The Ghost It Was

by Richard Hull

  ‘Thank you. Go on.’ Emily nerved herself for a last effort.

  Quickly, in the short jerky sentences which contained the maximum information in the minimum number of words, Julia Vaughan described why Emily had been standing at the window of her room and what she had seen. With the aid of a few questions from Fenby, no real detail was omitted.

  ‘And now,’ said the doctor, ‘I am going to take you both back in my car. We can go via my surgery and get you something to calm down your nerves. I’ll come back after that, if you like, Inspector, but, unless you really want me, I should prefer to get some sleep before I start my ordinary day’s work. My patients might prefer it too; though being out all night is a thing that often happens.’

  ‘No need for you to stay, so long as we have got your telephone number. By the way, you won’t think me rude if the police doctor takes over up there, will you?’ He waited till the doctor courteously nodded his assent, and then he drew Julia aside. ‘Mrs Vaughan,’ he said, ‘if possible, fix up a bed in your own room, and lock the door, and don’t let her out of your sight. When someone learns how much she has seen — well, we ought not to run any more risks.’

  Julia nodded quietly. How stupid men, even intelligent men could be sometimes! She had seen that long ago and quite made up her mind to act on just those lines.

  Left by himself, Fenby could once more hear disturbances coming from Malcolm’s room. Probably the noise of the doctor’s car starting had reached his ears, but anyhow he was again trying to push the chest of drawers aside. But Fenby ignored him and went into the room next door to the library.

  It looked a dreary room, as any room will look when it is left unfurnished and undusted. There was some pretence of a curtain across the lower half of the window so that external appearances might be kept up, and the electric-light bulb hung from the ceiling, unshaded, but in good order. Otherwise the room was empty. Opposite to the door in the wall that backed on to the tower was a fireplace. At first glance there seemed to be nothing very noticeable about it. The grate was ordinary in type, rather large perhaps for the room, but not remarkably so. Yet Inspector Fenby spent some minutes looking at it. Yes, there was no doubt, there were signs that the dust did not lie so thick on the boards round it, and above and to the side of the steel fireplace were dirty marks, looking sometimes as if a hand had moved some of the dust on the floor on to the wall and sometimes as if the wall had been hit by a round blunt object. In two places there were small dents where a piece of plaster had fallen out. Fenby began to tap lightly himself against the wall, but he had barely started when a louder noise than usual showed that Malcolm was at last on the point of raising the blockade of his bedroom door.

  With a sigh Fenby abandoned his investigations and, switching off the light, left the room. As he did so, he turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. ‘Really,’ he murmured, ‘a room in this house that isn’t locked would be almost suspicious by now. All right,’ he went on in a louder voice, ‘don’t break anything. I’m coming.’

  ‘And about time too. And anyhow, who are you?’ A minute later Malcolm had been released. ‘Heavens above!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s the empty bottle merchant. I don’t know whether I’m seeing things, but I thought you were thrown out of this house hours ago and then you turn up in the middle of the night in a car — at least I thought that I heard one, if not two — and start walking about the garden with, so far as I could see, Christopher and the doctor from the village. And while you do it, you have the impertinence to take no notice of me, but leave me where I was, barricaded into my room by my preposterous uncle and that outrageous fellow Rushton. By the way, where is my uncle? When I last saw him, he was very nearly insane, and going on like an old-fashioned melodrama.’

  ‘Just when did you see him last?’

  ‘Well, there was a family row at dinner, and he tried to turn me out of the house, so I locked myself in here and he pushed that thing against the door. I intended to stay where I was, but I wasn’t going to stand for that if I could help it. But that chest of drawers is pretty heavy, and I gave up trying to push it after a bit until I heard some sort of a disturbance down below. I’ve been wondering if I could get out of the window, only it’s some way down. But, look here, you haven’t answered any of my questions.’

  ‘All in good time.’ Despite the fact that Malcolm was considerably taller than himself and, in every way, more strongly built, Fenby calmly pushed past him and went into the bedroom walking across to the window. ‘And what,’ he said, after looking round the room for a while, ‘did you want these for?’ He picked up two leather straps which were lying on the floor behind the dressing-table, which stood across the corner of the room to the right of the window. It almost seemed as if he had been expecting to find them.

  ‘Confound your impertinence! What the dickens has it got to do with you, and who are you, anyhow?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Fenby, blandly ignoring him, ‘that you thought you could make something to lower you down the rest of the way.’

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘Yes. You did start to get out, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. There’s a pipe just below and I got on to that. I came to the conclusion that if I tied those two straps together I should probably be able to fasten them to the pipe and lower myself, but as I didn’t trust the pipe entirely, I left it at that, at any rate until it was light. One of the straps by the way is from an old-fashioned portmanteau, and the other belongs to the car. I was going to punch another hole in it. Now then, I’ve told you everything. Suppose you do some talking. By the way, how did you know that I tested that pipe?’

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson — which by the way is my line of business. Look at the wet brickdust scraped off the wall by the toe of your shoe, not to mention a little dirt when you scrambled back over the windowsill.’

  ‘I see. So, you’re an amateur sleuth, and this Departed Spirits Association business was all nonsense? You might have thought of something a bit brighter than that.’

