Six Against the Yard

by The Detection Club

  When I had calmed my wife, I told her that I would go and clear the dinner things, wash them up and at the same time keep an eye upon our guest. ‘I’ll mop up that treacle mess too,’ I added. Once below, I acted quickly. I got a cloth and wiped up such syrup as had been spilled. Fortunately most of it remained in the tin. I took the precaution, though, to put on rubber gloves, so that I might not leave fingerprints on any tell-tale article. I then sprinkled a very thin line like the thread of a spider with the syrup. I trailed this from the bricks behind the hearth to the body, along one of his outpinned arms, and so to his black beard, which I spread thickly. It would be known that he had been wolfing treacle just before he fell. My wife had been witness to that. The rascal’s mouth was hanging wide open, as it always did when he snored. With the help of a table-spoon, I wedged between his teeth a strong cork from a pickle-jar. I could feel his teeth pressing into it. Being assured that the cork could not be moved by the tongue, I poured a spoonful of whisky down his throat. I then saturated the cork with syrup, so that it trickled into his throat. It was then with a shudder and a gasp that he opened his eyes and stared at me bewildered.

  At last my moment of triumph had come.

  ‘Now listen to me, you lying, blackmailing hog,’ I whispered, ‘and listen well, for it’s the last speech you’ll hear this side of Hell’s river. In a little while I am going for the police, but not yet. I shall go to them after you are dead. No, you cannot move. You are nailed tight to the floor. I built this floor for the purpose. You cannot knock nails into slate slabs. Yes, I have planned it all carefully, and no blame will fall on me. I shall not tell the police that you are dead. I shall let them find that out when I bring them back. My tale to them will be the truth. That you were violently dangerous and had a stroke. That I couldn’t leave a madman loose to set the house on fire. By the time my wife and I bring the police your beard, mouth and throat will be alive with beetles. You’ve got two in your stomach now, you hog. They were in the mince-pies that you swallowed whole. I put them there. Look.’

  Here I took the other two mince-pies and fished out before his eyes the dead bodies of the insects.

  ‘The live beetles will soon be following the dead ones,’ I said as I dropped the nasty little bodies into his mouth. ‘Another tot of whisky to wash them down? I think so. You’ve been drinking death all the time in that whisky. I’ve laced it with pure nicotine. The doctor will say one of two things. Either that you died of nicotine poisoning as he warned you was likely, or that when I left you to get help, these poisonous beetles got into your throat, carrying their poison with them. Can’t you imagine how shocked I shall appear? I who was doing everything to cure you of your excesses, to lose you like this. Too bad. I am now going to wash up the dinner things while the beetles get busy. Already I can see one or two bold ones creeping towards you on the syrup trail that I have laid. I don’t think the coroner will find much good to say of you, and what a warning you will be to all excessive smokers. Good night. I wonder which will kill you. The nicotine or the beetles? It will be very interesting to hear the results of your post-mortem. They’ll be sending bits of you up to London in jars. You’ll be quite important for once, won’t you?’

  And with that I left him, for my rage had gone, and only cold disgust of him remained.

  I took the dinner things with me to the kitchen, and the parlour lamp as well. I thought the beetles would be more at home in the dark. When I had shut and locked the door on him I called up to my wife that the Major was sleeping, and urged her to do the same. In between my washings up I would listen at the parlour door. Once I heard a throaty noise like a strangled gargle. Beyond that, nothing. I fancied, however, that I could hear the faint crackle of paper. I had pasted a piece of paper over the hole in the brickwork, out of which the beetles came. Needless to say that I had seen to it that they could still crawl out into the room, and it was the tiny scrambling of innumerable little legs that I could hear.

  Presently I put out the kitchen light, and went into the parlour very cautiously, being careful to make no noise in the dark. I need not have taken such pains, because even when I turned on the electric torch I carried, the beetles were not scared. There they were as I had hoped to see them, swarming. With greedy, groping antennæ, a host of them were working up the trail, while others were already fighting for the sweetness with which I had daubed the ugly beard. I could see the curly hairs of it stirring as the insects pushed here and there in search of the succulent syrup. Then I saw one of them venture along the hanging under-lip, crawl over the yellow teeth, and then down on the tongue to feast upon the cork. Others followed, and the gurgles that sounded from my victim’s throat told me that the creatures were already at the uvula and tonsils. Could he contract his throat and keep them from a cavernous descent. I thought not, for I heard a gasp and a catch in his breath, and then a whimper of fearful horror. I kept the torch upon his face for a long time, horrified and yet triumphant until at last I saw the madness in his eyes. He had had enough to atone for all his horrid life. Loathsome as he still was to me, I was merciful enough to know that he could endure no more of the loathsomeness with which he crawled. Still wearing my rubber gloves, I took the nicotine bottle from its place, and emptied the contents down his open mouth. One dreadful swallow that swelled his throat, and he was gone. The horror of death glazed in his eyes, and I knew that he was dead. He could never publish his blackmailing secret now.

