The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

"The more you sort of scrutinize old Joseph, the less he begins to look like an unfortunate marionette dancin' on wires without knowing what goes on. Look at him!

There he is, very skinny and not tall for a young man; in fact, you'd consider him small. There are the fine wrinkles in his neck, his hair cropped short and colored red, his freckles and his snub nose and rather too broad mouth; there's his thin dead voice like a boy's; and above all - I want you to remember this - his loud check suits, always distinguishable at a distance. Very much like a kid, weighing maybe ninety pounds....

"And then there was a curious thing which Masters noticed just before the stone flower-box dropped; any of the rest o' you see it? He was makin' funny motions with his hands, as though he were brushin' and touching his face, and he stopped when they turned a light on him....”

"So I thought, 'Look here, is it possible that this is any sort of disguise?' You see, he'd just been out in the rain without a hat. And I wondered if he might be afraid...."

"Well?"

"Well, say - that his freckles might wash off," replied H.M. "That was only the basis of an idea, still hazy. But I was sittin' and thinkin', and I remembered that tree in the yard. You know the tree? Masters said that a very agile person could easily have got from the top of the wall to the tree, and from the tree to the little house. And McDonnell pointed out how rotten the tree was, and showed a broken branch where it'd been tested.... So it might have broken, under a person of normal weight. I say it might, son, because Masters accepted that statement too. But there was only one person in the whole house light enough to have climbed that tree without breaking it: the innocent `boy', Joseph.

"Now, would Joseph have had the skill and agility to do that; or to shoot straight enough through that window to inflict exactly those wounds? What becomes of this stupid, drug-ridden child now? All I suspect, for the moment, is that he's not what he pretends to be; and pretty definitely there's a disguise of some sort. I ask myself, `Look here,' I say, `while that popcorn is rattlin' around in the tin, look at something else. What's this feller's motive, if he did kill Darworth? He's working with Darworth to befoozle old Lady Benning and her crowd - why does he depart from the plan and shoot Darworth, which seems rather a fat-headed thing to do? 'Twasn't an accident; those last two bullets were intended to make mutton of the whiskery crook. Why kill the source of his income? The only one who inherits any of Darworth's money is his wife....'

"Wife! You'd be surprised what a revelation started to show glimmers in the old man's mind.. Let's see, what was Darworth's purpose in staging this show? He might have told a confederate it was to proclaim the truth of occultism to the world; to make his name reverberate... but it wasn't. Oh, no. 'By God,' says I to myself, `he was after the Latimer girl. He was goin' to propose marriage to her. But he's got a wife in Nice - a sharp, hard-headed wench who's frozen him into marriage at just the right time; who knows a deal too much about the past hanky-panky. How is she goin' to take all this? "

H.M.'s pipe described a curious motion in the air, as though he were sleepily tracing out somebody's features.

"Provocative-lookin' gal, by her pictures. Thin, very. Age thirty-odd; time for little wrinkles, but not many. Not tall, but 'ud look tall on high heels. You fellers married? Ever notice how small your wives looked the first time you saw 'em without them heels? Um. Funny, too, how a mass o' black hair changes the expression of a face, or what cosmetics do to it. First I thought, 'Burn me, I'd advise that gal to be awful damn careful. Because why? Because our smilin' Darworth has already disposed of one wife, by poison or throat-cuttin' or whatnot, and if he's got his heart clean set on orange blossoms again - well, if I were the wife, I'd look under beds now and then, and stay away from side-streets after dark."' H.M. gave a long sniff. Then his eyes fixed on us. “Unless,” I said to myself, 'I simply beat him to it!'"

He pointed his pipe at us.

"Did somebody tell you how Glenda Watson started her career at the age of fifteen? In a travelin' circus and side-show; ah, you heard it, did you? I'd be very much surprised to hear that negotiating a wall and a tree, or the use of a middle-caliber firearm, would cause her a great deal of difficulty.... A versatile gel, and what a woman! She's got talents, and she's got It, or they wouldn't have fallen for her when Darworth's money wangled her a lead in the actin' company at Nice. She had to destroy the sex-appeal during the months she played Joseph; but she didn't play him long at a time.... Pity to keep her hair cut short and dyed; but she had a very luxuriant black wig to replace her real hair when she went out to take the air. Remember the mysterious woman who was seen goin' in and out of Magnolia Cottage? You see, there was one conquest she had to complete as Glenda Darworth, and

that—“

"This is all very well!" exploded Major Featherton, "but it doesn't get us farther. Dammit, there's one difficulty, I repeat, you can't get over. She had an alibi; she was directly under the eye of a reliable man all the time she might have been out killing Darworth in the stone house. . . . You can't get around that solid fact. What's more, we were all in the room just across the hall, in absolute silence-she and the sergeant were over across from us - and we didn't hear a thing.:.."

