Death-Watch (6 page)

“Miss Handreth!” she called, ingratiatingly, applying vigorous knuckles and then applying a delicate ear. “Lucia dear!”

The door opened instantly, with such suddenness, in fact, that Mrs. Steffins came close to losing her balance. The room behind was dark. In the doorway stood a woman who could be no older (if anything, rather younger) than Eleanor. Her dark hair was down over her shoulders and she shook it back as she looked at them coolly.

“Er—oh!” said Mrs. Steffins. “Excuse me. I wondered if you were awake, Lucia …”

“You knew perfectly well I was,” said the other. She spoke in a clear voice, as though everyone were hostile, and as though she were in an uncomfortable position which she defied them to make her feel as uncomfortable. The brown eyes glittered behind long lashes partly lowered. She looked at Hadley, drawing closer her blue dressing-gown. “I presume you will have a doctor here. You had better send him in, please. There’s a man here who may be rather badly hurt.”

“Lucia!” said Mrs. Steffins in one tone, and then, with an entirely different expression she looked over her shoulder at Eleanor—a kind of beckoning triumph, with one eyebrow raised.

Lucia Handreth also looked at Eleanor. “I’m sorry,” she told her quietly. “I’d have concealed it, only he’s hurt. And they’d be bound to find out, anyway. It’s Donald.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Mrs. Steffins. “And are
you
entertaining Donald now, my dear?”

Her triumphant ha-ha’s were almost a burlesque, gurgling queerly as she wagged her head and patted her hands together. Eleanor was staring, very pale, and Lucia breathing hard. With an effort she added:

“He seems to have had a bad fall—hurt round the head or something—and I can’t quite bring him round. I heard him moaning in the back yard and dragging himself along. I dragged him in. Naturally, I didn’t want to arouse … Oh,
can’t
anybody do anything?”

“This is important, Hadley,” Dr. Fell muttered. “Get Watson. At once. The other can wait. Will you take us in, Miss Handreth?”

He gestured fiercely to Hadley, who nodded and hurried for the stairs. Snapping on the light, Lucia Handreth led them through a little sitting-room to a bedroom behind. The shade had been removed from the bright electric lamp beside the bed, and made a naked glare. Sprawled out on the yellow silk counterpane, a figure lay face downwards, twitching a little. A towel, wet and streaked red, had slipped round the corner of his head and half displaced a brownish bandage fixed with sticking-plaster; there were more towels, a bottle of iodine, and a bowl of water tinged with blood on a chair by the bed.

Eleanor Carver ran to him. He muttered something in a hoarse voice as she tried to lift him up, and suddenly began to fight.

“Steady,” said Dr. Fell, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Watson will be here in two ticks. He’ll have him round—”

“He kept on bleeding so at the nose,” Lucia Handreth appealed to him, in a breathless voice. “I didn’t know what to do. I—”

The figure on the bed ceased struggling. Only a faint creaking of springs disturbed the silence in that harsh-lit room; a scratching of clothes, as of someone crawling, against the yellow silk, or they might have thought life had gone. The clothes were grimy and ripped down from one shoulder; and red abrasions showed up bluish points along one wrist. Then even the creaking stopped, so that they could hear a clock tick. Eleanor Carver screamed, and Mrs. Steffins walked over and struck her across the mouth.

Then the man on the bed spoke.

“
It looked round the corner of the chimney
,” he said, clearly, as though obeying a prompting. The words startled them as though a dead man had spoken. “
It had gilt paint on its hands.
”

There was an intrinsic horror in those unemotional words which seemed to affect even the man on the bed. One of his legs straightened out and struck the chair. The bowl of stained water crashed and broke on the floor like spilled blood.

A sane and very testy voice spoke from the door as Eleanor whirled round on Mrs. Steffins.

“All right, now; all right,” squeaked Dr. Watson. “Out of here, now, all of you. None o’ my business, but if you will order me about

… Harrumph. Warm water.”

Then Melson found himself standing in the cool of the outer hall. The police surgeon, naturally, did not get rid of the women. Both Eleanor and Mrs. Steffins went hurrying to Lucia Handreth’s bathroom for the warm water; in a crazy scramble which looked ludicrously like a fight; and Mrs. Steffins was smiling over her shoulder at an unobserving Dr. Watson. Lucia Handreth began quietly to pick up the fragments of the bowl and mop up the spilled water with a towel. And in the outer hall, with a banged door behind them, Dr. Fell faced an irascible Hadley.

“Now would you mind explaining to me,” said the latter, “what all this row is about?”

