The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  “Did you know he had a wife living, Miss Latimer?”

  “No. Not that it was of great interest to me. I certainly never inquired.”

  “Just so.” He switched, instantly. “Was it Mr. Darworth who suggested to you, miss, that—we’ll say, that Mr. Dean Halliday’s mind and future were—well, tied up at Plague Court?”

  “Yes!”

  “He talked about it a lot?”

  “Always,” she replied, jerking the word out. “Always! I—I’ve tried to explain to Mr. Blake how I felt about Mr. Darworth.”

  “I see. Did you ever suffer from headaches, miss, or nervous disturbances?”

  Her eyes opened slightly. “I don’t quite see. … Yes, that’s true.”

  “Which he suggested he could cure through the proper medical use of hypnotic suggestion?” She nodded. Halliday twitched his head round, and seemed about to speak, but Masters caught his eye.

  “Thank you, Miss Latimer. Did he ever tell you, now, why he didn’t exploit his psychic talents, say? You all believed he had great powers, for instance. But nobody ever inquired whether he was a member of the Psychical Research Society, or connected with any genuine scientific body of that nature; even whether he had any genuine associations. … I mean, miss, didn’t he ever say why he—hid his light under a bushel, or what-not?”

  “He said he was interested in saving souls and giving peace. …”

  She hesitated, and Masters lifted his hand inquiringly.

  “He said that sometime his powers might be demonstrated to the world, but that he wasn’t interested in that. … He said he was more interested, if you want the truth, in setting my mind at rest about Plague Court.” She spoke vacantly, but in a rapid tone. “Ugh! I say, when I remember—! He told me it would be horribly dangerous. But that he wanted my gratitude. You see I’m frank, Inspector. I—I couldn’t have said all this a week ago.”

  She raised her eyes. Halliday’s face was ugly and satirical; with an effort, he kept himself from speaking, and mouthed his cigarette as though he would jab it against his teeth like a pipe-stem.

  Masters got up heavily. The room was very quiet while he drew out the end of his watch-chain, to which was attached a small, brightly polished object. He said, smiling: “It’s only a new latch-key, Miss Latimer. One of those flat ones. I happened to remember it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try a sort of experiment. …”

  He went round the work-bench and picked up McDonnell’s lantern. The girl flinched as he came towards her; she gripped the sides of the chair, and her eyes strained up at him. Close to her, he held the lantern high and steady over her head—a weird scene, with the shadow-barred glow streaming down over her upturned face, and Masters’ bulk silhouetted against it. The key glittered a dazzling silver as he held it about three inches above the line of her eyes.

  “I want you, Miss Latimer,” he growled softly, “to look steadily at this key. …”

  She started to get up, scraping back her chair. “No! I won’t! I won’t do it, I tell you, and you can’t make me! Every time I look at that—”

  “Ah!” said Masters, and lowered the lantern. “It’s quite all right, miss. Please sit down again. I only wanted to test something.” As Halliday strode forward the inspector lumbered back to his work-bench, turned, and regarded him with a sour smile. “Steady, sir. You ought to be grateful to me. I’ve broken at least one ghost. That there’s a part of Darworth’s trick of making people believe him. If the patient’s a good hypnotic subject. …”

  Wheezing, he sat down. “Did he try to cure your headaches, Miss Latimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever make love to you?”

  The question was shot out so quickly after the lazy tone of the preceding one that the girl had said, “Yes,” before she seemed to realize it. Masters nodded.

  “Ever ask you to marry him, Miss Latimer?”

  “Not—not exactly. He said that if he succeeded in cleansing this house of evil spirits, he would ask … I say! It—it sounds so crazy, and absurd, and—” She swallowed hard, and her eyes were hysterically amused. “I mean, when I think of it. He was like a Monte Cristo and Manfred rolled into one; gloomy and apart; like a cheap film, like—But you didn’t know him, you see. That’s the point.”

  “A rare sort of fellow, that gentleman,” the inspector said dryly. “He had a different mood and character for everyone he approached. … But after all, you see, he was murdered. That’s what we want to talk about now. It wasn’t hypnotism or suggestion that let somebody walk through a stone wall or a bolted door and hack him to pieces. Now, Mr. Halliday!—I want to hear everything that went on in that front room from the time the lights were put out. Tell your story, and I’ll ask Miss Latimer to confirm it.”

