The policeman, pacing his beat through Moreston Square, South Kensington, glanced up to see the lighted windows on the top floor of number 16. It was the Thursday night — or, to be exact, the Friday morning — exactly a fortnight after he had seen lights burning so late in Miss Callice's flat
From St Jude's tower the chimes rang and rippled with the hour of three. The policeman smiled and sauntered on.
If he had looked into the comfortable living-room on the top floor, he would have seen in its easiest chair a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit, with a cigar in one hand and a strong whisky-and-soda in the other.
Ruth was there, and Stannard, and Jenny, and Martin, and, as it happened, Lady Brayle. The light of the silver-shaded wall-lamps touched unquiet faces. It had taken a long time, and a very fair amount of whisky, to work themselves toward hearing what H.M. had begun to say.
H.M. drew deeply at the cigar, scowled, and put down the glass on the table beside him.
"Y'see," he said, "the boy-murderer is not at all uncommon, I don't have to tell you that Usually he's psychopathic, as Ricky Fleet is. But as a rule, he's nabbed straightway and shoved into confinement where he can't do any more harm.
"What's interesting here is to watch the boy-murderer who's grown up into a man-murderer. Still protected and cosseted by his mother! Still not believin' a soul now alive has suspected him! To watch his reaction to grown-up life; watch him squirm, watch him wriggle, watch him blurt out things, watch him smile and smile, until he's told his last lie. All that y'know, you saw unroll in front of your eyes.
"Now if we're goin'.into the grisly details," continued H.M., "there are some things we got to understand about Ricky Fleet.
"He really is a charmin' and likeable bloke. His good-nature is absolutely genuine. His generosity and free-handedness are genuine. His bravery, where he could be crazy-reckless but cool-headed at the same time, was genuine too. If you think those qualities can’t belong to a murderer just balanced between sanity and insanity, think of Ronald True. Or Patrick Mahon. Or — my eye, how recent this is! — Neville Heath." H.M. grunted.
At the end of the sofa opposite sat Jenny, her eyes fixed intently on him, and Martin with his arm round Jenny. Ruth sat at the other end of the sofa, with Stannard perched on its arm. He was an effulgent Stannard, beaming.
"To start at the beginning," continued H.M., eyeing a pile of papers on the table beside his glass, "Masters sent me a heap of testimony about the death of George Fleet. Together with three apparently scatty postcards about 'examine the skeleton in the clock' and 'what was the pink flash' and 'the evidence is still there.'
"I'd decided, before we went to Berkshire, that Fleet's death was murder. I argued the salient points with Masters at the Dragon's Rest on Saturday. You people haven't seen these typed sheets, maybe…"
Martin intervened.
"I've heard some of it," he said. "I heard you prove to Puckston, out of his own testimony, that he couldn't have swung that telescope round when he said he did. Did that make you suspect it was murder?"
"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M.
"It didn't?"
"Not so's you could notice it All it showed was that Puckston had been lying, and there might be a lot of hokey-pokey in his statement But what hokey-pokey? No, son. The glarin' give-away is in the testimony of an honest witness, Simon Frew with the binoculars, supported by others. Frew was lookin' straight at Fleet from the middle gable. I'll read what he said, just as Masters read it to me."
H.M. fished among the papers at his side, drew out a blue-bound folder, and grubbed through it until he found what he wanted.
Sir George was there. I could see all round him. He bad his glasses to his eyes in one hand, and was waving with the other. Then it looked like somebody gave him a hard shove in the back. He stood there for a second. He shouted. He fell head-first.
HM. threw the folder back among the papers.
"If somebody gives you a hard shove in the back,’’ he said, pointing his cigar at his listeners, "you don't stand there for a second.' You go straight over. As Martin Drake can tell you.
"Nobody pushed Fleet, or the pusher would have been seen. Nobody threw a weight at him. Aside from no weight being found, and no place to throw without bein' seen, it would have made Fleet lurch or stagger even if he didn't pitch straight over. He still wouldn't 'stand there for a second.'
"When I read that first, I felt a frizzlin’ kind of feeling,’’— H.M. indicated his corporation, — “here. Like devils at work. Fleet was in pain, intense pain. Or weakness. Or both. That look ‘like a hard shove in the back' was muscular jerk and reaction which would give the same gestures.
"If you'll think about that for a bit, you'll get the key and the lock together. I didn't get that give-away straight off— being goop-witted, which the same I often am not — but I got it later."
Jenny, under Martin's arm, turned her head up to look at him uneasily, inquiringly, while a shiver went through her. He could think only of unshaped devilries against a lurid-glowing red sky.
"But, H.M.," Martin protested, "that's one of the things we do want to understand. How was Fleet killed?"
"You be quiet," H.M. ordered austerely. "I've got somethin’ else to tell you."
Before resuming, he also mentioned the fact that he was the old man.
"Honest," he said, "what bothered me most in that bundle of Masters’s testimonies was the boy. I mean the tow-headed twelve-year old boy, Richard Fleet The Scotland Yard bloke didn't take a statement from him; only the local police did. But he got into the other statements, and he worried me.
"Whatever else George Fleet was, he was dead-keen on sport and dead-keen on the Army. Take his own career! As Masters said, he'd been sent to boarding-school when he was a tiny ‘un — ten or even less — then to Harrow, and then to Sandhurst He couldn't finish Sandhurst because he had to take up his dad's business. Oh, my eye! Don't you see a man like Fleet would be dreamin' of a career for his son just like the interrupted one of his own? Dreamin'? He'd have had it planned in detail from the first cradle-squawk.
"But this son, at twelve, was still at home with a governess. Why?
"Was the boy delicate and rabbity? No: he was a pocket athlete. Thick-witted? That wouldn't have mattered at a school; but, anyway, he was very intelligent. Did the fond mother step in and say she couldn't have her darling away? No: George Fleet ruled that roost and his word was law. "Then why?
