Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  Nita went out with an array of cups on a tray. Merrion Squires, who had been unwontedly silent—the centre of the stage for him or nothing, thought Nigel—said:

  “Well, where’s this blood-curdling exhibit we’ve been promised?”

  “To be sure. I’d quite forgotten. Delighted you share my naughty passion for sensationalism.” Major Kennington fumbled in the large pockets of his tunic, bringing out in turn a ball of string, a manicure set, a Bible, a bag of toffee, some revolver bullets and a matchbox. “Ah, here we are.” Opening the matchbox, he took out a thin cylindrical object, about the length of his thumbnail, rather like a lighter-fuel container on a miniature scale. He held it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger.

  “The idea was to lodge it between your back teeth, when a state of emergency declared itself. Then, if one of the armed thugs of the Pluto-Democracies laid hands on you—well, just a little wriggle with the tongue, and a sharp crunch, and the gates of Valhalla opened to you.”

  The little group in the room had broken up, and re-formed around Charles Kennington.

  “You mean, it’s not soluble?” asked Jimmy Lake.

  “No. Different from our type. But be careful how you handle it. The case is madly fragile. And the contents—well!” Charles rolled up his eyes.

  “What? Cyanide of potassium? “Harker Fortescue asked.

  “Pure hydrocyanic acid.”

  “Ker-rikey,” said Harker.

  At this moment Nita came in with her trayful of cups, and the group broke up again, Jimmy and Brian Ingle moving to help her. The others were passing the little container from hand to hand.

  “Come and get it,” said Nita. The tray was now on the Director’s desk.

  “Mind my photographs,” said Jimmy. “Sorry, we ought to have cleared them off the floor. Nita, would you——”

  “Certainly not,” said Kennington. “I can never resist photographs. Oh, goody, what a treat! What are they for?”

  Jimmy Lake told him. “Merrion and I were just quarrelling about those two spreads,” he added with a pleasant smile at his subordinate. Merrion acknowledged it, a little stiffly.

  They had all gravitated now towards the end of the room where Jimmy’s big desk was. Some held their cups of coffee, others put them down on the desk beside them.

  “Wait a minute, though. You must see Merrion’s cover-designs for this job. One of them is first-class.” The Director seemed intent on conciliating Merrion Squires. He opened a drawer and took out the designs. Then he was moving across to the bookcase on the left of Nita’s table, his hand lightly holding the girl’s elbow. “Come and help me put them up.”

  When they had propped the designs upright against the books, he took her elbow again and moved aside with her so that they could all get a clear view.

  “Now, Charles, which do you like best? Hark’ee and I are at loggerheads about them.”

  It was the Director’s normal practice, when alternative cover-roughs had been prepared, thus to take the opinions of his staff upon them. His staff, on the other hand, knew that his own decision had been made already, and they must be prepared to justify their choice with a wealth of critical judgment if they wanted him to change his mind. They all scrutinised the designs in silence for a little, shifting about to get a good view of them. At last Charles Kennington said:

  “I think that one. The bloodthirsty type peering out from amidst the bougainvilleas.”

  The Director glanced towards the Deputy Director, whistling softly between his teeth. Charles had evidently chosen aright.

  “Nah,” said the Deputy Director. “It’s too literary.” He paused, to summon up a still more offensive word. “Too refined. Put it beside one of Clegg’s covers and it’ll disappear.”

  “Hark’ee’s idea of a cover-design is a tooth-paste advertisement poster,” Merrion Squires put in, not best pleased at the reference to his chief rival designer.

  “I say you’ve got to hit them in the eye straight away, or you’re sunk,” declared the Deputy Director stubbornly.

  The telephone bell on Nita’s desk rang. She moved from Jimmy’s side to pick up her coffee-cup from his desk before answering the call. “Damn that telephone!” she exclaimed. “Which is mine?”

  “This one, isn’t it?” said Brian Ingle, indicating one of the two coffee-cups nearest her hand.

  “No, that’s Mr. Lake’s. This is mine.” She took it up, went over to her desk and began to answer the call. Jimmy followed her, taking his own cup. Sitting on the edge of Nita’s desk, his long legs dangling, he indicated the Deputy Director’s choice with his free hand.

