by Ngaio Marsh
Rosamund Grant was not called, but Mrs. Wilde, wearing rouge on her mouth but none on her face, supported Wilde in their own account of their joint conversation during the time of the murder. Sir Hubert, seeming terribly shaken, was treated with elaborate courtesy by the coroner. The incident of the willing of the knife by Rankin to Sir Hubert was touched on, but the coroner made little of it.
Alleyn asked for an adjournment; the whole affair ended, leaving the onlookers with a sense of having been served with treason when they ordered murder.
The guests were now at liberty to leave Frantock, and Nigel’s house-party was at an end. He was faced with the prospect of returning to his newspaper office, replete with forbidden copy. The office had been heavily tactful. Jamison, his chief, had rung him up, telling him rather wistfully not to worry. Nigel pictured the news-hungry Scot and, grinning to himself, had actually spent an hour before the inquest writing up the Russian element.
Now he stood for the last time at his window in the little Welsh room, listening to the querulous overtones of Mrs. Wilde’s voice as she talked to her husband amid their suitcases, beyond the bathroom. Angela had disappeared immediately after the inquest, presumably with the object of hurrying up to London with the letters. Nigel had had no opportunity of talking to her and felt rather injured. With a sigh he turned from the window and laid a pound note on the dressing-table for Ethel the Intelligent. A whole pound! Handsome and rather extravagant, but, after all, she had seen him before the lights went out and thus, he reflected, established his alibi.
There was a tap on the door.
“Come in,” said Nigel.
It was Sir Hubert. He came in uncertainly, hesitated at the sound of the Wildes’ voices and then, turning away from Nigel, spoke softly.
“I only interrupted you,” he said, “to tell you, while there is an opportunity, how deeply I feel—” he hesitated and then went on more vigorously, “how deeply I regret the tragic circumstances of your first visit here, Bathgate.”
“Oh, please, sir—” began Nigel, but the other interrupted him.
“You are going to be polite and generous about it, I know, but, though that is very nice of you, it does not make very much difference to what has happened. I feel—horribly responsible to you all, but particularly to you. If I can ever be of any use to you, you must promise to let me know.”
“It is very kind of you,” answered Nigel impulsively. “I do hope you will try, sir, if it’s not an impertinence for me to talk like this, to get rid of any feeling of morbid responsibility to any of us. I—I was fond of Charles, naturally, but I do not believe I knew him half as well as you. I think that you, his greatest friend after all, feel his death most of any of us.”
“I was extremely fond of him,” said Handesley, tonelessly.
“You know, of course, that he has left you a number of pictures and things. I shall see that they are sent here as soon as everything is settled up. If there is anything else among his possessions that you know of and would like to have as—a remembrance of Charles, I do hope you will let me know. This sounds awful, but I thought—” Nigel paused uncomfortably.
“Thank you very much indeed. I do perfectly understand, but I am sure there is nothing—” Handesley turned towards the window, “except perhaps the dagger. As you know, that will be mine in any case. I believe the will is quite in order.”
For two or three seconds Nigel was literally unable to speak. He stared at the back of Sir Hubert’s distinguished white head and thoughts of the complete incalculability of human reactions raced in utter confusion through his mind.
“Of course—” he heard himself say. Handesley interrupted him.
“You think it very strange that I should want to possess this weapon,” he said. “To you, perhaps, it is strange, but you are not a passionately enthusiastic collector, nor have you the detached point of view of the student. This knife cannot remind me more forcibly of that which, in any case, I can never forget, but it seems to me that it is due to Charles’ memory that I should have it when once the police have finished with it. You do not understand this, but Charles himself, who knew my character, would have understood. I think anyone interested in such things as I am interested would also understand. It is the scientific point of view.”
“What’s this about the scientific point of view?” asked Wilde, poking his head round the bathroom door. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but I heard the phrase.”
“You should be able to interpret it, Arthur,” rejoined Sir Hubert. “I must go down and relieve Rosamund. She is terribly upset still and Alleyn insisted on interviewing her again today. Arthur, tell me, do you think—?”
“I’ve given up thinking,” said Arthur Wilde bitterly.