"Let's take the boy's governess, this Miss Upton. H’m. There were bits about her in the testimony that bothered me. But let's jump ahead and use what you all knew or heard for yourselves.
— "Miss Upton was the rummiest kind of governess I ever heard off She was sort of immense, with a build like Sandow the Strong Man; and she knew how to put on a real wrestlin-grip. She was with the family for four years. Correct?"
It was Jenny who answered, Jenny with shining eyes but with the weighted and harassed air of one who has guessed too much.
"Correct," Jenny almost whispered. "I reminded Ricky himself, when he spoke about her."
"And on that roof of gaiety and delight," said H.M., "your Ricky told me — in his careless and laughin' way — she was with him till he was fourteen. Now it's fourteen instead of twelve. And at this time, he added, they pensioned her off. A pension after four years' service? I tried to keep from doin' more than blink. Either that was a lie, or else Miss Upton couldn't stand it and Cicely Fleet had to buy her silence.
"I wonder if you've begun to catch the unnatural atmosphere of Fleet House twenty years ago? The nervous, stamp-in father, who wallops his son (as the son told me) like blazes. The pretty, well-meanin' mother, who loves everybody and hopes George will get a baronetcy; and there mustn't be any scandal. Lemme give you one reminder: at Priory Hill, in November of 1925, a child was murdered and mutilated. Immediately afterwards George Fleet suddenly tore down his collection of rapiers and daggers from the wall, and gave 'em away. At that time young Fleet was in his eleventh year — Why didn't they dare send him to school? You answer."
A cold shock of horror spread through his listeners and lay inside them like lead, although two of them at least had been expecting it.
"I'm afraid, y’know," H-M. shook his head, "that in a way I did Masters in the eye. I warned him about it at the pub on Saturday afternoon. That little bit about Fleet gettin' rid of his weapons was in the original dossier I read in London. It bothered me worst of all. I rang up a friend of mine at the Evening News, and asked him if anything unpleasant had happened in this district about November, 1925. Cor! I got a answer.
"Masters learned this later, and told you. I knew beforehand. That was why I told young Drake, at Willaby's on Friday, to keep an eye out for real trouble. Because.. well now! You'll see.
"H.M.!" Ruth Callice intervened softly. "I've been a friend of poor Cicely for years. I knew she was hiding some kind of secret; but I never guessed it was an awful thing like this. And yet when I first visited there — the impression wore off later — I thought of that house as something like a prison."
(So, thought Martin, you did get the feeling too! Like mine, it wore off).
"And now," said H.M., with a sort of malevolent patience, "I want you to see everything happen from Saturday to Monday. You!' He pointed his cigar, long gone out, at Martin. "You went harin' down to Berkshire on Saturday.
"You sent a message to Ricky Fleet, who was at Brayle Manor, that an enemy was waitin' for him at the Dragon. Your gal and Sophie were there when he got the message. I've heard this from a very particular source.”
"Didn't it strike you as a bit odd that he should come over there so quickly? The proper reply to you should have been, 'I'm waiting at your service here at Brayle Manor; came and see me.' Above all the sweet fireworks of heaven, didn't it seem odd that your gal, should have come flyin' over there on a bicycle, as frightened as blazes, to anticipate him?"
Martin looked at Jenny, who had turned her head away.
"It did seem funny, yes. But Jenny said she had to know what happened between us."
"Sure. And that was true, as far as it went Now: presto-chango: watch! In the doorway of the second bar-parlour at his most charmin', stands Richard Fleet grown up. At his prime. Intoxicated by his war-success; but modest not showin' it Assured by this dotin' mother there's not a woman alive who can resist him. Quite believing it with conceit runnin’ in his veins like blood. Down he sits, takes out his pipe, and asks what's up.”
"And you give it to him between the eyes that you love your Jenny, she loves you, and you mean to get married." H.M. drew a deep breath.
"Son," he went on, "do you remember how Ricky Fleet sat there for a few seconds, with his leg over the chair-arm: not movin', just lookin', without any expression in his eyes: creepy as creepy?"
"Lord knows I do!" Martin answered. “I started to shout out something about being sorry, and I could hear what seemed like the skeleton-clock ticking in the other room…"
"If he'd had a weapon then," HM. observed very quietly, "you'd have been a dead man."
"You mean… about Jenny and Ricky and their engagement… he really did—?’
"Oh, son! He'd fallen head over heels for her. He just couldn't believe, in his vanity, that my woman could prefer another feller to himself. Burn it all, when you were at Willaby's the day before, why didn't you take the word of the one person who did know? I mean the gal herself?".
Jenny, her face flushed, still looked away from Martin; but she gripped his hand as she spoke.
"I told you Ricky was in love with me," she said. "That sort of thing — well, you always know. I'm afraid, at Willaby's, I showed I was frightened. I kept telling you about his good qualities and’—and looking at you and wondering if you'd see anything wrong. Once, if you remember, I started to talk about Ricky's father's death; but it stuck in my throat."
"Yes. Yes, it did."
"When you mentioned Sir Henry Merrivale, I didn't know what on earth might happen. I'd always heard of Sir Henry as a real sleuth: a strong, silent, unemotional man…"
"Hem!" said H.M., endeavouring to look modest. 'Thank-,'ee, my wench."
"Jenny, listen!" Martin insisted. "Ricky Fleet: you didn't know he was a…?"
Jenny regarded him with horror. "Oh, God, no! It was only a feeling of something horribly wrong; of how he might turn on you. I couldn't talk about it He was our friend. I liked him; but I couldn't endure his touch. As I told you afterwards — if I happened to be wrong, it would only be sordidly stupid."
"We will now," said H.M., "return to Richard Fleet in the bar-parlour, when he'd just got that staggerer between the eyes. How he did pull himself together! How he forced the blood in his face, and that look of relief and Thank God.' His charm poured all over the place." H.M. looked at Martin, "But from that moment, in his eyes, you were a dead duck."
