Six Against the Yard Read online

  ‘I took the nicotine bottle from its place, and emptied the contents down his open mouth,’ writes the killer. ‘One dreadful swallow that swelled his throat, and he was gone. The horror of death glazed in his eyes, and I knew that he was dead.’

  The post-mortem will reveal that, in addition to the slow nicotine poisoning, which extended over a long period, there was also this final fatal dose. The experts will have no difficulty in discovering this and in saying, quite definitely, that it could not have been caused by smoking, however excessive.

  It will also be obvious that the dose was large enough to kill instantaneously. Now, according to the story told by the murderer and his wife, Major Scallion was alive when he was tied up on the floor. He was still secured when the body was discovered. So the poison could not have been self-administered.

  The murderer took his wife upstairs while Scallion was still unconscious. ‘I’ll go down and wait for the brute to come round and then I’ll give him a good talking to,’ he said. And his story—not only as he relates it to us, but as he told it to the police—makes it quite clear that he was downstairs for some considerable time while his wife was in her room.

  He thus had the opportunity to administer the poison. And the investigations into his past and Scallion’s, to which I have already referred, have revealed the motive of the murder.

  I can imagine his horror when, on the inquest being resumed, the coroner proceeds to put a series of questions which tells him that the truth is known. From statements made in the course of his narrative I should say that he is not a particularly convincing liar. Once he realises that the police have somehow uncovered his secret, he will either break down and tell the truth, or else he will stumble, contradict himself, be ‘caught out’ in manifest perjury. Either way, his fate will be sealed. In a few weeks’ time he will face judge and jury on the capital charge, and on the evidence only one verdict will be possible.

  The only point which the prosecution may find difficulty in establishing is how the nicotine was obtained. According to the killer he prepared it himself, and saw to it that no traces were left of his having done so. But apparatus is required to extract nicotine from tobacco leaves, and if this were found in his workshop, that would suggest the manner in which the poison had been secured.

  True, he might have disposed of the apparatus. But if it had been seen in his workshop, and had then disappeared, that very fact would tell against him.

  No, very definitely this is not a perfect murder. And the man who committed it is congratulating himself too soon.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  BLOOD SACRIFICE

  IF THINGS WENT ON AT THIS RATE, JOHN SCALES would be a very rich man. Already he was a man to be envied, as any ignoramus might guess who passed the King’s Theatre after eight o’clock. Old Florrie, who had sat for so many years on the corner with her little tray of matches, could have given more than a guess, for what she didn’t know about the King’s was hardly worth knowing. When she had ceased to adorn its boards (thanks to a dreadful accident with a careless match and some gauze draperies, that had left her with a scarred face and a withered arm) she had taken her stand near the theatre for old sake’s sake, and she watched over its fortunes, still, like a mother. She knew, none better, how much money it held when it was playing to capacity, what its salary list was like, how much of its earnings went in permanent charges, and what the author’s share of the box-office receipts was likely to amount to. Besides, everybody who went in or out by the stage door came and had a word with Florrie. She shared good times and bad at the King’s. She had lamented over lean days caused by slumps and talkie competition, shaken her head over perilous excursions into highbrow tragedy, waxed tearful and indignant over the disastrous period (now happily past) of the Scorer-Bitterby management, which had ended in a scandal, rejoiced when the energetic Mr. Garrick Drury, launching out into management after his tremendous triumph in the name-part of The Wistful Harlequin, had taken the old house over, reconditioned it inside and out (incidentally squeezing two more rows into the reconstructed pit), and voiced his optimistic determination to break the run of ill-luck; and since then she had watched its steady soaring into prosperity on the well-tried wings of old-fashioned adventure and romance.

  Mr. Garrick Drury (Somerset House knew him as Obadiah Potts, but he was none the less good-looking for that) was an actor-manager of the sort Florrie understood; he followed his calling in the good old way, building his successes about his own glamorous personality, talking no nonsense about new schools of dramatic thought, and paying only lip-service to ‘team-work.’ He had had the luck to embark on his managerial career at a moment when the public had grown tired of gloomy Slav tragedies of repressed husbands, and human documents about drink and diseases, and was (in its own incoherent way) clamouring for a good romantic story to cry about, with a romantic hero suffering torments of self-sacrifice through two and three-quarter acts and getting the girl in the last ten minutes. Mr. Drury (forty-two in the daylight, thirty-five in the lamplight and twenty-five or what you will in a blond wig and the spotlight) was well fitted by nature to acquire girls in this sacrificial manner, and had learnt the trick of so lacing nineteenth-century sentiment with twentieth-century nonchalance that the mixture went to the heads equally of Joan who worked in the office and Aunt Mabel up from the country.

