Rope's End, Rogue's End

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I was interested in what you said just now, about you eldest brother, Paul,” said Macdonald.. “His ambition was to come and live here again, after he had made enough money to retire?”

  “That’s it – another frustrated intention. As eldest son he expected to inherit, but this property isn’t entailed, and it was left to Martin and Veronica jointly. The fact was our amiable parent hated Paul and Basil for being business men. The silly old ass wanted them to enter the services – even though he hadn’t a bean to help them. In the 1914-1918 mess-up, Paul didn’t join up until he had to; and even then he spent most of his soldiering in Whitehall – one of the brass-hat snobs – and got out of it by January, 1919. Basil did the thing properly and joined the ranks and finished as Major. There was one hell of a row when the old man’s will was read – but Veronica’s worth ten of Paul when it comes to a slanging match. We’re an amiable family as you perceive. Well, there’s the record. Paul was to restore Wulfstane. Basil was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Martin was to join the Navy and be Admiral of the Battle Cruiser squadron. I was to climb Everest – alone and single-handed to the best of my recollection. Result, Paul is hardly tolerated in Wulfstane and his money is spat upon. Basil turns swindler and shoots himself. Martin is a semi-neurotic with a lame leg. I peddle bits and pieces from Tibet – and Everest is still unclimbed, and I too old to climb again. Damn! and again damn!”

  He grinned wryly at Macdonald. “You encouraged me to talk, Inspector, and by hell, I’ve taken you at your word. Forget it! What about seeing the rest of the house? There’s nothing in this morn to interest any one who hasn’t a morbid imagination. If you are uncertain whether this door was locked, ask that chap who helped me smash the door in. If you think there’s a trap door in the roof, climb outside and inspect. You’ll find there isn’t, and you’ll likely break your neck and come through the tiles and laths and all the rest if you’re not careful. I got out on the roofs once when I was a kid. The only way up is by a trap door above the staircase at the far end of the building. Paul locked it for devilment when I was out on the tiles – and there’s no other way down. I know. I’m not afraid of heights or of jumping and I never have been, but I spent hours on that blasted roof and never found a way down. The rain pipes are too old – soft lead. I tested them before I trusted my weight on them, or I shouldn’t be here now.”

  Macdonald walked to the centre window and pushed the casement open. Looking down, he perceived that Long had been right – all of a thirty foot drop, and no foothold at all. Richard’s voice spoke again behind him:

  “I wish to God I knew what was in your minds, you fellows. The more you stare, the more I wonder. If you think a monkey could climb up or down that wall you’ll have to find a monkey with wings – and if you got that condition fulfilled, what would it have to do with Basil shooting himself in that chair there… My God, I wish I could forget him…”

  Macdonald turned away from the window. “Look here, this is getting on your nerves. Why not leave me alone to stare round? I’ve been sent down here to report according to our own routine, and I’ve got to take my time over it.”

  Richard Mallowood shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “Sorry for the sob stuff, Inspector. You can please yourself about staring around, and take your own time over it, but if you want to get the hang of this building, you’ll have time if you let me act as guide. Then you can come back here and meditate for the rest of the day if you like.”

  “Right, then let us go round the top floor now, and I will come back here later.”

  Richard proved a good guide. He led Macdonald through the maze of small rooms and passages and stairways which made up the north-east corner of the upper storey. He showed where the old staircase had been blocked by a wooden partition covered now with faded wallpaper of Victorian origin, and where the plaster of a dark passage covered an arched entrance which had once connected with the Elizabethan wing. They inspected the trap door which led to the roof and found the bolts sealed by the clearest of all evidence – the dusty spider’s webs which take months in the forming.

  “From the point of view of detection, evidence of a dry summer,” said Richard. “When next it rains, someone will have to go up and replace some tiles.”

  At the end of their examination, Macdonald had to admit that there was one way up to the playroom and one only, and that was by way of the staircase at the west end of the corridor. It was close here, according to the evidence, that Veronica had stood a few seconds after the shot was heard upstairs. Richard recapitulated what had happened at that moment.

