The Case of the Constant Suicides

by John Dickson Carr

Now the earthen floor under him felt icy. A very faint mist had crept in from the loch. The arch leading to the tower stairs, a gloomy hole, repelled and somewhat unnerved him. Though he started to take the stairs at a run, both the dangerous footing and the exertion of the climb forced him to slow down.

  First floor. Second floor, more of a pull. Third floor, and he was breathing hard. Fourth floor, and the distance up seemed endless. The little pencil of light intensified the coldness and close claustrophobia brought on by that enclosed space. It would not be pleasant to meet suddenly, on the stairs, a man in Highland costume with half his face shot away.

  Or have the thing come out of one of the tower rooms, for instance, and touch him on the shoulder from behind.

  You could not get away from anything that chose to pursue you here.

  Alan reached the airless, windowless landing on which was the door to the topmost room. The oak door, its wood rather rotted by damp, was closed. Alan tried the knob, and found that it was locked and bolted on the inside.

  He lifted his fist and pounded heavily on the door.

  “Colin!” he shouted. “Colin!”

  There was no reply.

  The thunder of the knocking, the noise of his own voice, rebounded with infernal and intolerable racket in that confined space. He felt it must wake everybody in the house; everybody in Inveraray, for that matter. But he continued to knock and shout, still with no reply.

  He set his shoulder to the door, and pushed. He got down on his knees and tried to peer under the sill of the door, but he could see nothing except an edge of moonlight.

  As he got to his feet again, feeling light-headed after that exertion, the suspicion which had already struck him grew and grew with ugly effect. Colin might be only heavily asleep, of course, after all that whisky. On the other hand –

  Alan turned round, and plunged down the treacherous stairs. The breath in his lungs felt like a rasping saw, and several times he had to pull up. He had even forgotten the Highlander. It seemed half an hour, and was actually two or three minutes, before he again reached the bottom of the stairs

  The double doors leading out into the court were closed, but the padlock was not caught. Alan threw them open – creaking, quivering frames of wood which bent like bow shafts as they scraped the flagstones.

  He ran out into the court, and circled round the tower to the side facing the loch. There he stopped short. He knew what he would find, and he found it.

  The sickening plunge had been taken again.

  Colin Campbell – or a bundle of red-and-white striped pyjamas which might once have been Colin – lay face downwards on the flagstones. Sixty feet above his head the leaves of the window stood open, and glinted by the light of the waning moon. A thin white mist, which seemed to hang above the water rather than rise from it, had made beads of dew settle on Colin’s shaggy hair.

  13

  Dawn – warm gold and white kindling from smoky purple, yet of a soap-bubble luminousness which tinged the whole sky – dawn was clothing the valley when Alan again climbed the tower stairs. You could almost taste the early autumn air.

  But Alan was in no mood to enjoy it.

  He carried a chisel, an auger, and a saw. Behind him strode a nervous, wiry-looking Swan in a now-dry gray suit which had once been fashionable but which at present resembled sackcloth.

  “But are you sure you want to go in there?” insisted Swan. “I’m not keen on it myself.”

  “Why not?” said Alan. “It’s daylight. The Occupant of the box can’t hurt us now.”

  “What occupant?”

  Alan did not reply. He thought of saying that Dr Fell now knew the truth, though he had not divulged it yet; and that Dr Fell said there was no danger. But he decided such matters were best kept from the papers as yet.

  “Hold the torch,” he requested. “I can’t see why they didn’t put a window on this landing. Colin repaired this door yesterday afternoon, you remember. We’re now going to arrange matters so that it can’t be repaired again in a hurry.”

  While Swan held the light, he set to work. It was slow work, boring a line of holes touching each other in a square round the lock, and Alan’s hands were clumsy on the auger.

  When he had finished them, and splintered the result with a chisel, he got purchase for the saw and slowly sawed along the line of the holes.

  “Colin Campbell,” observed Swan, suddenly and tensely, “was a good guy. A real good guy.”

  “What do you mean, ‘was’?”

