The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  Stannard lifted his shoulders in negation. "Somebody asked him what he'd seen up there at the window. And it was, 'The face of somebody I’d never met. The face of a total stranger. Looking down like God.' "Looking down like God.

  "Cor! There's your boy-murderer's conscience, leaping out of him and speaking through the mouth of a grown man. That's what he remembered best! That's what he thought all those years ago! And," H.M. looked at Stannard, "he rounded on you pretty savagely."

  "I noticed," Stannard pursed his lips, "he was nervous and truculent while you were questioning me. He would have been a difficult witness to handle.. And all, you say, because of this repressed—?"

  "Ho-ho!" rumbled H.M. "Not so's you could notice it It was because you said at least one thing that could help to denounce him."

  "I did?" Stannard asked in surprise.

  "You were in the study when you heard Fleet shout and fall on the flagstones? Right! You then went to the window and stood there looking down? Right!

  "But you further said you stood there five minutes before the governess and the boy came round the edge of the house to j the terrace. In Ricky Fleet's story of it which he gave me I almost immediately afterwards when we climbed up to the roof, he said he and Miss Upton were just startin' from the back to the front of the house when they heard the shout.

  What sort of frozen-snail-with-lumbago takes five minutes to walk from back to front? "His memory might be bad? Sure! Your memory too? Of course! But there was a certain way of checking it Across the way, at the pub, there were six witnesses on the roof though

  only two on the gables. All agreed in their first testimony." H.M picked up the blue folder, and stabbed at it with his dead cigar.

  "After Fleet's body struck the terrace, Dr. Pierre Laurier ran out of the house. The local policeman walked up the path to the terrace, picked up the field-glasses from the grass, and went in: presumably to phone the police-station. Dr. Laurier called to Lady (the Dowager Lady) Brayle, who brought a cloth out of the house. Dr. Laurier put the cloth over Fleet's head and shoulders. Cicely Fleet then came out and started to faint but they talked to her 'a while,'—I'm quoting, so note the 'a while,'—and she went in.”

  "Then, and only then, did the governess and the boy come round the side of the house. Lord love a duck! For the precedin’ events, you could easily allow five minutes.

  "But did the boy and the governess say the things, twenty years ago when it was fresh in mind, as Ricky Fleet said to me as well as to Jenny and Martin Drake? Including, for instance, that fancy touch about hearin' Dr. Laurier say, 'Get the tablecloth out of the hall?' So I asked Masters to check over their statements made to the local police.

  "And they had said the same things. Therefore they were both tellin' a pack of lies. Q.E.D."

  Again HM. threw back the blue folder among the other papers.

  "But there was another great big lie," he went an, screwing up his face hideously, "that the old man had to see through before the solution was so blazin' obvious. That lie has caused half the mystery in this case. It had to do with how Fleet was murdered.

  "When I went up to have a look at that roof-top for the first time, I was stumped and flummoxed. I couldn't think of anything but colour. I talked more about colour than an interior decorator. Because I'd got my mind fixed on that pink flash.

  "So I went to the front of the roof. And then this here venerable scalp did start to stir a bit with wheels workin' inside. I hadn't quite visualized the surroundings. Arthur Puckston had been over on that north gable, in a position to look at Fleet sideways — well sideways.

  "It went like this: Puckston probably wrote the anonymous postcards; only a postcard mentioned the pink flash; Puckston had told lies in his statement to the police; Puckston looked sideways…

  "The pink flash must have been that lurid-glowin' sky on something white or whitish. It must have moved, pretty sharply, or there wouldn't have been any flash. It couldn't have been up in the air, or Frew would have seen it But — stop a bit! — Puckston could see what Frew couldn't see: he could see behind Fleet and a part of the roof-floor. Down on the floor

  "Now think! That look of intense pain or weakness, or both, which strikes the victim all of a sudden and holds him there for a second…"

  "A sword!" interposed Stannard.

  "Nol" said H.M. sharply. "That's the one thing it couldn't have been, in spite of the tinge of steel in ail this case. Because. why?

  "Because a sword or sharp blade would have meant blood. Because that's, the one thing mat couldn't be concealed. Remember, Fleet's body was lying smack in front of a number of witnesses. Lemme quote again; and I've been over it so much I can. quote from memory."

