Deus ex Machina

A Cornish Idyll

William Blackstone Wildman, whose eyesight in his later years was not what it once had been, raised a monstrous magnifying glass he was wearing on a chain round his neck and peered at the manuscript I had given him. It was my version of a story he had told me on one of my previous visits.

"Yes," he said, when he had finished reading, "it will do. It is a fair representation of my memoir. There are a few turns of phrase I'm sure I never used, but the details are accurate."

"Good," I said; "then you approve publication?"

"Yes, by God! These things will die with me, and I see now that I have been a fool to be reticent all these years. If I were younger and more certain of a future I should undertake to write my memoirs."

"There is still time," I said.

"No. I am aweary, aweary. So it is up to you, Winston, with your tape recorder. Now, then, please to decant the port -- my hand is not to be trusted any longer for such a task -- and I will tell you about one of my early cases.

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As I have appointed you my biographer, Winston, I cannot withhold the facts of this most instructive case, which I have always regarded as an object lesson of the rule, 'Always look for the obvious.' Rarely in my experience was a conclusion as inevitable as the following.

During the winter of 1896-1897 I had been exerting myself to the limits of my powers in combating the schemes of three very nasty villains, the Halfsister brothers. The struggle was so exhausting and dangerous, so upsetting to my mental equilibrium, that a famous Baker Street doctor advised my to drop everything and retire immediately to the country for a rest cure and a change of scene.

So with some forethought that was diverting in itself I equipped myself for a period of gypsy wandering: a fold-up Alaskan prospecting tent, a pocket compass-thermometer-barometer-sundial (built to my own design, this), and a portable crime-detection laboratory, for one never knows what may occur. Also a large wine bladder, which I filled with gin. Beef-extract cubes were my sole provisions: after all, this was England, and I could always buy more substantial victuals locally. As I planned to visit Cornwall and the moors, an oilskin raincoat was a vital necessity as well.

In late March, I set out by railway to Okehampton in Devonshire. From a conveyancing firm I leased a donkey. Having loaded my beast of burden, whom I christened Apuleius, I found there was no room for more than one change of clothing. It was then I decided to play peasant and beat my simple costume clean in rocky rivers and streams. But Dartmoor was a wash-out -- it rained so constantly that even the oilskin and the tent were failures. Therefore, soon, and damply, I led Apuleius into sunnier Cornwall.

Never will I forget the moment of sudden involvement in what I call the Case of the Pink Garter. We had just turned into a narrow country lane a few miles from Launceton, when I was startled by a disturbance in the roadside hedgerow. A terrified and hysterical girl suddenly emerged and implored my aid.

"There is a monster attacking my sister! Please help us!"

"Young lady, you need fear nothing. We shall help you in your hour of distress. Come!"

Apuleius and I plunged through the hedgerow and I directed my attention to the grim old house standing granite-brown and menacing in the middle of a marshy field.

"There seems to be nobody about," I said to the girl when we had reached the terrace.

Her manner was now calm, almost subdued. "My sister screamed in the Hall. I locked the door and fled through that window."

"Ah, ha! Please to wait here with Apuleius while I investigate. Is nobody else here?"

"Only Mother, of course. She is always here. The others were in town, and so was I until I came home and heard the monster. The door to the Hall is on the left when you leave the drawing room." She pointed to the window -- a French window.

Then, for a moment, her composure left her again. "I...I think they are all dead," she said shrilly. "I shall be the next! Oh dear God, me! Oh, oh, ooh!"

Something distinctively odd about this girl, Winston. Nevertheless I went in and found the door to the Hall. I turned the key, but the door was also bolted on the inside; I removed the key and peered through the keyhole, and saw a body slumped on the floor.

Without thought (well, perhaps an 'Apuleius, my good fellow, what luck -- I have discovered a murder, and listen, it has occurred in a room locked from the outside and bolted from the inside...') -- in any case I ran out to retrieve an axe I had seen by a woodpile outside the house. And, "Oh! Your pardon, sir."

