Death Knocks Three Times

COPYRIGHT
1949

BY
ANTHONY
GILBERT

Printed in the United States of America

Death Knocks Three Times

E
VER since midday the rain had poured down with such ferocity that the whole moor seemed awash. To the solitary motorist the aspect was one of complete desolation. It was so dark no feature of the surrounding countryside was really visible, and it would be possible even for a man who knew the moors well, as Arthur Crook did not, to slip into a ditch or one of the great potholes that dotted the face of the land.

It occurred to him that the general outlook must resemble that of the world on the first morning of creation, and not much further removed from chaos at that. He had heard nothing for an hour but the groaning of trees, the beating of the rain, and once, the derisive cawing of a crow going home.

“Oh, shut up!” he admonished it, since going home was precisely what he was trying to do and it looked as though he might never get there. It was a long journey from London and Mr. Crook had only undertaken it on the insistence of a client who couldn’t persuade the police that he was not at a place where several witnesses were convinced he had been one night during the previous month. The job was taxing even the versatile Mr. Crook’s wits— not to say the endurance of his little car—to the utmost.

“When this chap sees how expensive innocence is, his jaw’ll drop •with a bang that’ll be heard at Piccadilly Circus,” he reflected characteristically, bumping off the twisting lane across the moor onto the main road again, and thinking it would be the last drop of honey in his cup if one of the wheels buckled in protest. He nosed his way along more by some sixth sense than by sight or hearing. “One thing, there’s not much chance of running any one down on a night like this. No one’s likely to be abroad except an escaped

convict from Manderley Jail, and if I take off one of his legs I should probably be awarded the Police Medal for Gallantry.”

The road seemed at last to be leading away from the moor„ though where it led he had no notion. He had lost his bearings a long time ago. There was still no sound but the pelting rain, and it seemed improbable that any one else was crazy enough to be abroad. Presently he realized there were hedges on either side of him, and so, he argued, sooner or later he’d reach a farmhouse or a church or some landmark that might show him if he was going back on his own tracks.

“Let there be light,” he prayed, taking a corner on three wheels —=the fourth was spinning wildly in the air, just above a ditch.

Immediately a golden gleam wavered out of the dark.

“Unless this is Bogeyland and they have will-o-the-wisps here, that must be a house of some kind,” decided Arthur Crook, steering the car carefully in the direction of the light.

Abruptly the light disappeared, but he was not disconcerted, for he was close enough by now to realize this simply meant a curtain had been drawn over a window, and windows don’t hang in midair even in isolated moorland country. A moment later he came to a dilapidated gate standing open, and drove in.

It seemed a very long drive, and he passed a wall of black windows before a gleam behind the drawn blind showed that at least one other human creature existed in this apparently dead world. Another instant and, in response to a fanfare on his horn, he heard a voice. It was high-pitched with age, rough with a kind of satisfied fear.

“Is that you, Mr. John?” demanded the apparition as the door opened wider, outlining a square-set figure against the light of a lamp in the hall behind him. “Are you out of your senses? You know the Colonel …”

“Not yet,” interrupted Crook cheerfully, gently pushing the speaker back into the hall, “but it won’t take me long to put that right.”

The old man, realizing a shade too late what was happening, made a wild grab at the door, but Crook put out a leg-of-mutton hand and closed it for him.

“Easy does it,” he said. “Just give me the low-down on the Colonel. I wouldn’t like to wreck our first meeting …”

“Who are you?” demanded the old man, furiously. “If you’ve come from the Government …”

“Tell ‘em that in Whitehall,” said Crook. He was observing his surroundings with fascinated, popping red-brown eyes. The hall in which they found themselves had all the appearance of a stage set, and now that he came to look at his companion he thought he’d look better on the boards. He was wearing a sort of old-fashioned livery and Crook knew they don’t generally come so fancy in 1949.

“Who in tarnation are you?” demanded the butler, as Crook took him to be. “You’re a stranger hereabouts, that I can see, or you’d not be coming to the Hall at this hour.”

“How did you guess?” inquired Crook, thinking this was almost good enough for E. A. Poe or that American comic artist chap, Charles Addams, the huge dark hall, die stairs stretching away into infinity—for the lamp shed only a limited circle of light—the tattered floor coverings, the worn stair carpet, the huge handsome chair embossed with a crest that, to his untutored eyes, looked like an oak tree bearing oranges, the carved black chest across the hall —big enough for a body, he reflected characteristically—the vista of closed doors, the quality of the silence, a listening quality, as though behind each of those doors was an enormous ear.

“We only want the clank of a chain and we’re in the middle of the Christmas Carol,” he thought.

“Here, you can’t come inside,” exclaimed the old man, as if discovering for the first time what had happened. “Colonel’s orders.”

“You go and ask the Colonel if he’d rather find my corpse drifted by the flood against his bedroom window at dawn,” suggested Crook. “Haven’t you got any ears? Can’t you hear that rain?”

“I don’t need to go outside to hear that,” exclaimed his companion, speaking in a more human voice. “I’ve only got to sit in my pantry and I can listen to it coming through the roof. If I’ve told the Colonel once about that pantry I’ve told him a hundred times. Believe it or not,” he continued, raising the light to examine the intruder more closely, “I’ve found a drowned rat sometimes after a storm like this.”

“Best way to find them,” suggested Crook.

