back from the kitchen he was sitting at this table.”

  “So when you missed the knife, what did you do?”

  “I went to speak to Heston. You see, I was quite sure just where I had left it, and so—”

  Heston looked up innocently at her. “Yes, Mrs. Orvin?”

  “Mr. Heston, have you by any chance seen my knife?”

  “You mean the big one with the red handle? Of course I have. You were using it a minute ago.”

  “Well, it’s gone now. Did you see anyone take it?”

  “No, I didn’t see anyone take it, Mrs. Orvin, but I know who’s got it all the same.”

  “Who?”

  “Gha.”

  “What?”

  “Gha. Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t know about him, do you? Gha’s a man from Mars, very tall and thin and strong, but you can’t see him or hear him—only I can do that. He told me he needed a knife.”

  “Mr. Heston, if this is your idea of a joke, I don’t think it’s very funny. If you’ve got my knife, please give it to me.”

  “I haven’t got your knife, Mrs. Orvin. And I’m not joking about Gha—it’s perfectly true. Some of the other men at the station also know about him.

  “Why don’t you ask Clobber?”

  “And did you ask Clobber, Mrs. Orvin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He muttered something about liking to break Heston’s neck.”

  “And about the knife?”

  “He said he didn’t know anything at all about that.”

  “Well, thanks. I think that will be all for now. Don’t call anyone else for the moment, Mrs. Orvin. We’ll let them know when we want them.”

  Mrs. Orvin left.

  Rolf allowed a puff of smoke to billow through his beard. He said to Johnson: “Everywhere we go, we bump into your Martian.”

  “Martian, nothing,” said Joubert. “This is murder, not fantasy. Someone wearing gloves killed Heston, and that person did it on top of the mountain. It can only be one of two men—the Native or Clobber. I fancy Clobber.”

  “And what will you say,” asked Rolf, “if we find that Heston was alive when he left the upper station? Will you then believe in the Martian?”

  “Not even then,” said Joubert. “Heston couldn’t have been alive—there is no possible way of stabbing a man suspended by himself two thousand feet above anything. All I would say is that the impression was given that Heston was alive when he left the mountain—that a clever alibi has been created. And no matter how good an alibi is, it can always be broken.”

  “I still have a feeling about this case,” said Rolf.

  “There are too many feelings altogether. What we need are a few facts. Let’s get Clobber in.”

  One of the policemen went to call him.

  Clobber’s face was pale. He was still wearing the dirty dustcoat he used while driving. Joubert looked at something protruding from the pocket, and glanced significantly at Johnson and Rolf.

  “Do you always wear cotton gloves?” he asked Clobber. “Yes. They keep my hands clean.”

  “I see. They also have another very useful purpose. They don’t leave fingerprints.”

  Clobber paled even more. “What are you getting at? I didn’t kill Heston. He was alive when he left the summit.”

  “And dead when he passed the other car halfway down? Come off it, Clobber. He must have been killed up here. Either you or Ben are guilty.”

  Clobber said: “Neither of us did it. I tell you he was alive when he left.”

  “That’s what you say. The point is, can you prove it?”

  “Yes, I think so. After the car had started, when he was about twenty yards out, he leaned over the side of the car and waved to me. Ben had just come into my cabin. He saw him too.”

  “Where was Ben before that?”

  “He was with Heston at the car.”

  A new gleam came into Joubert’s eye. He leaned forward. “Look, Clobber,” he said, “what was there to prevent Ben stabbing Heston just as the car pulled away?”

  “I suppose he could have. Only, as I’ve told you, Ben was with me when Heston waved.”

  “Think carefully now, Clobber. Are you sure it was a wave you saw? Couldn’t it possible have been that the body was wedged upright, and you saw it as it slumped over the door?”

  “No, definitely not. The arm moved up and down two or three times. He was alive. I’m sure of that.”

  Joubert flung up his hands in a gesture of impatience. “All right then. Say he was alive. How do you explain the fact that halfway down the knife was in his back? Who could have done it?”

  Clobber looked harassed. “I don’t know. The only idea . . . It doesn’t make sense. It can’t be right.”

  “What idea?”

  “Well, I’d better explain a bit. I had a talk with Heston this morning. He told me he didn’t expect to get to the bottom of the mountain alive.”

  Rolf echoed: “Didn’t expect?”

  “Yes. He said he’d been warned. His 31st birthday was yesterday—the 31st of the month—and he’d been told that if he spent last night on top of the mountain he’d never reach the bottom alive. I thought he was pulling my leg.”

  “Warned? Who warned him?”

  “That was a queer thing. He used to claim that he could see and hear an invisible creature from Mars, called Gha. That’s where he got the warning.”

