The Crooked Hinge Page 6

  “In point of fact, there is nothing funny in it. Here you sit in a lighted room, with a wall of windows giving on a dark garden and a screen of trees and the devil whispering behind every leaf. Be careful.”

  “Well,” returned Murray, with a faint smile creeping round his moustache and into his beard, “in that case I shall take all care. The more nervous of you can keep an eye on me through the window. Now you must excuse me.”

  They went out into the hall, and he closed the door on them. Then six persons stood and looked at each other. Lights had already been turned on in the long, pleasant hall; Knowles stood at the door of the dining-room, in the “new” wing which had been built out at the back from the center of the house, like the body of the letter T with its head as the front. Molly Farnleigh, though flushed and strained, tried to speak coolly.

  “Don’t you think we had better have something to eat?” she said. “I’ve ordered a cold buffet prepared. After all, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t carry on as usual.”

  “Thank you,” said Welkyn, relieved; “I should like a sandwich.”

  “Thank you,” said Burrows; “I am not hungry.”

  “Thank you,” said the claimant, to swell the chorus. “Whether I accepted or refused, it would sound equally bad. I am going somewhere to smoke a long, strong, black cigar; and then I am going to see that no harm comes to Murray in there.”

  Farnleigh said nothing. Just behind him in the hall there was a door giving on that part of the garden overlooked by the library windows. He studied his guests with a long, careful scrutiny; then he opened the glass door and went out into the garden.

  In the same way Page presently found himself deserted. The only person in sight was Welkyn, who stood in the dimly lighted dining-room and ate fish-paste sandwiches with great steadiness. Page’s watch said that it was twenty minutes past nine o’clock. He hesitated, and then followed Farnleigh out into the cool dimness of the garden.

  This side of the garden seemed shut off from the world, and formed an oblong some eighty feet long by forty feet broad. On one side it was closed in by the new wing; on the other by a stretch of high yew hedge. Through the beech trees the library windows spread out a faint and broken wall of light from the narrow side of the oblong. In the new wing, too, the dining-room had glass doors opening out into it, with a balcony overlooking it from the bedroom windows above.

  Inspired by King William the Third at Hampton Court, a seventeenth-century Farnleigh had laid out the garden in severe curves and angles of yew hedge, with broad sanded walks between. The hedges were built waist-high; it was, in fact, very much like the foundation of a maze. Though you had no actual difficulty in finding your way about the garden, it would be (Page had always thought) a rare place for hiding-games if you kept down below the line of the hedges. In the center was a large round open space, buttressed with rose-trees; and this space in turn enclosed an ornamental pool some ten feet in diameter, with a very low coping. In the uncertainty between the lights, with faint gleams from the house meeting a faint afterglow from the west, it was a secret and fragrant place. Yet for some reason Page had never liked the feel of that garden.

  With this thought came another, a more unpleasant one. There was nothing about a mere garden, a handful of hedges, shrubs, flowers, and soil, which could inspire disquiet. It may have been that the minds and thoughts of everyone here were concentrated so fiercely on the library, moving against that lighted box like moths on the glass. Of course, it was absurd to suppose that anything could happen to Murray. Things are not managed like that; they are not so convenient; it was only the claimant’s hypnotic personality which had been able to worm in the suggestion.

  “However,” Page almost said aloud, “I think I might just stroll past the window and have a look.”

  He did so, and jerked back with muttered profanity, for someone else had been having a look as well. He did not see who the other person was, because the other person drew away from the screen of beeches against the library windows. But Page saw Kennet Murray inside, sitting at the library table with his back to the windows, and Murray seemed to be just opening a grayish book.

  Nonsense.

  Page moved away, and walked quickly out into the cool garden. He skirted the round pool, looking up at a single clear star (Madeline Dane had a poetic name for it) which you could see just above a cluster of chimneys in the new wing. Working his way through the low labyrinth, he reached the far end in labyrinthine thought.

