Below Suspicion

by John Dickson Carr

  "Just take it easy, Lucia!" urged Butler, who found the scene being recreated so pictorially that he seemed to see it on the night of the murder. He saw Kitty using the carpet-sweeper, and the water-bottle under the ivory crucifix, and all of them waiting for Dick Renshaw's return.

  "You told Kitty, earlier in the evening, to 'do' the room? But she didn't actually start until past eleven o'clock?"

  "That's right. Because. . . ."

  "Because she knew that either you, or the tireless Miss Cannon, would be there to watch every move she made?"

  "Well—I suppose so. Agnes always is under your feet, somehow."

  "Now tell me, Lucia." Butler's voice grew as stealthy as a tiger. "In * any of the other bedrooms in your house, are there water-bottles and glasses just like the one in your husband's bedroom?"

  (Butler had noted, out of the corner of his eye, that Dr. Fell was

  listening with interest and ferocious approval. Now the good doctor listened intently for Lucia's reply.)

  "Yes! In all the rooms! Dick," and the hatred in Lucia's face was almost frightening. "Dick thought his habit was good for people."

  "Now think about Kitty. In the interval before she cleaned the room, Kitty would have plenty of time to dissolve a dose of antimony into another water-bottle? And conceal this second bottle in the knitting-bag?"

  Again a pause.

  Lucia seemed shaken as though by physical hands. Her mouth was loose. Dim comprehension began to glimmer in the blue eyes.

  "Pat, what on earth are you—?"

  "Don't try to reason. Let me do that. Just shut your eyes and remember!"

  "A-aU right. I'll try."

  "Kitty went in to clean the room. She picked up the water-bottle from the bedside table. She walked into the bathroom, emptied the bottle into the wash-basin, rinsed the bottle, and filled it again. Was she carrying the knitting-bag at this time?"

  "Yes!"

  "You—and Miss Cannon too, I think—were watching her from the middle of the bedroom? Good! I noticed," Butler closed his own eyes, visualising, "I noticed that the wash-basin in that bathroom is just opposite the door to the bedroom?"

  "Just opposite, Pat. You can—"

  "So you could see Kitty's back as she stood at the wash-basin?"

  "Yes, of course!"

  "Where was Kitty carrying the knitting-bag then? Was she carrying it at one side, or in front of her?"

  "In—in front of her, I think. Yes! Like an apron."

  "So that you couldn't actually see what she was doing?"

  "Not exactly, no."

  "You heard, in fact, the very obvious sound of her pouring out, rinsing, and filling the old bottle. And that's all you can testify?"

  "Yes."

  The black candles burned steadily, without a breath of air. Butler straightened up. He did not question; he stated.

  "What she did, we now see, was very simple. She slipped the old bottle, full of clean water, into her knitting-bag. From this knitting-bag

  she took out the new bottle aheady hidden there: the poisoned bottle. This second bottle she carried back to the bedside table, put it down, and inverted the tumbler over it to complete the picture."

  Sweat was heating at Butler's temples, but he appeared as cool as a judge as he slowly turned to Dr. Fell.

  "The miracle explained," he said, "What do you think of it?"

  DR. FELL, making no sound on that carpet despite his bulk and his stumping cane, slowly moved round the altar and came down to face Butler. While he stood in front of that vicious tapestry, his solid English presence drained effect from it like the presence of Old King Cole.

  But, as he left it, there now seemed to be a poison in the air. They were again aware of the bloodshot eye in the roof, the dimness of even fourteen candles, the odour of Satanism itself.

  Dr. Fell, as though a little appalled and less red in the face, looked Butler up and down.

  "Sir, you amaze me," he said.

  "Pleasantly, I hope."

  "Yes. And with considerable admiration."

  "I've got the truth, of course?"

  "Well... not exactly. Wait!" urged Dr. Fell, before the other could snap with protest. Dr. Fell squeezed his eyes shut, and ruffled at his temples under the heavy mop of hair.

  "Never have I known a man," he declared, looking at Butler, "who stood so face to face with truth. With the simple but very ugly truth you stand forehead to forehead, eye to eye, nose to nose, pressed together. Archons of Athens! You have reasoned closely and accurately. Move your head one inch from that minor-stare against truth, and you will see it. Not otherwise."