  Joubert threw up the sponge. “Oh my God,” he said. Johnson grinned again, but Rolfs face was serious. “Tell me, Mr. Clobber,” he said, “how long ag
o is it since Heston started talking about this man from Mars?”

  “Oh, quite a while now. I took it as a sort of peculiar joke.”

  “Why? Did he laugh or wink about it?”

  “No. He was always dead serious, but I thought it was a definite dig at me.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he knew I’m fond of reading science fiction magazines, and he was a queer sort of fellow. It seemed to me he turned the conversation to Gha the moment I came in. Or Brander—you know about his religion, of course?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was just a crude way of being sarcastic. Just a minute. Yes. I think I remember the first time he mentioned Gha.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a month ago. You see, I’d just come off duty and I was hanging around at the lower station. Heston was there and Brander, and somehow or other the conversation led to the subject of death—”

  Clobber said: “When a man dies, he leaves his body behind. Now, I don’t believe that there’s any spiritual worth in it—once you’re gone, your body’s just a mixture of chemicals. That’s why I can’t agree with all the hocus-pocus of funerals and holding the dead in awe. There should be a law compelling the use of bodies for practical purposes—making fertilizer, medical research, anything—but not hiding them in holes in the ground under fancy headstones.”

  Brander was shocked. “Oh, no, Clobber. You’re wrong. You are wrong. Your body is not worth much while you are alive, because it only exists as a compartment for the human soul. Nothing can remove that soul from that body except the Lord or one of his angels, and when that is done, the body is automatically sanctified. It has received the holy touch of Mars. I have a pamphlet inside if you will wait a minute—”

  “No, don’t bother, Brander. I know about your religion. Remember that book you lent me? I read it. Really. I don’t think the arguments are particularly scientific. You know, astronomers know quite a bit about Mars today, and we can say with quite a lot of certainty that there is no life such as we know it on earth—”

  “But that is just the point, Mr. Clobber—of course the life on Mars is not like life on earth. It is a spiritual life, a life of the soul—”

  Heston broke in suddenly: “You’re both right—and both wrong. I know.”

  Clobber said: “What do you mean you know? What are you getting at?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time,’’ said Heston. “Here’s the station wagon, and I’m in a hurry. Remind me, won’t you?” Joubert said: “And so, when you reminded him, he told you about Gha?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you believe in him yourself?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  Joubert rose. “Well, I do. There are no men from Mars, and nothing here except a cleverly planned murder. And God help you if you did it, Clobber—because I’m going to smash your alibi.”

  “You can’t smash the truth,” said Clobber. “In any case, why should I be the one under suspicion?”

  “One of the reasons,” said Joubert, “is that you wear gloves.”

  Clobber grinned for the first time. “Then you’ll have to widen your suspect list. We all wear them up here. Dimble has a pair. Ben, too. And, yes, Mrs. Orvin generally carries kid gloves.”

  “All right,” said Joubert, savagely. “That’s enough for now. Tell Ben we want to see him.”

  Ben came, gave his evidence, and went.

  “If I could prove that he and Clobber were collaborating.” Joubert started, but Rolf stopped him with a shake of his head.

  “No, Dirk. There is nothing between them. I could see that. You could see it, too.

  Johnson asked, suddenly: “What price the Martian now?”

  “All that talk,” said Joubert, “is just a red herring. I’ll admit I don’t see how the murder could have been done, but it was—and not by a Martian. Someone has worked out a careful scheme. What one mind has thought of before, we can think of again.”

  “Another trouble,” said Johnson, “is to work out whose mind did the thinking. You pays your penny and you takes your choice. On the surface of things, nobody could possibly have done it. We have searched the car pretty thoroughly, and there’s no trace of any sort of apparatus that might explain the stabbing of a man in mid-air. The knife couldn’t have been thrown, and the only way it could have been shot out of a weapon is from the sky—the wound came from above, remember—and a plane or balloon would certainly have been noticed. There’s just no explanation—except the Martian.”

  Rolf le Roux took his pipe from his mouth.

  “Seriously,” he said, “there’s more about this Gha than meets the eye.”

  Joubert snarled: “Now, Oom, don’t tell me you believe—?” Rolf’s eyes twinkled. He asked: “What other explanation can you offer?”

  “None. Not now, anyway. But even at this stage there are certain facts that stand out. First, this is a carefully premeditated crime. Second, it was done before the car left the summit—”

  “No, Dirk. The most important facts in this case lie in what Heston told Clobber—that Gha had warned him he was to be killed—the significance of his last night on the mountain—his 31st birthday—”

  “What are you getting at, Oom?”

  “I think I know how and why he was killed, Dirk. It is only a theory now, and I do not like to talk until I have proof. But you can help me get that proof . . .”

