The Noose

by Philip MacDonald

  Flood paused for breath. He had spoken all this very fast. He said now: ‘And so on … and so on. It’s pitiful. It’s dripping! Bronson’s counsel ought to’ve been shot.’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ said Lucia in a low voice, ‘do anything with Bronson. Bronson said: “I’ll tell the truth and the truth is that I don’t know anything about it.” And there it was …’ She stared into the fire.

  ‘No,’ said Anthony, ‘it wasn’t too good. It was, in fact, bad and damn’ bad. It wasn’t a Defence; it was a sort of Rider to the Prosecution.’

  Dyson came to life. He said to Flood:

  ‘The worst of these “No’s” was the one you left out. The one you told me this morning. They say to Bronson: “Did you ever receive a letter from Blackatter?” “No,” says Bronson. “Then how do you explain this one found in your pocket, ordering a meeting for that night in Bellows Wood?” “I don’t,” says Bronson. “You’ve never seen it before, I suppose?” says Crown, very nasty. “No,” says Bronson. “Oh!” says Crown, nastier … And that’s that!’ Dyson let his head drop back to rest against his chair. His eyes closed again.

  Anthony, who had been sitting, rose to his feel with a jerk. He began to pace up and down between the glowing fire and the curtained window. His pipe was in the corner of his mouth and clouds of its smoke hung about his head in the room’s warm air. He came to a sudden halt and said:

  ‘And now Dollboys.’ He looked from Dyson to Flood; from Flood back again to Dyson. ‘And that’s not inapposite.’

  Dyson opened his eyes. ‘No?’ he said. Then: ‘P’r’aps not.’ He turned his spectacles upon Flood. Who said:

  ‘Report: At 3 p.m. I called at Ashvale Farm and interviewed its owner, Andrew Dollboys. I told him I represented Belton’s Magazine, which was anxious to include an interview with, or a story by, him in its “Famous Trials by Leading Witnesses” series. He fell for it. I was with him just over an hour. We got on very well. In the hour, I prepared him; his mind was full of the Blackatter case again, but he wasn’t worried about it. Nothing in my behaviour to worry him. Just as I was going I remembered something and let him see me remembering it. I remembered I’d seen’—he waved a hand towards the sprawling Dyson—‘another journalist in the district. Not a nice journalist. In fact, a reporter. A crime reporter called Marable, who had the reputation of unravelling all mysteries and generally seeing justice done—and being very unpleasant in the course of it. I thought it unlikely that Marable was here to see Mr Dollboys, but just mentioned it in case. I strongly advised Mr Dollboys to have nothing to do with Marable (I described him) whatever name he happened to call himself. Of course, there was no suggestion that Mr Dollboys had anything to worry about. How could he? But Marable wasn’t a desirable person to have poking round. I then left, having done all I could to put Mr Dollboys in a suitable frame of mind.’

  Dyson sat up again. He said:

  ‘Bit later I turned up. Dollboys very short. Heard about me. Shut door in my face. I went away. Returned to back door. Walked in. Great scene. Mother Dollboys sent away—very nervous. Dollboys fetches old shotgun. I’m very sinister. ’Tisn’t what I say, it’s the nasty way I say it. Dollboys thinks better of gun. Eventually I say I’ll come back tomorrow. I go. Dollboys left. He was sweating. Literally. I want to know why. Why sweat? If there’s no more in him than meets the eye, why sweat over a newspaper-man? Even me. ’Specially as Flood’s seen he didn’t object to the press … No. We’re in luck. We wanted to find Dollboys fishy. And fishy he is.’ Dyson fell silent, but now he did not lie back in his chair again. He still sat upright, and from one to the other of the group he darted glances, like a proud and sardonic but very untidy vulture.

  Anthony looked at him. ‘Dyson,’ he said, ‘is pleased with himself. And not without reason. He ought to be. And Flood too … It’s all very heartening, this fishiness of Dollboys’. Let us consider Dollboys … It was Dollboys who heard what Blackatter said when Bronson turned him out of this house on the evening of the murder. Bronson did not hear it. Dollboys said that at the door Blackatter turned and made that remark at least suggestive of a pre-arranged meeting. And, if you look at that private bar, and remember that Dollboys was at the saloon bar, you will realise that Dollboys was some six feet farther away from Blackatter than was Bronson. And Bronson said—and stuck to it—that at the door Blackatter turned round and “muttered” something … Bronson is not deaf; he’s as quick of hearing, I’m told, as anyone. And Bronson—never forget our hypothesis—is truth. Ergo Dollboys is lying when he said he heard. And now Dollboys sweats over what would, to a maculate soul, be at the worst an annoying experience.’ He turned suddenly upon Flood. ‘What,’ he said, ‘is the material worth of Dollboys?’

