“Procure a revolver from a source which cannot be traced to you. Waylay your victim where nobody sees you. Shoot him, and walk away. They may suspect you. They may ask awkward questions. But they can never prove anything.
“So this man, Horace Ireton, told Anthony Morell to come to his house by the coast road—and told him when to come. On the following day he went to London, stole a fully loaded gun from a source we guess, and returned to his bungalow.
“At some minutes past eight o’clock he put on a pair of gloves, put the revolver in his pocket, and left his house. He walked by the back path across the meadow—where? To Lovers’ Lane, of course. That is the only side road joining the main road between here and Tawnish. It has high banks, in whose shadow he can wait unseen until the victim approaches. Such a choice was inevitable.
“At about eighteen minutes past eight, Morell came along. Horace Ireton wasted no time or words. He stepped out of the lane and took the gun from his pocket. Morell saw him by the street lamp, and knew. Morell turned; he began to run diagonally across the road, away and toward the sands. Horace Ireton shot him. Morell took, a step more and fell. The murderer went to him as he lay on the edge of the sand, dropped the pistol beside him, turned, and went quietly away the way he had come.
“Meanwhile, the same old, old chance had cropped up again: that unforseen witness. Constance Ireton had decided to see her father that night. Her car ran out of petrol. She walked to the bungalow, and found nobody there. She suddenly remembered that it was Saturday; that he must be in London. So she decided to walk the short distance to Tawnish, and get a bus there.
“And she saw the thing done.
“When she saw her father walk away afterwards, she was (I think) frantic. She could not and would not approach Morell, whom she then believed to deserve what had been given him. Her legs would hardly hold her. She wanted help, as always. Remembering the telephone box, she ran up the lane and attempted to phone Taunton.
“Therefore she did not see the fact which has turned this whole affair into a nightmare.”
Dr. Fell paused.
Mr. Justice Ireton sat motionless, his hands folded over his stomach, while the storm rattled.
“And what was it she failed to see?” he inquired.
“That Morell was not dead,” said Dr. Fell.
Mr. Justice Ireton closed his eyes. A spasm went over his face, but it was a spasm of realization, a shock of revelation. He opened his eyes, and said:
“You ask me to believe that a man with a bullet in his brain was not yet dead?”
“Didn’t I tell you it was incredible?” demanded Dr. Fell, with a sort of eagerness. “Didn’t I say nobody would believe it?” His tone changed. “The thing is, of course, a commonplace of medical jurisprudence. John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, moved and talked for some time with much the same sort of injury before he died. Gross quotes the case of a man who, after getting four and a half inches of steel through his brain, even recovered afterwards. Taylor quotes several such instances; of which the most interesting, medically speaking—”
“You may spare me your authorities, if you will be good enough to explain.”
“Morell,” said Dr. Fell simply, “wasn’t dead yet He was as good as dead; but he didn’t know it. For the moment he was most viciously and viperishly alive.”
“Ah!”
“What has happened to Anthony Morell, né Morelli? As his stunned wits start to work again, as he crawls and staggers up from that sand, what does he realize has happened?
“Well, that what happened before has happened once again. He has tried smoothly to work a game on somebody, and has got his answer in the form of a revolver bullet. Mr. Justice Ireton—the holy, the mighty, the man Morell hates—has tried to shoot him dead. But if he tells the police this, will he be believed? No. Even less than in the Lee case, where the mighty ones of this world clubbed together to ridicule and discredit him. But this time they are not going to get away with it. This time, by all his Sicilian gods, he will have it his own way.”
Dr. Fell paused.
“My dear sir,” he went on, settling back more comfortably in the chair and speaking with an air of wonder, “should you say for one moment that all this hocus-pocus with telephones and chewing gum sounds like Fred Barlow? Should you, as a jurist, say it was good psychology? I say no. I say there is only one person it does sound like. It sounds like Morell.”
Mr. Justice Ireton did not comment.
“His intention, in your view,” the judge said, “being—”
“To provide unanswerable proof, when he later comes to accuse you, that you shot him.”
“Ah!”
“Someone once described Morell to me as ‘a sort of crude Borgia.’ His lawyer declares that he would work out the most elaborate and Machiavellian schemes of revenge if he thought someone had done him a slight or an injury. Well, what you did to him might mildly be described as an injury. You agree?”
“Go on.”
“And here is his chance. He must reach that bungalow before you, at your slow walk, get there. He picks up the revolver, sees what caliber it is, and puts it in his pocket. He hurries straight along the main road. Sir, he did reach the place at eight-twenty-five after all. Had your daughter been at the gate, she would have seen him, chewing gum and looking like fire, go in to get his own back at last.
“It was Morell who put through that fake call and fired the second shot. But when he called for help, he needed it. That was the end. He could go no further, once that gum masked the bullet hole. The revolver, which he had wrapped in his handkerchief to avoid his own fingerprints, fell from his hand. The chair upset beneath him. And he fell dead beside the wreck of the telephone.”
Dr. Fell drew a long breath.
“I don’t wonder you were surprised,” he added, “when you came in from the kitchen and found him there. Is ‘surprised’ quite the right word, even?”
