The Skeleton in the Clock

stamp-in father, who wallops his son (as the son told me) like blazes. The pretty, well-meanin' mother, who loves everybody and hopes George will get a baronetcy; and there mustn't be any scandal. Lemme give you one reminder: at Priory Hill, in November of 1925, a child was murdered and mutilated. Immediately afterwards George Fleet suddenly tore down his collection of rapiers and daggers from the wall, and gave 'em away. At that time young Fleet was in his eleventh year — Why didn't they dare send him to school? You answer.'

A cold shock of horror spread through his listeners and lay inside them like lead, although two of them at least had been expecting it.

'I'm afraid, y’know,' H-M. shook his head, 'that in a way I did Masters in the eye. I warned him about it at the pub on Saturday afternoon. That little bit about Fleet gettin' rid of his weapons was in the original dossier I read in London. It bothered me worst of all. I rang up a friend of mine at the Evening News, and asked him if anything unpleasant had happened in this district about November, 1925. Cor! I got a answer.

'Masters learned this later, and told you. I knew beforehand. That was why I told young Drake, at Willaby's on Friday, to keep an eye out for real trouble. Because.. well now! You'll see.

'H.M.!' Ruth Callice intervened softly. 'I've been a friend of poor Cicely for years. I knew she was hiding some kind of secret; but I never guessed it was an awful thing like this. And yet when I first visited there — the impression wore off later — I thought of that house as something like a prison.'

(So, thought Martin, you did get the feeling too! Like mine, it wore off).

'And now,' said H.M., with a sort of malevolent patience, 'I want you to see everything happen from Saturday to Monday. You!' He pointed his cigar, long gone out, at Martin. 'You went harin' down to Berkshire on Saturday.

'You sent a message to Ricky Fleet, who was at Brayle Manor, that an enemy was waitin' for him at the Dragon. Your gal and Sophie were there when he got the message. I've heard this from a very particular source.”

'Didn't it strike you as a bit odd that he should come over there so quickly? The proper reply to you should have been, 'I'm waiting at your service here at Brayle Manor; came and see me.' Above all the sweet fireworks of heaven, didn't it seem odd that your gal, should have come flyin' over there on a bicycle, as frightened as blazes, to anticipate him?'

Martin looked at Jenny, who had turned her head away.

'It did seem funny, yes. But Jenny said she had to know what happened between us.'

'Sure. And that was true, as far as it went Now: presto-chango: watch! In the doorway of the second bar- parlour at his most charmin', stands Richard Fleet grown up. At his prime. Intoxicated by his war-success; but modest not showin' it Assured by this dotin' mother there's not a woman alive who can resist him. Quite believing it with conceit runnin’ in his veins like blood. Down he sits, takes out his pipe, and asks what's up.”

'And you give it to him between the eyes that you love your Jenny, she loves you, and you mean to get married.' H.M. drew a deep breath.

'Son,' he went on, 'do you remember how Ricky Fleet sat there for a few seconds, with his leg over the chair-arm: not movin', just lookin', without any expression in his eyes: creepy as creepy?'

'Lord knows I do!' Martin answered. “I started to shout out something about being sorry, and I could hear what seemed like the skeleton-clock ticking in the other room…'

'If he'd had a weapon then,' HM. observed very quietly, 'you'd have been a dead man.'

'You mean… about Jenny and Ricky and their engagement… he really did—?’

'Oh, son! He'd fallen head over heels for her. He just couldn't believe, in his vanity, that my woman could prefer another feller to himself. Burn it all, when you were at Willaby's the day before, why didn't you take the word of the one person who did know? I mean the gal herself?'.

Jenny, her face flushed, still looked away from Martin; but she gripped his hand as she spoke.

'I told you Ricky was in love with me,' she said. 'That sort of thing — well, you always know. I'm afraid, at Willaby's, I showed I was frightened. I kept telling you about his good qualities and’—and looking at you and wondering if you'd see anything wrong. Once, if you remember, I started to talk about Ricky's father's death; but it stuck in my throat.'