  Well, was Farnleigh the impostor, or the other fellow? Page did not know; and he had changed his mind so many times in the past two hours that he did not like to guess. Then, too, there had been the persistent, accidental introduction at every turn of the name of Madeline Dane—

  At the end of this side of the garden there was a laurel hedge which screened a stone bench from the house. He sat down and lighted a cigarette. Tracing his thoughts back as honestly as he could, he admitted to himself that a part of his grouse at the universe was the persistent recurrence of Madeline Dane’s name. Madeline Dane, whose blonde and slender good looks suggested the origin of her surname, was the person who mixed up the “Lives of the Chief Justices” and everything else in Page’s thoughts. He was thinking more about her than was good for him. For here he was, getting on towards being a crusty bachelor—

  Then Brian Page jumped up from the stone bench, thinking neither of Madeline nor of marriage: only of the sounds he had heard from the garden behind. They were not loud sounds, but they came with terrifying clarity out of the dim, low hedges. The choking noise was the worst: then the shuffle and scrape of feet: then the splash and thrashings.

  For a moment he did not want to turn round.

  He did not really believe that anything had happened. He never believed that. But he dropped his cigarette on the grass, set his heel on it, and walked back towards the house at a pace that was almost a run. He was some distance away from the house; and in the hide-and-seek paths he took two wrong turnings. At first the uncertain place seemed deserted; next he saw Burrows’ tall figure pounding towards him, and the beam of a flashlight flickered over the hedges into his face. When he came close enough to see Burrows’ face behind the light, the coolness and fragrance of the garden were lost.

  “Well, it’s happened,” said Burrows.

  What Page felt at that moment was a slight physical nausea.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he lied, “except that it can’t have happened.”

  “I’m simply telling you, that’s all,” returned a whitefaced Burrows, with patient insistence. “Come along quick and help me haul him out. I can’t swear he’s dead, but he’s lying on his face in that pond and I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

  Page stared in the direction he indicated. He could not see the pool, which was hidden by the hedges; but he now had a good view of the back of the house. From one window of a lighted room over the library, old Knowles the butler was leaning out; and Molly Farnleigh was on the balcony outside her bedroom windows.

  “I tell you,” Page insisted, “nobody would dare have a go at Murray! It’s impossible. It’s nonsensical to—and, anyway, what’s Murray doing at the pond?”

  “Murray?” said the other, staring at him. “Why Murray? Who said anything about Murray? It’s Farnleigh, man: John Farnleigh. It was all over before I could get there; and I’m afraid it’s too late now.”

  Chapter Six

  “BUT WHO THE DEVIL,” Page asked, “would want to kill Farnleigh?”

  He had to adjust his thoughts. Afterwards he has acknowledged that his original notion of murder had been mere suggestion. Yet, even when another suggestion replaced it, he remembered his first thought: if this were murder, it had been ingeniously conceived. As though by an effect of sleight-of-hand, every eye and ear had been concentrated on Kennet Murray. No person in the house had a thought in his head for anybody but Murray. No one would know where anybody had been, anybody but Murray. A person who acted in that vacuum could a
ttack unseen, so long as he did not attack Murray.

  “Kill Farnleigh?” repeated Burrows in a queer voice. “Here, this won’t do. Wake up. Stop. Steady. Come on.”

  Still talking like a man giving directions for backing a car, he led the way with his lanky stride. The beam from the flashlight was steady. But he switched it off before they reached the pond, either because there was still enough light from the sky or because he did not wish to see things too clearly just then.

  Round the pool there was a border of packed sand some five feet wide. Forms, even faces, were still dimly visible. Farnleigh lay prone in the pool, turned a little towards the right as you faced the rear of the garden. The pool was just deep enough so that his body rocked with the water, which still slopped and splashed over the low round edge of the coping, running across packed sand. They also saw a darker dye in the water, curling upwards and spreading round him; but they did not see the full color of this dye until it touched a patch of white water-lilies close to the body.

  The slopping agitation of the water began again when Page started to haul him out; Farnleigh’s heel just touched the edge of the low coping. But, after one minute which Page never wished to remember afterwards, Page got up.

  “We can’t do him any good,” Page said. “His throat’s been cut.”

