The Case of the Constant Suicides

by John Dickson Carr

  Alistair Duncan’s face was whiter yet.

  “And that’s the sum of your evidence?” the lawyer demanded.

  “Oh, no,” said Dr Fell. “That’s the least of it.”

  Wrinkling up his nose, he contemplated a corner of the ceiling.

  “We now come to the problem of Forbes’s murder,” he went on, “and how the murderer managed to leave behind him a room locked up on the inside. Mr Duncan, do you know anything about geometry?”

  “Geometry?”

  “I hasten to say,” explained Dr Fell, “that I know little of what I was once compelled to learn, and wish to know less. It belongs to the limbo of schooldays, along with algebra and economics and other dismal things. Beyond being unable to forget that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides, I have happily been able to rid my mind of this gibberish.

  “At the same time it might be of value (for once in its life) if you were to think of Forbes’s cottage in its geometrical shape.” He took a pencil from his pocket and drew a design in the air with it. “The cottage is a square, twelve feet by twelve feet. Imagine, in the middle of the wall facing you, the door. Imagine, in the middle of the wall to your right, the window.

  “I stood in that cottage yesterday; and I racked my brains over that infernal, tantalizing window.

  “Why had it been necessary to take down the blackout? It could not have been, as I indicated to you some minutes ago, because the murderer had in some way managed to get his corporeal body through the grated window. This, as the geometricians are so fond of saying (rather ill-manneredly, it always seemed to me) was absurd.

  “The only other explanation was that the window had to be used in some way. I had examined the steel-wire grating closely, if you remember?” Dr Fell turned to Alan.

  “I remember.”

  “In order to test its solidity, I put my finger through one of the openings in the mesh and shook it. Still no glimmer of intelligence penetrated the thick fog of wool and mist which beclouded me. I remained bogged and sunk until you” – here he turned to Kathryn – “passed on a piece of information which even to a dullard like myself gave a prod and a hint.”

  “I did?” cried Kathryn.

  “Yes. You said the proprietress of the Glencoe Hotel told you Forbes often came out there to fish.”

  Dr Fell spread out his hands. His thunderous voice was apologetic.

  “Of course, all the evidences were there. The hut, so to speak, reeked of fishiness. Forbes’s angler’s creel was there. His flies were there. His gum boots were there. Yet it was only then, only then, when the fact occurred to me that in all that cottage I had seen no sign of a fishing-rod.

  “No rod, for instance, such as this.”

  Impelling himself to his feet with the aid of his stick, Dr Fell reached round to the back of the sofa. He produced a large suitcase, and opened it.

  Inside lay, piecemeal, the disjointed sections of a fishing rod, black metal with a nickel-and-cork grip into which were cut the initials, ‘A.M.F.’ But no line was wound round the reel. Instead, to the metal eyelet on what would have been the end or tip of the joined rod had been fastened tightly with wire a small fishing hook.

  “A neat instrument,” explained Dr Fell.

  “The murderer strangled Forbes, catching him from behind. He then strung Forbes up with those artistic indications of suicide. He turned out the lamp and poured away the remaining oil so that it should seem to have burned itself out. He took down the blackout.

  “Then the murderer, carrying this fishing rod, walked out of the hut by the door. He closed the door, leaving the knob of the bolt turned uppermost.

  “He went round to the window. Pushing the rod through the mesh of the grating – there was plenty of room for it, since I myself could easily get my forefinger through those meshes – he stretched out the rod in a diagonal line, from the window to the door.

  “With this hook fastened to the tip of the rod, he caught the knob of the bolt, and pulled toward him. It was a bright, new bolt (remember?) so that it would shine by (remember?) the moonlight, and he could easily see it. Thus, with the greatest ease and simplicity, he pulled the bolt toward him and fastened the door.”

  Dr Fell put the suitcase carefully down on the sofa.

