Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful

by John Dickson Carr

  “Ask him,” Jane advised simply. “If you catch him after lunch he’ll tell you all about it. Except the revolver, of course; he’ll never mention that. Only for heaven’s sake don’t let on I was the one who sent you.”

  On a bedside table in an alcove of the big room, the telephone rang.

  “Excuse me,” said Dr. Fell.

  On the mantelpiece there was an ornate marble clock whose little pendulum switched back and forth with steady ticking. Its hands pointed to twenty-five minutes past nine.

  Jane Tennant did not look at it. While Dr. Fell lumbered over to the shrilling phone, she drew a compact out of her handbag and studied the reflection of her face in its mirror. Her hard breathing had slowed down long ago, but she still seemed to be asking herself fiercely whether she had done the right thing.

  She turned her face from side to side as she looked into the mirror. She made a grimace. Jane wore no lipstick and very little powder; hers was the complexion of full-blooded health, which redeemed the rather plain face. Instead of adding anything, she took out a comb and drew it through her thick, wiry brown hair. Her look was now one of intense bitterness. Below, from the promenade, the shuffle and laughter of a crowd boiled up against these windows.

  “Hello?” roared Dr. Fell, who is usually incomprehensible on the telephone. “Who? … Graham … Ah! How are you, Inspector? … Eh?”

  His exclamation was so thunderous that Jane involuntarily glanced round.

  Dr. Fell’s mouth was partly open, making the mustache droop. His eyes, unseeing, were fixed on her. She could hear a thin voice chattering on in the receiver.

  Her lips sketched: “What is it?”

  Dr. Fell put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

  ‘Tony Morell has been murdered,” he said.

  For a space while you might have counted ten, Jane Tennant sat motionless, the compact as though paralyzed in her fingers. Then she dropped it into the handbag, snapped shut the catch, and sprang to her feet with an animal-like litheness. If emotion had been sound, the room would have been full of a wash like the noise of the sea. But there was only the clock, and Dr. Fell’s voice.

  “Ireton’s bungalow … About an hour ago.” His eyes strayed to the clock. “Tut, man, nonsense!”

  Jane Tennant’s ears hurt with the pain of listening when she tried to catch that other voice.

  “Says what? … I see …”

  “Oh? With what make of revolver? …”

  “What caliber?. . .”

  As he heard the reply, Dr. Fell’s eyes widened and then narrowed behind the eyeglasses on the black ribbon. It was as though a dull, only half-credible idea had occurred to him while he stared back at Jane Tennant.

  “Is that so, hey?” His voice was elaborately casual. “No distinguishing marks on the revolver, I suppose?”

  The telephone answered at length.

  “I see,” grunted the doctor. “No. No, I don’t mind lending a hand. ’By.”

  He replaced the receiver. Lowering his head so that several chins folded over his collar, he leaned both hands on his crutch-headed stick, and stood for a moment winking and blinking incredulously at the floor.

  VIII

  In the living room of Mr. Justice Ireton’s bungalow, Mr. Herman Appleby was contemplating the effects of the hand grenade he had just flung among his listeners.

  “But of course,” the solicitor added, “you were aware of all this? That is to say: you knew Mr. Morell was a wealthy man, as wealthy men are counted these days?”

  Appleby looked at the judge, who inclined his head.

  “I did,” assented Mr. Justice Ireton.

  Inspector Graham drew a powerful breath of relief.

  “To be more exact,” the judge corrected himself, in a cold and careful voice, “that was what Mr. Morell said his position was. He was to come here tonight to prove it to my satisfaction, and offer his suggested wedding gift of three thousand pounds. Er—I forget whether I had already told you that, Inspector?”

  Graham nodded.

  “You did, sir!” he assured them all. “You certainly did! I remember it now.”

  “Ah. You might just write it down again, in case you are uncertain. Thank you … Mr. Barlow!”

  “Sir?”

