The Eight of Swords dgf-3

by John Dickson Carr

  "Do you know anything of his past life — before he employed you?"

  "No, sir. I assured the police officer of that this morning."

  He went over his story in a patient fashion. Mr. Depping had been a man of moods; touchy, irritated by trifles, apt to go into a rage with the cook if his meals were not shaded exactly to his fastidious palate, fond of quoting Brillat-Savarin. Very learned, no doubt, but not a gentleman. Storer appeared to base his sad deductions to this effect on the statements that (a) Mr. Depping tended to call the servants by their first names when he was drunk, and to mention his business affairs, (b) he used American expressions, and (c) he was freely and often — said Storer — vulgarly generous with his money. At one time (while devoted to his whisky drinking) he had said that the only reason why he employed Storer was because the valet looked so bloody respectable: and the only reason why he employed Achille Georges was because the world considered a taste for fine foods and wines to be the mark of a cultured man.

  "That's what he said, sir," affirmed Storer, with an expression which on any less dismal face would have been sly. His nose sang on: " The world is so full of fools, Charley,'—which is not my name, sir—'the world is so full of fools,' he said to me, "that anybody who can get emotional over an omelette, or tell you the vintage of a wine, is considered a very superior sort of person.' Then he would glare over those half-glasses of his, and grip the whisky bottle as though he meant to throw it."

  The valet's eyes wheeled round his narrow nose as though he appreciated this too. "But I must say, sir, in all justice, that he said he would have kept Achille anyway, because of the soups he could make. They were good soups," agreed Storer, judicially. "Mr. Depping was very fond—"

  "My good man," interposed the bishop testily, "I am not at all concerned with his tastes in food—"

  Tarn," said Dr. Fell suddenly. He had wheeled round as the valet's narrative went on. "Was he fond of crawfish soup, by any chance?"

  "He was sir," replied Storer imperturbably. "It was his favorite. Achille had been preparing it frequendy of late."

  Dr. Fell removed the cloth again from the dinner dishes of last night, and nodded towards them. "Then it's damned funny," he said. "Here's crawfish soup, nearly untasted. On the other hand, he seems to have been especially rough on a kind of pineapple salad. He's eaten most of his dinner except the soup… Never mind. Carry on."

  The bishop of Mappleham, who had paid no attention to this, fixed on an idea which had been growing in his son's mind for some time.

  "One thing is evident," he declared. "Every bit of evidence we have heard points towards it. I do not wish to defame the memory of the dead, but this man Depping was not what he seemed. His past life — his unaccountable past life — his actions, and contradictions, are all those of a man who is playing a part… "

  "Yes," said Dr. Fell, with a sort of obstinacy; "that's too evident to mention. But who's been eating his dinner?"

  "Confound his dinner!" roared the bishop, letting off steam for the first time. "You know it, Storer. I believe you know it too, Morley…"

  He swung round to young Standish, who had remained near the door with his hands jammed into his pockets. Morley lifted his eyes. Morley said equably:

  "Sorry, sir. I don't know anything of the kind."

  "It does not surprise me," pursued His Reverence, "that Depping should have been consorting with criminals. In all likelihood he has been a criminal himself in the past, and he has been living here to assume a guise of respectability. He knew Louis Spinelli. Louis Spinelli tracked him down for the purpose of blackmailing him… Depping's 'business.' What was his business? Does anybody know anything about it?"

  "Excuse me, sir," observed the valet. "He had — he informed me — a large financial interest in the publishing firm of Standish & Burke. But, as I told the police officer this morning, he was trying to get rid of that interest. You see, he told me all about it when he was — indisposed the last time."

  "I meant his business previous to five years ago. He never mentioned that to you, I dare say?… I thought not."

  His Reverence was regaining his self-confidence. He moved one hand up and down the lapel of his ponderous black coat. "Now, let us reconstruct what happened last night, if we can. Shortly after the storm began, around eleven o'clock, this stranger — I mean the American, whose name we know to be Spinelli — rang the doorbell and asked to see Mr. Depping. That is correct, Storer? Thank you… Now, as a matter of form I must ask you to identify him; I have two photographs here" — he produced them from his inside pocket and handed them to the valet. That is the man who called on Mr. Depping, is it not?"

