The Crookshaven murder

Front matter

By Alexander Morrison

HERE is one of the most brilliant, baffling, and absorbing of recent mystery novels.

When Mrs. Bascom leaned over to shake her friend Gerard King by the shoulder, after the presentation of his amateur mystery play for the entertainment of the gay house party, she found that he had been murdered before their very eyes.

Contents

. Ezra MAKEs A PROFESSIONAL CALL . Mrs. Bascom Lays A GHOST . ROBBERY

. A LIE err Ss GONE!’

. Mrs. Bascom CAPITULATES . CONFLICTING WILLS

Chapter I Comedy

GERARD KING frowned at a folded slip of paper that lay on the floor at his side. It had fallen from his pocket when he pulled out a handkerchief. He stooped with an angry exclamation, retrieved and unfolded it, staring at some figures written across its face. His eyes slowly dilated; his ire changed to dread, as he peered about uneasily, glanced behind him into the shadows that encircled a desk light, the room’s only illumination.

_. With an effort he shrugged, touched a lighted match to the paper and watched it burn, scowling to see his fingers tremble as he tossed the ashes into a tray.

‘I’m a fool. A doddering old fool — afraid of his own shadow. Worse than one of the shrinking victims of blackmail in one of my own detective stories.’

His words were scornful, yet his rather gaunt face mirrored their literal sense rather than the bravado with which he had striven to utter them.

‘This must be only some clumsy joke — a coincidenece. — Yet some one sent that paper to me — has sent other, similar ones 5

His jaw sagged open and his mutter ceased as something moved in the darkness before him, a ghostly figure that floated toward him. But as it approached into the light, it took form, became a young woman in a white chiffon gown that drifted about her in a restless cloud. King relaxed with a faint sigh, studying her vivacious, piquant face.

‘Mr. King, what is it?’ Her animation faded abruptly to alarm as she looked into his eyes. ‘Something’s worrying you. I’ve noticed that look on your face several times lately. What does it mean?’

The smile that had fled from her face seemed to leap across into his, wiping away its fear.

‘Nonsense, my dear Miss Hawley. You’ve no right to impute such dire notions to an old man’s reflections.’

‘Old man — tosh,’ she cut in indignantly. ‘But I know you're worried. Tell me what it is— let me help you as you’ve so often helped me.’

‘All right, Sylvia, forget your imaginative foolishness, and you can — by making my little amateur mystery play a success.’

‘Oh, I’m primed to do my share, Mr. King — or Uncle, pro tem.’ She smiled as she made this reference to her assigned rdéle in the entertainment he had planned so carefully for the amusement of his week-end house-party. ‘Yet I’m sure you are bluffing me about this. Somehow even I feel “‘all of a jump,’ as Mrs. Bascom would say — nervous, for no apparent reason. I wish you’d tell me

‘That must be stage fright, Sylvia. — It’s almost time for my curtain speech of explanation to my guests, so 1 must hurry. Perhaps I'll tell you —

Comedy eae:

some other time. — Now, then, let’s see. Paper-

. knife is ready; red ink, in the drawer. The stage is set for the murder scene, I guess, and the props all in order. I’ll take one last look just to be sure.’

King disappeared into the darkness. A light flashed on with a click, and he strode over to a row of chairs placed at the farther end of the room. In one of these he seated himself and looked about swiftly.

It was a long room with walls of rough clapboards, ceiling of dusty rafters, and crude plank floor, covered by threadbare rugs. In reality it was a part of the hayloft of a barn, converted into a study, or ‘workshop,’ as he called it, where King spent a large part of his days writing detective stories that, started as a hobby, had superseded all other work.

Three French windows had been cut into the walls to give light and air. The one at the farther end of the room from him was uncurtained and slightly ajar; the other two — one on his left, one behind him — were covered with heavy portiéres which lapped over the casements, effectually excluding any light from outside. A desk, placed diagonally between the open window and the one on his left, together with two straight-backed chairs, completed the meager furnishings.

‘Just switch off all the lights except on the desk, will you, Miss Hawley?’ asked King from his seat. ‘Great! You can’t see a thing from here except the immediate area of the desk and a gray blur from the open window. Aside from these two spots, the room is pitch black. I couldn’t have picked a better night for my play. It’s so overcast, no light can seep in to reveal too many details.’

