by Anne Morice
‘No, not there, Chrissie, old girl I Can’t have that. I say, Nancy, would you mind swapping over and sitting with Mr Price?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ she replied, ‘if you wish.’
‘It’s not me, old girl, but Christabel won’t be able to see a damn thing up this end. Much better shove her up by the screen.’
Neither woman looked particularly entranced by the arrangement, but complied without argument and as soon as they were seated the lights went out.
Two seconds later, there was a warning shout from Nancy and they were switched on again. So engrossed had she been in chatting up Sir Maddox that it was only when thrust into the sobering company of Robin that she discovered that no one had anything to drink.
All three Harper Barringtons whirled around at top speed, to rectify this omission, until simultaneously stricken with paralysis by the discovery that the vodka bottle was once again absent.
I awarded low marks to Nancy for this oversight, and Sir Maddox called out with a trace of impatience that he could manage very well without it. However, Nancy would not allow this and insisted on making amends by fetching it herself. Possibly she had welcomed the excuse, for she was absent a good five minutes, which the rest of us fidgeted away, according to our individual natures.
Toby went on the prowl again, Robin sank into a doze and Christabel rudely swivelled her chair round, to turn her back on Sir Maddox and stare intently at the book-shelves on her other side, although I guessed that she could not even distinguish the mock titles.
Nancy returned, bearing a crystal jug containing the vodkatini mixture and a cut-glass tumbler, the latter causing Sir Maddox to break off his hideously boring monologue about a visit to some ghastly dacha, in order to express his admiration. This gave her the chance to moan a bit about its being the last of a set, and the hellish thing about servants being the way they smashed up one’s few poor treasures, until Roger called for silence.
‘Come on, now, troops, let’s make a start, shall we? On your marks with the tapes, Anabel? Off we go, then.’
The lights went out again, the stirring notes of a sailors’ hornpipe flooded the room and, simultaneously, the screen became afire with a brilliant extravaganza of colour, although so blurred as to have no outlines at all.
‘Focus, focus!’ Nancy bellowed, a split second after her husband had adjusted it and, as the picture cleared, we were introduced to a dramatic shipboard scene, with Nancy taking the principle rôle. This mainly required her to bare her teeth at the camera, which she stared at through jet-black sunglasses, while performing such breathtaking acts as lighting a cigarette, strolling to the side of the deck, to the sound accompaniment of ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’, and waving her cocktail glass in a merry salute.
This opening sequence set the mood for the whole production and, as the minutes dragged by, we watched her emerging from the swimming-pool, studying the menu, laughing like a maniac at nothing at all and generally enjoying every minute of this mind-broadening voyage.
From time to time the gruelling monotony was broken by view of foreign ports, enabling Nancy to wear a succession of funny hats, often surrounded by colourful native characters selling their colourful native wares. Luckily, the tape recorder blared out a continuous selection of appropriate music, carefully edited to match each locale, which effectively smothered any yawning, groaning noises from audience, and there were two brief respites from the horror of it all. The first occurred when, contrary to Nancy’s confident boast, the projector appeared to have broken down, after all. The humming behind my left shoulder ceased and the screen went blank. This time, Toby had collapsed into the arms of merciful oblivion and did not stir, but the Robinsons went into a short knock-about act in the aisle, in order, for some mysterious reason, to exchange seats. They had barely sorted themselves out into the new positions when Roger launched into reel two, on the second projector.
The other diversion arrived soon afterwards, when a fly staggered drunkenly from one side of the screen to the other, climbed slowly to the tip of Nancy’s nose and remained suspended there. This brought piercing guffaws from Xenia, while Aunt Moo informed me that she would hate to go to Parshah and have insects crawling all over her. The rest of us, being more sophisticated types, pretended not to find it funny, and Roger, leaving the projector to whirr away on its own, strode up to the screen and flicked the fly away with his handkerchief.