  “Look at this design, Hark’ee. Take it easy, relax, and just look at it. It’s pitiable, the way you fall for the obvious. This design is dead at birth, it’s still-born, it’s an abortion. Here have I been nearly six years trying to educate you in visual values, and you have the nerve to tell me that this—this crudely-coloured platitude—is a cover design. T’chah.” Jimmy took a gulp of his coffee.

  The Deputy Director’s mouth twitched. “There’s only one principle for a cover design for our public. They must be obvious, they must be crude. That one ”—he jerked his finger towards the Director’s choice and poised himself for a knock-out blow—“is a good design, I admit; a good design for the dust-jacket of a volume of Bloomsbury belles-lettres.”

  Alice Lake giggled. “‘A bloodthirsty type peering out from amidst the bougainvilleas’? Poor old Bloomsbury!”

  “The trouble with you, Harker,” began Jimmy Lake; but he got no further with it. Nita Prince suddenly interrupted him with a paroxysm of coughing.

  “Cough it up, ducky,” he said, leaning across and patting her on the shoulders.

  Nita Prince did not cough it up, though. The coughing at once turned to a painful choking: the beautiful face was distorted: the eyes desperately stared: Nita’s hands clutched and tore at her throat, then jerked feebly in the air before her. They were all staring at her incredulously. Before anyone could move, she had fallen forward across her desk. An ink bottle overturned, rolled slowly off the desk on to the floor, dabbling her bright hair with ink as it went.

  CHAPTER III

  PASSED TO MR. STRANGEWAYS

  TRYING TO RECOLLECT the scene in tranquillity later, Nigel Strangeways found it curiously difficult to piece together. It was as if a bomb had exploded in the middle of the morning, blowing it into grotesque and unrelated fragments. There was the thin, doll-like cry from Alice Lake, “Oh, Jimmy!” There was the Director, staring down at Nita in consternation and muttering over and over again, “Nita, what is it? Nita, what is it?” There was Edgar Billson, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his sleeve and putting them on again, as though he couldn’t believe what he had seen through them. There was Merrion Squires, shivering uncontrollably. There was Harker Fortescue, rigid as a statue in the middle of the room. There was Brian Ingle, the first of them all to move, running across the room, throwing open the window by Nita’s desk with a cry of “Give her air!” Then standing protectively over Nita’s body as though he could still guard her from what had happened. And there was Charles Kennington, on whose face, before he clapped his hands over it, Nigel had caught an extraordinary expression—a look, he could have sworn, of blind, frantic amazement.

  Nigel strode across the room. There were only three things to be done, for the moment. He did them, while the others watched him like sheep. He felt Nita’s heart, turned up her eyelids. She was dead. He sniffed at her lips, and her coffee-cup: yes, she had been killed by cyanide; he laid the bright head gently back on the desk. He dialled Scotland Yard and asked for Superintendent Blount.

  “Blount? Thank God you’re in. Strangeways here. At the Ministry of Morale. Can you come at once? We’ve had a death by cyanide poisoning. What’s that? . . . Oh, damn your etiquette. Hold on a minute——” Nigel had suddenly thought of a fourth thing to be done. Laying the receiver on the desk, he bent down and sniffed Nita’s hands and fingers. “Are you there
? It’s almost certainly murder. . . . You will? Good. And will you pick up a doctor on the way? It’ll be quicker than trying to get one by telephone. Room F 29 of the Ministry. . . . Yes, I’ll see to that. ’Bye.”

  A murmur, absurdly stagey, had arisen when he used the word “Murder”, as though they were a crowd of extras in a film registering the appropriate response.

  “What the devil do you mean, Nigel?” said Harker Fortescue now in a rasping voice.

  And Jimmy Lake, vaguely and sadly, “No, Nigel, you must be wrong.”

  Brian Ingle, who had been standing away, made a desperate little rush at the body, sobbing as if he was in the last few yards of a close race, and Nigel had to fend him gently off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but no one must touch her now. And no one must leave the room till the police come.” He turned to the Director. “Forgive me taking charge like this, but I’ve had this sort of thing before. Superintendent Blount is an old friend of mine. Shall we all sit down?”

