Mr Splitfoot (Dr Basil Willing)

by Helen McCloy

  In the iron context of such a technology, the little reproductive group of the family would dissolve, unable to compete with the more efficient mass-reproduction methods of the biological laboratory. Humanity would be completely atomized, each in his narrow cell forever laid while still alive, like coral polyps building an island over millions of generations. Would man lose his taste for language as he lost his taste for love and other personal things? Would he end back in the mute, mindless, pre-human world from which he had once struggled with so much difficulty?

  Basil was not the only one aware of the impact of this place.

  “I feel as if we had paused to refuel at Space Station Number 6,389 on our way to Betelgeuse,” said Gisela.

  Ginevra Alcott murmured assent. Bradford Alcott contributed one of his weary sighs, and Basil said: “No one could talk here. We’ll take you up to our own quarters.”

  That was a distinct improvement. The sitting room was built to the scale of human life. The wall that faced the mountains was glass, and on a clear night like this, it gave a wide view of stars. There were no phony fireplaces. Just efficient central heating. No conversation wells. Just comfortably padded armchairs and a sofa. No trees growing in the floor. Just a thick, warm, soft carpet from one wall to another. The only absurdities were the vibrating mechanism in the beds that “massaged” you if you put a coin in a slot and the spigot for ice water that was quite unnecessary in a winter climate where tap water came from the pipes ice-cold.

  They ordered drinks and roast beef sandwiches and sat around a low table meant for drinks only, facing the stars.

  Ginevra was the first to speak about the things in all their minds. “It may be an awful thing to say . . . it is an awful thing to say . . . but, now I know the whole truth, I’m glad Frank and Folly died as they did.”

  “Who says you know the whole truth?” drawled Alcott. “There are a lot of things that Dr. Willing hasn’t told us.”

  “I think you ought to tell them,” said Gisela.

  “There’s not much more to tell.” Basil pushed away his plate and leaned back in his chair. “It all began when Frank Swayne discovered the attic, just as accidentally as Lucinda and Vanya had discovered it later. Like them, he also found that he could overhear things said in other parts of the house.

  “They were probably not the first to discover this property of the attic. Its possibilities as a listening post may have caused all the troubles among the three sisters, Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis, and the young man all three loved. Possibly because of this the last Miss Crowe concealed the existence of the attic from her heir, David Crowe, and so it was unknown to his tenants. She may have wanted to bury the attic and everything in it forever. It probably wouldn’t occur to her that the attic might be discovered once more through accident and once more play its familiar role of destruction in Crowe family history.

  “For it was by being in the attic and overhearing conversation in the rest of the house that Frank Swayne discovered that his wife, Folly, had a lover, David Crowe.

  “Folly was beautiful. Last love is far more passionate than first love. This was Frank Swayne’s last love and he knew it.”

  Ginevra gasped. “But . . . I thought . . .”

  “That Serena was unfaithful to Crowe instead of the other way round? So did I—in the beginning. So did Lucinda and Vanya. How wrong we were! I began to suspect the truth when first Folly and then you, Ginevra, insisted that Crowe had what used to be called ‘a roving eye’ or ‘an eye for beauty.’ Once I knew that Crowe had accused his wife of infidelity it seemed strange indeed that the only evidence of philandering was Crowe’s own philandering.

  “To a psychiatrist that could suggest only one thing— delusional jealousy. It’s a common failing of a certain type of human male. He’s almost promiscuous to the point of satyriasis but he is prey to unconscious guilt and, in our jargon, he projects this repressed guilt on his wife. She is the one he sees as unfaithful as if she were a glass in which he could see nothing but his own face.

  “Constantly, with or without provocation, he accuses her of infidelity and makes jealous scenes. As a rule she has never heard of delusional jealousy and doesn’t know what to make of it. Sometimes she flatters herself that his jealousy is proof of his love for her, but it isn’t in this case. Quite the opposite. He hates her because he hates himself in her.

  “Delusional jealousy is rarer than it used to be. Today divorce is more common and the compulsive philanderer is more apt to escape from his situation by becoming a divorce repeater, but such escape was not possible in Crowe’s case, because he and Serena had what she called ‘an ideal relationship.’

  “Every time he looked at the little scars of plastic surgery on her face he was reminded of the fact that he owed her something for having destroyed her beauty. His remorse wasn’t strong enough to keep him faithful to her, but it was strong enough to make him feel guilty for being unfaithful, and that’s all you need to set up delusional jealousy.”

  “Why did Swayne have to kill Serena?” asked Alcott.

  “Because she was beginning to suspect the truth. When she learned from the police that both Folly and Ginevra had accused Crowe of making advances to them, she realized for the first time that he might have been unfaithful to her. She could have discounted one such story, but it would be hard for her to discount two. She may not have known about delusional jealousy but she would certainly begin to wonder if Crowe’s accusing her of infidelity might not have been camouflage for his own infidelity, planned consciously. Once she got that far, she would see that Swayne had one of the oldest motives in the world for killing Crowe. The shock of that realization, and not pregnancy alone, was the cause of her vomiting.

