Death Came Softly

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “How the hell did you do it? It’s a foul business—the sight of that smoke sinking lower and lower. . . .” Rhodian’s voice was shaking, but Macdonald’s was as even as ever.

  “Yes. The sight of the smoke is unnerving, but smoke is harmless. That night when the professor died there was nothing to see. Carbon monoxide has not the visible qualities of smoke, but it must have behaved very much as the smoke did just now, rising at first, driven up by the heat, then slowly sinking until all the air in the cave was diffused with it. As to how it was done, use your common sense. It’s easy enough.”

  Rhodian shook his head and turned and looked at the entrance to the cave. The smoke was pouring out of it now, rising above the point of the arch, fanned by a breeze from the once more open lancet.

  “I haven’t the least idea,” he said. “I’m not good at puzzles. It beats me altogether.”

  Macdonald shrugged his shoulders.

  “And you’re said to be the world’s most ingenious traveler when it comes to improvising things to get you out of difficulties,” he said. “If your life depended on it, I think you’d sort this problem out in a very short time. Look at the under side of the great arch there, where the entrance gates used to be. What is that fixture in the center?”

  “Where the electric light used to be.”

  “An electric cable and fixture, still connected with the house current. You can easily find out if it’s in use by the simple expedient of fitting a bulb. The fixture is all right, the current is there. Now come inside the cave again. The smoke has cleared off now.”

  He motioned Rhodian to precede him, and they went back into the cave. It was still full of the pungent smell of burned leaves, but not unpleasant to breathe. Macdonald went toward the recess and shifted some leaves that lay in the shadow. His right hand pulled at a line of flex, invisible against the dark rock, and he pulled out a small electric stove.

  “All very simple,” he said. “You connect your flex with the fitment in the entrance arch by an adapter. You put your stove in here and pile up charcoal against the bars, being very careful to put enough charcoal to conceal any glow made by the fire. You put the flex from the stove through the lancet, and then you wait. When you have seen your victim arrive, you wait for an hour or so, and then you connect up the two ends of the flex by another adapter, and then you wait again. Of course, the lancet has to be—bunged up, as you said. Perhaps the arch to the entrance of the cave was bunged up too. You may remember that Carter used the wicket gate which once secured the cave to carry the body to the house. It must all have seemed very easy. The murderer did not even have to go inside the cave to remove the stove. It’s quite small. You can pull it through the lancet by the flex. Of course, this would have scattered the charcoal and upset the brazier, but that wouldn’t have mattered. As for the sound it made, a dead man does not hear. The charcoal was trampled all over the place the next morning—again, that did not matter.”

  * * *

  “The devilment of it!” Rhodian said at last. “The very simplicity of the thing is diabolical.”

  “Simple and workmanlike, as all good planning should be,” said Macdonald. “Also, it involved a minimum of risk. If it didn’t go according to plan, the murderer could bolt away into the dark, leaving a puzzled professor to puzzle over the intrusion of an electric stove into his cave. If it did go according to plan, the risk of discovery was also very slight. The stove used belonged to the house—it was taken from Lockersley’s room, I think. The end of the flex on that one had recently been cut, the ends are still fresh and shining. A length of flex was also cut from Lockersley’s hand lamp. In fact, it seems plain enough that Lockersley was meant as scapegoat. Curiously enough, other pointers indicated him as culprit, too. He was out all night—or most of the night—when the murder occurred; the first glimpse I had of him was in the hall of the house, when he stood by the box which holds the electric switches, those switches which control the lights in the drive and at the main entrance—”

  Rhodian gave an exclamation. “Look here, I may be a fool, I’ve shown you often enough that I am a fool, but I can’t help seeing that these things you’ve said about Lockersley look pretty damning. Are you dead certain that you’ve got the right man in Carter? Do you really think Carter would have been bright enough to think out the charcoal and electric stove stunt? Does a man like Carter know that charcoal gives off carbon monoxide when it burns? Hell and Hades! Isn’t the whole thing much more characteristic of a man like Lockersley, or isn’t there even a chance that he and Carter worked it together? What about those damned diamonds that Mrs. Stamford was always harping about? Say if the pair of them—Carter and Lockersley—stole them, and then planned the murder.”

