The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

"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.

"Now that we're all locked in here nice and cozy," said H.M., and his voice echoed in the little stone room, "I'm goin' to tell you what happened night before last."

Halliday scratched a match to light a cigarette; but he broke the head off, and he did not try again.

"You'll imagine," continued H.M. drowsily, "that you're in the positions you occupied then. Think back, now, to where everybody was. But we'll take up Darworth first; the dummy indicates him, and" - H.M. took his watch out of his pocket, leaned across the table, and laid it down -"we got some time to spare before somebody I'm expectin' arrives here tonight....”

"I've already told you some of what Darworth's done; I repeated it to Ken and the major yesterday, and to Halliday and Miss Latimer this morning. I told you about the confederate, and what was planned....”

"We'll start from where Darworth murders the cat; and that's where I began sittin' and thinkin'."

"Not to interrupt," said Halliday; "but who are you expecting tonight?"

"The police," said H.M.

After a pause he got his pipe out of his pocket and went on:

"Now, we've established that Darworth killed that cat with Louis Playge's dagger, by the punctures and rips in its throat. Very well; afterwards he's got the blood to splash hereabouts, he's got himself smeared up a bit - but that will pass unnoticed in the dark, under coat and gloves, if he doesn't see anybody, but gets Featherton and young Latimer to rush him out and lock him in here immediately. Point really is: What did he do with that dagger? Eh?

"Only two things he could 'a' done: (1) He could have brought it in here with him, or (2) Passed it to his confederate.

"Take the second point first, my lads. If he passed it to a confederate, that'd mean that his confederate had to be either young Latimer or Bill Featherton... " Here H.M. sleepily raised the lids from his eyes, as though expecting a protest.

Nobody spoke. We could hear the watch ticking on the table.

"Because those were the only two with him, to whom he could have passed it. Now, it's not reasonable that he did such a fat-headed thing. Why hand it over to the confederate merely to take into the big house and bring out again? - runnin', meantime, the risk of being seen giving it to the confederate by the other person who's not in the plot, and the even bigger risk entailed by the confederate carryin' around a blood-stained dagger which will give the show away if anybody in the front room happens to spot it. No, no; Darworth took it into this room with him. That's the reasonin'.

"As a matter of fact, I knew from another cause that he did take it in; but we'll pass over that other cause for a minute: I'm showin' you the obvious reasons for things. ... Well, speak up, somebody!" he added with a sudden sharp look. "What dye gather from that?"

Halliday turned round from gazing blankly at the watch.

"But what about," he said, "what about the dagger that touched the back of Marion's neck?"

"Humph. That's better. Exactly. What about it? Son, that apparently inconsistent point clears up a big difficulty. Somebody was prowlin' in the dark. Was that person holdin' another dagger? If so, the whole point is that he or she was holdin' it in a very odd way; an unnatural way; a way nobody under heaven ever carried a dagger

before. Mind you, she wasn't touched by the blade, but by the handle and hilt, so that the person must have been gripping it under the hilt, by the blade.... What is it, son, that you do naturally hold like that? What is it that is shaped rather like a dagger, so that a mind running on daggers might possibly mistake it for one in the

dark ... ?"

"Well?"

"It was a crucifix," said H.M.

"Then Ted Latimer-?" I said, after a pause that seemed to echo like thunder. "Ted Latimer—?"

"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin'. And I thought a good deal about the psychological puzzle of Ted Latimer, both before and after we heard how he come home with a little crucifix in his hand....”

"Y'know, that half-cracked young feller would have concealed that crucifix from you quicker and deeper than he'd have concealed a crime. He would honestly have considered himself shamed if you had thought that he, the intellectual snipe, carried it because he reverenced it or thought it holy: which he would say he didn't at all.... And that's the dancin', topsy-turvy puzzle of people nowadays. They'll sneer at a great thing like the Christian Church, but they'll believe in astrology. They won't believe the clergyman who says there's something in the heavens; but they will believe the rather less mild statement that you can read the future there like an electric sign. They think there's something old-fashioned and provincial about believing too thoroughly in God, but they will concede you any number of deadly earthbound spirits: because the latter can be defended by scientific jargon.

