“So I’ve heard.”
“But I can’t,” pursued Dr Fell, pushing back his shovel hat, “I can’t tell you any way of hocusing a bolt when there’s no keyhole and when the door is so close-fitting that its sill scrapes the floor. Like that one.”
He pointed.
“And I can’t tell you any way of hocusing a window when it is covered with a steel mesh-work nailed up on the inside. Again, like that one there. If Alec Forbes – hullo!”
The bookstand was placed cater-cornered in the angle beside the fireplace. Dr Fell discovered it as he went to inspect the fireplace, finding to his disgust that the flue was too narrow and soot-choked to admit any person. Dusting his fingers, he turned to the bookstand.
On the top row of books stood a portable typewriter, its cover missing and a sheet of paper projecting from the carriage. On it a few words were typed in pale blue ink.
To any jackal who finds this:
I killed Angus and Colin Campbell with the same thing they used to swindle me. What are you going to do about it now?
“Even, you see,” Dr Fell said fiercely, “the suicide note. The final touch. The brush-stroke of the master. I repeat, sir: this must be suicide. And yet – well, if it is, I mean to retire to Bedlam.”
The smell of the room, the black-faced occupant, the yearning dog, all these things were commencing to turn Alan Campbell’s stomach. He felt he could not stand the air of the place much longer. Yet he fought back.
“I don’t see why you say that,” he declared. “After all, Doctor, can’t you admit you may be wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“About Angus’s death being suicide.” Certainty, dead certainty, took root in Alan Campbell’s brain. “Forbes did kill Angus and tried to kill Colin. Everything goes to show it. Nobody could have got in or out of this room, as you yourself admit; and there’s Forbes’s confession to clinch matters.
“He brooded out here until his brain cracked, as I know mine would in these parts unless I took to religion. He disposed of both brothers, or thought he had. When his work was finished, he killed himself. Here’s the evidence. What more do you want?”
“The truth,” insisted Dr Fell stubbornly. “I am old-fashioned. I want the truth.”
Alan hesitated.
“I’m old-fashioned too. And I seem to remember,” Alan told him, “that you came north with the express purpose of helping Colin. Is it going to help Colin, or Aunt Elspat either, if the detective they brought in to show Angus was murdered goes about showing that it was suicide – even after we’ve got Alec Forbes’s confession?”
Dr Fell blinked at him.
“My dear sir,” he said in pained astonishment, and adjusted his eyeglasses and blinked at Alan through them, “you surely don’t imagine that I mean to confide any of my beliefs to the police?”
“Isn’t that the idea?”
Dr Fell peered about to make sure they were not overheard.
“My record,” he confided, “is an extremely black one. Harrumph. I have on several occasions flummoxed the evidence so that a murderer should go free. Not many years ago I outdid myself by setting a house on fire. My present purpose (between ourselves) is to swindle the insurance companies so that Colin Campbell can bask in good cigars and fire-water for the rest of his life . . .”
“What?”
Dr Fell regarded him anxiously.
“That shocks you? Tut, tut! All this (I say) I mean to do. But, dammit, man!” He spread out his hands. “For my own private information, I like to know the truth.”
He turned back to the bookstand. Still without touching it, he examined the typewriter. On top of the row of books below it stood an angler’s creel and some salmon flies. On top of the third row of books lay a bicycle spanner, a bicycle lamp, and a screwdriver.
Dr Fell next ran a professional eye over the books. There were works on physics and chemistry, on Diesel engines, on practical building, and on astronomy. There were catalogs and trade journals. There was a dictionary, a six-volume encyclopedia, and (surprisingly) two or three boys’ books by G.A. Henty. Dr Fell eyed these last with some interest.
“Wow!” he said. “Does anybody read Henty nowadays, I wonder? If they knew what they were missing, they would run back to him. I am proud to say that I still read him with delight. Who would suspect Alec Forbes of having a romantic soul?” He scratched his nose. “Still –”
“Look here,” Alan persisted. “What makes you so sure this isn’t suicide?”
