John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

"It was close on time for my appointment with you here, sir. So I sent Bert round there to make inquiries. But I warned her that I would issue a writ compelling his presence at the inquest; that's the legally safe way of arresting somebody if he tries to bolt; that his description would go out through the usual police channels as 'wanted,' and over the wireless, and so on." Masters shut up his notebook. He absently took the stiff drink I offered him, put it down on the table, and added savagely: "Personally, sir, I think that kid is either guilty or stark mad. Bolting like that-! Mad, or guilty; maybe both. If I had a scrap of evidence, beyond his having that key to the padlock, I'd hold him for murder. But if I make just one more mistake. . .

He gestured. It was graphic enough.

"It could be," said H.M. "Yes. Humph. If he deliberately wanted us to get suspicious of him, now, and frame a charge - why, that's how he'd do it. I wonder. That all you know?" he asked sharply. His little eyes wheeled round.

"I've got a complete record, if there's anything else you want to know."

"Yes. There's something missing, son. It ain't what I want, somehow. Burn me, I've a feeling that. . . . Look here. Darworth's house, now. You sure there wasn't anything else you noticed? Let your imagination float. That's it! Quick, what were you thinkin' about?"

"Only Darworth's workshop, sir," answered the Inspector. He seemed taken back by H.M.'s uncomfortable habits of reading the most wooden poker-face. "But you. didn't want to hear about the fake spiritist devices, so I thought

"Never mind, son. You keep talkin'. If I seem to shut you off; that may be because I've got ideas all of a sudden."

"It was only a room in the basement where he manufactured his boxes of tricks. No magic supply-house for him, sir; too dangerous. He made 'em himself, and he was skillful with his hands. 'Quite. I - you see, I mess about with that sort of thing myself, just as a hobby, and there was the finest little electric lathe you ever saw; delicate as a razor-blade. I wondered what trick he'd been up to last, for there were little whitish powdery traces on it .."

H.M. stopped with his whisky-glass halfway to his lips.

"... and some calculations on a slip of paper, measurements in millimeters, and a few scribblings I didn't pay much attention to it. Also, he'd been tinkering with life-masks, and made a good job of it. It's quite easy; tried it myself. You vaseline the person's face, and then spread the soft plaster on it. It doesn't hurt when it hardens, unless it catches in the eyebrows. Then you remove the cast,

and fit over its inner side sheets of moist newspaper.... I was watching H.M. Now if, at this point, H.M. had dramatically slapped his forehead or uttered a startled exclamation, I should have known that he was off on one of his intolerable digressions. But he didn't. He remained very quiet, except that he was wheezing a little. Taking a deep drink, he removed his feet from the desk, motioned the Inspector to go on talking, and picked up the sheets of Masters' report.

"-and not only that," H.M. suddenly observed, as though he were continuing a discussion with himself, "but a heavy incense, spices of some kind, burned in the fireplace of that little stone room."

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said Masters.

"Oh, I was just sittin' and thinkin'," the other replied, twiddling his thumbs and blinking about him with a heavy lift of his shoulders. "And I've been askin' myself all day why there was heavy incense. And now - white powder. ... Well, I'm a ring-tailed bastard," he murmured softly and admiringly. "I wonder if it could be? Ha ha ha."

"Just so, sir. You were thinking?" demanded Masters.

"Ho-ho-ho," said H.M. "I know what you're thinkin', Masters. And you too, Ken. I read another locked-room story once. I read plenty of 'em. Mysterious fiend invents a deadly gas unknown to science, and stands outside the room and blows it through the keyhole. Feller inside smells it and instantly goes off his onion. Then he strangles himself to death, or something. Ha-ha-ha. Boys, I actually read one of them things where the feller smells it in bed, and is so enlivened that he leaps up and perforates himself by accident on the spike of the chandelier. If that don't take all records for the sittin' high jump, I hope I never read another....

"No, no, son. Get your mind off that. This was something that let our murderer, our X, get in and skewer his man as neat as you please." He scowled, remembering old injuries. "Besides, there ought to be a law against stories about gases unknown to science, or poisons that leave no trace. They give me a pain. If you're allowed to be as staggerin'ly fantastic as all that, you might just as well have the murderer drink something that would allow him to slide in and out through the keyhole instead of the gas.

"Now that's interesting!" said. H.M., struck with an idea. "Burn me, if I wanted to be poetic and figurative about this business, crawling' in and out through the keyhole, I should say that in a matter of speakin' it's exactly what the murderer did."

"But there wasn't any keyhole!" protested Masters.

H.M. looked pleased.

"I know it," he agreed. "That's the interesting thing."

"I've had about enough of this!" said Masters, after a long pause. With controlled wrath, he began stuffing papers back into the long envelope. "This is no joking matter for me, you know. I feel like Major Featherton. I came to you for help--"

"Now, now, don't get your back up," H.M. put in soothingly. "Man, I'm serious too. Word of honor, I am. Here's our problem, the problem we've got to solve before we can do anything else: how was the trick worked? Without that, we can he morally certain who the murderer is and yet be absolutely unable to do anything about it. You want me to sit here and mull over, `Was he guilty, or was she guilty, and what was the motive?'-and all the rest of it.... Now, don't you?"

"I certainly thought that if you had any ideas----"

"Right. Well, we'll do some chinning, then, if you want to. Before we do, I wish you'd order round that car you were speakin' about; I want a look at Darworth's house."

The Inspector muttered, with obvious relief, that this was more like it. He put through the call; and, as he turned back again, we all felt the new tension that had settled down. It had grown altogether dark now, and there was a bustle and clatter of people leaving the building.

"Now, then, sir!" Masters plunged straightway.

"Here's what I've figured out. We could work up a case against any one of those people-"

"Steady," said H.M., frowning. "Is there something new, or didn't I read it correctly? Accordin' to that testimony, you'd have to narrow it down to three people. Two have definite alibis. Young Halliday and the Latimer girl were sitting in the dark holding hands."

The other regarded him curiously. Masters' dogged alertness seemed to have struck a bump where Masters had least expected it.

"Good Lord, sir! You don't mean to say you necessarily believe that?"

"Son, I'm afraid you got a nasty suspicious mind. Don't you believe it?"

"Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe part of it. I've been trying to look at every side. Um. Just so."

"You mean they were together in a plot to puncture old Darworth's liver and then back each other up with a story like that? Eyewash, my lad; first-class, guaranteed - British eyewash. Besides, it's bad psychology. There are a dozen objections to it."

"I wish you'd try to understand me, sir. I didn't- say anything like that, What I mean is this: Miss Latimer, now, is completely gone on Halliday. More so than ever now. She was sitting next to Halliday. Well, if she knew for a fact that he'd actually got up - if it was he carrying the dagger that brushed her neck - and he urged her for God's sake to support him with that story; eh? They had a whole lot of time when they could have talked to each other just after the murder was discovered."