White Priory Murders shm-2

by John Dickson Carr

  "Berserk?" repeated Katharine Bohun, although it hurt her to speak. She tried to laugh, weakly. "Louise? She can't help it; she's hysterical. After what happened last night oh, please don't be a fool! I don't feel especially well myself. "

  "I know you don't," said the other grimly, and bent forward as she tried to support herself against the wall. "What on earth are you doing now? Let me down! Let me down, do you hear?"

  He carried a rather dazed and somewhat frightened young lady, who asked him if he had gone mad, straight to his own room, and pushed open the door with his foot. Then, because it was comfortable and also because he wanted a look at her in better light, he put her down on the cushions of the window-seat in its deep embrasure. Without looking at her he rummaged in a suitcase after the bottle of brandy he found it advisable to carry in England as preparedness against the inexorable earliness of closing-hour. When he returned she was leaning back against the comer of the window with an expression in which weariness blurred out even anger or relief.

  "No," she said, rather quickly. "I'm all right. No brandy, thanks."

  "Drink it! — Why not?"

  It was, he thought, probably utter exhaustion that made her tell the truth then; she spoke involuntarily, and in spite herself.

  "Because Uncle Maurice would say I had been drinking." "Good old Uncle Maurice! Here..: ' She swallowed with difficulty and a good deal of pain, while he soaked a towel in water, wrung it out, and tried to adjust it round the purplish bruises on her neck. "That's better. That's fine. Like it?"

  "Of course I like it."

  "Have another? No? Then wait till I get this thing fixed around your neck, and then I wish you'd tell me what makes friends of yours like — like the Honorable Louise Carewe," the name sounded fantastic in his ears as he said it, when applied to that self-effacing girl whom he always pictured as sitting on a chair lower than that of anybody else. He tested it again. "Friends of yours like the Honorable Louise Carewe go hysterical and try to kill you. Sit still!"

  "I say, you're making a most awful mess of me. Give me that towel." She stirred, smiled faintly, and tried to assume a businesslike briskness. He studied her as she leaned back in the window-embrasure. The resemblance? If he had not been prepared for it by some accident or trick of the light, he wondered if he would have noticed it at all.

  In her quiet, casual, rather nervous way she had a beauty of her own. The face was pale and devoid of make-up; she had thin brows, curving a little upwards at the outer comers, over brown-black eyes of a curiously luminous quality. Her glance was direct, in contrast to Marcia's, and of a disturbing intensity; but she had the same heavy eyelids, the same small soft mouth and small neck.

  What then? Another victim of the dreams in the cloudy absorption of this house? A background for the pompous vagaries of the brothers Bohun, as quiet Louise was for Lord Canifest? You had the whole matter in the tone of John Bohun's voice when he spoke abstractedly of Little Kate. He remembered what Willard had said.

  "You must forgive me," she said, in her somewhat nervous fashion, "if I was upset, or said-silly things, or I'm always doing that. But I'm very fond of Louise. She has never had a chance. Her father. you know him, don't you?"

  "I know his voice."

  "Yes. Yes, that's what I meant," she nodded. "You understand. Louise liked you. She's a very different person, really, when she's among friends. I expect we all are. " She stared out of the window for a moment, and then turned back. "May I ask you something? Stella said — Stella's the maid who brought my tea up this morning — Stella said they were all talking about it downstairs, and that it was true. About Marcia. Is it true? Is it?"

  She spoke breathlessly, and he nodded without replying.

  "Stella said she was hurt, killed, out at the pavilion; and her head was all — all hurt, and John found her there. Is that true too?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  Again she turned away to the window, her shoulders rigid and her eyes closed. After a pause he said quietly: "Were you fond of her, then?"

  "Fond of her? No. I detested her. No, that's not true either. But, oh, my God, how I envied her."

  There was nothing to say. He felt nervous and uncomfortable. He got up to fumble among his belongings for a cigarette. The disturbing influence of this girl whom nobody ever noticed. She was speaking again:

  "Do they know who did it?"

  "No. Except they seem to think that it was somebody in this house."

  "Of course it was somebody in this house. It was the same person who was walking in the gallery last-night."

