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

by John Dickson Carr

  “Look here,” protested Elliot, “you’re not going to fire the thing?”

  “If possible, yes.”

  “But can’t you show us? Why disturb the whole house again?”

  “Ready,” said Dr. Fell.

  He was not listening to Elliot. He was utterly absorbed. Moving well to the right of the fireplace, he took up a position as though he were standing by a blackboard with his cane for a pointer.

  Even in that dim light you could see the .45 hung on its three pegs, below the glistening tier of pistols. Nobody moved or spoke. The windows were a crawling mass of rain; a faint gurgle came from the chimney, and chilly air crept along the floor from under the door.

  “You observe,” Dr. Fell went on, “that not even any magic words need be spoken or any cabalistic designs drawn. I merely—”

  “God!” said Inspector Elliot.

  To my bedazed eyes, it seemed that Dr. Fell merely made a mesmeric pass like a conjurer. The explosion of the shot blasted in that confined space. A streak of fire opened and closed across the dark bricks as the revolver, as though twitched by a diabolical life of its own, flung itself upward and backward into Dr. Fell’s face. It struck his upthrown arm, and fell with a ringing clatter on the hearthstone. When the noise had quivered and died away, I glanced toward the left. There was now a second bullet hole in the white wall, almost overlapping the first.

  Dr. Fell wore a guilty expression.

  “I must apologize,” he said, “for causing such a row.” He nodded toward the door. “But, do you know, I already hear sounds of response from the house. It should be very interesting to see who is the first person to come in here.”

  “But what did you do?” demanded Julian.

  “It’s quite simple,” the doctor assured him, scowling hideously and rubbing a bruised arm. “Er … will you pick up the revolver, Mr. Morrison?”

  I did so.

  “Thanke’e. First of all, you see, I cocked the gun by drawing back the hammer. Thus. Then …”

  Julian interposed. He had got a bad shock. “But do you need to cock a modern revolver before you can fire it?”

  “No, sir, you do not. The point is that a .45 has a hard trigger pull, and requires considerable pressure. By cocking it, you make the gun a hair-trigger which can be fired by the lightest touch. Now observe the three pegs which held the pistol to the wall.

  “The center peg, obviously, is used to support the revolver under and inside the trigger guard. I place the weapon back in a certain way. It points toward the left. I make sure that the center peg is placed against—and in front of—the trigger. I stand to the right, well to the right. The slightest touch against the butt of the gun will push the trigger against that wooden peg. So I reach out with the end of my cane, and …”

  “Don’t fire it again!” snapped Elliot. “Let it alone! Come away from there!”

  “H’mf. Well. If you insist.”

  “So all that’s necessary,” muttered Elliot, “is to make the gun jump: so that the peg touches the trigger.”

  Dr. Fell spoke in a curious tone.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “By thunder, but there never was a happier choice of phrase. All that’s necessary is to make the gun jump.”

  After a pause, which we were to remember afterwards, he turned to Julian.

  “You follow the demonstration, Mr. Enderby?”

  “Yes, I follow it all right,” Julian said with peevish violence. “But, frankly, I’m disappointed. I don’t see that that’s so very clever. It looked like magic, just because we didn’t see you touch the butt of the gun with your stick …”

  “Aha!”

  “What do you mean, ‘aha’?”

  “Then you still don’t see the real point?”

  Julian hesitated. “Technically, I admit, it disposes of the two objections. It shows how Mrs. Logan could have fired the shot without leaving fingerprints or taking the gun off the wall. That is, if she were foolish enough to try a trick like that.”

  “H’mf, yes,” said Dr. Fell. “But it also shows (d’ye see?) how the shot could have been fired by somebody who wasn’t in the room at all.”

  That latest experiment had roused the house. Faintly, you could hear running footsteps and a confused noise of calling. Dr. Fell paid no attention to it.

  “As I understand it,” he went on argumentatively, “the morning was dark and overcast. Everybody talks about the sun ‘trying to struggle out.’ So it didn’t come out, except for a gleam or two, until after the murder. I say, Elliot. Did you get a statement from Mrs. Logan?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “And what does she say? Does she say it was dark in this room when Logan was killed?”