  The word went round. A reconstruction of the crime. Everyone must do exactly as he did when Heston was killed. Whispers.

  “Who’s going to take Heston’s place?”

  “The elderly chap with the beard; Le Roux, I think his name is. The one they call Oom Rolf.”

  “Do you think they’ll find out anything? Do you think—”

  “We’ll know soon enough, anyway.”

  On the lower station Joubert pressed the button which rang the signal for the reconstruction to start. Dimble, Mrs. Orvin and Skager went towards the bottom car. Sergeant Botha went, too.

  Rolf Le Roux came through the door of the upper landing platform and looked at Ben sweeping out the empty car.

  He said: “Baas Heston spoke to you, and you stopped sweeping?”

  “Yes. And then I came out of the car like this.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we talked.”

  “Where did Baas Heston stand?”

  “He got into the car, and stood near the door. Yes, just about there.” He paused. “Do you think you will find out who killed him?”

  “It is possible.”

  “I hope not, Baas. This Heston was a bad man.”

  “All the same, it was not right that he should be killed. The murderer must be punished.”

  Two sharp bells rang in the driver’s cabin. The car began to move. Ben went through the door up the stairs and stood in the cabin with Clobber and Johnson. They saw Rolf lean over and wave with an exaggerated gesture.

  Clobber reached to lift a pair of binoculars, but Johnson gripped his arm. “Wait. Did you pick them up at this stage the first time?”

  “No. I only used them after the emergency brake was applied.”

  “Then leave them alone now.”

  They watched the two cars crawling slowly across space towards each other.

  In the ascending car Dimble peered approvingly at the one which was descending. “That’s right,” he said to Botha. “He’s leaning over the door exactly as Heston—Good God!”

  He pulled the emergency brake. Mrs. Orvin sobbed and then screamed.

  The telephone rang. Botha clapped the instrument to his ear.

  “Everything okay?” asked Johnson from above.

  “No,” said Botha, “no. Something’s happened to Rolf. There’s a knife sticking out of his back. It looks like the same knife . . .”

  From the lower station Joubert cut in excitedly. “What are you saying, Botha? It’s impossible.”

  “It’s true, Inspector. I can see it quite cle
arly from here. And he’s not moving . . .”

  “What now?” asked Johnson.

  “Get him down here,” said Joubert. “Quick. He may still be alive.”

  The cars moved again.

  In the driver’s cabin Johnson looked through the powerful binoculars, watched the car with the sagging figure go down, down, losing sight of it only as it entered the lower station.

  Joubert, with Brander, stood at the end of the room watching the approaching car. He felt suddenly lost and bewildered and angry. “Oom Rolf,” he muttered.

  Brander’s eyes were somber with awe. “The Lord has given,” he said, “and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  He stepped forward ahead of Joubert as the car bumped to a stop, walking with both hands raised, lips intoning a prayer. “You have sanctified this mortal with death, O Lord; you have taken his soul for your own to the golden fields of Mars . . .”

  The head of the corpse with the knife in its back suddenly twisted, smiled, said gloatingly: “April Fool!”

  Brander shivered into shocking action. With his bandaged left hand he gripped the hilt of the knife that had been held between Rolfs left arm and his body, and raised it high in a convulsive gesture. Rolf twisted away, but his movement was unnecessary. Joubert had acted, too.

  Brander struggled, but only for a second. Then he stood meekly, peering in myopic surprise at the handcuffs clicking round his wrists.

  “And that is how Heston was killed,” said Rolf. “He died because last night on the mountain he remembered that today was April 1—All Fools Day—and because his was that type of mind, he thought of a joke, and he played it to the bitter end. A joke on Clobber, on the people in the ascending car, on Brander. And Brander, because he is the man he is, could not tolerate such blasphemy, and made the joke come true.”

  “It was the will of the Lord,” said Brander.

  “And that is also why there were no fingerprints on the knife. Brander is left-handed—he reached for the hot iron with that hand, remember—and because he reached for the hot iron with that hand it was burnt, and so today it is bandaged. And because it was bandaged he could leave no fingerprints. The way Heston was stooping, too, explains the angle of the wound.”

  Joubert said, “So it was not premeditated after all.” And then to Brander: “And why did you not tell the truth?” Brander looked up in surprise. “But I did—I told you it was the Angel. Don’t you see? My arm may have struck the blow, but it was not me who killed Heston. The Angel of Death did that. The Mighty Messenger from Mars entered my body the better to punish the evil one who scoffed at holy death . . .” And he said suddenly: “On your knees, mortals! This spot is sanctified. The Messenger has been here—flashing through chaos from golden Mars to green earth, from green earth to golden Mars. And from this place he has taken a Soul.”