  “Now that he’s dead –”

  “But he’s not dead.”

  There was an appreciable silence.

  “Not dead?”

  The saw rasped and bumped. All the violence of Alan’s relief, all the sick reaction after what he had seen, went into his attack on the door. He hoped Swan would shut up. He had liked Colin Campbell immensely, too much to want to hear any sickly sentimentalities.

  “Colin,” he went on, without looking round to see Swan’s expression, “has got two broken legs and a broken hipbone. And, for a man of his age, that’s no joke. Also, there’s something else Dr Grant is very much excited about. But he’s not dead and he’s unlikely to die.”

  “A fall like that –?”

  “It happens sometimes. You’ve probably heard of people falling from heights greater than that and sometimes not even being hurt at all. And if they’re tight, as Colin was, that helps too.”

  “Yet he deliberately jumped from the window?”

  “Yes.”

  In a fine powdering of sawdust, the last tendon of wood fell free. Alan pushed the square panel inwards, and it fell on the floor. He reached through, finding the key still securely turned and the rusty bolt shot home immovably in its socket. He turned the key, pulled back the bolt; and, not without a qualm of apprehension, opened the door.

  In the clear, fresh light of dawn, the room appeared tousled and faintly sinister. Colin’s clothes, as he had untidily undressed, lay flung over the chairs and over the floor. His watch ticked on the chest of drawers. The bed had been slept in; its clothes were now flung back, and the pillows punched into a heap which still held the impression of a head.

  The wide-open leaves of the window creaked gently as an air touched them.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Swan, putting his head round the edge of the door and at last deciding to come in.

  “What Dr Fell asked me to do.”

  Though he spoke easily enough, he had to get a grip on himself before he knelt down and felt under the bed. He drew out the leather dog carrier which had contained the Occupant.

  “You’re not going to fool around with this thing?” asked Swan.

  “Dr Fell said to open it. He said there wouldn’t be any fingerprints, so not to bother about them.”

  “You’re taking a lot for granted on that old boy’s word. But if you know what you’re doing – open it.”

  This part was the hardest. Alan flicked back the catches with his thumbs, and lifted the lid.

  As he had expected, the box was empty. Yet his imagination could have pictured, and was picturing, all sorts of unpleasant things he might have seen.

  “What did the old boy tell you to do?” inquired Swan.

  “Just open it, and make sure it was empty.”

  “But what could have been in it?” roared Swan. “I tell you, I’m going nuts trying to figure this thing out! I –” Swan paused. His eyes widened, and then narrowed. He extended a finger to point to the roll-top desk.

  On the edge of the desk, half-hidden by papers but in a place where it certainly had not been the day before, lay a small leather book of pocket size, on whose cover was stamped, in gilt letters, Diary, 1940.

  “That wouldn’t be what you’ve been looking for, would it?”

  Both of them made a dart for the diary, but Alan got there first.

  The name Angus Campbell was written on the fly-leaf in a small but stiff and schoolboyish kind of hand which made Alan suspect arth
ritis in the fingers. Angus had carefully filled out the chart for all the miscellaneous information, such as the size of his collar and the size of his shoes (why the makers of these diaries think we are likely to forget the size of our collars remains a mystery); and after “motorcar license number” he had written “none.”

  But Alan did not bother with this. The diary was full of entries all crammed together and crammed downhill. The last entry was made on the night of Angus’s death, Saturday the twenty-fourth of August. Alan Campbell became conscious of tightened throat muscles, and a heavy thumping in his chest, as his eye encountered the item.

  Saturday. Check cleared by bank. OK. Elspat poorly again. Memo: syrup of figs. Wrote to Colin. A. Forbes here tonight. Claims I cheated him. Ha ha ha. Said not to come back. He said he wouldn’t, wasn’t necessary. Funny musty smell in room tonight. Memo: write to War Office about tractor. Use for army. Do this tomorrow.

  Then there was the blank which indicated the end of the writer’s span of life.