‘It'll be the darkest murder of the year!’ chuckled Sylvia.

‘I hope so,’ responded King. He tossed an old dressing-gown over the back of the desk chair, turned off the light, and led Sylvia away, discussing some final preparations still to be made.

A few minutes later, Sylvia returned to straighten up the desk and put a fresh blotter in the pad. Approaching almost noiselessly in the darkness, she hesitated just outside the door, thinking she had heard a board squeak under a footstep in the room. But when she called out —‘Who’s there?’ —a faint creak was her only answer, so she hurried in and switched on the light. The room was empty.

Sylvia was not a timid or imaginative woman normally, yet, as she changed the blotter, she looked up twice, unable to throw off the feeling that some one had been, or still was, in the room. Her task quickly completed, she did not stop to investigate further, plunging the room into darkness and hastening away, trying not to hear a sound from behind her that might have been a person breathing or moving lightly, stealthily.

When she reached the brightly lighted living-room of the house itself, Gerard King was ensconced before the fireplace, addressing his guests in a hearty voice.

‘— And I doubt every last one of you. All this talk about the ease of solving a mystery once you find the clues is the theorizing of amateurs. Clues, so-called, may be twisted any number of ways. Asa writer of detective fiction, I consider myself an authority on the matter and challenge your sleuthing powers.

‘Now here’s a practical test for you. We’ll act out a play, a murder scene — let you watch and hear everything except who actually does the deed, then see who is clever enough to deduce the truth. I'll guarantee to provide sufficient tangible clues that, when rightly interpreted, will prove the murderer’s guilt. Asa spur, I’ll give a prize to the one who actually proves— not merely guesses, mind you — who the guilty one is.’

A clamor of applause greeted his words, but he held up his hand for silence.

‘Of course you must observe certain conditions. You must not interrupt the play nor move from your seats during it. You, Basil and Ruel, will play the villains, I’ll be the victim. And we must have a heroine too. Miss Hawley shall do that rdle. — Now, then, after the play is over, I shall remain ‘‘dead”’ until my murderer has been discovered. You can do as you please then, make deductions and find clues — which you will discover in the room itself; but you must not touch or disturb anything that might prove vital evidence. That clear? — Then come along to my workshop. We'll make that the scene of the crime.’

When the guests trooped up the narrow, dark stairs to the loft, King, who refused to have any lights turned on, was in the lead. Beside him walked a slender, erect little woman who was speaking crisply.

‘You can put it any way you please, Gerard King, but making a play and entertainment out of death is fool

‘Foolish? Of course, but what is any impromptu entertainment at a house-party if not foolish?’

‘Impromptu?’ she echoed with a shrewd sniff. ‘It’s all a hoax of yours — concocted well ahead of time, or I miss my guess. You brought it about entirely too cleverly for an impromptu stunt.’

‘Right — as usual, Mrs. B., but I defy you to solve the mystery when you witness it, just the same!’

‘Oh, you'll probably bungle it enough times to make that easy,’ she gibed. ‘You just watch me.’

They had no time for further conversation as King left his guests to fumble into their places in the darkness.

Mrs. Bascom picked out a prominent chair in the front row, tucked her feet neatly under it, and stoically endured being bumped and prodded rather than relinquish her seat. She had not thoroughly approved of this idea of acting out a murder — it seemed vaguely wrong, like tempting Providence; yet, since King intended to carry it through, Mrs. Bascom intended to miss no detail of it!

When the confusion and murmur of voices had somewhat abated, a light at the farther end of the room flashed on, and Mrs. Bascom leaned forward — though she would have stoutly denied any feeling of interest or excitement then. At his desk sat King, his dressing-gown loosely tied about his waist, revealing a paper sticking out of his vest pocket. By squinting, Mrs. Bascom made out the words printed on its outer fold — ‘Last Will and Testament’ — before he withdrew it to read its contents. He was smiling as he did this, but the expression changed abruptly to consternation, it seemed to Mrs. Bascom. He frowned, seized the sheet as if to tear it, then shrugged and obviously shook off this mood of surprise.