  Flood shrugged. ‘Very difficult to say. Impossible, almost, without inquiry. From what I saw of the menage, he might be living above his income, or inside it, or just making it balance.’ He looked at Dyson. ‘What d’you think, Mogul?’

  Dyson shut his eyes. ‘I say he’s comfortable. No more. And his idea of comfort’s not everyone’s.’

  Anthony looked at Pike. He said:

  ‘How about it?’

  Pike nodded, got swiftly to his feet and was gone. Anthony looked at the closing door with a smile of approval. He said:

  ‘It occurs to me that if Dollboys faked the spoken message, he might know more of the written one …’

  ‘Meaning?’ said Dyson.

  Flood took on the manner of a Sergeant-Major. He muttered: ‘Wait for it! Wait for it!’

  ‘Meaning,’ said Anthony, ‘that it occurs to me to wonder if the letter from Blackatter, found in the pocket of Bronson, may not have been addressed, actually, to Dollboys. Speculation that, and perhaps impure.’

  ‘You’re saying,’ Flood cut in, ‘that Dollboys is X.’

  Anthony shrugged. ‘I’d like to think so. P’r’aps he is, but I can’t feel it. I can feel, though, that he’s in the equation somewhere.’

  Dyson said: ‘He could be X, that cove. It’s in him to do what’s been done …’

  ‘And then,’ asked Anthony swiftly, ‘sweat at shadow-threats?’

  Dyson was silent a moment. ‘Maybe,’ he said, eventually. There was no great conviction in his tone.

  ‘Mr Dollboys,’ said Flood softly, ‘is frightened. Hadn’t he better be frightened more? A lot more.’ His round face seemed youthful and mild as ever, but Lucia, looking at him, shivered a little within herself when she saw his eyes. With the sudden illogicality of the female, she felt sudden pity for Dollboys. She strangled this emotion.

  Anthony nodded. ‘As much,’ he said, ‘as you like. P’r’aps more.’

  The door opened. Pike came in, closing it swift and soft behind him. He came across the room to the fire. He said, looking at Anthony:

  ‘I’ve had a word with Mrs Bronson. She knows all about Dollboys. Enough anyhow. He comes here a lot. He did before, and he does still. And that shows something of the man, I’d say!’ Pike’s eyes were slits, his long jaw was thrust out. ‘But she says Dollboys has nothing. A little competence, and a small farm which would be neglected if it wasn’t for the man’s brother. As it is, it just pays. The man’s got enough to clothe himself and feed himself and have a quiet drink when he wants it.’

  ‘Has he,’ said Anthony quickly, ‘got a car? Or a motorbike? Did she say that?’

  ‘Car,’ said Pike. His jaw seemed to stick out farther. ‘Tell you how I know, sir … He’s here now!’

  ‘Eh?’ said Dyson, sitting really upright.

  Flood whistled.

  ‘As I was talking to Mrs Bronson, sir,’ said Pike, ‘she stopped suddenly. We were in that little office at the other end of the passage, behind the saloon-bar. She said: “That sounds like his car.” And she looked out. It was. He always leaves it round the back.’

  Dyson, his head to one side, was looking at Anthony like a speculative bird. He said:

  ‘Why d’you ask, has he got a car?’

  Flood
nodded.

  ‘Because,’ said Anthony slowly, ‘of what I learnt this afternoon. I spent most of it with T. Harrigan. You know the name. T. Harrigan is an arrested-development case. T. Harrigan at thirty has the mind of a boy often. And not an advanced boy at that. I went up to Bellows Wood with T. Harrigan. He showed me where and how he found the dead man and the unconscious man. He is an excellent actor—or mimic of himself. He can re-live an act. An asset; sometimes rather a grisly one. He re-lived for me and a pocket-knife. I thought I was going to get nowhere. But then, acting himself finding the men, he did a thing I couldn’t understand. Twice, three times, he looked straight up, either at the tree-tops or the sun through them. And when he did, fear caught hold of him … It took me half an hour and all my brains to get at that. It wasn’t any good just asking him point-blank, you see. That might have put him right off, or frightened him so that he wouldn’t say. Or, asked definitely, he might not have remembered. His acting’s not so much a memory—in fact I’d swear it isn’t done at all from “memory” as we know the word—as the reproduction, by his body, of an unrealised cinematographic picture in his tiny mind. Garbled, that, but the best I can do …

