Crime at Christmas

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  But this mood of calm was not to last, for it occurred to me quite suddenly to wonder if the Inspector had not been deceiving me with his confidential affability. Was there a chain of evidence of which I knew nothing, implicating me? Had I really been under suspicion the whole time? After all, it was I who, in the fullest sense, discovered both the corpses. Was I now, in the gloom of Paragon House, to be faced with an ordeal or kind of third degree? I could almost imagine apparitions of Mrs Harley and Dr Green arising in front of me with accusing fingers and saying in sepulchral unison: ‘You did it, Malcolm!’ Nor did it add to my peace of mind to know that if I were subjected to any such bogy trick, however innocent I was, I should act guiltily. Much as I disliked my last few days at Beresford Lodge, I would have given anything to be back within its comfortable walls.

  Too late. We had already reached the iron gateway bounding what used to be the short carriage drive to the front door of Paragon House. The Inspector led the way up the front steps and rang the bell. It was the old-fashioned kind which one pulls and emitted what, I believe, is often described as an ‘eerie peal’ in the basement. Two minutes passed and there was no answer. The Inspector rang again, with greater violence. Then we heard heavy steps approaching the door and the sound of rusty bolts being withdrawn. When, after what seemed a very long time, the door was opened, I saw the caretaker, whom I had seen that morning from the garden, standing pugnaciously in the aperture. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and such expression as there was on his large inscrutable face was certainly not one of welcome.

  ‘Well, what d’you want?’ he asked.

  ‘We have an order to view the house,’ said the Inspector quickly, ‘from Lanchester & Co., who, I understand, are the agents who employ you. My name is Rogers. This is Mr Warren, my wife’s brother-in-law, and this is Mr Edwards, who will advise us as to any repairs we might have to make if we considered taking the house.’

  While the Inspector was speaking, the caretaker flashed his electric torch on each of us in turn. I fancied he let the beam fall on me longer than on the others. However, his only comment was, ‘Well, if the agent says you can see over the house, I suppose you can. But it’s a dam’ fool time to send visitors, on a Sunday and after dark. There ain’t no electric light on, you know.’

  ‘You have your torch,’ was the reply, ‘and Mr Edwards and I have ours. You often find, don’t you, Edwards, that owners cut off the light when a house takes a long time to sell. A very false economy, as a matter of fact. Well, we’d better make a start. Will you lead the way, Mr Caretaker?’

  ‘You don’t want to see the basement, do you?’

  ‘Of course we do, cellars and all.’

  The caretaker muttered something, and led the way down a long passage, past a door that was almost off its hinges, to a flight of very worn stone steps, which he went down, flashing the torch in front of him. When he reached the basement, my two companions looked into every door and cupboard, and kept up a steady flow of domestic patter. Had the place been properly illuminated, I think my impression of its squalor would have been greater than it was. Almost everything that could be broken was broken, and the general filth was lamentable. Only one room showed any sign of attention, and that was a large one on the road side of the house which had probably been the servants’ hall – or as we are now told to call it, the ‘staff sitting-room’. It contained an iron bedstead, a table, a broken cane chair and a broken armchair, a tin trunk and some cooking utensils – in fact, the maximum furniture which the law allows to remain in a house if it is to be exempt from rates.

  ‘This, I suppose, is where you shake down,’ said the Inspector in a hearty voice. ‘I should have thought you’d have found the kitchen more convenient.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, if you knew the kitchen. It’s through here.’

  He opened a door, and the survey continued. The kitchen was frightful and the scullery unbelievable. In one corner of it there grew a clump of huge and smelly toadstools.

  ‘Well, I think that’s enough for this floor,’ said the Inspector at length. ‘Now for the floor above. Will you go first, please, Mr Caretaker?’

