The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  “—and not only that,” H.M. suddenly observed, as though he were continuing a discussion with himself, “but a heavy incense, spices of some kind, burned in the fireplace of that little stone room.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” said Masters.

  “Oh, I was just sittin’ and thinkin’,” the other replied, twiddling his thumbs and blinking about him with a heavy lift of his shoulders. “And I’ve been askin’ myself all day why there was heavy incense. And now—white powder. … Well, I’m a ring-tailed bastard,” he murmured softly and admiringly. “I wonder if it could be? Ha ha ha.”

  “Just so, sir. You were thinking?” demanded Masters.

  “Ho-ho-ho,” said H.M. “I know what you’re thinking Masters. And you too, Ken. I read another locked-room story once. I read plenty of ’em. Mysterious fiend invents a deadly gas unknown to science, and stands outside the room and blows it through the keyhole. Feller inside smells it and instantly goes off his onion. Then he strangles himself to death, or something. Ha-ha-ha. Boys I actually read one of them things where the feller smells it in bed, and is so enlivened that he leaps up and perforates himself by accident on the spike of the chandelier. If, that don’t take all records for the sittin’ high-jump, I hope I never read another. …

  “No, no, son. Get your mind off that. This was something that let our murderer, our X, get in and skewer his man as neat as you please.” He scowled, remembering old injuries. “Besides, there ought to be a law against stories about gases unknown to science, or poisons that leave no trace. They give me a pain. If you’re allowed to be as staggerin’ly fantastic as all that, you might just as well have the murderer drink something that would allow him to slide in and out through the keyhole instead of the gas.

  “Now that’s interesting!” said H.M., struck with an idea. “Burn me, if I wanted to be poetic and figurative about this business, crawling in and out through the keyhole, I should say that in a matter of speakin’ it’s exactly what the murderer did.”

  “But there wasn’t any keyhole!” protested Masters.

  H.M. looked pleased.

  “I know it,” he agreed. “That’s the interesting thing.”

  “I’ve had about enough of this!” said Masters, after a long pause. With controlled wrath, he began stuffing papers back into the long envelope. “This is no joking matter for me, you know. I feel like Major Featherton. I came to you for help—”

  “Now, now, don’t get your back up,” H.M. put in soothingly. “Man, I’m serious too. Word of honor, I am. Here’s our problem, the problem we’ve got to solve before we can do anything else: how was the trick worked? Without that, we can be morally certain who the murderer is and yet be absolutely unable to do anything about it. You want me to sit here and mull over, ‘Was he guilty, or was she guilty, and what was the motive?’—and all the rest of it. … Now, don’t you?”

  “I certainly thought that if you had any ideas—”

  “Right. Well, we’ll do some chinning, then, if you want to. Before we do, I wish you’d order round that car you were speakin’ about; I want a look at Darworth’s house.”

  The Inspector muttered, with obvious relief, that this was more like it. He put through the call; and, as he turned back again, we all felt the new tension that had settled down. It had grown altogether dark now, and there was a bustle and clatter of people leaving the building.

  “Now, then, sir!” Masters plunged straightway. “Here’s what I’ve figured out. We could work up a case against any one of those people—”

  “Steady,” said H.M., frowning. “Is there something new, or didn’t I read it correctly? Accordin’ to that testimony, you’d have to narrow it down to three people. Two have definite alibis. Young Halliday and the Latimer girl were sitting in the dark holding hands.”

  The other regarded him curiously. Masters’ dogged alertness seemed to have struck a bump where Masters had least expected it.

  “Good Lord, sir! You don’t mean to say you necessarily believe that?”

  “Son, I’m afraid you got a nasty suspicious mind. Don’t you believe it?”

  “Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe part of it. I’ve been trying to look at every side. Um. Just so.”

  “You mean they were together in a plot to puncture old Darworth’s liver and then back each other up with a story like that? Eyewash, my lad; first-class, guaranteed-British eyewash. Besides, it’s bad psychology. There are a dozen objections to it.”

