The Skeleton in the Clock

Chapter 16

"Stop," said Masters, extending his arm like a traffic-policeman. "Stop just there."

Despite Masters's effort to be calm, the hoarse and strangled note in his voice betrayed him. He must do more than count ten now. Snapping the rubber band round his notebook, he carefully put it in his pocket

"Sir," he continued, as one who weighs his words but gets louder and louder, "I've been mixed up in these cases for more years than I'd like to count I get the credit Oh, ah! But I've got blood-pressure, and I've got a family to think of!"

"Sh-h! Quiet! Don't wake up the house!"

"I've been kicked in the pants," said Masters. "I've been hocussed and flummoxed. I've had poisonous snakes dropped at my feet. I've been told to face a mob of reporters, without a word to say for myself, when you'd promised a world-beater of a story. All right: that's fair enough; I don't complain. But this is too much. —Reincarnation!" breathed Masters, and clasped his hands in prayer to heaven.

"Sh-h, now! Sh-h! Sh-h-h!"

Masters subsided. A healing peace settled through the room.

"And now," bellowed H.M., in a voice which made the curtains quiver, "are you goin' to stop being a goop and listen to a word of explanation?"

Masters was silent

"I've been reading a lot of literature," continued H.M. "I don't believe it as I oughter, because I don't remember as much as I oughter. But there was one thing I did read, and it slipped through without more than scratching the surface of the old man's mind, until somethin' was said that made me remember. And it tore the hocus-pocus wide open. Now do you see?"

Masters peered at him suspiciously.

"You're not off your chump? You don't remember how you wore a big hat and recited limericks to Charles the First?"

"Well No. Not much. And, Masters, for the love of Esau stop drivellin'. This is a murder case. And I'm scared."

"You?"

"Me," returned H.M, with all the impressiveness this conveyed. "We've got to act fast, son. If we can keep this feller," he pointed to Martin, "if we can keep him alive for just me more night…"

(Again that sense of hatred, gathering round and pressing against him! Martin, weak from lack of the food he told Ruth tie hated, sat down and lit a cigarette whose smoke made his lead swim.)

"If we can do that," said Masters, "he's out of danger?"

"Not necessarily. But a certain innocent-looker will be occupied with other things. Well be the attackers and not standin' at defence. Now, son!" H.M. pointed. "When you first barged in here tonight, I asked you whether you'd got the stuff. You said you'd got all of it Where is it?"

Masters indicated the chair where lay his bowler hat, the brief-case, and the brown cardboard folder. '

"You don't want to go through all that tonight do you?"

"I don't want to go through any of it Masters. I only want to ask you a question."

"Well sir?"

H.M. scowled and adjusted his spectacles.

"You've got" he stated rather than questioned, "you've got from the local police files some testimony from everybody, and I mean everybody, who was here at Fleet House on the afternoon of November 4th, 1927?"

From the thick-filled brown folder Masters took out a typewritten slip with pencilled notes.

"I have," he said. "Also what happened to each of 'em afterwards. The word 'here' means within a radius of three or four miles."

"So! Read it out loud!"

"As follows," said Masters, clearing his throat "Lady Fleet (here), Dowager Countess of Brayle (here), Earl and Countess of Brayle (one dead, one in Stockholm), young Fleet (here), Dr. Pierre Laurier (dead), Lady Fleet's companion (dead), governess (dead), butler (at Reading), parlourmaid (here), first and second housemaids (one here, one in Australia), gardener (dead). In addition to these persons's testimony, Stannard's too."

"Stannard!" interrupted Martin. "But he didn't give any statement then!" Masters grinned.

"No, Mr. Drake. Still, I'm told that in Sir Henry's presence and yours he said he'd talked to a newspaper reporter at the tram. The area's not so large that a few ‘phone-calls wouldn't cover it" Masters tapped the cardboard folder. They sent a copy of the press-cutting by hand.''

H.M. pressed his hands hard to his forehead.

"Here's the burnin' question," he snapped. "You or I got testimony, today or yesterday evening, from all the witnesses who weren't dead or out of reach. Does it agree with what they said twenty years ago?"

"Ah. Almost to a T." Masters's eye grew thoughtful. "Almost too close, don't you think?"

