The Case of the Constant Suicides

by John Dickson Carr

  Dr Fell blinked at her.

  “Are you sure you didn’t, ma’am?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’m afraid you did, Kitty-kat,” observed Colin, glaring at the floor. “But it was my fault. I –”

  Dr Fell made a gesture.

  “No matter,” he said. “That was not what I wanted to tell you. Intrigued and inspired by this revival of old Highland customs, I spoke with the driver, Mr Fleming.”

  “Yes?”

  “Now here is what I most seriously want to ask. Did any of you, last night, at any time go up into the tower? Any of you, at any time?”’

  There was a silence. The windows facing the loch were open to a clear, cool, pleasant day. They all looked at each other.

  “No,” returned Kathryn.

  “No,” stated Colin.

  “You’re quite sure of that, now?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Mr Swan,” Dr Fell went on, with a curious insistence which Alan found disturbing, “says that the two men were ‘dressed up’ in some way.”

  “Oh, it’s silly and horrible!” said Kathryn. “And it’s all Alan’s fault. They weren’t exactly ‘dressed up.’ They had checkered tablecloths draped over their shoulders for plaids, that’s all.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  Dr Fell drew in his breath. His expression remained so grave, his color so high, that nobody spoke.

  “I repeat,” Dr Fell continued, “that I questioned the driver. Getting information out of him was rather more difficult than drawing teeth. But on one point he did give some information. He says that this place is not ‘canny’ –”

  Colin interrupted with a fierce grunt of impatience, but Dr Fell silenced him.

  “And now he says he’s in a position to swear to it.”

  “How?”

  “Last night, after they had put up at Inveraray, Swan asked him to drive back here. Swan was going to have another try at getting in to see Miss Elspat Campbell. Now let’s see if I’ve got the geography straight. The road to Inveraray runs along the back of the house, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the front door faces the loch, as we see. Swan asked the driver to walk round and knock at the front door, as a sort of messenger, while Swan remained at the back. The driver did so. It was bright moonlight, remember.”

  “Well?”

  “He was just about to knock at the door, when he happened to look up at the window of the tower room. And he saw somebody or something at that window.”

  “But that’s impossible!” cried Kathryn. “We were –”

  Dr Fell examined his hands, which were folded on the handle of his stick.

  Then Dr Fell looked up.

  “Fleming,” he went on, “swears he saw something in Highland costume, with half its face shot away, looking down at him.”

  10

  It is all very well to be hard headed. Most of us are, even with headaches and shaky nerves. But to find a breath of superstitious terror is far from difficult here.

  “Were you thinking,” asked Kathryn, “of that story of what happened after the massacre of Glencoe? That the ghost of one of the victims pursued a man called Ian Campbell, who –”

  Despairing of words, she made a gesture as of one who jumps.

  Colin’s face was fiery.

  “Ghosts!” he said. “Ghosts! Look here. In the first place, there never was any such tradition as that. It was put into a lying guide-book because it sounded pretty. Professional soldiers in those days weren’t so thin-skinned about executing orders.

  “In the second place, that room’s not haunted. Angus slept there every night for years, and he never saw a bogle. You don’t believe such rubbish, do you, Fell?”

  Dr Fell remained unruffled.

  “I am merely,” he answered mildly, “stating what the driver told me.”

  “Rubbish. Jock was pulling your leg.”

  “And yet, d’ye know” – Dr Fell screwed up his face – “he hardly struck me as a man addicted to that form of gammon. I have usually found that Gaels will joke about anything except ghosts. Besides, I think you miss the real point of the story.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “But when did this happen?” asked Alan.

  “Ah, yes. It was just before the two cut-throats with their lady came out of the back door and set on Swan. Fleming didn’t knock at the front door after all. Hearing the shouts, he went to the back. He started up his car and eventually picked up Swan on the road. But he says he wasn’t feeling too well. He says he stood in the moonlight for several minutes after he’d seen the thing at the window, and didn’t feel too well at all. I can’t say I blame him.”

