The Crooked Hinge Page 19

  “Don’t you see what happened? The woman was falling from delirium into unconsciousness in a dark house. A poor devil of a derelict, seeing a dark house and an open window, thought he had found an easy crib to crack. What he met was a woman roused and screaming in delirium: and it must have been rather an unnerving apparition which rose up at him from the bed or the floor. He lost his head and killed her.

  “Anyone suffering delirium from that ointment couldn’t have and wouldn’t have put on the night-dress, dressing-gown, and slippers. The murderer wouldn’t have put them on her. He was interrupted and chased before he had finished his work.

  “But there was somebody else in the dark house. Victoria Daly was lying there dead with the ointment on her body and in a queer kind of costume which would cause a furious scandal when her body was found. Some wiseacre might even guess what had happened. To avert discovery, this third person crept into the bedroom before the body had been seen by anybody. (Remember? The two men who heard the screams saw the murderer escaping from the window, and gave chase; they didn’t return until some time afterwards.) This third person then removed whatever ‘witch’s’ clothes Victoria wore, and decorously dressed the body in night-gown, dressing-gown, and slippers. That’s it. That’s got it. That’s what really happened.”

  His heart was thumping. The mental images, hidden for so long, were of such clarity that he knew he was right. He nodded towards Madeline.

  “You know that’s true, don’t you?”

  “Brian! How could I know it?”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. I mean you’re as certain as I am, aren’t you? That’s the assumption on which Elliot has been working all this time.”

  She took a long time before she replied.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “I’d thought that. At least, I’d thought so until tonight, when those hints Dr. Fell gave didn’t seem in the least to square with my ideas—and I told him so. Besides, it doesn’t even seem to fit in with what they think either. You remember, he said yesterday there was no witch-cult hereabouts?”

  “And so there isn’t.”

  “But you’ve just explained—”

  “I’ve explained what one person did. One person, and only one. Remember, Dr. Fell told us that yesterday. ‘Everything, from mental cruelty to murder, is the work of one person.’ And, ‘I tell you frankly, Satanism itself is an honest and straightforward business compared to the intellectual pleasures a certain person has invented.’ Put all these words together; put them into a pattern. Mental cruelty, plus intellectual pleasures, plus the death of Victoria Daly, plus a vague and undefined rumor of witchcraft among—what did Elliot tell me?—the gentry of the neighborhood.

  “I wonder what prompted this person to take it up? Pure boredom? Boredom with life, utter and simple, coming from an inability to take an interest in ordinary things? Or a tendency inherited from childhood, under the surface, but always growing up and feeding on secret things?”

  “To take what up?” cried Madeline. “That’s what I’m trying to get at. To take what up?”

  Behind her a hand rapped on the glass of the window, with a malevolent tearing sound like a scratch.

  Madeline screamed. That knock or blow had almost closed the partly open window, which rattled with a small noise against the frame. Page hesitated. The jingle of the dance-orchestra still filled the room. Then he went to the window and pushed it open.

  * For a medical analysis of these ointments, see Margaret Alice Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 1921), Appendix V, 279-280; and J. W. Wickwar, Witchcraft and the Black Art (Herbert Jenkins, 1925), 36-40. See also Montague Summers, History of Witchcraft and Demonology (Kegan Paul, 1926)

  Chapter Eighteen

  D. FELL AND INSPECTOR Elliot did not catch the train. They did not catch it because, when they arrived at Farnleigh Close, they were told that Betty Harbottle was awake and could speak to them.

  They did not talk much on their way through the orchard and up through the wood. What they said, too, might have seemed cryptic to a listener. But it had a very deadly bearing on events which were to take place only an hour or two later, when one of the most cunning murderers in Dr. Fell’s experience was (perhaps prematurely) snared into the open.

  It was close and dark in the wood. Leaves made a heavy pattern against the starlight; Elliot’s flashlight threw a beam ahead on a path of bare earth, making the green spectral. From the gloom behind it sounded two voices, the harsh tenor of the inspector and the wheezing bass of Dr. Fell.

  “Still, sir, are we any nearer to proving it?”

  “I think so, I hope so. If I’ve read one person’s character correctly, he’ll give us all the proof we need.”

  “And if your explanation works?”

  “H’mf, yes. If it works. Of sticks and stones and rags and bones I made it; but it ought to serve.”

  “Do you think there’s any danger,” Elliot seemed to jerk his head over his shoulder in the direction of Madeline’s house, “back there?”

  There was a pause before Dr. Fell answered, while their footsteps swished among ferns.

  “Dammit, I wish I knew! I hardly think so, though. Consider the character of the murderer. A sly, cracked head—like the dummy’s; under that pleasant exterior—just as the dummy used to have. But emphatically not a fabled monster, intent on strewing the place with corpses. Not a monster at all. A moderate murderer, my lad. When I think of the number of persons who, by all the laws of progressive homicide, SHOULD have been murdered in this case, I have a tendency towards goose-flesh.