"No, son. Oh, my eye, no! You're not likely to forget the first HE bomb that fell close to you; now are you? Or the circumstances? No. And that's a great help."

"It's a great help to know there aren't any contradictions?"

"That's right."

Masters shut his eyes. "Anything else?"

"You don't mention Dr. Hugh Laurier as bein' there. Or wasn't he qualified for medicine yet?"

"He'd qualified a few years before; he was helping his father. But he was in London that day. He missed the train, and didn't get back till later."

"I see," observed H.M. in a colourless tone, and dropped his hands. "Finally, son, in that brief-case you got the Scotland Yard dossier, in a blue folder, with the statements of Simon Frew and Arthur Puckston. One with the binoculars, the other with the telescope." H.M. stretched out his hand and waggled the fingers. "Gimme that folder!"

And now they both saw, with growing alarm, the extent of H.M.s disquiet

This folder? What for?"

"I'm goin' on a little errand," said H.M. "It'll be short, but it won't be sweet I'm dreading it like the Old Nick.", He put the folder under his arm."

"Ready when you are, then!"

"You're not goin', Masters."

Masters stared at him. "In case it's slipped your memory, Sir Henry, I'm the police-officer in charge of this case."

"You're still not goin'," H.M. said simply. "You'd only scare him. Don't argue, burn it! This is the first card we play; and I got to play it Now that young feller," he nodded towards Martin, "is the one I want to go with me. If he’ll do it Hey?"

Martin staggered up from the sofa, crushing' out his cigarette.

"I'll go with you to Land's End," he said, "if you. don't mind my ringing up Jenny first I've been intending to do it all night; and every time somebody walloped out with something I had to hear." H.M. spoke sharply.

"You can ring her up, son, but you won't get any answer."

"My God, she hasn't gone away with Grandmother?" Martin thought back. "The old lady said she was going away overnight Did Jenny go?"

"No, no, no," H.M. told him in a fussed and malevolent way. "I made her promise, before the old hobgoblin sent her away from here, to take two nembutal pills as soon as she got home. Son, it wouldn't wake her if the whole town of Brayle fell down. All right: you be stubborn and cloth-headed. Try it!"

Martin did try it He sat at the telephone-table in the dark rear of the hall, listening to ghostly little ringing-tones which had no reply. Surely Dawson or somebody must be about? Never mind. It was late. He put down the 'phone.

Suddenly Martin realized he was in the dark. A gulf of mist in his imagination, opened in front of him; somebody's hands lunged out; the solid floor melted away for a plunge outward…

None of that! Martin went back towards the lighted drawing-room, timing his steps slowly. Himself: a focus of hatred. And again, everlastingly, why? The atmosphere of the drawing-room intensified this thought since Masters and H.M. had evidently been talking rapidly. It seemed to Martin that the Chief Inspector, in utter incredulity, had just opened his mouth to protest. Afterwards they did not speak.

They turned off the lights in the drawing-room. They went out of the house softly, Martin slipping the latch of the front, door. In a fine night the quarter moon dimmed by a sweep of stars, they crossed the road.

At the Dragon's Rest whose front showed no light what might be called the hotel-entrance was in its south side, the narrower end of the building. As Martin made for the hotel-entrance door, Masters preceding him and H.M. following him, he glanced southwards because Brayle Manor was somewhere there.

It seemed to him that in the distance the sky had a faintly whitish glow, conveying a sense of movement No sounds; or were there? The glimmer wasn't fire. He could tell that But…

"Oi!" whispered H.M., and shoved him inside.

A narrowish passage ran the length of the inn from south to north. Beyond the left-hand wall lay the three bars. In the right-hand wall was a cubicle for signing the visitors' book, then a door to the dining-room where Martin remembered having had lunch on Saturday, then more doors to the end. The wails, white-painted, had at one side a design of brass warming-pans framing a sixteenth-century crossbow; and the light of a shaded lamp shone on ancient scrubbed floorboards.

"See you later," whispered Masters, and tiptoed up the narrow staircase towards the bedrooms.

H.M., taking Martin by' the arm, impelled him down the passage to the far door at the right end. H.M. knocked gently.

"Come in," said a voice which Martin guessed must be Mrs. Puckston's.