Dr. Fell took out a violently coloured bandanna and mopped his forehead. “So,” he grunted, “you find the atmosphere getting thick, hey? Well, I’ve had more of it than you. I don’t know what ‘Donald’s’ last name is, my boy, but I suspect he’s going to be our chief witness. Point number one: Donald is in all probability Eleanor Carvers
caius
—”

“Kindly talk sense,” interrupted Hadley, with asperity. “I don’t know why it is, but the very sight of a murder seems to rouse all your worst tendencies towards scholarship. What in hell is a
caius
?” Dr. Fell wheezed. “I use the word,” he said, “in preference to employing the nauseating modern term ‘boy friend.’ Be quiet, will you? Anyway, I’m jolly certain he’s not her fiancé, since she is apparently compelled to meet him on the roof in the middle of the night—”

“Rot,” said Hadley. “Nobody meets on roofs. Which is Eleanor, the blonde?”

“Yes. And that’s where you underestimate either somebody’s romantic spirit or somebody’s sense of extreme practicality. I’m not sure yet, but … Aha! Well, Pierce?”

The constable, a man of extreme thoroughness, looked guilty and somewhat nervous when he saw Hadley. He saluted. His flush of success with the shoes and broken window had stimulated him; but he was a grimy and somewhat bedraggled object. Hadley’s eye raked him.

“Now what the devil,” he said, “have
you
been doing? Climbing trees?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the constable. “It was Dr. Fell’s orders, sir. There was nobody up there. But there has been, sir, several times. Cigarette ends all over the place, especially in a big flat place in the middle of all the chimneys. There’s a trap-door that leads down into the house, not very far away from the skylight in Mr. Boscombe’s room.”

Hadley looked curiously at Dr. Fell. “Naturally,” he remarked, “it never occurred to your subtle mind to send him up through the trap-door to the roof, instead of climbing a tree?”

“Well, it occurred to me that it would have given whoever might have been on that roof an excellent chance to make a getaway—if he were still on the roof. He must have missed his footing, got his fall, and been dragged into the house some time ago … H’m. Besides, Hadley, the door going up to that roof is locked. And I suspect we’re going to have a devil of a time finding the key.”

“Why?”

A voice struck in: “Excuse me, gentlemen—” and even the stolid Hadley, with Ames’s death heavy upon him, was so jumpy that he whirled round with a curse. The big, mild-eyed Mr. Johannus Carver seemed taken aback. He had drawn on a pair of trousers over his pyjamas, and his hands plucked at the braces.

“No, no,” he urged. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. Not at all. But I overheard you asking Mrs. Steffins for a room. Allow me to place our sitting-room at your disposal. Over this way.” He hesitated. The big head and overhanging brows made shadows under his eyes. “I don’t know much about such things, but may I ask whether you have made any progress?”

“A good deal,” said Dr. Fell. “Mr. Carver, who is ‘Donald’?”

“Good God!” said Carver, jumping a little. “Is
he
here again?

Tell him to leave, my dear sir! At once! Mrs. Steffins will—” Hadley sized him up, and did not seem impressed.

“We’ll use that room, thanks,” he said. “And I shall want to ask everybody in the house some questions presently, if you will round them up … As for friend Donald, I don’t think he’ll be able to leave for some time. The general opinion seems to be that he tumbled out of a tree.”

“Then—” said Carver, and caught himself up. He hesitated, with a deprecating eye on them as though he were about to say that boys will be boys and tumble out of trees sometimes; but he only coughed.

“Well?” Hadley asked, sharply.
“Was
he in the habit of spending his evenings on the roof?”

Melson had a sudden feeling that this cryptic old clockmaker was pulling all their legs good and hard. He would have sworn there was a gleam of amusement under those brows. Johannus peered round to make sure they were not overheard.

“To tell you the truth, I think he was,” he admitted, doubtfully. “But, so long as they didn’t disturb the neighbours and made no noise, they certainly didn’t disturb me.”

“Hell’s
fire
!” said Hadley, under his breath. “Is that all the explanation you have to offer?”

“Mrs. Steffins has her reasons,” explained Carver, nodding sagely. “Donald is a very pleasant young man, with an intelligent interest in my profession, but (to be candid) he is stony broke. So Mrs. Steffins says; and he is studying law, so I have no reason to doubt it. However, I make it a rule never to interfere in disputes between women. No matter whose side you take, each is convinced that you must be wrong. Hum. I am for a quiet life … However. What has this to do with the—the unfortunate demise?”

“I don’t know. And I must be rather flustered,” growled Hadley, “when a witness has to correct me. I want
facts
. Come on. Let’s get to this room.”

