The Plague Court Murders hm-1

by John Dickson Carr

  The yard behind was noisy and full of darting lights. Somebody was climbing up on the roof of the little stone house; the puff of a flashlight-powder glared out momentarily, so that the house, the wall, the crooked tree, looked as wild as a scene from Dore. Close at hand, a muffled voice said in an awed tone, "Lummy, but 'e got it, didn't 'e?" Another voice muttered, "Uh!" and somebody scratched a match.

  Masters jabbed his finger out towards the scene of activity.

  "I'm beaten, sir," he said. "Right now, at least, I'm beaten, and I don't mind admitting it. This thing can't have happened, but it did. We've got the evidence - clear evidence, plain evidence - that nobody in God's world could have got into that house or out of it. But Darworth's dead. Let me tell you how bad it is.... Wait! Have you learned anything?"

  I started to sketch out what I had learned, and he stopped me when I was telling' about Joseph.

  "Ah! Ah, yes. I'm glad you saw him; so did I" He was still smiling grimly. "I sent the boy home in a cab, under guard of a constable. He may not be in any danger, but on the other hand…."

  "Danger?"

  "Yes. Oh, the first part of it hangs together, sir. Neat; very neat. Darworth didn't fear this house because of its ghosts. He was very, very easy about the ghosts. What he did fear was physical harm from somebody-eh? Why else, d'ye think, did he bolt and bar his door out there? He wasn't trying to keep out a ghost with an iron bolt. But he thought somebody in his little spiritualist circle had designs on him, and didn't know which one. That was why he wanted to keep Joseph away from them tonight: to watch, and to find out. He knew it was one of this group, from the bogus message that'd been stuck among his automatic-writing drivel when only one of them could've done it. D'ye see, sir? There was something, or somebody, he was deadly afraid of; and this was a good time to get a line on who it might have been. He thought he was safe out there.... Then I told Masters about Major Featherton's evidence.

  " `I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried-' " he repeated. His big shoulders grew rigid, and his eyes narrowed. "That name's familiar. By George, that name's familiar! And it's associated with Darworth. I could swear to it. But it's been a long time since I've seen the man's dossier, so I'm not sure.' Bert will know. Elsie Fenwick! We've got something; I'm positive of it."

  He was silent a long time, biting at the joint of his thumb, muttering to himself. Then he turned.

  "Now, then, let me tell you the mess we're into. Do you realize it won't do us an ounce of good even to fasten on somebody we think is the murderer, if we can't show how the murderer did it? We shouldn't dare go to court, even. Eh? Listen.

  "First, the house. The walls are solid stone; not a crack or rat-hole in 'em. One of my men has been going over the ceiling inch by inch, and it's as solid and unbroken as the day it was put in. We've been over every inch of the floor also-"

  "You don't," I said, "waste any time."

  "Aaa-h!" grunted Masters, with a sort of battered pride, as though that were all he had left. "Yes. 'Tisn't every Force could get the police surgeon out of bed at three o'clock in the morning. Well! We've been over floor, ceiling, and walls. Any idea of hinges or trapdoors or funny entrances you can get out of your mind. Statement to that effect is signed and initialed by my men.

  "Next, the windows, and they're out. Those gratings are solid in the stone; no question of that. The gratings are so small that you can't even get the blade of that dagger through 'em, for instance; we tried it. The chimney isn't big enough to admit anybody, even if you could drop down into a blazing fire; and, finally, there's a heavy iron mesh across it only a little way up. That's out. The door ..." He paused, stared out at the yard, and bellowed: "GET OFF THAT ROOF! WHO'S ON THAT ROOF? .Didn't I tell you we'd wait till morning for all that? You can't see anything----"

  "Daily Express, Inspector," replied a voice out of the gloom. "The sergeant said…"

  Masters charged down the steps and disappeared. There was a flurry of high-colored language, and presently he came back breathing hard.

  "It don't much matter, I daresay," he said gloomily. "According to what we know. I was telling you. The door - well, you know about the door. Bolted, and barred; and not one of those bolts you could do tricks with, either. It's hard enough to pull back even when you're inside the place ...”

