Death-Watch (12 page)

“I repeat my question,” snapped Dr. Fell. “Steady, Miss Handreth. This is no effort at concealment. It’s simply that we don’t want any digressions now.”

Hastings had been moodily considering the previous question. “Oh, Boscombe had thought of that, too. He said he didn’t mind if the fellow told anybody; in fact, he rather hoped he would. Then, after the whole business was over, it would be taken as an extra lie on the man’s part—told to excuse his presence in case he should be seen hanging about the house, and clearly a lie because Boscombe had disliked him.

“One funny thing, though. I remember Boscombe said to Stanley about that: ‘This is what I don’t understand, but I’ll let
you
worry about it. When I was spinning an excuse to have him come here late at night after the clothes,
he
suggested it himself.’ Boscombe said he supposed this man really did intend to pinch something, if he could find an easy crib.

“He told the fellow to come round exactly at twelve; not before or after. He was to ring Boscombe’s bell. The house would be dark, but he wasn’t to mind that. If Boscombe didn’t come downstairs to answer the bell himself, that would mean Boscombe was engaged in an intensive piece of work upstairs, and would have left the door unlocked. So, if the man got no response from the bell, he was to come in quietly; not wake up the house by striking matches or going after lights, but walk straight back to the staircase he would see at the rear, and go upstairs …

“Boscombe, naturally, never had any intention of venturing out of his room to meet the tramp.
His
trick was to make everybody else in the house believe he had gone to bed at half-past ten. And now,” said Hastings, beating one hand softly on the table, “now comes the devilish ingenuity.

“Earlier, about half-past eleven, Boscombe had already sneaked downstairs in the dark, to unlock and unchain the front door. Asking this fellow to ring the bell at midnight, of course, was merely to warn him when the man was coming upstairs… Eh? Pardon?”

He looked round blankly as Hadley uttered an exclamation.

Hadley turned back a page of his notebook as he looked across at Dr. Fell.

“That,” he said, “was what Carver heard at half-past eleven. You notice he didn’t hear voices, or footsteps on the pavement, which is what you do hear if somebody is being let in; he only heard the chain rattle. But that’s not the important thing. Do you see what the important thing is?”

“
I
see it,” said Lucia Handreth, unexpectedly. Hadley started round, his eyes narrowing, and she faced him with defiant composure. “It means that if Inspector Busy Ames found that open door—and he was the sort of person who
does
find open doors— he had some little time to prowl about this house before he rang Boscombe’s bell at twelve o’clock.”

“Quite,” agreed Dr. Fell, blandly. “He was curious about somebody’s room. And that was why he was murdered.”

Hadley struck the table. “By God! you’ve got it! … The question is, Miss Handreth, how
you
know not only who he was, but even his nickname. Have you anything to say about that?”

“One thing at a time. Don is talking … Now, now, Don, don’t be so stupid and look so wild! I told you a while ago, even if it didn’t register. That tramp was
Inspector
Ames, and in case the name means nothing to you …”

Hastings stared. Then he put his head in his hands, his elbows on the table, and kept on laughing in a way that sounded horribly like sobbing. “Quit ragging!” he choked out, and then peered at her half-fearfully. “You don’t really mean—mean that one cop was waiting for another, and neither of ’em knew … ! My head—easy— where’s that handkerchief?

“Listen,” he went on, presently, with a thin edge of amusement in his voice, “whatever this means, it’s sauce for the rest of the joke. It repays me. I’m happy. I’m happy forever now, in spite of the scare I got.

“I told you about Boscombe unlocking the door. Well, when I saw Boscombe through the skylight, he was setting out the rest of his properties. An old pair of dilapidated shoes, stolen; a pair of cotton gloves and two pistols. One pistol was a Browning revolver, bought at a pawnshop, its numbers effaced, and fully loaded. The other was his own thirty-eight calibre automatic, with a German silencer on the barrel, loaded with several real cartridges and one blank.

“In his bedroom he had a couple of potted plants. After he’d unlocked the front door, he took some earth out of one pot, made a paste of mud with water in the washbowl of the bathroom, and spread it on the soles of the shoes. He then walked into the study, opened the window nearest the tree, sat on the window-sill, and put the shoes on his own feet. With the gloves on, he leaned out backwards like a window-washer, smashed one pane, lifted his feet and made marks on the sill of one climbing in. There was very little mud—just enough to make those marks and leave a very faint trail to the table where the brass box was. He’d done this with the lights out, of course; and the crazy thing was, I gathered from what he and Stanley were saying, it must have been only ten minutes or so before I climbed up.