This to a sinister looking gentleman who had appeared on the terrace. He was a short man, and swarthy, with a nose like a hatchet and shiny black hair that looked as though it had been painted thickly on to the bare skull.

"What is this animal doing on my terrace, sir? Remove this animal from my terrace, sir."

"Murder has been done," I said. "Here is my card."

His face suddenly went pale. "William Blackstone Wildman. I know the name, sir, I know the name. I am Francis Penwiper."

"I had the pleasure," I said, "of seeing you perform at the Vaudeville in '91. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir." Francis Penwiper -- Baron von Dee -- had been one of the greatest conjurors of his time.

"You say a murder, sir? A murder in my house? A murder?"

"I am afraid so. If you will come with me..."

Having grabbed up the axe, I returned to the house, accompanied by the magician and the girl. She stared with wide eyes.

"Father! Where have you been? Francesca has been killed!"

"Francesca, Frances? Francesca? Killed? How can that be?"

I directed their attention to the door to the Hall. "I am obliged to break down the door. It cannot be opened from the outside." It took me five minutes to splinter the bolt from its fastenings. The body of a young girl was lying face up near the doorway; she had been strangled with a pink garter and there was no hope of reviving her.

"Oooh, my silly darling!" cried Penwiper, gesturing theatrically and staggering back into an antique chair.

"That is my garter," said Frances. "How dare she?"

I looked round the room. The house, I had already observed, was a dark building with high ceilings, oak-panelled and tapestried walls, arched doorways: a neo-Gothic construction of the mid-fifties. Around me was a mock-medieval baronial hall -- a cavernous room, with a soaring beamed roof and great iron chandeliers hanging down from the carved-angel hammer beams. It was unrelievedly gloomy; narrow stained-glass windows provided the only illumination at that hour.

"There is nobody here," Frances said suddenly.

"We are here, young lady," I replied. "I see that the only other way out is that door at the dais end."

Penwiper murmured in a husky monotone. "We have had that door blocked up. I closed that wing of the house when I retired from the stage."

"Very odd," I said, trying the door. "No one could leave by the windows; they are leaded, with only diminutive ventilation flaps. There is the fireplace, however." I inspected it. "Yes. A very broad flue, and iron staples for the chimney sweep. Who else is in the house, sir?"

"It is the servants' day off. My son Frank is visiting the town fair, from which by the way I have just returned." Some color had returned to his face and his look was rather cynical under the circumstances. "There is only my wife, who is an invalid, sir. An invalid. Unable to leave her bed. And my poor Francesca remained here to care for her wants."

"Frances, where is this monster who attacked your sister? Where did he come from, where did he go? Mr. Penwiper, I must speak to your wife, if you please."

He jumped up. "I forbid it, sir! You have no right to gloat over my misfortunes. Find the tramp who did this foul deed."

Frances Penwiper clutched his arm. "You must, Father. Everything must come out now." Her sudden changes of manner continued to baffle me: now hysterical, now resigned. A minute before she had been looking indifferently at the roof. But my curiosity about the mother was whetted, and had to be satisfied before I went for the police. I insisted on speaking with her; the argument continued for a while.

"Very well, Mr. Wildman," Penwiper said finally. "Under the circumstances. But I fail to see the point. She can know nothing, sir."

Here, Winston, was a weak man -- all bluster, and a will worn to a thread. The spirit of Baron von Dee was long gone. A pity, but who knew what misfortune had broken him?

We proceeded to climb a steep flight of stairs. The floor of a long gallery stretched out before us, and creaked with every step we took down its gloomy length. Light shone out under a door at the very end of the gallery. Penwiper opened it cautiously.

When I looked inside I saw a corpse-like figure on a large bed. But the corpse was animated: sleeping uneasily and breathing in shallow stertorous gasps. Mrs. Penwiper, once a magician's assistant, lay unmoving -- old before her time, ill to the verge of death -- under an enormous pink eiderdown quilt. Her face was the white-lead colour of a clown's. She opened her eyes.

