Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful

by John Dickson Carr

  “Bert Weems?”

  “The chap who was here last night: yes. Mr. Barlow, Miss Tennant has gone home. She asked me to tell you not to forget the Esplanade Hotel swimming party tonight. Oh, Inspector. One other thing. When you searched this room, you didn’t find any chewing gum anywhere, did you?”

  “Any what, sir?”

  “Chewing gum,” returned Dr. Fell, champing his jaws by way of illustration, but with so serious a face that they all refrained from comment.

  “No chewing gum. No.”

  “No,” said Dr. Fell slowly, “I didn’t think you would. I won’t intrude on you any longer. I am going to try the unheard-of experiment of walking home. Cheer-o.”

  They stared after him as he lumbered away down the lawn.

  Inspector Graham seemed to be on thorns.

  “Excuse me half a minute,” he said to the others. “I’ll just see what Bert wants.”

  He hurried out into the twilight, which swallowed him up, and the window remained open. Dimly, above the rush of the sea, they could hear the thud-thud-pop from the engine of a stationary motorcycle down in the road.

  Mr. Justice Ireton, his hands folded over his stomach, sat so quietly that Fred was startled to hear the urgent note in his voice when he spoke.

  “That will be the well-dressed gentleman whom Graham sent to Taunton. Frederick, would you like to do me a favor?”

  “Naturally, if I can.”

  “You have a step like a red Indian. And the light is dim. See whether you can get close enough to hear what they are saying, without being observed yourself. For God’s sake do not question my orders. Go.”

  It was one of the few times in his life he had ever heard Horace Ireton use a scriptural expletive.

  Fred Barlow went through the bungalow, out by the kitchen door, and round the side of the house. The sandy soil muffled his footsteps. Skirting the fence at one side, he made for the road in front.

  P. C. Weems’s police motorcycle, with (empty) side car, had been drawn up at the gate. Weems, with one foot on the ground, was addressing Graham and Dr. Fell. They could not see Fred at the angle outside the fence. But, since they had to raise their voices above the popping of the engine, he could hear them distinctly.

  “Inspector,” was the first word he heard, “Inspector, we’ve got ’em.”

  “What do you mean, got ’em?” roared Graham. “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen, Inspector. You sent me over to see Miss Ireton. Nothing in it, like. You’d just forgotten to ask whether she could identify the revolver. So you sent me to do it. You said I could take my girl along. Remember?”

  “I remember. What about it?”

  “Well, listen, Inspector. My girl is Florence Swan, from the telephone exchange.”

  “I know she is. And you tell her from me that if she rings you up at the station again, when you’re on duty—”

  “Now, wait, Inspector. Wait! Miss Ireton couldn’t identify the gun. But Florence identified her. Florence identified her voice.”

  “Eh?”

  “Listen. Last night, about ten minutes before the ‘help’ call came through from the bungalow, Florence took another call. It was from a woman, phoning from a public call box, who wanted to put through a toll call without having any money.”

  “Well? And shut that blinking motor off, can’t you?”

  Weems did so. Stillness, except for the wash of the sea, descended with drowsy calm. And Weems’s voice rose up through it.

  “The call box,” he said, “was the one in Lovers’ Lane—over three hundred yards from here. Up on the old building estate, by the model houses. You know there’s a call box there?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no doubt about the place, because when this young lady said she wanted to put through a toll call to Taunton, Florence said, ‘What is your number, please?’ The young lady said, ‘Tawnish 1818.’ Which is right I’ve just been up to see.”

  Graham’s big figure looked suddenly alert.

  “Go on, Bert,” he said.

  “Ah!” Weems drew a breath of satisfaction. “It took four minutes to get the call through to Taunton. Then Florence said, ‘Here is your party. Deposit fivepence, please. Then press Button A and speak.’ The young lady went clear up in the air. Florence said she’d already sounded all wild and dithery, but now she was worse. She said she’d come out without her purse, and hadn’t got any money. She said wouldn’t Florence just put the call through, and they’d pay at the other end.