  “I haven’t formulated a charge against Carter, nor taken out a warrant for his arrest, without what we call ‘due care and attention,’ ” said Macdonald; “in other words, without having concrete evidence to charge him on, but the whole motive of this crime is very involved. Incidentally, it’s getting dark in here. I seem to have been very long-winded. Would you rather come out and sit in the car while I talk about the motive part of the business? It’d be more comfortable.”

  “No, I’d rather stay and talk about it here. It’s true that I loathe this damned cave, but there seems to be a certain fitness about hearing you work out your reconstruction in here. It has a dramatic fitness.”

  “Yes. That’s quite true. I don’t often ponder over the dramatic fitness of things when I’m on a job—I leave that to the writing confraternity. Lockersley would say that our presence here conformed to a pattern, all events being pattern-making. However, we might as well sit down. I’m afraid I shall be a bit involved, but I warned you that the story was an involved one.”

  15

  “All murder prosecutions depend on three factors,” said Macdonald. “Means, motive, opportunity. You can put them in any order you like. Motive often seems most important, but if you find yourself unable to prove the means and the opportunity, you have no case. In this case, I think the means need not be disputed. That electric stove has got scratches on it such as would have been made when it was dragged out through the lancet, and there was enough pulverized charcoal in it to satisfy any jury that it had been packed under a heap of the stuff. The freshly cut end of the flex is another point. So much for means. Now, as to opportunity. In this murder the presence of the murderer was essential, and that not for a brief time—not the few minutes required to fire a shot, or stab, or strangle—but for some considerable length of time. Now, owing to the circumstances of that particular night, several people in the Valehead household were known to be up and about when they would have normally been in their beds. Lockersley was on the moor, owing to the mist—a difficult statement to prove or to disprove. Keston was out to look for him—a seemingly unreasonable thing to do, but again, difficult to disprove. Carter sat up in the kitchen to wait for the two men who were out. All that can be said decisively on that point is that he was in the kitchen when Lockersley returned.”

  “According to Lockersley,” put in Rhodian, and Macdonald agreed.

  “Yes. According to Lockersley. Brady was in his bed for at any rate part of the time between eleven o’clock and two o’clock. Now it is difficult to say that any one of them had not opportunity. All could have used the means I have outlined. For that matter, both Mrs. Merrion and Mrs. Stamford could be said to have shared the means and the opportunity. The deciding factor was motive, or so it seemed to me.”

  As Macdonald talked the light was gradually fading. The sun had set, and the world outside was losing its colors. The heavy beech branches were dark and motionless against a pale, clear sky, the lake seen as a shining band of light through the arch of the cave. His back against the rock, the detective went on in his quiet, even voice:

  “Motive to murder their father seemed to me to be lacking in the one case and totally inadequate in the other, so far as his daughters were concerned. That they could have done it w
as clear, but any reason for doing it did not exist, so far as I could see. Next, as to Keston. His motive could have been profit, a desire to inherit the sum left him under the professor’s will, but in view of the man’s record, it seemed unlikely. To my mind, it did not make sense; in addition to which, a man of Keston’s nervous disposition was hardly likely to have achieved success over such a grim task as murder. He would have fumbled and made a mess of it. Apart from his scholarliness, of which others assure me, he seems a futile sort of man: good-hearted, capable of devotion, but singularly stupid. Next, Lockersley.”

  “Yes. Lockersley isn’t stupid,” said Rhodian, and his voice sounded grim.

  “No. Lockersley isn’t stupid. Far from it. He is acute, observant and unusually accurate, what I should describe as an exceedingly able fellow. As you have noted, he had the best opportunity of anyone in the house, and the means were ready to his hand. A case against him is further reinforced by the fact that one of the stolen diamonds was found in his pocket, others on his bedroom floor. The motive to ascribe to him would be purely that of the thief. He had stolen, and he murdered to get away with it. Does that strike you as a satisfactory case against a man of Lockersley’s type?”

  “No. Not altogether, but there may have been some other motive which you haven’t fathomed.”

