The Burning Court (21 page)

“No, she’s not there.”

“And yet,” pursued Ogden, opening his eyes, “when I dropped in on you at seven-thirty this morning, you told me she was still in bed.”

“That’s a lie,” said Stevens, calmly.

It brought Ogden up short; for about a tenth of a second he did not know what to say. He was used to making certain of his suspicions, and then bringing them up; at which time the victim usually admitted the truth, but immediately began to justify himself, which put Ogden in the position he liked. To have the accusation denied was a new experience.

“Go on,” he said, patronizingly. “Don’t lie. You know you said it. You were heard, so you might as well admit it. Didn’t he say that, Miss Corbett?”

“I really don’t know,” the nurse returned, with composure. “You two were in the kitchen, and I don’t know what he said. So you can’t prove it by me.”

“All right. But you admit she isn’t there. Where is she?”

“She went in to Philadelphia this morning.”

“Oh, she went in to Philadelphia this morning, did she? What for?”

“To do some shopping.”

“That’s what I wanted you to say. She got up before seven-thirty this morning, in order to rush in and do some shopping. Do you expect anybody to believe that?” enquired Ogden, raking his chin round his collar and peering satirically at the others.

“Did Marie Stevens ever before in her life get out of her warm bed at a time like that, to ‘go in and do some shopping’?”

“No, she never did. As I think I told you in front of Miss Corbett, both of us had been up all night.”

“But she felt she just had to be at the stores bright and early in the morning. Why was that?”

“Because this is Saturday. They close at noon.”

Ogden smirked. “Oh, this is Saturday, is it? This is Saturday, and that’s why she runs out on you. Why don’t you stop lying? You know she ran away last night, didn’t she?”

“If I were you,” said Stevens, judicially, “I wouldn’t try that sort of thing too long or too far.” He looked at Brennan. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, Captain? It’s quite true my wife went into town this morning. But, if she isn’t back by the afternoon, I’ll confess to the murder. I shouldn’t be inclined to put too much stock in what our friend Ogden says. By the way, he’s the fellow who writes you anonymous letters and forges your name to telegrams, so you can judge how reliable he is.”

Brennan’s face was black with doubt. He stared from Ogden to Stevens.

“I’m not going to be side-tracked every time I get down to something important,” he growled, “but this at least is a side track worth going into.—Is that true, young fellow? Did you write that letter to me and send all these other people telegrams to come back here?”

Whatever Ogden’s other qualities might be, at least he had plenty of courage. He took two steps backwards, and remained coolly looking round him. His nimble brain was obviously debating courses, yet his face remained without expression whatsoever.

“You can’t prove anything, you know,” he remarked, lifting one shoulder. “I’d be careful, if I were you. You’re talking libel. Or is it slander? I never can remember which is which; but at least it’s something you’d better be careful about.”

Brennan surveyed him keenly. For a short time Brennan remained quiet, a stocky figure jingling coins in his pocket. Then Brennan shook his head.

“It strikes me, young man, that you’re trying to play detective in the way your favorite books have taught you. Let me tell you it’s a rotten way. It’s also the wrong way. If I acted the way you think I ought to, I’d have you in the can before you could say Jack Robinson. As far as proof is concerned, that wouldn’t be hard. We could find out who handed those telegrams in.”

“Learn your law, Foxy Grandpa,” said Ogden, also shaking his head with a pale smile. “Those telegrams aren’t forgery. According to the law, forgery is an act in which it can be shown that personal profit is directly gained from it. If I write a note to the president of the Chase National Bank, saying, ‘This is to introduce Mr. Ogden Despard, who is my personal messenger, and to whom I wish you to give ten thousand dollars,’ and I sign it, ‘John D. Rockefeller,’ that’s forgery. But if I write a note saying, ‘This is to introduce Mr. Ogden Despard, to whom I wish you would extend every courtesy,’ and sign it with the same name, that’s no forgery. It’s a fine point. There’s not one word in those telegrams for which I could be prosecuted.”

“So you did send them, then?”

Ogden lifted one shoulder. “I never admit anything. It’s not good policy. I pride myself on being tough, and I
am
tough.”

Stevens glanced over at Mark. Mark had been leaning indolently against the bookcase beside the fire-place. Mark’s light-blue eyes were very mild, very thoughtful; his fists were dug into the pockets of his grey sweater, which pulled it out of shape.