"Never mind.... Point's this. Ted Latimer fanatically believed in the earthbound soul Darworth was goin' to exorcise. He'd got himself into a state of ecstasy and exaltation. He believed this house was swarmin' with deadly influences. He wanted to go out among 'em-face 'em - see 'em! He had been forbidden to move, and yet, d'ye see, he felt that he had to go out of the `safe' room into their midst.... And, my lads, when Ted Latimer got up and crept out of that circle, he was carrying the traditional weapon against evil spirits: a crucifix."

Major Featherton asked hoarsely:

"You're saying he was the confederate? He was the one who went out?"

"Man, doesn't that crucifix sound like it? He went out, yes. But he was the one you heard go out."

"Two-" said Halliday blankly. "Then why didn't he tell us he'd gone out?"

H.M. leaned over and picked up his watch. Something was on the way; some force gathering round with the quick ticking....

"Because something happened," said H.M. quietly. "Because he saw or heard or noticed something that made even him suspect Darworth wasn't murdered by ghosts... Can you account for his wild behavior afterwards in any other way, son? He was done up. He screamed belief at you. How did Lady Benning feel when Masters ripped out all those wires in Darworth's seance room, and tore the bowels out of her beloved phantom James? Ted still believed in Darworth; and yet he didn't. In any case - whatever it was, dye see? - he still thought the Truth was bigger than Darworth; better to have everybody believe Darworth was really killed by spooks, if the trickery in this case went to support the Truth in the eyes of the world! . . . Didn't somebody tell me how he kept repeating, over and over, that this would bring the truth before the world, and what was one man's mere life compared to that? Didn't he keep hysterically insisting on that? By God, I thought so!"

"Then what was it," said Halliday, choking suddenly, "what was it Ted saw or heard or noticed?"

H.M. slowly got to his feet, immense in the firelit room.

"D'you want me to show you?" he asked. "It's nearly time."

The heat of the fire was suffocating, rather hypnotic. The mist of incense, the distortion of fire and candlelight, made the expression on the dummy's mask one of satirical enjoyment; as though, behind the embodiment of canvas and sand, Roger Darworth were listening to us in the haunted place where he had died.

"Ken," said H.M., "take Louis Playge's dagger off the table. Got a handkerchief? Good. You remember, there was a handkerchief found under Darworth's body.... Now take that knife and give the dummy three hard, scratching cuts: use your strength and rip the clothes: on his left arm, hip, and leg. Go on!"

The thing must have weighed fourteen stone. It did not move when I did as I was told, except a hideously lifelike jerk against the table. The face slid a little sideways under the rakish hat, as though the dummy had glanced down. Sand sprayed and spilled out across my hand.

"Now cut his clothes a little, but don't puncture the canvas, that's it – anywhere - half a dozen good ones. Now! Now you've done what Darworth himself did. So wipe your fingerprints off the handle with that handkerchief and drop the handkerchief on the floor... ''

Halliday said very quietly:

"There's somebody walking round outside this house."

"Dagger back on the table, Ken. Now, then, I want all of you to watch the fire. Don't look at me; keep your eyes straight ahead, because the murderer's nearly here...”

"There's no blood to distract you now. Only a little sand. If you only knew it, all the ingenuity of this crime lies in Louis Playge's dagger being exactly that kind of dagger; in preparing your mind for it, as Darworth did; and in the splendid window-dressing of cat's blood and slashed clothes. And a very hot fire, and heavy incense in it, so that you couldn't smell. . . . Keep looking at the fire, now; don't look at me or at each other or at the dummy; watch the fire and how it blazes ... and in just a second you'll solve this thing for yourself...''

From somewhere in the room, or near it, there was a creaking and what sounded like a dull scrape. Always I was conscious of the dummy, so close to me that I could touch it, as though I were standing beside a guillotine. The fire crackled and pulsed; most of all, you heard the steady, sharp ticking of H.M.'s watch. The creaking grew louder...”

"My God, I can't stand this!" said Major Featherton - hoarsely. I shot a side glance at him; his eyeballs were starting and his face mottled as though it had begun to color in a fit. "I tell you I -"

Then it happened.

H.M.'s hands slapped together sharply; how many times I could not tell. In the same moment the dummy rose forward in its chair, upsetting the candle on the table. It hesitated, wavered, and thudded forward on its face - a canvas sack outflung, with the rakish black hat almost in the fire. There was a clang and clatter as Louis Playge's dagger struck the floor just beside it.