  “Swayne realized that. He couldn’t let her get any farther in her suspicion. Not knowing what evidence against him she might stumble on next. So he slipped back to the house, where she was alone, and killed her while I was talking to Martha.”

  “Just when did he decide to kill Crowe?” asked Gisela.

  “Last night, when Crowe explained why the room at the head of the stairs was never used. Swayne immediately saw that, if Crowe died in that room without apparent external wounds, or other obvious cause, the macabre circumstances might help to conceal a murder. He would know that autopsies in remote country districts are rarely as thorough as those in big cities with well-equipped laboratories. Such a tiny puncture above the hairline would be hard to see without a microscope. It might have escaped notice altogether if he had withdrawn the hatpin. Why didn’t he? Probably because he was afraid that, without the hatpin to act as a stopper, a few drops of blood would ooze out and draw attention to the wound. So he simply broke off the handle—gambling that the broken end of the pin itself was so tiny it would not be noticed by a country doctor—and he lost.

  “He was in the attic when he overheard Lucinda and Vanya plotting their poltergeist trick. Remember Lucinda said she thought she heard a noise in the upper hall that afternoon, but when she looked there was no one there? Swayne had just entered the attic.

  “He realized immediately that the hiding place Vanya wouldn’t reveal to Lucinda was that very attic, and that Vanya was planning to hide there that night when he faked the poltergeist raps. Swayne was already planning to kill Crowe that night while there were other people in the house and suspicion would be scattered among them if there were suspicion.

  “He didn’t want either of the young people involved, as they were sure to be if they were using his listening post in the attic. They might be suspected of the crime themselves or they might discover something that would lead them to suspect him. There was no knowing what Vanya would overhear if he were in the attic that night.

  “It was then Crowe hit on the idea of frightening them away from the attic. He could tell by the way they talked that they half believed in poltergeists, quite enough to be frightened. He thought he could keep them out of the attic permanently if he could make them believe that the rapping sounds t
hey had planned to fake were real after all.”

  “Browning,” said Gisela. Mr. Sludge, “The Medium.”

  “Yes. His idea was to startle Lucinda in the living room and Vanya in the attic by playing the role of Mr. Splitfoot himself by making three raps in response to Lucinda’s challenge before Vanya had a chance to do so, using a clicker for the purpose. It would probably have worked that way, especially for poor Vanya, alone in the eerie candlelit attic hearing the poltergeist sounds he had planned to mock coming from an unknown source.

  “As luck would have it, the effect was far more dramatic than that original plan. Vanya was kept at home by his mother because of a feverish cold. Lucinda didn’t know this. When she heard the poltergeist sounds, she thought Vanya was making them. Then his telephone call from his home immediately afterward told her that he wasn’t in the attic and that he couldn’t have made them. Who did? No wonder she fainted.

  “With Lucinda put to bed under sedation and Vanya kept at home by illness, Swayne thought he had complete freedom to carry out the rest of his plan, but he underestimated the nerve of the young.”

  “So he did,” said Ginevra. “They were both back in the attic next day.”

  “Together and by daylight, yes. I doubt if either would have gone back alone after dark.”

  “And the clicker?”

  “He threw it on the fire where the plastic part of it was consumed. The metal part that remained was almost impossible to recognize for what it was without some further clue to its identity. I wouldn’t have suspected what it was myself if I hadn’t been looking for something that would make castanet sounds. As he had no chance to buy one after he overheard Lucinda and Vanya talking, he must have found that one in the house. They have various uses. Sometimes they are used as a signal in private theatricals when the curtain must be raised or lowered. The fact that he knew the clicker was available may have given him the idea of faking the poltergeist just as the fact that he saw old-fashioned hatpins in the attic must have given him the idea of a way to kill Crowe. Swayne was an opportunist, an improviser in everything he did.

  “The most impressive example of this improvisation is the way he took over the whole situation and manipulated everybody as soon as I suggested I spend the night in the haunted room.

  “Drawing lots? That was to make it seem pure chance that Crowe was chosen—something that couldn’t be part of a plan for premeditated murder. But Swayne was a man who knew simple card tricks. I saw Lucinda demonstrate one he had taught her to Vanya this afternoon. Swayne would know enough to force the lowest card on Crowe in dealing.

  “Taking a bell upstairs? This was a device adapted from an old ghost story to make us believe that Crowe was still alive an hour after all three of us, including his murderer, had left him alone upstairs.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then when did he die?”

  “When a man is found dead in a locked room—”

  “The room wasn’t locked,” said Alcott. “The door was left open so we could hear the bell. Remember?”

  “When I said ‘a locked room’ I meant a room that no one but the dead man could have entered before his death. No one could have gone upstairs to the room where Crowe was without our seeing and hearing him. The hall door was open so we could hear the bell if it rang and we had the stairs in full view all the time. No one could have come down the upper hall to that room without our hearing something. There is no carpet, only scatter rugs, and the floorboards creak. No one could approach the house from outside without leaving tracks in the new-fallen snow. There were none when the police arrived. No one could have scuffled with Crowe in the haunted room without leaving some marks on the dust in the floor. To all intents and purposes, it was a locked room even though the door stood open.

