The Eight of Swords

'How do you know?'

'Because,' said J. R. equably, 'I was talking to Depping at that time… Don't gape at me, confound it!' He unscrewed his pipe and blew down the stem. 'Now you'll call it suspicious behavior, won't you? Bah.

Man pays a perfectly ordinary visit, and there you are.'

Morgan got up. He said: 'Holy Saint Patrick! And the suspicious behavior had to come from you…. Did you tell this to Murch?'

'No. Why should I? But now they've brought on all this funny business…'

'Excuse me, sir,' said Hugh, 'but did you make any footprints?'

J. R. used some bad language. He said it was a matter of indifference to him whether he had made any footprints, and also that he didn't know, and what was this all about anyway?

'I mean,' Hugh persisted, 'did you go to see him in Morley Standish's shoes?'

J. R. dwelt fancifully on this theme. He pointed out the infrequency of his necessity for borrowing a pair of shoes in order to pay business calls on his associates. Then Morgan remembered the footprint of which he and Murch had taken a plaster cast; and Hugh explained its origin.

'But the valet,' he went on, 'didn't mention any other visit last night, and I only wondered whether you might have gone up by the balcony door…'

'I did go up by the balcony door,' returned Burke. 'Ah, I see, I see. You're itching to turn inquisitor on me; I can smell it in the air. There's no good damned reason why I should tell it, but I will' He craned his neck aggressively. 'I went up because I saw his light, and that's the only room he ever uses. Why shouldn't I go up by the balcony door? Much easier.'

There was a strained and polite silence. Morgan coughed. No better spur could have been applied.

'I'd just as soon break down your theories by telling you. Humph. All this business about keys—! Listen. I went to see Depping last night just after dinner; it was about a quarter to nine, and just getting dark. And I’ll give Gideon Fell another tip, for what it's worth. Depping was leaving England.

'Don't ask me where or why. What I saw him about was business, and that doesn't concern you. But I'd be willing to swear he wasn't expecting anybody at all that night… I went up on the balcony and looked through the glass in the upper part of the door; you can see through the white squares in the chequering. He was standing by the desk with his coat, shirt, and collar off, and rummaging in the desk drawer. I couldn't see what he had in his hand. Still, I’ll admit it may have been a wig.'

Morgan whisded.

'Pleases you, don't it,' said the other, 'when somebody really gets into a situation like that? Tell you frankly, it didn't please me when I heard about the murder this morning… Humph. I was telling you. When I tapped on the door, Depping almost jumped out of his shoes. He'd got a wild-eyed look about him. Wondered if he'd been drinkin' again. He said, 'Who's there?' Would he have looked like that if he'd been expecting somebody eh?'

'Well…'

'Well, nothing. He took a key out of his pocket — yes, out of his pocket — and came over and unlocked the door. He smelled of whisky. He said, 'I can't see you tonight.' I said, This is important, and I don't want you going off drinking again.' We talked for a while, but every minute or so he'd look at his watch; and he didn't ask me to sit down. Finally I said, 'All right, go to the devil,' and walked out… He locked the door after me, and put the key in his pocket. That's all I know. It may be still there.'

'It wasn't there,' said Morgan, 'when Murch searched his clothes. And it wasn't in any of the suits in his wardrobe. I wonder…'

They sat quiet for many minutes. It was Patricia who finally suggested that they ought to be returning to The Grange for dinner; and, when she put her hand on Hugh's arm as she rose, he thought that it trembled.

CHAPTER XI The Poltergeist and the Red Notebook

There was no regular dinner that night at The Grange. When they hurried up to the house, well after seven o'clock, they received the news that Mr. Theseus Langdon, the dead man's solicitor, had arrived shortly before, accompanied by Miss Elizabeth Depping, who had taken the afternoon plane from Paris. The former was closeted in the library with Dr. Fell and Inspector Murch; the latter was indisposed, and kept to her room — probably, Patricia said with candor, less from her father's death than from her usual airsickness. But this indisposition was highly romanticized by Colonel Standish's good lady, who sailed about in a tempest of activity and set the house into an uproar. She presided at Betty Depping's bedside much as she might have presided at a ladies' club meeting; Patricia joined her, and there would seem to have been a row of some sort. Anyhow, only cold refreshments were set out on a sideboard in the dining-room, and disconsolate guests wandered about eating surreptitious sandwiches.

Of the celebrated Maw Standish, Hugh caught only a brief glimpse. She stalked downstairs to bid him welcome — a handsome woman, five-feet-ten in her lowest-heeled shoes, with a mass of ash-blonde hair carried like a war banner, and a rather hard but determinedly pleasant face. She told him firmly that he would like The Grange. She stabbed a finger at several of the portraits in the main hall, and reeled off the names of their artists. She tapped the elaborately carved frame of a mirror in the great alcove where the staircase stood, and impressively said, 'Grinling Gibbons!' Donovan said, 'Ah!' Next she enumerated the distinguished people who had visited the house, including Cromwell, Judge Jeffreys, and Queen Anne. Cromwell, it seemed, had left behind a pair of boots, and Jeffreys had smashed a piece out of the panelling; but Queen Anne seemed to have retired in good order. She fixed him with a stern, faintly smiling look, as though she wondered if he were worthy of this heritage; then she said that the patient required her attention, and marched up the staircase.

The Grange, he discovered, was a pleasant house: cool and sleepy, with its big rooms built on three sides of a rectangle. It had been modernized. The electric lights, set in wall brackets or depending from very high ceilings, had a rather naked look; but the only touch of antiquity — and a spurious one at that — was in the stone-flagged floor of the main hall, its great fireplace of white sandstone, and red-painted walls full of non-family portraits in gilt frames. Behind the main hall was a funereal dining-room, outside whose bay windows grew the largest ilex tree he had ever seen; and here J. R. Burke sat drinking beer in stolid thoughtfulness.

Wandering off into the west wing, Hugh found a drawing-room which some ancestor had decorated in opulent and almost pleasant bad taste. The walls were a panorama of Venetian scenes, with everybody leaning out of gondolas at perilous angles; gold-leaf mirrors; cabinets overlaid in china ornaments; and a chandelier like a glass castle. From across a hallway he could hear a mutter of voices behind the door to the library. A tribunal seemed to be going on there. As he watched, the door opened, and a butler came out; he could see momentarily a long room full of cigar smoke, and Dr. Fell making notes at a table.

The drawing-room windows were open on a stone-flagged terrace, where a cigarette was winking in the gloom. Hugh went outside. The terrace looked down over shelving gardens towards the rear, colorless under the white-and-purple dusk; and a few mullioned windows were alight in the pile of the west wing. Against the stone balustrade Morley Standish leaned and stared at the windows. He peered round as he heard a footstep.

'Who—? Oh, hullo,' he said, and resumed his scrutiny.

Hugh lit a cigarette and said: 'What's been going on? Your sister and I were down at Morgan's. Have they found-?'

'That's what I'd like to know,' said Morley. 'Seems to me they're devilish secretive. I don't seem to count for anything. Mother says I oughtn't to see Betty… Miss Depping, you know; she's here. I don't know what they're doing. They're had every servant on the carpet over there in the library. God knows what's going on.'

He flung away his cigarette, hunched himself up, and brooded over the balustrade. 'Beautiful night, too,' he added irrelevantly. ' 'Where were you on the night of the murder?'' 'I?'

'They've been asking us all that — just as a matter of form. Beginning with the servants to make it look better. Where would we be? Where is there to go after dark? We were all tucked up in our beds. I wish I could explain those confounded shoes.'

'Did you ask about them?'