  And since Mr. Drury, leaping nightly from his Rolls saloon with that nervous and youthful alacrity that had been his most engaging asset for the past twenty years, always had time to bestow at least a smile and a friendly word on old Florrie, he affected her head and heart as much as anybody else’s. Nobody was more delighted than Florrie to know that he had again found a winner in Bitter Laurel, now sweeping on to its hundredth performance. Night by night she saluted with a satisfied chuckle each board as it appeared: ‘Pit Full,’ ‘Gallery Full,’ ‘Dress Circle Full,’ ‘Upper Circle Full,’ ‘Stalls Full,’ ‘Standing Room Only,’ ‘House Full.’ Set to run for ever it was, and the faces that went in by the stage door looked merry and prosperous, as Florrie liked to see them.

  As for the young man who had provided the raw material out of which Mr. Drury had built up this glittering monument of success, if he wasn’t pleased, thought Florrie, he ought to be. Not that, in the ordinary way, one thought much about the author of a play—unless, of course, it was Shakespeare, who was different; compared with the cast, he was of small importance, and rarely seen. But Mr. Drury had one day arrived arm-in-arm with a sulky-looking and ill-dressed youth, whom he had introduced to Florrie, saying in his fine, generous way: ‘Here, John, you must know Florrie. She’s our mascot—we couldn’t get on without her. Florrie, this is Mr. Scales, whose new play’s going to make all our fortunes.’ Mr. Drury was never mistaken about plays; he had the golden touch. Certainly, in the last three months, Mr. Scales, though still sulky-looking, had become much better dressed.

  On this particular night—Saturday, April 15th, when Bitter Laurel was giving its ninety-sixth performance to a full house after a packed matinée—Mr. Scales and Mr. Drury arrived together, in evening dress and, Florrie noted with concern, rather late. Mr. Drury would have to hurry, and it was tiresome of Mr. Scales to detain him, as he did, by arguing and expostulating upon the threshold. Not that Mr. Drury seemed put out. He was smiling (his smile, one-sided and slightly elfin in quality, was famous), and at last he said, with his hand (Mr. Drury’s expressive hands were renowned) affectionately upon Mr. Scales’ shoulder, ‘Sorry, old boy, can’t stop now. Curtain must go up, you know. Come round and see me after the show—I’ll have those fellows there.’ Then he vanished, still smiling the elfin smile and waving the expressive hand; and Mr. Scales, after hesitating a moment, had turned away and came down past Florrie’s corner. He seemed to be still sulky and rather preoccupied, but, looking up, caught sight of Florrie and grinned at her. There was nothing elfin about Mr. Scales’ smile, but it improved his face very much.

  ‘Well, Florrie,’ said Mr. Scales,
‘we seem to be doing pretty well, financially speaking, don’t we?’

  Florrie eagerly agreed. ‘But there,’ she observed, ‘we’re getting used to that. Mr. Drury’s a wonderful man. It doesn’t matter what he’s in, they all come to see him. Of course,’ she added, remembering that this might not sound very kind, ‘he’s very clever at picking the right play.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr. Scales. ‘The play. I suppose the play has something to do with it. Not much, but something. Have you seen the play, Florrie?’

  Yes, indeed, Florrie had. Mr. Drury was so kind, he always remembered to give Florrie a pass early on in the run, even if the house was ever so full.

  ‘What did you think of it?’ inquired Mr. Scales.

  ‘I thought it was lovely,’ said Florrie. ‘I cried ever so. When he came back with only one arm and found his fiancée gone to the bad at a cocktail party—’

  ‘Just so,’ said Mr. Scales.

