John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

"Yes. We shall want to go over this house here, and try to match up the prints; take care of it. What j'you get out of his pockets?"

"Usual lot. Nothing enlightening. No papers of any kind, in fact." McDonnell took from his pocket a folded sheet of newspaper, wrapped round a small collection of articles. "Here it is. Bunch of keys, notecase, watch and chain, some loose silver: that's the. lot.... There was just one other funny thing...."

Masters caught sharply at the other's uncertainty. "Well?"

"The constable noticed it when we were raking out the fire, to see whether somebody might have got down the chimney. It was glass, sir. In the fire. Big fragments like a jar or bottle, maybe; but they were so splintered and burnt and softened out of shape that you couldn't tell.... Besides, it might have been there some time."

"Glass?" repeated Masters, and stared. `But wouldn't it melt?"

"No. It bursts and splinters, that's all. I thought perhaps-"

The inspector grunted. "Whisky-bottle, maybe. Dutch-courage for Darworth. I shouldn't worry about it."

"Might have been, of course," admitted McDonnell. But he was not satisfied. His fingers tapped his pointed chin, and his eyes roved about the room. "Still, it's dashed funny, though, isn't it? I mean, chucking a bottle in the fire when you've finished with it: hardly a natural action, is it, sir? Did you ever see anybody do it? It struck me that—“

"Stow it, Bert," said Masters, dragging out his words and making a wry face. "We've had plenty. Come along. 'We'll have a last look at the place in daylight, and then we'll dear out."

A cool wind blew drowsily on our eyelids as we went down into the yard. The gray light was uncertain and murky as though we saw the whole place under water; it looked larger than I had imagined it last night, and must have covered a good half-acre. Set down in the midst of decaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no churchbells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound, could ever penetrate it.

A brick wall perhaps eighteen feet high dosed it round on three sides of a rough oblong. There was a few dying plane trees straggling beside it, with an ugly coquettish appearance like the wreaths and Cupids on the cornice of the big house, as though they were dying in the mopping, mincing postures of the seventeenth century. In one corner was a disused well, and the crooked foundations of what might once have been a dairy. But it was the little stone house, standing out in the center and alone towards the rear wall, that carried the most evil suggestion.

It was blackish gray and secret, gaping with its smashed door. On the pitch of the roof were heavy curved tiles that might once have been red; the chimney was squat black, with a toppling chimney-pot like a rakish hat. Not far away grew the dead, crooked tree.

That was all. The stiff sea of mud about it, and only the broad squashy lines of tracks where many people had tramped up to the door in the same path. From this path, just two sets of prints - Masters' and mine-straggled close to the wall of the house towards the window at which I had held Masters up for his first sight of Darworth dead.

In silence we walked all around the house, keeping to the margin of the yard. The puzzle grew more monstrous and incredible as we stared at every blank side. Yet I have not overlooked, omitted, or misstated anything, and all was exactly as it seemed to be: a stone box, with door and windows solidly inaccessible, no tricks of secret entrances, and no footprints near it anywhere before Masters and I had gone out. That is literal truth.

It remained, to complete it, only for Masters to snatch at the only remaining lead, and to have that swept away also. We had got round to the other side of the house - the left side, looking towards it from the back door - and Masters stopped. He stared at the blighted tree, then back at the wall.

"Look here-" he said. The voice sounded strange and hoarse in that dead-silent place. "That tree. I know it won't explain the rest, but it might explain the absence of footprints ... a very agile man who got on to that wall might swing from the wall to the tree, and then from the tree to the house. It could be done, you know; they're not very far apart. . .

McDonnell nodded. He said grimly: "Yes, Sir. Bailey and I thought of that too. It was one of the first things we did think of, until somebody got a ladder round at the side, and I climbed up on the wall and walked round and tried to test it." He pointed up. "You see that broken branch? That's where I damned near broke my neck. The tree's dead, sir. It's as rotten as pulp. I'm fairly light myself, and I didn't do much more than touch it. It wouldn't support any weight. Try it for yourself.... You see, the tree has a different connotation."

Masters turned round. "Oh, for Lord's sake quit being superior!" he said raspingly. "What do you mean, connotation'?"

"Well, I was wondering why they'd cut down the rest of 'em, and left this one here. . . ." Pressing a hand over his eyes, the other looked puzzled and disturbed. His bleary gaze was turned on the ground at the foot of the tree: that slight plateau of which the house was the center. "Then I tumbled to it. That tree is where our good friend Louis Playge rests six feet under. I suppose they didn't want to disturb him. Funny, about superstitions. . . ."

Masters had strode out over the unmarked ground and reached up to test the tree. He was so irritated that his yank splintered off a branch altogether.

"Yes. It's funny, right enough. Ah, bloody lot of good you are, Bert!" He ripped off the branch and flung it on the ground; then his voice rose querulously: "Stow it, will you, or I'll heave this thing at you! This chap's been murdered. We've got to find out how, and if you keep on gibbering about superstitions-" "I admit it isn't much good for telling us how the murderer reached the house. But, on the other hand, I thought maybe--"

Masters said, "Bah," and turned to me. "There's got to be some way, you know," he insisted with a sort of dull persuasiveness. "Look here, can we be sure there weren't any footprints going out towards the place before we came? There's a terrible mess, you know, now, going up to the door.... "We can," I said with conviction.

He nodded. In silence we came round again to the front. The house kept its secret. In that drugged hour of the morning, it was as though we were not three practical men out of a sharp-eyed age; but that the old house had been recreated again, and that, if we looked over the boundary wall, we should see the doors of houses painted with a red cross below the words, "Lord, have mercy upon us." When Masters wormed his way through the shattered doorway into the gloom of the place, my thick head could only picture what he might see inside.

I tried to shake off these fancies as McDonnell and I stood outside, the smoke of our breath going up in the still air.

McDonnell said: "I don't think I shall get a look-in on this business. I'm district, you know; Vine Street; and the Yard will probably handle it. Still...." He whirled round. "Hullo! I say, sir, what's up?"

There had been a sound of thrashing about inside. It so fitted in with my distorted fancies that for a moment I did not look. Masters was breathing hard, and the beam of his flashlight darted about. The next instant he was in the doorway, very quiet.

He said: "It's a rum thing, but you know how you get a verse or a jingle or something stuck in your head, so that you can't get it out? - and you keep on repeating it all day, and try to stop yourself, but a little while later you forget, and you find yourself saying it again? Eh? Just so. Well-"

I said: "Stop babbling, and tell us "