  The ground floor comprised a large double dining-room (the walls of which were ‘enriched’ with a plaster ornamentation in the worst taste of 1850), a study, a pantry and an entrance hall. The house-hunters spent less time over it than they had over the basement and, after a glance at the strangest of bathrooms on the half-landing, we reached the first floor. At the back of the house was a large double drawing-room, and on the road side were three or four small rooms. There was also a box-room without windows or fireplace, the atmosphere of which was horrible.

  ‘Well, Edwards,’ the Inspector said, flashing his torch on his wrist-watch as he spoke, ‘in view of the general conditions of the place, I think the owner’s asking exactly three times what the house is worth. In fact, I hardly think we need go any further. However, I suppose my wife will say I’m shirking my job, if I don’t look at the next floor.’

  The caretaker looked round hopefully when the Inspector spoke of abandoning the investigation, but the Inspector drove him towards the next flight of stairs and then turned round and said casually to Edwards: ‘By the way, you might examine the fireplaces on the ground floor, will you? I don’t think there’ll be anything new for you to criticise up above, apart from the usual squalor.’

  Edwards said, ‘Righto!’ and ran downstairs. The caretaker, who was half-way up to the next floor, looked down apprehensively and hesitated, but the Inspector, signing to me to follow him, walked quickly upstairs, driving the man ahead of him.

  ‘We’ll have a look at the main back bedroom first, please,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just like the bedroom underneath,’ the caretaker murmured, as we followed him in. ‘Ceiling’s a bit lower, that’s all.’

  ‘It isn’t so much the bedroom I’m interested in, as the view,’ the Inspector answered. ‘I suppose the windows open all right?’

  As the Inspector flashed his torch on to the panes, I noticed that they were opaque with whitewash. This, I think, was the window out of which the caretaker had leant to speak to me that morning, when I was walking in the garden of Beresford Lodge.

  ‘The windows open all right,’ the caretaker said, with a trace of aggressiveness, ‘but it seems a queer time to look for a view – six o’clock on a Sunday night, when it’s pitch dark.’

  ‘I only want to see,’ the Inspector replied docilely, ‘whether the garden at the back is private or not. Down in London you expect to be overlooked, but up here, especially in a house of this price, you don’t want to be bothered with neighbours.’

  As he spoke, the caretaker raised the lower halves of the three big windows to their full height. A delicious freshness filled the room.

  ‘Look, Malcolm,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m afraid there’s one house that we can see all too plainly.’

  Again I saw him glance furtively at his wrist-watch. I was a little surprised at his calling me Malcolm, till I remembered that I was supposed to be his brother-in-law. Clearly, I thought, as I went to the window, something was going to happen. The caretaker, too, seemed uneasy; for he kept turning his head to the door and then toward us and shifting from one foot to the other, till the Inspector took him by the elbow and led him, with strange deliberateness, to the middle window.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘through those trees. You see the whole side of that enormous house. There isn’t a window that doesn’t overlook us.’

  I followed his gaze through the bare branches of the plane trees. It was quite true. The whole façade of Beresford Lodge was revealed. Despite the drawn curtains, there were chinks of light in the French window at the end of the dining-room, the windows of the terrace room, the drawing-room, two rooms on the second floor and two rooms on the third floor. It only needed, I felt, the slightest stirring of the curtains, the momentary flapping of a blind in the wind, for any of those lighted rooms to give up its secret. There was a fascination in
watching the big house, unobserved, and for a moment I ceased to wonder why I was where I was, and gave myself up to the contemplation of those many windows – as if I could gather from them material for a play or a novel, or even an emotional experience of my own. Should I see Amabel locked passionately in Dixon’s arms, Clarence crumpling up the failure of a sonnet, or Quisberg desperately turning out a secret drawer and burning the evidences of his former life? Had Nurse Moon been in the house I felt sure she would have appeared at an open window, or on the balcony perhaps, and smiled across the dark lawn to a lover hidden below.

  The Inspector, too, seemed absorbed by the view; for he stood motionless by the middle window and said nothing, while the caretaker beside him moved his feet restlessly. Yet even he seemed to share our interest, and made no attempt to speak or walk away.

