John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

A face was looking at us out of the door of the little stone house, which stood open. It was a pallid and rigid face, which yet seemed to be winking one eye.

Halliday, at my elbow, jerked back with an exclamation that he stifled in his throat. Major Featherton muttered something, and for a second we did not move.

Far away and muffled, a City clock began to toll out the hour of eleven. In the door and windows of the house shone a glow of red firelight. And, motionless, its hands crossed in its lap, something was sitting tall on a chair before the fire; and the face was hanging over one shoulder with a witless smirk on the bluish-white features; with a drooping mustache, and one eyebrow raised over goggling spectacles. There seemed to be drops of sweat on its forehead.

I could have sworn the thing grinned....

It was not a nightmare, suddenly coming down on us. It was as real as the night and the moon, which we met after we had come up through the echoing passage to Plague Court, round in the dark yard past the ruined arbor.

"That," said Halliday loudly, and pointed, "that's the damned thing - or something like it - I saw when I came out here alone the night before.”

A big shadow moved across the firelight inside. Somebody peered out and hailed us, blotting away the white-faced thing behind.

"Good," said H.M.'s voice. "I rather thought it might 'a' been, d’ye see, after what you said this morning. That's why I used James's mask in makin' my dummy. It's the dummy we're goin' to use for the experiment... Come on in, come on in!" he added testily. "This place is full of drafts."

H.M.'s elephantine figure, in the fur-collared coat and the ancient top-hat, only enhanced the evil grotesquerie of the room inside. An enormous fire, too big a fire, ran with a roar up the black chimney. A table had been set up before the fire; a table and five kitchen chairs, of which only one had a complete back. Supported on one chair, and propped sideways against the table, sat a life-sized dummy roughly constructed of canvas filled with sand. It was even fitted out with an old coat and trousers, and on its head a rakish felt hat held in place the painted mask where a face should have been. The effect was one of jaunty horror, enhanced by a pair of white cotton gloves sewn to the sleeves in such fashion that the dummy seemed to have its hands placed together as though praying....

"It's good, ain't it?" inquired H.M. with admiring complacency. He had his finger in the pages of a book, and his chair had been drawn up on the opposite side of the table. "When I was a kid, I used to make the best Fifth-ofNovember Guys in London. There wasn't time to make this one more elaborate. Blasted thing's heavy, too. Weighs as much as a full-grown man."

"Brother James-" said Halliday. He wiped his hand across his forehead, and tried to laugh. "I say, you go in for realism, don't you? What are you going to do with it?"

"Kill it," said H.M. "There's the dagger on the table."

I looked away from the bulging eyes of the dummy, the goggling spectacles and rabbit-like smile under the mustache as the thing sat with its hands together against the firelight. On the table a single candle burned in a brass holder, just as it had been last night. There were some sheets of paper and a fountain-pen. There was also-blackened with fire from bone handle to point - Louis Playge's knife.

"Dash it, Henry," said Major Featherton, clearing his, throat. The major looked strange in an ordinary bowler and tweed coat; less imposing, and more like a querulous elderly man with asthma and a face colored by too much tippling. He coughed. "After all, I mean to say, this seems merely damned childish. Dummies and whatnot, eh? Look here, I'm in favor of any reasonable thing—“

"You needn't try to avoid those stains on the floor," said H.M., watching him. "Or on the walls, either. They're dry."

We all glanced at what he indicated, but we all looked back at the smirking dummy. It was the most evil thing

there. The fire threw out a fierce heat, moving its shadows on the red-lit walls....

"Somebody bolt the door," said H.M.

"Good God, what is this?" demanded Halliday.

"Somebody bolt the door," repeated H.M. with sleepy insistence. "You do it, Ken. Make sure. Oh, you hadn't noticed that the door'd been repaired? Yes. One of my lads did it this afternoon. Clumsy job, but it'll do. Hop to it."

The bolt, after the wrenchings it had got that night, was more stiff then ever. I pulled the door shut and with a fairly powerful jerk got the bolt into place. The iron bar across it had been moved up vertically; I yanked it down and with several fist-poundings got it firmly wedged in the iron nests along the door.

"Now," said H.M., "'now,' as the ghost observed in the story, 'we're locked in for the night.' "

Everybody jumped a little, for one reason or another. H.M. stood by the fire, his hat on the back of his head. The firelight shone on his glasses; but no muscle moved in his big face. His mouth was drawn down sourly, and his little eyes moved from one to the other of us.

"Now, about your chairs. Bill Featherton, I want you sitting on the left hand side of the fireplace. Pull the chair out and a little away from it-that's it. Dammit, don't bother about your trousers; do as I tell you! You sit next in order, Ken . . . about four feet away from Bill; so. The dummy's next, sittin' by the table, but we'll turn him round like a companionable feller, to face the fire. The other side of the table - you there, Mr. Halliday. I'll complete the little semi-circle, thus."

He dragged his own chair over to the far side of Halliday, but set it down sideways to the chimney-corner, so that he could look along the little line we formed.