(Much, so very much, became comprehensible to Martin now.)
"What did he say?" pursued H.M. "Oh, he was ail bounces and smiles! He never in the world could have married the gal, and he was awful relieved. He'd grown up with her! Cor! He gave the impression they'd lived in each other's pockets for about twenty years; and he'd as soon have thought of marrying a sister. "But what was the truth?
“The gal there,'' H.M. pointed at Jenny, "told me on Sunday. She'd been at school from the time she was ten. Her holidays were spent with one or the other of her parents abroad. Then came the War and the Wrens. In other words, he couldn't possibly have seen much of the gal for about thirteen years. And what happens then, hey? She comes back at the end of the war.”
"And he sees her. He goes straight overboard. Presently, as they say, a marriage is arranged.”
"But Ricky Fleet (in the bar-parlour with Drake) is all dewy-eyed innocence. He's mad-keen on a gal named Susan Harwood. She was his newest, ripest conquest. (Of course, son, you heard his philosophy of marriage; you knew he saw himself as a boundin’ faun, all Pan-pipes and breathin's in the grove). Oh, he was goin' to marry Susan! — Then in walked our Jenny."
H.M. shook his head. Again Martin saw the dingy bar-parlour.
"She's just been having a blazing row with Ruth Callice here, across the road. — Don't interrupt me, dammit, either of you! Before she came in, Ricky Fleet made a dramatic business of what was he goin' to say to Jenny?' Son, do you remember what he did?"
Martin nodded.
"I thought he was acting a little. He looked at himself in a wall-mirror, to see if his posture was right He was preening a good deal."
"Uh-huh. And Ricky Fleet's passion for looking at himself in mirrors, at exactly the time when nobody except a vanity-swollen feller would, is going to figure in this business again.
"Anyway, in came Jenny. Very soon she asked you would you please, please take her driving that night and not go to the prison. That wasn't merely because she was jealous of Ruth, or..
"Will you two gals for the love of Esau shut up? Both of you? And lemme get on with this? All right: now put a sock in it”
"Ahem. Well. If Ricky Fleet did happen to hate Drake, something pretty unpleasant might happen to Drake at the prison. You gather the wench had naturally been listenin' to most of the talk between you and Fleet even though the windows were closed? All wenches do.
"But most of all she thought she could get these nasty crazy suspicions out of her mind — at least, she might — if she brought up the death of George Fleet and made Ricky Fleet tell about it Then she could be sure her suspicions were all moonshine.
“He had begun tellin' about it, when they were interrupted first by Dr. Laurier and then by Ruth Callice. There was a rumpus; I came in at the end of it But just think of Ricky Fleet as he talks about his old man's death!”
"I’ll take my oath, here and now, he'd practically forgotten about it. It was swept into the dustbin, lost and gone, like a dim sort of prank we remember that might have raised trouble in boyhood. His brain's most rational, admittedly; and if s tipped over the edge with hatred for Martin Drake, who's under his charm and thinks he's the best feller in the world."
Martin's feelings, in retrospect, had more of an inward shudder than can be rendered here.
The coppers are investigatin' that old, dim prank of twenty years ago? Well! What does Ricky Fleet care? They can't do anything. For I’ll tell you this much:”
"Only three other people, who protected him, ever knew he killed his father and how he killed his father. The first was his mother. The second was old Dr. Pierre Laurier, with the beard, who (we know) cherished a romantic passion for Cicely Fleet The third was Miss Upton, who told lies by the bucket to save him when the tow-headed boy came babblin' to her with fear.
"Now, twenty years later, Dr. Laurier was dead. So was Miss Upton — see Masters's list of witnesses — and couldn't retract any lie for the boy's alibi And one more fetchin' point: Ricky Fleet never knew anything about that skeleton in the clock, what it was or what it meant
"But shortly after he'd hared away from that explosive argument at the Dragon, and hurried back home, he did begin to get shocks.
"Watch his behaviour now!
"There was something wrong with his mother. Something seriously wrong. Ricky Fleet was worried. He knew it couldn't have been caused by any casual reference made to a twenty-. year-old death by Stannard…"
Thank you," Stannard intervened gravely. As he sat on the sofa-arm, bent a little forward, Stannard's black little glittering eyes were absorbed in the story.
"What upset his mother? When young Fleet hurried home, and followed her partway up the stairs (Drake and Ruth Callice saw that scene), all she'd say was that there was something he'd got to learn soon; and that she'd just put In a telephone-call for her now-closest friend, Sophie Brayle. But we can guess what was wrong with Cicely Fleet.”
"It was the sight of that ruddy great skeleton-clock being carried into the door of the pub just opposite. I'd sent it on ahead of Masters and me, by the carriage-people. Masters and I stopped at a couple of pubs in Brayle and didn't get there till late afternoon. Aunt Cicely must 'a' thought the secret was on the point of coming out”
"But what about Me?”
"I was dragged into Fleet House, along with Sophie there, by Ricky himself. I was shanghai'd, I was, and shoved into the library with the rest of you people. And Ricky Fleet had just before that got another shock.”
"He'd recognized, or half-recognized, Stannard as being the man standing at the upstairs study window. It jumped at him out of the past: Stannard was the bloke who looked down, when he came round the edge of the terrace that day, and he saw his father lyin' with a smashed head under the tapestry-cloth.”
"But let's take the events in their order! In that library, first off I had a bit of a dog-fight with Sophie. At least she gave confirmation to my notion (remember?) that Arthur Puckston might 'a' written the anonymous postcards about the pink flash and the skeleton-clock.
"Whereupon in tripped Aunt Cicely, at her artificial archest and most charmin', to carry away Sophie for a private talk. And there occurred something that was embarrassin' to the point of the horrible."
