“Just a moment. When was this?” interrupted Hadley, whose pencil had been busy.
“A month and a half ago, at least. During the warm weather, when a good deal of the skylight was lifted. You can’t hear much from that room unless you have your ear close to it. And when Boscombe has that curtain clear drawn, there’s nothing at all. But on this night I climbed round the chimney and crawled over, because I could hear something. Whoever else knew I was on that roof at any time, I’m jolly certain they never did. And when I heard those first words …” He swallowed hard. “Boscombe said—and I’ll never forget it—he said: ‘The question in my mind is only whether you now have even the courage to watch a killing, Stanley. Otherwise the thing is simple. It fascinates you to kill. You love it.’ Then he’d laugh. ‘That was why you shot that poor devil of a banker, because you thought you could do it safely.’”
There was a long silence. With his undamaged hand Hastings fumbled in one pocket and got out a cigarette-case, as though to keep himself very steady.
“Those,” he went on, quietly but more rapidly, “were the first words I heard. I stretched out and looked down through the part of the glass that was uncovered. I could see the back of that big blue chair turned facing the door, where it usually is, and a part of somebody’s head over the back of it. Boscombe was walking back and forth in front of the chair, smoking a cigar, with an open book in his hands. The lampshade was tilted and I could see his face distinctly. He kept walking back and forth, back and forth, as he talked, with that little smirk of his, and he never took his eyes off the fellow in the chair …
“It’s a queer thing,” Hastings said, suddenly. “He was wearing those little glasses, and the light reflected on them so that I couldn’t catch his whole look. But when I was a kid I had an aunt who was an anti-vivisectionist, and she used to have a lot of posters to stick in odd places. One of the posters showed a doctor—Anyhow, that’s what the expression on Boscombe’s face reminded me of, and he was smiling.
“I listened to all the smooth poison he was talking. He was going to kill somebody, not for any good reason, not because he hated anybody, but to ‘observe the reactions’ of the victim when he got him in a corner, and played on his nerves, and told him to get ready for death. Or some such horrible rot … He wanted Stanley to join him. Didn’t Stanley like the idea? Yes, of course he did. And didn’t Stanley want to do the poor stupid police in the eye for chucking him out, by committing a perfect murder or just assisting at one? He would plan the details, Boscombe said. He was only interested in Stanley’s reactions when confronted again with the bogey that had wrecked his career in the first place.
“I could see one side of that chair, and a part of the fellow’s face turned away. But most of all I could see his hand on the arm of the chair. When Boscombe began talking about doing the police in the eye, the hand began opening and shutting. Then it bunched into a fist and got a queer bluish colour and began to unclench again. And Boscombe kept on walking back and forth, in that long robe of his, past a funny-looking black-and-yellow screen that had flames and imps painted on it; and he was showing his teeth.”
Melson felt again the dull, creepy sensation that came to him whenever he thought of the screen that was painted in the design of the sanbenito, the robe worn by the sufferers of the auto-da-fé on their way to the place of burning. Figures were vivid in the white room; not a person moved; and Lucia Handreth said in a low voice. “Dear Mr. Boscombe’s hobby, I think, is the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Fell, “but I was wondering. If you people still hold to the popular notion that the Spanish Inquisition was a mere piece of senseless brutality, you know as little of it as Boscombe. Never mind that now. Go on, young man.”
Hastings got a cigarette shakily into his mouth, and Lucia struck him a match.
“Well, I crawled back to the other place. I was nervous; I admit it. The whole business made me half afraid of the roof and whoever might be walking on the roof. Of course I didn’t think they really meant it. When Eleanor came up I didn’t tell her, but she noticed I was edgy and I asked her who Stanley was … One thing I remembered was that Boscombe had said, ‘It will have to be a Thursday night.’
“That stuck with me; it kept me thinking and puzzling—yes, and half hoping; I admit it …”
“Hoping?” interposed Dr. Fell.
