Deadly Hall

by John Dickson Carr

  “I found the camera they had been using, an intriguing discovery. Those photographs should, as they did, contain some clear shots of Malcolm Townsend, who offered no objection to posing. I had the photographs developed. Then, with full permission of Lieutenant Minnoch—”

  “Didn’t throw any chairs in your way, did I?” that official demanded happily.

  “With Lieutenant Minnoch’s permission, and employing our own Ted Patterson of Patterson Aircraft, I sent Officer Terence O’Bannion by charter flight from New Orleans to Boston. He arrived there late on Monday with some full-face pictures. Early on Monday, before dispatching O’Bannion, I had taken one necessary precaution.” Again Gilbert Bethune addressed his nephew. “Do you see what the precaution was?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “I think so, Uncle Gil. Attempting to identify Horace Dinsmore as Malcolm Townsend would have been pointless if the Rev. Horace had never left Boston. So you telephoned Mansfield College and on some pretext asked for Dr. Dinsmore. They told you, probably, that Dr. Dinsmore was absent on sabbatical leave but could be reached by mail in care of a friend, Mr. Malcolm Townsend of Washington. Have I followed it?”

  “Exactly; well done! It seemed safe to send O’Bannion with the photographs, which made their point. Horace Dinsmore was clean-shaven and wore glasses he didn’t need. Townsend, though sporting a narrow moustache and lacking glasses, incontestably was the same man.”

  “But what about Townsend’s faith in the efficacy of disguise? Was that why he didn’t mind being photographed?”

  “At that time,” replied Uncle Gil, “I had not yet learned of his preoccupation with disguise; Saylor told me later. Our man had used very little disguise; he faced the camera confidently because he never dreamed anybody would associate Malcolm Townsend with a New England parson-professor. Those easy airs of his, I fear, hid swollen and arrogant conceit. He really and fatuously believed he could disguise himself beyond recognition when he chose. He would have tried something more elaborate in the future. But there was no chance to try anything; we had him cornered. On Tuesday, once O’Bannion returned with signed testimony and other preparations had been made, we were ready to pounce.”

  Uncle Gil’s cigar had burnt down to a stump. He dropped it into the ashtray at his elbow.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we had better recapitulate.

  “At the unexpected climax of the whole business on Wednesday night, some twenty-four hours after our quarry’s arrest, the police had learned all details of his plot. Let’s follow every step he took, marking clues along the way.

  “For some time he had not been happy as Professor Dinsmore of Mansfield. Though his scholarly interests were real enough, he felt almost too constricted to breathe. Under the scrutiny of academic life, this womanizer could not womanize; this lover of high living must eat and drink as his colleagues did.

  “About 1921 he created the alter ego of Malcolm Townsend, who lived in Washington and lived as he pleased. Of course Townsend had an independent income, derived from the same source as Dinsmore’s. But he could be Townsend only during summer vacations or at odd intervals of the school year. And the sense of constriction grew worse as time passed; Townsend, an actor manqué who enjoyed lecturing, was receiving offers of lecture tours he could not accept.

  “Why not end an intolerable situation? Why not get rid of Dinsmore and become Townsend for good? To accomplish this he need not ‘die’ or even disappear. As his sabbatical leave approached, he agreed to begin lecturing in the fall. But, on leaving Mansfield in June of ’26, he would not and did not offer his resignation. Expected to return in September of this year, he would actually if briefly return. Then, with much regret, he would tender his resignation. After taking affectionate leave of his erstwhile colleagues, he would ‘retire’ to meditate on lofty matters, leaving no forwarding address.

  “That was his plan and remained his plan until the end, though it underwent one slight change. This spring, by a letter forwarded from Mansfield to his apartment in Washington, he learned from the senior partner of Rutledge & Rutledge that, if both Harald Hobart’s children were dead by October 31st, with my own nephew he would become co-heir to the Hobart estate.”

  Ira Rutledge drew a deep breath.

  “Yes, I so informed him,” the lawyer declared. “I told Jeff that would be my course and I adopted it, though I gave no details. And the noncommittal answer, signed Horace Dinsmore, was postmarked Boston and written on the stationery of Mansfield College. He had some confidant, then?”

