The Skeleton in the Clock

gone, like a dim sort of prank we remember that might have raised trouble in boyhood. His brain's most rational, admittedly; and if s tipped over the edge with hatred for Martin Drake, who's under his charm and thinks he's the best feller in the world.'

Martin's feelings, in retrospect, had more of an inward shudder than can be rendered here.

The coppers are investigatin' that old, dim prank of twenty years ago? Well! What does Ricky Fleet care? They can't do anything. For I’ll tell you this much:”

'Only three other people, who protected him, ever knew he killed his father and how he killed his father. The first was his mother. The second was old Dr. Pierre Laurier, with the beard, who (we know) cherished a romantic passion for Cicely Fleet The third was Miss Upton, who told lies by the bucket to save him when the tow-headed boy came babblin' to her with fear.

'Now, twenty years later, Dr. Laurier was dead. So was Miss Upton — see Masters's list of witnesses — and couldn't retract any lie for the boy's alibi And one more fetchin' point: Ricky Fleet never knew anything about that skeleton in the clock, what it was or what it meant

'But shortly after he'd hared away from that explosive argument at the Dragon, and hurried back home, he did begin to get shocks.

'Watch his behaviour now!

'There was something wrong with his mother. Something seriously wrong. Ricky Fleet was worried. He knew it couldn't have been caused by any casual reference made to a twenty-. year-old death by Stannard…'

Thank you,' Stannard intervened gravely. As he sat on the sofa-arm, bent a little forward, Stannard's black little glittering eyes were absorbed in the story.

'What upset his mother? When young Fleet hurried home, and followed her partway up the stairs (Drake and Ruth Callice saw that scene), all she'd say was that there was something he'd got to learn soon; and that she'd just put In a telephone-call for her now-closest friend, Sophie Brayle. But we can guess what was wrong with Cicely Fleet.”

'It was the sight of that ruddy great skeleton-clock being carried into the door of the pub just opposite. I'd sent it on ahead of Masters and me, by the carriage-people. Masters and I stopped at a couple of pubs in Brayle and didn't get there till late afternoon. Aunt Cicely must 'a' thought the secret was on the point of coming out”

'But what about Me?”

'I was dragged into Fleet House, along with Sophie there, by Ricky himself. I was shanghai'd, I was, and shoved into the library with the rest of you people. And Ricky Fleet had just before that got another shock.”

'He'd recognized, or half-recognized, Stannard as being the man standing at the upstairs study window. It jumped at him out of the past: Stannard was the bloke who looked down, when he came round the edge of the terrace that day, and he saw his father lyin' with a smashed head under the tapestry-cloth.”

'But let's take the events in their order! In that library, first off I had a bit of a dog-fight with Sophie. At least she gave confirmation to my notion (remember?) that Arthur Puckston might 'a' written the anonymous postcards about the pink flash and the skeleton-clock.

'Whereupon in tripped Aunt Cicely, at her artificial archest and most charmin', to carry away Sophie for a private talk. And there occurred something that was embarrassin' to the point of the horrible.'

During all this Lady Brayle might not have been in the room, might not have existed. She sat over by one open window, staring blankly ahead of her, an untasted glass of sherry on the window-sill. She did not seem arrogant or even friendly: only like one who had been lost and still gropes.

'Do you remember that incident Sophie?' H.M. called softly.

'Yes.' The stiff lips writhed as the grey-white head slowly turned. 'I remember.' 'What was said?'

‘I made some mention of a blade, a sword, which I wished I could have brought back from Willaby's as a present There— there was real horror in Cicely's eyes. She blurted out, 'But you must never…' Then Cicely stopped and turned it off with some reference to Dr. Laurier. What she meant I imagine, was, 'You must never bring a sharp blade into this house?''

That's right,' agreed H.M. 'And then (hey) she took you upstairs and told you the whole truth?'

They spoke to each outer across the length of a room, Lady Brayle with her head turned sideways, trying to control the writhing of her mouth; but they spoke without incongruity.

