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

by John Dickson Carr

“A house,” he said, “where ghosts can be produced, by natural means, as easy as snapping your fingers. I’m going to suggest that that’s why you bought the place; that that’s why you assembled your ghost party; and that that’s how you murdered Mr. Bentley Logan.”

  The sun was setting.

  Here in the garden, the smell of earth seemed stronger than the smell of flowers. Clarke was absolutely at his ease. He picked up his glass of champagne, tasted it, and set it down. He regarded Elliot with what appeared to be real curiosity.

  “See here, Inspector. Am I by any chance under arrest?”

  “No, sir. If you were under arrest I couldn’t question you like this.”

  “Ah, that’s a relief. So I murdered poor old inoffensive Logan. How do you suggest I went about it?”

  Elliot unfastened the catch of his brief case.

  “First of all, you had to direct people’s attention away from the real history of the house. You didn’t want anybody to learn the actual facts, either about 1820 or 1920. You got very annoyed when Bob Morrison looked up the house in the Reports of the Historical Monuments Commission. In fact, you get annoyed every time someone steers the conversation toward the history of the place, as we saw yesterday. But—since this was supposed to be a haunted house—you had to provide them with SOME kind of legend. So you had to invent a ghost.

  “But you weren’t even clever enough to invent a ghost, Mr. Clarke. You cribbed one. That whole story of the ‘corpse with the scratched face,’ which you attributed to Norbert Longwood, was cribbed straight out of a collection of real-life stories by Andrew Lang.* Because the book was published forty years ago, you thought nobody would spot it. Here’s the book.”Diving into his brief case, Elliot drew out a gray-bound volume and put it on the sundial.

  He added:

  “Don’t ever try games like that on Dr. Fell, sir. It won’t work.”

  It was as though he had struck Clarke across the face. Clarke’s stocky body tightened up. His eyes remained, fixed and unwinking, on Elliot’s face.

  “But you tried a much cruder trick than that one,” Elliot went on easily. “Much cruder. You tried to make the story a little too good. Now, I’ll be frank with you. Miss Fraser here”—he nodded toward Tess—“has always thought you were a wrong ’un. She thought so when she first met you months ago. She believed you were going to try some kind of jiggery-pokery when you got the ghost party down here. So she decided to test you out.”

  Clarke’s eyes swiveled round toward Tess. He smiled at her and raised his hand as though in greeting.

  Elliot continued:

  “The minute she stepped into the house, she said something had caught her ankle. To test you. To see what use you’d make of it, if any. You were all a bit nervous that night, and she didn’t have to put up much of a show of acting. And you used it, Mr. Clarke. It was a boon to you. You thought in her nervousness she believed something had caught her. So, just like that”—Elliot snapped his fingers—“you instantly tacked it on to the story of the corpse with the scratched face. You claimed that a clutching hand was an old legend at Longwood. You said that Norbert’s ghost was in the habit of catching at people’s ankles. Whereas the whole thing had been invented on the spur of the moment by Miss Fraser not fifteen minutes before.”

  Elliot paused.

  He shook his head, with abrupt Scots dourness which made him look older than his thirty years. He added:

  “That wasn’t very intelligent of you, either, Mr. Clarke.”

  “No, Inspector?”

  “No, sir. It showed us that as a matter of fact you were a wrong ’un without any doubt.”

  “And, of course, it proves that I killed Bentley Logan?”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Elliot, with the same stolid and patient plodding, “we’ll go on and talk about that.”

  A large black shape darkened the garden from above. It was only Dr. Fell, his box-pleated cape billowing out behind him and his shovel hat pushed down firmly on his eyes; but he seemed to tower over us and to take away light. His face was puffed with uneasiness, polished and shining, when he lumbered down the steps among the flowers. Also, he wheezed hard.

  Tess, I knew, was about to scream, “Get on with it!” It would have made anybody’s scalp crawl to see the leisurely and smiling way in which Clarke drained his glass, shook out the nearly empty bottle, and poured more sweet champagne.

  Whatever else Martin Clarke was, he was a vain man. And his vanity must have been scraped raw. Yet he gave no sign of it.