The incident passed so quickly that most of the guests accepted it as a bit of clever acting, but Mrs. Bascom checked off a point on her finger which she bent down to her palm. That was not all acting, she commented mentally. At the very outset, something had gone wrong, some mistake had been made and he was trying to conceal it. Nor was it an ordinary one to have called forth such an expression of surprise, almost of — well, dread, for lack of a better term, thought Mrs. Bascom. Yet evidently he had decided to overlook it and go on with the play. She wondered

Her speculations were interrupted by a low, scratching sound like pebbles thrown against glass. King half turned toward the French window that stood ajar, and called out gruffly, ‘Come in.’

It flew open with a crash and Major, his ecstatic puppy, bounded into the room, only to stop short, bracing himself clumsily on all four paws at the burst of laughter from the guests behind Mrs. Bascom. His expressive tail drooped, one ear cocked up, and his head tipped quizzically. Then he hesitatingly sat up to beg, as if it were the only thing to do under the circumstances! A whispered pleading and insistent snapping of fingers from outside the window were hardly necessary to inform Mrs. Bascom that this actor, though effective, was usurping another’s role. She bent a second finger with a chuckle, wondering if she would have hands enough for all the mistakes that seemed predestined to occur.

Reluctantly the dog dropped to his feet again and g The Crookshaven Murder obeyed the summons from without, at which the expected actor made his anticlimacticentrance. It was Basil Stacey, wearing a long yellow slicker and carrying a slouch hat in his hand. His was a jolly, likable face, yet to Mrs. Bascom the concentrated light seemed to bring out the weakness of his jaw and lack of strong character.

‘Beastly sort of a night to set a man on a crosscountry hike,’ he began at once as he advanced to the desk. ‘Of all the toe-stubbing, shin-barking darkness I ever stumbled through °

‘It was necessary,’ interrupted King, overdoing the severity of his tone. ‘No one knows you came or shall see you go, understand?’

A bark of remonstrance from outside smothered his answer.

The dialogue and acting that followed were decidedly unimpressive to Mrs. Bascom. Both men were upset, almost too overcome with mirth to carry out their rdles, much less make them effective. King demanded some undefined papers; Basil declined to give them up. An argument was clearly intended to follow, but Basil cut it short, unable to play his part longer. With a sound that he tried to pass off as a sob of emotion, he threw down a packet of papers on the desk, kicked aside the chair by which he had been standing, and stumbled toward the window. When he had passed out of the immediate area of the light so that his expression could no longer be seen, he paused to shake his fist menacingly, then disappeared into the darkness. But the point of the scene had been hopelessly spoiled.

Mrs. Bascom gave an audible ‘Hump!’ which she hoped would reach King’s ears, then fixed her eyes on his face as he thumbed the papers in gloating silence before muttering, ‘I must put them into the safe.’ He crossed the room, passing before the dim oblong of light that defined the window, stooped down to fumble in the shadow beyond it, swung open the door to the safe she knew stood against the wall, and thrust in the papers.

Back again in his chair, he took up the will, drumming with his fingers as he read it.

A footstep sounded from the window, and another figure materialized, stepping inside and advancing slowly toward the desk.

‘Well, back again? Changed your mind about letting me have ’em?’ sneered King without turning his head.

‘Pardon me, sir. May I have a word with you?’

‘Oh, Ruel Moore. Well, I’m busy, but I’ll listen if you make it brief. Need another loan, I suppose?’

King’s greeting seemed to confuse Ruel. He stood stiffly by the side of the chair, and Mrs. Bascom relaxed as if in anticipation of another scene about to miscarry. Ruel, typical gentleman farmer in overalls and corduroy jacket, was too literal, too matter-of-fact for such fooling.

‘No, Mr. King,’ the latter answered as dramatically ashe could. ‘I’ve come to pay back what I’ve borrowed — with interest in full.’

King grunted, received the paper Ruel extended and glanced at it. ‘The check is correct. — How did you do it? Some one die and leave you a fortune?’

‘Pigs!’ answered Ruel laconically. ‘If you’ll give me a receipt ,

He waited, manifestly ill at ease while the other scribbled on a paper. This he thrust into his pocket without a glance.

