King Charles's Stair
"Hullo, there!" the voice continued, coming nearer.
They went out to the front door in time to see a big figure detach itself from the avenue of evergreens some ninety feet ahead, and stroll towards them at an unruffled pace. Jervis Willard. He was flicking powdery snow from the bushes with a stick. It was broad morning; but the light was shadowed by motionless dull-gray clouds, so that they saw him only as a dark shape with a pipe protruding from under the brim of a rakish black hat.
He stopped when he saw the two of them, and took the pipe out of his mouth.
"Keep back!" Bohun shouted. He felt on the inside of the door, found a key, and locked it on the outside. Bennett saw that he was regaining all his old wiry coolness; that the mask was being adjusted, and that it was the public John Bohun who walked up the path. There was even a sort of hard malice in his face as they met Willard.
"You can't go in there, old man," he continued. "I dare say nobody can, until the police get here."
Willard stood motionless. For a second he hardly seemed to breathe. In the winter light there were many more wrinkles in his face: a face that would have been rugged if the hat had not concealed the jutting forehead and heavy grayish hair. The loose mouth, which was half open, closed slowly and tightly. His eyes, a curious shade of yellowish brown, never flickered, never wavered from Bohun's face.
"Yes, Marcia's dead," said Bohun, as though he were striking blows against this immobility. His shoulders hunched. "Dead as Babylon, dead as Charles the — yes. Her head's smashed in. Do you hear? Somebody murdered her, and nobody can go in there until the police get here."
"So that's it," said Willard, after a pause.
He looked at the ground for some time; as though he were tied there and helpless, and yet with his arms moving under a pain he could hardly stand. The dead immobility was even worse. He fumbled at putting his pipe back into his mouth. Then he began to speak rapidly: "I met your ostler or groom or somebody. He said something was wrong, but that you wouldn't let him come out. He said you were going riding.'
He looked up, very white.
"I hope she didn't die painfully, John. She was always afraid of that. Shall we go back to the house now? It was my fault. After that poison affair, I shouldn't have allowed her to sleep there. I didn't think she was in danger. But I shouldn't have allowed-"
"You!" Bohun observed softly. "Who are you to allow?' He walked little ahead, and then turned sharply. "Do you know what I'm going to do? I’m going to play detective. I'll find out who did it. Then?'
"Listen, John." Willard stumbled against a bush as they turned round to go, and caught Bohun's arm. `There's something I want to know. What is it like, in there? I mean what does it look like? How did she come to be dead-I can't make clear what I mean-"
"I think I know. She was entertaining somebody."
They walked on. "The obvious question," Willard went on heavily, "is one I can't ask, even of a friend. But I am afraid the police will. Do you understand me, John?"
"Scandal?" inquired the other. To Bennett's surprise, Bohun did not in the least flare out. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind, and finding it puzzling; there was almost a sardonic expression on his lean face, but it vanished immediately. "Possibly. By God, there would be scandal about Marcia Tait if she died in a nunnery. Bound to be. It's a queer thing to say, Willard, but that side of it doesn't bother me at all. She was never jealous of her reputation; neither am I"
Jervis Willard nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself.
"Yes," he said. "And I think l know why. You knew she was in love with you, and you knew that if you knew nothing else in this world." As he turned to look at Bohun, he saw Bennett as though for the first time, and straightened up. The presence of a stranger closed his mouth instantly. "Sorry, John. You-you must excuse us, Mr. Bennett. Neither of us is at our best this morning."
They reached the house in silence. Bohun led them up the steps to the side-entrance, where Bennett's car still stood in the drive. At the top of the steps, just drawn back from peering out through the door, they found Thompson: not a stately specimen among butlers, but efficient as a genie. He was small, bald, and wrinkled, with the tolerant eye of one who has known the family too long. His utter respectability masked even the fact that his eyes were red-rimmed and his jaw swollen.
Bohun said, "Library," and stopped for a conference with him while Willard led the way. Bennett found himself in a maze of narrow passages, dark and smelling of old wood, with coconut matting underfoot. There were unexpected steps, and diamond-paned windows in deep embrasures. He did not remember that he was chilled through until Willard took him to a big room where one wall was built of these windows after the Tudor fashion, and the other three walls built of books. It was austere enough, with its stone floor and its iron book-gallery circling the walls; but there were electric lights in the twisted-iron chandelier, and the tapestry of upholstered furniture before the fireplace. Books crowded even over this fireplace; but there was a roaring blaze of wood. It dazzled Bennett's eyes, it made him shudder with a removal of the chill and remember how tired he was. He lay back in an overstuffed chair and stared at the groined roof with the red firelight flickering on it. The warmth seeped into him; he wanted to close his eyes. By moving his head slightly he could see the motionless gray clouds outside the windows, and the brown slopes of the Downs rutted with snow. The house was very quiet.