During all this Lady Brayle might not have been in the room, might not have existed. She sat over by one open window, staring blankly ahead of her, an untasted glass of sherry on the window-sill. She did not seem arrogant or even friendly: only like one who had been lost and still gropes.
"Do you remember that incident Sophie?" H.M. called softly.
"Yes." The stiff lips writhed as the grey-white head slowly turned. "I remember." "What was said?"
‘I made some mention of a blade, a sword, which I wished I could have brought back from Willaby's as a present There— there was real horror in Cicely's eyes. She blurted out, 'But you must never…' Then Cicely stopped and turned it off with some reference to Dr. Laurier. What she meant I imagine, was, 'You must never bring a sharp blade into this house?'"
That's right," agreed H.M. "And then (hey) she took you upstairs and told you the whole truth?"
They spoke to each outer across the length of a room, Lady Brayle with her head turned sideways, trying to control the writhing of her mouth; but they spoke without incongruity.
"Poor Cicely," Lady Brayle went on, "could hardly speak for sobbing. About the skeleton in, the clock. About that half-mad, or altogether mad, boy who—" She stopped. I do not suppose, Henry, you now have much respect for my word of honour?"
That's where you're wrong, Sophie."
"Never, until that moment," the lips writhed vehemently, "had I the least suspicion, let alone knowledge, of the situation. To think I would allow Jennifer, after that, to be married to…" She floundered. "My late husband, who commanded the Grenadier Guards, once said that a person who allowed…"
"Yes. Sure.-But Aunt Cicely would have allowed the marriage, hey?"
"Oh, Henry!" The other made an impatient gesture. Again she struggled to free herself from reticence. "You're hardly a person to understand mothers, especially, people like Cicely. That is—"
"Her son was 'cured' of this. It had been only childish aberration. Nothing like it at Cambridge or later. The "poor boy" had been misunderstood. Cicely wished to believe it so; and it was so. She could not even bear to have him know about the skeleton. She ought to tell him; but why remind the boy? The skeleton must be removed. I am Cicely's friend. I could not let her down."
Lady Brayle turned her head away, and looked out of the window. And now Martin remembered her look, on that Saturday evening, when she left Cicely Fleet and walked downstairs past Martin at the telephone table.
"I knew I was right," cried Jenny. "She was shielding somebody!"
"God help me," Martin said uncontrollably, "I thought that business of stealing the skeleton was funny."
"Not to me," said Lady Brayle without turning round.
"Looky here," howled H.M., bringing his fist down on the arm of the chair. "Who's tellin' this story? I'd got you people in the library early that Saturday evenin', after Sophie and Aunt Cicely had gone. Ricky Fleet then 'denounced' Stannard as the one who'd been lookin' at him from the study window. Before that he said one thing that gave me a shiver. Can you spot what it was?"
Stannard lifted his shoulders in negation. "Somebody asked him what he'd seen up there at the window. And it was, 'The face of somebody I’d never met. The face of a total stranger. Looking down like God.' "Looking down like God.
"Cor! There's your boy-murderer's conscience, leaping out of him and speaking through the mouth of a grown man. That's what he remembered best! That's what he thought all those years ago! And," H.M. looked at Stannard, "he rounded on you pretty savagely."
"I noticed," Stannard pursed his lips, "he was nervous and truculent while you were questioning me. He would have been a difficult witness to handle.. And all, you say, because of this repressed—?"
"Ho-ho!" rumbled H.M. "Not so's you could notice it It was because you said at least one thing that could help to denounce him."
"I did?" Stannard asked in surprise.
"You were in the study when you heard Fleet shout and fall on the flagstones? Right! You then went to the window and stood there looking down? Right!
"But you further said you stood there five minutes before the governess and the boy came round the edge of the house to j the terrace. In Ricky Fleet's story of it which he gave me I almost immediately afterwards when we climbed up to the roof, he said he and Miss Upton were just startin' from the back to the front of the house when they heard the shout.
What sort of frozen-snail-with-lumbago takes five minutes to walk from back to front? "His memory might be bad? Sure! Your memory too? Of course! But there was a certain way of checking it Across the way, at the pub, there were six witnesses on the roof though
only two on the gables. All agreed in their first testimony." H.M picked up the blue folder, and stabbed at it with his dead cigar.
"After Fleet's body struck the terrace, Dr. Pierre Laurier ran out of the house. The local policeman walked up the path to the terrace, picked up the field-glasses from the grass, and went in: presumably to phone the police-station. Dr. Laurier called to Lady (the Dowager Lady) Brayle, who brought a cloth out of the house. Dr. Laurier put the cloth over Fleet's head and shoulders. Cicely Fleet then came out and started to faint but they talked to her 'a while,'—I'm quoting, so note the 'a while,'—and she went in.”
"Then, and only then, did the governess and the boy come round the side of the house. Lord love a duck! For the precedin’ events, you could easily allow five minutes.
"But did the boy and the governess say the things, twenty years ago when it was fresh in mind, as Ricky Fleet said to me as well as to Jenny and Martin Drake? Including, for instance, that fancy touch about hearin' Dr. Laurier say, 'Get the tablecloth out of the hall?' So I asked Masters to check over their statements made to the local police.
"And they had said the same things. Therefore they were both tellin' a pack of lies. Q.E.D."
Again HM. threw back the blue folder among the other papers.
"But there was another great big lie," he went an, screwing up his face hideously, "that the old man had to see through before the solution was so blazin' obvious. That lie has caused half the mystery in this case. It had to do with how Fleet was murdered.
"When I went up to have a look at that roof-top for the first time, I was stumped and flummoxed. I couldn't think of anything but colour. I talked more about colour than an interior decorator. Because I'd got my mind fixed on that pink flash.
