The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  “So it wasn’t the money!” said H.M. “Burn me, it wasn’t the money after all! Of course not. Humph.” He rumbled with unsmiling satisfaction, and looked at his black pipe. But he was too lazy to light it, so he settled back again dully with his hands folded over his stomach. “Carry on, Masters. Carry on. I like it.”

  “What’s on your mind, sir?” the Inspector asked.

  “I got it straight from Stiller. Darworth’s got no other relations, made no will, and his wife will inherit. Stiller describes her as a—what-is-it—‘statuesque brunette, not at all a servant-type. …’ ”

  “Chuck it,” said H.M. “What’re you insinuatin’, son? That the woman came over and murdered Darworth for his money? Tut, tut. That’s not fair detective-fiction, to go and dump down a mere name, somebody we haven’t seen and that ain’t connected with the business. Don’t growl, now. Because why?” He pointed his pipe at Masters. “Because the person who planned this crime planned it exactly like a detective-story. It’s skillful; even I’ll admit that. But that locked-room situation is too rounded and complete, too thoroughly worked out and smacked down as a deliberate puzzle for us. It was staged for months. Everything led slowly up to just that situation, when just that crowd would be assembled under just those emotional circumstances. … They even provided themselves with a scapegoat. If something went wrong, we should fasten directly on good old Joseph. That was why he was there at all; he wasn’t needed otherwise. Man, d’ye think he could really have pinched a needleful of morphine from Darworth without Darworth knowing all about it but pretendin’ not to?”

  “But—” Masters protested.

  “Humph. It’s time to pry off a few layers of wrappin’ in this thing. Joseph doped himself and slid out of the package; all right; but he was always there, and the British public always knows what to think when it finds a Dope-Fiend, especially if he can’t give a coherent account of what he’s been doing: When the Dope-Fiend is also that other figure of suspicion, a Medium—arragh! That’s why you can stop lookin’ for a mythical outsider, son, who dived into the pool after the water’d been all colored up nice and proper.”

  He was gabbling on as though sleepily addressing the telephone; a little more rapidly than usual, but with no change of voice.

  “Hold on, sir!” said Masters. “Stop the bus! I’ve got to get this straight. You said, ‘They provided themselves with a scapegoat.’ Then you said something about Darworth. And all this time you were talking about somebody who planned things to happen along the line of a detective-story. …”

  “Right-ho. So I did.”

  “And have you any idea who it was that planned it?”

  H.M.’s little eyes roved. They seemed amused, though he preserved his sour expression, and kept on twiddling his thumbs across his waistcoat. He blinked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, as though suddenly determined to impart a confidence. “It was Roger Darworth.”

  Masters stared at him. Masters opened and shut his mouth. In the silence we could hear a door bang shut downstairs, the honking of taxis outside on the Embankment. Then Masters bent his head a little, raised it, and said with the quiet air of one who is determined to hold to reason:

  “Are you trying to tell me, sir, that Darworth killed himself?”

  “No. A man can’t give himself three good hearty stabs through the back and then finish himself with a fourth. Not possible. … You see, something went wrong. …”

  “You mean there was an accident?”

  “Dammit, man,” said H.M., “what sort of accident’ll slosh a man about like that, hey? You think the dagger was workin’ like a Ouija-Board or something? The answer is, NO. I said something went wrong. Which it did. … Can’t anybody give me a match?… Humph. Thanks.”

  “This,” said Major Featherton, “is outrageous!” He coughed again.

  H.M. looked at him blankly.

  “I can tell you a little, Masters,” he went on, “without being able (I mean yet, you understand; I’ll get it presently)—what was I sayin’?—without being able to solve the thundering riddle of the no-foot-prints and the locked room. It’s rather uncanny, by God, it is! And there’re going to be a lot of people believe it was spooks after all. …

  “Look here, son. You thought Darworth was going to put on a spiritualistic show last night. You were right. He was. If it had gone as he planned it, it would still have splashed him into terrific prominence in the world. It would also have got him Marion Latimer, awed, tied, and delivered for life; and that was what he wanted. Eh? I don’t have to stress that to you, do I? Read the testimony, if you don’t recall it. …

  “Well, Darworth had a confederate. One of those five people sitting in the dark was to help him put on his show. But the confederate didn’t play fair. Instead of doing what he or she was supposed to do, the confederate went out to that house and murdered him … after Darworth had worked out the play and set the stage so that it could be done. …”

  Masters leaned forward, his hands clenched on the desk.