"Humph. Now, let's see. Conditions are exactly as they were night before last, with one exception. . . ." Fumbling in his pocket, he drew out a gayly colored box and tossed its contents at the fire.

"Here!" roared Major Featherton. "I say-!”

First there were sparks, and a greenish light rolled out of the blaze. Then, in thick clouds, an overpowering wave of sickly smelling incense crept out and curled sluggishly up along the floor. Its odor seemed to get in my very pores.

"Got to do it," said H.M. in a matter-of-fact voice. "It ain't my artistic taste; it's the murderer's."

Wheezing, he sat down and blinked along the line.

There was a silence. I looked over my right shoulder at the dummy, leering at the fire with its black hat jauntily cocked over where the ear should be; and I had a horrible fancy, What if that damned thing should come alive? Beyond it was Halliday, grown quiet and satirical now. The candle burned on the table between him and the dummy, and flickered as the incense rose up. It was the sheer absurdity of the thing which made it come close to the terrible.

"Now that we're all locked in here nice and cozy," said H.M., and his voice echoed in the little stone room, "I'm goin' to tell you what happened night before last."

Halliday scratched a match to light a cigarette; but he broke the head off, and he did not try again.

"You'll imagine," continued H.M. drowsily, "that you're in the positions you occupied then. Think back, now, to where everybody was. But we'll take up Darworth first; the dummy indicates him, and" - H.M. took his watch out of his pocket, leaned across the table, and laid it down -"we got some time to spare before somebody I'm expectin' arrives here tonight....”

"I've already told you some of what Darworth's done; I repeated it to Ken and the major yesterday, and to Halliday and Miss Latimer this morning. I told you about the confederate, and what was planned....”

"We'll start from where Darworth murders the cat; and that's where I began sittin' and thinkin'."

"Not to interrupt," said Halliday; "but who are you expecting tonight?"

"The police," said H.M.

After a pause he got his pipe out of his pocket and went on:

"Now, we've established that Darworth killed that cat with Louis Playge's dagger, by the punctures and rips in its throat. Very well; afterwards he's got the blood to splash hereabouts, he's got himself smeared up a bit - but that will pass unnoticed in the dark, under coat and gloves, if he doesn't see anybody, but gets Featherton and young Latimer to rush him out and lock him in here immediately. Point really is: What did he do with that dagger? Eh?

"Only two things he could 'a' done: (1) He could have brought it in here with him, or (2) Passed it to his confederate.

"Take the second point first, my lads. If he passed it to a confederate, that'd mean that his confederate had to be either young Latimer or Bill Featherton... " Here H.M. sleepily raised the lids from his eyes, as though expecting a protest.

Nobody spoke. We could hear the watch ticking on the table.

"Because those were the only two with him, to whom he could have passed it. Now, it's not reasonable that he did such a fat-headed thing. Why hand it over to the confederate merely to take into the big house and bring out again? - runnin', meantime, the risk of being seen giving it to the confederate by the other person who's not in the plot, and the even bigger risk entailed by the confederate carryin' around a blood-stained dagger which will give the show away if anybody in the front room happens to spot it. No, no; Darworth took it into this room with him. That's the reasonin'.

"As a matter of fact, I knew from another cause that he did take it in; but we'll pass over that other cause for a minute: I'm showin' you the obvious reasons for things. ... Well, speak up, somebody!" he added with a sudden sharp look. "What dye gather from that?"

Halliday turned round from gazing blankly at the watch.

"But what about," he said, "what about the dagger that touched the back of Marion's neck?"

"Humph. That's better. Exactly. What about it? Son, that apparently inconsistent point clears up a big difficulty. Somebody was prowlin' in the dark. Was that person holdin' another dagger? If so, the whole point is that he or she was holdin' it in a very odd way; an unnatural way; a way nobody under heaven ever carried a dagger

before. Mind you, she wasn't touched by the blade, but by the handle and hilt, so that the person must have been gripping it under the hilt, by the blade.... What is it, son, that you do naturally hold like that? What is it that is shaped rather like a dagger, so that a mind running on daggers might possibly mistake it for one in the

dark ... ?"

"Well?"

"It was a crucifix," said H.M.

"Then Ted Latimer-?" I said, after a pause that seemed to echo like thunder. "Ted Latimer—?"

"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin'. And I thought a good deal about the psychological puzzle of Ted Latimer, both before and after we heard how he come home with a little crucifix in his hand....”

"Y'know, that half-cracked young feller would have concealed that crucifix from you quicker and deeper than he'd have concealed a crime. He would honestly have considered himself shamed if you had thought that he, the intellectual snipe, carried it because he reverenced it or thought it holy: which he would say he didn't at all.... And that's the dancin', topsy-turvy puzzle of people nowadays. They'll sneer at a great thing like the Christian Church, but they'll believe in astrology. They won't believe the clergyman who says there's something in the heavens; but they will believe the rather less mild statement that you can read the future there like an electric sign. They think there's something old-fashioned and provincial about believing too thoroughly in God, but they will concede you any number of deadly earthbound spirits: because the latter can be defended by scientific jargon.