We bade farewell to Nancy, at last, as the sun descended behind exotic Hong Kong, where the sampans plied their trade much as they had etcetera, and Anabel jumped up and switched on the lights. Various torpid forms jerked into life again and there was much blinking, murmuring and surreptitious consulting of watches, the quickest off the mark being Aunt Moo. With typical aplomb, she announced that Harbart’s lumbago always played up to him late at night, and she would therefore take her leave. Only half a move behind, I leapt to my feet to insist on accompanying her and leaving the others to follow later.
Ignoring their dagger-like looks, as well as a fusillade of ‘I say’s’ from Roger, who was already reloading the projector, I scuttled round the room, saying goodnight to everyone, in a fever of impatience to get away before Aunt Moo could be prevailed upon to change her mind.
There was a serious hitch when I got to Sir Maddox, because he was still slumped in his chair, perfectly inert, with his head turned away from me and I could not tell whether he was really asleep, or feigning it, so as to avoid a direct encounter.
As I stood hovering, I felt a sharp grip on my arm and the next moment Robin was tugging me towards the door. This was such a reversal of his former attitude that, although it suited my purpose, I could not restrain a polite inquiry as to what the hell he was up to.
‘Shut up,’ he growled. ‘Cut out the questions, for once, there’s a good girl, and get yourself and the old lady out of here as quick as you can.’
I can recognise an emergency as fast as the next person and, although seething with curiosity, bounded upstairs, bundled Aunt Moo into her sables and charged towards the front door. Nancy had followed, with Robin, to see us off and I begged her not to hold up the proceedings on our account. She obediently turned away, but as I drew back to let Aunt Moo pass I heard Robin say:
‘I think they may have to be held up, all the same. Would you mind calling Anabel out? Ask her to telephone your doctor and to wait in the hall until he arrives.’
‘Why?’ she asked coldly, ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘Quite well, thank you, but I have to tell you that one of your guests is dead.’
Five
‘It does not surprise me in the least,’ Toby insisted. ‘Incarcerated in the bowels of the earth, deafened by palm-court orchestras and bored into solid stone, it was enough to kill anyone. When the lights went up I expected to be the only survivor.’
‘I think we all did,’ I agreed. ‘And what made you so sure, Robin, that the old man wasn’t in the same condition?’
‘I knew it was the real thing,’ he replied. ‘I’ve seen too much of sudden death to be mistaken. There was something in his attitude. I confess I didn’t notice it until you tried to say goodbye to him, and then the reflexes went into action, warning me to get my female relatives off the premises before anyone else caught on. It could only have been distressing for you and, naturally, at that stage I concluded he had died of a nice, tidy heart-attack, which, as Toby has pointed out, we were all rather prone to.’
This conversation took place in Uncle Andrew’s library, where the three of us had adjourned when Robin and Toby returned from the Maltings. Aunt Moo had gone straight to bed, oblivious, as far as I could gauge, of the disaster which had befallen a fellow guest; and I had spent the long interval swallowing pints of black coffee and stamping up and down like a repentant suicide, an aching desire for sleep locked in deadly combat with my impatience to hear the grisly details.
‘And hadn’t he?’ I demanded. ‘Come on now, Robin! I’m in no state to prise it out of you
by instalments. What did he die of?’
‘It could have been self-administered.’
‘There you go! What could?’
‘Potassium cyanide.’
‘Oh, crumbs! In the vodka?’
‘Presumably. Unless he kept a cache in a hollowed-out tooth, like the war criminals. Anyway, they’ve removed the jug and glass for analysis, so we’ll soon know. No switch was possible with either of them, luckily; they were both quite distinctive.’
‘You mean the police have removed them?’
‘Who else? Their own doctor came first and diagnosed death from unnatural causes. He refused to sign a certificate, so I rang the local branch. Superintendent Cole; nice fellow. He was inclined to be a bit old fashioned at first, on account of you and Aunt Moo not being available for questioning, but I explained how it was and he said he wouldn’t bother you tonight, as it must be long past the old lady’s bed-time. Very decent.’