  “I wish you’d try to understand me, sir. I didn’t say anything like that. What I mean is this: Miss Latimer, now, is completely gone on Halliday. More so than ever now. She was sitting next to Halliday. Well, if she knew for a fact that he’d actually got up—if it was he carrying the dagger that brushed her neck—and he urged her for God’s sake to support him with that story; eh? They had a whole lot of time when they could have talked to each other just after the murder was discovered.”

  He was leaning forward rather fiercely. H.M. blinked.

  “So that,” he remarked, “is why you’re not so eager to pitch on young Latimer? I see. So that’s your solution?”

  “Ah! Be careful there, sir. I don’t swear it’s the right one; understand that. As I say, I’m looking at possibilities. … But I didn’t like that gentleman’s manner, and that’s a fact! Too flippant; much too flippant; and I distrust that. I’ve had experience, and the man who walks up to you and says, ‘Come on, arrest me! It won’t do you any good, but have a good time; come on and arrest me,’—well, in most cases he’s bluffing.”

  H.M. growled: “Look here, have you realized one thing? Out of the whole crowd of suspects, you’ve unerringly fastened on the one against whom it’ll be hardest to make out a case?”

  “I don’t follow that. How?”

  “Why, if you accept my analysis of things (and apparently you have) then can you think of anybody on this broad green footstool who’d be less likely to be a confederate of Darworth than Halliday?… Burn me, can you imagine Darworth saying to him, ‘Look here, let’s us put over a jolly good joke on all of them, what? Then I can prove I’m a genuine medium, and your girl will tumble into my arms.’ Masters, the crystal busts with that vision. My murderer crawling through the keyhole is elementary beside it. I grant you Halliday might have pretended to help him put over the joke, in order to give it a whackin’ exposure, if Darworth had ever asked his help. But Darworth would no more have asked Halliday’s help than he’d have asked—yours.”

  “Very well, sir, if you like. All I say is, there are deeps in this case we don’t understand. … His bringing Mr. Blake and me to that house, just at that time and under those circumstances, looks very fishy. It looks like a put-up job. Besides, his motive. …”

  H.M. stared disconsolately at his feet.

  “Yes. Now we come to motive. I’m not tryin’ to be superior at your expense; the motive beats me beyond all. Granted Halliday had a motive, then what becomes of poor old Elsie Fenwick? Dammit, that’s the part that sticks me.”

  “I should say, sir, that the words ‘I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried,’ and the way Darworth took them, made a threat of some kind.”

  “Not a doubt, not a doubt. But I’m afraid you don’t see all the difficulties. It’s like this—”

  At this moment the inevitable happened. This time H.M. did not protest at the ringing of the telephone. He said grumpily, “That’s the car,” and with a series of painful efforts began to hoist himself out of his chair. He is actually only five feet ten inches tall, and stoop-shouldered at that! but his sluggish bulk, without any animation of face, makes him seem to fill a room.

  Unfortunately, he insists on wearing a top-hat. In the fact itself there is nothing out of the way: it is the particular hat. He would, of course, scorn the customary glossy silk article, associating it with Toryism and grinding-the-faces-of-the-poor, as well as the comical aspect it provides. But this hat—high and topheavy, worn by many years to a rusty indeterminate hue—is a mascot. So also is hi
s long coat with the moth-eaten fur collar. He guards them jealously, with bitter resentment against slurs, and invents fantastic tales in defense of them. At various times I have heard him describe them as (1) a present from Queen Victoria, (2) the trophy of his winning the first Grand Prix automobile-race in 1903, and (3) the property of the late Sir Henry Irving. Other things he takes without undue seriousness, despite his pretenses; but not, I assure you, this hat or coat.

  While Masters answered the phone, he was carefully getting them out of a closet. He saw me looking, and his broad mouth turned down sourly; he put on the hat carefully, and assumed great dignity with the coat. “Come on, come on,” he said to Masters; “stop jawing with the chauffeur, and—”

  “… yes, I admit it’s queer,” Masters was saying to the telephone rather impatiently, “but … What else did you find out? … Are you sure? … Then look here; we’re going over to Darworth’s house now. Meet us there, and let’s-hear all about it. If you can find Miss Latimer, ask her if she’ll come along. …”

  After a long hesitation, Masters hung up the receiver. He looked worried.

