The Judas Window

by Carter Dickson

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, with visions which must have risen up before Answell. “The more you think about it the more devilish it sounds.”

  “She could, though,” said H.M. with great glee. “That’s why I like her: she’s a perfectly sincere and natural gal. A nosegay also goes to the judge. When Balmy Bodkin made that remark about this not bein’ a court of morals—burn me, I almost got up and handed him a box of cigars. Thirty years I’ve been waitin’ for a red judge to acknowledge the facts of life without comment; and I told you I had great faith in Balmy. But stop interruptin’ me, dammit! I was telling you about the trick to nobble Our Reginald.

  “Where was I? Ah, I got it. Well, it was known Reginald and Mary Hume were tied up together. It was also known he had no money at all, and that Avory Hume had squashed to earth any possibility of marriage. And then his rich cousin James gets engaged to her. And Reginald comes to see the old man—and goes berserk.

  “You see the plan Avory had? High words are overheard. Presently witnesses (unprepared witnesses) come chasin’ in. They find Reginald with his own gun in his pocket—suggestin’ violence. They find his fingerprints stamped on an arrow which has been so obviously (so blinkin’ obviously) ripped down from the wall—suggestin’ violence of a more than sane kind. They find his hair rumpled, his tie pulled out. They find Avory Hume with all the marks of a struggle on him. And what does Reginald himself say to all this, lookin’ wild and a little stupid as though he don’t know where he is? He says he’s been given a drug, and all this is a frame-up. But here’s a medical man to swear there’s been no drug taken, and the spotless decanter full of whisky on the sideboard. Short of actually showin’ the chap with straws stuck in his hair, I don’t see what more could have been arranged.

  “Well, I thought to myself, what’ll be the watchword when he’s found? It’ll be, ‘Sh-h! Hush! Keep it dark! This thing has got to be kept very quiet, known only to a few witnesses to prove it’s genuine.’ It mustn’t be known that the poor feller has lost his reason. The Commissioners in Lunacy mustn’t hear of it. Does the chap keep babblin’ something about Mary Hume, and some photographs, and a frame-up? All the more reason why such slanderous ravings mustn’t be repeated, mustn’t even be breathed by a lunatic. Why not take him to Dr. Tregannon’s nursin’-home under the charge of Spencer Hume? Even Jim Answell, when it’s necessary to break the sad news to him, will hush it up as fierce as anybody. On the eve of his own wedding, he won’t want it blared forth that a first cousin of his had to be taken away under escort.

  “Of course, the doctors in charge of the case will also take charge of his personal belongings: clothes, keys, and the like. Wherever he’s got those photographs stowed away, they’ll be found and burnt in pretty quick time.” H.M. snapped his fingers, and then sniffed. “And that’s all there is to it, my fatheads. It ain’t even very expensive. Our Reginald will remain under duress until he promises to be good—and serve him right! It’s an awful pity the scheme didn’t work. Even if he won’t promise, he can’t prove anything and he is still always suspect of a leaky steeple; and Avory Hume’s daughter is married. It’s happened many times before, y’know. It’s the respectable way of hushin’ up scandal.”

  We considered it, more detailed than it had come from the witness-box in the cold voice of Dr. Quigley.

  “Avory Hume,” I said, “was apparently a tough proposition.”

  H.M. blinked in the firelight of the old room, surprised.

  “Not particularly, son. He was simply respectable. Also, he was a realist. Someone was blackmailing him. Something had to be done about it. And so he did. You heard the father’s daughter talkin’ in court this afternoon. I don’t mind his sort. As I say, in this amusin’ little spectacle of dog-eat-dog, I’m rather sorry his scheme didn’t come off, and shove our cool Reginald into cooler clink while he reflects that there are ways and ways of gettin’ money. But I’m an old-fashioned lawyer, Ken, and a whole canine feast ain’t goin’ to let ‘em hang my client. Well, right there at the start, I had to dig up a witness who knew somethin’ about the scheme. If necessary, I was prepared to bribe Tregannon himself to spill the beans—”

  “Did you say bribe?”

