Death-Watch

by John Dickson Carr

  Hadley put his hands to his forehead.

  “Do you expect me to believe,” he demanded, “that two exact duplicates of the stolen articles happened to be hidden behind that panel by accident?”

  “Not by accident. By deliberate design. I am gradually trying to show my learned friend,” snapped Dr. Fell, bringing his fist down on the mantel-shelf, “that all the coincidences which trip and befog us have not been coincidences at all. Everything led to it. Eleanor’s kleptomaniac tendencies were well known; that was what gave the murderer the idea. He (or she) saw a chance all planned in the Gamridge crime. The loose description of the killer fitted Eleanor; Eleanor was at the store; Eleanor could prove no alibi. But it required a lot of evidence. That was why the person behind this whole damnable design tried to add to it by pinching the Maurer skull-watch out of Boscombe’s box. Boscombe was intended to believe she had stolen it—because this devil knew Boscombe would cover her up. You were intended to believe she had stolen it—because you would not believe any story Boscombe told to account for its disappearance. And both of you tumbled straight into the trap. Now, let’s go on with these ‘real pieces of evidence’ you have against her. I’ve pointed out that the only real piece of evidence, the unique watch that really could damn Eleanor, is missing. Why is it missing? Surely if somebody wanted to put the blame on Eleanor that watch would be the one thing he (or she) would be absolutely certain to ‘plant’ behind the panel. But it isn’t there. And the only tenable hypothesis to account for its absence—whether you still think Eleanor guilty, or whether you believe in my own theory—is that nobody put it there because nobody had it to put there.

  “I asked you in my fifth point,” thundered Dr. Fell, looking at the envelope in his hand, “about that. Melson’s note reads: ‘The department-store murderer did not steal a watch belonging to Carver when the theft must have been easier at home, but took the dangerous risk of stealing it out of a display in a crowded department store.’ Well, why? Surely it’s obvious. The mad impulse did not come over a woman in this house to steal a watch they all must have seen dozens of times before. The mad impulse came to somebody else. The mad impulse came, in fact, to some woman who does not live in this house; some woman of whom we have probably never heard; some woman we may probably never hear of in her hidden namelessness among eight million people! That is the department-store killer. The devil in this house merely used her crime; used it as a lead to spin up the insufficient evidence against Eleanor to bring the police on Eleanor’s track, and then murdered the police officer who had been summoned amid faked evidence that should send Eleanor to the scaffold for both crimes!”

  Hadley was so excited that he hurled his briefcase on the floor and faced Dr. Fell wildly.

  “I don’t believe it!” he shouted. “This is some of your damned rhetoric. It’s sheer theory, and rotten theory at that. You can’t prove it! You can’t accuse somebody you can’t even prove exists! You—”

  “Have I got you on the run?” asked Dr. Fell, grimly. “At least I think you’re worried. Why don’t you look at that bracelet and that skull-watch and see if there’s a single fingerprint on the whole polished surface of either? You say Eleanor thought that panel was safe: then there’ll be dozens of her prints on both, if that’s true. But it’s not. There won’t be any at all—that was one thing the evidence-faker couldn’t manage. Man, do you understand now why you had only to seek for one clue to find six? Do you understand why you had only to open your mouth to hazard a theory, and somebody walked in that door and confirmed it? Then you know why this case frightened me and why I can believe in evil spirits. There’s a real evil spirit here, who hates that girl with a patient, deadly, brilliant guile, hates her as a galley-slave hated the whip-master and failure hates success. The whole design was to weave a rope for her neck and crack that neck, as somebody would like to do between two hands … Now shall I go on, or are you afraid to hear my case?”

  “You still can’t prove—” began Hadley, but not loudly. He picked up his briefcase and his voice was growing thoughtful.

  “Go on,” said Melson, whose dogged hand kept on making notes.

