The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr Page B

crowd of people in the place. Afterwards we all went up the steps.”
    “Who was the last person out of the crypt?”
    “ I was,” said Mark sardonically. “I had to blow out the candles they were using, and gather up the iron standing-brackets the candles were in. But, since the whole process took the remarkable space of one minute, and since the saintly pastor of St. Peter’s Church was waiting for me on the steps, I can assure you the dominie and I have no guilty secrets.”
    “I didn’t mean that; I meant after you all left the crypt.”
    “As soon as we were all out, Henderson and his assistants went to work and sealed it up. Of course, you can say that they had a guilty hand in it, but it happens that a number of people hung around, watching it being done.”
    “Well, if that’s out, it’s out,” grunted Partington, and lifted one shoulder. “But don’t worry yourself about somebody playing crazy pranks, Mark. That body was stolen out of here, and has been destroyed since or hidden somewhere, for a damned good reason. Don’t you see what it was? It was to forestall just what we were going to do tonight. To my mind there’s no doubt your uncle was poisoned. And right now, unless the body is found, the murderer is in an impregnable position. Your doctor certified that Miles died of natural causes. Now the body disappears. You’re the lawyer and ought to know; but it strikes me that this is our old friend the corpus delicti again. Without the body, what proof have you that he didn’t die from natural causes? Strong contributory evidence, yes; but is it strong enough? You find two grains of arsenic in a milk-and-egg-and-port mixture, and the cup containing it was in his room. All right, what of it? Did anybody see him drink it? Can it be proved that he did drink it, or had anything to do with it? Wouldn’t he have mentioned it himself, if he had thought there was anything wrong? On the contrary, the only thing he was known to have taken into his own hands was a glass of milk you later proved to be harmless.”
    “You ought to ’a’ been a lawyer yourself,” said Henderson, with no pleasant inflection.
    Partington wheeled. “I’m telling you this to show you why the poisoner somehow got that body out of here. We’ve got to find out how it was done. Meanwhile, we have only an empty coffin——”
    “Not completely empty,” said Stevens.
    During this time he had remained staring into it with such intensity that he barely saw it at all. Now something that had been hidden by the color of the satin lining became plain to him. It lay along one side, about where the right hand of the dead man would have rested. He bent down, picked it up, and held it before them. It was a piece of ordinary wrapping-string, about a foot long, and tied at equal intervals into nine knots.
VII
    An hour later, when they stumbled up the steps into fresh air, they had satisfied themselves of two things:
    1. There was no secret entrance, or any other way of getting in or out of the crypt.
    2. The body was not still in the crypt, hidden in one of the other coffins. All the lower tiers of coffins they hauled out far enough for examination, and thoroughly examined each. Though it was impossible to open all of them, the state of undisturbed dust, rust, and tight-sealed lids showed that not one of them had been touched since it was put in there. Partington gave it up, going back to the house after another peg of whisky. But in an access of zeal Henderson and Stevens fetched ladders so that they could climb up and disturb the old Despards in their higher tiers: Mark uneasily refused to lend a hand at this breaking of bones. But here, where all things had a tendency to break under the touch, it was even more clear that the body had not been hidden. Finally, Mark even threw the flowers out of the urns and they tilted the urns over—without result. By this time they all knew the body was not in the crypt, for there was nowhere else it