The old retainer—the word seemed to suit him admirably— stared in an irresolute manner at this unconventional guest He

saw a stout man in bright brown shoes and a vulgar billycock hat, and a suit brighter than either. He shuddered.

“You didn’t ought to have come to the front door,”^ he said in severe tones. “And if you haven’t an appointment …”

His voice broke off abruptly as another was lifted from the head of the stairs.

“Have you taken leave of your senses, Bligh?” it shouted. “Who the devil are you gibbering at in that dark hall? If you’ve been at my port again …”

“Coming, Colonel,” said the old man hurriedly, backing toward the stairs and taking the lamp with him. “It’s a motorist …”

“What’s that?” The footsteps came nearer and began to descend the staircase. “Have you let someone in? Haven’t you had instructions … ?”

“I thought it was Mr. John, sir.”

“And why should my nephew materialize on my doorstep on a night like this?” scolded the old martinet. “Have you been having clandestine correspondence with him again?”

“No, sir. Certainly not, sir. But when I heard the car …”

“You know Mr. John hasn’t got a car. And who’s driving a car these days without gas? Come on, man, answer me. Who is he?”

Crook thought it time to take a hand in the conversation, and stepping forward from the blackness that engulfed him, he announced himself as the stranger within the gate.

“Then you can take yourself without the gate,” stormed the aged anachronism on the stairs. “You’ve no right to be on my premises. It’s trespassing. Don’t you know enough of the law … ?”

“What I know about the law ‘ud surprise you,” said Crook, “Don’t murder mean a thing to you?”

“Murder?” The old voice sharpened. “Who’s been murdered? If it’s on my ground, it’s self-defense. Bligh, why don’t you keep me informed of what’s going on?”

“More ways of killing a baby than strangling it,” observed Crook, before the bewildered old man could speak. “Drowning, for example. And my mother never had me taught swimming when I was a boy.”

The colonel now drew abreast of Bligh and snatched the lamp out of the old man’s hand, thrusting it toward the unwelcome visitor.

“If you’re selling anything,” he threatened.

“Only my company,” Crook assured him. “And that’s gratis. Fact is, I’ve missed the road.”

“Served you right, being out of doors on a night like this. Where are you making for?”

“Haydock.”

“Then you’re miles off your road. Have to go around by the toll bridge.” He paused. “Come to think of it, the road’ll be under water. Did you say you came here in a car?”

“That’s what I call her,” agreed Crook modestly.

“I won’t have cars on my property and that’s final. Every one knows it. Cars—faugh! Only good to frighten horses.”

“We didn’t meet any horses,” offered Crook, in what he thought was a conciliatory tone.

” ‘Course you didn’t. Aren’t any. This damned Government. Chap can’t do what he likes with his own land. Suppose if they had their way it wouldn’t be my land. Once I’m gone no one’ll give a damn what happens to it. Lived too long, that’s my trouble.”

Crook for once was inclined to agree with him.

“Where have you come from?” the old boy went on.

“Marchtown,” said Crook, meekly.

“That’s the other side of the moor.” Quite clearly the Colonel didn’t believe him.

“That was my impression, too.”

“Are you telling me you brought your infernal car over the moor in this weather?”

“She brought me,” said Crook. “Anyway, we started on a road.”

The Colonel turned to the obsequious Bligh. “Is the feller drunk, d’you think?”

“Not if ‘e’s brought ‘is car over that lane from Marchtown, ‘e ain’t,” said the old butler with a note almost of reverence in his voice.

“Then he’s mad. That’s worse. If a chap’s drunk you can lock him up and chuck a pail of water over him, and he’ll have sobered by morning, but these lunatics …”

“Ring up the police and have me arrested,” offered Crook obligingly, feeling that if he stayed here much longer he probably would be loco.

“Telephone? Wouldn’t have such a thing in the house. When I

was a young man, let me tell you, sir, we used the adjuncts of civilization when we wanted to get in touch with our friends and we respected their privacy and expected them to do the same. No privacy at all with one of the infernal contraptions on the premises.”

Bligh’s voice muttered, ” ‘E won’t ‘ave no radio neither. Makes it quiet-like.”

“Makes a cemetery sound like Piccadilly Circus,” Crook agreed. “I can see I’m a gift from on high to you. Now, sire, you unfreeze the cockles of your heart and let me sleep on the kitchen table or under it. Don’t want to be any trouble, but though my little Scourge can do a lot, for a car, she can’t fly and she can’t swim. Matter of fact, I’d appreciate it a lot if you’d let me put her under cover somewhere.”

“Don’t want ‘is death on your conscience, do you?” whispered Bligh in his employer’s ear.

“I don’t care where the feller dies so long as he doesn’t do it on my property so I’m expected to attend the inquest.” But very reluctantly he agreed to let Crook remain under cover until the storm was past.

“This won’t stop all night,” said Bligh, confidentially.

“I don’t entertain these days,” continued the Colonel in the same autocratic voice. “You’ll have to take us as you find us. Bligh will show you where you can wash your hands. And there are stables. Never had a car in them yet, but I don’t want you sending me in claims for damages.”

Following Bligh up the stairs, Crook permitted himself to wonder whether he mightn’t be more cosy in the stables with the Scourge than in the derelict old house. However, he had the gift of taking life as it came, which in the circumstances was just as well. The place was a veritable mausoleum. Corridors of rooms stretched away into the dark, all the doors locked, all the furniture within sheeted. Crook imagined, probably all devoured by moth and rust, and good luck to the moths at that.