  “No, he had no confidant at any time. To answer your letter meant only a quick visit to the Hub City for that requisite postmark. If at any time he had to confess he was on sabbatical leave, he could always claim he kept in close touch.

  “A moment ago, you remember, I spoke of the slight alteration in his plan. He was embarked on his affair with an all-too-willing Serena. Some time ago, from Serena’s father, he had learned the secret of Delys Hall. So he resolved, quite coolly, that neither Dave nor Serena must survive.”

  Penny had been fidgeting for some time.

  “But why?” she cried out. “What was his motive? If he already had more money than he needed, why hurt anybody? What did the man want?”

  “He wanted this house. And he believed two deaths were necessary for him to acquire it.

  “His fondness for picturesque old houses,” Uncle Gil resumed after pausing, “amounted to a passion, among the few authentic passions of his life. He never concealed that or needed to conceal it. Otherwise this murderer presents a curious psychological study.

  “The fellow’s belief in the power to disguise himself I have called fatuous. He had other fatuous ideas as well. It can be established that Dinsmore-Townsend, despite so much surface cleverness, was essentially a stupid man.

  “For no deaths were necessary. If he had investigated, he might well have discovered that Dave and Serena, far from inheriting a large estate, had comparatively few assets besides the Hall itself. But they were not likely to tell him, nor would a close-mouthed lawyer. If he had further learned they were about to sell, he himself had the wherewithal to buy. This consideration did not occur to him. To the born criminals of this world, I fear, such considerations never do occur.

  “Hear the rest of his scheme, the essential ignis fatuus. Having disposed of Serena and Dave, ‘Malcolm Townsend’ would have left New Orleans. Nobody who had known him in Boston as Horace Dinsmore was likely to meet him here. After a decent interval, wearing some other elaborately impenetrable disguise, ‘the Rev. Horace’ would have turned up to claim his rights as co-heir.”

  “Just a minute, sir!” interposed Dave. “If he’s gotten rid of Serena and me, does he also polish off Jeff to make the tally complete?”

  “Oh, no. For all his arrogant delusions, credit the fellow with at least some restraint. Two suspicious deaths would have been bad enough. Three suspicious deaths, with Horace Dinsmore as sole beneficiary, would have constituted raving lunacy. He would have offered to buy Jeff’s share of the Hall, as he could afford to do. Had he made such an offer, Jeff, would you have accepted?”

  “Yes, at once!” Jeff answered. “If ever I crave an old English house, Uncle Gil, I’ll buy one in England.”

  “Our murderer, then, would have resumed his happy life as Malcolm Townsend of Washington. When he visited New Orleans, of course, he must play Horace Dinsmore at all times. But what of that, to a man who enjoyed disguise anyway? He would own this house, his heart’s desire; he could afford to come and gloat.

  “Such was his plan, worked out in Washington this spring. Dave and Serena almost dished him at the outset, when they both appeared on his doorstep at the same time. Nevertheless, with his usual dexterity he kept them apart. Where or how he met Kate Keith we have not yet ascertained; and, in the lady’s present state of mind, I am unlikely to ask her. But he travelled downriver in Mrs. Keith’s arms. He could not have learned, of course, that the police had already been stirred up about Thad
Peters’s case by an anonymous letter signed Amor Justitiae.”

  “Who did write that letter, Mr. Bethune?” asked Penny.

  “I think I can tell you,” Jeff said, “if Uncle Gil will allow me. It was written by old John Everard. I should have suspected what to look for as soon as I saw the thing, though I didn’t suspect until you and I met the gentlemanly, harmless busybody at his cigar divan. Part of the text read, ‘Before you fling my letter into the wastepaper basket,’ and so on. Any American would have written just wastebasket, as we all do. Only a person brought up in England would have written wastepaper basket, the invariable form there. And I saw a large standard typewriter in the back room of his shop. But who wrote the other anonymous letter, Uncle Gil? The note on the portable typewriter, which sent me to Everard’s in the first place? If Townsend himself wrote that, what was his game?”

  Uncle Gil nodded.

