The Plague Court Murders hm-1 Read online

  "Because Darworth's dead?"

  "No-o. Because the whole game has been queered." He hunched his shoulders under the raincoat. "Look here, Blake. I suppose you've read the dark history? Masters said you were hard at it. Let's be rational. I never really believed in all that nonsense about 'possession', or the prowling spook either. I'll admit it upset me. But now the whole air is cleared - Lord, and how it's cleared! By three things."

  "Well?"

  He meditated, drawing deeply on his cigarette. Behind us we could hear Masters and McDonnell arguing, and heavy footsteps clumping about.

  "The first, old boy, is that this bogus ghost has definitely destroyed his ghostliness by killing Darworth: So long as, it only prowled and rattled windows, it could alarm us. But here's the funny thing: the moment it takes an extremely ordinary lethal weapon and punches holes in somebody, we get skeptical. Maybe if it had only come in and slashed at Darworth a couple of times, then killed him with fright, it would have been effective. A stabbing ghost may be good spiritualism, but it isn't good sense. It's absurd. It's as though the ghost of Nelson had stalked up from the crypt of St. Paul's, only to bean a tourist with its telescope.... Oh, I know. It's horrible, if you like. It's inhuman murder, and somebody ought to hang. But as for the ghostliness . . . “

  "I see the point. And what's the second thing?"

  His head was cocked on one side, as though he were staring at the roof of the little house. He made a sound as though he had started a chuckle, and cut it off in the presence of death.

  "Very simple. I know perfectly damned well, my boy, that nothing 'possessed' me. While all this was going on I was sitting in the dark, on an uncomfortably hard chair, and pretending to pray. . To pray, mind you!" He spoke with a sort of surprised pleasure, as at a discovery. "For Darworth. Then was when my sense of humor got started....

  "And that brings me to my final point. I want you to talk to those people in there: Marion and Aunt Anne in particular. I want you to see what's happened to the atmosphere, and you may get a shock. How do you think they're acting?"

  "Acting?"

  "Yes." He turned round excitedly and flung his cigarette away before he faced me again. "How do you think they've taken Darworth's cropper? Is he a martyr? Are they prostrated? NO! - They're relieved, I tell you! Relieved! All, maybe, except Ted, who'll go on believing Darworth was done in by a spook to the end of his days. ... But it's as though some hypnotic influence had got off them at last. Blake, what's the insane, upended psychology of the whole business? What's-?"

  Masters thrust his head out of the door at this juncture,. and hissed mysteriously. He looked even more worried.

  He said:

  "We've a lot to do. Police surgeon - photographers - reports. And now we're testing. Look here, sir, will you go back to the house and just chat with those people? Don't examine them, exactly. Let 'em talk, if they like. Hold them there until I come. And no information, beyond he's dead. None of the things we can't explain; eh? Eh?"

  "How's it going, Inspector?" Halliday, inquired, somewhat genially.

  Masters turned his head. The words had jarred.

  "It's murder, you know," he answered heavily, and with a faint inflection that might have been suspicion. "You ever see a trial, sir? Ah, just so. I shouldn't call it funny...?'

  Halliday, as though on a sudden resolution, walked up to the door and faced him. He hunched up his shoulders, in that old gesture of his, and fixed Masters with his rather bovine brown eyes.

  "Inspector," he said, and hesitated-as though he were rehearsing a set speech. Then he went on with a rush: "Inspector, I hope everybody will understand everybody else before we start this thing. I know it's murder. I've thought it all over; I know the notoriety, the unpleasantness, the sticky nastiness that we'll have to go through; oh, yes, and what a lot of soft-headed dupes we shall look at a coroner's inquest. . . Can't you let us off anything? I'm not blind. I know the implication will be that somebody up there stabbed Darworth. But you know better, don't you? You know it wasn't one of his own disciples. Good God, who would kill him? Except, of course" - his finger moved up slowly and touched his own chest, and his eyes opened wide.

  "Ah!" said Masters in a colorless voice.."Possibly, possibly. Why, I shall have to do, my duty, Mr. Halliday. I'm afraid I can't spare anybody. Unless - you're not meaning to give yourself up for murder, are you?"

  "Not at all. All I meant ..."