  Then suddenly the whole sky was illuminated by a dazzling light which appeared to rise somehow from behind Beresford Lodge and then hovered in the air over the middle of the garden, directing a powerful searchlight on to the whole side of the house. And at that moment a tall figure leant out of the window of the room where Mrs Harley had slept, and flung a great whitish bundle, which might have been a woman in a nightdress, over the sill. Horrified, I watched the body, if it was one, fall down the house side till it struck the spiked railing of the balcony below – the balcony on to which my bedroom of Christmas Eve had access. Then, before I had time to look again at the figure by the window of the room above, the light failed, and a thin rain of silver sparks drifted downwards to the earth. I turned round and, as I did so, heard footsteps creeping stealthily to the door. The Inspector remained where he was, apparently oblivious of everything, but I could no longer see the dim outline of the caretaker beside him.

  ‘Inspector,’ I whispered, but he turned his face towards me, put his finger to his lips, and shook his head. Then after what seemed a very long time I heard the sounds of a short scuffle below, followed by two quick blasts on a police whistle. At that the Inspector relaxed, took my arm and flashed his torch towards the door.

  ‘Did that frighten you?’ he asked pleasantly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It did. But the caretaker? . . .’

  ‘Oh, they’ve got him all right! Now quickly back to Beresford Lodge.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ I asked obstinately, ‘that you’ve had the caretaker arrested? Was he the murderer?’

  The Inspector laughed not without bitterness, I thought.

  ‘I’ve had him arrested,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think I can quite call him a murderer.’

  *

  We walked together in silence back to Beresford Lodge. My thoughts came and went at great speed, but left me little the wiser.

  XIX. Conclave and Cigarettes

  Sunday – 6.30 p.m.

  Despite the Inspector’s enigmatic words after the arrest of the caretaker, I could not help hoping that when I reached Beresford Lodge I should find the whole mystery at an end – that we should all wake up, as it were, from the long nightmare of suspicion and mutual hostility, and spend the last evening of the Christmas holiday in an atmosphere of relief and sympathetic friendliness. The caretaker seemed so convenient a culprit on whom to thrust the troubles of the house, that I almost forgot the irregularities of Quisberg’s past life, Dixon’s bad record, the dubious position of Clarence James, and the possible complicity of Nurse Moon. But I was destined to be gravely disappointed; for the hour which followed was perhaps the most harassing period in my whole visit.

  When the Inspector and I had taken off our coats in the lobby, he turned to me and broke his long silence by saying, ‘I shall probably see you again quite soon. You’d better go into the terrace room for a bit now. I dare say you’ll find some of the others there. If you want to tell them about Paragon House, I don’t really mind.’ Then he walked abruptly to the stairs, leaving me in the hall. I did as I was told, and went into the terrace room, where I found Amabel, Dixon and Clarence. Amabel and Dixon were sitting by a table loaded with drinks. Clarence sprawled, with his eyes shut, on a sofa at the far end of the room, where he twitched restlessly.

  ‘Hello,’ said Amabel miserably, ‘so the little wanderer is back! Help yourself.’

  I did, while Dixon glared at me and said nothing.

  For a while, as so often during the past three days, I searched desperately for something to say – something which without being too commonplace could wound nobody’s susceptibilities. But this time I could think of nothing and stood there inanely, glass in hand, looking at Amabel, till finally I felt I had to blurt out my story or sink through the floor.

  ‘Something extraordinary,’ I said, ‘has just happened in Paragon House.’

  ‘Really?’ she drawled.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been there with the Inspector.’

  Dixon looked at me sharply, and said to Amabel ‘I think we might hear about this, don’t you?’

  She nodded to him, and pointed to a seat.

  ‘Make yourself comfy,’ she said, ‘and tell us all about it. It’s rather a relief to see someone who seems quite pleased with life.’

  ‘Are you being polite?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all. Couldn’t be if I tried. I shall adore hearing the worst. Do begin.’