  He said: “I think I’m beginning to get this, sir. You mean that Darworth intended there to be a locked room?”

  “Sure he did, Masters,” H.M. replied somewhat querulously. He struck his match for the pipe, but it went out immediately. As though he were acting automatically, Masters struck another match and held it across the table. His eyes did not leave H.M.’s face as the Chief went on: “How else could he prove to the world that spooks had done—what he intended to have done?”

  “And what,” demanded Masters, “what did he intend to have done?”

  Laboriously H.M. heaved his feet down from the desk. He took the light from Masters’ match when it had nearly burnt the Inspector’s fingers. The pipe went out, but he kept on puffing as though he did not notice. Putting his elbows on the desk and his big head in his hands, he brooded over the notes that lay before him. Outside it was nearly dark now, and the rain whispered faintly. Against grayish mist you could see the necklace of street-lamps winking out along the curve of the Embankment below, and the lights on the bridges making gleams in black water. Under pale trees—taller than the buses that shouldered past in shadows and sullen red flickers—traffic crawled with a firefly glitter. Startlingly near, the voice of Big Ben commenced to bang and vibrate high above us. It had struck five before H.M. spoke. …

  He said: “I was sittin’ here this afternoon, thinking about those reports. And the key to the whole isn’t difficult to find.

  “It’s this, d’ye see? Darworth’s intentions towards that Latimer girl were what they call strictly honorable. That’s the hellish part of it! They were strictly honorable. If he’d only a-wanted to seduce her, he could’ve done it long ago, and then there wouldn’t be this mess. Bah! Then, after a while, he’d have got tired of his game with the Benning-Latimer circle, or got all the money he wanted from the old lady, and moved on to better game. Burn me, why couldn’t it have been like that?”

  H.M. spoke plaintively. He ruffled his hands across his head in an angry manner; he did not look up.

  “It don’t take much brains to see his course. First off, he was after the old lady to work on her bereavement. But it was pretty fair generalship; he learns how she’s tied up with the Latimer-Halliday crowd, and goes after Ted—you know it all. I dunno whether he knew about the Plague Court legend at the beginning or not; but he finds that a perfect ghost-story situation has dropped into his lap for him to twist any way he likes through the spirit of poor weak-headed James. Then he meets the Latimer girl. Bang. The big hunt’s started. …

  “He means to get a wife out of this, d’ye see? He combs his whiskers, assumes his Byronic air, paralyzes her with every psychological trick in the bag—and watch him work. Son, he damn near did it! If it hadn’t been for this chap Halliday, he’d have succeeded. As it was, he got round her with that ‘possession’ nonsense. It took a long build-up, of course. He filled her head with ideas she’d never thought of before; he danced in front of her; be
wildered, soothed, cajoled her; even tried hypnosis, and scared her nearly out of her wits. All the time, for one reason or another, the old lady was helping him. …”

  Again H.M. knocked his hands against his head. Masters said:

  “Ah! Bit of jealousy there, I should think.—But this business of ‘exorcising’ Plague Court was in the nature of his last big—”

  “Knockout!” said H.M. “A stinger. Have the girl exactly where he wanted her, if he’d pulled it off. Oh, yes.”

  “Go on, sir,” prompted the Inspector, after a pause.

  “Well, I was only sittin’ and thinkin’, you understand. It was probably a pretty dangerous stunt he was going to try. Had to be, you see. It had to be a stinger, or the whole scheme would fall through. It had to be a jolly sight more spectacular than makin’ passes at a pretended ghost nobody else could see. The bell, for example. It might have been for effect—or it might have been because there was a real, grim, deadly danger. Eh? In any event, it indicated he expected ’em to be called out. He was locked in there with a padlock on the outside of the door. That smelled more like trickery, but when he also bolted and barred the door in the inside. … Why, he was going to stage a fake ‘attack’ from Louis Playge, in a room where nobody but a ghost could have entered.