  “Yes, she does,” returned Elliot calmly.

  “Now suppose,” said Dr. Fell, lifting one finger with fiery emphasis. “Suppose I were standing outside that big north window.” He pointed. “Suppose I were standing on a box, with one pane open and my hand inside the window.

  “Suppose (hey?) I had in my hand a long, thin, fine rod, like an elongated fishing rod. Suppose in the gloom of the room that rod went unnoticed by an overimaginative and not-too-observant woman. Suppose, after touching a hair-trigger pistol, I let the end of it fall to the floor; and drew it back unobserved by a gardener at the other window. Suppose—”

  He paused.

  With a leisurely motion, as though pondering this, he took a large red bandana handkerchief out of his hip pocket, and proceeded to mop his forehead. He replaced the handkerchief, shook his shoulders, and spoke in a pleading tone.

  “Be chivalrous, Mr. Enderby. You’ve got nothing to fear. You’re all right, as Elliot has told you. The police haven’t suspected you so far. Why not be chivalrous and support the lady?”

  “The suggestion is nonsense,” yelped Julian. “What you say is p-p-preposterous.”

  Dr. Fell grunted.

  “To be quite frank,” he admitted, “it is. I can think of nothing more unlikely than that you were hanging about with a damned great rod fifteen feet long, and fished for a revolver without being seen. But, do you understand, it is one way of explaining a miracle? Perhaps the only way. That method, if suggested at the inquest, would at least cause you more embarrassment, publicity, and lurking suspicion than any simple process of telling the truth. Can I persuade you, Mr. Enderby?”

  Julian contemplated his neat brown shoes. He looked very tired. He was in a corner, and he seemed to know it. When he raised his head, his eyes were squeezed up so that the fine wrinkles round them showed in pin-point detail.

  “Very well,” he said, exhaling his breath. “If you must know, you must. Rather than be pestered like this, and be threatened with blackmail (which is what it is, as you very well know), I’ll tell you. Yes. I was looking in through that window.”

  “When the shot was fired?”

  “Yes.”

  At this point Inspector Grimes created a diversion by falling over the coal scuttle. But it was Elliot who picked up the questioning, without inflection.

  “You couldn’t have told us that before?”

  “I didn’t choose to tell you before.”

  “You climbed up on that box?”

  “Yes; about half a minute before the shot. I didn’t put the box there. It was already there. I saw it, so I just climbed up.”

  “Why? What made you climb up?”

  Julian’s eyebrows drew together. “Because I heard voices in here. Because of something I heard.”

  “Oh? And what did you hear?”

  “I heard—”

  He got no opportunity to finish the sentence. The view-hallo noise of searchers, which had been going from room to room but nervously avoiding this one, at last plucked up courage and rushed at the door. The first person into the room was Gwyneth Logan, with the marks of tears still on her face. Just behind her, his hand on her shoulder, was Clarke.

  XII

  I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN attracted but puzzled by those detective stories in which
the narrator is in on everything. He tags about everywhere without any real excuse, and yet the police never seem to notice him. At least, they never object to his presence. They never say, “Oi! What are you doing here, my lad? Get along home.”

  This grouse is inspired by the fact that, just as Julian Enderby was going to give some really important evidence, they tossed me out of the room.

  I regret to say that once the closing door had shut me out into the drawing-room, I dropped a sofa cushion on the floor and gave it a swift kick. This was witnessed by Tess and Andy, who directed withering glances, but were as seething with curiosity as I was. Our state of mind remained no better because Gwyneth Logan and Clarke had been allowed to stay in the study.

  “Well?” prompted Tess. “What happened? Is somebody else killed?”

  “No. They were only experimenting with the gun. But they’ve got a witness who saw the murder too: Julian himself.”

  “Julian …”

  “Yes. In the flesh.”

  “But what does he say?”

  “I don’t know. That was where they slung me out. If he backs up the Logan woman, the crime is more impossible than ever.”

