The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

minutes while there would be nobody in the house. So Ogden said, ‘Oh God,’ and agreed to wait there until Mrs. H. turned up. Consequently, everything was settled smoothly.
    “Margaret went out early; so did Miss Corbett, leaving instructions written for Mrs. H. in case she should need ’em. Lucy, Edith, Ogden, and I had a light dinner about eight o’clock. Miles had sent down word that he didn’t want anything to eat, and wouldn’t have anything; he was in one of his touchy moods. He consented, though, to have a glass of warm milk. After dinner, when we were all going upstairs to dress, Lucy carried it up on a tray. Here’s one thing I have good cause to remember: Edith overtook her on the landing, and said, ‘You don’t even know where things are in your own house. That’s the sour milk you’ve got.’ But they both had a taste of it, and it was good.”
    Stevens, listening to Mark’s deliberate voice, had no difficulty in calling up that scene at Despard Park, on the landing of the oak staircase under the big window. There was a big portrait on the wall, and underfoot an Indian rug as heavy as a bath mat, and in the embrasure of the window a telephone-table. Why, Stevens wondered, did his mind keep running on telephone-tables? He could imagine Lucy, very brisk and pleasant, with her black hair parted on one side, her suspicion of freckles; the “good sort on a party.” He could imagine Edith, taller, brown-haired, still good-looking, but drying and growing faintly hollowed round the eyes; inclined to fussiness and to speak much of Good Taste. He could imagine them wrangling without rancor over a glass of milk (for there never was any friction in that family)—while satirical young Ogden stood in the background, his hands in his pockets. Ogden lacked Mark’s tensity and seriousness. He was a good sort on a party, as well. …
    But what obsessed Stevens’s mind was the question: Am I certain where Marie and I were on that same night? He knew the answer, though he did not like to know it. They had been here, at the cottage in Crispen. It was not usual for them to come down from New York during the middle of the week. But he had to come down on business, to see the Rittenhouse Magazine people about serial rights. So he and Marie had spent the night here after driving from New York, and had gone back early in the morning: he had not learned of Miles’s death until two days later. And they had spent a quite ordinary evening at home, having no company in, and going to bed fairly early. Yes, they had gone to bed early, with all serene.
    He became aware that Mark was speaking again.
    “So, I repeat, the milk was good,” Mark continued, looking from one to the other of them. “Lucy carried it up, and knocked at Miles’s door. She was going to set it down on the table there—I’ve told you that usually he didn’t come to the door immediately—but this time he opened the door and took the tray himself. He was looking a whole lot better. He didn’thave quite so much of that misty look, as though he were searching for something and didn’t know quite what it was. (You never saw him, Part. Imagine a handsome oldish gent, going a little scrawny round the neck, with a grey moustache, and a high forehead.) That night he was even wearing a blue quilted dressing-gown of the old-fashioned sort, with a white collar and a scarf round his neck.
    “Edith said: ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right now? Remember, Miss Corbett is out, and nobody can hear your bell downstairs. If you want anything, you’ll have to get it for yourself. Can you do it? Wouldn’t it be better,’ she said, ‘if I left instructions for Mrs. Henderson to come up and sit in the hall after she gets back?’
    “Uncle Miles said: ‘Until two or three o’clock in the morning, my dear? Nonsense! You go along, and I shall be perfectly comfortable. I’ve beaten it now.’
    “Just then it happened that Joachim—Edith’s cat—who had been