  "Finally, here's the incredible thing. We shall have to wait until daylight for full confirmation, but I can tell you I know now. With the exception of the tracks you and I made-and those who came out afterwards all carefully kept in our tracks, so there'd be one line and no confusion - there isn't a footprint anywhere within twenty feet o f that house. And you and I know, don't we, that when we first walked out there we saw no footprints at all along the direction we went?"

  That was unquestionably true. I cast my mind back along that thin and glue-like sheet of mud: unbroken anywhere in the direction we walked. But I said:

  "Still, look here, Masters. . . . Plenty of people had been walking about the yard earlier in the evening, and in and out of the house, while it was raining. Why is the mud unbroken, then? How did there come to be no footprints when we went out?"

  Masters got out his notebook, pinched his nose, and frowned. "It's something to do with the soil. Something about stratum-deposits, or physics - or the like; I don't know, but I've got it here," he said. "McDonnell and Dr. Blaine were talking about it. The house out there is on a kind of plateau. When the rain stops, it runs down and carries a fine sandy silt away from the place-like a mason spreading out mortar with a trowel, Bert said. The yard smells badly, you noticed. And you could hear a sort of wash out there when the rain had stopped. Bert thinks there's probably a drain somewhere, running underground to the cellar.... Anyhow, the rain had stopped a good three quarters of an hour before Darworth was killed, and the mud had thickened over like a jelly."

  He went back into the kitchen, rubbing his face dully. Then he sat down dully on the packing-case behind the work-bench; a weird and muddy-looking Inquisitor for this bleak room.

  "But there it is solid. Unbreakable. Impossible. Ur! What am I talking about?" the Inspector muttered. "I must be getting old, and I'm sleepy. No footprints approaching the house; none! Doors and windows, floor, ceiling and walls, tight as a stone box! Yet there's got to be some way out. I won't believe-"

  He was looking down at the papers on the work-bench: at George Playge's manuscript,, the deed, and the newspaper cutting. He turned them over with dull curiosity, and then put them into the file-book.

  "I won't believe," he went on, holding up the file and rattling it savagely, "this."

  "You've left few enough tatters of the supernatural, Masters. Once the police come trampling in, poor old Louis...." I remembered Lady Benning twisting round to glare at me, and the words she had said. "Never mind. Anything in the nature of a definite clue?"

  "Fingerprint men working now. I've got a cursory report from the doctor, but we can't get the full P-M until tomorrow. The van's here, and they'll move him as soon as Bailey gets finished with the interior photographs. Aaa-h!" he snapped, and clenched his hands. "I wish it 'ud get daylight. Between ourselves, I never wanted daylight so much. There's an indication somewhere - somewhere - if I could see it. And I've bungled this, too. The assistant commissioner'll say I shouldn't have let any footprints get out there; that we should have put down boards, or some like foolishness. As though you could! I begin to see, ah, ah! I begin to see how hard it is to be methodical, and think of everything, when you're mixed up in a case yourself. Clues? No. We didn't find anything more than you saw - except a handkerchief. It's Darworth's; had his initials on it, and it was lying under him."

  "There were some sheets of paper and a fountain pen on the floor," I suggested. "Anything written?"

  "No such luck. Blank. Empty. Swept clean. And that's all."

  "So - now what?"

  "Now," said Masters vigorously, "we interview our little tea-party. Bert's taking charge outside, and we shan't be interrupted.... Now, let's get this straig
ht, from my notebook. It was, h'm, I judge it was roughly half-past twelve when Bert and Mr. Halliday and I left you here reading this - this bosh, and went out front there. Miss Latimer thought something had happened to Halliday, and grabbed him when we got to the front hall. Then we went into the room where the rest of 'em were, Bert stopping outside, and I had a talk which was-" he scowled.

  "Abortive?"

  "Ah! I suppose so. Yes, I daresay. Anyhow, the old. lady (as cool as you please) ordered me to hunt over the house for some chairs so's they could all sit down. And I did. Blast her.... Besides, it was a good chance for a look round. The place is full of broken furniture. Then they slammed the door in my face; but we'd got young Joseph. Bert and I took him to a room across the hall from theirs, which is full of old junk, and we lit a candle and had a talk with Joseph. . . ."