"So I went to the front of the roof. And then this here venerable scalp did start to stir a bit with wheels workin' inside. I hadn't quite visualized the surroundings. Arthur Puckston had been over on that north gable, in a position to look at Fleet sideways — well sideways.
"It went like this: Puckston probably wrote the anonymous postcards; only a postcard mentioned the pink flash; Puckston had told lies in his statement to the police; Puckston looked sideways…
"The pink flash must have been that lurid-glowin' sky on something white or whitish. It must have moved, pretty sharply, or there wouldn't have been any flash. It couldn't have been up in the air, or Frew would have seen it But — stop a bit! — Puckston could see what Frew couldn't see: he could see behind Fleet and a part of the roof-floor. Down on the floor
"Now think! That look of intense pain or weakness, or both, which strikes the victim all of a sudden and holds him there for a second…"
"A sword!" interposed Stannard.
"Nol" said H.M. sharply. "That's the one thing it couldn't have been, in spite of the tinge of steel in ail this case. Because. why?
"Because a sword or sharp blade would have meant blood. Because that's, the one thing mat couldn't be concealed. Remember, Fleet's body was lying smack in front of a number of witnesses. Lemme quote again; and I've been over it so much I can. quote from memory."
H.M. closed his eyes.
Bert (the policeman) came out and seemed to argue with Dr. Laurier about who carried Sir George. Bert took his head in the cloth and Dr. Laurier took his legs. They carried…
H.M. sat up.
"Even if old Dr. Pierre Laurier had been up to hanky-panky, he couldn't have concealed any blood below the shoulders.
"Then bang! On Sunday night this feller-" H.M. pointed to Martin—"came weaving his way downstairs after a fall off that roof, and he tells me I ought to see 'young' Dr. Laurier if I wanted information about swordsmanship in remembering (hem!) my reincarnation. He mentioned a cut called the 'Low-high.'
"Now upstairs I'd got a book called The Cavaliers, which I'd been readin’. As I distinctly told Masters at the pub on Saturday, it was a book on swordsmanship. The 'Low-high' was a cut by which the trickster dropped down and cut viciously across the backs of both his opponent's legs just above the ankle.-And the only way anybody could have attacked George Fleet would have been round his feet or ankles under that six-inch parapet
"A sword wasn't used. But at the same moment I remembered what else was hangin' on the wall of the study upstairs. You," he glared at Martin, "must have seen for yourself. And I remembered Dr. Laurier in the rocking-chair."
H.M. drew a deep breath.
"Y'see, this wasn't intended to be an impossible crime. Only one big whitewashed lie made it so. A twelve-year-old young 'un had been beaten too much by a father he hated. He was goin' to stalk his father just like a red Indian. Only he was goin' to kill him.
"He knew (he said so) his father was goin' up to that roof to watch the hunt when it came near. George Fleet always did. How did the twelve-year-old get up there? By a door, leadin' to the back garden, and a staircase going straight up there. Could he stalk the old devil, in all the excitement of the hunt without his father seein' him?
"Easy! And why? Because of field-glasses. "Y’know, Masters kept goin' on at me and raving when I insisted there was only one thing I wanted to know: were they good field-glasses, nothing wrong or wonky about them?”
That would have been my question no matter how Fleet had been killed. Lord love a duck! Suppose you or I look through a pair of field-glasses, and the vision don't seem to come into focus when we fiddle with the wheel?
"Well, we get mad; we get a vague sort of idea there's something wrong with the scenery and turn 'em somewhere else. We look round. We take the glasses away from our eyes and examine 'em all ways. But, if they're good, we don't notice what's goin' on around us.
"Fleet didn't. That twelve-year-old maniac — with a certain boy's weapon you'll guess — crawled belly-flat like a red Indian under the ledge of the north wall, and then under the ledge of the east wall towards where his father was standing. Remember: not a soul looked round until shortly before Fleet fell. Once the boy was under that front ledge on the east side, nobody could see him; not even Puckston. I think Masters may have told a couple of you that people won't believe how small a space can hide a full-grown adult, let alone a small boy.
"I'd dismissed that possibility at first, because I kept thinkin' of somebody startin' a tussle with the legs or ankles of a powerful man like Fleet. And Masters never dreamed of a kid. But also remember: Ricky Fleet, as he'd told Stannard in the condemned cell at Pentecost, wasn't what you might call ordinary in another way. He could put-the-weight a distance of twenty seven feet three inches when he was eleven. A lot of grown men couldn't do that
"On he goes, just as crazy-excited as we've seen him on other occasions, with the music of the hunt to encourage him. The hounds were after the fox; he was after the wolf. He's carrying something out of the realm of sport but a nasty heavy weapon if you remember it's…"
"A cricket-bat!" Jenny whispered. "He told us they'd given him a new cricket-bat that week!"
"And when it's new," said H.M., "it's the whitest of white ash. Don't see it as an ordinary cricket-bat: see the heavy broadness taperin' on each side to the very-narrow-rounded edge that's like the edge of a wooden blade.
"One hand, lyin' flat with his left arm under him, was all Ricky Fleet needed. It was the narrow blade of the bat. Out and back it went: flash! open and shut! It smashed across the back of Fleet's legs just above the ankle, the most painful of all places. It fractured the bone in both legs without drawin' a drop of blood. Fleet jerked in horrible pain; he couldn't stand straight, and—
"That's all. After the first thirty seconds or so, no witness (see testimony!) was studyin' that roof. They all looked down at the terrace, while the boy crawled back by way of the north ledge. But I'm bettin' he never thought anybody could see him at any time, except maybe God.
"You," H.M. said to Martin. "Burn it, you must have seen the row of cricket bats in Fleet's study! On Sunday night I remembered 'em; I remembered the 'Low-high' cut; I wanted to look it up in my book. And I remembered something else too: Or. Laurier, old Dr. Laurier, rocking back and forth before the skeleton-clock mutterin', ‘Would a man of honour have done it?'
