Carver was caught fully by enthusiasm now. He rubbed his hands.
“Quite right, sir. Quite right. It was done with wax … But the clepsydrae were certainly known up to the 1700’s. I should explain that, although a primitive form of our modern dial-mechanism was known in the fourteenth century, there was an enormous revival of interest in the clepsydrae towards the middle of the seventeenth—if only as ingenious toys. They were alive, those people! They were as clever as brilliant children at mechanics and chemistry. The Royal Society did its first vague groping towards a steam-engine then; we got the tinder-box, the burglar alarm, mezzotint engraving, Prince Rupert’s drops …
“This water-clock, for example.” He indicated the frame-work with dial and one hand, from the back of which a brass cylinder hung on a chain. “This I know to be authentic. As the flow of water from this cylinder decreased, the decreasing weight of the cylinder moved the hand at exactly the specified speed. Its date is 1682, but it is commonplace if you are looking merely for ingenious mechanisms. Consider, for instance, the clock run by steam, which you may now see at Guildhall—”
“Just a moment, please,” interposed Dr. Fell. “Humph, ha. You seem to doubt the genuineness of most of these things. But let’s consider some of the authentic pieces in your collection. Watches, for example.”
Carver was now at the requisite pitch of enthusiasm. “Watches!” he said. “Ah, now I have something for you, gentlemen! Let me see. I don’t usually do this, at least for strangers; but if you like I’ll open my safe and show you some real treasures.” His eyes moved over to the wall on the right as you entered the room— the same glance, Melson remembered, that he had instinctively given when he entered the room last night. His face clouded a little. “Of course you must remember that the gem of my collection is gone, although it remains under the same roof—”
“The watch you sold to Boscombe?”
“The Maurer skull-watch, yes. I have another of the same design and equally perfect as a piece of craftsmanship, but not one-tenth so valuable because of the inscription and the associations of the first. You must see it, Doctor. Boscombe will readily show it to you.” Dr. Fell scowled. “That’s what I was coming to. I’m exceedingly curious about that watch, because it seems to me that there’s been a devil of a lot of fuss concerning it,” he growled. “For a watch, even an antique watch, it has upset others besides yourself. Is it valuable? Very valuable, I mean?”
Carver’s eyelids flickered. He smiled faintly.
“Its value, Doctor, is far greater than its price. But I can tell you what Boscombe gave for it. It was the same price I paid when I bought it some years ago—three thousand pounds.”
“Three thousand pounds!” said Dr. Fell, violently, and let out a great gust of smoke as he twitched the cigar from his mouth. He coughed, his face grew more red, and presently the upheavals gave way to a chuckle. “Three thousand quid, hey?” he added, more mildly, and his eye twinkled. “O my sacred hat, wait till Hadley hears about this! Heh. Heh-heh-heh.”
“You—er—you see now why Mrs. Steffins sometimes thinks we are in need of money. But surely you know what the watch is?” demanded Carver. “You shall judge for yourself, then.”
He shambled over to one of the long panels in the middle of the right-hand wall. Although Melson could not follow the movement of his hand, he must have touched a spring, for a gap appeared along the edge and he pushed the panel back. Inside was a high gloomy aperture like an alcove, fronted by a door parallel with the wall. On the right-hand side of the alcove they saw the outline of a wall-safe, and on the left-hand side another door.
“One moment while I disconnect the alarm,” Carver was continuing. “As you may know, the skull-watch was an early and curious development in the sixteenth century. Don’t think of watches as we know them now. The skull-watch could never be carried, at least with any convenience: it weighed three-quarters of a pound. There are specimens now in the British Museum. This one is a good deal smaller—”
He twirled the combination knob with his left hand, unostentatiously shading it with his right. After opening an inner door, he drew out a small tray lined with black velvet and carried it to the centre table.
The watch was shaped like a flattish skull with an underhung jaw, so that in its very length there was something sinister. Outside, the daylight had become more murky; bright yellow firelight made a changing play on the skull-face, and its dull silver-gilt hue shone against the black velvet. In its own way it was beautiful, but Melson did not like it. What lent it a touch of the macabre, and even of the terrible, was the maker’s inscription engraved in curling script across the forehead and round the eye-sockets—a man writing his name on a death’s head.
