The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  “So she waited for him to go home—probably close to Plague Court. The trouble was that, although he was the second witness examined, he refused to go home afterwards; and didn’t go until the crowd of them had that row, and broke up.

  “But, delayed in that way, Glenda had stayed until the police subordinates themselves had gone; she was working out, even then, the details of that rather neat idea, and, while all you people were engrossed in the kitchen, there was a remarkable opportunity to pinch that dagger. …

  “Which is why, d’ye see, she lost Ted at the moment; he’d stalked off in a tearin’ rage. But, burn me, that woman would not be beaten. That’s the damnable, amazing thing about her. She relied on her wits and her powers of inventiveness to catch him alone, in his own room—in the house where she’d of course been many times as ‘Joseph’—to catch him when his mind was befogged and his reasonin’ not up to par—and convince him that he must meet her next day. If she delayed, if he didn’t have something to convince him before the very next morning, he might think better of his resolution to keep quiet. Y’see, the police were suspicious of him; and, under press of suspicion, he’d probably have told what he knew when he came to reflect on it.”

  “And what do you think she did tell him?” inquired Halliday.

  “God knows. By the note he left for his sister next morning, saying he was ‘investigating,’ it seems likely that ‘Joseph’ didn’t pretend to him it was a ghost-murder; but said that if he’d come out to Magnolia Cottage he would be furnished with proof. That ‘You never suspected it, did you?’ seems to indicate, too, that ‘Joseph’ accused a member of the group; and maintained that he (Joseph) was trying to save Darworth when Ted got that unfortunate look out the back door. After all, when a man’s been found stabbed, Joseph mightn’t have found it difficult to persuade Ted that Joseph was innocent—because ‘he’ obviously hadn’t been in the room of the stabbing. ‘A pistol? What nonsense! Your eyes were deceiving you; I was keeping watch over my patron, who was foully murdered by … who?’ Lady Benning; I’ll lay you a fiver that’s the one Glenda picked. ‘I was at the window; I saw it done.’

  “I say, you get your masculines and feminines considerably tangled in talkin’ about Joseph or Glenda; but bear with me, lads. …

  “What was I sayin’? Oh, yes. Now, obviously, considerable care had to be taken in spiriting away Ted. Because why? Because it must never be known that Ted’s disappearance had any connection with Magnolia Cottage. If a suspicious body were found unrecognizably burned in the furnace, and inquiry showed Ted had been messin’ about there, people’s suspicious minds might say, ‘Hey, look here! Is that body in the furnace really Joseph’s?’

  “And there is where my hat remains suspended over my head in admiration of Glenda. She was canny. She didn’t rush Ted out to Brixton and kill him then and there. With her knowledge of the Latimer family, she laid a really remarkable false trail. The very subtle and very neat scheme was delicately to hint that Ted had done a bunk for Scotland. He’s got a mother up there; a mother not quite right in the head; if the mother says he didn’t come up there, and that she’s not shieldin’ him, ten to one the police will believe he did and she is. And the purpose? To shift suspicion away from Magnolia Cottage until the body to be found there is accepted as Joseph’s; then they can hunt for Ted until they’re convinced he’s skipped the country—and will believe he’s guilty.

  “Result—a faked phone-call, not from anywhere near Euston Station—in deliberately vague terms. If the fake Ted said straight out he was going to Edinburgh, it might be discovered too quickly he hadn’t; that woman trusted to the way we’d think … ayagh, but she did! And the ironical part of the business was that McDonnell was taken in by it: he sent a telegram to Ted’s mother, and that lady ‘replied to Marion that Ted wasn’t there, but she would shield him if he did arrive.

  “At five o’clock Glenda, who had been keeping Ted in the background, was ready to go through with the scheme. Mrs. Sweeney was out. …”

  “By the way,” I suggested, “just how does Mrs. Sweeney figure in this business? Did she know what was going on?”

  H.M. pinched at his under-lip.