“My theory. My mule-headedness, if you prefer it.”
“And your theory still holds that Angus committed suicide?”
“Yes.”
“But that Forbes here was murdered?”
“Exactly.”
Dr Fell wandered back to the center of the room. He eyed the untidy camp-bed with the suitcase on it. He eyed a pair of gumboots under the bed.
“My lad, I don’t trust that suicide note. I don’t trust it one little bit. And there are solid reasons why I don’t trust it. Come out here. Let’s get some clean air.”
Alan was glad enough to go. The dog raised its head from its paws, and gave them a wild, dazed sort of look; then it lowered its head again, growling, and settled down with ineffable patience under the dead.
Distantly, they could hear the rushing of the waterfall. Alan breathed the cool, damp air, and felt a shudder go over him. Dr Fell, a huge bandit shape in his cloak, leaned his hands on his stick.
“Whoever wrote that note,” he went on, “whether Alec Forbes or another, knew the trick that had been employed in Angus Campbell’s death. That’s the first fact to freeze to. Well! Have you guessed yet what the trick was?”
“No, I have not.”
“Not even after seeing the alleged suicide note? Oh, man! Think!”
“You can ask me to think all you like. I may be dense; but if you can credit it, I still don’t know what makes people jump up out of bed in the middle of the night and fall out of windows to their death.”
“Let us begin,” pursued Dr Fell, “with the fact that Angus’s diary records his activities for the past year, as diaries sometimes do. Well, what in Satan’s name have been Angus’s principal activities for the past year?”
“Mixing himself up in various wildcat schemes to try to make money.”
“True. But only one scheme in which Alec Forbes was concerned, I think?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What was that scheme?”
“An idea to manufacture some kind of ice cream with tartan patterns on it. At least, so Colin said.”
“And in making their ice cream,” said Dr Fell, “what kind of freezing agent did they employ in large quantities? Colin told us that too.”
“He said they used artificial ice, which he described as ‘that chemical stuff that’s so expen –’”
Alan paused abruptly.
Half-forgotten memories flowed back into his mind. With a shock he recalled a laboratory of his school days, and words being spoken from a platform. The faint echo of them came back now.
“And do you know,” inquired Dr Fell, “what this artificial ice, or ‘dry’ ice, really is?”
“It’s whitish stuff to look at; something like real ice, only opaque. It –”
“To be exact,” said Dr Fell, “it is nothing more or less than liquefied gas. And do you know the name of the gas which is turned into a solid ‘snow’ block, and can be cut and handled and moved about? What is the name of that gas?”
“Carbon dioxide,” said Alan.
Though the spell remained on his wits, it was suddenly as though a blind had flown up with a snap, and he saw.
“Now suppose,” argued Dr Fell, “you removed a block of that stuff from its own airtight cylinders. A big block, say one big enough to fit into a large suitcase – or, better still, some box with an open end, so that the air can reach it better. What would happen?”
“It would slowly melt.”
“And in melting, of course,
it would release into the room . . . what would it release?”
Alan found himself almost shouting.
“Carbonic acid gas. One of the deadliest and quickest-acting gases there is.”
“Suppose you placed your artificial ice, in its container, under the bed in a room where the window is always kept closed at night. What would happen?
“With your permission, I will now drop the Socratic method and tell you. You have planted one of the surest murder traps ever devised. One of two things will happen. Either the victim, asleep or drowsy, will breathe in that concentrated gas as it is released into the room; and he will die in his bed.
“Or else the victim will notice the faint, acrid odor as it gets into his lungs. He will not breathe it long, mind you. Once the stuff takes hold, it will make the strongest man totter and fall like a fly. He will want air – air at any cost. As he is overcome, he will get out of bed and try to make for the window.
“He may not make it at all. If he does make it, he will be so weak on the legs that he can’t hold up. And if this window is a low window, catching him just above the knees; if it consists of two leaves, opening outwards, so that he falls against it –”
Dr Fell pushed his hands outwards, a rapid gesture.