  Alan flicked back over the pages. He did not read any more, though he noticed that at one point a whole leaf had been torn out. He was thinking of the short, heavy, bulbous-nosed old man with the white hair, writing these words while something waited for him.

  “H’m,” said Swan. “That isn’t much help, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” said Swan, “if you’ve seen what you came to see, or rather what you didn’t see, let’s get downstairs again, shall we? There may be nothing wrong with this place, but it gives me the willies.”

  Slipping the diary into his pocket, Alan gathered up the tools and followed. In the sitting-room downstairs they found Dr Fell, fully dressed in an old black alpaca suit and string tie. Alan noticed with surprise that his box-pleated cape and shovel-hat lay across the sofa, whereas last night they had hung in the hall.

  But Dr Fell appeared to be violently interested in a very bad landscape hung above the piano. He turned round a guileless face at their entrance, and addressed Swan.

  “I say. Would you mind nipping up to – harrumph – what we’ll call the sick-room, and finding out how the patient is? Don’t let Dr Grant bully you. I want to find out whether Colin’s conscious yet, and whether he’s said anything.”

  “So do I,” agreed Swan with some vehemence, and was off with such celerity as to make the pictures rattle.

  Dr Fell hastily picked up his box-pleated cape, swung it round his shoulders with evident effort, and fastened the little chain at the neck.

  “Get your hat, my lad,” he said. “We’re off on a little expedition. The presence of the press is no doubt stimulating, but there are times when it is definitely an encumbrance. We may be able to speak out without our friend Swan seeing us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Glencoe.”

  Alan stared at him.

  “Glencoe! At seven o’clock in the morning?”

  “I regret,” sighed Dr Fell, sniffing the odor of frying bacon and eggs which had begun to seep through the house, “that we shall not be able to wait for breakfast. But better miss breakfast than spoil the whole broth.”

  “Yes, but how in blazes are we going to get to Glencoe at this hour?”

  “I’ve phoned through to Inveraray for a car. They haven’t your slothful habits in this part of the country, my lad. Do you remember Duncan telling us yesterday that Alec Forbes had been found, or they thought he had been found, at a cottage near Glencoe?”

  “Yes?”

  Dr Fell made a face and flourished his crutch-handled stick.

  “It may not be true. And we may not even be able to find the cottage: though I got a description of its location from Duncan, and habitations out there are few and far between. But, by thunder, we’ve got to take the chance! If I’m to be any good to Colin Campbell at all, I’ve GOT to reach Alec Forbes before anybody else – even the police – can get to him. Get your hat.”

  Kathryn Campbell, pulling on her tweed jacket, moved swiftly into the room.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “You don’t go without me,” Kathryn informed them. “I heard you ringing up for that car. Aunt Elspat is bossy enough anywhere, but Aunt Elspat in a sick-room is simply bossy past all endurance. Eee!” She clenched her hands. “There’s nothing more I can do anyhow. Please let me come!”

  Dr Fell waved a gallant assent. Tiptoeing like conspirators, they moved out to the back of the house. A brightly polished four-seater car was waiting beyond the hedge which screened Shira from the main road.

  Alan did not want a loquacious chauffeur that morning, and he did not get one. The driver was a gnarled little man, dressed like a garage mechanic, who grudgingly held open the door for them. They were past Dalmally before they discovered that he was, in fact, an English cockney.

  But Alan was too full of his latest discovery to mind the presence of a witness. He produced Angus’s diary, and handed it to Dr Fell.

  Even on an empty stomach, Dr Fell had filled and lighted his meerschaum. It was an open car, and as it climbed the mighty hill under a somewhat damp-looking sky, the breeze gave Dr Fell considerable trouble in its attentions to his hat and the tobacco smoke. But he read carefully through the diary, giving at least a glance at every page of it.

  “H’mf, yes,” he said, and scowled. “It fits. Everything fits! Your deductions, Miss Campbell, were to the point. It was Elspat who stole this.”

