by Ngaio Marsh
Handesley looked at his own interlocked fingers lying before him on the table. He did not raise his eyes. His voice was even and unbroken.
“I went to my dressing-room at the far end of the corridor. I undressed and spoke to Vassily who was putting out my things. Then he went out and I had my bath. I had finished bathing and had dressed—all except my dinner jacket, when there was a knock at my door. Angela came in. She wanted to know if I had any aspirin. Miss Grant had a headache and would like to take some. I found the aspirin and gave it to Angela. She went out and almost immediately afterwards the alarm sounded. I joined the party on the landing and it was then that Arthur— Mr. Wilde—tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You are the corpse.’ I think that is all.”
“Any questions?”
The vague negative murmur floated round the table.
“Miss Grant,” said the Inspector, “you also went upstairs with the first party. Where was your room?”
“At the far end of the cross-corridor at the back of the house, next to Angela’s—to Miss North’s. We went along together. Angela came into my room after we had bathed. It was then I asked her for aspirin.”
“Where is the bathroom you used?”
“Opposite my bedroom. We both used it—I first.”
“And you merely crossed the passage to this bathroom and back to your own room?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go anywhere else while you were upstairs?”
“No. I came down after the alarm.”
“You, Miss North? What were your movements?”
“I came up with Rosamund. While she bathed I read in my own room. On my return from the bathroom I went in to her and after that to my uncle’s room for the aspirin. I had just got back to Rosamund’s door when the lights went out.”
“Where is Mr. Rankin’s room?”
“Next to mine and immediately opposite the entrance of the top passage into the corridor. May I complete the sketch there?” Alleyn pushed the sheet of paper along to her and she traced in the remaining rooms.
“Thank you very much,” said Alleyn. “That completes the positions of the characters. It also brings to a close the opening phase of the reconstruction of the game. Before we go I should like to speak to Florence, your maid, Miss North. I am sure you will all see that it is most important to establish the positions of Mr. and Mrs. Wilde and Mr. Bathgate.”
Angela got up and crossed to a push-bell by the mantelpiece. The others moved back their chairs and Wilde began a low-voiced conversation with Handesley.
The bell was answered, not by Vassily, but by a small agitated maid. She looked as if she belonged to the back stairs and had got into the drawing-room by mistake.
“Will you ask Florence to come in for a moment, Mary?” said Angela.
“Yes, miss.”
“Oh, just a second, Mary,” said Alleyn, with a glance at Angela, “were you in the hall last night when Mr. Wilde went upstairs and Mr. Rankin was left alone?”
“Oh—yes, yes, sir, I was. Mr. Roberts don’t usually send me to the front of the ’ouse, sir, but last night—”
“Did Mr. Wilde speak to you?”
“He arst me the time and I says ‘ten to’ and he says, ‘Hell, I’m late,’ and skedaddles upstairs.”
“What was Mr. Rankin doing?”
“Smoking a cigarette sir, quite happy like. I say, ‘Shall I take away the cocktail tray?’ and he says, ‘Don’t do that,’ he says, ‘I’ll have a quick one,’ he says, ‘and spoil that schoolboy complexion.’ So I goes away, sir, and then only a few seconds later, sir, the lights went out and—oh, isn’t it awful?”
“Terrible. Thank you, Mary.”
After a hesitating glance at Handesley the maid went out.
“Doesn’t the butler usually answer that bell?” asked Alleyn after a pause.
“Yes,” said Angela vaguely, “yes, of course, Mary’s the between-maid. She never answers the bell. I don’t know why he didn’t come—everyone is so upset, I suppose Vassily—”
She was interrupted by the entrance of Florence, a darkish wooden-faced individual of about thirty-five.
“Florence,” said Angela, “Mr. Alleyn wants to ask you something about last night.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Will you tell me, please,” began Alleyn, “which of the rooms you went into last night when the guests were upstairs dressing?”
“Very good, sir. I went first to Miss Angela’s room.”
“How long were you there?”
“Only a few minutes. Miss Angela wished me to ask Mrs. Wilde if I could assist her.”
