The Judas Window shm-8

by John Dickson Carr

  'Who? Of course, first of all you'd have plumped for Uncle Spencer, since he undoubtedly was a confederate in the plot. But that won't do; at least, as regards Uncle Spencer's committin' the murder with his own hand. He's got a really remarkable alibi, vouched for by half the staff of a hospital.

  'Who else, then? It's a remarkable thing, y'know, how the mere certainty of another confederate in the business narrows down the field. Avory Hume was a man with few friends and no intimates, except his own family. He was a great family man. If he went to the extent of confidin' that scheme to someone not necessary to it - even confidin' it under pressure - it must be someone very close to him.

  'You understand, at this point I was just sittin' and thinkin'; I'd got no more than an idea to roll about. Someone close to him, says I. Now, while it was theoretically possible for an outsider to have sneaked in and done it (like Fleming, to take an example), still this looked very doubtful. Fleming wasn't an intimate; he wasn't even a close friend, as you can easily tell from the way they speak of each other. Furthermore, an outsider would have had to sneak past a battery of watchful eyes composed of Dyer and Amelia Jordan, one of whom was in the house all the time. Still grantin' that it's possible, take the other theory and see where it leads.

  'It leads to the belief that the other confederate must 'a' been either Amelia Jordan or Dyer. That's so simple that it takes a long time before it can fully penetrate. But it pretty certainly wasn't Dyer. I'll say nothin' of my own belief that the painfully respectable Dyer was the last person that the painfully respectable Mr Hume would admit to a peep at any family skeletons from inside the cupboard. As a witness to Captain Reginald's gibberin' lunacy, yes. As a colleague, no. And that it couldn't have been Dyer is clear from the time-table.

  'Like this: I'd already come to the conclusion, from reasons you know, that Hume was murdered with that arrow fired from a cross-bow. Somebody had to wait until Jim Answell was under the influence of the drug. Somebody had then to go into the study with Hume, assist in pourin' mint-extract down an unconscious man's throat, and get the other decanter and syphon out. Somebody had to make a pretext for takin' the arrow out of the room. Somebody had to get Hume to bolt the door; how Hume was to be persuaded to do this, with the arrow still outside the door, I didn't know. Somebody had to work the mechanism of the Judas window. Somebody had to kill Hume, close up the window, dispose of the cross-bow and the decanter, and generally tidy up. You follow that?

  'Well, Dyer let Jim Answell into the house at 6.10. (Established.) It was three minutes at least before Answell took that drugged drink in the study, and longer than that before it hit him over the brain. (Established by Answell himself.) Dyer left the house at 6.15. (Established by me; I put into the right-hand column of my time-table, where I've put only absolutely unquestionable facts, that he got to the garage at 6.18; and, as he himself correctly said at the trial, the garage is a three or four minutes' walk away.) Is it possible to think that in the space of a minute and a half he went through all the hocus-pocus necessitated by Avory Hume's murder? It IS not. The time-element makes it impossible.

  'Which brought me up against the revealin' fact that Amelia Jordan was the only person who was known to be alone in the house with Hume and an unconscious man. And she was alone there for seventeen minutes, until Dyer returned with the car at 6.32.

  'Oho? Think about this woman for a minute. How would she fulfil the specifications for somebody who'd horned into the plot? She'd been livin' with the Humes for fourteen years: fourteen years, my children, which is certainly enough to qualify her as a member of the family. She was, or seemed to be on the surface, fanatically devoted to Avory. When she got excited - as you noticed she did at the trial - she called him by his first name, which was more than anybody except his own brother had the nerve to do. She was in a position to find out a good deal of what was goin' on in that house. If Avory had to confide his design to anybody, the likeliest person seemed to be a practical, swift-workin', hard-workin' woman who'd been there long enough to grow up in the closed circle of the family honour.

  'Still only theories, d'ye see: so let's look at what she did durin' those mysterious seventeen minutes between 6.15 and 6.32. At 6.30 (she says) she came downstairs after having finished packin' the bags. Here I'll ask you to follow the testimony she gave at the trial, because it was exactly the same testimony she gave the police a long time ago - when I studied it with uncommon close care, like everybody else's testimony. She says she packed a small valise for herself and a large suitcase for Uncle Spencer, and then down she came.

