Death-Watch

by John Dickson Carr

  “On the other hand, she might not have seen him at all. She might not even be positive of a burglar, since nothing was taken and (he hoped) nothing disturbed. In either event, to run was foolishness. His best course, and in fact his only course, was—well, gentlemen of the jury?” Hadley suggested.

  Melson blinked.

  “Eh? Yes, certainly,” he admitted. “His best course was to stand out on the doorstep boldly punching Boscombe’s bell.”

  There was a pause. This time it was Hadley who chuckled. “Exactly. If the copper came along, there he was honestly ringing the bell for an appointment he could prove. If a wide-eyed woman rushed out: ‘Burglar, madam? Do you think if I had burgled your room I should be here ringing the bell? I saw somebody come out of here, I saw the door wide open, and I’ve been trying to rouse you.’ So there he stood, with the door wide open, waiting to see if she would come out. If she didn’t, it meant he hadn’t been seen. Then he could go straight in again, up to his appointment, and later have a shot at the interrupted search.”

  Dr. Fell hitched his cloak round his shoulders.

  “H’mf. Has the learned gentleman,” he said, “got any corroborative evidence for his Arsène Lupin episode?”

  “The learned gentleman has. Don’t you remember for what a long time he kept punching that bell (as Hastings told us), even though he’d been told to come up straightaway? He was seeing if the coast was clear. Do you remember that you yourself found the front door wide open when you went up with the constable who spotted it? He’d have closed it, naturally, unless he wanted to make sure nobody charged down on him in the dark.

  “Now let’s go back to our pet cobra. She’s come out into that dark hall with the knife and the gloves. And there the enemy is, silhouetted on the street lamp, ringing the doorbell and summoning aid. It must have been the most horrible moment she ever had. If she doesn’t act she’s caught. If she does act, she’s apt to be seen in the act of murder with a stolen clock-hand. She could risk killing him—stabbing him as a burglar who got in—if only he actually would get into the house. Or does she even dare risk that? She’s got to do something before there’s an answer to that bell. Now he’s coming in. Now he’s walking across the hall, while she’s back under the staircase. Now he starts upstairs—

  “And she’s got him.”

  Hadley ended with a sort of pounce and jerk in his words, clenching one fist. He looked at Melson as though every sentence were a blow to avenge the Force.

  “Lastly,” he said, “and in case you accuse an old salt like myself of romancing, I’ll offer you the final, the absolute, the sealing proof. I’ll do that by explaining what you, Fell, tried to ridicule as ‘The Mystery of the Flying Glove.’ It only occurred to me when I examined that staircase a little while ago, and remembered something I was too blind to see before. But I can explain to you the flying glove and why it flew. Look at it.”

  He took from his pocket the glove which Christopher Paull had said was lying in the upper hallway, and smoothed it out on his knee.

  “Now imagine that you are in Eleanor Carver’s place, creeping up those stairs behind Ames. Instinctively she has taken both gloves, but she wears only one. In one hand she has glove and clock-hand; in the other the second glove, into the finger of which, with a gesture to get rid of it, she has dropped the key she has automatically kept from the first. On her left is the wall, on her right the banister rail. Got it?

  “Right! At the second tread from the top—where the stains begin—she bears forward with her weight on Ames’s back and strikes. The weight carries him nearly to his knees. He instinctively throws up both hands; she throws up her free hand to keep her balance, automatically loosening her grip on the free glove. There is blood. His arm, jerked up, sends the loose glove spinning over the top handrail into the hall …”

  Melson leaned forward.

  “But, my God, man!” he cried, and the academic calm cracked to bits, “in that case her free hand must have been on the right-hand side!”

  “And this,” said Hadley, “is the right-hand glove. Exactly. This is not the hand that gripped that knife. On this glove the only bloodstain is directly down the palm: a place it could never have been if the hand had been closed tightly round that steel shaft. Therefore—”

  He brought his fist slowly down on the footboard of the bed. “—therefore you see why the angle of the blow carried Ames so much to the right. You understand the statement of the witnesses who saw the shop-walker murdered at Gamridge’s: ‘We were standing to the right of her at one side, when the shop-walker came past us and touched her arm. She reached over with her other hand and seized the carving knife.’ … It means, gentlemen, that the Gamridge murderess was left-handed. And, by the incontrovertible evidence before you, Eleanor Carver is left-handed too.”