  Dr. Fell, wheezing heavily, stood looking from one to the other of them, his face more red and his thumb hooked in the armhole of his vast waistcoat. Beyond him the grey light through the windows showed the dreariness of sky and back yard. He went on more quietly:

  “So, in taking those five points backwards, I come to the fourth. That is the recurring, vexing question of why both clock-hands were stolen and why they were not stolen when the clock was exposed. I will tell you why it was done. It was done because all evidence had to point to Eleanor as the murderer of Ames. Merely to steal one clock-hand did not point to anybody. But the hour-hand, the superfluous hand which could not be used as a weapon and whose removal was a pure waste of time—it had to be found in Eleanor’s possession, as clear evidence of the thief. This also, but to a greater extent, was the reason for waiting until Wednesday night to steal the hands. It seems to have occurred to nobody here that the thief waited until Wednesday night because not until then had the clock been painted with gilt.

  “Hasn’t my learned friend realized the utter simplicity of that? The whole case is a track of gilt paint! It was meant to be. Where would have been your evidence against Eleanor as Ames’s murderer if it had not been for those gold smears ostentatiously plastered over a pair of her gloves, one of them hidden behind the panel, and the other thrown down not too ostentatiously close to the dead man? And, if you care for further confirmation, consider that matter of the key. The real murderer had to steal that key from her. That little key, gentlemen, was the most important thing in the whole plan, because the plan would have been impossible without it. Eleanor was required to turn in early, and would have no alibi for any night you might choose—unless she went up to see her lover on the roof. That must be made impossible. She must be trapped without being able to get through that door. And, when the murderer had no further use for the key, it was returned to the finger of the glove to score another crushing point against her.”

  Hadley interposed with some haste:

  “Admitting all this for a second … which I don’t, mind; but admitting it as a hypothesis … then what about the gloves? Hang it! The more I think of it the more I realize how much depends on those gloves! You seem to have proved that neither one of ’em was used—”

  “H’mf, yes. That bothers you, don’t it, hey?” The doctor chuckled, and then became very grave. “But the fact is I’m not telling you what did happen. I’m only telling you what didn’t. No, no. It’s not yet time for me to indicate to you who the real murderer is.”

  Hadley’s jaw came out. “You think not, eh? And yet you’re trying to convince me? By God! This isn’t the time for your own brand of parlour mystification! I still think I’m right—”

  “No, not altogether. At least I don’t think so,” replied Dr. Fell, studying him with sombre attention. “I’ve shaken you, but you’re in just that uncertain state when I don’t dare set out my whole case.” He saw the chief inspector opening and shutting nervous hands, and a real ring and thunder of earnestness came into his voice. “Man, this isn’t parlour mystification! I give you my word I’m much too worried for my usual observe-gentlemen-there’s-nothing-up-my-sleeve tactics. I don’t dare tell you, or I would. You’re in such a state that you’d rush out and try to verify it. We’re facing the wiliest devil under an inoffensive mask that I ever hope to be pitted against. One word dropped—then the slippery enemy speaks in return, and in your present state you’ll sweep away everything I’ve worked to build up, and go roaring after Eleanor again.

  “Listen, Hadley.” He swabbed fiercely at his forehead. “To follow it up, to drive the battering-ram into that brave skull of yours, continue on with my point number three, which reads:

  “The whole accusation and case against one of these women for murdering Evan Manders comes from an unidentified person, who now under circumstan
ces of the strongest pressure refuses to communicate with us.’

  “Precisely. That’s the core and secret of the whole scheme. Ponder those words deeply while I analyse ’em. What explanation can anybody give of this? The prosecution says, ‘Because that accuser was Mrs. Steffins. While hating Eleanor and wishing to reveal her as a murderess, she nevertheless refused to testify openly because she feared old Carver’s wrath at an accusation of old Carver’s favourite.’ I submit that nobody in his five wits could believe this for a moment—even those who still believed Eleanor guilty. What does Ames’s own report say? It says, ‘Informant was quite willing to testify in the witness-box to the above statements.’

  “In the witness-box, you perceive. It’s like saying that you have a secret which you are afraid to whisper in your own home, but on the other hand you have no objection to hearing it broadcast over the wireless. If there were things of which she feared the effect on Carver when uttered in private, they would scarcely be rendered more soothing when she spoke them in open court.