‘Mr. King, there’s another matter.’

‘What, more pigs?’

‘No, that is, you see, it’s — it’s not that — er — gender.’

‘Oh, you mean sows — lady pigs?’

‘Yes, the — er — ladies — your niece, to be exact.’ 3 3

The guests behind Mrs. Bascom laughed, hissed and applauded this sally, but she suspected his embarrassment was due more to stage fright or diffidence than deliberate cleverness of acting. At their clamor, he stiffened, his jaw protruding with determination, his hesitancy vanishing.

“Young man, am I to assume you are proposing marriage to me?’

‘Yes — that is, not to you, but to your niece. She’s already accepted me and we intend ‘

‘Intend, do you? — Let me get this straight. Ruel Moore, farmer, borrows money from Gerard King, feeds it to his hogs, and, through luck, gets it back again. He pays up his obligations, then announces his intentions of marrying his benefactor’s wealthy niece, thereby clinching for himself — and his hogs —a future income.—And if she were penniless, what then?’ |

‘Sylvia is, for all I know. Nothing would alter my intentions, for that matter.’

Some one near Mrs. Bascom interrupted sotto voce, “You see, my dear, his intentions are honorable!’ but King paid*no attention to this remark, launching

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Comedy II into a tirade against the pseudo-lover, the ‘brawny hero all aquiver to carry off his romantic — and wealthy — heroine.’ His anger was well simulated even though his bombastic words overdid the effect he tried to create. Ruel remained silent.

‘Damn you, get out!’ roared King in a final burst. ‘My niece shall never marry a man with a piggery for a home. Sylvia shall marry when I choose and whom I choose, understand? — Now get out before I throw you out.’

‘I go, sir, but I shall return.’

King sprang to his feet. ‘If it is the last thing I do, it will be to prevent such a marriage. Let me find you so much as looking at Sylvia again, and I'll Wait. Though I’ve made a will here leaving everything I possess to her, before I sleep to-night I’ll add a codicil cutting her off without a cent if she marries you. Then we shall see how pressing our swain becomes!’

“We shall see,’ echoed Ruel as he stalked toward the window.

Mrs. Bascom led the applause heartily. In her estimation, Ruel had been a most natural actor after all, and her shrewd mind was already at work surmising which of these men would prove to be the murderer, as one was obviously cast for that rdle. }

Meanwhile King scowled and sat down, muttering, ‘The insolence of him. Sheer bravado Why, he — Sylvia

“Yes, Uncle,’ answered a voice from the neighborhood of the door. ‘You want me?’

Mrs. Bascom recognized Sylvia Hawley’s accent, watched the grace of her silhouette as it passed across the gray of the window and into the spot light of the desk.

‘I do, Sylvia. Come here,’ replied King sternly.

Even Mrs. Bascom was surprised at the transformation in King’s secretary. Gone was her severe business dress and manner, the air of efficiency and briskness. She was animated, provocatively lovely.

‘Something wrong, Uncle?’

‘Decidedly so.— Ruel Moore has just been here.’

“To pay back his debt? I shouldn’t think that would distress you.’

‘You know what else transpired.’

‘Perhaps I could guess. — But it was nothing “‘decidedly wrong,’”’ I’m sure.’ Her averted eyes and hurried words attested to her skill as an actress.

‘It was ridiculous — utterly impossible — preposterous!’

‘Ridiculous? Not — not our love, Uncle.’

‘Puppy love is always absurd.’ The comparison was not a fortunate one, and King hurried on. ‘As to this

‘This is not — what you just called it!’

‘Words — quibbling. Listen to me, Sylvia. You _ shall not spoil your life by a hasty marriage toacom- | mon farmer. You are too fine for that. — No, let me finish.— When I brought you here to act as my secretary, I had no other thought than kindness toward an orphaned relative. But you have changed all that.

‘Now you have become a daughter to me. Why, only to-day I made you heiress to my wealth. And as my niece — daughter, rather — you shall not throw yourself away for a whim, a romantic passion.