  “Right you are. I’ll tell it exactly,” nodded Halliday; “because I’ve been thinking of nothing else all night.” He drew a deep breath, and then glanced sharply at Masters. “You spoke to the others. Did they admit hearing somebody moving around in there?”

  “You’re telling the story, sir,” Masters reminded him, lifting his shoulders blandly. “But, um, didn’t you have a conference among yourselves? All that time between witnesses, up there?”

  “I don’t know about the conference. We jolly well nearly had a fight. Nobody would admit what they’d told you, and Ted was a bit loony. Nobody would go home with anybody else … They all left in separate cars. Aunt Anne wouldn’t even let Featherton help her out to the street. Fine, sweet gathering. Never mind. …

  “This is what happened.

  “Aunt Anne insisted on sitting round and concentrating, trying to help Darworth out. I didn’t want to do it; but Marion begged me not to make a fuss, so I said all right. Also, I wanted to make up the fire—it had gone out. I didn’t see any sense in sitting around in a cold room when it wasn’t necessary. But Ted said the wood was green and damp, and wouldn’t burn anyway, and was I a pampered little duckling to be afraid of the cold? Ha! Well! we got our chairs—”

  The inevitable question followed. Both he and Marion verified the order of which he had been informed: Lady Benning on the right of the fireplace, then Halliday, Marion, Major Featherton, and Ted at the other end.

  “How far were the chairs apart?”

  The other hesitated. “A good distance. That’s an immense fireplace in there, you know. I had to stand on tiptoe to blow out the candles on the ledge over it. I don’t think any of us could have touched anyone else by stretching out a hand … except”—he looked Masters in the eye—”except Marion and myself.”

  The girl was staring at the floor. Halliday put his hand on her shoulder. He went on: “I’d taken good care to get my chair only a little way from hers; couldn’t get too close, because Aunt Anne was watching like a hawk; and I didn’t want to seem—oh damn it, you know!

  “I got hold of her hand, and we sat there. I don’t know how long; and what was worse—I’ll admit it—that darkness was beginning to get on my nerves. I don’t care how matter-of-fact a man is—” He looked at us defiantly, and Masters nodded. “Besides, somebody was whispering or mumbling, very low. The same words, over and over again, with a sort of rustling sound, and there was a noise like somebody swaying backwards and forwards in a chair. God, it was enough to make your hair stand on end!

  “I don’t know how long afterwards it was, but I had a feeling that somebody had got up. …”

  “You heard something?” demanded Masters.

  “Well, it’s hard to explain, but if you’ve ever sat at a séance you’ll understand. You can feel movement; a breath, or a rustle, a sense of something moving in the dark. You can only call it a feeling of nearness. I did hear a chair scrape, a little before that; but I’m not prepared to swear it was—whoever it was that got up.”

  “Go. on.”

  “Then I did definitely hear two footsteps directly behind me; but I’ve got pretty good ears, and nobody else seemed to notice it until—well, all of a sudden I felt Marion go stiff,
and she pressed my hand. I admit I nearly jumped out of my skin. I felt her other hand come out towards me, and she was trembling all over. … It wasn’t till afterwards that I found out what had gone past and touched her. … You’d better tell him, Marion.”

  Though she tried to keep her former self-control, the old terrors were coming back. The lantern was at her feet, throwing spangles of light up across the white, lovely, tortured face as she slowly looked up.

  “It was the handle of a knife,” she said, “touching the back of my neck.”

  CHAPTER XII

  The last candle on the work-bench had puffed out in a welter of grease. A faint, grayish light was stealing into the passage beyond; but the shadows in the kitchen were still thick, and the lantern burned at their core below Marion Latimer’s dull face. It was the climax of the night’s horrors, the last voice of them before they paled at cockcrow. I looked round at Masters, and at McDonnell, almost invisible back in a corner. But I thought, curiously enough, of a room situated high over Whitehall; and, in the midst of the sedate government upholstery, a fat man sitting with his feet on the long desk reading a cheap novelette. I had not seen that room since 1922…

  “You see,” Marion told us carefully, after a pause, “the idea of some one of us prowling like that was—was rather more ghastly than the other.”