  I began – baldly and self-consciously. But my two listeners seemed interested, and my narrative improved a little. Apparently they heard or saw nothing of the firework which had suddenly illuminated the house – after all, the curtains had been closely drawn – but they recognised it, from my description, as being similar to the one which they had let off together on the night of Christmas Eve. Amabel began to explain this escapade of theirs to me, but I unfortunately allowed her to realise that I already knew all about it.

  ‘So you know that, too,’ she said, while Dixon glowered suspiciously at me. ‘It seems to me we’re the only transparent people in this affair. But don’t stop now. The flash lit up the whole garden – I quite believe that.’

  I continued. When I reached the climax, she whistled and said: ‘No wonder we were warned off the upper floors this afternoon and herded in here. They must have stage-managed the show pretty well. What do you think of it, Len?’

  Dixon had been drinking almost ever since my arrival (and probably before it), and when he spoke, his voice was thick and hoarse.

  ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that it’s a great pity Mrs Quisberg ever asked such a skunk to join her party.’

  I was so dazed by the sudden rudeness that I said nothing, while Amabel put her hand on his arm and whispered to him.

  ‘No, leave me alone,’ he went on. ‘It’s time we had a little plain speaking. This has been a bloody affair for everybody, but it has been a thousand times bloodier than it need have been, because one of the party has been behaving like a police spy.’

  I looked at him as courageously as I could, and said with an attempt at dignity: ‘Are you by any chance referring to me? Because if you are—’

  ‘I am,’ he said, rising unsteadily from his chair. ‘What else are you but a dirty little copper’s nark? Who’s always been on the spot when a body’s been discovered? You. Who else spent his time eavesdropping and ferreting round and blabbing to that bloody Inspector—’

  His vulgar and bullying manner made me suddenly lose my temper.

  ‘I’d better tell you, Dixon,’ I said, ‘that I’m not in the habit of being spoken to like this by bastards.’

  It was, to say the least, an unfortunate remark. He flung off Amabel, who was trying to restrain him, and rushed at me like a bull. Luckily I stepped aside, and he went hurtling into the arms of the Inspector, who opened the door just at that moment.

  The Inspector took no notice of me or Amabel, but holding Dixon by the arm led him firmly through the door. As it shut I caught the words: ‘I want to speak to you.’ The next move was made by Amabel, who threw herself on to the window-seat in a paroxysm of tears. Then Clarence woke up, or pretended to wake up, raised his head from the cushion and made a
face at me. I had never felt more drawn to him. My anger left me as quickly as it had arisen, and I began to reproach myself for my tactlessness.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said when I had walked across the room. ‘I suppose my nerves are on edge, too. Do you think you ought to go to your sister?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, and lay back on his sofa. But when he saw her going towards the door, he got up and prevented her from opening it. I was longing so much to be a thousand miles away that I didn’t think of trying to overhear what he said. However, he seemed to have some influence; for she retired to the window-seat and sat there quietly, with her eyes fixed on the door. Then Clarence came over to me.

  ‘What does it matter, after all?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I echoed weakly.

  ‘This whole affair. Two people, for whom we don’t care—’

  ‘I liked Dr Green,’ I interrupted.

  He looked at me with astonishment.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. Very much.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But even so, you’d only known him for two days.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps it isn’t that.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  This new sympathy, this intimacy of conversation after so many evasions, half-truths and sentences too deliberately framed, made me suddenly want to cry. Indeed, tears, bringing a kind of relief, did come into my eyes, and as I sat down I felt I did not care who saw them. I had gone through enough. There was no reason, any longer, to be ashamed of anything I did. This moment of utter self-abandonment was an emotional turning-point. As far as the case was concerned, the worst, for me, was over, and however much I was afterwards to be moved by pity for the calamities of others, I shed, at last, the sense of the personal wretchedness which had troubled me ever since I saw the crumpled body of Mrs Harley on the balcony.