John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

it—“

"Sure she did, son," said H.M., with a heavy gesture. "Ladle me out some more of Father Flaherty's medicine, will you? Umph. Ha. Thanks.... Now, cast your mind back to that time. You and Ken and Masters were standin' over dose to the side of the staircase, weren't you? In fact, you had your back to it. Right. And up came the Major here, and Ted Latimer, and Joseph a little way behind them. So? Tell me: what was the floor made of?"

"The floor? Stone. Stone or brick; stone, I think."

"Uh-huh. But I mean the part you were standin' on then, at the back of the hall where the old flooring hadn't been taken up? Heavy boards, hey? Pretty loose; made the staircase rattle?"

"Yes," I said. "I remember how they squeaked when Masters took a step."

"And the landing of the staircase was just over young Halliday's head, hey? And there was a handrail? Quite, quite. It's the old Anne Robinson trick. Haven't you ever noticed, in an old hall with a shaky stair, how if you accidentally tread on the right board connected with the staircase, the stair will shake, and the handrail of a landing will tremble? Now if a heavy weight had been balanced across that handrail so that a hair-line shake would turn its equilibrium-?”

After a silence he went on:

"Ted and the Major, son, were ahead of you; they'd gone on. Joseph was following a few paces behind. And he didn't tread on the right board by accident....

"The more you sort of scrutinize old Joseph, the less he begins to look like an unfortunate marionette dancin' on wires without knowing what goes on. Look at him!

There he is, very skinny and not tall for a young man; in fact, you'd consider him small. There are the fine wrinkles in his neck, his hair cropped short and colored red, his freckles and his snub nose and rather too broad mouth; there's his thin dead voice like a boy's; and above all - I want you to remember this - his loud check suits, always distinguishable at a distance. Very much like a kid, weighing maybe ninety pounds....

"And then there was a curious thing which Masters noticed just before the stone flower-box dropped; any of the rest o' you see it? He was makin' funny motions with his hands, as though he were brushin' and touching his face, and he stopped when they turned a light on him....”

"So I thought, 'Look here, is it possible that this is any sort of disguise?' You see, he'd just been out in the rain without a hat. And I wondered if he might be afraid...."

"Well?"

"Well, say - that his freckles might wash off," replied H.M. "That was only the basis of an idea, still hazy. But I was sittin' and thinkin', and I remembered that tree in the yard. You know the tree? Masters said that a very agile person could easily have got from the top of the wall to the tree, and from the tree to the little house. And McDonnell pointed out how rotten the tree was, and showed a broken branch where it'd been tested.... So it might have broken, under a person of normal weight. I say it might, son, because Masters accepted that statement too. But there was only one person in the whole house light enough to have climbed that tree without breaking it: the innocent `boy', Joseph.

"Now, would Joseph have had the skill and agility to do that; or to shoot straight enough through that window to inflict exactly those wounds? What becomes of this stupid, drug-ridden child now? All I suspect, for the moment, is that he's not what he pretends to be; and pretty definitely there's a disguise of some sort. I ask myself, `Look here,' I say, `while that popcorn is rattlin' around in the tin, look at something else. What's this feller's motive, if he did kill Darworth? He's working with Darworth to befoozle old Lady Benning and her crowd - why does he depart from the plan and shoot Darworth, which seems rather a fat-headed thing to do? 'Twasn't an accident; those last two bullets were intended to make mutton of the whiskery crook. Why kill the source of his income? The only one who inherits any of Darworth's money is his wife....'

"Wife! You'd be surprised what a revelation started to show glimmers in the old man's mind.. Let's see, what was Darworth's purpose in staging this show? He might have told a confederate it was to proclaim the truth of occultism to the world; to make his name reverberate... but it wasn't. Oh, no. 'By God,' says I to myself, `he was after the Latimer girl. He was goin' to propose marriage to her. But he's got a wife in Nice - a sharp, hard-headed wench who's frozen him into marriage at just the right time; who knows a deal too much about the past hanky-panky. How is she goin' to take all this? "

H.M.'s pipe described a curious motion in the air, as though he were sleepily tracing out somebody's features.

"Provocative-lookin' gal, by her pictures. Thin, very. Age thirty-odd; time for little wrinkles, but not many. Not tall, but 'ud look tall on high heels. You fellers married? Ever notice how small your wives looked the first time you saw 'em without them heels? Um. Funny, too, how a mass o' black hair changes the expression of a face, or what cosmetics do to it. First I thought, 'Burn me, I'd advise that gal to be awful damn careful. Because why? Because our smilin' Darworth has already disposed of one wife, by poison or throat-cuttin' or whatnot, and if he's got his heart clean set on orange blossoms again - well, if I were the wife, I'd look under beds now and then, and stay away from side-streets after dark."' H.M. gave a long sniff. Then his eyes fixed on us. “Unless,” I said to myself, 'I simply beat him to it!'"

He pointed his pipe at us.