  Masters expelled his breath. “How did you know it was the handle of a knife, miss?”

  “It was feeling—it was the handle, you know, and then the crosspiece, the hilt, together: brushing past. I’d swear to it. Whoever had it must have been holding it by the blade, you see.”

  “As though the person holding it had tried to touch you?”

  “Oh, no. No, I don’t think so. It jumped back at once, if you understand what I mean. It was as though somebody had gone in the wrong direction in the dark, and accidentally brushed me. …Anyway, it was after that—maybe a minute afterwards, though it’s awfully hard to be certain—I heard the only footstep I could be sure of. It seemed to come from the middle of the room somewhere.”

  “You heard this too?” Masters asked Halliday.

  “Yes.”

  “And then—?”

  “And then the door squeaked. There was a draft along the floor, too. Hang it all,” said Halliday uneasily, “surely everybody must have felt it! You couldn’t miss.”

  “It ’ud seem so, wouldn’t it? Now, sir, how long after all this did you hear the bell ringing?”

  “Marion and I have compared notes on that. She estimates something over ten minutes, but I say nearer twenty.”

  “Did you hear anybody coming back?”

  Halliday’s cigarette was burning his fingers; he glanced at it as though he had never seen it before, and dropped the stump. His eyes were vacant. “Shouldn’t like to swear to more than that, Inspector. But I should say there was a pretty definite noise of somebody sitting down. That was before we heard the bell, but I don’t remember how long. It’s all a matter of guesswork, anyhow. …”

  “When the bell rang, was everybody sitting down?”

  “I can’t tell you, Inspector. There was a rush for the door, and either Marion or Aunt Anne screamed—”

  “It wasn’t I,” said the girl.

  Masters glanced slowly from one to the other of them. “The door to that room,” he said, “was closed while you were having your—meeting. I saw that myself. When you rushed out as the bell rang, was it open or closed?”

  “I don’t know. Ted was first at the door, because he was the only one with a flashlight. Marion and I crowded after him—anywhere we could see a light we’d have gone, and he switched his on then. The whole affair was so confused that I don’t remember. Except that Featherton got a match struck to light the candles, and shouted, ‘Wait for me!’ or something like that. Then I think we all realized the futility of dashing out that door—I don’t know who started the rush in the first place; it was like sheep following a leader. So—” He waved his hand. “Look here, Inspector, haven’t we told you enough for one night? Marion is dead exhausted. …”

  “Yes,” said Masters, “yes. You may go.” Suddenly he looked up. “Young Latimer—wait a bit!—young Latimer was the only one with a flashlight? Yours was broken; then Mr. Blake gave you his when we heard Miss Latimer-calling in the passage …?”

  Halliday looked at him a moment, and then laughed. “Still suspicious of me, Inspector? Well, you’re right to be. But, as it happens, I’m strictly innocent in the flashlight business. I gave that one to Ted, at his request. You should ask him, you know. … Well, good night.” He hesitated, and walked over to me, putting out his hand. “Good night, Mr. Blake. I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess. But I didn’t know, you see. By God, we did start a hare, didn’t we?”

  … They went out the back door, and we remained in our separate and foolish positions; conscious of a city waking to daylight all around, and only the ashes of a haunted house. Presently McDonnell came over to the work-bench, beginning to sort out the penciled notes he had brought in.

  “Well, sir?” Masters addressed me. “What about it? Brain working?”

  I said that it wasn’t, and added: “Of itself, the conflicting testimony may not be so inexplicable. That is, three people said there was somebody moving about in the room, and two people said there wasn’t. But the two people who denied it, Lady Benning and Ted Latimer, were the ones who might be so rapt in concentration or prayer, or whatever it was, that they wouldn’t hear it. …”

  “Yet they all heard the bell fast enough,” said Masters. “And it didn’t ring at all loudly, I’ll swear.”

