Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

“Ha, ha, ha,” screeched the macaw, and danced and rattled and flapped its wings all over the perch. From the corner of his eye Cheviot saw that Margaret Renfrew had drawn herself up straight. Her shining red mouth (lip-salve?) was open as though in amazement.

  “Are you accusing me,” asked Lady Cork, loudly but without inflection, “of stealing me own gewgaws?”

  “Not of stealing them, madam. Merely of hiding them.”

  “Freddie Debbitt said—!”

  “Yes. Freddie Debbitt seems to have said many things. Among them, doubtless with mimicry and gesture to alarm you, that a thief would spirit away your whole strong-box. In our experience, Lady Cork—”

  “Whose experience?”

  “—a woman’s natural instinct is to hide things of value, and hide them close at hand, if she thinks them in danger. This is especially so if the things have a great sentimental value too.”

  Cheviot still spoke gently, softly, persuasively.

  “I can hardly think of a better place to hide rings, brooches, any small pieces of jewellery,” he went on, “than in the seed containers of bird cages. It does credit to your wit. Who will suspect it? Or, if suspected, the detaching of a container from the side of a covered cage at night may set up a flutter and cry to betray the thief. And so you hid your most valued trinkets. Do I speak the truth?”

  “Yes!” said Lady Cork.

  It was those words “sentimental value” which had stabbed her. She twisted round her very short neck and stared at the fire. Grotesquely, from under her wrinkled eyelids, two tears squeezed out and ran down her cheeks.

  “From me husband,” she said to the fire, choking a little. “Ay! And from another man, dead these sixty years.”

  The swell of the waltz-music seemed to beat against Cheviot’s brain.

  “I must remind you,” he said softly, “that these jewels were stolen. The thief has not yet been found.”

  Lady Cork nodded without looking round.

  “Aunt Maria,” interposed Miss Renfrew, in a voice of deep compassion, “they will be found. Don’t fear. In the meantime, it is near midnight. Your guests must be advised of supper. Have I your leave to go?”

  Again Lady Cork nodded, violently, without turning round. The old, squat shoulders were trembling.

  Miss Renfrew, in her white gown with the black-edged roses round the bodice, slipped away by the door to the bedroom rather than the double-doors. Cheviot watched her, began to speak, and changed his mind.

  “Lady Cork, I can’t and I won’t distress you too much. But why didn’t you say the jewels had been stolen? Why did you conceal it?”

  “And have ’em all laugh at me again? As they always do?”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “The man who can laugh at you, your ladyship,” suddenly interrupted Mr. Henley, with suppressed violence, “shall answer to me. By God, he shall!”

  This roused her. She turned her head, giving Mr. Henley a singularly gracious smile. But, to conceal the fact that she was openly crying, she glared at Cheviot.

  “Now, who’d ha’ thought,” she almost sneered, with more tears streaming down, “that George Cheviot’s son would have had the wit to fathom this?”

  “It’s my job, madam.”

  “Your what?”

  “My work, I should have said. May I venture a further question?”

  “Ye may.”

  “On Tuesday night, as an experiment, you hid four treasures in the seed-containers of the parrots’ cages in your own bedroom? Yes. You were struck with horror, amaze, wrath, when you found them gone next morning. On Thursday night you concealed another trinket in a canary’s cage in the passage: something of little or no sentimental value, and perhaps to lay a trap for the thief?”

  Lady Cork cowered back.

  “Yes! True! But man, man, how did you know all that? Aforetime we spoke of wizards. Odd’s life. Are you one?”

  Cheviot, taken aback at her reception of his commonplace reasoning, made a fussed gesture.

  “It’s the most likely supposition, madam. No more.”

  “Ah! Then tell me this, Signor Cagliostro!” Shrewdness peered out through the blur of tears. “Why did this curs’t knave empty out the containers, into a bowl or whatnot, and leave ’em empty? Why not fish with his fingers? Draw out the pretties? And leave the seed as though untouched?”

  “Madam, there are several explanations. Again I can but give you the most likely.”

  “Well!”

