The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

"She wasn't at home. She'd gone out calling on people to see whether she could find Ted, and she hasn't got back yet. I'm sorry, sir ... but I waited half an hour to see her myself, after I'd got back from chasing all over Euston Station. I'll tell you about it. She and I were both mad good and proper over that telephone call---“

H.M. had been sticking his neck out of the car like a turtle, and somewhat damaging his hat in so doing; he was making remarks, not in an amiable manner. When the situation was explained, he said, "So' Painfully he climbed out and waddled up the steps. He roared, "Open the goddammed door, you!" in a voice that must have carried as far as Berkeley Square, and then hurled his full weight against it. This was effective. A rather pale, middle-aged man opened it, after turning on some lights. The middle-aged man explained nervously that reporters had been impersonating officers of the law

"That's all right, son," said H.M. in a voice abruptly turned dull and disinterested. "Chair."

"Sir?"

"Chair. Thing you sit in. Ah! Here."

The hallway inside was high and narrow, with `a polished hardwood floor, on which one or two small starved-looking rugs were laid out like hazards on a golf course. I could understand why Masters had said the whole place resembled a museum. It was swept and stiff and unlived-in, and there were too many shadows arranged as precisely as the scanty furniture. Faint concealed lights along the cornices illumined a piece of snaky-looking white sculpture towering up over a black-upholstered chair. Darworth had known the value of atmosphere. As an anteroom to the supernatural, it was uncannily effective. H.M. did not seem impressed. He spread himself out in the black chair, wheezing, and Masters went into action at once.

"Sir Henry, this is Sergeant McDonnell. He's under me in this business. I've taken an interest in Bert, and he's ambitious. Now, tell Sir Henry"

"Hey!" said H.M., with a powerful contraction of memory. "I know you. Knew your father, of course. Old Grosbeak. He was against me when I stood for Parliament, and I got licked, thank God. I know everybody, y'see. Last time I saw you, son..”

"Report, Sergeant," said Masters curtly.

"Yes, sir," returned McDonnell, bringing himself to attention. "I'll begin at the time you sent me to Miss Latimer's home and went to Whitehall for your appointment.

"They live in a big place in Hyde Park Gardens. It's too big for them, as a matter of fact; but they've lived there since old Commander Latimer died and the mother went to live with her people in Scotland." He hesitated. "Old Mrs. Latimer's not - not quite right in the head, you know. Whether that explains anything of Ted's erratic conduct, I don't know. I'd been in the house before, but, queerly enough, I'd never met Marion until last week."

Masters warned him to keep to the point, and the sergeant went on:

"When I went round this afternoon, she was rather cut up. She as much as told me I was a filthy spy-which," said McDonnell bitterly, "I suppose I was. But she forgot that, and appealed to me as a friend of Ted. It was like this: she'd no sooner got done talking to you, sir, than she got another phone-call...."

"Who from?"

"It purported to be Ted. She said it didn't sound like his voice, but that it might have been; and she didn't know what to think. `Ted' said he was at Euston Station, and not to worry: that he was after somebody, and might not be home until tomorrow. She started to tell him that the police were looking for him, but he rang off immediately.

"So naturally she wanted me to hop over to Euston Station; find out if he meant to take a train or had taken one; try to trace him, anyhow, and drag him back before he made a fool of himself. That was about twenty minutes past three o'clock. In case it was a hoax, she was going after some friends of his and try to trace him in that way "

H.M., who was stroking his plowshare chin, with his hat on the back of his head and his eyes half closed, interrupted.

"Hold on, son. Just a minute. Did young Latimer say anything about taking a train?"

"That's more or less the idea she got, sir. You see, he'd taken a bag with him when he went out this morning; and, since he was phoning from a railway station "

''More jumpin' to conclusions," observed H.M. sourly. "Seems to be a favorite sport. All right. What happened then?"

"I got over to Euston as fast as I could, and spent over an hour combing the place. It was a warm trail, and Marion gave me a good photograph; but no result. Only one remotely possible identification, when a platform-guard thought he might have gone through on the 3.45 express for Edinburgh; but I couldn't get any identification at the ticket-window, and the train had gone. I don't know what to think. It might have been a hoax."

"Dj'you wire the police at Edinburgh?" demanded Masters.

"Yes, sir. I also sent a wire to-" he checked himself.

"Well?"

"It was a personal wire. Ted's mother lives in Edinburgh. Hang it, sir, I knew Ted pretty well; I couldn't imagine what would have taken him up there, if he did go, but I thought I'd better warn him for God's sake to get back to London before he found himself in the dock.... Then I came back to the Latimer place, and found out the next queer thing."