  “Ah, Doctor,” he said. “I was wondering whether you would honor us. The inspector was just about to tell us how Logan was murdered. Weren’t you, Inspector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it!” cried Gwyneth Logan, coming to life. It was the first time she had spoken. She sat bolt upright, in a green Robin Hood hat, her fingers twisting a handbag until it was almost doubled in two. “I was there. They thought I was a (what do you call it?) an accomplice, until I told them different. What did happen?”

  Dr. Fell bowed gravely to her, swept off his shovel hat, and indicated by pantomime that he wanted to sit down beside her.

  “By the way, ma’am,” said Dr. Fell. “We may as well clear up rather an important point here.” He extended his crutch-headed stick and pointed it at Clarke. “That is the man, isn’t it, whom you’ve been in the habit of meeting at the Victoria and Albert Museum?”

  “Yes. That’s the man,” answered Gwyneth. “Oh, Martin, why deny it?”

  “I knew it!” whispered Tess, and pinched at my arm.

  Clarke’s suavity had begun to turn.

  “You were saying, Inspector?”

  “About the secret of this house,” continued Elliot; and a dead silence fell in the gaudy garden.

  “The question was this. What did we know about the real history of the Longwoods, either in 1820 or 1920? About Norbert in 1820, only that he was a scientist writing pamphlets in that year with three others whose names were Arago, Boisgiraud, and Sir Humphrey Davy; and that he died mysteriously in that year. That’s all.

  “But about Herbert Harrington Longwood in 1920—well, that’s different. We’ve got a good deal of information about him. He thoroughly rebuilt this house.” Elliot paused. “He installed electric light and modern plumbing. He built the billiard-room annex of the east wing. He raised the ceiling of the dining-room, making the room more spacious but destroying the usefulness of the bedrooms just above it. He tore the paneling out of the downstairs hall. Finally, he built a new fireplace, a brick fireplace, in the study. And he did all this using a gang of workmen imported from Guernsey, who would not be likely to talk much hereabouts afterwards.

  “An interesting character, that fellow. Everybody hereabouts testifies to his character—”

  Tess interrupted him. She had put her fingers to her temples, with a wild air of concentration. She peered through them at Elliot, and spoke with difficulty.

  “Wait! Please wait! Is that the same man who was mad about his family history and records? And loved the idea of having a haunted house? And was mad about practical jokes? And so, since there weren’t any children to frighten, he made it into a haunted house? Is that what you mean?”

  “Bull’s-eye,” observed the heavy and grimly affable voice of Dr. Fell. “Whang in the gold.”

  “But how?”

  “Yes. Let the doctor tell it,” requested Clarke, with unshaken urbanity. “After all, what the inspector said was only His Master’s Voice. He was only repeating a parrot lesson. Not very intelligent of you, Inspector. And rather dangerous. Can’t Dr. Fell speak for himself?”

  Dr. Fell, at the moment, looked rather dangerous himself.

  “Why, sir, it will hardly be necessary for me to speak. You can see for yourself. In a very few minutes we shall have a couple of workmen here. With your permission (and even, I fear, without it) we are going to begin some alterations of our own. Frankly, sir, we are going to tear your blasted house to pieces, in t
he firm expectation of revealing as cruel and ingenious a murder trick as comes within my experience.” His face became fiery. He struck the ferrule of his stick sharply on the stones. “And we shall begin by opening up that brick fireplace in the study.”

  Clarke’s voice grew shrill.

  “Opening it up? God help us, are you back on Morrison’s old obsession of a secret passage? That is a solid mantelpiece. You proved as much yourself.”

  “Granted,” agreed Dr. Fell.

  “Well?”

  “It is a solid mantelpiece. No crack or crevice exists in it. Every brick is safe and smooth-joined with mortar. But there is something buried in it. A small thing, d’ye see: not half as big as my hand.” Dr. Fell held up his hand. “A dead thing, too. Yet something which can become, on occasion, horribly and viperishly alive.”

