John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

"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