  "Why, then," said Masters, with a deprecating motion of his head. "Why, then-! Excuse me, sir. I've got to get back to work."

  The muscles tightened down Halliday's jaws. He was smiling. Taking me by the arm, he strode off towards the house. "Yes. Yes, the inspector's got his eye on one of us, very definitely. And do I care, my son? I do not!" He threw back his head, as though he were laughing to heaven, and I could feel him shaking with that silent and rather terrible mirth. "And now I'll tell you why I don't. I told you we were sitting in the dark: the lot of us. Now if Masters can't fix the slashing on young Joseph - which is what he'll try to do, first off then he'll pitch on one of us. You see? He'll say that during twenty-odd minutes of darkness, one of us got up and went out....

  'And did anybody?"

  "I don't know," he answered very coolly. "There was undoubtedly somebody who got up from a chair; I heard it creak. Also, the door of the room opened and closed. But that's all I could swear to."

  Apparently he did not yet know. the impossible (or difficult, if you prefer the word) circumstances surrounding Darworth's murder. But it struck me that the picture he had been presenting had elements rather worse than the supernatural.

  "Well?" I demanded. "Nothing very laughable about that, you know. It's not altogether reasonable, on the face of it. Nobody but a lunatic would risk a chance like that, in a room full of people. But as for being uproariously funny-"

  "Oh, yes, it is." His face was pale, almost inhuman in the starlight, and split by that fantastic jollity. But his head jerked down. He grew serious. "Because, you see, Marion and I were sitting in the dark holding hands. By God, won't it sound amusing in a coroner's court? Clapham Common on parade. I think I hear the giggles.... But it will have to be told; because that, my boy, is what is known as an alibi. You see, it doesn't seem to have occurred to the rest of them that they may be suspected of murder. I can tell you it's jolly well occurred to me. However, that doesn't matter. So long as my own light-o'-life can present a brow of radiant innocence . . . why, they may lock up old Featherton, or Aunt Anne, or anybody they like."

  There was a hail from ahead of us, and Halliday hurried forward. From the old kitchen where I had read the letters, the light of the candles was still shining out into the passage. And silhouetted against it in the back door was the figure of a tall girl in a long coat. She stumbled down the steps, and Halliday had her in his arms.

  I heard little dry sobs of breathing. The girl said: "He's dead, Dean. He's dead! And I ought to feel sorry, but I don't."

  Her trembling shook the words. The flickers of light made dazzling her yellow hair, against the gaunt doorway and the gray time-bitten house. When Halliday began to say something, all he could do was shake her shoulders; and what he actually stammered out, gruffly, was: "Look here, you can't come down in this mud! Your shoes-"

  "It's all right. I've got galoshes; I found some. I - what am I saying? Oh, my dear, come in and talk to them...." Raising her head, she saw me, and looked at me steadily. All the scenes in this puzzle had seemed fragments in half-light: a face shadowed, a gleam on teeth, a gesture indicated, as Marion Latimer was now. She pushed herself away from Halliday.

  "You're a policeman, aren't you, Mr. Blake?" she asked quietly. "Or a sort of one, anyway, Dean says. Please come with us. I'd rather have you than that awful man who was here a while ago. . . ."

  We went up the steps, the girl stumbling in heavy galoshes much too large for her; but at the door to the kitchen I gestured the others to stop. I was interested in that kitchen. Joseph was sitting there.
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  He sat on the packing-case, as I had done when I read the manuscript; his elbows on the work-bench and fingers propped under his ears. His eyes were half shut, and he breathed thinly. The light of the four candles brought his face strongly out of the gloom; his face, his thin, grimy hands and meager neck.

  It was an immature face, immature and small-featured, with freckles staining the muddy skin across the flattish nose and round the large, loose mouth. The red hair - of a light shade, and cut short - was plastered against his forehead. He might have been nineteen or twenty years old, and looked thirteen. On the work-bench before him were spread out the papers I had been reading, but he was not reading them. A soiled pack of playing-cards had been spread out fanwise across them. He was peering dully at one candle, swaying a little; the loose mouth moved, slobbering, but he did not speak. His clothes, of a violent reddish check pattern, made him look even more weird.

