The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

"All the Melishes are rotten with insanity. I could have told you that. Sara Melish, that girl's mother, is kept under observation in Edinburgh.... But if you won't believe what I tell you, won't you believe plain evidence?"

"Humph. Such as-?"

"The voice in Ted's room that morning!" She apparently caught some expression on H.M.'s face, for she kept smiling and nodding. "Why did you all so easily assume it was an outsider? Was it likely that an outsider should be on the balcony at that hour of the morning? But, you see, the balcony runs all around the house: past dear Marion's bedroom.... But was it a wonder that a poor kitchen-maid was deceived in the voice? Dear Sir Henry, she had never heard it before-speaking in that manner. That was the dear girl's real voice. What else can one make of the words, `You never suspected it, did you?"

I heard hard breathing behind me. Masters lumbered past and up to H.M.'s desk.

"Ma'am," he said, "ma'am"

"Shut up, Masters," said H.M. softly.

"And that dear gullible police-sergeant of yours, that Mr. McDonnell you sent to spy on us before," continued Lady Benning, lifting and lowering her fingers on the desk. Her painted face moved snakily around. "He called on poor Marion at an inconvenient hour yesterday afternoon. She got rid of him - oh, so easily, the dear clever girl! She had to go out. Oh, yes. She had other work to do."

Lady Benning giggled. Then her head jerked up.

"I believe the inquest is to be held this afternoon, Sir Henry. I shall perform my duty. I shall go into the box and accuse poor Marion of the murder of Roger Darworth and of Joseph Dennis."

The silence after those sharply enunciated words was broken by H.M:'s thoughtful voice: "Now, ma'am, that's most interestin'. You won't be able to do, it this afternoon, of course; I forgot to tell you there's been an adjournment---"

She leaned again. It was like a pounce. "Ah! You believe me, don't you? I can see it in your face. Dear Sir Henry... . "

"But it's interestin'. It shows rather a change of attitude, don't it? I wasn't there, and all I know is what I read, but didn't you say Darworth had got himself done in by ghosts?"

Her little eye gleamed like a crumb of glass. Say that, and you touch the fanatic. "Make no mistake, my friend. If they had chosen to kill Mr. Darworth- "

There was a late and somnolent fly drumming along the edge of H.M.'s desk. Her black-gloved hand shot out. The next moment she brushed the dead thing softly to the carpet; then she dusted her hands together, smiled at H.M., and went on evenly: "That is why I supposed it, you see. But when the unfortunate imbecile was murdered, I knew that they had only stood by in their power, and watched a human being commit these murders. In a way, it was their direction. Oh, yes. They were instrumental. But they chose a human agent." Slowly she lifted herself across his desk; and, leaning nearly in his face, scrutinized H.M. with a hideous earnestness. "You do believe me? You do believe me, don't you?"

H.M. rubbed his forehead. "It seems to me, now that I remember it, something about Miss Latimer and Halliday holdin' hands. . .

She was a wise general. She knew the value of not saying too much; she knew the value of her effects. After carefully watching H.M.'s face-and, in general, card-players have found this a highly unprofitable proceeding - she seemed satisfied. There was a thin frosty light of triumph about her. She got to her feet, and so did H.M. and I.

"Good-by, dear Sir Henry," she said softly, at the door. "I shall not take up your time. And holding hands?" She giggled again, raised her hand and wagged a finger at us. "Surely my dear nephew is chivalrous enough to uphold her if she cares to say that? It is the simple conduct of a gentleman. Besides, you know, he may have been deceived." Her face assumed a sly and coquettish simper. "Who knows? In her absence, he may have been holding mine."

The door closed. We heard the cane slowly tap-tapping down the hall.

"Sit still!" said H.M., as Masters made a movement forward. His command rang in the ugly quiet. "Be still, you fool. Don't go after her."

"My God," said Masters, "do you mean to tell me she's right?"

"I'm only tellin' you we've got to work fast, son. Take a chair. Light a cigar. Be calm." He hoisted his feet on the desk again, and drowsily blew smoke-rings. "Look here, Masters. Did you have any suspicions of the Latimer girl?"

"I'll be honest about it, sir. I never even considered it."

"That's bad. On the other hand, y'see, the mere fact that she was the farthest from suspicion don't necessarily mean she's guilty. Things'd be too easy like that. Find the unlikeliest person - call the Black Maria. The trap is that, since it don't seem likely, you'll believe it all the more. Besides, in this case it happens to be the most likely one who's guilty....

"But who is the most likely one?"

