Scandal at High Chimneys

by John Dickson Carr

  “Then all the worse, I fear. Put this matter out of your mind. My old friend Damon wished neither of his daughters to marry—”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t say.” Exasperation crossed Dr. Bland’s face. “But a father hasn’t to give reasons for his wishes, you know.”

  “Oh? I think he has.”

  “The whole world differs from you; therefore the whole world is wrong. It’s a habit of young people; I can make allowances. And I will give you a reason, if you like.”

  “May I hear it?”

  “Murder,” said Dr. Bland, opening his sharp, bright-blue eyes and fixing them on Clive with the effect of a blow. “You would agree that murder, and this murder in particular, is a horrible business? You would further agree that I, as a man somewhat older and more experienced than yourself, should be in charge here until the police arrive?”

  “Yes, by all means!”

  “Good,” said Dr. Bland, suavely holding out his hand. “Then give me the key to the study, which Burbage tells me you have. We must go across there now. We must cast an eye over poor Damon. And we must see whether your story is at all probable.”

  “Whether my story is probable?”

  “Yes,” agreed Dr. Bland. “The key, if you will.”

  Somewhere upstairs, a woman screamed.

  They heard it clearly above the driving of the rain. It went piercing up in terror. To Clive, whose flesh had gone hot-and-cold, it symbolized some force that prowled at High Chimneys, that frightened servants on the stairs, and that struck at last to kill: some force, hidden but malignant, peering round a corner.

  Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland did not turn a hair.

  “Tut!” he said in his bluff way. “So faint of heart, Mr. Strickland? That is only Celia. The young lady is not well, and we must expect these little contretemps. You give too great attention to shadows.”

  “Greater attention, it would seem, than you give to patients.”

  “Good, very good! But I am wanted here. You will see.”

  And in fact, as they crossed the hall and Dr. Bland unlocked the door of the study, that cry from upstairs seemed to have roused no one except Penelope Burbage. Penelope, standing near the back by the green-baize door, gave them only one look before she hastened away into the servants’ quarters.

  Dr. Bland left the study door open. Ignoring Clive, who remained in the doorway, he went over to examine the figure in the chair.

  Nobody spoke. The ceaseless rain was bringing out an odour of old stone and of damp places behind the wallpaper. Then, sharp-eyed and portentous, something of a dandy, Dr. Bland walked round the room, glancing at both doors. After a time he picked up the revolver from the floor.

  “Lefaucheux!” Clive said suddenly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Lefaucheux!” repeated Clive. “That’s the name of the French firm who manufactures those pistols.”

  “Just so,” agreed the other, pulling out the pin which held the cylinder to the frame, and detaching the cylinder to examine it. “A double-action Lefaucheux: one shot fired, five chambers loaded.” He replaced the cylinder. “Light to the hand, an easy trigger-pull when the hammer is drawn back to cock. Sportsman, Mr. Strickland?”

  “Not much of one, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah. You don’t appear to relish the sight of poor Damon.”

  “I don’t. Do all dead men have open mouths?”

  “Ah. Yes; a double-action Lefaucheux. I was with Damon when he bought this at Stover’s in Piccadilly. What happened here when he was killed?”

  Clive told what had happened: the facts, without a word of what had been said.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the doctor said pleasantly. “But I understood from Burbage (correct me if I err!) that my old friend had something of great importance to tell you. Indeed, you appeared most engrossed when I looked in. What were you discussing?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “You must please yourself,” smiled Dr. Bland, after a pause during which he looked very hard at Clive. “However, the police may perhaps be insistent. If I might instruct you in the law …”

  “You need not. I was called to the bar four years ago.”

  “Ah.” Thoughtful, holding the revolver in his left hand, Dr. Bland stroked the underside of his moustache with the little finger of his right. “You sat in this chair? Here?” He indicated it. “Facing Damon across the desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like Penelope Burbage, you too saw this mysterious apparition which no one else has seen? Dear, dear, dear! I do hope,” Dr. Bland added with great politeness, “you have no pressing engagement in London tomorrow?”