"Did somebody tell you how Glenda Watson started her career at the age of fifteen? In a travelin' circus and side-show; ah, you heard it, did you? I'd be very much surprised to hear that negotiating a wall and a tree, or the use of a middle-caliber firearm, would cause her a great deal of difficulty.... A versatile gel, and what a woman! She's got talents, and she's got It, or they wouldn't have fallen for her when Darworth's money wangled her a lead in the actin' company at Nice. She had to destroy the sex-appeal during the months she played Joseph; but she didn't play him long at a time.... Pity to keep her hair cut short and dyed; but she had a very luxuriant black wig to replace her real hair when she went out to take the air. Remember the mysterious woman who was seen goin' in and out of Magnolia Cottage? You see, there was one conquest she had to complete as Glenda Darworth, and

that—“

"This is all very well!" exploded Major Featherton, "but it doesn't get us farther. Dammit, there's one difficulty, I repeat, you can't get over. She had an alibi; she was directly under the eye of a reliable man all the time she might have been out killing Darworth in the stone house. . . . You can't get around that solid fact. What's more, we were all in the room just across the hall, in absolute silence-she and the sergeant were over across from us - and we didn't hear a thing.:.."

"I know you didn't," said H.M. composedly. "That's just it. You didn't hear a single damned whisper out of that room. And that's what made me suspicious.

"Now I want those shrewd minds of yours, all mellowed and primed, to consider a variety of funny coincidences.... First, immediately after the murder, a newspaper photographer was allowed to climb up on the roof of the stone house: a thing that should have and could have been stopped, because if there were any traces of the murderer's footprints on that roof, they'd have been messed up. Second, somebody walked round on the wall to test that rotten tree, and would have messed up more footprints. Third, in spite of Masters' efforts, the story of this being a ghost-murder - inexplicable, nothing but a supernatural thing-splashed out into the newspapers....

Halliday got up slowly out of his chair....

"Fourth, somebody who was very lever had been assigned to keep an eye on Darworth's movements, and would have had a better chance than we to discover that `Joseph', living in a house at Brixton, was really the fascinating Mrs. Darworth long before we had an inkling of it.

"Fifth," continued H.M., and his voice grew less sleepy.,

"fifth, my fatheads, have you forgotten that seance of automatic-writing at Bill Featherton's? Have you forgotten that seance at which `Joseph' wasn't even present? Have you forgotten that there the paper saying 'I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried' had been slipped in among Darworth's other papers, and scared him silly because he realized that somebody besides his wife - somebody there - some unseen, deadly person according to Darworth's ideas - knew the secret? Why should he have been frightened merely if `Joseph' slipped in a paper like that? He knew `Joseph' knew it, didn't he?" Suddenly H.M. leaned across the table. "And who was, admittedly, the only person who could have palmed the paper off on Darworth; bein', as he himself admitted, an expert at parlor magic?"

In the enormous silence Halliday knocked his fist against his forehead. He said:

"My God, are you telling us that that fellow McDonnell-"

And H.M. went on drowsily:

`Bert McDonnell didn't commit the murder, of course. He was an accessory, but not an important one. He wouldn't have been needed at all by Glenda Darworth if - unexpectedly - Masters hadn't shown up at Plague Court. That tore it. McDonnell was watchin' in the yard to see nothing went wrong. When he saw Masters he had to intervene; had to get Joseph away somewhere out of Masters' sight; and he was so nervous (wasn't he?) that he almost bungled it. Who suggested that Masters should go upstairs in the house and watch while he questioned Joseph alone? Who deliberately led you in the wrong direction every time you showed a flash of intelligence?

Who swore to you that tree in the yard couldn't stand any weight? Who said, for a reason you didn't question, that all it meant was that Louis Playge was buried beneath it?"

H.M. saw the expressions on our faces, and scowled.

"He's not a bad young feller. The woman had simply got him where she wanted him, that's all.... He didn't know she was going to murder Ted Latimer, and dress Ted in those glaring loud clothes and shove him into the furnace-"

"What?" shouted Halliday.

"Humph. Didn't I tell you that?" H.M. inquired blandly. "Yes. Y'see, Joseph had to disappear.. Glenda Darworth didn't mean for there to be any more murders; she was simply goin' to fade out, let the police think what they might, and reappear as Glenda Darworth to claim her two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. But Ted Latimer spotted Joseph when Ted slipped out that night. And so, y'see, Ted had to die."

XXI

THE END OF IT

HALLIDAY got up and walked aimlessly about the room. With his back to us, he stared into the fire. "This," he said, "this will just about kill Marion.... "Sorry, son," said H.M. gruffly. "I - well, y'see, I

couldn't tell you two this afternoon. It might have spoiled my game for tonight. And I sort of thought, 'Well,' I thought, 'they're pretty happy, those two. They've been through hell and blight for some time; they've had a crack-brained hag of an aunt riding 'em as badly as Darworth ever did, and even accusing one of 'em of murder when she saw they were happy; and there's no use darkening one day now."'

He spread his fingers and inspected them sulkily.

"Yes, the kid's dead. He was a good deal the height and build of `Joseph', you remember? That's what made it possible. It was very nearly spoiled when that workman Watkins looked through the cellar window and spotted the murderer at work. But, d'ye see, it was the fact that convinced us Joseph was really dead. He saw only the back of the person on the floor; he saw those clothes - those bright checked clothes; didn't I tell you to remember them -which he'd seen Joseph wearing every day. And the window-pane was dusty, and only one candle was burnin'; who wouldn't assume it was Joseph? ... Oh, the woman was clever enough. Pouring kerosene on that body, pushing it in the furnace, wouldn't have been necessary; it was unnecessary brutality; if she hadn't only wanted to make identification impossible. They'd get a charred mass out, with a few shreds of Joseph's clothes and a pair of his shoes, and there you are. It was an opportunity, and she took advantage of it. Why do you think she chloroformed him? Why, to get him bundled into Joseph's clothes before she stabbed him with the dagger. That's why they were so long together in the house before he was chucked in the furnace."