'Poor Cicely,' Lady Brayle went on, 'could hardly speak for sobbing. About the skeleton in, the clock. About that half-mad, or altogether mad, boy who—' She stopped. I do not suppose, Henry, you now have much respect for my word of honour?'

That's where you're wrong, Sophie.'

'Never, until that moment,' the lips writhed vehemently, 'had I the least suspicion, let alone knowledge, of the situation. To think I would allow Jennifer, after that, to be married to…' She floundered. 'My late husband, who commanded the Grenadier Guards, once said that a person who allowed…'

'Yes. Sure.-But Aunt Cicely would have allowed the marriage, hey?'

'Oh, Henry!' The other made an impatient gesture. Again she struggled to free herself from reticence. 'You're hardly a person to understand mothers, especially, people like Cicely. That is—'

'Her son was 'cured' of this. It had been only childish aberration. Nothing like it at Cambridge or later. The 'poor boy' had been misunderstood. Cicely wished to believe it so; and it was so. She could not even bear to have him know about the skeleton. She ought to tell him; but why remind the boy? The skeleton must be removed. I am Cicely's friend. I could not let her down.'

Lady Brayle turned her head away, and looked out of the window. And now Martin remembered her look, on that Saturday evening, when she left Cicely Fleet and walked downstairs past Martin at the telephone table.

'I knew I was right,' cried Jenny. 'She was shielding somebody!'

'God help me,' Martin said uncontrollably, 'I thought that business of stealing the skeleton was funny.'

'Not to me,' said Lady Brayle without turning round.

'Looky here,' howled H.M., bringing his fist down on the arm of the chair. 'Who's tellin' this story? I'd got you people in the library early that Saturday evenin', after Sophie and Aunt Cicely had gone. Ricky Fleet then 'denounced' Stannard as the one who'd been lookin' at him from the study window. Before that he said one thing that gave me a shiver. Can you spot what it was?'

Stannard lifted his shoulders in negation. 'Somebody asked him what he'd seen up there at the window. And it was, 'The face of somebody I’d never met. The face of a total stranger. Looking down like God.' 'Looking down like God.

'Cor! There's your boy-murderer's conscience, leaping out of him and speaking through the mouth of a grown man. That's what he remembered best! That's what he thought all those years ago! And,' H.M. looked at Stannard, 'he rounded on you pretty savagely.'

'I noticed,' Stannard pursed his lips, 'he was nervous and truculent while you were questioning me. He would have been a difficult witness to handle.. And all, you say, because of this repressed—?'

'Ho-ho!' rumbled H.M. 'Not so's you could notice it It was because you said at least one thing that could help to denounce him.'

'I did?' Stannard asked in surprise.

'You were in the study when you heard Fleet shout and fall on the flagstones? Right! You then went to the window and stood there looking down? Right!

'But you further said you stood there five minutes before the governess and the boy came round the edge of the house to j the terrace. In Ricky Fleet's story of it which he gave me I almost immediately afterwards when we climbed up to the roof, he said he and Miss Upton were just startin' from the back to the front of the house when they heard the shout.

What sort of frozen-snail-with-lumbago takes five minutes to walk from back to front? 'His memory might be bad? Sure! Your memory too? Of course! But there was a certain way of checking it Across the way, at the pub, there were six witnesses on the roof though

only two on the gables. All agreed in their first testimony.' H.M picked up the blue folder, and stabbed at it with his dead cigar.

'After Fleet's body struck the terrace, Dr. Pierre Laurier ran out of the house. The local policeman walked up the path to the terrace, picked up the field-glasses from the grass, and went in: presumably to phone the police- station. Dr. Laurier called to Lady (the Dowager Lady) Brayle, who brought a cloth out of the house. Dr. Laurier put the cloth over Fleet's head and shoulders. Cicely Fleet then came out and started to faint but they talked to her 'a