The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  This infuriated him. Were those glasses left here, so very obviously, either to entrap or hoax him? Nonsense; it was all nerves.

  Very deliberately, to show himself it was so, he turned round. He sauntered to the front of the roof at the middle, and stood just inside the little ledge. Deliberately he looked out over a countryside submerged in mist: left, right, and across to the gables of the Dragon's Rest

  Then two things happened.

  A distant sound — on its first tremor faint and creaky, but gathering volume, gathering voice — shook out with a creak-and-clang, creak-and-clang, metallic bell-notes banging across a hush of morning, clang-and-call, clang-and-call, so that Martin stood rigid with realization of what it was. The alarm-bell at Pentecost was ringing.

  He did not turn round. He had not time to turn round.

  A pair of human hands, just behind him, lunged out and gave him a violent shove in the middle of the back.

  Martin had just that flash-hundredth of a second, with the bell-note in his ears, to understand he had been pitched forward — head foremost, but a little sideways — pitched forward over the ledge into a sea of mist After that he felt no pain; he felt nothing at all.

  Chapter 13

  From the right came a faint, steady ticking, just outside the circle of a shaded light The ticking grew stronger (it was a watch on a table) just as did reality. Consciousness looked out through almost-closed eyelids.

  The first thoughts of Martin Drake were those which he had once or twice entertained during war-time. They were as follows:

  Well, here I am again. What the hell's happened now? Pause for long reflection. Either this is damn serious or it's not serious at all, because I don't feel much. Ah, clever idea. I'm not flat on my back; I'm propped tip somehow.

  Still with his eyelids open only a slit Martin sent tentative movements through his body. He felt stiff and shaken, but he wasn't bound up in anything. His right shoulder and a part of the chest pained, but his exploring left hand found no splint or bandage. He had a slight headache; yes, but only what felt like a smallish, narrow, oblong bandage.

  Whereupon memory returned like an electric shock.

  This wasn't war-time. He had been jabbed in the back by somebody's hands; he had taken a half-turning dive over the ledge into mist, with a bell-note in his ears and panic in his vitals. Sheer incredulity at the fact of being alive shook him fully alert; and he looked round wildly.

  At his bedside, to the right was a large face, squarish and wrinkled, with an acquiline nose and a steady grey eye.

  "Captain Drake," said the Dowager Countess of Brayle.

  Martin shut his eyes, and opened them again.

  (And upon thy dazzling face, O madonna, I must first rest my eyes after being picked up off the flagstones and somehow pieced together. It couldn't be Jenny. It couldn't even be a good-looking nurse. It had to be you).

  "Captain Drake," pursued Lady Brayle, "I will tell you very briefly what you wish to know. First: you are in the bedroom of the late Sir George Fleet Second: the time is nearly ten o'clock on Sunday night Third: Dr. Laurier has had to put five stitches across your forehead. Aside from this and some bad bruises, you have suffered no hurt"

  Martin, propped up on both elbows, was staring at her incredulously.

  "No — hurt," repeated Lady Brayle, with measured emphasis. "Dr. Laurier has kept you under opiates all day, in case there were effects of shock. I thought it unnecessary; and indeed," she glanced at him, "that appears to be the case."

  Martin leaned back on his pillow, head aching, to consider this. Then he pushed himself up again.

  "Let's get this straight," he begged. "I fell off a forty-odd-foot roof on to flagstones? And all I've got are some bruises and five stitches in my head? How did that happen?"

  "You owe your life to Providence. Remember that, Captain Drake, in your prayers tonight"

  "Yes, but how did Providence operate?"

  Lady Brayle's lips tightened.

  "Also," she said, and looked away, "to an accident I believe your acquaintance, the unspeakable Merrivale, was somehow concerned in it"

  "Old H.M.? What did he do?’

  "You may or may not have observed," said Lady Brayle, "that outside this house, some distance above the front door, there is a very large awning coloured orange. This is usually, kept folded up on an iron frame."