“So you went to Mrs. Wilde’s room?”
‘Yes, sir.”
“What happened there?”
“Madam asked me to fasten her dress. I fastened it,” said Florence sparsely.
“Did Mrs. Wilde speak to you?”
“Madam was speaking to Mr. Wilde who was in the bathroom next door to the dressing-room.”
“Did Mr. Wilde answer?”
“Yes, sir. He was speaking to Mrs. Wilde and also to Mr. Bathgate who was in his own room beyond.”
“When you left Mrs. Wilde where did you go?”
“To Miss Grant’s room.”
“How long were you there?”
“I waited a moment, sir. Miss Grant was not there. She came in a few minutes later and said she did not require me. I left. Miss Angela was coming along the passage. Then the lights went out.”
“Did Miss Grant come from the bathroom?”
Florence hesitated. “I think not, sir. Miss Grant bathed earlier—before Miss Angela.”
“Thank you very much. I think that’s all I wanted to ask you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The door shut behind Florence. No one had looked at Rosamund Grant. No one had spoken.
Alleyn turned a page of his note-book.
“By the way, Miss Grant,” he said, “did you not say that apart from your visit to the bathroom you did not leave your room until the gong sounded?”
“Wait a moment!” ejaculated Doctor Young.
“Rosamund—it’s all right,” cried Angela, running across to her friend. But Rosamund Grant had slid from her chair to the floor in a dead faint.
In the sort of horribly false confusion that followed, Nigel was aware only of one thing, and that was the pounding at the bell-push in answer to some confused order of Sir Hubert’s.
“Brandy—that’s what she wants.” Handesley was shouting.
“Better some sal volatile,” said Doctor Young. “Just open those windows one of ye.”
“I’ll fetch some,” Angela said and hurried away.
The flustered Mary had reappeared.
“Tell Vassily to bring some brandy,” said Handesley.
“Please, sir, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, sir, he’s gone—he’s disappeared, sir, and none of us liked to tell you!”
“Hell’s teeth!” ejaculated Alleyn.
CHAPTER SIX
Alleyn Does His Stuff
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR ALLEYN had been most particular about the state of the house. Nothing must be touched, he said, until he had finished what he called his noseyparkering. Nothing had been touched. Little Doctor Young, in his capacity as police surgeon for the district, had stressed the point from the moment of his arrival and Bunce, P.C., in his brief and enjoyable supremacy, had scared the life out of the servants, keeping them all confined to their own quarters. He had, however, set no watch at the gate and Vassily apparently escaped by the simple method of walking out at the back door.
Alleyn recovered from his momentary rage at the disappearance of the butler, rang up the station and found that the old Russian had, with peculiar ingenuousness, caught the ten-fifteen for London. The Inspector telephoned the Yard and gave orders that he should be traced and detained immediately.
By this time a detachment of plainclothes men had appeared at Frantock. Alleyn had the
tall and quite unsurmountable fence inspected, mounted a guard of helmets, felt hats and waterproofs at the gates, and invited Detective-Sergeant Bailey, the finger-print expert who had come down with him, to attend him in the house. Mr. Bunce was also on tap in the hall. Handesley had been requested to detain his guests in the library or to let them loose in the garden.
“Now,” said Detective-Inspector Alleyn, “I’ll see Ethel, the only housemaid remaining. Ask her to come in, Bunce.”
Mary had been scared and Florence calm. Ethel, a pretty girl of about twenty-seven, was intelligent and interested.
“Where were you,” Alleyn asked her, “at ten to eight last night?”
“I was in my room upstairs, sir, at the end of the back corridor. I had just changed my apron and noticed the time and thought I would go downstairs and help Mary tidy the hall. So I came along the back corridor into the passage past the best bedrooms.”
“You mean past Mr. Bathgate’s room?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right. I got as far as the head of the stairs and looked over and I saw Mr. Rankin was still in the hall. Mary was there too, sir, locking the front door, and she looked up at me and jerked her head like, so I said to myself that I’d wait till the hall was clear before I came down. I turned back and as I passed Mr. Bathgate’s door I remembered I hadn’t brought his shaving water and that there was only two cigarettes left in his box. So I tapped on the door.”
