John Carr - The Judas Window

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE JUDAS WINDOW

CARTER DICKSON

First published 1938

Published In Penguin Books 1951

Reprinted 1955

PROLOGUE

What Might Have Happened

ON the evening of Saturday, January 4th, a young man who intended to get married went to a house in Grosvenor Street to meet his future father-in-law. There was nothing remarkable about this young man, except that he was a little more wealthy than most. Jimmy Answell was large, - good-natured, and fair-haired. He was just such an easygoing sort as people liked, and there was no malice in him. , His hobby was the reading of murder mysteries, like your ' hobby and mine. He sometimes took too much to drink, and he sometimes made a fool of himself, even as you and I. Finally, as heir to the estate of his late mother, he might be considered a very eligible bachelor indeed.

It will be well to keep these facts in mind during the murder case of the painted arrow.

Here are the facts behind his visit to Number 12 Grosvenor Street. During a Christmas house-party in Sussex, Answell met Mary Hume. Their love affair was sudden and serious. They were mentioning this subject as early as twelve hours after their first meeting, and by New Year's Day they were engaged. On the strength of it Answell's cousin - Captain Reginald, who had introduced them - attempted to touch him for fifty pounds. He gave Reg a cheque for a hundred, and did similar delirious things. Mary wrote the news of their engagement to her father, who wrote back congratulations.

This was gratifying. Mr Avory Hume, a director of the Capital Counties Bank, and formerly manager of the St James's office of that bank, was not a man to take such matters lightly. He might be said to be made up equally of integrity and suspicion, which he had shown since the time he began his career at a mill town in the north. Therefore, when on January 4th Jim Answell was compelled to leave the house-party for one day and go to London on business, he intended to call on his future father-in-law immediately. There was only one thing he could not understand. When Mary saw him off at the station at nine o'clock, he could not understand why her face was so white.

He was thinking about it on the way to Grosvenor Street, at a little past six o'clock in the evening. It had not been necessary for him to get in touch with Avory Hume. The old man had himself rung up Answell's flat that afternoon, and invited him to the house. He had been courteous, but of a freezing formality which Answell vaguely supposed proper to the occasion. 'Considering what I have heard, I thought it best that we should settle matters concerning my daughter. Would six o'clock be convenient?'

It was not exactly hail-fellow-well-met, Answell thought. The old boy might at least have invited him to dinner. Besides, he was late for the appointment: a raw white mist impeded the traffic, and his taxi had to creep along. Remembering Mary's scared face, he wondered. Damn it all, Hume couldn't be such a terror as all that I If he were, his obedient son-in-law was prepared to tell him exactly where he could get off; and then he told himself that this was nonsense. Why should he be nervous? For anyone to be ill at ease about meeting the bride's family, especially in this day and age, came to the edge of comedy.

It was not comedy.

Number 12 Grosvenor Street was just such a solid yellow-sandstone house, with inconvenient window balconies, as he had expected. A conventional butler admitted him to a conventionally solid hall, filled with the ticking of a grandfather clock whose hands pointed to ten minutes past six.

'My - er - name is Answell,' he said. 'Mr Hume is expecting me.' 'Yes, sir. May I have your hat and coat?' At this point, for no reason at all, Jim dropped his hat. It was a bowler, and it bounced clear across to the other side of the hall. He felt himself growing hot round the neckband, especially at the picture of himself standing like a great gawk among the sedate furnishings, and at the calm way in which the butler retrieved his hat. He said the first thing that came into his mind.

'I'll keep my coat on,' blurted Jim Answell. As he made this idiotic remark, his voice sounded almost savage. 'Take me to Mr Hume.'

'Yes, sir. Will you come this way, please?'

The room to which he was taken was at the rear of the house. As they passed the great staircase in the hall, he could see someone looking down at him, and he thought he could make out the not unpleasing face of a woman: in spectacles. This must be Miss Amelia Jordan, of whom Mary had spoken, who had been with her father for many years. He wondered if the old man's brother, Dr Spencer Hume, were also there to give him a formal inspection.

'- to see you, sir,' said the butler.

His guide opened the door of a high room which was furnished like an office, except for the sideboard. There was a modern desk-lamp burning on a modern flat-topped desk in the middle of the room. Another hint of an office (or even a strong-room) was in the two windows: both were shuttered, and the shutters looked like steel. The place had been fashioned out of a tall and rather chilly back-parlour of the last century, having black paper once patterned in gold, and a few grudging chairs. In the wall opposite the door was a white marble mantelpiece, ostentatiously devoid of ornament. The only ornament in the room had been fastened to the wall above this mantelpiece: three target-arrows arranged in the form of a triangle. They had once been painted in different colours, and seemed to have been inscribed with dates; but the three feathers attached to the end of each arrow looked crooked and dry. In the centre of the triangle was a bronzed plaque or medallion.

Mary Hume's father got up from behind the desk with the light on his face. He had evidently just closed a chessboard and put the chess-pieces into their box, which he pushed to one side. Avory Hume was a middle sized, heavy-boned man, vigorous at sixty-odd, with a heavy expression round the eyes. What remained of his greyish-black hair was brushed carefully across a big skull. He wore a grey tweed suit, with a high old-fashioned collar and crooked tie. At first Answell did not like the expression of his rather protuberant eyes, but this changed.

, 'That will be all, Dyer,' he told the butler. 'Go and | bring the car round for Miss Jordan.' His voice was non-committal. The look he turned on his guest was neither I; cordial nor hostile, but merely non-committal as well. “Please sit down. We have a great deal to talk about, I think”

Hume waited until the door had closed. Then he sat back in the chair behind his desk and inspected his hands.

The fingers were thick and blunt-tipped, but well kept, He added suddenly: 'I see you are looking at my trophies.'

Answell, flushing again and feeling that something was very much wrong, drew his glance back from the arrows on the wall behind his host. The bottom arrow of the triangle, he noted, was a dusty yellowish-brown, and inscribed with the date 1934. 'Are you interested in archery, sir?'

'When I was a boy in the north, we drew a forty-pound bow as boys here play cricket and football. Here I have found it fashionable.' The heavy voice stopped. Avory Hume seemed to consider every idea as though he were walking round it and inspecting it, like a man inspecting a house. 'I am a member of the Royal Toxophilite Society, and of the Woodmen of Kent. Those arrows are trophies of the grand target, or annual wardmote, of the Woodmen of Kent. Whoever first hits the gold -'

'The gold?' repeated his guest, feeling that there had been a sinister emphasis on this. 'The centre of the target. Whoever first hits the gold becomes Master Forester of the society for the-ensuing year. In twelve years I have won it three times. They are still good arrows. You could kill a man with them.'