The Judas Window shm-8

by John Dickson Carr

  'Then I had to hurry. I had already put the cross-bow in the dark hall; I meant to take it back to the shed after I had finished. And the thread was already inside the knob on the door...'

  H.M. tossed the blue-bound sheets on his desk.

  'The worst of it bein’ he said, 'that, just as she had finished her work, she did hear Dyer comin' back. That was the trouble, I suspected at the time she hadn't allowed for the delay in persuadin' and arguin' with old Avory, and she cut it too fine. Just as she finished sealin' up the door again (with Avory Hume's gloves, which we found in that suitcase), up comes Dyer. She had no intention of shovin' away the cross-bow in the suitcase. The thing to do was take it back to the shed, where nobody'd suspect it But she hadn't time now. She hadn't even time to disengage the piece of feather from the windlass. Burn me, what was she goin' to do with that bow? In thirty seconds more, Dyer will be there and see everything.

  ",That was what caused me the trouble at the start, and nearly sent me wrong. She had a little valise and a big suitcase, and both of 'em were back there in the hall. What she intended to do, of course, was to put the other preparations in her own valise, disposing of 'em later, and take the cross-bow back to the shed: the best course. But - Dyer appearin' too soon - the bow had to go into Spencer's suitcase; it was too big to fit into the smaller bag.

  'It made me suspect (for a long time) that Spencer himself must certainly be concerned in the murder. Hey? She's used his suitcase. When the whole week-end kit suddenly disappears, and later Spencer makes no row about it-‘

  'He certainly didn't,' I said. 'On the afternoon of the first day of the trial, he went out of his way to declare he'd sent the golf-suit to the cleaner's.'

  'Well, I assumed that he must be tangled up in the murder,' said H.M. plaintively. 'And possibly that he and our friend Amelia planned the whole show together: Spencer carefully preparin' an alibi at the hospital. We've now got the reconstruction of the story up to the time Amelia runs out of the house, to drive to St Praed's after Spencer; and that whole run of dirty work looked almighty likely.

  'But I was sittin' and thinkin', and one thing bothered me badly. She had nipped out of the house with that suitcase, and she couldn't very well bring it back again - on that night, at least - in case anybody got suspicious or still; happened to be whistlin' for ink-pads. She had to dispose of it somehow, and to do it in a snappin'-of-your-fingers time; for she had to go direct to the hospital and fetch back Uncle Spencer. If she and Spencer had been concerned together in the murder, you'd have thought she'd have left the suitcase at the hospital: where he would have a room or at least a locker of his own. But that didn't happen. As you see from my note on the time-schedule, the hall porter saw her arrive and drive away with

  Spencer, and no suitcase was handed out. Then where the blazes did it go? She couldn't chuck it in the gutter or hand it to a blind beggar; and gettin' rid of a suitcase full of dangerous souvenirs (even temporarily) is a devilish difficult trick. There's only one thing that could have been done, in the very limited time the schedule shows you she took. When you're at St Praed's Hospital in Praed Street, as you know and as has been pointed out to you even if you didn't, you're smack up against Paddington Station. It could have been put into the Left-Luggage Department. This was inevitable, my lads. It had to be.

  'Now here was (possibly) a bit of luck. I thought of it 'way back in February. Since the night of the murder, Amelia had been flat on her back with a bad case of brain-fever, and hadn't been allowed out. At that time she still hadn't come out. She couldn't have gone to reclaim the case. As I say, logically the damned suitcase had to be there-

  'Well, like the idiot boy, I went there; and it was. You know what I did. I took along my old pal Dr Parker and Shanks the odd-jobs man; I wanted them to be witnesses of the find as well as examiners of it. For I couldn't stop this case from comin' up for trial now. In the first place it was a month under way. In the second and more important place, d'you know what I'd have had to say to the authorities? The old man (never very popular with the Home Secretary or the D.P.P.) would have had to go swaggerin' in and say: "Well, boys, I got some instructions for you. I want this indictment quashed for the followin' reasons: Amelia Jordan is lyin'. Spencer Hume is lyin'. Reginald Answell is lyin'. Mary Hume has been lyin'. In short, nearly every person in the whole ruddy case has been lyin' except my client." Would they have believed me? Question yourselves closely, my fat-heads. I had to put that whole crowd under oath: I had to have a fair field and swords on the green: I had to have, in short, justice. There's my reason; and also the reason for my mysteriousness about it.

  'You know where I went to get my witnesses, and why, But one thing still bothered me, and it bothered me up to the second day of the trial. Was Spencer Hume concerned in the dirtier deal of the murder, or wasn't he?

  'Here's what I mean. I snaffled the suitcase. But it'd been at Paddington since the night of the murder. Now, if Amelia and Spencer were workin' together, surely she'd have told him to go and reclaim it quickly before some inquisitive feller nosed inside? She hadn't been delirious with fever for over a month. It wasn't until a week after my own visit that a man - not Spencer - came and made fumblin' enquiries about it.