  Immediately I went carefully along the depleted syrup trail and removed its sticky evidence. Then I wrenched out the cork gag, and put it in my pocket. His mouth was still wide open, and I lit up his teeth with my torch. I could see no fragments of bitten cork, but to be on the safe side I brushed his teeth with an old toothbrush I had ready. Having burnt the cork in the stove of my workshop, I put down some beetle poison on the parlour hearth. Everything was now ready for the Discovery.

  After locking the parlour door from the outside, I went through the kitchen and up to my wife’s room. She was lying down upon the bed, but still dressed and awake.

  ‘I have been thinking over the situation downstairs,’ I said, ‘and the only thing to be done is to hand him over to the police. He’s harmless enough at the moment, but we cannot endure another night like this. It’s too frightening for you. Too insulting. Put on your things and come with me to the police. Do you mind the long walk?’

  ‘I wouldn’t stay here without you for anything,’ she answered. ‘But couldn’t we go down to the inn and borrow their car?’

  ‘I thought of that,’ I replied, ‘but they’ll be in bed, and the less scandal we have the better. The police will take charge of him, and won’t talk too much. He’ll probably be put into a mental home, poor devil.’

  I think I shall never forget that walk through those high-hedged, winding lanes. My wife chatted all the way. She was relieved to know that the awful sojourn of our so-called cousin was to be over. She talked of the farming we were going to do, and made such plans that by the time we reached the constable’s house she was in good spirits. The constable was a good fellow, and knew me well, so bore no resentment at being roused. He let us into his kitchen and made my wife a pot of tea, while we drank beer. I confess I should have preferred a strong brandy. He heard what we both had to say about our guest, and he commended me for my sudden brain-wave of pinning him to the floor. He was horrified at my wife’s vivid description of the dinner. ‘He’ll have to go into a strait-jacket if he plays those tricks with us,’ he said.

  He phoned for the police van from the market town, which presently picked us up with a sergeant in charge, and drove us back to the farm.

  ‘You can say in the village that he was took ill,’ advised the sergeant. ‘Took to hospital, see, sir? There’s no need to set too many tongues wagging. A few months’ detention will bring the Major to himself.’

  ‘With all respects, sir,’ said our constable, ‘but the Major goes it a good deal too far. I told him tonight he was heading for a fall, and
he seems to have had it. You were too good, looking after such a rascal, sir.’

  I had certainly looked after him, and put a stop to his further sinning.

  I was quite calm when I held the lighted lamp and turned the key in the parlour door. I went in first, bidding them follow me. My wife remained in the kitchen. As I put the lamp on to the table and stooped to adjust the wicks, I heard one of the policemen draw in his breath with a whistling sound. I longed to reply, ‘I know. The beetles have got him,’ but it was the sergeant who said, ‘He’s been set on, done in, by these damned beetles. Look.’

  ‘It’s the hand of God,’ muttered our constable.

  Then the sergeant said, ‘He’s dead right enough. We must get the doctor. Have you a phone, sir?’

  I told him ‘No,’ so he sent the man who drove the van to fetch him. I went out into the kitchen to tell my wife that the Major was dead, and until the doctor arrived we had to listen to the two policemen discussing the cause of death.

  The sergeant from the market town said there was no doubt in his mind it was the beetles, especially as I had pointed out some of them lying dead by the poison I had put down in the hearth.

  The local constable, however, said he had watched the Major for some time, and had brought him home that evening, and death, to his mind, was due to a stroke brought on by alcoholic poisoning.

  The doctor arrived, and after his examination held a different view. He also knew the dead man, and had strongly disapproved of his excessive smoking. To encourage this view, I showed them the box full of stubs. ‘Nicotine poisoning, without a doubt,’ he said. ‘He was a chain-smoker of cigars. Told me so himself, and I watched him inhaling. As to these horrible beetles, I must keep an open mind about them till I can examine the stomach. It’s just possible that the brutes choked him and carried some of that beetle-poison on their legs into his system. On the other hand, he may have died from shock. I must reserve my opinion.’ He turned to me and added, ‘I’m afraid there will have to be an inquest, and the coroner will certainly order a post-mortem. I’m only sorry that such a thing should have happened in your house.’

  The doctor was right. The results of the inquest demanded a post-mortem. No thought of foul play seems to have entered the heads of any of the jury, and the coroner was sympathetic enough to regret such a tragedy should have occurred in the home of a newly-married couple. He even praised me for having done what I could for so disreputable a guest. As my wife and I are well liked in the neighbourhood, I believe that no thought of foul play will arise. We are now waiting to hear what the expert chemists will say. For my own part in the affair, I have no regret and very little fear. But I have got a burning curiosity to know whether my dead beetles will be found in the stomach, and whether any other of the brutes found their way into the body. In the meanwhile I have removed the bricks from behind the chimney and destroyed the pests in their lair. Needless to say, I have seen to it that no one shall find any proof of my having prepared those doses of nicotine. I feel quite happy that neither of my crimes will ever be known to the police or to my beloved wife. I await the immediate future with confidence.

  Ex-Supt. Cornish, C.I.D. investigates Russell Thorndike’s Crime

  DETECTIVES SOMETIMES READ

  MR. RUSSELL THORNDIKE’S MURDERER IS HEAVILY handicapped by the fact that Mr. Russell Thorndike is a popular writer. Detectives sometimes read. They even read thrillers—though, quite often, they derive more amusement than thrills from them.