H.M. chuckled. "That's been the trouble with the case; we haven't been able to see it. Still, at my little party tonight ... by the way, you didn't know about it, did you, Ken? Plague Court at eleven o'clock sharp. This will be strictly stag. I want you, and young Halliday, and Bill Featherton.... Masters, you're not to be with us; I'll give you your instructions presently. I'll need some extra men for help, but they'll come from my own department. Shrimp's the man I want, if I can find him."

"All right," the Inspector agreed wearily. "Whatever you say, sir. If you'll agree to introduce me to the murderer, I'll do anything in this nightmare of a business. I'm just about crazy, and that's a fact. After that fiasco of Mrs. Sweeney "

"You know about it?" I interrupted, and hastened to lay out my information. Masters nodded.

"Every time we get a lead," he said, "even a small one, it's cut out almost as soon as it's mentioned.... Yes, I know. That was Durrand's brain-wave. That was the reason he dragged me in with a trunk-call from Paris that we had to pay for. He found out about Glenda Darworth; and then that there were long periods when she was not seen in Nice. I'll admit he got me excited about the thing.... H.M. waved his cigar in the air.

"Burn me," he said admiringly, "Masters was inspired with a real joie de vivre, he was. Back he goes to Magnolia Cottage a-flying, with a female searcher in tow. So they leap on Mrs. Sweeney with triumphant shouts, and then they discover that something's wrong. No padding. No wig....”

"But, blast it,, the woman isn't young any more," Masters protested; "she mightn't have needed any disguise-"

H.M. pushed over the copy of l'Intransigeant. There was a large photograph labeled, "Mme. Darworth." "Full measurements here, son. It was taken eight years ago; but eight years ain't long enough to change brown eyes to black, alter the shape of a nose, mouth, and chin, and add four inches to height.... Well, Ken, Masters was wild. Not so much as La Sweeney, I'll admit. More so as good old Durrand put through another call this morning, at the Yard's expense, saying, 'Alas, one is desolated. One fears, my old one, that this handsome small idea will not march. One finds that Madame Darworth has herself telephoned from her other flat, which discovers itself at Paris, to appellate one a species of large imbecile. Truly, it is unfortunate.' Then he rings off, and the exchange says, 'Three pound nineteen and fourpence, please.' Ho. ho."

"All right," said Masters bitterly. "Go on. Have a good time. You yourself said that Elsie Fenwick is buried close to that cottage; you said – “

"She is, son."

"Then-?" "Tonight," said H.M., "you'll see. All this is a clue, but not the kind you think it is. It leads to London, not Paris or Nice. It leads to somebody you've seen and talked to, and yet never once more than suspected a little bit. Yes, the person's been under suspicion; but not very much. The person who used that dagger, and stoked the furnace, and has been laughing at us behind the best kind of mask all the way through this case....”

"Tonight," said H.M., "I'm goin' to have somebody murdered exactly as Darworth was murdered. You'll be there, and the stroke will come straight over your shoulder, and yet you may not see it. Everybody might be there, including Louis Playge."

He rolled up his big head. The pale sun behind him silhouetted a bulk still lazy, but irresistible and deadly.

"And the person ain't goin' to laugh-much longer."

XIX

THE DUMMY THAT WORE A MASK

THERE was a bright moon over the little stone house. It was a cold night; so cold that sounds acquired a new sharpness, and breath hung in smoke on the luminous air. The moon probed down into the well of the black buildings round the yard of Plague Court; it etched flat shadows, and the shadow of a crooked tree lay across our path.,

A face was looking at us out of the door of the little stone house, which stood open. It was a pallid and rigid face, which yet seemed to be winking one eye.

Halliday, at my elbow, jerked back with an exclamation that he stifled in his throat. Major Featherton muttered something, and for a second we did not move.

Far away and muffled, a City clock began to toll out the hour of eleven. In the door and windows of the house shone a glow of red firelight. And, motionless, its hands crossed in its lap, something was sitting tall on a chair before the fire; and the face was hanging over one shoulder with a witless smirk on the bluish-white features; with a drooping mustache, and one eyebrow raised over goggling spectacles. There seemed to be drops of sweat on its forehead.

I could have sworn the thing grinned....

It was not a nightmare, suddenly coming down on us. It was as real as the night and the moon, which we met after we had come up through the echoing passage to Plague Court, round in the dark yard past the ruined arbor.

"That," said Halliday loudly, and pointed, "that's the damned thing - or something like it - I saw when I came out here alone the night before.”

A big shadow moved across the firelight inside. Somebody peered out and hailed us, blotting away the white-faced thing behind.

"Good," said H.M.'s voice. "I rather thought it might 'a' been, d’ye see, after what you said this morning. That's why I used James's mask in makin' my dummy. It's the dummy we're goin' to use for the experiment... Come on in, come on in!" he added testily. "This place is full of drafts."

