John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

"Got the devil!" somebody shouted out of the dark. "Penned in a corner-“

"No," said a clear thin voice out of the dark; "no, you haven't."

I will swear to this day that I saw the revolver flash lighting up a face, a mouth split in triumphant defiance, as that woman fired a last bullet into her own forehead. Something went down in a sodden heap, over against the wall near Louis Playge's crooked tree. . . . Then there was a great silence in the yard, smoke white against the moon, and dragging footsteps as men closed in.

"Let's have your lamp," H.M. said in a heavy voice to Masters. "Gentlemen," he said with a sort of bitter flourish, "go over and take a look at the most brilliant she-devil who ever gave an old veteran the nightmare. Take the lamp, Halliday - don't be afraid, man!"

The bright light shook in his hand. It caught a white face turned sideways in the mud by the wall, the mouth open still sardonically....

Halliday started, and peered. "But - but who is it?" he demanded. "I'll swear I never saw that woman before. She's"

"Oh, yes you have, son," said H.M.

I remembered a picture in a newspaper; a fleeting one, cloudy and uncertain, and I hardly heard myself saying:

"That's ... that's Glenda Darworth, H.M. That's his second wife. But you said - Halliday's right - we never

saw.... "Oh, yes, you did," repeated H.M. Then his big voice raised: "But you never recognized her all the time she was masquerading as `Joseph', did you?"

XX

THE MURDERER

“WHAT annoys me most," growled H.M., who was heating water on a forbidden gas-ring in the lavatory connecting with his office, "what annoys me most is that I should've spotted this whole business a day earlier-naturally, fatheads - if I'd only known everything that you knew. It wasn't until last night and this morning (or yesterday morning) that I got a chance to go over everything with Masters; and then I could 'a' kicked myself. Humph. Comes o' tryin' to be godlike."

It was close on two o'clock in the morning. We had come back to H.M.'s office, roused the night watchman, and stumbled up the four flights of stairs to the Owl's Nest. The watchman built us a fire, and H.M. insisted on brewing a bowl of whisky punch to celebrate. Halliday, Featherton, and I sat in the decrepit leather chairs about H.M.'s desk while he came back with the boiling water.

"Once you'd got the essential clue, that Joseph was Glenda Darworth all the time, the rest is easy. Trouble is, there was so much wool and padding round the business that it was last night before I tumbled to it. Another

thing got in the way, too; I can see that now.... "But, look here!" grumbled the major, who was struggling to light a cigar. "It can't be! What I want to know is--"

"You're goin' to hear it," said H.M., "as soon as we get comfortable. This water should be what the Irish call `screeching hot '- just a minute-that sugar, now! ..."

"And also," said Halliday, "how she happened to be in that yard a couple of hours ago, and who fired those shots through the window tonight; and how the devil the murderer reached the roof in the first place"

H.M. said, "Drink first!" After the punch had been tasted, and H.M. flattered on its quality, he grew more expansive. He settled down so that the light of the desk lamp did not get in his eyes, stretched his feet on the desk with an expiring sigh, and began talking to his glass.

"The funny part was, Ken and old Durrand in Paris stumbled slap on the whole explanation, even to the dead give-away of the business, if they'd only had the sense to apply it to the right person. But they picked on poor Mrs. Sweeney; naturally, I suppose, becoz Joseph was apparently lyin' burned to a cinder on a morgue-slab with the dagger in his back.

"Son, in essentials that theory was absolutely right. Glenda Darworth was the strong-minded, bleed-their-purses lady; the brain behind Darworth's personality; and she'd have played the part of a Cherokee Indian if it had helped their game. Trouble is, you had to look farther than Mrs. Sweeney. Because why? Because Mrs. Sweeney was never in the thick of things; she was never in a position where she could keep an eye on the people and make strategic moves unobserved; all she did was sit at home and be a respectable housekeeper for a weak-minded boy.

But Joseph - well, if you're considerin' a suspect to occupy that position, Joseph jumps out at you. He was never out of the middle of things, because he was the medium. They had to have him; he was indispensable; and not one thing could occur without his knowing it. And you had the complete answer, Ken, when that lady friend of yours deliberately told you the names of the plays in which Glenda Darworth had made her big hits. . . . Remember 'em?"

"One," I said, "was Shakespeare's `Twelfth Night', and the other was Wycherley's `The Plain Dealer'."

