The Man Who Could Not Shudder (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 12)

by John Dickson Carr

  “Last night, about one-thirty. I mean this morning; but it’ll be less confusing if we call it last night.”

  “Where was the gun then?”

  “In the pocket of Logan’s dressing gown.”

  “You’ve said that you and Mr. and Mrs. Logan were in this room, while Logan hunted round for somebody he thought might be hiding here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do after that?”

  “Went upstairs to bed. The Logans went to their room, and I went to mine.”

  “Was the revolver still in Mr. Logan’s pocket? That is, might he have taken it out and left it down here?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It was still in his pocket, so far as I can remember.”

  Elliot made another note. Then he looked up. “Who, besides you and Mrs. Logan, knew that he had a gun here?”

  “I can’t tell you. Nobody, so far as I know.”

  “You didn’t meet anybody else—in the halls, or prowling about?”

  “No.”

  The rain pattered steadily, drearily, bringing out an odor of old wood and old stone.

  “Now,” continued Elliot in a quiet, insistent voice, “I want you to look at something, and think hard if you ever thought in your life. Walk over to the fireplace and look at that row of pistols. Study it. Then tell us whether you see anything different, anything at all different from the arrangement of the pistols last night. I don’t mean the substitution of the .45 for the cavalry pistol; but is anything else different?”

  He spoke with such urgency that I grew uneasy. Even Dr. Fell’s wheezing breaths seemed to come faster; the doctor struck a match for his dead cigar, with a sharp plop and a core of light like a start, which was reflected back from his eyeglasses.

  I went to the mantelpiece. There was a dead silence except for the dreary monotone of the rain. At first nothing emerged. The rain went on. Then a half-memory grew in my mind, and twisted, and took shape …

  “Yes, by the Lord Harry there is!”

  “Well? What is it?”

  “Somebody has been monkeying with more of the guns.”

  “So? How?”

  Memory returned as flat and clear as a picture postcard.

  “Somebody,” I said, “has taken down three or four of the pistols off the wall, and hung them back up again in a hurry.”

  Inspector Grimes whistled. Elliot’s eyes did not waver; his hard, probing voice went on insistently. “You’re sure of that, now?”

  “Dead sure. The murderer was trying to find the right height for his gun trap, and set the .45 in several other places first. And he did it clumsily. Last night the muzzles of those pistols were in practically a straight line. Now somebody’s been messing them about, and they’re uneven.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Elliot admitted, “that’s what Mrs. Winch and the maid Sonia tell us. Sonia swears that two of them have changed places: that the Bow-Street-runner gun is now where a dueling pistol used to hang—”

  “And she’s right!”

  “Is she?” asked Elliot. He put down his pencil. “There’s a film of bright polish on all of them,” he added. “Would it interest you to know that there isn’t a fingerprint on any of ’em: not even a smudge where they might have been handled with gloves? Nobody has touched those guns.”

  “But, hang it, that’s not true! Ask anybody. They’ve been changed about all over the place!”

  “Nobody,” said Elliot tonelessly, “has touched any of those guns.”

  “But if there’s a secret passage—”

  Elliot suddenly grew human. He picked up his notebook and slapped it down on the table. “For the love of Mike,” he said, “stop babbling about secret passages. Will you, once and for all, get that obsession about secret passages out of your head? That mantelpiece is just what it pretends to be: a solid brick mantelpiece. There’s no secret passage, or trick door or whatnot, anywhere in this room.”

  He turned to Dr. Fell.

  “Well, sir, have you any ideas? What do you say?”

  Dr. Fell stirred. He scowled at the lighted end of his cigar, drawing in several chins for weighty speech, and replying in a voice of such concentration that it seemed to come from deep down in the earth like the first rumble of an earthquake.

  “I do not deny,” he replied, “that I have an idea. A faint o’erglimmering of an idea, which”—he gestured vaguely with the cigar, scattering ash—“flickereth and goeth out. There is one very strong objection to it. Before committing myself, I should like to hear what Mr. Enderby has to say.”

