John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

• Название: The Reader Is Warned
• Автор: John Carr
• Жанр: Прочая старинная литература

Another of Carr's mysteries with a strong gothic touch, this one involving a psychic. 

_________________

---

'But what did Pennik actually say? Did he say (at the time) that he would do the killing? Not a bit of it! Did anybody understand him to mean that he would do the killing? No! You'd been playin' at mind-reading. So Hilary Keen immediately asked, "Do you mean that it's in someone's mind to kill Mr Constable within a very short time?" And Pennik, smilin' affirmatively, answers, "Perhaps."

'Now each of you took that proposition, and interpreted it each accordin' to his own nature. None of you thought of Pennik as the possible murderer: in fact, it startled the daylights out of you when later Pennik coolly announced what he had really meant. What you all thought he meant was that somebody else in that house had conceived a plan to Mil Constable; and that Pennik had read the guilty thought. - Is that a fair statement, son ?'

Sanders nodded.

'It is,' he admitted, and thought again of the overheated conservatory.

'Well, and what was the effect of it on your two hosts? What was the effect on Sam and Mina Constable? Just reflect on that. Constable, as pure a hypochondriac as I ever heard of, first thought of a seizure and then instantly thought of murder before murder had even been suggested. Back he came to the same old idea that he'd been talkin' about for so long: that his youngish, attractive wife might murder him. It was three-fourths a joke, of course. He didn't really and seriously believe she ever would. But he was the sort who likes to try out that kind of thing on a wife, three-fourths as a joke but one-fourth as a warning not to try any games. -Everything he said was sprinkled and peppered with references to that. He even indicated how she might kill him. "Mina will be the death of me yet, dropping things." Arid more directly, "Will she kill me and make it look like an accident, like that case in the papers?" Hah! That was a side-thrust they both understood, because the case was in Mina's scrap-book.

'So - while he looked accusingly at her - what do you imagine his wife was thinkin'? She'd heard this before. She was an imaginative woman, ill and unstrung from the backwash of malaria, jumping at every shadow. She really did worship that old blister. So it was, "Poor old Sam thinks I might kill him, and of course I never would; but suppose I should, without meaning to?" At that time she believed in Pennik with fervency. And up sprang this prophecy, which she could only take as applyin' to her. The hobgoblin was: "If I should kill him, they would hang me." It was a pretty bad thought.'

'And Pennik?'

'Pennik was responsible for it all.

'It's Pennik's case. He's the god from the machine. His personality was a whole heap more powerful than you thought. He took a group of ordinary, bickerin' human people; and before he got through with you he had each of you thinking exactly the thoughts you shouldn't. He had you, young feller, thinking you didn't actually care a rap for Marcia Blystone. He had Hilary Keen pondering very unpleasant thoughts about her stepmother. He had Sam Constable half afraid his wife would kill him, and Mina Constable terrorized for fear she might. The emotional pressure was stoked up too high. Somethin' was bound to blow up. And it did.

'At seven-thirty the Constables retire to their rooms to dress. That woman, with her shaky hands and her frightened imagination, has got to draw Samuel's bath and put the studs in his shirt. He's already hinted, downstairs, how she might kill him even while dressin' him. Suppose she did ? Suppose she had a subconscious (cor, how fond and afraid of that word we all are!), a subconscious wish to kill him? That's the worst thought of all.

'Now, did Samuel immediately step in and get his bath as soon as they went to their room? Later she said he did; she said he'd finished his bath, and was dressed to such an extent that she was tyin' up his shoes, just before he hopped down to investigate the smashing of the lamp in the other room at a. quarter to eight. But she was lyin', as we proved. At a quarter to eight he was wearin' a dressing-gown and slippers, and nothing else. That was because he hadn't yet had his bath. He'd spent so much time jawin' away to her - and making her more nervous - that he was only just ready to step into the tub when the lamp-smash happened. He went to see what it was; he returned, and he got into the tub between a quarter to eight and eight o'clock.

'Ah, now we're sort of approaching!

'Samuel was always complainin' of the cold. He couldn't get the house warm enough. In fact, the last thing he groused about to high heaven, before your party broke up at seven-thirty, was the coldness of the house. Well, what's he done to take care of this mania of his in a room where people really do feel the cold: I mean the bathroom?'

H. M. looked malevolently at Sanders.

'You, son. On a couple of later occasions you saw in the bathroom a portable electric heater. A two-bar, or two-unit, heater. In fact, on one occasion you fell bang over the thing, didn't you? Yet it's very rummy - I repeat: very rummy - that, though you saw a heater there on Saturday and Sunday, you didn't see one there on Friday night when you looked into the bathroom only a little while after Sam Constable's death.'

