The Crooked Hinge

by John Dickson Carr

  “When this hand-grenade exploded, she saw imminent peril. You recall Farnleigh’s mood that night? If you have described it correctly to me, through every word he said and every move he made runs one strong and reckless flavor: ‘Well, here’s the test. If I survive it, well and good. If I don’t, there is one compensation which almost reconciles me to everything else: I can speak out about the woman to whom I am married.’—Harrumph, yes. Have I interpreted the mood correctly?”

  “Yes,” admitted Page.

  “So she took desperate measures. She must act at once. At once, at once! She must act before the fingerprint-comparison had been completed. She took these measures—just as yesterday, in the attic, she struck back at me before the words were out of my mouth—she acted magnificently; and she killed her husband.”

  Burrows, white-faced and sweating, had been vainly hammering on the table to call for order. Now there was a gleam of hope in his manner.

  “There seems to be no way of stopping you,” Burrows said. “If the police won’t do it, I can’t do more than protest. But now, I think, you are at a place where these glib theories won’t do. I say nothing of the fact that you have no evidence. But until you can show how Sir John was murdered—alone, mind you, with nobody near him—until you can show that—” His words choked him; he only stuttered, and made a broad gesture. “And that, doctor, that you cannot show.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” said Dr. Fell.

  “Our first real lead came at the inquest yesterday,” he went on reflectively. “It’s good that the testimony is in the records. After that we had only to pick up certain pieces of evidence which had been lying under our noses from the first. Behold a miracle dropped into our laps. We are given hanging evidence by word of mouth. We apply it. We arrange the bits in order. We hand them to the prosecuting counsel. And”—he made a gesture—“we draw the bolt of the gallows-trap.”

  “You got your evidence at the inquest?” repeated Murray, staring at him. “Evidence from whom?”

  “From Knowles,” said Dr. Fell.

  A whimpering kind of cry came from the butler. He took a step forward, and put his hand up to his face. But he did not speak.

  Dr. Fell contemplated him.

  “Oh, I know,” the doctor growled. “It’s sour medicine. But there you are. It’s an ironical turn of the screw. But there you are. Knowles, my lad, you love that woman. She’s your petted child. And by your testimony at the inquest, in all innocence, in all desire to tell the truth, you have hanged her as surely as though you drew the bolt yourself.”

  Still he kept his eyes fixed on the butler.

  “Now, I daresay,” he continued comfortably, “that some people thought you lied. I knew you didn’t lie. You said that Sir John Farnleigh had committed suicide. You clinched your story by saying—something you had remembered in your subconscious mind—that you saw him fling away the knife. You said you saw the knife in the air.

  “I knew you weren’t lying, because you had had exactly the same trouble with that point when you talked to Elliot and me the day before. You had hesitated. You had groped after an uncertain memory. When Elliot pressed you about it, you puzzled and shook. ‘It would depend on the size of the knife,’ you said. ‘And there are bats in that garden. And sometimes you can’t see a tennis-ball until it’s—’ The choice of words is significant. In other words: at about the time of the crime you had seen something flying in the air. What puzzled your subconscious mind was that you saw it just before the murder rather than just afterwards.”

  He spread out his hands.

  “A very, remarkable bat,” said Burrows, with shrill sarcasm. “A still more remarkable tennis-ball.”

  “Something very like a tennis-ball,” agreed Dr. Fell seriously, “though much smaller, of course. Very much smaller.

  “We will return to that. Let’s go on and consider the nature of the wounds. Already we have heard much astonished and feeling comment about those wounds. Mr. Murray here maintained that they were like the marks of fangs or claws; he maintained that the bloodstained clasp-knife found in the hedge could not have produced them. Even Patrick Gore, if you have correctly quoted him to me, made a very similar comment. And what did he say? ‘I never saw anything like this since Barney Poole, the best animal-trainer west of the Mississippi, was killed by a leopard.’