“Ogden,” he said, “it’s hard to understand what has come over you. Lucy’s right; you never were as bad as this before. Maybe getting a slice of Uncle Miles’s money has gone to your head. But it’s possible, when I get you alone, that I’ll try to find out just how tough you are.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ogden told him, with an instantaneous turn like a jump. “My value to the world is the number of things I know. I’m just interested in things. I think you were a fool, for instance, to bring Tom Partington over here. He was getting along very well as it was, drinking all the English pubs dry, and considering his past. He never learned. But now he might learn something about Jeannette White. Wasn’t once enough for you? Are you going to pick it up all over again?”

“Who,” asked Brennan, quickly, “is Jeannette White?”

“Oh, a lady. I don’t know her, but I know a lot about her.”

“You know a great deal of things,” said Brennan, explosively; “but do you know anything that has to do with this case? Anything more? No. Sure of that? All right. If that’s true, we’ll go on—about arsenic and Mrs. Stevens. You were telling us, Miss Corbett, about the Sunday three weeks ago when you talked about poisons. Go on,”

The nurse reflected.

“We talked a little while longer, and then I had to go and get Mr. Miles Despard his beef tea. I had gone out into the hall, where it was a little dark, and Mrs. Stevens followed me out. She came up behind and grabbed my wrist. Her hand was as hot as fire. Then she asked me where she could buy arsenic.” Miss Corbett hesitated. “I thought it was queer at the time, because at first I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. At first she didn’t call it arsenic. She called it Somebody’s ‘receipt.’ Somebody’s receipt—I have forgotten what the name was. I think it was some French name. Then she explained what she meant. Just afterwards Mrs. Despard came out of the dining-room, and I think Mrs. Despard overheard her.”

Brennan was puzzled. “Somebody’s receipt? Can you help us out, Mrs. Despard?”

Lucy frowned uneasily. She looked at Stevens as though with appeal.

“I can’t tell you very much, although I heard her. I don’t know what the name was: but I think it began with a ‘G.’ Something like
glacé,
which doesn’t seem to mean anything. Also, she spoke very fast, and I hardly recognized her voice. It seemed different.”

It was at this point that Mark Despard turned his head and slowly looked around. He blinked like a man in front of a bright light; then it was as though he tried to accustom his eyes to it. He took his hands out of his pocket, and lifted one of them to rub his forehead.

“Can you, either of you,” insisted Brennan, “try to remember exactly what she said? You can see how important it is.”

“No,” replied the nurse, vaguely troubled and irritated. “It was confused, and she spoke in a queer kind of way, just as Mrs. Despard says. She said something like: ‘Who keeps it now? Where I lived it was not difficult, but the old man is dead.’”

Brennan, who was making notes with a pencil, frowned over them. “Makes no sense!” he complained. “I don’t see—Here; wait a minute! You mean she was having difficulty with the language? Her name is Marie, you say. And she used a French name. She’s French, then?”

“No, no, no,” said Lucy. “She speaks English just the same as you or I. She’s a Canadian; of French descent, of course. I think she told me once her maiden name was Marie D’Aubray.”

“Marie D’Aubray—” said Mark.

An almost frightful change had come over his face. He came forward a little and spoke with a lumbering lucidity, making a little movement of his forefinger at each word.

“I want you to think, Lucy, and think hard, because somebody’s soul may depend on this. ‘Somebody’s receipt.’ Could that have been ‘Glaser’s receipt’? Could it?”

“Yes, I believe it was. But why. What on earth is the matter with you?”

“You know Marie,” he pursued, with the same fixity of look, “better than most of us here in the house. In all the time you’ve known her, did you ever notice
anything
strange in her behavior besides that? Anything at all that struck you? No matter how nonsensical it sounds?”

During this time Stevens had a sensation of being on a railway track and seeing a train flying closer towards him, without power to move from the tracks or look away from the hypnotic eye of the locomotive. He could hear the roar of the thing. But he intervened, nevertheless.

“Don’t be a fool, Mark,” he said. “This seems to be contagious. That’s the old principle of ‘The whole world is queer except me and thee, and thee is a little queer.’ On that principle I’ll undertake to prove that everyone in this room is cracked, particularly yourself.”

“Answer me, Lucy,” said Mark.

