The Case of the Constant Suicides

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The Case of the Constant Suicides Page 18

by John Dickson Carr


  “The obvious line of attack was to say that the murderer had to take down the blackout in order to make his escape; and, once having made it, he couldn’t put the blackout back up again. That is a very suggestive line, if you follow it up. Could he, for instance, somehow have got through a steel-mesh grating, and somehow replace it afterwards?”

  Duncan snorted.

  “The grating being nailed up on the inside?”

  Dr Fell nodded very gravely.

  “Yes. Nailed up. So the murderer couldn’t very well have done that. Could he?”

  Duncan got to his feet.

  “I am sorry, sir, that I cannot remain to listen to these preposterous notions any longer. Doctor, you shock me. The very idea that Forbes –”

  “Don’t you want to hear what my proposal is?” suggested Dr Fell. He paused. “It will be much to your advantage.” He paused again. “Very much to your advantage.”

  In the act of taking his hat and briefcase from the little table, Duncan dropped his hands and straightened up. He looked back at Dr Fell. His face was white.

  “God in heaven!” he whispered. “You do not suggest – ah – that I am the murderer, do you?”

  “Oh, no,” replied Dr Fell. “Tut, tut! Certainly not.”

  Alan breathed easier.

  It was the same idea which had occurred to him, all the more sinister for the overtones in Dr Fell’s voice. Duncan ran a finger round inside his loose collar.

  “I am glad,” he said, with an attempt at humorous dryness, “I am glad, at least to hear that. Now, come sir! Let’s have the cards on the table. What sort of proposition have you which could possibly interest me?”

  “One which concerns the welfare of your clients. In short, the Campbell family.” Again Dr Fell leisurely blew a film of ash off his pipe. “You see, I am in a position to prove that Alec Forbes was murdered.”

  Duncan dropped hat and briefcase on the table as though they had burned him.

  “Prove it? How?”

  “Because I have the instrument which was, in a sense, used to murder him.”

  “But Forbes was hanged with a dressing-gown cord!”

  “Mr Duncan, if you will study the best criminological authorities, you will find them agreed on one thing. Nothing is more difficult to determine than the question of whether a man has been hanged, or whether he has first been strangled and then hung up afterwards to simulate hanging. That is what happened to Forbes.

  “Forbes was taken from behind and strangled. With what, I don’t know. A necktie. Perhaps a scarf. Then those artistic trappings were all arranged by a murderer who knew his business well. If such things are done with care, the result cannot be told from a genuine suicide. This murderer made only one mistake, which was unavoidable. But it was fatal.

  “Ask yourself again, with regard to that grated window –”

  Duncan stretched out his hands as though in supplication.

  “But what is this mysterious ‘evidence’? And who is this mysterious ‘murderer’?” His eye grew sharp. “You know who it is?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dr Fell.

  “You are not in a position,” said the lawyer, rapping his knuckles on the table, “to prove Angus Campbell committed suicide?”

  “No. Yet if Forbes’s death is proved to be murder, that surely invalidates the false confession left behind? A confession conveniently written on a typewriter, which could have been written by anybody and was actually written by the murderer. What will the police think then?”

  “What are you suggesting to me, exactly?”

  “Then you will hear my proposition?”

  “I will hear anything,” returned the lawyer, going across to a chair and sitting down with his big-knuckled hands clasped together, “if you give me some line of direction. Who is this murderer?”

  Dr Fell eyed him.

  “You have no idea?”

  “None, I swear! And I – ah – still retain the right to disbelieve every word you say. Who is this murderer?”

  “As a matter of fact,” replied Dr Fell, “I think the murderer is in the house now, and should be with us at any minute.”

  Kathryn glanced rather wildly at Alan.

  It was very warm in the room. A late fly buzzed against one bright window-pane behind the starched curtains. In the stillness they could distinctly hear the noise of footsteps as someone walked along the hall toward the front.

  “That should be our friend,” continued Dr Fell in the same unemotional tone. Then he raised his voice and shouted. “We’re in the sitting-room! Come and join us!”