  He sat down on the window-seat again; not wanting to force confidences, not wanting to throw out blatant and futile offers of help for-what? Yet those were the sensations, baffling and complicated, that he felt more fiercely than he could have explained them. But she must have seen it, for she said surprisingly:

  "Thanks. Thanks you-don't-know-how much." A steady smile. "Most people would say I can take care of myself. I can. But it frightened me nearly as much as it frightened

  .. Yes, there was somebody in the gallery last night, blundering, searching, pacing; I don't know what. It was what nearly drove poor Louise out of her wits, and why we shall probably need to have the doctor for her. Whoever it was took hold of her wrist in the dark, and then pushed her away."

  "You don't suppose she imagined-?"

  "There was blood on her," said Katharine Bohun.

  "When did all this happen?"

  She shook her head blankly. "I don't remember the time. At close on four o'clock, I should think; I looked at the clock afterwards. That was my room you saw me come out of. Something woke me up; I'm not sure what. But then I heard somebody fumbling at my door and pawing at the knob. Like — like a big dog. I suppose I keep thinking of dogs because Tempest barked so much early last night, and I heard him howling again this morning.

  "But this was at my door. Then I heard a sound like a fall, and somebody running. I didn't dare move, until I heard Jervis Willard's voice speaking out there. He'd heard some noise, and come out in the hall and turned on the light to see what it was. When I opened my door he was lifting up Louise in a faint."

  Bennett said rather irritably: "Why the devil was she wandering around in the dark at four o'clock in the morning?"

  "I'm not sure. She hasn't been very coherent since. I think she was coming to my room; she hadn't been asleep all night, and she was rather hysterical already. I suppose when she got out of her own room she wasn't able to find the light-switch, and got lost and worse frightened because she couldn't find her way either back or to me. I know she has kept saying, `Lights, lights! " Katharine Bohun stared straight ahead, her hands clenched in her lap. "Were you ever awfully frightened by thinking you were lost in a maze in the dark, and you'd never get to where you wanted to go? I've been. In dreams, sometimes."

  He leaned forward suddenly and took her by the shoulders. He said:

  "I'm very fond of ghost stories and the morbid kind. That's because I've never run up against anything really morbid in my own life. But you're not to get frightened by a lot of damned shadows and nonsense, do you hear? You've had too much of it."

  "I say, what on earth-"

  "What you need is to walk out of this forsaken house with its cold hot water pitchers and its cockeyed mirrors and its moth-eaten ghosts. You need to make straight for London or Paris, preferably Paris, and fly off on a bender that would knock the unholy watch-springs out of anything you'd ever imagined. You need to wallow in dress-makers' shops and red plush hotels; you need to hear bands and have a dizzy love-affair and get sozzled in every bar round the Place de Clichy; you need to see the Chinese lanterns on the lake in the Bois, and dance at the Chateau de Madrid in a postage-stamp of a dress, and see the chafing-dishes steam and the color of Burgundy while you're jammed up in a crazy little room that's served the best in the world for two hundred years. You need to see the chestnut-trees coming out in spring on the Champs Elysees, and taste onion soup down in the markets b
y the river when it's just getting daylight; you need.."

  He had pitched diplomacy clear out of the window. He had got up and was waving one arm in the air during the fervor of the moment. Now the balloon collapsed as he realized he must be making a fool of himself. He saw again the bleak room, the windows looking out on snow. But he was surprised at the vividness and intensity of Katharine Bohun's face. She looked up at him.

  "You — you blasted Yank!" cried Katharine Bohun, with a violence of relief which made her voice quaver. Then she began to laugh, but not in ridicule. It seemed difficult for her to stop.

  "Er-yes. Exactly."

  "You're quite the craziest person I ever met."

  "On the contrary, you blasted Limey, I am regarded as-"

  "And you mustn't talk like that; at least, you see-that is, of course, I mean — where anybody else can hear you." "Ho?"

