Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful

by John Dickson Carr

  XV

  She responded, but only perfunctorily, as one who fulfills a social duty. Her hands remained at his shoulders, pressed flat there. After a moment she pushed him away, drew her head back, and looked him in the eyes with steady appraisal.

  She said quietly:

  “Why did you do that?”

  He spoke, or tried to speak, just as calmly.

  “Because I’m in love with you. You may as well know that now as later.”

  “Are you? Or do you only think you are?”

  “Oh, God, Jane!”

  “What about Connie?”

  “I think I worked it out last night. I’ve never been in love with Connie. Connie’s—gone.”

  “Just when she needs you?”

  He dropped his hands, moved back, and walked round the table. He rapped his knuckles on the table; first quietly, and then with increasing violence.

  “I don’t take back-any of that. I’m very fond of Connie. I’ll still fight her battles; I’ll still fetch and carry for her. But it’s not the same thing. This is different. You don’t know how different. That’s all. Sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  “Offended me?” said Jane, her face blazing. “Offended me!” She stretched out her hands to him. “Come here, my dear. Come here to me for a moment.”

  He looked at her, and then moved round the table. Both of them were breathing rapidly. It was a contrast to their low-voiced, studied, almost muttering speech. But when he touched her hand, and put his arm across her shoulder again, the mood changed to one charged with violence.

  Some five minutes later, Jane said breathlessly:

  “You know, this is positively indecent.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “No. But if one of the hotel people should—”

  “Ho! Let ’em!”

  Five minutes later, when, in a manner neither could afterwards recall, they found themselves sitting on the wicker bench, Jane disengaged herself and sat back.

  “This must stop. Sit over there. Please! I mean it.”

  “But if you—”

  “Anywhere. Any time,” said Jane. “Always. Forever. But don’t you see—” She pressed her hands to her forehead. “I feel I’m being a beast to Connie somehow. I know I’m not, really, and yet that’s what I feel.”

  This sobered him somewhat.

  “And now she’s in trouble,” Jane went on. “Why? Only through trying to shield her father. That’s decent of her, if you like. Fred, we can’t. Not while she’s … No, sit where you are. Give me a cigarette.”

  There was a packet of cigarettes in the pocket of his beach robe. His hand shook when he took them out, and fumblingly struck a match. Her cheeks were bright with color, but her own hand was steady as she accepted cigarette and light.

  “Fred, I’ve got a confession to make too. I can identify that revolver.”

  He shook out the match, and dropped it on the floor.

  “That is,” she corrected herself, “I haven’t actually identified it to the police yet but I’m positive it’s the same one. It’s the Ives-Grant .32 that poor Cynthia Lee used on Morell five years ago.”

  He stared at her.

  “But the Lee girl wouldn’t—that is—?”

  “No: I don’t think Cynthia did it, just because of the revolver. You see, it’s not in her possession. Before the trial it was whisked away by a man named Hawley, Sir Charles Hawley. He ‘hid’ it by putting it in a huge collection of guns he’s got all over the walls of his flat, where nobody ever noticed it.”

  She broke off, for her companion’s expression was curious. He spoke with painful clearness.

  “Did you say Sir Charles Hawley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who has since been made a judge? Mr. Justice Hawley?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When he went to London yesterday,” said Fred, fashioning the syllables carefully, “Horace Ireton had lunch with his old friend, Sir Charles Hawley, at Hawley’s flat. He told Inspector Graham that last night.”

  There was a silence.

  “The crafty old devil!” muttered Fred, with a growing comprehension not untinged with admiration. “He pinched that gun out of old Hawley’s flat. Hawley was Cynthia Lee’s counsel at the trial, wasn’t he? I remember now. Don’t you see the beauty of the scheme? Horace Ireton doesn’t care how much they try to trace that revolver. Even if they do trace it to Sir Charles Hawley—even if they do—Hawley will have to swear that it doesn’t come from his collection and that he never saw it before, because he can’t admit he was unlawfully in the possession of evidence he unlawfully suppressed at the Lee Trial.”