  "Joseph!" I said, not loudly. "Joseph!"

  One hand fell with a flat smack on the table. He rolled his body round slowly, and peered up.... It was not that the face was witless; once upon a time it might have been highly intelligent. A film was over his eyes, whose pupils were contracted nearly to invisibility, and yellowish round the iris. When they came to focus on me, he cringed away. A smile was parodied on his big mouth. When I had seen him a few hours before, by the beam of a flashlight, he had seemed quiet and dull and incurious enough. But not like this.

  I repeated his name, and went slowly towards him. "It's all right, Joseph. It's all right. I'm a doctor, Joseph....

  "Don't you touch me!" he said. He did not speak at all loudly, but he gave such a jerk backwards that I thought he meant to duck down under the bench. "Don't you touch me, now...."

  I got my fingers on his wrist, by dint of keeping his eye (an excellent hypnotic subject); he trembled, and kept jerking back. To judge by the pulse, whoever had given him that dose of morphine had gone a little too far. He was not in danger, however, for he was obviously accustomed to it.

  "Of course. You're ill, Joseph. You're often ill, aren't you? And so you get medicine, of course...."

  "Please, Sir." He shrank again, with a ducking motion, and an ingratiating look. "Please, Sir, I feel quite well now, thank you, sir. Will you let me go?" Suddenly he became voluble. It was the voice of a young schoolboy blurting out a confession to a master. "I know now! You want to find out. Please, I didn't mean any harm! I know he told me I shouldn't ought to have any medicine tonight, but I took it anyway, because I know where he keeps the case. So I took the case ... but I only took the medicine a very little while ago, sir! Only a very little while ago...."

  "Medicine you put in your arm, Joseph?"

  "Yes, Sir!" His hand moved towards his inside pocket, with the child's hurry to show you everything once he has confessed, and lighten the blame. "I'll show you. Here-"

  "Mr. Darworth gives you this medicine, Joseph?"

  "Yes, Sir. When there is to be a seance, and then I go into a trance. That's what makes the forces gather; but of course I don't know that, because I never see anything. . . ." Joseph burst out laughing. "I say, I shouldn't be telling you this. I was told never to tell. Who are you? Besides, I thought it would be better if I took twice as big a dose tonight, because I liked the medicine, and I'd like it twice as well if I took twice as big a dose. Wouldn't I?" His smeary eyes came round at me with a sort of pounce, eagerly.

  I wanted to look round and see how Halliday and the girl were taking this, but-I was afraid to lose his eye. That extra grain had fuddled him into speech. It was a blunder that might bring us on the truth.

  "Of course you would, Joseph" (he looked gratified), "and I don't blame you. Tell me, what's your whole name: all of it, you know?"

  "You don't know that? Then you can't be a doctor-!"

  He moved back a little, changed his mind, and said: "You know it. Joseph Dennis."

  "Where do you live?"

  "I know! You're a new doctor. That's it. I live at 401B Loughborough Road, Brixton."

  "Do you have any parents, Joseph?"

  "There's Mrs. Sweeney-" he said doubtfully. "Parents? I don't think so. I don't remember, except I never had enough to eat, much. All I remember is a little girl I was going to get married to, that lived in a house and had yellow hair, but I don't what happened to her, sir. There's Mrs. Sweeney. We were each of us only eight years old, though, so of course we couldn't."

  "How did you come to know Mr. Darworth?"

  This question took more time. I gathered that Mrs. Sweeney was a guardian of his, who had known Mr. Darworth once. It was Mrs. Sweeney who told him he had great psychic powers. She went out one day and came back with Mr. Darworth "in a coat with a fur collar on, and a shiny hat, and rode in a long car that had a stork on the bonnet." They had talked about him, and somebody had said, "He'll never blackmail." Joseph thought this was three years ago.

  Again - while Joseph was giving an involved description of the parlor at 401B Loughborough Road, with special reference to the bead curtains at the door and the gilt-clasped Bible on the table-I wanted to look round at my companions. How the acolytes would take this tolerably clear evidence about Darworth was uncertain: the difficulty might be in persuading him to repeat it afterwards. Besides, I could tell that he was nearly at the limit of his volubility. A few minutes more, and he would turn sullen and fearful, possibly savage. I pressed him on gently, thus:

  "No, of course you needn't worry about what Mr. Darworth says, Joseph. The doctor'll tell him you took that medicine because you had to-"

  "Ah-h!"