  ‘And the scene on the Embankment—lovely, I thought that was, when he rolls up his old army coat and says to the bobby: ‘I will rest on my laurels’—that was a beautiful curtain line you gave him there, Mr. Scales. And the way he put it over——’

  ‘Yes, rather,’ said Mr. Scales. ‘There’s nobody like Drury for putting over that kind of line.’

  ‘And when she came back to him and he wouldn’t have her any more and then Lady Sylvia took him up and fell in love with him——’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr. Scales. ‘You found that part moving?’

  ‘Romantic,’ said Florrie. ‘And the scene between the two girls—that was splendid. All worked-up, it made you feel. And then in the end, when he took the one he really loved after all——’

  ‘Sure-fire, isn’t it?’ said Mr. Scales. ‘Goes straight to the heart. I’m glad you think so, Florrie. Because, of course, quite apart from anything else, it’s very good box-office.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Florrie. ‘Your first play, isn’t it? You’re lucky to have it taken by Mr. Drury.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Scales, ‘I owe him a lot. Everybody says so, so it must be true. There are two fat gentlemen in astrachan coats coming along tonight to settle about the film rights. I’m a made man, Florrie, and that’s always pleasant, particularly after five or six years of living hand-to-mouth. No fun in not having enough to eat, is there?’

  ‘That there isn’t,’ said Florrie, who knew all about it. ‘I’m ever so glad your luck’s turned at last, dearie.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Scales. ‘Have something to drink the health of the play.’ He fumbled in his breastpocket. ‘Here you are. A green one and a brown one. Thirty bob. Thirty pieces of silver. Spend it on something you fancy, Florrie. It’s the price of blood.’

  ‘What a thing to say!’ exclaimed Florrie. ‘But you writing gentlemen will have a bit of a joke. And I know poor Mr. Milling, who wrote the book for Pussycat, Pussycat and The Lipstick Girl always used to say he sweated blood over every one of ’em.’

  A nice young gentleman, thought Florrie, as Mr. Scales passed on, but queer and, perhaps, a little bit difficult in his temper, for them that had to live with him. He had spoken very nicely about Mr. Drury, but there had been a moment when she had fancied that he was (as they said) registering sarcasm. And she didn’t quite like that joke about the thirty pieces of silver—that was New Testament, and New Testament (unlike Old) was blasphemous. It was like the difference between saying: ‘Oh, God!’ (which nobody minded) and ‘Oh, Christ!’ (which Florrie had never held with). Still, people said all kinds of things nowadays, and thirty bob was thirty bob; it was very kind of Mr. Scales.

  Mr. John Scales, slouching along Shaftesbury Avenue and wondering how he was going to put in the next three hours or so, encountered a friend just turning out of Wardour Street. The friend was a tall, thin young man, with a shabby overcoat and a face, under a dilapidated soft hat, like a hungry hawk’s. There was a girl with him.

  ‘Hullo, Molly!’ said Scales. ‘Hullo, Sheridan!’

  ‘Hullo!’ said Sheridan. ‘Look who’s here! The great man himself. London’s rising dramatist. Sweet Scales of Old Drury.’

  ‘Cut it out,’ said Scales.

  ‘Your show seems to be booming,’ went on Sheridan. ‘Congratulations. On the boom, I mean.’

  ‘God!’ said Scales, ‘have you seen it? I did send you tickets.’

  ‘You did—it was kind of you to think of us amid your busy life. We saw the show. In these bargain-basement days, you’ve managed to sell your soul in a pretty good market.’

  ‘See here, Sheridan—it wasn’t my fault. I’m just as sick as you are. Sicker. But like a fool I signed the contract without a controlling clause, and by the time Drury and his producer had finished mucking the script about——’

  ‘He didn’t sell himself,’ said the girl, ‘he was took advantage of, your worship.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Sheridan. ‘It was a good play—but he done her wrong. But,’ he added, glancing at Scales, ‘I take it you drink the champagne that she sends you. You’re looking prosperous.’

  ‘Well,’ said Scales, ‘what do you expect me to do? Return the cheque with thanks?’

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ said Sheridan. ‘It’s all right. Nobody’s grudging you your luck.’

  ‘It’s something, after all,’ said Scales defensively, ‘to get one’s foot in at all. One can’t always look a gift horse in the mouth.’