  He rose, went to the fireplace, and knocked out his pipe on the marble edge. Hadley took pride in himself as a relentless logician who was not above a crackle of drama. Smiling grimly, he leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and looked at them.

  “Any questions, gentlemen?” he enquired.

  Dr. Fell started to say something, changed his mind, and said: “Not bad, Hadley. ‘What men and what horses against you shall bide, when the stars in their courses do fight on your side?’ Humph. Bucephalus has become Pegasus all of a sudden. Man, you talk fine! And yet somehow I’m always suspicious—highly suspicious—of those cases which depend on somebody’s being left-handed. It’s a little too easy … Just one question. If all this is true, then what becomes of the mysterious figure on the roof that Hastings saw: the figure with gilt paint on its hands? Do you think Hastings was lying?”

  Hadley put down his pipe with the air of one who remembers something.

  “The handkerchief!” he muttered. “By Jove! I’ve been carrying it about all morning, ever since I found you looking at watches with Carver.”

  “What handkerchief?”

  “Mrs. Steffins’s. I didn’t tell you, did I?” He took out of a separate envelope a crumpled cambric handkerchief thick with that substance which was cloying Melson’s very thoughts by this time. “No, don’t stare. This is only the gold oilpaint she used for her china and pottery painting. It has nothing to do with the other stuff. Preston found it shoved far down in the bottom of a laundry-bag in her room. But the stuff’s fresh; as fresh as last night.

  “Our good friend Steffins was undoubtedly the watcher on the roof. She went up from her own room, which opens on that hidden staircase in Carver’s alcove, up the other staircase to investigate this romance on the roof which everybody else seems to have known about.

  “Remember that she was fully dressed. Remember also that tube of paint I told you about?—the one squashed at the top, as though somebody had put a hand down on it. That’s exactly what happened, because it was dark. She went out of her room in the dark, and leaned on that tube of paint while she was blundering about. She wiped her hand on a handkerchief, not realizing how much she’d accumulated in the darkness, and tumbled up hastily to see the evil things on the roof. There she accidentally walked into Hastings at the height of the terror downstairs. The paint on her hand put the wind up him—he ran for the tree, with what results we know. She saw him fall and saw Lucia find him, over the edge of the roof; else how did she know he was in her room? (You remember she called our attention to it the instant I arrived.) Then she blundered downstairs, saw in the light how much paint she’d put on her hand, and had a wash. She shoved the handkerchief into the laundry-bag and prepared to have hysterics before all the high gods if anybody gave her a sinister look … Does that strike you as reasonable?”

  Dr. Fell uttered a mysterious noise which might be interpreted as either agreement or dissent.

  “But that,” the chief inspector went on, “is not my chief consideration now. I have stated the case of Rex v. Eleanor Carver. This morning you outlined a list of five points or questions in connection with the evidence, and I have answered every one of them. I have done t
his in spite of your sneering at all the visual evidence: the stolen articles in her possession, the hour-hand of the clock, the blood-stained gloves. I have provided not only concrete evidence, but motive, opportunity, and temperament of the accused; and I have provided the only explanation which satisfactorily fits all these conflicting facts. I therefore claim that the evidence leaves no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Eleanor Carver. You have said you’ll tear my evidence to blue tatters, but you haven’t a fact to call your own. That, me lord and gentlemen,” said Hadley, with a broad smile, “is the case for the Crown. Now break it if you can.”

  He mockingly sat down. And Dr. Fell, hitching his cloak about his shoulders, rose for the defense.

  18

  The Case for the Defence

  “ME LORD,” SAID DR. FELL, inclining his head absently towards the Krazy Kat on the mantelpiece, “and gentlemen of the jury.”

