The Crooked Hinge Read online

  “Farnleigh!” Page said aloud. “Farnleigh!”

  “Did you call me?” asked a voice almost at his elbow.

  The effect of that voice in the dark was to make Page jump back so that he almost stumbled over the body. Forms and outlines were now completely lost in night. The stir of a footstep on a sanded path was followed by the rasping of a match. The flame of the match sprang up over its box, cupped in two hands; and showed, in one opening of the yew hedge, the face of the claimant—Patrick Gore, John Farnleigh—looking into the space beside the pool. He came forward at his slightly clumsy walk.

  The claimant was carrying a thin black cigar, halfsmoked and gone out. He put it into his mouth, lit it carefully, and then peered up.

  “Did you call me?” he repeated.

  “I didn’t,” Page said grimly. “But it’s a good thing you answered. Do you know what’s happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Wandering.”

  The match went out; but Page could hear him breathing faintly. That the man was shaken there could be little doubt. He came closer, his fists on his hips and the cigar glowing in a corner of his mouth.

  “Poor crook,” said the claimant, looking down. “And something about him a good deal to be respected, too. I’m rather sorry I did this. I’ve no doubt he reverted to the Puritan faith of his fathers and spent a good many years repenting at the same time he kept fast hold on the estate. After all, he could have continued posing and made a better squire than I ever shall. But the wrong Farnleigh stuff was missing, and so he did this.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Without a doubt.” The claimant took the cigar out of his mouth and blew out a cloud of smoke, which curled in the darkness with the odd effect of a ghost taking form. “I suppose Murray has finished comparing the prints. You were present at that little inquisition by Murray. Tell me: did you notice the exact point at which our—late friend slipped and gave away the fact that he was not John Farnleigh?”

  “No.”

  Then Page suddenly realized that the claimant’s shaken air was due as much to relief as to any other emotion.

  “Murray would not be Murray,” he said with a certain dryness, “if he had not included a catch question. That always was his nature. I was expecting it and even dreading it: in case it should not really be a catch question, but something I had forgotten. But it was a fairly obvious catch when it came. You remember. ‘What is the Red Book of Appin?’ ”

  “Yes. Both of you wrote down something—”

  “Of course there is no such thing. I should be interested to see what gibberish my late rival wrote down in order to explain it. It was all the more intriguing when Murray, with a face as solemn as an owl, assured him he had written the correct answer; but you observed that the very assurance almost finished my rival. Oh, curse it all,” he broke off, and made a gesture with the lighted end of his cigar which was curiously like a question-mark. “Well, let us see what the poor devil did to himself. May I have that electric torch?”

  Page handed it over, and moved away while the other squatted down with the light. There was a long silence, with an occasional muttering. Then the claimant got up. Though he moved slowly, he snapped the button of the electric torch on and off.

  “My friend,” he said in a different voice, “this won’t do.”

  “What won’t do?”

  “This. I hate what I am going to say. But I will take my oath this man did not kill himself.”

  (Score one for suggestion, intuition, or the influence of a certain garden at twilight.)

  “Why?” said Page.

  “Have you looked at him closely? Then come and do it now. Does a man cut his own throat with three separate slashes, all of which sever the jugular vein, and any one of which would have caused death? Can he do it? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Remember, I began my self-made career in a circus. I never saw anything like this since Barney Poole, the best animal-trainer west of the Mississippi, was killed by a leopard.”

  A night breeze moved in the labyrinth, and stirred the roses.

  “Where, I wonder, is the weapon?” he went on. He played the beam of his torch over the misted water. “Probably in the pool here, but I don’t think we had better go after it. The police may be more necessary in this business than we think. This alters matters in a way that—that worries me,” said the claimant, as though making a concession. “Why kill an impostor?”

  “Or a real heir, for that matter,” said Page.

  Then Page could sense that the other was eyeing him sharply. “You do not still believe—?”

