Deadly Hall

by John Dickson Carr

  “Cause of death, Kenneth?”

  “In non-technical language, Gil, her heart gave out. That’s why there were no external injuries. Good night.”

  Lights had been switched on in the upper hall; more lights shone through the open door of Serena’s bedroom at the front. Jeff hesitated before entering in his uncle’s wake.

  The door had been burst open, by all evidence with a chisel, splintering out the closed bolt in its socket so that both hung drunkenly down. There was a dusting of gray powder over the bolt and on both knobs of the door.

  As with those downstairs in front, each room up here had a panel of diamond-paned casement windows divided into four lights by stone mullions: every light immovable above, but hinged below and opening out like a door. Three window-lights remained closed; that on the extreme left stood wide open, making a not inconsiderable gap. Gray powder had been dusted over window-fastenings and glass.

  Despite sombre oak panelling, despite canopied bed and seventeenth-century dressing-table, Serena had tried to lighten it with a couple of overstuffed chairs, a floor lamp or two, a table bearing magazines as well as a generous-sized ashtray, and some smallish copies of paintings by Renoir and Monet.

  Jeff glanced towards the bed, its silk coverlet undisturbed except for the indentation where a body had rested. In one corner of the room, as though brooding, stood elderly Sergeant Bull. Towards the newcomers, nodding recognition to Jeff, strode heavily moustached Lieutenant Minnoch.

  “Mr. Bethune, sir!” he began with some formality. “This business o’ subtlety, now …”

  “No misunderstandings, if you don’t mind!” said Uncle Gil. “It’s your case, Harry; handle it as you see fit. I’m amicus curiae, and at the moment that’s all I am. How do you read the situation?”

  Lieutenant Minnoch, who did not wear his hat in the house, passed a hand over his bald head.

  “Well, sir, we’ve both heard the testimony. First off, just for a starter, I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. However the young lady fell out that window, it wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t accident either.”

  “That seems fairly evident. Still, what are your reasons for saying so?”

  “She came in here ’bout ten to eleven. She bolted the door. Her fingerprints are all over the bolt and on both knobs; Officer Richards dusted every surface that would take prints. She got undressed; she put on pajamas and whatever else she did put on. But she wasn’t interested in the window. Of her own free will, leastways, I doubt if she went near the window.”

  “How do you make that out?”

  “Because she didn’t touch the window! Not the one that’s open, not the other three or any part of ’em!”

  Lieutenant Minnoch went to the windows and peered closely before turning back.

  “It’s so high up here,” he added, “that with these fancy windows they need curtains even less’n they need curtains downstairs. No curtains anywhere in front. And not a fingerprint o’ Miss Hobart’s anywhere here, though her prints are all over the rest of the room. And don’t ask me who opened the window, sir; you heard it same as I did.”

  “Oh, of course!” said Uncle Gil. “That maid?”

  “Got it, Mr. Bethune. The maid (I think her name’s Josie) that was routed out with the rest and seems to be sweet on the chauffeur. Josie looked after the young lady. Every night she opens the window, always that same window, and did it last night. It’s too early for many skeeters just yet, so she don’t need to bother about screens or about a mosquito-net for the bed.

  “I didn’t want to scare the maid worse’n she was already scared, but Richards got her prints to play it safe. Her prints are on the window, on the catch and the frame too, a little bit blurred. ’Pears to me, sir, like there’s only one thing that could ‘a’ happened.”

  “Yes?”

  “The young lady, as I said, came in here ’bout ten minutes to eleven. She bolted the door—”

  “Why did she bolt the door? They never lock or bolt doors at Delys Hall; they have no reason to.”

  “They had good reason this time, sir, if only they’d known it. Maybe Serena Hobart did know, and thought somebody was after her.”

  Uncle Gil drew himself up.

  “As you so carefully pointed out, Harry, I heard the testimony too. At no time did Serena seem apprehensive: only determined, if a little absent-minded or remote. Her own brother said so, and the others agreed.”