Halliday whistled. "Viola!" he said. "Hold on a bit! Isn't Viola the heroine who dresses in boy's clothes to follow the hero-"

"Uh. And I was glancin' over the other one, `The Plain Dealer'," vouchsafed H.M., chuckling, "while I was waitin' for you in the stone house tonight. What did I do with that book?" He fished in his pocket. "And Fidelia, the heroine there, does exactly the same thing. It's a rare good play for entertainment. Burn me, did you know they were crackin' Scotch jokes in 1675? The Widow Blackacre refers to a wench as a Scotch Warming Pan. Heh-heh-heh. Never mind. . . . But those two plays, with exactly the same kind of part, stretch the thing a bit too far to be coincidence. If you fatheads only had a little more erudition, you'd 'a' spotted Glenda much sooner. However"

"Get down to cases," growled the major.

"Right. Now, I'll admit we learned all that a little too late. So I'm goin' to start at the beginning and follow out the story, with what could have been deduced from it even if I had first tumbled to Joseph. We'll assume we don't know Glenda Darworth is Joseph; we don't know anything; we're only sittin' and thinkin' about the facts....

"We've decided that Darworth had a confederate, who was goin' to help him stage a fake attack by Louis Playge's ghost. That confederate was to go to the museum and take the dagger. The little trick of moving the neck in the manner of Louis Playge was meant to catch the attendant's eye; Darworth knew that the papers would play it up, and it was fine publicity for his scheme. We've even decided how the real murder was committed; with rock-salt bullets fired by somebody on the roof through one of those grated windows. If Darworth had cleaned up his lathe, and if Ted hadn't so casually mentioned those pieces of sculpture, it might have been a snag. Lord!" grunted H. M., taking a hasty drink of his punch, "Burn me, but I was afraid you'd find it out for yourselves, I was!" He glared at us. "If one of you had spoiled my effect, hanged if I wouldn't have backed out of the case altogether. I don't mind helpin' you, but you got to let the old veteran have his way, or he won't play. Humph. I even hadda tell Masters not to taste the stuff, or he'd have found out it was salt, and even his brain might 'a' been started workin'. Purpf. Bah. Well!

"Now, that's all we know, you understand. There's where we begin lookin' for a murderer.

"We look around. And what do we see but the obvious one starin' us in the face - the person who would be a confederate, and was more likely to be than anybody else: namely, Joseph. So why don't we suspect him and drag him under the spotlight straightaway?

"First, because the apparent boy is a weak-minded drug-addict, under Darworth's domination, and certainly full of morphine after the murder was committed.

"Second, because we've been told Darworth keeps him as a dummy or front for his activities, and Joseph knows nothing.”

"Third, because apparently he has a perfect alibi; and was sitting playing cards with McDonnell the whole time."

H.M. chuckled. He got his pipe lit after a herculean effort; inhaled soothing smoke; and his stare became vacant again.

"Boys, it was rather an ingenious set-up, d'ye see. First the obvious thing, then smeared over with a number of hints or facts which would make people say, `Poor old Joseph! Framed; not a doubt of it.' Oh, I know. I fell for it myself, for a few hours. And then I began thinkin'. It was a funny thing, but, when I read over all that testimony again, not one of the people in that circle - who'd known Joseph for nearly a year-had ever suspected him of being a drug-addict before that night. In fact, it came as a shock to everybody. Now, throughout all that time, it might have been possible for Joseph and Darworth to have concealed this; though it would have been difficult; but most of all, that constant doping of Joseph would have seemed unnecessary. Why keep shooting him full of morphine before a seance - ain't that a highly expensive, dangerous, and complex way of puttin' a person to sleep, when it could have been done as well with cheap legitimate drops from the chemist's, and leave no dangerous after-effects? What's to be gained by it? All you do is create a drug-addict who may babble and tilt the beans all over the floor at any minute! Why not even ordinary hypnosis, if Joseph were such an easy subject? It struck me as a fishy, roundabout way of attaining a very ordinary object: that is, to keep the boy quiet in the medium's cabinet while Darworth was manipulating strings. You wouldn't even need to put a weak mind to sleep in order to do that.

"So I asked myself, 'Look here,' I said, 'where did that suggestion of his being a drug-addict first come from?' It was first mentioned by Sergeant McDonnell, who'd been investigating the case; but by nobody else until it was backed by Joseph's obviously showing himself under the influence, and babbling.

"Then it struck me, lads, that of all the inconsistent, dubious, and suspicious things we had heard in this case, that story of Joseph's was the worst. First, he said that he had pinched the hypodermic needle and morphine from Darworth, and given himself a dose. Now, that's wildly unlikely, as you'll admit.... Major Featherton, stroking his white mustache, interrupted:

"But dammit,. Henry, you yourself said, in this office, it was because - look here, what was it? - that he'd done it with Darworth's connivance. . . ."