"You saw her?" asked Jervis Willard's voice. Bennett roused himself.
"Yes."
Willard was standing with his back to the fire, his hands folded behind him. The fire threw a burnished gray gleam on his hair.
"That was opportune, I should think." His voice grew a shade quicker. "May I ask how you happened to be there?"
"Accident. I'd just driven from town. I heard Bohun cry out — or call out — something of the sort. There was a dog howling…"
"I know, said Willard, and passed a hand heavily over his eyes. The rumbling voice grew quicker again, soft, and suggestive. "I should think you were cooler than John. Did you notice anything? Anything that might help us?"
"Not much. She was — ‘
He sketched out a picture, briefly. Willard leaned his arm along the mantelpiece, staring at the fire while the other spoke. Noting the fine if now rather flabby profile, Bennett thought: Matinee idol of pre-war grandeur. Had the sense to move with the times. Something stately, something savored of Shakespeare, in that bearing. Sensible, logical, humorous Friend of the Family; if Bohun had a niece (come to think of it, he had mentioned a niece), she would probably call Willard uncle.
"In all probability," he heard himself going on, absently, "she had been taking a glass of port with somebody. There was a short fight"
"It is unwise," said Willard, smiling and looking sideways, "to trust to inferences so far as that. As a matter of fact, I drank her health myself." He straightened up. He began to walk up and down, quickly. "Joking aside. This is rather worse. You are sure about those burnt matches?"
He paused as a door closed hollowly across the room. John Bohun came up to the fire and spread out his hands. The heavy riding-crop still dangled on a thong from his wrist. He flung it off; then he loosened the wool muffler that was knotted round his throat, and opened his tweed jacket. "Thompson," he said to the fire, "will be in in a moment with coffee. James my lad, your bags have been taken upstairs and your car's in the garage. You can get a hot bath and change the white tie." Then he turned round. "By the way, what's this about burnt matches?"
"I was hoping," said Willard quietly, "we could still blame it on a burglar."
"Well?" demanded Bohun. He seemed to hesitate.
"When you looked at Marcia, did you notice a lot of burnt matches scattered about?"
"I was not interested," said Bohun, "in burnt matches. No. I didn't turn on the lights. What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? Speak up!"
Willard went over and sat down on the other side of the fireplace. "They were colored matches, it seems. The kind (I think?) every bedroom in this house has been supplied with, ever since Maurice got the fancy for them. Wait!" He held up his hand. "The police will be asking these questions, John, and it's ordinary sanity to think of them. There were no such matches at the pavilion. Unfortunately, I can swear to that. Except for the actual murderer, I must have been the last person to see Marcia alive. When they lit those fires for her last night, they left no matches in the house…"
"That reminds met said Bohun. "Maid! Her maid. Carlotta! Where has Carlotta been all this time?"
Willard looked at him sharply. "Curious, John. I thought you knew that. She left Carlotta behind in London. Leave of absence, or something. Never mind. There were no colored matches, none of any kind, at the pavilion. I gave her a box of the ordinary sort before I left.
"Now let's face it. Casual burglars don't strew the floor with colored matches; let me give you a hint there. But I don't need to hint very broadly. There were very queer things going on in this house itself. At some time last night, something scared old Canifest's daughter, terrified her nearly out of her wits. I heard her cry out, and found her lying on the floor in the passage near the bathroom. I couldn't get a coherent word out of her, except a reference to something or somebody walking up and down in the passage, and the somebody or something had seized her wrist. But she spent the rest of the night with Katharine."
Bennett heard the fire crackle. John Bohun, who had, been opening a silver cigarette-box, closed it with a snap and turned round.
"Louise," he said, "Louise Carewe is here?"
"Why not? She's a friend of Katharine; she's been in America for several months, and hasn't seen her. Why should it surprise you? — I wish to God you wouldn't be so jumpy, my lad," he added, rather testily. "It's a good thing you never did become an actor. You'd have the audience embarrassed for you in five minutes."
"Oh, I don't know," observed the other. His long hands cupped the match to his cigarette. The flame showed a kind of swaggering, feverish, secret mirth in his eyes. "I don't know. I might make a better actor than you think. No, it didn't surprise me. Only I was talking to Canifest himself early last night. At his office. And he didn't mention it. Well, well. Maybe she disturbed a family ghost. Have we got any other visitors?"