"Done what? We know that after Fleet fell Dr. Laurier (quote) 'made as if he was examining all over Sir George.' He ordered the constable to take the head, in spite of an argument, and he took the legs. He was the old family friend, the one who cherished Aunt Cicely, and he knew all about the boy's psychopathic traits. He saw in a second this wasn't accident. Finally, remember, he was the police-surgeon,
"The awful creepin' danger was that the coppers, especially Scotland Yard, would tumble to the fracture at the back of both legs, when Fleet fell in a way where that couldn't have happened. Then the gaff would be blown.
"At the post-mortem there wasn't much danger — everybody's concentrated on the stomach-contents, as usual — of too-close investigation. Laurier had sworn (which was the lie I told you about) there hadn't been other injuries to the body. But Aunt Cicely intervened, weepin' and pleadin'. And at her insistence old Laurier… amputated just above both ankles before burial.
"It was a fat-headed thing to do; but our Cicely pleaded they couldn't prove anything against her boy, which was true, if that was done. Also (here I'm on ground I don't know) there had to be hanky-panky with the undertaker.
"I won't go into grisly details," growled H.M., "about how Laurier removed flesh and sinew from what was left It was only long afterwards, when age wore on him and he got a bit senile, that he built the skeleton-clock for his parlour, where everybody could see but nobody knew, as his penance. Anybody here examined that clock?"
"Yes. I have," said Martin out of a thick throat
"Did you look inside? Look close?"
"There was some kind of platform round the ankles and feet, apparently to keep the skeleton upright…"
"Dr. Laurier took his old anatomical-specimen skeleton," said H.M., "He removed what had to be removed, and he attached — what had to be attached. It was a skillful job of fittin'. But any medical man could have seen at a glance that the ankle-bones and feet of a big man don't belong to the skeleton of a small man. Unless there's a wooden platform built up round 'em which gives you only a glimpse of the feet and curves round the ankles. You cant probe the truth about that skeleton until you take it out of the clock. And I hadn't time before Sophie stole it
"So y'see, as regards that nasty business of murder on the roof, there was only a twelve-year crawlin' back unseen, and out to his governess now screamin' what he'd done and how he'd got to be protected. That's why they took five minutes to get round. Nobody'd notice if Ricky Fleet was scared. Nobody'd notice him anyway. But it must 'a' made him nearly faint when he thought he saw God lookin' down from his father's study window.
"You," and H.M. pointed to Stannard, "said something else to the grown-up Ricky Fleet that shook his nerve too. You called him a 'grubby little boy.' It was twistin' and wrigglin' in his mind just later when I asked him about his father and Ricky Fleet blurted out: 'He never minded how filthy dirty you got' He was thinkin' about how almighty dirty he got when he crawled along that concrete roof to kill his father."
There was a long silence. H.M. picked up his whisky-and-soda, and drained the glass with a volcanic gurgle. Then he set it down.
"There's not much more to tell except what you know already," he went on. "That expedition to the prison on Saturday night…"
"Where," Ruth said, "Ricky later killed Enid Puckston. H.M., why?"
"Listen, my wench. Young Fleet said himself it was an 'expression.' An outlet. Did you ever see a golfer smash a golf-club against a tree? Or a woman throw a whole breakfast-tray in somebody's face? Well, that's normal; he wasn't.”
"Burn it Ricky Fleet had been hurt His girl preferred somebody else to him. His vanity was scratched raw. There was young Drake, the cause of it all. He wouldn't dare face Drake without a weapon, anymore than he'd have dared face his father. (That was still lurkin' got it?) But he had to hurt, had to inflict pain on a helpless person, before he killed Drake.
"No, It's not pretty. I warned you long ago it wasn't.”
"He prepared it all beforehand. Do you recall, when you were all sitting in that dark back garden just before you started t for the prison, how he kept rushin’ back to the house — apparently to see how his mother was?'' "Yes," said Martin. "Very well"
"The last time, just before you left, he made his preparations. On this occasion he was goin' to give you a good grownup sophisticated alibi He had the dagger and its sheath. He cut his own arm, got plenty of blood for the dagger; and the sheath would hold it without staining him, except for smears on the handle, if he wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket Just as you later did when you shoved it in Dr. Laurier's pocket
"You went to the prison. Who deliberately called your attention to that pile of rapiers and daggers in the condemned cell? He did. You didn't find the dagger, as he'd hoped when he shoved it in there under cover of so much darkness. But back he went with Drake after the fencin' match—"
"By the way," demanded Martin, "was 'young' Dr. Laurier concerned in this?"
"Not in the least son. He's only a bit of a snob, that's all. His most valued patient is Sophie there, and when he had tea with her on Saturday she must have dropped a hint that 'Captain' Drake was endangerin’ Jenny's marriage. Hence the faintly sinister hints in the bar-parlour when he first met you."
"But to get back to—?"
"Sure, if you'll stop interrupting. Ricky Fleet when you and he went back to get corks, smackin' well made sure you'd find the dagger. He helped tumble over some swords and put his light straight on it. As to how the weapons got there, it's clear he'd been using the prison for some time…"
"Using it? He told me," said Martin, "he'd often wanted to explore the place, but he couldn't get in."
"Oh, my son!" H.M. said dismally. "Anybody could get in there. You don't have to be a locksmith to understand that. You just have to go and take a dekko at the main gates. The bigger the lock, the simpler it is. And the easier it is to get a wax impression, if anybody wants to.
"Son, there were too many doors with oiled hinges inside that place, as our friend Stannard pointed out. Even if Stannard himself had been up to some kind of funny business—"
Here the barrister chuckled.
"— why in the name of Esau should he have oiled the hinges of those high front gates? Admittedly all your party were goln’ there. No; it was somebody who wanted no betraying gate-creaks when he slipped in.
