Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  (“Now what, in God’s name,” Cheviot was thinking furiously, “has Flora to do with this affair? Or, in fact, any affair that concerns the police?”)

  But he did pot speak. The door closed after Billings. In silence Colonel Rowan opened and read the letter. His expression changed and grew more grave. He handed over the letter to Mr. Mayne.

  “I greatly fear, Mr. Cheviot,” he said, “we must postpone our experiment with the pistol. This is a matter of serious import. Someone has again been stealing bird-seed from Lady Cork.”

  Pause.

  The words were so grotesque, so unexpected, that for the moment Cheviot could not even laugh. He was not sure he had heard aright.

  “Bird-seed?” he repeated.

  “Bird-seed!” declared Mr. Mayne, who was quivering with excitement. Suddenly an inspiration gleamed in his dark eyes, and he struck the letter. “By Jove, Rowan! Since our good friend Cheviot fancies his abilities as a detective policeman, here’s his opportunity. Mind you, I mean to see he makes good his boast about the pistol. Meanwhile, here’s a test to decide whether he gets what he wants!”

  “To be honest,” the Colonel admitted, “I had much the same idea too.”

  Both pairs of eyes were fixed on Cheviot, who slowly bent down and fished up his hat from the floor.

  “I see,” he remarked with much politeness. “Then you wish me to investigate this abominable crime?”

  “Mr. Cheviot, do you find the matter so very amusing?”

  “Frankly, Colonel Rowan, I do. But I have been given far more nonsensical assignments in my time.”

  “Indeed,” said the Colonel, breathing hard. “Indeed!” He waited for a moment. “Are you acquainted with Lady Cork? Or, to give the lady her proper title, with the Countess of Cork and Orrery?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Lady Cork is one of our leading society hostesses. She keeps many birds in cages, as pets. There is also the famous macaw which draws out, clips, and smokes a cigar. For the second time in a week, someone has stolen the bird-seed from the containers at the side of a number of bird-cages. Nothing was stolen except bird-seed. But Lady Cork is very angry.”

  Colonel Mayne, an undemonstrative man, hesitated.

  “We—we are a new institution, we Metropolitan Police. I need not tell you how the mob hate and fear us. If we are to succeed at all, we must have the good-will of the gentry. The Duke himself, as Prime Minister, is not too proud to assist us in this. Are you too proud, Mr. Cheviot?”

  “No,” Cheviot answered, and lowered his eyes. “I understand. And I beg your pardon.”

  “Not at all. But we must act at once. Tonight Lady Cork gives a ball for the younger people. As a gentleman, your presence will pass unnoticed. You see the virtue of my method, Mayne?”

  “Deuce take it, Rowan, never say I objected!” cried Mr. Mayne.

  “Mr. Henley had better write you a few lines, signed by both Mayne and myself, to serve as your authority. Henley!”

  But the chief clerk had already limped back to his writing-desk, and sat down. Flint-and-steel crunched up a brief yellow-blue flame; a lamp-wick, this time in a green shade, burst up with a loud pop. Mr. Henley was mending the nib of a pen.

  “Henley, I think, had better accompany you should you wish to take notes. We must ring for horses. Stay, though!” Colonel Rowan’s face grew blank and detached. “Am I correct in assuming that the carriage outside is Lady Drayton’s?”

  There was no sound in the room except the scratching of the chief clerk’s pen.

  “You are correct,” Cheviot said. “May I ask where Lady Cork lives?”

  “At number six New Burlington Street.—You accompanied Lady Drayton here?”

  “I did.”

  “Ah! Doubtless she has a card of invitation to the ball; and you would wish to ride there with her in the carriage?”

  “With your permission, yes.”

  “By all means.” Colonel Rowan looked away. “You must consult your own conscience as to what questions you ask her about an opened letter. Now, Henley!”

  The chief clerk lumbered up with four lines written in a neat round-hand on half a sheet of foolscap. This he put on the table, together with pen and inkstand. Mr. Mayne and Colonel Rowan hastily scratched their signatures. Mr. Henley sanded the document, folded it up, and gave it to Cheviot.

