The Plague Court Murders

by John Dickson Carr

  Masters squinted up his eyes. “If we could explain how the murderer went in and out of that house without leaving footprints—”

  “I read a story once,” volunteered H.M., like an urchin from the back of a classroom. “It was funnier than watchin’ somebody sit on a silk hat. Feller committed a murder in a house with six inches of unmarked snow all around. How’d he get in and out? It appears he walked to and from the place on stilts. The police thought they was rabbit-tracks. Ha ha ha. Burn me, Masters, wouldn’t it have given you a turn if you’d seen somebody staggerin’ out of that place on stilts? Reasonable. Bah.

  “Y’see, fatheads, the fundamental trouble with the locked-room situation is that it generally ain’t reasonable. I don’t mean that it can’t be worked, any more than you’d deny one of Houdini’s escapes; oh, far from it. I mean that, under ordinary circumstances, no real murderer would think of indulging in all the elaborate hocus-pocus, we’re required to believe at the end of the story. … Unfortunately, this case is different. We’re up against Darworth: a man whose whole mind was devoted to hocus-pocus, and who was admittedly staging an unreasonable show for a very reasonable purpose. It becomes logical—devilish logical, Masters. He didn’t intend to be murdered; the murderer simply took advantage of a plan all worked out for him … but, burn me, how?”

  “That’s what I was trying to say,” reported Masters. “If we could explain no footprints, we might explain the bolted and barred door.”

  H.M. looked at him.

  “Don’t gibber, Masters,” he said austerely. “I detest gibbering. That’s like saying that, after all, if you can only hang the roof of a house in the air first, there won’t be any difficulty about putting up the walls. But go on. I want to see the fountains play and the star-shine of your brow. … How do you explain it?”

  The Inspector remained stolid. But he said:

  “It only occurred to me, sir—sittin’ and thinkin’—that, after the murderer had gone, Darworth himself might have bolted and barred the door after him. That might have been their scheme, when Darworth only expected to be wounded. He mightn’t have realized that he was really dying, and wanted the plan to go through as arranged.”

  “Man,” H.M. replied, putting his head in his hands again, “I’ll say nothin’ of the fact he couldn’t have moved three steps after the murderer stabbed him in earnest; that all he could do was grope for the bell-wire and then tumble down and smash the glasses in his eyes. I’ll say nothin’ of the fact that there was no blood-trail or marks from him to the door—as there must have been. We won’t argue whether a man stabbed through the heart could have lifted a heavy iron bar and shot a bolt that it takes a strong man to move in the first place. All I’ll say is, we’ve got to look for another explanation. …

  “Facts! I want more facts, Masters. Now, about what you’ve been doing today, and about young Latimer. Let’s have it all. Talk!”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get it in order. Order’s what we want. And it’s getting late. … After I’d talked to Stiller, the solicitor, we both went round to have a look at Darworth’s house. It’s funny how houses have a habit of drawing people back. We’d no sooner got inside, than we met—”

  Again sharply, almost in H.M.’s ear as he bent forward with a curious expression on his face, the telephone rang.

  CHAPTER XV

  With the receiver at his ear, H.M. glared.

  “No!” he said quickly. “No! Wrong number!… How do I know what number you want? My good man, I don’t give a gore-stained farthing of immoral habits what number you want. … No, this is not Whitehall 0007! This is Museum 7000. The Russell Square Zoo, you fathead. … Certainly there’s a Zoo in Russell Square. Look here. …” (A girl’s voice, from the switchboard downstairs, cut in audibly.) “Hang it, Lollypop,” said H.M. to the new voice, “why can’t you shut off these blighters and not put ’em through to me …?” His voice became freezingly austere. “No, my good man, I did not call you ‘Lollypop’. …”

  “I expect it’s for me, sir,” said Masters, rising hurriedly. “Excuse me. I left orders for calls for me to be transferred here. I hope you didn’t—”

  H.M. left off glaring at the telephone to look at him. The telephone tinkled, “Ha, ha.” It was still making derisive remarks when Masters dexterously got it out of H.M.’s hands.