Mr. and Mrs. Puckston, whose child had been murdered and hacked last night, were in there. If H.M. had not gripped his arm, Martin would have turned and bolted.

H.M. opened the door.

It was an old-fashioned kitchen-sitting-room, its brick walls. painted white. In what-had once been the immense embrasure of the fireplace, there now stood a big coal cooking-stove with many lids, and a kettle simmering on one of them. In the middle of the room, with a frayed yellow-and-white cloth and an electric light hanging over it, was a table set for an untouched supper.

Arthur Puckston, back to the door, sat on the other side of the table and faced the stove. His freckled bald head, with its little fringe of grey-reddish hair, and his thin drooping muscular shoulders, were motionless. Mrs. Puckston, dark-haired and stoutening, sat in a corner chair and sewed.

Then Puckston looked round.

The tears were running down his face despite his spasmodic blinkings. His eyes remained gentle. He saw who was in the doorway. First startled, then deeply ashamed, he whipped his head away and began swabbing desperately at his eyes with his coat-sleeves. But grief had beaten him. His arms dropped. He did not care.

"Mr. Puckston," said H.M., in so gentle a tone that Martin could not have thought it possible, "I know we're intruding. Will you believe I only came because I know I can help you?"

Mrs. Puckston, tearless but dull-glazed of eye, looked up.

"Won't you sit down, please?" she asked quietly. "We understand. Arthur suspicioned — at least, he hoped — you'd come."

The two visitors sat down on their side of the table, their eyes fixed on the cloth.

"Norma," Puckston said in a slow, dull monotone, "I've got to explain." -

"That's not necessary, Arthur." "I've got to explain."

With great care Puckston slowly hitched his chair round. He too looked down. His right hand, blue-veined, automatically brushed and brushed and brushed at the table-cloth.

"What I've got to explain, sir, is that we only opened the 'ouse tonight because I'd promised the Choral Society they could have the two parlours for their practice after chapel. Because it was hymns, you see. We thought that was only right and proper. Because it was hymns. And Mr. Bradley, from the Chapel, he said so too.

"Of course, we didn't go out there. But Norma and me, we reckoned it would be right and proper if we sat out in the passage, there, and listened to the hymns through the wall. And we did. And I was feeling fine, I was feeling just as fine as I could be, until it came to that part of the hymn about while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.

"And I don't know," he went on, shaking his head while he brushed and brushed at the table, "I can't just rightly say, what made me make such a fool of myself. Breaking down like that, and coming in 'ere so they wouldn't know about it. I didn't know I was so soft I reckon it was just that part of the hymn, that's all."

Both of his visitors, one of whom could not bear this, made an instinctive movement to get up.

"No!" said Puckston, and stretched out his hand. "Don't go, if I've not offended you. Sit down. I was hoping you'd come."

They sat down.

"Don't think about it Arthur!" said Mrs. Puckston. But there was a heavier glaze in her eyes as she sewed.

"I won't," said her husband, He concentrated hard for a moment, before slowly moving his head sideways. "Norma, haven't you got a cup of tea for the gentlemen?"

The sewing slid from his wife's lap. "Arthur, I never thought of that. I've never been so bad-mannered in all my born days."

"But please don't…"

"Easy, son," muttered H.M., and gripped Martin's wrist as the latter started to speak. H.M. looked at Puckston, who had ceased to care whether they saw the tears on his face. "You said, Mr. Puckston, you hoped I'd come here. Was it about anything in particular?"

The other started to speak, but fell to brushing the cloth instead.

"Mr. Puckston," said H.M., "this person who — hurt your little girl."

As Mrs. Puckston moved the kettle from the stove-lid, the white-brick kitchen was as still as death. Mrs. Puckston, an iron hook in her hand to remove the stove-lid and see to the fire, did not seem to breathe.

Puckston swallowed. "Yes, sir?"

"Do you want me to nab that person, and see that there's punishment?"

The lid rattled back. From the stove leaped up a yellow lick of flame, curling high; momentarily it painted the kitchen with yellow brightness; and, had he been facing it, you might have fancied a reflection in Puckston's eyes.

Then the lean man's shoulders sagged.

