The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “It does,” said Wilson. “Quite insane.”

  “Well, do you know where he stood? And why he used a blunderbuss? It seems an extraordinary sort of weapon. Why not a revolver? They’re plentiful enough.”

  “I think I’ve an idea where he stood—or rather, where he didn’t stand,” Wilson replied, “though it’s only an idea; and at present I haven’t the ghost of a notion how to prove it. And I’m pretty sure I know why he used a blunderbuss. Think of the specific characteristics of blunderbusses, and you’ll be able to answer that question for yourself. Hullo, what’s this?” He was standing close by the telephone, peering at the shelf above it. “God be praised, the charwoman isn’t as thorough as might have been gathered from the telephone. Look there.” Prendergast stared at the shelf, which was fairly thick with an accumulation of London dust. At one end, the end to which Wilson was pointing, there was a round depression in the dust about six inches across. “Something round has stood there,” he said; and felt he was being a little obvious.

  “It has,” said Wilson. “And it has only recently been taken down, and it hadn’t been standing there long. The dust on the mark is practically as thick as that on the rest of the shelf—it’s only been compressed. Now look around, Michael, and tell me what made that mark.”

  “The telephone,” Prendergast said promptly. Indeed it was the only possible object in sight.

  “So it would appear. But we’d better make sure,” said Wilson, proceeding carefully to measure the diameter of both telephone and mark. “Now perhaps you can tell me why the late Mr. Carluke kept his telephone in so inconvenient a position? I can hardly reach it, and I should say I’m as tall as he was.”

  “Taller,” said the man of science mechanically; and racked his brains to think why the telephone should have been removed to that distant shelf. To make room for the murderer, seemed the only possible answer; yet what could it possibly avail a murderer to have the telephone cleared out of the way? Prendergast’s mind, as he told Wilson, could only conjure up the vision of a murderous gnome the size of a telephone, sitting on the shelf with a blunderbuss in his arms. He was rather surprised that Wilson smiled at him encouragingly.

  “That’s better,” Wilson said. “You’re beginning to use your brains.”

  “If the only result of using them is to produce hobgoblins,” Prendergast grumbled, “I think they might as well be unused.” At that moment he nearly jumped out of his skin, for the bell of the telephone shrilled suddenly through the silent house.

  “Somebody ringing up Mr. Carluke?” he said, as Wilson lifted the receiver.

  “No, it’s the station,” the latter said. “Yes, inspector. Yes. Wilson speaking.…” Prendergast wandered out into the hall, where the sergeant was just coming downstairs after a careful official search of the house.

  “Well, whoever did that poor fellow in’s got wings,” he said. “There’s nowhere for him to have got out at. Back door’s locked and bolted; windows all fastened and the snibs as tight as anything with this weather. You couldn’t possibly push any of them back from outside. There’s one window open on the top floor, but no signs of anyone getting in or out. And the window’s too small to climb through without leaving marks.”

  “What about the chimneys?” Prendergast suggested. “I suppose a murderer could climb up a chimney?”

  “Not up a gas-flue he couldn’t, doctor,” said the sergeant. “It’s gas all over the house, and the flues quite tightly fastened in. No, he flew, that’s what he did. Unless he chopped himself up and put himself away in pieces. I’ve looked everywhere a man could possibly hide himself in this house, and there’s no one there.”

  At this point the telephone bell tinkled to indicate the end of the conversation, and Wilson came out into the hall. “You’ve some very efficient men at your station, sergeant,” he said; and the sergeant blushed with pleasure. “They’ve checked Barton’s statements already. His story’s all right. The landlord of the Dog and Duck remembers him and Carluke passing the door last night, and actually watched Carluke back to his own house. Then they’ve got onto his hosts at Hendon, who say he arrived at nine-thirty and didn’t leave till nearly one, and his wife and son say he came straight home.”

  “Sounds all right,” said the sergeant. “Unless he came back after one.”

  “That would make it nearly two when he got back,” said Wilson. “Buses and tubes would have stopped running by then, and he hasn’t got a car.”

  He looked at Prendergast with a question in his eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” the latter answered. “I’m pretty sure he was dead long before midnight. Of course, one can’t tell to an hour or so—but I’m pretty certain. Did you think Barton’s alibi was wrong then?”