It was true.

Sanders had in his mind only too clear a picture of that damp-smelling bathroom, when he had gone into it to search in the medicine-cabinet for an opiate to administer to Mina Constable. He had noted every object in the bathroom on Friday night; and there had been no heater there. But later it obtruded itself on the notice: a bronze-painted affair over which both he and Mina had at different times stumbled.

'And,' he said suddenly, 'the bathroom still smelt damp -' 'Sure,' growled H. M. 'Because Samuel Hobart didn't get his bath until it was past quarter to eight. Burn me, I can see him and I can hear him!

'He climbed in. He squawked to high heaven about draughts and the cold. There was his wife flutterin' around him as he made his valet flutter. And he was king and emperor. And automatically and without thinkin', just as he'd done a thousand times to his valet, he bawled to her to put the portable heater closer to the bath. And the subconscious fear or wish got hold of her, just as she was afraid it would. And she automatically picked it up in those hands of hers that can't; hold a glass. And all of a sudden, as she lifted it, they both thought of the same thing. She slipped; and the electric heater dropped into the bath.

'That's all, gents.

'Certain death, that's all.'

H. M. drew a deep breath.

'Y'see, son, here in town the London County Council have quite rightly got almost morbid rules about electric fittings in bathrooms. They won't even allow an electric-light switch inside the door. But to pick up a two-bar heater and move it about near bath-water b just plain suicidal lunacy.

'If it falls into the water, the thing short-circuits with a bang. The full weight of the house current goes through the best conductor of electricity known: water: and through the body of a victim sittin' in it up to his shoulders. It won't leave a mark or burn on the body, because the area's top distributed. It won't leave any sign at all, except dilated eye-pupils. There were two cases of it recently, at Bristol; and poor old Mina Constable knew it only too well, because she had the press-cutting in her scrap-book. And the voltage don't matter; 210 kills.

'She was the death of him, dropping things. And the very thing she was most awful cussed scared of was the thing that really happened.

'Well, what next? She stood there in the dark, with a wet-splashed bathroom and a dead husband. (No, don't interrupt me!) She had to find out if it was so. The lights had been put out when the fuse blew. But, as we found out, Fourways is on a system of what they call distributing fuses, two or three rooms to each fuse. The only lights that had gone out in the house were the lights in her room, in the bathroom, and in Samuel Hobart's room.

'There were a couple of candles standing on a chest-of-drawers in her husband's bedroom. She ran in, lit the candles, and brought 'em tearin' back to the bathroom to see what was what. But, in addition to droppin' wax on her sleeve, she also dropped two blobs of grease on the carpet. One was by the leg of the bed, and the other was by the door of the bathroom. - Remember, son? We were talkin' to her on Sunday afternoon, and she was standing in' the doorway of the bathroom ? I told you to look at the wax-stains, one by the bed and one beside where she was standing? Uh-huh. We gave her a bad time then, and I'm sorry as blazes; but that's how it happened.

'Well, her husband was dead.

'And they'd hang her now.

'You know what that woman's character was. She saw in her mind, in blazin' colours on vellum, the judge and the scaffold and herself on it. Pennik's hocus-pocus got hold of her imagination and swept it away. Nobody would believe it was an accident now. Samuel Hobart had practically said in front of witnesses that she'd kill him: "and make it look like an accident, like that case in the papers." She's even thought of it herself as a method of murder for a book; she was guilty. Oh, my eye!

'Standin' there in that bathroom with the candle held up, you know what she thought about. Little devil whistled to her and says, "Couldn't you pretend you didn't do it?" She says, "No, no, I loved him and I won't." "But you didn't mean to do it." "Never mind that." "You could,'' little devil says, "if you could get him out of that bath and not let on the bath had anything to do with it."

'It's simple enough. She was no-end fond of him; but she couldn't stand the thought of bein' arrested and hanged. She never thought faster or in more of a fever. Mina Shields, professionally, worked it out in two minutes. She once wrote a detective story (here, I say! Didn't young Chase comment on this?) where the murderer killed his victim in one place and then moved the body somewhere else and pretended the victim died there.' Sanders nodded gloomily.

'Yes,' he agreed. 'Chase did comment on it. It was my introduction to Mina Constable: he said he refused to believe it could be done.'

'I see. Ideas bein' in the air, hey? Well, her mind worked exactly along the same lines again: Move the body.

