Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful

by John Dickson Carr

  “Steady on, Jane!” Fred said sharply.

  A paralysis of horror lay on the group. It held them rigid. Though Fred’s manner still seemed easy, the color had left, his face. White cast, black spot. White cast, black spot …

  “You didn’t,” whispered Jane Tennant. “You didn’t. For God’s sake say you didn’t.”

  The moaning voice attracted Mr. Justice Ireton’s attention and annoyed him.

  “Madam,” he said, “you will pardon me if I ask you to leave this matter in my hands.” He looked round again. “This does indeed appear to be serious. Have you, sir, any explanation of it?”

  White cast, black spot. Black spot, clouding the mind and darkening it. Fred regarded the judge dully.

  “Do you think I did it?” he asked, in a voice of heavy curiosity.

  “I have not said what I think. But if you go in this fashion, I fear you will leave me no choice. You either have an answer to this charge, or you have not. Will you produce that answer?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  The judge looked thoughtful “Perhaps you are wise. Yes, perhaps you are wise.”

  Fred continued to study him with the same heavy curiosity, breathing slowly. After this he turned to Graham.

  “Good work, Inspector. Have you by any chance traced the revolver I used?”

  “Not yet, sir; but with this other evidence we don’t need to. We have a witness who testifies you usually carry a revolver in the right-hand side pocket of your motor car. And that’s the whole story, to my way of thinking.

  “This crime wasn’t planned. That’s to say, it was done on the spur of the moment. On Saturday night you started to drive in to Tawnish to get cigarettes, just like you told us.

  You were nearly to Lovers’ Lane when you saw Mr. Morell walking along the road toward you. Now, you hated Mr. Morell. You can’t deny that?”

  “No, I can’t deny it.”

  “You had good reason for wanting him out of the way, as Miss Ireton can tell us. When you saw him walking toward you, on a lonely road where as a rule cars don’t pass one every twenty minutes, I’m betting you had two thoughts. The first was: ‘If Morell is going to see the judge, he’s out of luck; because the judge is in London.’ The second thought was: ‘Gripes, I could kill him here; get rid of the bounder for good and all; and nobody’d ever be the wiser.’

  “You’re an impetuous. sort of fellow, Frederick Barlow. That’s how you do act: crash-bang and think-about-it-after-wards. That’s the way most murderers act, in my experience.

  “You stopped your car and got out. He came up to you. You didn’t even give the poor bloke a chance. You got the revolver out of the side pocket. He twigged what you were going to do; and turned round and tried to run to get away on the beach. There’s a lamppost a little way down from ■ there, and you could see his outline. You shot him behind the ear just as he got to the opposite side of the road.

  “Now, as a general rule, you’d still have been safe enough. It wasn’t likely anybody would hear the shot, with the breakers thumping away; and, as I said, it’s a lonely road. But by bad luck, when you went over to him, scared all of a sudden, and trying to decide what to do, along came Dr. Fellows.

  “You had to think pretty fast. But nobody’s ever accused you of being slow with your headpiece. You remembered that Black Jeff always dosses down in one of those model houses up Lovers’ Lane. Jeff wears a butcher’s coat that was once white but now’s a kind of dirty gray, like Mr. Morell’s suit. From behind, without the whiskers and the rest of it, this chap could be mistaken for Jeff in a bad light if you said it was Jeff. So you did, and the doctor went on.

  “It was all right about Jeff. Everybody in town knew he’d been on a spree since Friday. Later, he’d never be able to remember where he’d been on Saturday night or that he wasn’t flopped down by the roadside like you said. But this body was different. If Mr. Morell’s body’s found here, or most anywhere in this district; if it isn’t shown he was alive after you were seen bending over him; then Dr. Fellows is going to think back, and say to himself, ‘Here!— What was—?’ And you’re for it. So you suddenly think to yourself: ‘The judge’s bungalow.’ ” Fred spoke with a sick irony of cynicism. ‘To throw suspicion on the judge, I suppose?”