  Fenby forbore to point out that it had apparently served its purpose sufficiently well to deceive Malcolm, and contented himself by murmuring that, as a matter of fact, he was not exactly an amateur. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I earn my living that way.’

  ‘Don’t quibble. I’ve no doubt Uncle James is paying you. I suppose his throwing you out was all a put up job, too. But where is that silly old man?’

  ‘Silly?’ Fenby echoed innocently.

  ‘Well, when I last saw him he was capable of any folly from burning his will (which, by the way, he did) to killing any of us, or even himself.’

  ‘I see. So that if by any chance your uncle were found dead and suicide was at all possible, you would like me to know that his mental state was such that it was quite likely. However, tell me more about this will.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious.’ Malcolm stopped and then went on as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him. ‘I say, nothing has happened to Uncle James, has it?’

  Fenby could no longer evade the direct question. ‘Yes, we’ve found him on the top of the tower with a dagger in his chest.’

  ‘Dead?’

  It was a question which, in Fenby’s opinion, did not require an answer. Instead he waited to hear what Malcolm’s next remark would be. It came very soon. ‘So, he did kill himself!’

  ‘What makes you so sure that he did it himself?’

  ‘Well, considering the state that he was in and that he carefully locked us all up first — except Christopher of course.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I can give Christopher a complete alibi myself.’

  ‘Except Christopher and yourself then.’

  ‘And Mrs Vaughan. She was with us all evening.’

  ‘That rules you out, I suppose. Aunt Julia would never murder anyone in public. By the way, how many people saw this crime?’

  ‘What makes you think anyone did?’

  ‘Well, when I was kindly allotted the role of firs
t murderer of Arthur, we had three eyewitnesses. Now that you are trying, as you obviously are, to impute a further crime to me, I presume you are again going to have at least one witness.’

  ‘Yes, but only one this time,’ Fenby dryly answered, ‘and that one, you may be interested to know, says that no one was there.’

  ‘Well, I told you he did it himself.’

  ‘So you did.’

  ‘Do you know, you rather annoy me. I hate all this beating about the bush. Personally, if I want to say a thing, I say it straight out, and I don’t mind what other people think. I wish you would adopt the same attitude. You think you can fasten a case on me because I said “suicide” first; because I made a reference to a witness; and because I got half-way out of the window. A lovely case, complete with two leather straps as exhibits A and B. Oh yes, and then you think there is something in the will. In a few minutes you will go down and look for ashes in the fireplace and the marks of where I dropped on to the lawn below.’

  ‘Or a dent in the flagged pavement.’

  ‘A footprint on it, then.’

  ‘Unwashed out by the rain.’

  Malcolm shook his head petulantly. ‘At any rate, you ought to go down in the dark by the way you say that I did, and then see if you can get up again, or did I come up another way and then pull that chest into position with a pocket magnet?’

  ‘You do jump to conclusions so. You know, it is you who are saying all this, not me. I haven’t even warned you not to give evidence against yourself, but I really must do so now. You know, there is a proverb beginning “Qui s’excuse—”’

  ‘Warning indeed! That would only apply if you were a real policeman.’

  ‘Without arguing the accuracy in law of that proposition, I did tell you that I was one, didn’t I?’

  ‘You said nothing of the sort. You said you were a professional Sherlock Holmes.’

  Fenby thought this over and came to the conclusion that Malcolm was right. Rather sadly he explained exactly who he was.

  ‘Scotland Yard indeed!’ Malcolm snorted. ‘You don’t look in the least like it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I am.’

  ‘I don’t believe you for a moment. If you ask my opinion, this is another of your tricks, and personally, I don’t believe you’re up to any good at all.’

  ‘All right. Have it your own way — but at your own risk. Meanwhile I think you did say something about a will, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did, and, by the way, that helps me more or less. The will which he burnt was in favour of Emily and myself. Uncle James told us so at the time, and both of us and Gregory heard him. So, according to you, I killed him without giving him time to turn round and repent, which of course he would have done in the end. He talked a little hot air about the Psychical Research Society, but it wouldn’t have meant anything — he’d have changed his mind again when he quarrelled with them in a few weeks’ time; and, of course, he said it was to be irrevocable, but it wouldn’t have been.’

  ‘If he had done that, you know, he wouldn’t have been able to change it.’

  ‘Nonsense, you can always change wills. Why, some people do it every day, and once Uncle James had started the habit he would have gone on doing it — and a very great bore it would have been. As it is, this was the first time that he proposed to do it.’

  ‘The first time? What makes you say that?’

  ‘Why this sudden interest? He said it was the only will that he had ever made, so of course it was the first that he could change.’

  ‘I see,’ Fenby said very slowly. ‘Don’t you think you’re overdoing your ignorance of the law? I mean you do really know what the word “irrevocable” means, don’t you? And surely you have heard of people dying intestate?’

  The colour mounted suddenly to Malcolm’s cheeks, but, before he could say any more, Inspector Perceval’s voice was heard calling for Fenby. Malcolm followed Fenby downstairs. From the way in which Fenby was being addressed, he had no doubt left as to the bona fides of the little man to whom he had been talking.