  “I was in the bathroom between my room and Martin’s when I heard the report, and I was out on the landing within a few seconds. I could see the full length of the corridor from end to end. Ada, the maid, was still sitting on the floor with broken plates all round her; Veronica was coming towards her. A few seconds later the front door bell rang, Ada was sent down the main staircase, and Veronica and I ran to the west end of the corridor and up the staircase to the top storey. Inspector Long found us up there when he arrived a few moments later.” Richard paused here, adding, “If any one else had been on the west staircase or in the upper corridor, or in any of the upper rooms west of the playroom, we should have seen them. I opened every door as I went along, and you have seen those rooms on the south front at the top of the house. They’re all empty, and there’s nowhere to hide.”

  Macdonald did not add that Long had examined those rooms also, and knew from the undisturbed dust on their floors that no one had been concealed in them.

  It was at this juncture that Veronica appeared on the stairs, saying in her deep impatient voice:

  “Are you dead, both of you? Richard, there’s a meal of sorts in the dining-room. I’m going out if nobody wants me. The foresters are felling some timber above Willow Farm. I shall be there if I’m needed.”

  “All right, Ronnie. I shall be about the house. See you later,” called Richard. He turned back to Macdonald with a grin which was half grimace.

  “Selling the timber… that’s the beginning of the end. If you’ve done with this floor come and see the rooms downstairs, and then I’ll leave you to wander, while I go and forage. When you’re hungry, find your way to the dining-room and take what you can find in the way of food.”

  He led the way down the staircase connecting the two upper floors, and waited for Macdonald until they both stood at the west end of the long corridor which ran from end to end of the house.

  “The two rooms at the end, facing west, are both unused,” he explained. “The one at the south-west corner was the one Paul had. I think he fossicked around in the other two rooms a bit – they all open out of one another, and I bet Paul nosed around to see if any more of the family bits and pieces had gone to the Jews. The old powder closet next to Paul’s room is used as a bathroom – best Victorian variety, with a frightful painted bath on a dais, and three steps leading up the necessary. Funny notion of preserving dignity on undignified occasions. You either go up steps or else go down them for all purposes in this house. The next room eastwards is my sister’s – also opening into the same bathroom. Damned silly, to say the least of it.”

  He opened the door as he passed them, and Macdonald glanced into the two great panelled bedrooms – the “state rooms” of the house. Both had fourposter beds, with superb embroidered curtains and covers, faded but still beautiful relics of Queen Anne needlewomen, with fantastic conventional flowers worked in wool, and slender deer crouching in the spiralled stems of the pattern. Veronica’s room seemed fitted to its owner, Macdonald thought, its dimensions capable of absorbing a whole modern house, its walls panelled in sombre oak, its furnishings vast oaken presses and chests. It was bare of any personal belongings or adornment. Neither brushes nor bottles, boxes nor cosmetics were left out on the severe dark surfaces. There was not even a mirror to be seen. It reminded Macdonald of some of the exhibition rooms in state-preserved houses, impersonal, sombre, giving no signs of
an inhabitant. “Late seventeenth century, including furniture.” Some such label seemed to be required to complete it. As though following Macdonald’s train of thought Richard observed with an impish grin:

  “Sightseers are requested not to touch the exhibits… That press belonged to William of Orange. Pass along please…”

  They now reached the great landing above the entrance hall, and the sun streamed in through the southern windows, shoving the dust on the floors, the unevenness of the wide oak boards, and the time-worn state of the woodwork.

  “Mice, rats, worms and other niceties,” said Richard. “Watch your step, these floors are no joke.”