  “Hadley, I said there were several things that sounded very fishy about Ames’s report. That’s one of them. Say, if you like, that Mrs. Steffins was the accuser—but in that case you must say she was also the murderer. Whoever told Ames that whole tissue of lies did it for only one purpose—to lure Ames to his death in that house. That person, as Ames says, testified to having seen in the accused’s possession … Eleanor Carver’s possession, if Ames hadn’t been so secretive, and it would have built another plank in the girl’s scaffold … to having seen ‘the watch in Gamridge’s display loaned by J. Carver.’ Nothing else would have interested Ames. Well, where is that watch? It’s not here, along with the rest of the carefully prepared evidence. It never was here. It was bait for Ames, intended as a literal death-watch for him as the Maurer skull was to be a death-watch for Eleanor. What else did the accuser see? Eleanor burning a pair of blood-stained kid gloves on the evening of the Gamridge murder. Hadley, did you ever try burning kid gloves? The next time you make a bonfire in your back garden, have a shot at it; but it would be an extraordinary woman who carried those damning trophies all the way back from Oxford Street and spent the next twelve hours over a roaring blaze patiently reducing tanned leather to ashes … Read Ames’s report again. Study the inconsistencies, the too-canny behaviour of the accuser, the insistence on secrecy, the contradiction in the accuser’s being willing to tell all this but jibbing at the small point (apparently) of openly introducing Ames into the house. And you will see that there can be only one explanation.

  “So we come at as last to the beginning. My second point indicates that the murderer of Ames was not the same as the Gamridge killer, for the reasons I have given. My first point indicates the crux of the case and the whole conclusion to which we were intended to be led: that, if we accepted all other alibis, the weight of suspicion must rest on either Lucia Handreth or Eleanor Carver. Even this could be reduced, and was almost instantly reduced, to a certainty when the Handreth woman produced an alibi too strong to be even attacked. Then I was sure. Eleanor and Eleanor alone was to be the victim of one of the most ingenious and devilish murder-plots within my memory.

  “Me lord and gentlemen!” He straightened up, and brought his hand down flatly on the mantel-shelf. “In conclusion, there are several things which the defence cheerfully acknowledges. Nobody has been kind enough to fake evidence for us as has been done for my learned friend. Therefore we are to rely only on truth, and, having neither magical properties nor the cooperation of the police, we cannot produce the real Gamridge killer. We can set forth no ‘hard facts’ which turn to thistledown under scrutiny. We can tell no rambling tale of police officers who ring bells on their way out of a house, and, within two minutes of being caught rifling somebody’s room, blithely walk in again for the convenience of a killer waiting in the dark. We do not picture a killer so sartorially fastidious as to carry about two gloves when she needs only one, and then inexplicably fails to use either. It is even difficult for us to imagine a police officer, on the alert for danger, walking up twenty-three steps without ever a suspicion of somebody treading on his heels. But let that pass. What we have wished to do is to throw a reasonable doubt on the prosecution’s case, the one little grain of uncertainty which must force you to bring in a verdict of ‘not guilty’; and I submit, gentlemen, that we have done so.”

  Both Hadley and Melson were so much on edge that they jumped and whirled round when the door banged open without a knock. Sergeant Preston said sharply: “I don’t want to make a mistake this time, sir. But I think she’s coming up the front steps now. She’s trying to keep off the reporters, and there’s a young fellow with her who’s got his head bandaged. Shall I—?”

  Swift dull-coloured clouds made more shadowy the grey room, and wind had begun to mutter in the chimney. Hadley stood facing Dr. Fell. Both were erect, and looked each other in the eye while Melson heard his watch ticking loudly. Every nerve-force in the room was locked and fighting between them.

  “Well?” said Dr. Fell. He moved his elbow backwards on the mantel, and one of the framed photos toppled over with a tinny crash.

  Hadley moved forward swiftly. He rolled up the articles on the bed in the old jumper, thrust it all into the opening, and shut the panel.

  “All right,” he said, in a heavy voice. “All right. No good alarming her if she didn’t do it …”

  Then his voice rose. “Where the hell is Betts? Don’t let her talk to the press! Why isn’t Betts out there taking care of—?”

  Through an almost sickening sense of relief Melson heard the sergeant say: “He’s been on the telephone for ten minutes, sir. I don’t know what it is … Ah!”

  There was a tramp of hurried footsteps. Betts, still stolid, but with his hands shaking a little, pushed Preston to one side and closed the door.