  “Sure. But I got Quigley, because the Medical Council had already been after Tregannon. There was someone who actually overheard Avory and Spencer and Tregannon cookin’ up the broth: someone planted in Tregannon’s nursing-home, and waitin’ for an opportunity to expose Tregannon. That was what I meant, a while ago, by speakin’ of the cussedness which cuts the other way.”

  “But what’s the line of defense now?”

  “Ar!” said H.M., and scowled.

  “You’ve practically established that there was a plot. But will Storm throw up his brief just because of that? Is there any reason why Answell still shouldn’t be guilty?”

  “No,” said H.M. “That’s what’s got me worried.”

  He pushed back his chair, lumbered up, and took a few pigeon-toed turns up and down the room.

  “So what’s the line of defense now?”

  “The Judas window,” said H.M., peering down over his spectacles....

  “Now, now!” he went on persuasively. “Just you look at the evidence, and take it from the beginning as I did. Now that we’ve established a plot, there’ll be a whole heap of helpful suggestions in the way that plot was worked out. I’ll give you a hint. One thing in this scheme bothered me a bit. Avory and Spencer are workin’ together to nobble Reginald—very well. But, on the night of the trick, Avory manages to get everybody out of the house except the butler. The cook and the maid are out. Amelia Jordan and Dr. Hume are goin’ off to Sussex. But I said to myself, Here! Spencer can’t be going away like that. His brother needs him. Who’s goin’ to come in and cluck his tongue over the bogus loony: who’s goin’ to examine the loony: who’s goin’ to swear he took no drug, if not Dr. Hume? He was the essential part of the scheme; he was the pivot.”

  “Unless they got Tregannon.”

  “Yes; but they’d hardly have Tregannon on the premises. It would look much too fishy. And there was the answer to the other question. If Spencer himself were too conveniently hangin’ about with his stethoscope, if the whole thing flowed too smoothly, an eyebrow might be raised here and there. It was the Jordan woman, in all accident, who gave the hint away when she was burblin’ in court yesterday: I heard her testimony a month ago, and I spotted it then. Remember what she was to do? She was to pick up Spencer in the car—pick him up at the hospital—and they were to drive into the country afterwards. Do you recall that?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “Do you also recall,” said H.M., opening his eyes, “what Spencer had asked her to do for him? He’d asked her to pack a suitcase for him, and bring it along to the hospital so that he wouldn’t have to bother. And, burn me, I don’t recall a neater trick! She intended to go to Sussex; Spencer never did. The one way in this world you can be sure you won’t get what you want is to tell someone, offhand, to pack a suitcase for you. The person does his best, and shoves in what he thinks you’ll need. But something is always wrong. In this case, all Spencer needed was a pretext. She was to arrive at the hospital luggin’ the suitcase. ‘Ah,’ says Spencer affably, ‘I see you’ve packed it. Did you put in my silver-backed brushes?’ Or it may be his dressing gown, or his evenin’ studs, or anything at all: all he’s got to do is wade through the list until he finds something that’s been omitted. ‘You left that out?’ he says. ‘Good God, woman, do you think I can travel to the country without my whatever-it-is? My whatever-it-is is absolutely necessary. This is a most unfortunate nuisance’—can’t you hear Spencer sayin’ that?—’but I am afraid we shall have to go back to the house for it.’”

  H.M., patting his stomach and leering down from under lofty eyebrows, was giving such an uncanny impersonation of Spencer Hume that you could almost hear the doctor’s voice. Then he broke off. He added:

  “So they drive back to the house. And
they arrive (accidentally but providentially) just in time to find Avory Hume overcoming a maniac who has tried to kill him. Hey?”

  There was a pause.

  “It’s rather a neat trick, and it would have been convincing,” Evelyn admitted. “Was the woman—Amelia Jordan—in on the scheme to nail Reginald?”

  “No. Otherwise there’d ‘a’ been no reason for the hocus-pocus. She was to be one of the unprepared witnesses. The other two were Dyer and Fleming—”

  “Fleming?”

  Taking the cigar out of his mouth, H.M., with a very sour expression, sat down at the table again. “Look here! You heard what Fleming said in the witness-box. Avory had told him to drop in at the house about a quarter to seven. Hey? All right. With Fleming’s habits, he may even suspect that Fleming’ll be a few minutes early. Now concentrate on the elegant timing of the whole business, as it was meant to happen.