  “What makes you say it’s murder?” asked Major Kennington. He seemed a different being: his voice was like a whip; his slight body quivered, and his eyes snapped with intelligence. Nigel caught a glimpse of the man who had captured Otto Stultz.

  “Her coffee-cup smells of cyanide. Her fingers don’t. If she had taken the poison by putting that trophy of yours straight into her mouth, the coffee-cup wouldn’t smell. If she had broken the container into her coffee, her fingers would almost certainly have picked up a smell of the stuff. But there’s no smell of cyanide on them. So——” Nigel shrugged.

  Major Kennington seemed about to speak, to make some sort of protest. Then he too shrugged his shoulders. Then he did speak.

  “Who had Stultz’s thing last?” he snapped, turning upon the group huddled round the Director’s desk.

  “This is intolerable,” said Edgar Billson. “I do not accept Mr. Strangeways’ authority.”

  “You will accept mine, then,” said the Director with patient firmness, “and stay in this room. There is no need to answer questions, if you don’t wish to, before the police come.”

  Harker Fortescue said, “She might have put the thing in her mouth and taken a gulp of coffee to wash it down, Nigel. And a little of the stuff might have got into the coffee-cup like that.”

  “It’s just a faint possibility,” Nigel replied. “That’s why I told Blount it was almost certainly murder.”

  “Why are we all talking like this?” It was Alice Lake’s high, tiny voice. “That poor girl was alive just now, and now she’s dead.”

  Jimmy walked over to his wife, an intense, appealing expression on his face, and took her hand.

  Presently Charles Kennington said, “Nigel, do me a favour and look in her coffee-cup. See if you can dredge anything up with a spoon. You know what I mean.”

  Nigel poked about in the cup, which was a quarter full. Then he turned, shaking his head silently at Kennington. The Director, moving restlessly about the room again, hands in pockets, had come near to an open window.

  “No!” said Nigel sharply. “Sorry, Jimmy, but I don’t think any one had better go near the windows just now.”

  “Afraid the murderer is going to hurl himself out?” sneered Merrion Squires. “Best thing he could do, I should think.”

  In the shocked silence, Nigel said, “It’s not that. It’s Stultz’s thing.” They were getting into the habit of calling it that, not “Charles’ thing”—it seemed more tactful. “You see, it’s not soluble, and it’s not in Nita’s cup. So, if somebody did pour the poison into the cup, he’s either tucked the container away somewhere in the room or he’s still got it on him. And if so, he might try to flip it out of a window when no one was looking. We shall all have to be searched, of course.”

  “This is preposterous,” muttered Edgar Billson angrily.

  The telephone rang beside Nita’s limp, outstretched arm.

  “Oh, God, oh, God!” murmured Jimmy Lake. “This is too much. Nigel, will you——?”

  Nigel went to the door and spoke to one of the typists in the ante-room. “Please take all the Director’s calls out here. There’s been an accident in his room. Miss Prince. Now, pull yourself together, Miss Grangely. Take all calls. Say the Director is engaged. Don’t let any one into his room. Not even the messengers. When a Superintendent Blount arrives, send him in. No one else. Got it? Oh, yes, and cancel the Director’s conference with the Foreign Office people at midday. Ring Mr. Gillespie at the F.O., and say the Director has been compelled to cancel it. Then telephone to my assistant and the Deputy Director’s, and Mr. Squires’, Mr. Ingle’s and Mr. Billson’s, and tell them we’ve been detained. Tell them to carry on.”

  “Thank you, Nigel,” said Jimmy Lake softly.

  Harker Fortescue said, “Look here. If that damned stuff ought to have got on to her fingers, it ought to have got on to the fingers of whoever——”

  “You’re right,” snapped Charles Kennington. “Nigel, you’d better——”

  “I agree,” said the Director. “I take it no one objects?”

  “If you mean Mr. Strangeways is to go round smelling all our fingers, I must protest. It is a farcical proceeding,” said Edgar Billson.

