The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  Here H.M. roused himself out of his reverie.

  "I say, Masters. Am I making myself clear?"

  "Curiously enough," retorted Masters, with towering and stiff-jawed dignity, "you are not" Then slow suspicion dawned and grew clear in his expression. "Sir Henry, are you trying to do me in the eye again?"

  "Oh, my son! No! I wouldn't do that!"

  "Oh, no,", said Masters in a hollow voice. "Oh, no. No. You never have, have you? Oh, no. In a pig's ear you haven't!"

  H.M. looked at him steadily.

  "I'm not doin' it this time son. Honest It's too serious."

  This almost if not quite reassured his companion, who again opened the notebook.

  "And I get all the details," he insisted, "straightaway?"

  "Every detail," H.M. reassured him, "goes on the table tonight. For our conference. We've been dealt some awful good cards, but a little conjuror's hokey-pokey won't do any harm when it's our turn to deal."

  "Then what was all that flummery a minute ago? First you started gabbling about a beach-chair, and then about the skeleton and Dr. Laurier…"

  "Wait a minute! I didn't.."

  "And," Masters rode him down, "you said they were connected by a real clue."

  "Oh, Masters! The whole place is flooded with clues."

  "Maybe so. You talked about a 'real' clue, that bonged down out of the air, like, and hit you on the head. I can't see the wood for the trees. I don't see anything, except that the alibi is a fake. Where did you get this 'real' clue? Where did it come from?"

  H.M. pondered.

  "Well," he said, "from my reincarnation."

  Chapter 16

  "Stop," said Masters, extending his arm like a traffic-policeman. "Stop just there."

  Despite Masters's effort to be calm, the hoarse and strangled note in his voice betrayed him. He must do more than count ten now. Snapping the rubber band round his notebook, he carefully put it in his pocket

  "Sir," he continued, as one who weighs his words but gets louder and louder, "I've been mixed up in these cases for more years than I'd like to count I get the credit Oh, ah! But I've got blood-pressure, and I've got a family to think of!"

  "Sh-h! Quiet! Don't wake up the house!"

  "I've been kicked in the pants," said Masters. "I've been hocussed and flummoxed. I've had poisonous snakes dropped at my feet. I've been told to face a mob of reporters, without a word to say for myself, when you'd promised a world-beater of a story. All right: that's fair enough; I don't complain. But this is too much. —Reincarnation!" breathed Masters, and clasped his hands in prayer to heaven.

  "Sh-h, now! Sh-h! Sh-h-h!"

  Masters subsided. A healing peace settled through the room.

  "And now," bellowed H.M., in a voice which made the curtains quiver, "are you goin' to stop being a goop and listen to a word of explanation?"

  Masters was silent

  "I've been reading a lot of literature," continued H.M. "I don't believe it as I oughter, because I don't remember as much as I oughter. But there was one thing I did read, and it slipped through without more than scratching the surface of the old man's mind, until somethin' was said that made me remember. And it tore the hocus-pocus wide open. Now do you see?"

  Masters peered at him suspiciously.

  "You're not off your chump? You don't remember how you wore a big hat and recited limericks to Charles the First?"

  "Well No. Not much. And, Masters, for the love of Esau stop drivellin'. This is a murder case. And I'm scared."

  "You?"

  "Me," returned H.M, with all the impressiveness this conveyed. "We've got to act fast, son. If we can keep this feller," he pointed to Martin, "if we can keep him alive for just me more night…"

  (Again that sense of hatred, gathering round and pressing against him! Martin, weak from lack of the food he told Ruth tie hated, sat down and lit a cigarette whose smoke made his lead swim.)

  "If we can do that," said Masters, "he's out of danger?"

  "Not necessarily. But a certain innocent-looker will be occupied with other things. Well be the attackers and not standin' at defence. Now, son!" H.M. pointed. "When you first barged in here tonight, I asked you whether you'd got the stuff. You said you'd got all of it Where is it?"

  Masters indicated the chair where lay his bowler hat, the brief-case, and the brown cardboard folder. '

  "You don't want to go through all that tonight do you?"

  "I don't want to go through any of it Masters. I only want to ask you a question."

  "Well sir?"

  H.M. scowled and adjusted his spectacles.

