Scandal at High Chimneys

by John Dickson Carr

  “All in all, he was in an uncommonly bad state of mind.

  “And then, not long afterwards, one of the swellest of swells—Lord Albert Tressider—wants to marry Miss Celia for the money her father will settle on her.

  “Whatever young Victor does, he’s bound to do something. He can’t risk having his noble friend, who’s contemptuous even of men that demean ’emselves by marrying actresses, learn who his mother was.

  “Master Victor has a friend (yourself, Mr. Strickland) who’s got him out of fixes before this. He can always persuade you to go down to High Chimneys and offer the proposal of marriage: suggesting his sisters are in some terrible danger, probably from a father who’s a little insane, in case Mr. Damon tells you the truth.

  “It’s possible, just remotely possible, Mr. Damon may be so impressed by an offer of marriage from the noble gentleman that he won’t say anything. You’ll be the man to test that. But Mr. Damon mustn’t even tell you; he mustn’t tell anybody. If he starts to, Victor’s all ready for it. Mr. Damon’s got to die.”

  Again Whicher contemplated the fire.

  Then he snorted.

  “Naturally, as you said, you’d never have accepted that errand if you hadn’t seen Miss Kate’s portrait in Victor’s rooms. But Victor never doubted his charm. He was so sure he could persuade you that he got it arranged before then. He and his wily aunt had several days’ notice of Penelope Burbage going to a lecture in Reading on Monday night, so Mrs. Cavanagh could play the prowler while Victor got drunk with you to prove he couldn’t have been within forty miles of High Chimneys.

  “Thunderation! When women play men’s parts on the stage, they don’t deceive anybody and they’re not meant to; there wouldn’t be any men-customers in the audience if they did. Penelope was never meant to think the prowler was a man. But her short sight … well, there it is. All hand-tailored to prove it was Miss Kate.”

  Kate, her eyes closed, hesitated before she spoke.

  “Mr. Whicher,” she cried, “does Victor hate me as much as all that?”

  “Ma’am, he doesn’t hate you at all.”

  “But you said—”

  “No, ma’am. He’s rather fond of you, as far as he can be fond of anybody. He didn’t teach you to ride and shoot with that notion. But your wearing boy’s clothes on a well-known occasion, and Mrs. Damon’s talking about it too much, gave him an uncommon neat idea. By the time he came to High Chimneys to kill his ‘father’ on Tuesday night, he and Mary Jane Cavanagh thought it’d be taken for gospel the goblin was a woman.

  “Victor’s short and slight. He would be taken for the same woman, he thought. Naturally there were two sets of clothes, Miss Kate! One for Mrs. C. to wear and then hide in your room with a cut-off stocking-top for a mask. And one for Victor, who could wear ’em when he went to High Chimneys, and was admitted through the conservatory door by Mrs. C; they wouldn’t make anybody suspicious anywhere; nearly every man in England’s got a costume like that.

  “Neither he nor his aunt wore shoes. That was partly to avoid noise, and partly so dirt wouldn’t be tramped into the house if it happened to be a damp night. No outsider, d’ye see? You. As for Mary Jane Cavanagh …”

  Whicher scowled and looked at Inspector Hackney.

  “Hackney, my lad,” he asked, “have they telegraphed from Reading yet? After they arrested Harriet Pyke’s sister?”

  “Ay; they’ve telegraphed,” growled Hackney.

  “But the woman hasn’t confessed, I’ll lay you a bender? No; I didn’t think she would. She’s a hard nail. Not like the young ’un who planned it all and then broke like a rotten board when the law tapped him.”

  “Why is it so important,” demanded Clive, “that Mrs. Cavanagh wasn’t at High Chimneys when you met the rest of the family?”

  “Because Victor, who was there, didn’t remember my name and never troubled to say who I was. I’d been announced as an Inspector of the Detective Branch. Mrs. Cavanagh, when he told her about it, thought I was an official detective. She never associated the official detective with the cove she’d heard of: me.