  “My daughter seems to be unwell. I should prefer not to have her exposed to this unpleasant business any more than is necessary. You agree, Inspector? Mr. Barlow, will you be good enough to take her into the other room; and, when she has sufficiently recovered, drive her home?”

  Fred Barlow held out his hand to Constance. After a hesitation she took it.

  He was glad that he had his back to the others, for they were now moving through the most dangerous emotional phase yet. The source of potential danger was Constance. If she let herself go, in any way whatever, not even the judge’s arrogant self-assurance could carry the lie much further.

  Constance, her eyes looking brown and burned and deep-set, her make-up like clown’s paint on a beautiful face, opened her mouth to speak. Barlow glared a warning. A spark flicked the powder train and went out. She took his extended hand, and pulled herself up from the sofa. Silently, with Barlow’s arm round her shoulder, they went out of the room. But in the hall the other three heard her burst into hysterical sobs.

  Mr. Justice Ireton blinked rapidly, several times.

  “You will excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. “I do not go into this without pain.”

  Inspector Graham coughed, and Appleby bowed stiffly.

  “However! Go into it we must,” continued the judge. “In what I have said, I think this gentleman should be able to confirm me. You, sir. Mr.—?”

  “Appleby.”

  “Ah, yes. Appleby. May I ask what Mr. Morell said when he called on you today?”

  Appleby considered. Behind that professional mask of his, Inspector Graham (who was nobody’s fool) had an uncertain impression that the solicitor was laughing. Graham did not know why he felt this. From his scanty but well-brushed hair to his perhaps scanty but well-brushed morals, nothing could have been more correct than the solicitor’s bearing.

  “Said? Let me see. He said that he was playing a game on Mr. Justice Ireton—”

  “Game?” interposed Graham sharply.

  “—which he promised to explain later. What he meant I can’t say. I have had the pleasure of seeing you many times in court, sir.”

  The judge’s eyebrows went up, but he merely inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “One other thing!” said Appleby, reflecting. “He made the remark, rather odd, that you yourself had fixed the amount of Miss Ireton’s wedding present. He said he had tried to persuade you to go higher; but you refused.”

  “Indeed. And why is that so odd?”

  “Well … ”

  “Why is it so odd, Mr. Appleby? Surely three thousand pounds may be considered generous enough?”

  “I don’t say it isn’t. I only—let it go, let it go!” The solicitor made a gesture, and brushed a grain of sand from his overcoat with a gloved hand.

  “He said nothing else?”

  “Nothing. And now, in the interests of my late client may I ask a question? Have you any idea who killed him? What, precisely, happened here? I submit I’ve a right to know that.”

  Inspector Graham eyed him.

  “Well, sir, we were hoping you could help us there.”

  “I could? Why so?”

  “Knowing him, and all. You did know him pretty well, I imagine?”

  “Yes, in a way.”

  “He wasn’t robbed,” Graham pointed out. “That’s certain, if nothing else is. Did he have enemies, for instance?”

  Appleby hesitated. “Yes, he did. I can’t tell you anything about his private life. He had one or two bad business enemies.” Surprisingly, Appleby seemed to consider this point with more care than any of the others. With a word of apology he put down his brief case and his bowler hat on the chess table, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his o
vercoat.

  “I told you the poor fellow was a queer mixture,” he went on. “He could be generous enough. Vide that money. But, if he thought anybody had done him a slight or an injury, he would devise the most elaborate and Machiavellian schemes to get level.” Appleby glanced at the judge. “You understand that of course, sir.”

  “How should I understand it?”

  Appleby laughed.

  “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not speaking personally! After all, a gift like that to Miss Ireton could hardly be called doing you an injury.” His glance was meaning. “No: I meant you could understand the workings of a mind like that, from your great experience on the bench.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Then, too, there was his business drive. He had an unfortunate love affair about five years ago—”

  “You mean;” interrupted Graham, “when he tried to blackmail the young lady, and she shot him?”

  Appleby seemed taken aback. But he spoke softly.

  “There was something to be said for the boy too, you know.”