  “No! Not by a jugful! Because, you see, you thought he was in London and wouldn’t get back until the last train. So he’d have an alibi for sure.

  “You dumped Mr. Morell’s body in your car, switched off the lights, backed round in Lovers’ Lane, and drove to the bungalow. You had a look. It was all dark in front except for one little light in this room, which is exactly what you’d think a person would leave to light him home by in a dark neighborhood. This room was empty.

  “Your scheme, with the bullet and the chewing gum you knew Mr. Morell carried, that was worked out in two minutes. I’ve heard you make some pretty smart use of spur-of-the-moment material in court, sir. Mr. Morell had got beach sand on the front of his coat where he fell. You’d brushed most of that off, though (maybe you remember?) Bert Weems called our attention to some white sand still on the coat. And (you can’t forget this, anyway) Mr. Morell’s coat, when we saw it, still had patches of damp on the front of it.”

  It was Mr. Justice Ireton who spoke then.

  “True,” he remarked. “I recall it.” Graham snapped shut the clasp of the suitcase. “That’s about all. You carried the body in; smeared his fingerprints on the phone and all over; used the handkerchief out of his breast pocket (which we found there, remember?) for your own fingerprints; and played your trick. You’d just fired the shot, jumped down, and rolled the body close to the desk, when—”

  “I heard someone coming, probably?” inquired Fred. His. voice was still calm.

  “Right. You heard the judge coming. You dropped the revolver and nipped out of the window. You had to leave that gun behind, to prove only one shot had been fired. But you were pretty sure we couldn’t trace it to you; and we can’t.

  “There was only one other thing you had to do. You knew, after that phone call, that the police would be coming in a brace of shakes, along the only road they could come. So back you went, left your car all smack and plain on the wrong side of the road with the lights on, and stopped Bert Weems with your story about Black Jeff, so you could fix that part of it in everybody’s minds as clear as you’d fixed things in the telephone girl’s.”

  Graham concluded with bursting loudness. Then he got his breath after so much talking.

  “Here’s the proof,” he added, tapping the suitcase.

  “Your sole proof, Inspector? Pretty strong, I admit, but is that all you have against me?”

  “No,” said Graham in a flat voice. “That’s why I wanted Miss Ireton to be here.”

  Constance had backed away until she was standing against the sideboard. She seemed to want to put as great a distance as possible between herself and Jane Tennant. Her face—pale, small-boned, delicate-featured—now seemed drawn as though with illness.

  “M-me?” she stammered, and edged still farther away.

  “You see, sir,” continued Graham, giving her a brief sympathetic smile before he turned to Mr. Justice Ireton, “we were never just satisfied with Miss Ireton’s story. No. We still aren’t. But we had it all wrong. Up to the time Dr. Fell explained about the extra bullet and the fake phone call, we thought she was telling lies to protect you.

  “But then I thought to myself: ‘How is she protecting her father, by what she testified?’ She wasn’t. She didn’t. Nothing she said helped you very much; now did it? As a matter of fact, the only good solid thing she insisted on was … what was it? I’ll tell you. It was that she saw Mr. Morell come along the road and go into this bungalow at twenty-five minutes past eight.

  “Cripes, that was where I woke up! It wasn’t her father she was protecting. It was Mr. Barlow.”

  Graham turned round and faced Constance. His manner was lowering and embarrassed; his face shone with a polished red r
ash under the bright lights; but his earnestness seemed to hypnotize her. He spoke not unkindly.

  “Now, miss, here’s how it is. We can prove that at twenty minutes past eight, two minutes or so after Mr. Morell must have been shot, you were in a telephone box in Lovers’ Lane only sixty feet away from the place. Even if we couldn’t prove that, we should know you were telling us fibs. Mr. Morell was dead by eight-twenty-five; and a man can’t walk along a road with a bullet in his brain. You can’t stick to that story unless you want to see real trouble.