  “Avory has told the prospective loony to come to the house at six o'clock sharp; and, considerin’ an errand of blackmail, he can ruddy well believe Reginald will be on time. Avory has told Amelia Jordan that she’s to start off in the car (which Dyer will bring round from the garage) at soon after 6:15. Gimme a piece of paper, somebody, and a pencil. Avory Hume was awful methodical, and he worked out this piece of crooked work as methodically as he’d have worked out the terms of a mortgage. Like this:

  “At 6:00 P.M., Reginald will arrive. He will be seen by Jordan and Dyer. Dyer takes him to the study. Then Dyer will be sent to fetch the car. Dyer will probably linger at the study door for a couple of minutes; he’s been warned the visitor is not to be trusted, remember. Dyer will leave the house, say 6:05. He should be back with the car between 6:10 and 6:15. Between 6:15 and 6:20, Amelia Jordan will be drivin’ away in it to the hospital.”

  “It’s only a short drive from Grosvenor Street to Praed Street, near Paddington. Amelia Jordan arrives at the hospital, say 6:22. She will hand the suitcase to Spencer, who will discover that his whatever-it-is is missin’, and they will drive back. They will arrive back between 6:27 and 6:30.

  “By this time the stage is all set. Avory Hume will cut up a row—bring Dyer bangin’ at the door—open the door to show the results of a frantic struggle in the study. Reginald, groggy and wild-eyed with the inertia that follows a maniacal outburst, won’t be able to say much. The doctor will arrive, clucking his tongue. While the excitement is still high and handsome, Fleming will arrive and be the last witness. So.”

  H.M. puffed out smoke and waved it away.

  “Only it didn’t work out like that,” I said. “Someone took advantage of that scheme—and murdered the old man.”

  “That’s it. Now I’ve told you what was meant to happen. Next, to help you along, I’ll show you what did happen. I’m goin’ to give you a timetable for that whole evening, because it’s very suggestive. Most of the official times, like the arrival of officers or the times centerin’ directly round the fact of the murder, you’ve already heard in court. Others weren’t important as direct evidence, and weren’t stressed. But I’ve got ‘em all here, taken down from the police notes; and I’ve got the comments I wrote opposite ‘em after I’d interviewed Answell and Mary Hume. I suggest to you (gor, how I’m beginnin’ to hate that expression!) that, if you study ‘em with a little cerebral activity, you’ll learn a good deal.”

  From his inside pocket he took out a large, grubby sheet of paper, worn from much pawing-over, and spread it out carefully. It was dated over a month before. The time-schedule, in the left-hand column, had evidently been typed by Lollypop. The comments, in the other column, were scrawled in blue pencil by H.M. Thus:

  TABLE

  COMMENT

  6.10. Answell arrives, and is taken to study.

  Delayed by mist.

  6.11. Avory Hume tells Dyer to go and get car; study door is closed, but not bolted.

  6.11-6.15. Dyer remains in passage outside study door. Hears Answell say, “I did not come here to kill any-one unless it becomes absolutely necessary.” Later hears Hume speaking in sharp tone, no words distinguishable; but ending loudly, “Man, what is wrong with you? Have you gone mad?” Hears sounds like scuffle. Taps on door and asks if anything is wrong. Hume says, “No, I can deal with this; go away.”

  No mention of stealing spoons. “Have you gone mad?” very fishy; look into this.

  “Scuffle” Answell’s fall?

  Was door bolted at this time? No, or Dyer would have heard sounds made by stiff and unused bolt shot into socket.

  Very brave of Hume; unco’ fishy.

  6.15. Dyer goes to get car.

  6.29. Amelia Jordan finishes packing own valise and suitcase Dr. Hume has asked her to pack for him.

  Obedient. Arrives at garage 6.18. Shocking.

  Suppose she left something out?

  ?

  6.30-6.32. Amelia Jordan comes downstairs. Goes into passage towards study door. Hears Answell say, “Get up, damn you!” Tries study door, finds it is bolted; or locked in some way.

  Must be bolted. Lock is stuck at “open” position.

  6.32. Dyer returns with car.

  6.32-6.34. Amelia Jordan tells Dyer to stop them fighting or get Fleming; she goes after Fleming.

