The Skeleton in the Clock

Chapter 6

Some half an hour before Ruth's appearance, in the other bar-parlour with the clock containing its skeleton, Sir Henry Merrivale sat in a leather chair near the fireplace. Chief Inspector Masters stood opposite, behind a table on which lay a brief-case stuffed with documents.

And these two were carrying on in a way which would have sounded familiar to any friend of theirs.

"Now, now, Masters, keep your shirt on!"

Masters, large and burly, usually bland as a card-sharper, his grizzled hair brushed to hide an increasing bald-spot was buttoned up in a blue serge and had assumed his witness-box manner. This indicated that his words would have weight and dignity.

"It might interest you to know, sir, that I've got my shirt on."

"That's right Masters. Be like Me."

These impossible situations," said Masters. "What do I care for 'em?" He reached out and snapped his fingers. "Not that! Oh, ah! And why? Because I'm resigned."

"I got a spiritual nature too."

Masters's blood-pressure soared, as was evident in his countenance. "But what I DO object to—" "Easy, son!"

"But what I do object to," continued the Chief Inspector, swallowing bard, "is the Assistant Commissioner wanting to dig up a twenty-year old case, because: first, he was an old friend of Sir George Fleet; and, second, he recently gets three anonymous postcards straight out of Colney Hatch, Now I ask you I is that fair or reasonable?"

Delving into the neatly packed brief-case, Masters drew out three cards and pushed them across the table towards H.M., who did not even glance at them. H.M., with a malignant scowl, had folded his hands across his corporation and was twiddling his thumbs.

These cards, the ordinary twopenny-halfpenny sort you buy at any post office, had both address and message printed in small block capitals, with a pencil. They were postmarked in the town of Brayle, about two miles southwards, on July 5th, July 6th, and July 7th, and addressed, 'Chief of the C.LD., Scotland Yard, London W.I.’ The first card read:

The second card read:

The third card read:

"Lummy!" breathed Masters. "I've seen some scatty messages in my time, but this beats the lot." He squared himself, "Now I’ll just take each point, sir; This clock, to begin with."

Both of them, in the old room hung with hunting prints, surveyed the tall clock. Standing eater-cornered in its southeast angle, its gilt hands and numerals faintly shining, the glass dial conveyed an impression that the skull had its chin tilted up so that the skull could see better. Like Martin Drake, Masters experienced the illusion that the tick-tick of the mantelpiece clock issued out of that dead case. It made Masters uncomfortable, which in his staid soul he resented.

"Sir," he demanded, "what's wrong with that clock?"

"Nothin'," H.M. answered simply.,

"What's wrong with the skeleton?"

"Nothin'."

"Then why in lum's name do you want to bring it down here and stick it up in a bar-parlour?"

"Because, son, I can't do everything at once. I want to take that blighter out of his case—" H.M. pointed to the skeleton— "and put him on a table, and examine him thoroughly. I dunno who he is, son. But I can tell you who he's not. He's not Sir George Fleet"

"Oh, ah!" muttered Masters, with a sideways look. "So you thought of that?’

"Oh, my son! It was the very first wild and wool-gatherin' notion I did have, for no reason at all But it won't work. Now the overall height of that clock, includin' platform and fancy top, is six feet And the late lamented?"

"Six feet one inch tall," grunted Masters, with the heaviness of one who has studied much; "and with big bones."

"Right Whereas the chap who's watchin' us," H.M. indicated the clock again, "was a little feller. Five feet five, about Well-proportioned, small bones. Masters, I'll tell you what it is. That's an ordinary medical-school skeleton: varnished, articulated…"

"Meaning strung together with wire?"

"With fine cat-gut, usually. Besides, you couldn’t possibly conceal the injuries to Fleet's head. Who'd want to?"

"Ah, and that's just it What about the skeleton?" exploded Masters. "In all this record-" he brought his hand down slowly on the brief-case—"there's not a word to do with any skeleton in a clock. What's it supposed to mean?"

"I dunno. But an anonymous letter, postmarked Brayle, tells you to examine it Five days later Our Sophie, on instructions from Cicely Fleet waddles up to London to buy it for Dr. Laurier: son of clock's former owner. Don't you find that rather fetchin' and interesting?"

Masters took several paces up and down. The ticking of the clock seemed to trouble him.