  “If I were you, sir,” the lieutenant said indulgently, “I wouldn’t be too much impressed by anything young Mr. Hobart told us. He’s a flighty sort o’ gentleman, seems to me. And the nigras were all mixed up: not only that maid, but the chauffeur and the old butler too.”

  Uncle Gil, who had replaced the cigar in his vest pocket, stood pulling at his underlip with hideous indecision.

  “I take it, Harry, you don’t doubt this was murder?”

  “Not a doubt at all, Mr. Bethune. Have you any doubt it was murder?”

  “No, not really. But what happened here, exactly?”

  “I was comin’ to that, sir. The murderer got here tonight to do exactly what he did do. He wouldn’t leave fingerprints; they all wear gloves nowadays. He just grabbed her and slung her out the window. Probably he knew about her bad heart, and knew she’d be dead before she hit the ground. Or maybe—”

  “If Serena had bolted the door so that she couldn’t be taken by surprise, how did the murderer get in?”

  “Well, sir, that window’s wide open.”

  “Quite right; the window is wide open. But that makes it all the worse.”

  Gilbert Bethune strode to the window and put his head out, peering first left and then right along the façade.

  “I’ve already looked out here,” he announced. “If you care to glance out for yourself, you can confirm what I say.”

  Jeff, following him, also looked and could confirm it.

  “A very narrow stone ledge,” Uncle Gil continued, “runs along the front about three feet below floor level of this room. A professional steeplejack might navigate that ledge by pressing flat against the wall and edging along. But there seems no way even a steeplejack could reach the ledge from below. Look out there!”

  “I’m looking, sir,” Lieutenant Minnoch assured him.

  They had all concentrated on it.

  “The walls are smooth brick smooth-joined,” said the District Attorney, “with no crevice in the mortar for a fingerhold. There are no drainpipes to climb by. They’ve kept the walls free of ivy or other vines, as they’ve kept the oaks free of Spanish moss. Barring a professional job with ropes and hooks and tackle (and assistance), done by some expert team in broad daylight, it’s a physical impossibility.”

  Uncle Gil drew in his head and faced the other two.

  “No, Harry, that won’t do. And what else do you postulate?”

  “Well, sir …”

  “Fearing attack, Serena Hobart has bolted the door. But she does not hesitate to undress and don pajamas. The behavior of your hypothetical attacker seems still more curious. In some fashion ascending the wall like Dracula, he carries out his purpose: in your own words, he grabs her and slings her out the window. All this, mark it, with no outcry or even protest from the victim! If those in the house tonight disagree on other matters, all agree there was no outcry. We observe for ourselves there is absolutely no sign of any struggle.”

  “But—”

  “When they burst in here afterwards, witnesses also agree they found nobody hiding. What has our murderer done? Either he has descended Dracula-fashion, or else he has made himself invisible. How?”

  Lieutenant Minnoch’s face shone with a kind of radiance.

  “God bless you, sir,” he cried, “you can get as many notions as young Mr. Hobart himself! I’m the first to admit your ideas sometimes pay off, as in that Irishtown poisoning business where we caught the fake nurse who did it. But can I make a suggestion?”

  “We are waiting for one.”

  “It’s not
dead certain she was afraid of the fellow who killed her. Maybe that’s the answer to the whole business. I wouldn’t want to say one word against the young lady’s character, now. All the same, any cop knows these quiet ones can carry on and do things they oughtn’t to do.

  “Say she let the murderer in by the door, then bolted it so nobody else could intrude. She hadn’t any suspicion he’d come to kill her. That’s how he could get close enough to do what he wanted to do. Before she realized what was up, he just grabbed her and did it.”

  “How did he get down from the window, then?” demanded Uncle Gil. “Adopting your own conversational style, my friend, I might remark that, while tortures would not tear from me a whisper about your intellect, you can sometimes talk like a jackass.”

  “Easy, Mr. Bethune! E-easy, now! Don’t you go flyin’ off the handle, you of all people, or you’ll wind up by proving this didn’t happen and the victim’s not dead!”