"What’s the good?" he asked dully. "Like old Sir George. Years ago. You can't beat 'em."

"I know this country," said H.M. "Ifs asinine, sure. It's full of fatheads. But there's been justice here for nearly a thousand years."

"Old Sir George…"

"Could he take your land from you, when he tried to?"

"No, by God 'e couldn't!"

Rattle went the stove-lid, back into place.

"Arthur," said-his wife, herself near to breaking down, "I don't think I’ll make tea. I think there's some bottles of the '24 port that the gentlemen would like better. I think I know how to find them."

Then she was out of the room. Her husband, struggling to pull his wits together, pressed his hands flat on the table. His mildness, his weary look, showed he could scarcely do it.

"Can — you help me?" Puckston asked.

"If you help me."

"How? I'll try. Yes; I'll do it"

"Son, I warn you: the first bit is goin’ to hurt It’ll keep you thinking about your daughter." "Go ahead."

From his inside breast pocket H.M. took out three postcards. One, postmarked July 5th, read, Re Sir George Fleet: examine the skeleton in the clock. The second, July 6th: Re Sir George Fleet: what was the pink flash on the roof? The third, July 7th: Re Sir George Fleet: evidence of murder is still there. Clearing a space on the supper-table, pushing away cutlery and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, he put down the exhibits.

"Son," he said quietly, "you sent these postcards."

The other's mouth quivered like a hurt child's.

To be more exact," added H.M., "you dictated the substance and Enid put it down in correct grammar and spelling, with schoolgirl flourishes." "'Ow did you know that?" asked Puckston. "Never mind. It's not important. What I…" "'Ow did you know that?" repeated Puckston, with the insistence of the drunken or the damned. The tears had started. again.

"Oh, son! From your antiques here I thought you might subscribe to Willaby's catalogue. I asked Lady Br — I asked somebody in this district if you did, and she said yes. She also said she got her last catalogue on July 5th, which is the postmark on that first anonymous card.

"Y'see, that was the catalogue that listed the skeleton in the clock. Somebody got it on July 5th, and fired off an anonymous postcard to stir up the police about the Fleet case. There weren't likely to be two such curiosities.as that clock floatin' about" "I'm not saying I didn't do it" Puckston had the palms of his hands pressed over his face. He rocked back and forth.

"But why did it have to be me who sent the postcards?" H.M. expelled a slow, deep breath of relief. They could hear the throb of the fire inside the stove, and Mrs. Puckston moving somewhere in the cellar.

"Well… now. That's what we're coming to. And it’ll be easier. Because it's about Sir George Fleet's death."

H.M. snapped his fingers down at one side, without looking away from Puckston. Martin rightly interpreted this as an order to pick up the blue Scotland Yard folder, which H.M. had dropped.

Puckston was not composed now, but he was more composed. Any mention of Fleet could rouse him. His light-blue eyes, bloodshot and reddish at the lids, tried to focus on H.M. out of a long, wretched face.

"Do you remember," continued H.M., turning over the typewritten pages of the folder, "what happened the day Fleet died?"

"Do I remember when I first walked out with Norma?" "You didn't like Fleet Hey?"

"I wonder," said Puckston, shutting his eyes, "if that man ever thought how much I looked down on him. 'Im, with 'is money made out of the fourteen-eighteen war! Me, whose forbears 'ave owned this inn a matter of two hundred year! But you can't make the nobs see that They don't notice!"

"Let's come to the day, shall we?"

"Glad to."

"You, accordin' to your testimony, were sitting on the top of the north gable with a telescope. You were watching the hunt, You heard the shout Fleet gave. Now lemme read you a part of your statement verbatim."

H.M. found the passage and ran his finger down it

I looked round. I saw something pitch over the little ledge, but it was so quick I did not see what it was. I looked—

H.M. paused abruptly. There was a space of silence, while Martin found the sweat stand out on his forehead.

"Y’see," H.M. said very gently, "that second sentence just can't possibly be true."

"Why not?"

"I'll tell you. If there's one thing of general agreement, it's that Fleet gave a shout and immediately fell. If you doubt that, see the testimony of Simon Frew, who had the binoculars on the middle gable and is admittedly an honest witness.