"If we had one bit of evidence that this was murder—!"

"Oh, Masters. It was murder. Tell me something about George Fleet"

"Lummy, haven't you read this stuff in the brief-case?"

"Uh-huh. But I want to see what impressed you."

H.M, his spectacles pulled down on his broad nose, closed his eyes. An expression almost of serenity crossed his unmentionable face. Masters, deeply suspicious of being done in the eye again, studied him warily. At length the Chief Inspector cleared his throat

"Hurruml" he said. "Sir George Fleet? Came of a well-to-do family in the Midlands, with a cotton-business. Family wanted him to be pukka Army; so did he. Boarding-school when he was a tiny 'un, then Harrow, then Sandhurst Never finished Sandhurst; father died, and he had to take over the business.

"But he acted Army all the rest of his life, though he didn't join up in '14. Upright carriage, cropped moustache, dead keen on sport Roared at everybody. Wanted a knighthood; got it; wanted a baronetcy so his title wouldn't die with him; didn't get it"

Still H.M. did not open his eyes, though his look was now evil. He grunted.

"Yes. That's why it's so rummy that.. h'mf. What about his wife?"

"She lives just over the road, sir. You could go see her." "I meant twenty years ago."

"Bit of a beauty, I'd say." Masters considered. "You've seen her photograph. Yes, bit of a beauty in the fair-haired, blue-eyed way. Completely gone on her husband. Idolized him. Do anything he said, and like it"

"Wait a minute, son. Does that mean she was all coos and clucks in public, and in private wept and twisted him round her little finger?"

Masters repressed a guffaw.

"No, it does not" he retorted dryly. "Old Chief Inspector Radford: if you've read his notes of that time—"

"I have. I've gone over other things too. Y’know, Masters, I may have been doin' you in the eye. Just a little bit"

Masters stiffened. Once more he became as wary as a heavy-game hunter near a somnolent water-buffalo.

"But it was only a telephone-call," pleaded H.M. in a bumbling way. "And it don’t (burn me, it don't!) help with our real problem."

"If you hadn't sent that ruddy clock on ahead of us, and we'd got here—"

"You were tellin' me, Masters. About Fleet's wife."

"Now get this, sir! At that time there was only one person ' who ruled the roost in that house: it was her husband. Why, sir, he once tore up her favourite morning-room, or whatever they call it and put in new panelling and a billiard-table. And she never said a word. I know what my old woman would have said.

"Changeable sort of gentleman, too. One time he had a collection of old swords and daggers. Got tired of 'em, and bang! overnight they went, and she had a room with nothing on the walls but hooks until he could put up antique guns instead. Now," Masters added grimly, "well come to the day of the accident Because it was an accident and I’ll show you why. Come over and look at the house, Sir Henry. Just look out of the window!"

"I got a picture in my mind's eye, son. You just gush on."

Returning to the table, Masters sat down, took a blue-bound folder of typewritten sheets out of the brief-case, and opened it.

The date," he continued, "was November 4th, 1927. Just so. Let me emphasize a few points about that roof.

"It's a very big roof, fiat and perfectly square. Ifs floored with cement; they used it for sun-bathing. On the edge of the south side there's a low chimney-stack, narrow and oblong, flat on top. In the middle of the roof there's another chimney-stack just like it, and a third on the edge of the north side. All in a straight line dead across the middle of the roof. Got it?"

"Got it Sure."

"Just so. At the time this happened, there was nothing at all on the roof except two beach-chairs and a wicker settee, all of 'em pushed back dead against the little chimney-stack in the middle."

ELM., eyes closed, blew out his cheeks hideously. "Stop a bit, son. What were beach-chairs doin' there in November?"

"It'd been a warm autumn, and still wasn't cold. They'd just been left there." "Any smoke from the chimneys?" "No. Not a fire lighted. Gas-range in the kitchen." "What colour were the beach-chairs?" Masters stared at him.

"How in lum's name should I know? This report deals with—"

"Now, now, Masters! Keep your shirt on!"

Again the Chief Inspector's forefinger; somewhat agitated by his blood-pressure, travelled down the typewritten lines.

