John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

From two rooms away, Mina Constable began to scream when the hands of Sanders's watch stood at one minute to eight.

" There was an animal quality about those screams, one of almost physical pain rather than fright. Mina Constable seemed to be trying to scream and speak at the same time, so that all they could hear was the endless repetition of her husband's name. Hilary, her hand on the mantelpiece, turned round with a face of pure superstitious terror. But she could not stand the sound of those screams; and Sanders was afraid she would begin to cry out as well.

He had the door to the hall open while the noise was still going on. And he saw the scene he was so many times afterwards to describe.

Sam Constable, fully dressed for dinner, was leaning against the hand-rail round the well of the stairs - within one step of the descent. He was sagging forward across the hand-rail, one hand partly supporting him on the newel-post. He raised the other hand spasmodically, the fingers twitching; he heaved his back, and for a second Sanders thought he would pitch forward over the rail on to the stairs below. But he was already too inert. He slid down beside the banisters, his body curving against them, and one hand struck with a flat thud on the carpet. His face had been turned away, so that Sanders could not see it until he rolled over on his back. The screams stopped.

Mina Constable, her teeth biting on a handkerchief, stood in the half-open door of one of the two rooms facing the head of the stairs. She did not move. With that piercing din gone; it was possible to think. Sanders ran over and knelt beside him. There was a faint flutter of pulse, which stopped as Sanders found it; and the man was dead.

Sanders, still kneeling, looked round. Three doors were open on that hall: the door of Mina Constable's room, his own room, and Hilary's room. From his position he could see across obliquely into Hilary's room. He could see under the chairs, under the bed, even under the dressing-table against the far wall. And his eye was caught by the outlines of an object which had rolled unnoticed or uncared-for under the dressing-table, but which he was to remember afterwards.

It was a tall white chef's cap, with a muffin top.

Ringing with fluid chimes, and then breaking off in dignity for official pronouncement, the grandfather clock on the landing struck eight.

CHAPTER V

And now, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, there were three persons looking out into the hall besides himself. Mina Constable still stood by the half-open door, her jaws shaking. Hilary had taken two steps out towards them, and stopped. Across the hall Lawrence Chase had just opened another door, leading to his bedroom. None of them moved.

A dim little cluster of bulbs burned at a corner of the landing by the grandfather clock, which seemed to rustle rather than tick. That light threw shadows of the hand-rail's banisters across Sam Constable's face and body. Methodically, shutting his mind to everything else, Sanders made an examination of the body. What he found caused him no alarm, but a shattering sense of relief. And yet - He felt rather than saw Chase tiptoeing over to his side, and making several ineffectual attempts to look past, his shoulder. But he did not turn round until Chase, with a kind of pounce, seized his arm. Chase was coatless and collarless, his stiff shirt bulging out between striped braces, and his long neck looking even longer. He had his collar in the other hand.

'Look here,' Chase began with hoarse thinness. 'He's not dead, is he? You're not going to tell me he's dead?' 'Yes.'

'Sam is dead?' 'See for yourself.'

'But it can't be,' said Chase, holding Sanders with one hand and shaking the collar in his face with the other. He crowded still closer. 'It's not true. He didn't mean any of it; He couldn't have.'

'Who couldn't have what?'

'Never mind. How did he die? Just tell me that. What was it?'

.'Steady! You'll have me over this rail in a minute. Get away, damn it! - Rupture of the heart, I should think.'

'Rupture?'

'Yes. Or it may be plain heart failure, where the heart is weak and just conks out by itself. Get away, will you?' said Sanders, brushing the collar away from his face with a feeling that a hundred collars were being shaken at him. ‘You heard him talk about a seizure. How was his heart, do you know?'

'His heart?' repeated Chase, with a powerful gleam of hope or relief. 'Idon't know. Probably very bad. Must have been. Poor old Sam. Ask Mina; that's it; ask Mina!'

Hilary had come out quietly and joined them. Sanders touched an arm of each of them.

'Listen to me,' he said, 'and please do as I tell you. Stay here with him; don't touch him, either of you, and don't let anyone else touch him. I'll be back in just one moment.'

And he went over to the half-open door where Mina Constable was waiting. Pushing her gently back before him, he went into the room and closed the door.

She did resist him, but her knees began to sag with an effect less like' that of a fall than of a collapsing paper lantern. He put his hands under her arms and put her gently down in a chair. She had not finished dressing; she was wearing a large padded pink dressing-gown, which muffled her except for the wiry hands and the muddled face from which the black hair was brushed back. It was an untidy dressing-gown, spotted on the sleeve with what looked like spots of wax. All Mina Constable's vivacity had gone. The lips were white, the pulse very rapid. But it was only when she seemed to realize he was keeping her away from her husband, was holding her back gently in the chair, that she began to fight.

'It's all right, Mrs Constable, We can't do anything now.’

'But he's not really dead! He's not I saw -'

'I'm afraid he is.'

‘You would know? You're a doctor. You would know, wouldn't you?' Sanders nodded.

After a long silence, during which she shuddered, she let herself fall back in the chair. It was as though fright were passing, to be replaced by something else. She seemed to be bracing herself; then, slowly, the tears welled up in her large imaginative eyes.

'It was his heart, wasn't it, Mrs Constable?'

'What did you say?'

'His heart was weak, wasn't it?'