  "Kitty Owen, I tell you, is as guilty—"

  "Ah, yes. Kitty. Put her under severe police-examination, as I shall tell Hadley to do, and you may well break her down. You may not learn the name of the murderer-cum-head-of-witch-cult, though you have a sixty-forty chance in your favour. But you will probably clear Mrs. Ren-shaw of any charge of murder."

  "Pat," Lucia whispered, "I still can't understand any of this. But I do think you're rather wonderful."

  Again, for once in his life, Butler did not tut-tut a compliment while quietly preening himself about it.

  "Look herel" he said. "Did Kitty put poison in that bottle?"

  "No."

  "Then what in hell are we talking about?"

  "Hell," Dr. Fell answered simply.

  "If you know so much about all this," Butler shouted, "why don't you tell me?"

  "I can tell you," retorted Dr. Fell, "and tomorrow moming I will. But it will lead, I fear, to one of my eternal wanderings round Robin Hood's barn. Confound it, sir, we came here to find the records of the witch-cult! We must find them or we can get nowherel We...."

  Here his eye fell on Dr. Arthur Bierce. All three of them had forgotten Bierce. Bierce, his cap pushed to the back of his freckled skull, his sandy eyebrows drawn down, had never left off staring at the tapestry behind the altar.

  "I am sorry," he spoke in a normal voice, swallowing a large Adam's apple, "I've been so little and so dismal a help in this investigation "

  "Little help?" exclaimed Dr. Fell. "My good sir, next to Mr. Butler's reconstruction, you have made the most helpful remark that has been made tonight."

  "Thank you," said the physician, who either did not believe him or did not even hear him. "But I can help with the search. Tear down the hangings and rip up the cushions! Destroy the altar! Look there!"

  His bony finger quivered as he pointed.

  "It's a luxurious prie-dieu," he said. "I don't like a prie-dieu; it smells of Popery—but even Popery should not be defiled. Burn it!"

  "Take it easy, man!" Dr. Fell thundered in vague alarm. "This place must be kept intact for the police. And cushions are no good, or chairs; we want a large mass of papers. Shall we begin?"

  And they plunged into the search.

  It was just on midnight, by Butler's watch, when they began. The black candles, first in a veil so light that it was scarcely perceptible, had already begun to diffuse some scented mist which had an odd effect on the brain if you went close; but they needed those candles for extra light in the thick red gloom of the chapel.

  The walls and floor were of heavy concrete under hangings and car-

  pet, excluding a secret hiding-place. The pillows, after examination, they kicked to a heap which left clear a good deal of floorspace. In a cupboard set into concrete, to the left of the apse, Bierce found priestly vestments of the finest quality: several chasubles, one sewn with occult characters in silver, another embroidered with a pig and a woman in flesh-tint.

  On a shelf there was one of the prized 'missals' of the Black Mass, red characters on vellum. Bierce translated one sentence from the Latin, "We shall be saved through the flesh," then he flung the missal across the room.

  "Easy!" said Dr. Fell out of a thin-scented haze.

  But, on another shelf where it could be moved to the altar for worship, there was a heavy statuette of Satan in the form of a black goa
t. Bierce tried to smash it by flinging it down on the floor. It only rebounded and rolled to lie face upwards, grinning, under the staring eye-light.

  Wilder and wilder grew the scenes in the red gloom. Lucia, she said, was convinced the records must be in some pouch or bag fastened behind one of the hangings. The hangings swayed out and rippled as she hurried behind them, emerging from them with startling effect, and going back again.

  "For my choice," said Butler, "it's one of these confessional boxes."

  "My dear sir," protested Dr. Fell, who was examining the ebony pillars which supported the roof, "you couldn't hide—"

  And evidently you couldn't. Butler stood before one of them, against the middle of the right-hand side-wall. This grotesque parody reminded him, for some reason, of two high magician's cabinets set side by side. Their two doors, in open carving twined with designs of Satanic triumph, opened outwards. On one side sat the leader of the cult, in black goat-mask to the shoulders, head inclined towards the other compartment: where a woman whispered of....