"Ricky Fleet had been usin' the prison for his amorous adventures, Pan-pipes and nature-worship, which weren't of a sadistic kind. Masters has discovered he got back the rapier-dagger collection from the ghost-village…
"Ghost-village? You saw it Built beyond the prison. The Governor's house was there. George Fleet gave that collection to Major Colwell, and Major Colwell left it behind when everybody decamped. So Ricky Fleet had a second dagger, very like the first, when he led Enid Puckston toward the prison to kill her."
Martin cleared his throat "H.M. Was she one of Ricky's —?"
H.M.'s expression was heavy and bitter.
"No, son. That's the real irony of this case. She liked and admired him an awful lot, as I could tell when I heard her mention him at the pub. That's all it amounted to. But— haven't you wondered why Puckston sent those anonymous postcards in the first place?"
"You mean she wasn't one of Ricky's conquests, but—?"
"Her father thought she might be," replied H.M.
He was silent for a moment, glowering.
"Mind you, Puckston didn't know the boy Richard Fleet had done that murder years ago. He'd seen what he knew was the light on a cricket-bat He guessed nobody but a kid could have crawled under that ledge unseen. He had no proof and anyway he didn't want trouble. But if Enid had fallen for this bloke years later—! So he sent the postcards, with her help but without her knowin'; and then he thinks she's been killed, by the same boy grown up, because she knows too much! Do you wonder at Puckston's state of mind on Sunday night?"
"No," Martin answered. "No. I don't wonder."
"Anyway, Ricky Fleet took that gal to the prison, to see a 'ghost-hunt', at goin' on for one in the morning. He butchered her with all the hate in him. He left the body under the gallows-trap, as a rare sight for somebody if the trap was opened. Masters has told you that story, including the reversed alibi. Finally, Fleet slipped out again without a whisper to catch Masters's ear.
"I don't think, though, he slept very well the rest of the night And then you two," H.M.'s finger indicated Martin and Jenny, "had to go yellin' under the windows at going on for five in the morning, and give him his heaven-gilded opportunity to shove Drake off the roof." "But why didn't you warn me?"
H.M. drew himself together. He stuck out towards Martin a face of such utter loathing, such indescribable contempt, that the other felt his scalp stir with hostility.
"Look here, you something-something'd thus-and-so," he said. "There's a feller here in London," he mentioned a famous painter, "you think is a friend of yours. I bein' the old man, happen to know he hates your guts."
"That," Martin said quietly, but with buzzing ears, "is a very bloody lie."
"Darling!" cried Jenny.
"You think so, hey?" inquired H.M., with a contempt which was one vast sneer. "He was in Spain with another feller he hated, and he shot that feller in the back without givin' him a chance. What, do you say to that, you credulous so-and-so this-and-that”
"I say," returned Martin, sticking out his own neck, "that I will prove you a thus-and-so this-and-that liar. I will take him to any lonely place you name, with a loaded revolver in my pocket I will hand him the revolver, and—" Even with badly buzzing head, Martin stopped short
"Y’see what I mean?" inquired H.M., with a sort of malignant apology.
"I deny that! I. ’
"Your feelings, son, ring up as plain as l.s.d. on a cash register. Even when," H.M. glanced towards Lady Brayle, "it was half the world to you that they shouldn't. Ricky Fleet would have had to shut you up even quicker than he tried to do.”
"And didn't he try! It was a matter of seconds for him to nip up, get the field-glasses out of his father's study where his mother kept 'em, rearrange, the chairs on the roof, and…
"Are you askin' why? Listen. What's the impulse of anybody who finds a pair of field-glasses on a roof? It's to try 'em, ain't it? People in general (we all did it ourselves on Saturday evening) walk straight to the centre-front of a square roof. You'd have done it on Sunday, with your attention distracted, if you hadn't got suspicious of the glasses. Your bravado took you there instead. The chairs were arranged like a series of rocks for hiding places, while somebody in bare feet crept up behind you.”
To wind it up, on Sunday night I tumbled to the trick of the murder on the root And that opened every other door: the skeleton in the clock too. Puckston, nobody else but Puckston, was our salvation if we could get him to help.
"He'd written the postcards, probably with the help of his daughter. It seemed to me the poor devil would be over at the Dragon, writhin' in agony with the fear Enid might 'a' been killed because of that Mind you, I didn't know then he suspected something between Enid and Ricky. And at that time I didn't know old Dr. Laurier, with one too many brandies in his bar, had once given him a hint about what the skeleton-clock meant
"But— if I could show him he wasn't in any way responsible for his girl's death — it seemed to me he'd help us yank a confession out of Ricky. I even took Drake along, as one nearly killed by a maniac. But Puckston didn't even notice Drake's honor-film forehead; and he wasn't necessary.
"The crowds at MacDougall's show were just what we needed. Puckston 'phoned Ricky early in the morning. Ricky arranged to meet him — just as he was willing to meet Drake, with somethin' goading his mind — in the darkish outer-shell of the Mirror Maze.
"But young Richard had plans laid too. He'd arranged a quite genuine meeting between his mother and Susan Harwood, timed for one o'clock. You see why? That was his time to meet Puckston. So he told everybody about it even Dr. Laurier, with this addition, 'If you see me motion to keep away, keep away.'
"Neat idea. He could then go where he liked, to meet Puckston, and he could keep-any of his friends from followin' him if he waved. All the same, even when we were discussing who was goin' to the fair, he couldn't keep away from his own reflection in the hall mirror. Just as, on Saturday night and of all places and times, he'd taken a look at himself in the mirror of the condemned cell"
"And about his emotional state Monday morning. Did you notice, there in the hall, he had tears in his eyes?"
"But H.M.!" protested Ruth. "If what Cicely told me was true, he was laughing. You'd been telling some perfectly outrageous anecdotes about your ancestor. Including one about reciting limericks to Charles the First"
"Well… now!" said H.M., with a cough and a deprecating wave of his hand. "I didn't really think, y’know, the lofty muse of Curtius Merrivale would ever descend to limericks, even if they'd been invented. It was Masters put the idea in my head by savin’ so the night before."