  “No,” said Wilson, “I didn’t. But we had to check it.”

  “And in any case,” said the sergeant, “if he did come back, how’d he get out again?” He explained to Wilson the difficulties. “What are we to do now, sir?”

  “Search the house thoroughly,” Wilson said. “And his papers. I’ve got his keys. I’ll help you. Only we must be quick.”

  “Anything you’re looking for particular, sir?”

  “Oh, as for papers—anything bearing on the crime—or suggesting that anybody else has been at ’em. And for the rest—the weapon.”

  “Blunderbuss, sir?”

  “That, or something like it. But it may have been taken to pieces. Look for anything that could conceivably be part of a blunderbuss. It ought to be somewhere in the house, I’m pretty certain, but I’ve no idea where.”

  “It’s my belief, doctor,” the sergeant said admiringly, as they began their search, “that Mr. Wilson’s got the whole thing solved already.”

  “Only half solved, sergeant,” said Wilson, turning a rather anxious face on him. “I haven’t got the motive, and I haven’t got the weapon. And if we don’t find one of them quickly I’m afraid I shan’t get the murderer either.”

  IV

  It was a long and depressing search that they conducted through the dead man’s effects, while the minutes wore on, and Wilson’s face got more and more tense. Prendergast felt that he had never till that morning known what a careful search really was. Wilson made them grope in every crevice, shake out every cushion and every piece of fabric; he felt along the seams of mattresses and chair seats; he made them turn out the dustbin and the sink and look under the traps; they even went into the little garden and searched the gravel path that encircled the house, and all its adjoining flower beds; but all in vain. There was no blunderbuss, nor any less unusual firearm to be seen; there was not even anything that might have been part of a blunderbuss. At length, after more than two hours’ searching, they came to the safe, which Wilson unlocked with the dead man’s keys.

  “Doesn’t look as if there was much to be found here, sir,” said the sergeant, looking at the neat bundles of documents.

  “Well, we can but try,” said Wilson, beginning to examine the first packet.

  “You know,” he said after a few minutes, “I’m inclined to think that somebody’s been through these papers before us. They’re just a little bit out of order—as if somebody had tried to put them back tidily who didn’t really know what the order was. Like one’s library after someone’s been dusting it. But for the life of me I can’t make out what the somebody was after. Whatever it was, if he took it away it’s left no traces. What on earth could he have wanted? There’s not much sign of the mysterious nephew, anyway. Mr. Carluke seems to have been in the habit of destroying his private papers.”

  “You didn’t,” Prendergast, having no answer to the last question, suggested, “you didn’t think anything of my idea that the telephone people might be able to give you the time of his death? That would settle people’s alibis, anyway.”

  “I know,” said Wilson. “The difficulty is, that I’m pretty certain he wasn’t telephoning when he died.”

  “But he was!” Prendergast cried. “You’re f
orgetting his hands—his fingers, I mean. Don’t you remember the way they were curved? I can just see them. They were exactly at the angle one uses to hold a telephone”—he illustrated with his own hands—“only a bit wider—as if it had been dragged out of them, and the rigor had fixed them in that position. I remember noticing at the time, and wondering what he could possibly have been holding. I thought it might have been the blunderbuss—but if it had been, of course, he’d be holding it still. But the telephone’s much more likely.” He stopped with a feeling of triumph, for Wilson had dropped the papers and was looking at him with real respect.

  “By George, Michael, I believe you’ve got it!” he said. “I’d quite forgotten his hands, fool that I am. Sergeant, do you happen to know if the Post Office have lost an instrument lately?”

  “An instrument? I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” the sergeant chuckled, while Prendergast gaped at this unexpected result of his suggestion. “The Post Office attend to their own lost property.”

  “Then ring them up and find out, as quick as you can,” was the reply. “Hurry up, man, the whole thing may depend on it.”

  “Why ever should you think they’ve lost a telephone?” Prendergast asked.

  “It’s only a guess,” Wilson answered. “But if it’s right, it makes the thing pretty certain.”

  The sergeant was away a long time, while Wilson and Prendergast patiently searched through a quiet old gentleman’s most uninteresting private papers. When he came back, he gazed at Wilson with an expression almost of reverence on his face.

