The Skeleton in the Clock

John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) The Skeleton in the Clock

Chapter 1

The policeman, passing through Moreston Square at three o'clock in the morning, saw lights still burning in the windows of the top-floor flat at 16. And he smiled to himself. That would be Miss Ruth Callice's flat. The chimes from St. Jude's Church rang the hour, rippling through the little eighteenth-century square and lapping it in security. Police-Constable Davis glanced up at a quarter-moon over the rooftops. No more, he thought, of one thing. These narrow red-brick houses, these white-painted window-frames and pane-joinings, wouldn't burst or burn amid a nightmare of noise. At least, P. C. Davis amended with the skepticism of all his tribe, not just yet.

In front of the door of number 16 stood a heavy shiny car, a new one to rouse envy. Again he looked up at the lighted windows, lulling against rooftop and sky.

Miss Callice was — nice. And he didn't mean it in any smug or smarmy way, either. Young, good-looking, but (still his mind would find no better word) nice. There were people up there, the men in black ties or white, the women in high-cut or low-cut dresses, sometimes as late as three in the morning, like this. But never any disturbance; seldom any drunks. They went in talking; they came out talking. What did they find to talk about?

At that moment, in the living-room on the top floor, John Stannard, K. C, was employing his most measured tones.

'Let's suppose, Ruth, your theory is correct. In that case, what would be the most dangerously haunted place in the world?’

Miss Callice, on the sofa under silver-shaded wall-lamps, made a protest.

'I didn't say it was my theory,' she pointed out, and looked at her two companions. 'It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in—'

'Say it,' Stannard urged dryly. 'Don't be afraid of a word; or you'll never get near the truth. Say it. 'The supernatural.' '

It. would have been difficult to tell Ruth Callice's age, though she could not have been more than twenty- eight. And P. C. Davis's definition of niceness would be hard to analyze even by closer observers.

Frankness? Honesty? True; but these qualities, when too strongly observable, are suspect because they may be assumed. It may have been that she completely lacked coquetry; never thought of it, never noticed herself; though she was undeniably pretty and her rounded body, in the oyster-coloured evening-gown, was far from unnoticeable as she sat coiled on the sofa.

The light, smoke-misted, glistened on her light-brown hair. She rested one elbow on the arm of the sofa, her arm straight up, fingers turning over a cigarette that had gone out. When she changed her position, the light altered the complexion of her face and shoulders from pale to pink to pale. Her straight-forward eyes, dark-brown, regarded Stannard deprecatingly.

'I only said—' she began again.

'Let me put the case to you.'

'Oh, my lord of the law!'

'My dear Ruth, it's not necessary to mock at me.'

Ruth Callice was genuinely astonished. She sat up. 'Stan! I never thought any such thing!'

'Never mind,' chuckled John Stannard, K. C.

He had one of those heavy voices, roughened into what for him was unjustly called a whisky-voice, which can make any statement sound abrupt. Thick-bodied, not overly tall, he picked up his cigar and settled back in the easy-chair. Out of a roundish face, roughened like his voice, the brilliant black eyes peered sardonically. Though he had reddened during those remarks with Ruth, this may have been a matter of the drinks.

'A man dies,' Stannard went on, after a gust of cigar-smoke.' 'His soul is heavy with evil; with spiritual poison; call it what you like. He may die a natural death; more probably, he commits suicide or is killed. In any case—'

Here Stannard made a chopping motion with his hand.

During this time neither Ruth Callice nor John Stannard had glanced at the third person in the gill-and-silver room: a young man who sat some distance away from them, his head down and his hands on his knees, near the empty fireplace and the grand piano. At the barrister's last words he did look up.

'Your dead man,' continued Stannard, 'in a spiritual sense is chained there, He's what the books call earthbound. Is that correct?'

Ruth gave a quick little nod of absorbed attention. 'Yes. That, you see,' she threw out her hands, 'is what would make some of these houses so horribly dangerous, if it were true. It wouldn't be like an ordinary haunting. It would be like… like a man-eating tiger.'

'Then why don't your psychical researchers do the obvious thing?’

The obvious thing? I don't follow you.'

With the cigar Stannard gestured round at the bookshelves.

'You tell me,' he retorted, 'that at Something-Old-Hall there's a psychic strangler, and at Somewhere-Low- Grange there's an earthbound force that can crush you to death. It may be so; I can't say. But I can tell you a far better place to look for evidence. If what you say is true, what would be the most dangerously haunted place on earth?'

'Well?'

'The execution shed of any prison,' replied Stannard.

He paused, letting the image sink in. Then he got up and went to the coffee-table beside the sofa; His black hair, showing no grey and brushed to a nicety round his head, gleamed in contrast to the reddish, roughened face. The white shirtfront bulged and crackled. Picking up the decanter, he poured a very little whisky into his glass.

'But that's — horrible!' Ruth cried.

'No doubt,' Stannard agreed dryly. 'All the same, think of it for a moment'

The sofa-syphon hissed.

'Your human tiger, at the very high point of his rage and desperation, is dragged to the execution shed and has his neck cracked on a rope.' The strong, faintly husky voice pointed it vividly. 'If anybody would leave an earth- bound soul in that place, he would.

'Believe me,' Stannard added abruptly, 'I've defended too many murderers not to know that many of them are decent honest fellows. There-but-for-the-grace-of-God, and all the rest of it When you hear the foreman of the jury say 'not guilty,' you feel half sick with relief. You pat yourself on the back for the rest of the week.'

Ruth's eyes were fixed on his face.

'I've heard,' she said, 'that only two persons you defended on a murder charge were ever… well, executed.'

'Much exaggerated, my dear. Much!' Stannard chuckled; then his expression changed. 'But I've seen the other kind of murderer too. That's why I don't scoff at spiritual evil.'

He lifted his glass, drained its contents, and put it down.

'By God, it is true to say they don't know the difference between right and wrong. Not at that time. Mostly they go to the rope with indifference; outwardly, that is. But not inside. They're boiling crazy. Society hasn’t understood them. Society has persecuted them. They want to tear…' Stannard spread out his hands. 'That's why I say, Ruth, that a place like Pentonville or Wandsworth must be deadly. Hasn’t any psychical researcher ever thought of spending a night in the execution shed?' Ruth lifted her shoulders.

'I dent know,' she confessed. 'I never thought of it' And she turned towards the young man who was sitting near the fireplace and the grand piano. 'What's your opinion, Martin?'

Martin Drake looked up. Like Stannard, he was dark. Unlike Stannard, he was tall. But his cat-green eyes, now absent minded, had a sardonic quality which sometimes matched Stannard's. He looked thin and he looked