“No, she didn’t say that. She only intimated—”
“Because I remember now,” Eleanor cut in, with brilliant eagerness, “I didn’t even mention that at all until we were in the cab where nobody could have heard. Chris had been quiet for a long time, fidgeting. You know how he does. He said, ‘Look here, how could you put the thing wonky, anyhow? I mean, you couldn’t just go in and dot it one with a sledge-hammer. I mean, I don’t want the confounded thing wrecked.’ I said, ‘No, but you could take a screwdriver and remove one of the hands …’”
“Only one of the hands?”
“Yes. But he got gloomier and gloomier. He said he wanted to hurry on to some club or other and write a note in a last attempt to borrow money. So if dear little Miss Handreth told you she heard that—”
“One other thing.” Hadley took out of his briefcase the left-hand glove; he did not make the mistake of showing the one with the blood-stain. His tone became lightly humorous. “Here’s part of the evidence prepared against you. Does it belong to you?”
“No. I never buy black.” After a momentary repulsion she examined it. “Good gloves, too. Jolly little girl! Eight and six-pence to get herself hanged. A bit too large for me, though.”
“Skoal,” wheezed Dr. Fell absently. He pushed his glass away. “By the way, while the questions are flapping back and forth, d’ye mind if I ask one?—Good! I don’t want to pry into secrets that don’t concern the murder, but just how often did you two young ones meet on that roof at night? Did you have regular nights, or what?”
She smiled. She was calmer now.
“I know perfectly well it seems silly,” she announced. “And neither of us cares. Yes, we had our nights, Saturdays and Sundays, as a rule.”
“But never during the week?”
“Almost never—on the roof, that is. Sometimes we met downtown on Wednesday afternoon; we met this last Wednesday, the day I was telling you about. Don has been trying to persuade me to do what I’m doing now. I was so fed up that we agreed to meet on Thursday night. That was how it happened … Dear Lucia knew all about those meetings, too; don’t think she didn’t! I could see it right enough. She told Chris …”
“Hullo!” called a voice from one of the dusky rooms, and a start went through the group. The door closed. Up to them in nervous but amiable mood, a glass in his hand, came Christopher Paull.
“Hullo!” he repeated, gesturing with the glass. “Thought I heard my name mentioned, or did I? I’m not interruptin’ anything, am I?”
20
A Letter Under the Floor
THE CHIEF INSPECTOR, HURRIEDLY STUFFING the glove back into the briefcase, swore under his breath. He had not forgotten that the “Duchess of Portsmouth” was a rendezvous for the members of the household, as he had told Dr. Fell; but it was convenient as being close to Ames’s late lodgings, which had not yet been investigated, and he offered odds that none of the Carver crowd ever bothered to wander back into the dining-room. Very well, he was wrong. Melson heard him whisper, fiercely, “Agree-with-anything-I-say.” Then he turned to the newcomer almost with affability.
Mr. Paull was not drunk. He looked as though he had it in his mind to be off somewhere, for one hand determinedly grasped hat and rolled umbrella while the other held the glass. But he was in that dividing state when, if a boon companion suggests having just one more quick one before leaving, the balance trembles, the scale-pan dips, and mortal man remains to get drunk. He was freshly shaven to pinkness, his toothbrush moustache was clipped and his thin blond hair brushed straight. He wore blue serge of a dexterous tailoring that made him look less stout, and tie with colours for something-or-other. But his eyes were still bloodshot; he seemed friendly but nervous.
“We should be very glad,” Hadley went on, “if you would join us for a few minutes. There are some questions … We were discussing the murder last night—” He glanced at him and left the matter vague. “Rotten business,” said Paull, with some violence. “Rotten business. Ain’t it? My God!”
He sipped his whisky and soda hastily and drew out a chair. He shot an apprehensive glance towards Eleanor, but did not continue.
“Have you learned exactly what happened?”
“Yes! I can’t for the life of me see what it means, dammit!” Again the apprehensive glance. “But I was wondering …”
“Wondering what?”
“Well, dash it all! Whether you might want to ask me any more questions.” Paull returned, in a somewhat aggrieved tone which trailed off. He fidgeted. “Look here. Tell me. I was still pretty well screwed when I talked to you this morning, wasn’t I?”