  “How did you know, sir?” he said. “They have lost one. There was one pinched out of an empty flat in Golders Green within the last week or two; but they can’t say exactly when, and they’ve no idea who took it. How did you know?”

  “Well, it was a fairly obvious conclusion, wasn’t it?” said Wilson. “I wish it was as obvious where it had got to. Come, we must find this thing. It can’t have left the house; there wasn’t time. And there’s nowhere he can have dropped it—Good Lord!” He sprang to his feet, and made for the door. “The owl!”

  “What’s the matter?” Prendergast said, following him breathlessly as he rushed down the stairs.

  “What a fool! The owl, of course!” was all the answer he got. “No, wait a moment. I’ll be back directly.”

  Prendergast and the sergeant stood at the hall door, gaping, while Wilson ran out into the road and about a hundred yards up the hill. There he stood for five seconds or so, staring up at the trees which all but screened the house from view; and then he returned at the same pace. “It’s the bathroom window, I think,” he said as he regained the house; and shot up the stairs, the other two following. Arrived at the bathroom he flung wide the window, which was the same that the sergeant had already found open, and leaned out as far as possible to the left, groping with his hand in the thick ivy that covered the wall. After two or three seconds’ searching he gave an exclamation of triumph.

  “Got it!” he said. “At least, I think so. Will you both please look carefully? I want to have a witness to this.” He brought his hand back, with a fat envelope in it marked Capital and Counties Bank. This he handed to the sergeant. “The weapon, sir?” the latter said, puzzled. “There’s more coming,” said Wilson; and dived again into the ivy.

  “This wants careful handling,” he said as he returned for the second time. In his hand was what at first sight looked like an ordinary telephone receiver. But on looking closely, it was apparent that the mouthpiece and the top of the telephone had been removed, and in their place was a fat muzzle of metal. Prendergast came close to it and stared down the black mouth of the thing.

  “My God, it’s the blunderbuss!” he said.

  “It seems to be,” said Wilson. “We’ll have to take it to pieces to find out how it worked. But it seems quite clear what the murderer did. The inside of this instrument has been taken out to make room for the charge, and the hook for the earpiece is fastened to the trigger. A man going to answer a telephone ring in the dark—remember that broken light, sergeant, which was probably broken by the murderer—would take hold of the earpiece and let the gun off. You see now the point of having a blunderbuss—and a blunderbuss, as Dr. Prendergast noticed, charged with a peculiarly nasty type of expanding slug, like soft-nosed bullets. You can’t make quite certain where a man’s head will be when he’s answering the telephone, and the blunderbuss was pretty safe to hit him wherever he was. There are some finger-prints on both the receiver and the earpiece”—he had been dusting it with powder as he spoke—“I’m pretty certain they are Carluke’s, but we can compare them downstairs for certain. I took his prints on a card before he was taken away. Now, Michael, I think I can answer the question I asked you a while back—where did the murderer stand when he killed his victim? The answer is—at a private telephone in Hendon. Sergeant, will you send down to the station and tell them to detain Edward Barton on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Harold Carluke? I think you’ll find he’s still there.”

  “Good God, sir,” the sergeant said. “What a diabolical thing! Do you mean he fixed up this affair and then went off and left the poor old boy to be shot next time he went to the telephone?”

  “And then rang him up to make sure he did go,” said Wilson. “Twice, you remember, in case he should have been out the first time. The telephone people will be able to trace those abortive calls for us. But, of course, he was dead long before the second one was made.”

  “Good God!” said the sergeant again. “The cold-blooded devil! Why did he murder him, sir?” He spoke as though he regarded Wilson as an eye-witness of the whole thing.

  “I don’t know that yet,” said Wilson. “But I shouldn’t be surprised if the envelope you have in your hand throws some light on it.” He tore it open, and a small bundle of cheques drawn on the Capital and Counties Bank fell out. Drawing a lens from his pocket, he made a rapid examination of the signatures.

