The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  “Yes,” said Halliday. “You only seem to be interested in man’s life after he’s dead. As for the rest of it, I’ve heard all that poisonous nonsense before.” He looked at the other sharply. “By the way, what are you getting at, anyhow?”

  Ted thrust out his neck. He tapped his finger slowly on the back of the chair. His head was wagging, and his face screwed up into a probably unintentional sneer.

  “Only this, my boy. Simply this. We’re not altogether without brains. We heard your policemen smashing down that door; we heard a good deal of what was said, and what’s thought. …And until your Scotland’ Yard can tell us how Darworth was killed, I’ll keep my own ideas.”

  He glanced across the hearth, as though carelessly, and his eyes narrowed. Inexplicably, we must all have experienced a sense of shock to see that Lady Benning was sitting up.

  She was dry-eyed now, but so dull of face that the black-lace gown, all the elaborate deckings-out of a shell, became harsh travesty. On God knows what impulse—but I remembered it afterwards—Major Featherton bent over and settled the cape about her shoulders. With the red lining gone, she became a somber part of the gloom. Only the bracelets on her arm glittered as she put her elbow on the arm of the chair, her flabby chin against her knuckles, and stared down as though at flames in the dead fire. She hunched her shoulders, drearily.

  “Thank you, William,” she said. “These courtesies—! Yes. Yes, I am better now.”

  Featherton said gruffly: “If anything’s upset you, Anne, I’ll -”

  “No, you won’t, William.” Her hand slid up as his big shoulder lifted. It was comedy, or tragedy, or whatever you like. “Ask Mr. Blake, or Dean, or Marion,” she went on without lifting her eyes. “They know.”

  “You mean, Lady Benning,” I said, “what Joseph told us?”

  “In a way. Yes.”

  “Seriously, then: had you never suspected Darworth of being an impostor?”

  We heard voices begin calling outside the house; a hail, somebody’s answer, the clumping of footsteps coming nearer. A muffled voice at the front said “Carry y’r own ruddy tripod, can’tcher? W’ere the ’ell?…” Somebody replied, there was a mutter of mirth, and the footsteps clumped on round the side of the house. Lady Benning spoke.

  “Suspected? We do not know Mr. Darworth was an impostor. If so, I am sure of one thing. … They are not impostors. They are real. He tampered with them, and they killed him.”

  There was a pause. She felt the atmosphere.

  “I am an old woman, Mr. Blake,” she said, looking up suddenly. “I had very little to make me happy. I never asked you into my life. But you came into it, with your—your great boots, and your bullyings of half-witted children like Joseph—and you trampled that little garden down. For the love, of God, my friend, in the name of His mercy, do nothing more!”

  She pressed her hands together, and turned away.

  “Part of it, Lady Benning,” I said, “would seem a very terrible gospel. Were you made happy to think, or did you really think, that your nephew could be possessed, and go amuck like a devil?”

  For answer she regarded Halliday.

  “You! Oh, my dear boy, I don’t doubt you’re happy. You’re young, you’re rich, you have a beautiful girl. …” Lady Benning spoke with soft malevolence, turning out her wrist as she uttered each phrase, so that she sounded horribly like a burlesque Shylock. “You have health, and friends, and a quiet bed at night. Not like poor James, out there in the cold. Why shouldn’t you worry and squirm a little? Why shouldn’t that pretty doll, with her lips and her fine body, why shouldn’t she sicken and worry her heart out? Do her good, instead of so much kissing. Why shouldn’t I encourage it?… It wasn’t you I worried about. It wasn’t for you I wanted this house cleansed. It was for James. James must stay there in the cold until the foul thing is gone out of this house. Perhaps James is the foul thing—”

  “Anne, my dear old friend!” said Major Featherton. “Good God, this won’t do. …”

  “And now,” Lady Benning went on, in a sharp but Very matter-of-fact tone, “Roger Darworth has cheated me. Very well. I only wish I had known it sooner.”

  I restrained Halliday, who was regarding his aunt with incredulous eyes, and he had started to say,

  “You encouraged—” I said quickly:

  “Cheated you, Lady Benning?”

