Swan Song

by Crispin, Edmund

  ‘What on earth . . . ?’ said Adam, mystified.

  ‘Ah,’ said Fen. ‘That took me in, too. You see, Stapleton’s plan involved tying Shorthouse’s ankles, a fact which was quite impossible to conceal. The tying of the wrists too was merely a camouflage – the best he could devise. It wasn’t bad, either. Anyway, it filled my head with quite a number of imbecile theories . . .’

  He now fixed the longer rope around the waist of the skeleton, passed the free end over the hook and hauled. Drooping, the skeleton rose into the air. When it had reached a sufficient height, Fen tied his end of the rope to the door handle, took the stool, and adjusted it so that the feet of the skeleton rested on it. Then he again mounted his chair, and put the noose which hung from the ceiling about the neck. He inserted the cotton padding, and pulled the rope fairly tight.

  ‘Suicides often like to make themselves comfortable,’ he said indistinctly over his shoulder, ‘which was a very good thing for Stapleton. It was most important that Shorthouse should not be strangled prematurely.’

  He climbed down and took away the rope from the skeleton’s waist. It sagged forward, the feet resting on the stool, the neck supported from the hook in the ceiling.

  ‘As you see, it needs a good deal of care,’ said Fen. ‘But given care, Shorthouse could live quite a long time, even suspended in that fashion. The real problem is to avoid pushing the tongue back against the pharyngeal wall, and also to avoid putting pressure on the carotid sinus and the vagus nerves. But you’ll notice that quite a lot of weight is taken by the feet.’

  He now took the end of the rope which was hanging through the skylight and fastened it round the skeleton’s ankles, with the knot at the back. A handkerchief from his pocket served to remove his finger-prints from the chalk-marked places at which he had touched the stool. Finally, he untied the remaining length of rope from the door-knob and fastened it round one leg of the stool.

  ‘This,’ he announced, pink with effort, ‘is a knot called the Highwayman’s Hitch. You have to keep both ends in your hand. One of them will bear any amount of strain, but if you pull the other the whole knot comes undone.’

  As he spoke, he was making rough loops in the two ends. With these in his hand, he climbed on to the chair for the last time, pushed them through the skylight, and hung them on the nail on the outside which Mudge had provided. The last thing he did was carefully to wipe the seat and back of the chair he had been using.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘everything’s ready. Stapleton leaves the room, and is conducted by Furbelow from the theatre. After a short interval he goes to a public box and telephones Dr Shand, saying that Shorthouse is in urgent need of medical help – for he must have a medical witness on the spot immediately after he has sprung his trap, or all this effort is wasted: that’s to say, some reliable person must be there to swear that Shorthouse had only just died – ha died, in fact, long after Stapleton left the dressing-room. Stapleton can calculate, with some certainty, how long it will take Shand to get here – and if he’s not available, there are other doctors whose addresses are in the telephone book. Then, just previous to the psychological moment, he re-enters the theatre, intending to lower the lift – only to find, my dear Adam, that you’re engaged in doing it for him.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ groaned Adam, ‘if only I’d known . . .’

  ‘But you didn’t know,’ said Fen, ‘so there’s no earthly use worrying about it . . . Anyway, let’s watch what happens when the lift is lowered. Mudge is the lift for the purposes of this test . . . Haul away, Mudge,’ he called. ‘Haul away, oh, haul away.’ He broke into a sea-shanty, but was silenced by the Chief Constable.

  The rope tied round the ankles of the skeleton tightened, and in another moment, still suspended by the neck, its feet were lifted from the stool and dragged upwards towards the skylight. The back of the neck was pressed against the angle of the ceiling, and when the feet were within an inch or two of the skylight, there was a crack as one of the cervical vertebrae gave way under the strain.

  ‘Well, there we are,’ said Fen. ‘Mudge,’ he called, ‘can you fasten the rope somewhere, and undo the knot at the ankles?’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ came Mudge’s disembodied answer. And after a moment’s pause his hand appeared through the skylight, groped, found the knot, and loosened it. The skeleton swung down again like a pendulum, and the rope was withdrawn.

  ‘Hence his panic at your mention of suspending the laws of gravity,’ Fen explained to Elizabeth. ‘Hanging a man feet upwards is certainly rather phenomenal . . . Now the stool, Mudge.’

  One strand of the rope attached to the stool was jerked, and it fell on its side; the other, and the Highwayman’s Hitch came undone. (‘That’s lucky,’ said Fen in mild surprise. ‘I don’t often get it right first time.’) This rope vanished, like its predecessor, and they were alone in the room with a skeleton swinging from a hook.

  ‘Neat,’ said Fen with admiration. ‘Complex but neat. Of course once one had grasped the method, the culprit was obvious. As you see, the arrangements have taken me about ten minutes – which means that even if some other person had entered the dressing-room while Furbelow was showing Stapleton off the premises, he or she would not have had time to fix the trap, since Furbelow was away only three minutes. Stapleton was helped, of course, by the fact that there were plenty of hiding-places about the theatre, and what’s more, his plan couldn’t have been carried out if it hadn’t been for Furbelow’s habit of staying up till midnight, and of sitting with the door of his room open in order to minimize the noxious gases from his electric fire. That was essential to Stapleton’s alibi. After he’d dismantled his apparatus, he no doubt came down from the roof, and got away from the theatre, while Shand was in here with Furbelow . . . It’s odd, though, to think that all the time he was dying of arsenic supplied by the man he was killing – and didn’t know it.’