  Keeping my voice down, straining without success to catch the muffled mutter of voices from behind the study door, I told Tess and Andy what had happened. It was too dark in the drawing-room to see their expressions. You could hear the noise of Andy rubbing at his already bristly jaw.

  “Swine!” commented Andy. He meant Julian. “Told you what he’d be like, didn’t I? Ass! Why? Why deny it? Being at that window, I mean.”

  Tess spoke thoughtfully. “I can understand that. Julian’s awfully dignified. He heard something interesting, and eavesdropped on it; but he’d rather die than have to admit it in a witness box. So it had to be dragged out of him with pincers. They must have given him a bad time, Bob. Poor Julian.”

  “Poor Julian my eye.”

  “Anyway,” said Andy, “it’ll clear Mrs. Logan.”

  You could feel the breath of relief which he exhaled, the loosening of taut muscles, and the fall of sinewy hands to his sides. This was new and disturbing. Tess felt it too.

  “And poor Andy,” she laughed.

  “What do you mean, poor Andy?” demanded that harassed man.

  “The lady-in-distress would appeal to you,” said Tess, linking her arm through his. “Don’t fall, Andy. For heaven’s sake don’t you fall.”

  “That,” I said, “was what I advised him this morning.”

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” said Andy, disengaging his arm. “I said she was a dashed fine-looking woman. So she is. Why not? And I’ll swear she’s telling the truth.”

  Tess regarded him curiously. “What if Julian says she isn’t telling the truth? What if he upsets her whole story?”

  “He can’t. Damn little bounder!”

  “Steady, Andy.”

  He drew a shuddering breath, and became himself again. Sitting down on one arm of the sofa, he took out his pipe, turned it over in long fingers; and seemed to be listening, with his head on one side, to the fall of the rain.

  “See here, Bob. What did you mean when you said that if this Julian Whatshisname backs up Mrs. Logan, the crime will be more impossible than before?”

  “Just that. It will be another hermetically sealed room.”

  “Eh?”

  “Look at it. We now know there was a witness guarding every entrance or exit to the room. MacCarey, the gardener, covered the two south windows. Sonia, the maid, was in this room and covered the only door to the study. Julian covered the north window. All can testify that nobody left the study after the shooting. So no outsider—say—could have shot Logan and nipped out of the room without being seen.”

  “Well?”

  “Gwyneth Logan was alone with her husband. If she told the truth, and didn’t shoot him … there you are. It’s a hair-raiser of an impossibility. Something or somebody moved the revolver; but what?”

  It was ten minutes past four. The shadows were closing in, both literally and figuratively. In a short time it would be just twenty-four hours since we had first crossed the threshold of Longwood House, and something with fingers plucked at Tess’s ankle from the floor.

  Night came on again. From behind the closed door to the study, I heard Martin Clarke’s high, hearty laugh. There seemed to be an exchange of courtesies. Then the door opened, and Gwyneth Logan came out.

  Gwyneth was transfigured. Considering the temperamental atmosphere she carried with her, you could tell that even in the dim light. Her blue eyes, wide open, shone with relief or gratitude near tears; her lower lip, moist and with the color now of a sepia painting, quivered before she set her teeth in it. She had both hands pressed against her breast, and ran toward us as though for sanctuary.

  “My dear friends,” she said; “my dear, dear friends!”

  The reason for this emotional outburst was not clear. It left us uncomfortably wondering what we had done to deserve it. But Tess, easily touched, sat her down on the couch and put her arm round Gwyneth’s shoulder.

  Tess’s voice was strained.

  “They—they didn’t keep you long.”

  “No,” said Gwyneth, with blurred eagerness. “I’d seen them before. They wanted to ask me about Bentley’s revolver. And where he kept it. And whether he locked our bedroom door at night. Bentley always kept it locked; which I’ve told him is vulgar, when you’re in the country.” She brushed this aside. “But that isn’t it. That isn’t what I wanted to tell you. They believe me now.”

  “Ah!” growled Andy.