  22

  L’Enfant Terrible

  Anxious though Fenby was to get on with things, he felt that a few words were necessary to the police, doctor, and the man in charge of the photographic apparatus before they began their respective examinations. It would be useful if they knew what was wanted and what must be left untouched. It would save time in the long run if Perceval listened at the same time, and so, for a few minutes, Fenby’s attention was given entirely to the County Police.

  ‘Fingerprints will have to wait until your fellow turns up. It doesn’t really matter that you couldn’t get him tonight — tomorrow will probably do. I suggest, Perceval, that you go with them and have a look at things before they start, and then come back. By the way, you’ll find Vaughan, Christopher Vaughan, the brother of Arthur, on guard up there. Don’t be too long. I’ll wait before I do anything more this end until you come back. So far, I’ve only interviewed Malcolm. And, by the way, where on earth is he?’

  While Perceval went round to make his brief inspection, Fenby had for a few minutes nothing to do. The tiredness natural after so long a day had now reached the stage when he had become restless, and the continued absence of Malcolm began to worry him so much that presently he went up to see if he was upstairs. But Malcolm’s bedroom was deserted. By now really worried, Fenby hurried downstairs again to find the man for whom he was looking calmly standing in the library. With his nerves slightly on edge, for once Fenby was almost irritable. ‘Where on earth have you been?’ he snapped out.

  Apparently, Malcolm regarded it as a question which required no answer, since he merely sat down, crossed his legs and smiled. But in any case, he would not have had time to speak before Perceval came running back into the room. ‘Vaughan says the body has been moved. It’s fallen right forward now.’

  ‘I’ll come at once.’ Fenby reached the door as he spoke. Then he turned back to Malcolm. ‘And you stay here and don’t go moving about. On second thoughts,’ he added, ‘I’d better make sure of that.’ He firmly shut the door and locked it. ‘It’s all right,’ he added, seeing Perceval look a little surprised, ‘he’s quite used to it by now. I shall have to get a key-ring soon specially for this house at this rate.’

  It took very little time for them to retrace their steps to the tower and obtain from Christopher an account of why he had momentarily left his post and what had happened during his absence. Then once more Fenby went up the steps of the tower. When he had seen it before, the body of James Warrenton had been leaning to the left but had been prevented from falling over by the wall of the entrance to the staircase, against which the head had fallen. Now it was sprawling full length on the ground.

  ‘It was only quite lightly balanced before,’ Fenby told Perceval, ‘but I really do not think it could possibly have slipped forward by itself. Besides, I have a very definite mental picture of where it was, and I am almost sure that the two knees were exactly beside each other. Now the right is a bit behind the left. When you have done with photographing things as they are, put it back again — the head here,’ he pointed to what he thought was the right place, ‘and then photograph it once more. It won’t be quite as it was, probably, but it might help.’

  ‘I can’t see why anybody should want to push a corpse over,’ Perceval said.

  ‘Nor can I, at first sight, unless — and this is where my theory about the knees becomes important — unless he was kneeling on something that it was better should not be found. Doctor,’ he turned to the police surgeon, ‘when the photographers have finished, there is no reason why the poor devil should be left here any longer, and you can get on with your work. You’ll have to tell me whether it is in any way possible for that wound to have been self-inflicted, though I’m pretty sure that it was not. And if you find any grease on his hands, I wish you would let me know.’

  ‘Grease?’

  ‘Yes, the sort of grease you would use on a car for instance — or p
erhaps just plain lard.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Leaving the rest to do their work, Fenby returned with Perceval and Christopher to the house, adding more details to the inspector’s knowledge as they went. They found Malcolm in the library, much as they had left him, while Christopher, at Fenby’s request, stayed in the hall.

  ‘And now,’ said Fenby when he was once more in the library, ‘you must answer my question.’

  ‘Which one are you referring to out of quite a number you have indulged in?’

  ‘You know perfectly well. Do drop this fencing attitude. The last one. Where did you go just now, and why?’

  ‘My good man, you’re beginning to imagine things. Why assume that I went anywhere? I merely thought that I ought to avoid eavesdropping on you and the inspector, who, by the way, to my knowledge, is almost as good a hand at asking fatuous questions as you are.’

  ‘I assume you went outside for the very simple reason that, when you crossed your legs just now, I saw that the soles of your shoes were wet.’

  ‘No brick dust or mud this time?’

  ‘No, so I assume you kept to the flag pavement round the house.’

  Malcolm looked with mock solemnity at Perceval and remarked: ‘Nothing is hidden from him. Might I remind you that, though I have been liberal in providing information, you have told me absolutely nothing. After all,’ he dropped the bantering tone, ‘he was my uncle and we have been together a considerable while, even if we did quarrel pretty often. Besides, curiosity is natural. I wanted to know what had happened and to see for myself, so while you two were busy, I walked round to the tower.’

  Perceval looked incredulous. ‘Skirting the lawn? The pavement’s a longer route.’

  ‘It is, but may I remind you that it has been raining and that the constant passage of you people across the lawn has probably turned it into a morass by now. So, I preferred the pavement.’