  “Got that, sir? When household gossip said Mr. Damon was going to London to see me, she imagined it was about Mrs. Damon and the gentleman you call Tress. She never hesitated to threaten Miss Kate with my name, even before the murder’d been committed.” Whicher glanced at Kate. “Begging your pardon, ma’am: but you knew it was about your so-called brother, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I—I as good as told her so, when Mr. Strickland was listening. I told her there was a man in the house on Monday night, prowling up and down. Of course Victor wasn’t there that night, but I thought he was.”

  “And so Master Victor killed the gentleman who’d done so much for him,” said Whicher.

  He was silent for a moment.

  “We know now,” he went on grimly, “he brought a pistol to High Chimneys. His aunt stole Mr. Damon’s revolver, to make it seem more of Miss Kate’s work. His aunt tore up Mr. Damon’s will. That’s another pointer. Under the law as it stands, a daughter can’t inherit money unless it’s specifically allowed her in a will; a son can. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Strickland; didn’t that occur to you?”

  “It occurred to me when Celia mentioned it long afterwards, yes. Not until then.”

  “So he killed Mr. Damon; oh, ah! It would all ’a’ gone according to plan except for two things. First, Victor’s short and slight; but he’s not effeminate; you saw him in the goblin’s clothes, and knew it was a man. Second, Mrs. Damon was in the train to Reading that afternoon; she guessed the dirty work, whatever it was going to be, would incriminate Miss Kate. When Mrs. Damon nipped away from High Chimneys that evening, because a noble lord was blackmailing her and she had to meet him in London, she took the clothes that were meant to hang Miss Kate.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but that’s a fact! And then, next day, Victor saw her in Oxford Street.

  “He did more than see her, you know.

  “As he admitted in the rum and stupid note he left for Mr. Strickland at my office, he followed Mr. Strickland and Mrs. Damon. He met her. He told her Mr. Damon had been shot; up to then he never dreamed she’d twigged him.

  “What she let fall, when she heard her husband was dead, his confession don’t say. But Victor knew he might be a goner if he let her speak. In that tomfool’s note he left at my office he said he was taking her to the train; he couldn’t have taken her to the train if he nipped up and left a note for you.

  “No! It was only to show he was staying in London, when he meant to go down to High Chimneys again. That’s where I’m to blame again. Mr. Strickland, when you talked to Victor in London on Wednesday morning, didn’t he do his best to throw suspicion on a woman?”

  “He did.”

  “Also, as you told me from overhearing Mrs. Damon talk to the manager of the Princess’s Theatre, Mrs. Damon knew the guilty party was a man. She said some person ought to be condemned to the treadmill, before she’d even heard about a murder; and we don’t condemn women to the treadmill. I couldn’t have asked for many more clues about Victor. If I’d gone to High Chimneys on Wednesday afternoon, as I’d intended—”

  Whicher stopped. He rose to his feet, all bitterness.

  “But, oh, no!” he said. “That’s not mysterious enough, or devious enough, for Johnny Whicher. I’m the dealer in shortcuts, and dummy arrests, and hocus-pocus to get a confession. Thinks I to myself, ‘I’ll borrow that letter of Harriet Pyke’s from the lodginghouse-keeper in Pimlico. I’ll send Cherry White to the young fellow’s lodgings, offering to sell the letter; I’ll let Cherry play on his nerves for a few days or a week; and then I’ll have Peelers ready to step in when Cherry hands over the letter with a close friend of Victor’s looking on.’

  “It’s the same scheme we did use, except that it had to be done next day and risk failure by acting too soon. And, mark you, it succeeded.

  “Howsoever! I should have seen that Victor Damon, after he’d talked to Cherry on Wedne
sday afternoon, would hare off for High Chimneys that evening. But I didn’t, and I let Mrs. Damon die. You can guess what Victor did, can’t you?”

  Clive made a savage gesture.

  “In many ways, that may be …”

  “Sir, sir! It was easy for him to get into the house by the front door. But he hadn’t warned Mrs. Cavanagh he’d be there; he hadn’t taken counsel with a wiser head. If he had any doubts about killing Georgette Damon, he forgot ’em when he heard Mrs. Damon saying what she did say.

  “He could kill, but he couldn’t leave the house again—what with the windows stuck, and the front door locked by Dr. Bland, and a mort o’ people in the servants’ hall watching the back door—unless he left by way of the conservatory and left that door unlocked.

