Death-Watch (8 page)

“Yes, that’s evident. She expected to find it was somebody else. H’m. But, with that light shining on his face, she would have seen Ames wasn’t the man she thought had been hurt or killed—unless one of the doors had been so half-closed that the shadow hid his face. Hence the shock and terror. So you made her reconstruct the scene … Not bad, confound you!” said Hadley, grudgingly, and beat his fist into his palm. “Not at all bad, for a quick guess.”

“Guess?” roared Dr. Fell, removing his cigar. “Who said anything about a guess? I applied principles of the soundest lo—”

“All right, all right. Carry on.”

“H’mf! Ha! Burr! Very well. Which brings us to the whole crux of the matter. Although she was rather startled to find this man (presumably the one with whom she had the appointment) in the house at all, nevertheless she wasn’t surprised to find him
upstairs.
She was going upstairs, to begin with, and the very fact that she did mistake him for the dead man proves it. When I see, not six feet from the dead man, a door leading straight to the roof, and when this girl makes determined efforts to steer me away from it at my first sign of curiosity, then I begin to have a strong suspicion. When I reflect that the girl, although alluringly got up with regard to cosmetics and pyjamas, nevertheless wears a dusty, shabby leather coat with a warm fleece lining …”

“I see all that,” returned Hadley, with some dignity. “Except that the whole thing’s still far from sensible, and only a lunatic would—”

Dr. Fell shook his head benevolently.

“Heh,” he said. “Heh-heh-heh. It’s our old difficulty again. You don’t mean that only a lunatic would spend hours of rapture on a breezy roof. You only mean that
you
wouldn’t. I am willing to venture a small wager that, even in your courting days, the present Mrs. Hadley would have been a trifle astonished to see you swinging up to her balcony through the branches of a maple tree …”

“She’d have thought I was balmy,” said Hadley.

“Well, so should I, for that matter. Which is the point I am patiently trying to make. But there are young men, aged twenty and twenty-one—I shrewdly suspect Eleanor of being older and wiser, but what of it?—who would. And try to drive it through your head that this crazy comedy is the most desperately serious thing in their lives. Why, man,” boomed Dr. Fell, his face fiery with controversy, “the young fellow isn’t worth his salt who doesn’t want to show off his muscles climbing trees in romantic situations, and half hoping he’ll break his damnfool neck, but very much surprised if he does. You’ve been reading too many modern novels, Hadley … The ironical part is that in the middle of these storybook dreams and rescues from romantic dangers, down dropped a real corpse; and young gallantry did nearly break his neck when he faced reality. But I said Eleanor was older and wiser, and there’s the revealing part of the whole thing …”

“How so? If you’ve not any
facts
—”

“She saw on the floor, dead, somebody she took for this young chap. And over him she saw Boscombe, with a gun in his hand. That was why she went hysterical. She never for a second doubted Boscombe had shot him.’’

Hadley ran a hand across his dull-coloured hair. “Then Boscombe—”

“He’s in love with her, Hadley; I almost said bitterly in love, and I rather think she hates him. That little soft-footed nervous fellow is full of a kind of iron and water, and she may be a bit afraid of him. If she thought he would kill or had killed our friend Donald, there’s a curious inference to be drawn with regard to the other—”

Hadley peered at him from under lowered brows.

“There’s also the inference,” he pointed out, almost idly, “that Ames, in the darkness of that hall, might have been mistaken for Boscombe … We have enough complications already, I admit; but Boscombe interests me.”

“The shoes and gloves and the broken window, and Stanley?”

“Oh, I’ll get the truth out of them,” said Hadley, quietly. There was something in the commonplace words, and in the very faint smile that accompanied them, which made Melson shiver. He had a feeling that something would be smashed, as though the chief inspector were to bring his gloved fist down on one of the glass cases and scatter its brittle contents. Hadley moved over easily and stood with his inscrutable dark eyes in the lamplight. “I have an idea that Boscombe and Stanley were going to put up a bit of a fake ‘crime’ to pull Ames’s leg. You’d thought of that?”

Dr. Fell made an indistinguishable noise.

“And the most significant thing in the whole affair,” Hadley went on, “was the testimony as to who did or did not know Ames. And I promise you that I’m going to sweat out every filthy he that’s ever been told in this house, by God! Until I find the swine who came up and stabbed a good man in the back!”