  The footsteps hesitated, turned, and came towards the door of the room.

  Duncan got to his feet, spasmodically. His hands were clasped together, and Alan could hear the knuckle-joints crack as he pressed them.

  Between the time they first heard the footsteps and the time that the knob turned and the door opened, was perhaps five or six seconds. Alan has since computed it as the longest interval of his life. Every board in the room seemed to have a separate creak and crack; everything seemed alive and aware and insistent like the droning fly against the windowpane.

  The door opened, and a certain person came in.

  “That’s the murderer,” said Dr Fell.

  He was pointing to Mr Walter Chapman, of the Hercules Insurance Company.

  20

  Every detail of Chapman’s appearance was picked out by the sunlight. The short, broad figure clad in a dark blue suit. The fair hair, the fresh complexion, the curiously pale eyes. One hand held his bowler hat, the other was at his necktie, fingering it. He had moved his head to one side as though dodging.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said in a somewhat shrill voice.

  “I said, come in, Mr Chapman,” answered Dr Fell. “Or should I say, Mr Campbell? Your real name is Campbell, isn’t it?”

  “What the devil are you talking about? I don’t understand you!”

  “Two days ago,” said Dr Fell, “when I first set eyes on you, you were standing in much the same place as now. I was standing over by that window there (remember?), making an intense study of a full-face photograph of Angus Campbell.

  “We had not been introduced. I lifted my eyes from studying the photograph; and I was confronted by such a startling, momentary family likeness that I said to you, ‘Which Campbell are you?’”

  Alan remembered it.

  In his imagination, the short, broad figure before him became the short, broad figure of Colin or Angus Campbell. The fair hair and washed-out eyes became (got it!) the fair hair and washed-out eyes of that photograph of Robert Campbell in the family album. All these things wavered and changed and were distorted like images in water, yet folded together to form a composite whole in the solid person before them.

  “Does he remind you of anyone now, Mr Duncan?” inquired Dr Fell.

  The lawyer weakly subsided into his chair. Or, rather, his long lean limbs seemed to collapse like a clothes horse as he groped for and found the arms of the chair.

  “Rabbie Campbell,” he said. It was not an exclamation, or a question, or any form of words associated with emotion; it was the statement of a fact. “You’re Rabbie Campbell’s son,” he said.

  “I must insist . . .” the alleged Chapman began, but Dr Fell cut him short.

  “The sudden juxtaposition of Angus’s photograph and this man’s face,” pursued the doctor, “brought a suggestion which may have been overlooked by some of you. Let me refresh your memory on another point.”

  He looked at Alan and Kathryn.

  “Elspat told you, I think, that Angus Campbell had an uncanny flair for spotting family resemblances; so that he could tell one of his own branch even if the person ‘blacked his face and spoke with a strange tongue.’ This same flair is shared, though in less degree, by Elspat herself.”

  This time Dr Fell looked at Duncan.

  “Therefore it seemed to me very curious and interesting that, as you yourself are reported to have said, Mr ‘
Chapman’ always kept out of Elspat’s way and would never under any circumstances go near her. It seemed to me worth investigating.

  “The Scottish police can’t use the resources of Scotland Yard. But I, through my friend, Superintendent Hadley, can. It took only a few hours to discover the truth about Mr Walter Chapman, though the transatlantic telephone call (official) Hadley put through afterwards did not get me a reply until the early hours of this morning.”

  Taking a scribbled envelope from his pocket, Dr Fell blinked at it, and then adjusted his eyeglasses to stare at Chapman.

  “Your real name is Walter Chapman Campbell. You hold, or held, passport number 609348 on the Union of South Africa. Eight years ago you came to England from Port Elizabeth, where your father, Robert Campbell, is still alive: though very ill and infirm. You dropped the Campbell part of your name because your father’s name had unpleasant associations with the Hercules Insurance Company, for which you worked.

  “Two months ago (as you yourself are reported to have said) you were moved from England to be head of one of the several branches of your firm in Glasgow.