  But the floors were too thin, the carved roofs too narrow, for any concealment.

  There were two dull crashes as Lucia deliberately knocked over metal braziers in comers, as though she hated them for some disservice. Dr. Fell, who had somehow managed to stand on a chair, was studying the heavy carved roof-beams. Dr. Bierce, with a surgical knife—no action now seemed fantastic—carefully ripped up the hard altar-couch to find concealed papers. Half-past twelve. Ten minutes to one....

  "No," Dr. Fell said dully. "It's no good."

  At one o'clock they gathered, four begrimed searchers not quite in their right minds, near the front of the altar.

  Bierce still held the surgical knife, with which he had been trying experiments on cushions and carpet. Lucia had lost her scarf; her old black gown, as well as her bare arms and shoulders, were smeared with dust. The haze from the flames of the black candles, burning down, drifted out past them through the chapel.

  "The records aren't here," said Dr. Fell in the same heavy voice. "They ought to be, but they aren't. I regret to tell you that I am beaten. They may be hidden away, perhaps at some bank...."

  Lucia whipped round. "Whose shadow was that?" she asked.

  "What shadow?" Dr. Bierce looked up from his surgical knife.

  "Just now! It moved behind one of the pillars there. It—it seemed larger than life."

  It would not be true to say that a wing of panic brushed that group. Yet Satan, even if we consider him as an abstraction, can become oppressive in his presence.

  "There's nobody here." Bierce spoke curtly. But he replaced the surgical knife, and closed his medicine-case with a snap. "Those candles are throwing our own shadows. As for the candles, I want to have them analyzed. There's some kind of accursed magical scent that's putting images in front of my eyes, and ... let's get out!" he cried thickly.

  "I agree," grunted Dr. Fell.

  "And I!" said Lucia, viath her hand at her throat. "Ready to go, Pat?"

  " 'Magical,' " said Butler, staring into vacancy. Then he woke up, all his theatricalism flowering.

  "No, my dear," he smiled. "You people go on up and stand by the outer door of the chapel upstairs. I shall join you in exactly three minutes."

  "Pat, what's wrong? Why do you want to stay down here?"

  "Because," answered Butler, "I know where the records are hidden."

  To use the word "sensation" would be a very mild description of the effect.

  "A while ago," continued Butler, filling his lungs but speaking in the same easy tone, "I proved how your husband was really murdered. When I challenged Dr. Fell, he replied with mumbo-jumbo or plain mystification. Very well. But now, with your kind permission, 7 will do the mystification for a change. I promise to put those records in

  your hands in three minutes. Will you go upstairs and wait for me? Or shall we postpone it, like Dr. Fell's explanation, for tomorrow?"

  And he leaned back against the black-and-red curtain of the wall, folding his arms.

  "Look here, dash it all!" protested a genuinely puzzled Dr. Fell. "I only meant that...."

  "Sir, will you go?"

  "We'll go," replied Dr. Bierce, taking a firm hold of Lucia's arm when Lucia began to turn back. "Three minutes, you said?"

  "Three minutes."

  Arms still folded, leaning against the wall beside the apse, Butler watched them move away in the red gloom. Lucia was protesting. Now they were at the little ebony-railed staircase, almost invisible. Now he was alone.

  To be alone here, Butler hoped, wouldn't start his own nerves twitching like a drug addict's. All he had to fear was imagination. When he had first thought of that confessional box as a magician's cabinet on the stage, the idea should not have dropped away in his mind until it was jabbed to wakefulness by Dr. Bierce's term 'magical.'

  The tops of magicians' cabinets, he had heard, were always made to look so shallow that nothing could be hidden in that shallow space. At a casual glance, especially at carving, the eye was deceived.

  Butler, as quick on his feet as a cat, raced over to the parody confessional box he had examined before. He sat inside one compartment, which would have been occupied by the goat-deity. He closed the door of the compartment, with its black design of open scroll-work. Fishing out his pocket-lighter and snapping it into flame, he stood up to examine the roof.

  The roof, on this side at least, was only plywood painted black.

  Butler's heart was beating heavily. He ran the fingers of his right hand round the edges of the plywood. . . .

