The Crooked Hinge Read online

  “It’s beastly to look at,” whispered Madeline. “But what on earth is it?”

  “The mask of the god,” said Dr. Fell.

  “The what?”

  “The mask worn by the master of ceremonies presiding at witch-gatherings. Most of those who read about it, and even some of those who write about it, have no idea what witchcraft really was. I firmly do not mean to lecture. But we have an example here. Satanism was an unholy parody of Christian ritual; but it had its old roots in Paganism. Two of its deities were Janus the doubleheaded, patron of fertility and of the cross-roads; and Diana, patron both of fertility and virginity. The master (or mistress) wore either the goat-mask of Satan or a mask such as we have here. Bah!”

  He ticked his forefinger and thumb against the mask.

  “You have been hinting at something like that for a long time,” said Madeline quietly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but will you please answer a straight question? It seems ridiculous even to ask it. Are you saying that there is a Satanist group somewhere hereabouts?”

  “That’s the joke,” declared Dr. Fell, with an expression of heavy enlightenment. “The answer is, NO.”

  There was a pause. Inspector Elliot turned round. He was so surprised that he forgot they were talking in front of witnesses.

  “Steady on, sir! You can’t mean that. Our evidence______”

  “I do mean it. Our evidence isn’t worth that.”

  “But______”

  “Oh, Lord, why didn’t I think of it before!” said Dr. Fell vehemently. “A case after my own heart, and I have only just thought of the solution. Elliot, my boy: there have been no sinister gatherings in the Hanging Chart. There have been no goat-pipes or revels by night. A whole group of solid Kentish people have not been snared into any such mad tomfoolery. It was one of the things that stuck in my gullet when you began collecting your evidence, and I see the grimy truth now. Elliot, there is one crooked soul in this whole affair, and only one. Everything, from mental cruelty to murder, is the work of one person. I give you all the truth gratis.”

  Murray and Burrows joined the group, their footsteps creaking.

  “You seem excited,” Murray said dryly.

  The doctor looked apologetic.

  “Well, I am, a bit. I haven’t got it all worked out yet. But I see the beginnings of it, and I shall have something to say presently. It’s—er—a matter of motives.” He stared far off, and a faint twinkle appeared in his eye. “Besides, it’s rather novel. I never heard of the trick before. I tell you frankly, Satanism itself is an honest and straightforward business compared to the intellectual pleasures a certain person has invented. Excuse me, gents—and ladies. There’s something I should rather like to look at in the garden. Carry on, inspector.”

  He had stumped towards the stairs before Elliot woke up. Elliot ignored everything, and became brisk.

  “Now, then.— Yes? You wanted something, Mr. Murray?”

  “I wanted to see the automaton,” returned the other with asperity. “I’ve been rather left out of it, I notice, since I produced my proofs-of-identity and ceased to be of any value. So this is the hag. And this: do you mind if I look at it?”

  He picked up the wooden box, rattling it, and moved it closer to the faint dust-grimed light from the window. Elliot studied him.

  “Have you ever seen any of those things before, sir?”

  Murray shook his head. “I have heard of this parchment-mask. But I have never seen it. I was wondering______”

  And that was when the automaton moved.

  To this day Page swears that nobody pushed it. This may or may not be true. Seven persons were jostling round it on a creaking, crackling floor which ran down in a smooth hump towards the stairs. But the light from the window was very uncertain, and Murray, his back to the hag, was fixing their attention with the exhibit he held in his right hand. If a hand moved, if a foot moved, if a shoulder moved, nobody knew. What they did not see was the rotted dummy jerking forward with the stealthy suddenness of a motor-car slipping its brakes. What they did see was three-hundredweight of rattling iron darting out of reach and driving like a gun-carriage for the well of the stairs. What they heard was the screech of the wheels, the tap of Dr. Fell’s stick on the stairs, and Elliot’s scream:

  “For God’s sake, look out below!”

  Then the crash as it went over.