  “Of course he had to take the blackout down from the window, and, you see, could not now replace it. Also, it was vitally necessary to take the rod away with him. The handle and reel wouldn’t go through the window in any case; and, if he were to pitch the other parts in, his game would be given away to the first spectator who arrived and saw them.

  “He then left the premises. He was seen and identified, on getting into his car –”

  Chapman let out a strangled cry.

  “– by the same Home Guard who had first been curious about that car. On the way back he took the rod apart and threw away its pieces at intervals into the bracken. It seemed too much to hope for a recovery of the rod; but, at the request of Inspector Donaldson, of the Argyllshire County Constabulary, a search was made by the local unit of the Home Guard.”

  Dr Fell looked at Chapman.

  “They’re covered with your fingerprints, those pieces,” he said, “as you probably remember. When I visited you at your hotel in the middle of the night, with the purpose of getting your prints on a cigarette-case, you were at the same time identified as the man seen driving away from Forbes’s cottage just after the time of the murder. Do you know what’ll happen to you, my friend? You’ll hang.”

  Walter Chapman Campbell stood with his fingers still twisting his necktie. His expression was like that of a small boy caught in the jam-cupboard.

  His fingers moved up, and touched his neck, and he flinched. In that hot room the perspiration was moving down his cheeks after the fashion of side-whiskers.

  “You’re bluffing,” he said, first clearing his throat for a voice that would not be steady. “It’s not true, any of it, and you’re bluffing!”

  “You know I’m not bluffing. Your crime, I admit, was worthy of the son of the cleverest member of this family. With Angus and Colin dead, and Forbes blamed for it, you could go back quietly to Port Elizabeth. Your father is very ill and infirm. He would not last long as heir to nearly eighteen thousand pounds. You could then claim it without ever coming to England or Scotland at all, or being seen by anyone.

  “But you won’t claim it now, my lad. Do you think you’ve got a dog’s chance of escaping the rope?”

  Walter Chapman Campbell’s hands went to his face.

  “I didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “My God, I didn’t mean any harm!” His voice broke. “You’re not going to give me up to the police, are you?”

  “No,” said Dr Fell calmly. “Not if you sign the document I propose to dictate to you.”

  The other’s hands flew away from his face, and he stared with foggy hope. Alistair Duncan intervened.

  “What, sir, is the meaning of this?” he asked harshly.

  Dr Fell rapped his open hand on the arm of the sofa.

  “The meaning and purpose of this,” he returned, “is to let Elspat Campbell live out her years and die happily without the conviction that Angus’s soul is burning in hell. The purpose is to provide for Elspat and Colin to the end of their lives as Angus wanted them provided for. That is all.

  “You will copy out this document” – Dr Fell took several sheets of paper from his pocket – “or else write, at my dictation, the following confession. You will say that you deliberately murdered Angus Campbell . . .”

  “What?”

  “That you tried to murder Colin, and that you murdered Alec Forbes. That, with the evidence I shall present, will satisfy the insurance companies and the money will be paid. No, I know you didn’t kill Angus! But you’re going to say you did; and you have every motive for having done so.

  “I can’t cover you up, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want or mean to. But this much I can do. I can withhold that
confession from the police for forty-eight hours, in time for you to make a getaway. Ordinarily you would have to get an exit-permit to leave the country. But you’re close to Clydeside; and I think you could find an obliging skipper to take you aboard an outgoing ship. If you do that, rest assured that in these evil days they won’t bring you back.

  “Do that, and I’ll give you the leeway. Refuse to do it, and my evidence goes to the police within the next half-hour. What do you say?”

  The other stared back.

  Terror, befuddlement, and uncertainty merged into suspicious skepticism.

  “I don’t believe you!” shrilled Chapman. “How do I know you wouldn’t take the confession and hand me over to the police straightaway?”

  “Because, if I were foolish enough to do that, you could upset the whole apple-cart by telling the truth about Angus’s death. You could deprive those two of the money and tell Elspat exactly what her cherished Angus actually did. You could prevent me from achieving the very thing I’m trying to achieve. If you depend on me, remember that I depend on you.”