  'Sometimes I thought one thing, sometimes another: until the evenin' of the first day of the trial I began to get a glimmer. Spencer ran away; but he wrote to Mary, swearin' he actually saw the crime committed by Jim Answell. That letter had a ring of truth that Spencer never got into any of his quotations. Yet I knew it must have been a lie, until (bang) I saw what it was. Through this case, a vision of simple innocence has been presented by Amelia Jordan. A vision of moustache-twistin' craft has been presented by Spencer. Uncle Spencer's trouble is that he is too innocent. He honestly shouldn't be allowed loose. For fourteen years he's believed every word that's been spoken by that simple and practical woman: perhaps he'd had a right to. She told him she had actually seen Answell commit the crime, and he believed it. That's all. Don't you realize that that man really believes in all the soundin' platitudes he spouts? Her course had been simple. She told him she joined with Avory in the little plot, and had taken his (Spencer's) suitcase to stow away the decanter, the glasses and the rest of the trappings. She told him she'd had to dispose of that suitcase - into the river, she says here in her statement - and he'd have to get used to the loss. For, if the properties had been found in his bag, he would certainly get into serious trouble. Not a word about the cross-bow, of course. So Spencer shut up. He wouldn't even betray her to the extent of sayin', in his letter to Mary, that his information wasn't first-hand. I think we've misjudged Uncle Spencer. His chivalry was too much.'

  'But look here!' I protested. 'Who was the man who did go to Paddington Station - apparently a week after you did - and asked about the suitcase? You asked the manager about that in the witness-box. I remember, because it threw me off. I was certain a man had committed the murder. Who went to Paddington?'

  'Reginald Answell,' said H.M. in a satisfied tone.

  'What?'

  'Our Reginald,' continued H.M. with ferocious tenderness, 'is goin' to serve a couple of years for perjury; you knew that? - Well, he went into the witness-box and swore he had practically seen the murder committed. I wanted him to testify. If he tried any funny business (as I rather hoped he would), I could nail him to the wall quicker than flick a tiddley-wink; and there wasn't enough evidence to indict him for blackmail. Oh, yes. I told him, d'ye see, that the subpoena he'd received was only a matter of form, and he probably wouldn't be called at all. Naturally I didn't want him to run away like Spencer - as he smackin' well would have if I'd let him know I intended to bring up the subject of blackmailin' Mary Hume. So he went smoothly, and tried to repay the compliment by doin' me down. As a result, he'll serve two years for perjury. But the beautiful and glorious and cussed part of it is that, except for the triflin’ detail of the person in question, what he said was true: to all intents and purposes, he really did see the murder done
.'

  'What?'

  'Sure. He didn't know I knew everything about the interview he had with Grabell - I mean about his knowledge of the pistol Hume pinched - right up until the second day of the trial. He was pretty sick with me already for bringin' up the blackmail question while he sat right at the solicitors' table; so he rounded on me. But the first part of what he said was quite true. He did go down the passage between the houses; he was in Grosvenor Street after all. He did go up the steps to the side door. If you'll remember Mottram's notes written on the plan of the rear of the house, you'll remember that door was found unlocked -'

  'But, damn it all, you yourself proved that he couldn't have seen anything through a wooden door -'

  'And you're still forgettin' something,' urged H.Nt. gently. 'You're forgettin' two glasses of whisky.'

  'Two glasses of whisky?'

  'Yes. Avory Hume poured out two drinks, one for himself that he didn't touch (not wantin' to drink brudine), and the other for his guest, who drank only half of it You've also heard how Amelia Jordan later packed up those glasses in a suitcase. Well, I can tell you one thing she didn't do: she didn't put two drinks of whisky in a suitcase. She had to empty 'em. But there wasn't a sink at hand, and she didn't want to open the windows in case the locked room should be disturbed. So she simply unlocked the side door, opened it, and tossed out the contents of the glasses, thereby -'

  'Thereby?'

  'Givin' a way in to Reginald, who was prowlin'. You remember what he said when I fired the point about the glass door at him? He turned a little green, and said: "The door may have been open", which was quite true. The door was open. He didn't even notice what kind of door it was; he simply remembered the old glass door, and mentioned that because he didn't want to admit he'd stuck his nose into the house. How much he saw, I don't know. I doubt very much that he saw the murder committed. But he must have seen enough to give him a handle for blackmail on the person of Amelia Jordan, and he knew very well there was somethin' fishy about that suitcase. The trouble was, the suitcase had disappeared and he didn't know where. Until he did know - until he could find out - he was stuck between Mephistopheles and deep water. It's pretty hard to determine what went on in Reginald's mind, or bow far he approached Amelia. She was so bedevilled that I began to be sorry for her; but they weren't goin' to hang my client because of that. 1 thought it'd be very salutary, however, for her to see the evidence in court. I knew it would be very salutary to put Reginald into the witness-box and make that swine squirm on a hotter griddle than he'd ever dreamed of. Finally, it pleases and soothes me to know that he'll serve a long stretch in clink for tellin' what was, in essentials, the perfect truth.'

  We stared at H.M. as he gobbled whisky-punch. He had wanted to be the old maestro; and, by all the gods, you had to admit he was.

  'I am inclined to suspect,' said Evelyn, 'that you are a disgrace to all the splendid traditions of the fairness of English law. But, since we're all among friends -'

  'Yes, I s'pose so,' admitted H.M. reflectively. I technically broke the law when I got my burglar pal, Shrimp Calloway, to break into Inspector Mottram's police-station one fine night and make sure my deductions were right about the piece of feather bein' in the Judas window. It'd never have done to go to court and get my great big beautiful dramatic effect spoiled by the lack of a feather. ... But still, there it is. The old man likes to see the young folks have a good time; and I rather think Jim Answell and Mary Answell are goin' to be just as happily married as you and your wench there. So why the blazes, burn it all, have you got to pick on me?'

  He gobbled whisky-punch again, and lit his dead cigar.

  'So our Reginald was laid by the heels,' I said, 'all by perverting the pure rules of justice; and I begin to suspect that Jim Answell was acquitted by a trick; and the whole thing moves by ... by what the devil is it?'

  'I can tell you,' said H.M. quite seriously. 'The blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general.'

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  John Dickson Carr

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