The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  Through the arched frame of bars like a portcullis, he saw that the tall iron gates stood wide open. Beyond lay thick white.mist, drifting and with rifts in it; the mist would presently vanish before heat and sun, but meantime it muffled the world in eeriness.

  As he passed the opening in the portcullis, switching off the lamp and putting it in his pocket, Martin laughed aloud at this so-called eeriness." He could have danced or hit the air a right-hander. Then, just outside the prison gates as a rift in the mist floated past, he saw Jenny herself. She was obviously waiting.

  For a moment he stood still, with a notion that this might be part of the fantasy.

  By coincidence, Jenny also wore slacks and a sweater coloured brown, with a light coat thrown over her shoulders. As soon as he saw her, other considerations of feminine appeal were forgotten. Her yellow hair curled to her shoulders. She was smoking a cigarette, which she instantly threw away. They ran towards each other.

  "How the devil did you get back here?"

  ‘I was never away," Jenny confessed. "I thought I could take that train. But I couldn't face it I told the taxi-driver to come back. Because—" She stopped. "So you'd have paid five hundred pounds just to learn where I'd gone?"

  "If that butler has blabbed, the old lady will sack him."

  "Dawson," said Jenny, "isn't a butler. I suppose he is, in a way, and Grandmother insists on calling him that He's butler and handyman too; we don't employ much of a staff of servants. Anyway, I caught him when he was going to take your money. I was afraid you could hear me whispering in the background."

  Realization bumped him. "Come to think of it I heard something."

  "Of course I rang up Mr. Anthony after you did, and said it was all a joke and he wasn't to send any cheque. Dawson nearly wept Then I made him ring you and give the address, or you might have come to the Manor. But—"

  Here, raising her blue eyes, Jenny began such a bitter denunciation of her own character, such a writhing of self-loathing, that it would have been considered strong even by her worst enemy.

  "Martin, I knew you had to go through with that "bet' I wouldn't have you back out That's what makes me so vile. There's one excuse," her eyes looked at him oddly, "that perhaps helps, and I've got to tell you soon. But Ruth had got me absolutely furious. Then, when I saw you running across the road after her…"

  He ended her rush of speech in the appropriate way, which was an effective way. At the back of his mind it occurred to him that he wouldn't just yet tell Jenny about that small brush with Ruth last night Presently, of course! But not just yet

  Presently Jenny spoke.

  "So I had to sneak out this morning and meet you. Otherwise," she said happily, "you'd have been ripping away or chartering a special plane or heaven knows what Where do you want to go now?"

  "Anywhere you like. We might go and throw a bucket of water over your grandmother?"

  "Martin! You mustn't…"

  Jenny stopped. Suddenly she began to laugh, with such full infectiousness and delight that Martin joined in without knowing why..It warmed his heart to see this girl growing healthier and more exuberant at every minute, as though she had been let out of prison.

  "If you think the idea is as funny as all that Jenny, it would be still better to use a fire-hose."

  "Wait!" cried Jenny, shaking all over and wiping the tears of joy from her eyes. "Do you mean to say you haven't heard about the perfectly awful thing that happened last night? In the public road between the Dragon's Rest and the Manor?"

  "No."

  "Well, Grandmother and Sir Henry Merrivale…" "Godalive, don't tell me those two had another knock-down row?" "Yes."

  "He threw a bucket of water over her, I suppose?"

  "No, no, it wasn't anything like that." Jenny, the wings of her yellow hair falling forward, pressed a hand over her mouth and began to shake again. He straightened up her shoulders. "Darling," she assured him, "I shall be a perfect model of prim correctness. I've been trained to that You're at the Dragon, aren't you?"

  "No; at Fleet House."

  "If you don't mind wading in wet grass, there's a wonderful short-cut over the fields."

  "We will roll and revel in the wet grass. Lead on."

  About them the white mist so muffled sight that even the prison was hardly visible twenty feet away. Sometimes the mist would drift past Jenny, obscuring her until the smiling face emerged. Their footsteps crunched in weedy gravel; once, on the edge of the gravel approach, Jenny hesitated.

  "Good heavens, what about Mr. Stannard? What about everything?"