"What in God's name-!" shouted Halliday. He was on his feet, peering wildly about the firelit room, and so were all the rest of us.

None of us had moved, none of us had touched the dummy; and yet, but for ourselves, the room was empty.

My knees were shaking as I sat down again. I drew a sleeve across my eyes, and yanked one foot back; for the dummy was resting against it, and the floor was gritty with spurted sand from its back. There were wounds in the dummy's back: one that had nipped across the shoulder-blade, one high up on the shoulder, one beside the spine, and one under the left shoulder-blade that would have pierced the canvas heart.

"Steady, son!" said H.M.'s slow, calming, easy voice. He gripped Halliday by the shoulder. "Look for yourself, now, and you'll see. There's no blood and no hocus-pocus. Examine that dummy as though you didn't know anything about what Darworth intended to do; as though you'd never heard of Louis Playge or his dagger; as though no suggestion had been forced on you as to what was to happen.... '

Halliday came forward shakily and bent down.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Look, for instance," said H.M., "at the hole that finished him; the one straight through the heart. Pick up Louis Playge's dagger, and fit it into that hole.... Fits, don't it? Quite, quite. Why does it fit?"

"Why does it-?" said Halliday wildly.

"Because the hole's round, son; the hole's round. And the dagger is just the same size. . . . But if you'd never seen any dagger, and never had any suggestion of a dagger forced on you, what would you say it looked like? Answer, somebody! Ken?"

"It looks," I said, "like a bullet-hole."

"But, my God, the man wasn't shot!" cried Halliday. "There'd have been bullets found in the wounds. And there weren't any found by the police surgeon."

"It was a very special sort of bullet, my dear fathead," said H.M. softly. "It was made, in fact, of rock-salt.... They dissolve, my fathead, between four and six minutes at blood-heat; it takes longer than that for a dead body to cool. And, when a dead body is lying in front of one of the hottest fires in England with its back exposed.... Son, it's nothing new. The French police have used 'em for some time; they're antiseptic, and no dangerous extractions of the bullet necessary when used on a burglar; it dissolves. But if it pierces the heart, the man's just as dead as though it had been lead."

He turned, and heaved" up an arm to point.

"Was Louis Playge's dagger originally exactly the same circumference as a bullet from a thirty-eight caliber revolver? Eh? Burn me, I dunno. But Darworth ground it down to the same size: not a millimeter difference. Darworth constructed his own rock-salt bullet, fatheads, on his own lathe. He got his material from one of those pieces of rock-salt 'sculpture' that Ted very, very innocently mentioned to Masters and Ken. He left traces of the salt on the lathe. It might have been fired, there bein' no noise, either from an air-pistol-which is the method I should have chosen myself-or from an ordinary pistol with a silencer. When thick incense, is burned in a small room, notwithstandin', I conclude that it was an ordinary pistol with powder-smoke that might be smelled.... Finally, it could have been fired through a big keyhole; but, as a matter of fact, the muzzle of a .38 exactly fits one of the nice grating-spaces of any of the four windows round this room. The windows, somebody may have told you, are up against the roof. If - I say if - somebody could get on that roof...."

From outside, in the yard, there was a shout, and then a scream. Masters' voice yelled, "Look out!" and two heavy shots exploded just as H.M. pushed aside the table and heaved himself towards the door.

"That was Darworth's scheme," snarled H.M. "But the little joker firin' them shots now is the murderer. Get that

door open, Ken. I'm afraid the murderer's loose.... I wrenched the bolt back, pushed up the bar, and

dragged the door open. The yard was a nightmare of darting lights. Something ducked past us, a low shape in the moonlight, started to run for our door, and then whirled as we stumbled out. There was a needle-spit flash, and a flat bang almost in our faces. Through a wake of powder smoke, we could see Masters-a bull's-eye lantern in his hand-charging after that running figure which zigzagged about the yard. H.M.'s bellow rose above the din of shouts:

"You goddamned fool, didn't you search----?'

"Didn't say anything," Masters yelled back chokingly, "about being under arrest.... You said not to.... Head off, boys! Close in! Can't-get-out of the yard now.... Penned in...."

Other shapes, flickering long flashlight beams, darted round the side of the house....