"Yes. Your good friend Rainger."
Bennett sat up. "Steady, now," Willard went on, as Bohun took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Take it easy, and listen to me. There's nothing you can do. He is here, and in high favor with Maurice. I don't like to mention it, but before you suggest wringing his neck let me remind you that you're the younger brother. Maurice is foggy and absent-minded enough, but he's nasty when you cross him. And don't underestimate the Enemy. Their business was to keep close to Marcia, and they've done it."
"So. How did the swine manage?"
Wrinkles of amusement deepened round Willard's eyes. He seemed gradually throwing off befuddlement and shock. He was groping in his pocket after a pipe. "Easily. Rainger is a shrewd, intelligent, and cultured yes, don't snort; cultured-man. He was here before us yesterday afternoon. When we arrived, out bustled Maurice patting Rainger paternally on the shoulder… "
"Maurice didn't go up to London, then?"
"No. Rainger had already sent him too interesting and suggestive a telegram. It seems that he had conceived the notion, subject to the proper authorities; that a sixteen jewel super-special motion picture might be made of Maurice's scholarly researches, with Maurice's technical advice. It's probably a hoax, but Maurice is only human"
"I begin to understand. Fully equipped with dancing girls and theme-songs, and to be called, `The King Throws A Party."' Bohun's voice grew high. "I say, Willard, has my brother gone completely off his rocker?"
"That's where you're wrong. Look here, John; admit the man's got some good points. His direction in 'La Borgia' and `Queen Catherine’ was devilish good. He comes as close to historical accuracy as it's possible to come without actually telling the truth."
Bohun took a step forward.
"Thank you," he said, "for whole-hearted admiration. Perhaps you'll admire him still more when I tell you what the swine's cleverness has done now." Bennett had a feeling that the man was saying what he ought not to admit, and would regret; that he knew it; and yet that he could not stop himself. "Shall I tell you how he's blocked us? If Marcia had lived, there would have been no play anyhow. Canifest has refused to back us."
Willard's hand jerked. He caught the pipe again, and rose halfway out of his chair.
"But he said"
"He said to me last night, not a penny. I saw him at the Globe-Journal office. He was as lordly as the statue of himself over in the comer. After mature consideration (hur-rum), he had decided that for reasons of policy and discretion it would not be well to lend the name of Canifest to theatrical enterprises. Weight of the name! He wasn't to appear at all, blast him. I say, Willard, it shakes you up, doesn't it? Aren't the managers so keen on your work as they used to be — or as Marcia was? So, if you don't get this engagement…"
He stopped.
"I never pretended to be a great actor, John," Willard said quietly. "But I don't think I deserved that."
After a silence Bohun passed his hand across his eyes. Then he replied, just as quietly: "I beg your pardon, old man. So help me God, I wouldn't have said that… I think you must know by now that I'm an egotistical ass who's usually afraid to talk; and when I do talk I only mess things up. I didn't mean it. But the shock of all these things together… Not that it matters now. Rainger must have talked to Canifest, that's all. I didn't think Rainger knew. If only Marcia hadn't been such a fool’
Again he caught himself up, from a different cause this time. By mutual consent both of them ignored what had been just said about Willard, but Willard took him up rather sharply on this.
"Knew?" he repeated. "What are you referring to there?" "Nothing."
"Not even, for instance, a suggestion that our distinguished publisher had been considering making Marcia Lady Canifest?"
Bohun cackled. "That's rot, and you must know it. D'you think she'd have him? — Where did you pick up that idea?"
Willard looked at him, and made a slight satiric bow. "I fancy it was the penalty of my extreme age and decrepitude. I have no particular desire to play father-confessor, but young ladies seem to think I should have. Oh, it's no particular secret. Canifest's daughter told your good niece Katharine, and Katharine (with permission, I believe) told me. The girl seems to be worried. All I could do was make strange clucking noises and say nothing. By the Lord, if Canifest marries Marcia, the fat will literally be in the fire." He stopped abruptly. "She's dead. She's dead-and I'd forgotten it. I can't get used to this, John," he said rather wildly. "I keep imagining she'll walk in that door at any minute."
It intensified the gray loneliness of the room. Bohun made a move towards a decanter of brandy on a side-table; but he paused, tightened his shoulders, and looked back again.
"Let's hear," he said, "everything that happened last night."
Willard considered a moment, vaguely. "It's hard to give facts. Marcia was acting. She carried it off sheerly by force of herself, by that damned force, that hypnosis, whatever it was, that you couldn't resist; but I have never seen her acting — in private — become quite so high-flown. She said she was `attuning herself,' and similar absurdities.'