Nigel saw Handesley as he went out steal a glance at his old friend.
“What’s the matter with Hubert?” asked Wilde when they were alone.
“Don’t ask me,” said Nigel wearily. “This crime seem to have acted like a corrosive acid in all our hearts. Do you know, he wants to have the dagger?”
“What!”
“Yes. He reminded me of that will you witnessed—you remember, the joke will.”
“I remember,” said Wilde, sitting on the bed and staring blankly at Nigel through his glasses.
“He said you would understand.”
“The scientific point of view. I see. How terribly consistent! Yes, I suppose in a way I do understand, but—good Lord!”
“I know. Have a cigarette.”
“Arthur!” called Mrs. Wilde from beyond the bathroom. “Have you rung up and told them what time we are arriving tonight? I do wish you wouldn’t wander off like that.”
“Coming, darling,” said Wilde. He hurried back to his wife and Nigel, wondering if Angela had returned, went out on to the landing. He met Alleyn at the head of the stairs.
“I was looking for you,” said the Chief Inspector. “Can you come down to the study for a moment?”
“With pleasure,” answered Nigel drearily. “What’s up now? Are you going to tell me you’ve discovered the murderer?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am,” said Alleyn.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alleyn Comes Cleanish
“DID YOU MEAN THAT?” asked Nigel as the detective closed the door behind them.
“Yes, it’s true. I know now. I have known for some time, I think, but even though a Yard official is supposed to have no psyche, I find there is often a moment in a case when a piece of one’s mind, one’s feeling, one’s sense, knows the end while all the rest of the trained brain cuts this intuitive bit dead. Yes, it’s like that sometimes.”
“Who is it?”
“It is not for the sake of keeping you on tenterhooks that I don’t answer that at once. I want someone to listen to the evidence. Oh, we’ve gone over it at the Yard ad infinitum, of course. There are one or two of us who know the case-book off by heart. But I want to hear myself repeating it to someone fresh. Will you be patient, Bathgate?”
“Very well, only, God knows, it’s not easy.”
“I’ll be as brief, and as impersonal, as possible. The policeman speaking. On Monday morning when I began work on this case I interviewed the members of this house-party individually and afterwards, as you remember, together. At the conclusion of our ‘trial’ I made an exhaustive examination of the house. With the assistance of Bunce I reconstructed the murder. The position of the body (which had been so infuriatingly interfered with), of the knife, of the cocktail shaker and of the gong, led me to assume that Rankin had been stabbed from behind and from above. It is no easy matter to drive a knife into a body from the back so as to penetrate the heart. This had been accomplished and I, with Doctor Young, suspected a certain anatomical knowledge. Who of the party possessed such knowledge? Doctor Tokareff. For some time the evidence pointed strongly towards Doctor Tokareff, and the fantastic aspect of the motive was considerably upheld by the murder of Krasinski for the same reason—the violation of
the sacred dagger. Two objections withheld me from going definitely for the Russian—one, the fact that he is left-handed, the other the distance from his room to the scene of the murder. Also I gathered that he strongly urged the inadvisability of moving the body.
“His attitude, too, was hard to explain. He made no attempt to disguise his indifference to Rankin’s death and his feeling that it was an act of poetic justice. Next I turned my attention to Rosamund Grant. Here we had the age-old motive of the woman, not exactly scorned, but faced with complete disillusion as regards the man she passionately loved. She was aware of Rankin’s intrigue with Mrs. Wilde. She had tried to see him, had lied about her movements immediately prior to the murder, and in my interview with her was an extremely unsatisfactory subject. She had studied anatomy and had in the past given exhibitions of an ungovernable and violent temper. Miss Angela’s discovery of the wisp of green fluff from her shoe in Rankin’s room was a fortunate event for Miss Grant. It cut down the time factor in her case to an almost impossible ration. Then Sir Hubert. Here the only motive I could discover was the passion of the collector. This passion can become a disease and I am not sure that Sir Hubert is not tainted with it. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to add to his collection. But murder? And again, the time factor. In your case I was extremely thorough, but the housemaid’s evidence was unanswerable; you had smoked two cigarettes while you were in your room, too. You were not in debt. Money is the motive behind most crimes and in your case it was there—nice and healthy. I gave you up with reluctance.
