The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  "Well… now. That's what we're coming to. And it’ll be easier. Because it's about Sir George Fleet's death."

  H.M. snapped his fingers down at one side, without looking away from Puckston. Martin rightly interpreted this as an order to pick up the blue Scotland Yard folder, which H.M. had dropped.

  Puckston was not composed now, but he was more composed. Any mention of Fleet could rouse him. His light-blue eyes, bloodshot and reddish at the lids, tried to focus on H.M. out of a long, wretched face.

  "Do you remember," continued H.M., turning over the typewritten pages of the folder, "what happened the day Fleet died?"

  "Do I remember when I first walked out with Norma?" "You didn't like Fleet Hey?"

  "I wonder," said Puckston, shutting his eyes, "if that man ever thought how much I looked down on him. 'Im, with 'is money made out of the fourteen-eighteen war! Me, whose forbears 'ave owned this inn a matter of two hundred year! But you can't make the nobs see that They don't notice!"

  "Let's come to the day, shall we?"

  "Glad to."

  "You, accordin' to your testimony, were sitting on the top of the north gable with a telescope. You were watching the hunt, You heard the shout Fleet gave. Now lemme read you a part of your statement verbatim."

  H.M. found the passage and ran his finger down it

  I looked round. I saw something pitch over the little ledge, but it was so quick I did not see what it was. I looked—

  H.M. paused abruptly. There was a space of silence, while Martin found the sweat stand out on his forehead.

  "Y’see," H.M. said very gently, "that second sentence just can't possibly be true."

  "Why not?"

  "I'll tell you. If there's one thing of general agreement, it's that Fleet gave a shout and immediately fell. If you doubt that, see the testimony of Simon Frew, who had the binoculars on the middle gable and is admittedly an honest witness.

  "But what about you? You were on the north gable, watching the hunt: either the hounds streakin' to the north, or the field galloping round Black Hanger to the east You heard a yell: that's all. You couldn't have known where it came from, except somewhere behind you. You couldn't have known what it meant By the time you could swing that telescope round, Fleet must have been dead on the flagstones.

  "Yet you claim, see, that out of all the space of sky and land comin' round into view through your telescope, you managed to pick out the exact spot where Fleet was standing just as he fell. Son, it won't do. It's plain ridiculous."

  Again there was a silence.

  In Puckston's expression there was no fear, no wrath, no shrinking; only a curious twitch of the mouth which Martin could not identify.

  "What did I do, then?" Puckston asked.

  'Tm goin' to suggest" pursued H.M., turning back a page and tapping it, "that the same thing which happened to Simon Frew also happened to you."

  Puckston shut his eyes.

  "You saw the field gallop round the side of Black Hanger. Through the telescope they all seemed to be waving and smiling at you. You wondered who it could be for just like Frew. You turned round and raked your telescope along till you saw your enemy, George Fleet, a few seconds before be fell. Is that true?"

  "Yes," said Puckston without opening his eyes.

  "But you were looking at him sideways — a good distance sideways — instead of face on. That's how you came to see…"

  "See what?"

  "The pink flash. Just like open and shut, wasn't it?"

  Were they coming at last, Martin wondered, to the explanation of that tantalizing obscurity which (Masters seemed to think) was connected with a wooden beach-chair? He, Martin Drake, had been pushed by a pair of hands. Or could he swear he had? The soft, gentle growl of H.M.'s voice went on.

  'To clinch it," said H.M., "here's a final bit of your story. You tell in this record (Oh, lord love a duck!) about how Dr. Laurier ran out on the terrace, and the constable came up. Now you're speakin', son."

  And they saw, through Puckston's eyes, the scene played against the white facade.

  Dr. Laurier said something, and Bert picked up Sir George's binoculars and walked into the house. Dr. Laurier said something else, and Lady Brayle came out with some kind of cloth. I said aloud, 'The bastard is dead.'

  Puckston stared at a salt-cellar on the frayed white-and-yellow cloth.

  "I never made no bones about what I thought of him. Maybe I oughtn't to have said that, with the hymns tonight and all. But that's how I felt. And still do."

  H.M. held up a hand for silence.