“They’d had the lights out all the time after Boscombe was supposed to have gone to bed at ten-thirty, so that
nobody
could later have said a light was seen; and they only flashed ’em on briefly to make sure everything was ready. Boscombe had the gloves and shoes, upside down, laid out on a couch. He had his own gun in his bare hand; and the other, which he hadn’t touched except with a handkerchief, in the pocket of his dressing-gown.

“When they heard the bell ring at midnight, they’d arranged that Stanley was to get behind the screen again with his eyes to a crack, so that he could see. So that there’d be no chance of anybody seeing a light, or catching this tr—this
copper …
”

At the word, which startled him anew, Hastings began to show those inexplicable signs he had demonstrated before.

“Go on!” Hadley snapped.

“… Sorry. Or of catching this copper coming upstairs, Boscombe had told him that he’d be working in another room; the outer room would be dark, but not to mind that. Boscombe said for him just to open the door, walk in, and call out quietly … Then, by God! the fun was to begin; the screaming mirth and the beautiful experiment on a man about to die.” Hastings’ voice rose. “As soon as he came inside, Stanley was to pop out from behind the screen, switch on the lights beside the door, and turn the key in the lock.

“They’d catch the rabbit before it squealed, you see. The victim would see Boscombe sitting in the big chair, with a gun in his hand, grinning at him; and Stanley, six feet three and also grinning, just behind him. Boscombe had even rehearsed what was going to be said. The victim would say something like, ‘What’s all this?’ or ‘What do you mean?’ And Boscombe would say, ‘We are going to kill you.’”

Hastings pressed the back of one hand across his eyes.

“Blast it! Even to hear Boscombe talking down there—and hopping back and forth and making oozy gestures while he rehearsed it—was … well, it was like one of those ghastly nightmares in which people don’t strike you as human beings at all, but as implacable robots you can’t reason with. You only see them coming closer and closer, and know that they’re going to kill you as a matter of course. “Boscombe explained how they were going to lead him gently over to the other chair, and make him sit down,
and put on the old shoes he was to be found dead in.
Then Boscombe would say, ‘You see that pretty box on the table? Open it. There’s money in there, and a fine watch. Put it all in your pocket. You won’t keep it long.’ He would explain exactly what they intended to do, after they’d squeezed all the blood out of their victim’s nerves, and got all his ‘reactions,’ and seen him crawl and pray. They would debate
where
they would shoot him, and after that game had been enjoyed in tortuous ways, then Boscombe would stand back and drill him through the eye with a silenced gun.

“‘I don’t wish him to suffer any pain’—so help me, I heard Boscombe say that! He said, ‘It’s not in the nature of my object.’”

Lucia Handreth, who was standing by the mantelpiece, turned away suddenly and thrust her hands over her eyes. She cried:

“He
couldn’t
have … not even Calvin Bos—You see … well, it’s too horrible! It must have been a joke, as he said, on that man Stanley’s nerves …”

During the heavy, sickly silence Hadley said:

“I don’t see that there’s much difference, if that’s the fellow’s idea of a joke on a neurotic cripple.” He cleared his throat and finally added: “Well, Mr. Hastings? What were they to do then?”

“Oh, the fun was over then, with just a little more work to be done. They would spread him out on the floor, wearing the shoes and gloves, beside the rifled box. They would put in his hand the Browning revolver, unfired. Stanley would shake hands with Boscombe, thank him for a pleasant evening, and slip away while Boscombe relocked the front door. Boscombe would then go and rumple up his bed. Leaving the exploded cartridge-case on the floor, he would go back to the room, hide the silencer and the man’s shoes, and fire a blank cartridge at nothing … When the crash of the shot awoke the household, Boscombe (the blank cartridge-case slipped out and its place filled) would explain that he had been aroused by a noise, and …

“Oh, you see it. He would not only have been instantly exonerated; he would even be praised. ‘Courageous Householder Shoots Armed Burglar in Self-defense.
Picture inset,
Mr. Calvin Boscombe, who was a fraction of a second quicker on the draw than the desperate criminal who threatened his life.’” Hastings choked off his gurgling laughter and leaned forward.

