The Crooked Hinge Read online

  “Yes, sir. Macneile (that’s the gardener) mended the wheel, and I had it sent over in a cart. Macneile and Parsons said there was nobody at home at Miss Dane’s at the time, so they put it into the coal-house. Then—er—Mr. Burrows arrived here, and expressed annoyance that it had gone. He also knows of a gentleman who is an expert on such things.”

  “How popular the hag is becoming in her old age,” rumbled Dr. Fell, with a wheeze of what might or might not have been pleasure. “How excellent to eke out her days among throngs of admirers. By thunder, how excellent! A perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort, and command. Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel hard eyes that grow soft for an hour—waugh!” He stopped. “And is Mr. Murray also interested in the automaton?”

  “No, sir. Not that I know of.”

  “A pity. Well, shoot him into the library. He is remarkably at home there. One of us will be down in a moment. And what,” he added to Elliot, when Knowles had gone, “do you make of this little move?”

  Elliot rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem to fit in with what we saw. In any case, it mightn’t be a bad idea for me to get back to Monplaisir as fast as I can.”

  “I agree. Profoundly.”

  “Burton ought to be here with the car. If he is, I can make it by the road in three minutes. If he isn’t—”

  He wasn’t. What adjustment had gone wrong with the scales or the night Elliot did not know. Nor could he get a car from the garage at the Close, whose doors were (revealingly) locked. Elliot set off for Monplaisir by the path through the wood. The last thing he saw before he left the house was Dr. Fell descending the main staircase, lowering himself step by step on his crutch-handled stick; and on Dr. Fell’s face was an expression that is very seldom seen there.

  Inspector Elliot told himself that he had no reason to hurry. But, as he mounted the hill through the Hanging Chart, he found himself walking fast. Nor did he particularly like his surroundings. He knew that they were the victims, no longer gullible, of a series of ingenious hoaxes no more to be feared than the black Janus-face in the attic. The hoax at best was unpleasant and at worst was murderous; but it was no more than a hoax.

  And yet, even as he increased his step, he kept the beam of his electric torch playing from side to side. Something stirred in him that was rooted in his blood and race. Out of his boyhood he sought a word to describe the present doings, and found it. The word was “heathenish.”

  He did not expect anything to happen. He knew that he would not be needed.

  It was not until he was almost out of the wood that he heard a shot fired.

  Chapter Nineteen

  BRIAN PAGE STOOD IN the open French window and looked out into the garden. After that knock he had been prepared, in the usual fashion, for anything except nothing. And there was nothing—or so it seemed.

  The automaton had gone. The quiet light, almost draining the grass of its color, barely showed the wheel-marks where iron had rested. But the presence or absence of that dead metal meant nothing; someone or something had rapped on the window. He took one step across the sill.

  “Brian,” said Madeline quietly, “where are you going?”

  “Just to see who called on us, or started to call on us.”

  “Brian, don’t go out there. Please.” She came closer, and her voice was full of urgency. “I’ve never asked you to do anything for me before, have I? Well, I ask you to do something now. Don’t go out there. If you do I’ll—well, I don’t know what I will do, exactly, except that it will be something you won’t like. Please! Come in and close the window, won’t you? You see, I know.”

  “Know?”

  She nodded towards the garden. “What was sitting out there a moment ago, and isn’t there now. I saw it from the back door when I was in the kitchen. I didn’t want to worry you in case you hadn’t seen it, though I—I was pretty sure you had.” She slid her hands up the lapels of his coat. “Don’t go out there. Don’t go after it. That’s what it wants you to do.”

  He looked down at her, at the pleading eyes and the curve of the short throat upturned. In spite of what he was thinking and feeling just then, he spoke with a kind of impassioned detachment.

  He said:

  “Of all the extraordinary places to say what I am going to say, this is the most extraordinary. Of all the inappropriate times to say what I am going to say, this is the most inappropriate. I maintain this because I have got to use superlatives somehow in getting my feelings off my chest, and what I mean is that I love you.”

