Death-Watch

by John Dickson Carr

  “—din’ for the last round up …” Then Hadley spoke incisively. “That woman’s out of it, Fell. Aside from that artist fellow, there seemed to be a whole crowd there having rather a noisy breakfast. They all tried to talk, and they all said the same thing. So—”

  “Come upstairs,” said Dr. Fell. “Don’t argue; come upstairs.

  There’s one last thing, and we must find it out.”

  He stumped ahead, making little noise on the muffling carpet, and they followed him. Hadley, seeming to remember the handkerchief he had been holding in his hand for some time, began to speak; but Dr. Fell silenced him with a fierce gesture. The double doors of Boscombe’s room were slightly open. After a perfunctory knock he opened them. The remnants of a breakfast were on the table, and the curtains drawn wide. Boscombe, fastidiously dressed, looking sallow and withered against the daylight, was pouring himself a whisky and soda at the sideboard. He swung round, his hand on the syphon.

  “Good morning,” said Dr. Fell. “We’ve been talking to Carver— an exceedingly interesting conversation. He’s been telling us all about watches, and we’re rather interested in that skull-watch you bought. Would you mind letting us see it?”

  Boscombe’s eyes darted to the brass box. He hesitated, and suddenly looked even more sallow and withered, as though he could not get his breath, and nevertheless fought for something.

  “Yes,” he said, “I would mind. Get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t choose to show it to you,” the man returned with an effort. His voice rose harshly. “It happens to belong to me, and nobody is going to see it unless I say so. If you imagine that merely because you have police powers you can do as you bloody well like, then you’ll find you’re mistaken.”

  Dr. Fell took a tentative step forward. Boscombe yanked open the drawer of the sideboard and slid his hand inside. He braced himself backwards.

  “I warn you what you’re doing is robbery. If you so much as touch that box, I’ll—”

  “Shoot?”

  “Yes, damn you!”

  Something in his voice cried out in a sheer pale fury of humiliation that his bluff had been called once, but he did not mean to have it called again. Hadley muttered an oath and jumped forward. And then Melson realized that Dr. Fell was chuckling.

  “Boscombe,” said the doctor, quietly, “if anybody had told me last night that at some future time I should rather like you, I’d have called him a liar … I am changing my mind a little. At least you have guts enough and affection enough in that little soul of yours to protect somebody, even if you happen to be wrong about who—”

  “Look here, what the devil is all this about?” demanded Hadley. “The Maurer skull-watch has been stolen,” said Dr. Fell. “But not, I suspect, by the person Boscombe is afraid stole it. You’ll be interested, Hadley. That watch happens to be worth three thousand pounds. And it’s gone.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Don’t be a fool, man,” said Dr. Fell, sharply. “You’ll be questioned about it at the inquest, and if you can’t produce it …”

  Boscombe turned back to the sideboard and reached for the soda-syphon again. “I shall be under no necessity to produce it. If I happened to have loaned it to a friend of mine before this affair occurred, that is my own concern and nobody else’s.” The hiss of the soda-syphon rose loudly. He turned to face them.

  “In fact,” observed Dr. Fell, blankly, “it shakes you up when somebody stalks boldly into your room and accuses you of a decent act. It must upset your pride in yourself. Come out of it, man! The world isn’t such a miserably rotten place that you’ve always got to keep kicking it because you’re afraid it may kick you. As for—”

  A voice in the doorway behind said in a quick, shaky, confidential tone,

  “I say, old boy …”

  Then it gulped. They looked round, to see a stoutish young man peering forward into the room. With one hand he clutched round his throat the collar of a rumpled silk dressing-gown and held hard to the door-post with the other. His thin blond hair was ruffled; his face, which must ordinarily have been fresh-coloured, was pale and hazy, with gummy eyes which held a rather horrorstruck look. Although he was not wavering, his expression conveyed that if he let go the door-post he would rise and hover in the air. His voice was quick, slurred, and jerky, even now when it had taken on a hoarsely confidential air.

