Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  “He limped, as he limps now, on that same thin ebony stick. The walking-stick-cum-air-gun, which you see in Sergeant Bulmer’s hands and which was found in Mr. Henley’s own locked cupboard in this house, he never dared carry at his duties here. Colonel Rowan, an experienced Army man and a sportsman as well, would at once have recognized that thick knotted cane for what it is.

  “Three nights ago, when I was bidden to visit Lady Cork’s house on what seemed a matter of stolen bird-seed, he was ordered to accompany me as a shorthand writer. Had he not been so ordered, he would have suggested the same excuse to go.

  “But what followed, and to which Lady Drayton herself can testify—”

  Briefly Cheviot swung round towards Flora.

  She could not bear to see him. He seemed coldly inhuman, the light-grey eyes wide and hard. To Flora, in her cosy and sheltered and gaslit life, it was as though someone had squeezed her heart with fingers; she could not bear to look on.

  But Cheviot had turned back.

  “As Lady Drayton and I left this house,” he went on, “Mr. Henley was already on horseback. He must ride on well ahead of us, you see. But first he stopped by our closed carriage. Very conspicuously, in the light of a carriage-lantern, he permitted me to see the thick and knotted cane he had exchanged for his ebony one.

  “If I recognized the disguised air-gun for what it was, his plan would have been frustrated at the beginning. But, clearly, I recognized nothing. God help me, no! With its iron ferrule-cap fitted on, as you see it now in the hands of Sergeant Bulmer, I did not even recognize it when he boldly and cynically allowed me to examine it just after the murder.

  “But, to return to the time when he sat on horseback by Lady Drayton’s closed carriage, and he gave me a certain warning. I marked his uneasiness then, as I had already marked the sweat that ran down his head (why?) when Colonel Rowan had been saying that the clothes of someone shot at a fairly short distance would bear powder-burns.

  “Sitting on horseback, Mr. Henley said to me, ‘Look very sharp when you talk to Lady Cork. And to Miss Margaret Renfrew too. That is, if you do talk to her.’

  “It was the first mention, in this affair, of Miss Renfrew’s name. Why?

  “And how did Mr. Henley come to know so much of Lady Cork’s household? When he was there, I noted, he was treated almost as a servant. He was scarcely noticed. Lady Cork did not know him. Miss Renfrew herself did not seem to know him. But recall this:

  “When Flora and I entered Lady Cork’s house, we were greeted by Miss Renfrew on the stairs. Her mood was strange, wild; it seemed unreadable. But all agree it was defiant—and it was ashamed.

  “On those stairs, and in this humour, she spoke certain words with great intensity. She spoke them after a group of young men had passed her and gone up.

  “‘What puppies they are,’ said Miss Renfrew. ‘How little amusement they provide! Give me an older man, with experience.’

  “She was not looking at me. No. Her eyes, with a most strange and cryptic look, were fixed at a point past my shoulder. Much as it may distress you, Lady Drayton, I beg you to speak. Who was standing just behind me on those stairs, and followed us up?”

  At first Flora, through dry throat and lips, could form no words. She too was remembering that scene on the stairs.

  “It—it was Mr. Henley,” she faltered out. “But I had forgot him.”

  Cheviot swung back.

  “We all forgot him,” he said. “Yet look at him, even now! He is likeable, as none can deny. He has much virile charm. He has raised himself, doubtless from what you would call low beginnings, to the position of chief clerk to the Commissioners of Police.

  “When or where he first became acquainted with Margaret Renfrew: this I cannot prove or even say. But is it remarkable that a lonely and pretty woman—denied affection, denied love to her passionate nature by some mysterious repulsiveness which all could feel yet none define—is it remarkable she should have fallen victim to an older man who had learned the craft of flattery?

  “More! Does it surprise you that his head was turned?

  “He was bettering himself, as he strove to do. This infatuated woman, for a time at least, would steal money for him. She would steal Lady Cork’s jewellery for him. And why? So that he could line his pockets, so that he could win money across Vulcan’s gaming tables; and become in his own eyes the ‘true gentleman’ he wished to be.

  “Nevertheless, there was a matter on which he had not reckoned.

