Death-Watch (32 page)

“What do you mean, accusations?”

“Did you know the late Inspector George Ames?”

“I did—once.”

“But you didn’t recognize him when you saw him dead last night?”

“I didn’t recognize him,” said Stanley, leaning forward still further. “The way he looked
then.
Pretty, wasn’t it? Yes.”

He started to laugh.

“But I suppose,” said Dr. Fell, “you do know your own handwriting when you see it?”

It was as though he had cracked a whip before the other’s face, and Stanley jerked back. Then Melson knew. He knew what Stanley had reminded him of ever since the man came in. The soft movements despite his heaviness, the snarl in the voice, the witless, incalculable stare of the eyes that looked back, the quick jerks. They were in a cage, with something between them and the door.

“Know my own handwriting?” he snapped. “What the hell do you mean? Of course I know my own handwriting. Do you take me for a lunatic?”

“Then,” said Dr. Fell, “you wrote this.”

He reached in his pocket, took out the folded letter, and flung it across. It landed on Stanley’s knees, but he did not touch it.

“Read it!”

Again the whip-crack. Stanley touched the letter, then slowly unfolded it.

“You wrote that.”

“I did not.”

“It’s your signature.”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t write it and never saw it before. You call me a liar, do you?”

“Wait until you hear what they say, Stanley. I’m your friend, you know, or I wouldn’t be telling you this. Wait until you hear what they say.”

“Say?” He moved back a little. “What do they say?”

“That you’re mad, my friend. Mad. That there’s a little maggot up in your head that’s eaten away the brain …”

He was leaning forward as Dr. Fell spoke, to throw the letter on the table. From him came a strong door of wet clothes and brandy. As his hairy hand came forward, his ulster and coat fell a little open, and Melson saw something in the pocket …

Stanley was carrying a gun.

“Mad,” said Dr. Fell. “And that was why you killed George Ames.”

For a second Melson thought the damned thing was going to turn on them. It switched in the chair, and seemed to grow larger.

“But to show you what
I
think of your brain,” Dr. Fell went on, looking straight into the round yellowish eyes that seemed to contract and expand, “I’m going to tell you what the evidence against you is. This is what somebody thinks about you, as somebody said …

“Last night, while Ames was walking up those stairs, you couldn’t have gone out through the double doors to the hall. We all know that, and admit it.

“But there was a very odd bit of testimony in the evidence, the oddest bit we have. A man standing out in the dark hall saw a little line of moonlight. The door to the passage, the passage that runs up to the roof, was open—you understand that?—and in that passage he saw moonlight. He said that it came from the trapdoor to the roof. But that must have been impossible, because the trap was heavily bolted and nobody could have got at it. Remember that he said ‘a line’; not a patch or a square such as an opened trap could make, but a little line … like the opening, say, of one of these secret wall panels of which we know there are half a dozen in this house.

“Remember the position of the rooms—that your host’s bedroom is at the left, and that
its wall is the wail of that passage.
Remember that you could have slipped from behind the screen, also at the left, in your dark-grey suit—slipped unseen into the bedroom— and opened the wall panel to get out. Remember that the back windows face the moon. That moonlight fell into the bedroom, and shone out through the partly open panel as you slipped out, opened the spring lock of the door from the inside, and struck down Ames on the landing! That’s what your enemy says you did, unless you can make him tell different, and his name is—”

“LOOK OUT!” yelled Hadley.

They heard the rest of it as Stanley’s big hand smashed forward and swept the lamp off the table. Firelight rose up through the momentary blindness in their eyes; they saw Stanley’s eyes, the gleam of metal in his hand, and heard a sob of breath.

“Stand back,” said Stanley. “I’ll get him.”

A big shape blocked the light from the hall as he turned and ran; the light disappeared in the crash of the door-slamming, and the key was twisted in the lock even as Hadley plunged for the knob.

“He’s locked us—” Hadley’s fists beat the panels. “Berts! You! All of you—get him—open this! Fell, in the name of God, you’ve turned a maniac loose. BETTS! Can’t you stop—”

“Do—Fell—he said
not
to stop him!” yelled a voice from outside. “You said—He’s taken the key!”