  Fred paused, and added:

  “The crafty old devil!”

  “You know, my dear, I’m rather afraid you’ve got it.”

  He whirled round. “You haven’t told anybody else about this, have you?”

  “Yes. I—I told Dr. Fell, before I’d even heard Morell was dead. That is, I described Cynthia’s revolver.”

  She repeated, in some detail, the account she had given Dr. Fell last night.

  “But I still don’t quite understand,” she concluded, drawing her robe more tightly round her. “Even if Sir Charles won’t identify it suppose somebody else does? Cynthia herself, for instance? Or me?”

  “Could you swear to the revolver?”

  “N-no.”

  “Wasn’t the defense at the Lee trial that no such revolver had ever existed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Cynthia Lee can’t come out now and say, ‘Yes, that’s the gun I used five years ago.’ And neither can you, unless you want to rake up more trouble for her. Sir Charles Hawley would only say you were all dotty anyway. No. Horace Ireton is protected at every point of the compass. They’ll never even guess where he pinched it.”

  “I think Dr. Fell guesses, though.”

  Fred brooded. “If he does, he certainly hasn’t mentioned it to Graham. Which is another problem. If he guesses, why is he holding his hand?”

  “Perhaps because he still doesn’t think the judge is guilty. Do you think so?”

  “Against all the dictates of reason,” replied Fred, after a pause, “against all the dictates of common sense—no, I don’t.”

  He got to his feet. He stood in front of her, and looked down at her.

  Her eyes had a strained, happy wildness; her lips were half smiling. But when he attempted to take her hands, she drew away.

  “Can’t we forget all this?” he said.

  “No. You know we can’t. Not for a minute. No! No! No! I won’t!”

  “It took a lot of time to find you, Jane.”

  “There’s a lot of time ahead of us.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked quickly.

  Drifting, never very far away since last night, the black patch that could cloud his mind returned again. Since then it seemed to have spread like ink. It swallowed him up. It was all the worse now, because Jane was so near.

  “This appears to be the hour of confessional,” he told her. “So perhaps I’d better make my confession.”

  She smiled. “If it’s about any other love affairs—”

  “No. Nothing like that Jane, I think I may have killed a man last night.”

  The thick, warm stillness of the conservatory grew to a roaring in their ears. He stood looking down at her, his eyes fixed and unsmiling. To Jane, who was utterly happy, the words came first without comprehension; and then, as he nodded, like a blow under the heart.

  She moistened her lips.

  “Not—?”

  “No.” His voice sounded firm: the slow, pleasant baritone he could make ring with sincerity in court. “Not Morell. That’s not on my conscience, anyhow.”

  “Then who?”

  “Black Jeff. I ran over him in my car.”

  She half got up, but sank down again.

  “That tramp?”

  “Yes. I told Graham something about it today.
But I didn’t tell him all of it.”

  Jane hastily reached down and ground out her cigarette on the marble floor. Then, drawing her robe round her and her legs up under her, she faced him with all the strength of sympathy in her nature. His expression was cryptic; for the first time she did not understand him; she felt rather afraid of him.

  “So that,” she murmured, “that was why you were looking so queer at lunch, when they were asking you about it!”

  “You noticed it?”

  “I notice anything that concerns you, Fred. Tell me. What happened?”

  He made a gesture.

  “Well, Jeff came staggering out of Lovers’ Lane and fell straight in front of my car—”

  “It was an accident, then?”

  “Yes. Oh, I’m not in great danger of going to prison, if that’s what you mean. But listen. I got out and examined him, and carted him across to the other side of the road, just as I said. I went back to my car to get a torch, just as I said. And, also as I said, when I returned with the torch he was gone.”

  “But my dear Fred! If the man was badly hurt, he surely didn’t get up and walk away. He couldn’t have been badly hurt.”