  “He had not reckoned on Miss Renfrew’s soul, as deeply and damnably snobbish as any about her. Offend snobbery, and you are undone. Recall her, all you who knew her! Physical passion, the balm of compliment and flattery, would hold her enthralled for a while. But then …

  “Then she would become ashamed of having robbed Lady Cork. But this only in part. Most of all, she would be horrified at having taken as a lover someone whom she could never proudly display. A crude man, in her eyes. A man of uncertain grammar and manners as clumsy as his walk; in short, a man of low origins. That was why she was ashamed. That was why she had become ready to betray him, as well he saw and knew. And so, to protect his own fierce respectability, he shot her with the air-gun before she could speak.”

  Cheviot paused.

  Mr. Alan Henley, behind the desk with the green-shaded lamp, uttered a bubbling kind of cry. He had not uttered a word. But he jerked his right hand, with the head of the stick in it, and papers flew wide.

  “Stop!” said Mr. Mayne.

  As though emerging from a kind of mesmerism, Mr. Mayne rubbed his forehead and thrust out a round face.

  “You speak with persuasion, Mr. Cheviot,” he said. “But this man,” he nodded towards Mr. Henley, “has served us faithfully, according to his lights—”

  “Agreed!” said Colonel Rowan.

  “And the evidence against him must be complete.” Mr. Mayne struck the table. “Your producing of the air-gun, there, is legal proof which may be taken into court. Always provided this unburned bullet is an air-gun bullet—”

  Mr. Daniel Slurk, who had been tapping the brim of his hat against his teeth, allowed one eyelid to droop still further.

  “Sir,” he said to Mr. Mayne, “I could have told you it was fired from an air-gun. As a surgeon, sir, I have some small experience of bullets.”

  “But you did not so tell Mr. Cheviot?”

  “I am a cautious man, sir. I was not asked.”

  “Very well!” And Mr. Mayne stared at Cheviot. “But it is little of legal evidence to say, ‘A woman looked thus.’ ‘A man spake thus.’ Have you any proof that Miss Renfrew stole Lady Cork’s jewels, or that Henley ever laid hands on them?”

  “Yes!” said Cheviot, and opened the writing-case again.

  “Here,” he went on, “is a letter written by Lady Cork, and delivered to me by hand at the Albany early this morning. It contains the substance of a conversation I had with her late last night. Lady Cork actually saw Miss Renfrew steal the diamond ring which appears in a list I produce. Lady Cork knew Miss Renfrew was prepared to confess; she is willing, as you see, to testify in a court of law.”

  Once more he attacked the writing-case. A handkerchief, knotted round some objects within, he untied and flung out; glittering jewels rattled and rolled across the table under Mr. Mayne’s eyes. Beside them Cheviot thumped down two account-books.

  “Here,” he continued, “are the jewels themselves. Any of my men can tell you I found them at Vulcan’s gaming house; and Lady Cork has identified them. Now look in these accounts!” He riffled the pages, pointing. “See whose name is written opposite the description of this, and this, and this, and this. All five of the stolen pieces. The name, in every case, is Mr. Alan Henley.”

  “This,” said Mr. Mayne, after a pause of examining, “would seem—”

  “Complete,” said Colonel Rowan, and swallowed.

  “And you divined all this, Mr. Cheviot,” demanded Mr. Mayne, lifting his eyes, “from the very beginning?”


  “No, sir. No, as I have been attempting to tell you! My eyes were opened, only yesterday afternoon, by a remark made by Miss Louise Tremayne.”

  “I made such a remark?” cried Louise. “I?”

  She drifted forward towards him, all hazel eyes and broad quivering lips, as though she would put her hand on his arm.

  Flora flung her muff into the chair behind her. At that moment she hated Louise and quite seriously believed she could kill her.

  “You were suggesting,” said Cheviot, not without sardonic humour, “that I might be Miss Renfrew’s lover.”

  “But I never truly thought—”

  “Never, Miss Tremayne?” he suggested gently. “In any case, I denied it. I said something to this effect: ‘Listen! The first time I ever heard that woman’s name—’

  “And there I spoke no further. I remembered when I first had heard her name, and who had spoken it: Mr. Henley. Past events, in their true shape, took form clearly. At the same time, I was looking straight down at this table and at Colonel Rowan’s silver-handled pistol. That particular weapon, I see, has been put on Mr. Henley’s desk at the moment. …”

  (Alan Henley stiffened. None saw this except Cheviot.)