  "Wow!"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Only too well Martin remembered that orange-coloured awning; and, yesterday, H.M. standing in the middle of the gravel path, his fists oh his hips and an expression of malevolence on his face, looking up at the awning above Martin's and Ruth Callice's heads.

  "As for Henry," continued Lady Brayle, now with a handkerchief at her lips, "I sometimes think, you know, he must be feeble-minded. According to the maid Phyllis he actually gave money to the gardener—"

  "I know! I was there when Phyllis said so!"

  "Ah, but for what purpose? The gardener was to go out in the middle of the night — the middle of the night if you. please! — and lower the awning so as to shade the terrace!

  "By such acts of stupidity," said Lady Brayle, her voice rising strongly, "does good come about in this world. When you fell, I am informed, the loose canvas of the awning broke your fall like a firemen's whatever-the-term-is. Then the awning ripped, and let you slide through. You have had a most extraordinary escape, Captain Drake."

  "The Old Maestro!" Martin said softly.

  'Tm afraid I don't understand," said Lady Brayle.

  On the bedside table there were cigarettes and his lighter. Martin, in the act of stretching out a painful right arm for them, stopped and looked at her. His glance said, 'Whatever is going on in that twisty brain of his, he saved my life and you know it' Lady Brayle's lofty stare replied: 'Kindly refrain from mentioning objectionable subjects.'

  This duel of glances became, as it were, so silently audible that anger gathered round Lady Brayle's mouth. Martin's stare did not fall. Instead Lady Brayle rose up from her chair, shaking shoulders which appeared massive in heavy tweed, and paced up and down the room.

  "It may be conceded," said Lady Brayle, "that Henry sometimes possesses the vulgar cunning to outwit criminals."

  "Thank you."

  "But he is despicable," said Lady Brayle, breathing hard. "I hadn't observed it'.'

  "Constantly he consorts with low company. Never once does it enter his head—" this was the real grievance—"that their station is in any way inferior to his. His childish vanity, which makes him seriously imagine he is a model of deportment like Lord Chesterfield, is infuriating. On his vile tempers and obscene language I need not dwell. Even now, I believe, he is downstairs explaining to poor Cicely how he was once a Cavalier poet"

  "Lady Brayle," Martin interrupted, "where's Jenny?"

  Lady Brayle flowed into this without even seeming to notice the change of subject

  "Jennifer," she corrected him, "has gone home. On my specific order. Her behaviour here today was unladylike and even disgusting. No less than twenty times, by my own counting, Dr. Laurier had to assure her you were not at death's door. The speech she addressed to you — well, I make no comment."

  This bedroom, uncompromisingly masculine, was a large square room with striped wall-paper and heavy oak furniture, dimly lighted by the bedside lamp. Lady Brayle stopped short in her pacing and loomed over the bed.

  "Captain Drake," she began formally.

  There was something strange in her tone. Martin, in the act of lighting a cigarette, blew out the lighter-flame.

  "Yes?"

  Lady Brayle seemed to be pushing, pushing hard against some door inside herself, to struggle out It was a difficult business.

  “I sat here tonight," again she pushed at the door, "for one specific purpose. I wished to say—" She stopped. "From what I had heard of your behaviour from certain sources, I was beginning to believe you possessed the qualities (and also the imperfections, which are just as necessary) of
a gentleman."

  There was a pause.

  At this point (perhaps) Martin might have ended the feud. But he didn't trust the old girl an inch, not one inch. And his face showed it

  "Thank you," he said gravely. "You sat here tonight to tell me that?"

  "Yes, yes, of course!" retorted his companion, with rather too much haste, "What other reason could there have been?" "I can't say."

  "But I no longer," snapped Lady Brayle, "think my belief to have been a true one." Her voice became colourless. "It remains only for me to give you your orders. On the table beside you you will find a yellow pill. Take that with water from the glass, and lie back. Tomorrow you will be perfectly fit"

  Martin, putting down cigarette and lighter, instantly threw back the bed-clothes and slid his legs out of bed. He was wearing his own pyjamas, and his slippers were beside the bed.

  "If you don't mind, Lady Brayle," he suggested pointedly, "I'd like to get dressed. — You've guessed, of course, that Jenny and I are to be married."