"You think they were absurdities?"
Willard noted his look. "Yes, I know how you two feel about the influence of this place. She may have believed it, but somebody should have given her better lines to speak. I think I see the abilities of Rainger now: he's a tamer. If he had been directing that performance, he would have molded those powers in the right direction." He looked up briefly, and then went on filling his pipe.
"Go on."
"At dinner I am willing to admit she was brilliant. It was partly the effect of your dining-hall: the polished oak and candlelight and big windows with the moon behind them. Also, she wore a silver gown and had her hair arranged like that portrait of the Duchess of Cleveland over the fireplace. It was a good illusion, even her gestures. Rainger kept a wooden face, but Maurice was almost dodderingly worshipful. He had put on his thickest-lensed spectacles in honor of the occasion. As for Katharine and Canifest's daughter, I do not believe they were impressed. I should think little Louise hated her. As for Katherine, she had one sharp brush with Her Ladyship when Marcia uttered some bubbling absurdity…"
"Little Kate-" said Bohun, "Gad, I never thought! I don't seem to be able to think of anything. I stayed in London, I didn't come down here after I'd been away for months. I haven't even seen little Kate-"
Willard snorted.
"Little Kate, he said, "be damned. Look here, John, do you know anything about her? Do you ever think of anything except your own dreams? She's twenty-one, she runs this house for you, she's rather a beauty, and she's never been farther afield than London in her life. Between you and Maurice, this whole house is run on dreams and shadows. Of course you haven't seen her. You've never even looked at her."
"You were saying?" Bohun prompted politely.
Willard seemed to debate something in his mind.
"This. That you don't even know what Marcia was like, or why anybody should want to kill her. And you may not feel the devilishness in this house. She inspired devilishness wherever she went. If you didn't love her, she was just as willing to have you-or anybody else hate her." He struck the arm of the chair. Momentarily his queer yellow-brown eyes were gleaming. "Oh, yes. I know. She would help it along; she would touch and prod and crack the whip. And as for us, we poor striped brutes went through the paper hoops and climbed up on the perches, and usually she had only to fire a blank cartridge when we got unruly. I say usually.
"Now I'm going to tell you what happened after dinner, and why I wasn't surprised at murder.
"Marcia insisted on a tour of the house by moonlight; with only Maurice carrying a candle, and explaining the romance of the White Priory. Of course Maurice was delighted. The rest of us went along. Rainger was too jocose, too attentive to the Honorable Louise; Katharine was with me. And Marcia had a word for all of us. Oh, she was vivid enough. She would sometimes take the candle from Maurice to show her eyes and her smile when she dazzled Maurice; she even got a spark out of Rainger, who was stolid enough, but he snatched up a silver cape of hers when it nearly touched the floor. The girls she treated with a kind of motherly sarcasm. I suppose I was down in the dumps — I don't know why. She chaffed me about what a poor Charles the Second I would make. This mind you, when I was suddenly beginning to realize for the first time just how the part should be played. In those dark rooms, when you had that uncanny sense that people had just stepped out of them: I got it, I got the feel of a role such as I've never had since I played Peter Ibbetson! I had even begun to imagine the crashing success with the audience.’
"Then we came to the Charles-the-Second Room." Willard seemed to feel his audience even then. He turned to Bennett.
"This will be gibberish to you, I fear. The Charles-the-Second Room is the one our friend Bohun here occupies now. It is kept much as it was. The feature of the place is a staircase in the wall, between the inner and outer walls, which goes down to a door opening on what is now a modern side porch-the porch by which we came into the house. The door (it's not a secret door, of course) is at the rear end of the porch. It was built so that Charles could go out and down the lawns to the pavilion without being observed leaving by any main entrance."
"Yes, of course," said Bohun impatiently. "Well?"
"Maurice," Willard continued, "was showing us the secret staircase. I had seen it before, of course. But Marcia dragged me out on the little stone landing when the others crowded out there. It was draughty, and there was only the light of the candle Maurice was holding up. It is a very steep, narrow, and long flight of steps. I remember thinking it looked dangerously like a precipice. Then I don't know, nobody knows, whether it was a draught that blew out the candle, or whether somebody jogged Maurice's arm, or what happened. But the candle went out. I heard somebody giggle in the dark. Not laugh, but giggle, and that was worse. Then I felt somebody pitch against me. I caught Marcia just as she had tripped headlong down those stairs."
"She was," said Bohun rather hoarse, "she was-?"
"Pushed? Yes. Hurled, rather."