  Nobody spoke, though I thought Gwyneth Logan was going to scream. The sky had darkened so that the beech trees above and beyond stood out against clear silver; and the garden was being drained of its color.

  “You will easily spot the truth,” continued Dr. Fell, “if you clear your minds of atmosphere, and forget the spell which our friend Mr. Clarke has tried to throw over your wits. Just ask the simple question: What happened here? And get a reply in plain words.

  “Here is the reply, in plain words. A number of articles have been made to move. That’s all. Kindly note that not one of those articles is at all difficult to move, nor did any of them move very far. A revolver was made to ‘jump.’ A chandelier, already so delicately balanced that the lightest draught will make it move, was set swinging. The pendulum of a clock, a very delicate balance, was also set swinging. Finally, we were first told that a wooden chair—perplexity of perplexities!—was made to ‘jump.’ But, by thunder, it wasn’t a wooden chair! It was a flimsy iron chair on greased wheels, such as you see on the back porch. And now the sun breaks out. Now the darkness divides and the birds sing again. For we see at last the connecting link: that each one of these objects was made of metal.”

  Dr. Fell leaned forward, making a face like a Dame in a pantomime.

  “Do I need to tell you now what is buried in that mantelpiece? Buried just below the surface, under the thickness of half a brick? Buried cunningly an inch to the left of a revolver muzzle? Buried in such fashion that, when the current was switched on, the revolver would respond by jumping forward a fraction of an inch?”

  He paused.

  With infinite labor he propelled himself to his feet, grunted, growled, and swung round on Martin Clarke. His big voice sounded clearly in the darkening garden.

  He said:

  “I mean, of course, an electromagnet.”

  * The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, by Andrew Lang (Longmans, Green & Co., 1897).

  XIX

  DR. FELL RESUMED, AS though speaking confidentially to the sundial:

  “Any schoolboy knows about electromagnets, and could construct you one in a few minutes. Take a small piece of soft iron; wind it round with as many coils of insulated copper wire as you need; and send an electric current through it. You then have a powerful magnet which can be turned on or off at will.

  “The strength of the magnet depends on the number of ampere turns, the strength of the current employed, multiplied by the number of turns in the coils. In plainer words: the more wire you wind round her, the stronger she is. You could construct a magnet big enough and strong enough to lift a ton of scrap iron—in fact, they’re used commercially for just that purpose. But all we need here is a miniature, matchbox affair.

  “To set a chandelier swinging! Embed your magnet under a plaster ceiling just beside the beam. Give her ‘bursts’: That is, keep turning the current on and off until the iron chandelier gets up momentum and begins to swing wildly. The same neat effect can be managed with the metal pendulum of a clock, by burying the magnet just under a plaster wall in the angle where the clock stands cater-cornered. I need hardly add that the power of an electromagnet is not materially affected by intervening surfaces, such as wood or plaster or brick, provided the surface is not too devilish thick. The late Harry Houdini (upon whom be peace!) used to stand in front of a bolted door, and draw the inside bolt by using an ordinary magnet from outside.

  “I myself, as a boy, once constructed an electromagnet for the purpose of …”

  “When you were a boy?” cried Tess. “Were they invented then?”

  Dr. Fell blinked at her.

  “My dear,” he said mildly, “you overwhelm me. Do you know when the principle of the electromagnet was first discovered?”

  “No.”

  “In the year 1820,” replied Dr. Fell. “It was discovered almost simultaneously by three eminent scientists whose names, curiously enough, were Arago, Boisgiraud, and Davy. They were not doctors, as Mr. Clarke misled you to believe: or at least they are not remembered as doctors. They were men of science. But then Mr. Clarke had not mentioned them, you know. It was young Morrison who brought them up, so a bit of misdirection had to be used. Norbert Longwood appears to have made a fourth to this trio of scientists who even then were experimenting with electricity, in the form of the galvanic battery, and ‘bombarding each other with pamphlets.’”

  Clarke had not moved.

  You could see his white hair against the gathering dusk, and his white teeth as he smiled. He was as quiet as a tarantula. Dr. Fell never once glanced in that direction.

  “Go to hell,” Clarke said softly and pleasantly.