"I don't have to explain this hunting stuff. You've read it Sir George Fleet even if he did act like a comic-paper colonel, really was a sport First-class horseman and A-l shot He hunted except when he had (don't I know it?) the rheumatic pains in his side. On November 4th, about two o'clock in the afternoon, he was sitting in his study reading The Field when the gardener came to see him. This gardener said the Ascombe Hunt was 'drawing,' whatever that means, a big wood called Black Hanger."

H.M. sat up with ghoulish thoughtfulness.

"I say, Masters. Did you ever see me on a horse?"

"I daresay," the Chief Inspector said with heavy sarcasm, "you were one of the greatest horsemen in England too?"

"Well.. now!" said H.M., with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "I wouldn't like to say that, no. But I had a steeplechaser, named Whoozler, who could take fences like the cow jumpin' over the moon. Besides, it’d fit in — burn me if it wouldn't! — with a former existence where…" Masters stiffened.

"So help me," he swore, and pointed at H.M., "if I hear one more word about your reincarnation, just one more word, then back I go to tell the A.C. I'm through. I tell you straight: it gives me the creeps."

H.M. pondered. He peered round carefully, to make sure both doors were closed.

"Y’see, Masters, I'm not just sure I believe it myself, exactly."

"Ah!"

"But some of those books sound awful plausible, son." H.M. shook his head. "And it stirs you up, sort of (wouldn't it anybody?) to imagine… I say, Masters: couldn't you see me as a Cavalier poet?"

"In a pig's eye I could."

"But the feller was my own ancestor, curse it! His picture's the spittin' image of me. And I've just got a book on swordsmanship. And," added H.M., suddenly drawing himself up and glaring at his companion with awful dignity, "are we goin' to get on about Sir George Fleet, or aren't we?"

Masters shut his eyes, counted ten, and opened them again. There was a brief silence, under the ghost-clock and in the room of sporting prints. Then Masters went on.

"The gardener," he said, "told him the hunt was coming. So he picked up a pair of field-glasses, and started up for the roof. Now the only way to the roof is through a covered door at the very back, or west side, of the roof.

"Sir George walked straight to the front of the roof, a position just about over the front door below. He raised the field-glasses, and focussed them. It seems there was a lurid kind of red sky behind him, but it was clear light Now get this, sir. The chimney-stacks were fifty feet behind him. He was alone on a concrete floor, without anybody or any object within fifty feet of him."

Masters paused. He riffled over several pages, flattening them down with his fist.

"Stop the bus again," muttered H.M. "What about the field-glasses? I seem to remember readin' a story where there was hokey-pokey with field-glasses, and they stuck somebody in the eye."

Masters was now cat-like and bland. "The fact is, sir, I thought you might bring that up. The glasses were just plain field-glasses, as you'll hear in a moment Accept that?"

"Uh-huh. Go on.?

"Our real evidence," Masters continued, "comes from six witnesses on this side of the road. Two of these witnesses," he pointed upwards, "were sitting astride the gable-tops of this pub. And these two witnesses are clinchers.

"The Ascombe Hunt is disbanded now. But in those days, it seems, everybody hereabouts was keen about it. It beats me to know why. You'd think it'd make country people read as hops to have a lot of horses and dogs tearing over private property and mucking it up. But they tell me it didn't These six men, they were down in the bar. They heard about the kafuffle coming just about when Sir George did. And up they went

"Our two chief witnesses are Arthur Puckston and Simon Frew. Mr. Puckston, who's still the landlord here, was astride one gable with an old brass telescope that belongs to the house. Simon Frew had a pair of big new binoculars he was very proud of.

This pub's on high ground, air. From the top you can see straight over and across Fleet House, covering the roof. During this time there was an unholy row in the wood. First one dog—"

"HOUND."

"— started to yell, then another, then a lot more, and before long: smack out they came from Black Hanger, tearing across in the open. Now listen to what Simon Frew said, when he was astride the middle gable with his binoculars. All this question-and-answer stuff has to be polished up and made smooth into a statement But here you are."

Again Masters smoothed put the turnover pages with his fist

"'The field—'" he began, and stopped. "This 'field,’ it'd seem, would mean the gents in the red coats."

"I got it son. Well?"

Masters read slowly.

The field had just started to come round the far side of Black Hanger, almost facing us. It is a good distance away there and on higher ground than us. I put my glasses on them. The first few men were smiling and waving their hands. They seemed to be waving straight in my face. I knew it could not be me. So I turned my glasses round.