'It was easy enough to put the lights on again, unknown to anybody else. The fuse-box was in the cupboard in her bedroom. She shoved in a spare fuse, and put the candles back on the chest-of-drawers in the other room. The next part was pretty horrible for her, because she had to dress him. Gents, I saw her on Sunday - and I tell you that only the thought of the hangman kept her goin'. Keep in mind her later actions and you'll understand. It was easy enough to move him; he wasn't a heavy-weight and you noticed her strong wrists. I've seen little women handle dead-drunk men and undress 'em and put 'em to bed without trouble. What she did was the reverse. She had a good ten minutes to work in. The clothes were laid out, and the studs and links were in the shirt.

'What she thought would be the worst part was gettin' him out in the hall. She pulled him out there and propped him over that hand-rail, as though he'd fallen across it. The hand-rail held up his body with the weight supported on each side.

'But it wasn't the worst part of it.

'Not by a jugful!

'Gents,' said H. M., with a long, reflective, evil look at his two companions, 'next came those screams! Everybody who heard 'em was just about paralysed. I've heard they hardly sounded human. She stood in the door of her room and went on screamin' as though she'd gone mad; and she very nearly had. She wasn't acting. Oh no. After superhuman labour to avoid the hangman, she'd got a dead lump of clay out and poised over the rail. And, just as she was lookin' back at him before she closed the door, she saw him move.

Just note very carefully, young feller, that no independent witness ever saw Sam Constable actually standin' on his feet. You didn't; and you were out in that hall almost as soon as the woman started to scream. There was no sign of this "dancing and staggering" she invented to protect herself. You saw him saggin' across the rail, just as she had left him, with one of his hands on the newel-post. But you did see him move. - 'You saw his body twitch; and one of his hands go up in a little jerk - so - and the fingers start to twitch. He was inert across that rail, yet he managed to move his back and hand. The symptoms are pretty characteristic, hey? Yes.'

He turned to Masters. "The doc'll tell you, son, that there's only one form of death in which a man can be officially pronounced dead, and have his heart stop; and yet can show signs of life minutes afterwards. That's death from electric shock.’*

'It was known to happen in the old days of official execution by electricity in America, before they knew quite as much as they know now. When a feller gets only one shock, and that an accidental one in his own home, you can often get signs of life by givin' him artificial respiration. Mind now, Masters: I said signs of life. No artificial respiration ever invented can keep that heart beatin' for long. The victim's a goner if his heart's stopped to begin with. But you may get the same signs as Sanders here saw Constable make. And why? Because, all unknown to herself, Mina Constable had just been givin' him a very violent kind of artificial respiration by dressing him.

'At the end of that feverish work, when she pressed him forward on the hand-rail, she'd flogged just a flicker of life into him. A stir; a groan; not much more. But, by the blinkin' awful cussedness of things, Sanders here felt that

*‘ See Taylor's Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence on Electricity, vol. I, pp. 560-573.

flicker of life go out - and naturally thought it was the real time of death.

'Lord, who can blame him? Who'd suspect revival from electric shock in the case of a man who, by all the evidence and testimony, merely falls down and dies in his own hall? It was a kind of second death. It threw everything wrong regardin' the time and place and manner of death. It made us look straight in the wrong direction. I don't trust this young feller as a detective, but I do trust him as a doctor; and there's nobody alive who could have seen what had happened. It was cussedness and it was a part of the same inevitability. Finally, it nearly finished Mrs Constable.'

"Thank you,' said Sanders.

He was remembering Mina in her bedroom just after that death. Her stark bewilderment, and her rapid-beating pulse of physical exertion. Her words, 'But he's not really dead! He's not. I saw -' could be completed in a different way now. 'You would know. You're a doctor. You would know, wouldn't you?'

Yes; he could trace every turn of her feelings, the self-contempt she showed and the hesitation she had on the verge of blurting out everything then and there.

'And you'll also,' pursued H. M. dryly, 'trace without much difficulty the state of her feelings when, coolly and calmly, Pennik announces to everybody that he killed Samuel Hobart by Teleforce. It'll give you just a taint glimmerin' suspicion why she suddenly rounded on Pennik and screamed that he was a fraud and a crook. Here he was, gently savin' he'd eliminated a useless member of society, and bulletin’ up a great reputation on it: while she had only dead clay that she couldn't even nurse. The trouble was, she couldn't speak. She wanted him shown up more than anything in the world. She was so anxious to challenge his Teleforce that we couldn't do anything with her. But she couldn't speak.