Stanley Anton - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 27, No. 3. Whole No. 148, March 1956

“Well... now!” he growled. “I had my reasons, hadn’t I? Burn me,” and H.M.’s voice rose up passionately, “people are always sayin’, ‘What an old cloth-head he is; stick him upside down in the dustbin.’ Then they see what I mean. And they yell, ‘Why, Henry; pull him out and dust him off; we should never have guessed it.’ And of course they wouldn’t have guessed it, the star-gazin’ goops! Only—”

H.M.’s eloquence was interrupted only by a back-wash taste from his own black pipe. Then he simply sat and looked evil.

“All right, all right!” he said. “What did you do last night?”

“Steve Lamoreux and I stood guard outside Jenny’s windows all night—”

“Stop a bit, son. Does the gal know who Lamoreux is?”

“She doesn’t know he’s Armand de Senneville’s spy, naturally! And she can’t meet him. But, for all practical purposes, he isn’t a spy. He won’t stand for violence—”

“Uh-huh. I know. I talked to him in my office today. You were sayin’?”

“Well, while the rest of ’em were at dinner, Steve and I sneaked into her bedroom and dismantled the gas heater...”

Tom paused in even more exasperation. H.M., with a silent and ghoulish mirth, was rocking in ecstasy.

“Oh, son! You didn’t think the murderer would try that simple little trick again?”

“Simple little trick?”

“Easy as shellin’ peas.”

“Will you acknowledge to me,” demanded Tom, after a hard-breathing pause, “that the door of the room really was tightly bolted on the inside and couldn’t have been tampered with?”

“Sure.”

“Will you acknowledge that both windows were securely locked on the inside and that they weren’t tampered with in any way?”

“Agreed without a struggle.”

“Will you finally acknowledge that, with no funny business about outside gas meters or the like, somebody — somebody actually in that room — turned on the gas-tap?”

“That’s right, son.”

“Then how in hell did the murderer get in and out of that room?”

“I’m not goin’ to tell you. Now wait!” said H.M., and pointed with the stem of his pipe. “Yesterday you raved and danced about the ‘miracle’ of the ventriloquist, didn’t you? But that was easy. And this is just as easy, maybe easier, if you think about it. I want you to think about it. Meanwhile, you’d better think of something and somebody you’ve rather neglected.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“Armand de Senneville himself. You hated him from instinct and from jealousy. But maybe your instincts were right. I had him investigated today.”

“Well?”

“He’s tough, son,” H.M. said somberly. “He’s tougher than you think. He’s an outstanding businessman, a first-class journalist, a mechanical expert, and he was liaison officer with the Yanks for four years during the war. Finally, he’s as conceited as the devil; he swears, in private, there’s nothing he ever wanted that he hasn’t got.”

“But Armand de Senneville’s in Paris!”

“He doesn’t have to be here, don’t you see?” H.M. asked patiently. “Now listen. You, and the gal Jenny, and even Steve Lamoreux, have all thought there was a whole conspiracy of the Harpenden family — Uncle Fred, young Margot, and Aunt Hester — against Jenny Holden.”

“And isn’t there?”

“No! Coincidence has mixed you up. There’s only one , one of those three, who has any knowledge of it. One of them, bribed by Armand de Senneville, would pay any price to have Jenny Holden frightened out of her wits. I give you three: which one?”

It was growing darker in the ancient quadrangle. Tom paced up and down the paving stones, his footfalls stirring back ghostly echoes from the walls.

H.M. knocked out his pipe and replaced it.

“Burn me,” he said in a worried voice, “where’s that whole family now? You were supposed to be keepin’ track of ’em, weren’t you?”

“I couldn’t! Aunt Hester knows me too well, from that bang-up row in the tea shop! But Steve is trailing ’em, and giving me signals from windows whenever he can.”

“But they can’t stay in there forever! It’ll be pitch dark! I’d give my ears to know where they’ve gone!”

It was unnecessary to sacrifice H.M.’s ears.

From under the archway to a second quadrangle the sound of “S-s-t!” hissed at them in a way which made H.M. leap up from the overturned wheelbarrow.

Steve Lamoreux approached as warily as a red Indian. Tom, not without difficulty, had persuaded him to put on a dark suit and an inconspicuous necktie. But his short brown hair stood up as wirily as ever, and he infuriated H.M. by addressing the great man as Pop.

“They’re outside,” he said, “at the back of the joint. They’re going along that broad path, at the back of the palace, that runs a long way to the left between the palace and the gardens. They’ve got the oldest guide here, who’s deaf and practically blind. — And for the love of Pete, Pop, get a wiggle on or they’ll close the inner gates and well be locked in!”

H.M., not without much ruffling of his dignity, was hauled and impelled through the archway, across another quadrangle, and then through a very long archway at whose end they could see the last gleam of daylight.

They stopped at the outer edge of the arch. Just ahead lay the immense gardens, their straight-ruled lines of flower beds draining of color in twilight. Peering round the edge of the arch to the left, Tom saw the very broad, sanded path beside ancient walls.

Five persons, their backs to the conspirators in the archway, strolled along this path about a hundred yards ahead. Though it was too dark to discern faces at that distance, Tom knew who they were as they walked abreast.

First, on the extreme left, doddered an old guide in uniform. Next, marching briskly, strode Aunt Hester. Jenny walked nervously between the giggling Margot, who danced with short steps, and the firm military stride of Uncle Fred on the extreme right.

“All right,” whispered Tom. “What do we do now?”

“I know what we could, do,” said Lamoreux.

“You do, hey?” sneered H.M.

“Yes! They can’t recognize us in this light. If we just strolled after ’em, three abreast but keeping back, they’d take us for another privileged tourist party like themselves. That is, if somebody could do a little spiel like a guide.”

The role of guide caught Sir Henry Merrivale’s fancy at once.

“Hem!” he said, tapping himself on the chest. “Me.”

Lamoreux looked doubtful.

“Okay, Pop, you’re the boss. But are you sure you know enough about the history of this joint?”

“Me?” said the outraged H.M. “The palace of Hampton Court,” he bellowed, “begun by Cardinal Wolsey in the year 1515, was in 1526 pinched from this worthy prelate by that howlin’ old ram King Henry the Eighth, whose wives I shall now proceed to—”

“Pop! Quiet!”

“Am I a guide,” H.M. asked loftily, “or ain’t I?”

“You are,” snapped Tom. “And if the balloon goes up, it goes up. Anyway, I can see Jenny. They can’t hurt her now. Let’s go.”

Out they marched, trying to tread softly, with Lamoreux on the inner side, Tom in the middle, and H.M. on the outer side.

It was quiet, so intense that they could hear the footsteps of these far ahead of them as well as their own. Peace lay in the hollow of a warm spring night, with the fragrance of grass and trees. You would never have guessed that death was walking with them along the broad white path — and moving closer at every pace.

Tom Lockwood did not know this, of course. But he sensed danger-fangs everywhere. He kept his eyes fixed on Jenny as though she might disappear, and his nerves were twitching like a landed fish.