  H.M. closed his eyes.

  Bert (the policeman) 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…

  H.M. sat up.

  "Even if old Dr. Pierre Laurier had been up to hanky-panky, he couldn't have concealed any blood below the shoulders.

  "Then bang! On Sunday night this feller-" H.M. pointed to Martin—"came weaving his way downstairs after a fall off that roof, and he tells me I ought to see 'young' Dr. Laurier if I wanted information about swordsmanship in remembering (hem!) my reincarnation. He mentioned a cut called the 'Low-high.'

  "Now upstairs I'd got a book called The Cavaliers, which I'd been readin’. As I distinctly told Masters at the pub on Saturday, it was a book on swordsmanship. The 'Low-high' was a cut by which the trickster dropped down and cut viciously across the backs of both his opponent's legs just above the ankle.-And the only way anybody could have attacked George Fleet would have been round his feet or ankles under that six-inch parapet

  "A sword wasn't used. But at the same moment I remembered what else was hangin' on the wall of the study upstairs. You," he glared at Martin, "must have seen for yourself. And I remembered Dr. Laurier in the rocking-chair."

  H.M. drew a deep breath.

  "Y'see, this wasn't intended to be an impossible crime. Only one big whitewashed lie made it so. A twelve-year-old young 'un had been beaten too much by a father he hated. He was goin' to stalk his father just like a red Indian. Only he was goin' to kill him.

  "He knew (he said so) his father was goin' up to that roof to watch the hunt when it came near. George Fleet always did. How did the twelve-year-old get up there? By a door, leadin' to the back garden, and a staircase going straight up there. Could he stalk the old devil, in all the excitement of the hunt without his father seein' him?

  "Easy! And why? Because of field-glasses. "Y’know, Masters kept goin' on at me and raving when I insisted there was only one thing I wanted to know: were they good field-glasses, nothing wrong or wonky about them?”

  That would have been my question no matter how Fleet had been killed. Lord love a duck! Suppose you or I look through a pair of field-glasses, and the vision don't seem to come into focus when we fiddle with the wheel?

  "Well, we get mad; we get a vague sort of idea there's something wrong with the scenery and turn 'em somewhere else. We look round. We take the glasses away from our eyes and examine 'em all ways. But, if they're good, we don't notice what's goin' on around us.

  "Fleet didn't. That twelve-year-old maniac — with a certain boy's weapon you'll guess — crawled belly-flat like a red Indian under the ledge of the north wall, and then under the ledge of the east wall towards where his father was standing. Remember: not a soul looked round until shortly before Fleet fell. Once the boy was under that front ledge on the east side, nobody could see him; not even Puckston. I think Masters may have told a couple of you that people won't believe how small a space can hide a full-grown adult, let alone a small boy.

  "I'd dismissed that possibility at first, because I kept thinkin' of somebody startin' a tussle with the legs or ankles of a powerful man like Fleet. And Masters never dreamed of a kid. But also remember: Ricky Fleet, as he'd told Stannard in the condemned
cell at Pentecost, wasn't what you might call ordinary in another way. He could put-the-weight a distance of twenty seven feet three inches when he was eleven. A lot of grown men couldn't do that

  "On he goes, just as crazy-excited as we've seen him on other occasions, with the music of the hunt to encourage him. The hounds were after the fox; he was after the wolf. He's carrying something out of the realm of sport but a nasty heavy weapon if you remember it's…"

  "A cricket-bat!" Jenny whispered. "He told us they'd given him a new cricket-bat that week!"

  "And when it's new," said H.M., "it's the whitest of white ash. Don't see it as an ordinary cricket-bat: see the heavy broadness taperin' on each side to the very-narrow-rounded edge that's like the edge of a wooden blade.

  "One hand, lyin' flat with his left arm under him, was all Ricky Fleet needed. It was the narrow blade of the bat. Out and back it went: flash! open and shut! It smashed across the back of Fleet's legs just above the ankle, the most painful of all places. It fractured the bone in both legs without drawin' a drop of blood. Fleet jerked in horrible pain; he couldn't stand straight, and—

  "That's all. After the first thirty seconds or so, no witness (see testimony!) was studyin' that roof. They all looked down at the terrace, while the boy crawled back by way of the north ledge. But I'm bettin' he never thought anybody could see him at any time, except maybe God.