  “But –”

  “Look here.” He pointed to the place where a page had been torn out. “The entry before that, at the foot of the preceding page, reads, ‘Elspat says Janet G’ – whoever she may be – ‘godless and lecherous. In Elspat’s younger days –’ There it breaks off.

  “It probably went on to recount gleefully an anecdote of Elspat’s younger and less moral days. So the evidence was removed from the record. Elspat found nothing more in the diary to reflect on her. After giving it a careful reading, probably several readings to make sure, she returned the diary to a place where it could easily be found.”

  Alan was not impressed.

  “Still, what about these sensational revelations? Why get in touch with the press, as Elspat did? The last entry in the diary may be suggestive, but it certainly doesn’t tell us very much.”

  “No?”

  “Well, does it?”

  Dr Fell eyed him curiously.

  “I should say, on the contrary, that it tells us a good deal. But you hardly expected the sensational revelation (if any) to be in the last entry, did you? After all, Angus had gone happily and thoughtlessly to bed. Whatever attacked him, it attacked him after he had finished writing and put out his light. Why, therefore, should we expect anything of great interest in the last entry?”

  Alan was brought up with something of a bump.

  “That,” he admitted, “is true enough. All the same –”

  “No, my boy. The real meat of the thing is here” Dr Fell made the pages riffle like a pack of cards. “In the body of the diary. In the account of his activities for the past year.”

  He frowned at the book, and slipped it into his pocket. His expression of gargantuan distress had grown along with his fever of certainty.

  “Hang it all!” he said, and smote his hand on his knee. “The thing is inescapable! Elspat steals the diary. She reads it. Being no fool, she guesses –”

  “Guesses what?”

  “How Angus Campbell really died. She hates and distrusts the police to the very depths of her soul. So she writes to her favorite newspaper and plans to explode a bomb. And suddenly, when it is too late, she realizes with horror –”

  Again Dr Fell paused. The expression on his face smoothed itself out. He sat back with a gusty sigh against the upholstery of the tonneau, and shook his head.

  “You know, that tears it,” he added blankly. “That really does tear it.”

  “I personally,” Kathryn said through her teeth, “will be in a cond
ition to tear something if this mystification goes on.”

  Dr Fell appeared still more distressed.

  “Allow me,” he suggested, “to counter your very natural curiosity with just one more question.” He looked at Alan. “A moment ago you said that you thought the last entry in Angus’s diary was ‘suggestive.’ What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant that it certainly wasn’t a passage which could have been written by anyone who meant to kill himself.”

  Dr Fell nodded.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Then what would you say if I were to tell you that Angus Campbell really committed suicide after all?”

  14

  “I should reply,” said Kathryn, “that I felt absolutely cheated! Oh, I know I shouldn’t say that; but it’s true. You’ve got us looking so hard for a murderer that we can’t concentrate on anything else.”

  Dr Fell nodded as though he saw the aesthetic validity of the point.

  “And yet,” he went on, “for the sake of argument, I ask you to consider this explanation. I ask you to observe how it is borne out by every one of our facts.”

  He was silent for a moment, puffing at the meerschaum.

  “Let us first consider Angus Campbell. Here is a shrewd, embittered, worn-out old man with a tinkering brain and an intense love of family. He is now broke, stony broke. His great dreams will never come true. He knows it. His brother Colin, of whom he is very fond, is overwhelmed with debts. His ex-mistress Elspat, of whom he is fonder still, is penniless and will remain penniless.

  “Angus might well consider himself, in the hard-headed Northern fashion, a useless encumbrance. Good to nobody – except dead. But he is a hale old body to whom the insurance company’s doctor gives fifteen more years of life. And in the meantime how (in God’s name, how) are they to live?

  “Of course, if he were to die now . . .”

  Dr Fell made a slight gesture.

  “But, if he dies now, it must be established as certain, absolutely certain, that his death is not a suicide. And that will take a bit of doing. The sum involved is huge: thirty-five thousand pounds, distributed among intelligent insurance companies with nasty suspicious minds.