  They were interrupted by footsteps coming rapidly if pontifically from the direction of the house. The claimant turned the beam of light on Welkyn, the solicitor, whom Page last remembered eating fish-paste sandwiches in the dining-room. Welkyn, now evidently a very scared man, gripped the edge of the white slip inside his waistcoat as though he were going to make a speech. Then he changed his mind.

  “You’d better get back to the house, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Murray would like to see you. I hope,” he gave the word a sinister emphasis, and looked hard at the claimant, “I hope neither of you gentlemen has been in the house since this thing happened.”

  “Patrick Gore” whipped round. “Don’t tell me anything else has happened?”

  “It has,” said Welkyn snappishly. “It appears that someone has taken advantage of this confusion. In Mr. Murray’s absence, someone went into the library and stole the Thumbograph containing our only evidence.”

  II

  Thursday, July 30th

  THE LIFE OF AN AUTOMATON

  Then all was silent, and presently Moxon reappeared and said, with a rather sorry smile:

  “Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there that lost its temper and cut up rough.”

  Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by four parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:

  “How would it do to trim its nails?”

  —AMBROSE BIERCE, Moxon’s Master

  Chapter Seven

  IN EARLY AFTERNOON OF the following day, while gray, warm rain darkened the countryside, Page sat again at the desk in his study; but this time with very different thoughts.

  Up and down the room, in a way as monotonous as the sound of the rain itself, paced Detective-Inspector Elliot.

  And throned in the largest chair sat Dr. Gideon Fell.

  The doctor’s thunderous chuckles were today subdued. He had arrived in Mallingford that morning, and he did not seem to like the situation he found. Sitting back in the big chair, he wheezed gently. His eyes, behind the eyeglasses on the broad black ribbon, were fixed with singular concentration on a corner of the desk; his bandit’s moustache bristled as though ready for argument, and his big mop of gray-streaked hair had fallen over one ear. On a chair beside him lay his shovel-hat and his stick with the ivory crutch-handle. Though there was a pint tankard of beer at his elbow, he did not seem interested even in this. And, though his red face was even more red in the July heat, it hardly expressed his customary joviality. Page found him even larger, both in height and circumference, than he had been described; when he first came into the cottage, wearing his box-pleated cape, he seemed to fill the place and crowd out even the furniture.

  Nor did anybody like the situation within the district of Mallingford and Soane. The district retreated within itself; it was not even eloquently silent. Everybody now knew that the stranger known as a “folklore authority” at the Bull and Butcher was an inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. But not a word was said of it. In the taproom of the Bull and Butcher, those who came in for their morning pint spoke in a little lower tone, and drifted away sooner; that was all. Dr. Fell had been unable to get accommodations at the pub—inn by courtesy—since both guest rooms were occupied; and Page had been only too glad to offer the hospitality of his cottage.

  Page liked Inspector
Elliot as well. Andrew MacAndrew Elliot looked out of place neither as folklore authority nor as Scotland Yard man. He was youngish, raw-boned, sandy-haired, and serious-minded. He liked argument, and he liked subtleties in a way that would have displeased Superintendent Hadley. His education had been that thorough Scots one which deals with the minutest details of the minutest subject. Now, pacing the floor of Page’s study while the gray rain fell, he tried to make his position clear.

  “H’mf, yes,” grunted Dr. Fell. “But exactly what has been done so far?”

  Elliot considered. “Captain Marchbanks, the Chief Constable, telephoned to the Yard this morning and washed his hands of the business,” he said. “Ordinarily, of course, they’d have sent a chief inspector. But, since I happened to be on the spot and already investigating something that may be connected with this—”

  (The murder of Victoria Daly, thought Page. But how connected?)

  “You got your chance,” said Dr. Fell. “Excellent.”