  "You've got" he stated rather than questioned, "you've got from the local police files some testimony from everybody, and I mean everybody, who was here at Fleet House on the afternoon of November 4th, 1927?"

  From the thick-filled brown folder Masters took out a typewritten slip with pencilled notes.

  "I have," he said. "Also what happened to each of 'em afterwards. The word 'here' means within a radius of three or four miles."

  "So! Read it out loud!"

  "As follows," said Masters, clearing his throat "Lady Fleet (here), Dowager Countess of Brayle (here), Earl and Countess of Brayle (one dead, one in Stockholm), young Fleet (here), Dr. Pierre Laurier (dead), Lady Fleet's companion (dead), governess (dead), butler (at Reading), parlourmaid (here), first and second housemaids (one here, one in Australia), gardener (dead). In addition to these persons's testimony, Stannard's too."

  "Stannard!" interrupted Martin. "But he didn't give any statement then!" Masters grinned.

  "No, Mr. Drake. Still, I'm told that in Sir Henry's presence and yours he said he'd talked to a newspaper reporter at the tram. The area's not so large that a few ‘phone-calls wouldn't cover it" Masters tapped the cardboard folder. They sent a copy of the press-cutting by hand.''

  H.M. pressed his hands hard to his forehead.

  "Here's the burnin' question," he snapped. "You or I got testimony, today or yesterday evening, from all the witnesses who weren't dead or out of reach. Does it agree with what they said twenty years ago?"

  "Ah. Almost to a T." Masters's eye grew thoughtful. "Almost too close, don't you think?"

  "No, son. Oh, my eye, no! You're not likely to forget the first HE bomb that fell close to you; now are you? Or the circumstances? No. And that's a great help."

  "It's a great help to know there aren't any contradictions?"

  "That's right."

  Masters shut his eyes. "Anything else?"

  "You don't mention Dr. Hugh Laurier as bein' there. Or wasn't he qualified for medicine yet?"

  "He'd qualified a few years before; he was helping his father. But he was in London that day. He missed the train, and didn't get back till later."

  "I see," observed H.M. in a colourless tone, and dropped his hands. "Finally, son, in that brief-case you got the Scotland Yard dossier, in a blue folder, with the statements of Simon Frew and Arthur Puckston. One with the binoculars, the other with the telescope." H.M. stretched out his hand and waggled the fingers. "Gimme that folder!"

  And now they both saw, with growing alarm, the extent of H.M.s disquiet

  This folder? What for?"

  "I'm goin' on a little errand," said H.M. "It'll be short, but it won't be sweet I'm dreading it like the Old Nick.", He put the folder under his arm."

  "Ready when you are, then!"

  "You're not goin', Masters."

  Masters stared at him. "In case it's slipped your memory, Sir Henry, I'm the police-officer in charge of this case."

  "You're still not goin'," H.M. said simply. "You'd only scare him. Don't argue, burn it! This is the first card we play; and I got to play it Now that young feller," he nodded towards Martin, "is the one I want to go with me. If he’ll do it Hey?"

  Martin staggered up from the sofa, crushing' out his cigarette.

  "I'll go with you to Land's End," he said, "if you. don't mind my ringing up Jenny first I've been intending to do it all night;
and every time somebody walloped out with something I had to hear." H.M. spoke sharply.

  "You can ring her up, son, but you won't get any answer."

  "My God, she hasn't gone away with Grandmother?" Martin thought back. "The old lady said she was going away overnight Did Jenny go?"

  "No, no, no," H.M. told him in a fussed and malevolent way. "I made her promise, before the old hobgoblin sent her away from here, to take two nembutal pills as soon as she got home. Son, it wouldn't wake her if the whole town of Brayle fell down. All right: you be stubborn and cloth-headed. Try it!"

  Martin did try it He sat at the telephone-table in the dark rear of the hall, listening to ghostly little ringing-tones which had no reply. Surely Dawson or somebody must be about? Never mind. It was late. He put down the 'phone.

