The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

"I ain't got any cigars, you know. My nephew Horace - you know, Featherton, Letty's kid; the fourteen-year-old 'un with the feet gave me a box of Henry Clays for my birthday. (Sit down, dammit, can't you? And mind that hole in the 'rug; everybody who comes in here kicks it and makes it bigger). But I haven't smoked 'em. I haven't even tried 'em. Because why?" inquired H.M. He lifted one hand and pointed it at Masters with a sinister expression. "Eh? I'l1 tell you. Because I've got a dark suspicion that they explode, that's why. Anyway, you have to make sure. Fancy: any right kind of nephew givin' his uncle explodin' cigars!-I tell you, they won't take me seriously, they won't... So, d'ye see, I gave the box to the Home Secretary. If I don't hear anything about it by tonight, I'll ask for 'em back. I got some good pipe-tobacco, though ... over there.... "Look here, Henry," interposed the major, who had been wheezing and glaring for some time, "we've come to you about a dashed serious matter,"

"No!" said H.M., holding up his hand. "Not yet! Not for a minute! Drink first."

This was a rite. I brought the glasses, and we went through it, though Featherton was fuming with impatience. Masters remained stolid, holding his glass steadily as though he were afraid it might fall; but there was some new development on his mind. H.M. said, "Honk-honk!" with the utmost solemnity, and drained his glass at a gulp. - He relaxed. He adjusted his feet on the desk, wheezing. He picked up a black pipe. When he settled back in the chair, it was with an air of gentle benevolence wrapping him round. His expression did not change, but at least he looked like a Chinese image after a good dinner.

"Humph. I'm feelin' better.... Yes, I know what you came for. And it's a confounded nuisance. Still-" His small eyes blinked, and moved slowly from one to the other of us. "If you've got the assistant commissioner's permission.... "Here it is, sir," said Masters. "In writing."

"Eh? Oh, yes. Put it down,put. it

down. He'd always got pretty good sense, Follett had," H.M. admitted grudgingly. He grunted. "More than most of your people, anyhow." The small eyes fixed on Masters with that disconcerting stare which the old boy knew best how to employ. "That was why you got me, eh? Because Follett backed you up. Because Follett thought you'd tossed 'em a loose pack of dynamite, and at last you'd got a real upand-at-em Sizzler of a case?"

"I don't mind admitting that," said Masters, "or, as you say, that Sir George thought-"

"Well, he was quite right, son," said H.M., and nodded somberly. "You have."

During a long silence the rain splashed on the windows. I looked at the spot of yellow light made on the desk by H.M.'s goose-neck lamp. Among a litter of typewritten reports, spattered over with tobacco-ash, lay a sheet of foolscap sprawled over with notes in thick blue penciling. H.M. had headed it, "Plague Court." I was fairly certain that, if Masters had furnished him with all the reports, he knew as much as we did.

"Any ideas?" I inquired.

With painful effort H.M. moved his heel on the desk and struck the foolscap sheet. "Plenty of ideas. Only, d'ye see, they don't altogether make sense - just yet. I shall want to hear a lot of talkin' from you three. Humph, yes. What's more, and it's a blasted nuisance, I'm afraid I've got to go and have a look at the house...."

"Well, sir," Masters said briskly, "I can have a car at the door in three minutes, if you'll let me use your phone. We'll be at Plague Court within fifteen minutes...."

"Don't interrupt me, dammit," said H.M. with dignity. "Plague Court? Nonsense! Who said anything about Plague Court? I mean Darworth's house. Think I mean to get out of a comfortable chair to mess about in the other place? Bah. But I'm glad they appreciate me." He spread his spatulate fingers and examined them with the same sour expression. The voice grew querulous again. "Trouble with the English people is, they won't take serious things seriously. And I'm gettin' tired of it, I am. One of these days I'm goin' over to France, where they'll give me the Legion of Honor or something, and shout about me with bated breath. But what do my own flesh-and-blood countrymen do, I ask you?" he demanded. "The minute they learn what department I'm in, they think it's funny. They sneak up to me, and look round mysterious-like, and ask whether I have discovered the identity of the sinister stranger in the pink velours hat, and if I have sent K-14 into Beloochistan disguised as a Veiled Touareg to find out what 2XY is doing about PR2.