  ‘Anyhow I got at this thing that puzzled me by a series of question and answer. Animal, Vegetable or Mineral technique. I got it—at last … T. Harrigan is terrified of the moon. Though he spends much time alone at night in the woods, that time, if there is bright moonlight, is spent in shelter. He won’t go out into moonlight. The wildest horses wouldn’t make him. The very word makes him tremble. Quite a usual thing with that mentality. But—have you heard any mention yet of this failing of T. Harrigan’s?’ Anthony broke off. He let that sink in. There was silence, broken only by a little hissing whistle from Flood. But Pike was staring, and Dyson once more was bolt upright in his chair. Lucia, her dark eyes lakes of bewilderment, looked from one man to another.

  Anthony, too, looked at the three men, ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘It is like that, isn’t it?’

  Dyson relapsed again into an ungainly heap. ‘If,’ he said, ‘he didn’t have a torch, or a lantern, it is.’

  Anthony shook his head. ‘He had neither torch nor lantern. And he left his little hut where he sometimes sleeps to go and investigate. But it wasn’t a shot which made him investigate; he hears too many of those to worry about them. And he heard no cry. And there was no moonlight … He investigated because he saw a light. A great light and a strong light. That light pleased and intrigued him. He went towards it as a moth might go. He was halfway through the undergrowth and in full view of the clearing, when the light went. But Tom kept on. He had seen something, which had driven the light’s existence out of his small head. He went on and found it. Blackatter. And when, after making sure the moon was not likely to blaze out from behind the cloud-wrack, he started off for help, he tripped over Bronson … That’s why I’m asking about cars. The great, bright light. He described it to me.’

  ‘A car in a wood!’ grumbled Dyson. His eyes were fast closed. His mouth opened only at one corner to let out the words.

  ‘See here,’ said Anthony. He took from his pocket pencil and paper and sketched rapidly a little plan. ‘Look at that.’ They came and crowded round him. ‘There’s the wood, there’s the clearing. This is the hedge along the road, that here’s the gate. If that gate were opened, a car could get along the cart-track—here—and its headlights could blaze right into the clearing … Suggestive. Yes?’

  ‘My Winkey!’ Pike’s strange and childish oaths were sure sign of excitement in him. He said: ‘But why didn’t this come out, sir? Three times that lad gave his evidence. Coroner, Magistrate, Assizes …’

  ‘Exactly.’ Anthony nodded. ‘And it didn’t vary a word. Why?’ His lean dark face took on a savage look. ‘Why? Because Dadda told him what to say. Tom wasn’t frightened, Dadda was with him. Dadda had coached him. Dadda was at his elbow. Blast Dadda! He ought to be hanged, if you like. And the Defence didn’t cross-examine the boy. You can’t cross-examine a virtual lunatic. And anyhow there seemed nothing to cross-examine about. T. Harrigan was in the wood. T. Harrigan found the bodies. T. Harrigan, having told Dadda, told the policeman. And the policeman goes up there and there the bodies are. Quite obviously no need to do anything with T. Harrigan except the formalities. It …’ He stopped in mid-sentence. Lucia had sprung suddenly to her feet. Her face was white, her eyes wide. But she spoke quietly. She said:

  ‘Unless … unless … No. I suppose it’s impossible … But he isn’t sane, this Harrigan … Could he? …’

  ‘No,’ said Anthony. ‘No. I toyed with that idea. But only for five minutes. You haven’t seen him, dear. I have. And he’s sane enough. As a child is sane. No; this thing’s a plot and T. Harrigan’s not the plotter.’

  ‘Nor,’ said Dyson suddenly, ‘the plotter’s thumb?’

  Anthony laughed. But still he shook his head. ‘T. Harrigan’s square. A small square, but a right-angled one. The only crooked thing about the boy is the boy’s father. And even Dadda meant no harm! Didn’t even know he was doing it. The most dangerous kind, that. And his harm’s irreparable.’