  “The claw-mark motif runs all through the case. We find it coming out with curious guardedness and in a strikingly suggestive way in Dr. King’s medical evidence at the inquest. I have some notes here of his testimony. Harrumph! Hah! Let me see:

  “ ‘There were three fairly shallow wounds,’ says the physician.” Here Dr. Fell looked very hard at his audience. “ ‘Three fairly shallow wounds, beginning at the left side of the throat and ending under the angle of the right jaw in a slightly upward direction. Two of the wounds crossed each other.’ And presently this still more damning statement: ‘There was much laceration of tissue.’

  “Laceration of tissue, eh? Surely that is odd, gents, if the weapon were that exceedingly sharp (if notched) knife which Inspector Elliot is showing you now. Laceration of the throat suggests______

  “Well, let’s see. Let’s return to the claw-mark motif and examine it. What are the characteristics of wounds made by claws, and how are they fulfilled in the death of Sir John Farnleigh? The characteristics of marks left by claws are these:

  “1. They are shallow.

  “2. They are made by sharp points which tear and scratch and lacerate rather than cut.

  “3. They are not separate cuts, but are all made at the same time.

  “Every one of these qualifications, we find, is fulfilled by the description of the wounds in Farnleigh’s throat. I call your attention to the somewhat odd testimony given by Dr. King at the inquest. He does not tell a direct lie; but he is obviously working like blazes and talking wildly in order to make Farnleigh’s death a suicide! Why? Observe—he, too, like Knowles, has a petted child in Molly Farnleigh, the daughter of his oldest friend, who calls him ‘Uncle Ned’ and whose traits of character are probably known to him. But, unlike Knowles, he screens her; he does not send her out to have her neck cracked in two at the end of a rope.”

  Knowles put out his hands as though in supplication. His forehead was smeary with perspiration; but he still did not speak.

  Dr. Fell went on.

  “Mr. Murray suggested the basis of our case to us some time ago, when he spoke of something flying in the air and pertinently asked why the knife had not been dropped in the pool if it were really the weapon. But what have we got now? We’ve got something that flew at Farnleigh in the dusk, something smaller than a tennis-ball. We’ve got something equipped with claws or points which would make marks like claws______”

  Nathaniel Burrows uttered a ghost of a chuckle.

  “The episode of the flying claws,” he jeered. “Really, doctor! And can you tell us what the flying claws were?”

  “I’ll do better than that,” said Dr. Fell. “I’ll show them to you. You saw them yesterday.”

  From his capacious side-pocket he took out something wrapped in a large red bandana handkerchief. Unfolding it so that the needle-sharp points should not catch in the handkerchief, he disclosed an object which Page recognized with a shock, even though it was a puzzled shock. It was one of the objects which Dr. Fell had unearthed from the wooden box put away in the book-closet. It was (to be precise) a small but heavy leaden ball into which at intervals had been set four very large hooks of the sort used to catch fighting deep-sea fish.

  “Did you wonder at the purpose of this singular instrument?” asked the doctor amiably. “Did you wonder what earthly use it could be to anybody? But among the Middle-European gipsies—among the gipsies, I repeat—it has a very effective and dangerous use. Let me have Gross: will you, inspector?”

  Elliot opened his brief-case and took out a large flat book in a gray jacket.

  “Here,” pursued Dr. Fell, juggling the book, “we have the most c
omplete text-book on crime ever compiled.* I sent to town for it last night to verify a reference. You’ll find a full description of this leaden ball on pages 249-50.

  “It is used by the gipsies as a throwing weapon, and accounts for some of their mysterious and almost supernatural thefts. Into the other end of this ball is fastened a long length of very light but very strong fishing-line. The ball is thrown; and, at whatever it is thrown, the hooks lightly catch no matter in what direction they fall—like a ship’s anchor. The leaden ball lends the necessary weight for throwing, and the fishing-line draws it back with the booty. Hear Gross on the use of it:

  “ ‘As regards the throwing, gipsies, especially the children, are remarkably skilful. Among all races children amuse themselves by throwing stones, but their particular object in doing so is to throw them as far as possible. Not so the young gipsy; he gathers together a heap of stones about the size of a nut and then chooses a target, such as a fairly large stone, a small plank, or an old cloth, at a distance of about ten to twenty paces; he then launches his stock of projectiles. . . . He keeps going for hours and soon acquires such skill at this exercise that he never misses anything larger than one’s hand. When he reaches this stage he is given a throwing hook. . . .