“You like it?” asked Carver, eagerly. “Yes, you may handle it. You see: the jaw opens. Open the jaw—reverse it—so. There is the dial. The works are in the brain, as they should be.” He chuckled. “It is quite small and fairly light, as you see. Isaac Penard made it, nearly a century after Boscombe’s, of course, but the two are similar. Except—”
“Except?” prompted Dr. Fell, who was weighing the watch in his hand.
“Except its history. Yes. Except,” said Carver, his faded eyes shining, “what is written across the forehead in its own symbolic way. Have you a pencil? Thank you. I have an envelope here. I will write it for you. Ha! You gentlemen should have no difficulty in …” The pencil wrote jerkily, and Carver drew a deep breath. He glanced up under the shadow of his big forehead, bending forward to smile harshly in the firelight as he pushed the envelope across the table. The fire crackled and fell a trifle. Melson stared as he deciphered what was written. “Ex dono Frs. R. Fr. ad Mariam Scotorum et Fr. Regina, 1559.” There was a pause.
“‘The gift,’” read Dr. Fell, suddenly putting up a hand to his eyeglasses, “‘the gift of Francis, King of France, to Mary, Queen of France and Scotland, 1559.’ Then—”
“Yes,” said Carver, nodding. “The gift of Francis II, on ascending the throne, to his bride—Mary Queen of Scots.”
14
The Last Alibi
“THAT,” CONTINUED CARVER, POINTING to the watch in Dr. Fell’s hand, “is a good specimen. But it has—if I may use the word—no personality, no suggestion with those who have used it. It is dead metal. But the one upstairs is not. And there is nothing which keeps touches of past people like a watch. It is personal as a mirror. Think of it,” he continued, quietly, and stared at the fire. “In 1559 Mary was seventeen, queen of the earth, and Elizabeth only a raw red-haired vixen just mounting a shaky throne. There was no shadow of scheming, and butchered lovers, and her hair showing white when the wig fell off with her head under the axe. And yet, gentlemen, you can look at that watch upstairs and imagine it all reflected in the face.”
Melson, professor of Constitutional History, did not like this sort of thing. Automatically he uttered his dry cough, as though he were about to deal with it. At any other time it might have roused him to battle. But he was silent. Something in the muffled terror of the house made him unable to take his eyes off the watch gleaming in Dr. Fell’s hand. Besides, there was a curious expression on the doctor’s face. He put down the skull-watch on its velvet tray.
“I presume,” he remarked, “that everybody in the house has seen it—the other one? Eh?”
“Oh yes.”
“Did they all like it?”
Suddenly the shell of reserve was back on Carver. He picked up the tray.
“Very much … But let us go on. You will wish to see some others.” A small crash. “Damn it, I’m a clumsy beggar! Will you pick up that teacup, Doctor, or what’s left of it? I’m always knocking china off tables. Um, yes. Yes. Thank you. My enthusiasm has carried me away, I fear.” Again he was talking against a silence, ducking his big head, wrinkling up his face, and nearly blundering into the doorpost. He went on rapidly: “I suppose you think me unduly cautious for having all these alarms on my collection. It’s true that the safe is a good on
e, and that any burglar who stole something of mine would have difficulty in disposing of it. But—it makes me feel safer. Especially, you see, as this door,” he nodded towards the one on the left of the alcove, “leads to a staircase going up to the roof; and, although it is strongly bolted …”
“To the roof?” said Dr. Fell.
His words were still echoing when the door to the hall was thrown open and Hadley strode in. He looked perturbed, and he was trying to conceal in the palm of his hand something that looked like a handkerchief. He had begun, “Look here, Fell—” when he caught the expression on the doctor’s face and stopped.
“Don’t tell me,” he rasped, after a pause, “that something else has happened. For God’s sake don’t tell me that!”
“Harrumph. Well, I don’t know whether you’d call it happening. But there appears to be another way up to the roof.”
“What’s that?”