Mr. Justice Ireton did not say whether it was the right word. But his mouth worked slightly.
“I don’t wonder,” pursued Dr. Fell, “that you picked up the revolver, and were perhaps a little surprised—a little—to find only one bullet still gone. I don’t wonder you sat down, dumbly, and tried to think. Most murderers would be more upset than you if their carefully placed victims came home.”
“You assume much,” said the judge.
“And your daughter, too,” said Dr. Fell, “was considerably surprised. She finished her futile efforts at the phone; and returned by the back path because she could not, would not, pass Morell’s body again. She was in time (I indulge my fancy here) to hear the second shot from a distance. She saw nobody in the kitchen. She circled the house, looked in at the front, and saw you.
“This also provided her with the realistic detail, later put into her story, about the central lights being turned on. Only the little lamp was burning when she first looked in here on her way past. All the lights were on later.
“Her tale about Morell’s arrival at eight-twenty-five was, of course, an attempt to shield you by turning attention away from Lovers’ Lane and the real time of the murder. You were in trouble when she told it. But you would have been in a damned sight worse trouble had we known you really did kill Morell at an earlier place and time. Unfortunately, the astute Inspector Graham interpreted it as applying to Barlow. It is a good thing for you. But it will hang an innocent man.”
Mr. Justice Ireton removed his spectacles, and began to swing them back and forth.
“The evidence against Fred Barlow—”
“Oh, my dear sir!” protested Dr. Fell dismally.
“You do not call it evidence?”
“Barlow,” said Dr. Fell, “was driving in to Tawnish. With all due respect to the clock in the car belonging to Dr. Fellows, whose name is associated with mine as such a sinister omen, I submit that his statement is tosh and eyewash. I submit that his time is all wrong. Barlow thinks so himself. I submit that the time was nearer eight-t
hirty than eight-twenty.
“Morell had gone long before. Black Jeff, either by chance or still trying to trace the source of a revolver shot he had heard, came out of his haunt in Lovers’ Lane and fell smack in front of the car. Barlow thought he had run over the man.
“He carried Jeff to the other side of the road. Dr. Fellows passed. Barlow, to see how badly Jeff was hurt, got an electric torch from his car and returned to the place where he thought he had left his victim. But Jeff had crawled away.
“Barlow (as he told us, once) thought he must have mistaken the spot where he had put Jeff down. He walked all along the bank, flashing his light And presently he saw . . . ”
“Yes?” inquired the judge.
“He saw blood,” said Dr. Fell. “And brain tissue.”
Mr. Justice Ireton put a hand over his eyes.
“Well, what did the lad naturally think?” asked Dr. Fell.
“What would you have thought? Not you, perhaps, since you would no doubt preserve a more stoical attitude than most of us. But the average person?”
“I—!”
“He thought he had done for Black Jeff. So he smoothed over the traces. That’s all. I doubt if he ever even noticed that tiny brass cartridge case, which was smoothed over with the rest of it.
“The thing haunted him. If you talk to Miss Tennant (as I did, last night) you will hear what Barlow once said: that he knew, from positive evidence, that he had badly hurt Black Jeff. That’s the evidence. It is the same evidence Graham will use to prove he killed Morell. I am aware that the matter, personally, is of no interest to you. You were very severe with Barlow last night, I remember, for not being able to explain it.”
“I—”
“No one, as you once said to me, has ever-accused you of being a hypocrite or a stuffed shirt. Still, the matter is surely of some academic interest to you. Are your beliefs so unshaken, sir? Do you still maintain, from your private knowledge, that circumstances can never hang an innocent man?”
“I tell you—”
“Then there is your daughter,” continued Dr. Fell, surveying the matter dispassionately. “The ordeal in court will not be pleasant for her. She now has some three months in which to look forward to it. She is faced with the choice of saving Barlow or of saving you. She does not love Barlow, or the result might be different. She has for him only an adolescent liking based on long acquaintanceship. She will, of course, save her father. It is a necessary choice. But it is a cruel choice.”
Again Mr. Justice Ireton struck the table, making the chess men jump.
“Stop this,” he said. “Stop these cat-and-mouse tactics. I won’t have it, do you hear?” His voice rose pettishly. “Do you think I like doing what I’ve had to do? Do you think I’m not human?”
Dr. Fell considered.
“ ‘I have not said what I think,’ ” he replied, in the voice of one who quotes. “ ‘But if you go on in this fashion, I fear you will leave me no choice. You either have an answer to these charges, or you have not. Will you produce that answer?’ ”
Mr. Justice Ireton put down his spectacles on the table.
He sat back, shading his eyes with his hand. He breathed thinly, like a man facing exertion after a sedentary life.
“God help me,” he said, “I cannot go on with this.”
But when he removed his hand from shading his eyes, his face was smoothed-out, pale, and calm again. With an effort he got to his feet and walked across to the desk. From the upper drawer he took a long envelope, and returned to the table again. He did not sit down.
“A while ago, Doctor, you asked me whether I had spent a pleasant day. I did not spend it pleasantly. But I spent it profitably. I spent it in writing a confession.”