  “Wasn’t it certain, Lady Cork, that next morning you would immediately hasten to the cages, and make sure your treasures were safe?”

  “God’s body!” said Lady Cork. “So I did!”

  “And the thief, he or she, must act very quickly in the night. It’s no easy matter to disturb parrots’ cages without a great commotion, which might have aroused you. No doubt the thief cared little whether or not the containers were left empty. But you understand what this means?”

  “Hey?”

  “For instance. Is your house, on the outside, locked up safely at night?”

  “Like Newgate! Like the Fleet! Or more so, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Do you lock your bedroom doors at night?”

  “No! Where’s the need?”

  “Then the thief, he or she, must be someone close at hand. On your honour, madam: you have no notion at all who the thief may be?”

  “No.” She rounded the syllable carefully, after a pause.

  “Did you confide to any person your intent of hiding the jewels?”

  “To nobody!” snapped Lady Cork, with more assurance.

  “Then but one more question, madam. You are sure you heard no noise or movement, saw no glimmer of light, in the long watches of the night?”

  “No. It’s—it’s the laudanum.”

  “The laudanum?”

  “Old women, boy, sleep very little.” Then she raged at him. “I drink it every night, to give peace. I can’t help it! Even when I laid a snare on Thursday, with a worthless ring in a canary’s cage, I yielded and drank. And where’s the harm? Don’t the King drink laudanum to ease the pain in his bladder? And, when his Ministers go down to talk o’ state affairs, an’t he so hocussed he can’t speak to ’em?”

  She brooded, fiercely, clasping and unclasping her hand on the head of the stick. Yet her tone changed.

  “The King,” she said. “They hate him, don’t they? Ay! They hate him. But I knew him when he was young, as handsome as a god, and a-paying court to poor Perdita Robinson.”

  Again the muscles of her face were writhing past control. Despite herself the tears overflowed and trickled down.

  “Be off!” she shouted, clearing her throat. “I’ve had enough this night. Be off with ye!”

  Cheviot made a sign to Mr. Henley.

  The chief clerk sealed his ink-well, put away his pens, closed the writing-case, and limped over softly on his own thick cane to yank the tapestry bell-pull beside the fireplace. Then he and Cheviot moved towards the double-doors.

  “Stop!” Lady Cork said suddenly.

  She rose to her feet with strange dignity, for all her tear-draggled look.

  “A last word to you! I hear everything. I have heard, no matter how or from whom, about my diamond-and-ruby brooch, formed like a ship. It was the first gift I had from my husband after we were wed. And I hear it’s been pledged at Vulcan’s.”

  Even the surge of waltz-music seemed to infuriate her. She hammered her stick on the floor, so hard that the macaw screeched once more.

  “My brooch!” she said, swallowing. “At Vulcan’s!”

  “Vulcan?” Cheviot thought. “A pawnbroker? A moneylender?”

  He couldn’t ask her who Vulcan was. Clearly she expected him to know. But there were others he could ask, and so he merely bowed.

  “Good night, Lady Cork.”

  He motioned the clerk to precede him, and they both went out.

  There, in the long and broad passage with its two lines of Chinese lamps, th
ey stood huddled in muttered conference as Cheviot closed the door with a loud snap.

  “Now, what,” asked Mr. Henley, “did you make of that?”

  “The fact is,” Cheviot answered truthfully, “she’s so much of the eighteenth century I could hardly understand her pronunciation, much less try to imitate her speech. It’s a relief to speak naturally.”

  (To speak naturally. Over ninety years before he had been born!)

  “Ah!” muttered Mr. Henley, assuming a wise look. “I had a bit of trouble myself, once or twice, though I’m a good deal older than you. But what I meant—!”

  “She’s not telling us the whole truth. She knows, or guesses, who stole those jewels. If it weren’t for their sentimental value to her, she might not have spoken at all. It’s fairly clear that—”

  Cheviot paused, because his companion had swung round from the door. Mr. Henley was staring ahead; his reddish eyebrows drew together; he half-lifted his cane to point. Cheviot swung round too.