  “Sir—” he began, rather huskily. “What is it? Speak out, can’t you?”

  “Call from the Yard, sir. It’s rather important. The Assistant Commissioner … I don’t think we can get that warrant even if we want it. They’ve found the woman who did the Gamridge job.”

  Hadley did not speak, but his fingers tightened on his briefcase. “Yes, sir. It’s—it’s somebody we know. She tried a raid on Harris’ Stores this morning, and they nabbed her. Marble Arch Division says there’s no doubt about it. When they took her home, they found about half the jewellery and the rest of the stuff stolen in all the raids for some time. When they found that watch—the one Mr. Carver owns—she broke down and tried to throw herself out of the window. The finger-print comparison showed who she was. They nabbed one of her accomplices, too, but the other…”

  “Who is it?”

  “Well, sir, nowadays she goes under the name of Helen Gray. It’s a systematic business; she works the big stores and gets rid of the stuff through a fence. She always has two men accomplices to cover her—”

  He stopped, probably at the curious expressions on the faces before him. Again it was very quiet. There was a scrape and creak of boards as Hadley stepped back. Breathing heavily, he looked round at Dr. Fell. And across Dr. Fell’s face spread a Jovian serenity which slowly broadened into a vast sleepy smile. He hitched his cloak across his shoulders. Clearing his throat, he lumbered out from the fireplace, turned, and swept the Krazy Kat a great bow.

  “Me lord,” said Dr. Fell in a ringing voice, “the defence rests.”

  19

  Sequel in a Tavern

  IN THE BAR OF THE “DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH” TAVERN, which is in the curve of the little backwater called Portsmouth Street, there is still talk of a lunch given in the smoky, low-raftered back dining-room one afternoon early in September. The lunch was given by a certain enormously fat gentleman to four guests. It lasted from half-past one until a quarter-past four. It was noted not merely for its size— although the stout gentleman himself consumed a steak and kidney pie nearly as big as a washbowl … but also for its hilarious noise. The stout gentleman stuck his he
ad into the bar, removed a shovel-hat, and announced that all the drinks for the habitués there assembled were on him. He made a speech to the company, which contained incomprehensible references to having his enemy by the hip, or some such nonsense; but it was roundly applauded until a companion of his, tall chap with a military cut, came hurrying in and hauled him away, amid protests from the company.

  That lunch was always a pleasant memory to Melson. But what he best remembered was a little scene that preceded it, while Eleanor and Donald Hastings were studying the menu in the dining-room, and the other three had adjourned to the private bar to moisten their sandy throats with a quick one before the beer-drinking. Dr. Fell looked at Hadley, and Hadley looked at Dr. Fell. But neither spoke until the doctor had emitted an expiring and satisfied “Haaa!” as he put down his glass.

  “And the beauty of the circumstance,” said he, bringing down his first on the bar in admiration, “is the way both of us used the testimony of Gray and her two accomplices—false testimony, to divert suspicion from Gray’s own crime. You used lies to condemn Eleanor, and I used the same lies to defend her. Of course we believed Gray. Why not? There were three apparently unrelated people, disinterested onlookers, who all told the same tale. Gray didn’t run. She simply dropped the knife, cried out, pointed to a phantom, told an expert lie … and was backed up. Why she should have lost her head and stabbed Manders—”

  Hadley stared at his glass and swirled round its contents. “Well, it meant certain prison if they took her up on suspicion and compared finger-prints with the files. All the same, it was a fool trick. She’ll hang, for a certainty, and maybe the others with her.” He scowled. “What interests me is that it’s a new trick in super-shoplifting. If anybody grew suspicious, up stepped a fashionably dressed young man. ‘You thought you saw this lady—? Nonsense! I was watching her myself, and—’ Snufly-looking respectable man on the other side also shakes his head and timidly agrees. Gray thanks them and departs in a huff before authority can be summoned. Not bad! Costume jewellery at twenty quid a time … they must have cleaned up a couple of thousand in a fortnight. The shop-walker’d probably spotted her before, and wasn’t going to have any nonsense. If she hadn’t lost her head …” He set down the glass with a thump. “Oh, yes. We believed her. But now that I come to think of it …”