"But what about you? You were on the north gable, watching the hunt: either the hounds streakin' to the north, or the field galloping round Black Hanger to the east You heard a yell: that's all. You couldn't have known where it came from, except somewhere behind you. You couldn't have known what it meant By the time you could swing that telescope round, Fleet must have been dead on the flagstones.

"Yet you claim, see, that out of all the space of sky and land comin' round into view through your telescope, you managed to pick out the exact spot where Fleet was standing just as he fell. Son, it won't do. It's plain ridiculous."

Again there was a silence.

In Puckston's expression there was no fear, no wrath, no shrinking; only a curious twitch of the mouth which Martin could not identify.

"What did I do, then?" Puckston asked.

'Tm goin' to suggest" pursued H.M., turning back a page and tapping it, "that the same thing which happened to Simon Frew also happened to you."

Puckston shut his eyes.

"You saw the field gallop round the side of Black Hanger. Through the telescope they all seemed to be waving and smiling at you. You wondered who it could be for just like Frew. You turned round and raked your telescope along till you saw your enemy, George Fleet, a few seconds before be fell. Is that true?"

"Yes," said Puckston without opening his eyes.

"But you were looking at him sideways — a good distance sideways — instead of face on. That's how you came to see…"

"See what?"

"The pink flash. Just like open and shut, wasn't it?"

Were they coming at last, Martin wondered, to the explanation of that tantalizing obscurity which (Masters seemed to think) was connected with a wooden beach-chair? He, Martin Drake, had been pushed by a pair of hands. Or could he swear he had? The soft, gentle growl of H.M.'s voice went on.

'To clinch it," said H.M., "here's a final bit of your story. You tell in this record (Oh, lord love a duck!) about how Dr. Laurier ran out on the terrace, and the constable came up. Now you're speakin', son."

And they saw, through Puckston's eyes, the scene played against the white facade.

Dr. Laurier said something, and Bert picked up Sir George's binoculars and walked into the house. Dr. Laurier said something else, and Lady Brayle came out with some kind of cloth. I said aloud, 'The bastard is dead.'

Puckston stared at a salt-cellar on the frayed white-and-yellow cloth.

"I never made no bones about what I thought of him. Maybe I oughtn't to have said that, with the hymns tonight and all. But that's how I felt. And still do."

H.M. held up a hand for silence.

Dr. Laurier put the cloth over his head. Lady Fleet came out and started to faint, but they talked to her a while and she went in. The governess and the boy came round the house then, but Dr. Laurier yelled so loud you could hear to go back. Dr. Laurier made as if he was examining all over Sir George. I did not see anybody at the windows. Bert 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 him in the house. Lady Fleet came out again once and looked up. That was all I saw before I slid down.

Puckston smote the table.

"And there's not a word of a lie in that," he insisted. "Simon could—"

"Sure, son. I know. It agrees with what Simon Frew said, and the other fellers who were farther down on the roof. But, considering what I've read, can you tell me more about the pink flash now?"

Puckston looked vacant

"I was sure what it was." Again his hand mechanically brushed the table-cloth. "Anyway, I was pretty sure. But…"

"But you were glad Fleet was dead. And anyway you didn't want trouble, because you were scared of the nobs."

"Nice lot, aren't they? Lady Brayle.."

"Sure, Sophie's one of the bad examples. That's because she's so goddam cloth-headed. She ought to be either ousted or made popular. But when you sent that anonymous card with the fancy words 'pink flash'…"

Any reference to those cards, no matter with how gentle probing, seemed to send Puckston frantic

"Enid didn't know nothing about it" he pleaded. "It was only a lark, don't you see? She loved larks. That's how they got her up to Pentecost, because it was a lark. Because all the gossip was round they were looking for ghosts. Because…"

Puckston got up. He stumbled across to a kitchen dresser with an oil-cloth top, fumbled in a drawer, and brought out a table-cloth to dab at his eyes. Then he turned round.

"It was Enid," he said, "who thought of saying ‘pink flash.' I–I hemm'd and hawed." Puckston's freckled bald head stood out against the white-brick wall. His thin shoulders, square like a scarecrow's in the old blue-and-white shirt were humped up.