  "Stannard," he replied, "is A-l. He'll be out in a minute, so let's go ahead. I saw no ghosts. In fact," concluded Martin, telling one of the more remarkable lies of his life, "there was practically no excitement. Let's hear about this row."

  The wet grass swished and soaked to their knees as they went down across an almost invisible field in the mist The shape of a tree swam dimly past, to be blotted out as though by magic. They walked happily, arm and hand linked; but Jenny was now frowning.

  "You see," she explained, "Grandmother's now got the skeleton."

  "She's got… you mean the skeleton-clock?"

  "Not the clock. Just the skeleton. Heaven alone knows why she wants it" Jenny bit her lip, "or why anybody wants it. It all started very seriously. Grandmother had gone to visit Aunt Cicely, and got back home about a quarter to eight"

  "Yes. I remember."

  "I was a bit uneasy when she got home. I shouldn't have been, and I won't be again. But I wondered what she'd say when she found I hadn't gone to visit Mr. and Mrs. Ives after all. She just looked at me in the oddest way—" Jenny hesitated—"as though it didn't matter. She said: 'Jennifer dear, I must think hard for five minutes.'

  "Whenever she says that I know it means she's thinking about legal proceedings. Grandmother's got a passion for law suits. She's always trying to prove something from old documents of 1662, or things like that. I imagined she was thinking about the fair (you'll hear about it) that opens on Monday.

  "Anyway, she came back in fifteen minutes looking grim and sort of triumphant. She made me sit down in a chair. She said: 'Jennifer, mark my words! The unspeakable Merrivale!’

  (Martin could hear Lady Brayle saying it.) '—the unspeakable Merrivale,' Grandmother said, "in the presence of no less than four witnesses, distinctly promised to give me the clock if I answered "a few" questions. These questions I did answer, as the witnesses can testify.'"

  To Martin's memory returned a view of the library at Fleet House, with H.M. and Lady Brayle standing on either side of the desk like offenders in a magistrate's court He saw Ruth Stannard, Ricky and himself with their backs to the white marble mantelpiece.

  "Jenny,’' he said, "that's true. He did say so!"

  "Anyway, I'm afraid I couldn't follow the legal lecture she gave me. Something about possession of the clock including possession of its contents: as, par example, and to wit, when it is sold at Willaby's with a skeleton inside. Then she called for Dawson to get out the electric car. Do you know what an electric car is?"

  Martin reflected.

  "I dimly remember having seen, or at least heard of one. It looked like a two-seater carriage with a dashboard, but no horses; nothing in front except the dashboard and a glass windscreen. You steered with a handle instead of a steering-wheel Yes! And it was used by stately ladies who didn't want to travel fast"

  Jenny nodded.

  "That's it exactly. Grandmother has one, and it still works. But it's never used except on very special occasions. I asked Grandmother what it meant, but she only smiled that peculiar smile and said I should understand in good time. What's more, she told Dawson she would drive herself, because she wanted me as a witness.

  "It was broad daylight, not more than half-past eight. Along we went in the electric—'brougham’ Grandmother calls it— with Grandmother sitting bolt upright and never looking more grand, and me sitting bolt upright, eyes ahead, and feeling awful. We got as far
as Fleet House, and then turned round in a graceful curve to the main bar of the Dragon's Rest."

  Martin Drake was beginning to taste ecstasy.

  "Is that the one she usually patronizes?"

  "Martin!" said Jenny. Her eyes belied her seraphic countenance.

  "I beg your pardon. Go on."

  "Of course Grandmother wouldn't let me go in. She stationed me just outside the door. It was Saturday night, and they were pretty noisy. They're not supposed to sing, but the constable doesn't interfere much. A group in one corner were harmonizing on a pirate chantey with a refrain like, 'Skull and bones, skull and bones; ho, the Jolly Roger.' "When Grandmother walked in, every man of them looked up as though he'd seen the hangman. But Grandmother loves—" Jenny's voice poured with bitterness—"how Grandmother loves being the lady of the manor. She raised her hand and said, ‘Please, my good men, be at ease.' Then she beckoned to poor Mr. Puckston.