  “As I say, I was sittin’ and thinkin’. …

  “So I asked myself, ‘Here! First, how was he goin’ to do it; and, second, was he goin’ to do it alone?’

  “I read your report. It said how you were outside yourself, and how you’d come round the side of the house a few minutes before you heard the bell. And you heard funny noises from the house. You said you heard his voice, ‘as though he were beggin’ or implorin’ somebody, and as though he’d started to moan or cry.’ Man, that don’t sound like a violent attack. No sounds of a fight, mind you, though he was cut up with rather tolerable thoroughness. No yells or blows or curses, such as any ordinary person would make. It was pain, Masters. Pain! And he was simply standing there takin’ it. …”

  Masters ran his hand savagely through his hair. But he spoke in a low voice. “Do you mean, sir, that he deliberately allowed himself to be mutilated—”

  “We’ll come to the mutilation in a minute. Now, that might or might not argue the presence of a confederate. But it looked a good deal like it. Because what good were mere wounds in his locked-room scheme unless they were in a place where he couldn’t have inflicted ’em himself?”

  “Go on.”

  “Then I read all about that room, and I kept askin’ questions. First, why was there so infernally much blood about? There was too much blood, Masters. Darworth might have been one of your Messianic neurotics; might ’a’ been willing to undergo more than usual jabs to make this piece of trickery ring in the world—to snare the Latimer girl—to feed his ego—I dunno what. Mind you, he was wealthy himself; it was partly the incense-drunk prophet, not able to resist the sound of his own voice, who let himself. … But I repeat, son, there was too much blood.”

  H.M. lifted his head. He spoke for the first time with a curious smile on his ponderous face; his little eyes fixed Masters. You felt the power of the man, growing steadily. …

  “And then I remembered two things,” he said softly. “I remembered that in the fire, where they had no business to be, were the smashed fragments of a big glass bottle. And in the big house, under the stairs, lay the body of a cat with its throat cut.”

  Masters whistled. The major, who had started to get up, sat down again.

  “Humph,” said H.M. “Humph, yes. I phoned through to your analyst, Masters. I shall be a good deal surprised if most of that blood didn’t come from a cat. It was part of the spectacular element. And you’ll see now why there was so infernally much blood—without any marks or imprints in it, as there’d bound to be if the murderer had really chased round after Darworth cutting at him.

  “And I also kept askin’ muself, ‘Was that why there was such a very hot fire?’ Darworth could have carried the blood under his coat in a flattish bottle, and it wouldn’t be long till he could splash it round artistically on himself and on the floor: making a very effective picture. But it had to be kept warm in the meantime, so it wouldn’t coagulate. … Maybe it was the reason for the very hot fire, or maybe not.

  “Anyway, thinkin’ about that mess, I said to myself, ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘the man’s clothes, were torn scandalous, he was saturated with blood, and he’d accidentally smashed his glasses in his eyes when he tumbled over on the floor. But disregard the splendor and vididness of the stage-setting,’ I said—”

  “Hold on a bit, H.M.!” I interrupted. “You say Darworth killed the cat?”

  “Uh,” snorted H.M., glowering round nearsightedly to see who had made the interruption. “Oh, it’s you, is it? Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “When did he do it?”

  “Why, when he’d sent young Latimer and poor old Featherton here out to set his house in order; they took enough time about it. He was only resting, d’ye see. Now shut up and—”

  “But wouldn’t he get blood on him?”

  “Sure he would, Ken. A bloomin’ good thing, too. He intended to splash himself later on, d’ye see, and the more evidence the better. Simply put on his overcoat and gloves to conceal it then (you’ll notice he didn’t go back in the front room where anybody could see him in a decent light, or examine him; oh, no. He rushed out and had ’em lock him in that house awful abrupt. Remember? That blood hadda be kept fresh). What was I saying … ?”