  The shock had not worn off yet, and they both spoke calmly.

  “Yes. I was afraid of that. It’s—”

  “It’s murder. Or,” said Page abruptly, “suicide.”

  They looked at each other in the dusk.

  “All the same,” argued Burrows, trying to be official-mannered and human at the same time, “we’ve got to get him out of there. That rule about touching nothing and waiting for the police is all very well, but we can’t let him lie there. It’s not decent. Besides, his position has been disturbed as it is. Shall we—?”

  “Yes.”

  The tweed suit, now black and bulging, seemed to have accumulated a ton of water. With difficulty they rolled Farnleigh over the edge, sending a minor tidal wave across themselves. The peaceful evening scent of the garden, especially the roses, had never seemed more theatrically romantic than in the midst of this reality. Page kept thinking: this is John Farnleigh, and he’s dead. This is impossible. And it was impossible, except for one thought which grew clearer every second.

  “You mean suicide,” said Burrows, wiping his hands. “We’ve had a hallucination of murder put on us, but I don’t like this any better. You see what it means? It means he was the impostor after all. He bluffed it out as long as he could, and hoped against hope that Murray might not have the fingerprints. When the test was over he couldn’t face the consequences. So he came out here, stood on the edge of the pool, and—” Burrows put up a hand to his throat.

  It all fitted very well.

  “I’m afraid so,” admitted Page. Afraid? Afraid? Yes: wasn’t that the worst charge you could make against a dead friend, pile the whole burden on him now that he couldn’t speak? Resentment rose up in a dull ache, for John Farnleigh had been his friend. “But it’s the only thing we can think. For God’s sake what happened here? Did you see him do it? What did he do it with?”

  “No. That is, I didn’t exactly see him. I was just coming out of the door from the hall back there. I’d got this torch,”—Burrows snapped the button on and off, and then held it up,—“out of the drawer of the table in the hall. You know how weak my eyes are when I go out in the dark. Just as I was opening the door, I saw Farnleigh standing out here—very dimly, you know—on the edge of the pool, with his back towards me. Then he seemed to be doing something, or moving about a bit: with my eyesight, it’s very difficult to tell. You must have heard the noises. After I heard that splash—and the thrashing round, you know, which was worse. There never was a balder, worse story.”

  “But there wasn’t anybody with him?”

  “No,” said Burrows, spreading out his fingers against his forehead and pressing the tips of them there. “Or at least—not exactly. These hedges are waist-high, and—”

  The meaning of the words “not exactly,” spoken by the meticulously careful Nathaniel Burrows, Page did not have time to inquire. Voices and footsteps were stirring from the direction of the house, and he spoke quickly.

  “You’re the one with authority. They’re all coming. Molly mustn’t see this. Can’t you use your authority and head ’em off?”

  Burrows cleared his throat two or three times, like a nervous orator about to begin, and his shoulders straightened. Switching on the flashlight, he walked towards the house with the light pointing in that direction. Its beam picked out Molly, with Kennet Murray following; but it did not shine on their faces.

  “I am sorry,” began Burrows, in tones of high and unnatural sharpness. “But there has been an accident to Sir John, and you had better not go out there—”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Molly in a hard voice. With deliberate strength she pushed past him, and came into the gloom beside the pool. Fortunately she could not see the extent of what had been done. Though she tried to give the impression of calmness, Page heard her heel turn in the path. He put an arm round her shoulder to steady her; she leaned against it, and he felt unsteady breathing. But what she said, flung out in a sob, seemed merely cryptic. Molly said:

  “D-damn him for being right!”

  By something in the tone Page knew that she could not be referring to her husband. But for a moment it so startled him that he could not take it in. Then, hiding her face even from the dark, she started in a hurried walk for the house.

  “Let her go,” said Murray. “It will be better for her.”

  But Murray did not appear as capable as you might have thought, faced with a thing of this sort. He hesitated. Taking the flashlight from Burrows’s hand, he directed its beam on the body beside the pool. Then he let out a whistle, his teeth showing between cropped moustache and beard.

  “Did you prove,” asked Page, “that Sir John Farnleigh was not Sir John Farnleigh?”