His fist crashed down on the table; and, with the eerie effect of an answer, there was a knock at the door. Hadley was his old impassive self when Sergeant Betts appeared, carrying something wrapped in a handkerchief.

“The—the knife, sir,” he reported. He looked white. “There was nothing in his pockets, nothing at all, except a pair of gloves. Here they are. Old Busy never …” Checking himself abruptly, he gave an unnecessary salute and waited.

“Take it easy, old son,” said Hadley, trying not to show that he looked uncomfortable. “We none of us like it. We—Shut that door! Hum. Er—you didn’t talk? You didn’t let anybody find out who he is? That’s important.”

“No, sir, although two have been asking a lot of questions—the stoutish lady with the dyed hair and the fussy little bloke in the grey dressing-gown.” Betts regarded him with some sharpness under a wooden exterior. “But a queer thing happened only a minute ago. While we were going after fingerprints—there aren’t any on that arrow-headed thing, by the way—”

“No,” Hadley commented, sourly. “I didn’t suppose there would be. I’d like to find somebody in this day and age who did leave finger-prints. Well?”

“—While Benson was doing that, and we were standing in the doorway, out of another doorway comes a big bloke, you see, sir, with a funny shambling walk and a queer look in his eyes. And Benson says, ‘Good God,’ under his breath, and I said, ‘What?’ and Benson says (under his breath, you see, sir, because the lady was looking on and saying she wasn’t nervous and she was always good in sick-rooms anyway), Benson says, ‘Stanley.
He
ought to recognize Old Busy …’”

Hadley remained impassive. “Mr. Stanley,” he replied, “was a former police officer. You didn’t let him tell the others about Ames?”

“He didn’t seem to know Old—the inspector, sir. At least, he wasn’t paying any attention. He went over to the sideboard and swilled a lot of brandy out of the decanter, and then turned around without looking at us and went back where he’d come from, with the decanter in his hand. Like a blooming ghost, sir, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes. Where is Dr. Watson now?”

“Still with the young chap over in the lady’s bedroom,” answered Betts, not without a curious glance at the chief inspector. “Doctor says he got a nasty knock, but there’s no concussion, and he should be in passable state shortly. The kid—”

“Kid?”

“He’s about twenty-one, sir,” Sergeant Betts pointed out, from the austerity of a probable twenty-six. “He keeps laughing and saying something about ‘hope deferred, hope deferred.’ The two other ladies are with him. What now?”

“Find Mr. Carver,” said Hadley, “and send him in here. Stand guard yourself.”

When the sergeant had gone Hadley sat down by the table, taking out notebook and pencil. He carefully unwrapped the handkerchief, so that the bright gilt of the clock-hand, which had been cleaned, glittered under the lamp. Along the heavy end the gilt was streaked and blurred with what appeared to be the smudges of gloved hands, and similar streaks brushed faintly down its entire length.

“Stolen off the clock before the paint was dry,” observed Hadley. “Or—I wonder if the stuffs thoroughly dried and set even yet? The thing’s still damp from washing, but it feels sticky. It should be dry, if the paint was put on last night. May be some sort of waterproof varnish that takes a long time to dry. Note,” he wrote down. “The look of these blurs lower down makes me think they might have been caused when it was pulled out of Ames’s neck. Therefore may be stains on murderer …”

“And what a cheerful blighter it is,” said Dr. Fell, admiringly. He lumbered over to the table and blinked through cigar smoke at the blade. “H’m. Hah. Now, I wonder. It looks as though the thief had
deliberately
messed up the gilt, Hadley. He could have pinched that blade without so much of a mess, d’ye think? Or is it only that the fiend of subtlety is stalking this old brain again? I still wonder.”

Hadley paid no attention.

“Length—” he muttered, and measured it on the sole of his shoe. “You were a little out, Fell. This thing is eight and a half inches at the most; nearer eight … Ah! Come in, Mr. Carver.”

Hadley sat round in his chair with a sort of dangerous politeness. The wheels were in motion now; the inquisition had begun; and sooner or later, Melson knew, they would interview a murderer. In the room of old clocks. Hadley tapped the gilt minute-hand slowly on the table as Carver closed the door behind him.