  “Miss, here’s what I think. I think you saw Mr. Barlow shoot Mr. Morell.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Then I think you ran to that phone box—sort of hysterical, like—and tried to ring up Miss Tennant. Probably to ask for a car to get you home. But you couldn’t, so you went back to this bungalow. Hang it miss, you couldn’t have been as close as that at that time, without seeing something or hearing the shot! Your lie about seeing Mr. Morell after he was dead proves you must have! The only question we had to think about was whether we ought to lock you up as accessory after the fact—”

  “No!” cried Constance.

  “I won’t go on about that,” said Graham, “because I don’t want you to think I’m putting pressure on you. I’m not. All I say is: If you did see Mr. Barlow do that it’s your duty to tell me. You can’t stick to what you’ve been saying. If you do, we’re bound to keep on at you until we’re satisfied, and you may find yourself in serious trouble.”

  Graham made a grimace which was evidently intended to be a sympathetic smile. He put out his hands.

  “Now, come on, miss!” he urged persuasively. “Is what I’ve been saying true? Yes or no? Did you see anything? Did Mr. Barlow shoot Mr. Morell?”

  Constance slowly raised her hands and pressed them against her face, either to hide it or to control emotion. They were delicate fingers, with red-painted nails, and ringless. While the seconds hammered on, clock beats ticking into eternity, she stood rigid. Then her shoulders drooped. She let her hands fall and opened her eyes. The eyes seemed to be asking a question, asking for something which she hoped even now might be given to her.

  “Yes,” she said in a whisper. “He did it.”

  “Ah!” said Graham, and expelled his breath.

  Mr. Justice Ireton’s cigar had long ago gone out. He picked it up from the edge of the ash tray on the chess table, and lit it again.

  Jane Tennant uttered a moaning cry, a kind of whimper. The sheer incredulousness of her look had never faded. She kept shaking her head from side to side, violently, but not speaking.

  Nor did Dr. Fell speak.

  Fred Barlow slapped his knees as though with decision, and got up from the arm of the sofa. He walked across to Jane. Her face, which was as cold as marble, he took between his hands; and he kissed her.

  “Don’t worry,” he said with clear reassurance. “I’ll beat them. Their times are all wrong, for one thing. But—but the circumstantial evidence … ”

  He rubbed his hand across his forehead, as though in desperation. He glanced at Mr. Justice Ireton, but the judge’s face was stony.

  “All right, Inspector,” he concluded, lifting his shoulders. “I’ll go quietly.”

  XX

  On the evening of the day following Frederick Barlow’s detention, Tuesday, May first, Mr. Justice Ireton sat in the living room of his bungalow, playing chess with Dr. Gideon Fell.

  An electric heater burned beside their table, for the evening was stormy. The sea wind came at the windows with a pounce and slap; the sea charged the beach as an army might charge it; the night outside was white-flecked and stung with spray.

  But the heater burned warmly. The lights were snug. The chess pieces, red and white, gleamed in crooked array on their board. Neither the judge, nor Dr. Fell had spoken for some time. Both contemplated the board.

  Dr. Fell cleared his throat.

  “Sir,” he asked, without looking up, “have you spent a pleasant day?”

  “Eh?”

  “I said: have you spent a pleasant day?”

  “Not particularly,” replied the judge, making his move at last.

  “I refer,” said Dr. Fell, moving in reply, “to the supposition that this day cannot have been very pleasant for your daughter. She is fond of Frederick Barlow. Yet in the interests of justice she will be forced to go into the witness box and send him to death. Still, there is the philosophical side. As you said yourself, nothing in this world is of less importance than human relationships.”

  Again they were silent, studying the board.

  “Then there is young Barlow himself,” pursued Dr. Fell. “A decent lad, when all is said and done. He had a great future before him. Not any longer. Even if he is acquitted of this charge (which I consider unlikely), he will be ruined. He stood by you at a difficult time. You must feel rather friendly toward him yourself. But, as you say, nothing in this world is of less importance than human relationships.”

  Mr. Justice Ireton frowned at the board, considering it. He made his move after more deliberation.