  “Of course, I don’t know the Hampstead clients of the Capital and Counties Bank,” he said. “But I should say there’s no doubt that some of these are forgeries. Look at the waviness of that line in the glass. That’s no true signature.” He handed cheque and glass to the sergeant, who nodded agreement. “I presume friend Barton had either written them or helped to pass them through; and that Carluke had found it out. If we get into touch with the bank manager, we’ll probably get the whole story. But you’d better go and make sure of your prisoner. I doubt whether Catling’s finding it easy to detain him.”

  V

  “You gave my eyesight better credit than it deserved. What I took for an owl was Barton’s hand putting the papers away,” said Wilson. “My only excuse is that I wasn’t looking at the place at all. I only got a faint impression at the edge of the retina, and when I focussed on it, it was gone. There is only one spot in the road from which that particular bit of ivy is visible at all—and that spot’s not visible from the window. Barton must have thought himself quite unobserved. But I nearly lost the clue, all the same, through not following up my impression quickly enough.”

  “What I don’t see,” Prendergast said, “is why you were looking for a weapon at all—why you thought it hadn’t been taken away.” They were discussing the case again after Barton’s execution. Faced with the forged cheques and the incriminating telephone, his nerve had gone and he had confessed everything—incidentally giving away the actual forgers of the cheques which he had paid over the counter. The bank manager on his return had supplied the information that investigations had been taking place into one of the forged cheques, which had been detected, and that the dead man had asked him for an interview as soon as he came back on that very subject. Hence the necessity for his murder. The rest of the crime was as Wilson had indicated—even to the stealing of the telephone from the empty flat in Golders Green and the careful breaking of the electric light bulb.

  “Well,” Wilson said. “I didn’t see what else he could have done with it. He had only been
in the house a few minutes, the man at the gate said—no time to take it anywhere else. Of course, he might have had it on him; but I didn’t think he’d risk that, as he knew he would have to go to the police station. If I hadn’t found it in the house, I was going to have him searched, as a last resort. But I didn’t want to do that, because we should have had to let him go, after his complete alibi; and that would have given him plenty of time to find and destroy his weapon, or to leave the country.”

  “Then you knew all along he was guilty?” Prendergast asked. “How?”

  “Well, I began to suspect him as soon as I’d had a look at the telephone cabinet. You see, it was so obvious, from the dimensions of the cabinet and the direction of the shots, that the murderer hadn’t been in the cabinet at all. You saw that yourself, only you were convinced that he must have been. But there was no room for him to have been, and no signs of his departure. There were only Barton’s footprints visible, and no one could have got out across the body and across that pool of blood without stepping in it. I tried myself. That suggested that the man was alone when he was killed, and that he was killed by some mechanical means or other; and the fact that the bulb—a practically new one, as I daresay you noticed—was broken, was suspiciously convenient for a trap. I got Barton to put his finger-prints on another bulb for me so as to have a record of them, and later I discovered that the broken one bore prints of the same hand. Of course, that wasn’t conclusive; but it was suggestive. The bulb’s well out of Barton’s reach; he wouldn’t have been changing it in the ordinary course of events. That was his principal slip, by the way; he wiped everything else clean—the real telephone rather suspiciously so—but he forgot the bulb.

  “Well, if the man was alone when he met his death, obviously his murderer could have a cast-iron alibi, so that any alibis could be left out of account in the preliminary investigations. Actually, it made Mr. Barton’s own alibi a little suspicious—it almost suggested careful preparation. So when I’d got all I wanted out of him, I left you to look after him and went back to make a further study. Then I found, as I showed you, that there was blood under the telephone, showing that it had been put down after the crime. Carluke himself couldn’t possibly have put it back, as you said; he must have fallen as soon as he was hit; and as additional evidence of that, I found, when I examined the telephone, that Carluke had apparently never touched it at all. That meant that somebody else must have put it back after his death, and cleaned it after moving. But, so far as we knew, only Mr. Barton had been in the cabinet after his death. So I tried a little more investigation of Mr. Barton’s movements; and when I found, first that the telephone had apparently stood very recently for a few hours on an exceedingly inaccessible shelf, and secondly, prints of somebody’s bloodstained toe-tips just below the place where it had stood, and a smudge on the shelf below which looked uncommonly like the mark of a knee resting there, I was pretty certain that it was he who had moved it—and moved it back again when he ‘discovered’ the corpse.