  "You," H.M. said to Martin. "Burn it, you must have seen the row of cricket bats in Fleet's study! On Sunday night I remembered 'em; I remembered the 'Low-high' cut; I wanted to look it up in my book. And I remembered something else too: Or. Laurier, old Dr. Laurier, rocking back and forth before the skeleton-clock mutterin', ‘Would a man of honour have done it?'

  "Done what? We know that after Fleet fell Dr. Laurier (quote) 'made as if he was examining all over Sir George.' He ordered the constable to take the head, in spite of an argument, and he took the legs. He was the old family friend, the one who cherished Aunt Cicely, and he knew all about the boy's psychopathic traits. He saw in a second this wasn't accident. Finally, remember, he was the police-surgeon,

  "The awful creepin' danger was that the coppers, especially Scotland Yard, would tumble to the fracture at the back of both legs, when Fleet fell in a way where that couldn't have happened. Then the gaff would be blown.

  "At the post-mortem there wasn't much danger — everybody's concentrated on the stomach-contents, as usual — of too-close investigation. Laurier had sworn (which was the lie I told you about) there hadn't been other injuries to the body. But Aunt Cicely intervened, weepin' and pleadin'. And at her insistence old Laurier… amputated just above both ankles before burial.

  "It was a fat-headed thing to do; but our Cicely pleaded they couldn't prove anything against her boy, which was true, if that was done. Also (here I'm on ground I don't know) there had to be hanky-panky with the undertaker.

  "I won't go into grisly details," growled H.M., "about how Laurier removed flesh and sinew from what was left It was only long afterwards, when age wore on him and he got a bit senile, that he built the skeleton-clock for his parlour, where everybody could see but nobody knew, as his penance. Anybody here examined that clock?"

  "Yes. I have," said Martin out of a thick throat

  "Did you look inside? Look close?"

  "There was some kind of platform round the ankles and feet, apparently to keep the skeleton upright…"

  "Dr. Laurier took his old anatomical-specimen skeleton," said H.M., "He removed what had to be removed, and he attached — what had to be attached. It was a skillful job of fittin'. But any medical man could have seen at a glance that the ankle-bones and feet of a big man don't belong to the skeleton of a small man. Unless there's a wooden platform built up round 'em which gives you only a glimpse of the feet and curves round the ankles. You cant probe the truth about that skeleton until you take it out of the clock. And I hadn't time before Sophie stole it

  "So y'see, as regards that nasty business of murder on the roof, there was only a twelve-year crawlin' back unseen, and out to his governess now screamin' what he'd done and how he'd got to be protected. That's why they took five minutes to get round. Nobody'd notice if Ricky Fleet was scared. Nobody'd notice him anyway. But it must 'a' made him nearly faint when he thought he saw God lookin' down from his father's study window.

  "You," and H.M. pointed to Stannard, "said something else to the grown-up Ricky Fleet that shook his nerve too. You called him a 'grubby little boy.' It was twistin' and wrigglin' in his mind just later when I asked him about his father and Ricky Fleet blurted out: 'He never minded how filthy dirty you got' He was thinkin' about how almighty dirty he got when he crawled along that concrete roof to kill his father."

  There was a long silence. H.M. picked up his whisky-and-soda, and drained the glass with a volcanic gurgle. Then he set it down.

  "There's not much more to tell except what you know already," he went on. "That expedition to the prison on Saturday night…"

  "Where," Ruth said, "Ricky later killed Enid Puckston. H.M., why?"

  "Listen, my wench. Young Fleet said himself it was an 'expression.' An outlet. Did you ever see a golfer smash a golf-club against a tree? Or a woman throw a whole breakfast-tray in somebody's face? Well, that's normal; he wasn't.”

  "Burn it Ricky Fleet had been hurt His girl preferred somebody else to him. His vanity was scratched raw. There was young Drake, the cause of it all. He wouldn't dare face Drake without a weapon, anymore than he'd have dared face his father. (That was still lurkin' got it?) But he had to hurt, had to inflict pain on a helpless person, before he killed Drake.