  “I don’t like this, sir,” he snapped. “I’ve got a, feeling that—that something’s going to happen.”

  The words sounded more eerie spoken by the practical and unimaginative Inspector. His eyes fixed on the spot of light from the desk-lamp. The rain flicked in little whips against the window-panes, and there were echoes in the old stone building.

  “Ever since that damned dagger was stolen again—!” He clenched his hand. “First Banks a while ago, and now McDonnell. That was McDonnell. Somebody’s been making queer phone-calls to the Latimers’ place, and there was something about a—a ‘horrible voice,’ or the like, talking to Ted early this morning. Look here, you don’t think—?”

  H.M. stood with his shoulders hunched, a hugh silhouette in the top-hat and fur-collared coat. With his little eye.

  “I don’t like it either,” he rumbled, with a sudden gesture. “I’m funny like that. Psychic. I can smell trouble. … Come on, you two. We’re goin’. Now.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  London was going home. You could hear the buzz of the liberated, that swelled in a calling from the dazzle of Piccadilly Circus; shadows moving on misty yellow-and-red sketches, cars jerking like the electric-signs, and their horns honking through it with a weary plaintiveness. This we could perceive up the long hill as the police-car nosed past the foot of the Haymarket. Waves of lighted buses rose at us and plunged past down Cockspur Street with a flying hoot; and H.M. leaned out and gave a very tolerable raspberry in reply. He did not like buses. He said they were required to put on extra speed just as they shaved round corners. That was why he gave the raspberry. By accident, at a break in the traffic, he delivered a very malevolent one into the face of a policeman on duty at Waterloo Place; and Masters was not amused. It was a police-car, and he said he did not want it thought that the C.I.D. sent people around doing that sort of thing.

  But once up St. James’s Street, through the crush in Piccadilly and into the quiet of the shuttered houses northwards, we were all silent. As we passed the Berkely, I thought of Major Featherton sitting on a tall bar-stool and smirking in a fatherly way at a young lady who enjoyed his dancing; very much a contrast to the queer, bitter face of Lady Benning that would always hover at the back of any picture in which these characters were concerned. “Something’s going to happen. …” It was difficult to fit those uneasy words even into the rather sinister quiet of Charles Street. And yet it did. …

  Somebody was plying the knocker of Number 25, filling in the intervals by pressing the bell. As our car drew up, the caller came down the steps under a street-lamp; and we saw that once more McDonnell was waiting in the rain.

  McDonnell said: “I can’t make him answer the door, sir. He thinks it’s another reporter. They’ve been after him all day.”

  “Where’s Miss Latimer?” barked Masters. “What’s the matter?—wouldn’t she come, or were you too polite to use pressure?” (It was remarkable how the Inspector’s manner underwent a change when he met a subordinate.) “Sir Henry especially wanted to see her. What’s happened now?”

  “She wasn’t at home. She’d gone out calling on people to see whether she could find Ted, and she hasn’t got back yet. I’m sorry, sir. … but I waited half an hour to see her myself, after I’d got back from chasing all over Euston Station. I’ll tell you about it. She and I were both mad good and proper over that telephone call—”

  H.M. had been sticking his neck out of the car like a turtle, and somewhat damaging his hat in so doing; he was making remarks, not in an amiable manner. When the situation was explained, he said, “So?” Painfully he climbed out and waddled up the steps. He roared, “Open the goddamned door, you!” in a voice that must have carried as far as Berkely Square, and then hurled his full weight against it. This was effective. A rather pale, middle-aged man opened it, after turning on some lights. The middle-aged man explained nervously that reporters had been impersonating officers of the law—

  “That’s all right, son,” said H.M. in a voice abruptly turned dull and disinterested. “Chair.”

  “Sir?”

  “Chair. Thing you sit in. Ah! Here.”