  “That’s why you and Miss Kate found the temperature lowered in the conservatory when you two ran away; the door had been left partly open. I told you, among other things, your theory about Mrs. Cavanagh being guilty was right as far as it went. I told you the murderer had left High Chimneys last night.

  “Mind, I couldn’t possibly have known Lord Albert Tressider was there to get material for blackmailing Master Victor too….”

  “Blackmail? Tress?”

  “Well, sir, didn’t he blackmail Mrs. Damon in another way? That gentleman’s a beauty. He wants everything he can get, in every way.

  “According to Victor, he turned up at Victor’s rooms when Cherry was there yesterday afternoon. At the time Victor didn’t think he’d heard anything, but Mr. Tress is nobody’s fool. He’s not likely to tell us what he saw when he followed Victor to the country. If he could get his fives on that letter, to hold over the head of an unstable young ’un who presumably would now be a very wealthy young ’un, he needn’t demean himself by marrying Celia Damon after all.

  “In any event, you and Miss Kate here ran away to London. I had to set the trap immediately. And I thought it would catch the weasel. The danger—”

  “Yes?” Clive prompted. “The danger?”

  Whicher, standing by the chimneypiece, glanced round at Kate.

  “The danger was that Victor mightn’t go himself to get the letter. He might send a deputy. And Miss Kate was in London. What’s more, she was alone in these rooms because there was nowhere else to send her except Mivart’s Hotel, where she wouldn’t go. If Victor should turn up there to see you, and throw himself on her mercy, and tell her the whole story, and ask her to get the letter for him … eh?”

  Now it was Clive who sprang up.

  “You thought he’d dare do that? To the girl he was trying to get hanged? And Victor thought he could persuade her?”

  “He did persuade her. You write devilish good stories, Mr. Strickland, but you don’t understand much about criminals. That’s the answer.”

  “In what way is it the answer?”

  Whicher looked down at the fire.

  “The Victor Damons of this world, you know, think they can persuade anybody of anything. Most often they do manage it. They never think they’re in any real danger, they never think they can hang from a gallows, until they feel the bracelets on their wrists. They’ve got too little imagination, and then too much. That’s all.”

  Kate spoke out strongly.

  “He didn’t persuade me,” she said. “It was only that I couldn’t bear it any longer. When he told me he wasn’t my brother, I was ready to help him because it wouldn’t be helping him; I knew it would be leading him into a trap. Clive, can you forgive me?”

  “For what?”

  “For letting him be taken? And bribing the hall-porter at Mivart’s to say I hadn’t been there?”

  “But there’s nothing to forgive!”

  “Isn’t there?” Kate shivered. “When I went into that promenade, I was horribly frightened. I was afraid he wouldn’t be following me to watch from a distance, though he said he would.”

  “Well, ma’am,” observed Whicher, “it was a risk we took too. The betting was in favour of his following you; I thought he couldn’t help himself. And by that time Hackney had an officer watching both of you.

  “Nothing was certain. Mr. Strickland was supposed to take off his hat when Cherry gave the letter to somebody at the counter. That would give the signal to the Peelers; we were hidden where whoever got the letter couldn’t see us. We couldn’t ha’ foretold his friend Tress would turn up.

  “So it’s almighty lucky Master Victor took up a position not far from the Peelers when you ran to him with the letter, and Cherry followed and denounced him as she was supposed to do. Without that confession …”

  Whicher rubbed his jaw, disturbed at what he remembered.

  “You see, sir,” he added to Clive, “there was one other matter I didn’t tell you, though Hackney mentioned it when we were at the Alhambra this afternoon.

  “It was easy to remember that nineteen years ago Mr. Damon lived at a place called Fairacres, near Doncaster in Yorkshire. It was easy to go to Scotland Yard yesterday and ask ’em to telegraph to the Doncaster police.

  “They got the news from Yorkshire, right enough. Mr. Damon’s real children were Miss Celia, born in August, 1845, and Miss Kate, born in July, 1846; their births were registered in the parish. What’s more, the clergyman who baptized ’em is still alive. He remembered how a Mrs. Mary Jane Cavanagh, a young widow, came there as nurse just over twenty years ago and not over twenty-one years ago, as she’s claimed since.