  "Was he full of morphine then?"

  "No. But he needed it. He would sit quiet for a while, and then he'd jerk. He wouldn't admit anything. But then, I can remember now, was when he got the morphine. He kept complaining about it being too warm, and rushed over to where it was dark and pretended to be trying to push the boards off a window. He wasn't doing that, because when I went over after him I caught him' putting something back in his inside pocket.... Oh, there was no, rough stuff!" Masters added suspiciously. "Just a little, um, polite firmness. Ha. Well, I thought if it was dope, I'd give it a chance to work before I tackled him again. So I left him with Bert who," snapped Masters, "who's too bloody polite to be in the Force anyway, and I went out to have a thorough look round the house. That would have been about ten minutes to one, maybe more; but we hadn't been much time.

  "I went out in the hall. The other room, where the five of 'em were, was quiet, and I thought it was dark.... But the front door was partly open. The big door, you know. The one we came in by."

  His face was so portentous as he looked at me that I said:

  "Masters, this is nonsense! Surely nobody would dare, when there was a police officer just across the hall.... Besides, that big door was open when we arrived. Maybe the wind.. . . “

  "Ah!" growled the inspector. He tapped his chest.

  "That's what I thought, too. I wasn't paying any attention to these people inside; I had my eye on Darworth, you see. I wanted to queer a game of his, and so.... Well! I shut the door: firmly. Then I went upstairs to prowl. We'd thought, before, that you might get a better view of the house from a back upstairs window, but you couldn't. And when I came downstairs, the front door was partly open again. I'd only a flashlight, but it was the first thing I spotted."

  He knocked his fist on the work-bench. "I tell you, sir, alone in that place ... I damned well got the wind up myself. If I'd only thought that somebody had designs on Darworth ... I went out the front door. . . ."

  "The place is muddy all around," I suggested. "Footprints?"

  "There were no footprints whatever," Masters returned quietly.

  We looked at each other. Even with the police in possession, with flash-powders exploding and reporters fighting for news, this house had become full of more monstrous and terrible things than existed in the letters I had read.

  "I went round the side of the house," the inspector continued, "and I've told you what I saw and heard. Shadows inside. Darworth moaning or imploring. Then the bell."

  He paused, and let out a sound resembling, "Haa-ah!" as of a man finishing off a deep drink that has almost choked him. "Now, Sir! Now! And here's what I wanted to ask you. You tell me you heard somebody walking past your door, when you were sitting in this room reading? Yes. Well, then: which direction was it going? Was it going out towards the back yard, or returning from there?"

  The only answer was, or could be, "I don't know."

  He wheezed. "Because, if it was coming back to the house - I mean this house; the big one here - after, say, `visiting' Darworth.... You see, I came round the side of the house into the back yard. I could see the back door, with the candlelight shining from here, I could even see the part of the yard towards me... Then what kind of hell-bound thing is it that can walk out a front door, round through a muddy yard without leaving footprints; can kill Darworth in a stone jug of a house, and return here by the back door, and pass through candlelight without being seen?"

  During the ensuing silence he nodded curtly and went to the door. I could hear him addressing the constable he had sent up to the front room as a guard against the five suspects comparing notes. Vaguely I heard him giving instructions that Lady Benning was to be sent back here to our "council-room"; vaguely I wondered what my old Chief at the M.I.D., that rather great figure whom Featherton's remark had put into my mind, would have thought of this muddle. "What kind of hell-bound thing is it that can… .?" I looked up, to see Masters striding back.

  "If," he said uncertainly, "the old lady goes to pieces again, the way you say she did before-"

  He hesitated. His hand went slowly to his hip-pocket, and he took out that gunmetal flask, which in his own placid thoroughness he kept for the convenience of nervous believers at spiritist seances. He juggled it in his hand. His eyes wore a curiously blank look. Along the passage we could hear someone limping towards the council-room, and the booming tones of a constable urging caution.

  "You drink it, Masters," I said.