  Elliot got up, went to the door, and spoke to the constable in the drawing-room.

  “Ask Mr. Enderby,” he said, “if he can come here at once.”

  What Julian had to do with this was a mystery to me, but Elliot made no comment. However, when I started to go, he motioned me to remain where I was.

  He went to the typewriter table, where he picked up six opened envelopes: presumably the envelopes of the letters Logan had received that morning, and which he had been sitting down to answer when he was shot. These Elliot put in a neat pile on the center table. With them he placed a collection of articles which were probably the contents of the dead man’s pockets. They included nothing which appeared very significant: a notecase, a key ring, a fountain pen, two pencils, a small address book, some loose change, and a bent cigar in a crumpled cellophane wrapper.

  Elliot was arranging these things in a line when Julian entered. In that dim light, with eternal rain smearing the windows, his tubby figure was reminiscent of someone else. But, when he opened his mouth, he could be nobody but Julian. Elliot motioned him to a chair, and he sat at attention.

  “Now, sir, as a formality …”

  “I don’t suppose, Inspector,” said Julian, “that any attention would be paid to me if for the dozenth time I asked to get away from here? Good Lord, I know nothing of the case. Nothing! If I did, I should be only too pleased to help you.”

  Elliot had an admirable way with witnesses: brisk, and yet deferential; pleasant, but implying that nonsense was nonsense in anybody’s phraseology.

  “In that case, sir, the sooner we get the routine inquiries over with, the sooner you’ll be able to get away. Would you mind giving me your full name, with both your business and home addresses?”

  Julian took out a super-neat cardcase, extracted a card from it, disengaged it gingerly from the intervening tissue paper, and laid it on the table.

  “Just so, sir. And the home address?”

  “Twenty-four, Malplaquet Chambers, Finchley Road, N.W. 6.”

  Elliot wrote it down.

  “How long have you known Mr. Logan, sir?”

  A shadow of exasperation crossed Julian’s face. “But that’s just the point. I didn’t know him. I never saw the man until after he was dead. Consequently—”

  “Have you ever met Mrs. Logan?”

  Julian reflected.

  “I’ll tell you what, Inspector,” he confided. “That’s something I’ve been trying to remember ever since I saw her. I think I’ve met her somewhere before, or seen her; but for the life of me I can’t remember where. Anyway, for all practical purposes you can say that I didn’t know her.”

  “Yes. I see. Now, at what time did you arrive at the house this morning?”

  “At just before ten o’clock. I’m afraid I cannot be precise as to the minute.”

  “You went straight into the house?”

  “Of course. I wished to pay my respects to our host. I—er—was not acquainted with him either.”

  “But you didn’t find Mr. Clarke?”

  “No,” returned Julian, fiddling with his already perfect tie, and then leaving off to brush at the lapels of his coat. “The housekeeper (I think it was the housekeeper?) told me he was ‘out back.’ I went out into the garden, as I have already told Bob Morrison.” He flashed a side glance. “I was in the garden when I heard the shot which presumably killed Mr. Logan.”

  “You he
ard the shot?”

  “Of course.”

  “Whereabouts in the garden were you then, sir?”

  It sounded like routine questioning. But I, who knew Elliot, could hear a faint undertone, a faint suave lift which suggested traps amid courtesy.

  Julian considered the question. His voice was persuasive.

  “I’m not quite sure about that, Inspector. It’s a big garden: you may have seen it. There is a lot of grass, with a crazy-paved path, and then a sunken garden beyond. I was startled when I heard the shot (naturally); and I can’t be positive.”

  “Just try to tell me your approximate whereabouts, sir. Were you near the house?”

  “No, not very near.”

  Elliot turned round and inclined his pencil toward the great window facing north, toward the gardens. It was blurred and darkened by skeins of rain, which tapped back at him. One of the tall panes still stood partly open, so that rain sluiced down almost on the top of the radio-gramophone under it.