“I never did,” Lucy answered, promptly. “I certainly never did. Ted’s right about one thing; you’re the one whose actions could bear investigation. I happen to know that Marie thinks your interest in murder trials and things like that is morbid. No, I never noticed anything in the least odd about her. Except, of course——”

She stopped.

“Except——?”

“It’s nothing. She can’t stand the sight of a funnel. Mrs. Henderson was putting up preserves in the kitchen, and straining the juice, and… well, I never knew Marie had so many lines around her eyes, or that her mouth could go out of shape like that.”

There was a silence, a silence of almost physical coldness. Mark remained shading his eyes with his hand. When he took his hand away again, his face had an expression of ordinary earnestness and simplicity.

“Look here, Mr. Brennan. The shortest way out of this will be to show you what’s behind it.—I want the rest of you to go out of the room, if you will, all except Ted and the captain. No argument, please. Just go. Ogden, you might make yourself useful. Go down to Henderson’s place and rout him out; he doesn’t seem to be up yet. Tell him to bring that small scout-axe of his, and a chisel. There’s a larger axe here in the kitchen, I think. I’ll use that.”

It was clear from Brennan’s look that the captain half-wondered whether Mark’s brain might not have been unhinged. It was a little like a look of alarm, followed by a deprecating air but a settling of the shoulders as though Brennan prepared to deal with it. Nevertheless, the others obeyed Mark’s order.

“No, I’m not going to kill anybody with the axe,” Mark said. “Now, we might get an architect out here to examine the wall between the windows in Miles’s room, and find out whether there’s really a secret door there. But it would mean more delay and fooling around. The shortest way will be to knock open that wall and see for ourselves.”

Brennan drew a deep breath. “Good. Good! If you don’t mind wrecking the room——”

“But let me ask you just one question. So far, your theories about this case are pretty cut and dried. I’m not going to say anything; I want you to deduce it for yourself. But I want to ask you just one question. Suppose we don’t find any secret door in that wall, or anywhere in the room. What would you think then?”

“I’d think the Henderson woman was lying,” Brennan retorted, promptly.

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“And it would make you think Marie Stevens was innocent?”

“We-el,” said Brennan, cautiously, and hunched up his shoulders, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say—still, yes, I kind of think it would. It would certainly bust the whole thing wide open. You couldn’t very well take a case to court when the defence could prove your star witness was a liar. No human being can walk through a stone wall, I’ll tell you that.”

Mark turned to Stevens. “That’s good news, isn’t it, Ted?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

They went out into the high and dusky hall. Neither Brennan nor Stevens spoke while Mark hurried back to the kitchen, returning with a basket of tools and a short-handled axe.

Upstairs, at the end of the gallery on the right-hand side as you ascended the stairs, was the door of Miles Despard’s room. Stevens noticed the portraits on the walls of the gallery, but it was too dim for him to find the one in which he was interested. Mark opened the door of Miles’s room, and for a moment they studied it from the threshold.

It was a room about twenty feet square; but, like the other rooms in this house, with a somewhat low ceiling after the fashion of the late seventeenth century. On the floor was a bright-patterned carpet in blue and grey, faded and begrimed. The uneven floorboards showed at its edges. The walls were panelled in dark walnut to a height of about eight feet; and above this was plaster painted white like the ceiling, except where the oak beams showed through. At the junction of the two walls towards their left—as they stood in the doorway—was a gigantic cupboard or wardrobe standing cater-cornered. It was built of patterned oak; and its door, which had a brass handle, stood partly open to show ranks of suits hanging inside, and a great display of shoes in their trees.

In the left-hand wall, which formed the back wall of the house, were the two small-paned windows. In the space between them stood a very high-backed Carolean chair in black oak. Hung on the wall over it was the Greuze head, a circular painting of a curly-haired child in a light frame. A short electric socket, with a bulb in it, depended from the ceiling over the head. By the far window stood a big basket-chair.

The next wall—that which faced them from across the room—contained the bed with its foot towards the hall door. A brass warming-pan and a seventeenth-century woodcut hung on this wall. In the right-hand corner, at the junction of this wall with the one on their right, was the glass door opening on the sun porch, still curtained in brown velvet. The right-hand wall showed first a highly ugly gas-stove (there was no fireplace), and then the door to the nurse’s room, with Miles’s blue quilted dressing-gown depending from a hanger against it. Finally, completing the tour to the wall of the hall door, there was against this a bureau almost smothered in a vast display of ties.