  The Doctor Syn stories, however, are authentic thrillers, and the smuggling parson is one of the best-known characters in modern fiction. So Mr. Thorndike is much too modest—and his murderer much too optimistic—in assuming that neither the police engaged on the case nor the coroner who holds the inquest will have read of the sinister ‘sometime Vicar of Dym-church-under-the-Wall.’

  I think, therefore, I can safely conclude that at least one of those who are investigating the strange death of Major Scallion will be struck by the resemblance between this event and the revenge taken by Dr. Syn on his enemy.

  There might conceivably be the starting-point of the line of inquiry that would bring the murderer to the scaffold. He himself says of his victim: ‘He was not curious as to my books. I think he never read one title, and this was just as well, because my study of crime might have given him an inkling of what was in store for him.’

  Yet the Major was ‘no reader.’ To a detective who was ‘book conscious’ the contents of the killer’s book-shelves would mean much more.

  I am not, of course, suggesting that any police officer would say: ‘Ha, this man has read a lot about crime, therefore he must be a criminal.’ That would be absurd.

  But here is a man found dead in suspicious circumstances—and the explanation given of these circumstances does involve an admission that he had been pestering his hostess with unwelcome attentions. There is at least the suggestion of a possible motive for murder here.

  Further, the stage-setting of the death recalls that of a murder in fiction, and the book describing this murder is one of those in the library of the man who, according to his own story, tied down the Major to the floor.

  If I were in charge of the case this would interest me very much indeed. I should not allow my suspicions to appear on the surface, but I should certainly want to make a very full investigation. And even before the result of the post-mortem became known I might be in possession of some highly significant information.

  I should certainly look through that shiny black leather trunk of the Major’s. His murderer never seems to have considered the possibility of that containing something which would supply a clue to the real connection between himself and his victim.

  True, we don’t know the nature of the hold which Scallion had over the other man. But, for the threat of public exposure to be effective, there must be some proof of the ‘lapse’ in existence. The Major’s unsupported word, especially in view of his character, would have carried no weight whatever. Therefore, he must either have possessed some evidence himself, or he must have known where such evidence was to be found.

  The latter is perhaps the more likely alternative. In that case, there might well have been some note on the subject among Scallion’s effects. But even if there were nothing of this sort, my examination of the trunk would still tell me about the dead man’s character and facilitate my inquiries into his past.

  I would learn that Scallion was thoroughly disreputable and vicious—the last person whom a man who loved and respected his wife would introduce into his home. That alone would make me suspect that he must have had some sort of hold over his host.

  This would be confirmed when I discovered the extent to which money had been extorted from the killer over a period of years. His patrimony, we are told, had been ‘somewhat depleted by the blackmail.’

  Again, there is a reference to the Major’s ‘continual cry of ‘Must let me have a pony, old son. No, make it a hundred.’’

  I should imagine that some of this money could be traced to Scallion. At least, there would be evidence of a severe and long-continued drain on the murderer’s resources—and evidence also that the periods during which the dead man was in funds coincided with withdrawals from the bank by the other which could not be accounted for.

  Then, Scallion was apparently a man much given to talking of himself. Among the lies which he told habitually, may there not also have been hints of the true state of affairs between himself and his host?

  He might not, indeed, have said anything of this at the village inn, but inquiries would extend beyond the village, and some of his associates in town were probably aware that he had a hold over the killer.

  It is also stated that the Major was fond of proclaiming his conquests among women. May he not have boasted that his hostess was one of these? The fact that there was no foundation for such a vaunt would not have stopped him. But the boast would be remembered—and might be believed—when he met his death.

  You s
ee how mistaken is the murderer’s confidence that the police will be unable to find a motive for murder. It is, indeed, quite on the cards that the inquiries into his past, which will proceed simultaneously with those into his victim’s, will reveal the incident which he has been so anxious to hide, and which gave Scallion his power over him. If Scallion’s part in the business is also brought to light and some of the hush money traced to him, the case, so far as motive is concerned, will be complete.

  Frankly, I should anticipate this to happen. It is sometimes said that there is at least one thing, in everyone’s life which he wants to hide. And most people with such secrets do manage to keep the skeleton safely in the cupboard.

  That gives them an entirely wrong idea of the extent to which concealment may be practised successfully. Their secrets remain their own because they have never attracted the attention of the police. But once the searchlight of detective investigation is turned upon any man—and it always is when there is suspicion of murder—there is very little of real importance about his private affairs that is not laid bare.

  I think that the killer would discover this. Before the inquest was over—I assume that it is only the preliminary hearing of which the murderer writes, as there would be an adjournment until the result of the post-mortem was known—the police would be aware of his motive, and that part of the case against him would be strong enough to satisfy the most difficulty jury.

  Nor is our criminal in any better plight as regards the manner of the murder. All his elaborate calculations and preparations break down on one simple fact—that a comparatively large dose of nicotine, a few drops of which are sufficient to kill a man, was administered while Scallion was lying, bound and helpless, on the floor.