John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

He stared; the damp, musty air turned suffocating in my lungs; then he spoke, gruffly.

"It's all right, sir," said Masters. "All right. It ain't nice, though. It's only a cat." "A cat?"

"Yes, sir. A cat. It's got its throat cut."

Halliday jerked back. I leaned over Masters' shoulder and turned my light inside. Somebody or something had thrust it in there to be out of sight. It had not been dead long, and lay on its back, so I could see that the neck had been slit through. It was a black cat, stiffened out with agony; now turning shrunken and wiry and dusty, and the half-open eyes looked like shoe-buttons. There were things moving about it.

"I'm beginning to think, Mr. Blake," said Masters, rubbing his chin, "that maybe there's a kind of devil in this house after all."

With a stolid disgust he pulled the door shut again, and got up.

"But," said Halliday, "who would-?" He peered over his shoulder.

"Ah! That's it. Who would? And why? Would you call it a piece of deliberate cruelty, now, or was there a reason? Eh, Mr. Blake?"

"I was thinking," I said, "of the enigmatic Mr. Darworth. You were going to tell us something about him, you know. By the way, where is he?"

"Steady-!" Masters struck in quietly, and raised his hand.

We could hear voices and the sound of footsteps coming through the house. They were palpably human voices; yet such was the trick of echoes in this stone labyrinth that they seemed to sheer off the wall and echo softly in your ear just behind you. First there was a gruff mumble in which we could catch scattered words:

"-don't hold with the mumbo-jumbo ... all the same ... look a damned fool ... something.”

"That's it, that's just it!" The other voice was lower, lighter, more excited. "Why do you feel like that? Look here, do I look like any namby-pamby aesthete who could be gulled and hypnotized by my own nerves? That's the ridicule you're afraid of. Trust yourself! We've accepted modern psychology...."

The steps were coming from beyond a low archway at the rear of the hall. I saw the light of a candle shielded in somebody's hand; there was a glimpse of a whitewashed passage with a brick floor; then a figure stepped into the hall, and saw us. It jerked back, bumping into another figure. Across that space you could almost feel its shock and stiffening. I saw a mouth suddenly pulled back, and the teeth, over the candle it held. It muttered, "Oh, Christ. . ." And Halliday threw back in a matter-of-fact tone, faintly edged with spite: "Don't get the wind up, Ted. It's only us."

The other peered, straightening his candle. He was very young. Over the candle-flame hung first a careful Etonian tie, then an uncertain chin, the sproutings of a fair mustache, the faint outline of a square face. His coat and hat were sodden. He said, querulously:

"You ought to have better sense than to try to scare a fellow like that, Dean! I mean, hang it all, you can't go crawling about the place, and-and-" We heard the whistle of his breath.

"Who the devil are these people?" rasped his companion, who had come out from behind him. We threw up our lights mechanically to see the newcomer; he cursed and winked, and we lowered them. Besides these two, there was a thin little red-headed figure behind them.

"Good evening, Major Featherton," Halliday greeted. "As I say, you needn't be alarmed. I seem to have the unenviable quality of making everybody I meet jump like a rabbit." His voice kept rising. "Is it my face, or what? Nobody ever used to think it was so frightful as all that, but as soon as they begin talking to Darworth---“

"Confound you, sir, who says I'm alarmed?" said the other. "I like your infernal, blasted cheek. Who says I'm alarmed, sir? Furthermore, I will repeat to you, as I will repeat to everybody I meet, that I hope I am a fair-minded man, whose motives will not be misunderstood or made a subject for ridicule because I preserve-because, in short, I am here." He coughed.

The voice in the gloom sounded like a disembodied letter to The Times. The paunchy figure tilted slightly backwards. From the brief glimpse I had had of him, of the map-veined cheeks and cadaverous eyes, I could fill out the bigness of an outworn buck and gallant of the eighties, tightened into his evening clothes like a corset.

"I shall have rheumatism for this," he protested, weakly and almost cajolingly. "Besides, Lady Benning asked my assistance, and what could a man of honor do?"

"Not at all," said Halliday, without particular relevancy. He drew a deep breath. "Well, we've seen Lady Benning too. My friends and I are going to watch and wait for the ghost-laying with you. Now we're going to have a look at the little house out there."

"You can't," said Ted Latimer.

The boy looked fanatical. A smile twitched round his lips, as though he had lost control of the facial muscles. "You can't, I tell you!" he repeated. "We've just put Mr. Darworth in there. He asked to go. He's begun his vigil. Besides, you daren't, even if you could. It's too dangerous, now. They'll be out.. And it must be” -his thin, angular eager face, very much like his sister's, bent over his wristwatch-"yes. Yes, it is five minutes past twelve."

"Damn," said Masters. It was unexpected, as though the word had been shaken out of him. He took a step forward, his footfall squeaking on the rotting boards towards the rear of the hall, where the floor had not been lifted from the flagstones. I remember thinking, with that dull focus of mind which fastens on trivial details at such moments, that the rest of the flooring had probably been fine hardwood. I remember Ted Latimer's grimy hand, with its grease-covered knuckles, thrust far out of his sleeve. I remember that colorless figure of the red-headed youngster in the background, vague by candlelight touching its hair, brushing its face, in inexplicable and rather horrible pantomime. . . .

