John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

"Go on."

"Then I did definitely hear two footsteps directly behind me; but I've got pretty good ears, and nobody else seemed to notice it until-well, all of a sudden I felt Marion go stiff, and she pressed my hand. I admit I nearly jumped out of my skin. I felt her other hand come out towards me, and she was trembling all over.... It wasn't till afterwards that I found out what had gone past and touched her.... You'd better tell him, Marion

Though she tried to keep her former self-control, the old terrors were coming back. The lantern was at her feet, throwing spangles of light up across the white, lovely, tortured face as she slowly looked up.

"It was the handle of a knife," she said, "touching the back of my neck."

XII WHAT WAS MISSING AT DAWN

THE last candle on the work-bench had puffed out in a welter of grease. A faint, grayish light was stealing into the passage beyond; but the shadows in the kitchen were still thick, and the lantern burned at their core below Marion Latimer's dull face. It was the climax of the night's horrors, the last voice of them before they paled at cockcrow. I looked round at Masters, and at McDonnell, almost invisible back in a corner. But I thought, curiously enough, of a room situated high over Whitehall; and, in the midst of the sedate government upholstery, a fat man sitting with his feet on the long desk reading a cheap novelette. I had not seen that room since 1922....

"You see," Marion told us carefully, after a pause, "the idea of some one of us prowling like that was-was rather more ghastly than the other."

Masters expelled his breath. "How did you know it was the handle of a knife, miss?"

"It was feeling-it was the handle, you know, and then the crosspiece, the hilt, together: brushing past. I'd swear to it. Whoever had it must have been holding it by the blade, you see."

"As though the person holding it had tried to touch you?"

"Oh, no. No, I don't think so. It jumped back at once,, if you understand what I mean. It was as though somebody had gone in the wrong direction in the dark, and accidentally brushed me. . . . Anyway, it was after that - maybe a minute afterwards, though it's awfully hard to be certain - I heard the only footstep I could be sure of. It seemed to come from the middle of the room somewhere."

"You heard this too?" Masters asked Halliday.

"Yes."

"And then-?"

"And then the door squeaked. There was a draft along the floor, too. Hang it all," said Halliday uneasily, "surely everybody must have felt it! You couldn't miss."

"It 'ud seem so, wouldn't it? Now, sir, how long after all this did you hear the bell ringing?"

"Marion and I have compared notes on that. She estimates something over ten minutes. but I say nearer twenty."

"Did you hear anybody coming back?"

Halliday's cigarette was burning his fingers; he glanced at it as though he had never seen it before, and dropped the stump. His eyes were vacant. "Shouldn't like to swear to more than that, Inspector. But I should say there was a pretty definite noise of somebody sitting down. That was before we heard the bell, but I don't remember how long. It's all a matter of guesswork, anyhow...."

"When the bell rang, was everybody sitting down?"

"I can't tell you, Inspector. There was a rush for the door, and either Marion or Aunt Anne screamed

"It wasn't I," said the girl.

Masters glanced slowly from one to the other of them. "The door to that room," he said, "was closed while you were having your meeting. I saw that myself. When you rushed out as the bell rang, was it open or closed?"

"I don't know. Ted was first at the door, because he was the only one with a flashlight. Marion and I crowded after him - anywhere we could see a light we'd have gone, and he switched his on then. The whole affair was so confused that I don't remember. Except that Featherton got a match struck to light the candles, and shouted, 'Wait for me!' or something like that. Then I think we all realized the futility of dashing out that door - I don't know who started the rush in the first place; it was like sheep following a leader. So-" He waved his hand. "Look here, Inspector, haven't we told you enough for one night? Marion is dead exhausted...."

"Yes," said Masters, "yes. You may go." Suddenly he looked up. "Young Latimer - wait a bit!-young Latimer was the only one with a flashlight? Yours was broken; then Mr. Blake gave you his when we heard Miss Latimer calling in the passage?"

Halliday looked at him a moment, and then laughed. "Still suspicious of me, Inspector? Well, you're quite right to be. But, as it happens, I'm strictly innocent in the flashlight business. I gave that one to Ted, at his request. You should ask him, you know.:.. Well, good night." He hesitated, and walked over to me, putting out his hand. "Good night, Mr. Blake. I'm only sorry I dragged you into this mess. But I didn't know, you see. By God, we did start a hare, didn't we?"

... They went out the back door, and we remained in our separate and foolish positions; conscious of a city waking to daylight all around, and only the ashes of a haunted house. Presently McDonnell came over to the work-bench, beginning to sort out the penciled notes he had brought in.

"Well, sir?" Masters addressed me. "What about it? Brain working?"

I said that it wasn't, and added: "Of itself, the conflicting testimony may not be so inexplicable. That is, three people said there was somebody moving about in the room, and two people said there wasn't. But the two people who denied it, Lady Benning and Ted Latimer, were the ones who might be so rapt in concentration or prayer, or whatever it was, that they wouldn't hear it...."

"Yet they all heard the bell fast enough," said Masters. "And it didn't ring at all loudly, I'll swear."