Carver was again hard and quiet. “I did not know, Inspector,” he said, “that you were interested. At least, you did not take the trouble to tell me so.” He put away the tray in the safe, closed the door with a decisive clang, and twirled the knob. “This door opens on a staircase. The staircase goes up between the walls past two rooms, now lumber-rooms, on the floor above, and then on to the roof. I believe it was used in the early nineteenth century, when this room was a dining-room, as a private stairway for carrying the master of the house up to bed when he had finished his port-drinking … I repeat, what of it! You see, there are double-bolts on this side, and bolts on the inside of the trap-door. No outsider could get in.”
“No,” said Hadley, “but an insider could get out. To the roof, eh?” He pointed to the door behind Carver, the door in the far side of the alcove parallel to the wall of this room. “And that—yes, I was in there just a moment ago. That’s Mrs. Steffins’s room, isn’t it, on the other side of the door?”
“It is.”
“What about these lumber-rooms on the floor above? Do they open on the staircase, too?”
“They do,” Carver told him, without curiosity.
“I say, Hadley,” interposed Dr. Fell, “exactly what is on your mind?”
“Any member of this household, with access to this stairway either down here or from the rooms above, could get up to the roof. Once on the roof, he could go down again through the other trapdoor—you remember the girl said it once had a bolt on the inside, but the bolt was broken—then on again to the door at the head of the main staircase, open that door by the spring lock from the inside, and …” Hadley made the gesture of one stabbing. “That had occurred to you, hadn’t it? You seem to have become unusually dense all of a sudden.”
“Perhaps I have,” grunted Dr. Fell, pulling at his moustache. “But why all the elaborate hocus-pocus? If you were going to kill jolly old Ames, wouldn’t it have been much simpler to walk up the stairs behind him, do the business, and then go comfortably off to your room?”
Hadley regarded him in some curiosity, as though he sensed a trick or a hidden purpose. But he discarded the idea.
“You know damned well it wouldn’t. First you’ve got the possibility of a fight or an alarm that would rouse the whole house. Second and most important, after the work was done, you could go straight back to your room by the same way without a chance of being seen.”
“Well, now—!” urged Dr. Fell, deprecatingly. “Don’t say that. It would strike me that with Miss Carver and Hastings up there taking the air and the moonlight, you would run much more chance of being seen than in a nice dark comfortable hall. Hey?”
Hadley looked at him in some suspicion. “Look here,” he said, “is this your idea of a subtle leg-pull? You’re using to back up your theory the evidence that proves mine. Namely, that somebody was seen on the roof, and that somebody the probable murderer. Eleanor Carver and Hastings didn’t meet regularly on that roof; the murderer likely didn’t know they met there at all. Come along. We’re going to explore that roof now.”
Dr. Fell had opened his mouth to reply, when Carver, who had been regarding them in ironical amusement, made a great show of drawing the bolts to the staircase door.
“By all means,” he suggested, gesturing, “you must—hum— explore. Yes, yes. I should hate to damp your ardour, Mr. Inspector. All I know is that your theory is wrong.”
“Wrong? Why?”
“Millicent was much exercised last night, you remember? Particularly about Eleanor’s saying that young Hastings could not, um, control his temper, and had broken the bolt on the trap-door. She told me about it. To be frank,” the corners of his mouth were drawing down, “I did not like it myself. It was unnecessary. And dangerous, after all my precautions. So naturally I went up and had a look at it—”
“At the trap-door on the other side of the roof? This is interesting,” said Hadley. “Last night the door at the head of the stairs, leading up to it, was locked. And your ward said that the key had been stolen from her … Did you find the key? Or how did you get through?”
Carver drew a bunch of keys out of his pocket and inspected them. “I have duplicates,” he replied, “to every door in the house. You did not ask me, or I should have told you. Do you want that one? With pleasure. Here you are.”
Detaching one key, he suddenly tossed it. It glittered in the air, as though with a flick of contempt, and Hadley caught it. Carver went on:
“I inspected the trap-door. And Eleanor has somehow made a mistake. The bolt was not smashed. It was in perfect order, and the trap was firmly bolted with three inches of steel. Nobody on the roof could possibly have entered the house through that trap. Consequently, your whole picture of the murderer coming up through one trap and going down through another like a character in a pantomime happens to be rubbish. Hum. Yes. If you doubt me …” He gestured towards the key.