  “You weren’t near that window, for instance?”

  “No. Not very near it, that I remember.”

  Elliot put down the pencil and folded his hands.

  “Mr. Enderby,” he said, like a schoolmaster across a desk, “I’d be very grateful if we could cut out all this and come down to business. What did you see when you climbed up on that up-ended wooden box outside, and looked in through the window just as the shot was fired?”

  “Looked in …” began Julian; the rain was like a roar in all our ears.

  Elliot made a restraining gesture. His tone was patient.

  “Just a minute, sir. I’m not bluffing, and I’m not third-degreeing. As you know, you’re not compelled to answer my questions. If you refuse to answer, that’s your own affair. But I’d like to point out the trouble it will save you at the inquest if you help me now by telling the truth. It will certainly save your face,” here he looked hard at Julian, “and it may save you other unpleasant consequences as well. When you drove up to the house this morning, did you notice a gardener working beside the front driveway—in a flower bed just outside the two front windows? There?”

  He pointed.

  “I noticed somebody. Perhaps,” said Julian, “a gardener.”

  “Yes. This gardener, Mr. MacCarey, was standing not six feet from the front windows when the shot was fired. He dropped his hose, and ran to see what had happened. The front windows (you notice?) are built much nearer the ground than the back one. It was easy to look in.”

  “Well?” said Julian. He began to twirl the end of his watch chain; and twirl it faster.

  “Mr. MacCarey,” continued Elliot, “is prepared to swear that he saw you standing outside that big back window, on the box, looking in. He couldn’t see the box; but he distinctly saw you. He also says that your hand was inside the window, through that partly opened pane. And this was only two seconds … two seconds, sir … after the firing of the shot.”

  Again, this time with a sharper movement of his hand, Elliot forestalled the other.

  “Just a minute, sir. I’m not suggesting that you had anything to do with this crime. You’re all right: you were clear outside the window at the time. But what we do want, and want very badly, is a witness. You are that witness. You must be. If you were on that box, and with your hand partly through the window, only two seconds after the shot … well, it’s twenty to one you saw what happened when the gun went off. Mrs. Logan tells what seems to be an impossible story. You’re in a position to confirm that story, or demolish it. Considering that, and considering what your plain duty is, are you ready to change your mind and tell me what happened? What do you say?”

  XI

  JULIAN’S RESPONSE TO THIS was interesting, to those of us who know our Julians. He turned round on me.

  “You got me into this,” he said accusingly.

  Which was confounded cheek, to say the least of it. When you considered Julian puttering up and down, saying in an agony of logic, “Let us consider the factors involved,” and, “I have no concern with this!” it became too greased and slippery for anybody’s liking. But Julian pulled himself together in a second. He did not bat a round eyelid as he returned Elliot’s gaze.

  “Inspector,” he said, “can the person who is being questioned get in a word edgeways?”

  “I’m waiting, sir.”

  “So am I,” retorted Julian. “You see, your proposition does not follow. Even if it were true—”

  “Is it true? Were you outside that window?”

  “Not so fast, not so fast!” Fussed and fussy, but always alert, Julian hit back. “Suppose what you say is true. I say: suppose it, that’s all. Why am I, per se, your chief witness? What about the gardener? Why can’t he substantiate, or deny, Mrs. Logan’s testimony?”

  “Because, sir, he wasn’t at the window when the shot was fired.”

  “Then,” said Julian, “have you any reason for supposing that I was?”

  “Look here—”

  “No, no! It’s a fair question, Inspector. The gardener arrives at the window a few seconds after the shot. Very well. Why shouldn’t the same apply to me? Why shouldn’t I hear the shot too, and look through my window on the other side? Have you one scrap or shred of evidence to show that I looked through my window before he looked through his? You haven’t; and you know it. Then why should I be expected to know so much more than he?”

  Elliot’s patience was wearing thin.

  “Because, Mr. Enderby, the gardener looked through the wrong window.”

  “The wrong window?”