McDonnell's eyes roved about the dim, harsh-shadowed hall. He said:

"One of the servants heard a voice talking to Ted at just about daylight this morning. They said it was high and queer and talking very rapidly. They said it came either from in his room, or the balcony outside."

There was something in those unadorned words which brought new terrors into the cold place. McDonnell felt it; even Masters felt it; and it conjured up shapeless images without faces. H.M. sat with his arms folded, blinking vacantly; but I felt that at any moment he might get up. Masters said: "Voice? What voice?"

"Couldn't be identified, sir.... This is the way it was. When I went to the house first, Marion had mentioned something about the servants' hearing things in the house that morning, and she wanted me to look into it. But I put it off until I returned from Euston. She had gone out, so I got the servants together and put the question.”

"You remember, Ted seemed a bit - well, shaky and upset when he left us last night. At about half-past four this morning the butler at Latimers', level-headed fellow named Sark, was awakened by somebody throwing pebbles at his window. I may mention that the house is set back from the street, with gardens around it, and a high wall. Well, Sark looked out the window (it was still pitch dark) and heard Ted calling to him to come down and open the door; he'd lost his key.”

"When Sark opened the front door, Ted fell inside on the floor. He was muttering to himself; Sark said, it gave him a turn to see him as dirty as a chimney-sweep, spotted with candle-grease and dazed-looking about the eyes-and with a crucifix in his hand."

The last detail was so weird that McDonnell involuntarily stopped, uneasily, as though expecting comment. He got it.

"A crucifix?" repeated H.M., stirring abruptly. "This is news, this is. Very religious turn of mind, was he?"

Masters said in a flat voice: "The boy's mad, sir; that's all. I could have told you.... Religious? Just the contrary. Why, when I asked him if he'd been praying, he flared out at me as though I'd insulted him. He said, `Do I look like a pious Methodist?' or some such bilge.... Go on, Bert. What else?"

"That was all. He told Sark he'd walked a good deal of the way back, and was in Oxford Street before he could find a cab. He said not to wait for Marion; she'd be back in good time; then he poured himself a big dose of brandy and went up to bed.

"The rest of it happened about six o'clock. There's a girl who gets up to start the fires, and she was coming down from the third floor past Ted's bedroom. It was very quiet and darkish outside, with a mist in the garden. When she passed the room she heard Ted mumbling something in a low voice; she thought he was talking in his sleep.

"And then the other voice spoke.

"The girl swears she never heard it before. It was a woman's voice, apparently of a quality ugly enough to scare the girl half to death; talking fast.... Then she recovered herself, and thought something different. It seems that one night about a year ago Ted had been pretty drunk, and he'd brought a girl-friend, also remarkably tight, back to the house with him; smuggled her up to the bedroom by way of a balcony, with a staircase, that runs all along that side of the house....”

McDonnell gestured.

"It was a simple enough conclusion; but when this girl heard the news about the murder later on, and what time Ted had got in, and all the rest, she got scared. And she told Sark. All she could say was that it didn't sound `like what I'd thought.' She said the voice was `creepy and crazy'."

"Did she get any words?" asked Masters.

"She was so frightened when I talked to her that I couldn't get her to make it clear. She made one remark (not to me; to Sark; but I got it second-hand) that's either startlingly imaginative or plain damned ludicrous, according to your conception. She said that, if an ape could talk, it would talk just like that voice. The only words she remembers are, `You 'never suspected it, did you?"'

There was a long silence. Masters discovered that Darworth's butler was listening; and, to cover the things we were all thinking, Masters thunderously ordered him out of the room.

"A woman-" Masters said.

"Doesn't mean a blasted thing, worse luck!" said H.M., opening and shutting his fingers. "You get anybody of nervous type all worked up, man or woman, and the voice will go into falsetto. Humph. That very curious and interestin' remark about an ape suggests something big - something - I dunno. And yet why does Ted rush off like that, with a traveling bag ... ? Humph." He brooded. His somnolent eyes moved round the hall. "All I can do for the time bein', Masters, is agree with you that I don't like it either. There's a murderer walkin' around this town that I wouldn't want to meet on a dark night. Ever read De Quincey, Masters? Remember that part about the one poor devil hidin' in the house, who'd got overlooked when the murderer butchered all the rest? And he tries to creep downstairs and get out, when he knows the murderer's prowlin' around in the room by the front door. And he's crouchin' on the stairs, scared to a jelly, and all he can hear is the noise of the murderer's squeaking shoes goin' around and around, and up and down, in that front room. Just the shoes....”