  She hesitated, seeming to come to herself. “If he was an impostor, he cheated me. If not, he still failed to exorcise what is in this house. In either case, it slew him. He failed. And therefore he cheated me.” Lady Benning lay back in her chair and commenced to laugh, in shuddering convulsions, as though she had made a hilariously witty reply. Then she wiped her eyes. “Ah, ah. I mustn’t forget. Was there anything else you wanted to ask me, Mr. Blake?”

  “Yes. Something I should like to ask everybody. … A week ago tonight, I am given to understand, there was an informal gathering at Major Featherton’s flat. At this gathering, Mr. Darworth was persuaded to try automatic writing. Is that correct?”

  The old lady turned and prodded at Featherton’s coat.

  “Didn’t I tell you, William?… I knew it. When that police officer came in here a while ago, and tried to bully us, he had a younger man with him. Another policeman, the one who took charge of Joseph. He didn’t show his face to us, but I knew who it was. It was the police spy they sent to us, and we received as a friend.”

  Ted Latimer jumped up. “Oh, I say! That’s utter rot! Bert McDonnell-oh, yes, I know!—I thought 1 recognized him, in the dark, when he came in after that log, and didn’t answer when I spoke to him … but, damn it, that’s impossible! Bert McDonnell’s no more on the police force than I am. The idea’s absurd. Fantastic. … Look here, it isn’t true, is it?”

  I evaded as well as I could, by referring them to Masters, for I wished no more digressions. Halliday, I could see, was preventing Marion from speaking; and I kept my eyes on Major Featherton while I sketched out what we knew of the evening. The major seemed uneasy.

  “And we are informed that Darworth was terrified, apparently by what he saw on that paper. …” I glanced round.

  “Yes, by Gad, he was!” Featherton blurted, and drove one gloved fist into his palm. “Funk. Sheer funk. Never saw it worse.”

  Ted said blankly: “Yes. Yes, it must have been Bert. …”

  “And, of course, if anybody saw what was on that paper—”

  The silence held for so long a time that it appeared I had drawn a blank. Lady Benning was disinterested, but she had a contemptuous eye on Ted, who was blankly muttering something to himself.

  “A pack of foolery, of course,” the major announced. He cleared his throat several times. “But— aaah—for what it’s worth, I think I can tell you the first line. Don’t look at me like that, Anne! Confound it, I never did approve of your nonsense, and I’ll tell you this besides … Those pictures I was dragooned into buying … H’m, yes. Now that I think of it. They go into the fire tomorrow. … What was I saying? Ah! The first line. Remember it distinctly. It said, ‘I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried.’ ”

  There was another silence, while the major stood back, wheezing and stroking at his mustache in a sort of swaggering defiance. You could hear no sound but his asthmatic breathing. Repeating the words aloud, I looked round the group. Either one person in that group of five was a magnificent actor, or else the words meant absolutely nothing to anybody. Only two remarks were made in the space of possibly three minutes: which can seem a very long time. Ted Latimer said, “Who’s Elsie Fenwick?” in a querulous tone, as though irrelevant matters were being dragged in; and later Halliday observed thoughtfully: “Never heard of her.” Then they all stood and looked at the major, whose port-wine cheeks were growing more mottled, and his puffings louder, as at some slur on his veracity.

  And I was becoming morally certain that one of the five people before me was the murderer of Roger Darworth.

  “Well?” Featherton demanded explosively.
“Say something, one of you!”

  “You didn’t tell us of this before, William,” said Lady Benning.

  Featherton made a vague and irritated gesture. “But it was a woman’s name, confound it,” he protested, as though he were not certain of the issues himself. “Don’t you see? It was a woman’s name.”

  Ted looked round in a sort of wild amusement, as though he had seen a caricature he could not believe. Halliday muttered something about the Medes and the Persians; Marion’s face wore a bright and interested expression, and she said, “Oh!” Only Lady Benning studied him grimly, catching her cloak about her neck. …

  Heavy footfalls clumped along the hall outside, and we all turned. The tension went back to chill hostility as Masters strode into the room.

  Masters returned the hostility. I have never seen him look more disheveled, more worried, or more sinister. His coat was muddy, like the bowler jammed on the back of his head. He stood in the doorway, surveying the group slowly.

  “Well?” asked Ted Latimer. The way he pitched his voice, in those circumstances, was less like defiance than childish impertinence. “Are we free to go home? How long do you intend keeping us here?”