  “I mean,” continued Elliot, putting the palms of his hands flat on the table, “that even if MacCarey had been at the window when the shot was fired, he still couldn’t have seen anything. Do you follow that? He looked through the window that had the typewriter table against it. That one there. So he couldn’t see Mrs. Logan, because she was over at the other side of the fireplace; and the projection of the mantelpiece cut off the view.”

  Julian turned to look.

  “That,” he conceded, “would appear to be true.”

  “Whereas you had a grandstand seat from the opposite side. Now that’s all I’ve got to say to you, sir. I’ve practically gone down on my knees to you. If you don’t tell the truth now, it’ll be at your own risk. Were you looking through that north window when the shot was fired?”

  “No, I was not.”

  “Did you look through the window at any time?”

  “No, I did not.”

  And that, for the moment, appeared to be that. For the life of me, I couldn’t decide whether or not Julian was lying. He has one of those rubber faces which can be as noncommittal as a sponge.

  What attitude Elliot might have taken was not apparent, for Elliot never got a chance to speak. There was an interruption. Dr. Fell, clearing his throat with a noise which could have been heard upstairs, rolled forward in his chair. His cigar had gone out again. He blinked at it vaguely, and compromised by dropping it into his pocket. He leaned forward with his hands over his crutch-headed stick, and an expression of Gargantuan distress on his face.

  “Mr. Enderby,” he said, “where is your chivalry?”

  “Chivalry?”

  “Chivalry,” repeated Dr. Fell firmly. “Here is a lady in distress. Mrs. Logan tells an incredible story. Archons of Athens! Unless you back her up, don’t you see that she will probably be arrested for murder?”

  Julian’s voice had a note of heavy skepticism.

  “That won’t do, Doctor.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “To begin with, why should I be interested in backing her up?” inquired Julian, lifting his shoulders. “I don’t know the lady. It’s no concern of mine.”

  “Chivalry, sir. Chivalry.”

  Julian seemed genuinely amused. “Besides, Mrs. Logan is in no danger of being arrested. Ask Bob Morrison. There is the reason (a) that the revolver was hanging against the wall when it was fired. See powder marks. There’s the reason (b)
that there were no fingerprints of hers on the revolver. Oh, yes, I know that!” He grinned round at us. “As a matter of fact, I happened to overhear Inspector Elliot and Inspector Grimes in consultation.”

  Dr. Fell blinked at him.

  “And is that,” he inquired in a hollow voice, “all the reason you have for thinking she wouldn’t be arrested?”

  “It’s a good enough reason.”

  “Oh, tut, tut!” said Dr. Fell. “Tut, tut, tut, tut!”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Listen to me,” urged the doctor in a confiding tone. He edged forward. “I will make you a fair offer. I will undertake to fire that revolver, while it is hanging on the wall, without touching it—without coming within six feet of it—and without using strings, mechanical devices, or flummery of any kind.”

  There was a silence.

  “Five bob you can’t,” growled Inspector Grimes under his breath; but nobody was listening.

  “In other words, you can explain the miracle?” asked Julian.

  Dr. Fell nodded, and nodded again.

  “I rather think so, my lad. Harrumph—Elliot. Where’s the revolver? Give me the revolver.”

  The revolver had been laid down on top of a bookcase. Elliot, after staring at the doctor with hard suspicious eyes, yielded and went to get it. We have since learned that to trust Gideon Fell with a loaded revolver is about as safe as entrusting him with a packet of nitroglycerin. But at the moment we were all too absorbed to consider the little possibility of getting our ears blown off.

  “Ahem. Now watch me closely, gentlemen,” he invited.

  He lumbered over to the fireplace, with the gun in his hand, and turned his back to us. It was impossible to watch him closely, since his back blotted out the whole center of the mantelpiece. But we heard a sharp click.

  “I do not,” he continued, “I do not anticipate results of an—um—dangerous nature. But at the same time, Inspector Grimes, you had better stand to one side. Just a little to one side.”