  Storer looked at the snapshots with care. He handed them back.

  ‘No, sir" he said apologetically.

  With a feeling that somebody had gone mad, Hugh Donovan peered into the man's face. There was a silence, during which they could hear Dr. Fell unconcernedly poking with his stick in the fireplace behind the dead man's chair. Behind this chair Dr. Fell rose to the surface like a red-faced walrus, wrinkled his moustache with a beaming air, and sank down again. The bishop only stared, blankly.

  "But this…" he said, and swallowed hard. He assumed a persuasive air. "Gome, come, now! This is absurd. Utterly absurd, you know. This must be the man. Come look again."

  "No, sir, it isn't the same man," Storer answered with an air of regret. "I only had a brief look at him, I know, and the candle didn't give a great deal of light. Perhaps, sir, I might not even be able to identify him positively if I saw him again… But — excuse me — this is not the same man. The whole face is different, except for the moustache. This man's face is very broad and low, and has heavy eyebrows. It doesn't look anything like the man I saw. And, besides, the man I saw had projecting ears, noticeably projecting, sir."

  The bishop looked at Dr. Fell. The doctor was stirring a mass of heavy black ash in the fireplace, and one eye caught the ecclesiastical appeal.

  "Yes," he said, "yes, I was afraid of that."

  Somebody brushed past Donovan. Morley Standish had come up to the desk.

  "This man's lying," he said heavily. "He's either lying, or else, he's working with Spinelli. It must have been Spinelli. The bishop is right. There's nobody else—"

  "Tut, tut," said Dr. Fell, rather irritably. "Calm yourselves a moment, while I ask just one question, and then I may be able to tell you something. I say, Storer, it's rather an important question, so try not to make any mistake."

  He indicated the door to the balcony. "It's about that door. Was it usually locked or unlocked?"

  "The door… why, always locked, sir. Invariably. It was never used."

  Dr. Fell nodded. "And the lock," he said musingly, "isn't a spring-lock. It's the old-fashioned kind, d'ye see. Where's the key for it?"

  The other reflected for some time. "I believe, sir, that it's hanging up on a hook in the pantry, along with some other keys for rooms that aren't used."

  "Cut along then, and see if you can find it. Ill give you odds it isn't there, but have a look anyway."

  He watched owlishly until the valet had left the room.

  "Let's pass over for the moment," he went on, "the identity of the man who came to see Depping last night. Let's only assume that somebody came here for the purpose of killing Depping, not blackmailing him, and go on from there. Come here a moment, will you?"

  They followed him uncertainly as he went over to the bridge lamp near the front windows.

  The electric fittings in this place" he continued, "are of a rather old-fashioned variety. You see that socket along the baseboard of the wall? This plug," — he picked up a length of wire from the lamp—"this plug, which is loose now, is screwed into that socket. In the modern ones the plug has only two prongs, which fit into the socket, and the live part isn't exposed for somebody to touch accidentally and get the devil of a shock. But the live part is exposed there; you see?"

  "Certainly," said the bishop. "What about it?"

  "W
ell, I've found the buttonhook."

  "What?"

  Dr. Fell raised his hand for silence as Storer hurried back into the room. "The. key isn't there, sir," he reported.

  "Mmf, yes. Now, then, just let me get one or two points corroborated, and then you may go. Last night the storm began just before eleven o'clock. You didn't speak to Mr. Depping then, or he to you. You went downstairs to shut the windows, and you were down there when the lights went out. You rummaged after candles down here, which took — how long, should you think?"

  "Well, sir, say five minutes."

  "Good. Then you started upstairs, and were going up to see whether your employer needed any candles when the knock came at the door, and you saw the mysterious man with the American accent. He wouldn't give any name, but pointed to the speaking tube and said to ask Mr. Depping whether he couldn't go upstairs. Which you did, and the visitor went up. Is

  all that correct, as we heard it?" "Yes, sir."