‘Very,’ Toby agreed. ‘And only wish it had occurred to me that it was long past mine. I find this kind of thing so unnerving. Even the dreaded Spirals couldn’t have been worse.’
Robin said: ‘It was Cole who tipped me off about the cyanide.’
‘But none of the others know?’
‘Except the murderer. That is, if there is one.’
‘Certainly there is,’ Toby said. ‘And that’s what I find so distressing; because I can name her. I would have told that cool confident Superintendent, if I hadn’t been afraid of his making an arrest on the spot, which would have been rather more than I could have borne at that time of night.’
‘You can tell me,’ Robin said. ‘I will promise not to go out and arrest anyone on the strength of it.’
‘I am staggered that the trained mind should need telling. Remembering that Sir Brands Essence was a spy; for our side, I need hardly add . . .’
‘How can we remember that, when we didn’t know it?’ I asked.
‘Oh, going on and on like that about wonderful Russia. It’s a dead giveaway, if you know anything about the world of espionage.’
‘It’s also a dead bore and I’m glad I don’t move in it more often,’ I remarked.
‘So, accepting this extravagant premise, I suppose we designate Xenia the counter spy?’ Robin asked with some amusement.
‘Quite right, my dear. Taking the opposite line, you notice? All that fatuous talk about the Aristos practically proves her to be a Soviet spy. A very overdone performance, in my opinion. It certainly indicates that she would be quite incapable of perpetrating such a neat little murder.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Toby. It could be the counter bluff, you know.’
‘I have lost my bearings,’ Robin complained. ‘I thought it was Xenia’s guilt that we were leading up to?’
‘Dear me, no. I reject Tessa’s suggestion absolutely. No, Christabel’s your girl.’
‘Can you be serious?’ I screamed.
‘You know he can’t,’ Robin said.
‘Well, answer me this: who was sitting in pitch darkness, within inches of his glass, for forty-five minutes?’
‘It wouldn’t have needed forty-five minutes, or even forty-five seconds. And, if you’re looking for opportunity, Nancy Harper Barrington had the best one of all.’
‘That’s true,’ I agreed. ‘She was out of the room for ages. That’s when she must have done it.’
‘You’re forgetting that she had no desire to see him dead. She was probably the only one of us who felt any genuine regret for what had occurred.’
‘I don’t know, Toby. She might have been temporarily unhinged by his upsetting her even numbers. It is obviously a thing which goes very deep with her and she strikes me as a woman of strong passions.’
‘His murder would have solved nothing,’ Toby reminded me. ‘With Sir Madcap gone, she was in an even sadder numerical fix.’
‘Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. It does rule her out, on the face of it? What about her husband, though? He had the whole room in view, all the time. He could easily have chosen the exact moment to drop a pill in the old man’s drink. Yes, that’s much more like it. What a pity! I quite like old Roger. He does so enjoy having lots of money; not like that twisted-up Nancy. Still, that must be the answer, you know. All that flashing about with the handkerchief, when he went to shoo the fly away, was just part of the legerdemain. An old conjuror’s trick, in fact.’
‘What about the old conjuror’s motive?’ Toby inquired politely.
‘Well,’ I said warily, ‘There’s Anabel.’
‘So there is. What about her?’
‘She could be the crux. A somewhat retarded adolescent, more than average mixed up, because her mother resents her. And why, I ask you, does her mother resent her?’
‘Because she is plain and dull. I resent her myself.’
‘Supposing there were more to it than that? A bit of the old Greek tragedy? What if Pa had an unnatural crush?’
Robin, who, to the casual observer, had been fast asleep, roused himself to say:
‘We haven’t all had your training in that department.’
‘Besides,’ Toby said, ‘it has no significance. The breath of incest may blow through the Maltings, but no more gustily than in most well-conducted middle-class households. You would do better to stick to the facts.’