  “Yes! I have a very pressing engagement in Oxford Street at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon!”

  “That’s a pity, you know. That’s a very great pity. You won’t keep your engagement, Mr. Strickland. No, I assure you! Tell this tale to the police, and you won’t keep it. You will certainly be detained for questioning, and you may well be arrested for murder. No, don’t speak! And we mustn’t excite ourselves, must we? Excuse me for just one moment. One moment, my dear fellow!”

  Still speaking with avuncular tenderness, Dr. Bland had turned the knob of the door to the library and found it locked from the other side.

  And, repeating, “One moment!” while he made soothing gestures, he moved past Clive into the hall, where he disappeared into the library. He did this just as Burbage, carrying a small lamp, marched towards the rear of the hall.

  “Sir, one moment!” urged Burbage, catching an echo of the doctor when Clive started to address him.

  Into the back-parlour, through the back-parlour and into the conservatory, Burbage marched with great attention to every wall. The glow of his lamp sprang up amid greenery beneath rain-stinging glass.

  “Ah!” continued Dr. Bland, unlocking the study-door to the library from the far side and appearing about where the murderer had stood. His tone changed. The apparition, you say, was here?”

  “Yes. Left hand on the far knob, right hand with the pistol.”

  “Like this? Good! Then this prowler allowed you to see him face to face in full light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Criminals are fond of doing that, eh?”

  “I can only tell you what happened.”

  “Can you see my face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you see his?”

  “No.”

  “Tut! To kill poor Damon, the prowler must have fired a bullet within an inch or two of your own head? Eh? Good. With so unpredictable a weapon as a hand-gun, would you attempt a shot like that and undertake not to hit a man standing between?”

  “Look here, Doctor: the murderer was forced to risk it. Mr. Damon was just about to tell me—”

  “Ah! To tell you what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If this prowler existed, why didn’t he fire from the other door?”

  “The other door?”

  Briskly, with cat-footed steps, Dr. Bland crossed the study and stood beside Clive.

  “The prowler, imagine, is here in the hall. He had been at this door, you maintain, since at some time he locked it from the outside. Be good enough to watch! If he stood behind this door, which opens inwards and to the right, you in your chair could not possibly have seen him behind the shield of the door. Agreed?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “He would have had a direct line of fire to the victim, at right angles, with nothing and no one between. Could he have been surprised here by someone from the servants’ quarters? No! The servants are together at table between six-fifteen and six-thirty or a few minutes later. Could he have been surprised by any guest or member of the family? Likewise no. As a rule (I say as a rule!) no one comes downstairs until a quarter to seven at the earliest. Agreed?”

  “Oh, yes,” answered Clive. “I thought of that too.”

  Raindrops from the chimney hissed into the dying fire. Dr. Bland, who had
stalked back to the desk and put down the revolver there, wheeled round.

  “You thought of it?”

  “I did. Do you propose to accuse me, for instance, of killing an estimable gentleman who was scarcely more than an acquaintance?”

  “Accuse? Oh, tut! You horrify me. At the same time, if you have any notion of going to London tomorrow, pray be quit of it. You will not go.”

  “Who is to stop me?”

  “Why, as to that: means can be devised, if they are necessary. Meanwhile,” and again the bright blue eyes struck across like a blow, “can you suggest why any murderer, any at all except one in your imagination, should have taken so much trouble in order to be seen?”

  “Yes, I think I can,” retorted Clive, with all the doubts and perplexities and bedevilments boiling up inside him. “You have just given the explanation.”

  “My dear sir …!”

  “The murderer wanted to be seen,” Clive interrupted, “because it was necessary for the clothes to be seen. And had to be seen and remarked because … well. Because nobody would suspect a woman of wearing them.”

  There was a stroke of silence, during which Dr. Bland’s hand went up to his beard.

  “A woman? That’s impossible!”

  “Oh, no,” said Clive, advancing as the other advanced. “I dislike the idea. I hate the idea. In my heart I refuse to believe it. But it is the most likely supposition of all.”