Carver led them across the hall, and showed a disposition to linger; but Hadley was curt. It was a spacious room in the same white panelling, with the curvilinear shield-back chairs of Heppelwhite, and a broad fireplace in which embers still smouldered. Above the mantelpiece hung framed a faded print of a man with long hair curling to his broad linen collar, possessing that greyish ethereal look which seventeenth-century artists could give to the fattest men, and inscribed round the margin:
“Wm. Bowyer, Esq., through whose Efforts was Founded ye Royal Company of Clockmakers, Anno Dom. 1631.”
In glass cases along the line of windows were curious objects. One was a discoloured metal shell like a bowl, pierced with a hole in the centre; another a tall bracket bearing on one arm a floating-wick lamp, just opposite a cylindrical glass upright down whose side ran a board notched in Roman numerals from 3 to 12, from 12 to 8; finally, a heavy open clock behind whose dial and single hand hung a hollow brass cylinder on a chain, the dial inscribed,
“John Banks of ye towne Chester, Anno Dom. 1682.”
While Hadley threw his briefcase on the table and sat down, Dr. Fell stumped across to peer at these. Dr. Fell whistled.

“I say, Hadley, he’s got some rarities here. It’s a wonder the Guildhall hasn’t snaffled ’em. These are landmarks in the development of the
clepsydra,
the water-clock. The first pendulum clock, and you know, wasn’t built in England until 1640. And, unless I’m much mistaken, this bowl is a Brahmin device somewhat older than Christian civilization. It worked—” He turned round, the black ribbon on his eyeglasses swinging aggressively, and added: “Oh, and don’t say I’m merely lecturing, either. I dare say you noticed poor Ames was stabbed with the hand of a clock?—You didn’t?”

Hadley, who had been fumbling in his briefcase, threw two long envelopes on the table. He said: “So that’s what it was? I couldn’t make out—” and sat staring dully at the fireplace. “But the hand of a clock, man!” he snapped, making a wild gesture. “Are you sure of that? It’s fantastic! In the name of all unreason, why the hand of a clock? who would ever think of using a thing like that to kill anybody?”

“This murderer would,” said Dr. Fell. “That’s why it rather scares me. You’re quite right. The ordinary person, flying into a rage, seldom thinks of wrenching off the hand of a clock for a weapon, like a little dagger all ready to hand. But somebody in this house looked at the stable clock Carver was making …” Rapidly he told Hadley of the theft. “Somebody with a brilliantly devilish imagination saw it as a literal symbol of time moving to the grave. There’s something unholy in the very thought that he couldn’t even look at an object he must have seen a dozen times every day of his life without looking at it crookedly. He didn’t see it as a reminder of dinner or closing-hour or a dentist’s appointment; he didn’t even see a clock-hand. What he did see was a thin steel shaft, something under ten inches long, barbed with a sharp arrowhead and admirably weighted at the handle for stabbing. And so he used it.”

“You’re getting into your stride at last,” said Hadley. He knocked his knuckles against the table in irritable meditation. “You say ‘he.’ There are Ames’s last reports, and as much information as I could get about the department-store case. I was wondering …”

“About women? Certainly. That’s our objective. I use ‘he’ because it’s convenient, where I should have said ‘it.’ As that young chap on the roof did—and I tell you again he’ll be our star witness—when he said, ‘It had gilt paint on its hands.’”

“But that sounds like a
real
clock,” protested Hadley. “I tell you the fellow must have been delirious and got things mixed up. I hope you’re not trying to tell me that a clock is human and can get up and walk about on a roof?”

“Now I wonder—” muttered Dr. Fell, as though struck with an idea. “No, don’t snort. We’re trying to follow the workings of a very lucid crackbrain, and we shall be no forrader until we find out what he meant by using that sort of weapon. There is a significance, blast it! There’s got to be … Human? Look here, has it ever struck you that in fiction and poetry, even in everyday life, the clock is the only inanimate object that
is
considered human as a matter of course? What fictional clock doesn’t have a ‘voice,’ and even human speech? It speaks nursery rhymes, and clears the way for ghosts, and accuses of murder; it’s the basis of all startling stage-effects, and a note of doom and retribution. If there were no clocks, what would happen to the tale of terror?—And I’ll prove it to you. There is one particular thing,
vide
the cinema, which is good for a roar of laughter at any time—a cuckoo clock. You have only got to have that little bird popping out to warble, and the audience thinks it’s uproariously funny. Why? Because it’s a parody of something we do take seriously, a burlesque of the solemnity of time and clocks. If you will imagine of the effect on the reader provided Marley’s ghost had said to Scrooge, ‘Expect the first of the three spirits when the cuckoo clock chirps one,’ you will have some faint notion of my meaning.”