  “We’ve known cases in which the murderer, after taking careful pains about his original crime, then goes berserk and begins to eliminate people all over the place. It seems to be like getting olives out of a bottle: you have infinite trouble with the first one, and the rest roll out all over the table. Without, indeed, anybody seeming to pay much attention to them. This murder is human, my lad. I’m not, you understand, praising the murderer for this sporting restraint and good manners in refraining from killing people. But, my God, Elliot, the people who have gone in danger from the first! Betty Harbottle might have been killed. A certain lady we know of might have been killed. For a certain man’s safety I’ve had apprehensions from the start. And not one of ’em has been touched. Is it vanity? Or what?”

  In silence they came out of the wood and down the hill. Only a few lights burned at Farnleigh Close. They went through the part of the garden on the opposite side from the place where the murder had been committed, and round to the front door. A subdued Knowles admitted them.

  “Lady Farnleigh has retired, sir,” he said. “But Dr. King asks me to say that he wishes you gentlemen would join him upstairs, if you will.”

  “Is Betty Harbottle—?” Elliot stopped.

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  Elliot whistled through his teeth as they went upstairs and into the dimly lighted passage between the Green Room and the bedroom where the girl lay. Dr. King held them off a moment before they entered.

  “Now, look here,” King said in his abrupt fashion. “Five minutes, ten minutes maybe: no more. I want to warn you. You’ll find her as quiet and easy-spoken as though she were talking about a bus-ride. But don’t let that deceive you. It’s a part of the reaction, and she’s got a dose of morphia in her. You’ll also find her quick with her eyes and tolerably intelligent—curiosity was always Betty’s chief feature—so don’t start her going with too many suggestions and general fol-de-rol. Is that understood? Right, then. In you go.”

  Mrs. Apps, the housekeeper, slipped out as they entered. It was a large room in which every globe was illuminated in the old-fashioned chandelier. Not an impressive room: large old-fashioned photographs of Farnleighs were framed on the walls, and the dressing-table held a menagerie of china animals. The bed was black, square, and uncompromising. From it Betty regarded them with vague interest.

  She had one of those faces called “bright,” with very
straight bobbed hair. Her pallor, and the slightly sunken look of the eyes, were the only signs of illness. She seemed pleased to see them rather than otherwise; and the only thing or person that seemed to make her uncomfortable was Dr. King. Her hands slowly smoothed the counterpane.

  Dr. Fell beamed on her. His vast presence made the whole room comfortable.

  “Hullo,” he said.

  “Hullo, sir,” said Betty with an effort at brightness.

  “Do you know who we are, my dear? And why we’re here?”

  “Oh, yes. You want me to tell you what happened to me.”

  “And can you?”

  “I don’t mind,” she conceded.

  She fixed her eyes on the foot of the bed. Dr. King took out his watch and put it on the dressing-table.

  “Well—I don’t know how to tell you, hardly. I went upstairs there to get an apple—” Betty abruptly seemed to change her mind. She shifted in bed. “No, I didn’t!” she added.

  “You didn’t?”

  “I didn’t go up to get an apple. When I get well my sister’s taking me away from here (I’m going to have a holiday at Hastings, too), so that’s why I’ll tell you. I didn’t go up there to get an apple. I went up often to see if I could get a peep at what’s in the cupboard there, the locked cupboard.”

  Her tone was not in the least defiant: she was too listless to be defiant: she was merely speaking out truth as though she were under the influence less of morphia than of scopolamine.

  Dr. Fell looked heavily puzzled. “But why should you be interested in the locked cupboard?”

  “Oh, everybody knows about it, sir. Somebody’d been using it.”

  “Using it?”

  “Sitting up there with a light. There’s a little window in the roof, like a skylight. At night, if you’re a little way off from the house, and there’s a light inside, you can see it against the roof. Everybody knows about it, though we’re not supposed to. Even Miss Dane knows about it. I was over at Miss Dane’s house one evening, taking her a parcel from Sir John, and I was going back through the Chart. Miss Dane asked me whether I wasn’t afraid to go through the Chart after dark. I said, Oh, no; perhaps I should see the light in the roof, and that would be worth it. I only said it as a joke, because the light was always on the south side, and the path through the Chart takes you to the north side. Miss Dane laughed and put her arm round my shoulder and asked whether I was the only one who had seen it. I said, Oh, no, everybody had; because we had. Besides, we were all interested about that machine like a gramophone, that dummy—”

  The look in her eyes altered slightly.

  There was a pause.

  “But who was ‘using’ the room?”

  “Well, mostly they said it was Sir John. Agnes saw him come down from the attic one afternoon, with his face all perspiring and something like a dog-whip in his hand. I said, So would you be perspiring, too, if you sat in a little bit of a place like that with the door shut. But Agnes said he didn’t look quite like that.”

  “Anyway, my dear, will you tell us what happened yesterday? Hey?”

  Dr. King interposed sharply. “Two minutes, my lads.”

  Betty looked surprised.

  “I don’t mind,” she responded. “I went up there to get an apple. But this time, when I went past the door of the little room, I saw the padlock wasn’t fastened. The padlock was open, hanging on the staple. The door was closed, but with something stuck in between the door and the frame to hold it shut.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went and got an apple. After that I came back and looked at the door and started to eat the apple. Then I went to the apple-room again, and finally I came back and thought I would see what was inside after all. But I didn’t want to, as much as usually.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there was a noise in there, or I thought so. A rattly kind of noise, like winding a grandfather clock; but not very loud.”