Hadley’s tone became sharp. “You’re not going to tell us, are you, that you don’t remember what you said?”
“No, no. I remember that well enough. All I can say is”—he drew a deep breath—“do you think it was very sporting not to tell me the fellow’d been done in with—what he was? Now I ask you!”
“Why should it interest you?”
“You know. You’re makin’ it devilish hard, old boy.” He gulped at the drink. “Fact is, I’ve been talking with Lucia Handreth, and—”
“Have you, indeed,” said Eleanor, with that breathlessness which precedes an outburst. Her eyes had a curiously unreal blaze. Then something jarred her body like a shudder, and Melson suspected that some one had administered an ungallant kick under the table. Paull appealed to her for the first time.
“Old girl, on my solemn oath, swear it on a stack of Bibles, I never really said I saw you in that hall! It was what I thought …”
“What did you think,” Hadley cut in, “when you learned a police officer had been stabbed with the hand of a clock?”
“Not what you think I thought. Word of honour!”
“Especially with the hand of a clock you had asked Miss Carver to steal for you?”
Again Eleanor seemed about to interpose, but Hastings had her by the arm. Hastings’ imaginative, intelligent eyes moved between Paull and the chief inspector, and understood. He was leaning forward, one elbow on the table; Melson felt that he was ready to lend a convincing theatrical display to the situation if it were needed.
“But I didn’t, old boy,” Paull protested, taken aback. He peered over his shoulder. “I say, don’t talk so loud. I didn’t at all. Besides, I didn’t need it. I borrowed the money, you know. Didn’t like to face the chap—borrowed money before—went to the club and wrote a note explainin’. Thought I’d better get an appointment with him, you see, so I thought, ‘Dammit! the train’s gone, but if I get an appointment I can’t take the train anyway, can I?’”
“Steady. You mean you didn’t go down to Devon, after all?”
“Oh yes. But not till Wednesday night. I’d promised the old man, you see, so I had to go. But I had the money, and there was no reason for pacifyin’ the old boy about anything, so I simply turned round and came back up to town again. What? Of course I ran into some fellers yesterday afternoon, and when I woke up this morning, dashed if I wasn’t stony again, but my money’ll be in tomorrow, so everything’s quite all right. Absolutely. What?”
Hadley cut short this desperate talking against time. “Let’s go back to the subject, Mr. Paull. Would it surprise you to hear that a warrant has been issued for Miss Carver’s arrest?”
Paull had taken out his handkerchief, and it shook in his hands. “You can’t do it,” he insisted, rather wildly. “Speak up, Eleanor. Say something. What I say is this. Some fellers are murderers, and some fellers ain’t. Same thing with women. Dammit! It’s too hard to believe—”
“But Miss Handreth believes it?”
“Well, Lucia’s different. She don’t like Eleanor. But I do.”
“Yet you still agree with Miss Handreth, don’t you?”
“I—no, I—I don’t kn—. Oh, well, dammit!”
Hadley’s eyelids flickered. His elbow came forward on the table, and he watched Paull steadily as he said:
“Then you’ll be glad to hear that the effort to throw sus
picion on Miss Carver has been absolutely discredited and she is the one person we are certain did not commit the murder.”
“Eh?” said Paull, after a long pause. The fire fell with a collapsing rattle, splintering weird light about the room, so that the pewter plates in their racks seemed to shift duskily. There were ghostly creaks from old woodwork. Paull sat with his handkerchief halfway to his forehead, as though suspecting a joke. “Eh?” he said, and asked Hadley to repeat. The chief inspector did so. When Paull spoke again, there was a rustle of expelled breath from all around the circle; Melson had a feeling of a shadow come and gone.
“Well, what do you want to pull a feller’s leg for, then?” he asked, in a sort of querulous weakness. “Havin’ me in here and lookin’ at me like a poacher, dash it! But I’m glad you can see sense. Hear that, old girl?”