  “ ‘The young gipsy comes out of his apprenticeship when he is able to strike and carry off a piece of rag thrown upon the branches of a tree among which he has to cast his hook.’

  “Into a tree, mind you! This is how, with amazing skill, he is able to carry off linen, clothes, and so on, through barred windows or in enclosed yards. But as a throwing weapon you can imagine its horrible effectiveness. It will tear the throat from a man, and back it goes______”

  Murray uttered a kind of groan. Burrows did not speak.

  “H’mf, yes. Now, we’ve heard of Molly Farnleigh’s uncanny and amazing ability at throwing, a trick she learned among the gipsies. Miss Dane told us of it. We know of her deadly snap-judgments, and the suddenness with which she could strike.

  “Where, then, was Molly Farnleigh at the time of the murder? I hardly need to tell you: she was on the balcony of her bedroom overlooking the pool. My eye, directly above the pool; and her bedroom, as we know, is built over the dining-room. Like Welkyn in the room below, she was much less than twenty feet away from the pool, and raised above it. Very high up? Not at all. As Knowles here—invaluable at giving us hints on how to hang her—as Knowles told us, that new wing of the house is ‘a little low doll’s house of a place,’ the balcony hardly eight or nine feet above the garden.

  “So there she is in the dusk, facing her husband below, and raised up high enough to give purchase to her arm. The room behind her is dark—as she admitted. Her maid was in the next room. What brought her to that deadly snap-decision? Did she whisper something to make her husband look up? Or was it because he was already looking at a star, with his long throat upturned?”

  With an expression of growing horror in her eyes, Madeline repeated:

  “Looking at a star?”

  “Your star, Miss Dane,” said Dr. Fell somberly. “I’ve talked a good deal with the various persons in this case; and I think it was your star.”

  Again memory returned to Page. He himself had thought of “Madeline’s star” when he walked through the garden beside the pool on the night of the murder: the single eastern star to which she had given a poetic name, and which from the pool you could just see by craning your neck to look over the farther chimney-tops of the new wing . . .

  “Yes, she hated you. Her husband’s attentions to you had done that. It may have been the sight of him looking up, staring at your star and facing her blindly, that brought out murder in a flood. With the line in one hand and the leaden ball in the other, she lifted her arm and struck.

  “Gents, I call your attention to the curious, the weird behavior of that poor devil when something caught him. It has vaguely troubled everybody who has tried to describe it. The shufflings, the chokings, the jerkings of the body before he was yanked forward into the pool— what has it reminded you of? Ah! Got it, have you? Shows clearly, does it? Of a hooked fish on a line; and that is what it was. The hooks did not penetrate deeply: she saw to that. There was a good deal of mauling, on which everybody commented. The direction of the wounds, obviously, was from left to right, running upwards, as he was pulled off balance; and he went into the pool (you recall?) with his head slightly towards the new wing. When he was in the pool she jerked back the weapon.”

  With a heavy grimness of expression Dr. Fell held up the leaden ball.

  “And this little beauty?

  “Obviously, of course, it left no blood-trail or any traces when it was pulled back. It had landed in the pool and had been washed clean. You recall that the water in the pool had been so agitated (naturally, by his smugglings) that it was slopped over the sand for some feet round. But the ball did leave one trace—it rustled in the shrubbery.

  “Reflect. Who was the only person who heard that curious rustling? Welkyn, in the dining-room below: the only person who was near enough to hear it. That rustling was an intriguing point. Clearly it had not been made by any person. If you will try the experiment of attempting to slip through yew hedges as thick as a wide screen (as Sergeant Burton noticed when he later found the knife ‘planted’ there, with the dead man’s fingerprints conveniently on it), you will realize what I mean.

