Death-Watch (21 page)

“I never saw it before.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Quite sure. I am also sure that you are on the verge of one of the biggest mistakes of your life. Excuse me.” He adjusted the thin pince-nez on his nose and went over softly to take Paull’s glass.

“You said last night,” Hadley went on, “that before the end of this case we should come to you for advice. You said you had something to tell us. Have you anything to say now?”

“I have question for question.” He took Paull’s glass, but did not turn round. “What do you make of that glove?”

“I don’t need to exercise my imagination very far,” the chief inspector returned, “when I find the letters
‘E. C.’
stencilled inside.” Boscombe turned in dry fury. “It would be precisely like your shallow intelligence to think that. Now I will tell you something. Eleanor’s name is not Carver. It happens to be Smith. On things belonging to her—”

“Got it!” said Paull, suddenly. “Eleanor! Of course!”

He had sat up straight, trying to pull at his little moustache. The blotchy colours of his face had begun to sink; he looked stout and ineffectual, but for the first time more sure of himself. “Eleanor! In the hallway—”

“You saw her in the hallway?”

“Now, now! Don’t joggle me,” Paull urged, with querulous entreaty, as though his memory might be spilled like a pail of water if he moved his head. “Wasn’t it? It’s beginning to come back a bit. Nothing to do with your blasted old police officer, of course. Eleanor. Ho-ho! But since you’re so keen to know … I say, what did happen really? Maybe if you told me that—”

Hadley curbed his impatience with an effort.

“Remember what you can remember without any help. We don’t want the evidence distorted to fit what you think might have happened. Well?”

“Got it, then. Part of it. What mixes me up is your saying I got back here,” Paull muttered with an air of stubbornness, “so early. Hang it all, there was a dinner … or was there? Dunno. Anyhow, I woke up—”

“Where?”

“In my room. It was dark, you see, and I didn’t know where I was or how I’d got there, and my head was so muzzy I thought I must still be dreaming. I was sitting in a chair and I was cold, so I felt my shoulder and found I was half undressed, with my shoes off, too. Then I stretched out my hand and hit a lamp. I pulled the chain and found I was in my room right enough, but the light looked funny.

“Yes, by God! I’ve got it now … Remembered there was something at the back of my mind worrying me. All of a sudden I remembered. I thought: ‘Dash it all, what time is it? I’ve got to get to that dinner.’ But I couldn’t move straight, and the room looked all queer, and I couldn’t find the clock, so I thought: ‘Kit, you’re still drunk as an owl, old boy. Got to get to that dinner.’ Then I wandered round and round the room until I heard a clock striking somewhere. I counted it …”

He shivered suddenly. Hadley, who had taken out his notebook, prompted, “You remember the time?”

“Absolutely positive of it, old chap. Midnight. I counted. Remember that, because I got my dressing-gown because it was cold, and sat down on the bed and thought it over. I thought I could still get to that dinner if I had another spot to keep me going. Then—no, there’s another blank. Don’t remember getting up from that bed. Next thing I knew, you see, I was standing over in the closet among my suits and things, and couldn’t keep upright, but I had a flask in my hand. There was a little in it and I drank some, but I thought, ‘Look here, old boy,
that’s
not enough to keep you going.’ Always feel most comfortable with a full bottle.

“Then, somehow, I was out in the hall in the dark …”

“How did that happen?”

“I can’t—yesbgad! I can!” He was more excited, as slowly the struggling image seemed to come out of a haze. He gestured fiercely to Boscombe, who brought him a very weak drink; but he did not taste it yet. “It was you. Got it. Of course. I thought: ‘Old Boscombe. Always keeps a bottle of the best on his sideboard.’ Then I thought he might be very shirty if I went in and woke him up to ask for a spot. Some fellers are. But he don’t keep his door locked, I thought. Sneak in ever so softly, don’t make any noise—like this and pinch a bottle.”

“Go on.”

“So I did. Quiet. Tiptoe. Turned out my light. But that last drink—bad. Everything was all blurry, even in the dark. Head went round, couldn’t find the door. Frightful.” He shuddered again. “Then I opened the door, very quiet, you see, and started out in the dark. I had the flask in my hand; remember that …”

“And what did you see?” demanded Hadley. His voice was rather hoarse.

“I don’t know. Something—somebody moving. Thought I heard something, but I’m not absolutely positive … Eleanor, yes.”