  “There, of course, Angus Campbell spotted you.”

  Walter Chapman moistened his lips.

  On his face was printed a fixed, skeptical smile. Yet his eyes moved swiftly to Duncan, as though wondering how the lawyer took this, and back again.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Chapman said.

  “You deny these facts, sir?”

  “Granting,” said the other, whose collar seemed inordinately tight, “granting that for reasons of my own I used only a part of my name, what for God’s sake am I supposed to have done?”

  He pounced a little, a gesture which reminded the watchers of Colin.

  “I could also bear to know, Dr Fell, why you and two Army officers woke me up at my hotel in Dunoon in the middle of last night, merely to ask some tomfool questions about insurance. But let that go. I repeat: what for God’s sake am I supposed to have done?”

  “You assisted Angus Campbell in planning his suicide,” replied Dr Fell; “you attempted the murder of Colin Campbell, and you murdered Alec Forbes.”

  The color drained out of Chapman’s face.

  “Absurd.”

  “You were not acquainted with Alec Forbes?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “You have never been near his cottage by the Falls of Coe?”

  “Never.”

  Dr Fell’s eyes closed. “In that case, you won’t mind if I tell you what I think you did.

  “As you said yourself, Angus came to see you at your office in Glasgow when he took out his final insurance policy. My belief is that he had seen you before. That he taxed you with being his brother’s son; that you denied it, but were ultimately compelled to admit it.

  “And this, of course, gave Angus the final triple-security for his scheme. Angus left nothing to chance. He knew your father for a thorough bad hat; and he was a good enough judge of men to diagnose you as a thorough bad hat too. So, when he took out that final, rather unnecessary policy as an excuse to hang about with you, he explained to you exactly what he meant to do. You would come to investigate a curious death. If there were any slip-up, any at all, you could always cover this up and point out that the death was murder because you knew what had really happened.

  “There was every inducement for you to help Angus. He could point out to you that you were only helping your own family. That, with himself dead, only a sixty-five-year-old Colin stood between an inheritance of nearly eighteen thousand pounds to your own father; and ultimately, of course, to you. He could appeal to your family loyalty, which was Angus’s only blind fetish.

  “But it was not a fetish with you, Mr Chapman Campbell. For you suddenly saw how you could play your own game.

  “With Angus dead, and Colin dead as well . . .”

  Dr Fell paused.

  “You see,” he added, turning to the others, “the attempted murder of Colin made it fairly certain that our friend here must be the guilty person. Don’t you recall that it was Mr Chapman, and nobody else, who drove Colin to sleep in the tower?”

  Alistair Duncan got to his feet, but sat down again.

  The room was hot, and a small bead of sweat appeared on Chapman’s forehead.

  “Think back, if you will, to two conversations. One took place in the tower room on Monday evening, and has been reported to me. The other took place in this room on Tuesday afternoon, and I was here myself.

  “Who was the first person to introduce the word ‘supernatural’ into this affair? That word which always acts on Colin as a matador’s cape acts on a bull? It was Mr Chapman, if you recall. In the tower on Monday evening he deliberately – even irrelevantly – dragged it into the conversation, when nobody had suggested any such thing before.

  “Colin swore there was no ghost. So, of course, our ingenious friend had to give him a ghost. I asked before: what was the reason for the mummery of the phantom Highlander with the caved-in face, appearing in the tower room on Monday night? The answer is easy. It was to act as the final, goading spur on Colin Campbell.

  “The masquerade wasn’t difficult to carry out. This tower here is an isolated part of the house. It has a ground-floor entrance to the outside court, so that an outsider can come and go at will. That entrance is usually open; and, even if it isn’t, an ordinary padlock key will do the trick. With the assistance of a plaid, a bonnet, a little wax and paint, the ghost ‘appeared’ to Jock Fleming. If Jock hadn’t been there, anybody else would have done as well.”

  “And then?”