  “Do you remember what time this was, Betty?”

  “No, sir. Not properly. It was past one o’clock, maybe a quarter past or more than that.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went over ever so quickly, before I should decide not to do it, and opened the door. The thing that was keeping it shut was a glove. Stuck into the door, you know, sir.”

  “A man’s glove or a woman’s glove?”

  “A man’s, I think. It had oil on it; or it smelt like oil. It dropped on the floor. I went inside. I could see the old machine-thing there, a bit sideways to me, like. I didn’t want one more look at it: not that you could see very well in there. But I no sooner stepped inside than the door closed ever so softly; and somebody put up the chain across the door and I heard the padlock close together outside; so I was locked in, you see.”

  “Steady!” said the physician sharply. He took up his watch from the dressing-table.

  Betty was twisting the fringe of the counterpane. Dr. Fell and the inspector looked at each other; Dr. Fell’s red face was heavy and grave.

  “But—are you still all right, Betty?—who was in there? Who was in the little room?”

  “Nobody. Nobody except the old machine-thing. Nobody at all.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I was afraid to call out and ask to be let out. I was afraid I should get the sack. It wasn’t quite dark. I stood there and didn’t do anything for, oh, maybe it was a quarter of an hour. And nobody else did anything either: I mean the machine-thing didn’t. Presently I started to move away from it, and got back as far as I could, because it started to put its arms around me.”

  If, at that moment, so much as the ash of a cigar had fallen into an ash-tray, Dr. Fell swears it would have been heard. Elliot heard the breath drawn through his own nostrils. Elliot said:

  “It moved, Betty? The machine moved?”

  “Yes, sir. It moved its arms. They didn’t move fast, and neither did the body, the way it sort of ducked forward towards me; and it made a noise when it moved. But that wasn’t what I minded so much. I didn’t seem to feel anything, because I had been standing in there with it for a quarter of an hour already. What I minded was the eyes it had. It didn’t have eyes in the proper place. It had eyes in the skirt, right by the knees of the old dummy thing; and they looked up at me. I could see them move round. I don’t mind even them so much. I expect I shall get used to them. At that time I don’t remember anything more about it; I must have fainted or something; but it’s outside the door now,” continued Betty, with absolutely no change of expression or tone while she nodded at the door.

  “I should like to go to sleep,” she added in a plaintive tone.

  Dr. King swore under his breath.

  “That’s done it,” he said. “Out you go, now. No, she’ll be all right; but—out you go.”

  “Yes,” agreed Elliot, looking at Betty’s closed eyes, “I think we had better.”

  They went out with guilty quietness, and King made a pantomime of slamming the door after them. “I hope,” he muttered, “hearing common delirium helps you.” Still without speaking, Dr. Fell and the inspector went across to the dark Green Room. It was furnished as a study in heavy antique style; and the windows were rectangles of starlight. They went across and stood by one window.

  “That settles it, sir? Even aside from the—er—answer to the inquiries—?”

  “Yes. That settles it.”

  “Then we’d better get on to town, and—”

  “No,” said Dr. Fell after a long pause. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary. I think we’d better try the experiment now, while the metal is hot. Look there!”

  The garden below showed in clear etching-lines against the dark. They saw the maze of hedges veined with whitish paths, the clear space round the pool, and the white smears of the water-lilies. But they were not looking at this. Someone, carrying an object recognizable even in that
light, slipped past under the library windows and round the south corner of the house.

  Dr. Fell expelled his breath. Lumbering across the room to the central light-fixture, he turned on the lamp and swung round with a vast billow of his cape.

  “Psychologically, as we’ve come to say,” he told Elliot with sardonic dryness, “tonight is the night. Now’s the time, man. Now, or we may lose the whole advantage. Get ’em together, I tell you! I should like to do a little explaining as to how a man can be murdered when alone in the circle of sand; and then we can pray Old Nick will come and get his own. Hey?”

  A small cough interrupted them as Knowles came into the room.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Dr. Fell. “Mr. Murray is here, and asking to see you gentlemen. He says he’s been looking for you for some time.”

  “Has he, now?” inquired Dr. Fell, with ferocious affability. The doctor beamed and shook his cape. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  Knowles hesitated. “No, sir. That is—” Knowles hesitated again. “He says he’s disturbed about something, sir. He also wishes to see Mr. Burrows. And, as regards that—”

  “Speak up, man! What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, sir, may I ask whether Miss Dane received the automaton?”

  Inspector Elliot whirled round from the window.

  “Whether Miss Dane received the automaton? What automaton? What about it?”

  “You know the one, sir,” returned Knowles, with a guilty expression which (less smoothly done) might have been a leer. “Miss Dane rang up this afternoon, and asked whether she might have the automaton sent over to her home this evening. We—er—we thought it was an odd request; but Miss Dane said a gentleman was coming there, an expert on such things, and she wished him to have a good look at it.”

  “So,” observed Dr. Fell without inflection. “She wished him to have a good look at it.”