  X THE TESTIMONY IN THE CASE

  IT IS to Masters' thoroughness that I am indebted for the actual word-for-word record of the testimony we received. Masters does not trust to brief notes. Into his fat notebooks you will find entered in shorthand every word spoken by the person he has questioned: except, of course, things obviously irrelevant. This is later deciphered, rearranged, and typed into a statement which he submits for the witness to initial. With his permission, I have got copies f these notes, filled in also with the questions he asked but did not write down at the time.

  These, then, constitute mere extracts from that vast jumble of talk: they are designedly incomplete, but they are submitted because they may be of interest to the puzzle-analyst, and for the significance of certain statements among them.

  The first is headed "Lady Anne Benning, widow; wife of the late Sir Alexander Benning, O.B.E." It does not convey the atmosphere of that bleak room, where the spurious Watteau marquise faced Masters across the candles; with the clock-hands crawling towards four, and the stolid constable looming in the shadows behind, and outside the noise of Darworth's body being dumped into a black van.

  She was even more hostile than before. They had given her a chair; the red cloak-lining gleamed again, and she sat upright with her jeweled hands clenched tightly in her lap. About her there was a sort of evil jauntiness. She moved her head as though she were looking for a place to touch Masters on the raw; the pouched eyes were half shut, and you could see wrinkles along the lids; and she still smiled. They went through the formalities without clashing, though Major Featherton - who insisted on accompanying her-had to be rather forcibly urged from the room. I can see her yet, lifting an eyebrow or hand slightly, and hear the thin chill metal of her voice.

  Q. Lady Benning, how long have you known Mr. Darworth?

  A. I really can't say. Does it matter? Eight months, possibly a year.

  Q. How did you come to make his acquaintance?

  A. Through Mr. Theodore Latimer, if it matters. He told me of Mr. Darworth's interest in the occult, and brought him to see me at my home.

  Q. Yes. And we understand that you'd been in what we'll call a receptive state for that sort of thing. Is that correct, Lady Benning?

  A. My dear man, I am not going to answer mere impertinences.

  Q. Just so. Did you know anything about Darworth?

  A. I knew, for instance, that he was a gentleman, and well-bred.

  Q. I mean, anything about his past life?

  A. No.

  Q. Did he tell you, in fact, something like this: That, though he was, not a medium himself, he was intensely psychic; that he felt you had suffered a great bereavement, and influences were trying to g
et in touch with you; that he was the patron of a medium who he thought could help you? Did he, Lady Benning?

  A. (A long hesitation) Yes. But not at first, not for a long time. He was very sympathetic about James.

  Q. And a meeting with the medium was arranged? A. Yes.

  Q. Where?

  A. At Mr. Darworth's house in Charles Street.

  Q. Were there many such meetings afterwards?

  A. Many. (Here the witness began to show discomposure).

  Q. Where, Lady Benning, you `got through' - so to speak - to Mr. James Halliday?

  A. For God's sake, will you stop torturing me!

  Q. Sorry. You understand, ma'am, I have to do this. Did Mr. Darworth join the circle?

  A. Rarely. He said it disturbed him.

  Q. So that he was not in the room at all?

  A. No.

  Q. Did you know anything about the medium?

  A. No. (Hesitation). Except that he was not altogether of sound mind. Mr. Darworth had discussed his

  case with the doctor in charge of the London League of Mercy for the mentally deficient. He told me how highly the doctor had praised James, and how much they thought of him. James used to send £50 yearly to the League. Mr. Darworth said it was only a small piece of thoughtfulness, but it was wonderful.

  Q. Just so. You made no inquiries about Mr. Darworth?

  A. No.

  Q. Ever give him money? No reply.

  Q. Was it a great deal of money, Lady Benning?

  A. My dear man, surely even you must have the intelligence to see that it is none of your business.

  Q. Who first suggested that Plague Court should be exorcised?

  A. (The witness spoke very strongly). My nephew James.

  Q. I mean, who- Let's say, among people who can be called more easily as witnesses, who first put the

  suggestion into audible English?

  A. Thank you so much for the correction. It was I.

  Q. What did Mr. Darworth think of it?

  A. He did not wish to do it at first.

  Q. But you convinced him?