  “Now make haste,” advised Colonel Rowan, “yet not too quickly! Henley must be there before you, on horseback, to explain matters. One moment!”

  John Cheviot felt an inexplicable chill at his heart. Colonel Rowan’s large eyes and thin face swam at him with calm but inflexible authority.

  “The affair may seem trifling. But I say again that it is of grave import. You won’t fail us, Mr. Cheviot? You will do your best?”

  “I will do my best,” said Cheviot, “to solve the mystery of the missing bird-seed.”

  And he bowed satirically, his hat over his heart. His last glimpse was of the polished pistol, shining and evil-seeming on the table under the lamp, as he strode out into a worse nightmare than any of which he had ever dreamed.

  3

  Carnival by Gaslight

  FULLY A DOZEN fiddles, animated by the twang of a harp, sang and dipped and raced in the fast tempo of the dance. Open gas-jets, in their flattish glass bowls, jumped and swayed to the music.

  As Flora Drayton’s carriage turned into New Burlington Street, a very short and rather narrow lane to the left of Regent Steet, they heard the music even at a distance.

  Number six New Burlington Street was a large double-fronted house of dark red brick, with a dingy whitish pillar on either side of the street-door, and window-frames picked out in white. The door was uncompromisingly closed. Yet tremulous gaslight, yellow-blue, shone out on the white mist. It shone out through curtains, tasselled and looped, which were only half closed on every window in the house.

  Thump, thump went the feet of the dancers, advancing and retreating. Shadows appeared at the windows on the floor above the street: appeared, grew bloated, then faded and dwindled away. The window-frames rattled to the noise.

  “Who-o-a!” softly called the coachman, to restive horses creaking in heavy harness. The horses’ hooves clopped, swerved badly, and drew up.

  “Flora!”

  “Y-yes?”

  “That music. That dance. What is it?”

  “But, J-Jack, it’s only a quadrille. What on earth do you think it is?”

  To Cheviot it sounded like an old-fashioned square-dance, which in effect it was. But they carried it at a pace which he, for one, would not have cared to try.

  Flora, cowering back in a corner after what she had endured even during that short drive, pressed one hand hard against her breast.

  She loved him. Seeing him now, the light-grey eyes, the high forehead with the heavy dark-brown hair, the sardonic-humorous lines from nostril to mouth, it came to her with a stab how deeply and passionately she loved him.

  Flora was not possessive; or, at least, not very. Being wise, she did not seek to pry into every mood. Soon, she felt, his conscience would be troubling him as usual; then he would turn to that fierce tenderness which had carried her away from the first. But he mustn’t quiz or tease her; he mustn’t pretend! That frightened her too much.

  And Cheviot himself?

  Ever since he had left number four Whitehall Place, stepping out again through the mist and dim gas-gleam towards the carriage with the gilt wheels, he had been wondering what he should say to her. As they turned into New Burlington Street, his mind went back to that scene at Great Scotland Yard.

  The coachman in red livery had jumped down and held open the carriage-door. Cheviot had hesitated, hat in hand, on the step.

  Flora sat back against claret-coloured cushions, breathing emotion though not looking at him. She was still hatless. Her golden hair, exposing the ears and drawn to such a long sweep at the back, did not seem suited to a hat. But she had drawn the red cashmere shawl round her shoulders. Her ha
nds, now white-gloved to the elbows, were thrust into a large muff of fur dyed in yellow-and-white stripes to match her gown.

  “Well!” she breathed, still without looking at him. “Did you obtain this odious and inferior position for which you so horribly longed?”

  “Inferior!” exclaimed Cheviot, still hesitating on the step.

  Flora tossed her head.

  “Is it not?”

  “If I obtain the position, I shall command a force of four inspectors and sixteen sergeants, each sergeant in charge of nine constables.”

  “If you obtain it?” At last she turned to look at him. “Then you have not?”

  “Not yet. First I am being given a test. Flora, would it trouble you too much if we drove to Lady Cork’s? I—I suppose you have a card of invitation?”

  Had she opened that letter, or hadn’t she?

  As a rule Cheviot counted himself a reasonably good judge of human character.

  But Flora’s whole being, the mock-innocent mouth and mock-innocent blue eyes now wide open, disturbed his senses and upset his reason. Besides, what the devil did it matter whether she had opened the letter or not? Her blush, as she lowered her eyes, was vividly real.

  “My reputation is not yet so tarnished,” she retorted in a very low voice, “that all doors are closed to me. Yes! I have my invitation, and yours too.”

  From her muff she drew out two engraved cards, square and very large, much too ornate for his conservative taste; and then put them back again.

  “But you swore you wouldn’t go,” she whispered reproachfully, “because you detest bluestockings. I’m not fond of them myself, I allow. And Lady Cork, goodness knows, was the original bluestocking of all. Jack! Please get in!”

  “Mr. Cheviot!” called a heavy voice behind him.

  Flora shrank back. Cheviot swung round.

  On a skittish, eye-rolling black horse sat Mr. Henley, the chief clerk. But his short, stocky figure bestrode the saddle like a centaur, reins gripped in two fingers of his left hand. His glossy beaverskin hat was stuck on rakishly.

  The horse clattered and danced. Mr. Henry restrained it. As more suited to an outdoor excursion, his right hand held a thick cane of knobby wood, as well as the flattish shagreen-covered case for his writing-materials.

  He bent down towards Cheviot.

  “I’m off,” he said. “But a word in your ear, sir.”

  His brown eyes, ordinarily merry in the broad fleshy face, grew very sombre as he glanced left and right in the mist.

  “Look very sharp when you talk to Lady Cork. Ay! And to Miss Margaret Renfrew too. That is, if you do talk to her.”

  “And all this,” Cheviot thought rather wildly, “about stolen bird-seed?”

  But the chief clerk, he knew, was no fool. Instinctively subservient, Mr. Henley touched two fingers to his hat. Then the black horse clattered away, spurting mud; past the Admiralty, looming dim and unfamiliar at the other side of the street, at a canter and then at a gallop up Whitehall.

  “Jack!” Flora pleaded softly. “Do get in!” She addressed the motionless coachman in red livery. “Robert. To Lady Cork’s, if you please.”

  Cheviot got in. The door closed. The carriage lumbered out to the crack of a whip.

  Then she even knew his Christian name. Everybody, at least at the Scotland Yard of his own time, had called him Jack. It was all so fantastic that—

  “‘Reputation,’” Flora said, almost to herself. “As though it mattered! Oh, as though I cared one farthing for that! My dear …”

  And again she was in his arms, in an intoxication which blotted out thought.

  Yet other thoughts and emotions, always as palpable as the perfume she wore, stirred in Flora. She moved her head back.

  “Jack. Who was that man? The man with the despatch-box?”

  “His name is Henley. He’s the chief clerk to the Commissioners of Police.”

  “Margaret Renfrew—” Flora began.

  “Yes?”

  “You are not acquainted with Lady Cork,” said Flora. “I’m quite sure you are not acquainted with Lady Cork. But you may have met Margaret Renfrew. Yes; I daresay you know Margaret Renfrew?”

  “Flora, I …”

  “You do know her, don’t you?”

  Suddenly, to his amazement, Cheviot felt he held a tigress in his arms. A soft tigress, but a tigress all the same. Her small fists beat frantically at his chest. She wrenched and writhed, with surprising strength, to draw away from him.

  “Flora!” He was more astounded than angry. “Flora!” he shouted.

  Instantly she was submissive again. He knew, with this power of sympathy which was like a physical touch, that she was near to tears.

  “Listen to me, my dear,” he said gently. “I had never even heard this woman’s name, whoever she is, until Henley mentioned it. One day, soon, I may tell you who I am and what I am. I may tell you where, in a sense, I first saw you; and why your image has been with me for so long.”

  He felt, rather than saw, the long-lashed eyes stare at him in bewilderment.

  “But I won’t tell you now, Flora. I won’t frighten you; I could not frighten you for worlds. There is only this. In a place I don’t know, amid people I don’t know, I have been given an idiot’s mystery to solve. And I need your help.”

  “Dearest, of course I’ll help you! What is it?”

  Cheviot told her his mission.

  “Oh, yes, it’s comic enough!” he said, though Flora did not regard it as at all comic because it concerned him. “But I see why they think it important. Even a character called ‘the Duke,’ whoever he is, thinks—”

  Look out!

  Cheviot stopped, just in time, as memory opened and showed him the gulf.

  “The Duke,” of course, was Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington. Though sixty years old, he was still spry enough to fight a pistol-duel with Lord Winchilsea in March of this year.

  (“Now, then, Hardinge,” he had said to his second, “look sharp and step out the ground. I have no time to waste. Damn it! don’t stick him up so near the ditch. If I hit him, he’ll tumble in.”)

  Those gruff words seemed to echo in the night. The Duke, frosty-headed and beakier than ever, was very much alive and growling at Apsley House. He loomed into reality, dragging his whole century with him, as the carriage rattled and bumped. Sir George Murray held the Colonial Office; Lord Aberdeen was Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Robert Peel, above all, was Home Secretary.

  John Cheviot’s slip had gone unnoticed. Flora was fascinated, deeply fascinated, as is any woman whose aid has been sought in a puzzling question.

  “But why …?” she was persisting.

  “Why bird-seed? I can’t tell. Nothing else was stolen. Are you well acquainted with Lady Cork?”

  “Very well. Awfully well!”

  “H’m. Is she in any way (how shall I say it?)—is she in any way eccentric?”

  “No worse than many others. She’s very old, to be sure; she must be well past eighty. And she has crotchets. She’ll tell you for the hundredth time what Dr. Johnson said to her when she was a girl, and what she said to him. She’ll tell you how poor Boswell got fearfully lushy with Lord Graham, and staggered to one of her mother’s parties, and made the most indecent remarks about ladies; and afterwards was so ashamed of himself he wrote her a set of verses in apology, and she still keeps them in a sandalwood box.”

  “True, true!” exclaimed Cheviot, who was remembering his Boswell’s Life. “Wasn’t Lady Cork originally a Miss Maria Monckton?”

  “Yes!—Jack!”

  “My dear?”

  “Why must you pretend you never even heard of her, when you have? And become as tensed and nervous as though—as though you were going to an execution?”

  “Your pardon, Flora. Does Lady Cork ever keep large sums of money in the house?”

  Flora drew still farther back from him.

  “Mercy on us, no! Why should she? Why should anyone, for that matter?�
�

  “Has she jewels?”

  “Some few, I think. But they are always kept in a big iron box in her boudoir, the pink boudoir; and she alone has a key to the box. What has this to do with …?”

  “Stop, stop! Let me think! Do you know her maid?”

  “Really, Jack! One does not know one’s friends’ maids!”

  But Cheviot’s gaze remained steadily on her, while he drummed his fingers on his knee; and Flora relented.

  “It is true,” she answered, with a lift of her rounded chin, “I have some acquaintance with Solange. Yes, her maid! Solange, which is often embarrassing, positively adores me.”

  “Good, good! That will be useful. Finally, has Lady Cork relations? Children? Nieces or nephews? Close friends?”

  “Her husband,” said Flora, “has been dead more than thirty years. Her children have grown up and gone.” Impulsively the warm-hearted Flora seized his arm. “Don’t laugh at her,” Flora pleaded gently. “Most hostesses, I know, make sport of her loud voice and old-fashioned ways. But who else would have the good-nature to give a ball for the younger people, when she prefers tea and conversation about books? They’ll only smash her china and stain her carpets and break her furniture. Don’t laugh at her, Jack; pray don’t.”

  “I promise you I won’t, Flora. I—”

  More than once, on that drive, he had glanced searchingly out of the window. Now, for some time, they had been driving uphill on what seemed a broader road much better paved.

  Cheviot bent away from her side. Letting down the offside window with a bang and bump, he thrust out his head. Then he was back again, putting his arm round Flora’s shoulder.

  “Come!” he said, as though carelessly. “I knew there wouldn’t yet be a Trafalgar Square, or a Nelson Monument, or a National Gallery. But, my God, where are we now? What’s this?”

  “Darling! It’s only Regent Street!”