  “Bright and early on Wednesday, Mr Chapman was ready. The ghost story was flying. He came here and (don’t you remember?) pushed poor Colin clear over the edge by his remarks on the subject of ghosts.

  “What was the remark which made Colin go off the deep end? What was the remark which made Colin say, ‘That’s torn it,’ and swear his oath to sleep in the tower? It was Mr Chapman’s shy, sly little series of observations ending, ‘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.’”

  In Alan’s memory the scene took form again.

  Chapman’s expression now, too, was much the same as it had been. But now there appeared behind it an edge of desperation.

  “It was absolutely necessary,” pursued Dr Fell, “to get Colin to sleep in the tower. True, the artificial-ice trick could have been worked anywhere. But it couldn’t have been worked anywhere by Chapman.

  “He couldn’t go prowling through this house. The thing had to be done in that isolated tower, with an outside entrance for him to come and go. Just before Colin roared good night and staggered up all those stairs, Chapman could plant the box containing the ice and slip away.

  “Let me recapitulate. Up to this time, of course, Chapman couldn’t for a second pretend he had any glimmering of knowledge as to how Angus might have died. He had to pretend to be as puzzled as anybody else. He had to keep saying he thought it must be suicide; and rather a neat piece of acting it was.

  “Naturally, no mention of artificial ice must creep in yet. Not yet. Otherwise the gaff would be blown and he couldn’t lure Colin by bogey-threats into sleeping in the tower. So he kept on saying that Angus must deliberately have committed suicide, thrown himself out of the window for no cause at all – as our friend did insist in some detail, over and over – or, if there were any cause, it was something damnable in the line of horrors.

  “This was his game up to the time Colin was disposed of. Then everything would change.

  “Then the apparent truth would come out with a roar. Colin would be found dead of carbon-dioxide poisoning. The artificial ice would be remembered. If it wasn’t, our ingenious friend was prepared to remember it himself. Smiting his forehead, he would say that of course this was murder; and of course the insurance must be paid; and where was that fiend Alec Forbes, who had undoubtedly done it all?

  “Therefore it was necessary instantly, on
the same night when Colin had been disposed of, to dispose of Alec Forbes.”

  Dr Fell’s pipe had gone out. He put it in his pocket, hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat, and surveyed Chapman with dispassionate appraisal.

  Alistair Duncan swallowed once or twice, the Adam’s apple moving in his long throat.

  “Can you – can you prove all this?” the lawyer asked in a thin voice.

  “I don’t have to prove it,” said Dr Fell, “since I can prove the murder of Forbes. To be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy upon your soul, is just as effective for one murder as for two. Isn’t it, Mr Chapman?”

  Chapman had backed away.

  “I – I may have spoken to Forbes once or twice –” he began, hoarsely and incautiously.

  “Spoken to him!” said Dr Fell. “You struck up quite an acquaintance with him, didn’t you? You even warned him to keep out of the way. Afterwards it was too late.

  “Up to this time your whole scheme had been triple foolproof. For, d’ye see, Angus Campbell really had committed suicide. When murder came to be suspected, the one person they couldn’t possibly suspect was you; because you weren’t guilty. I am willing to bet that for the night of Angus’s death you have an alibi which stands and shines before all men.

  “But you committed a bad howler when you didn’t stay to make sure Colin was really dead after falling from the tower window on Tuesday night. And you made a still worse howler when you climbed into your car afterwards and drove out to the Falls of Coe for your last interview with Alec Forbes. What is the license-number of your car, Mr Chapman?”

  Chapman winked both eyes at him, those curious light eyes which were the most disturbing feature of his face.

  “Eh?”

  “What is the license number of your car? It is” – he consulted the back of the envelope – “MGM 1911, isn’t it?”

  “I – I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “A car bearing the number MGM 1911 was seen parked by the side of the road opposite Forbes’s cottage between the hours of two and three o’clock in the morning. It was seen by a member of the Home Guard who is willing to testify to this. You should have remembered, sir, that these lonely roads are no longer lonely. You should have remembered how they are patrolled late at night.”

 

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