Scandal at High Chimneys by John Dickson Carr

other with attention. “I shall beg leave for a word with you later.”
    A last draught whirled through. Heavy brown-rep curtains, on both the windows, swayed with it. Clive saw that more than doors had been locked and barred here; heavy wooden shutters, on full-length windows, were folded together and barred on the inside.
    The door to the hall closed.
    Matthew Damon, putting aside the brandy-glass, sat down in the chair behind his desk and closed his eyes.
    “Mr. Strickland, I am growing old. What was I saying?”
    “The lusts of the flesh,” answered Clive. “And Harriet Pyke.”
    “Ah, yes.”
    Trees seethed in the wind outside. Mr. Damon opened his eyes.
    “At the time I speak of, this woman was twenty-three. It will be unnecessary to mention the name of her latest protector. He had installed her, together with a maid and a private carriage, at a villa in St. John’s Wood. Harriet Pyke was then at the height of her beauty and wantonness. But she had an unpredictable temper, especially in drink. Nor, for all her dainty appearance, could she conceal the strength of her arms and hands.”
    He looked at his own hands, and clenched them.
    “One night towards the end of ’46, after much amorousness at that villa, there was a quarrel, a threat, we cannot say what. Two murders were committed. Harriet Pyke’s lover was shot through the abdomen with a revolving pistol, or so-called revolver. Afterwards the five remaining bullets were fired at him, though only one struck him. The villa was isolated; no person heard the shots except this woman’s maid. But, because the maid might be a witness, she was seized and strangled to death.”
    Ugly images flowed out and filled the study.
    Clive glanced over his shoulder at the other closed door, the door to the library, behind his back. Then he sat down again facing Mr. Damon.
    “A revolving pistol?” said Clive. “Nineteen years ago?”
    “Yes. Do you think the weapon is new?”
    “Not new, it may be—”
    “I do not refer, Mr. Strickland, to the revolver with metallic cartridges. That is new; that is most recent; I have one in my desk here, against would-be thieves.”
    “Steady!”
    Matthew Damon had reached out towards a drawer, but he did not open it.
    “The evidence seemed clear. The authorities wished an example to be made of this woman. I was briefed for the Crown. Her defence consisted only of a denial that she had been at the villa that night. Well, where had she been? She would not say. Brazenly she insisted that this protector of hers must also have seduced her maid-servant; that these two had quarrelled; that the maid had fired the bullets, and must have been strangled by the man before he died. An unspeakable tale, you must allow; the authorities would have none of it.
    “It was not a happy time for me. My wife, my first wife, had recently died. But I was young then, as men of the law are accounted; my duty was to make the jury disbelieve Harriet Pyke’s account of what happened; and I did so.
    “It was only after the verdict …
    “Had I exceeded my duty? Had I shown too much zeal? Had my grief for my wife been poured into the bitterness of the prosecution?
    “When I went to visit this woman in the condemned cell, I do most firmly deny that I was in any way influenced by her physical charms. Throughout the trial she had watched me steadily, as though possessing some secret knowledge of me; I can still see her flaunting bonnet and her eyes in the dock.
    “Later, in the condemned cell, she indeed proved to have some knowledge of me and my life. She professed to have read it. But there was little time to reflect on this. For she went down on her knees and told me a different story of the murders.
    “Harriet Pyke had borne a child, of much the same age as my own babies: so much proved to be true. When her latest protector installed her in the villa, she left this child to be cared for by a sempstress and saw the child when she could: that also was