  The whole thin underside of the roof fell down on hinges. When he saw it fall, showering him with paper-bundles, documents, notebooks, he instinctively shied back and sat down as though under attack.

  "Got it!" he said aloud, hardly realizing that he actually had got it.

  Papers or bundles, of all sizes, thumped or fluttered round him to fall on the floor of the box. They lay there at his feet, no small pile, while he sat in the confessor's seat and looked at them. Presently he raised his head to the door—and remained motionless.

  Through the black Satanic scroll-work, very close, he was looking straight into the face of Gold-teeth.

  Gold-teeth, with even his dental fittings. The upper lip, swollen badly and crossed with half-dried cracks, showed the two gleams below.

  For perhaps two seconds, while both he and Butler remained motionless, every detail of appearance and every detail of thought went through Butler's mind.

  Gold-teeth couldn't have got in here! Oh, yes he could. Lucia's key, to the door of the upper chapel, was in her handbag. That handbag, left behind with her coat at the Love-Mask Club, could quickly have been identified as belonging to the woman who ran away from the club with Patrick Butler. If Gold-teeth knew anything whatever about this red chapel, . . .

  He did.

  Butler, staring through the scroll-work, saw that Gold-teeth held his right hand a little away from his body. It gripped a small bundle of papers, some white and some grey or greenish, loosely fastened wdth a paper-clip.

  Gold-teetli had been here before. Those papers he held were the only deadly or compromising documents in the files of the Murder Club. He had them now; but he wouldn't have them for long. These papers inside the box were rubbish.

  " 'Ullo," said Gold-teeth through the black carvings.

  "Hello," answered Butler—and instantly charged at the door.

  He burst out of that confessional box like a mad bull, the flimsy door whacking back. Gold-teeth, still facing him, was backing away with a footwork which to anyone except Butler would have suggested the boxer.

  Abruptly Butler stifled his rage, steadied his eyesight; he became bland and negligent, with a half-smile. They were both in an open space in front of the altar, with no black pillars or cushions against dark-red carpet. A little way to Butler's right, the black goat-face of Satan lay on the carpet and grinned up at the light of the eye.

  "Hand 'em over," said Butler.
r />   "Wot?"

  "Those letters, or whatever they are."

  Gold-teeth, still in soiled evening clothes except for collar or tie, seemed to have something else on his mind.

  "You 'it me," he stated, and touched his swollen lip. His murderous eyes never moved.

  "That's right. Care to be hit again?"

  'Tou 'it me," said Gold-teeth. "You done it when I wasn't ready. But you done it hke a amateur." The upper hp hfted. "You never done much fighting. Did you, mister?"

  Butler smiled. Gold-teeth was half a head shorter than he; Gold-teeth was lean, stringy, bony. Nobody told his adversary that Bob Fitzsim-mons, despite height, was in actual poundage something less than a middleweight.

  "I said," repeated Gold-teeth, "you never done much fighting. Did you, mister?"

  "I never bothered to learn."

  " 'E never bothered to learn!" crowed Gold-teeth, with that mimicry which could drive a man mad. "Could you lick me?"

  Butler merely looked at him and laughed.

  For the first rime Gold-teeth showed a human expression, a really human expression.

  "Gawd's truth!" he said, with the veins standing out on his forehead.

  He stuffed the bundle of papers swiftly into his pocket. His right hand darted to his left sleeve, and whipped out a closed razor. But he gripped the end of the razor, and flung it far away from him into the gloom; it made hardly a sound when it fell.

  "I ain't got no razor," said Gold-teeth. "I ain't got no moley. I'm a-going ter give you an 'iding—fair and square."

  "You think you can do it?"

  Gold-teeth tapped the papers in his pocket. "Come and get 'em," he said.

  Butler walked slowly towards him. And at the same moment, in the far comer of the room on the wall behind Butler's back, there was a very soft explosion with a gush of blue-yellow flame. A streak of fire rippled up the side of the curtain, it's light flashing out through the dim chapel.

  "That?" jeered Gold-teeth. "That's only some little alarm-clock things, set to go off in lots of places. Lost your nen-e, mister?"

  That was when Butler sprang at him, leading with a right that would have been murderous if it had landed.

  It did not land. Something else was happening.