  “There may; I shall be getting back to motive later. A word about Carter. I think there is no doubt that Carter was the original thief of the diamonds. I have been going into his record, and it is not so blameless as Mrs. Merrion imagined. Carter may have hoped that the diamonds would never be missed, that no record of them remained, and he may have lost his head and sunk deeper into crime than he originally intended. It’s quite certain that it was Carter who attacked Lockersley. Now, having got thus far, I want to consider the matter from quite another angle. It is this. Why did Professor Crewdon suddenly change his plans and return home a day earlier than he intended?”

  Rhodian gave an exclamation of surprise.

  “But what has that got to do with it?”

  “I think it is an essential of the case. Crewdon was not a casual nor impetuous man. He broke a dinner appointment in order to get home one day earlier. I feel sure that he did not do this without a cause, and it seems probable to me that the cause was something, or some person, here at Valehead. Somebody he had to see, in order to set his own mind at rest. That is a guess, of course, but I think it will prove to have been a good guess.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, and then Rhodian asked: “Well? Go on. I’m no good—at guessing.”

  “Who—or what—could it have been that brought him back? Certainly not news of the loss of his diamonds. Who could have informed him of that? Had he some unexpected news of one of his daughter’s guests? Did he want to see Lockersley—and warn him off, to put it simply. Certain it is that Lockersley’s absence on the moor enabled him to avoid being seen by the professor. Another curious point emerged in the inquiry. An anonymous letter was sent to the police stating that Lockersley was seen on the same train as that by which the professor traveled to Enster. A lot of inquiries have been made of the railway officials, and the letter writer has been traced, but I think the real answer to my question was given in Lockersley’s own statement which he wrote out for me. I said you could read it. A torchlight is rather inadequate, and it isn’t really necessary for you to read it. You must remember the incident quite well?”

  “What incident? Why can’t you get on with it? This drawn-out business defeats me altogether.”

  “Does it? You said just now that there was a certain dramatic fitness in unraveling the story here in this cave, and I agreed with you. I am told that the professor used to say that the meditations of previous occupants conditioned certain places. Perhaps his meditations linger on here. I don’t know, but there is a certain justice in working out this story here. Do you remember walking to the cave with Lockersley, the first time you saw it, and do you remember him talking to you, quoting the professor?”

  “As we walked? No, I don’t remember.”

  “Think again. Lockersley claims to have a good memory. I think he’s right.”

  “I can’t imagine what you are driving at.”

  “I am asking you to remember, because I think that the gist of that conversation was identical with the cause which brought the professor back from town one day early. He had been dining with Professor Evans—you will remember him. I have been cabling to him, and I hope to talk with him over the telephone shortly. I think that he and Professor Crewdon were talking about a young man named Trent, once a friend of Bruce Rhodian’s. Lockersley said to you, as you walked to this cave, ‘The professor knew Martin Trent, and was talking about him.’ ”

  There was a sudden dead silence. Macdonald’s voice had ceased abruptly. In the half-dark beside him, Bruce Rhodian was panting as a dog might pant on a hot day. Macdonald suddenly spoke again, clearly and sharply.

  “My guess is this. Martin Trent is here, in this cave. Bruce Rhodian died, as Professor Crewdon died—”

  He broke off as the man beside him suddenly sprang up and made a dive for the entrance of the cave, meaning to plunge out into the gloom of the twilit woods. Another figure darkened the mouth of the cave, and Rhodian turned like a flash, facing Macdonald.

  “That for you, devil take you—a present from Martin Trent.”

  The roar of the pistol filled the cave, but the shot went high. Reeves, at the cave’s entrance, had struck up the hand holding the Colt, and he had gripped the other hand and swung it around behind his captive’s back, in the ju jitsu hold which renders a powerful man impotent. There was a few seconds’ wild struggle, as the captive twisted like an eel, slipped and finally fell against the angle of the entrance arch, his head thudding against the stone, so that he fell suddenly limp.

  “Well, it seems you guessed right,” said Reeves soberly, “but what damned fools these clever bluffers are when they see they’re bowled out. They always damn themselves at the end.”