Alan could almost see the limp, unwieldy body in the nightshirt plunge outwards and downwards.
“Of course, the artificial ice will melt away and leave no trace in the box. With the window now open, the gas will presently clear away.
“You now perceive, I hope, why Angus’s suicide scheme was so foolproof. Who but Alec Forbes would have used artificial ice to kill his partner in the venture?
“Angus, as I read it, never once intended to jump or fall from the window. No, no, no! He intended to be found dead in bed, of poisoning by carbonic acid gas. There would be a postmortem. The ‘hand’ of this gas would be found in his blood as plain as print. The diary would be read and interpreted. All the circumstances against Alec Forbes would be recalled, as I outlined them to you awhile ago. And the insurance money would be collected as certainly as the sun will rise tomorrow.”
Alan, staring at the stream, nodded.
“But at the last moment, I suppose –?”
“At the last moment,” agreed Dr Fell, “like many suicides, Angus couldn’t face it. He had to have air. He felt himself going under. And in a panic he leaped for the window.
“Therein, my boy, lies the million-to-one chance I spoke of. It was a million to one that either (a) the gas would kill him, or (b) the fall would kill him instantly as he plunged out face forwards. But neither of these things happened. He was mortally injured; yet he did not immediately die. Remember?”
Again Alan nodded.
“Yes. We’ve come across that point several times.”
“Before he died, his lungs and blood were freed of the gas. Hence no trace remained for the post-mortem. Had he died instantly or even quickly, those traces would have been there. But they were not. So we had only the meaningless spectacle of an old gentleman who leaps from his bed in order to throw himself out of the window.”
Dr Fell’s big voice grew fiery. He struck the ferrule of his stick on the ground.
“I say to you –” he began.
“Stop a bit!” said Alan, with sudden recollection.
“Yes?”
“Last night, when I went up to the tower room to rout out Colin, I bent down and tried to look under the still of the door. When I straightened up, I remember feeling lightheaded. In fact, I staggered when I went down the stairs. Did I get a whiff of the stuff?”
“Of course. The room was full of it. Only a very faint whiff, fortunately for yourself.
“Which brings us to the final point. Angus carefully wrote in his diary that there was a ‘faint musty smell in the room.’ Now, that’s rubbish on the face of it. If he had already begun to notice the presence of the gas, he could never have completed his diary and gone to bed. No: that was only another artistic touch designed to hang Alec Forbes.”
“And misinterpreted by me,” growled Alan. “I was thinking about some kind of animal.”
“But you see where all this leads us?”
“No, I don’t. Into the soup, of course; but aside from that –”
“The only possible explanation of the foregoing facts,” insisted Dr Fell, “is that Angus killed himself. If Angus killed himself, then Alec Forbes didn’t kill him. And if Alec Forbes didn’t kill him, Alec had no reason to say he did. Therefore the suicide note is a fake.
“Up to this time, d’ye see, we have had a suicide which everybody thought was murder. Now we have a murder which everybody is going to take for suicide. We are going places and seeing things. All roads lead to the lunatic asylum. Can you by any chance oblige me with an idea?”
16
Alan shook his head.
“No ideas. I presume that the ‘extra’ thing which ailed Colin, and exercised Dr Grant so much, was carbon-dioxide poisoning?”
Dr Fell grunted assent. Fishing out the meerschaum pipe again, he filled and lighted it.
“Which,” he assented, speaking between puffs like the Spirit of the Volcano, “leads us at full tide into our troubles. We can’t blame Angus for that. The death box didn’t load itself again with artificial ice.
“Somebody – who knew Colin was going to sleep there – set the trap again in a box already conveniently left under the bed. Somebody, who knew Colin’s every movement, could nip up there ahead of him. He was drunk and wouldn’t bother to investigate the box. All that saved his life was the fact that he slept with the window open, and roused himself in time. Query: who did that, and why?
“Final query: who killed Alec Forbes, and how, and why?”