  He cleared his throat with a rumbling noise like a battle cry. He hitched his cloak across his shoulders and took up a position facing the bed. With this cloak, and his heavy grey-streaked mop of hair disarranged, he looked rather like an over-fat barrister squaring himself for battle.

  “Me lord and gentlemen,” he continued, settling his eyeglasses more firmly and looking over the tops of them. “To an unprejudiced listener, it might well seem that on every hand chance and coincidence have conspired to deliver over to my learned friend every corroborative fact and detail necessary for his case; whilst to me, on the other hand, they would appear to have delivered only what might be described in vulgar circles as a kick in the pants. His success in this respect is almost uncanny. He has only to seek for one clue, and he finds six. He has only to open his mouth to hazard a theory, and instantly somebody walks in that door and confirms it. I do not like this. I do not believe that even a really guilty person could leave so much damning evidence behind her if she strewed the pavement with clues from here to the Elephant and Castle. I persist in regarding this affair as a murder case and not a paperchase. And it is on a deduction drawn from this belief that I base my case.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Hadley, encouragingly.

  “And,” pursued Dr. Fell, imperturbably, “if my learned friend will consent to stow it and shut his fat head for a brief time, this defence I shall proceed to elaborate. To begin with. Gentlemen, it is a well-known rule in poultry-farming—”

  “Now look here,” expostulated Hadley, getting up. “You can have all the latitude you like. But I object to your making a farce of this thing. In the first place, I haven’t time for jokes, and, even if I had, it seems to me pretty bad taste when a man has really been murdered and somebody’s life is concerned. If you have anything to say, say it; but at least have the decency to be serious.”

  Dr. Fell removed his eyeglasses. Then he dropped his judicial manner and spoke very quietly.

  “You don’t see it, do you? You won’t believe me if I tell you I was never more desperately serious in my life? I am trying to keep that girl from being arrested, if nothing worse—and, incidentally, save your own official head—in the only way you’ll understand it—by showing you what you’re up against. I’m no authority on law. But I do know a good deal about lawyers and their methods. And I’ll show you what a man like Gordon-Bates or Sir George Carnahan, if they brief him, would do to your poor old case when you presented it. I may be wrong. But God knows I was never more practical.”

  “Very well. Carry on, then,” muttered Hadley. He seemed uneasy.

  “It is a well-known rule in poultry-farming,” resumed Dr. Fell, his voice trumpeting out again as he squared himself, “to avoid two errors which have since become axiomatic, thus: (a) Do not put all your eggs in one basket, and (b) Do not count your chickens before they are hatched. The prosecution has done both, which is a fatal bloomer. The prosecution has made its two charges interchangeable. If this woman killed Evan Manders, she also killed George Ames. If this woman killed George Ames, she also killed Evan Manders. Each charge is built on the other and is a part of it. We have only to throw a reasonable doubt on one of them, and we therefore discredit both.

  “For example, we have this glove, the right-hand glove. The prosecution states that this glove could not have been worn on the hand that stabbed Ames. From the wound, as we saw, there was an effusion of blood which would have saturated it; whereas on this glove there is not only a very small blood-stain, but a stain placed in such a position that my learned friend flatly states it could not have been there had this hand held the weapon. Good! My learned friend produces evidence definitely to show that the Gamridge murderess was left-handed. Since Eleanor Carver in killing Ames must have struck with the left-hand glove, then the two killers are one and the same.

  “That,” said Dr. Fell expansively, and nodded his big head, “is what I call putting all the eggs into one basket. Whereas this”— he lumbered over to the panel in the wall, opened the shoe-box, took out the left-hand glove, and, whirling round, flung it on the bed. “This is what I call counting chickens before they are hatched. There is the glove which the prosecution alleges must have been used in the murder. But examine it, gentlemen, and you will find not one single spot or speck of blood upon it. My learned friend states that the blow could not possibly have been struck without a quantity of blood. Therefore—by the prosecution’s own reasoning—we prove (1) that Eleanor Carver is not left-handed like the Gamridge murderess, and (2) that in the murder of Inspector Ames neither of these gloves could have been used at all.”