  “Mr. Strickland, you are more quick-witted than I had imagined. And yet it won’t do. I tell you it won’t do! There is no—”

  Dr. Bland stopped. That was the point at which both of them, each from the corner of his eye, caught a flicker of movement from inside the nearly dark library.

  A man of Dr. Bland’s portliness and dignity might move briskly, but he could not or did not move with speed. Clive, physically as hard as nails and in first-rate training, could and did. He was into the library within half a second, his shoulders cutting off the glow which penetrated there from the study lamp.

  “Don’t go in,” he said gently to the person in front of him. “What you see there will only distress you.”

  “I had not intended to go in,” answered Celia Damon.

  He could not see her clearly, though he heard her breathe. Her gentle grey eyes, the lids puffy with weeping in a pretty face almost distorted from emotion, were fixed on him in a kind of horrified realization.

  “You should not have come downstairs, Miss Damon. Permit me to take you into the drawing-room.”

  Only Celia’s natural submissiveness prevented her from bursting out.

  “Thank you,” she said, and lowered her eyes. “But I have something to say, and I must say it.”

  “Celia!” cried Kate’s voice in the distance.

  Kate, carrying a lamp, ran into the drawing-room from the hall as Clive parted the bead curtain and escorted Celia there. Kate, as tempestuous of manner as Celia was quiet, stopped and watched them.

  “Celia,” she cried, “can’t I leave you alone for one minute without …?”

  “I am sorry, Kate dear, if I alarmed you. I would not do that for the world.”

  Dr. Bland, bringing the green-shaded study lamp, and Burbage with his own light, followed the others into the room. Shadows retreated, unveiling the big drawing-room to show its padded chairs, its Turkey carpet, its piano of carved rosewood with a brass candle-bracket on either side of the music-rack.

  “I would not do that for the world, I do assure you,” repeated Celia. “But I have something to say, and I must say it.”

  About Celia, slim and delicate in the purple-coloured gown, her back curls dishevelled, there was a quality of eeriness which held the others silent. She approached the centre-table, and hesitated.

  Then her eyes, enormous, turned in the direction of the study. She went to the upright piano, opened its lid, and sat down on the padded stool. Kate’s instinctive protest was checked by a gesture from Dr. Bland as Celia spread her fingers over the keys.

  The famous hymn-tune, its beat emphasized by loneliness and storm, swelled up softly as though in a fervency of prayer. Celia had no music, but she needed none. A chill touched Clive Strickland. Celia’s head was thrown back, and her eyes were squeezed nearly shut. No one else moved: perhaps no one thought of moving.

  Nearer, my God, to Thee,

  Nearer to Thee …

  E’en though it be a cross

  That raiseth me …

  “Celia!” said Kate. That single word was swept away, lost, unheeded. Celia’s fingers, strong and supple despite their delicacy, smote in a greater passion of dedication.

  Still all my song shall be,

  Nearer, my God, to Thee …

  Dr. Bland stood with his head bowed. Burbage had also lowered his head, though the lamp trembled slightly.

  Nearer, my God, to Thee,

  Nearer to Thee.

  The music died away; the fingers grew lifeless. Celia’s own head bowed after she had finished playing. For perhaps twenty seconds she remained motionless before edging out the swell of the crinoline from under the keyboard and standing up to face them.

  “You must forgive me if I speak now,” she said. “I have guessed who killed my father—”

  “Celia!”

  “—and known it, I say known it, since Burbage told me who left this house while the rest of us were dressing for dinner.”

  “Oh!” said Kate, as though expecting something different.

  “My dear young lady—” began Dr. Bland.

  “I will speak,” Celia said in white-faced quiet, “and you shall not stop me until I have done. It did not need Mr. Strickland to say this woman dressed as a man. She dressed in men’s clothes often enough when she appeared with Charles Kean. But I should have known why she dressed like that when she killed my father. It was not to be mistaken for a man. No! Never in this world! It was to put the blame on Kate.”