“Wait, sir,” Hastings said, curtly; “wait a bit. My work went to the devil; on other evenings I’d go over to the skylight, but never a word about it even on a couple of the evenings when Stanley was there. I won’t say I forgot it; but the hard thoughts stopped tormenting me and that ‘It will have to be a Thursday’ stopped ding-donging through my head.
“Until tonight. The most persistent thought, the thing that kept after me like a little blue devil, was: ‘How are they going to get away with it? How are they going to commit this perfect murder and keep from being hanged?’ But even that had faded out until tonight.
“I climbed up the maple tree at just a quarter to twelve. I remember that because the bell at the Hall was striking the quarter-hour. And I didn’t have any books; all I had, queerly enough as you’ll see, was a newspaper stuck in my pocket. That tree—did you notice it?—runs up past one of Boscombe’s windows. That never gave me any difficulty, because the windows were always closed and covered with thick black curtains. But tonight I noticed a queer thing. There was a moon out, shining on the windows, and I saw that the window by the tree had one of its panes smashed and wasn’t quite closed.
“Funny how the mind works. I didn’t any more than notice that pane, except to think I’d have to be quiet in case Boscombe heard a noise. But when I swung off to the gutter of the roof it put it in my mind to have a look down Boscombe’s skylight.
“I waited till I’d got my breath again, and crawled over. I had to keep low in the exposed places, because there was bright moonlight and I didn’t want to be seen from another house. Then I heard something, very low and whisperish, from the room. It suddenly turned me cold and half sick in the stomach, and my arms shook so that I nearly fell forward on the sharp edge of the pane. Boscombe said: ‘We’ll do the business in just fifteen minutes, or never. It’s too late to back out now.’
“I was shaking so much that I had to lie down at full length on the upward slope of the roof. My coat got caught up under my arms, you see, and twisted round so that the damned newspaper was twisting out of my pocket. When I put my head round I could see it as— as close as somebody who’s going to shoot you. The moon was on it, and I read across the top, ‘Thursday, September 4th.’ …”
He drew a deep breath. The fire had eaten crookedly down one side of the cigarette. In absolute stillness he continued:
“Then Boscombe spoke again, and I learned how he was going to do it …”
9
The Imperfect Crime
THIS HASTINGS, MELSON REFLECTED, might never become an outstanding barrister. But as a story-teller he unquestionably had his points. He seemed to realize that he had snared his audience, so that no creak came from a chair and even Hadley’s pencil was motionless. And Hastings’ face wore a crooked smile that made him look older than his years. They heard his breath whistling thinly.
“When I looked down there again,” he went on, “I hadn’t any consciousness of time or place, or anything except the rectangle of light that wasn’t covered by the curtain. I could see the right-hand side of the chair-back as it faced the door, just as before, and the double-doors themselves, and a part of the screen to the right of them.
“Stanley was standing with his hand on the screen; his face was a greenish colour, and he was shaking as much as I was. Boscombe stood over by the lamp, putting bullets in the clip of an automatic. He seemed a bit queasy, but he was smiling and his hand was as absolutely steady as that table. He reached over and picked up the gun itself off the table—it seemed to have rather a long barrel, but I understood that a minute later—and shoved in the clip: click. Then Stanle
y said, ‘O Christ! I can’t watch it! I’ll dream about it if I do!’ All Boscombe did was patiently go over the whole plan again, to make sure everything was set, and then I understood.
“He had gone on the principle he’d laid down a month before— that nobody was to be selected for the ‘experiment’ who was likely to be ‘a loss to the enlightenment of the human race.’ Which,” said Hastings, turning and throwing his cigarette into the fireplace, “was uncommonly decent of him. Secondly, the victim had to be a seedy down-and-outer, well known in the neighbourhood who might be thought likely to commit a burglary. So he’d selected the likeliest man, a hanger-on at a pub near by, whom he’d been considering for a week. He had been careful to present this man with a grudge against him, in public, by ostentatiously asking the landlord to keep the man out of the private bar.”
Somebody in the group uttered a stifled exclamation, but Hastings did not notice it.