  Hadley rose from his seat as though in a process of astral levitation. He seized the glove from the bed and stared at Dr. Fell…

  “We wish all this to be understood,” the doctor thundered, “because this time the prosecution is jolly well not going to have it both ways. At this late date my learned friend is not going to say that he meant something else, and that the right-hand glove was really used, after all. He himself proved that it wasn’t. And I have proved the impossibility of left-handedness. If the free right-hand glove got a splash of blood when it was several feet away from the wound, then—to put it mildly—we must demand that the prosecution show us at least some microscopic trace on the hand that made the wound. There is none. Therefore Eleanor Carver didn’t kill Ames. Therefore she wasn’t the left-handed woman who stabbed Evan Manders. And those gloves, the only real personal evidence against her, must be disregarded when the prosecution’s whole case crashes down under the weight of its own logic.”

  To show he was far from finished, Dr. Fell added, “Ahem!” as he took out the red bandanna to mop his forehead. Then he beamed.

  “Stop a bit,” said Hadley, with dogged quietness. “Perhaps I’ve betrayed myself—a bit. Maybe in the excitement of building up a case (which was only a skeleton outline, as I told you) I may have gone a little too far. But these other pieces of real evidence …”

  “Me lord and gentlemen,” pursued Dr. Fell, thrusting the bandanna back into his pocket. “So instantly is the prosecution adopting the attitude I prophesied it would, that I need not point out how damaged its case has become. But let me proceed. The other side itself has proved she did not use the gloves. But one was found near the body, and another behind that panel. If she did not put them there, it follows that somebody else did—with the sole purpose of getting her hanged—and this I shall attempt to prove.

  “In considering these other ‘pieces of real evidence’ against her, I shall first deal with the Gamridge murder. As somebody has mentioned, I have outlined five points to be considered in connection with these two crimes … Harrumph. Gimme that envelope, Melson. So … And, when I come to discuss them, I shall ask leave to take them backwards.”

  He looked about suspiciously over his glasses, but there was no hint of a jeer. Hadley sat with the glove in his hand, chewing at the stem of a dead pipe.

  “Since we have disproved the charge of left-handedness, the only definite one, what remains to connect Eleanor Carver with the Gamridge murderess? That she was probably a blon
de (one says a brunette, but let that pass), that she was young, and that she wore clothes common to most women. This rouses my amazement, not to say my mirth. In other words, it is the very indefiniteness of the description which you use to prove it was Eleanor Carver. You say that the murderess must have been a certain women solely on the grounds that there are so many other women in London who look like her. It is as though you said John Doe was infallibly guilty of the Leeds scarf murder because the man seen sneaking away from the scene of the crime might just as well have been somebody else. Second, you have Eleanor’s own admission that she was at Gamridge’s that afternoon; which does not sound like the admission either of a murderess or of Eleanor Carver as you have painted her character as a murderess. But I will tell you what it does sound like. It sounds like the effort of somebody who knew she was there that afternoon; who noted the superficial resemblance to her in the newspaper accounts and knew there could be no positive identification; who read a description of the stolen articles and saw that, with one exception, they could not positively be identified, either—to saddle her with the crime.”

  “Hold on!” interposed Hadley. “This is getting fantastic. Granting that the witnesses couldn’t positively identify her, we have the stolen articles. There they are in front of you.”

  “You think they’re unique?”

  “Unique?”

  “You have a bracelet and a pair of ear-rings. Do you think that you couldn’t walk into Gamridge’s at this moment and buy twenty exact duplicates of those two articles? They’re not unique; they’re turned out in lots of which no individual bracelet or ring could be absolutely identified as the one stolen on the twenty-seventh of August. You wouldn’t think of arresting every woman you saw wearing one of them. No, my boy. There is only one of the stolen articles that could be identified beyond doubt—namely, the seventeenth-century watch of Carver’s in the Gamridge display. That is unique. That, and that alone, would infallibly point to Eleanor Carver. And it is very significant,” said Dr. Fell, “that it is the only one of the stolen articles you have not got.”