  "-and the doctor'll tell him, naturally, you couldn't be expected to do what Mr. Darworth told you to do.... Let's see, old man: what was it he told you to do, now?"

  Joseph put a grubby thumb-nail in his mouth and nibbled at it. He lowered his voice portentously, almost as though he were imitating Darworth. "To listen, sir. To listen. That's what he said, please, sir." Then Joseph nodded several times, and looked triumphant.

  "Listen?"

  "To listen to them. The people here. He said not to stay with them at all, and if they wanted a sitting to refuse it, but to keep listening. Please, sir, that's true. He said he wasn't sure, but that somebody might want to hurt him, and come creeping out. . . ." The boy's eyes grew more hazy; evidently Darworth had described that process of "creeping out" with sharp and hideous detail. Also evidently, Darworth was no stranger to the medical use of hypnotic suggestion. "Creeping out.... And I was to see who it was...."

  "What then, Joseph?"

  "He told me how good he had been to me, and the money he had given Mrs. Sweeney for me; and that my mind would know it, and if anybody did I should know who it was.... But I took my medicine, you see, sir, and then all I wanted to do was play cards. I don't understand the games, much, but I like to play cards. After a while the cards with the pictures on them all seem to come alive, especially the two red queens. You hold them to the light and turn them round, and then you can see new colors on them you didn't see before

  "Did he expect anybody to come creeping out, Joseph?"

  "He said--" The weak mind groped obscurely within itself. He had already turned round, and was picking up the cards and sorting them over in eager haste. A thin hand plucked out the queen of diamonds. As he looked up again, his eyes wandered past me.

  "Please, sir, I won't talk any more," he said in a sort of whine. He got up and backed away. "You can beat me, if you like, the way they used to, but I won't talk any more."

  With a jerk he had slid past the packing case, holding the card jealously, and retreated into the shadows.

  I turned round sharply. Marion Latimer and Halliday were standing close together, her hand on his arm: both of them staring at Joseph's white face writhing and retreating towards the wall. Halliday's eyes were heavy-lidded; his mouth showed either pity or contempt, and he held the girl closer. I thought that she shuddered, that relief had weakened her, that it was as though her eyes were growing accustomed to the
light in here; even that her angular beauty had grown softer like the loosening in the sharp waves of her blonde hair. But, looking past them, I saw that the audience had been augmented.

  There was a figure in the doorway.

  "Indeed!" said Lady Benning harshly.

  Her upper lip was pulled up. In contrast to the primness of the waved white hair and the black velvet band round her throat, her face was full of darkish wrinkles. The black eyes were on mine. She was leaning, incongruously, on an umbrella, and with this she abruptly made a gesture and struck the wall of the passage behind. "Come into the front room, you," she cried shrilly, "and ask which one of us killed Roger Darworth. . . . Oh, my God, James! James!" said Lady Benning, and suddenly began to cry.

  VIII

  WHICH ONE OF FIVE?

  IN THE front room I faced five people.

  For the moment the most curious study was the self-assured old lady breaking to pieces like the wax-flower placidness of her face. It was as though she had tumbled down and could not get up: and there existed a very real physical cause behind the mental. Either slightly lame, or afflicted as I judged with some slight paralytic weakness of the legs, Lady Benning remained a stately little figure (got up deftly into her Watteau marquise's role, as though to have her portrait painted) while she only sat in the chimney corner and nodded against her red cloak. But once she got up, and moved uncertainly, you saw only a decaying, spiteful, very bewildered, elderly woman, who had lost a beloved nephew. Such at least was my impression, though you sensed in her a more baffling quality than in any of the others.

  She sat in the same chair as before, beside the smoky fire that had long ago gone out, under the six candles in the ruined room. Nor would she use a handkerchief; she sat with a hand pressed to her pouched and smeary eyes, her breast heaving, and would not speak. Major Featherton stood over her, glaring at me. Ted Latimer was on the other side of the fireplace, and he had a poker in his hand.