  She caught herself up, nervously. "Never mind. Be sensible again. I've got to be. I mean — Marcia. I can't think of anything else. Marcia could do all those things you were speaking about. Marcia was herself; she was alone; she was wonderful. in her own way." Again she clenched her hands. "And maybe — I've been thinking of this too-maybe she was satisfied. She's lying down there dead. But she died when she had everything she wanted; when she had everything a woman ever wanted; when she was alone and splendid and not growing old. Who wouldn't give death for that? And if somebody smashed in her head with the loaded end of a riding-crop, then maybe it was worth it."

  Even in her rush she stopped suddenly. You could feel unspoken words shut off as at the closing of a door. And their import was as palpable as the slam of a door in the cold room.

  Bennett stared at her. "With a riding-crop?" he said. He should never have spoken. He realized it as soon as

  the words were out. That closing door was one that shut him from her.

  She rose from the window-seat.

  "Wasn't it? I must have got that impression from Stella," she said, quickly and loudly. In that moment the quiet, nervous Katharine Bohun looked dangerous, and she was breathing sharply. "I must really get back to my patient now. Thank you so much for everything. You had better go down to breakfast, hadn't you?"

  Before he could move or speak, almost with the swiftness an illusion, she was out of the room. He remained staring at the closed door, fingering an unshaven jaw. Then he went over and kicked an empty suitcase across the room. He followed it with the intention of kicking it back; but sat down on the bed instead, lit a cigarette, and blew out smoke violently.

  The muddle was growing worse. His hand was shaking, and the room was full of a mocking image of Marcia Tait. If Willard's crackling picture of her character were correct, she had never laughed in life as she would laugh in death. Riding-crop! There was no riding-crop at the scene of the crime, or near it, except the one John Bohun had carried on his wrist. Which was manifestly impossible.

  The police would be back from the pavilion now. He must go downstairs. Keeping his mind grimly away from Katharine Bohun, he shaved in cold water; felt better but a little light-headed; dressed, and went downstairs.

  He had intended to go to the dining-room, but there were loud voices from the direction of the library. The door was open. Lights had been turned on in the ceiling of the dusky room, and a group had gathered round the modem furniture in front of the fire. At a table behind the couch, flanked by bronze lamps with yellow shades, a tall man in the uniform of an inspector of police sat with his back to the door. He was tapping a pencil against the side of his head. Beyond him stood a very nervous Thompson, and beyond them Chief Inspector Masters blandly inspecting books on the shelves. The person who had been speaking-with strident positiveness, and a gesture like a semaphore — was a sharp-featured little man in a shabby black overcoat and a bowler hat stuck on the back of his head. He stood with his back to the fire, a pair of black-ribboned glasses coming askew on his nose, and pointed again.

  He said: "Don't think you can tell me my business, Potter. I regard that as a sheer, out-and-out insult, that's what I do; and when I get you at the inquest, Potter, then dum-me, I promise you now, I'll make you smart good and proper!" He leered over the glasses, malevolently. "I'm telling you the exact medical facts. Get your police surgeon to check up on me, if you like. Get every bloody quack in Harley Street. Yah! Then you'll find out-?' His sharp gaze saw Bennett at the door. He stopped.

  There was a silence in the tension of the room. Masters came up to the table.

  "Ah!" he said quickly. "Come in, Mr. Bennett. Come in, if you please. I was just going to send for you. This is Dr. Wynne — here. Inspector Potter — here. Now, we've been hearing some very unusual things in the last half hour:"

  Dr. Wynne snorted. Masters had lost some of his earlier genial air; there were lines round his mouth and he looked worried.

  "Which need straightening out. Just so. Now, sir, I've 'already told these gentlemen what you told me a while ago, Perhaps you'd better repeat it, as a matter of form, to the inspector —“

  Inspector Potter looked up from his notebook. He was a bald-headed giant with a small tuft of moustache, a reddish face, and an eye like a ruminating cow; and he was dogged if bewildered. He looked at Bennett rather suspiciously. "Nameanaddress," recited the inspector, in gruff positiveness. "If foreigner," more suspicion, "suggest references. Not under oath but advise for own good complete frankness. Now!"

  "Now, then, Potter," interposed Masters with some asperity, "you want my help; is that it? Eh?"

  `That," said the inspector, "that I do, sir."