  "I couldn't hear much of what they were saying. Mr. Puckston seemed to be telling her the first bar-parlour was used as a private sitting-room by Sir Henry Merrivale, and H.M. was out, and the door was locked. Of course you can guess how Grandmother dealt with that Mr. Puckston unlocked the door, Grandmother went in; and in a minute Mr. Puckston followed her with a pair of wire-cutters.

  "Then the door opened again. Out marched Grandmother, with the skeleton slung over her shoulder. The head was hanging down her back, and she had the legs in her hand.

  "One poor old man, who must have been eighty, spilled a pint beer-glass straight into Miss Partridge's lap. Grandmother never stopped or looked round. She marched straight out to the brougham, sat the skeleton up in the seat like a passenger, and told me to get in.

  "That's where the fireworks really started. As I was getting in, I looked round. In the middle of the road, about thirty feet behind us — well, there was Sir Henry.

  "His eyes were bulging out behind his spectacles, and his whole corporation was shivering like a mountain. I can't reproduce the tone, and, anyway, nobody could reproduce the volume, of what he said.

  "He said: 'You stole my skeleton.' Then he turned round to the people in the door, who'd crowded out with their glasses in their hands, and said: 'Boys, that goddam hobgoblin stole my skeleton.' By this time we were off to a flying start

  "There wasn't any motor-car outside the Dragon at all. Only a lot of bicycles, and a farm-cart with Will Harnaby's horse. H.M. was so mad he really and literally couldn't see straight and he fell all over the farm-cart when he tried to get up. But he did get there, and he did grab the reins and whip, and off we all went

  "Grandmother was bending tensely over the steering-lever, putting on every ounce of speed; and Sir Henry was standing up and whirling the whip round his head like a charioteer in Ben-Hur. Only, you see, that electric car couldn't possibly do twenty miles an hour. And Will Harnaby's horse couldn't do fifteen.

  That's where—" Jenny faltered a little—"Grandmother gave me the instructions. She said, with that smile of hers, I was to stick the skeleton's head out of the side-window so it faced H.M. And I was to move the lower jaw up and down as if the skeleton gibbered at him.

  "Well, I did. I made the skeleton stick its head out and gibber about every twenty yards. And, every time the skeleton gibbered at him, his face got more purple, and his language was awful. Truly awful. I never heard anything, even in the Navy, that could…"

  Jenny stopped. "Martin!" she said, in an attempt at reproachfulness which broke down completely.

  He couldn't help it. He knew it wasn't really funny; it was funny only because you could visualize the expressions of the persons concerned. He had collapsed against a tree, beating his hands on the bark. Jenny collapsed as well.

  "But, Martin!" she insisted presently. "You've got to see the serious side as well!"

  "If you can see the serious side of that, my sweet, you'd appeal greatly to Sir Stafford Cripps. Besides, you haven't told me the ending."

  The ending is the serious side."

  "Oh? Who won the race?'

  "We did. By yards and yards and yards." Jenny reflected. "I'm perfectly certain Grandmother told Dawson to be ready. He was there at the lodge gates, where there's no lodge-keeper now. But the wall is fifteen feet high, and there are big iron-barred gates."

  Prisons, it suddenly occurred to Martin: striking the amusement from his heart. Pentecost, Fleet House, Brayle Manor, all were prisons; though for the life of him he could not think how this applied to Fleet House, where the impression had-come only, from feeling.

  He and Jenny were walking again through the mist A white tide of mist-under-mist washed across the grass, then revealed it ever moving. Its damp could be felt and breathed.

  "Go on," he prompted. "What happened after your electric flyer got through the gates?"

  "Dawson closed and locked them. Grandmother drove the car a fairly long way up the drive. After that she walked to the gates again. By that time she and H.M. too must have done a little thinking, because.. well, because it was different H.M. was sitting outside the gates on the seat of the farm-cart, with the whip across his knees and no expression on his face at all.

  "Grandmother put her own face almost against the bars, and (don't think I've forgotten a word!) she said: 'It may be conceded that you won the first round, Henry; but can there be any doubt about who won the second?'" Martin whistled.

  "Jenny," he declared, "something tells me there is going to be a third round. And that the third round will be a beauty."