"Grr-rr!" said H.M., waving his flippers and glaring. "And what's more, their idea of sending me messages, and bribing Chinamen to call, and the cards that're sent up here... Why, only last week they phoned up from the downstairs office and said an Asiatic gent wanted to see me, and gave his name. I was so bloomin' mad I chewed the phone, and I yelled down and told Carstairs to chuck the feller down all four flights of stairs. And he did. And then it turned, out that the poor feller's name really was Dr. Fu-Manchu after all, and he come from the Chinese Legation. Well, sir, the Chink Ambassador was wild, and we hadda cable an apology to Pekin. And what's more "

Featherton hammered the desk. He was still coughing heavily, but he contrived to get out: "I tell you, Henry, and I've been telling you, this is a dashed serious business! And I want you to get down to it. Why, I said to young Blake only this afternoon, I said, `We'll put this thing up to Henry as a matter of-caste, dammit. Won't be any aspersions cast on the ruling classes of England, by Gad, if old Henry Merrivale"

H.M. stared, and literally began to swell. As an appeal to a fanatical Socialist, this was not precisely the way to draw a man out.

"He's ragging you, H.M.," I said quickly, before the storm broke. "He knows your views. What we did say was this. We agreed to try you as a last resort, but I pointed out that this was utterly beyond you - not in your line - foolish to think you could see through it-" "NO?" said H. M., and leered. "You want to bet? Hey?" "Well, for instance," I continued persuasively, "you've read all the testimony, I suppose?"

"Uh. Masters here sent it over this morning, along with a pretty first-class report of his own. Oh, yes."

"Find anything interesting, suggestive, in what anybody said?"

"Sure I did."

"In whose testimony, for example?"

Again H.M. inspected his fingers. Again the corners of

his mouth were turned down, and again he blinked. He grunted:

"Humph. For a starter, I'll call your attention to what was said by the two Latimers: Marion and Ted. Eh?" "You mean - suspicious?"

Major Featherton snorted. H.M.'s expressionless eyes moved to him; H.M. was locked up at last, in the cage of his own brain. Once enticed into the cage, you could let him alone to pad up and down noiselessly, until the door was opened and he pounced.

"Oh, I dunno as I'd call it suspicious, Ken. What do you think? ... Point is, 'I'd rather like to talk to 'em. I'm not going to stir out of this room, mind you. I'm not wastin' good shoe-leather just to give Scotland Yard a bouquet. Too much trouble. All the same-"

"You can't, sir," Masters said heavily.

There was something in the tone of his voice that made us all look at him. What had been on his mind, some new development that was worrying him, all seemed packed into those few words.

"Can't what?"

"See Ted Latimer." Masters leaned forward, and his placid tones got a little out of control. "He's bolted, Sir Henry. Done a bunk. Packed a bag and cleared out. That's what!"

XIV

CONCERNING DEAD CATS AND DEAD WIVES

NOBODY spoke. Featherton made a movement as though to protest, but that was all. The patter of the rain grew loud in the quiet room. Masters, drawing a deep breath as though he had at last got a weight off his chest, took out his notebook and an envelope stuffed with papers. He began to sort over the papers.

"Has he, now?" inquired H.M., blinking. "That's interesting. Might mean something, might not. All depends. I shouldn't jump at it, if I was you. Humph. What have you done?"

"What can I do? Swear out a warrant for murder without even being able to tell a coroner's jury how it was done?.. . . No, thanks," Masters said curtly. His face showed that he had not been to bed for twenty-four hours. He looked straight at H.M. "This is my official head, Sir Henry, if I make any more mistakes, and if I don't pull it off. The papers are saying, `While an inspector of the C.I.D. was amusing himself with the occult, it seems rum that a brutal murder should be pulled off under his nose; very rum indeed.' To top that, the dagger was pinched under my nose. To top that, the story got into the papers in spite, of me.... Sir George gave it pretty straight to me this morning. So, if you've got any ideas, I'd appreciate them."

"Oh, hell," said H.M. gruffly. He looked" down his nose. "Well, what the devil are you waiting for? Get started! Give me facts! Get down to business. - Tell me what you've done today."

"Thanks." Masters spread out his papers. "I've got a few things, anyhow, that may be leads. As soon as I got back to the Yard, I began rummaging the files about Darworth. Part of the information I've already sent you, but not this. You read about that scandal over his first wife, Elsie Fenwick's disappearance, following the alleged attempt to poison her while they were in Switzerland?"

H.M. grunted.

"Just so: Now, there was a woman mixed up in that business who might or might not've been important. That was the maid; the maid who swore old Elsie had swallowed the arsenic herself, and pretty well saved Darworth's bacon. I was curious about that maid, so I looked her up. And now," said Masters, lifting his dull eyes, "here are some names and figures. The alleged poisoning attempt took place at Berne some time in January, 1916, and the maid's name was Glenda Watson. She was still with the old woman when Elsie disappeared from their new home in Surrey on April 12th, 1919. Afterwards the maid left England.. .

"Well?"

"At eight o'clock this morning I cabled the French police for any information about Darworth's second wife. They keep tabs on everybody in the country, harmless or otherwise. This was the reply."