You have scarcely a nodding acquaintance with life, and there are others, real men, more worthy of

‘Social dummies, you mean! No, Uncle, I’ve seen that sort of successes — men birthmarked with a dollar sign who have never faced an issue in their lives. I’ve had to fight for a living, and I want aman who can do the same, one whom I can help. Ruel is that sort of man.’

‘Nonsense — a yokel. I know the world better than you do. You leave such matters to me.’

‘The world, yes — but not my love!’.

‘Look here, Sylvia, enough of this parrying. I forbid you to speak of that man again, absolutely forbid yyou to have anything to do with him, do you hear? I am your guardian, and while you remain here, you shall obey me — for your own good.’

‘Very well. While I am here, I shall obey.’

‘Quite right.’

Without further reply, she walked away and left as she had come.

While the guests cheered this bit of the drama, Mrs. Bascom sat tense. A vague movement from the window had riveted her attention. It was a movement so slow and indistinct that she scarcely could be sure it was not her own imagination. She had rather scoffed at the speeches and acting thus far, but there was something arresting, pulse-quickening about this furtive shadow that sent a shiver of expectancy down her erect spine.

King stared after his pseudo- -niece as if in doubt as to the meaning of her last words, took a step and called her name. When she did not answer or return, he shrugged and settled back in his chair. But Mrs.

Bascom was oblivious to all this. The shadow had taken outline against the window, became a man, peering stealthily into the room, though his features were, of course, indistinguishable.

In spite of Mrs. Bascom’s scorn at the idea of the play, now that she sensed the approach of the climax — the murder scene — she became excited, clasping her hands tightly, thus wiping out all the errors she had started to count, and wetting her thin lips in the darkness. Something made her uneasy, ‘creepy’ she would have described the feeling. The enacting of a murder, of death by violence, had not appealed to her as an appropriate subject for amusement, but it was more than a mere sense of indelicacy now. She was acutely nervous

‘Stop being so skittish, Ellen Bascom,’ she admonished herself. ‘It’s nothing but your own imagination — all worked up just because it’s dark and sort of spooky.’

This seemed to calm her for a while and she watched keenly for some clue to the identity of the silent intruder and the meaning of his actions.

Meanwhile, King sat gazing into the light in thought, then blinked and abruptly snapped off the switch. The room became pitch black, except for that shadow against the window where a man waited patiently.

A match flared up as King lighted a cigarette. Its tip made a glowing point of light as he puffed a few times, then tossed it into an ash tray on his desk. The whistling sound of his breath became more pronounced and regular. He was supposedly asleep.

Then the man at the window moved, tiptoed into the room, halting at each step to listen and peer into the darkness toward the desk. He did not turn his head enough for his face to be seen in profile, however, and it might have been either Ruel or Basil for all Mrs. Bascom could tell.

At last he passed out of line with the dim light of the window, became invisible. She strained to trace his movements, but in vain. She heard him shuffle toward the desk. There was a soft scraping, perhaps when his fingers fumbled over the desk or blotter. Mrs. Bascom thought she heard a rustle, then a swish as from a quick, sudden movement of an arm. The gasping sigh that followed was convincing. She shuddered as King’s stertorous breathing abruptly ceased.

A thud announced the falling of a body against the desk. Something metal clattered to the floor and she caught her breath sharply to stifle an exclamation. It all seemed so vividly real.

Out of the obscurity a voice whispered tentatively, ‘Uncle.’ When there was no reply, a woman’s figure glided from the doorway into the oblong of light, advanced toward the safe and stooped down before it. Mrs. Bascom recognized this was Sylvia.

The knobs twirled and clicked, the door swung open. A sheet of paper appeared in her silhouetted hand, and she held it close to her eyes as if to read it in the half light. Satisfied with her scrutiny, she tore it into tiny bits which she scattered on the floor, then chuckled, and slipped away through the door as she had come.

Silence — broken by a deep sigh like the exhaling of a breath held almost to the bursting point. A cautious fumbling, the click of a ring or finger nail as it rapped against wood, then a shuffling of footsteps, and the man appeared abruptly before the window. He paused to wipe his fingers meticulously on a handkerchief which he withdrew from his pocket. This done, he produced a pair of gloves and slowly drew them on his hands, just as there was a second sharp sigh and movement from the direction of the desk.