  “Yes, sir, I got my chance,” agreed Elliot, placing a freckled fist carefully on the table and bracing himself over it. “And I mean to make something of it, if I can. It’s opportunity. It’s—you know all that.” He expelled his breath. “But you know the difficulties I’m going to find. People hereabouts have shut up tighter than windows. You try to see inside, but they won’t let you inside. They’ll drink a glass of beer and talk just as usual; but they fall away as soon as you say anything about it. With what we’ll call the gentry of the whole district”—his tone showed a certain faint contempt for the word—“it’s been even more difficult, even before this thing happened.”

  “About the other affair, you mean?” inquired Dr. Fell, opening one eye.

  “About the other affair. The only one who’s been at all helpful is a Miss Dane, Madeline Dane. There,” declared Inspector Elliot, with measured carefulness and emphasis, “is a real woman. It’s a pleasure to talk to her. Not one of your hard-boiled misses who blow smoke in your eye and ring up their lawyers as soon as you send in a card. No. A real woman; reminds me of a girl I used to know at home.”

  Dr. Fell opened both eyes, while Inspector Elliot (so to speak) fidgeted under his freckles for having said this. But Brian Page understood and approved. He was even conscious of a twinge of nonsensical jealousy.

  “However,” the inspector resumed, “you’ll want to know about Farnleigh Close. I’ve taken a statement from everybody who was there last night: exclusive of servants, as yet. A brief statement. I had to round some of them up. Mr. Burrows stayed at the Close last night, to be ready for us today. But the claimant, this Mr. Patrick Gore, and his solicitor (name of Welkyn) both went back to Maidstone.” He looked round at Page. “I gather, sir, there was a bit of a row—or, well, say that things got pretty strained after this Thumbograph had been stolen?”

  Page admitted it with some fervor.

  “Especially after the Thumbograph was stolen,” he replied. “The odd part of it was that to everybody except Molly Farnleigh it seemed more important that the evidence had been stolen than that Farnleigh had been murdered—if he was murdered.”

  A gleam of interest stirred in Dr. Fell’s eye. “By the way, what was the general attitude in the question of suicide v. murder?”

  “Very cautious. A great lack of attitude, which is surprising. The only one who definitely said he’d been murdered (screamed it, in fact) was Molly—Lady Farnleigh, I mean. Otherwise accusations of crookedness hurtled about in a way I hope won’t be remembered today. I’m glad to say I don’t remember half of it. I suppose it was only natural. Beforehand we had all been so strainedly and unnaturally on our best behavior that the reaction was a little too much. Even solicitors, it appears, are human. Murray tried to take charge, and was swept under. Our local police-sergeant wasn’t much better.”

  “I am endeavoring,” said Dr. Fell, making a hideous face of emphasis, “to clear the way to the problem. You say, inspector, you don’t have much doubt that it is murder?”

  Elliot was firm.

  “No, sir, I haven’t. There were three gashes across the throat, and no weapon I’ve been able to find so far, either in the pool or anywhere at hand. Mind,” he said cautiously, “I haven’t had the medical report. I don’t say it’s impossible for a man to inflict three such wounds on himself. But the absence of a weapon seems to decide it.”

  For a moment they listened to the rain, and to the doubtful wheezing of Dr. Fell’s breath.

  “You don’t think,” suggested the doctor, “I only—harrumph—put it forward as a suggestion: you don’t think he might have killed himself and, in the convulsion, flung the weapon away from him, so that you haven’t found it? That has happened before, I think.”

  “It’s remotely possible. But he can’t have thrown it clear out of the garden; and, if it’s there anywhere, Sergeant Burton will find it.” There was a curious look on Elliot’s hard face. “Look here, sir: do you think this is suicide?”

  “No, no, no,” said Dr. Fell earnestly, as though this rather shocked him. “But, even believing that this is murder, I still want to know what our problem is.”

  “Our problem is who killed Sir John Farnleigh.”