  Suddenly Martin realized he was in the dark. A gulf of mist in his imagination, opened in front of him; somebody's hands lunged out; the solid floor melted away for a plunge outward…

  None of that! Martin went back towards the lighted drawing-room, timing his steps slowly. Himself: a focus of hatred. And again, everlastingly, why? The atmosphere of the drawing-room intensified this thought since Masters and H.M. had evidently been talking rapidly. It seemed to Martin that the Chief Inspector, in utter incredulity, had just opened his mouth to protest. Afterwards they did not speak.

  They turned off the lights in the drawing-room. They went out of the house softly, Martin slipping the latch of the front, door. In a fine night the quarter moon dimmed by a sweep of stars, they crossed the road.

  At the Dragon's Rest whose front showed no light what might be called the hotel-entrance was in its south side, the narrower end of the building. As Martin made for the hotel-entrance door, Masters preceding him and H.M. following him, he glanced southwards because Brayle Manor was somewhere there.

  It seemed to him that in the distance the sky had a faintly whitish glow, conveying a sense of movement No sounds; or were there? The glimmer wasn't fire. He could tell that But…

  "Oi!" whispered H.M., and shoved him inside.

  A narrowish passage ran the length of the inn from south to north. Beyond the left-hand wall lay the three bars. In the right-hand wall was a cubicle for signing the visitors' book, then a door to the dining-room where Martin remembered having had lunch on Saturday, then more doors to the end. The wails, white-painted, had at one side a design of brass warming-pans framing a sixteenth-century crossbow; and the light of a shaded lamp shone on ancient scrubbed floorboards.

  "See you later," whispered Masters, and tiptoed up the narrow staircase towards the bedrooms.

  H.M., taking Martin by' the arm, impelled him down the passage to the far door at the right end. H.M. knocked gently.

  "Come in," said a voice which Martin guessed must be Mrs. Puckston's.

  Mr. and Mrs. Puckston, whose child had been murdered and hacked last night, were in there. If H.M. had not gripped his arm, Martin would have turned and bolted.

  H.M. opened the door.

  It was an old-fashioned kitchen-sitting-room, its brick walls. painted white. In what-had once been the immense embrasure of the fireplace, there now stood a big coal cooking-stove with many lids, and a kettle simmering on one of them. In the middle of the room, with a frayed yellow-and-white cloth and an electric light hanging over it, was a table set for an untouched supper.

  Arthur Puckston, back to the door, sat on the other side of the table and faced the stove. His freckled bald head, with its little fringe of grey-reddish hair, and his thin drooping muscular shoulders, were motionless. Mrs. Puckston, dark-haired and stoutening, sat in a corner chair and sewed.

  Then Puckston looked round.

  The tears were running down his face despite his spasmodic blinkings. His eyes remained gentle. He saw who was in the doorway. First startled, then deeply ashamed, he whipped his head away and began swabbing desperately at his eyes with his coat-sleeves. But grief had beaten him. His arms dropped. He did not care.

  "Mr. Puckston," said H.M., in so gentle a tone that Martin could not have thought it possible, "I know we're intruding. Will you believe I only came because I know I can help you?"

  Mrs. Puckston, tearless but dull-glazed of eye, looked up.

  "Won't you sit down, please?" she asked quietly. "We understand. Arthur suspicioned — at least, he hoped — you'd come."

  The two visitors sat down on their side of the table, their eyes fixed on the cloth.

  "Norma," Puckston said in a slow, dull monotone, "I've got to explain." -

  "That's not necessary, Arthur." "I've got to explain."

  With great care Puckston slowly hitched his chair round. He too looked down. His right hand, blue-veined, automatically brushed and brushed and brushed at the table-cloth.

  "What I've got to explain, sir, is that we only opened the 'ouse tonight because I'd promised the Choral Society they could have the two parlours for their practice after chapel. Because it was hymns, you see. We thought that was only right and proper. Because it was hymns. And Mr. Bradley, from the Chapel, he said so too.

  "Of course, we didn't go out there. But Norma and me, we reckoned it would be right and proper if we sat out in the passage, there, and listened to the hymns through the wall. And we did. And I was feeling fine, I was feeling just as fine as I could be, until it came to that part of the hymn about while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.

  "And I don't know," he went on, shaking his head while he brushed and brushed at the table, "I can't just rightly say, what made me make such a fool of myself. Breaking down like that, and coming in 'ere so they wouldn't know about it. I didn't know I was so soft I reckon it was just that part of the hymn, that's all."