H.M.'s elephantine figure, in the fur-collared coat and the ancient top-hat, only enhanced the evil grotesquerie of the room inside. An enormous fire, too big a fire, ran with a roar up the black chimney. A table had been set up before the fire; a table and five kitchen chairs, of which only one had a complete back. Supported on one chair, and propped sideways against the table, sat a life-sized dummy roughly constructed of canvas filled with sand. It was even fitted out with an old coat and trousers, and on its head a rakish felt hat held in place the painted mask where a face should have been. The effect was one of jaunty horror, enhanced by a pair of white cotton gloves sewn to the sleeves in such fashion that the dummy seemed to have its hands placed together as though praying....

"It's good, ain't it?" inquired H.M. with admiring complacency. He had his finger in the pages of a book, and his chair had been drawn up on the opposite side of the table. "When I was a kid, I used to make the best Fifth-ofNovember Guys in London. There wasn't time to make this one more elaborate. Blasted thing's heavy, too. Weighs as much as a full-grown man."

"Brother James-" said Halliday. He wiped his hand across his forehead, and tried to laugh. "I say, you go in for realism, don't you? What are you going to do with it?"

"Kill it," said H.M. "There's the dagger on the table."

I looked away from the bulging eyes of the dummy, the goggling spectacles and rabbit-like smile under the mustache as the thing sat with its hands together against the firelight. On the table a single candle burned in a brass holder, just as it had been last night. There were some sheets of paper and a fountain-pen. There was also-blackened with fire from bone handle to point - Louis Playge's knife.

"Dash it, Henry," said Major Featherton, clearing his, throat. The major looked strange in an ordinary bowler and tweed coat; less imposing, and more like a querulous elderly man with asthma and a face colored by too much tippling. He coughed. "After all, I mean to say, this seems merely damned childish. Dummies and whatnot, eh? Look here, I'm in favor of any reasonable thing—“

"You needn't try to avoid those stains on the floor," said H.M., watching him. "Or on the walls, either. They're dry."

We all glanced at what he indicated, but we all looked back at the smirking dummy. It was the most evil thing

there. The fire threw out a fierce heat, moving its shadows on the red-lit walls....

"Somebody bolt the door," said H.M.

"Good God, what is this?" demanded Halliday.

"Somebody bolt the door," repeated H.M. with sleepy insistence. "You do it, Ken. Make sure. Oh, you hadn't noticed that the door'd been repaired? Yes. One of my lads did it this afternoon. Clumsy job, but it'll do. Hop to it."

The bolt, after the wrenchings it had got that night, was more stiff then ever. I pulled the door shut and with a fairly powerful jerk got the bolt into place. The iron bar across it had been moved up vertically; I yanked it down and with several fist-poundings got it firmly wedged in the iron nests along the door.

"Now," said H.M., "'now,' as the ghost observed in the story, 'we're locked in for the night.' "

Everybody jumped a little, for one reason or another. H.M. stood by the fire, his hat on the back of his head. The firelight shone on his glasses; but no muscle moved in his big face. His mouth was drawn down sourly, and his little eyes moved from one to the other of us.

"Now, about your chairs. Bill Featherton, I want you sitting on the left hand side of the fireplace. Pull the chair out and a little away from it-that's it. Dammit, don't bother about your trousers; do as I tell you! You sit next in order, Ken . . . about four feet away from Bill; so. The dummy's next, sittin' by the table, but we'll turn him round like a companionable feller, to face the fire. The other side of the table - you there, Mr. Halliday. I'll complete the little semi-circle, thus."

He dragged his own chair over to the far side of Halliday, but set it down sideways to the chimney-corner, so that he could look along the little line we formed.

"Humph. Now, let's see. Conditions are exactly as they were night before last, with one exception. . . ." Fumbling in his pocket, he drew out a gayly colored box and tossed its contents at the fire.

"Here!" roared Major Featherton. "I say-!”

First there were sparks, and a greenish light rolled out of the blaze. Then, in thick clouds, an overpowering wave of sickly smelling incense crept out and curled sluggishly up along the floor. Its odor seemed to get in my very pores.

"Got to do it," said H.M. in a matter-of-fact voice. "It ain't my artistic taste; it's the murderer's."

Wheezing, he sat down and blinked along the line.

There was a silence. I looked over my right shoulder at the dummy, leering at the fire with its black hat jauntily cocked over where the ear should be; and I had a horrible fancy, What if that damned thing should come alive? Beyond it was Halliday, grown quiet and satirical now. The candle burned on the table between him and the dummy, and flickered as the incense rose up. It was the sheer absurdity of the thing which made it come close to the terrible.