  “When you are absolutely convinced that no one could have entered a room after a man has been left alone in it, there are only two ways to explain his death after he was left alone. Either he was killed by the last person to leave the room or by the first person to come back to it and discover him apparently dead.”

  “I was the first person to come back to Crowe.” There was wonder in Alcott’s voice. “Did you suspect me?”

  “For a while. But Swayne was the last person to leave Crowe, and it was Swayne who killed him then.”

  “How?”

  “When we left the room I was at the door and you were halfway to the door while Swayne was still near Crowe. Swayne even touched Crowe and we both saw it. You told the police that Swayne ‘clapped’ Crowe on the back. I told them he had a hand on Crowe’s shoulder. That hand concealed the hatpin. He stabbed Crowe in the back of the neck and snapped off the little ivory handle that was lightly attached to the pin with glue. They tiny wound was hidden by Crowe’s hair. The poltergeist incident and the story of the haunted room had prepared us psychologically for the idea of an inexplicable death. But even then there were indications of the truth.

  “Any deep puncture of the medulla oblongata causes almost instant death. Crowe couldn’t rise or cry out. He just slumped in his chair, eyes down as if he were still looking at the open book on his knee. But as he exhaled his last breath, he had a flash of realization and he summoned enough of his waning will and intelligence to make that last breath a little more articulate than a sigh or a moan.

  “You realize now what it was he said under his breath? Tobermory gave us the clue in his own slurred language. Not Tobruk. Not to brood. That was another of Swayne’s improvisations designed to lead us away from the truth. Neither makes sense, but what Crowe said does make sense when you realize that they were old friends and Crowe knew suddenly that he had been stabbed.”

  “And that was?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Et tu, Brute.”

  “Two things are still unexplained,” said Ginevra. “How did Swayne make that bell ring upstairs with Crowe dead and the rest of you downstairs? And why did Crowe accuse his wife of infidelity?”

  “Haven’t you guessed how the bell was rung? Don’t you remember how carefully he hung the bell on picture wire from a picture hook? Don’t you realize that the bell was hanging above the open register that pierced the ceiling of the living room and the floor of the haunted room above it? And that that register was near the living-room fireplace? Don’t you remember how Swayne threw a big log on the fire just before we heard the bell? The fire was almost dead until he cast the log on it. Then came a sudden burst of flame.

  “He used the same principle as the Swedish angel chimes. Hot air rising from an open flame causes a draught. That sudden burst of flame created an updraught strong enough to stir the carefully balanced bells on their wire and jangle them more than once. It created a perfect illusion that Crowe was alive and ringing the bells.”

  “Jealousy is madness,” said Gisela. “He killed Serena and Folly as well as Crowe. He even tried to kill you and me. He was running amuck.”

  “There is an element of running amuck in all murders. The taboo against shedding the blood of a member of your own clan is as old and powerful as the taboo against incest. You cannot violate either without being pursued by Furies.”

  “Had he no other motive for trying to kill you?”

  “Oh, he had a motive of sorts. He was in the attic when I was telling Lucinda and Vanya how the clicker was used to fake the poltergeist raps. He knew I’d be on to the rest of it soon and tell the police. So he hid in the back of Folly’s car under the travel rugs there. Of course she didn’t know he was there.

  “Remember, Gisela, how we watched her go over to her car and get in? Remember how, just after she got in and closed the door, the interior lights went off and the headlights were a little slow in coming on? During those few seconds, when the car was in darkness, Swayne rose from the back seat, knocked her out cold, put her under the rugs, where he’d been hiding, and drove off himself. We never saw clearly the face of the driver when we were following that car. We were behind it and the interior lig
hts did not come on again. How could we see that it was Swayne, and not Folly? But it was he, and not poor Folly, who deliberately drove us to that cliffside, hoping he could use his car to force our car over the cliff to our deaths.”

  “Didn’t he know that in such a duel he and Folly were likely to be killed as well as you and me?”

  “I think he knew, but, by that time, he no longer cared. Folly had destroyed his happiness and he had destroyed himself.”

  ››› If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to discover more great vintage crime and thriller titles, as well as the most exciting crime and thriller authors writing today, visit: ›››

  The Murder Room

  Where Criminal Minds Meet

  themurderroom.com

  By Helen McCloy

  Dr Basil Willing

  Dance of Death (1938)

  The Man in the Moonlight (1940)

  The Deadly Truth (1941)

  Who’s Calling? (1942)

  Cue for Murder (1942)

  The Goblin Market (1943)

  The One That Got Away (1945)

  Through a Glass, Darkly (1950)

  Alias Basil Willing (1951)

  The Long Body (1955)

  Two-Thirds of a Ghost (1956)

  Mr Splitfoot (1968)

  Burn This (1980)

  The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr Basil Willing (short stories) (2003)

  Standalone novels

  Do Not Disturb (1943)