  Three lamps, in three different hands, cast a wavering play of shadows above their heads.

  “On Kate?” Clive blurted out.

  “Dr. Bland knows it. Burbage knows it.” Celia’s tears blinded her. “I have heard so much—oh, so much!—about a girl named Constance Kent and a dreadful thing at Road-Hill House five years ago. Constance Kent, before she did a murder, once ran away from home in boy’s clothes. Well! When Kate and I were much younger …”

  Dr. Bland took two steps forward. Celia shrank back.

  “We ran away from home,” she said. “And Kate wore boy’s clothes. Georgette Libbard, the woman my father married, has laughed and told that story ever since she heard it. She even laughed when Kate slapped her face and said she had not the courage to be an honest prostitute.”

  “Celia,” shouted Dr. Bland, “this is not seemly.”

  “You did not see her face when Kate slapped her. I did.”

  “Burbage,” Dr. Bland said suddenly, and turned as though remembering, “you may go.”

  “Sir—” began the house-steward.

  “Yes, Burbage?” interposed Clive. “What is it?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Burbage,” cried Dr. Bland, “you may go.”

  “No; stop!” said Kate, her brown eyes fixed and glittering. Clive had gone to her side and taken her hand, and the fingers were cold. “You have just finished making a—a tour to see whether all the ways in or out of this house are locked and barred on the inside. I heard Mr. Strickland tell you to do that. Are they all fastened on the inside?”

  “Yes, Miss Kate.”

  “That’s not true,” cried Celia, fighting sobs.

  Clive glanced from Kate to Celia and back again. Every lamp now trembled in a different hand.

  “At half-past five or thereabouts, you said,” Clive interposed again as Burbage’s face turned towards him, “the coachman drove Mrs. Damon to Reading?”

  “Yes, sir. To the railway station. Hopper has returned, and has—”

  “Whether or not Mrs. Damon could have got back from the railway st
ation, could she have got into the house?”

  “No, sir.”

  The shadows swayed over curtains of purple velvet with gold cords and tassels. Though five faces were so clear under the light, you could not tell who exhaled a breath of relief.

  “And at long last, Burbage,” said Dr. Bland, “I think that will be all.”

  “No, Burbage,” said Clive, as Kate’s arm tightened in his, “that will not necessarily be all. Might we have a word with your daughter?”

  “My daughter, sir?”

  “Yes, if you will. Miss Burbage has remembered ‘a fact, or at least an impression’ about what she saw on the stairs. She wanted to speak to Mr. Damon, but he died before she could. May she speak to us instead?”

  “Young man,” snapped Dr. Bland, “take care what you do. To close the door of hell is not easy.”

  “I will fetch my daughter, sir,” said Burbage.

  He brought her within a matter of twenty seconds. Those in the drawing-room had hardly altered their positions, except that Kate put down her lamp on the centre-table beside a bowl of wax fruit, and Dr. Bland set his own lamp on the white-marble mantelpiece beside the clock, when Penelope entered.

  Clive could have sworn Burbage had not prompted her. Yet she was far from being composed. The fine eyes shifted in the plain face; she smoothed at the straight front of her crinoline, and seemed very small beside her stately father.

  Clive hesitated.

  “Miss Burbage,” he said, and saw her eager response to this formal address, “you told your father you had remembered ‘a fact, or at least an impression’ about the figure on the stairs last night. Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You implied that this had something to do with your being near-sighted. Is that so too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But the cultured voice hesitated.

  “Penelope, please do tell us!” Kate burst out. “This figure in man’s clothes: could it possibly have been a woman?”

  Penelope’s eyes widened; the cultured voice slurred away. ‘And yet that’s it!’ Clive thought in astonishment. ‘By the living jingo, that’s what she was going to tell us.’

  “Well, Penelope?” cried Celia. “What have you to say? It was a woman, was it not?”

  Penelope steadied herself and said ten words. And the whole affair was in even worse darkness than it had been before.