"Praise the Lord!" she cried when she saw me. "Tis St. Michael come for my weary soul. Oh blessed release!" she cried, and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

I thought she had died, Winston, so help me! But within a few seconds she revived -- and repeated the performance. I had never seen anything like it before.

["Nor has anyone else, Wildman," I interrupted. "This story is a bit too much." I reached for the port.

"No, no, Winston," he said, "I swear to you that these events occurred just as I remember them, and as you are hearing now. My mouth is dry -- would you be so kind as to fill my glass? -- Now, where was I?"]

So. When I saw the situation, I turned to Penwiper and offered him my sincerest sympathies.

"I am afraid," he said, "her mind has lost its bearings, sir. Lost its bearings." He put on a face of tragic lament. "The curse of the Penwipers! Mad, mad! Is there any man as unfortunate as I? They are all mad! All my hopes shattered!"

Penwiper snatched at his greasy hair with both hands and pulled, as though he were trying to split his skull down the middle. He staggered out the bedroom with his hair standing up on both sides like horns.

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy!" The girl, too, ran out. I was alone with the comatose madwoman.

"This is intolerable," I muttered. Before you could count to twenty, I had joined Apuleius on the terrace. He brayed comfortingly to me as I removed the oilskin cape and bladder of gin from his saddlebag. "Enjoy your dinner, old friend," I said, turning him out into the field.

I went into the baronial hall, where poor Francesca lay with the pink garter round her throat. I spread the cape over her and sat down on the dais to worry over the problem.

When the bladder was empty, I walked sedately to the fireplace and proceeded to climb the flue. Halfway up, the staples ceased; while I groped about, the one beneath my feet broke off, and I plunged down on to the tiles in a shower of rust and soot. Luckily, there were no fire irons. "BY HEAVEN!" I cried, "No one left by the chimney at all."

Quickly running out into the corridor: "Miss Penwiper! Miss Penwiper! Come here!" Eventually she emerged from the drawing room. Her father was in an adjoining room; I heard the clink of bottles.

"I have been conversing with dear Apuleius," she said. "What a charming companion you have!"

"He is a Roman sorcerer," I told her. "Now, my girl, how soon after your sister screamed for help did you lock the door and come running to find me?"

"At once.... I thought he would come after me."

"I have nothing to say concerning your reasons for leaving your sister at the mercy of a fiend. But you realize that you locked the murderer in the Hall, with no escaping. Do you see what that means?"

"Of course, Mr. Detective. He was in the Hall when you broke down the door."

I was finding the situation very uncomfortable. "The murderer climbed up one of the chandelier chains and hid himself among the roof beams."

"Indeed. So you say, sweetheart."

Well, that was the clincher; the rest was inevitable. I said, "Your brother Frank did not stop at the fair, did he? But you and your father shielded him -- at least you did not interfere -- as soon as you realized what had happened. Is your brother mad?"

"Of course he is. Father tried to train him to be a conjuror -- he had great gifts. But he never could abide us."

"But why did you not do something before it came to this?" My blood was curdling in my veins.

She was indignant. "What was I to do? I never knew he had done it. I thought it was a tramp. Until I saw the Hall was empty. The silly coward! I saw him lying on the angel's head up there. He was always terrified of heights."

Well, Winston, the poor ass was still up there when I returned to the Hall. Treed like a cat. He scrambled up when he heard the hounds at the door, and he could not for the life of him get down again. I coaxed him on to the chandelier chain and cranked him down from the firmament.

Later, the local magistrate had him confined in the madhouse; he would have done the same with Frances, if she had not been engaged to the son of his neighbour with whom he was engaged in a law suit. Apuleius and I had meanwhile found our way to Land's End, where I fed him on a diet of daffodils and roses. Here, let's have another drink....

From the William Blackstone Wildman Collection by Grobius Shortling

[This is a tall tale if there ever was one. However, I guess you could say it is a genuine 'locked-room' mystery. --Grobius]