  “Then there’s some good in Lammas Eve,” said Madeline, and lifted her mouth.

  It is a problem how far, in accounts of violence, there may be expressed the things he thought and said then. Yet, without a violence that moved round the edges of a lighted window, it is possible that he would never have learned or heard the things he learned and heard then. He was not concerned with this. He was concerned with other matters: the paradox of how remote and mysterious a loved face looks by very reason of being closer: the strange chemistry of kissing Madeline, which altered his life and in whose actuality he could not even yet believe. He wanted to utter a mighty shout of pure joy; and, after many minutes at that window, he did.

  “Oh, God, Brian, why didn’t you ever tell me so before?” said Madeline, who was half-laughing and half-crying. “I mustn’t swear! My moral character is falling deplorably. But why didn’t you ever tell me so before?”

  “Because I didn’t see how you could possibly be interested in me. I didn’t want you to laugh.”

  “Did you think I would laugh?”

  “Frankly—yes.”

  She held to his shoulders and studied him with her face upturned. Her eyes were shining curiously.

  “Brian, you do love me, don’t you?”

  “For some minutes I have been trying to make that clear. But I haven’t got the slightest objection to beginning all over again. It—”

  “A spinster like me—”

  “Madeline,” he said, “whatever else you do, don’t use that word ‘spinster.’ It is one of the ugliest-sounding words in the language. It suggests something between ‘spindle’ and ‘vinegar.’ To describe you properly, it is necessary to—”

  Again he noticed the curious shining in her eyes.

  “Brian, if you really do love me (you do?) then I may show you something, mayn’t I?”

  Out in the garden there was a noise of a footstep in the grass. Her tone had been odd, so odd as to make him wonder; but there was no time to reflect on this. At that swishing of the footstep they stood apart quickly. Among the laurels a figure was taking shape and coming closer. It was a lean, narrow-shouldered figure, with a walk between a brisk stride and a shamble; after which Page saw, with relief, that it was only Nathaniel Burrows.

  Burrows did not seem to know whether to keep his halibut-faced expression or to smile. Between the two he appeared to struggle: producing something of an amiable contortion. His large shell-rimmed spectacles were grave. His long face, which had a very genuine charm when he chose to exercise it, now showed only a part of that charm. His very correct bowler hat was set at a somewhat rakish angle.

  “Tsk! Tsk!” was his only comment, with a smile. “I’ve come,” he added pleasantly, “for the automaton.”

  “The—?” Madeline blinked at him. “The automaton?”

  “You should not stand in windows,” said Burrows severely. “It upsets your mental equilibrium when you have visitors afterwards. You shouldn’t stand in windows either,” he added, looking at Page. “The dummy, Madeline. The dummy you borrowed from Farnleigh Close this afternoon.”

  Page turned to look at her. She was staring at Burrows, her color heightening.

  “Nat, what on earth are you talking about? The dummy I borrowed? I never did any such thing.”

  “My dear Madeline,” returned Burrows, putting his gloved hands wide apart and bringing them together again. “I’ve not yet properly thanked you for all the good
work you have done for me—at the inquest. But hang it!—” Here he looked at her sideways past his spectacles. “You rang up and asked for that dummy this afternoon. Macneile and Parsons brought it over. It’s in the coal-house now.”

  “You must be absolutely mad,” said Madeline, in a high and wondering voice.

  Burrows, as usual, was reasonable. “Well, it’s there. That’s the supreme answer. I couldn’t make anyone hear at the front of the house. I came round here, and I—er—still couldn’t make anyone hear. My car’s out in the main road. I drove over to get the automaton. Why you should want it I can’t imagine; but would you mind very much if I took it along? I can’t quite see, as yet, how it fits into the picture. However, after my expert has a look at it, it may give me an idea.”

  The coal-house was built into the wall a little to the left of the kitchen. Page went over and opened the door. The automaton was there. He could make out its outlines faintly.

  “You see?” said Burrows.

