The White Priory Murders: A Mystery for Christmas by Carter Dickson

Author:Carter Dickson [Dickson, Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Winter mystery, traditional mystery, locked-room mystery, impossible crime, golden age mystery, Christmas murder mystery, Sir Henry Merrivale
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2022-10-09T23:00:00+00:00

‌XII

H.M. Argues the Case

A clock in the passage was striking eleven-thirty when they reached the library.

‘—full reports,’ Inspector Potter was intoning. ‘Statement of police surgeon, post-mortem order for you to sign. Here’s plaster of Paris casts of two sets of footprints, Mr Bohun’s and Mr Bennett’s: only tracks before we got there. Plan showing exact line of footprints, measured to scale. I thought that was wise; it’s beginning to snow again. Here’s the fingerprint reports. Photographs will be developed and sent back this afternoon. The body’s still there, but it’s been moved up on the bed.’

Potter was laying out articles in an orderly line on the table under the yellow-shaded lamps. It had grown darker outside, and dead tendrils of vine whipped the windows as the wind rose. There was a growling in the chimney, a draught in which one high sheet of flame cracked like thorns and flicked out spurts of fiery embers. Masters, his heavy face showing more wrinkles under the lamp, sat at the table with an open notebook. Maurice Bohun, looking interested and pleased with his bright unwinking eyes fixed on a corner of the fireplace, also sat at the table. Over at one side, in silhouette against the firelight like two Dutch dolls, stood Thompson and a grey-haired sturdy woman in black. Bennett could not see H.M. But there was a big mass of shadow in the far corner of the fireplace, where he thought he could make out a gleam of enormous glasses and a pair of white socks.

‘Thanks, Potter,’ said Masters. ‘Here’s your notebook back. I’ve been reading Sir Henry all the testimony we’ve accumulated to date. And now… any instructions, sir?’

‘Uh?’

Masters moved a little to one side, so that some faint light penetrated towards the corner of the fireplace. Now Bennett could see H.M. start a little and open his eyes. The corners of his broad mouth were turned down, as though he were smelling a bad breakfast-egg, and he was ruffling the two tufts of hair on either side of his big bald head.

‘Any instructions, sir?’

‘I wasn’t asleep, damn you,’ said H.M. He put a dead pipe into his mouth and puffed at it. He added querulously: ‘I was concentratin’. Now don’t rush me! Don’t rush me, will you? You fire a lot of undigested stuff at me and expect me to make sense of it straight off. Also, I see I got to go out to that pavilion before it snows again; and that’s more work. I don’t like this a little bit, Masters. It’s ugly—devilish ugly. What were you askin’? Oh. Reports. No, save ’em for a minute until I get something straight. Stand over a little bit, son,’ he gestured to Potter, ‘and lemme talk to Mr and Mrs Thompson.’

There was something in H.M.’s presence, despite his efforts to glare, which seemed to put the Thompsons at their ease.

‘Howdy, folks,’ said H.M., lifting his pipe. ‘I’ve heard what you told the chief inspector, and I’m goin’ to use both of you as a check on the others in this place.

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