  He spoke quietly.

  “Don’t ask me to go into details now. They’re not pleasant. All I can say is this. I know, from evidence I saw myself, that poor old Jeff had an injury few people could survive. I was going to tell the good P. C. Weems, of course, when he came pelting up on his bike. In fact I started to. But he started in to tell me about the other business—”

  “And that drove it out of your head?”

  “Yes. So, as far as I’m concerned, I let Jeff go away and die without stopping him, and without telling anyone about it. I still haven’t told anyone about it. Coldly and candidly, I don’t mean to; and I would defy the Recording Angel to prove it against me in open court. But it was a hell of a thing to do. You get nightmares.”

  “Well?” asked Jane, after a pause.

  “Well, what?”

  “Don’t you feel better?” said Jane, smiling.

  He drew the sleeve of his beach robe across his forehead. “Yes, you know—by the Lord, I do!”

  “Sit down beside me,” she said. “You want someone to talk to. Harangue. You’re so absorbing the Ireton training that in a few more years you’d be stuffed, like that moose’s head in the judge’s room. You say this Black Jeff got up and walked away; and I say he couldn’t have been much hurt. Are you even sure your car hit him?”

  He turned rather excitedly. “That’s the funny part. First off, I could have sworn I hadn’t. But then, afterwards, when I saw—”

  “Being here,” said Jane, “you might kiss me.”

  Presently, drawing a deep breath, Fred sat back and assumed a rather dictatorial air.

  “The English Sunday,” he declared, “has been for many years mocked and maligned. Its dullness has been a target for more cheap wit than any institution except mothers-in-law and the Royal Academy. This misconception, I say, is monstrous. I am going to write an essay and expose it. If this particular Sunday night has been dull, my beloved, then all I can observe, with due moderation … ”

  He paused, for she had sat up straight.

  “Sunday!” she exclaimed.

  “Correct. What about it?”

  “Sunday!” said Jane. “The bar and swimming pool aren’t closed at eleven o’clock. They’re closed at ten. All the attendants lock up. And it must be nearly eleven now!”

  He whistled.

  “So all your guests,” he observed, not without satisfaction, “must have been chased away home long ago? Well, well.”

  “But, Fred, my dear, if we can’t get our clothes—”

  “Personally, my witch (yes, I said witch) it is a prospect which fails to curdle my blood. I see no urgent necessity for more clothes than we are wearing now. Contrariwise, as someone remarked; but that by the way.”

  “Go home like this?”

  “Never mind. We’ll rout somebody out. Come on.”

  As he thought back over it, he did not remember seeing lights in other parts of the conservatory for some time. He pushed open the opaque-glass door into the next section.

  Darkness.

  All the other doors were open through the long length of the conservatory, and darkness made it ghostly. Down at the end, in the direction of the swimming hall, shone a vague glimmer of light.

  They groped through, their faces brushed by unpleasantly fuzzy tentacles from the plants, and emerged into the hall beside the pool. Only one small light, up in the center of the big domed roof, was now burning: presumably it was left on all night.

  Its reflection showed in pin points from the dim, darkening mirrors. It trembled on the faintly agitated water of the pool, opaque green. It blurred the outline of beach chairs and tables, veiling them with shadows. Everything looked neat, swept, cold, and slightly sinister. The doors to the American Bar were shut and locked.

  Fred tried the big door which led out into the hall: to the dressing rooms and the way upstairs. It was locked too.

  “That’s done it,” he said aloud.

  The sound of his voice rose up and rolled back at them hollowly in the marble shell. A distinct echo muttered, “That’s done it,” from one side of the dome.

  Jane began to laugh, which was repeated with grotesque effect by a sly voice from the dome.

  “You mean we can’t get out?”

  “We can try banging on the door. But this room is underground; and it’s out of season at the hotel, which means a skeleton staff; and in the mysterious city of Tawnish they go to bed early. However, here goes.”