'Yes. Yes, it did.'

'When you mentioned Sir Henry Merrivale, I didn't know what on earth might happen. I'd always heard of Sir Henry as a real sleuth: a strong, silent, unemotional man…'

'Hem!' said H.M., endeavouring to look modest. 'Thank-,'ee, my wench.'

'Jenny, listen!' Martin insisted. 'Ricky Fleet: you didn't know he was a…?'

Jenny regarded him with horror. 'Oh, God, no! It was only a feeling of something horribly wrong; of how he might turn on you. I couldn't talk about it He was our friend. I liked him; but I couldn't endure his touch. As I told you afterwards — if I happened to be wrong, it would only be sordidly stupid.'

'We will now,' said H.M., 'return to Richard Fleet in the bar-parlour, when he'd just got that staggerer between the eyes. How he did pull himself together! How he forced the blood in his face, and that look of relief and Thank God.' His charm poured all over the place.' H.M. looked at Martin, 'But from that moment, in his eyes, you were a dead duck.'

(Much, so very much, became comprehensible to Martin now.)

'What did he say?' pursued H.M. 'Oh, he was ail bounces and smiles! He never in the world could have married the gal, and he was awful relieved. He'd grown up with her! Cor! He gave the impression they'd lived in each other's pockets for about twenty years; and he'd as soon have thought of marrying a sister. 'But what was the truth?

“The gal there,'' H.M. pointed at Jenny, 'told me on Sunday. She'd been at school from the time she was ten. Her holidays were spent with one or the other of her parents abroad. Then came the War and the Wrens. In other words, he couldn't possibly have seen much of the gal for about thirteen years. And what happens then, hey? She comes back at the end of the war.”

'And he sees her. He goes straight overboard. Presently, as they say, a marriage is arranged.”

'But Ricky Fleet (in the bar-parlour with Drake) is all dewy-eyed innocence. He's mad-keen on a gal named Susan Harwood. She was his newest, ripest conquest. (Of course, son, you heard his philosophy of marriage; you knew he saw himself as a boundin’ faun, all Pan-pipes and breathin's in the grove). Oh, he was goin' to marry Susan! — Then in walked our Jenny.'

H.M. shook his head. Again Martin saw the dingy bar-parlour.

'She's just been having a blazing row with Ruth Callice here, across the road. — Don't interrupt me, dammit, either of you! Before she came in, Ricky Fleet made a dramatic business of what was he goin' to say to Jenny?' Son, do you remember what he did?'

Martin nodded.

'I thought he was acting a little. He looked at himself in a wall-mirror, to see if his posture was right He was preening a good deal.'

'Uh-huh. And Ricky Fleet's passion for looking at himself in mirrors, at exactly the time when nobody except a vanity-swollen feller would, is going to figure in this business again.

'Anyway, in came Jenny. Very soon she asked you would you please, please take her driving that night and not go to the prison. That wasn't merely because she was jealous of Ruth, or..

'Will you two gals for the love of Esau shut up? Both of you? And lemme get on with this? All right: now put a sock in it”

'Ahem. Well. If Ricky Fleet did happen to hate Drake, something pretty unpleasant might happen to Drake at the prison. You gather the wench had naturally been listenin' to most of the talk between you and Fleet even though the windows were closed? All wenches do.

'But most of all she thought she could get these nasty crazy suspicions out of her mind — at least, she might — if she brought up the death of George Fleet and made Ricky Fleet tell about it Then she could be sure her suspicions were all moonshine.

“He had begun tellin' about it, when they were interrupted first by Dr. Laurier and then by Ruth Callice. There was a rumpus; I came in at the end of it But just think of Ricky Fleet as he talks about his old man's death!”

'I’ll take my oath, here and now, he'd practically forgotten about it. It was swept into the dustbin, lost and