  There was a long pause. Mudge could be heard clattering down the iron ladder from the roof. Elizabeth said to Adam: ‘Darling, I’ve been intolerable. But now it’s all over, I’ll really try to behave myself. And I do love you so much.’

  Peacock said to Joan:

  ‘Levi’s given me the job, my dear. Let’s get married quickly.’

  And in the place where, a week ago almost to the minute, Edwin Shorthouse had died, two couples embraced. Sir Richard began to display a marked interest in the litter of articles on the dressing-table. Fen, less discreet, looked on with an air of sentimental indulgence.

  The Master, who had watched the entire proceedings open-mouthed, now spoke.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Very extraordinary and interesting. And how like Edwin to make a fuss and nuisance about even the simple act of dying. I won’t say,’ he added generously, ‘that I’ve quite fathomed it all yet . . .’

  ‘By the way,’ said Fen, ‘where did you and Miss Thorn go when you left Wilkes that evening?’

  ‘Oh we never left him at all,’ said the Master innocently. Then a spasm of annoyance passed over his face. ‘There now – I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Fen asked, suddenly suspicious.

  ‘I promised Wilkes,’ said the Master naïvely. ‘He rang up on the morning after my brother’s death, and particularly asked me to say I had left him shortly before the time of the murder. I admit,’ the Master went on unhappily, ‘that his motives were not clear to me, but he was so insistent that I thought it would be discourteous to refuse. He mentioned, I believe, that it would have the effect of confusing you, though I cannot understand why . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Fen with deep and inexpressible emotion. ‘I see.’

  ‘But before you go, my dear fellow,’ the Master pursued, ‘we must have a word about the New York production of my Oresteia.’

  ‘Surely you realize by now that I’m not the agent of the Metropolitan Opera House?’

  ‘Nor you are.’ The Master’s countenance was sad. ‘Well, never mind. I expect they wanted a younge
r man for the job. Better luck next time.’ He grew more cheerful. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll let you sell me that nice little car of yours.’

  Anyone passing through the bar of the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ before lunch the following morning would have seen three people seated at a corner table. The girl, who was small and brown-haired, held an open note-book and a pencil, and there was an expression of unnatural gravity on her face. The younger of the two men sat gazing at his pint tankard with the greatest amiability. And the third member of the party was tall and lanky, with a ruddy, clean-shaven face and dark hair which stood up in rebellious spikes at the crown of his head. He held a glass of whisky, was frowning with the effort of concentration, and appeared to be making some oracular pronouncement. He said:

  ‘The era of my greatest successes . . .’

  MORE FROM VINTAGE CLASSIC CRIME

  MARGERY ALLINGHAM

  Mystery Mile

  Police at the Funeral

  Sweet Danger

  Flowers for the Judge

  The Case of the Late Pig

  Dancers in Mourning

  The Fashion in Shrouds

  Traitor’s Purse

  Coroner’s Pidgin

  More Work for the Undertaker

  The Tiger in the Smoke

  The Beckoning Lady

  Hide My Eyes

  The China Governess

  The Mind Readers

  Cargo of Eagles

  E.F. BENSON

  The Blotting Book

  The Luck of the Vails

  NICHOLAS BLAKE

  A Question of Proof

  Thou Shell of Death

  There’s Trouble Brewing

  The Beast must Die

  The Smiler with the Knife

  Malice in Wonderland

  The Case of the Abominable Snowman

  Minute for Murder

  Head of a Traveller

  The Dreadful Hollow

  The Whisper in the Gloom

  End of Chapter

  The Widow’s Cruise

  The Worm of Death

  The Sad Variety

  The Morning After Death

  EDMUND CRISPIN

  Buried for Pleasure

  The Case of the Gilded Fly

  Holy Disorders

  Love Lies Bleeding

  The Moving Toyshop

  Swan Song

  A.A. MILNE

  The Red House Mystery

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  The Saltmarsh Murders

  Death and the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men’s Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter’s Finger

  Brazen tongue

  Hangman’s Curfew

  When Last I Died

  Laurels are Poison

  Here Comes a Chopper

  Death and the Maiden

  Tom Brown’s Body

  Groaning Spinney

  The Devil’s Elbow

  The Echoing Strangers

  Watson’s Choice

  The Twenty-Third Man

  Spotted Hemlock

  My Bones Will Keep

  Three Quick and Five Dead

  Dance to your Daddy

  A Hearse on May-Day

  Late, Late in the Evening

  Faults in the Structure

  Nest of Vipers

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  Epub ISBN: 9781407092195

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  Published by Vintage 2009

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  Copyright © 1947 Rights Limited (a Chorion company).

  All rights reserved

  Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in Great Britain in 1947 by Victor Gollancz

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  ISBN 9780099542148