“He’d already dropped hints in the bar about the amount of cash and valuables he kept lying about loose … Come to think of it, from what Eleanor told me,” Hastings reflected, dully, “he had bought a valuable watch from the old man; he didn’t use any burglar-alarm devices like the old man; he kept it lying loose in a brass box. Eleanor said she liked it better than anything in the old man’s collection.
“Anyway, he was ready. This evening he trailed the down-and-outer, was sure nobody saw them, pretended to relent, and offered him a suit of clothes if he’d come to the house that night for it. Then he was just about prepared for the fake ‘burglary,’ because …”
Dr. Fell opened his eyes and interposed, sharply:
“Steady on, son. Wasn’t this ingenious gentleman afraid that the tramp—always supposing the tramp was what he seemed—would tell somebody Boscombe had invited him to the house for a suit of clothes?”
Lucia Handreth stared. “But, Don,” she cried, “don’t you know? Were you too groggy to hear what I told you in the other room? That tramp was—”
“I repeat my question,” snapped Dr. Fell. “Steady, Miss Handreth. This is no effort at concealment. It’s simply that we don’t want any digressions now.”
Hastings had been moodily considering the previous question. “Oh, Boscombe had thought of that, too. He said he didn’t mind if the fellow told anybody; in fact, he rather hoped he would. Then, after the whole business was over, it would be taken as an extra lie on the man’s part—told to excuse his presence in case he should be seen hanging about the house, and clearly a lie because Boscombe had disliked him.
“One funny thing, though. I remember Boscombe said to Stanley about that: ‘This is what I don’t understand, but I’ll let you worry about it. When I was spinning an excuse to have him come here late at night after the clothes, he suggested it himself.’ Boscombe said he supposed this man really did intend to pinch something, if he could find an easy crib.
“He told the fellow to come round exactly at twelve; not before or after. He was to ring Boscombe’s bell. The house would be dark, but he wasn’t to mind that. If Boscombe didn’t come downstairs to answer the bell himself, that would mean Boscombe was engaged in an intensive piece of work upstairs, and would have left the door unlocked. So, if the man got no response from the bell, he was to come in quietly; not wake up the house by striking matches or going after lights, but walk straight back to the staircase he would see at the rear, and go upstairs …
“Boscombe, naturally, never had any intention of venturing out of his room to meet the tramp. His trick was to make everybody else in the house believe he had gone to bed at half-past ten. And now,” said Hastings, beating one hand softly on the table, “now comes the devilish ingenuity.
“Earlier, about half-past eleven, Boscombe had already sneaked downstairs in the dark, to unlock and unchain the front door. Asking this fellow to ring the bell at midnight, of course, was merely to warn him when the man was coming upstairs… Eh? Pardon?”
He looked round blankly as Hadley uttered an exclamation.
Hadley turned back a page of his notebook as he looked across at Dr. Fell.
“That,” he said, “was what Carver heard at half-past eleven. You notice he didn’t hear voices, or footsteps on the pavement, which is what you do hear if somebody is being let in; he only heard the chain rattle. But that’s not the important thing. Do you see what the important thing is?”
“I see it,” said Lucia Handreth, unexpectedly. Hadley started round, his eyes narrowing, and she faced him with defiant composure. “It means that if Inspector Busy Ames found that open door—and he was the sort of person who does find open doors— he had some little time to prowl about this house before he rang Boscombe’s bell at twelve o’clock.”
“Quite,” agreed Dr. Fell, blandly. “He was curious about somebody’s room. And that was why he was murdered.”
Hadley struck the table. “By God! you’ve got it! … The question is, Miss Handreth, how you know not only who he was, but even his nickname. Have you anything to say about that?”
“One thing at a time. Don is talking … Now, now, Don, don’t be so stupid and look so wild! I told you a while ago, even if it didn’t register. That tramp was Inspector Ames, and in case the name means nothing to you …”
Hastings stared. Then he put his head in his hands, his elbows on the table, and kept on laughing in a way that sounded horribly like sobbing. “Quit ragging!” he choked out, and then peered at her half-fearfully. “You don’t really mean—mean that one cop was waiting for another, and neither of ’em knew … ! My head—easy— where’s that handkerchief?