  “Incidentally,” resumed Dr. Fell, moving in reply, “it will break the heart of a girl named Jane Tennant. Perhaps you noticed her face, when they took her away yesterday? But then!—you hardly know her. And in any case, as you say, nothing in this world . . . ”

  Mr. Justice Ireton glanced up briefly, behind his big spectacles, before he resumed his scrutiny of the board.

  “What sort of chess are you playing?” he complained, displeased with the position he saw there.

  “It is a little development of my own,” said Dr. Fell.

  “So?”

  “Yes. You would probably call it the cat-and-mouse gambit. It consists in letting your opponent think he’s perfectly safe, winning hands down: and then catching him in a corner.”

  “You think you can win with that position?”

  “I can try. What do you think of Graham’s case against Barlow?”

  The judge frowned.

  “A strong case,” he conceded, with his eyes on the board. “Not a perfect case. But a satisfying case.”

  He made his move.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” agreed Dr. Fell, striking his fist on the arm of the chair with subdued but hearty enthusiasm. “That’s just the word for it. Rounded, complete, with few if any loose ends. Satisfying! Such cases often are. It is an explanation which covers all or most of the facts. It is an explanation which is rather convincing. What a pity that it isn’t the true explanation!”

  As he bent forward to move a piece in turn, Dr. Fell looked up and added: “For of course you and I know that it was really you who shot Morell.”

  Outside, the hard gusts drove across sand, masked in spray. The distant thunder of breakers seemed to make the stuffed moose’s head vibrate against the wall. Mr. Justice Ireton stretched out a hand toward the electric heater; still he did not look up, but his lips tightened.

  “Your move,” he said.

  “You have no comment to make?”

  “Only that you would have to prove it.”

  “Exactly!” agreed Dr. Fell, with a sort of pounce, and the same rich enthusiasm. “And I can’t prove it! That is the curious beauty of it. The truth is too incredible. Nobody would believe me. If you are uneasy about your own safety, at least in this world, put the thought out of your mind. Your Roman stoicism has its reward. You committed a murder. You are letting a friend of yours swing for it. You cannot be convicted. I congratulate you.”

  The thin lips tightened still more.

  “Your move,” repeated the judge patiently. But after the other had made it he added: “And what makes you believe I killed Mr. Morell?”

  “My dear sir, I was sure of it as soon as I heard about the revolver you stole from Sir Charles Hawley.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Yes. But there again you are protected. You are protected by the word of an eminent man who dares not betray you, and against whom my word would weigh
no more than that. He snapped his fingers. “Just as you are protected by your daughter, who loves you. Who saw you commit the murder. But who is compelled to say it was Barlow, because otherwise she would have to admit it was you. Again I congratulate you. Did you sleep well last night?”

  “God—damn you!” said Horace Ireton in two gasps, and brought down his fist on the table with a crash that jarred the chess pieces.

  Dr. Fell set about quietly restoring the shaken chessmen to their proper squares.

  “Be good enough,” said the judge, after a pause, “to tell me what you know, or think you know.”

  “You are interested?”

  “I am waiting.”

  Dr. Fell leaned back, and sat listening as though to the storm.

  “There was a man,” he said, “placed in the seats of the mighty, who had let this position go to his head. His sin (shall we say?) was not that he judged hardly or harshly. His sin was that he began to think himself infallible: that he could not make a mistake in judging men.

  “But he could and he did.

  “This man, to protect his daughter, resolved to commit murder. But he was a jurist. He had seen more murderers than there are lines in the palm of his hand. He had seen murderers clever, murderers stupid, murderers cowardly, murderers brave. And he knew that there is no such thing as a perfect crime.

  “He knew that what defeats the murderer is not the imperfection of his plans or the cleverness of the police. What defeats the murderer is accident: the dozens of little unforseen chances which lurk every step of the way: Somebody looks out of a window at the wrong time. Somebody notices a gold tooth, or remembers a song. So this man knew that the best crime is the simplest: that is, the one which presents fewest opportunities both to chance and to the police.