  “They lose their temper and their nerve simultaneously,” said Macdonald. “I’ve been sitting here beside this chap, knowing he’d a pistol in his pocket, and certain that he would use it before the evening was out. I think he knew his game was up when I showed him the trick he had played with the electric stove, but he went on trying to persuade me that it was Lockersley who did it. Did you hear him say, ‘When I’m afraid I get angry, and butt into things’? That was a true word spoken of himself. He was afraid, and he murdered Crewdon. He was afraid again just now, and he tried to shoot me. It doesn’t always come off.”

  The unconscious man stirred uneasily on the rocky floor, and Reeves produced a pair of handcuffs.

  “We can take him back in the car, but he’ll probably start kicking before long. Nothing like making sure.”

  Between them the two detectives lifted their captive and carried him back to the car. Reeves sat beside him at the back, and Macdonald drove. As the sound of the engine and the glimmer of the masked headlight died away in the distance, silence and darkness settled on the Valehead woods. The entrance to the Hermit’s Cave was but a blacker blot in the shadows, and an owl hooted mournfully above the wooded scarp.

  16

  Macdonald was sitting with Mrs. Merrion and David Lockersley on the terrace at Valehead. Below them, by the river, yellow water iris stood by the stream like golden sentinels, and the scent of roses came in wafts on the breeze. The hot sun was tempered by a cool breeze, and the whole valley, set between its wooded scarps, was rich and sweet with the glory of an English midsummer.

  “I think Mr. Lockersley guessed his way along, rather as I guessed mine,” said Macdonald, “though he was rather put out of his stride by the complication of the diamond theft.”

  “Yes. I thought it was part and parcel of the whole thing,” said Lockersley, “and I admit that I believed Keston had deliberately put that stone in my pocket. This confused me and I went astray. I can just remember Carter before he hit me,
standing by the cupboard, and I had a sudden flash of illumination, as one seems to have in dreams sometimes, when one says, ‘Now I can see it all,’ just before darkness comes down again.”

  Mrs. Merrion sighed, and Macdonald said to her, “You are still puzzled. You want to get the whole problem sorted out, and then you can put it behind you.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I want to know exactly what happened, so that I’ve never got to wake up and wonder again.” She paused a minute and then added, “I’m not going to let all this poison Valehead for me. I know my sister thinks I’m inhuman, but I still love this place as much as ever. It’s not that I wasn’t fond of Father. I was, very. I shall miss him, but I do know that he died peacefully, without any pain or distress; and the rest can be forgotten, just like a bad dream. I want you to tell me exactly what happened, so that my mind needn’t ever worry about it again.”

  “Exactly, and if there’s anything you don’t understand, stop me, and I will try to explain. Now when you met Bruce Rhodian in London, he told you that he had read your father’s books, and wanted to meet him, and you asked him if he would like to come to see Valehead, and he agreed. That is all quite plain and simple. The complication was this. Two men, Bruce Rhodian and Martin Trent, did a transcontinental journey which has since become famous. They started in Northern Peru, and finished at Rio de Janeiro, but only one of them lived to the complete the journey. That one was the man whom we knew as Bruce Rhodian. Martin Trent was reported to have died of fever in the jungle. The real facts of the matter were that Rhodian died, and Martin Trent assumed his name and claimed to be Rhodian, and claimed, too, the MS. description of the journey which has since been published, here and in America, and the films and other records which had very great value. The impersonation was done for the commonest and meanest of all motives—love of money and prestige. I won’t bother you with a description of the circumstances which made that impersonation possible. It doesn’t matter so far as this narrative is concerned. What does matter is that Martin Trent, known to you and to everybody else as Bruce Rhodian, came to stay at Valehead, and that Lockersley here said to him, ‘Professor Crewdon knew Martin Trent when he was a young man in one of the American universities, and is looking forward to talking to you about him.’ Imagine for a moment what this meant to the impostor. He had come to England ostensibly to enlist, knowing that the chances of his fraud being discovered were very small here. Neither he nor his companion had been at all famous before their journey. Rhodian—as I shall continue to call him for simplicity’s sake—had stolen another man’s work and the very large profit accruing therefrom. He had taken all the credit for a piece of planning and endurance and daring which had been the result of another man’s brains and determination. He was sunning himself in admiration, and expecting to make a large sum of money from the film companies. He saw himself discredited, shown up as a cheat, possibly something worse, by that one brief statement of Lockersley’s.”