"I hemm'd and hawed, not wanting to say much. And Enid, she said, 'Well, Daddy, what did it look like?’ And I told her. And she thought for a minute and said, 'I know, Daddy! We'll call it a pink flash.' And she put it down,"

"Ah!" said HM "Now we got it!"

"Got what?"

Statement and question were flung across that warm kitchen. Martin knew that a scale-pan hung in the balance, that a gambler prepared to play.

"You've been torturin' yourself," said H.M., "because you thought you were responsible for that kid's death. You thought some swine believed she knew too much, and killed her."

Puckston put the table-cloth in front of his face.

"I don't hold many things sacred," said H.M., "but I swear you on what I do hold sacred that you're wrong. Wrong! That wasn't the reason! It wasnt even a reason you or I could understand."

The table-cloth fell to the floor. ‘’Ere! Are you trying to.?"

"No. I can prove it, son. And if I do prove it," said H.M., with such a radiance of conviction that the other did not move, "will you help me with something else?'

Ten seconds ticked past. Puckston walked across to the table and extended his hand. H.M. gripped it After this be slid back in his chair with a Gargantuan thump, and breathed noisily. Slowly his head turned round.

"You," he glared at Martin with incredible malevolence, ‘What are you doin’ here, son?"

"But you asked me to—''

"You go out in that passage," H.M. ordered sternly, "and you wait there till I talk to you. You've served the purpose. Now the garden's lovely. Sling your hook."

Martin felt no surprise now when he remembered having heard that Chief Inspectors sometimes came within an ace of murdering Sir Henry Merrivale. He knew why. Deeply he could sympathize. In fact as his eye caught a bowl of Jell-o on the sideboard, he wondered how its contents would look if they were tastefully pressed down on H.M.'s skull.

But he went out into the passage and closed the door.

"You've served the purpose." What purpose? Why had he been brought to see the Puckstons? He was beginning to suspect H.M. of a purpose in everything, but what purpose in this?

The long passage, with its single dim lamp, lay shadowy and deeply cool. At the other end of it lounged Masters himself, with the hotel-entrance door wide open to the fragrant night. Masters's face was a mask of inquiry as Martin joined him.

"Don't ask me what happened," the latter begged. "He's verified what he wants to verify. Do you understand?"

"Do I!" Masters growled with fervour.

Yet the Chief Inspector, or what could be seen of him in dimness, appeared serene, breathing the fragrant air, almost humming a tune and smiling. Martin pointed southwards.

"By the way, what's that whitish glow, away over there? In the direction of Brayle Manor?"

"Can't say, I'm sure."

"Probably doesn't mean anything. -Still," Martin was uneasy, "it did strike me he hurried me in here when I tried to look at it Er — you've heard about his feud with the Dowager Countess of Brayle?"

"Have I?’ snorted Masters,

"He won the first round by a thrust with a guisarme. She, definitely took the second by making a skeleton gibber at him-and insulting him behind locked gates. I've wondered before this if he might — well…"

' "You know, Mr. Drake," said Masters, shaking his head and folding his arms portentously, ‘I’ve tried to stop if, but I can’t It’s a sin and a shame how that old bounder carries on!" "At his age, you mean?"

"Oh, ah! Just sol It'd be a great pity if he (hurrum!) made it worse."

"It would, Chief Inspector! It would! What worries me is mat it always upsets Jenny, and I won’t have Jenny upset!"

"Of course," Masters observed musingly, after a long pause, "the lady is a bit of a handful"

"Are you telling me?"

"Do you know what she said to me," continued Masters, with his eye on a bright star outside, "when I tried my ruddy best to get that skeleton back?" Here he mimicked heavily. "'My good man, you are perfectly well aware you cannot remove the article in question until you can show just cause why you need it Should you set foot inside the park without a warrant I shall instruct my gardener to use his gun.' —Urr!" said Masters suddenly, making a noise like a dog.

"And do you know," Martin demanded, "what she said to me? Listen!"

Whereupon they both stopped and looked at each other, conscious of a meeting of minds.

"Let's face it sir," Masters said benevolently, and lowered his defences. "There may be trouble."

And the richest and ripest trouble of all, as regards proceedings between Sir Henry Merrivale and the Dowager Countess of Brayle, had its first stir at eleven o'clock on the following morning.