  “Already he was confusing his trail, as he often did, to confuse any who might follow it. In that respect, Jeff, recall our interview with Townsend at Mrs. Keith’s last Sunday. Any search for hidden gold, he said virtuously, would be meaningless and ghoulish. ‘What about Jean Laffite’s treasure?’ he added. ‘Or Captain Flint’s?’ That was a slip.

  “Our city has several legends of Jean Laffite, but knows no Captain Flint. Captain Flint, a figure of fancy, was the pirate cutthroat who buried his hoard only in Stevenson’s novel, Treasure Island.

  “Dinsmore-Townsend, who heard so much, had heard of the well-known local character, asker of questions and prober of problems, at the Stevenson-inspired cigar divan in the Vieux Carré. It would do no harm, it would serve admirably as confusion, if he roused the curiosity of somebody—of anybody; it scarcely mattered whom—about the inquisitive old man who presided there. But our murderer had Stevenson at the back of his mind, and he made that unconscious slip.

  “Let’s follow him. Arriving in town with the rest of you on Friday afternoon, he carried out the next step. Having finished using Mrs. Keith for the moment, he turned to Serena. That night he phoned her and summoned her to the city. When they did meet, we are informed, it was Serena herself who suggested Cinderella’s Slipper. The owner-manager of that establishment, Marcel Nordier (his real name is Mario Petucci), has since confessed that he keeps several upstairs rooms for the convenience of the amorous.

  “You see, Jeff, when you and Penny visited Cinderella’s Slipper without finding Serena in either of the downstairs rooms, you looked no further because you never thought of any speakeasy as containing a house of assignation.”

  “I thought of so much,” Penny said with a shiver, “that it frightened me silly! I—I nearly fainted when that flower-pot dropped and smashed. Do you mean What’shisname did it deliberately, aiming at Jeff?”

  Gilbert Bethune shook his head.

  “He dropped the flower-pot deliberately, from the window ledge of a room above, though without intention of killing or injuring. To kill unnecessarily would have been against his own interest, something he never did. But Dinsmore-Townsend had begun to taste power, a heady brew. He exulted in the thought that he could have killed if he had wished, and he could not resist the gesture.

  “That same night, with Serena, he had given her instructions for what she must do the following night, Saturday. He told her that he, the authority on houses, had discovered the hiding place of Commodore Hobart’s gold. If she would navigate the ledge between her room and the next, she herself would make the discovery. ‘You don’t need the gold, of course,’ he said, ‘but what a triumph if you found it!’

  “We know, as Serena’s murderer didn’t, how much she wanted to find that gold and save her home. She would follow instructions to the letter, as she did.

  “However, I must not anticipate. On Saturday morning he made his official entrance here. If you ask who removed Commodore Hobart’s log from the safe in the study, it was Serena herself, on instructions from her mentor. Again he confused the trail, fouling it up for the benefit of any investigator. He was a little too quick to show us his brief-case, and there were other mistakes I have already indicated.

  “Still, his plan seemed to go swimmingly. Having used Kate Keith before, he could now use her again. Mrs. Keith, on instructions from the same mentor, soon after dinner hurried in to claim him for his alibi. He had set his murder-trap, and that night the trap worked.

  “Though he could kill Serena without going anywhere near her, the same would not apply to Dave. But it did not deter him. Serena’s brother had a heart condition too; a blow with a blackjack should prove lethal. On Sunday afternoon, taking insane risks, he removed his shoes under the overhanging hood of the side door and went upstairs to finish his work. His luck had changed. He failed, as he failed Monday night with three bullets fired from the drive. Luck had run out.”

  “But, Uncle Gil,” Jeff protested, “where did he get such mobility? He hadn’t hired a car; and the police, I understand, can’t trace any taxi he might have used. How could he be all over the place as he liked?”

  “How could he be all over the place?” Uncle Gil echoed gently. “You ask that, Jeff, although you were present when Mrs. Keith offered him either of the two cars in her garage? He declined, but he declined so cozily that it could not fail to rouse suspicion.