  Both of his visitors, one of whom could not bear this, made an instinctive movement to get up.

  "No!" said Puckston, and stretched out his hand. "Don't go, if I've not offended you. Sit down. I was hoping you'd come."

  They sat down.

  "Don't think about it Arthur!" said Mrs. Puckston. But there was a heavier glaze in her eyes as she sewed.

  "I won't," said her husband, He concentrated hard for a moment, before slowly moving his head sideways. "Norma, haven't you got a cup of tea for the gentlemen?"

  The sewing slid from his wife's lap. "Arthur, I never thought of that. I've never been so bad-mannered in all my born days."

  "But please don't…"

  "Easy, son," muttered H.M., and gripped Martin's wrist as the latter started to speak. H.M. looked at Puckston, who had ceased to care whether they saw the tears on his face. "You said, Mr. Puckston, you hoped I'd come here. Was it about anything in particular?"

  The other started to speak, but fell to brushing the cloth instead.

  "Mr. Puckston," said H.M., "this person who — hurt your little girl."

  As Mrs. Puckston moved the kettle from the stove-lid, the white-brick kitchen was as still as death. Mrs. Puckston, an iron hook in her hand to remove the stove-lid and see to the fire, did not seem to breathe.

  Puckston swallowed. "Yes, sir?"

  "Do you want me to nab that person, and see that there's punishment?"

  The lid rattled back. From the stove leaped up a yellow lick of flame, curling high; momentarily it painted the kitchen with yellow brightness; and, had he been facing it, you might have fancied a reflection in Puckston's eyes.

  Then the lean man's shoulders sagged.

  "What’s the good?" he asked dully. "Like old Sir George. Years ago. You can't beat 'em."

  "I know this country," said H.M. "Ifs asinine, sure. It's full of fatheads. But there's been justice here for nearly a thousand years."

  "Old Sir George…"

  "Could he take your land from you, when he tried to?"

  "No, by God 'e couldn't!"

  Rattle went the stove-lid, back into place.

  "Arthur," said-his wife, herself near to breaking down, "I don't think I’ll make tea. I think there's some bottles of the '24 port that the gentlemen wo
uld like better. I think I know how to find them."

  Then she was out of the room. Her husband, struggling to pull his wits together, pressed his hands flat on the table. His mildness, his weary look, showed he could scarcely do it.

  "Can — you help me?" Puckston asked.

  "If you help me."

  "How? I'll try. Yes; I'll do it"

  "Son, I warn you: the first bit is goin’ to hurt It’ll keep you thinking about your daughter." "Go ahead."

  From his inside breast pocket H.M. took out three postcards. One, postmarked July 5th, read, Re Sir George Fleet: examine the skeleton in the clock. The second, July 6th: Re Sir George Fleet: what was the pink flash on the roof? The third, July 7th: Re Sir George Fleet: evidence of murder is still there. Clearing a space on the supper-table, pushing away cutlery and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, he put down the exhibits.

  "Son," he said quietly, "you sent these postcards."

  The other's mouth quivered like a hurt child's.

  To be more exact," added H.M., "you dictated the substance and Enid put it down in correct grammar and spelling, with schoolgirl flourishes." "'Ow did you know that?" asked Puckston. "Never mind. It's not important. What I…" "'Ow did you know that?" repeated Puckston, with the insistence of the drunken or the damned. The tears had started. again.

  "Oh, son! From your antiques here I thought you might subscribe to Willaby's catalogue. I asked Lady Br — I asked somebody in this district if you did, and she said yes. She also said she got her last catalogue on July 5th, which is the postmark on that first anonymous card.

  "Y'see, that was the catalogue that listed the skeleton in the clock. Somebody got it on July 5th, and fired off an anonymous postcard to stir up the police about the Fleet case. There weren't likely to be two such curiosities.as that clock floatin' about" "I'm not saying I didn't do it" Puckston had the palms of his hands pressed over his face. He rocked back and forth.

  "But why did it have to be me who sent the postcards?" H.M. expelled a slow, deep breath of relief. They could hear the throb of the fire inside the stove, and Mrs. Puckston moving somewhere in the cellar.