  'Now right here is an interestin' bit from Dyer's testimony which fits into that. Dyer returns and finds her standin' in front of the study door - in front of the study door, mark'ee. She flies info a wailin' frenzy, tells him that the fellers inside the study are killing each other, and orders him to run next door after Fleming. At this time, says Dyer, "she fell over a. big suitcase belonging to Dr Spencer Hume".

  'I rather wondered what that suitcase was doin' back in the passage that leads to the study. The main staircase in that house - you've seen it, Ken - is towards the front. It'd mean that she walked downstairs with the bags; and, intendin' to go to the study to say good-bye to Avory, she walked back into the little passage still carryin' the bags -or at least, you notice, the suitcase. What's the game? When people come downstairs with a couple of bags, my experience is that they always plump 'em down at the foot of the stairs where they'll be convenient for the front door. People don't go to the trouble of luggin' 'em to the back ' of the house and walkin' about with them firmly clutched While they say good-bye.

  'Right here I began to get a strange, burnin' sensation at the back of the brain. I began to see things. I wrote a question-mark on my time-schedule opposite Amelia Jordan's activities. Just what did I know, so far, about the murder? For my certain beliefs as opposed to the police's, I knew that (a) Hume had been killed with an arrow fired from a cross-bow through the Judas window, and the cross-bow had been missin' from the shed ever since that night; (b) Amelia was the only person who had been alone in the house for seventeen minutes; (c) Amelia was found near the study door in the inexplicable lovin' company of a large suitcase, which nobody seems to have heard of since that time; and then there fell into my obtuseness the fact that (d) Uncle Spencer's fine tweed suit had been missin' out of the house since that night.

  ‘Wow! We even know when that suit was found missin'. Directlv after the discovery of the murder, you'll observe, Randolph Fleming conceives the idea of takin' the prisoner's finger-prints. Dyer mentions that there's an ink-pad upstairs in the pocket of Spencer's suit. Dyer flies up to get it - and the suit's gone. Dyer can't understand it, and comes downstairs in a weird state of perplexity. But where was the suit? If everyone hadn't been rattled off balance by the discovery of a murder, where's the first place you'd have thought the suit must be? Hey?' There was a silence.

  'I know,' said Evelyn. 'You'd know it must have been packed.'

  'Sure,' agreed H.M., spitting out smoke and glowering. 'A certain woman had just finished packin' a bag for the owner of that suit. Uncle was goin' into the country for the week-end. Well, what the jumpin' blazes is the first thing you think of shovin' into a suitcase for a man who is goin' to do that? A tweed sports suit, my England.

  'Follow this not-too-complicated line of thought. At 6.39, you'll see by your table, Fleming asks Amelia to go to the hospital and get Spencer. At the very same time and in the very same breath, he tosses out the idea of takin' the finger-prints. If only, he says, they had an ink-pad. Dyer mentions the one in the golf-suit, and goes to get it. Mind you, as you'll see in the table, the woman is still there. She hears this. Why, therefore, don't she up and say: "It's no good going up and looking for that suit; I've got it in the suitcase right out in the passage"? (Even if she's taken the ink-pad out of the suit before packin' it, she'd say: "Don't look in the suit; I've put the ink-pad in such-and-such another place.") In either event, why don't she speak up
? She can't have forgotten she packed it so recently; and she's a severely practical soul who's learned to think of everything in Avory Hume's employ. But she says nothin'. Why?

  'You notice something else. Not only is the suit missing at this time - but it continues missing. It never turns up at all. Add to this fact the knowledge that a pair of red Turkish slippers (remembered because they're so conspicuous) are also missing; and you begin to see that the whole ruddy suitcase has disappeared.

  'That's another why. Do we know of anything else that's vanished as well? We smackin' well do! A crossbow has also vanished. Let's see: a stump cross-bow, but with a very broad head? It'd be much too big, say, to go into a little valise ... but it would fit very neatly into a suitcase, and out of sight.'

  H.M.'s cigar had gone out, and he drew at it querulously. Privately, I thought this business was among the best bits he had ever done; but I hesitated to say so, for he would only bask woodenly and delight his soul obscurely with more mystification.