  “Yes, his luck had run out; on Tuesday he was cornered. Photographs identified Malcolm Townsend as Horace Dinsmore. Captain Joshua Galway and several steamboat employees would identify him for us, which they wouldn’t for Saylor, as the paying stowaway on the river. Mario Petucci, alias Marcel Nordier, could point out the amorous gentleman who had shared a private room with Serena Hobart. So we assembled our little gathering here.”

  “Forgive me for butting in again,” volunteered Jeff, “but weren’t several characters missing from that assembly? Just to round out the picture, shouldn’t it have included Saylor himself? Kate Keith? Billy Vauban? Even Earl G. Merriman of St. Louis? Saylor had just finished so confusing me with an earthquake display that I almost asked about Earl G. Meldrum of San Francisco.”

  “My dear Jeff, where’s your sense of fitness? Since we meant to show how Thad Peters had died, as well as how Serena had died, the gathering could scarcely have included Thad Peters’s nephew. Already Mrs. Keith had suffered much; I would no more have summoned her here on Tuesday than I would have summoned her here tonight. We had small concern with the St. Louis businessman out of Sinclair Lewis. John Everard I did invite, because I rightly believed he could be persuaded to keep quiet. The irrepressible Saylor would never have kept quiet, so I omitted him too.

  “And yet in one respect I judged badly. When Townsend was arrested, I expected him to fight; I expected a legal battle that might carry us all the way to the Supreme Court.

  “I should have been most suspicious on Wednesday night when he offered to tell us everything and did tell us everything. To be present as he sat in jail, justifying each move he made—which he hadn’t wanted to make, of course, but circumstances forced it—was not an experience I care to repeat. Having finished the recital, with a last gesture he swallowed the capsule which Kate Keith, faithful to the last, had secretly conveyed into his possession. He was unconscious in seconds and dead in two minutes.”

  “What was the poison, Uncle Gil? Potassium cyanide?”

  “Even deadlier than cyanide, which is only one salt derived from what he used. The capsule contained hydrocyanic acid, the fastest-working poison on earth. It was provided, no doubt, by some obliging pharmacist with whom Mrs. Keith has been over-friendly. But we needn’t hound Mrs. Keith; we needn’t hound the pharmacist; we need hound nobody. Since there will be no trial, with its attendant publicity, I may be able to smother the story so that as little scandal as possible attaches to the Hobart name. As regards the evidence, at least, we have now explained everything.”

  Ira Rutledge spoke with dignity.

  “Not everything, I suggest,” he corrected. “What of my own suspicious behavior?”

  “Your behavior?
Suspicious? I observed that you had something on your mind …”

  “You observed more than that, surely? Since Serena died by what might be called remote control, my famous alibi was worth nothing at all. And were there no suspicious circumstances? When Dave and Jeff arrived from the steamboat on Friday afternoon, together with Serena and the young lady who is now looking at me so strangely, I met them out in the hall. I said I had been looking at some papers in the study. But I emerged from the main drawing-room, which is in the opposite direction from the study.

  “Others have remarked on my tendency to frequent that drawing-room. In point of fact, as I afterwards informed Jeff, it contains some very fine antique musical instruments, including a sixteenth-century harpsichord. But some of you may have thought I told an unnecessary lie.” He looked straight at Penny. “You thought so, did you not?”

  “Honestly, Mr. Rutledge!” Penny protested. “If some notion of suspecting you did cross my mind, I dismissed it as ridiculous. And the point of your being in the drawing-room never occurred to me.”

  “Well, it occurred to me,” confessed the lawyer, “so I will speak out. Too long I have seemed a desiccated dodderer, acquainted with little except the law. But I know what’s what. Though far from being as devoted to detective stories as Gil or Jeff, I have read my fair share. And no character is more often encountered than the solemn family lawyer, really an unmitigated old crook, who culminates embezzling activities with the murder of his client. It relieves my mind to be free of suspicion. At the same time—”

  “Yes, Mr. Rutledge?”

  “What of you, young lady? Have you something to say or something to reveal? If so, I move you say it forthwith.”

  “Let the motion hereby be seconded,” agreed Gilbert Bethune.

  Levelly Penny met Uncle Gil’s gaze.