He shoved a cable-form at H.M., who scarcely glanced at it, grunted, and passed it to me. It said:

"MAIDEN NAME GLENDA WATSON. MARRIED ROGER GORDON DARWORTH, HOTEL

DE VILLE, 2ND ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS, JUNE 1, 1926. WIFE'S LAST ADDRESS VILLA D'IVRY, AVENUE EDWARD VII, NICE. WILL INVESTIGATE AND COMMUNICATE.

DURRAND, SURETE."

"Well?" inquired H.M., blinking placidly at me. "Make anything of it, son? - Y'know, Masters, I got a suspicion you're on a blinking awful wild-goose chase. I got an even darker suspicion that it ain't Glenda Watson who's going to figure in this; but somebody in nice high-up places that knew what Glenda knew. But you're right to keep kickin' the ball.... Well, Ken?"

I said: "The first of June, 1926. Seven years and a month-odd. They're devilish law-abiding people. They wait exactly the length of time until old Elsie is legally dead, and then rush into each other's arms...."

"But I don't see-!" protested Featherton, rumbling and drawing himself up. "I'm dashed if I can understand---"

"Shut up," said H.M. austerely. "And quite right they are too, son. Got to have it legal. And this raises the interesting point: was it worth it for the Watson woman? Darworth got any money, by the way?"

Masters smiled heavily. He was growing more assured now.

"Has he got any money? Ha! Listen, sir. Immediately after the splash in the papers, we got a phone call from Darworth's solicitor. Now it happens (and this I'll admit is a piece of luck) that I know old Stiller pretty well. So I hopped found to him straightway. He hemmed and hawed and looked out. the window; but it boils down to the fact that Darworth leaves an estate of about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Eh?"

The major whistled, and Masters peered round the desk as though well satisfied. But this information acted on H.M. in a rather different way than I had expected. He opened his fishy eyes wide. He pulled off his spectacles and shook them in the air. For a second I thought his feet were going to slide off the desk or his chair tip backwards.

"So it wasn't the money!" said H.M. "Burn me, it wasn't the money after all! Of course not. Humph." He rumbled with unsmiling satisfaction, and looked at his black pipe. But he was too lazy to light it, so he settled back again dully with his hands folded over his stomach. "Carry on, Masters. Carry on. I like it."

"What's on your mind, sir?" the Inspector asked. "I got it straight from Stiller. Darworth's got no other relations, made no will, and his wife will inherit. Stiller describes her as a what-is-it `statuesque’ brunette, not at all a servant-type...."'

"Chuck it," said H.M. "What're you insinuatin', son? That the woman came over and murdered Darworth for his money? Tut, tut. That's not fair detective-fiction, to go and dump down a mere name, somebody we haven't seen and that ain't connected with the business. Don't growl, now. Because why?" He pointed his pipe at Masters. "Because the person who planned this crime planned it exactly like a detective-story. It's skillful; even I'll admit that. But that locked-room situation is too rounded and complete, too thoroughly worked out and smacked down as a deliberate puzzle for us. It was staged for months. Everything led slowly up to just that situation, when just that crowd would be assembled under just those emotional circumstances. . . . They even provided themselves with a scapegoat. If something went wrong, we should fasten directly on good old Joseph. That was why he was there at all; he wasn't needed otherwise. Man, d’ye think he could really have pinched a needleful of morphine from Darworth without Darworth knowing all about it but pretendin' not to?"

"But—“ Masters protested.

"Humph. It's time to pry off a few layers of wrappin' in this thing. Joseph doped himself and slid out of the package; all right; but he was always there, and the British public always knows what to think when it finds a Dope-Fiend, especially if he can't give a coherent account of what he's been doing. When the Dope-Fiend is also that other figure of suspicion, a Medium - arragh! That's why you can stop lookin' for a mythical outsider, son, who dived into the pool after the water'd been all colored up nice and proper."

He was gabbling on as though sleepily addressing the telephone; a little more rapidly than usual, but with no change of voice.

"Hold on, sir!" said Masters. "Stop the bus! I've got to get this straight. You said, `They provided themselves with a scapegoat.' Then you said something about Darworth. And all this time you were talking about somebody who planned things to happen along the line of a detective-story.... "Right-ho. So I did."

"And have you any idea who it was that planned it?"

H.M.'s little eyes roved. They seemed amused, though he preserved his sour expression, and kept on twiddling his thumbs across his waistcoat. He blinked.

"Well, I'll tell you," he said, as though suddenly determined to impart a confidence. "It was Roger Darworth."'

Masters stared at him. Masters opened and shut his mouth. In the silence we could hear a door bang shut downstairs the honking of taxis outside on the Embankment. Then Masters bent his head a little, raised it, and said with the quiet air of one who is determined to hold to reason: