Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sergeant!” Mr. Mayne called in a different tone. “As you do this, will you be good enough to step out into the street and fetch in two witnesses for a deposition? Any passers-by will do.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  As the harassed officer opened the door to go out, there were sounds of hurry and turmoil in the passage. Evidently the police were active that night. Not a minute later they heard, through closed window-curtains, a carriage smash at a gallop into the yard and pull up.

  Nor was it long before the sergeant, number 9, ushered in two witnesses. One was a seedy man in a battered white hat, the other a shrunken elderly gentleman on his way to the Athenaeum Club. Both were far from sweet-tempered.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” protested Mr. Mayne, soothingly, “I shall detain you but a moment. (You have finished, Henley? Good.) I humbly beg you, my dear sirs, merely to affix your signatures as witnesses to two copies of a document. Captain Hogben?”

  Hogben scratched his signature with a bold flourish. So did the others. The copies were sealed and attested, the witnesses bustled out with as little ceremony as they had been bustled in. Mr. Mayne beamed.

  “Though it is scarcely essential,” he continued, “may I ask, Miss Tremayne, whether you will give Captain Hogben your muff?”

  “My muff?” cried Louise.

  “If you will. And let him show us how Lady Drayton held the muff, sideways, so as to fire the shot?”

  “Yes!” struck in a new voice. “By all means let him show that.”

  The voice was not loud. If anything, it was quiet; too repressed, too quiet.

  In the open doorway stood Superintendent John Cheviot.

  His face was pale, his jaws clenched hard except when he spoke. Under his cloak he wore black, as Hogben did, except for soiled white linen and a gold watch-chain with seals. He carried by its handle what resembled a green writing-case.

  But the effect of that quiet, almost agreeable, tone was so sinister that it left in the room a faint chill. Louise Tremayne repressed a scream.

  Just behind him stood Flora Drayton; and, beyond her, Sergeant Bulmer. Cheviot bowed for Flora to precede him into the room. In dead silence he pushed out another padded chair, not far from Louise. With a slight nod to all the others, Flora sat down. She was more pale than Cheviot; but just as composed, her head up.

  Cheviot made a slight and cryptic gesture to Sergeant Bulmer, who nodded and closed the door. Cheviot softly crossed the room to the table behind which sat Mr. Mayne. Amid the drift of papers there still lay, a sardonic reminder, Colonel Rowan’s silver-handled pistol.

  With a look of distaste, without speaking, Cheviot transferred it to the desk of the chief clerk. In its place he put down the green writing-case.

  The eerie silence was broken at last by Mr. Mayne.

  “You come rather late, Mr. Cheviot,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. That is true. A certain person,” Cheviot answered, “took the most elaborate precautions to make sure I should not be here at all.”

  He turned briefly, and glanced at Hogben. Hogben laughed in his face. The laugh, behind closed teeth, clashed badly against the quiet and the hard courtesy of the two Police Commissioners.

  “Surely, Mr. Cheviot,” remarked Mr. Richard Mayne without expression, “it was rather brazen of you when you promised to deliver to us the murderer of Miss Renfrew by eight o’clock tonight?”

  “Sir, I do not think so.” Cheviot removed his cloak and hat, putting them carefully in a chair. He returned to the table. “After all, it is only a quarter to seven.”

  “Mr. Cheviot!” interposed Colonel Rowan, with an almost pleading note in his voice. “Captain Hogben has made a statement, now copied and attested. …”

  “I was aware of it, sir. May I see the statement?”

  Mr. Henley handed over a copy.

  There was a small fire burning in the grate of the mantelpiece, beside the big moth-eaten stuffed bear with one glass eye. Nobody spoke while Cheviot slowly read the statement through. Flora Drayton, still with her head up, looked from Colonel Rowan to Mr. Mayne and to Captain Hogben; she did not look at Louise.

  “I see,” remarked Cheviot in the same cold, calm voice. He put down the pages on the desk. “Captain Hogben, of course, is ready to answer questions concerning what he has testified?”

  He faced Hogben. Hogben, arms again folded, looked in his eyes with calmness changing to surprise.

  “Questions, fellow? From you, fellow? Damme, not likely!”