Alan continued to shake his head doubtfully.
“You’re still not convinced that Forbes’s death was murder, my lad?”
“Frankly, I’m not. I still don’t see why Forbes couldn’t have killed both the others, or thought he had, and then killed himself.”
“Logic? Or wishful thinking?”
Alan was honest. “A little of both, maybe. Aside from the money question, I should hate to think that Angus was such an old swine as to try to get an innocent man hanged.”
“Angus,” returned Dr Fell, “was neither an old swine nor an honest Christian gentleman. He was a realist who saw only one way to provide for those he was fond of. I do not defend it. But can you dare say you don’t understand it?”
“It isn’t that. I can’t understand, either, why he took the blackout down from the window if he wanted to be sure of smothering himself with the . . .”
Alan paused, for the sudden expression which had come over Dr Fell’s face was remarkable for its sheer idiocy. Dr Fell stared, and his eyes rolled. The pipe almost dropped from his mouth.
“O Lord! O Bacchus! O my ancient hat!” he breathed. “Blackout!”
“What is it?”
“The murderer’s first mistake,” said Dr Fell. “Come with me.”
Hurriedly he swung round and blundered back into the hut again. Alan followed him, not without an effort. Dr Fell began a hurried search of the room. With an exclamation of triumph he found on the floor near the bed a piece of tar paper nailed to a light wooden frame. He held this up to the window, and it fitted.
“We ourselves can testify,” he went on, with extraordinary intensity, “that when we arrived here there was no blackout on this window. Hey?”
“That’s right.”
“Yet the lamp” – he pointed –” had obviously been burning for a long time, far into the night. We can smell the odor of burned paraffin oil strongly even yet?”
“Yes.”
Dr Fell stared into vacancy.
“Every inch of this neighborhood is patrolled all night by the Home Guard. A hurricane lantern gives a strong light. There wasn’t even so much as a curtain, let alone a blackout, on this window when we arrived. How is it that nobody noticed that light?”
There was a p
ause.
“Maybe they just didn’t see it.”
“My dear chap! So much as a chink of light in these hills would draw down the Home Guard for miles round. No, no, no! That won’t do.”
“Well, maybe Forbes – before he hanged himself – blew out the lantern and took down the blackout. The window’s open, we notice. Though I don’t see why he should have done that.”
Again Dr Fell shook his head with vehemence.
“I quote you again the habits of suicides. A suicide will never take his own life in darkness if there is any means of providing light. I do not analyze the psychology: I merely state the fact. Besides, Forbes wouldn’t have been able to see to make all his preparations in the dark. No, no, no! It’s fantastic!”
“What do you suggest, then?”
Dr Fell put his hands to his forehead. For a time he remained motionless, wheezing gently.
“I suggest,” he replied, lowering his hands after an interval, “that, after Forbes had been murdered and strung up, the murderer himself extinguished the lantern. He poured out the oil remaining in it so that it should later seem to have burned itself out. Then he took down the blackout.”
“But why in blazes bother to do that? Why not leave the blackout where it was, and go away, and leave the lantern to burn itself out?”
“Obviously because he had to make use of the window in making his escape.”
This was the last straw.
“Look here,” Alan said, with a sort of wild patience. He strode across. “Look at the damned window! It’s covered by a steel grating nailed up solidly on the inside! Can you suggest any way, any way at all, by which a murderer could slide out through that?”
“Well – no. Not at the moment. And yet it was done.”
They looked at each other.
From some distance away they heard the sound of a man’s voice earnestly hallooing, and scraps of distant talk. They hurried to the door.
Charles Swan and Alistair Duncan were striding toward them. The lawyer, in a raincoat and bowler hat, appeared more cadaverous than ever; but his whole personality was suffused with a kind of dry triumph.
“I think you’re a good deal of a cheap skate,” Swan accused Alan, “to run away like that after you’d promised me all the news there was. If I hadn’t had my car I’d have been stranded.”
The Case of the Constant Suicides Page 14