  Dr. Laurier put the cloth over his head. Lady Fleet came out and started to faint, but they talked to her a while and she went in. The governess and the boy came round the house then, but Dr. Laurier yelled so loud you could hear to go back. Dr. Laurier made as if he was examining all over Sir George. I did not see anybody at the windows. Bert came out and seemed to argue with Dr. Laurier about who carried Sir George. Bert took his head in the cloth and Dr. Laurier took his legs. They carried him in the house. Lady Fleet came out again once and looked up. That was all I saw before I slid down.

  Puckston smote the table.

  "And there's not a word of a lie in that," he insisted. "Simon could—"

  "Sure, son. I know. It agrees with what Simon Frew said, and the other fellers who were farther down on the roof. But, considering what I've read, can you tell me more about the pink flash now?"

  Puckston looked vacant

  "I was sure what it was." Again his hand mechanically brushed the table-cloth. "Anyway, I was pretty sure. But…"

  "But you were glad Fleet was dead. And anyway you didn't want trouble, because you were scared of the nobs."

  "Nice lot, aren't they? Lady Brayle.."

  "Sure, Sophie's one of the bad examples. That's because she's so goddam cloth-headed. She ought to be either ousted or made popular. But when you sent that anonymous card with the fancy words 'pink flash'…"

  Any reference to those cards, no matter with how gentle probing, seemed to send Puckston frantic

  "Enid didn't know nothing about it" he pleaded. "It was only a lark, don't you see? She loved larks. That's how they got her up to Pentecost, because it was a lark. Because all the gossip was round they were looking for ghosts. Because…"

  Puckston got up. He stumbled across to a kitchen dresser with an oil-cloth top, fumbled in a drawer, and brought out a table-cloth to dab at his eyes. Then he turned round.

  "It was Enid," he said, "who thought of saying ‘pink flash.' I–I hemm'd and hawed." Puckston's freckled bald head stood out against the white-brick wall. His thin shoulders, square like a scarecrow's in the old blue-and-white shirt were humped up.

  "I hemm'd and hawed, not wanting to say much. And Enid, she said, 'Well, Daddy, what did it look like?’ And I told her. And she thought for a minute and said, 'I know, Daddy! We'll call it a pink flash.' And she put it down,"

  "Ah!" said HM "Now we got it!"

  "Got what?"

  Statement and question were flung across that warm kitchen. Martin knew that a scale-pan hung in the balance, that a gambler prepared to play.

  "You've been torturin' yourself," said H.M., "because you thought you were responsible for that kid's death. You thought some swine believed she knew too much, and killed her."

  Puckston put the table-cloth in front of his face.

  "I don't hold many things sacred," said H.M., "but I swear you on what I do hold sacred that you're wrong. Wrong! That wasn't the reason! It wasnt even a reason you or I could understand."

  The table-cloth fell to the floor. ‘’Ere! Are you trying to.?"

  "No. I can prove it, son. And if I do prove it," said H.M., with such a radiance of conviction that the other did not move, "will you help me with something else?'

  Ten seconds ticked past. Puckston walked across to the table and extended his hand. H.M. gripped it After this be slid back in his chair with a Gargantuan thump, and breathed noisily. Slowly his head turned round.
>
  "You," he glared at Martin with incredible malevolence, ‘What are you doin’ here, son?"

  "But you asked me to—''

  "You go out in that passage," H.M. ordered sternly, "and you wait there till I talk to you. You've served the purpose. Now the garden's lovely. Sling your hook."

  Martin felt no surprise now when he remembered having heard that Chief Inspectors sometimes came within an ace of murdering Sir Henry Merrivale. He knew why. Deeply he could sympathize. In fact as his eye caught a bowl of Jell-o on the sideboard, he wondered how its contents would look if they were tastefully pressed down on H.M.'s skull.

  But he went out into the passage and closed the door.

  "You've served the purpose." What purpose? Why had he been brought to see the Puckstons? He was beginning to suspect H.M. of a purpose in everything, but what purpose in this?

  The long passage, with its single dim lamp, lay shadowy and deeply cool. At the other end of it lounged Masters himself, with the hotel-entrance door wide open to the fragrant night. Masters's face was a mask of inquiry as Martin joined him.