“You bloody idiot, stop him! Do some … Sparkle! Smash this door!”

A weight crashed against it from the outside, a grunt, and then another crash. From upstairs came a scream, and then a pistol-shot.

They heard the second shot just before the lock ripped out in a tearing screech, and a big figure stumbled through on its knees. Hadley knocked the door aside, writhed out, and was off towards the stairs, with Melson after him. A voice was speaking clearly through the house. It was loud, but very cool and level, and it seemed pleased.

“You see, they think I’m mad, so I can kill you slowly without any danger whatever. I may kill you whether you tell the truth or not; that I haven’t decided. But one bullet for the leg—one for the belly—one for the neck—the whole thing is, it must go on slowly until you open your lying mouth. You see, don’t you, that nobody’s interfering with me? There’s a police officer at the door, and he does nothing to help you, although he has a gun himself. I saw the bulge of it in his hip pocket, but you observe he does nothing even though my back is to him. Now I’m coming in for another shot …”

A scream, more like a rabbit in a snare than anything human, made Melson’s knees turn to water as he staggered on the stairs behind Hadley. The scream was repeated.

“No,” said the voice, pleasantly, “you can’t run away, you see. A room has only four walls and you’re a good deal in a corner. You know, I was a fool when I once shot that banker with four bullets in the head. But then I had nothing against him.”

The painful breath gasping in his nostrils, Hadley plunged up the last step. Cordite fumes blurred pale faces there; faces that did not move, that watched, twisted and stricken. Through open double doors Melson saw Stanley’s back. Beyond him he saw a face that was not human at all. It was a writhing figure, flapping away, hurling out his arms, trying to bore himself into a tall painted screen as Stanley moved towards him.

“This one,” said Stanley, “is for your belly,” and raised his arm to fire.

The other man stopped screaming.

“Take him off,” a queer voice muttered, not loudly. “It’s all right. I killed Ames. I killed Ames, damn you all! I killed Ames, and admit it. Only for the love of God take him off.”

The voice rose despairingly. The grey face lifted and strained back against painted flames. Then Calvin Boscombe, his mouth slobbering, tumbled down against the screen in a dead faint.

For a moment Stanley stood motionless; at length he drew a shuddering breath and put the pistol in his pocket. He turned a dull face towards Dr. Fell, who lumbered slowly across the room and stared at the open-mouthed caricature on the floor.

“Well?” asked Stanley, heavily. “Was it all right? He cracked.”

“It was a damned good show,” said Dr. Fell, gripping his shoulder, “and we couldn’t have planned a better one … Only, for Lord’s sake don’t fire off any more of those blanks or you’ll rouse the whole neighbourhood.”

He turned to Hadley.

“Boscombe’s not hurt,” he added. “He’ll live to hang.
I wonder what he thinks of the ‘reactions of a man about to die’ now
?”

T
HE DAILY SPHERE:
“Brilliant Strategy By Retired Police Officer Avenges Murder of Old Comrade!” The
Daily Banner:
“Scotland Yard Again Triumphs by Faith in Disgraced Chief Inspector!” The
Daily Trumpeter:
“Pictures: Left, Chief Inspector David Hadley, who unerringly spotted the solution within twenty-four hours, receiving handshake from Assistant Commissioner the Hon. George Bellchester; and Right, Mr. Peter E. Stanley, the hero of the hour, who, unfortunately, could not be interviewed, as he had started on a long sea voyage for the benefit of his health.”

The
Daily Trumpeters
leader said: “Again has been signally demonstrated the efficiency of the law’s guardians, even those who have no longer a connection with the institution they reverence even in retirement. Only in Britain, we may proudly boast, could such a thing—”

Dr. Fell said: “Well, dammit! It was the only possible way to save all their faces. Have another glass of beer.”

But, since this is a story not so much of saved faces as of a murder committed by a man who thought himself too shrewd, we must refer for enlightenment to a conversation which occurred in the early hours of that same morning at Dr. Fell’s hotel in Great Russell Street. Hadley had to brush up in secret on the facts of his triumph, and only he and Melson were there when the doctor talked.