  "No, It's not pretty. I warned you long ago it wasn't.”

  "He prepared it all beforehand. Do you recall, when you were all sitting in that dark back garden just before you started t for the prison, how he kept rushin’ back to the house — apparently to see how his mother was?'' "Yes," said Martin. "Very well"

  "The last time, just before you left, he made his preparations. On this occasion he was goin' to give you a good grownup sophisticated alibi He had the dagger and its sheath. He cut his own arm, got plenty of blood for the dagger; and the sheath would hold it without staining him, except for smears on the handle, if he wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket Just as you later did when you shoved it in Dr. Laurier's pocket

  "You went to the prison. Who deliberately called your attention to that pile of rapiers and daggers in the condemned cell? He did. You didn't find the dagger, as he'd hoped when he shoved it in there under cover of so much darkness. But back he went with Drake after the fencin' match—"

  "By the way," demanded Martin, "was 'young' Dr. Laurier concerned in this?"

  "Not in the least son. He's only a bit of a snob, that's all. His most valued patient is Sophie there, and when he had tea with her on Saturday she must have dropped a hint that 'Captain' Drake was endangerin’ Jenny's marriage. Hence the faintly sinister hints in the bar-parlour when he first met you."

  "But to get back to—?"

  "Sure, if you'll stop interrupting. Ricky Fleet when you and he went back to get corks, smackin' well made sure you'd find the dagger. He helped tumble over some swords and put his light straight on it. As to how the weapons got there, it's clear he'd been using the prison for some time…"

  "Using it? He told me," said Martin, "he'd often wanted to explore the place, but he couldn't get in."

  "Oh, my son!" H.M. said dismally. "Anybody could get in there. You don't have to be a locksmith to understand that. You just have to go and take a dekko at the main gates. The bigger the lock, the simpler it is. And the easier it is to get a wax impression, if anybody wants to.

  "Son, there were too many doors with oiled hinges inside that place, as our friend Stannard pointed out. Even if Stannard himself had been up to some kind of funny business—"

  Here the barrister chuckled.

  "— why in the name of Esau should he have oiled the hinges of those high front gates? Admittedly all
your party were goln’ there. No; it was somebody who wanted no betraying gate-creaks when he slipped in.

  "Ricky Fleet had been usin' the prison for his amorous adventures, Pan-pipes and nature-worship, which weren't of a sadistic kind. Masters has discovered he got back the rapier-dagger collection from the ghost-village…

  "Ghost-village? You saw it Built beyond the prison. The Governor's house was there. George Fleet gave that collection to Major Colwell, and Major Colwell left it behind when everybody decamped. So Ricky Fleet had a second dagger, very like the first, when he led Enid Puckston toward the prison to kill her."

  Martin cleared his throat "H.M. Was she one of Ricky's —?"

  H.M.'s expression was heavy and bitter.

  "No, son. That's the real irony of this case. She liked and admired him an awful lot, as I could tell when I heard her mention him at the pub. That's all it amounted to. But— haven't you wondered why Puckston sent those anonymous postcards in the first place?"

  "You mean she wasn't one of Ricky's conquests, but—?"

  "Her father thought she might be," replied H.M.

  He was silent for a moment, glowering.

  "Mind you, Puckston didn't know the boy Richard Fleet had done that murder years ago. He'd seen what he knew was the light on a cricket-bat He guessed nobody but a kid could have crawled under that ledge unseen. He had no proof and anyway he didn't want trouble. But if Enid had fallen for this bloke years later—! So he sent the postcards, with her help but without her knowin'; and then he thinks she's been killed, by the same boy grown up, because she knows too much! Do you wonder at Puckston's state of mind on Sunday night?"

  "No," Martin answered. "No. I don't wonder."

  "Anyway, Ricky Fleet took that gal to the prison, to see a 'ghost-hunt', at goin' on for one in the morning. He butchered her with all the hate in him. He left the body under the gallows-trap, as a rare sight for somebody if the trap was opened. Masters has told you that story, including the reversed alibi. Finally, Fleet slipped out again without a whisper to catch Masters's ear.