“You’ll swear to that?”

“I know what it was!” Paull muttered, with an air of inspiration. “It came to me then: Eleanor goin’ to meet that chap on the roof. She does, you know. Wanted to play a joke on ’em, time and again. It made me want to laugh. I thought, I say, wouldn’t she get a turn if I came up behind and said, ‘Boo!’ Then I felt bad about thinkin’ that. I thought, ‘Poor little devil, what fun does
she get
?’—she don’t, you know—and I said to myself, ‘You’re a cad, that’s what you are, you cad, to think of interruptin’ her …’”

In his overwrought nerves and chivalry, even now his eyes were moist. His hand trembled when he drank the rest of the whisky and soda.

“Look here, Mr. Paull,” said Hadley, with a sort of wild patience, “nobody cares what you thought. Nobody wants to know what you were thinking about. The whole thing is, what did you see? When you have to testify at the inquest—”

“Inquest?” babbled Paull, jerking up his head. “What rot! What do you mean? I tried to do a good turn—”

“What you saw, or thought you saw in the dark, was a man being stabbed to death. Can you understand that? A man being stabbed through the throat—like this—who stumbled up those stairs and died between these two doors.” Hadley strode over and flung them open. “You can still see the blood on the floor. Now speak up! Tell us what you heard, how you came by that glove, and how it is that nobody saw you when the doors were opened a few minutes afterwards, or it’s just possible that a coroner’s jury will bring in a verdict of wilful murder against
you.
”

“You mean,” said the other, stricken alert and seizing the arms of the chair, “that was what I heard—”

“Heard?”

“It was a funny sort of noise, like somebody choking, and then stumbling a bit. I thought it was because she’d heard me and was frightened. So I ducked down, rather …”

“How far were you from the stairs, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s all a fog. Stop a bit, though. I must have been a goodish distance away, because I hadn’t got much outside my door. Or was I? Don’t remember … But when I bent down, I touched or kicked something; don’t remember which; and it was that glove.”

“You are trying to tell us that you found that glove on the floor some distance from the stairs? Come now!”

“I tell you it’s true! Damned bad form doubting. Look here, I don’t know where it was, but it was on the floor, because I nearly dropped my flask when I picked it up, and it was draughty. I thought I’d duck back to my room and wait till she’d gone. So I did. Softly, you know. On tiptoe. Then I don’t know what happened. I don’t even remember getting to my room. The next thing I knew it was daylight and I was lying on my bed still half-dressed, and feeling like hell.”

“Why did you pick up the glove?”

“I—I was trying to do a good turn, dash it!” protested the other, with weak querulousness. The dull gaze was returning to his eyes. “At least, I think so. Yes, of course. I thought, ‘Little lady’s lost her glove, poor old girl. Aunt Steffins finds it there, going to be trouble. Poor old girl. Give it to her tomorrow and say, ‘Tut, tut, I know where
you
were last night.’ Ha-ha! … I say, old chap, I don’t feel well. Maybe if I have time I can remember some more. I seem to remember—” He ruffled up his hair, and then shook his head blankly. “No. It’s gone. But now that I keep on thinking, I seem to remember …” Dr. Fell, who throughout all this recital had kept silent, lumbered forward. Between his teeth he still gripped the stump of a long-dead cigar, but he took it out and put it quietly in an ash-tray before he looked down at Paull.

“Be quiet a minute, Hadley,” he rumbled. “Somebody’s life depends on this … Let me see if I can assist your memory, young man. Think back. You’re in the hall now, in the dark. You say it was draughty. Now think of the door at the head of the stairs, the one on the way up to the roof where you thought Eleanor was going. You’d have noticed that if—was it draughty because that door was open?”

“Yes, by Gad! It was!” muttered Paull, sitting up. “Absolutely. I know now. That’s what I was trying to think of, because …”

“Don’t lead him, Fell!” snapped Hadley. “He’ll remember anything if you suggest it to him.”

“I’m suggesting nothing now. It’s coming back to you now, young fella, isn’t it?” He pointed with his cane. “Why are you sure it was open?”

“Because the trap-door to the roof was open, too,” said Paull.