"Towards Fleet House," Masters interpolated grimly. "About three hundred feet that's all."

Sir George was there. I could see all round him. He had his glasses to his eyes in one hand, and was waving with the other. Then it looked like somebody gave him a hard shove in the back. He stood there for a second. He shouted. He fell head-first I did not follow him with the glasses because I was too surprised. I just kept looking round to see who could have pushed him.

It was a shorn statement Yet Martin Drake, had he been there, would have seen the red sky with the silhouetted figure, and scented the autumn air, and sensed the rush and crash.

"I won't trouble you," Masters said drily, "with what you know. But just to hammer it home, sir! A bit of what Puckston said, the man with the telescope. His attention was caught by this yell Sir George gave."

And then spoke Mr. Puckston.

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 all over the roof, but did not see anybody or anything. I looked down. Sir George was lying there, and something was wrong with his head. Dr. Laurier ran out of the front door. Bert Hartshorn—

"Bert," Masters explained, "was the constable. He'd been at the pub, but naturally he (hurruml) couldn't climb on the roof."

— Bert Hartshorn was coming up to the terrace. 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.'

To Masters it was one more case, with nothing more of drama than a blueprint He closed the blue folder.

"There's more of Puckston," he explained. "And four others who were lower down in between the gables. But it needn't trouble us. Eh?"

H.M. groaned.

"Let's sew it up," suggested Masters. "The 'little ledge' Puckston talks about is a stone coping, just six inches high, which runs round the whole roof. You agree nobody could have hidden there? Or, if we accept the witnesses, attacked a big powerful man without some kind of struggle?"

"Uh-huh. I'm afraid I got to agree.’’

"You admit the fact that the roof was as bare as a biscuit-tin.”

"Well..”

"Sir George's injuries, for instance.’' Masters remained affable and bland, if anything more affable. "They were to the head, the arms, and one shoulder. That's not unusual, when somebody pitches from a comparatively low height There wasn't another fracture or another mark on him. Not even," Masters lingered on the word, "a bruise.’’

H.M. made fussed motions.'

"Don't leer. Masters. I hate leerin’. What's on your mind?"

"You were going to ask, weren't you, whether there was a bruise? Whether something might have been thrown or fired at him? Eh?"

H.M. only grunted.

"If it hit him hard enough to knock him over the edge," Masters pointed but "it must have left a mark or a bruise. But it didn't Finally, there's the evidence of the post-mortem."

Reaching with infinite effort into his hip pocket H.M. fished out a case of his vile cigars and lighted one with relish. He seemed to have little relish for anything else.

"There was a possibility, just a bare possibility," Masters goaded him, "that somebody might have given him a drug— poison, event — to make his head swim so he fell But there was no drug, no poison, nothing."

"As I understand it Masters, the post-mortem was performed by old Dr. Laurier. The family friend So! Was there anybody assistin’ him at the post-mortem? To sort of look on?"

Masters grinned.

"As a matter of fact, there was. A doctor from Newbury. I forget his name, but it's in the record. He confirmed the finding."

"O tempore," said H.M. "O mores. Oh, hell!"

Masters rubbed his hands together.

"Here's your victim," he explained, "on a concrete floor with no person or thing within fifty feet of him. He wasn't pushed. He had nothing thrown at him. He wasn't drugged in any way. What happened to him?"

"Son, I just don't know."

"You bet you don't But I can tell you. Sir George was a man over forty, who'd just climbed some long flights of stairs. He got excited waving to the hunt; he came over dizzy, as anybody might; and he fell. Do you still want to know the colour of the beach-chairs?'

"Sure I do," retorted H.M. instantly, taking the cigar out of his mouth. "What's the pink flash?" "Pink flash?"

"Certainly. See the second anonymous postcard on the table in front of you. Quote: Re Sir George Fleet: what was the pink flash on the roof? Go on, Masters: say it's a pink rat and I ought to be makin' faces at it"

"But there's not a word about a pink flash in any of this evidence!"

"No," returned H.M., "and there's not one word about a skeleton-clock either. But you'll find one standing just behind you."

Masters strode over to the middle of the room, where he jingled coins in his pocket

"This chap Puckston," mused H.M. "I didn't realize he was still the licensee here. By that statement, he didn't seem to like Fleet much."