“Yes?”
“The door wasn’t shut and when I tapped it, it swung in a bit like and at the same time Mr. Bathgate calls out, ‘Come in.’ So I went in and just as I was asking about the shaving water the lights went out and I felt all confused, sir, so I went out too, and kind of groped my way back to my own room, sir.”
“What was Mr. Bathgate doing?”
“Smoking a cigarette, sir, with a book in his hand. I think he had just called out something to Mr. Wilde who was bathing next door.”
“Thank you, Ethel.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ethel plaintively. She withdrew with some reluctance.
Alleyn, with a mental shrug at Nigel’s amazing imbecility in having overlooked his own cast-iron alibi, got on with the work. Roberts, the pantry man, proved unprofitable. He had been in his pantry solidly for twenty minutes when the gong sounded. The cook and odd-boy were also completely without interest. Alleyn turned his attention to the hall itself.
He produced a tape measure and carefully took measurements between the cocktail table and the foot of the stairs. The tray with its sordid array of used glasses had been left untouched.
“All very nice and proper,” grumbled Alleyn to Detective-Sergeant Bailey, “nothing disturbed except the minor detail of the body.”
“Lovely funeral if we’d only had a corpse, sort of,” responded Bailey.
‘Well, young Bathgate says the body was lying at right angles to the gong. The last that Mary saw of Mr. Rankin he was standing at the cocktail tray. Presumably at the end of it when he was struck. Come here, Bunce. How tall are you?”
“Five-foot-eleven in me socks, sir.”
“Good enough. The body is just on six foot. Stand here, will you?”
Bunce stood to attention and Alleyn walked round him, looking at him carefully.
“What do you make of this, Bailey?” he said. “This job was done inside five minutes at the most. The knife was in that leather slot by the stairs, unless it had been previously removed, which I think unlikely. Therefore, the murderer started off from here, took the thing in his right hand—so—and struck from the back.”
He went through the pantomime of stabbing the constable. “Now see what I mean. I’m six-foot-two, but I can’t get the right angle. Bend over, will you, Bunce. Ah, that’s more like it, but the bannister gets in the way. He may have been leaning over the tray. It’s too far if I stand on the bottom step. Wait a bit. See if you can get anything from the bottom knob of the bannister, will you, Bailey?”
“It’ll be a fair mess of prints,” said the expert glumly. He opened a small grip and busied himself with the contents.
Alleyn nosed round the hall. He inspected the main switch, the glasses, the cocktail shaker, the gong, all the tables and woodwork. He paused by the grate. The dead clinkers of last night’s fire were still there.
“I ses, ‘don’t you touch none of them grates,’” said Bunce suddenly, “there’s only gas upstairs.”
“Quite right,” rejoined the Inspector, “we will deal with the fireplaces ourselves.” He bent over the fireplace and taking a pair of tongs, removed the clinkers one by one, laying them on a piece of newspaper. As he did this he kept up a running commentary to Detective-Constable Bailey.
“You’ll find Miss North’s prints on that sketch plan of the house that I put on the tray there. Also Bathgate’s. We must have everyone’s, of course. The tooth mugs upstairs will be profitable in that direction. I hate asking for prints, it makes me feel so self-conscious. There’s nothing on the knife, needless to say—nor yet the switch. A nit-wit wouldn’t leave a print behind him nowadays if he could help it.”
“That’s right, sir,” agreed Bailey. “There’s a proper muck up on the bannister, but I rather think we’ll get something a bit better from the knob.”
“The knob, eh?” said Alleyn, who had now drawn out the ash tray from under the grate.
“Curious position, too. There’s a clear left hand impression pointing downwards. Quite an awkward place to get your left hand with the bannister curving out at the bottom the way it does. It’s right on the inside edge. Very clear, too. Saw it with me naked eye at once.”
“Your naked eye is uncanny, Bailey. Try the head of the stairs. Hullo, what’s this?”
He had been sifting the ashes in the tray and now paused, squatting on his heels and peering at a small grimy object in the palm of his hand.