"Yes. That's the part that sticks. . . . Oh, admittedly somebody was lying. And it was as expert lying as we'll probably ever listen to."

Masters got up. "I'm not going to hash the thing over now," he snapped. "Not with a dead brain. I'll forget even the great big snag in the business that's worse than people who can walk over soft mud without leaving footprints. I'll put it out of my mind. And yet I've a hunch - a hunch - I don't know - what is a hunch, anyway?"

"Well, sir," said McDonnell, "I've generally discovered that a hunch is what you call an idea that you're afraid is wrong. I've been having them all evening. For 'instance, it struck me-"

"I don't want to hear it. Lummy, I'm sick of the business! I want a cup of strong coffee. And some sleep. And - wait a minute, Bert. What about those reports you've got? If there's anything interesting, let's have it now. Otherwise let it wait."

"Right you are, sir. Surgeon's report: `Death of a stab wound, made by the sharp instrument submitted for inspection-that's the L.P. dagger-penetrating through...."'

"Where is the blasted thing, by the way?" interrupted Masters, struck with an idea. "I shall have to take it along. Did you pick it up?"

"No. Bailey was photographing it on the table; they set up the table after we'd taken the measurements and shot the scene as it was. It's probably still out on the table. By the way, its blade had been ground to a needle-point sharpness. Doesn't sound like a ghost there."

"Right. We'll pick it up. I don't want our 'man with his back turned’ messing about with it again. Never mind the doctor's report. What about fingerprints?"

McDonnell scowled. "Not a print on the dagger of any kind, Williams says. He says it had been wiped clean, or the chap used gloves; that was only to be expected.... Otherwise, the whole place is alive with 'em. He counted two separate sets of prints aside from Darworth's. The photos will be around this morning. Also a lot of footprints. The place was dusty. No marks in the blood, though, except half a footprint that probably belongs to Mr. Blake."

"Yes. We shall want to go over this house here, and try to match up the prints; take care of it. What j'you get out of his pockets?"

"Usual lot. Nothing enlightening. No papers of any kind, in fact." McDonnell took from his pocket a folded sheet of newspaper, wrapped round a small collection of articles. "Here it is. Bunch of keys, notecase, watch and chain, some loose silver: that's the. lot.... There was just one other funny thing...."

Masters caught sharply at the other's uncertainty. "Well?"

"The constable noticed it when we were raking out the fire, to see whether somebody might have got down the chimney. It was glass, sir. In the fire. Big fragments like a jar or bottle, maybe; but they were so splintered and burnt and softened out of shape that you couldn't tell.... Besides, it might have been there some time."

"Glass?" repeated Masters, and stared. `But wouldn't it melt?"

"No. It bursts and splinters, that's all. I thought perhaps-"

The inspector grunted. "Whisky-bottle, maybe. Dutch-courage for Darworth. I shouldn't worry about it."

"Might have been, of course," admitted McDonnell. But he was not satisfied. His fingers tapped his pointed chin, and his eyes roved about the room. "Still, it's dashed funny, though, isn't it? I mean, chucking a bottle in the fire when you've finished with it: hardly a natural action, is it, sir? Did you ever see anybody do it? It struck me that—“

"Stow it, Bert," said Masters, dragging out his words and making a wry face. "We've had plenty. Come along. 'We'll have a last look at the place in daylight, and then we'll dear out."

A cool wind blew drowsily on our eyelids as we went down into the yard. The gray light was uncertain and murky as though we saw the whole place under water; it looked larger than I had imagined it last night, and must have covered a good half-acre. Set down in the midst of decaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no churchbells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound, could ever penetrate it.

A brick wall perhaps eighteen feet high dosed it round on three sides of a rough oblong. There was a few dying plane trees straggling beside it, with an ugly coquettish appearance like the wreaths and Cupids on the cornice of the big house, as though they were dying in the mopping, mincing postures of the seventeenth century. In one corner was a disused well, and the crooked foundations of what might once have been a dairy. But it was the little stone house, standing out in the center and alone towards the rear wall, that carried the most evil suggestion.

It was blackish gray and secret, gaping with its smashed door. On the pitch of the roof were heavy curved tiles that might once have been red; the chimney was squat black, with a toppling chimney-pot like a rakish hat. Not far away grew the dead, crooked tree.

That was all. The stiff sea of mud about it, and only the broad squashy lines of tracks where many people had tramped up to the door in the same path. From this path, just two sets of prints - Masters' and mine-straggled close to the wall of the house towards the window at which I had held Masters up for his first sight of Darworth dead.

In silence we walked all around the house, keeping to the margin of the yard. The puzzle grew more monstrous and incredible as we stared at every blank side. Yet I have not overlooked, omitted, or misstated anything, and all was exactly as it seemed to be: a stone box, with door and windows solidly inaccessible, no tricks of secret entrances, and no footprints near it anywhere before Masters and I had gone out. That is literal truth.

It remained, to complete it, only for Masters to snatch at the only remaining lead, and to have that swept away also. We had got round to the other side of the house - the left side, looking towards it from the back door - and Masters stopped. He stared at the blighted tree, then back at the wall.