  “I spare you details. But that, in essence, is how she planned and carried out one of the wickedest murders in my experience. It was all flash and hate; and it succeeded. She fished for men as she has always done; and she caught her victim. She won’t get away, naturally. She will be nabbed by the first policeman she passes. Then she will hang. And all, happily for the cause of justice, because of Knowles’s happy inspiration in telling us about the flight of a tennis-ball at dusk.”

  Knowles made a slight waggling gesture of his hand as though he were trying to stop a bus. His face was like oiled paper, and Page was afraid he was going to faint. But still he could not speak.

  Burrows, with his eyes gleaming, seemed inspired.

  “It’s ingenious,” Burrows said. “It’s clever. But it’s a lie, and I’ll beat you in court with it. It’s all false and you know it. For other people have sworn things too. There’s Welkyn! You can’t explain away what he said! Welkyn saw somebody in the garden! He said he did! And what have you got to say to that?”

  Page noted with alarm that Dr. Fell himself was looking somewhat pale. Very slowly Dr. Fell pushed himself to his feet. He stood towering over them, and he made a gesture towards the door.

  “There’s Mr. Welkyn now,” he replied. “Standing just behind you. Ask him. Ask him if he’s now so sure of what he saw in the garden.”

  They all looked round. How long Welkyn had been standing in the doorway they could not tell. Immaculate, brushed as ever, the overgrown cherubic countenance was uneasy, and Welkyn pulled at his lower lip.

  “Er—” he said, clearing at his throat.

  “Well, speak up!” thundered Dr. Fell. “You’ve heard my say. Now tell us: ARE you sure you saw something looking at you? ARE you sure there was anything there to see?”

  “I have been reflecting,” said Welkyn.

  “Yes?”

  “I—er—gentlemen.” He paused. “I wish you would cast your minds back to yesterday. You all went up to the attic, and I am given to understand that you investigated certain curious articles you found there. Unhappily I did not go along with you. I did not see any of those articles until today, when Dr. Fell called them to my attention. I—er—refer to the black Janus-faced mask which you seem to have found in a wooden box there.” Again he cleared his throat.

  “This is a plot,” said Burrows, looking rapidly right and left like a man hesitating before wild traffic in a road. “You can’t get away with this. It’s all a deliberate conspiracy, and you’re all in it______”

  “Kindly allow me to finish, sir,” retorted Welkyn with asperity. “I said I saw a face lookin
g at me through the lower panel of the glass door. I know what it was now. It was that Janus mask. I recognized it as soon as I saw it. It occurs to me, as Dr. Fell suggests, that the unhappy Lady Farnleigh—in order to prove to me the presence of someone actually in the garden—merely let down that mask on another length of fishing-line; and unfortunately sent it too low against the window, so that . . .”

  Then Knowles spoke at last.

  He came up to the table and put his hands on it. He was crying; and for a moment the tears would not let him speak coherently. When the words did come out, they shocked his listeners as though a piece of furniture had spoken.

  “It’s a bloody lie,” said Knowles.

  Old and muddled and pitiful, he began to beat with his hand on the table.

  “It’s like Mr. Burrows said. It’s all lies and lies and lies and lies. You’re all in it.” His voice grew frantic, rising to a quaver, and his hand beat frantically on the table. “You’re all against her, that’s what you are. You none of you will give her a chance. What if she did carry on a bit? What if she did read them books and maybe carry on with a lad or two? What difference is it, much, from the games they used to play when they were kids? They’re all kids. She didn’t mean any harm. She never meant any harm. And you sha’nt hang her. By Christ, you sha’nt. I’ll see nobody harms my little lady, that’s what I’ll do.”

  His voice grew to a scream through the tears, and he waggled his finger at them.

  “I’ll fool you, with all your grand ideas and your grand guesses. She didn’t kill that crazy silly beggar that came here pretending to be Master Johnny. Master Johnny my foot! That beggar a Farnleigh? That beggar? He got just exactly what he deserved, and I’m sorry he can’t be killed all over again. Came out of a pig-sty, that’s where he came from. But I don’t care about him. I tell you you’re not going to hurt my little lady. She never killed him; she never did; and I can prove it.”