  “Whatever I wind up by proving, we might at least make some small effort towards proving it. Fair enough?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I do say so. And I have already stated certain points on which the witnesses agree. It is further agreed …”

  Musing, Gilbert Bethune sauntered to a dressing-table whose seventeenth-century Venetian mirror remained untarnished by time. Over the back of the straight chair facing it hung a light-blue dress with a white collar. More feminine apparel lay on the seat of the chair, together with folded flesh-colored stockings, and beside it on the floor stood beige alligator-skin shoes.

  “That’s the dress she wore at dinner,” said the District Attorney, “as well as the stockings and shoes. I knew Serena Hobart as a girl of extreme neatness. But she does not seem to have put anything away, which is suggestive in itself.”

  “Suggestive of what?” asked Jeff.

  “Well, let’s see. When Cato and Isaac carried her upstairs, she had been lying on her back on the terrace. She was wearing something over her pajamas, and some kind of slippers. First they put her in another bedroom, because the door of this one had been bolted. When the door had been forced and the same two carried her in, as they put her down on the bed there Dave Hobart in a kind of daze removed the wrap and hung it up in the cupboard. He also removed the slippers.”

  “But that’s where it gets mixed up!” Harry Minnoch said stubbornly. “Don’t make much difference, I suppose, but … !”

  “Dave says she was wearing a dressing-gown; the chauffeur agrees. Cato, on the other hand, thinks it was what women call a house-coat. Let’s see whether we can determine which.”

  A very deep cupboard had been built out against the side of the bathroom in the southwestern wall. When Gilbert Bethune opened the cupboard door, several lights illumined its interior with fair clearness.

  Both to left and right a long row of hangers held the great array of dresses, gowns, coats, and other outfits. A bank of closed drawers rose on the right. On the floor at the left shoes and slippers of every kind or description stretched in a line towards shelves at the rear.

  From the first coat-hanger visible on the left depended a dressing-gown of dark-blue quilted silk. The first on the right held a black silk house-coat with faint gold embroidery down the front.

  Lifting out the left-hand hanger, Uncle Gil held it up so that they could get a better view of the dressing-gown. Down the right sleeve from the shoulder ran a long smudge of dust or dirt. He reversed the garment and showed its back very broadly smudged in the same way.

  “We are safe in deciding,” said Uncle Gil, “that the girl did not fall head-first. She landed feet downwards, toppled on her right side, and rolled on her back.”

  “That ’un’s the one, eh?” asked Lieutenant Minnoch.

  “Not necessarily.” Uncle Gil lifted down the house-coat, displaying a right sleeve and back also smudged; then he replaced both. “It might have been either the dressing-gown or the house-coat. Or else—well, never mind. As for the slippers, we have another if slighter difference of opinion.”

  Running the sole of his own shoe over the cupboard’s rather dusty floor, he pointed to the parade of footgear.

  “Dave and the chauffeur say the slippers were mules; Cato thinks they were a pair of moccasins, Indian or imitation Indian. Behold both in evidence here.”

  “Then there’s no tellin’, is there? And not much more we can do tonight, sir, if you ask me.”

  “The cupboard, if not entirely revealing, provides one or two suggestive points. You think we should adjourn? Very well, Harry; you adjourn. Before you go, however …”

  Followed by Sergeant Bull, who had not said one word, Lieutenant Minnoch moved out past the partly shattered door into the upper hall. Overtaking him, Gilbert Bethune gave some instructions in a low voice.

  “You’ll do that, will you?”

  “It can be done O.K., sir, if you think it’s necessary.”

  “Oh, it’s necessary; it may be vitally important. Coming, Jeff?”

  Only too glad to get out of that room, Jeff went out and joined them. Together they marched along the hall and descended the main staircase.

  “Before I myself leave,” Uncle Gil observed on the way down, “I have one other small inquiry to make. You’ll excuse me, Harry, if some of my remarks may have seemed rather cryptic?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Bethune,” said the now-simmering lieutenant, “but they’re just a little bit too cryptic! You keep talking about suggestive points, one after the other, and yet you won’t come out with any of ’em!”