  “I fear that won’t do,” Colonel Rowan said quietly.

  And Mr. Mayne, for all his prejudices, was iron-fair.

  “Indeed it won’t do!” he agreed, and rapped his knuckles. “You have accused Lady Drayton and Mr. Cheviot of a conspiracy to do murder. Pending further notice, he is still the Superintendent of this division. Should you refuse to answer his questions, your deposition becomes suspect.”

  “That fellow?” demanded Hogben, and then controlled himself. “Ask away!” he said.

  Cheviot took up the statement.

  “You state, here, that you saw Lady Drayton fire the shot?”

  “Yes! Disprove it!”

  “You further state that the weapon was a small pistol, with a lozenge-shaped plate in gold let into the handle, and bearing some initials? You saw this, you say, when it fell from Lady Drayton’s muff, and I picked it up?”

  “Yes!”

  Cheviot unfastened the writing-case, took out the pistol belonging to Flora’s late husband, and gave it to Hogben.

  “Is that the pistol you saw?”

  Hogben’s eyes narrowed, fearing a trap.

  “You need not hesitate,” Cheviot said in the same bleak tone. “I acknowledge it as the pistol in Lady Drayton’s muff. Do you identify it?”

  “Yes!” Hogben said triumphantly, and handed it back.

  “Did you smell smoke? Either at the time of the shot, or afterwards, did you smell powder-smoke?”

  “No!” Hogben blurted. “Funny thing. I—” He stopped, shutting his mouth tightly and warily.

  “Did you hear the shot?”

  “I …”

  “Since you refuse to answer, we will ask others who were present. Miss Tremayne: did you hear the shot?”

  “No!” said Louise, startled. “But, to be sure, the orchestra was …”

  “Mr. Henley! Did you hear the shot?”

  “N-no, sir. As I said. But, as this young lady tells you …”

  Cheviot turned to the two Commissioners of Police, putting the small pistol on the table.

  “Mark it, gentlemen. No sound of the shot; and, which is far more important, no smell of powder-smoke. The latter fact, in my density, I failed to note at the time.”

  A convulsion of creaks and cracks went through Mr. Mayne’s straight chair.

  “Mr. Cheviot!” he said, lifting his hand. “Do you admit Lady Drayton killed the deceased woman with this pistol here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But you admit the pistol was in Lady Drayton’s muff? That it fell to the floor? That you hid it under a hollow-based lamp?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Then you lied? You suppressed evidence?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Ah! And in that event,” Mr. Mayne asked in a silky voice, “may I make so bold as to ask why?”

  “Because it would only have misled you, as it has misled you now.” Cheviot’s voice, so repressed that the nerves ached for it to grow louder, was having an uncanny effect on them all. “Because that pistol had nothing whatever to do with the murder of Margaret Renfrew. Permit me to prove as much.”

  With no change in his expression he went to the closed door, knocked once on it with his knuckles, and returned.

  The door was opened by Sergeant Bulmer, ushering in a small, bustling man, in a brightly coloured waistcoat and with dark bushy side-whiskers. His knowing eyelid gave him a man of the world’s appearance, yet his pursed-up mouth
indicated that never, never would he say too much on any matter.

  “Mr. Henley,” said Cheviot, “can you identify this gentleman?”

  “Why, sir,” the chief clerk returned, with a grimace, “that’s the surgeon I fetched three nights ago, when you desired to have the bullet removed from the poor lady’s body. That’s Mr. Daniel Slurk.”

  Mr. Slurk gravely removed his hat and approached the table.

  “I am rejoiced to see you, gentlemen,” he said to the two Commissioners. He did not sound rejoiced; his tone was guarded and irritable. “Superintendent Cheviot, I may observe, has summoned me from home at a most devilish inconvenient time. I—”

  Cheviot’s gesture stopped him.

  “Mr. Slurk. Three nights ago, the twenty-ninth of October, did you go to number six New Burlington Street, and in my presence extract a bullet from the body of Miss Margaret Renfrew?”

  “I extracted a bullet from a woman’s body. Yes.”

  “Did this bullet cause her death?”

  “It did. The post-mortem examination has since proved—”

  “Thank you. Could you identify the bullet?”

