John Carr: The Plague Court Murders

"The boards on the window?" interrupted Halliday.

"Sure. Have you forgotten that the wall round Plague Court runs within three feet of the windows in the house? And that they're high windows, from which a good jumper could get to the top of the wall with one swing? That was how she walked round to the back of the house without leaving a footprint; she went on top of the wall. And you know what she did. She left McDonnell there while Masters was prowlin' upstairs - the whole shooting would take only three or four minutes. She and Darworth had prepared the whole scene the night before; you, Halliday, blundered in on them in your travels, and I don't know how they played ghost on you, but it seems they succeeded....”

"Meantime, somebody meshed more gears, and caused trouble for us. Ted Latimer got up and sneaked out of the other room. What happened is probably this. Instead of goin' straight through the house - he could see your light, Ken, in the kitchen where you were lookin' over that manuscript - he thought he'd escape observation if he went outside and round the house. Well, he'd no sooner got out on the steps than it entered that queer brain of his that he might be funking his duty if he didn't walk straight through the evil influences of the house, and defy them. Yah! So he turns round and goes back through the hall; and he leaves the front door unlatched.

"Now, the probable fact is that Ken didn't hear him when he passed the door of the kitchen going towards the outside. And, no sooner had he got to the door at the rear of the house - the one givin' on the yard-then he saw ... well, what?

"We'll never know precisely that; the boy's dead, and Glenda never told McDonnell. It's most probable that he saw `Joseph', in the light of the fire in the window, climbing down from the roof on the window with the gun and silencer in his hand. A silencer, you know, isn't altogether silent; it makes a noise as though you cupped the palms of your hands and brought them together quickly. Now Ted was in a state to see evil spirits; he may even have tried to convince himself that that's what he did see; but it wouldn't quite wash....

"He'd keep quiet, and determine his line. But Glenda saw him in the doorway, and he was marked from that minute. She wasn't sure he'd seen her, but it must have l been a horrible moment.

"In the interval, what has happened? Masters is coming down from upstairs. When he first went up, the wind had moved the front door, and he had closed it on the latch. Well, down he comes again.... and sees the front door open as Ted had left it. Son, if he'd gone in the room where `Joseph' and McDonnell were supposed to have been sitting-well, it would've been all up. But he sees that open door and he charges out like a maniac: to find, of course, no footprints going round the side of the house. He comes round the side of the house as `Joseph,' the work finished, is returning on the other side. He hears Darworth's moans . . . y'know, I don't really believe Darworth knew his confederate had finished him, even then, or he'd have sung out boldly.

"But young Latimer, standin' in the doorway just outside the house, heard Masters come tearin' round the side of the house; he'd heard those moans of Darworth's also. He still ain't sure what they mean - he still ain't sure of anything. But he hears Masters come chargin' round the side of the house, and he realizes that, if there's really been any dirty work, his position might be embarrassin'. He ducked back to the front room, and arrived not a second before Darworth pulled the bell-cord.

"Meantime, Glenda was back. She'd shoved the gun and silencer under a floorboard that she and Darworth had prepared in that room the night before. And McDonnell's description to me of that woman when she came in and faced him - he was laying out cards in that alleged Rummy game - is fairly revealing. He said she was flushed, and her eyes were shining. She rolled up the sleeve of her coat and (to his own stupefaction) very calmly went about her morphine alibi. 'My dear,' she said to him, 'I believe I've made a mistake. I believe I've really killed the after all.' And she smiled.

"Do you wonder he was nearly insane when he rushed out? Masters tells me he never saw a man look like McDonnell when he saw him first after that, holdin' a handful of cards like a crazy man.

"I think you know the rest. The doubtful point was: what would Ted say? You know what he did; he kept quiet, and yelled at you that it really was a ghost-murder after all. It had taken possession of him that a fake ghost-murder was better publicity than a common shooting; and he was still puzzled about it anyway, because you all swore Darworth was murdered with a dagger.... By the way, wasn't that his first question to you? 'With Louis Playge's dagger? With what?' And then he kept quiet until he announced his belief in a supernatural killing.

"The rest of it will always be pure speculation, because the only two people who could tell us how Ted Latimer was lured out to Brixton are both dead. . . . Obviously Glenda had to work very, very rapidly. Ted might change his rather volatile mind at any minute, and decide to talk. One suggestion as to what `Joseph' had been up to, and Glenda might be done for. If necessary, she was prepared to follow that boy home and close his mouth. So she got Masters to send her home---'Joseph' was very sleepy, much more sleepy than the amount of morphine she'd taken would warrant. But she didn't go home”

"And then she got the brilliant idea of her life. You know what it was. `Joseph' had planned to disappear; but what if `Joseph' were supposed to have been murdered? ... The essential thing was for her to get to Ted immediately, and spin some story that would keep his mouth closed until she lured him out to Magnolia Cottage.

"So she waited for him to go home - probably close to Plague Court. The trouble was that, although he was the second witness examined, he refused to go home afterwards; and didn't go until the crowd of them had that row, and broke up.

`But, delayed in that way, Glenda had stayed until the police subordinates themselves had gone; she was working out, even then, the details of that rather neat idea, and, while all you people were engrossed in the kitchen, there was a remarkable opportunity to pinch that dagger.”

"Which is why, d'ye see, she lost Ted at the moment; he'd stalked off in a tearin' rage. But, burn me, that woman would not be beaten. That's the damnable, amazing thing about her. She relied on her wits and her powers of inventiveness to catch him alone, in his own room - in the house where she'd of course been many times as `Joseph' - to catch him when his mind was befogged and his reasonin' not up to par - and convince him that he must meet her next day. If she delayed, if he didn't have something to convince him before the very next morning, he might think better of his resolution to keep quiet. Y'see, the police were suspicious of him; and, under press of suspicion, he'd probably have told what he knew when he came to reflect on it.”

"And what do you think she did tell him?" inquired Halliday.

"God knows. By the note he left for his sister next morning, saying he was `investigating', it seems likely that

Joseph' didn't pretend to him it was a ghost-murder; but said that if he'd come out to Magnolia Cottage he would be furnished with proof. That 'You never suspected it, did you?' seems to indicate, too, that 'Joseph' accused a member of the group; and maintained that he (Joseph) was trying to save Darworth when Ted got that unfortunate look out the back door. After all, when a man's been found stabbed, Joseph mightn't have found it difficult to persuade Ted that Joseph was innocent - because `he' obviously hadn't been in the room of the stabbing. 'A pistol? What nonsense! Your eyes were deceiving you; I was keeping watch over my patron, who was foully murdered by . . . who?' Lady Benning; I'll lay you a fiver that's the one Glenda picked. 'I was at the window; I saw it done.'