Read Online Scandal at High Chimneys by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online Page A

Celia,” he saw in his imagination so clear a picture of Kate Damon’s face (and, to a lesser degree, of Celia’s too) that he began to understand the terrifying implications of that statement, “Mr. Damon is dead.” He stopped feeling and began to think.
    Burbage, a face of consternation between sandy whiskers, blurted out words of which he heard only the last few.
    “No, it was not an accident,” said Clive. “Stay a moment! I have remembered something. Come with me.”
    Turning the key and locking the study door, he removed the key and put it in his waistcoat pocket. Then he almost raced to the front of the hall.
    When he left the drawing-room at six-fifteen, both Kate and Celia had been there. Now the room was empty.
    Its thick carpet and curtains seemed a swathing for evil thoughts. The lamp, its shade painted in blue forget-me-nots against red and white, still stood on the circular centre-table. The curtain of different-coloured bead-strings, which shrouded the archway entrance to the library from this direction, glimmered as Clive took up the lamp.
    He parted the curtain and held the lamp high inside the library. That was empty too.
    “Sir!” protested Burbage behind him.
    “Look there,” said Clive, indicating a closed door just opposite at the far end. “That leads into the study, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Still another door, towards Clive’s left now, opened from the library out into the hall.
    “Mr. Damon was shot through the head. The—the person who did it was the same man who frightened your daughter on the stairs last night. He wasn’t a figment of Penelope’s imagination. She didn’t dream him.”
    Burbage said nothing, though his tongue moistened his lips.
    “The murderer opened that door to the study, there, ” Clive nodded opposite, “and fired a shot with what I think was Mr. Damon’s own pistol. Then he locked me in and got away. He must have locked the hall-door beforehand. If you heard no shot—or did you?”
    “No, sir. No! ”
    “Well! That was because he fired just at the beginning of a peal of thunder. Has the coachman returned from driving Mrs. Damon to Reading? No? When he does, I am afraid we can’t avoid sending him back for the police. In the meantime, you might fetch that doctor: Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland. He can’t help us, but we had better have him.”
    “Sir, which of all these things do you want me to do first?”
    They were yelling at each other; even Burbage was yelling. Clive strode back and banged down the lamp on the centre-table.
    “First of all, make sure the house is locked up. Then fetch the doctor.”
    Following Burbage out into the hall, he stopped and looked up. Kate Damon, a little out of breath, stood halfway down the heavy oak staircase, her fingers on the banister-rail.
    Kate stood mainly in shadow, but he saw the shock in her eyes and the quick lift of her bodice in the dull-yellow gown with black trimmings. She gripped the banister-rail, swaying; for a second Clive thought she might faint. Then she ran down the stairs and across to him.
    “You heard, did you not?” Clive asked bitterly. “You heard what I was saying to Burbage?”
    “Yes. I heard. My father has been—”
    She could not go on.
    This was no longer the impatient, rebellious Kate, lashing out at things her intelligence would not accept. That aspect had disappeared. This was a warm-hearted and impulsive girl, perhaps a little too romantic-minded in her own way, and above all things physically desirable.
    ‘Lock up your thoughts, fool!’ Clive said to himself.
    If in a manuscript he had so much as used the words ‘physically desirable,’ he could imagine what would be said by Mr. Wills of All the Year Round; not to mention the awesome Charles Dickens, its editor. You were not to think of such matters, let alone write of them. A man might keep a mistress or wallow among easy conquests; that could be tacitly ignored, so long as he did not intrude it into the sacred