  The hallway inside was high and narrow, with a polished hardwood floor, on which one or two small starved-looking rugs were laid out like hazards on a golf course. I could understand why Masters had said the whole place resembled a museum. It was swept and stiff and unlived-in, and there were too many shadows arranged as precisely as the scanty furniture. Faint concealed lights along the cornices illumined a piece of snaky-looking white sculpture towering up over a black-upholstered chair. Darworth had known the value of atmosphere. As an anteroom to the supernatural, it was uncannily effective. H.M. did not seem impressed. He spread himself out in the black chair, wheezing, and Masters went into action at once.

  “Sir Henry, this is Sergeant McDonnell. He’s under me in this business. I’ve taken an interest in Bert, and he’s ambitious. Now, tell Sir Henry—”

  “Hey!” said H.M., with a powerful contraction of memory. “I know you. Knew your father, of course. Old Grosbeak. He was against me when I stood for Parliament, and I got licked, thank God. I know everybody, y’see. Last time I saw you, son—”

  “Report, Sergeant,” said Masters curtly.

  “Yes, sir,” returned McDonnell, bringing himself to attention. “I’ll begin at the time you sent me to Miss Latimer’s home and went to Whitehall for your appointment.

  “They live in a big place in Hyde Park Gardens. It’s too big for them, as a matter of fact; but they’ve lived there since old Commander Latimer died and the mother went to Jive with her people in Scotland.” He hesitated. “Old Mrs. Latimer’s not—not quite right in the head, you know. Whether that explains anything of Ted’s erratic conduct, I don’t know. I’d been in the house before, but, queerly enough, I’d never met Marion until last week.”

  Masters warned him to keep to the point, and the sergeant went on:

  “When I went round this afternoon, she was rather cut up. She as much as told me I was a filthy spy—which,” said McDonnell bitterly, “I suppose I was. But she forgot that, and appealed to me as a friend of Ted. It was like this: she’d no sooner got done talking to you, sir, than she got another phone-call. …”

  “Who from?”

  “It purported to be Ted. She said it didn’t sound like his voice, but that it might have been; and she didn’t know what to think. ‘Ted’ said he was at Euston Station, and not to worry: that he was after somebody, and might not be home until tomorrow. She started to tell him that the police were looking for him, but he rang off immediately.

  “So naturally she wanted me to hop over to Euston Station; find out if he meant to take a train or had taken one; try to trace him, anyhow, and drag him back before he made a fool of himself. That was about twenty minutes past three o’clock. In case it was a hoax, she was going after some friends of his an
d try to trace him in that way—”

  H.M., who was stroking his plowshare chin, with his hat on the back of his head and his eyes half closed, interrupted.

  “Hold on, son. Just a minute. Did young Latimer say anything about taking a train?”

  “That’s more or less the idea she got, sir. You see, he’d taken a bag with him when he went out this morning; and, since he was phoning from a railway station—”

  “More jumpin’ to conclusions,” observed H.M. sourly. “Seems to be a favorite sport. All right. What happened then?”

  “I got over to Euston as fast as I could, and spent over an hour combing the place. It was a warm trail, and Marion gave me a good photograph; but no result. Only one remotely possible identification, when a platform-guard thought he might have gone through on the 3.45 express for Edinburgh; but I couldn’t get any identification at the ticket-window, and the train had gone. I don’t know what to think. It might have been a hoax.”

  “Dj’you wire the police at Edinburgh?” demanded Masters.

  “Yes, sir. I also sent a wire to—” he checked himself.

  “Well?”

  “It was a personal wire. Ted’s mother lives in Edinburgh. Hang it, sir, I knew Ted pretty well; I couldn’t imagine what would have taken him up there, if he did go, but I thought I’d better warn him for God’s sake to get back to London before he found himself in the dock. … Then I came back to the Latimer place, and found out the next queer thing.”

  McDonnell’s eyes roved about the dim, harsh-shadowed hall. He said:

  “One of the servants heard a voice talking to Ted at just about daylight this morning. They said it was high and queer and talking very rapidly. They said it came either from in his room, or the balcony outside.”

  There was something in those unadorned words which brought new terrors into the cold place. McDonnell felt it; even Masters felt it; and it conjured up shapeless images without faces. H.M. sat with his arms folded, blinking vacantly; but I felt that at any moment he might get up. Masters said: “Voice? What voice?”