Then what—?"
‘I was always careful to be very comfortin' and cloth-headed in front of Ricky Fleet He didn't think he'd got to worry about the old man." Then H.M.'s voice changed, sharply. "He wasn't amused then, my wench. He'd been listenin' with all his ears to Drake's end of a do-you-love-me telephone conversation, with that gal there, which didn't amuse him at all.
"When four of you went out there in the car, I heard later, he nearly lost control of himself. He was rigid, nearly ready to burst, hardly keepin' back the tears. That was after Drake had said he meant to elope with Jenny if he had to.”
"I didn't know this at the time; but cor! I was worried. When I gathered that crowd round the race-track booth, and yelled and bellowed the odds, it was only partly to make Sophie popular. I wanted the jostle of a big crowd so I could make sure Ricky Fleet wasn't carryin' a weapon. He wasn't But when I heard Drake was in the maze..”
"You know the rest Puckston and the dewy-eyed innocent were near a microphone (it was darkish, so the feller didn't see it) outside what looked like a solid mirror. It was only the silver paint usually used over plate glass, for what's known to gamblers as a two-way mirror, but in this case on cardboard and curtain.”
"Puckston… so! I should 'a' realized, the night before, he was powder packed into a cartridge. He exploded. Ricky Fleet was a first-rate athlete and as strong-built as you'd find; but against that man he hadn't the chance of a celluloid cat in hell. He collapsed in the pieces of smashed looking-glass. And that's all."
There was long silence, extending almost to discomfort. All of them, except Lady Brayle at the window, looked everywhere except at each other. Finally Ruth, smoothing her skirt over her knees and looking steadily down at it, managed to speak.
"There is one thing." Her face was flushed. "Jenny, dear!"
"Yes, dear?" answered Jenny, without looking at her.
"I was in the prison that night You know what I mean. I made a suggestion to Martin."
"Ruth darling," said Jenny sincerely, "I don't mind. At least—"
"I don't mean that kind of suggestion!"
Martin felt like dropping through the floor. Jenny was so surprised she almost looked round.
"About Ricky's — unbalanced state of mind," said Ruth tensely. "I apologize. It was horrible of me. I honestly thought there might be something — well odd about your side of the family."
Lady Brayle, outraged, turned round majestically. Jenny, with an exclamation of pleasure, put her hand across towards Ruth.
"And that's the only reason you went there?" Jenny did not stop for an answer, which was just as well. "Ruth, everybody thinks that very same thing when your parents are estranged, and everything seems mixed up, and you have a grandmother as reserved and reticent as mine!"
"Ruth," Stannard said softly.
All through H.M.'s recital his strong personality had been repressed, buckled in, to the steady gleam of attention in his eyes. Now, sitting on the arm of the sofa, his husky chuckle seemed to dominate the room. He put his hand under Ruth's chin and tilted it up so that he could look at her eyes.
"What has been," he smiled, "is no longer. What is," he smiled again, "shall continue."
"Always," said Ruth. Her look left no doubt of that
"By God," Stannard said suddenly, looking up radiantly and lifting his fist, "I can conquer the world!"
He checked himself. His' hand dropped, and he looked whimsically at H.M.
"Sir Henry," he said, "it seems an "extraordinary thing that only a fortnight ago, in this room, I said I mustn't keep late hours. What is it now? Close on four." He glanced towards Martin and Jenny. "Exactly when, my dear fellow, are you getting married?"
"Tomorrow," Martin answered, "at Westminister registry office. We take the afternoon plane for Paris."
"My new car," chuckled Stannard, "is downstairs. Just as it was a fortnight ago. There's no petrol for long distances. But suppose the four of us drive out to Virginia Water and see the sun come up?"
There was almost a scramble to get up. Much attention from Jenny and Ruth was bestowed on H.M, who endured this with a stuffed and stoical look; like a world-weary Curtius Merrivale. Then it was broken.
"Captain Drake," said Lady Brayle, getting up from her chair beside the window and adjusting her shoulders.
Dead silence.
Martin instantly left the group and went over towards the window so that he could look her in the eye. "Yes, Lady Brayle?"
"With regard to your proposed marriage with my granddaughter."
"Yes."
They looked at each other for a full minute, which can be a very long space if you time it The reason was that Lady Brayle could not speak. She was shaken; emotion tore her, but the lips would not move. Her large, rather flabby hands were folded in front of her. Her shoulders were back. Her eyes wandered in search of determination. Then came firm resolve, and clearly she spoke.
"The Gloucesters, I am informed, are a very honourable regiment." There was a short silence.
"Very," agreed Martin. He reflected for a moment. "But in my opinion the Brigade of Guards, particularly the Grenadier Guards, must always rank highest of all."
Then, startlingly, tears came into the woman's eyes.
"Thank you, Captain Drake."
"Not at all, Lady Brayle."
They did not even shake hands. They understood.
And so, as the clock of St. Jude's rang out the hour of four, and white dawn showed faintly behind Kensington, the policeman was on his way back through Moreston Square. The car which had been standing at the kerb was gone. But the windows of Miss Callice's flat were still lighted.
A rumbling voice floated down clearly from those open windows.
"So they framed him, Sophie," the voice said. "And the only reason they framed him was because he killed one of 'em in a duel outside the War Office. But they indicted that fine character on a charge of promotin' fake companies to get Aztec gold out of Mexico, and three times they chucked him into the can. I tell you, Sophie, it was a cry in' scandal against the law!"
The policeman looked up at those windows thoughtfully. But, after all, duels outside the War Office are comparatively rare. And it was Miss Ruth Callice's flat. The policeman smiled and sauntered on.