There was a silence. Topsyturvydom had returned again. Melson looked past Dr. Fell’s big cape, at the dull gleam on the ferrule of the cane as he held it out, and beyond it Paull’s fat pale face against the big blue chair. In the young man’s eyes there was a growing light of revelation and more—of certainty. You could not help believing him. “This is sheer fooling,” Hadley said, heavily. “Stand back, Fell. I’m not going to have this sort of thing forced on witnesses … It happens, Mr. Paull, that a reliable person—one who happened to be sober at the time—has told us that trap-door was solidly bolted when he looked at it a little while afterwards. In the meantime, the door leading to it was locked and the key missing.”

Paull sat back. Into his expression had slowly come a look that was not weak or querulous.

“I say, old chap,” he said, quietly, “I’m getting a bit tired of having people call me a liar. If you think I’ve enjoyed telling how I made a ruddy ass of myself, think again. I’m doing the best I can; I know what the truth is, and I’ll face you with it in every coroner’s court from here to Melbourne … The door was open. So was the trap. I know that because I saw the moonlight.”

“Moonlight?”

“Rather. When you open that door there’s a straight passage, without windows, that runs back to a sort of staircase-ladder at the end. Above that there’s a little box-room, not big enough to stand up in, and the trapdoor is just above. I know that. We’d thought of putting a roof-garden to sit in on the flat part of the roof once. We couldn’t; too much smoke from the chimneys all about … But I know it.

“I know what I saw. It was a sort of line of moonlight on the floor of the passage. If I could see the passage, the door was open; and if I could see the moonlight, the trap was open. That’s flat. The trap was open, right enough. Dammit all, now I know what put it in my mind about Eleanor! That was it.”

“But did you see anybody to identify?” asked Dr. Fell. “No. Just—something moving. Or things.”

Hadley walked slowly about the table, knocking his knuckles against it, his head down. But he became aware of the glove in his hand, and his indecision did not last.

“I don’t imagine it much matters,” he said. “Since I found in the finger of this glove—the glove used by the murderess—the key that opens that door. My advice to you, Mr. Paull, is to go to your room, slosh yourself with water, and get some breakfast. If you have any more inspirations, come and tell me.” He looked significantly at Dr. Fell and Melson. “I think, gentlemen, that a glance at the trap-door …”

“Delighted,” said Paull. “Thanks for the drinks, old lad. I’m a new man.”

He closed the door so quietly that Melson suspected he had thought of slamming it. Hadley followed a moment afterwards, glancing left towards the door of Paull’s own room as it also closed. In the direction of the chief inspector’s measuring eye, Melson saw that the staircase was some little distance away from Paull’s room— from the trail of the blood-marks, say about fifteen feet. The curtains were drawn back on the big windows at the front of the hall, and harsh light illumined it clearly. Some effort had been made to scrub out the stains, but the wet discoloured rubbing of the nap on the red-flowered carpet showed the trail more clearly than the blood itself.

It would be impossible, Melson thought, to determine on which step of the stairs Ames had stood when the clock-hand pierced his neck. The first stains began on the second tread from the top, but, since he had presumably remained on his feet until he stumbled across the threshold upstairs, then the blow might have been struck lower down. First the trail turned towards the right (coming upstairs), as though the dying man had tried to hold to the banisters for a moment or two; then it zigzagged to the left, passed the top tread, zigzagged right again and grew more plain, as though Ames had gone down on one knee briefly, and at last on to the double doors.

Hadley looked at Dr. Fell, and Dr. Fell at the chief inspector. Both had their minds set on something; battle was coming, but neither would open the subject. Hadley examined the newel-post, peered down the narrow stairwell to the floor below, and glanced back at Paull’s door.

“I wonder,” he remarked, abruptly, “how long it took him to— make that progress?”

“Two or three minutes, probably.” The doctor spoke with gruff abstraction. “It was slow going, or the track wouldn’t be so easy to follow.”

“But he didn’t cry out.”

“No. The murderer struck for a spot that made sure he wouldn’t.”

“And from behind …” Hadley peered round. “Any idea where the murderess might have stood? If she came up on him, followed him up—”

“In all probability, the person who killed Ames stood flattened against the wall opposite the banisters, about three treads down. As Ames passed, the killer struck. It’s likely Ames was walking up with his hand on the banister-rail: most of us do when we go up a strange stairway in the dark. The blow brought Ames nearly to his knees— that would be where the track turns right, where he grabbed with both hands for the banister-rail. Then he lost his grip, turned left, and kept on as you see.”