  Masters kept looking round. As though on an impulse, he let himself smile. He said, nodding:

  “Why, I’ll tell you, ladies and gentlemen.” Carefully drawing off his muddy gloves, he reached inside his overcoat and drew out a watch. “It’s now just twenty-five minutes past three. To be frank, we may be here until daylight. You may go as soon as I have had a statement from each of you—needn’t be on oath, of course, but I should suggest frankness. …

  “We shall want these statements separately. My men are making one of the rooms as comfortable as possible, and we shall want you in one at a time. Meantime, I’ll send a constable in here to keep you company, and see that no harm comes to anybody. We regard you all as valuable witnesses, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The smile grew tighter. “And now, um, excuse me. Mr. Blake! Will you step out here a moment, please? I should like a word in private.”

  CHAPTER IX

  Masters took me down to the kitchen before he spoke. Joseph was not there now. The work-bench had been slewed round so that it faced the door; with the candles burning in a line across it, and a chair drawn up a few feet out for witnesses, the background made it resemble pictures of the Inquisition’s tribunal-room.

  The yard behind was noisy and full of darting lights. Somebody was climbing up on the roof of the little stone house; the puff of a flashlight-powder glared out momentarily, so that the house, the wall, the crooked tree, looked as wild as a scene from Doré. Close at hand, a muffled voice said in an awed tone, “Lummy, but ’e got it, didn’t ’e?” Another voice muttered, “Uh!” and somebody scratched a match.

  Masters jabbed his finger out towards the scene of activity.

  “I’m beaten, sir,” he said. “Right now, at least, I’m beaten, and I don’t mind admitting it. This thing can’t have happened, but it did. We’ve got the evidence—clear evidence, plain evidence—that nobody in God’s world could have got into that house or out of it. But Darworth’s dead. Let me tell you how bad it is. … Wait! Have you learned anything?”

  I started to sketch out what I had learned, and he stopped me when I was telling about Joseph.

  “Ah! Ah, yes. I’m glad you saw him; so did I.” He was still smiling grimly. “I sent the boy home in a cab, under guard of a constable. He may not be in any danger, but on the other hand—”

  “Danger?”

  “Yes. Oh, the first part of it hangs together, sir. Neat; very neat. Darworth didn’t fear this house because of its ghosts. He was very, very easy about the ghosts. What he did fear was physical harm from somebody-eh? Why else, d’ye think, did he bolt and bar his door out there? He wasn’t trying to keep out a ghost with an iron bolt. But he thought somebody in his little spiritualist circle had designs on him, and didn’t know which one. That was why he wanted to keep Joseph away from them tonight: to watch, and to find out. He knew it was one of this group, from the bogus message that’d been stuck among his automatic-writing drivel when only one of them could’ve done it. D’ye see, sir? There was something, or somebody, he was deadly afraid of; and this was a good time to get a line on who it might have been. He thought he was safe out there. …”

  Then I told Masters about Major Featherton’s evidence.

  “ ‘I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried—’ ’’ he repeated. His big shoulders grew rigid, and his eyes narrowed. “That name’s familiar. By George, that name’s familiar! And it’s associated with Darworth. I could swear to it. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the man’s dossier, so I’m not sure. Bert will know. Elsie Fenwick! We’ve got something; I’m positive of it.”

  He was silent a long time, biting at the joint of his thumb, muttering to himself. Then he turned.

  “Now, then, let me tell you the mess we’re into. Do you realize it won’t do us an ounce of good even to fasten on somebody we think is the murderer, if we can’t show how the murderer did it? We shouldn’t dare go to court, even. Eh? Listen.

  “First, the house. The walls are solid stone; not a crack or rat-hole in ’em. One of my men has been going over the ceiling inch by inch, and it’s as solid and unbroken as the day it was put in. We’ve been over every inch of the floor also—”

  “You don’t,” I said, “waste any time.”

  “Aaa-h!” grunted Masters, with a sort of battered pride, as though that were all he had left. “Yes. ’Tisn’t every Force could get the police surgeon out of bed at three o’clock in the morning. Well! We’ve been over floor, ceiling, and walls. Any idea of hinges or trap-doors or funny entrances you can get out of your mind. Statement to that effect is signed and initialed by my men.