  “Don’t you understand? They know I’m telling the truth. That nice Mr. Something, the one with the fair hair, the one who only got here this morning, you see: he saw it all. And he told them.”

  “Julian Enderby?” murmured Tess.

  “Is that the name? Yes, I believe it is.”

  Tess bent closer. “But tell us. What was Julian doing, standing on a box outside the window?”

  Gwyneth stopped in mid-flight. Her tone changed. “I—I can’t tell you. It’s nothing, really. Just something I said to poor Bentley, and he said to me. I didn’t tell the police before, because why should I?”

  “But, my dear,” said Tess, “you’ll probably have to tell it at the inquest.”

  “At the inquest?” screamed Gwyneth. “In public?”

  “Unless it’s adjourned, of course.”

  “I’d die before I’d told it, even in front of you,” declared Gwyneth; and then, evidently at her wits’ end, proceeded to tell it. “It was the reason why I went in to see poor Bentley this morning, when he sat down to his typing. I—I was frightened,” she went on breathlessly. “You see, I’d been wondering. I—you know—I slept with Bentley last night, without—you know—using precautions.”

  Even in that gloom, her face was pink. She gulped out the words.

  “So that,” grated Andy, “that was why he was so full of beans this morning.”

  “Andy!” said Tess, shocked.

  “And I didn’t want to think I might be going to—you know—have a baby,” explained Gwyneth, making a flapping gesture. “I wanted to tell him so. So I waited for him in the study this morning. He came in, and saw me, and said, ‘Hullo: what are you doing here?’ So I told him, I said: ‘I didn’t use any precautions, any at all, and you don’t think I might have a baby, do you?’” Gwyneth paused. She added simply: “And just as he laughed, the revolver came off the wall and shot him.”

  Then she began to cry.

  Perhaps because of the eternal rain, the drawing-room felt even more chilly. Through the open door to the hall, and from across the hall in the dining-room, a rattle of plates and saucers indicated that the table was being set for tea.

  “Explicit the situation,” murmured Tess.

  “Explicit Julian,” said I.

  “Now, now!” said Andy gruffly.

  Gwyneth gulped. “Yes; I’m being silly, aren’t I?” she decided, and sat
up and passed the back of her hand across her eyes. “I expect I haven’t got anything to be afraid of, really. But I’m always worried whenever that happens.”

  “Of course,” said Tess.

  “And the main thing is,” insisted Gwyneth, “the m-main thing is that they believe me now. When I said the revolver just got up off the wall and killed poor Bentley, they know it was the truth. I feel awful. I expect I look awful too. I know! Come with me, Tess, while I powder my nose; and then let’s all go and have some tea. What do you say?”

  Andy and I walked across the hall to the dining-room, while the other two, with that unmistakable air of women who intend to communicate secrets to each other, disappeared upstairs.

  Two wall lamps were on in the dining-room, barely glowing through the twilight but striking hard against our eyes. The cheerful Mrs. Winch—completely unmoved by anything that had happened—flew about and cackled at us, pointing out in succession the nutritive value of everything on the table. She smacked Sonia for some serving enormity which I forget, and swished her out into the kitchen.

  It was the first time we had been given tea in that house, and I could do with it. But Andy eyed the table with disfavor. Wrestling with himself, he flopped down into a chair and stretched out his long legs.

  “Poor girl!” he said moodily.

  “Who? Sonia?”

  “Sonia!—Mrs. Logan.”

  “H’m. Maybe. But if she got worried every time THAT happened, her married life must have been one long terror.”

  This stung Andy on the raw. He opened his eyes with an incredulousness which gradually changed to dogged and baffled exasperation.

  “Bob,” he said in all seriousness, “what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you any sense of the—” he gestured hard, groping for words—“of the fineness of life? Of the—of the fine things—of the spiritual things, what I mean; and all that? You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  Andy brooded.

  “He was thirty years older than she is. He must have led her a devil of a life. All I wonder is, who …?” This seemed to be the torturing problem, the recurrent problem never absent from the back of Andy’s brain.