“That was what was supposed to happen. Now I’ll tell you what did happen.”

The door to the room softly opened and Boscombe came in. Nobody moved or spoke. Each person glanced at him, briefly, without seeing him at all, and then looked back to Hastings; but Melson could feel in the air a sort of rustling, a repulsion as though each person had moved a little back from him. The atmosphere was thick with it, the more so as Boscombe’s face wore a sickly smile and he was rubbing his hands together. He glanced at each one, but nobody would look back. Dr. Fell alone studied him, a puzzled blankness in his eye. Boscombe’s lip twitched, and he folded his arms.

“One thing I noticed,” Hastings went on, although his stamina was ebbing and he looked even paler than when he had come in—“one thing I noticed,” he said, heavily, “was that as the zero hour came closer Stanley began to shake less and grow a little more human—or inhuman. He’d lost some of his flabby jaw-twitching. And the minutes kept on ticking, until all of a sudden the big bell over at the Hall began to strike midnight. My God! It sounded loud! Like thunder and doomsday. I thought I couldn’t move at all, but I nearly jumped out of my skin at that. Directly on top of it Stanley said, in a voice that sounded as loud as the bell: ‘You’re going through with this? You do mean it?’ And Boscombe said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Get behind that screen, and don’t bungle your part when you come out. You’ll be able to see the light-switch, because there’s a bright moon and I’ve left the—’

“There was where he looked up.”

“He saw you?” demanded Hadley, and jerked forward as though Boscombe were not there at all.

“No. The light was in his eyes, and he was thinking about other things, anyway. His face looked like a blind man’s behind the glasses. What distracted him just then, and put the wind up me, was that on the same second his doorbell buzzed.

“That buzzer must be up near the ceiling somewhere, because the blasted thing seemed to go off like a rattlesnake sounding directly under my hands. I jumped and nearly rolled. Boscombe said: ‘Behind the screen. I give him five minutes before he’s here,’ and switched off the lamp on the table.

“The moonlight came into the room with a pale bluish colour. I couldn’t see Stanley, who was bumping about behind the screen, but I could see Boscombe distinctly—and ahead of him the moonlight on the double-doors, with the shadow of the big chair strong and black. Boscombe stood in that weird light, moving his shoulders up and down, and I heard the safety catch click on the pistol when he released it. The doorbell started in again, horribly, and buzzed out a couple of bursts—the victim clamouring to come into the trap. When the buzzing stopped—and it seemed incredibly loud and nervous—Boscombe backed into the big chair and sat down. I could see him leaning forward, his hand getting nervous on the pistol, and the moonlight trembling a little on the long blue barrel … “He’d said he would give the victim five minutes. It seemed like three times as long as that, although it couldn’t have been, because I’ll swear I held my breath the whole time. It was the dead silence of the place—everywhere. Not even a motor horn outside, or a creaky fire grate inside. I thought, now he’ll be opening the door downstairs, looking inside. Now he’ll be coming across the hall … “Minutes, hours …

“The strain was growing too much. I could hear Boscombe rustle in the chair, I could even hear his breathing; but he still had a pretty steady grip on the gun. Once Stanley rattled a tin or something behind the screen. It was as though you could hear a watch ticking the minutes in your own head. I felt that I couldn’t stand it much longer, when Boscombe spoke. It wasn’t much more than a whisper, but the man was losing his nerve and the gun had begun to wabble. He said:

“
‘What the hell’s delaying him?’

“And there was a kind of agony in it, the voice gone to a crazy key and shooting out that whisper. It seemed to propel him out of the chair. He got up and took a couple of steps, stiffly, towards the double-doors. The bluish light was clear on the doors and I suddenly thought I saw one of the knobs starting to turn. But I know I heard a noise …

“It was a
scratching
noise on the outside of the doors, like a dog trying to get in. It wavered and fumbled for about ten seconds. Then with a crash the left-hand door was knocked open. Something or somebody pitched through, went forward on his hands as though he were salaaming, kicked himself round and lay writhing half inside the room. It was a man with something shiny sticking out of the back of his neck, and trying to talk as though he had his mouth full of water …