There was a silence, broken by Dr. Fell’s wheezy sigh.
“It’s no good talking about deep waters, Hadley,” he volunteered. “This whole affair is gradually swamping the boat. So—people on the roof are eliminated, eh? Apparently, apparently.” He reflected. “Yes, we shall have to go up and explore the roof, Hadley. But not at this precise moment … I have a fancy to see a watch.”
“Watch?”
“Boscombe’s. I don’t want to examine it,” the doctor insisted, with rather unnecessary emphasis. “I just want to see it and make sure it’s there. It’s like this … H’mf? Ah! Good morning, Miss Handreth.”
He broke off at the knock, and remained beamingly dull as she entered. Lucia Handreth looked alert and even cheerful. Dressed for going out, in a tight fur-collared coat and grey hat, she was briskly pulling on a pair of black gloves and had a briefcase tucked under one arm. No shadow remained of last night’s defiant uncertainty. Her eyes had the strained appearance of one just risen from brief sleep, but she brought health and vigour into the room along with a scent of wood-violets which somehow seemed as brisk and businesslike as the briefcase.
“I’m going out on business, surprisingly enough,” she said, smiling at Hadley. “But I thought I could catch you here before I went. D’you mind coming to the telephone?”
“Right. Tell them to—”
“Oh, it’s not your office. It’s about that alibi of mine,” she explained, composedly. “You know, for the afternoon of Tuesday a week ago. I told you I would look it up in my diary, and I was right. It was the day of the cocktail party. So this morning I rang up the man and his wife who gave the party; I remember now that I got there about half-past four and stayed until seven. Ken is on the wire now, and both he and his wife are willing to give me corroboration. He’s an artist, but he does magazine covers and should be respectable enough for you. There are others, of course … I know you’ll have to check up all this in person, but I wish you’d speak to him now and let me get it off my mind. It’s been worrying me, rather.”
Hadley nodded, with a significant glance at Dr. Fell, and Hadley seemed pleased as he followed her out. Dr. Fell did not look pleas
ed. He lumbered out after them, but he went no farther than the hallway. When Melson closed the door behind him, after a word of thanks to Carver, he found the doctor standing broad-legged in the gloom, his shovel-hat stuck on the back of his head, pounding one cane slowly on the carpet with a sort of repressed fury. Melson had never seen him like this. Melson felt again the sense of unknown terrors gathering and darkening. Dr. Fell started when he spoke to him, and peered round.
“Eh? Oh, I can’t stop it,” he said, with a baffled stamp of the cane. “I see it coming. I’ve seen it gradually drawing near every hour we’ve been in this damned place, and I’m as helpless as a man in a nightmare. The devil never is in a hurry. And how can I stop it? What tangible evidence have I got to lay before twelve good men and true, and say—”
“Look here, what ails you?” demanded Melson, who was beginning now to feel jumpy at each footfall or opened door. “You seem upset because this Handreth girl has proved her innocence with regard to the department-store murder.”
“I am,” nodded Dr. Fell. “But then I am always rather upset when I see an innocent person in danger of being hanged.”
Melson stared at him. “You mean that the Handreth girl really—”
“Steady!” said Dr. Fell, sharply.
Hadley, his jaw muscles tight with satisfaction, bowed Lucia Handreth ahead of him out of the room opposite. She settled her gloves between the finger-joints, gave her hat a final pat, and said:
“You feel better now, Mr. Hadley?”
“I shall have to check up, of course, but—”
She nodded quietly. “Yes. Still, I think it will do. I may go now? Good. You may still search my rooms, if you like. Good morning.” The pointed teeth showed in a broad smile, and her brown eyes gleamed. Then the hollow slam of the front door, the rattle of its chain, went up in echoes that were caught by the heightened murmur of the crowd still milling outside. Through the narrow sidewindows on either side of the door fell faint light. Melson could see the area rails, and eager faces, open-mouthed, swaying back and forth over them like heads on spikes. A camera was raised high, and a flash-bulb glared against the autumnal sky. Then Melson became aware that Hadley, behind him, was humming some fragment under his breath as though he was pleased. Melson was not well acquainted with popular songs, but he could not help knowing that one. Words stood out:
Death-Watch Page 15