  “That was not,” Masters said to it, “a secretary being funny. That was Sir Henry Merrivale.” The voice died in a gurgle. “I can’t help what you thought. Get on with it, Banks! What do you want?… Oh!… When?… In a cab, eh? Did you see who the other person was?… Get the number of the cab?… Well, for reference. No, it probably isn’t important. Nothing suspicious?… No; I should just keep a sharp eye out. … Get into the grounds, if it won’t hurt your conscience. … Right. …”

  He seemed uncertain and rather disturbed as he rang off, and his hand almost went back to it. But he was distracted by all the other matters weighing on him; and H.M. was in a mood to lecture.

  “There now!” said H.M., in a tone of gloomy satisfaction. He pointed at Masters. “There’s a first-class example of the intolerable outrages that are perpetrated on me. And they call me ‘eccentric’! Imagine it! People simply walk into my room when they like, or ring me up, and they call me eccentric!… Pour me out another drink, Ken. I’ve tried every way of keepin’ people out. I tried puttin’ the most complicated Yale lock on my door. And the only person I ever locked out was myself, and Carstairs had to break down the door, and I still got a dark suspicion that somebody deliberately pinched that key out of my pocket. Bah. And even my secretary, even little Lollypop, mind you; as nice a girl as ever mussed up my desk; she betrays me. I ask you, what’s a man goin’ to do?”

  Masters, who had his hands crooked as though on the steering-wheel of a wildly skidding car, was trying to divert him. There was one way of doing it, not strictly fair. Thinking of Lollypop, I began to reminisce as though sentimental about old times. I began telling him of the day when Bunky Knapp and I had walked up unannounced, when Lollypop was with him and he was supposed to be dictating letters to her. … It was effective. He turned on Masters.

  “If I’m not goin’ to get any help from you, man, we might as well call this thing off. Go on! You were telling me about visiting Darworth’s house. Get on with it.”

  He paused, peering up. Major Featherton had risen. The major had put on his top-hat with a sort of angry precision. I could only faintly see his face in the gloom round the desk-lamp; but apparently the major had groped his way through all the intricacies of which we had been talking, and he had now adjusted his thoughts to voice a coldly furious conclusion.

  “Merrivale!—” he said.

  “Eh? Oh! Sit down, my boy, sit down. … What’s the matter?”

  “I came to you, Merrivale,” boomed the major, with precise enunciation, “for help. By Gad, I did! And I thought you’d help us. And did you? You did not. You persist in this insufferable tommyrot about one of us—”

  “I say, my boy,” interposed H.M., wrinkling his brow, “how long have you had that cough?”

  “Cough?”

  “Cough. You know: whoosh! Huh-huh-huh! Cough. You’ve been blastin’ up the dust all afternoon. Did you have it last night, for instance?”

  Featherton stared. “Certainly I did,” he replied, with such dignity that it sounded like pride in the achievement. “But, dammit, I don’t see that this is the time for discussing coughs! I don’t like to admit it, Henry, but you’ve betrayed us. I don’t think I care to hear much more. Gad! Confound it! I’m due at the Berkely for a cocktail; past due. And I’ll wish you all good afternoon.”

  “Sure you don’t have a drink?” asked H.M. vaguely. “No? Sorry. Well—er—goo’by.”

  The door slammed, and H.M. winced. He blinked owlishly in that direction. Then he shook his head, curiously as though there were some puzzling thought which he tried to roll into place.

  H.M. repeated suddenly:

  “ ‘You are o
ld,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,

  And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—

  Pray, what is the reason of that?’ ”

  “What?” said Masters.

  “Oh, I was just thinkin’… never mind. Let’s see, I was born in ’71. Yes, that would make Bill Featherton born in ’64 or ’65. There’s energy for you, hey? Hell be dancin’ at a supper-club tonight. Si la jeunesse savait, et si—’ Bah. Go on, Masters. You went to Darworth’s house with the solicitor. Tell me about it.”

  Masters spoke hurriedly.

  “Number 25 Charles Street. Stiller and McDonnell and I went there. Very quiet, dignified place, mostly shuttered. He’s had it about four years. Only person there was a kind of butler-manservant; Darworth lived out, I gathered. He used to keep a chauffeur, but for the last few years he’s driven his car himself.”

  “This butler, now—?” suggested H.M.