  “I say, old boy,” he repeated, clearing his throat, “could you give me a spot, by any chance? Rotten luck. I—I seem to have smashed the last bottle or lost it or something. Appreciate it frightfully …”

  He appeared chilled. Boscombe looked at him, then took up the bottle, spilled more whisky into the drink he was carrying, and held it out. The newcomer, who Melson supposed could be nobody else than Mr. Christopher Paull, let go the door-post and his dressing-gown, and hurried forward with that same vaguely horrified look, as though he could not believe in the existence of any state of nerves so hideous as the one he felt. Mr. Paull was barefoot and his pyjama parts did not match. Mr. Paull seemed full of jangled piano-wires. After accepting the glass from Boscombe, he held it blankly for several seconds; then said, “Well, cheerio,” faintly, and drank, and shivered.

  “Hhhh-ooo!” said Mr. Paull. His smile was spectral. “I say, old boy. Guests. Most frightfully sorry you have guests. Er—” He wiped his toothbrush moustache with the back of his hand nervously. “You know how it is. Regimental dinner or something. ‘Boys of the bulldog breed,’ and all that. Or was it? Can’t imagine how it happened, or getting home. ‘Boys of the bulldog breed, Hooray’— somebody sang that, I know. I say, old boy; frightfully sorry, you know.” He drank again. The voice of eager contrition was immersed in gurgles. “Haaa. That’s better.”

  “Then you don’t know,” Boscombe said, sharply, “what happened last night?”

  “Good God! What did I do?” said Paull, and suddenly took the glass from his mouth.

  “You didn’t,” interposed Hadley, “you didn’t by any chance commit murder, did you?”

  Paull backed away. The glass wabbled in his hand and he had to put it down on the sideboard. For a moment he stared incredulously; then fear came into his sticky eyes. His voice grew querulously uncertain.

  “I say. I say, this is no time to pull a fellow’s leg.” He looked at Boscombe. “I say, old boy, who are these fellers? Tick ’em off. Tick ’em off good and proper. Dammit, putting the wind up a man feels like I do; damned bad form, if you ask me. Who are these fellers? Commit murder? My God! What rot!”

  He reached for his glass again, and his hand nearly missed it. “I happen to be from the C. I. D.—from Scotland Yard,” said

  Hadley, raising his voice as though he were speaking to a deaf person. “And I suppose you are Mr. Christopher Paull. A police officer was murdered here last night while he was coming up those stairs. At the head of the stairs, as a matter of fact …”

  “Rot! You’re pulling—”

  “I am not. He was stabbed to death not very far from your own door. We have evidence to the fact that you arrived here last night at about seven-thirty, and must have been in your room at the time. I want to know whether you know anything about it.”

  Paull looked at Boscombe, who nodded. He became very quiet, whether from sheer shock and fright Melson could not tell; but for a time he could not speak. Several repetitions of the statement were necessary. He went over to a chair and sat down, putting his glass on the table beside him.

  “Well, Mr. Paull?”

  “I don’t know! My God! You don’t think I did it, do you?”

  “No. We only want to know whether you heard or saw anything, or whether you were in a condition to hear or see anything.”

  Paull seemed a little reassured, and his breathing grew more quiet. Pressing his hands over his eyes, he rocked back and forth.

  “Can’t think, confound it! Can’t get a blasted thing straight in my head. Everything in such a muddle; damned bad form spring
a thing like this on me … Police officer gettin’ killed, what rot … Stop a bit!”

  He looked up blearily.

  “There was something … can’t quite get it straight. Some time. When? Let me see. No, I dreamed it. Often think you get up in the dark and you don’t. What rot. I thought—”

  As though to drive away a phantom of recollection, his hand stole to the pocket of the dressing-gown and fumbled there. It found something, for his expression changed. Out of his pocket, dazedly, he drew a woman’s black kid glove, turned partly inside out. As he turned it over a small key fell from one of the glove-fingers and gleamed on the floor; and the palm of the glove was dully streaked with gilt paint.