  “I never heard it,” snapped Graham. “You don’t think the young lady’d be still holding a grudge, now?”

  “I know almost nothing about the affair. That is your province, Inspector.”

  “But these business enemies of Mr. Morell’s?”

  “You must excuse me from talking slander,” Appleby said with decision. “If you read through his business files, as you probably will, you’ll find names and suggestions which you can interpret as you like. That’s the most I can tell you.”

  Graham was looking more and more worried, as though each person and situation turned into a new greased pig which he could not hold.

  “You knew he was coming here tonight, sir. Do you know if he told anybody else?”

  “I can’t say. He probably did. He wasn’t one to guard his tongue, except when he had something up his sleeve.”

  “But think, sir? Isn’t there ANYTHING more you can tell me that would help?”

  Appleby was thoughtful. “No, I don’t believe so. As he was leaving my office I said, ‘If we’re both going down there tonight, why don’t we go together? Let me give you a lift in my car.’ He said, ‘No. I want to see Mr. Ireton before you do. I’m taking the 4:05 train, which will get me into Tawnish at just on eight o’clock. Perhaps I’ll even meet him in the train. He said he’d be in town today.’ If that helps any?”

  Graham swung round to the judge.

  “Oh? You were in London today, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask what you were doing there?”

  A shade of weary exasperation passed over Mr. Justice Ireton’s large, smooth forehead.

  “I usually go up on Saturdays, Inspector.”

  “Yes, sir; but—”

  “Confound it all! I made a few purchases, and looked in at my club. But I hadn’t the pleasure of seeing Mr. Morell on the train. I had an early lunch with my old friend Sir Charles Hawley. After that I took the 2:15 to Tawnish, and a taxi from the station to here.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Graham returned to the solicitor.

  “Just one other thing, Mr. Appleby. That revolver on the table there, beside your brief case: did you ever see it before? Yes, you can handle it if you want to!”

  Appleby treated the question with his usual meticulous care. He picked up the weapon in his gloved hands, stepped under the central chandelier, and turned the revolver over and over.

  “No, I can’t say I do. One of these things looks very much like another.” He peered up. “The number’s been filed off, I notice. Evidently a long time ago.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Graham dryly. “We noticed that too. It didn’t belong to Mr. Morell himself, did it?”

  Appleby looked startled.

  “That’s an odd ideal I don’t know, but I shouldn’t think it was likely. He hated firearms. He—”

  “Hold on, sir!” interrupted Graham sharply.

  The solicitor, his shells of eyeglasses opaque-glittering under the four-bulb chandelier, started and lifted one shoulder higher than the other. His expression was one of surprise underlaid by some other emotion.

  But Graham spoke in no tone of menace. As the Ives-Grant .32 was held tilted under the light, Graham’s eye caught something he had not previously seen. He took the weapon out of Appleby’s hands and studied it. On one side of it, just under the cartridge drum, someone had cut into the steel a small figure like a cross: the horizontal arm short, the vertical bar long.

  “Like a religious cross,” he decided. “Might be useful.”

  “Or,” said Mr. Justice Ireton placidly, “it might not.”

  None of them saw the handle of the door move, or heard the latch click shut. Fred Barlow, who had been listening outside in the passage, moved quietly across to the bedroom.

  There were no lights in this passage. The front door stood open. Outside, where the sky had cleared into a night of big unsteady stars, Barlow could see P. C. Weems pacing up and down the flagged path to the gate.

  The judge’s bedroom was dark, too, for Constance had turned out the light The big, heavy bedroom furniture— which had belonged to the bungalow’s late owner, Mr. Johnson of Ottawa—made shadows against starlight through the open windows. Barlow could discern a patch of white where Constance sat huddled in a rocking chair beside the middle window. Constance was sobbing: sniffling, rather: and she cried peevishly to him to go away.

  “No, don’t go,” she added, swinging back and forth in the rocking chair so that it squeaked. “Come here. I’m so miserable I could die!”

  He put his hand on her shoulder in the gloom.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry,” said Constance, shaking off the hand. “You detested him.”