  Kathryn hesitated. “What did it look like?”

  “Bonnet and plaid and face caved in. That’s all he could tell with any distinctness.”

  “Not a kilt too?”

  “He wouldn’t have been able to see a kilt. He only saw the upper half of the figure. He says it looked decayed, as though the moths had got at it, and it had only one eye.” Again the doctor cleared his throat, rumblingly. “The point, however, is this. Who, besides you three, was in the house last night?”

  “Nobody,” replied Kathryn, “except Aunt Elspat and Kirstie, the maid. And they’d gone to bed.”

  “I tell you it’s rubbish!” snarled Colin.

  “Well, you can speak to Jock himself if you like. He’s out in the kitchen now.”

  Colin rose to find Jock and end this nonsense; but he did not do so. Alistair Duncan, followed by a patient but weary-looking Walter Chapman, was ushered in by the maid Kirstie – a scared-eyed, soft-voiced girl whose self-effacing habits rendered her almost invisible.

  The lawyer made no reference to last night’s rumpus with Colin. He stood very stiffly.

  “Colin Campbell –” he began.

  “Look here,” grumbled Colin, shoving his hands into his pockets, lowering his neck into his collar, and looking like a Newfoundland dog which has been at the larder. “I owe you an apology, dammit. I apologize. I was wrong. There.”

  Duncan expelled his breath.

  “I am glad, sir, that you have the decency to acknowledge it. Only my long friendship with your family enables me to overlook a piece of ill manners so uncalled for and so flagrant.”

  “Hoy! Now wait a bit! Wait a bit! I didn’t say –”

  “So let us think no more about it,” concluded the lawyer, as Colin’s eye began to gleam again. Duncan coughed, indicating that he had left personal matters and now dealt with business.

  “I thought I had better inform you,” he went on, “that they think they may have found Alec Forbes.”

  “Wow! Where?”

  “He’s been reported to have been seen at a crofter’s cottage near Glencoe.”

  Chapman intervened.

  “Can’t we settle it?” the insurance man suggested. “Glencoe’s no great distance from here, as I understand it. You could drive there and back easily in an afternoon. Why not hop in my car and run up and see him?”

  The lawyer’s manner had a sort of corpse-like benevolence.

  “Patience, my dear fellow. Patience, patience, patience! First let the police find out if it is Alec. He has been reported before, you remember. Once in Edinburgh and once in Ayr.”

  “Alec Forbes,” struck in Dr Fell, “being the sinister figure who called on Mr Campbell the night the latter died?”

  They all swung round. Colin hastily performed an introduction.

  “I have heard of you, Doctor,” said Duncan, scrutinizing Dr Fell through his pince-nez. “In fact, I – ah – confess I came here partly in the hope of seeing you. We have here, of course,” he smiled, “a clear case of murder. But we are still rather confused about it. Can you unriddle it for us?”

  For a moment Dr Fell did not reply.

  He frowned at the floor, drawing a design on the carpet with the end of his stick.

  “H’mf,
” he said, and gave the ferrule of the stick a rap on the floor. “I sincerely trust it is murder. If it is not, I have no interest in it. But – Alec Forbes! Alec Forbes! Alec Forbes!”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, who is Alec Forbes? What is he? I could bear to know much more of him. For instance: what was the cause of his quarrel with Mr Campbell?”

  “Ice-cream,” replied Colin.

  “What?”

  “Ice-cream. They were going to make it by a new process, in great quantity. And it was to be colored in different tartan patterns. No, I’m perfectly serious! That’s the sort of idea Angus was always getting. They built a laboratory, and used artificial ice – that chemical stuff that’s so expensive – and ran up bills and raised merry blazes. Another of Angus’s ideas was a new kind of tractor that would both sow and reap. And he also financed those people who were going to find Drake’s gold and make all the subscribers millionaires.”

  “What sort of person is Forbes? Laboring man? Something of that sort?”