  “Florence tried to explain she couldn’t do that. Florence tried to explain that unless you put the money in, you couldn’t press Button A and the connection wouldn’t work. The young lady wouldn’t believe her. She seemed to think all Florence had to do was pull a lever or something, and the call would go through.

  “The result was, they had a hell of a slanging match which went on for more than three minutes before Florence rang off. Inspector, the number that young lady wanted to ring was Taunton 634955: Miss Tennant’s house. And the young lady was Miss Constance Ireton.”

  Weems stopped for breath.

  Inspector Graham glanced at Dr. Fell, and both were eloquently silent. It was Weems who explained.

  “Now look, Inspector. Miss Ireton first rang the exchange at twenty minutes past eight—”

  Graham found his voice.

  “Is your Florence sure of that? Sure, now?”

  “She charted it, Inspector. They’re bound to.”

  “Go on.”

  “It took four minutes to get the call through to Taunton. Then three minutes and over while she and Florence were arguing. That means it was eight-twenty when Miss Ireton went into the call box, and eight-twenty-seven at the earliest before she left it. That call box in Lovers’ Lane is a good three hundred yards from this bungalow.”

  “It is,” agreed Graham grimly.

  “Ah! And yet look at what she tells us! She says she was here in front of the bungalow all that time. Sir, she couldn’t ’a’ been! She couldn’t ’a’ seen any of the things she says she did. The most she could ’a’ done would have been to walk back here—by the main road, or maybe the back path—just about in time to hear the shot fired at half past eight.”

  Weems broke off. His voice was full of an almost reproachful wonder.

  “That young lady’s lying,” he added. “That young lady’s lying!”

  Inspector Graham nodded.

  “Bert,” he said, “you never said a truer word. You’ll never say a truer word, until you come to testify at the trial. That young lady’s lying.”

  XIV

  “Jackknife,” called the faired-haired young man, as soon as his head emerged above water. He flung the wet hair out of his eyes.

  Hoots of derision echoed back hollowly from the walls.

  “That’s not a jackknife, you ass,” yelled somebody. “A jackknife dive is where you bend double and touch your toes in mid-air, and then straighten out before you hit the water. What you did was a kind of a jitterbug twist that didn’t mean anything at all.”

  “I tell you it was a jackknife,” the young man said truculently. His face was red. He tried to haul himself up by the rail round the inside edge of the pool, and slipped back again.

  A girl in a red bathing suit intervened with pacifying smoothness.

  “All right, dear. It was a jackknife. Come and have a drink.”

  “Ah! Now you’re talking!” said the athlete. “Best bloody jackknife I ever did,” he added, blowing bubbles from the surface of the water.

  The vault which houses the swimming pool at the Esplanade Hotel is some eighty feet long, and proportionately broad and high. Its walls are made of smooth-fitted panels of looking glass, its floor is of marble mosaic. Its water, greenish-tinted, makes the white tiles of the pool waver and tremble with continuous motion. And the floor space round the pool is considerable; for it is used as a lounge, with bright-colored beach chairs and tables lining the mirror walls.

&
nbsp; From here, wide-open double doors lead into the American Bar, a smallish room presenting a vista of vivid bottles behind a bar counter of frosted glass. Another door in the same wall leads to an underground conservatory, artificially lighted and heated. The management are tolerant, the waiter swift. In fine, any person already primed with cocktails could desire no more ideal place for a beano.

  Something like this was in progress at half past nine, when Fred Barlow arrived.

  Thirteen guests, seven women and six men, sat or lounged or swam or fell in. These ranged from the very young man with the taste for fancy diving to a middle-aged lady, a remote courtesy aunt of Jane’s, who was supposed to be “keeping an eye on” the house party and on whom a close eye had to be kept by Jane herself. The girls’ bathing dresses were of all colors, and all different. Nor were they conspicuous for prudery. Some guests wore beach robes of heavy toweling; but this was not observable in the case of any girl with a good figure.