  He tried banging on the heavy door and shouting. After five steady minutes of it he had achieved no result except such an unnerving din of echoes that Jane begged him to stop.

  They looked at each other.

  Jane’s eyes twinkled. “Well, I suppose there are worse places,” she sighed. “Still, it does seem a pity on our very first evening.”

  “Anywhere with you, my witch, were paradise enow. But I have strong romantic objections to us dossing down either on a marble floor or among a mess of evergreens. Hold on!” He reflected. “I was just wondering.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why was that light left on in the place where we were? Not out of consideration for us. For the same reason this one was: an all-night light. Got it! That’s the farthest end of the conservatory. I seem to remember there’s a door there. If it’s open, it leads to a staircase and to the main lounge upstairs at the back.”

  “Shall we try it?”

  “I will try it. You stay here. In spite of what I said, I am not going to have you parading through the main hall of the Esplanade Hotel in that outfit. If the door does happen to be open, I’ll go up and down and let you out by this one here in two shakes.”

  “All right. Don’t be long.”

  He hurried into the conservatory, his blue robe flying. After a difficult passage through, to judge by the language, there was a long pause and then a triumphant shout.

  “Open! Back straight away!”

  Distantly, the door closed.

  Jane drew a deep breath of relief.

  As though the closing of the door had set up vibrations all through the conservatory, the water in the pool seemed to tremble.

  The reflection of that one dim light split up into glints on imperceptible waves. Even her cork beach sandals made an audible sound on this floor.

  She sat down in a deck chair pushed back against the wall, and stretched back in it. Her bathing suit felt clammy under the robe; she wanted dry clothes.

  One part of her mind told her that she did not like this place at all. Even the sight of your own reflection, caught out of the tail of the eye as you moved, had a stealthy suggestion; it was as though people were coming at you, in all directions, out of dim rooms beyond the mirrors. Yet the other part of her mind, the wide-awake part was fiercely exultant. She half closed her eyes as she contemplated the roof.


  “You,” she prayed, “You, Who grant prayers: I’m happy. All my life I’ve felt dead, but now I’m alive. Make him happy too. That’s all I want. Make—”

  Jane stopped, and sat up straight.

  Without warning, the light in the dome went out.

  XVI

  Jane sat still.

  Her first thought was that the person responsible must be Fred, switching off this light under the impression that he was switching others on. But this hardly seemed reasonable; and she was a reasonable person. It wasn’t likely that a panel controlling the pool lights would be out in a hall clear at the other end of the conservatory. It was much more likely to be outside the main door here.

  Which might mean that there was somebody out in the passage now, if she called through the door.

  Sudden darkness is at any time startling. Here it was catastrophic. Jane got up, and realized she had only the haziest idea in which direction the door lay.

  Darkness seemed more than a mere bandage across her eyes: it was a thick weight piled upon her. She felt a touch of panic, the sensation of being lost, which is experienced sometimes in dreams. To darkness was added that earlier quality of underground silence, completing a tomb.

  “Hello!” she called.

  Her own voice made the shell ring; it seemed to slip round that sounding board like water in a bowl. The echo gurgled, “Hello,” from the dome, and then the vibrations quivered away. She took an experimental step forward. She kicked off her sandals, because they made a noise that bothered her, and took another step.

  Where was the door? Where was the pool, even? Better not take too many steps, or she might walk over the edge of it. She turned toward her left, groping out ahead; but this only served to confuse directions still more.

  Where was Fred? Why didn’t he come?

  She started to walk boldly forward in what she thought was the right direction. After two steps she stopped short, and stood bent forward, rigidly, listening.

  There was somebody in here with her.

  The sound was soft, but unmistakable. It was the faint drag and shuffle of leather-soled shoes—starting, stopping, starting again—as someone moved toward her: uncertainly, trying to find out where she was.