"There's nothing to that," Masters snorted. "It was only…"

Whether by coincidence, or at mention of the name, there was a discreet tap at the door to the bar. The door opened, to reveal the Puckston family: father, mother, and daughter.

To a befuddled Martin Drake, Arthur Puckston had been little more than a name and a voice. He was, in fact a lean man with a freckled bald head, a harassed but conscientious smile; tall but stooped, with stringy powerful arms. Mrs. Norma Puckston, though stoutened and rosy, had fine black hair and was not unattractive. Miss Puckston, dark-haired and sixteen years old, was not unattractive either.

"I 'ate to disturb you, gentlemen," said Mr. Puckston, making an apologetic motion. "But it's five minutes to opening-time, and… well, do you really want this parlour for a private room?"

"We sure do, son," H.M. assured him. "If that's convenient?"

"Oh, it's convenient. But I shall 'ave to charge you a good bit extra. This being Saturday night and other things. Even for the police.."

Three pairs of eyes surreptitiously watched Masters.

"Well, well!" said Masters, suddenly urbane and in his most cheerful manner. "How would you have learned I was a police-officer, now?"

"Things," said Mr. Puckston thoughtfully, "get about" He glanced up. "You ought to know that" H.M. intervened.

"He's a copper, son. But he won’t bother you. Ill see to that Anything else?"

"Well, sir. If you wouldn't mind keeping the doors locked and the curtains drawn? It's that clock. You told me you were going to take the skeleton out…" Puckston's voice trailed away; his throat seemed to be constricted.

"Yes, I see your point," nodded H.M., taking several puffs of his (to others) venomous cigar. "You think it might put the customers off their beer if they saw me sittin' here with a skeleton on my lap like a ventriloquist's dummy?"

Miss Enid Puckston suddenly giggled, and was shushed by a look from her mother. The father, for some reason, took the girl's face between his hands.

"I'll be careful," H.M. promised. Behind smoke and spectacles, his eyes had taken on a faraway look; "I don't want to be chucked out of here. I'm always being chucked out of places, though bum me if I can think why. This is a fine old house, this is. Antiques, and real antiques."

"Oh, yes!" cried Mrs. Puckston in one gush. "Arthur always tries to—"

The doors of the Dragon's Rest, unlike those of most pubs, were solid and close-fitting. Little could be heard through them unless you bent close. But now, from beyond the closed door to the far bar-parlour, arose a sudden babble of angry voices, all clamouring together. One voice, a man's, clove through the tumult.

"I can't do it, I tell you! What’s more, I won't!"

H.M. abruptly snatched the cigar out of his mouth.

"That sounded like young Drake." His own big voice boomed out. "Does anybody know who's there with him?"

It was the dark-haired and well-spoken Enid who answered.

"Lady Jennifer, sir. And Mr. Richard Fleet And a lady from Fleet House; I don't, know her. And Dr. Laurier."

"So!" grunted H.M., and surged to his feet "That's a combination I don't like." And, with his white linen suit rucked up and the gold watch-chain swinging across his corporation, he lumbered towards the door and opened it

The heat of strained feelings was as palpable in the other room as its atmosphere of beer and old stone. But except for Martin Drake, it was now empty. Martin stood by the stove, his dark eyebrows drawn together and the green eyes enraged. H.M., after giving him a dismal look, lumbered over to peer out of the open door into the road.

Some distance to the left along the Dragon's Rest Jenny was detaching a bicycle from the ivy and steadfastly refusing to look round. A light-haired young man in a sports-coat had just opened the central gate in the wall round Fleet House. Sauntering, her head high, a girl in a grey silk frock walked in the same direction. Though there was no visible sign of Dr. Laurier, you could hear a car-motor start up close at hand.

It had been a swift, decisive exodus. The emotional echoes still swung like bells inside your head. H.M., the corners of his mouth turned down, turned and surveyed Martin.

"You been havin' a good time?" he demanded.

"Listen, sir," Martin began. He paused for a few seconds, and tried again more calmly. "Yesterday, before Jenny and I left Willaby's, we told you pretty well everything."

"You did, son. Well?"

"But you didn't hear about the execution shed. You didn't hear—" Again Martin stopped. "Women!" he added, with one savage and sweeping gesture.

Then, shouting something, he also plunged out through the open door.