  Beyond the stair head he continued:

  “Blue room, sacred to guests, used by Mrs. Lorne, bathroom beyond. Martin’s room also opens into same bathroom. He has a choice of two, superior fellow – there’s the ‘bachelors bath room’ on the further side. My room’s the end one, opening off the smaller corridor, and Basil’s is cheek by jowl with mine, with windows to the south. They’re interconnected, but I’ll leave you to find the door as an exercise in detection. Basil’s room also opens into the Elizabethan wing, but I think the doors are blocked. There’s a double door, with a space between – you’ll find the same arrangement in many of these rooms. Amusing, when you’re a kid. You see to it that the further door is locked, shove the unwary into the space and bang the nearer door on them. As there are no door handles on the inside in most cases the victim has a poor time until released.”

  He walked on to the end of the corridor and opened a door on the north side which gave on to another landing, several steps below the main one. From here the service stairs led downwards, and a screwed-up door, whose screws were rusted into their sockets – shut off the upper part of the same stairway.

  “Why, and when, was it screwed up?“inquired Macdonald, and Richard replied:

  “Some devilment on our part – Paul’s and mine – when we were kids. The servants slept upstairs in those days. ‘Nuff said. These rooms used to be occupied by lesser guests – who had to make do without a bathroom. Also they all connect up with one another – a convenient arrangement for one’s guests, and one which caused considerable thought to nice-minded hostess. Well, shall I leave you to it? Food is below if you feel disposed to eat it.”

  Macdonald, when he was left alone, forgot all about food, and time, and anything but his immediate job. After Richard’s footsteps had died away down the long corridor the great sunlit house was invested in silence. Remembering that the servants had left, Macdonald realised that apart from himself and Richard, the place was empty – a queer thought bearing in mind all the open windows and doors. Any one could walk into the manor, apparently – and there were plenty of valuable things which could be easily carried away. Apparently the Mallowoods were so arrogantly certain of their own security that they did not even consider precautions against burglary.

  Macdonald went first into Basil Mallowood’s bedroom. The door had been locked by the Superintendent, and the key was now in Macdonald’s possession. The bed had been stripped, and the room “cleaned” by Ada Brown after Basil had gone upstairs to the playroom on the morning of his death. There was little of interest left for a detective – only Basil’s suitcase, into which his belongings had been packed by himself – clothes and toilet articles thrust in carelessly in a heap. Long had glanced through them and listed them carefully; evening clothes, studs, shirts, collars and tie, silk socks and patent leather pumps: a dressing-gown of flaming magenta and black silk: striped silk pyjamas, magenta and blue (“not ‘arf gaudy,” Ada Brown had said, and “not half costly,” added Macdonald’s Scots mind as he felt the quality of the heavy silk), bedroom slippers, a sponge bag with shaving materials and razor pushed in carelessly with sponge and toothbrush – as no man in his senses would pack his kit; expensive ebony hairbrushes with silver monogram, intricate and showy, had been thrown in, with their case separate from them. Face cream and hair wash, a travelling shaving mirror and an ebony clothes-brush had all been tumbled in anyhow. Inspector Long – an admirably cautious officer – had seen to it that everything capable of bearing fingerprints had been examined for traces. His caution had resulted in several photographs of prints which coincided with those of the dead man, but showed no other prints at all. A similar result had been obtained from the leather writing-case upstairs in the playroom, and from the letter which Basil Mallowood had left on the carved table. Even the big key which had been turned on the inside of the playroom door had given traces of just the one set of prints, as had the stock of the gun and the arms of the chair in which the dead man had sat. “A nice clear case,” as Long had said bitterly.

  Macdonald opened the window and looked outside. The room faced east: immediately below it were flag-stones outside the kitchens: a few feet away was a neglected shrubbery and then the high wall of the kitchen gardens. Nobody was in sight, and Macdonald hoisted himself on to the window sill with his feet inside and, leaning back as far as he could, looked up at the wall of the house above him. Its smoothness was only broken by the moulding below the playroom window, high above his head. Above that window was the stone balustrade which in part masked the sloping roof whose angle he had seen from within the unceiled playroom. ‘A monkey with wings might climb that wall,” Richard had said, and Macdonald, who knew more than a little about climbing, agreed with him.