‘But it is a fact that Sir Mad had been casting eyes at Anabel. Don’t ask me how I know,’ I added, casting a speculative one of my own at Robin. His eyes were shut again, but I had the impression that he was missing nothing, and I went on, after the barest pause:
‘You will have to take my word for it. Furthermore, he got very uppish indeed when I put it to him that he probably had a stinking reputation in that department, so it’s almost bound to be true.’
‘I should think he might,’ Toby remarked, ‘whether it were true or not. It seems such a strange accusation to fling at a complete stranger, although I wish I had been there to hear it. My own conversations were so dull, by comparison.’
‘Well, you have heard it now, which is almost as good because it brought our chat to a halt. But the point is that no one of his age would mind having the reputation of woman-chaser; he’d more likely be tickled pink; but chasing little girls is a different cup of tea and it certainly gives Roger a motive. Well, it’s not perfect, I admit, but it makes him a much better candidate than Christabel. The idea of her doing such a thing is simply laughable.’
‘What would you say if I told you I had actually seen her drop a pill in his glass?’ Toby asked me.
‘What could I say? I might try a few euphemisms but it would amount to the same thing.’
‘Which was?’
‘That you lied.’
He sighed: ‘Correct. If you had believed me, it would have saved going into all the tedious details about motives.’
‘I can see that does present certain difficulties.’
‘Not the ones you think, though. It is more a question of embarras de richesse.’
‘Indeed? Well, spill some of this richesse.’
‘There are two obvious motives, although I haven’t yet decided which finally goaded her into what I call the fatal deed; or whether it was a combination of both. In the first instance, we may as well assume that she was Sir Marketing Board’s ex-mistress, not having forgiven him for discarding her.’
‘May we?’ Robin asked, unexpectedly bouncing back into the arena again and confirming my belief that caution should not be relaxed. ‘And what evidence have we for doing any such thing?’
‘No first hand evidence,’ Toby replied. ‘By which I mean that she hasn’t told me so. I base my premise on the laws of probability, in which I may justly claim to be an expert.’
This was news to me and Robin did not even consider the announcement to be worth staying awake for, so Toby proceeded without interruption:
‘Remembering that Christabel has had every art expert in Europe in her pocket, at one time or another, plus the fact which you ha
ve drawn our attention to that Sir Mad was a highly rampageous member of those circles, it is a fair bet, is it not, that they were once more than just good friends?’
‘No, it isn’t. For one thing, if she was such a nympho as you’re trying to make out, why should one ex-lover bring out this hell-hath-no-fury strain any more than another? Furthermore, we all know that Mott was the one great love of her life, which completely ditches the whole argument.’
‘Never mind,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Since you take that attitude. I’ll try you on number two. Consider Christabel as the all time Soviet spy. I happen to know that she was a party member in her youth.’
‘So were several thousand other people of her generation.’
‘And it may surprise you to learn that some of them became Soviet spies. Not all those starry-eyed, left-wing intellectuals of the thirties saw the red light, if you’ll forgive the amusing play on words. Some of them, as even you may know, are in Moscow at this moment. The laws of probability –’
‘In which you may justly claim to be an expert –’
‘Suggest that for every one who got caught there is at least half a one still at large and going about its business. I will swop Christabel for any two, dead or alive, that you care to name. It simply means that she is in the top bracket and clever as paint to have got away with it. Now, what more likely than that Sir Mad got wind of this when he was in Russia and was teasing her about it, which is precisely the way I interpret all those quizzical remarks of his at dinner.’
‘I suppose it’s logical, in a crazy sort of way, but I’m surprised at you, Toby, I really am. We know you must have your joke, and also that you’re thoroughly unnerved by what’s happened, but to pick on Christabel, of all people! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
Just for a moment he had the grace to look it; then he said in a low voice:
‘Well, yes, perhaps I did get rather carried away, but I don’t think Robin was listening, do you? And it’s all conjecture, isn’t it? I think one can safely assume that nothing has been said to give anyone grounds to go out and arrest anyone.’