  "Well, then-!" said Masters persuasively, and waved his hand. "I'll manage for a bit, if you don't mind. Now, Mr. Bennett, I want to stress the importance of this. I want you to get it down clear. Thompson]"

  Thompson came forward. His reddish-rimmed eyes showed a very definite hostility, but his voice was docile; and he looked (Bennett thought) the most respectable man in the room.

  "You told Inspector Potter," Masters went on sharply, "that the snowfall stopped last night at just after two o'clock — no more or less — and you can swear to it?"

  "Yes, sir. I'm afraid I can:'

  "Afraid? What do you mean, afraid?"

  "Why, sir, only that I shouldn't want to cause any trouble," Thompson replied without inflection, "for the police. I can swear to it. I didn't close an eye all night."

  Masters turned back.

  "And Dr. Wynne tells us-"

  "I tell you this," snapped the doctor, and 'tapped Masters on the shoulder. "Allowing for everything, including temperature, I definitely put the time of that woman's death as between three o'clock and three-thirty A.M. That's final. You say the snow stopped at two o'clock. Well, that's your business. What I say is that if the snow stopped at two o'clock, then that woman didn't die until at least an hour afterwards." He leered round. "I don't envy you your job, my lads."

  Inspector Potter came to life. "But, sir," he shouted, "it's not possible! Not sense! Look here; there's two sets of tracks going into that house," he continued with heavy impressiveness, and held up two fingers. "Mr. Bohun tells us they were made by himself and this gentleman. Very well. There's two sets coming out, made by the same people. And that's all. Each of the four sets of prints is about equally fresh, so far as we can judge. and I've done some poac-urrr some trapping, I meantersay, in my younger days. They were made this morning, they were made about the time Mr. Bohun says] And thassalleris." He swept his arm about, small pencil in massive fist. Then he brought the fist down on the table. "A hundred straight feet of unmarked snow on every side of the 'ouse. Not a tree, not a shrub. And sixty feet of it thin ice on every side. Not possible, not sense, and may I never go to chapel again if it is!"

  The inspector was breathing heavily through his nostrils. But so was Masters, who had been trying in vain to stop a conversational steam-roller. Masters did more than merely glare. His attitude towards Inspector Potter as his family relation made him deplorably forgetful of his dignity.

  "Now
, then]" he declared. "Now, then, I'll tell you what it is, Charley Potter. You keep your ruddy head shut when you're told, or I'll report to the Chief Constable of this county your means of carrying on a case. Tell a witness what to say; eh? Makes no difference if we know it's truth. Eh? Oh, Lord! You in the CID., my lad? I don't think."

  Inspector Potter closed one eye in a highly sinister fashion.

  "Urr?" he inquired with dignity. "And 'oo may be in charge of this case, I should like to know? — You that was going to play Santy Claus! Urr! All right. Play Santy Claus. Here. Now. I was stating well-known facts. And I'll tell you more. We've got, a witness, Bill Locker that I've known all my life and is honest and trustworthy and 'as spotted the Derby winner for the last three years which is more than you can do: Bill Locker saw Mr. Bohun go in. Eh? And there was nobody in there hidden, which we proved. Now then!" He flung down his pencil on the table like a gauntlet. "Until you can play Santy Claus and explain all that, sir, I'll ask you respectfully-.'

  "Sic 'em, my lads," said the little doctor, with an air of refreshed interest. "I think I'll stop on a bit. Yes. Nothing adds zest to a criminal case like a free-for-all fight among the police at the outset. But is there anything else you want to know from me?"

  With an effort Masters regained his imperturbability.

  "Ah, ah," he said. "Forgot myself, inspector. Just so. You're in charge, for the moment, and you're quite right and within your duties." He folded his arms. "I should suggest, however, that before the doctor goes you make some inquiry about the weapon."

  Dr. Wynne scowled. "Weapon? Hum. Dunno. That's your business. All I can give you is the customary Blunt Instrument. They were hard smashes. From the position of the wounds, looks as though she'd been struck down from the front, and then smashed five or six times as she lay on her side or face. Hard blows. Yes. Your police surgeon will tell you definitely at the pm"

  "I don't suppose, sir," observed Potter, as a startling thought seemed to occur to him for the first time, "I don't suppose it could have been done by a woman, could it?"