"And don't the flaw of that belief immediately strike you?" demanded H.M., who hates to be reminded of his mistakes. "All right, all right; I admit it didn't strike me for a minute, but don't it shout aloud in the universe? Darworth, according to Joseph, wants Joseph to keep on the watch for somebody who may do him harm. That's what Joseph said to Ken and Masters; that was his story. Well, can you think of anything more unreasonable than allowingsomebody to

shoot himself full of morphine in order to keep on the watch? Either way you looked at it, the thing was fishy. It didn't ring true.... But there was another explanation, so obvious and simple that it was a long time before it occurred to me. Suppose old Joseph wasn't a drug-addict at all; suppose all the others had been right, and all we had was his own word, which we accepted too easily? Suppose that whole tale was spun up to avert suspicion? Granted that he'd taken a dose of morphine then - he couldn't counterfeit the actual physical symptoms-still, the symptoms of the addict, the twitching hand, the wandering eye, the jerks and babblings, could have been put forward by a good actor and corroborated by our own instinctive belief that a person won't admit he's a drug-addict unless he actually is. Neat psychology, son; not at all bad.

"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin'..”

"So I asked myself, `Here,' I said, `let's take that as a workin' hypothesis; is there anything to support it?' It'd prove, for instance, that Joseph was very far from being the idiot he pretended, and assumin' the colors of a dangerous character, if we could prove it.

"Look at his story again. He said that Darworth was nervous about being attacked by somebody in that circle. We had it from everybody's testimony that Darworth wasn't nervous at all about goin' out to keep a vigil in that house; that whatever it was he feared didn't seem to come from here; but let that pass.... What I. knew, as I told you, was Darworth's plan: the confederate who was to stage a fake attack on him. Therefore, if the confederate were a member of that circle in the front room, was it likely that he'd deliberately have asked Joseph to keep on the watch? God love us, gents, Joseph might 'a' seen the confederate, raised a row, and the beans upset again! On whichever side you looked at Joseph's story, it was equally dubious. But it was precisely the story he might have told, to protect himself, if he had been that confederate; if he had murdered Darworth instead of assisting him; and he

had shot morphine into himself after the murder to provide an alibi.

"Keep starin' at that rather sinister-lookin' person now, and examine the second reason why we didn't suspect him -the statement that he was only Darworth's Front, to take the blame in case of mishaps. Again, who suggested that to us? Only McDonnell, who'd been investigatin', and Joseph who admitted it. And we accepted it - my hat, how meekly we accepted it! We believed Joseph simply walked about in a daze, while Darworth did all the work and the lad knew nothin'.

"But then I remembered the stone flower-box."

The smoke of our pipes and cigars mingled in a haze with the steam of the punch-bowl. Beyond the glow of the desk-lamp, H.M.'s face was sardonic in gloom. A late taxi honked on the Embankment, sharp in the silence of the morning. Halliday leaned forward.

"That's what I want to know about!" Halliday said. "That flower-box that dropped out of the ceiling or somewhere, and damn near smashed my head. Masters talked very easily and grandly about what a stale trick it was. Right-ho. But the stale trick nearly finished me, and if it was that swine Joseph - or Glenda Darworth - if she did

it—“

"Sure she did, son," said H.M., with a heavy gesture. "Ladle me out some more of Father Flaherty's medicine, will you? Umph. Ha. Thanks.... Now, cast your mind back to that time. You and Ken and Masters were standin' over dose to the side of the staircase, weren't you? In fact, you had your back to it. Right. And up came the Major here, and Ted Latimer, and Joseph a little way behind them. So? Tell me: what was the floor made of?"

"The floor? Stone. Stone or brick; stone, I think."

"Uh-huh. But I mean the part you were standin' on then, at the back of the hall where the old flooring hadn't been taken up? Heavy boards, hey? Pretty loose; made the staircase rattle?"

"Yes," I said. "I remember how they squeaked when Masters took a step."

"And the landing of the staircase was just over young Halliday's head, hey? And there was a handrail? Quite, quite. It's the old Anne Robinson trick. Haven't you ever noticed, in an old hall with a shaky stair, how if you accidentally tread on the right board connected with the staircase, the stair will shake, and the handrail of a landing will tremble? Now if a heavy weight had been balanced across that handrail so that a hair-line shake would turn its equilibrium-?”

After a silence he went on:

"Ted and the Major, son, were ahead of you; they'd gone on. Joseph was following a few paces behind. And he didn't tread on the right board by accident....