  Page reached it. He had his fingers round the iron box, and he might just as well have tried to stop a runaway gun; but he kept it upright when it might have gone head-over-heels-side-to-side, sweeping the whole staircase in crazy descent and crushing anything in its way. The black weight kept to its wheels. Sprawling down the first steps, Page saw Dr. Fell peering upwards—half-way down. He saw the daylight from the open door at the foot of the stairs. He saw Dr. Fell, unable to move an inch in that enclosed space, throw up one hand as though to ward off a blow. He saw, out of an inferno of crashings, the black shape plunge past within a hair’s clearance.

  But he saw more; more which no one could have foreseen. He saw the automaton clear the open door, and land in the passage below. One of its wheels snapped off as it struck, but its momentum was too great. Lurching once, it hurtled against the door directly opposite across the passage; and the door came open.

  Page stumbled down the stairs. He did not need to hear the cry from the room across that passage. He remembered who was in that room, and why Betty Harbottle was there, and what had just gone in to visit her now. In the cessation of noise after the automaton had been stopped, small sounds crept out. After a time he heard distinctly the squeak of the hinges as Dr. King opened the bedroom door, and the physician had a face like white paper. He said:

  “You devil up there, what have you done?”

  III

  Friday, July 31st

  THE RISE OF A WITCH

  Car, au fond, c’est cela le Satanisme, se disait-il; la question agitée depuis que le monde existe, des visions extérieures, est subsidiare, quand on y songe; le Démon n’a pas besoin de s’exhiber sous des traits humains ou bestiaux afin d’attester sa présence; il suffit, pour qu’il s’affirme, qu’il élise domicile en des âmes qu’il exulcère et incite à d’inexplicables crimes.

  —J.-K. HUYSMANS, Là-Bas

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE CORONER’S INQUEST ON Sir John Farnleigh was held the following day, and produced a sensation that blew off every journalistic roof in Great Britain.

  Inspector Elliot, like most policemen, is not fond of inquests. This is for practical reasons. Brian Page is not fond of them for artistic reasons: because you never learn anything you did not know before, because there is seldom anything of a sensational nature, and because the verdict, whatever it is, brings you no nearer to a solution than before.

  But this inquest—held on the morning of Friday, July 31st—he admitted did not go according to pattern. A suicide verdict, of course, was a foregone conclusion. Yet it was spectacular enough to produce a first-class row before the first witness had said ten words, and it ended in a way that left Inspector Elliot dazed.

  Page, drinking very black coffee at breakfast, offered up profane thanks that they had not another inquest on their hands from the business of the previous afternoon. Betty Harbottle was not dead. But she had gone through a narrow graze of it after seeing the hag for the second time, and she was still in no condition to speak. Afterwards Elliot’s endless questioning ran in a dismal circle. “Did you push it?” “I swear I didn’t; I don’t know who did; we were tramping on an uneven floor and maybe nobody did.”

  Elliot summed it up when he and Dr. Fell talked late over pipes and beer. Page, after taking Madeline home, forcing her to have something to eat, quieting threatened hysterics, and trying to think of a thousand things at once, heard the conclusion of the inspector’s views.

  “We’re licked,” he said briefly. “Not a single ruddy thing we can prove, and yet look at the string of events we’ve got! Victoria Daly is murdered: maybe by a tramp
, maybe not: but with the indications of other dirty work that we needn’t discuss now. That’s a year ago. Sir John Farnleigh dies with his throat cut. Betty Harbottle is in some way ‘attacked’ and brought down from the attic; and her torn apron is found in the book-closet upstairs. The Thumbograph disappears and returns. Finally, a deliberate attempt is made to kill you by pushing that machinery downstairs, an attempt which you only escaped by one whistle and the grace of God.”

  “Believe me, I appreciate that,” muttered Dr. Fell uncomfortably. “It was one of the worst moments of my life when I looked round and saw that juggernaut coming down. It was my own fault. I talked too much. And yet______”

  Elliot regarded him with sharp inquiry.