  “Oh, no. Bloke of some education. But scatty in the money line, like Angus. Lean, dark-faced chap. Moody. Fond of the bottle. Great cyclist.”

  “H’mf. I see.” Dr Fell pointed with his stick. “That’s Angus Campbell’s photograph on the mantelpiece there, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr Fell got up from the sofa and lumbered across. He carried the crepe-draped picture to the light, adjusted his eyeglasses, and puffed gently as he studied it.

  “Not the face, you know,” he said, “of a man who commits suicide.”

  “Definitely not,” smiled the lawyer.

  “But we can’t –” Chapman began.

  “Which Campbell are you, sir?” Dr Fell asked politely.

  Chapman threw up his arms in despair.

  “I’m not a Campbell at all. I represent the Hercules Insurance Company and I’ve got to get back to my office in Glasgow or business will go to blazes. See here, Dr Fell. I’ve heard of you too. They say you’re fair-minded. And I put it to you: how can we go by what a person ‘would’ or ‘wouldn’t’ have done, when the evidence shows he did do it?”

  “All evidence,” said Dr Fell, “points two ways. Like the ends of a stick. That is the trouble with it.”

  Absentmindedly he stumped back to the mantelpiece, and put the photograph down. He seemed very much disturbed. While his eyeglasses came askew on his nose, he made what was (for him) the great exertion of feeling through all his pockets. He produced a sheet of paper scrawled with notes.

  “From the admirably clear letter written by Colin Campbell,” he went on, “and from facts he has given me this morning, I have been trying to construct a précis of what we know, or think we know.”

  “Well?” prompted the lawyer.

  “With your permission” – Dr Fell scowled hideously – “I should like to read out these points. One or two things may appear a little clearer, or at least more suggestive, if they are heard in skeleton form. Correct me if I am wrong in any of them.

  “1. Angus Campbell always went to bed at ten o’clock.

  “2. It was his habit to lock and bolt the door on the inside.

  “3. It was his habit to sleep with the window shut.

  “4. It was his habit to write up his diary each night before going to bed.”

  Dr Fell blinked up.

  “No misstatement there, I trust?”

  “No,” admitted Colin.

  “Then we pass on to the simple circumstances surrounding the crime.

  “5. Alec Forbes called on A. Campbell at nine-thirty on the night of the crime.

  “6. He forced his way into the house, and went up to Angus’s bedroom.

  “7. Neither of the two women saw him at this time.”

  Dr Fell rubbed his nose.

  “Query,” he added, “how did Forbes get in, then? Presumably he didn’t just break down the front door?”

  “If you’d like to step out of that door there,” responded Colin, pointing, “you can see. It leads to the ground floor of the tower. In the ground-floor room there are wooden double-doors leading out to the court. They’re supposed to be padlocked, but half the time they’re not. That’s how Forbes came – without disturbing anybody else.”

  Dr Fell made a note.

  “That seems to be clear enough. Very well. We now take arms against a sea of troubles.

  “8. At this time Forbes was carrying an object like a ‘suitcase.’

  “9. He had a row with Angus, who evicted him.

  “10. Forbes was empty-handed when he left.

  “11. Elspat Campbell and Kirstie MacTavish arrived in time to see the eviction.

  “12. They were afraid Forbes might have come back. This becomes more understandable when we learn of the isolated tower with its outside entrance and its five empty floors.

  “13. They searched the empty room, and also Angus’s room.

  “14. There was nothing under the bed in Angus’s bedroom at this time.

  “Still correct?” inquired Dr Fell, raising his head.

  “No, it isna,” announced a high, sharp, positive voice which made them all jump.

  Nobody had seen Aunt Elspat come in. She stood sternly on her dignity, her hands folded.

  Dr Fell blinked at her. “What isn’t true, ma’am?”

  “It isna true tae say the box tae carry the dog wasna under the bed when Kirstie and I luked. It was.”

  Her six auditors regarded her with consternation. Most of them began to speak at once, frantic babble which was only stilled by Duncan’s stern assertion of legal authority.