"I know you didn't," said H.M. composedly. "That's just it. You didn't hear a single damned whisper out of that room. And that's what made me suspicious.

"Now I want those shrewd minds of yours, all mellowed and primed, to consider a variety of funny coincidences.... First, immediately after the murder, a newspaper photographer was allowed to climb up on the roof of the stone house: a thing that should have and could have been stopped, because if there were any traces of the murderer's footprints on that roof, they'd have been messed up. Second, somebody walked round on the wall to test that rotten tree, and would have messed up more footprints. Third, in spite of Masters' efforts, the story of this being a ghost-murder - inexplicable, nothing but a supernatural thing-splashed out into the newspapers....

Halliday got up slowly out of his chair....

"Fourth, somebody who was very lever had been assigned to keep an eye on Darworth's movements, and would have had a better chance than we to discover that `Joseph', living in a house at Brixton, was really the fascinating Mrs. Darworth long before we had an inkling of it.

"Fifth," continued H.M., and his voice grew less sleepy.,

"fifth, my fatheads, have you forgotten that seance of automatic-writing at Bill Featherton's? Have you forgotten that seance at which `Joseph' wasn't even present? Have you forgotten that there the paper saying 'I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried' had been slipped in among Darworth's other papers, and scared him silly because he realized that somebody besides his wife - somebody there - some unseen, deadly person according to Darworth's ideas - knew the secret? Why should he have been frightened merely if `Joseph' slipped in a paper like that? He knew `Joseph' knew it, didn't he?" Suddenly H.M. leaned across the table. "And who was, admittedly, the only person who could have palmed the paper off on Darworth; bein', as he himself admitted, an expert at parlor magic?"

In the enormous silence Halliday knocked his fist against his forehead. He said:

"My God, are you telling us that that fellow McDonnell-"

And H.M. went on drowsily:

`Bert McDonnell didn't commit the murder, of course. He was an accessory, but not an important one. He wouldn't have been needed at all by Glenda Darworth if - unexpectedly - Masters hadn't shown up at Plague Court. That tore it. McDonnell was watchin' in the yard to see nothing went wrong. When he saw Masters he had to intervene; had to get Joseph away somewhere out of Masters' sight; and he was so nervous (wasn't he?) that he almost bungled it. Who suggested that Masters should go upstairs in the house and watch while he questioned Joseph alone? Who deliberately led you in the wrong direction every time you showed a flash of intelligence?

Who swore to you that tree in the yard couldn't stand any weight? Who said, for a reason you didn't question, that all it meant was that Louis Playge was buried beneath it?"

H.M. saw the expressions on our faces, and scowled.

"He's not a bad young feller. The woman had simply got him where she wanted him, that's all.... He didn't know she was going to murder Ted Latimer, and dress Ted in those glaring loud clothes and shove him into the furnace-"

"What?" shouted Halliday.

"Humph. Didn't I tell you that?" H.M. inquired blandly. "Yes. Y'see, Joseph had to disappear.. Glenda Darworth didn't mean for there to be any more murders; she was simply goin' to fade out, let the police think what they might, and reappear as Glenda Darworth to claim her two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. But Ted Latimer spotted Joseph when Ted slipped out that night. And so, y'see, Ted had to die."

XXI

THE END OF IT

HALLIDAY got up and walked aimlessly about the room. With his back to us, he stared into the fire. "This," he said, "this will just about kill Marion.... "Sorry, son," said H.M. gruffly. "I - well, y'see, I

couldn't tell you two this afternoon. It might have spoiled my game for tonight. And I sort of thought, 'Well,' I thought, 'they're pretty happy, those two. They've been through hell and blight for some time; they've had a crack-brained hag of an aunt riding 'em as badly as Darworth ever did, and even accusing one of 'em of murder when she saw they were happy; and there's no use darkening one day now."'

He spread his fingers and inspected them sulkily.

"Yes, the kid's dead. He was a good deal the height and build of `Joseph', you remember? That's what made it possible. It was very nearly spoiled when that workman Watkins looked through the cellar window and spotted the murderer at work. But, d'ye see, it was the fact that convinced us Joseph was really dead. He saw only the back of the person on the floor; he saw those clothes - those bright checked clothes; didn't I tell you to remember them -which he'd seen Joseph wearing every day. And the window-pane was dusty, and only one candle was burnin'; who wouldn't assume it was Joseph? ... Oh, the woman was clever enough. Pouring kerosene on that body, pushing it in the furnace, wouldn't have been necessary; it was unnecessary brutality; if she hadn't only wanted to make identification impossible. They'd get a charred mass out, with a few shreds of Joseph's clothes and a pair of his shoes, and there you are. It was an opportunity, and she took advantage of it. Why do you think she chloroformed him? Why, to get him bundled into Joseph's clothes before she stabbed him with the dagger. That's why they were so long together in the house before he was chucked in the furnace."