  H.M. paused, his little eyes fixed. He said, slowly, “Oh—my—God,” and put his fists down on the desk.

  “I say, you chaps stimulate me, you do. I just thought of somethin’. Oh, this is bad. Very bad. Never mind. Let me go on. Where was I?”

  “Keep to the point,” rasped the major, knocking his stick on the floor. “This is all damned nonsense, but go on. You were talking about Darworth’s wounds—?”

  “So I was. Yes. Humph. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘disregard the stage-setting.’ Everybody talked a lot about how terribly slashed up he was, after a good look at all the blood and slit clothes. But, leavin’ out the good straight stab that killed him, just how serious were his injuries? Eh?

  “Y’see, the point about that dagger is that it ain’t a slashing weapon in the least. You can’t cut with a straight-bladed awl, no matter how sharp it is. Old Darworth had to use it, to keep up the Louis Playge illusion. But what happened to him, actually?… I sent over for the full post-mortem report, I did.

  “There were three very superficial wounds in his left arm, thigh, and leg: the sort of thing a nervous person might do to himself, and get scared and not dig more than half an inch in. I think maybe Darworth screwed up his courage and did that himself; then got frightened and wanted to back out of his confederate sticking him from behind. That might account for some of the moanings. The exaltation must ’a’ been wearing a bit thin by that time.

  “Nervous strain. It couldn’t have hurt him much. But the confederate had to give him wounds he couldn’t have made himself. Thus: one cut high in the flesh over the shoulder blade. One that stabbed sideways, straight across his back and very shallow. And that was all the confederate WAS supposed to do to him. …”

  H.M.’s desk-telephone rang stridently, and I think we all started. He cursed and shook his fist at it, talking to it for some time before he took down the receiver. Then he immediately said he was busy, protesting querulously about the fate of the British empire depending on it, and interrupted by a strident voice. The voice went on speaking. A dour expression of satisfaction overspread H.M.’s face. Once he said,

  “Ehocaine Hydrochloride!” as though he were gloating over a delicacy.

  “That settles it, lads,” he said, replacing the receiver. His eye twinkled. “Doc Blaine on the wire. I might have guessed it. A section of Darworth’s back was shot full of ehocaine hydrochloride; you know it as novocaine, if you’ve ever had a dentist sittin’ on your chest.
… Poor old Darworth! Couldn’t stick the pain even in a good cause. Damn fool. He might ’a’ stopped his heart. Somebody did stop it though. It’s interesting to think of that suave, unctuous blighter knowing what he had to do to win everything he wanted, but scared green when the time came for the operation. Ha. Ha-ha-ha. Give me a match.”

  “The confederate,” said Masters, who had been writing busily, “was supposed to give him those light stabs. …”

  “Yes. And didn’t. He cut loose suddenly with two deep ones, before Darworth knew what was happening. He stabbed through the back close to the spine, and then under the shoulder-blade—”

  H.M. brought down a big flipper out of the air. There was something ghoulish, rather inhuman, about the expression of his face. His eyes seemed to know exactly what you were thinking, and I looked away from them.

  “This is all very well, sir,” Masters began doggedly, “but it doesn’t get us anywhere! You’ve still got to explain the locked-room. If it was a confederate, I can understand how Darworth might have drawn the bolt and raised the bar and let him in, but—”

  “After,” I said, “the confederate walking thirty yards of mud from the big house without leaving a footprint. …”

  “Don’t mix me up, now,” growled Masters, making a fierce gesture as though he were balancing a pail of water on his head, “I said I could understand how Darworth let him in—”

  “Steady on,” interposed H.M. “Remember that there was a padlock on that door that had to be opened from outside. By the way, who had the key to that padlock?”

  “Ted Latimer,” said Masters.

  There was a silence.

  “Now, now,” urged H.M. soothingly. “Might have been. But I shouldn’t jump to conclusions—yet. That reminds me, you said something about his doing a bunk; and you haven’t explained it yet. Oh, I want to hear a lot of things yet. Yet, yet, yet. …”