  6.34. Finds Fleming coming down steps of own house to go next door.

  Rather early; but what of it?

  6.35.Fleming accompanies her. They all knock at study door.

  6.36. Answell opens study door.

  6.36-6.39. Examination of body and room. No doubt of door and windows being locked on inside. Answell’s cool and dazed behavior commented on. “Are you made of stone?” Answell says, “Serves him right for drugging (or doctoring?) my whisky.” Inquiries about whisky. Bottle and siphon found full, glasses untouched; Answell still declaring business a frame-up.

  Piece of feather found torn off arrow.

  Drug still working. Brudine?

  How did Hume get rid of original siphon? Original decanter too?—Answell says nothing put into glass; must have been in decanter.

  ?

  N.B. No hocus-pocus about locks. Door inch-and-a-half thick; big heavy knob and panels; tight-fitting frame; no keyhole. Shutters have bar; no slits; windows also locked.

  Gobble gobble.

  Phooey.

  6.39. Fleming sends Amelia Jordan to get Dr. Hume. Fleming wants to take Answell’s fingerprints. Dyer says there is ink-pad in Dr. Spencer Hume’s suit.

  Why? Officious busybody?

  6.39-6.45. Dyer cannot find ink-pad or suit. Remembers old ink-pad in desk in study. Answell objects to having his fingerprints taken; knocks Fleming across room; finally seems to become dispirited and agrees.

  6.45. Dyer goes out into street and calls Police-Constable Hardcastle.

  At this point Evelyn interposed. “I say! Does this mean, in actual times, that it was only nine minutes between the time they went into the room and the time Dyer went out to get the policeman? By the way they talked in court, it sounded much longer, somehow.”

  H.M. grunted sourly. “Sure. It always sounds longer, because they’ve got so much to tell. But there’s the actual record, as you could ‘a’ worked it out for yourselves.”

  “The one thing that’s most puzzling here,” I insisted, “is why so much rumpus in general is being kicked up on the subject of inkpads. Inkpads would seem to have nothing to do with the case. What difference does it make whether Fleming did or didn’t take Answell’s fingerprints? The police could always do it, and match them with the ones on the arrow. Yet even the prosecution made a point of bringing it up and hammering it home.”

  Exhaling a cloud of smoke, H.M. leaned back with rich satisfaction and closed one eye to avoid getting smoke in it.

  “Sure they did, Ken. But they weren’t concerned with inkpads. What they wanted to hammer was that, when Fleming tried to get Answell’s fingerprints, Answell—far from bein’ torpid—flared out murderously and threw Fleming clear across the room. Same kind of attack as he launched on the de
ceased, d’ye see. But I’m glad they brought it up; if they hadn’t, I should have. Because I am most definitely interested in one particular inkpad. It’s pretty well the key to the whole business. You see that, don’t you?”

  XIV—Timetable for Archers

  THAT argument, up in the little low-raftered room at the Milton’s Head, while we waited for the afternoon session of the court, will always remain a kind of vignette as vivid as anything in the case. The firelight shone on rows of pewter tankards, and on H.M.’s enormous shoes, and on his glasses, and on a face wreathed with fantastic jollity. Evelyn sat with her legs crossed, leaning forward with her chin in her hand; and her hazel eyes had that amused annoyance which H.M. inspires in every woman.

  “You know perfectly well we don’t,” she said. “Now don’t sit there chortling and rocking and making faces like Tony Weller thinking what he’d like to do to Stiggins! You know, at times you can be the most utterly exasperating man who ever—ee! Why do you take such pleasure in mystifying people? If only Mr. Masters were here, the party would be complete, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t take pleasure in it, dammit!” grumbled H.M., and quite seriously believed this. “It’s only that people take such unholy joy in doin’ me in the eye, that I got to get a bit of my own back.” He was soothing. “You stick to business, here. Read the rest of the timetable. I’m merely askin’ you: if Jim Answell isn’t the murderer, who is?”

  “No, thanks,” said Evelyn. “I’ve been had like that before. And much too often. You did it in France, and you did it in Devon. You parade out a list of suspects, and we take our choice; and then it always turns out that you’ve got someone else altogether. I daresay in this case you’ll show the murder was really committed by Sir Walter Storm or the judge. No, thanks.”