  “All the same, sir, it showed you were on the right track. The murderer knew you knew too much. As to just what that track is, if you’ve got any ideas now is the time to tell me. I shall be recalled to town, you know, unless something is done.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you fast enough,” growled Dr. Fell. “I’m not making mysteries. Even when I do tell you, though, and even in the event I happen to be right, it still doesn’t prove anything. Besides, I’m not sure about another thing. I am very flattered, of course. But I’m not sure the automaton was pushed downstairs with the purpose of what is poetically known as rubbing me out.”

  “For what purpose, then? It couldn’t be just to frighten the girl again, sir. The murderer couldn’t have known it would land smack against that bedroom door.”

  “I know,” said Dr. Fell stubbornly, and ruffled his hands through his big mop of gray-streaked hair. “And yet—and yet—proof______”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Here are all these points, a connected series of events, and not one blasted one of ’em I can prove! Not one thing I can take to my superintendent and say, ‘Here; grab this.’ Not one bit of evidence that isn’t capable of another interpretation. I can’t even show that the events are in any way connected, which is the real snag. Now take this inquest tomorrow. Even the police evidence must plump for a suicide verdict______”

  “Can’t you get the inquest adjourned?”

  “Of course. Ordinarily that’s what I should do, and keep on adjourning it until we either had evidence of murder or had to drop the case altogether. But there’s the last and greatest snag. What have I got to hope for by more investigation, as matters stand? My superintendent is just about convinced that Sir John Farnleigh’s death is suicide, and so is the A.C. When they learned that there are traces of the dead man’s fingerprints on that clasp-knife Sergeant Burton found in the hedge______”

  (Here was news to Page, the final nail in a suicide’s coffin.)

  “—that finished it,” Elliot corroborated him. “What else can I look for?”

  “Betty Harbottle?” suggested Page.

  “All right: suppose she does recover and tell her story? Suppose she says she saw somebody in the book-closet? Doing what? And what of it? What connection has it got with a suicide in the garden? Where’s your proof, laddie? Anything about the Thumbograph? Well, it’s never been suggested that the Thumbograph was in the possession of the dead man, so where do you get with that line of argument? No. Don’t look at it sensibly, sir; look at it legally. It’s a hundred to one they’ll recall me at the end of today, and the case will be shelved. You and I know that there’s a murderer here, worming so neatly that he or she can keep right on in the same old way unless somebody stops it. And apparently nobody can stop it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Elliot gulped down half a pint of beer before he answered.

  “There’s just one chance, as I say: a full-dress inquest. Most of our suspects will give evidence. It’s remotely possible that somebody, under oath, will make a slip. Not much hope, I admit—but it’s happened before (remember the Nurse Waddington case?), and it may happen again. It’s the last hope of the police when nothing else works.”

  “Will the coroner play your game?”

  “I wonder,” said Elliot thoughtfully. “This chap Burrows is up to something; I know that. But he won’t come to me and I can’t get any change out of him. He’s gone to the coroner about something. I gather that the coroner doesn’t particularly like Burrows, didn’t particularly like the late alleged ‘Farnleigh,’ and himself thinks it’s suicide. But he’ll play fair, and they’ll all stand together against the outsider—meaning me. The ironical part is that Burrows himself would like to prove murder, because a suicide verdict more or less proves his client was an impostor. The whole thing is going to be just one hilarious field-day about lost heirs, with only one possible verdict: suicide, my recall, and the end of the case.”

  “Now, now,” said Dr. Fell soothingly. “By the way, where is the automaton now?”

  “Sir?”

  Elliot roused himself out of grievances and stared at the other.

  “The automaton?” he repeated. “I pushed it into a cupboard. After the whacking it took, it’s not good for much now except scrap-iron. I was going to have a look at it, but I doubt if a master-mechanic could make sense of the works now.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Fell, taking up his bedroom candle with a sigh. “That, you see, was why the murderer pushed it downstairs.”