  About a dozen feet ahead of them, with her back to them, stood Flora Drayton.

  There was nothing unusual in her presence there. She stood somewhat to the right, on the dull-flowered carpet, in the direction of the closed double-doors to the ballroom.

  It was her rigid, unnatural posture, head held a little back and hands thrust deeply into the fur muff. Though they could not see her face, yet her whole body was instinct with agony and despair.

  Cheviot’s heart seemed to contract as though squeezed in fingers.

  Two seconds later, a door opened. It was one of the single doors, painted brilliant orange, in the wall now on their left as they faced forwards towards the stairs. It was, in fact, the passage-door to Lady Cork’s bedroom.

  Out walked Margaret Renfrew, closing the door sharply after her. She was turned sideways, showing little more than the line of her cheek. Miss Renfrew passed well ahead of Flora, hurrying diagonally as though towards the doors to the ballroom.

  Then she hesitated, seeming to change her mind. Making a gesture of impatience, she turned slightly and walked straight down the middle of the carpet towards the stairs. She was then about ten feet ahead of the agonized Flora.

  And at that moment—let it be the chronicler who states it—somebody fired the shot.

  They scarcely heard the shot, for reasons to be explained. A dozen fast-sawing fiddles and a harp, the swish and swirl of shoes as dancers whirled and dipped, the giggles of women and the shouts of men, filled the passage with incredible noise.

  But the bullet struck Margaret Renfrew just under the left shoulder-blade.

  Cheviot’s long eyesight saw its black speck leap up against the back of the white gown. It was as though someone, with hands more than human, had flung her forwards. She pitched two steps, staggered, and fell flat on her face.

  For what seemed minutes, and must actually have been two or three seconds, she lay motionless. Then her fingers, frenziedly, clawed and scrabbled at the carpet. She tried to push herself up on both arms, and succeeded in straightening out to the elbows. But a violent spasm shook her body. Margaret Renfrew’s shoulders collapsed. Her forehead bumped against the carpet, the glossy black ringlets tumbling forwards. She lay still.

  Up and down whirled the waltz-music.

  While we glide on summer’s tide, to what dream’s end?

  As we ride, our thoughts abide with …

  Cheviot raced forwards, past a blur of black-lacquer walls and gold dragons. He knelt down by that motionless figure.

  The bullet-hole was small; only a little sluggish blood had trickled down. A small pistol, with a light powder-charge, would have made comparatively little noise. It should not have done much damage, even, unless the bullet pierced the heart.

  But it had.

  Snatching out his watch, he pressed open the lid. Sliding one hand under the woman’s forehead, he lifted her head up and held the face of the watch close against painted lips, automatically noting the time as he did so. Not a breath clouded the glass. She had died within twenty seconds.

  Cheviot lowered her head. He shut up the watch and put it in his pocket.

  Mr. Henley, as pale as paper and with a sagging fleshy mouth, loomed up over him. The chief clerk all but sprawled on his face as he knelt down too.

  “What—?” he began.

  Fortunately he was looking at Miss Renfrew’s body. Cheviot glanced behind him, and went cold.

  Flora’s rigidity had changed. She was now facing him, from ten feet away. Her eyes looked at him without seeing him. She began to tremble all over, beyond control of all nerves. As her arms shook, the big fur muff slipped sideways.

  Though she still held the muff with her left hand, her right hand—in an elbow-length glove with one seam split wide open along the back of the hand—fell nervelessly out of the muff.

  And a smallish pistol, with a golden lozenge-shaped plate let into the wooden handle, fell with it. The pistol dropped on the carpet and gleamed there.

  Flora dropped the muff, too, gasped, and pressed both hands over her eyes.

  6

  Nightmare in the Passage

  CHEVIOT, WHO HAD stood up, clamped his hand firmly on the shoulder of the still-kneeling Mr. Henley.

  “Turn her over!” he said.

  “Eh?”

  “Turn her on her back, and make sure she’s dead. You’ve been to the wars; you won’t lose your head. Don’t let anything distract your attention!”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  If the chief clerk looked round …

  But he did not look round. His lame foot gave him difficulty when he wrenched at the limp but dead-weight body.