  "That's all. And be sure you go downstairs now, please." Pushing out his cloak, Dr. Fell lowered himself into an easy-chair near the lamp. He regarded his audience with an argumentative stare, and said: "I wanted to be sure of that, genthemen. It struck me, when I heard it this morning, that the story had a distinctly fishy sound. Look here. Put yourselves in Depping's place for a moment.

  "You're sitting here in this room one evening, reading or what not, and all of a sudden — without the slightest warning — every light in the house goes out. What would you do?"

  "Do?" repeated the bishop. He frowned. "Why, I suppose I should go out and find out why—"

  "Precisely!" rumbled Dr. Fell, and struck his stick against the floor. "It's the normal, inevitable thing. You'd be furious; people always are when that sort of thing happens. You'd go out and bawl over the bannisters as to what the thus-and-so was going on in that place. Depping, a man who was annoyed more than anything by trifles, assuredly would. But that's the point. He didn't. He didn't even call downstairs to inquire what was wrong.

  "To the contrary, he evinced a singular lack of interest in those lights. He was willing to entertain a man — who wouldn't give his name — with only a candle or two for illumination. He even, you recall, instructed Storer not to bother about seeing that they were repaired. Now, that isn't reasonable. And, actually, what was wrong? Something had blown out the fuses. I thought it might be interesting to inquire into causes. Here is the cause."

  From the floor beside the chair Dr. Fell took up a long steel buttonhook, now corroded and blackened. He turned it over in his palm, musingly.

  "You see that live socket? Eh? Well, this buttonhook was deliberately thrust into it, in order to short-circuit the lights. You have only to look at the buttonhook to see that. I found it lying near the open socket. In other words, the lights were put out from this room… What do you make of it?"

  CHAPTER VII

  "Who's Been Sitting in My Chair?"

  The bishop was a gentleman and a sportsman. He rumpled at the bird's nest of hair curling back over his big head, and then he smiled. "My dear doctor," he said, "it begins to be borne in on me that I should have done better to remain silent. Pray go on."

  "Tut!" grunted Dr. Fell amiably. "Let's pursue this line of reconstruction a little further. Il saute aux yeux la question: Why under sanity should Depping want to put out his own lights? The obvious answer is that he wanted to entertain a visitor who must not be recognized by his servants.

  "From this we proceed to inference that (1) Storer did know the person who was to call on him, but (2) he was in such fashion disguised that Storer would not know him if he were seen only by the very uncertain light of a candle. Hence the short-circuiting of the lights. This is decidedly supported by the conduct of the visitor. Mind, he is never supposed to have been inside the house before, and is a complete stranger. Yet he points to the speaking tube on the wall and tells Storer to speak to his employer. That isn't the ordinary behavior of a caller who wants an interview with the master of a house; far from it."

  The bishop nodded. "Unquestionably," he agreed. "There can be no doubt of it. That is the explanation."

  Dr. Fell scowled. His eyes wandered drowsily about the room, and then a capacious chuckle ran down the ridges of his waistcoat.

  "No, it isn't," he said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It isn't. I didn't say it was the explanation; I only said those were inferences to be drawn from the hypothesis that Depping put out his own lights. And I wish it were as simple as that. But let's proceed for a moment on that assumption, and see. what we find.

  "H’m. Harrumph. There is a very, very grave objection to this theory. If Depping wished to entertain a secret visitor, why did he indulge in all that elaborate and dangerous mummery? Why go to all the trouble of putting a loud check suit and a false moustache on his visitor, dousing the lights, and mysteriously bringing him in at the front door? Why not simply bring him up to the balcony, and through the balcony door unknown to anybody? Why not smuggle him in at the back door? Why not bring him through a window, if necessary? Why not adopt the simplest course of all: send the servants to bed and let him in himself — front door, balcony door, or back door?

  "You see, that theory won't work. Nobody but a lunatic would have arranged a meeting like that. There must have been a very good reason why it was done in that way."

  He paused for a long time.