  15

  The Flying Glove

  MOMENTARILY HADLEY STOOD FROZEN. Then he bent over and took the glove out of Christopher Paull’s limp hand. Carrying it to one window, he examined the palm against dull grey light. Beyond him the branches of the great maple, as yet scarcely tinged with yellow, almost touched the window, and a draught blew through the broken pane. Hadley touched the gilt stains; then he ran his finger along other stains, evidently not yet quite dry.

  “Blood,” he said.

  The quiet word echoed. It seemed all the more ugly uttered in this big room with its sombre books and the leering Hogarth prints on the walls. Returning without hurry, quietly inexorable, Hadley picked up the little key. When he backed away to get the light, this time it was he who stood up against the tall leather screen painted with flames and saffron crosses. Hadley’s face looked grey, his eyes hard black, his jaw pleased. From his pocket he took the key Carver had given him downstairs, the key to the door on the landing. He fitted it against the other, holding them both up against the light. They were exactly the same. Then he put the keys into different pockets.

  “Now, Mr. Paull,” he said, “you will tell us how you happen to have this glove.”

  “I don’t know, I tell you!” cried the other, with a kind of groan. “Can’t you give a chap a chance to think? Maybe if I have a chance to think I can get the beastly thing straight. Got an idea—can’t think— picked it up somewhere? Did I? Got an idea—talking to some woman. On the stairs. No, that was Aunt Steffins. She put my necktie in my pocket. There were lights on then. Don’t know why I remember that.”

  “Do you know who owns this glove?”

  “Good God, its not mine! Take it away, can’t you? How should I know?” He regarded it doubtfully, as a man might get closer to a snake he is assured is harmless. “Woman’s glove. Might be anybody’s … I say, old boy, let me have another, will you? I’m quite sober. I feel like hell, but I’m quite sober. Buck me up if I do.”

  “You, Mr. Boscombe?”

  Boscombe’s nostrils twitched; but he remained motionless, his arms folded, against the sideboard. Again he was fighting for something. He barely glanced at the glove.

  “I never saw it before.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Quite sure. I am also sure that you are on the verge of one of the biggest mistakes of your life. Excuse me.” He adjusted the thin pince-nez on his nose and went over softly to take Paull’s glass.

  “You said last night,” Hadley went on, “that before the end of this case we should come to you for advice. You said you had something to tell us. Have you anything to say now?”

  “I have question for question.” He took Paull’s glass, but did not turn round. “What do you make of that glove?”

  “I don’t need to exercise my imagination very far,” the chief inspector returned, “when I find the letters ‘E. C.’ stencilled inside.” Boscombe turned in dry fury. “It would be precisely like your shallow intelligence to think that. Now I will tell you something. Eleanor’s name is not Carver. It happens to be Smith. On things belonging to her—”

  “Got it!” said Paull, suddenly. “Eleanor! Of course!”

  He had sat up straight, trying to pull at his little moustache. The blotchy colours of his face had begun to sink; he looked stout and ineffectual, but for the first time more sure of himself. “Eleanor! In the hallway—”

  “You saw her in the hallway?”

  “Now, now! Don’t joggle me,” Paull urged, with querulous entreaty, as though his memory might be spilled like a pail of water if he moved his head. “Wasn’t it? It’s beginning to come back a bit. Nothing to do with your blasted old police officer, of course. Eleanor. Ho-ho! But since you’re so keen to know … I say, what did happen really? Maybe if you told me that—”

  Hadley curbed his impatience with an effort.

  “Remember what you can remember without any help. We don’t want the evidence distorted to fit what you think might have happened. Well?”

  “Got it, then. Part of it. What mixes me up is your saying I got back here,” Paull muttered with an air of stubbornness, “so early. Hang it all, there was a dinner … or was there? Dunno. Anyhow, I woke up—”

  “Where?”