  "Don't ask me what happened," the latter begged. "He's verified what he wants to verify. Do you understand?"

  "Do I!" Masters growled with fervour.

  Yet the Chief Inspector, or what could be seen of him in dimness, appeared serene, breathing the fragrant air, almost humming a tune and smiling. Martin pointed southwards.

  "By the way, what's that whitish glow, away over there? In the direction of Brayle Manor?"

  "Can't say, I'm sure."

  "Probably doesn't mean anything. -Still," Martin was uneasy, "it did strike me he hurried me in here when I tried to look at it Er — you've heard about his feud with the Dowager Countess of Brayle?"

  "Have I?’ snorted Masters,

  "He won the first round by a thrust with a guisarme. She, definitely took the second by making a skeleton gibber at him-and insulting him behind locked gates. I've wondered before this if he might — well…"

  ' "You know, Mr. Drake," said Masters, shaking his head and folding his arms portentously, ‘I’ve tried to stop if, but I can’t It’s a sin and a shame how that old bounder carries on!" "At his age, you mean?"

  "Oh, ah! Just sol It'd be a great pity if he (hurrum!) made it worse."

  "It would, Chief Inspector! It would! What worries me is mat it always upsets Jenny, and I won’t have Jenny upset!"

  "Of course," Masters observed musingly, after a long pause, "the lady is a bit of a handful"

  "Are you telling me?"

  "Do you know what she said to me," continued Masters, with his eye on a bright star outside, "when I tried my ruddy best to get that skeleton back?" Here he mimicked heavily. "'My good man, you are perfectly well aware you cannot remove the article in question until you can show just cause why you need it Should you set foot inside the park without a warrant I shall instruct my gardener to use his gun.' —Urr!" said Masters suddenly, making a noise like a dog.

  "And do you know," Martin demanded, "what she said to me? Listen!"

  Whereupon they both stopped and looked at each other, conscious of a meeting of minds.

  "Let's face it sir," Masters said benevolently, and lowered his defences. "There may be trouble."

  And the richest and ripest trouble of all, as regards proceedings between Sir Henry Merrivale and the Dowager Countess of Brayle, had its first stir at eleven o'clock on the following morning.

  Chapter 17

  It was nearly eleven before Martin finished his breakfast on Monday morning. When he turned in the night before, he had been too tired to bother with the sleeping-pill Dr. Laurier had left for him. He woke to a morning of soft breeze and gentle sun, so stimulated and refreshed that he felt ravenous for food. Certain instructions, which H.M. had made him promise to carry out overnight, now seemed nonsensical.

  Martin sang in his bath. A harassed but punctilious Dr. Laurier, who arrived while he was shaving, changed the bandage on his forehead and told him that with luck the stitches would be out in no time.

  Somebody had tried to kill him? But he had only to think of Jenny, and other matters for the moment seemed of no consequence. When he went downstairs, he met nobody in the cool house. In the dining-room he was served breakfast by a maid other than Phyllis; and, since Fleet House was supplied with great quantities of food from an unspecified source, he ate with appetite.

  But it was the telephone he wanted. Emerging through a series of passages which brought him out opposite the staircase' at the back of the main hall, Martin at last heard sounds of life. Voices — apparently those of Aunt Cicely, Ricky, and H.M. himself — drifted down from the direction of the drawing-room.

  Then the 'phone rang; and it was Jenny.

  The first part of their conversation need not be recorded here. Doubtless Sir Henry Merrivale would have described it as mush, adding that Jenny and Martin seemed to have achieved the seemingly impossible feat of getting into an intimate embrace over a telephone. But there seemed to be a faintly odd note in Jenny's voice.

  "You haven't forgotten," he asked, "that this is the day you and I are going to London?"

  "We — we can't. Not yet, anyway. Tonight we might."

  A sense of impending disaster crept into him. "Why not?"

  "Martin," breathed Jenny, "why does your H.M. insist on persecuting my poor grandmother?"

  (I knew it! By all cussedness and the ten finger-bones of Satan, I knew it!)

  "But what's he doing to her now, Jenny? He's here! In the drawing-room!"