  “Brian,” said Madeline rather frantically, “will you believe I never did anything of the kind? I never asked for the thing to be sent here, or thought of it, or anything of the sort. Why on earth should I?”

  “Of course I know you didn’t,” Page told her. “Somebody seems to have gone completely mad.”

  “Why not go inside?” suggested Burrows. “I should like to have a little talk with both of you about this. Just wait a moment until I put on the side-lights of my car.”

  The other two went inside, where they looked at each other. The music from the radio had stopped; somebody was talking instead, about a subject Page does not remember, and Madeline shut off the set. Madeline seemed to be in the grip of a reaction.

  “This isn’t real,” she said. “It’s all illusion. We’re dreaming it. At least—all but a part of it, I hope.” And she smiled at him. “Have you any idea what’s happening?”

  As for what happened in the few seconds after that, Page is still confused in his mind. He remembers that he had taken her hand, and opened his mouth to assure her that he did not particularly give a curse what had happened, provided those minutes by the window were not illusion. They both heard the detonation from the direction of the garden or the orchard behind. It had a flat and bursting noise. It was loud enough to make them jump. Yet it seemed to have no connection with them, to be remote from them, in spite of the fact that a wiry sound sang close to their ears—and one of the clocks stopped.

  One of the clocks stopped. Page’s ears took note of that at the same time his eyes noted the small round hole, starred with a faint web of cracks, in the glass of the window. It then became clear that the clock had stopped because there was a bullet buried in it.

  The other clock ticked on.

  “Get back from the window,” Page said. “This can’t be: I don’t believe it: but there’s somebody firing at us from the garden. Where the devil has Nat got to?”

  He went over and switched out the lights. The candles remained; and he blew them out just as a sweating Burrows, his hat crushed down on his head, ducked low through the window as though for safety.

  “There’s somebody—” Burrows began in a strange voice.

  “Yes. We had noticed that.”

  Page moved Madeline across the room. He was calculating, by the position of the bullet in the clock, that two inches to the left would have sent it through Madeline’s head, just above the small curls there.

  No other shot was fired. He heard Madeline’s frightened breathing, and the slow, sharp breathing of Burrows from across the room. Burrows stood inside the last of the windows: only his polished shoe was visible as he braced himself there.

  “Do you know what I think happened?” Burrows asked.

  “Well?”

  “Do you want me to show you what I think happened?”

  “Go on!”

  “Wait,” whispered Madeline. “Whoever it is—listen!”

  Burrows, startled, poked his head out like a turtle’s past the line of the window. Page heard the hail from the garden and answered it. It was Elliot’s voice. He hurried out and met the inspector, whose run through the grass from the orchard was easy to follow. Elliot’s face was inscrutable in the gloom as he listened to Page’s story; also, his manner was at its most heavily official.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “But I think you can put on those lights now. I don’t think you will be troubled again.”

  “Inspector, are you going to do nothing?” demanded Burrows in a wiry voice of remonstrance. “Or are you accustomed to this sort of thing in London? I assure you we’re not.” He mopped his forehead with the back of a gloved hand. “Aren’t you going to search the garden? Or the orchard? Or wherever the shot was fired from?”

  “I said, sir,” repeated Elliot woodenly, “that I don’t think you will be troubled again.”

  “But who did it? What was the point of it?”

  “The point is, sir,” said Elliot, “that this nonsense is going to stop. For good. We’ve had a bit of a change in plans. I think, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have you all come back to the Close with me—just in case, you understand. I’m afraid I’ve got to make the request something like an order.”

  “Oh, nobody’s got any objection,” said Page cheerfully; “though it would almost seem that we’d had enough excitement for one evening.”

  The inspector smiled in a way that was not reassuring.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything like excitement tonight. But you will, Mr. Page. I promise you you will. Has anybody got a car?”

  That uneasy suggestion remained with them while Burrows drove them all to Farnleigh Close. All efforts to question the inspector were useless. To Burrow’s insistence that the automaton should be removed with them, Elliot only answered that there was not time and that it was not necessary.