  “If I saw it,” replied Mr. Slurk, stroking his bushy whiskers and letting droop a knowing eyelid, “yes.”

  Cheviot opened the writing-case again. From a piece of paper, wrapped up and marked in ink, he took out a small pellet of round, smooth lead. It shone under the light of the red-glass lamp as Cheviot held it out in his palm.

  “Is this the bullet?”

  Pause. Then Mr. Slurk nodded and handed it back.

  “That’s the bullet, sir,” he declared, preening his whiskers.

  “You are sure?”

  “Sure, sir? The bullet did not strike bone; it is unflattened, as you may remark. There is the scratch, rather like a question mark, made by my probe. I observed it at the time. There is the distinct marking left by my own forceps. You would wish me to swear to it? I am cautious, sir; I must be so. Yet I would swear.”

  “Mr. Mayne!” said Cheviot.

  Catching up the gold-mounted pistol and the small bullet, he thrust them across the table under the barrister’s nose.

  “You need be no authority on pistols, Mr. Mayne,” he continued. “In fact, you need never have touched one. But take these, sir; thank you! Now try to fit the bullet into the muzzle, as I myself did three nights ago.”

  Mr. Mayne instinctively jerked back. But, challenged, he took both of them. After a pause he cleared his throat.

  “This—this won’t do!” he cried, with a wavering sound in his tone. “The bullet, small as it is, is much too large to fit into the barrel of the pistol.”

  “Consequently,” Cheviot demanded, “the bullet could not possibly have been fired from Lady Drayton’s pistol?”

  “No. I allow it.”

  For the first time Cheviot raised his voice.

  “And therefore,” he said, pointing to Hogben, “that man has been telling a pack of lies under oath?”

  It may only have been the tension which held them, like a drumming in the ears; yet it seemed to some of them that they could hear, distantly, a very faint roaring noise. Both the women had stood up from their chairs.

  Hogben, dropping his arms, glanced quickly at the open door. Sergeant Buhner stood in the doorway, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

  “One moment!” interrupted Colonel Rowan.

  Throughout this Colonel Rowan, who had moved back from the table, had been listening with a look of satisfaction on his thin, handsome face. Now, however, he was frowning and biting on his lip.

  “I entirely agree,” he remarked, as a hush fell on the room again, “that the bullet could not have been fired from that weapon. But … may I see the bullet, Mayne?”

  Mr. Mayne passed it to him.

  “You seem to be a person of some reflection, Mr. Cheviot,” the barrister said. “And, as for myself, I—I appear again to have been too hasty. Mark you, sir! This does not in any way lessen the charge against you of suppressing evidence, or …”

  Once more Colonel Rowan interrupted.

  “In my opinion,” he announced, “we have here more than a question of a bullet fired from Lady Drayton’s pistol. This bullet was not fired from any weapon at all.”

  “Oh yes, it was,” said Cheviot.

  Colonel Rowan drew himself up.

  “I may say, I think,” he replied with suave courtesy, “that I have had rather more experience with firearms than even your-self, Mr. Cheviot. This bullet,” he held it up, “is smooth and unblackened by powder-burns.”

  “Exactly, sir. So I found it three nights ago.”

  “But any bullet, fired from any pistol,” said Colonel Rowan, “is burnt black by powder grains into soft lead by the time it leaves the muzzle of the weapon!”

  “Again I praise your correctness, sir,” Cheviot declared in a ringing voice. He dived once more into the writing-case, and held up a tiny, flattened, black-crusted pellet. “Here, for example, is a bullet I fired from that pistol at Joe Manton’s shooting gallery this morning.”

  “Then may I ask, with all restraint, what the devil—?”

  Cheviot replaced the flattened missile in the case.

  “But it is not so, Colonel Rowan, with every weapon,” he said.

  “You mock me, Mr. Cheviot!”

  “No, sir. I should not mock one who has ever stood my friend. Consider, Colonel Rowan! No noise! No smell of powder-smoke! Finally, no bullet burnt black by the powder! What sort of weapon alone could have fired the shot that killed Miss Renfrew?”

  Colonel Rowan stood motionless. As illumination came to him, his pale-blue eyes turned slowly. …

  “You have it!” Cheviot said. “I confess myself blind and obtuse to it until last night, when I exposed a rigged roulette-wheel at Vulcan’s gaming-house.”