  "That Captain Drake, can await discussion later."

  "Can I reach you tomorrow morning?"

  "Fortunately or unfortunately," replied Lady Brayle, taking up a handbag from the chest of drawers, "no. I am driving tonight to visit some friends at Priory Hill, and I shall not return until the afternoon. Then there will be the fair."

  "The fair?"

  "Has Jennifer told you nothing of the fair?"

  Martin drew his hand down over his face. "She did say something…"

  "Among my records," Lady Brayle informed him triumphantly, "there is a document dated 1662. By permission of the King, an annual fair may be held within the park of Brayle Manor.

  The town-council," she shook her shoulders, "have opposed this project I have informed them that I will sue them for five thousand pounds if one of their representatives sets foot inside the park.

  "Cromwell, by which I mean the vile Oliver, sought to suppress these fine old wholesome English customs. Doubtless there will be grinning-matches through horse-collars, and quarterstaff bouts; perhaps even a Maypole."

  Lady Brayle, having reached the door, spoke as though she were addressing a public meeting. Then her face seemed to close up; to retreat

  "Now," she said, "you must excuse me. My friends at Priory Hill wish to hear the details of a — of a most unpleasant affair at Pentecost Prison this morning."

  "The bell!" exclaimed Martin.

  Until this moment his own grace-of-God escape from death had swept away everything else.

  "The alarm-bell," he said, "was ringing from Pentecost The alarm-bell from the condemned cell Stannard… What happened there?"

  Lady Brayle regarded him coolly.

  "You have had your orders," she informed him. "You must not excite yourself." And she went out and closed the door.

  Martin stumbled over his slippers when he sprang forward. Then he stopped and put them on. Pain knifed across his forehead, the effect of opiates still lingered, and (to tell the truth) not many of his joints seemed to work well. But he had his wits with him.

  Thank the Lord he had brought that suitcase across from the inn last night across the room stood a gigantic wardrobe, with a long mirror. As he reached out to open the door of the wardrobe, he saw his own face.

  Wow! Though the bandage was small enough, he had not counted on the swelling and discolouration of the forehead, which made him resemble someone out of a horror-film. Never mind appearances; and somebody had given him a shave. Inside the wardrobe were clothes: clean, fresh clothes.

  When Lady Brayle opened the door, it bad disclosed a modern bathroom. Martin brushed his teeth, doused and doused his face and head in water, and felt better. Physically, that is. While he dressed, automatically putting on his wrist-watch, the full implications of this business spread through his mind.

  Whatever had happened to Sir George Fleet his own fall had been no accident Some person, man or woman, had lunged with a solid pair of bands and sent him over the edge to crush his skull on flagstones. Someone hated him that much. Why, for God's sake? And who?

  It was nonsense. It couldn't be anybody he had met hereabouts. In imagination, their faces all smiled at him. And yet Stannard's 'spiritual evil,' his 'man-eating tiger’ of fancy, might be close. What made Martin Drake shiver was not so much the attempted murder as the consciousness of all that hatred directed against himself.

  H.M. had somehow foreseen this. He must get to HM. And the old man, Lady Brayle had said, was downstairs now.

  Trying to find the position of his own bedroom, Martin threw open the window-curtains on windows wide up in the breath of a perfect summer night deepening from dimness into dark. Sunday would be early closing for the Dragon; across the road he could see the last customers being turned out against a background of lighted door and small-paned lighted windows.

  His bedroom was at the north-east corner front Hence—

  Martin went through the bathroom, obviously an addition making two rooms smaller. The room beyond was dark. Groping across it he felt his knees begin to shake and the sensation mat someone was following, just behind, to push him over an edge.

  "Steady!" Martin said. But you can't argue with feelings like that

  Groping wildly, he bumped into a desk and after a moment found the chain of a desk-lamp. When the light sprang up, healing to nerves, he sat back heavily in the desk's swivel-chair.

  And Martin waited to get his breath back.