  “Quite. You still don’t perceive the double-alley of hell into which that leads us. I am worried about this case, because all rules have been violated. All rules have been violated because the wrong man had been chosen for a victim. If only Murray had been murdered! (I speak academically, you understand.) Hang it all, Murray should have been murdered! In any well-constituted plot he would have been murdered. His presence cries out for it. Here is a man possessing evidence which will decide a vital problem at the outset: here is a man who can probably solve the puzzle of identities even without that evidence: well, he is the certain candidate for the deathblow. Yet he remains untouched, and the problem of identities is merely made more inexplicable by the death of one of the claimants. You follow that?”

  “I do,” said Inspector Elliot grimly.

  “Let’s clear away some of the underbrush,” insisted Dr. Fell. “Is the whole thing, for instance, an error on the part of the murderer? Was Sir John Farnleigh (to give him his present name) not intended to be the victim at all? Did the murderer kill him in mistake for somebody else?”

  “It seems doubtful,” said Elliot, and looked at Page.

  “It’s impossible,” said Page. “I’d thought of that too. Well, I repeat: it’s impossible. The light was too good. Farnleigh didn’t look like anybody else, and wasn’t dressed like anybody else. Even from some distance away you could never have mistaken him, let alone at the close quarters of someone who cuts his throat. It was that queerish watery light where details are blurred but all outlines are clear.”

  “Then Farnleigh was the intended victim,” said Dr. Fell, clearing his throat with a long rumbling noise. “Very well. What other possible undergrowths or verbiage can we rake away? For instance, is it possible that this murder has no connection whatever with the battle over the title and estates? Did some person unaffected by this debate—some person who didn’t care whether he was John Farnleigh or Patrick Gore—choose just this moment to slide through the screen and kill him for some outside motive we don’t know? It is possible. It is possible if the Powers are being coy. But I for one am not going to worry about it. These things are cohesive; they depend on each other. For, you notice, the Thumbograph-evidence was stolen at the same time Farnleigh was murdered.

  “Very well. Farnleigh was deliberately murdered, and murdered for some reason connected with the question of the right heir to the estates. But we still haven’t decided what our real problem is. The problem is still doubleheaded, not to say double-faced. Thus. If the murdered man was an impostor, he might have been killed for any one of two or three reasons. You can imagine them. But, if the murdered man was the real heir, he might have been killed for any one of two or three totally different reasons. You can imagine those too. They entail different sides, different eyes, different motives
. Therefore, which of those two is the impostor? We have got to know that before we have the remotest idea in which direction we’ve got to look. Harrumph.”

  Inspector Elliot’s face hardened.

  “You mean that the key is this Mr. Murray?”

  “I do. I mean my old, enigmatic acquaintance, Kennet Murray.”

  “You think he knows which is which?”

  “I’ve got no doubt of it,” growled Dr. Fell.

  “Nor I,” said the inspector dryly. “Let’s see, now.” He got out his notebook and opened it. “Everyone seems to be agreed—remarkable what a lot of agreement there is—that Mr. Murray was left alone in the study at about twenty minutes past nine o’clock. Correct, Mr. Page?”

  “Correct.”

  “The murder (we’ll call it that) was committed at about half-past nine. Two persons give a definite time about this: Murray and the solicitor, Harold Welkyn. Now ten minutes may not be a long time. But the comparison of fingerprints, though you’ve got to be careful about it, isn’t the all-night job Murray gave you to understand. You can’t tell me he didn’t have some idea— Do you think he’s a wrong ’un, sir?”

  “No,” said Dr. Fell, frowning heavily at the tankard of ale. “I think he’s trying to do a spot of sensational detection. And in just a minute I’ll tell you what I think this case is. You say you got a statement from each of them as to what each was doing during that ten minutes?”

  “Bald few lines from everybody,” said Elliot, suddenly angry. “No comments. They asked what comments they could make. Well, I mean to ask again, and comment too. Queerish crowd, if you ask me. I know things sound pretty shorn in a policeman’s report, because you’ve got to stick little bits of facts together without anything between: and thankful to get what you do. But there’s black murder and plain hell in the midst of them, and this is what they say. Listen.”