  “She’ll always say that she didn’t. It’s like this. She was telling the absolute truth when she said Darworth brought ‘Joseph’ to her. Mrs. Sweeney is a former medium; Masters has looked her up, and has pretty well decided that Darworth saved her from goin’ to prison once, and had a tight hold over her in a good deal the same way as Glenda had over him. He wanted a figurehead for that house in Brixton; between them, he and Joseph scared La Sweeney to death. At first they probably tried to put over on her that ‘Joseph’ was a boy—but you can’t live in a house like that for four years and not get pretty suspicious. She likely became suspicious right off, and Glenda said to her, ‘Look here, my friend. You’re already mixed up in some very shady business; one word from my friend Roger Darworth, and you’ll land in prison. If you should happen to see anything: forget it. Do you understand?’ We shan’t know the whole truth until Sweeney tells; but, as Glenda’s dead now. … You see, Darworth wanted somebody always living in that house in Brixton, for a very good reason, and a woman he held and could hold a threat over would make an admirable housekeeper.”

  “Do you think she knew Glenda had murdered Ted, and substituted the body?”

  “I’m damn certain of it! Otherwise she might have been prevailed on to tell us. Don’t you remember what she said: ‘I’m afraid!’ And, son, she was. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it hadn’t been good old Glenda’s plan to wait for her to return from her day but, after Ted was disposed of, and eliminate Mrs. Sweeney. Fortunately, she was scared off by the workman looking in at the window; and Sweeney didn’t get home until past six. …”

  Big Ben, loud in the silent streets, struck four. H.M. saw that the last of the punch was cold and his pipe had gone out. Disconsolately he shivered a little in the chill room. He got up, lumbered over to the fire, and stared into it.

  “I’m tired. Burn me, I could sleep a week. And I think that’s all the story. … I arranged my little show tonight. A friend of mine I referred to as ‘Shrimp,’ a good little feller who says he’s makin’ an honest living now, helped me out. He’s an arms expert, and light enough to scale that tree at Plague Court. It was all arranged. I’d had him go over the housé, and he found Glenda’s gun and silencer under the floor-boards in the room she used at Plague Court. We were goin’ to use another, a duplicate, if we couldn’t find ’em. At shortly after eleven o’clock Masters and his crowd gravely—without sayin’ any- 1 thing—persuaded Glenda to go to Plague Court. She couldn’t refuse; anyway, she came very gamely. First they went into the front room and Masters resurrected the gun from under the floor. She didn’t say anything, and neither did Masters. They walked just as gravely out to the back yard. Shrimp took the gun, and, in sight of Glenda, climbed up on the roof of the stone house. …

  “I wonder what that woman thought when she saw him firm’ those bullets? You know what she did. They were fools not to search her beforehand. She might ’a’ hurt somebody besides herself.”

  Stale smoke hung about the lamp. I felt unutterably weary.

  “You haven’t yet said,” Halliday told him harshly, “what you did about McDonnell. ‘His innocence!’ Damned rot! I’ll bet he was as guilty as she was. … Look here, you didn’t let him get away?”

  H.M. stared down into the dying fire. His back jerked a little, and he blinked round uncompre-hendingly.

  “Let him—? Son, didn’t you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “No, of course,” said H.M. dully. “We didn’t stay in that infernal yard—you didn’t see. …

  “Let him get away? Not exactly. I said, ‘Son, I’m goin’ out of this room—’ this was when we were at his flat. I said, ‘You’ve got a service revolver, haven’t you?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m goin’ now. If I thought you had a chance to escape hangin’, I
shouldn’t advise it.’ And he said, ‘Thank you.’ ”

  “You mean he shot himself?”

  “I thought he was goin’ to; the way he looked then. … I said, ‘You couldn’t tell a court what you’ve told me, could you? It would only look like hidin’.’ Well, he saw that.

  “But she must have been an amazin’ woman, Glenda. What did that young fool do? He joined the party that arrested Glenda, but he couldn’t get close enough for a word, Masters tells me. Masters didn’t know about him then. We came out with them to Plague Court. Don’t you understand the meanin’ of those shots, man? Shrimp had no sooner done his demonstration, and the crowd of ’em were standin’ in the yard, than McDonnell walks out in front of ’em with a gun and says, ‘There’s a taxi around the corner, Glenda. I’ve had it waiting. Make a bolt for it. I’ll hold these chaps till you can make it.’ The God blasted young fool!—his last gesture, y’see, cool as ice, holdin’ up the whole crowd. …”

  “Then those two shots—McDonnell fired—?”

  “No, son. Glenda looked at him. She took out her own weapon as she got out from Masters’ men. She said, ‘Thanks’ to McDonnell. Then she fired two bullets into his head just before she ran.

  “She died in the right place, son. She and Louis Playge—they both belong there.”