  He was in Sir George Fleet's study, no doubt of it That was where Stannard had sat with his host before Fleet hurried up to the roof, just as Martin had heard Stannard speak of it

  Along the west wall were the gun-racks, behind folding glass doors. A ledge of silver cups, kept bright ran round the other walls. Cricket-bats, once the whitest of white ash and now brown-grey from use and age, were inscribed in red with the dates when George Fleet had made a century. Between the windows, where the desk stood sideways, hung a picture of a man who must be Fleet himself. Aunt Cicely — old ghosts, old and deep loves;—must have put it there.

  Stem kind of bloke, Martin thought, thin military-looking face, ridged hair parted in the middle, cropped moustache. Then Martin glanced down at the desk-blotter, and in a few seconds began to grin.'

  It was only a grey-covered book, open and face down. But its title, which was The Cavaliers, 1625–1649, made it seem an odd book for this particular room. Martin turned it over and glanced at the flyleaf. He was greeted by the following formidable and menacing announcement of ownership, done in red crayon:

  ME — H.M.

  The old maestro himself seemed to scowl out of that flyleaf, warning with ferocity an attempted book-pincher to keep away. Martin's grin became a laugh, and he got up. It was infernal nonsense, letting these bugbears weaken-his knees and letting him grow soft noting the position of the door, he switched off the lamp and walked slowly to the door.

  The upper hall outside was luxuriously furnished and softly lighted. At the rear was the staircase, beside its tall arched window. He went downstairs without a tremor, walked to the front of the lower hall with its polished hardwood floor; and hesitated. But he did not hesitate long.

  Green Room and library, which were on the right as you faced the front door from inside, showed no light But a faint glow filtered out from the left-hand door at the front

  Also, Martin heard a familiar voice.

  "Honest-Injun," the voice rumbled with a faint note of surprise, "you'd like to hear all about it?"

  "I'd love to," said the attractive and still-young voice of Aunt Cicely.

  "You want to know what Charles the First said about me?" "I do, really."

  "Ahem!" said the other voice, beginning to take on a stern, stuffed air.

  Martin peered round the edge of the door.

  In a drawing-room rich with the luxury of twenty years ago, Aunt Cicely was sitting at one side of the tall mantelpiece just opposite. In her upraised face there was no trace of amusement; she was, Martin sa
w, deeply fascinated. At the other side of the mantelpiece, his back to it, Sir Henry Merrivale stood swelling with the same stuffed, heroic look.

  The muffled lamps, dull red or white, struck gleams from a wine-coloured carpet. It was a setting for romance.

  "This here," said H.M., whipping out a pocket-book and extracting a typewritten slip, "is a quotation from the Dictionary of National Biography, edition of 1889. It ain't there now, because a lot of people have got born since and they don't pay any attention to the arts. But here's just what it says.

  " 'Merrivale, Sir Curtius, first baronet. (1583–1645?). Knighted by James I, created baronet Charles I. Poet, duellist, and lover of fair women.' "

  Here H.M. gave a short cough, and glanced sideways behind his spectacles.

  " 'He is best known for his lyric poetry, later collected by Anthony à Wood. Many present-day critics, including Mr. Andrew Lang, consider his best work — notably the lyric called, "Come rest in this bower, my honey-haired bride,’'—to be the equal of Herrick: How's that, hey?"

  "It's lovely!" said Aunt Cicely, her eyes far away. ""Come rest in this bower, my honey-haired bride.' Could you recite it?"

  H.M. touched his neck and made a long challenging noise. "You got a throat-spray?" he inquired. "Really, I…" Aunt Cicely looked round vaguely. I’m afraid…"

  "Never mind," H.M. consoled her. "Well come back to mat Lord love a duck, I'll give it all the organ-stops I had when I played Richard the Third for Henry Irving. You just lemme go on with this."

  "Of course, Sir Henry."

  "'Charles the First" — we you gettin’ this, hey? — 'Charles the first is said to have remarked of him: "No man of fairer manners was ever about us." His tragic marriage to Lucy Baimbridge, and the duel that followed, are well known. In the middle years of his life there is a long gap, which Anthony à Wood was evidently unable to trace."