Willard got up. He lit his pipe, inhaled a deep gust of smoke, and pointed with the pipe-stem. "What is more, she knew it. But when a light was struck again, she turned round with one of her slowest, most radiant smiles and said — oh, I can't mimic her, but I remember her exact words — 'But what an accident! I should have killed myself.' And she would have, John. Yet she enjoyed it; she enjoyed the violence that would admit her power enough to kill her."
Bohun began to pace up and down the hearth-rug. His cigarette had smoldered down to his lip, and he burnt his hand as he knocked the stump into the fire. "You don't," he said, "you don't know who?"
"No idea. We concluded our tour after that: it was about a quarter past eleven."
"And then?"
Willard hesitated. "Then was when she seemed to grow worried. Oh, I don't mean nervous about what had happened; but impatient and abstracted, as though she were expecting something." A curious film had come over his eyes. He added softly: "You, perhaps?"
"Possibly. I wasn't feeling like returning. Do you realize," Bohun demanded, "what I'd just heard from Canifest? Ruin of all our plans. I was drinking, if you want to know the truth. And driving the streets, wondering what in God's name I should say when I got home." He beat his hands together. "Well? What happened then?"
"I should have thought," Willard remarked musingly, "her attitude was. never mind. At midnight she insisted on going to bed; a little early for Marcia. I didn't want her to go there — Maurice offered to let one of the housemaids sleep there and act as maid — but she wouldn't. We went out there with her. The night had gone clouded; that was when it started to snow, and there was a sharp wind. When we came back to the house after we had," he snapped the word out, "installed her, Maurice dragged Rainger off to the library to discuss motion pictures. Maurice had completely forgotten about, the play. Rainger gave me a very strange, almost leering good-night when I said I was going to my room." He blew a film of ash off the bowl of his pipe. "As a matter of fact, I walked back to the pavilion."
"Oh."
"I was there," Willard answered, very quietly, "exactly ten minutes. That was as long as she allowed me to stay. She seemed surprised when I knocked at the door, surprised and annoyed, as though she had been expecting somebody else. Twice while we were talking — it was in the bedroom she went out and looked through the front windows of the drawing-room. And she seemed to be growing more nervous and upset. We drank a glass of port and smoked a cigarette. But the more I pointed out that there was somebody in very cool earnest, who had made two attempts to kill her, the more amused she grew. She said, `You don't understand the chocolates; and, as for the other, I'm certainly not afraid of..’
"Who?"
"I don't know. She only stretched her arms up above her head (you know that gesture of hers?) As though she were breathing-life, and breathing it in a kind of glutted satisfaction. She was not acting then. In ten minutes she walked to the outer door with me. She was still wearing the silver gown, and the snow was growing thicker outside. That was the last I saw of her."
The snow. Bennett leaned across in the firelight. His muddled brain still kept returning to that question of the snow.
"Do you remember," he said, "exactly what time the snow began, Mr. Willard?"
"Why yes.. Yes, if it matters. It was when we took Marcia out to the pavilion, about ten minutes past twelve." `But I don't suppose you'd know what time it stopped?"
The actor wheeled round. He seemed about to answer irritably, when he saw Bennett's expression, and then looked with a quick speculative glance at Bohun.
"As it happens, I do. For reasons I'll explain, I spent a very wakeful night. First there was the dog barking. I was up and at the window any number of times, although — although my room isn't at the rear of the house and I couldn't see towards the pavilion. But I noticed how very heavy a fall of snow it was to last for so brief a time. It lasted just about two hours, roughly from a little past twelve to a little past two. The number of times I looked at my watch last night" He hesitated. "Why?"
A knocking at the door echoed hollowly across the room. Wind was rising across the Downs and rumbling in the chimney. Out of the corner of his eye Bennett saw Thompson come in.
"Excuse me, sir," said Thompson's voice. "Dr. Wynne has just arrived, and the inspector of police you sent for. There's, a definite ah of doubtful description, "there's someone else with them…"
So Marcia Tait must have been killed before two o'clock, probably some time before two o'clock, for all footprints of the murderer to have been effaced. Why, Bennett wondered, should it bother him? He almost started when he heard Thompson go on:
"The other ma — the other gentleman asked for his card to be given to Mr. Bennett. You are Mr. Bennett, sir? Thank you "
Bennett took the slip of pasteboard, on which was scribbled, "Friend of Sir Henry Merrivale. Should like to see you privately." The neat engraving read:
HUMPHREY MASTERS CHIEF INSPECTOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPT. NEW SCOTLAND YARD, S. W.