To this latter sound, the actor paid no attention, yet it had a curious effect on Mrs. Bascom. She held her breath, peered toward the desk, and half arose to her feet. King’s first death sigh in the play had been gruesomely realistic; this one seemed unnatural, out of keeping with the action. There was no definite reason for her feeling, yet she became stifled, oppressed. It was too much. She must relieve her tenseness, cry out, or

She sank back, flushing.

‘You skittish old fool— as emotional as a school girl! Stop making a scene of yourself,’ she whispered, forcing her eyes to the man kneeling before the safe to listen for the fall of the tumblers in the combination.

At length his efforts succeeded and the door swung part-way open. But he did not reach in, instead became rigid, listening intently.

Somewhere outside the room a board squeaked under the pressure of a foot. A woman’s voice -hummed a tune, then a chair scraped along the floor. A typewriter clicked as a paper was inserted into the carriage, the keys tapped out a brief sentence, then the chair scratched again as if the woman had stood up. There followed a smothered exclamation, a curious thump, dying away in a series of low, bumping jerks as when some bulky object is dragged across the floor.

The thief sprang to his feet and leaped toward the window, stepped across its sill and vanished. But his hands were empty, Mrs. Bascom noted.

She sat listening, still tense. After a brief pause, two men’s voices came from a distance and the clatter of feet upon an uncarpeted stairway. They stumbled in the darkness as they neared the door. A hand fumbled along the wall, a switch clicked, and the room was flooded with blinding light.

Involuntarily, as she blinked at the sudden illumination, Mrs. Bascom turned first to look at the motionless figure, fallen forward on the desk. But under this light, her unnatural fears vanished. After all, it was only a play!

With a smile, she turned to Ruel and Basil who had just entered the room.

Chapter II Tragedy

KING’s guests jumped to their feet, moving toward Basil and Ruel and all talking at once.

‘Of all the ham actors I ever saw

‘The trained dog act was quite human

‘My dear, if he doesn’t move this minute to prove he isn’t dead, I think I shall scream!’

‘Come on, let’s lynch the murderer!’

‘All right, but who is he?’ Basil laughingly challenged this last speaker.

His question precipitated a chorus of shouts, some crying ‘Ruel,’ others ‘Basil,’ and trying to make the reason for their conclusions heard above the din.

It was a cosmopolitan gathering of men and women, ranging, as King had remarked earlier in the evening to his secretary, ‘From youth, almost to senility and back again.’ The former might best be typified by Mrs. Tenney, vivacious and sophisticate from the tips of her smart pumps to the remarks that gushed from her carmined lips; the latter by Mrs. Bascom or ponderous Judge Brant, who said nothing, but smiled with a tolerant, superior air.

The hubbub continued as they milled about Basil until he held up both hands in a plea for silence.

‘For the love of crime, you’re making enough noise to wake the dead there, but you haven't a scrap of evidence on which to base your judgments. How about searching for the clues first?’

b

Tragedy IQ

“May we question the suspects, you and Ruel?’ asked some one.

‘Certainly not. We’d only deny our guilt, and besides you’re supposed to know all and more than a detective would when called upon the scene. Haven’t you just seen the murder committed?’

‘Insinuating I have cat’s eyes?’ laughed Mrs. Tenney.

Basil ignored the remark.

‘Now remember your instructions, and obey them as the last words of a dying man— Ruel, the papers!’

The latter distributed to each of the guests a pencil and a sort of handbill on which was drawn a plan of the room with a red ink ‘X’ to mark the position of the body, as in a newspaper diagram. : Below this were tabulated spaces to be filled in with the name of the murderer, list of clues found, deductive reasoning, and such details, ending with a line for the signature of the person submitting it.

When these had been received, they all began to scurry about the room, utterly disregarding most of the rules that had been imposed by King, moving the few furnishings and looking in corners and under the rugs as if a clue might be found like a lost jewel or elusive collar button. The curtains over the windows were jerked aside until they hung askew; they jostled one another in laughing eagerness, ran in and out of the open window looking for footprints — and discovering their own! Only the realistically crimson-daubed paper-cutter on the floor and the motionless figure crouching over the stained blotter escaped their onslaught.