  “… and I recalled, with much distinctness, there had been no powder-smoke in the passage when Miss Renfrew was shot. There had been no noise, no powder-mark on the bullet. I did not think of an air-gun until Vulcan’s spring-and-compressed-air mechanism exploded in the roulette-table.

  “But the sequence of events on the night of the murder must now be clear. This small pistol,” and Cheviot took up the weapon with the gold lozenge set into the handle, “was only intended as a dummy and a cheat.

  “Who borrowed the pistol from Lady Drayton? Officially Lady Cork; but, as we know, it was Miss Renfrew who in fact borrowed it and kept it. Mr. Henley, as we also know, arrived at the house nearly half an hour before Lady Drayton and myself.

  “It would not have been difficult for him to steal the small pistol from the room of a half-distracted woman who was ready to confess. Wherever he killed Miss Renfrew, none must suspect his thick and knobbed cane of being an air-gun.

  “There must be a dummy pistol, fired, to account for the death. It is the same device, you will note, which the late John Thurtell meant to use in the murder of Wood. I doubt that Henley fired a shot inside the house. More probably it was in the garden, into soft earth. He then had time to go back into the house, hide the pistol under a table in the upstairs passage near Lady Cork’s boudoir, and sit down quietly in the foyer.

  “Lady Drayton, before the murder, found the discharged pistol. For good reasons which she explained to me, but on which I need not dwell, she concealed it in her muff.

  “In the boudoir, while I was questioning Lady Cork in the presence of Miss Renfrew and Mr. Henley, matters all but boiled over.

  “By the Lord, you should have seen Miss Renfrew’s demeanour then! You should have seen how often and how furtively she glanced at Henley, who was (apparently) unconcerned and busy at his shorthand. But, again, you should have seen her demeanour when she marched out!

  “He knew he must kill, and kill quickly. The opportunity was provided.

  “I think, Colonel Rowan, you would have seen the truth in our positions in the passage if Mr. Mayne had not so persistently suspected Lady Drayton and myself. Consider!

  “Henley and I left the boudoir, closing the double-doors behind us. We turned round. Lady Drayton was standing about a dozen feet ahead of us, well to our right, her back turned. Miss Renfrew opened the passage-door of the boudoir, and came out.

  “Now what happened? Two seconds earlier, Henley had lifted his cane as though to point. I did not see him remove the ferrule-cap. Probably he meant no harm—until he saw Miss Renfrew. I thought nothing of it; why should I?

  “Miss Renfrew walked across diagonally, as though to the ballroom. She turned, and in the middle of the passage she walked towards the stairs with her back to us. If you had listened to the testimony of Lady Drayton, which I included in my report, you might have seen the truth. What was that testimony?”

  Flora herself could not remember. Her mind was too confused. But Cheviot, putting down the small pistol on the table, spoke clearly.

  “Flora Drayton,” he said, “told me this. ‘She,’ meaning Miss Renfrew, ‘was well ahead and to the left of me. I felt a wind, or a kind of whistle or the like, past my arm. She went on a little and fell on her face.’”

  At last Flora remembered, and all too vividly. The terror of the night was returning.

  “In other words,” said Cheviot, “she felt the bullet pass her on the left. Henley, with a direct-sightline to his victim, pressed the knob of the cane. Any noise was hidden from me by the loud waltz-music. That small bullet, which at a longer distance would not even have been deadly, struck Miss Renfrew through the heart. She took two steps and fell dead.

  “It was the last act,” Cheviot said. “But it was not the last link.”

  “Not, you say,” Mr. Mayne asked in an unexpectedly high voice, “the last link?”

  “No,” Cheviot suddenly pointed. “You think Alan Henley has been your faithful servant?”

  “Yes!” Mr. Mayne and Colonel Rowan spoke at once.

  “He is not.” Cheviot shook his head. “Though I did not stress it in my second report, so much was evident from my visit to Vulcan. Someone had warned Vulcan I should be there, else he could not have packed the house with so many blacklegs. Who warned him?”

  “Well?”