  “Eh? I beg your pardon?”

  Page repeated his question.

  “I have proved,” said Murray with heavy gravity, “absolutely nothing. I mean that I had not completed my comparison of the prints; I had barely begun it.”

  “It would appear,”—Burrows spoke rather weakly,— “that you would not need to finish.”

  And so it would. There could not be, in all truth and reason, much doubt of Farnleigh’s suicide. Page saw that Murray was nodding, in his sometimes vague manner: nodding as though he were not thinking of the matter at all: and stroking the cheek of his beard like a man who tries to place an old memory. It was not a physical wriggling, yet it gave that impression.

  “But you can’t have much doubt, can you?” Page was prompted to ask. “Which one of them did you think was the fake?”

  “I have already informed you—” Murray snapped.

  “Yes, I know, but look here. I was only asking, which one of them did you think was the impostor? You surely must have had some notion after you’d talked to them. After all, it’s the only really important thing either about the imposture or about this; and you can’t have any doubt about it? If Farnleigh is the impostor, he had good reason to kill himself and we can certainly agree that he did. But if by any inconceivable chance he were not the impostor—”

  “You are assuming—?”

  “No, no, only asking. If he were the real Sir John Farnleigh, there would be no reason for him to cut his throat. So he must be the impostor. Isn’t he?”

  “The tendency to leap to conclusions without even examining the data,” began Murray, in a tone between asperity and comfortable discussion, “is one to which the unacademic mind is strongly—”

  “Right you are; question withdrawn,” said Page.

  “No, no, you misunderstand.” Here Murray waved his hand like a hypnotist; he seemed uncomfortable and flustered that the balance of argument had been disturbed. “You intimate that this might be murder on t
he grounds that, if the—er—unfortunate gentleman before us were the real John Farnleigh, he would not kill himself. But, whether he is or is not the real Johnny, why should anyone kill him? If he is a fraud, why murder him? The law will attend to him. If he is real, why murder him? He has done no harm to anyone. You see, I am only taking both sides of it.”

  Burrows spoke gloomily. “It’s all this talk, suddenly produced, about Scotland Yard and poor Victoria Daly. I’ve always thought I was a sensible sort of fellow; but it’s given me all sorts of ideas that I’ve got to root out of my head. And then I’ve never liked the feel of this blasted garden.”

  “You felt that too?” demanded Page.

  Murray was regarding them with a blaze of interest.

  “Stop,” he said. “About the garden: why don’t you like it, Mr. Burrows? Have you any memories connected with it?”

  “Not exactly memories.” The other considered; he seemed uncomfortable. “It was only that, when anyone used to tell a ghost-story, it was twice as effective here as anywhere else. I remember one about—but that doesn’t matter. I used to think it would be very easy to raise the devil here; and I don’t mean cut up a row, either. However, this is still beside the point. We’ve got work to do. We can’t stand here talking—”

  Murray roused himself; he grew almost excited. “Ah, yes. The police,” he said. “Yes, there is a great deal to be done, in the—er—practical world. You will, I think, allow me to take charge. Will you come with me, Mr. Burrows? Mr. Page, will you oblige us by remaining with the—er—body until we return?”

  “Why?” asked the practical Page.

  “It is customary. Oh, yes. Indeed, it is absolutely necessary. Kindly give Mr. Page your flashlight, my friend. And now this way. There was no telephone at the Close when I lived here; but I presume there is one now? Good, good, good. We must also have a doctor.”

  He bustled off, shepherding Burrows, and Page was left beside the pool with what remained of John Farnleigh.

  With the shock wearing off, Page stood in the dark and reflected on the increasing uselessness and complexity of this tragedy. Yet the suicide of an impostor was simple enough. What disturbed him was the realization that he had got absolutely no change out of Murray. It would also have been simple enough for Murray to have said, “Yes, that is undoubtedly the impostor: I knew it from the beginning”; and, in fact, Murray’s whole atmosphere had conveyed that this was what he thought. But he had said nothing. Was it, then, merely his own love of mystery?