  “Next, the windows, and they’re out. Those gratings are solid in the stone; no question of that. The gratings are so small that you can’t even get the blade of that dagger through ’em, for instance; we tried it. The chimney isn’t big enough to admit anybody, even if you could drop down into a blazing fire; and, finally, there’s a heavy iron mesh across it only a little way up. That’s out. The door …” He paused, stared out at the yard, and bellowed: “GET OFF THAT ROOF! WHO’S ON THAT ROOF? Didn’t I tell you we’d wait till morning for all that? You can’t see anything—”

  “Daily Express, Inspector,” replied a voice out of the gloom. “The sergeant said—”

  Masters charged down the steps and disappeared. There was a flurry of high-colored language, and presently he came back breathing hard.

  “It don’t much matter, I daresay,” he said gloomily. “According to what we know. I was telling you. The door—well, you know about about the door. Bolted, and barred; and not one of those bolts you could do tricks with, either. It’s hard enough to pull back even when you’re inside the place …

  “Finally, here’s the incredible thing. We shall have to wait until daylight for full confirmation, but I can tell you I know now. With the exception of the tracks you and I made—and those who came out afterwards all carefully kept in our tracks, so there’d be one line and no confusion—there isn’t a footprint anywhere within twenty feet of that house. And you and I know, don’t we, that when we first walked out there we saw no footprints at all along the direction we went?”

  That was unquestionably true. I cast my mind back along that thin and glue-like sheet of mud: unbroken anywhere in the direction we walked. But I said:

  “Still, look here, Masters. … Plenty of people had been walking about the yard earlier in the evening, and in and out of the house, while it was raining. Why is the mud unbroken, then? How did there come to be no footprints when we went out?”

  Masters got out his notebook, pinched his nose, and frowned. “It’s something to do with the soil. Something about stratum-deposits, or physics or the like; I don’t know, but I’ve got it here,” he said. “McDonnell and Dr. Blaine were talking about it. The house out there is on a
kind of plateau. When the rain stops, it runs down and carries a fine sandy silt away from the place—like a mason spreading out mortar with a trowel, Bert said. The yard smells badly, you noticed. And you could hear a sort of wash out there when the rain had stopped. Bert thinks there’s probably a drain somewhere, running underground to the cellar. … Anyhow, the rain had stopped a good three quarters of an hour before Darworth was killed, and the mud had thickened over like a jelly.”

  He went back into the kitchen, rubbing his face dully. Then he sat down dully on the packing-case behind the work-bench; a weird and muddy-looking Inquisitor for this bleak room.

  “But there it is—solid. Unbreakable. Impossible. Ur! What am I talking about?” the Inspector muttered.

  “I must be getting old, and I’m sleepy. No footprints approaching the house; none! Doors and windows, floors, ceiling and walls, tight as a stone box! Yet there’s got to be some way out. I won’t believe—”

  He was looking down at the papers on the work-bench: at George Playge’s manuscript, the deed, and the newspaper cutting. He turned them over with dull curiosity, and then put them into the file-book.

  “I won’t believe,” he went on, holding up the file and rattling it savagely, “this.”

  “You’ve left few enough tatters of the supernatural, Masters. Once the police come trampling in, poor old Louis. …” I remembered Lady Benning twisting round to glare at me, and the words she had said. “Never mind. Anything in the nature of a definite clew?”

  “Fingerprint men working now. I’ve got a cursory report from the doctor, but we can’t get the full P-M until tomorrow. The van’s here, and they’ll move him as soon as Bailey gets finished with the interior photographs. … Aaa-h!” he snapped, and clenched his hands. “I wish it ’ud get daylight. Between ourselves, I never wanted daylight so much. There’s an indication somewhere—somewhere—if I could see it. And I’ve bungled this, too. The assistant commissioner’ll say I shouldn’t have let any footprints get out there; that we should have put down boards, or some like foolishness. As though you could! I begin to see, ah, ah! I begin to see how hard it is to be methodical, and think of everything, when you’re mixed up in a case yourself. Clues? No. We didn’t find anything more than you saw—except a handkerchief. It’s Darworth’s; had his initials on it, and it was lying under him.”