  To see whether we can explain it, remember that the balcony door, which is always kept locked, was found open this morning. Not only was this door usually locked, but the key was not in it at all; it hung on a nail in a pantry downstairs. And it is gone now. Who took that key, and who opened the door? The murderer left that way, and it must have been unlocked either by Depping or by the murderer. Keep that fact fixed in your mind while we consider the problem.

  "Whoever the visitor was, or why he was admitted under such circumstances of hocus-pocus, look at the facts and see what happened afterwards. Depping and X are closeted together, amiably enough to all purposes, and some very extraordinary things occur. They are seen by the cook putting up all the windows in the midst of a blowing thunderstorm… What does that suggest to you?"

  The bishop was pacing about at a measured and thoughtful gait.

  "I can scarcely imagine," he replied, "that they did so because they wanted to air the room."

  "But they did," said Dr. Fell. "That's exactly what they wanted to do. Haven't you looked in the fireplace? Haven't you wondered about afire in the hottest part of August? Haven't you seen that heavy, clotted mass of ash? Haven't you wondered what must have been burned, so that all the windows had to be raised?"

  "You mean-"

  "Clothes," said Dr. Fell.

  There was an eerie pause. "I mean," the doctor went on, his voice rumbling through the quiet room, "I mean that glaring check suit worn by the visitor. You can still see traces of it in the fireplace. Now, mark you, these two are acting in perfect accord and understanding. The more we examine the problems as it seems to be, the more we must realize that it's mad, and there must be something wrong with the facts as they have been presented to us. Here is Depping admitting a visitor as he does, when he could easily have let him in through the balcony door without fuss. Here are Depping and his visitor sitting down to burn the visitor's clothes: which, I can assure you, is a social pursuit somewhat rare in the British Isles. Finally, we have the visitor not only shooting Depping with Depping's own gun, but (a) taking the gun out of the drawer without any protest, (b) getting behind Depping with it, also without protest, (c) firing two bullets of which one has mysteriously vanished, (d) carefully replacing the gun in the drawer, and (e) leaving this room by means of a balcony door which is always kept locked, and whose key is downstairs in the pantry."

  Wheezing, the doctor took out his pipe and tobacco pouch with an air of gentle protest. Morley Standish, who had been staring out of the window, turned suddenly.

  "Hold on, sir! I don't follow that. Even if Depping di
dn't let the man in, he might have got the key out of the pantry and put it in the door so that he could let the visitor out afterwards."

  "Quite so," agreed Dr. Fell. "Then why isn't the key

  there now?" "Why isn't-?"

  "H’mf, yes. It's not very complicated, is it?" the other asked anxiously. "If you're a murderer leaving a room in comparative haste, throwing the door open and ducking out, does it generally occur to you to pinch the key on your way out? Why should you? If you wanted to lock the door behind you, I could understand the position. Lock the door; chuck away the key. But why, if you intend leaving the door ajar, do you want a dangerous souvenir like that?"

  He lit the dregs of his pipe.

  "But let's not consider that just yet. Let's tear some more flimsy shreds out of the situation as it seems. If we come back to that problem of the mummery round the entrance of Depping's visitor, I think we shall see it isn't sensible either way. If for some reason the thing were an abstruse piece of deception, with all details arranged between them beforehand, look at the fantastic nature of one of the details! I refer, gentlemen, to Depping's apparent means of putting out the lights. I can think offhand of several easy and perfecdy safe means of short-circuiting 'em. _. But what, apparendy, does Depping do? He picks up an all-steel buttonhook and shoves it into a live socket—!

  "There's the buttonhook. Will any of you volunteer to do it now?"

  Morley ran a hand through his sleek dark hair.

  "Look here!" he protested plaintively, "I mean to say, come to think of it, if you tried that you'd get a shock that would lay you out for fifteen minutes… "

  "If not considerably worse. Quite so."

  Hugh Donovan found his voice for the first time. His father had ceased to be formidable now. He said: "I thought you'd just proved, doctor, that the buttonhook was used. And yet anybody would know better than to do a thing like that."

  "Oh, it was used right enough; look at it. But go a step further. Can you think of any means by which it could have been used in perfect safety?"