  "But that's just what mustn't happen!" Jenny, peering at him past the side of her yellow hair, was again the eager and the breathless. "Oh, I suppose it doesn't matter if it's something silly, like making skeletons gibber. Though even there I doubt whether your H.M. is as clever as Grandmother."

  "You think that, eh?"

  "Yes. I do."

  "Wait," advised Martin.

  "But the skeleton-in-the-clock," Jenny told him, her thin and arched eyebrows drawn together, "is a different thing. It's serious, and — it may be deadly. Do you realize, from what H.M. said at Willaby's and from every bit of gossip floating about, that H.M. thinks this skeleton is a vital piece of evidence?"

  "But evidence of what?"

  "I wish I knew. And he told us straight out what he thought about Sir George Fleet's… death."

  "You're sure it was murder too. Aren't you, Jenny?"

  She stopped short and turned round, her lips apart "Martin! What makes you ask that?"

  "Because every single time you've mentioned it you hesitate before you say 'death.' Besides, for some reason yesterday you started to be passionately interested all of a sudden, and wanted to learn all about it Why, Jenny?"

  Instead of lessening as they walked, the mist was becoming thicker. Already, some distance back, a hedgerow had loomed unexpectedly in their faces; they groped for the stile. Now a fence emerged with almost equal materialization from the white twilight They reached the fence, and Jenny put a hand on it

  "Martin. Did you ever wonder why I didn't offer to go with you on the ghost-hunting expedition?"

  Martin felt uncomfortable. "Well! I thought you were…"

  "Jealous? Yes, that was true. Afraid of ghosts? Also true, a little." Her lips and eyebrows apologized gently. "But I told you there was another reason. Martin, I want you to know everything about me. I do, I do! But I can't tell you now because if I'm wrong it's not merely being mistaken; it's — if s sordidly stupid."

  "Jenny, I don't care. I'm not a detective."

  She shook her hair violently, and settled the coat over her brown sweater as though more conscious of mist-clamminess.

  It all comes back to that utterly meaningless skeleton," she said. "And now Grandmother's got it locked up somewhere."

  "For innocent reasons, of course.’' He tried hard to make this a plain statement, without any inflection of question.

  'Naturally. You see, under everything, Grandmother is just a sentimentalist"

  Martin found his reason rocki
ng. "Your grandmother," he said, defining the words with care, "you call a sentimentalist?"

  "Oh, she isn't easy to live with. I hate her sometimes. But she is kind-hearted, and you'd see it if it weren't for the arrogance. Grandmother is shielding somebody." Jenny hesitated. "She says the skeleton is legally her property. She also says nobody, not even the police, can take it from her unless they can show why it's a vital piece of evidence. Is that right?"

  "You'd better ask Stannard. But it sounds reasonable to me."

  "Then that means," cried Jenny, her eyes shining under lowered lids, "the police don't know themselves. It means.."

  Here Jenny, whose gaze had wandered along the line of the fence, uttered a cry and ran to Martin. Some little distance down beside the fence, a man was standing motionless.

  A drifting mist-veil hid everything except his legs, as he stood sideways to the fence. Then the moving veil slowly swirled past and up. Martin saw clearly a large and somewhat burly figure, with its blue serge suit and its ruddy face dominated by a boiled blue eye, under a bowler hat

  "Chief Inspector Masters!" Martin said.

  Masters lifted one foot experimentally, and set it down with a faint squelch. If he did not happen to be in a good temper, the Chief Inspector never showed this in his professional countenance.

  "Morning, miss. Morning, sir," he greeted them, as offhandedly as though he were in a London office instead of a mist-wrapped Berkshire field at half-past four on Sunday morning. Bland as ever, poker-faced as ever in public, he walked towards them and looked hard at Martin.

  "Still alive, I see," he added.

  Chapter 12

  We talk with scorn of prophetic instincts. Martin felt one then, as sharp as the twinge from a bad heart; but, like the mist-movings, it drifted away and was lost in an instant.

  "Still alive?" he repeated, and laughed. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't be alive?"

  "We-el!" smiled Masters, with a tolerant and amused wave of his hand. "As you described it to Sir Henry and me, this execution shed business was to be a swell affair. But you don't seem to be hanged by the neck or snuffed out by any ghost, do you?"