  ‘No,’ said Sheridan. ‘Good Lord, I know that. Only I’m afraid that you’ll find this thing hang round your neck a bit if you want to go back to your own line. You know what the public is—it likes to get what it expects. Once you’ve made a name for sob-stuff, you’re labelled for good or bad.’

  ‘I know. Hell. Can’t do anything about it, though. Come and have a drink.’

  But the others had an appointment to keep, and passed on their way. The encounter was typical. Damnation, thought Scales, savagely, turning in to the Criterion bar, wasn’t it enough to have had your decent play cut about and turned into the sort of thing that made you retch to listen to it, without your friends supposing you had acquiesced in the mutilation for the sake of making money?

  He had been a little worried when he knew that George Philpotts (kindly, officious George, who always knew everybody) had sent Bitter Laurel to Drury. The very last management he himself would have selected; but also the very last management that would be likely to take so cynical and disillusioned a play. Miraculously, however, Drury had expressed himself as ‘dead keen’ about it. There had been an interview with Drury, and Drury, damn his expressive eyes, had—yes, one had to admit it—Drury had ‘put himself across’ with great success. He had been flattering, he had been charming. Scales had succumbed, as night by night pit and stalls and dress circle succumbed, to the gracious manner and the elfin smile. ‘A grand piece—grand situations,’ Garrick Drury had said. ‘Of course, here and there it will need a little tidying up in production.’ Scales said modestly that he expected that—he knew very little about writing for the stage—he was a novelist—he was quite ready to agree to alterations, provided, naturally, nothing was done to upset the artistic unity of the thing. Mr. Garrick Drury was pained by the suggestion. As an artist himself, he should, of course, allow nothing inartistic to be done. Scales, overcome by Drury’s manner, and by a flood of technicalities about sets and lighting and costing and casting poured out upon him by the producer, who was present at the interview, signed a contract giving the author a very handsome share of the royalties, and hardly noticed that he had left the management with full power to make any ‘reasonable’ alterations to fit the play for production.

  It was only gradually, in the course of rehearsal, that he discovered what was being done to his play. It was not merely that Mr. Drury had succeeded in importing into the lines given to him as the war-shattered hero, a succulent emotionalism which was very far from the dramatist’s idea of that embittered and damaged character. So much, one had expected. But the plot had slowly disi
ntegrated and reshaped itself into something revoltingly different. Originally, for example, the girl Judith (the one who had ‘gone to the bad at a cocktail party’) had not spurned the one-armed soldier (Mr. Drury). Far from it. She had welcomed him and several other heroes home with indiscriminate, not to say promiscuous, enthusiasm. And the hero, instead of behaving (as Mr. Drury saw to it that he did in the acted version) in a highly sacrificial manner, had gone deliberately and cynically to the bad in his turn. Nor had ‘Lady Sylvia,’ who rescued him from the Embankment, been (as Mr. Drury’s second leading lady now represented her to be) a handsome and passionate girl deeply in love with the hero, but a nauseous rich elderly woman with a fancy for a gigolo, whose attentions the hero (now thoroughly deteriorated as a result of war and postwar experience) accepted without shame or remorse in exchange for the luxuries of life. And finally, when Judith, thoroughly shocked and brought to her senses by these developments, had tried to recapture him, the hero (as originally depicted) had so far lost all sense of decency as to prefer—though with a bitter sense of failure and frustration—to stick to Lady Sylvia, as the line of least resistance, and had ended, on Armistice Day, by tearing away the public trophies of laurel and poppy from the Cenotaph and being ignominiously removed by the police after a drunken and furious harangue in denunciation of war. Not a pleasant play, as originally written, and certainly in shocking taste; but an honest piece of work so far as it went. But Mr. Drury had pointed out that ‘his’ public would never stand the original Lady Sylvia or the final degradation of the hero. There must be slight alterations—nothing inartistic, of course, but alterations, to make the thing more moving, more uplifting, more, in fact, true to human nature.

  Because, Mr. Drury pointed out, if there was one thing you could rely on, it was the essential decency of human nature, and its immediate response to generous sentiments. His experience, he said, had proved it to him.