It was to him that. Ted Latimer turned. The candle-flame swung, fluttering with thin noise. His motions abruptly stopped.

"We'd better go into the front room, hadn't we?" Ted demanded. "In the front room, where it's safe, and they can't come. Hadn't we?"

"Yes, I suppose so," replied a colorless voice. "Anyway, that's what I'm given to understand. I never see them, you know."

So this was Joseph, saving the fantastic incongruity of names, whose dull freckled countenance appeared incurious. The candle fluttered round again, and the shadows took him.

"You see?" inquired Ted.

"Monstrous!" said Major Featherton suddenly, for no reason at all.

Halliday strode forward, with Masters after him. "Come along, Blake," he said to me; "we're going to have a look at that place."

"They're out now, I tell you!" cried Ted. "They won't like it. They're gathering, and they're dangerous."

Major Featherton said that as a gentleman and a sportsman he considered it his duty to go along and give us safe conduct. Stopping short, Halliday gave him a kind of satirical salute, and laughed. But Ted Latimer touched his arm, grimly, and the major allowed himself to be led towards the front of the hall. They were all moving now, the major with a rolling stateliness, Ted hurriedly, Joseph in obedient and unperturbed slowness. Our lights followed the footsteps of that little procession, and the high darkness pushed round us like water, and I turned towards that little whitewashed passage that led out to where the rain was splashing....

"Look out, man!" said Masters, and dived to yank Halliday aside.

Something fell out of the darkness. I heard a crash; somebody's flashlight jumped and vanished; and, while the vibrations beat and whirled round my ears, I saw Ted Latimer turn round with staring eyeballs, his candle held high.

IV TERROR OF A HIGH PRIEST

FULL in the beam of my electric torch, Halliday sat on the floor, supporting himself with his hands behind him, and looking dazed. Another beam - Masters' after flickering on him momentarily, had gone straight up into the vault like a searchlight; it was playing over the staircase, the stair-rail, the landing immediately above. They were empty.

Then Masters faced round on the group of three. "Nobody is hurt," he said heavily. "You'd better go into the front room, all of you. And hurry. If they are alarmed, tell them in there - we will join them in five minutes."

They did not argue, but turned into the room and the door scraped shut.

Then Masters began to chuckle.

"That's torn it, sir. They're cool, they are. Why, sir," said the inspector, with a sort of broad tolerance, "that's one of the oldest, stalest, childishest tricks in the whole bag. Talk about whiskers. . . . Lummy! You can rest easy now, Mr. Halliday. I've got him. I always thought he was a fake. And I've got him now."

"Look here," said Halliday, pushing back his hat, "what the devil happened anyway?" His voice was under control, but a muscle jerked in his shoulder, and his eyes wandered round the floor. "I was standing there. And then something hit the flashlight out of my hand; I was holding it loose. I think" - he experimented, without rising - "I think my wrist is numb. Something hit the floor, something came flying down; bang! Ha. Ha ha. Funny, maybe, but damned if I see it. I need a drink. Ho ho."

Masters, still chuckling, turned the beam on the floor. Lying a few feet in front of Halliday were the smashed fragments of a vessel so heavy that the shards had scattered very little, and a third of it was still intact. It was of grayish stonework, now black with age: a sort of trough some three feet long and ten inches high, which must once have held flowers. Masters' chuckle died, and he stared.

"That thing-" he said, "my God, that thing would've crushed your head like an orange.. You don't know how lucky you are, sir. It wasn't meant to hit you, of course. They didn't mean it; not them! That wasn't on the cards. But a foot or two to the left.. .

"They?" repeated Halliday, starting to get up. "You don't mean-?"

"I mean Darworth and young Joseph, that's who. They only meant to show that the powers, the evil powers, were getting out of control; that they were fighting us, and firing that stone thing at you because you insisted on coming here. It was for somebody, anyhow... That's right. Look up. Higher. Yes, it came from the top of the staircase; from the landing.... Halliday's knee-muscles were not as steady as he had thought. He knelt there, absurdly, until his own rage helped him to his feet.

"Darworth? Man, are you telling me that – that swine," he pointed, "stood up there on the landing, and dropped-? -"

"Steady, Mr. Halliday. Don't raise your voice, if you please - not at all. I don't doubt Mr. Darworth is out there where they left him. Just so. There's nobody on the landing. It was that kid Joseph."

"Masters, I'll swear it wasn't," I said. "I happened to have my light on him the whole time. Besides, he couldn't have---“

The inspector nodded. He seemed possessed of an endless patience. "Ah? You see? That's part of the trick. I'm not exactly what you'd call an educated man, gentlemen," he explained, with a rather judicial air and broad gesture, "but this trick, now ... well, it's old. Giles Sharp, Woodstock Palace, sixteen forty-nine. Anne Robinson, Vauxhall, seventeen seventy-two. It's all in my files. A gentleman at the British Museum has been very helpful. I'll tell you. how they worked it in just a minute. Excuse me."

From his hip-pocket, solicitous as a steward, he whipped out a cheap gunmetal flask, which had been carefully polished. "Try some of this, Mr. Halliday. I'm not a drinking man myself, but I always take it along when I tackle matters of this kind. I find it useful-eh? For others, I mean. There was a friend of my wife, who used to go and visit a medium at Kensington.”