  “N-no. Straight, I should say, sir. Excellent references. In fact, he named somebody he used to work for, also in Mayfair, who’d called him up as soon as Darworth’s death was in the papers, and asked him if he wanted his old place back. We verified. It’s true.”

  “Uh-huh. Sounds like my wife. Watch out for gossip, Masters. Well?”

  “I gathered he’d only taken the place because there was so much time off. Get that, sir? I asked him about the visitors and the séances. He said he knew Darworth was interested in the occult. But, whenever there was to be a séance, he was always given the evening off.

  “The house is dismal inside; like a museum. No fires, few rooms lived in, full of all those rummy pictures and statuary. We went upstairs to Darworth’s bed-and-dressing room, and Stiller opened a wall safe in the dressing-room. There wasn’t much that was revealing; Darworth had been very careful about his papers, or else he’s got ’em somewhere else.

  “Then we went to the seance-room.” Masters looked amused and contemptuous. “It was a big room up under the roof. It had a black carpet as soft as feathers, and a curtained alcove for the medium to sit in. Ah, ah! And then, sir—well, I’ll admit we had a bit of a shock. Coming on her suddenly like that, sitting in the chair with her neck twisted over the back and moving round like it hurt her, with just that dullish light through the windows—I tell you, I don’t mind admitting …”

  “Coming on who?” demanded H.M., and opened his eyes.

  “That’s what I was going to tell you, sir, when the phone rang. On Lady Benning. And she was moaning.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. What was Lady Benning doing there?”

  “I don’t know, sir. She gabbled some nonsense about this being James’s room, and for us to get out. Porter—that’s this butler chap—swore he hadn’t let her into the house. Then she started to curse us. Lummy, it was awful, sir! That is, her being a lady, and refined and all that—you know—you feel embarrassed—and an old lady, too. That seemed to make it worse. Then I felt a bit sorry for her, because she got up, and was very lame. But she wouldn’t let anybody help her, and sat down again. … Well, we hadn’t time to waste, so we had to go to work on the room. …”

  “Go to work on the room? How?”

  Again the easy, tolerant, contemptuous smile. “I tell you, sir, of all the clumsy stuff I ever saw, this was the worst! How Darworth got away with it I don’t know, unless it was his personality that carried him. Lord, he’d never court investigation. … The whole room was wired. Electric coils and magnet in the table for spirit-raps. Dictograph attachment in the chandelier, so every word spoken could be heard in another room–we found the little place, a sort of trunk-room, on the same floor, where Darworth could sit and control the whole séance. One of those home wireless-sets hidden in a panel behind the medium’s alcove: microphone arranged, so Darworth could be all the voices. Gauze ectoplasm in those folding packets; a gauze panel on a sort of magic-lantern projection outfit for floating-faces; tambourines on wires; a rubber glove stuffed with wet tissue paper—”

  “Never mind the inventory,” H.M. interrupted irritably.

  “Well, sir, Bert and I went to work and ripped that room to pieces. And Lady Benning—it’s funny how noise must affect some people. She watched us. Every time we’d tear out a wire or something, she’d stiffen up and shut her eyes. When I was pulling that dummy wireless-attachment out from behind the medium’s alcove, I carried it over to the table. I saw the tears were running out of her eyes. … Not crying like you think of people crying, just those tears and no blinking or anything. Then she got up and started to go out again; and I’ll admit I was nervous. I ran after her (she let me take her arm then), and I said I’d take her down and put her in a cab.”

  The recollection disturbed Masters. He stroked his solid jaw, and seemed annoyed with himself for giving what he would have called “impressions” instead of facts; for he pulled himself up and abruptly recited in a strange police-court fashion:

  “I took the witness downstairs. Er—the witness looked up at me and said, ‘Would you like to take the clothes off me, too?’ She emphasized the word ‘clothes,’ so I—er—I didn’t know what in lum’s name she—er—what the witness was getting at, sir. She was wearing something fancy, not like an old lady at all, and had a lot of paint on. …”

  At H.M.’s gesture, I had already gone over to pour out our drinks; and both H.M. and I looked at the Inspector. The hiss of the soda-siphon seemed to affect him as a slur on his powers of understanding.