From the envelope he took several sheets of notepaper covered with his fine, neat handwriting. He replaced it, and tossed the envelope across to Dr. Fell.
“It covers, I think, such points as will effect the boy’s release. I must ask, however, that you do not deliver it to Inspector Graham for twenty-four hours. By that time I have every reasonable hope of being dead. It will be difficult, under the circumstances, to make my death appear an accident. But my life is insured for a large sum, which will take care of Constance; and I trust I shall be able to manage suicide more expertly than I appear to have managed murder. There is your confession. Pick it up, please.”
He watched while Dr. Fell did so. Then the blood rushed into his face.
“Now that I have made the amende honorable,” he added in a cold, steady voice, “shall I tell you what I think?”
“Yes?”
“I do not think,” said Mr. Justice Ireton, “that Fred Barlow is under arrest at all.”
“Indeed,” said Dr. Fell.
I have read all of today’s newspapers. Not a word appears in any of them about this rather sensational capture.”
“So.”
“I think that this whole arrest is a trick, deliberately devised and staged between you and Graham, in order to extort a confession from me. It struck me once or twice yesterday that Graham’s acting was nervous. I think that the boy is being ‘detained’ while you are sent to apply torture of a refined and effective sort.
“But I dare not take the risk. I dare not call your bluff. I cannot trust my judgment any longer. It is just possible Graham does mean what he says. It is just possible he will bring that boy to trial, and ruin him if he does not convict him.
“On your own part in this, Gideon Fell, I pass no comment. You can cry checkmate. You can crack the whip. You wanted to beat me at my own game; and, if it is any source of satisfaction to you, you have done so.” His voice broke. “Now take your damned confession, and go.”
Thinly, the storm whistled round the house. But Dr. Fell did not move.
He sat turning the envelope over in his hands, sunk in dim and obscure meditation. He hardly seemed to hear what the judge was saying. He took the sheets of paper from the envelope, and slowly read them through, wheezing gently as he did so. Then he folded them up with equal slowness, tore them in three pieces, and threw the pieces on the table.
“No,” he said. “You win.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re quite right,” assented Dr. Fell, heavily and wearily. “Graham no more believes Barlow is guilty than I do. He’s known it was you all along. But you were just a little too legally nimble for us; so we had to think of another way. The only other person who knows about this now is Miss Tennant. I couldn’t refrain from telling her last night as I can’t refrain from telling you now. I have only one other thing to say to you: go free.”
There was a pause.
“Explain that extraordinary statement.”
“I said: go free,” repeated Dr. Fell, waving his hand rather testily. “Don’t expect me to apologize to you as well. I shall tell Graham that it didn’t work, that’s all.”
“But—”
“There will be a flaming scandal, of course. You will have to resign from the bench. But they can’t touch you now that there’s so infernally much confusion as to what did happen.”
The judge sat down heavily, making the table quiver.
“You quite understand what you are saying, Doctor? You mean this?”
“Yes.”
“Doctor,” observed Mr. Justice Ireton abruptly, “I do not know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say. I can inform you, though, that your plans for your daughter will not materialize. She will not marry Fred Barlow. Barlow, I am happy to say, will marry Jane Tennant: who will manage him admirably while he thinks he is managing her. Your daughter is now interested in some young man named Hugo, about whom I know nothing except that he seems likely to meet an early demise in the swimming pool. For the rest, you have come well out of this. So go your ways, and don’t be so ruddy cocksure about your judgment in the future.”
While Mr. Justice Ireton shaded his eyes with his hand, Dr. Fell dropped the pieces of the confession into the ash tray. He struc
k a match to them. The flames curled up as the paper caught fire, and were reflected in the eyes of the moose’s head on the wall. Both men sat silent, watching truth burn.
THE END
JOHN DICKSON CARR
The man many readers think of as the most British of detective story writers was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in 1906. After attending Haverford College, Carr went to Paris where, his parents hoped, he would continue his education at the Sorbonne. Instead he became a writer. His first novel, It Walks By Night, was published in 1929. Shortly thereafter, Carr married and settled in his wife’s native country, England.
The Thirties were a highly prolific period for Carr, who was turning out three to five novels a year. Some of these were published under what became his most famous nom de plume, Carter Dickson. (Because the Dickson novels contain a great deal of a certain type of comedy, many of their earlier readers attributed them to P. G. Wodehouse. Could an American write like this? Never!)
In 1965 Carr left England and moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where he remained until his death in 1977.
In his lifetime, Carr received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of only two Americans (the other was Patricia Highsmith) ever admitted into the prestigious—but almost exclusively British—Detection Club, in his famous essay “The Grandest Game in the World”, Carr listed the qualities always present in the detective novel at its best: fair play, sound plot construction, and ingenuity. (He added, “Though this quality of ingenuity is not necessary to the detective story as such, you will never find the great masterpiece without it.”) That these qualities are prevalent in Carr’s work is obvious to his legions of readers. In the words of the great detective novelist-critic Edmund Crispin, “For subtlety, ingenuity, and atmosphere, he was one of the three or four best detective-story writers since Poe that the English language has known.”
Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful Page 19
