The Skeleton in the Clock

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.

Chapter 17

It was nearly eleven before Martin finished his breakfast on Monday morning. When he turned in the night before, he had been too tired to bother with the sleeping-pill Dr. Laurier had left for him. He woke to a morning of soft breeze and gentle sun, so stimulated and refreshed that he felt ravenous for food. Certain instructions, which H.M. had made him promise to carry out overnight, now seemed nonsensical.

Martin sang in his bath. A harassed but punctilious Dr. Laurier, who arrived while he was shaving, changed the bandage on his forehead and told him that with luck the stitches would be out in no time.

Somebody had tried to kill him? But he had only to think of Jenny, and other matters for the moment seemed of no consequence. When he went downstairs, he met nobody in the cool house. In the dining-room he was served breakfast by a maid other than Phyllis; and, since Fleet House was supplied with great quantities of food from an unspecified source, he ate with appetite.

But it was the telephone he wanted. Emerging through a series of passages which brought him out opposite the staircase' at the back of the main hall, Martin at last heard sounds of life. Voices — apparently those of Aunt Cicely, Ricky, and H.M. himself — drifted down from the direction of the drawing-room.

Then the 'phone rang; and it was Jenny.

The first part of their conversation need not be recorded here. Doubtless Sir Henry Merrivale would have described it as mush, adding that Jenny and Martin seemed to have achieved the seemingly impossible feat of getting into an intimate embrace over a telephone. But there seemed to be a faintly odd note in Jenny's voice.

'You haven't forgotten,' he asked, 'that this is the day you and I are going to London?'

'We — we can't. Not yet, anyway. Tonight we might.'

A sense of impending disaster crept into him. 'Why not?'

'Martin,' breathed Jenny, 'why does your H.M. insist on persecuting my poor grandmother?'

(I knew it! By all cussedness and the ten finger-bones of Satan, I knew it!)

'But what's he doing to her now, Jenny? He's here! In the drawing-room!'

Martin, do you know where I am?' asked Jenny.

'What's that?'

'I'm under the main staircase, with a thick oak door closed so I can speak to you. Hold on a second, and I'll push the door open. Listen!'

Martin jumped. The sound which poured out at him, even over a telephone, made him yank the receiver away from his ear before putting it back to his ear again.

It sounded rather like Blackpool on August Bank Holiday. But-the crowd-noises were over-ridden by musk, in which Martin (too imaginatively, perhaps) thought he could detect one brass band, a panotrope with a bad needle, and the steam organ of a merry-go-round. High rose the strains of Waltzing Matilda, closely contested by Cherry-Ripe and The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

The strains were blotted away as Jenny closed the door.

'Did Grandmother,' she asked, 'tell you anything about a fair?'

'Well,' Martin searched his memory, 'she did say something about it, yes. I thought she meant some sort of rustic fair with a Maypole.'

'So did she,' Jenny answered in a weary voice. 'But it's the biggest travelling fair in the British Isles. They took half the night to set it up. You see, they — they sent Grandmother some sort of paper, six months ago. She said solicitors cost too much money, when she knew all the law anyway. And she signed it'

For a moment hope began to stir in Martin. After all, six months ago! It had been Grandmother's own fault H.M. couldn't have had anything to do with this! He said as much.

'Yes,' said Jenny. 'But have you met a Mr. Solomon MacDougall?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'He's the owner or the man who manages it or something. Anyway, H.M. met him when he was looking over the ground yesterday…'

'Oh, my God!'

'And H.M. pointed out something in the contract they didn't know themselves. They intended to use Rupert's Five-Acre, which would have been bad enough. But H.M. said wouldn't it be a wonderful attraction if they had lines of booths and stalls and freak-shows up the main drive to the front door? And that's not the worst, either. Have you ever ridden in a Ghost-Train?'

Martin had. But he wanted to let Jenny pour her heart out.

'It's a big place like a house, dark inside. You ride in a little railway through terrific screams and howls and screeches. Do you know where H.M. persuaded them to put the Ghost-Train?'

'No, my sweet'

'Under Grandmother's bedroom windows,' said Jenny.

“Er — yes. What I mean is: I see '

'On the roof of the Ghost-Train house,' said Jenny, 'there's a papier-mache skull on a pole. It's painted green. It turns round, and round. And, every time it turns round, it looks in the bedroom window and chatters two sets of teeth.'

'Jenny,' said Martin, 'wait just one minute. Hold the line and wait The culprit's here. I'll…'

With a shaking hand he put down the 'phone beside its cradle. To say that he did not know whether to laugh or swear is to understate a real conflict of mind: it boiled inside him, tearing him both ways. Grandmother Brayle was not due home until this afternoon. To watch her behaviour then would be worth much. On the other hand, H.M.'s craftiness seemed always to separate him from Jenny; and he was resolved to get Jenny away today.

At this point of both murderousness and mirth, he became conscious of the great man's voice from the direction of the drawing-room. It was now raised to a serious and oratorical pitch, holding his listeners.

H.M. said: 'What we got to remember, y'see, is the noble dignity of Curtius Merrivale. I wish I could paint you the picture of Charles the First sittin' in that noble Banqueting Hall, designed by Inigo Jones, with all his family gathered round just as you see it in the portraits. (Mind, I don't say these are the exact words; it's the idea.) And Charles the First would say, 'Sir Curtius, will you not favour us with some amusing conceit?'

'And Curtius Merrivale would get up, sweepin' off his plumed hat like this, and he'd say:

' There was a young girl from Bel Air, Who used to—''

'H.M.!' thundered Martin, with full power of lungs. It was enough to bring even H.M. to an abrupt stop. And Martin, torn between two feelings, could only sputter mentally.

'Did you,' he shouted down the hall, 'put a damn great Ghost-Train under Lady Brayle's bedroom?'

This question, whatever else may be said about it was at least arresting. It roused attention and curiosity. After short silence, there was movement.