“Listen,” he went on, presently, with a thin edge of amusement in his voice, “whatever this means, it’s sauce for the rest of the joke. It repays me. I’m happy. I’m happy forever now, in spite of the scare I got.
“I told you about Boscombe unlocking the door. Well, when I saw Boscombe through the skylight, he was setting out the rest of his properties. An old pair of dilapidated shoes, stolen; a pair of cotton gloves and two pistols. One pistol was a Browning revolver, bought at a pawnshop, its numbers effaced, and fully loaded. The other was his own thirty-eight calibre automatic, with a German silencer on the barrel, loaded with several real cartridges and one blank.
“In his bedroom he had a couple of potted plants. After he’d unlocked the front door, he took some earth out of one pot, made a paste of mud with water in the washbowl of the bathroom, and spread it on the soles of the shoes. He then walked into the study, opened the window nearest the tree, sat on the window-sill, and put the shoes on his own feet. With the gloves on, he leaned out backwards like a window-washer, smashed one pane, lifted his feet and made marks on the sill of one climbing in. There was very little mud—just enough to make those marks and leave a very faint trail to the table where the brass box was. He’d done this with the lights out, of course; and the crazy thing was, I gathered from what he and Stanley were saying, it must have been only ten minutes or so before I climbed up.
“They’d had the lights out all the time after Boscombe was supposed to have gone to bed at ten-thirty, so that nobody could later have said a light was seen; and they only flashed ’em on briefly to make sure everything was ready. Boscombe had the gloves and shoes, upside down, laid out on a couch. He had his own gun in his bare hand; and the other, which he hadn’t touched except with a handkerchief, in the pocket of his dressing-gown.
“When they heard the bell ring at midnight, they’d arranged that Stanley was to get behind the screen again with his eyes to a crack, so that he could see. So that there’d be no chance of anybody seeing a light, or catching this tr—this copper …”
At the word, which startled him anew, Hastings began to show those inexplicable signs he had demonstrated before.
“Go on!” Hadley snapped.
“… Sorry. Or of catching this copper coming upstairs, Boscombe had told him that he’d be working in another room; the outer room would be dark, but not to mind that. Boscombe said for him just to open the door, wa
lk in, and call out quietly … Then, by God! the fun was to begin; the screaming mirth and the beautiful experiment on a man about to die.” Hastings’ voice rose. “As soon as he came inside, Stanley was to pop out from behind the screen, switch on the lights beside the door, and turn the key in the lock.
“They’d catch the rabbit before it squealed, you see. The victim would see Boscombe sitting in the big chair, with a gun in his hand, grinning at him; and Stanley, six feet three and also grinning, just behind him. Boscombe had even rehearsed what was going to be said. The victim would say something like, ‘What’s all this?’ or ‘What do you mean?’ And Boscombe would say, ‘We are going to kill you.’”
Hastings pressed the back of one hand across his eyes.
“Blast it! Even to hear Boscombe talking down there—and hopping back and forth and making oozy gestures while he rehearsed it—was … well, it was like one of those ghastly nightmares in which people don’t strike you as human beings at all, but as implacable robots you can’t reason with. You only see them coming closer and closer, and know that they’re going to kill you as a matter of course. “Boscombe explained how they were going to lead him gently over to the other chair, and make him sit down, and put on the old shoes he was to be found dead in. Then Boscombe would say, ‘You see that pretty box on the table? Open it. There’s money in there, and a fine watch. Put it all in your pocket. You won’t keep it long.’ He would explain exactly what they intended to do, after they’d squeezed all the blood out of their victim’s nerves, and got all his ‘reactions,’ and seen him crawl and pray. They would debate where they would shoot him, and after that game had been enjoyed in tortuous ways, then Boscombe would stand back and drill him through the eye with a silenced gun.
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