  Martin, do you know where I am?" asked Jenny.

  "What's that?"

  "I'm under the main staircase, with a thick oak door closed so I can speak to you. Hold on a second, and I'll push the door open. Listen!"

  Martin jumped. The sound which poured out at him, even over a telephone, made him yank the receiver away from his ear before putting it back to his ear again.

  It sounded rather like Blackpool on August Bank Holiday. But-the crowd-noises were over-ridden by musk, in which Martin (too imaginatively, perhaps) thought he could detect one brass band, a panotrope with a bad needle, and the steam organ of a merry-go-round. High rose the strains of Waltzing Matilda, closely contested by Cherry-Ripe and The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

  The strains were blotted away as Jenny closed the door.

  "Did Grandmother," she asked, "tell you anything about a fair?"

  "Well," Martin searched his memory, "she did say something about it, yes. I thought she meant some sort of rustic fair with a Maypole."

  "So did she," Jenny answered in a weary voice. "But it's the biggest travelling fair in the British Isles. They took half the night to set it up. You see, they — they sent Grandmother some sort of paper, six months ago. She said solicitors cost too much money, when she knew all the law anyway. And she signed it"

  For a moment hope began to stir in Martin. After all, six months ago! It had been Grandmother's own fault H.M. couldn't have had anything to do with this! He said as much.

  "Yes," said Jenny. "But have you met a Mr. Solomon MacDougall?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  "He's the owner or the man who manages it or something. Anyway, H.M. met him when he was looking over the ground yesterday…"

  "Oh, my God!"

  "And H.M. pointed out something in the contract they didn't know themselves. They intended to use Rupert's Five-Acre, which would have been bad enough. But H.M. said wouldn't it be a wonderful attraction if they had lines of booths and stalls and freak-shows up the main drive to the front door? And that's not the worst, either. Have you ever ridden in a Ghost-Train?"

  Martin had. But he wanted to let Jenny pour her heart out.

  "It's a big place like a house, dark inside. You ride in a little railway through terrific screams and howls and screeches. Do you know where H.M. persuaded them to put the Ghost-Train?"

  "No, my sweet"

  "Under Grandmother's bedroom windows," said Jenny.


  “Er — yes. What I mean is: I see "

  "On the roof of the Ghost-Train house," said Jenny, "there's a papier-mache skull on a pole. It's painted green. It turns round, and round. And, every time it turns round, it looks in the bedroom window and chatters two sets of teeth."

  "Jenny," said Martin, "wait just one minute. Hold the line and wait The culprit's here. I'll…"

  With a shaking hand he put down the 'phone beside its cradle. To say that he did not know whether to laugh or swear is to understate a real conflict of mind: it boiled inside him, tearing him both ways. Grandmother Brayle was not due home until this afternoon. To watch her behaviour then would be worth much. On the other hand, H.M.'s craftiness seemed always to separate him from Jenny; and he was resolved to get Jenny away today.

  At this point of both murderousness and mirth, he became conscious of the great man's voice from the direction of the drawing-room. It was now raised to a serious and oratorical pitch, holding his listeners.

  H.M. said: "What we got to remember, y'see, is the noble dignity of Curtius Merrivale. I wish I could paint you the picture of Charles the First sittin' in that noble Banqueting Hall, designed by Inigo Jones, with all his family gathered round just as you see it in the portraits. (Mind, I don't say these are the exact words; it's the idea.) And Charles the First would say, 'Sir Curtius, will you not favour us with some amusing conceit?'

  "And Curtius Merrivale would get up, sweepin' off his plumed hat like this, and he'd say:

  " There was a young girl from Bel Air, Who used to—'"

  "H.M.!" thundered Martin, with full power of lungs. It was enough to bring even H.M. to an abrupt stop. And Martin, torn between two feelings, could only sputter mentally.

  "Did you," he shouted down the hall, "put a damn great Ghost-Train under Lady Brayle's bedroom?"

  This question, whatever else may be said about it was at least arresting. It roused attention and curiosity. After short silence, there was movement.

  Ricky Fleet in white flannels and white shirt with tears of emotion in his eyes after what had been a long narration by H.M. raced and skidded along the hardwood floor. He was