  “Just so, sir. I got a cab and put the witness into it. She leaned out of the window and said …” He picked up his notebook. “The exact words were, ‘I talked to my dear, dear nephew’s fiancée this morning, Sergeant. I think you ought to take a little interest in those people, you know. Especially since dear Theodore has seen fit to go away so suddenly.’ ”

  H.M. nodded. He did not seem much interested. I said:

  “Hullo! Featherton spoke to Lady Benning on the telephone this morning, but she didn’t mention to him—”

  “Naturally that wasn’t pleasant news, sir,” Masters continued. “I hurried inside and phoned the Latimers. Miss Latimer answered, very upset. I was pretty sharp with her, but she couldn’t tell much. She hadn’t got back home (they live in Hyde Park Gardens) until past six this morning. He had got home before her, for she saw his hat and coat in the, hall; but she didn’t disturb him, and went to bed.

  “When she woke up this morning, her maid gave her a note from her brother. All it said was, ‘Investigating. Don’t worry.’ The maid said he had left the house with a traveling bag at about ten o’clock. It was eleven when she got the note. I asked her why she hadn’t let us know immediately, and she admitted she’d been afraid. She begged me not to take any notice of it; said it was another of his vagaries; and that he’d probably be back by evening. First she thought he might have gone to Lady Benning’s, but she phoned the old Lady and he wasn’t there. Since then she’d been calling everybody he knew, without result.

  “It was close on time for my appointment with you here, sir. So I sent Bert round there to make inquiries. But I warned her that I would issue a writ compelling his presence at the inquest; that’s the legally safe way of arresting somebody if he tries to bolt; that his description would go out through the usual police channels as ‘wanted,’ and over the wireless, and so on.” Masters shut up his notebook. He absently took the stiff drink I offered him, put it down on the table, and added savagely: “Personally, sir, I think that kid is either guilty or stark mad. Bolting like that—! Mad, or guilty; maybe both. If I had a scrap of evidence, beyond his having that key to the padlock, I’d hold him for murder. But if I make just one more mistake. …”

  He gestured. It was graphic enough.

  “It could be,” said H.M. “Yes. Humph. If he deliberately wanted us to get suspicious of him, now, and frame a charge—why, that’s how he’d do it. I wonder. That all you know?” he asked sharply. His little eyes wheeled round.

  “I’ve got a complete record,
if there’s anything else you want to know.”

  “Yes. There’s something missing, son. It ain’t what I want, somehow. Burn me, I’ve a feeling that. … Look here. Darworth’s house, now. You sure there wasn’t anything else you noticed? Let your imagination float. That’s it! Quick, what were you thinkin’ about?”

  “Only Darworth’s workshop, sir,” answered the Inspector. He seemed taken back by H.M.’s uncomfortable habits of reading the most wooden poker-face. “But you didn’t want to hear about the fake spiritist devices, so I thought—”

  “Never mind, son. You keep talkin’. If I seem to shut you off, that may be because I’ve got ideas all of a sudden.”

  “It was only a room in the basement where he manufactured his boxes of tricks. No magic-supply-house for him, sir; too dangerous. He made ’em himself, and he was skillful with his hands. Quite. I—you see, I mess about with that sort of thing myself, just as a hobby, and there was the finest little electric lathe you ever saw; delicate as a razorblade. I wondered what trick he’d been up to last, for there were little whitish powdery traces on it …”

  H.M. stopped with his whisky-glass half way to his lips.

  “… and some calculations on a slip of paper, measurements in millimeters, and a few scribblings; I didn’t pay much attention to it. Also, he’d been tinkering with life-masks, and made a good job of it. It’s quite easy; tried it myself. You vaseline the person’s face, and then spread the soft plaster on it. It doesn’t hurt when it hardens, unless it catches in the eyebrows. Then you remove the cast, and fit over its inner side sheets of moist newspaper. …”

  I was watching H.M. Now if, at this point, H.M. had dramatically slapped his forehead or uttered a startled exclamation, I should have known that he was off on one of his intolerable digressions. But he didn’t. He remained very quiet, except that he was wheezing a little. Taking a deep drink, he removed his feet from the desk, motioned the Inspector to go on talking, and picked up the sheets of Masters’ report.