  Leaving Basil’s room, Macdonald made his way to Martin’s. This was a big room, like Veronica’s, but with a clumsy section cut off from it to make the bathroom which Basil had mentioned. The room had been tidied by Veronica since Ada had left, and most of Martin’s possessions were under lock and key. In this, alone of the rooms he had seen, Macdonald found a large number of books. Their titles, and some of the cases and nests of drawers, indicated that Martin still kept up his boyhood’s interest in birds and wild creatures. In one corner of the room were some fishing rods, and Macdonald studied these with much interest. A fine, jointed salmon rod particularly took his fancy, and he examined it thoughtfully. He measured its length and sections carefully, noted the result, and after a moment went into the passage and walked along it. No one was about, and he returned to Martin’s room, fetched the salmon rod and carried it to the end of the corridor and negotiated it up the stairs. He carried it along to the playroom, where he fitted the sections together. Then going to the window, looked down at the flagged yard, discovered nobody was in sight, and then manoeuvred the slender rod out of the window and raised it vertically, estimating the height of the balustrade above him. At one point in his eccentric performance the flexible end of the rod became involved with the balusters of the parapet above him, and he had to lower it carefully to get it clear. He then drew the rod inside, unfastened the extra sections and went downstairs and put it back in Martin’s room.

  Macdonald’s next centre for observation was Paul’s bedroom. He prowled round studying the panelled walls, and unlocked the connecting door which led into the other bedrooms on the west side. Here he found the arrangement which Richard had mentioned – the double doors with a space between them which was in reality the thickness of the walls. Some of these doors were secured by catches cunningly set in the moulding around the panels so that it took considerable ingenuity to discover them and release the spring which held the door. Both rooms beyond Paul’s were furnished, but shrouded in dust sheets. Remembering Richard’s comment about Paul “fossicking around,” Macdonald examined the dusty floors and found prints of rubber soled shoes whose pattern had also left a few traces on the boards of Paul’s own room.

  The afternoon was drawing on when Macdonald, having wandered over the entire house, including the unused Elizabethan wing, went downstairs at last into the empty hall. The great doors stood open to the misty sunlight, the wood fire smouldered faintly beneath a coil of blue smoke, and ring doves strutted self-consciously on the stone steps. It was very peaceful and quiet until the sound of a car broke in on the tiresome reiterations of the doves, who
took to flight and circled around in a fuss and flutter of beige plumage. Macdonald stood by the fire and waited until the car drew up by the steps and its driver alighted and came up to the open doors. She saw Macdonald in the shadows at the back of the hall and said:

  “Hallo, is Veronica in?” and then as she advanced, realised that it was a stranger who faced her.

  “I beg your pardon. I thought you were Richard Mallowood. I couldn’t see properly, coming in out of the sunlight.”

  Macdonald looked down at a fair vivid face, marvellously curled golden hair and very blue eyes, and made a good guess at the identity of the visitor.

  “I think Miss Mallowood is out, but her brother should not be far away,” he said, and she asked quickly:

  “Her brother? Do you mean Martin?”

  “No. I mean Richard Mallowood. Are you not Mrs. Lorne?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

  “You don’t know me. My name is Macdonald.”

  He drew out a card and handed it to her, and she read it, her fair face seeming to age as she frowned over it.

  “Scotland Yard, but how awful! Has anything happened?”

  She flushed, as though realising her own lapse, and added hastily, “I beg your pardon. That was idiotic of me. I mean has anything else happened? Is Martin all right?”

  “I don’t know. He has not yet returned. I have been sent here to make additional inquiries concerning Mr. Basil Mallowood, and I should be grateful if you would answer a few questions.”

  “I don’t know anything that would be of any use to you, Inspector Macdonald. I had left this house before that ghastly thing happened.”

  She had recovered from her first surprise, and her voice and manner now achieved a deliberate coolness and remoteness – the coldly remote tone of a woman putting a man in his place.

  “So I gathered,” said Macdonald evenly, and then drew a bow at a venture, speaking with a certainty which gave no indication that he was hazarding the vaguest of guesses. “But you knew Basil Mallowood in town,” he added evenly.