  Fred, stepping into the clean, close, tangy atmosphere, was dazed by noises. Voices and echoes: from the echo of laughter to the fine, hollow echo of a splash. Voices struck at him.

  ‘Tony ought to be here,” said a lean, alcoholic-looking blonde in a blue-striped robe.

  “Poor old Tony!”

  “Sh-h!”

  “It’s all right. Connie’s not here. She wouldn’t come.”

  “Waiter! Coo-ee! Waiter!”

  “Like to see me do a swan dive now?”

  “No, dear.”

  “I do so like to see young people enjoying themselves,” said Jane’s aunt. “In my—gup! Pardon me, my dear—in my day, it was all so different.”

  The mingling of voices and echoes rolled over him. He was very much conscious of his street clothes. Then he saw Jane.

  She saw him at the same time, and came toward him. She was wearing a yellow bathing suit. The effect was inspiring. She had just come out of the water; she also wore a yellow rubber bathing cap which she took off to shake out her hair, and caught up a beach robe from a chair. She had pulled this round herself by the time he reached her.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.

  “What’s that, Fred?”

  “I said I’m sorry I’m late,” he yelled above the din.

  “Oh! That’s all right. You said you might be, but I thought you weren’t coming. Have you had any dinner?”

  He reflected. “Yes. Yes, I think so. A sandwich or something. Jane, I don’t want to be a killjoy; but can I see you alone for a minute?”

  “Not trouble again?”

  “Bad trouble, I’m afraid.”

  She hesitated.

  “You look worried to death,” she said. “Can’t it wait for five minutes? Why not have a drink and take a turn in the pool first? It’ll do you good.”

  The prospect was inviting. He could both stretch and relax. And he had brought his kit along.

  “Do!” she urged. “I’ll get you a drink while you’re changing. The dressing rooms are out in the hall you came in by. You’ll see the sign.”

  “Right.”

  As he changed he reflected, though he was on the lean side and no ruddy Apollo, still there was nothing wrong with his shoulders and it would be long before he had a stomach.

  Jane was awaiting him with gin-and-French when he returned. He drank, and felt better; not much better, but more human. He said abruptly:

  “Where’s Connie? She’s not here. I heard somebody say so.”

  “No, she wouldn’t come. She’s at my house; probably gone to bed. If you’ve come just to see her, I’m afraid your luck’s out.”

  “She’s not at your house,” he said. “We don’t know where she is. The police are still looking for her.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes. Excuse me a moment.”

  There were two diving boards, a high one at the top of a ladder and another a little above water level. Fred chose the lower one, and left it in a dive that would make him stretch. He felt the creak and snap of the board as its edge released him; the soar of motion, open and shut and open; then the exhilaration and balance of the straight deep drop, heels not too far over, as the water closed round him.

  The water felt cool and grateful. He turned up his hands and floated through a green twilight, which drew out wavering lines of white tiles. Feeling soothed and almost drowsy, he floated to the surface and struck out for the rail with slow, lazy overarm strokes.

  He had almost reached it when he was astonished to hear the clamor that seemed to have broken out.

  “That was a jackknife!”

  “What was?”

  “That! What that fellow just did.”

  A pink and truculent face appeared over Fred’s head, peering down at him.

  “Like to see me do a one-and-a-half?” it leered. “High board,” it added.

  “Hugo,” said a girl in a red bathing suit, “don’t be an ass. You’ll break your silly neck.”

  Hugo, whoever he might be, instantly climbed the ladder to the high springboard.

  “One-and-a-half,” he announced—and hurled himself into the air.

  What complicated maneuver he thought he was performing was perhaps not even clear to himself, and certainly not to the spectators. The only question in anybody’s mind was whether he would land flat on his face or flat on his back. They were not long left in doubt. He landed flat on his face, with a hollow, thocking splash which flung spray as far as the mirror walls. It drew from several of the watchers a howl of joy which presently changed to a silence of consternation.