“I hear it,” replied Eleanor, very quietly. She sat with her fingers locked, rigid. Then she shook back her hair, moving her head and throat with unconscious grace, but the eyes never left him. “Thanks for the help, Chris.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he disclaimed, in vague haste. Some inflection in her tone caught him momentarily, but he disclaimed whatever suggestion of an ulterior meaning it might have had. About him was an atmosphere of amiability and failure. “Do you—do you want me any longer? If not, I’ll be pushing off. It’s a rotten business, but so long as I haven’t got anybody into trouble—”
“I’m afraid you are in need of some recreation. As a matter of fact,” said Hadley, in his suavest tones, “you have an invitation. Very shortly my two young friends are going to—to the cinema, and they insist that you go along with them. They feel that the atmosphere at home is a little strained and that your conversation might make it more so. You do insist on his going along, don’t you?”
He looked at Hastings, who nodded instantly. Hastings’ lean face was expressionless, but his dark eyes moved towards the chief inspector.
“We insist on it,” he assented, feeling surreptitiously in his pocket. “Ha. Ho-ho! Yes, we insist,” he went on in a fuller tone. “Nothing like celebrating, is there? It should be a three-hour program. I was only wondering—for instance, whether we ought to start now?”
“Stop a bit,” said Dr. Fell, sleepily. “I was wondering … Tell me, Mr. Paull. Has anything else emerged out of the mists of last night?”
The other, who was trying to puzzle out the last situation, wrenched his wits back.
“You mean, remember anything? No. Sorry, old—er—sorry.
Not a blasted thing. Sorry. I’ve been trying all day.”
“Not even when Miss Handreth told you what had happened?”
“’Fraid not.”
“Heh.” A small twinkling eye opened in his red and shining face. “But perhaps you’ve an idea … a theory … about what might have happened? After, hem, our first theory blew up, we’ve been rather looking for leads.”
Paull grew more confidential, even a trifle flattered. From his inside pocket he took a flat silver flask, made a pretence of offering it about, and took a deep pull. The scale-pan trembled and tipped with that decisive ounce of whisky. His voice grew more hoarsely confidential.
“Not in my line, exactly, is it? No. What I always say is this. There are fellers who think and fellers who do. If I did anything I should be one of the fellers who do, but I don’t. Follow me? Well. I don’t claim much, but there’s one thing I’ll tell you.” He tapped the table with his forefingers. “I don’t like that chap Stanley.”
Hadley sat up.
“You mean,” he said, in the hush, “you suspect—”
“Now, now! I said I didn’t like him,” Paull insisted, doggedly, “and I don’t. And he knows it, so it’s no secret. But when Lucia told me, I thought, ‘Hullo!’ Nothing in it, maybe. The whisky talking and thinkin’. But why do they put two barrels on a gun? Because there’s always more than one bird, or what would the shoot be like? Well. Here’s a police officer killed, and rotten business. And in the same house there’s another police officer. And the two fellers knew each other and worked together, Lucia says. Ain’t they goin’ to ask any questions about that?”
An eager gleam had come into Hastings’ eyes. It faded; he clenched his hands and sat back.
“Lord! How I wish I could believe you!” he said. “But it’s no good—you don’t know the whole story … of what happened … And even aside from that, I—I, of all people!—can give the swine a clean bill of health. He was in the room the whole time. I saw him.”
“Did you?” asked Dr. Fell.
He did not raise his voice. But something in his tone arrested them all and made silence a hollow in which a spoon clinked sharply.
“Did you see him in the room the whole time?” Dr. Fell went on, and this time he did raise his voice. “You saw Boscombe, yes. But did you see Stanley? Did you notice Stanley? If I remember correctly, he was behind the screen.”
Hastings released his breath. He was staring at the memory, and he could find nothing he liked. “Sorry. How much I wish I could support it you’ll never know. I mightn’t have seen Stanley. But I did see the door—in full moonlight. And nothing, nobody, went in or out.”
Dr. Fell lost interest. “Why do you dislike Stanley?” he asked Paull.
“Well, dash it! He hangs about so, if you know what I mean. Always in your way. Sits in Bossie’s room drinkin’ Bossie’s brandy, and not speakin’ for half an hour at a time; and when he does speak it’s something dashed unpleasant. He’s the one, by the way, who’s always goin’ on about the Spanish Inquisition.”