  “Not a bit,” exclaimed Merrion Squires. “Put us out of our misery. All but one of us, anyway.” He held out his hands to Nigel.

  The little scene that ensued was bizarre to a degree. The tall, loose-limbed figure of Nigel Strangeways bent over one hand after another, as if at some Court ceremony. Even Edgar Billson gave way, though with a bad grace. Finally Nigel extended his own fingers, first to the Director, then to Charles Kennington.

  “Well?” asked Merrion impatiently. “Who is the culprit?”

  “Nobody’s fingers smell of cyanide,” replied Nigel.

  There was a general stir of relief.

  “May I return to my duties, then?” Billson said.

  “Afraid not. For one thing, the stuff is highly volatile——”

  “I could have told you that,” interrupted Billson.

  “——And it’s some little time since—oh, well,” Nigel sighed, “we must wait and see. And while we’re waiting, I suppose we might as well try and find out what happened to Stultz’s thing.” He said it in a deliberately off-hand way. He wanted to give the impression that he had relaxed. If people were a little off their guard, there might be interesting discrepancies between what they said now and their evidence to the police later when they would be very definitely on guard again—one of them, at least.

  “Cook up your stories, boys,” said Merrion Squires.

  Billson glared at Nigel.

  “I cannot concur in this procedure. The matter should be deferred until expert investigation by the police is, h’rrm, set on foot.”

  “Oh, come, Billson,” said the Director, with a return to his normal manner, half-coaxing, half-authoritative. “Don’t let’s be stuffy. We’ve got to pass the time somehow.”

  They were all sitting at one end of the room now, some against the wall, others grouped round the Director’s desk. Alice Lake was in the Director’s chair, and he himself perched sideways on the desk, holding her hand again. It was as if they wished to huddle together for protection against the dead body of Nita slumped across her table at the other side of the room, one arm outstretched towards them in a stiffening pose of accusation. Between them and her, on the floor, lay the dividing sea of photographs, their groups disordered by the feet that had scuffled over them just now.

  “I don’t think we need go into all this,” Alice Lake said. “When Nita came in again with the coffee-tray——”

  “Yes, your husband and I went to help her, I remember,” said Brian Ingle dully.

  Mrs. Lake went on: “Well, I had the thing then. You put the tray down on the desk, here”—she laid her fingers on the left-hand edge of the desk—“and I—let me think, what did I do with it?—yes, I had the thing in my right hand, and I put it down just behind me on the desk: I was standi
ng in front of the desk, at the right-hand corner there. I put it down behind me to take my cup of coffee. Yes, that’s right. And then my husband took out Mr. Squi res’ cover designs and went across the room to prop them up on the bookshelf.”

  “Did you notice the poison-container there when you took the designs out of your drawer?” Nigel asked the Director. “It was the top right-hand drawer, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. It was lying beside my desk calendar.”

  “You didn’t move it or touch it, then?”

  “No.”

  “Very well,” said Nigel. “Now, did you notice the container again after that, Mrs. Lake?”

  “Yes. When Charles pointed to one of the designs and said, ‘The murderous type peering out from amidst the bougainvilleas’—I suppose it was an association of ideas—anyway, I glanced round, and the thing was still there, behind me.”

  “Did any one happen to notice it on the desk after that?”

  A silence.

  “Did any one else see it on the desk at any time?”

  “I did,” said Brian Ingle. “I mean, I saw Mrs. Lake put it down. That was just after N-Nita told us to come and get our coffee.”

  “Any one else?”

  Another silence.

  “Well, that seems to look after the poison-container. Now, Nita’s cup was here”—Nigel indicated the right-hand edge of the desk, near the Director’s calendar—“until her telephone rang and she took it over to her own table. From that point she was in full view of every one, and it doesn’t seem possible——”

  “Don’t forget we were all concentrated on the cover designs,” said Harker Fortescue.

  “That’s true. But no one went near her desk, except Jimmy——”

  Alice Lake cut in quickly, “Well, surely someone would have noticed it if my husband had broken the container into her cup then.”

  “Exactly,” said Nigel. “In fact, she’d have been bound to spot it herself. So we’re left with——”