  A worried-looking Knowles admitted them to the Close. The center of tension was in the library. There, as two nights ago, the gaping crown of electric-bulbs from the ceiling was reflected in a wall of windows. In the chair formerly occupied by Murray sat Dr. Fell, with Murray across from him. Dr. Fell’s hand was supported on his stick, and his lower lip outthrust above the chins. The echo of emotion came to them as soon as the library door was opened. For Dr. Fell had just finished talking, and Murray shaded his eyes with an unsteady hand.

  “Ah,” said the doctor with dubious affability. “Good evening, good evening, good evening! Miss Dane. Mr. Burrows. Mr. Page. Good. I’m afraid we have commandeered the house in a reprehensible way; but something has made it necessary. It is very necessary to have a gathering for a little conference. Couriers have been despatched for Mr. Welkyn and Mr. Gore. Knowles: will you ask Lady Farnleigh to join us? No: don’t go yourself; send a maid; I should prefer that you remain here. In the meantime, certain matters can be discussed.”

  The tone of his voice was such that Nathaniel Burrows hesitated before sitting down. Burrows raised a hand sharply. He did not look at Murray.

  “We cannot go as fast as that,” Burrows returned. “Stop! Is there anything in this discussion that is likely to be of a—er—a controversial nature?”

  “There is.”

  Again Burrows hesitated. He had not glanced in Murray’s direction; but Page, studying them, felt a twinge of pity for Murray without knowing why. The tutor looked worn and old.

  “Oh! And what are we going to discuss, doctor?”

  “The character of a certain person,” said Dr. Fell. “You will guess who it is.”

  “Yes,” agreed Page, hardly conscious that he had spoken aloud. “The person who initiated Victoria Daly into the pleasantries of witchcraft.”

  It was remarkable, he thought, the effect that name had. You had only to introduce the words “Victoria Daly,” like a talisman, and everybody shied away from it; the prospect seemed to open into new vistas which were not liked. Dr. Fell, vaguely surprised but interested, turned round and blinked at him.

  “Ah!” said t
he doctor, wheezing with approval. “So you guessed that.”

  “I tried to work it out. Is that person the murderer?”

  “That person is the murderer.” Dr. Fell pointed his stick. “It will help us, you know, if the view is also shared by you. Let’s hear what you think. And speak out, my lad. There will be worse things said in this room before any of us leaves it.”

  With some care, and a vividness of image which he hardly sought to use, Page repeated the story he had already told to Madeline. Dr. Fell’s sharp little eyes never left his face, nor did Inspector Elliot miss a word. The body smeared with ointment, the dark house with the open window, the panic-mad vagabond, the third person waiting: these images seemed to be enacted in the library like pictures on a screen.

  At the end of it Madeline spoke. “Is this true? Is it what you and the inspector think?”

  Dr. Fell merely nodded.

  “Then I ask you what I was trying to ask Brian. If there is no witch-cult—as he says—if the whole affair was a dream, what was this ‘third person’ doing or trying to do? What about the evidences of witchcraft?”

  “Ah, the evidences,” said Dr. Fell.

  After a pause he went on:

  “I will try to explain. You have among you somebody whose mind and heart have been steeped for years in a secret love of these things and what they stand for. Not a belief in them! That I hasten to point out. That I emphasize. Nobody could be more cynical as regards the powers of darkness and the lords of the four-went-ways. But a surpassing love of them, made all the more powerful and urgent by an (altogether prudish) necessity for never letting it show. This person, you understand, figures before you in a very different character. This person will never admit before you to even an interest in such matters, an interest such as you and I might have. So that secret interest—the desire to share it—the desire, above all, to experiment on other people—grew so strong that it had to burst its bonds somehow.

  “Now what was this person’s position? What could this person do? Found a new witch-cult in Kent, such as existed here in previous centuries? It must have been a fascinating idea; but this person knew that it was as wild as wind. This person is, essentially, very practical.