Dr. Fell cocked a sleepily mocking eye at a corner of the ceiling. “H’m, yes. The poor old Spanish Inquisition again. Gentlemen, how the fiction-writers have flattered it and everybody else has misunderstood it! Remember Voltaire’s horror—‘Ce sanglant tribunal, ce monument de pouvoir monacal, qui l’Espagne a reçu, mats ellemême abhorré—written at a time when in enlightened France people could be checked into the Bastille without trial and kept there till they rotted? Of course, the Inquisition had become doddering by that time and didn’t tear out a man’s tongue or cut off his hand for a political offence as in France; but never mind. I had a young friend once, a writer, who intended to write the historical novel of his life about the picturesque horrors of the Inquisition. He was enthusiastic. He was going to picture the foul Inquisitors smacking their gums over the ingenuity of newly devised tortures, and the young Scotch hero-mariner struggling in their grasp; as I remember it, the whole thing was to wind up in a sword-fight with Torquemada across the roofs of Toledo … Then, unfortunately, he began to read the evidence. He stopped reading fiction and began reading facts. And the more he read the more disgusted he grew and the more his shining illusions fell away. Gentlemen, it genuinely pains me to have to dispel any good bloodthirsty illusion, but I have to report that he gave up in despair and is now an embittered man.”
Even Hadley was roused by this.
“I don’t want you flying off into a lecture again,” he snapped. “But you don’t defend the thing, do you? You don’t deny that your Scotch hero would have been in danger of torture and burning?”
“Not at all. At least, not much more danger than he would have run in Scotland. In his home town, the boot and thumbscrew were a legal part of any man’s trial for anything. Spain would have burned him as quickly as England would have burned him if he denied the existence of a future life, by the Puritan ordinance of 1648; as Scotland burned two thousand alleged witches and good old Calvin burned Servetus. That is—Spain would have burned him unless he recanted, which at home he wouldn’t have the option of doing. Not one person went to the fire who was willing to recant before the reading of the final sentence, I regret to say … No, I don’t defend it,” said Dr. Fell, rapping on the table with his stick. “I only say nobody attacks it for the real harm it did—the ruin of a nation, the eternal stain on the mala sangre family, the secret witnesses at trial (also a cheerful feature of English law), and the cer
tainty of conviction for some offence, however light, on anybody brought to trial. Regard it as a wrong. But don’t regard it as a nightmare. Say that the Inquisitors tortured and burned people, as civil authority did in England. But they were men who believed, however wrongly, in the soul of man, and not a group of half-witted schoolboys maliciously torturing a cat.”
Hastings lit a cigarette. The match-flame flared in the darkening room, and for the first time he looked older than Eleanor.
“You’ve got a purpose in telling all this, sir,” he stated, rather than asked. “What is it?”
“Because Mr. Paull’s attitude towards Stanley interests me, for one thing, and for another—”
“Yes?”
Dr. Fell roused himself from thought and sat up briskly. They had an impression of cobwebs broken and terrors for the moment pushed away.
“That’s all,” he declared. “H’mf. That is, it’s all for the moment. Go along to that show, now, the three of you. I have some last instructions for you. You’ll see that they’re followed, young fella?— Right.” He looked at his watch. “You’re all to come back to the house at exactly nine o’clock tonight, and not before then. You’re not to say a word when you get there—about anything. Got it? Cheer-ho, then.”
They rose hesitantly, and Paull in some haste.
“I don’t know what’s in your mind,” Eleanor said, her hands clenched, “or why you’ve done all this for me. All I can say is, thanks.”
She could not go on. She gripped her coat round her, shut her eyes once, and then hurried away, with Hastings after her. The footfalls faded and died. Three men sat round a table in the sinking firelight, and for a long time nobody spoke.
“We shall have to go and look at Ames’s room,” Hadley remarked at last, in a dull voice. He opened and shut his hands. “We’re wasting time. But I don’t know what to do. Somehow everything has been upset. In the last hour or so a dozen new possibilities have been floating about in my mind. They’re all possible, they’re all even probable—and I can’t nail down any one of them! Then what that young fool Paull said … that started me thinking too…”
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