  Hugo floated gently just below the surface; face downwards, but turning over on his side. He did not move except with the motion of the water. There was no sound in the big hall until a fat girl screamed.

  A hairy-chested young pianist plunged in and dragged him out. They laid him dripping on the dripping mosaic floor, and put down their drinks to gather round him. There was a broad reddish mark on his forehead.

  “He’s all right,” a voice announced with relief. “Just. knocked out the silly ass. His forehead hit the water. Get him some brandy.”

  Jane’s aunt moaned and showed the extent of her Christian charity by giving up her own brandy.

  “Don’t you think we ought to throw some water over him?” asked the fat girl.

  This was considered a good idea, so they scooped up handfuls out of the pool and sloshed him down again.

  Jane and Fred were some distance away from the others. The latter toweling his face and head, glanced sideways at Jane. She was sitting in a beach chair, her robe thrown back, her hands on her knees, her face a picture of misery. He had never seen the capable, competent Jane Tennant look like that; he had not known she could feel like that.

  “I never bring luck to anybody, do I?’ asked Jane.

  He could understand. The white, limp face of the unconscious boy on the floor brought back to his mind the memory of another white, limp face.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Jane fiercely. “Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  She slipped into sandals. And, since all the others were still arguing round Hugo, nobody—a fact which was later to prove of importance—noticed them go.

  Pulling on his own robe, he led the way round the pool and opened the glass door leading to the conservatory. Once inside, Jane hesitated again.

  “Do you think I ought to leave them?”

  “The bar and pool won’t close until eleven o’clock. It’s not ten yet. They’ll be all right. There are one or two things I’ve got to talk to you about. Two things in particular. Come on.”

  The conservatory was very long and rather narrow, divided into sections by wall panels and doors of opaque-colored glass. Its atmosphere was heavy with the closeness of plants and ferns, its floor also of marble mosaic. He led the way through to the last section, and closed the door. Screened round by banks of ferns, there were some wicker chairs, a table, and a bench in the little open space.

  Neith
er of them sat down.

  “Yes?” asked Jane. “What are these two things you’ve got to talk about?”

  “The first is Connie. We’ve got to find her before the police do. Do you think she’s gone back to London?”

  “I don’t know, but I shouldn’t think so. There’s no train, and we’re using all the cars. Why? Why must we find her?”

  “Jane, she’s been telling a pack of lies. And they’ve found out about it.”

  “What lies?”

  “Wait. Now tell me. Were you at home last night about twenty-five minutes past eight?”

  “Why do you ask that?” Her voice was sharp.

  “That’s a part of it. Were you?”

  “No, I was on my way to see Dr. Fell. Why?”

  “Because Connie tried to put through a phone call to your house from a call box in a place called Lovers’ Lane—some distance away from the judge’s bungalow. The operator claims to have got somebody at the other end. If they can prove that call was to your house, and that it was Connie speaking, she’s in an ugly position. You don’t remember anything about a call, do you?”

  “Not to take it, no. But, now I remember it, Annie did say this morning that there’d been a call from Tawnish that never got through.”

  “So!”

  “But, Fred, that means … ”

  “Yes. Connie couldn’t have been outside the bungalow at twenty-five minutes past eight, or anywhere near there. She couldn’t have seen Morell arrive. She’s lying; and they’re suspicious enough of the judge already. This may tip the balance.”

  “I see,” Jane said slowly. She looked up. “What was the other thing you wanted to talk about?”

  They faced each other more like duelists than friends.

  It was very quiet in the little enclosure; with a warm, heavy oppressive quiet. The lights, of such dull pale white that they seemed bluish, only intensified it. They were shut away in a little corner, out of the world, behind plants and opaque-colored glass.

  “This,” he said, “is the other thing.”

  He walked up to her. He put his arm over her shoulder and round her left side. He tilted her head back and kissed her, very hard, on the lips.