  'Go on," I said. 'You didn't drop any hint to us that Miss Jordan was guilty until your closing speech in court; but you must have your way; so go on.'

  'Assumin',' said H.M., with as close to a look of pleasure as he could get, 'assumin’ for the sake of argument that the cross-bow was stowed away in that suitcase, you have a good reason why the woman didn't sing out and tell Dyer the golf-suit wasn't upstairs. She'd hardly tell him to open the suitcase and find the cross-bow. She'd hardly open it herself in the presence of anyone else. Quite to the contrary, what would she do? Dyer was goin' upstairs after the suit. She'd think - you can lay a small wager on this - that as soon as he discovered the absence of the suit it'd be all up. The cat would come out of the bag with a reverberatin' yowl. Dyer would think of the obvious thing. He'd say: "Please, miss, will you open the suitcase and let us have that ink-pad?" Consequently, she would have to get that suitcase out of the house in a blazin' hurry. Fortunately, she had a magnificent excuse to leave the house: she was going for the doctor. Fleming was in the study, Dyer was upstairs: she could snatch up the suitcase and get away to the car without bein' observed.

  'So far I thought I was treadin' over pretty safe ground. But -'

  'Please wait a bit,' interposed Evelyn, frowning. 'There's one thing I don't understand here, and I've never understood. What did you think was in the suitcase? I mean, aside from Uncle Spencer's clothes?'

  'Something like this,' said H.M. 'One cross-bow. One cut-glass decanter. One syphon partly emptied. One bottle of stuff to destroy the smell of whisky. Probably one screwdriver, and certainly two tumblers.'

  'I know. That's what I mean. Why did Avory Hume or anyone else need to have a lot of stuff carried out of the house or stowed away? Why did they have to have two decanters? Wouldn't it have been easier to have emptied the drugged whisky out of the ordinary decanter, rinsed it, and filled it up with ordinary stuff? Wouldn't it be easier to rinse out the glasses and put them back? And if you simply put a syphon of soda on a shelf in the pantry, what would be suspicious about this? - I don't say anything about the cross-bow, because that wasn't Hume's idea; it was the murderer's; but what about the rest of it?'

  H.M. gave a ghostly chuckle.

  'Ain't you forgettin',' he enquired, 'that originally there was nobody in the scheme except Avory and Spencer?' ‘Well?'

  'Consider the little pictures we draw,' said H.M., gesturing with his dead cigar. 'Dyer knows nothin' about the scheme. Neither does Amelia Jordan. The good Reginald Answell will walk in, and be closeted in the study with Avory. Between that time and the time Reginald is discovered as a gibberin' loony, how can Avory leave the study} Either Dyer or Jordan will be in the house all the time; Jordan will be there while Dyer goes out after the car, Dyer will be there while Jordan drives off after Spencer. You see it now? Avory couldn't dash out to the kitchen, empty the whisky, rinse the decanter, fill it up again, and walk back - with his guest lyin' unconscious in an open room, and one of his witnesses watchin’ him rinse the decanter. You can't do that when there's someone in the house, particularly someone on the alert for trouble: as Dyer was warned to be and as the woman certainly was. Similarly, Avory can't rinse the tumblers, wipe 'em, and put 'em back. He can't go shovin' syphons into pantries. He's got to lie low in that study. That's why I said, and emphasized: only two people were in the scheme to begin with.

  'We'd better deal with that part of the business, and tie it up with my growin' consciousness that Amelia was guilty. As originally planned, Avory had his sideboard all set; duplicates of decanters and glasses in the sideboard underneath, ready to be changed for the others. Lord love a duck, keep one concrete fact in mind. It's this: in Avory's scheme, he had no intention whatever of callin' in thepolice! There wasn't goin' to be any fine-tooth-comb search of the room or even the house. He only meant to fool his own little witnesses, his private witnesses, who wouldn't pry at all. All he had to do in the world was simply to shove decanter, syphon, glasses, and mint-extract into the bottom of the sideboard - and lock the sideboard doors. He could then get rid of the stuff after a dazed Reginald had been led away gibberin’. Don't you remember (see Mottram's notes on the plan) that the key to the sideboard doors was actually found in his pocket?