  “I only met him once, Connie.”

  “You detested him! You know you detested him!”

  Somewhere inside him, Barlow felt a pang of what he recognized as disappointment. Of all things, he thought, he oughtn’t to feel disappointment. Constance had been through agony, of two kinds, twice sending her to opposite extremes.

  Yet there it was. He experienced again the feeling that that had been haunting and baffling him for several years: a groping, a feeling of something missing, a sense of life not quite fulfilled. Frederick Barlow was not an introspective person. Except for the one black spot in his mind, the one recent sudden thing he must not think about, he took the world as he found it. Still …

  “All right,” Barlow said, “I detested him. You’re better off without him, Connie.”

  “He was worth two of you!”

  “He may have been. Admitted. I still say you’re better off without him.”

  Constance’s mood changed.

  “He was a silly, stupid fool,” she cried, making the rocker squeak violently. “Why couldn’t he have said he had all that money? Why couldn’t he have come to Daddy and said so? Why did he let Daddy (and me!) think he was a … Fred?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think Daddy killed him?”

  “Sh-h!”

  The three French windows, as in the living room, had white net coverings which could hardly be called curtains, and which made only a shadowy mesh against the starlight.

  Putting his face against the curtain, Barlow could see P. C. Weems still pacing the path, and hear the faint rasp of his footsteps. Constance spoke in a frightened whisper.

  “They can’t hear us, can they?”

  “Not if you keep your voice down.”

  “Well? Do you think Daddy did it?”

  “Listen, Connie. Do you trust me?”

  Her eyes opened wide in the gloom. “Naturally,” she said.

  “Then do you realize—” he spoke softly but distinctly—“that it’s only sheer force of the old man’s personality, his godlike assumption that what he says must be accepted, which keeps him from being under arrest this minute? Do you?”

  “I—”

  “He hypnotized
that constable. He’s half hypnotized Graham. For the moment, thank the Lord, he’s had a bit of luck. I mean the news about Morell’s unsuspected wealth. And you saw him instantly grab it and play it for all it was worth. I can’t help admiring the way he whizzes over thin ice without batting an eyelid. He can say to Graham: ‘I’m not a rich man, and I live above my income. Is it reasonable to suppose I should have shot the faithful suitor who can give my daughter all the luxury she wants?”

  Constance’s eyes overflowed again, and she began to rock with hysterical vigor.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But you’ve got to understand this, so that you can be steady enough to help him by confirming what he says.”

  “Then you do think Daddy did it!”

  “I think they may arrest him. Mind, I say may. Once they start to examine that story of his, about his being in the kitchen opening a tin of asparagus while Morell was shot in the front room, there’s likely to be trouble. Don’t you see the flaws in it?” He spoke drearily. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

  “I’m not c-clever like some people.”

  “Don’t let’s quarrel, Connie.”

  “Go away from me! You’re deserting him too.”

  “Far from it,” said Barlow, with more vehemence than he meant to show. He leaned one knee on the edge of the rocking chair, stilling its movement. He took hold of its arms, and bent over Constance. He felt under the high incurious stars, that he had to explain how one atom felt.

  “Listen to me. Your father and I have always been at opposite ends of interpreting the legal code. He’s a great man. He’s taught me more than I ever hoped to learn. But he can’t teach me to despise the beaten, the crippled, the underdog, the man who can’t fight because he has no education and can’t explain because there are no words. Like Lypiatt. Do you remember Lypiatt’s face, when sentence was pronounced?”

  He felt her body grow tense, and heard the ticking of the watch on her wrist.

  “Connie, I hate the smugness of the just. I hate their untroubled eyes. I hate their dictum, which is: ‘This man’s motives do not count. He stole because he was hungry or killed because he was driven past the breaking point; and therefore he shall be convicted.’ I want a fair fight to win my case and say: ‘This man’s motives do count. He stole because he was hungry or killed because he was driven past the breaking point; and therefore, by God, he shall go free.’ ”