It was past twelve o’clock when he began, for much had to be done and Boscombe’s signature, with witnesses, had to go on a statement before he gathered back enough of his nerve to attempt a denial. But the work was over; a bright fire was kindled, padded chairs were set out, and ready to hand stood a case of beer, two bottles of whisky, and a box of cigars. Dr. Fell beamed on his domain and prepared for the recital.

“I’m not joking,” he said, “When I tell you I was honestly sorry to have to deceive you all the way through. I not only had to drop hints to you of my belief in Boscombe’s innocence, but even to Boscombe himself. You remember I told you, just after we went to his room this morning and found missing the watch he had stolen from himself, that I had just been through one of the worst interludes of my life. When I even had to stand there and pay compliments to that fish-blooded devil, they choked me like castor oil. But it was necessary. If he is the meanest murderer in my experience, he is also one of the cleverest; he left
no
tangible clue to work on. My only chance to trap him was the chance I took. You were in such a state this morning that, if I had let you know what I thought, you would have tried to verify it and let him know he was under suspicion. Then he would have begun to slip and twist away from us again, and he would certainly have been suspicious of the trap I planned to lay with Stanley. Boscombe didn’t fear the law: it was Stanley he feared, Stanley’s poor goblin-ridden brain turning with claws to tear him. And I saw it was
all
he feared.”

“But the alibi—!” protested Melson. “Hastings saw—and why did he—?”

“Stop a bit,” interposed Hadley, his notebook on his knee. “Let’s get this in order. When did you first become suspicious of him?”

“Last night. I wasn’t morally certain until this morning, when the skull-watch disappeared, and I wasn’t absolutely certain until I went upstairs just before lunch (you were carefully kept from coming along) and discovered that sliding panel in the passage wall which was also the wall of his bedroom. There
had
to be a panel there, or there could have been no sense to Paull’s story of moonlight in the passage at all.

“But we’ll take it in order. I first believed in Boscombe’s guilt because of one of those
coincidences
which have been bothering us so much. There were some of them, and especially one of them, which I
could not
believe to be accidents. The minor ones were easy to credit, since they were not really coincidences at all, but logical outcomes from the habits and characters of the various people concerned. For example:

“I could believe that by accident, on that fatal Thursday night, Eleanor and Hastings had agreed to meet on the roof even though they were not accustomed to do so in the middle of the week. There had been turmoil in the house over the clock, Eleanor was at the end of her emotional tether, Hastings was depressed: a meeting sooner or later was inevitable. It was a possibility which Boscombe foresaw and anticipated by stealing the key, even though he did not really believe they would choose the middle of the week. This, then, was not a startling coincidence.

“I could believe, further, that Mrs. Steffins had been on that roof investigating the two lovers (we shall return to this presently), because—as you pointed out in your reconstruction which was the only true part of your case against Eleanor as murderess—that was exactly like Mrs. Steffins. Thursday night was the logical night for her to choose; Mrs. Gorson was out, and Steffins could lock up the house early and go a-sleuthing without danger of being sought out over some belated household point.

“
But,
” said Dr. Fell, stopping to tap the arm of the chair, “there was one thing too monstrous for anybody to swallow.

“I could not believe that Boscombe, putting on a fake ‘murderplot’ as a harmless bit of amusement, as the victim of this plot accidentally chose a disguised detective who was out to prove a murder on somebody else in that same house! That, Hadley, is the coincidence which makes the mind reel and the stars turn upside down. If chance can play tricks like that, then chance is not only frightful, but frightening. It savours not only of something supernatural, but something supernatural managed by the powers of darkness. That is, if it were accident.

“But I looked again, and saw it backed up and apparently supported by another coincidence just as astounding as the first. Boscombe has not done merely this. As the sole (intended) witness for his bogus murder, he has accidentally chosen a former policeofficer who was once a close associate of the disguised detective he doesn’t know is a detective! By fixing my mind on the infinite, by rapidly repeating to myself some selections from the book called Believe-It-Or-Not, I might credit the first instance. But two of them together—no, no! It wasn’t accident. Therefore it was design, and Boscombe’s design.”

Hadley took the glass of beer that was handed to him.