  Then Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot did what he would never have believed he could have done.

  Silently he ran to Flora. Her eyes, changing, were now fixed on him in mute, irresistible appeal. He picked up the pistol, gripping it hard with forefinger and thumb round the edge of the muzzle.

  Only a few feet from her side stood one of the very low black teakwood tables. Though the lamp with fringed and silk-brocade shade appeared to have a heavy base of dark-painted porcelain, he knew the base was hollow.

  He lifted the lamp with his left hand. With his right he put the pistol underneath. The base of the lamp easily fitted over it and concealed it.

  But not before he had noted several things. The pistol was still warm. His middle finger, against the muzzle, came away with traces of burnt black powder. The little golden lozenze-shaped plate, inlaid in the wooden handle, was carved with the entwined initials A.D.

  To hide the pistol under the lamp, it had been necessary to turn away briefly. He whirled back again, Mr. Henley had not glanced round. But …

  God Almighty!

  He thought that one of the double-doors to the ballroom had opened only two inches or so, and then closed again. He had a wild impression he had seen something black, a coat or perhaps hair, between the brilliant orange oblongs with their arabesques of gold.

  But he couldn’t be sure. It was only a flash at the edge of the edge of the eye; uncertain, possibly a complete deception. There was no reason for his nerves to jump.

  Margaret Renfrew lay on her back, with her eyes wide open and her jaw fallen. She could not hear the music, or would ever hear it again.

  Mr. Henley, still pale but beginning to regain his wits, staggered to his feet.

  “Mr. Cheviot,” he said, “who done this?”

  Cheviot risked a look at Flora. His eyes pleaded with her as silently they asked the question, “Flora, Flora, why did you …?”

  Just as desperately her own eyes replied, “I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!”

  “Mr. Cheviot,” the chief clerk repeated in his hoarse, heavy voice, “who done this?”

  Mr. Henley had not even observed his slip in grammar.

  “You didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t do it. With all due respects to the lady, and suggesting nothing,” he jerked his head towards Flora, “she didn’t do it
either. I was watching her, and she didn’t take her hands out of that muff for one instant.”

  It was true.

  It was so true, striking like a blow, that Cheviot spoke without thinking.

  “You saw the wound. It was a small pistol, what they call a pocket pistol. If you or I fired through a pocket, muffling the flash too …”

  Mr. Henley, startled out of his wits, uttered an expletive.

  “Look at my clothes!” he said, staring down over himself. “You’re as good as Superintendent of the Home Division. Go on: look at ’em! I’ll do the same for you!”

  “But …”

  “By your leave, sir! I insist!”

  Cheviot did so. He even opened the writing-case and examined the cane. He found nothing. But he knew he wouldn’t, as Mr. Henley examined him. His thoughts were on Flora’s muff. There wasn’t any—

  “Merely as a matter of form?” he suggested, with what must have been a stiff and grotesque smile. And he picked up Flora’s muff.

  She could not even have fired through the muff, without leaving a black burned rent from the exploded powder. As he turned the muff over in his hands, he found no such rent; and he gave it back to her.

  Flora was no longer trembling. Her fear of him, her shrinking back from him, whatever had been its inexplicable cause, was gone. Her lips scarcely moved when she spoke.

  “Darling!” she whispered, in so low a voice that he hardly heard. “Darling, darling, darling! You know I never did.”

  Whereupon Flora spoke aloud.

  “But who did?” she cried. “There was nobody else in the passage.”

  True again; there had been nobody else in the passage.

  Eerily the oil-lamps shone on black-lacquered wood. The canaries hopped, defying the surge of music and competing with it. Cheviot looked back at Mr. Henley.

  The latter, instinctively subservient, touched two fingers to his forehead.

  “It’s no business of mine, Mr. Cheviot. But,” and he gestured around, “there’s only one way. One of these doors must have opened, and somebody stuck out a barker.”

  “I could take my oath,” Cheviot answered quietly, “that not one of the doors opened when the shot was fired.”

  “Certain of that, sir?”