  Still the doctor did not look round.

  “That,” he explained to Tess, “is the sort of obscure and good-for-nothing information I enjoy collecting. It—harrumph—made me look out for electromagnets before I had been hearing about the case for ten minutes.

  “We don’t know how Norbert Longwood really died. Since he was experimenting with electricity, it must have seemed to the whole countryside so weird and devilish that foul play would have been suspected if he had died of green-apple colic. He passes, leaving only a smell of smoke and burning.

  “But, by thunder, we do know how the butler Polson died in 1920!

  “Reflect. The late Herbert Harrington Longwood, in all probability, had no criminal intentions at all. He thought he was only playing a harmless joke. We learn that he was a great one for studying family records: it seems likely that he heard of old Norbert’s interest in crude and primitive electromagnets; and suddenly realized how, with a modern application of the method, he could create a ‘haunted house’ as a rich, ripe joke with which to bedevil his friends.

  “Herbert Harrington Longwood had the house wired for at least three—very probably more—electromagnets. They would work off the ordinary house current. The wires would be hidden in the walls, and would lead to concealed switches … where? That, d’ye see, is the point. For the ingenuity of the scheme is that the man who works the magnet need not be in the same room or anywhere near at the time.

  “Poor old Polson’s death was the result of a tragic accident; yet an accident which should have been foreseen.

  “The butler goes downstairs late at night to lock up. His employer, chuckling at the joke which is to be played, tries out the mechanism. Well, what would be the effect of that? What would be the effect on an old family retainer who—contrary to all laws of sense or reason—sees a chandelier begin to swing, with more angling and wilder momentum each second? I think he would lose his head. His first impulse would be to stop it: stop it any cost. He drags a tall chair under the chandelier. He stretches up his fingers to arrest that unholy movement. But he cannot quite reach it. He stands on tiptoe, groping. He loses his head completely. He makes a final, desperate little jump; his fingers close on the iron; he loses his balance …

  “And his employer, white and horrified, hears the weight fall. This employer’s only intention was to frighten a servant with the spectacle of a swinging chandelier. Instead his joke has killed an old friend.”

  Dr. Fell hunched his shoulders under the box-pleated cape, and looked at me.
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  “You see, my lad. Polson never swung himself back and forth on the chandelier. Like everybody else, you put the cart before the horse. The chandelier was already swinging; and it swung him.”

  After this, two voices spoke almost together.

  “Andy—” cried Tess.

  “Pins—” I said.

  Dr. Fell scowled. His voice was angry.

  “Yes. You perceived the masked truth. Young Hunter, during the repairs to this house, must have uncovered certain wires for whose purpose he could not account. The death trap was still here, hidden and unimpaired by time. Hunter did not know what the jiggery-pokery was, except that it somehow concerned electricity. Let us say that he tumbled to the trick just before tea on Saturday, when I asked him to climb up on the chair under the chandelier; and the chandelier very slightly moved. (You noticed his expression then?) He said nothing. But he got some pins—”

  “Why pins?” I demanded. “Why pins?”

  “Because iron, when once acted on by an electromagnet, becomes in its own turn magnetic. Is that clear? If such a force had been used, the chandelier would be magnetic in its top parts. Get some pins. Climb on a stepladder. If the pins adhere to the iron, your theory is proved with a resounding Q.E.D. Unfortunately, something happened to the too-curious Mr. Hunter.”

  The doctor’s voice was heavy and grim. He hesitated, puffing out his cheeks.

  “That is all I have to say,” he growled. “Elliot, this is your affair.”

  Clarke laughed.

  Those constant chuckles, that tireless amusement, rasped against the nerves each time it occurred. And you gradually realized, not without uneasiness, that it was not bravado. Clarke was not alarmed in the least. I felt in my bones that some new twist was coming—some new devilry would spring out of ambush—some further upheaval would strike us between the eyes again.

  This case was not finished.

  “You’ve been sunk in a long, long silence, Inspector,” Clarke remarked. “Have you no observations of your own? No accusations? I deplore your lack of originality.”

  Elliot’s jaws shut up hard.