  “I—I counted it strange,” Cheviot muttered, “only a coincidence perhaps, that there should have been so many resemblances between Vulcan and Alan Henley. Both are self-educated men: though Vulcan, save for his rings, has achieved near-perfection of manner. Both have a physical disability caused by accident: Mr. Henley a lame leg, Vulcan a glass eye. Both are inordinately vain, especially of their power over women.

  “Vulcan, in his study or office, could not help mentioning this. He remarked on the strangeness that some men, even with natural disadvantages, should have this power. He added, meaning himself, that he knew such a man. And I, with my eye on the two walking-sticks propped at the far end of his private roulette-table, said, ‘So do I.’

  “He is quick-witted. He guessed I meant Mr. Henley. It was as though an arrow had struck home.

  “In fact, he tested me by referring to it later. Should the police make any attack on his gaming-house, he said that he would be warned beforehand. And I replied, without surprise, that I was aware of it.

  “Then Vulcan knew. He knew I meant the chief clerk to the Commissioners of Police. Again the arrow struck home.

  “Your faithful servant? No, I think not! Mr. Henley had assisted Vulcan far more than in pledging jewels there. How far he may be associated with the owners of other gaming-houses, a matter at which I only guess, it will be your duty to inquire. But faithful? Never!”

  Again, from Alan Henley’s thick throat, issued a wordless cry.

  He did not deny; he did not speak. His left hand reached out, in a tentative way, as though he would seize the medium-bore silver-handled pistol and turn it on himself. But he could not do it.

  In his staring eyes was reflected the image of the hangman. He pressed his hands over his face. The ebony stick clattered to the floor. He fell headlong across the table, amid flying papers, in a dead faint.

  Flora, her throat choked, saw another figure loom up. Captain Hogben, his cloak over his right arm, was backing against Mr. Henley’s desk. Hogben’s body was partly obscured by the green-shaded lamp. His own right hand went snaking out. …

  “Is it not ironic—?” Mr. Mayne was beginning, when Cheviot cut him short.

  “Ironic?” he cried. “Have you seen no worse irony?”

  Whereupon, to those who listened, Cheviot seemed to take leave of his wits.

  “I, as Superintendent of C-One of the Criminal Investigation Department! I, who prided myself on my knowledge of scienti
fic criminology? I, because I never dreamed they had been invented, was deceived for two days by a common air-gun, when any gunsmith of the year 1829 could have told me.”

  They were staring at him. Behind Sergeant Buhner, who stood rocklike with the thick and knotted cane, the doorway was crowded with policemen. The other sergeant, with the collar-numeral 9, fought his way through them.

  Breathing hard, Sergeant 9 straightened up and saluted.

  “Sir!” he said to Colonel Rowan. “The riot’s begun. That tailor, who’s drunk, set fire to his own house. The devil knows why he did, but it’s crazed ’em. There’s six hundred men a-fighting in Parliament Street, and the truncheons are out. They’ve attacked our men, and spilled round into King Street. …”

  “We shall deal with it,” snapped Colonel Rowan. “Meanwhile, Mr. Cheviot, have you gone mad? What is this you speak of ‘C-One’? ‘Criminal Investigation Department’?”

  Cheviot laughed.

  “Your pardon,” he said. “I could not even remember Mr. Fulford’s biography of King George the Fourth; and the fact that a bullet-hole from an air-gun was found in the glass of the coach-window. That was in 1820. Air-guns must have been known long before then. But it took Joe Manton the younger to remind me.”

  “A biography of the King?” echoed an astounded Mr. Mayne. “But the King is yet alive! No biography of His Majesty has yet been written.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Cheviot. “I had also forgotten that Mr. Roger Fulford’s account will not be published for more than a hundred years.”

  “Good God!” breathed Colonel Rowan. “Mr. Cheviot! Control yourself, lest we think you a staring lunatic.”

  “Perhaps I am,” Cheviot retorted. “But there is one more reckoning to be settled. It is not at all concerned with Mr. Henley.”

  And he pointed to Hogben, whose hand still moved along Henley’s desk.

  “I mean that man there,” Cheviot snapped. “Captain Hogben has sworn and is perjured. It was done before a magistrate. He will pay. And the penalty for that, in this age—”