"That's all we're hearing. Just shoes....”

"Now I wonder- Ha." For a moment he leaned his big head on his hand, tapping at his forehead, and then he sat up irritably. "Well, well, this won't do. Work! Got to get to work. Masters!"

"Sir?"

"I'm not navigatin' any stairs, d'ye hear? I got enough stairs to navigate as it is. You and Ken go down to this Darworth's workshop. Get me that slip of paper you were talking about, with the figures on it; also scrape some of that white powder off the lathe and put it in an envelope for me." He stopped. He rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "And by the way, son. In case the idea occurs to you: I shouldn't taste any of that powder, if I were you. Just a precaution."

"You mean, sir, it's-?"

"Go on," the other commanded gruffly. "What was I thinkin' about? Oh, yes. Shoes. Now, who'd know? Pelham? No; he's eye and ear. Horseface! Yes, Horseface might. Where the devil's the telephone around here? Hey? People are always hidin' telephones on me! Where is it?" Darworth's butler, who had magically reappeared, hurried to drag open a cupboard at the back of the hall, and H.M. was consulting his watch. "Um. Won't be at his office now. Probably home. McDonnell! ... Oh, there you are. Hop to that phone, will you? Ring Mayfair six double-O four, and ask for Horseface; say I want to speak to him."

Fortunately I happened to remember who Horseface was, and passed the word to McDonnell as Masters led the way towards the rear of the hall. No misdirection was intended in the least. It would simply never have occurred to H.M. that there was anything strange about telephoning the home of Doctor Ronald Meldrum-Keith, possibly the most eminent bone-specialist in Harley Street, and inquiring for Horseface: either on his own part or McDonnell's. It is not at all that he dislikes the sometimes stuffed dignities into which the people about him have grown; it is that he is unconscious of them. What he wanted with the Harley Street man I had no idea.

But, as Masters opened a door at the rear of the hall, I got a definite notion that for the moment he wanted everybody else out of the way. He had got up, and was stumping towards a curtained door at the left.

Masters led the way downstairs, and through a cluttered cellar, turning on lights as we went. He very deftly picked the lock on the door of a boarded-off partition at the front; and, as I followed him inside, I could not help jumping a trifle. A dim green-shaded bulb made a sickly glow from the ceiling; the place still smelled of dead heat from an oil stove, of paint, wood, glue, and damp. It resembled a toymaker's workshop, except that all the toys were ghoulish. A number of faces stared at me; they hung drying on the walls above a clutter of workbenches, tool-racks, paint-pots, and thin sheets of wood stretched in frames; they were masks, but they were hideously lifelike. One mask - it was of a bluish skim-milk color, one eye partly shut and the other eyebrow lifted, peering down through a parody of thick spectacles - one mask I could not only have sworn was alive, but that I knew it. Somewhere I had seen that moth-eaten drooping mustache, that nervous cringing leer....

"Now, this lathe-" said Masters, laying his hand on it rather enviously. "This lathe-" He picked up a slip of paper from a steel shelf under it, and from the turning-blade scooped some whitish grains into an envelope; then he went on discussing the lathe's excellences. It was as though he were wrenching his mind away, with a sense of relief, from the riddles of the case. "Oh, you're admiring the masks, eh? Yes, they're good. Very good. I did a Napoleon once, to see how it looked, but nothing like this chap's stuff. It's - it's genius."

'Admiring,' I said, "isn't exactly the word. That one there, for instance...."

"Ah! You'll do well to have a look at that one. That's James." He turned away abruptly, asking me whether I had ever seen any gauze ectoplasm treated with luminous paint. "Can be compressed to a packet the size of a postage stamp, sir, and stuck on the inner side of the medium's groin. A woman in Balham used to do it like that; so that, she could be searched beforehand. Wore only two garments, above and below the waist; and manipulated 'em so quickly that they could swear they'd searched her beyond doubt. . . ."

Upstairs, the doorbell was ringing. I stared at that replica of James's face, at Darworth's canvas work-apron carefully folded over the back of a chair; and the presence of Darworth stood as vividly in the room as though I had seen him standing by that workbench, with his silky brown beard, his eyeglasses, and his inscrutable smile. These toys of sham occultism seemed all the more ugly for being shams. And Darworth had left one even more terrible legacy - the murderer.