Halliday whirled round.

"And this fellow McDonnell?"

"Steady, son. Go easy, now.... I saw him tonight; I saw him just before I went to Plague Court. Y'see I knew

his father. I knew old Grosbeak very well." "So-what?"

"He swore to me he didn't know there was goin' to be a murder; he didn't know Darworth was to be killed at all. Maybe I'd better tell you about it.

"I come up to him and said, `Son, are you off duty now?' and he said, `Yes.' So I asked him where he lived, and he said a flat in Bloomsbury, and I suggested that he invite me over for a drink. I could tell then he knew something was wrong. When we got there he put the latch on the door, and turned on the light; then he just turned round and said flat-out, 'Well?' So I said, `McDonnell, I thought a lot of your father, and that's why I'm here. She's only been playing you on the string, and you know it now, don't you?' I said, `She's the ace of she-bloodsuckers, and she's got certain characteristics of the devil; and, since she burnt poor Latimer out at Magnolia Cottage, you know that now too, don't you? "'

"What did he do?"

"Nothing. He just stood there and looked at me, but he turned a funny color. Then he put his hands over his eyes for a second; and sat down, and finally he said, 'Yes, I know it - now.'

"Then we didn't say anything, but I smoked my pipe and watched him, and afterwards I said, `Why not tell me about it?" H.M. rubbed his big hand wearily across his forehead. "He asked me why he should, so I said: 'After your friend Glenda killed young Latimer yesterday afternoon she put on her regular woman's clothes and took the night Dover-Calais service over the Channel and got into Paris late last night. She'd cleaned everything out of the house that could incriminate her,' I said. 'She turned up in Paris this morning as Darworth's wife. At my request, Darworth's solicitor cabled her, to come to England for the adjustment of financial affairs. She's answered that she will be at Victoria at nine-thirty tonight. It's now a quarter to eight, and there's no way of reaching her. When she gets in, Inspector Masters will meet her at the station and ask her to come to Scotland Yard. At eleven o'clock she'll be escorted to Plague Court to witness a little exhibition of mine.' I said, 'She's done for, son. She'll be arrested tonight.'

"Well, he sat there a long time with his hands over his eyes. He said, `Do you think you can convict her?' And I said, 'You know damned well I can.' Then he nodded his head a couple of times, and said, 'Well, that finishes both of us. Now I'll tell you the story.' And he did."

Halliday strode up to the desk. "What did you do? Where is he?"

"Better hear what he had to say first," suggested H.M. mildly. "Sit down. I'll sketch it out, if you like....

"Most of it you know. How it was the woman's idea that she and Darworth should set up in this line of mulcting the gullible - although she always swore to McDonnell Darworth forced her into it - and, with long intervals between, they've been hooking various people for about four years. Darworth was to pose as the romantic bachelor, as a bait for the women; she was the dull medium who should arouse no suspicion in Darworth's lady friends. And it all went well until two things happened, (1) Darworth fell for Marion Latimer, and (2) last July McDonnell was sent to get a line on Darworth's activities by the police, and discovered who `Joseph' was.

"It happened by accident; he stumbled on the 'mysterious lady' leaving Magnolia Cottage in her proper costume, and trailed her. What happened subsequently isn't very clear from what he told me, but I gather she used every one of her own tricks to shut his mouth. It seems McDonnell went on a holiday not long afterwards; and spent it with Mrs. Darworth at her villa in Nice.... Oh, yes. When the persuasive Glenda put herself out to be fascinating, by God, she was fascinating! Incidentally, while McDonnell was telling me this, he kept saying, 'How could you know how beautiful she is? You never saw her except in that make-up!' over and over again. Son, it was a bit o' real ghastliness to hear him pleading that, as though it were an excuse. He even rushed to a drawer and got out a lot of photographs, all the time he was tellin' about murder; and I was readin' between the lines....

"Do you know what I was readin' between the lines, and why good old Glenda took such pains to win him over so he'd do anything she liked? By that time she was beginning to realize Darworth's little game. Darworth purported to be bleeding the Benning circle, and handling the Plague Court matter for their mutual benefit; but Glenda knew all about the Latimer girl, so she determined to-"