  “In my room. It was dark, you see, and I didn’t know where I was or how I’d got there, and my head was so muzzy I thought I must still be dreaming. I was sitting in a chair and I was cold, so I felt my shoulder and found I was half undressed, with my shoes off, too. Then I stretched out my hand and hit a lamp. I pulled the chain and found I was in my room right enough, but the light looked funny.

  “Yes, by God! I’ve got it now … Remembered there was something at the back of my mind worrying me. All of a sudden I remembered. I thought: ‘Dash it all, what time is it? I’ve got to get to that dinner.’ But I couldn’t move straight, and the room looked all queer, and I couldn’t find the clock, so I thought: ‘Kit, you’re still drunk as an owl, old boy. Got to get to that dinner.’ Then I wandered round and round the room until I heard a clock striking somewhere. I counted it …”

  He shivered suddenly. Hadley, who had taken out his notebook, prompted, “You remember the time?”

  “Absolutely positive of it, old chap. Midnight. I counted. Remember that, because I got my dressing-gown because it was cold, and sat down on the bed and thought it over. I thought I could still get to that dinner if I had another spot to keep me going. Then—no, there’s another blank. Don’t remember getting up from that bed. Next thing I knew, you see, I was standing over in the closet among my suits and things, and couldn’t keep upright, but I had a flask in my hand. There was a little in it and I drank some, but I thought, ‘Look here, old boy, that’s not enough to keep you going.’ Always feel most comfortable with a full bottle.

  “Then, somehow, I was out in the hall in the dark …”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I can’t—yesbgad! I can!” He was more excited, as slowly the struggling image seemed to come out of a haze. He gestured fiercely to Boscombe, who brought him a very weak drink; but he did not taste it yet. “It was you. Got it. Of course. I thought: ‘Old Boscombe. Always keeps a bottle of the best on his sideboard.’ Then I thought he might be very shirty if I went in and woke him up to ask for a spot. Some fellers are. But he don’t keep his door locked, I thought. Sneak in ever so softly, don’t make any noise—like this and pinch a bottle.”

  “Go on.”

  “So I did. Quiet. Tiptoe. Turned out my light. But that last drink—bad. Everything was all blurry, even in the dark. Head went round, couldn’t find the door. Frightful.” He shuddered again. “Then I opened the door, very quiet, you see, and started out in the dark. I had the flask in my hand; remember that …”

  “And what did you see?” demanded Hadley. His voice was rather hoarse.

  “I don’t know. Something—somebody moving. Thought I heard something, but I’m not absolutely positive … Eleanor, yes.”

  “You’ll swear to that?”

  “I know what it was!” Paull muttered, with an air of inspiration. “It came to me then: Eleanor goin’ to meet that chap on the roof. She does, you know. Wanted to play a joke on ’em, time and again. It made me want to laugh. I thought, I say, wouldn’t she get a turn if I came up behind
and said, ‘Boo!’ Then I felt bad about thinkin’ that. I thought, ‘Poor little devil, what fun does she get?’—she don’t, you know—and I said to myself, ‘You’re a cad, that’s what you are, you cad, to think of interruptin’ her …’”

  In his overwrought nerves and chivalry, even now his eyes were moist. His hand trembled when he drank the rest of the whisky and soda.

  “Look here, Mr. Paull,” said Hadley, with a sort of wild patience, “nobody cares what you thought. Nobody wants to know what you were thinking about. The whole thing is, what did you see? When you have to testify at the inquest—”

  “Inquest?” babbled Paull, jerking up his head. “What rot! What do you mean? I tried to do a good turn—”

  “What you saw, or thought you saw in the dark, was a man being stabbed to death. Can you understand that? A man being stabbed through the throat—like this—who stumbled up those stairs and died between these two doors.” Hadley strode over and flung them open. “You can still see the blood on the floor. Now speak up! Tell us what you heard, how you came by that glove, and how it is that nobody saw you when the doors were opened a few minutes afterwards, or it’s just possible that a coroner’s jury will bring in a verdict of wilful murder against you.”

  “You mean,” said the other, stricken alert and seizing the arms of the chair, “that was what I heard—”

  “Heard?”