  “Vulcan’s?” asked a bewildered Mr. Mayne.

  “Yes, sir. In the midst of exposing it, I realized what might also be done by the impact of a powerful spring released by the immense force of compressed air.”

  “Powerful spring? Compressed air?”

  Cheviot took from the writing-case a leather-bound book. He flipped over its pages.

  “Allow me to read two very brief passages from a volume entitled The Fatal Effects of Gambling—and so on, published by the firm of Messrs. Thomas Kelly, etc., in 1824. It deals with the clumsy crime of John Thurtell, who killed a blackleg named William Weare by quite literally punching out his brains with the muzzle of a pistol. This, or the part dealing with false gambling methods, need not interest us.

  “But here, in the appendix, is the testimony of a rogue named Probert. True, or false, Probert’s words are illuminating. Thurtell, he says, had also intended to murder a man named Wood. Remember it: Wood!”

  “But I still demand to know—” began Mr. Mayne.

  Cheviot, finding his place in the book, swept on.

  “‘Probert,’” he read aloud, “‘was to go home early at night, and keep the landlady and her daughter drinking belowstairs after Wood was gone to bed; and when he was supposed to be asleep, John Thurtell, disguised in a boat-cloak, was to enter the house by means of Probert’s key of the street door, proceed to Wood’s room, and shoot him through the heart with the air-gun.’”

  The stillness in the room, despite the faint distant tumult, was like a cloying physical presence.

  “An air-gun,” muttered Colonel Rowan, and snapped his fingers.

  “Wait!” said Cheviot.

  “‘He was then,’” Cheviot went on reading, “‘to place a small pistol that had been discharged, in Wood’s right hand, so that it might appear as if he had shot himself.’”

  Cheviot lowered the book.

  “Crime, or intended crime,” he asked, “surely does go on repeating itself, does it not? Afterwards, Thurtell could have found himself an alibi.”

  And Cheviot snapped his fingers towards Sergeant Bulmer in the doorway.

  “Now what, exactly, does an
air-gun of this age look like? We find the answer on page 485. Permit me to read again!”

  Over flickered the pages.

  “Here we have it! ‘The air-gun,’” Cheviot read, “‘resembled a knotted walking stick—’”

  “A—a what?”

  “‘A knotted walking stick,’” Cheviot read inexorably, “‘and held no less than sixteen charges. It was let off by merely pressing one of the knots with the finger, and the only noise was a slight whiz, scarcely perceptible to any one who might happen to be on the spot.’”

  Cheviot closed the book and dropped it.

  “Sergeant Buhner!” he cried. “Show us what you have found, in the place where it must be.”

  Buhner’s hand reached outside the doorway. He entered the room carrying an object which drew all eyes, and Mr. Mayne jumped to his feet.

  Cheviot pointed to it.

  “We sought the explanation of an apparently impossible crime. But there never was an impossible crime. The assassin fired his shot in full view. With my own eyes I saw him lift the weapon to fire, when I thought he meant only to point. If you accept my innocence, he was the only person standing in a dead straight line to the victim.”

  Drawing the breath deeply into his lungs, Cheviot faced the two Commissioners of Police.

  “The murderer, gentlemen, is your own chief clerk—Mr. Alan Henley.”

  20

  The End of Death-in-Waiting

  TO FLORA DRAYTON, standing up on trembling legs with her hands moist from being inside the silk lining of the muff, the staring faces before her seemed to swim in a murk of red and green light.

  She could not see Cheviot’s face, and was glad she could not.

  But clearly she saw the face of Mr. Alan Henley. Mr. Henley, his fleshy lips open and his brown eyes bulging, had turned a sickly colour from terror. He tried to prop up his stocky figure on the thin ebony stick; but he stumbled, and nearly fell face down across the desk.

  Cheviot’s voice, dominating them all, still rang out.

  “I will offer further proof. When I first met Mr. Henley in this room three nights ago, I marked him (without suspicion, I allow) as something of a ladies’ man, a dasher, a lover of good food and wine. He had bettered himself from his original beginnings, and he strove to fly higher.