  Uncle Gil had halted on the stairs, surveying the hall below.

  “For one brief moment, please, forget what happened to Serena. Before I came here tonight, before I knew anything had happened, I thought I could see the clue to one minor mystery. Two generations of Hobarts, beginning with Harald, have been in search of the old commodore’s hidden gold. Where must we look for it?”

  “Well, where must we look for it?”

  “I will give you a very broad hint. In what local or state industries have the Hobarts been financially interested for so long a time?”

  He paused, studying each of his companions in turn.

  “Now forget the gold. We return, as inevitably we must, to the wicked business upstairs. There was something in that cupboard I overlooked, but I can always refresh my memory. I would not have you think I myself am making mysteries or venturing on any flippancy at such a time. Nevertheless, at risk of being assaulted by the police themselves, I will conclude with still another question. In what way does Serena Hobart’s death so much resemble the death of Thaddeus Peters seventeen years ago?”

  12

  MANY HOURS LATER, on that dismal Sunday of rain gusts spattering and dying away, Jeff found himself again enmeshed in a net that seemed never to open for escape.

  When neither Lieutenant Minnoch nor anybody else had been able to answer the question Uncle Gil flung out on the stairs, the lieutenant had gone into a whispered conference with Sergeant Bull and with a plain-clothes officer summoned from one of the police cars outside.

  Beckoning to Jeff, Gilbert Bethune had led his nephew first into the library, then on through into the study. He waved Jeff to one of the padded chairs and sat down in another, where he clipped and lighted the cigar he had hitherto failed to smoke.

  “And now, with your permission …”

  “Uncle Gil,” Jeff had insisted, “it’s no use asking me in what way Serena’s death resembles the death of the late Thad Peters. Except that both died of a fall, there’s not one point of similarity between them. It happened in different places and under different circumstances. Finally—”

  “After reflection, however, more than one similarity may present itself. But I am not now concerned with theories; my concern is only with information.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “I rely,” said the District Attorney, “on your phenomenal memory. For past events you have been blessed with what some might describe as total rec
all.”

  “Yes?”

  “You journeyed downriver, I understand, with Serena, with Dave, with Penny Lynn, with Mrs. Kate Keith, and with a harmless if inquisitive journalistic character named Saylor. Be good enough to tell me everything you saw or heard between Monday morning and Saturday night.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything, at least, relating to any of those five persons. Perhaps relating to others as well; that will emerge in due course. If you are not too tired …”

  Jeff did his best, even at that drugged hour of the morning. He touched only lightly on any private interview between Penny and himself, without mentioning the embarrassments of either. Otherwise he described and quoted at such length that he feared he might be talking too much. But Gilbert Bethune, far from seeming bored, more than once uttered an exclamation of satisfaction.

  “You see, Uncle Gil, so very little actually occurred … !”

  “And yet more may have occurred than on the surface seems evident. The preoccupation of Captain Joshua Galway merits close scrutiny. So does—but no matter. Go on!”

  Jeff complied. It was a very long story; Uncle Gil had smoked a fair number of cigars, Jeff more than half a pack of cigarettes, and the hands of the clock crawled towards four A.M. before the narrator sat back.

  “The shock of Serena’s death,” he summed up, “followed almost immediately after another shock that, in its different way, was almost as bad. I mean Ira Rutledge’s news: if both remaining Hobarts should die before October 31st, their estate’s supposed to be shared between myself and a New England parson who’s already got more money than he needs. Damn it all … !”

  “May I remind you,” Uncle Gil spoke from a cloud of cigar-smoke, “that there is only one remaining Hobart? We must take good care no harm comes to Dave, and I have given orders to that effect. A plain-clothes policeman has been stationed outside Dave’s door, with instructions not to be obtrusive or draw attention to himself. You should then be saved the awkwardness of an inheritance you don’t want.”