  Again Chapman fingered his necktie. Dr Fell took out a large gold watch and consulted it.

  “This,” Alistair Duncan said out of a dry throat, “is the most completely illegal, fraudulent –”

  “That’s it,” stormed Chapman. “You wouldn’t dare let me get away, anyway! It’s a trick! If you have that evidence and held up the confession, they’d have you as accessory after the fact!”

  “I think not,” said Dr Fell politely. “If you consult Mr Duncan there, he will inform you that in Scots law there is no such thing as an accessory after the fact.”

  Duncan opened his mouth, and shut it again.

  “Rest assured,” pursued Dr Fell, “that every aspect of my fraudulent villainy has been considered. I further propose that the real truth shall be known to us in this room, and to nobody else. That here and now we swear an oath of secrecy which shall last to the end of our days. Is that acceptable to everyone?”

  “It is to me!” cried Kathryn.

  “And to me,” agreed Alan.

  Duncan was standing in the middle of the room, waving his hands. If, thought Alan, you could imagine any such thing as a sputtering which was not funny, not even ludicrous, but only anguished and almost deathlike, that was his expression.

  “I ask you,” he said, “I ask you, sir, before it is too late, to stop and consider what you propose! It goes beyond all bounds! Can I, as a reputable professional man, sanction or even listen to this?”

  Dr Fell remained unimpressed.

  “I hope so,” he answered calmly. “Because it is precisely what I mean to carry out. I hope you, of all people, Mr Duncan, won’t upset the apple-cart you have pushed for so long and kept steady with such evident pain. Can’t you, as a Scotsman, be persuaded to be sensible? Must you learn practicality from an Englishman?”

  Duncan moaned in his throat.

  “Then,” said Dr Fell, “I take it that you have given up these romantic ideas of legal justice, and will row in the same boat with us. The question of life or death now lies entirely with Mr Walter Chapman Campbell. I am not going on with this offer all day, my friend. Well, what do you say? Will you confess to two murders, and get away? Or will you deny both, and hang for one?”

  The other shut his eyes, and opened them again.

  He looked round the room as though he were seeing it for the first time. He looked out of the windows at the shimmering waters of the loch; at all the domain which was slipping away from him; but at a house cleansed and at peace.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  The 9:15 train from Glasgow to Euston slid into Euston only four hours late, on a golden sunshiny morning which dimmed even the cavernous grime of the station.

  The train settled in and stopped amid a sigh of steam. Doors banged. A porter, thrusting his head into a first-class sleeping compartment, was depressed by the sight of two of the most prim, respectable (and probably low-tipping) stuffed-shirts he had ever beheld.

  One was a young lady, stern of mouth and lofty of expression, who wore shell-rimmed spectacles severely. The other was a professional-looking man with an even more lofty expression.

  “Porter, ma’am? Porter, sir?”

  The young lady broke off to eye him.

  “If you please,” she said. “It will surely be evident to you, Dr Campbell, that the Earl of Danby’s memorandum, addressed to the French king and endorsed, ‘I approve of this; C.R.’ by the king himself, can have been inspired by no such patriotic considerations as your unfortunate Tory interpretation suggests.”

  “This ’ere shotgun don’t belong to you, ma’am, does it? Or to you, sir?”

  The gentleman eyed him vaguely.

  “Er – yes,” he said. “We are removing the evidence out of range of the ballistics authorities.”

  “Sir?”

  But the gentleman was not listening.

  “If you will cast your mind back, madam, to the speech made by Danby in the Commons in December, 1689, I feel that certain considerations of reason contained therein must penetrate even the cloud of prejudice with which you appear to have surrounded yourself. For example . . .”

  Laden with the luggage, the porter trudged dispiritedly along the platform after them. Floreat scientia! The wheel had swung round again.