  “Harriet Pyke’s child, that proved, was nearly two years old when Mrs. Cavanagh was put in charge of the boy. Mr. Damon didn’t leave any record except an account in his will. If Mrs. Cavanagh destroyed the will, everybody was used to accepting Victor as a real son; it’d be done so quietly that nobody would have ever doubted. We could have shown he wasn’t a real son, to be sure, but proving murder was a different matter if we didn’t get a confession. Tell me, sir: if you thought the child was a daughter, which of the young ladies did you imagine was the one?”

  “I thought it was Kate.”

  “Ah,” murmured Whicher.

  “Me?” cried Kate. “Why?”

  “Because Celia and Victor both have brown hair and grey eyes. Harriet Pyke was described as dark, and you’re dark.”

  The faintest shadow of a smile hovered round Whicher’s mouth.

  “You won’t see very clearly, sir, if you maintain two people are brother and sister just because they have brown hair and grey eyes. Thunderation! You might as well prove Master Victor was Harriet Pyke’s son because he’s got a taste for booze too.”

  “Clive!” exclaimed Kate. “You thought…. But didn’t it horrify you?”

  “No. I can’t say it did. What does rather horrify me,” Clive spoke doggedly, “is this question of tainted blood. I could have sworn the murderer, whoever else it might be, wasn’t Harriet Pyke’s child at all. Are we reduced to believing that Victor shot one person and strangled another because he was the son of a woman who did the same?”

  “No, by George!” Whicher said sharply. “But you can inherit an unstable temperament; we all know that. And then, if you’ve got solid motive enough, and you learn you’re the son of a murderess and believe you’re going to act like it anyway …”

  The hush of the drugged hours, of suicides and bad dreams, held the town outside. Whicher went to one of the windows overlooking Brook Street. He threw back the curtains.

  “It could apply to millions of people sleeping out there,” he said. “I’m not what you’d call an educated man, sir, but a cove named Hamlet puzzled about that before any of us was born. It’s all in what you think you are, sir. Thunderation, yes! It’s all in what you think.”

  The End

  NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

  THIS NOVEL ATTEMPTS TO present, through the medium of the formal detective story, an accurate picture of life at several levels of society in the year 1865. It may vary from accounts with which the reader is familiar: chiefly from those of Victorian writers themselves, who were prevented by social taboos from tel
ling the whole truth even when they wished to do so. Therefore I must beg leave to offer documentation.

  With the obvious exception of High Chimneys and one other place, every scene in the novel is set at a real address in a real street. In some parts of London the topography has changed almost as much as the manners and customs. But these events are seen through the eyes of Clive Strickland, who is a man of his time and has not the gift of prophecy. He cannot be expected to read the future in any sense. It would be the height of clumsiness for the author to have intervened, explaining on every occasion what it was that Clive didn’t know. That is another reason why I beg the reader’s indulgence for these notes.

  1 TOPOGRAPHY

  With the aid of Wyld’s New Plan of London (published by James, Wyld, Geographer to the Queen, 457 West Strand, June, 1866), and H. B. Wheatley’s London, Past and Present (London: John Murray, 3 vols., 1891), we can reconstruct the background exactly as it was in 1865.

  It must be remembered that Piccadilly Circus did not yet exist. Neither did Shaftesbury Avenue. A part of their site, between Oxford Circus and the top of the Haymarket, was occupied by a disreputable district known as the Regent’s Quadrant. For remarks about the Quadrant, see Mr. Serjeant Ballantine’s Some Experiences of a Barrister’s Life (London: Richard Bentley & Son, eighth edition, 1882). The Argyll Rooms stood on the site of the Trocadero. Oxford Circus, at that time, was called the Regent Circus.

  Only one other main change affects the novel. Charing Cross Road, which runs from Oxford Street south to Trafalgar Square, did not exist either. A part of its site was then occupied by the Crown Street mentioned in chapter eight.

  The opening of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, in the eighteen-eighties, was a desperate bid to abolish some of the worst slums in the world: the district of St. Giles’s, which no longer exists as a separate entity. Today, if you stand at the top of Charing Cross Road and look down the little street bearing southwards to the left, you will see all that remains of St. Giles’s High Street, with St. Giles’s Church in the distance.