  “Elspat Campbell, listen to me. You said there was nothing there.”

  “I said there was nae suitcase there. I didna say aboot the ither thing.”

  “Are you telling us that the dog carrier was under the bed before Angus locked and bolted his door?”

  “Aye.”

  “Elspat,” said Colin, with a sudden gleam of certainty in his eye, “you’re lying. God’s wounds, you’re lying! You said there was nothing under that bed. I heard you myself.”

  “I’m tellin’ ye the gospel truth, and Kirstie will tu.” She favored them all with an equally malignant look. “Dinner’s on its way, and I’m no’ settin’ places for the parcel o’ ye.”

  Inflexible, making this very clear, she walked out of the room and closed the door.

  The question is, thought Alan, does this alter matters or doesn’t it? He shared Colin Campbell’s evident conviction that Elspat was lying. But she had one of those faces so used to household deceit, so experienced in lying for what she believed a good purpose, that it was difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood in anything.

  This time it was Dr Fell who stilled the babble of argument.

  “We will query the point,” he said, “and continue. The next points define our problem squarely and simply.

  “15. Angus locked and bolted his door on the inside.

  “16. His dead body was found by the milkman at six o’clock on the following morning, at the foot of the tower.

  “17. He had died of multiple injuries caused by the fall.

  “18. Death took place between ten p.m. and one a.m.

  “19. He had not been drugged or overcome in any way.

  “20. The door was still locked and bolted on the inside. Since the bolt was rusty, difficult to draw and firmly shot in its socket, this rules out any possibility of tampering with it.”

  In Alan’s mind rose the image of the shattered door as he had seen it last night.

  He remembered the rustiness of the bolt, and the stubborn lock torn from its frame. Jiggery-pokery with string or any similar device must clearly be put aside. The image faded as Dr Fell continued.

  “21. The window was inaccessible. We have this from a steeplejack.

  “22. There was no person hiding in the room.

  “23. The bed had been occupied.”

  Dr Fell puffed out his cheeks, frowned, and tapped
a pencil on the notes.

  “Which,” he said, “brings us to a point where I must interpose another query. Your letter didn’t say. When his body was found in the morning, was he wearing slippers or a dressing gown?”

  “No,” said Colin. “Just his wool nightshirt.”

  Dr Fell made another note.

  “24. His diary was missing. This, however, might have been taken at some subsequent time.

  “25. Angus’s fingerprints, and only his, were found on the catch of the window.

  “26. Under the bed was a case of the sort used to carry dogs. It did not belong in the house; had presumably been brought by Forbes; but was in any case not there the night before.

  “27. This box was empty.

  “We are therefore forced to the conclusion –”

  Dr Fell paused.

  “Go on!” Alistair Duncan prompted in a sharp voice. “To what conclusion?”

  Dr Fell sniffed.

  “Gentlemen, we can’t escape it. It’s inevitable. We are forced to the conclusion that either (a) Angus Campbell deliberately committed suicide, or (b) there was in that box something which made him run for his life to escape it, and crash through the window to his death in doing so.”

  Kathryn shivered a little. But Chapman was not impressed.

  “I know,” he said. “Snakes, spiders. Fu Manchu. We were all over that last night. And it gets us nowhere.”

  “Can you dispute my facts?” inquired Dr Fell, taping the notes.

  “No. But can you dispute mine? Snakes! Spiders –”

  “And now,” grinned Colin, “ghosts.”

  “Eh?”

  “A rattlebrain by the name of Jock Fleming,” explained Colin, “claims to have seen somebody in Highland dress, with no face, gibbering at the window last night.”

  Chapman’s face lost some of its color.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “But I could almost as soon believe in a ghost as in a dexterous spider or snake that could close up the clasps of a suitcase afterwards. I’m English. I’m practical. But this is a funny country and a funny house; and I tell you I shouldn’t care to spend a night up in that room.”

  Colin got up from his chair and did a little dance round the room.