  Page spent a troubled night. There were many things for the next day besides the inquest. Nat Burrows, he reflected, was not the man his father had been; even matters like funeral arrangements had to be turned over to Page. It appeared that Burrows was busying himself over some other aspect of the difficulty. There was also the question of leaving Molly “alone” in a house of questionable atmosphere, and the disquieting news that the servants were threatening to leave almost in a body.

  These things churned through sleep into a day of brilliant sunshine and heat. The riot of motor-cars began by nine o’clock. He had never seen so many cars in Mallingford; the Press and the outside world poured in to an extent that made him realize the immense noise this case was making outside their gates. It angered him. It was, he thought, nobody else’s damned business. Why didn’t they put up swings and round-abouts, and sell hot dogs? They swamped the Bull and Butcher, in whose “hall”—a sort of long shed built for the jollifications of hop-pickers—the inquest was to be held. Sunlight winked on many camera-lenses in the road. There were women. Old Mr. Rowntree’s dog chased somebody clear up the road to Major Chambers’s, and had a hysteria of barking all morning, and couldn’t be quieted.

  In this the people of the district moved without comment. They did not take sides. In country life each person depends on the other for something, giving and receiving; in a case like this you had to wait and see what happened, so that matters could be reasonably comfortable whichever way verdicts went. But from the outside world came the tumult of LOST HEIR SLAIN OR LOST HEIR FRAUD?; and at eleven o’clock in the hot morning they opened the inquest.

  The long, low, gloomy shed was packed. Page felt the appropriateness of a starched collar. The coroner, a forthright solicitor who was determined to stand no nonsense from the Farnleighs, sat behind a heap of papers at a broad table, with a witness-chair at his left.

  First of all, evidence of identification of the body was given by Lady Farnleigh, the widow. Even this—as a rule the merest of formalities—was questioned. Molly had hardly begun to speak when up rose Mr. Harold Welkyn, in frockcoat and gardenia, on behalf of his client. Mr. Welkyn said that he must protest against this identification in the matter of a technicality, since the dead man was not, in fact, Sir John Farnleigh; and, since the matter was of the utmost importance in determining whether the deceased took his own life or was murdered, he respectfully begged leave to bring it to the coroner’s attention.

  There ensued a long argument in which the coroner, aided by a frigid and indignant Burrows, quite properly sat on Mr. Welkyn. But Welkyn, relapsing, perspired with satisfaction. He had made the point. He had set the pace. He had outlined the real terms of the battle, and everybody knew it.

  It also compelled Moll
y to discuss the matter in reply to the coroner’s questions as to the deceased’s state of mind. He treated her well, but he was determined to thrash the matter out and Molly looked badly rattled. Page began to realize the state of affairs when the coroner, instead of next calling evidence as to the finding of the body, called Kennet Murray. The whole story came out; and, under Murray’s gentle firmness, the imposture of the deceased stood out as clear and black as a fingerprint. Burrows fought every step of the way, but only succeeded in angering the coroner.

  Evidence of finding the body was given by Burrows and Page. (The latter’s own voice sounded wrong to him.) Then the medical testimony was called. Dr. Theophilus King testified that on the night of Wednesday, July 29th, he had gone to Farnleigh Close in response to a telephone-call from Detective-Sergeant Burton. He had made a preliminary examination and ascertained that the man was dead. The next day, the body having been removed to the mortuary, he had on the instructions of the coroner performed a post-mortem examination, verifying the cause of death.

  The coroner: Now, Dr. King, will you describe the wounds on the throat of the deceased?

  The doctor: There were three fairly shallow wounds, beginning at the left side of the throat and ending under the angle of the right jaw in a slightly upward direction. Two of the wounds crossed each other.

  Q: The weapon was passed across the throat from left to right?

  A: That is so.

  Q: Would this have been the course taken by a weapon held in the hand of a man taking his own life?

  A: If the man were right-handed, yes.

  Q: Was the deceased right-handed?

  A: To the best of my knowledge, he was.

  Q: Should you say it was impossible for the deceased to have inflicted such wounds on himself?

  A: Not at all.

  Q: From the nature of the wounds, doctor, what sort of weapon should you say had been used to inflict them?