  “Yes. That’s the part that sticks. … Oh, admittedly somebody was lying. And it was as expert lying as we’ll probably ever listen to.”

  Masters got up. “I’m not going to hash the thing over now.” he snapped. “Not with a dead brain. I’ll forget even the great big snag in the business that’s worse than people who can walk over soft mud without leaving footprints. I’ll put it out of my mind. And yet I’ve a hunch—a hunch—I don’t know—what is a hunch, anyway?”

  “Well, sir,” said McDonnell, “I’ve generally discovered that a hunch is what you call an idea that you’re afraid is wrong. I’ve been having them all evening. For instance, it struck me—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Lummy, I’m sick of the business! I want a cup of strong coffee. And some sleep. And—wait a minute, Bert. What about those reports you’ve got? If there’s anything interesting, let’s have it now. Otherwise let it wait.”

  “Right you are, sir. Surgeon’s report: ‘Death of a stab wound, made by the sharp instrument submitted for inspection—that’s the L.P. dagger—penetrating through. …’’’

  “Where is the blasted thing, by the way?” interrupted Masters, struck with an idea. “I shall have to take it along. Did you pick it up?”

  “No. Bailey was photographing it on the table; they set up the table after we’d taken the measurements and shot the scene as it was. It’s probably still out on the table. By the way, its blade had been ground to a needle-point sharpness. Doesn’t sound like a ghost there.”

  “Right. We’ll pick it up. I don’t want our ‘man with his back turned’ messing about with it again. Never mind the doctor’s report. What about fingerprints?”

  McDonnell scowled. “Not a print on the dagger of any kind, Williams says. He says it had been wiped clean, or the chap used gloves; that was only to be expected. … Otherwise, the whole place is alive with ’em. He counted two separate sets of prints aside from Darworth’s. The photos will be around this morning. Also a lot of footprints. The place was dusty. No marks in the blood, though, except half a footprint that probably belongs to Mr. Blake.”

  “Yes. We shall want to go over this house here, and try to match up the prints; take care of it. Whatj’you get out of his pockets?”

  “Usual lot. Nothing enlightening. No papers of any kind, in fact.” McDonnell took from his pocket a folded sheet of newspaper, wrapped roun
d a small collection of articles. “Here it is. Bunch of keys, notecase, watch and chain, some loose silver: that’s the lot. … There was just one other funny thing. …”

  Masters caught sharply at the other’s uncertainty. “Well?”

  “The constable noticed it when we were raking out the fire, to see whether somebody might have got down the chimney. It was glass, sir. In the fire. Big fragments like a jar or bottle, maybe; but they were so splintered and burnt and softened out of shape that you couldn’t tell. … Besides, it might have been there some time.”

  “Glass?” repeated Masters, and stared. “But wouldn’t it melt?”

  “No. It bursts and splinters, that’s all. I thought perhaps—”

  The inspector grunted. “Whisky-bottle, maybe. Dutch-courage for Darworth. I shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Might have been, of course,” admitted McDonnell. But he was not satisfied. His fingers tapped his pointed chin, and his eyes roved about the room. “Still, it’s dashed funny, though, isn’t it? I mean, chucking a bottle in the fire when you’ve finished with it: hardly a natural action, is it, sir? Did you ever see anybody do it? It struck me that—”

  “Stow it, Bert,” said Masters, dragging out his words and making a wry face. “We’ve had plenty. Come along. We’ll have a last look at the place in daylight, and then we’ll clear out.”

  A cool wind blew drowsily on our eyelids as we went down into the yard. The gray light was uncertain and murky as though we saw the whole place under water; it looked larger than I had imagined it last night, and must have covered a good half-acre. Set down in the midst of dacaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no church-bells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound, could ever penetrate it.

  A brick wall perhaps eighteen feet high closed it round on three sides of a rough oblong. There were a few dying plane trees straggling beside it, with an ugly coquettish appearance like the wreaths and Cupids on the cornice of the big house, as though they were dying in the mopping, mincing postures of the seventeenth century. In one corner was a disused well, and the crooked foundations of what might once have been a dairy. But it was the little stone house, standing out in the center and alone towards the rear wall, that carried the most evil suggestion.