“Made a find, sir?” said the finger-print expert, who was now at work on the stair head.
“Somebody’s been chucking away their belongings,” grunted the Inspector. He produced a small magnifying glass and squinted through it.
“A Dent’s press button,” he murmured, “with just a fragment of—yes, of leather—charred, but unmistakable. Ah, well.” He put his trophy in an envelope and wrote on the flap.
The next twenty minutes he spent crawling about the floor, standing on chairs to examine the stair well and outside of the treads, gingerly inspecting the cigarette boxes, and directing Bailey to test the coal-scuttle and fire-irons for prints.
“And now,” he said, “for the bedrooms. The mortuary van will be here any time now, Bunce. I’ll leave you to attend to that. Come on,” he said, and led the way upstairs. On the landing he paused and looked about him.
“On our left,” he informed Bailey, “the bedroom of Mrs. Wilde, the dressing-room of her husband, the bathroom, and Mr. Bathgate’s room. All communicating. Very matey and rather unusual. Well, begin at the beginning, I suppose.”
Mrs. Wilde’s room was disordered and bore a faint family likeness to a modern comedy bedroom. She had taken away its character and Florence had not been allowed to put it back. The bed had not been made and the early morning tea-tray was still on the table.
“There’s your mark for prints, Bailey,” said the Inspector, and once again the expert produced his bag.
“The alibi here is pretty good, I understand,” remarked Bailey, sifting a fine powder over the surface of a cup.
“Pretty good?” answered Alleyn. “It’s pretty damn good for all of ’em except Miss Grant. She did tell a nice meaty lie about her movements, and followed up with a faint on top of it.”
He opened a suitcase and began going through the contents.
“What about this Russian affair, sir? The doctor or whatever he is?”
“Yes, he seems to be a likely horse. Do you fancy him, Bailey?”
“Well, from what you’ve told me about the knife and all that, it looks sort of possible. Personally I favour the butler.”
&n
bsp; “If Tokareff’s our man, he is pretty nimble on his pins. His room is some way along the passage and he sang, so they tell me, continuously. As for the butler—he was in the servants’ quarters the whole time and was seen there.”
“Is that dead certain, sir? After all, he has done a bunk.”
“True. He is rather tempting; but when we’ve got your prints from the bannister, I’ll know better if I’m on the right track. Do your stuff in the bathroom now, will you, Bailey? Bathgate and Wilde will be found to predominate. Then come back and go through this tallboy for me while I get on to the other rooms. Do you mind working out of your department for a bit?”
“Pleasure, sir. What am I looking for?”
“A single glove. Probably yellow dogskin. Right hand. I don’t expect to find it here. Make a list of all the clothes, please.”
“Right, sir,” said Bailey from the bathroom. Alleyn followed him and looked round the dressing-room and bathroom very carefully. Then he went into Nigel’s room.
It was much as it had been the night before. The bed had not been slept in. Alleyn had learnt from Bunce that Nigel had been up all night, trying to get calls through to the family solicitor, to his own office, and, on behalf of the police, to Scotland Yard. He had been invaluable to Handesley and to Angela North, had succeeded in getting Tokareff to stop talking and go to bed, and had silenced Mrs. Wilde’s hysterics when her husband had thrown up his hands in despair and left her to it. The Inspector considered Ethel’s statement that she had actually seen Nigel in his room as the lights went out good enough proof of his integrity. However, he examined the room carefully.
Conrad’s Suspense lay on the bedside table. The butts of two Sullivan Powell cigarettes were in the ash tray. An inquiry showed that these were the last in the cigarette box at seven-thirty the evening before, and Ethel, recalled, repeated that she had noticed the box empty and Mr. Bathgate smoking the last on her dramatically terminated visit. Mr. Bathgate’s own cigarettes were of a less expensive variety. “Exit Mr. Bathgate,” murmured the detective to himself. “He couldn’t smoke two cigarettes, commit a murder, and talk to a housemaid while he was doing it, in ten or twelve minutes.” He had come to this conclusion when the door opened and in walked Nigel himself.