'Yes, he always - no, no, no I' cried Mina, coming to herself and peering at him in a blurred way. 'His heart was as strong as an ox's. Dr Edge told him that only a week ago. Nobody had such a good heart as he had, I think. What does it matter, anyway? I don't know. I didn't give him his two clean handkerchiefs. It was the last thing he asked me to do.'

'But what happened, Mrs Constable?' 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.' 'That is, why did you scream?' 'Please let me alone.'

Sanders braced himself, feeling the sympathy he must not allow to show.

'You know I hate to trouble you, Mrs Constable. But, you see, there are certain things we've got to do. We've got to send for a doctor, his own doctor; and perhaps even for the police.' He felt the muscles stiffen in her arm. 'I'll take the responsibility off your shoulders if you'll just tell me what happened, so that I can attend to it.'

'Yes, you're right,' she said, trying to tighten her jaws; but the tears flowed faster for this very resolution. 'I'll do it. You're very decent to me.'

"Then what happened?'

'He was in there -'

They were in Mina Constable's bedroom, a frilled place which nevertheless had a certain austerity about the furniture. It communicated with her husband's bedroom by way of a small bathroom. All doors were open through the suite. Straightening up, passing the back of her hand across her forehead, she indicated the other bedroom.

'He was in there. He'd just finished dressing. I was in here,

sitting over there at that dressing-table. I wasn't ready; I had to help him dress, and I was late. All the doors were open. He called out and said, "I'm going downstairs." (It was the last thing he ever said to me.) I said, "All right, dear." ' This nearly brought on a new paroxysm of tears, though she held her eyes as steady as though the eyelids were fixed.

'Yes, Mrs Constable?'

'I heard his door close, the one out into the hall.'

Again she stopped.

‘Yes?'

'Then I wondered whether I had put out the two clean handkerchiefs he asked for. One for the breast pocket, you know, and one to use.'

'Yes?'

'I wanted to ask him. So I got up and put on a robe,' her shaky fingers touched it; she illustrated everything with gestures; 'and went over - there - and opened my door to look out into the hall. I expected he'd already got downstairs. But he hadn't. He was standing out there with his back to me. Dancing or staggering, or both.'

Again it was several seconds before she could go on. The efforts she made to control her face, tightening the jaws and pressing her tongue against her teeth, were of bitter stubbornness.

'Dancing and staggering?' ' 'It looked like that. He fell. Across that hand-rail. I thought he was going over. I started to call out to him. I knew he was dying.'

‘Why?'

'I can feel things.' ·Yes?'

"That's all. You came out. I heard what you said to Larry Chase.'

'Then that will be enough, Mrs Constable. I'll attend to the rest of it. Come over here and lie down for a while. By the way, you didn't see anybody else in the hall?'

‘No.'

'How long was it between the time you last spoke to your husband and the time you saw him like that in the hall?'

'About a minute. Why do you want to know?' 'Just wondering about the, length of time a seizure would take.'

Yet he could sense a new, queer undercurrent in her voice. And more: a kind of self-contempt, a fierce hesitation on the edge of a decision, which sent her off again. 'I can't lie down,' she said. 'I won't lie down. I want to go and sit with him. I want to think. "The soul of Adonais, like a star." Oh, God help me!'

'This way, Mrs Constable. You'll feel more comfortable.'

T won't.'

"That's better,' said Sanders, gently pulling the down coverlet over her as she sank down on the bed. 'Just a moment.'

By the long breath she drew, he was reassured. He wondered if he could find a sleeping-tablet or a bromide in the house. With a person whose vivid imagination made her such a bundle of nerves and secret fears as Mina Constable, there would probably be some such thing. And he wanted to cloud her wits before she began thinking about Herman Pennik.

He went into the bathroom. It was dark except for the glow coming through from Sam Constable's bedroom, and he switched on the light. The bathroom was a tiny, damp-smelling cubicle, fitted only with a bath, a towel-rail, a wash-bowl with hot and cold, and a medicine-cabinet In the medicine-cabinet (so packed with bottles and appliances that he had to move his wrist carefully to avoid a crash) he found a cardboard box containing quarter-grain morphia tablets under the prescription of a Dr J. L. Edge.

Sanders tipped two out into his hand.

Then, closing the door of the medicine-cabinet, he stared at the reflection of his own face in the glass.

'No!' he said aloud. And he dropped the tablets back in the box, returned it to the cabinet, and went back to the bedroom. Mina Constable was lying very quietly, her eyes half open and little wrinkles slackening round them.

'I'll be within call' he assured her. 'Can you give me the name of your husband's doctor?' ‘

·No.... Yes. Near here?' She was evidendy trying to be sensible and cool. 'Dr Edge. You can telephone him. Grovetop 62.'

'Grovetop 62. Shall I turn out this light by the bed?' 'No!'

It was not that she half-started upright which made him draw back his hand. He had seen something, and it tightened his subconscious fear of giving anyone any medicine in this house. Beside the bed there was a night-table; and near the lamp was a writing-board, a row of sharpened pencils, and several writing-pads restlessly torn. All the tops of the pencils were frayed or bitten by sharp teeth. Under and just behind the table were a couple of very small book-shelves that could be reached from the bed. Thrust in among an Oxford dictionary, a book of synonyms, and fat notebooks or press-cutting books, he saw a taller, thin volume in imitation leather; across it had been pasted a label with the shaky printed words, New Ways of Committing Murder.