  Lucia dug her fingers into her palms. She said, in a voice whose very control showed the strain upon her:

  ‘But can’t we do something about that? Can’t we? If evidence was withheld and we can prove that it was withheld, doesn’t that … wouldn’t that be enough to … to make them? …’ She broke off. Her eyes were fixed upon Anthony’s. He said:

  ‘No, dear. Even if we could show that there had been withholding of evidence—which I doubt—where are we? A looney boy saw a bright light in a wood. And then found the two bodies. Put that little crumb against the Prosecution Cake. Because the boy’s looney, his asinine but doubtless well-intentioned sire rehearses his evidence and omits to make him tell of the bright light. That doesn’t alter all the rest of it. We say it does because we know what the other side don’t—that Bronson’s innocent. But put yourself in the place of the Prosecution and you’ll see there’s little to it. Nothing doing. No. It’s helped us. But it doesn’t finish our job. Far from it. Agree, Pike?’

  ‘Absolutely, sir. It’s nothing—unless you’re doing what we’re doing—the whole case over again, upside down.’

  ‘What we can now do,’ Anthony said, ‘is to make X the owner of a car or motor-cycle. What I mean is: pay less attention in our eliminatory searches to persons without one or the other of these.’

  ‘Except,’ said Flood, ‘that X might’ve had an accomplice to do his dirty work. E.g …’

  ‘Dollboys,’ said Dyson quickly.

  Anthony surveyed them. ‘Quite. We’re on to Dollboys. We’re following him up. But that doesn’t mean we’ve finished. You can use one path and then another in the ordinary way; but we’ve not got the time. We’ve got to go down ’em all at once. I mean this: that, looking for other strings, we can make car-owning, if not an essential, at least a guide.’ He looked at his watch. ‘My wife and I are going, almost at once, among the heads. Dyson and Flood: you stick, on any lines you think fit, to the Dollboys’ scent. Pike: use your own judgment about what you do. I’ve no suggestions. We’ll all meet here at—’ He looked at Lucia. Who said:

  ‘We ought to be back by 1.30 at the latest, I should think.’

  ‘At,’ said Anthony, ‘two o’clock then. This room. I’ll fix it up with Mrs Bronson.’

  Dyson wriggled back in his big chair until once more his body was a long pot-hook. He said:

  ‘If we sleep, where do we sleep?’ He jerked his head to indicate Flood. ‘Him and me? Mean: is it wise to billet here? Might put Dollboys wise that we’re in with you. Better find ’nother place. What?’

  Anthony shook his head. ‘No. No; you’re wrong. What’s our scheme with Dollboys? To scare him. Well, if he does smell a rat, so much the better. The more rats and the higher smell the merrier. You and Flood put up here.’

  Lucia rose, and with her the three men; Pike alertly; Flood with a solid grace; Dyson with
a protesting scramble. Flood crossed to the door and held it open. She smiled upon them all and went, Anthony at her heels.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE NIGHT OF FRIDAY

  I

  THERE was much light in the usually dim house of Colonel Brownlough, and music of a sort, and many women of whom a few had pretensions to beauty.

  And there were flowers and ferns and sofas in the great hall, and along the corridors which from it ran east and west. And in the conservatory at the end of the western corridor—through the billiard-room—were chairs and soft-shaded lights. And in the library, along the whole length of the far wall, was a white-draped buffet, on and beneath and behind it bottles, bottles and yet more bottles.

  And the whole house of Colonel Brownlough, usually so silent a house that in it a sneeze unrepressed would assail the ear like the shattering of a bomb, vibrated now with the droning hum of a hundred ceaseless voices which wove their sound, against the background of the dance-music, into a changeless yet ever shifting pattern by no means unpleasant.

  Anthony’s car, its low headlights cutting the blackness with a pure hard beam, swung through Colonel Brownlough’s gates. It throbbed its slow, repressed way up the curving drive and came to a halt, near an orderly mass of other cars, before the house.

  Anthony switched off lights and engine. ‘Out you pop!’ he said. But Lucia sat. She laid a hand upon his arm.

  ‘These,’ she said, ‘are the first words from you in twelve miles. Most unusual! …’ Her voice changed. ‘Darling: what are you thinking? Tell.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said her husband. ‘It’s always like that with these great detectives. We think, but we don’t speak. We say it’s because we aren’t ready for speech. But it’s really because we don’t know what we’re thinking about.’

  He felt, in the darkness, soft fingers make strong, gentle pressure upon his arm. ‘Tell!’ said Lucia.