  'But when Amelia stepped into the scheme, she had no intention of leavin' it at that She was goin' to kill him. And that meant the police in. And all those incriminatin' souvenirs couldn't merely be left in the sideboard; they had to be got out of the house, or the blame wouldn't be fastened on the wrong feller who was lyin' unconscious.'

  ‘I liked her,' said Evelyn suddenly. 'Oh, dash it all! -I mean -'

  'Listen,' said H.M.

  He pulled open the drawer of the desk. Taking out one of those terrible blue-bound folders I had seen often enough before (this one had not been there long enough to accumulate dust), he flipped it open.

  'You know she died at St Bartholomew's last night,’ he' said. 'You also know she made a statement before she died; the papers have been full enough of it. Here's a copy. Now listen to a paragraph or two.

  I worked for him for fourteen years. I did more than that; I drudged for him. But I did not mind that, because for a long time I thought I loved him. I thought that when his wife died he would marry me, but he did not. I had had other offers of marriage, too; but I turned them all down, because I thought he would marry me. And he never said a word about it; he said he would always be faithful to his wife's memory. But there was nothing else to do, so I stayed on at the house.

  ' "I knew that in his will he had left me five thousand pounds. It was the only thing in the world I had to look forward to. Then we learned that Mary was going to get married. All of a sudden he told me this mad idea that he was going to change that will, and to put every penny he had into trust for a son that was not even born. The horrible part was that I suddenly saw he meant it. I could not have stood that, and I did not mean to stand for it.

  '"... of course I knew all about what he and Spencer and Dr Tregannon were going to, do. I knew about it from the beginning, though Avory did not know I knew; he thought women should not be concerned with things like that, and he would not have told me. There is something else I must tell you, and it is that I like Mary very much. I never would have killed Avory and tried to put the blame on Mr Caplon Answell; this Reginald Answell was blackmailing Mary and I thought he would get what he deserved if I put the blame on him. How was I to know it was not the right man?"

  'That's true,' growled H.M. 'It's a good half of the reason why she broke down with brain-fever when she found what she'd done.'

  'But she didn't own up afterwards,' said Evelyn. 'She swore there in court that old Avory had been after Jim Answell all the time.'

  'She was protectin' the family,' said H.M. 'Does that sound very rummy to you? No, I think you understand. She was protectin' the family as well as protectin' herself.'

  'I did not say anything at all to Avory, about my knowing of his scheme, until just about a quarter of an hour before I
killed him. When Dyer had gone out of the house to get the car, I came downstairs with the bags. I went straight to the study door and knocked, and I said: "I know you've got him in there drugged with brudine; but there's nobody else in the house, so open this door and let me help you."

  'The odd part of it was that he did not seem terribly surprised. He needed support, too: it was the first crooked thing he had ever done, and when he came to do it he had to lean on me. Well, it was the first crooked thing I had ever done too, but I was much better at it than he was. That was how I was able to make him do what I said.

  'I told him he was a very foolish man to think that, when Captain Answell - that is who I thought it was - when Captain Answcll woke up, he would not make a terrible fuss and demand to have the house searched. I said Mr Fleming would be there, and Mr Fleming was just the man to insist on searching the house for glasses or syphons or things. He knew that was true, and it frightened him. It is about seven years, I think, since I have been in love with Avory; and right then I hated him.

  'I said that I had my valise outside, and I was going to the country in a few minutes. I said I would take all the things along, and get rid of them. He agreed to that.

  'We put that automatic in the man's pocket - he was lying on the floor - and we tried to pour some stuff down his throat. I was afraid we had choked him. After we had given the arrow a pull and dragged it down, and cut Avory's hand to make it look real ... Avory was not a coward, though I should have been afraid to have that done ... we had to put finger-prints on it. The hardest part was for me to get the arrow out into the hall now without him suspecting anything. This is how I did it. The decanter and glasses and things were all out there already. I pretended to hear Dyer coming back, and I ran out of the room holding the arrow by the tip, and cried out to him to bolt the door quick. He did it without thinking, because he was an old man and not used to such work.