E
VERY TIME THEY SAW
Johannus Carver, Melson thought he had put on one additional article of clothing. Now it was a frogged smoking-jacket over the pyjamas, in addition to the pepper-and-salt trousers. Melson had a picture of him frequently wondering what to do when his house was invaded; and each time putting in the interval by tramping upstairs to struggle into another garment, if only for an appearance of activity. His first glance was at the glass cases containing the clocks. Then he peered sharply at the panels on the right-hand side of the room—a glance which they did not interpret then, or understand at all until the case had taken a more terrible turn. His wrinkled neck looked scrawny without a collar, his head too big for it. The mild eyes blinked in the cigar smoke. His smile changed suddenly when, apparently for the first time, he saw the clock-hand.

“Yes, Mr. Carver?” prompted Hadley, softly. “You recognize it?” Carver stretched out his hand, but withdrew it.

“Yes, certainly. Without a doubt. That is, I think so. It’s the minute-hand off the dial I made for Sir Edwin Paull. Where did you find it?”

“In the neck of the dead man, Mr. Carver. He was killed with it.

You looked at the body. Didn’t you see this?”

“I—Good God, no! I don’t look for such things in—well, in burglars’
necks
,” returned Carver, a note of protest in his voice. “This is appalling. And ingenious, by George!” He fell to musing, and peered at a shelf of books over a writing desk. “I cannot recall, in the whole history of … extraordinary! The more I think of it—”

“We can return to that later. Sit down, Mr. Carver. There are a few questions …”

He answered the first of them somewhat absently, sitting with his big body stooped over in a chair and his eyes wandering towards the shelf of books. He had lived in this house for eighteen years. He was a widower, the house having belonged to his wife. (By certain vague digressions Melson gathered that the Carver household had been supported by an annuity which had died with his wife.) Eleanor was the daughter of an old friend of the late Mrs. Carver’s— herself an invalid—and had been taken in on the death of Eleanor’s parents because there seemed to be no prospect of having children of their own. Mrs. Millicent Steffins was also a heritage, having been a friend who faithfully attended Mrs. Carver through all her illness. You gathered that the late Mrs. Carver had surrounded herself with people as though with trinkets.

“And the lodgers?” pursued Hadley. “What do you know of them?”

“Lodgers?” Carver repeated, as though the word startled him. He rubbed his forehead. “Ah yes. Mrs. Steffins said it was necessary to rent a part of the house. You want to know something about them, is that it? Hum. Well, Boscombe’s intelligent. Got a lot of money, I believe, but, frankly, I certainly would not have sold him that Maurer watch if Millicent—Mrs. Steffins—hadn’t insisted.” He brooded. “Then there’s Mr. Christopher Paull. Quite an amiable young man. He gets drunk and sings in the hall sometimes, but he’s very well connected socially and Millicent likes him. Hum.”

“And Miss Handreth?”

Again the faint gleam of amusement showed in Carver’s eyes.

“Well,” he said, deprecatingly, “Miss Handreth and Millicent don’t get along, so I hear quite a lot about her. But I don’t suppose it would interest you to know that she has no law clients and does not wear under-vests in winter and is probably leading an immoral life; hum, especially as most of the statements are matters whose truth or falsity my age prevents me from verifying … Um, she has been here only a short time. Young Hastings brought her here and helped her unpack. They are old friends, so I fear Millicent suspects the worst—”

“Young Hastings?”

“Didn’t I tell you? That’s the ‘Donald’ you were asking about, the young man who falls out of trees when he comes to see Eleanor. I must speak to him about it. He might hurt himself … Oh yes, he and Miss Handreth are old friends. That was how he met Eleanor.” Here Carver seemed to stumble over a memory, as though he were trying to recall something; but he blinked, rubbed his cheek, and forgot about it.

“Finally, Mr. Carver,” Hadley went on, “you have an underhousekeeper here—a Mrs. Gorson—and a maid?”

“Yes. Extraordinary woman, Mrs. Gorson. I believe she was once an actress. She speaks in rather a lofty strain, but she has the utmost cheerfulness about doing all work no matter how heavy, and gets along well with Millicent. Kitty Prentice is the maid … Now, sir, that you know the household, will you answer me a question?”

Something in the man’s voice arrested Melson. He did not raise his voice, he did not move. But he suddenly took on the cool alertness of a fighter behind a shield.

“You believe, I understand,” he said, abruptly, “that one of the people in this house stole the hand off that dial and, for some fantastic reason, killed the man upstairs. Doubtless you have some cause for thinking so, even if it happens to be ludicrous. What I should like to know, sir, is which one of us you suspect?”