“Well, so it went on. Mrs. Wilde, who, from the scene you and Miss Grant overheard, revealed herself to be in a state of hysterical and reluctant subjection to Rankin, was too short to have accomplished the murder. Her husband had revealed an interesting phobia of hers as regards knives and blades of all sorts. She was in debt. Rankin left her husband three thousand. Also she had lugged the body some way out of position—a noteworthy point. But she was too short. This led me back to the position of the assailant and I put Bunce in Rankin’s place and myself stood behind him at the foot of the stairs. If I stood on the bottom step I could not reach him, and I was persuaded the victim had been standing by the cocktail tray. From the floor, even, I could scarcely get the correct down-drive indicated by the position of the dagger. Where, then, had the assailant stood? How had he drawn so close without being observed and yet—! Every time I seemed to end up in a cul-de-sac. I had, of course, got all your finger-prints. We went over every inch of the walls and the bannisters. The knife handle gave no prints. Then at last we made another discovery. Amongst the confused blur of prints on the knob at the bottom of the bannister were the faint but unmistakable impressions left by two hands that had gripped it from above. The left hand was moderately clear, but the right hand was quite a different proposition. It was the curious impression left by a gloved hand and the pressure had been great enough to show the actual seams of the glove and in places an indication of the coarse-grained leather.
They were bad prints, but we got a good enough impression from them to suggest they had been made by the right and left hands of the same individual. Their angle was curious. It called up the picture of someone standing with their back to the stairs, leaning across the curved end of the bannister at a very awkward angle. A most unlikely attitude, unless—” Alleyn paused.
“Well?” said Nigel.
“Unless the person who made them was sitting astride the bannister and facing the hall. Someone who had, for instance, slid down the bannister and fetched up leaning heavily on the knob. A person with a longish reach could, from that position, have just got hold of the knife as it hung on the leather strip against the wall. Such a person would have been considerably higher than the stooping victim. We re-examined the entire length of the rail. At the top we found similar prints consistent with my idea that their author had slid down the bannister face first. I asked Miss Angela if any of you had been indulging in this mild sport and she told me no—not this week-end. I also ascertained that Doctor Tokareff and Mrs. Wilde were no good at it. This was not particularly interesting as the prints were not those of any of these persons.”
“Then whose—?”
“We next turned our attention to the outer border of the bottom of the bannister, the wooden base into which the uprights are set. Here we found a print, solitary and unmistakable since Ethel, Mary and Co. don’t fancy poking a duster through the rails. It was incisive at the top and blurred further down.”
“But how could anyone get their hand through the rails, and why should they?”
“It was not the print of a hand, but of a naked foot, a foot that had just brushed the wood as its owner slid down the bannister. And with that discovery, I had to reconstruct my ideas about the time factor. It gave me about ten seconds more room to think about in. A vivid little scene had begun to take shape. Picture it, Bathgate. The hall is dimly lit. Mary has turned off most of the lights, having a mania for this manoeuvre. She has gone out and Rankin is bending over the cocktail tray, clearly lit by the wall lamp above it. The stairs are practically in darkness. Rankin is probably shaking up the last of the cocktail, preparatory to pouring it out. At the top of the stairs appears a dim, half-clad figure. It may be wearing a dressing-gown or perhaps it is only clad in underclothes. A glove is on its right hand. There is a faint swishing noise, drowned by the gurgle of the cocktail shaker. The figure is now astride the bottom of the bannister. It makes two swift gestures and Rankin pitches forward, striking the gong with his head. The figure on the bannister leans far out and reaches towards the switch. Then complete darkness.”
Alleyn stopped speaking.
“Well,” ventured Nigel with shaky facetiousness. “Am I now supposed to know the answer?”
Alleyn looked at him with a curious air of compassion.
“Not even yet?” he said.
“Whose were the prints?”
“That I am not going to tell you. Oh, believe me, Bathgate, not out of any desire to figure as the mysterious omnipotent detective. That would be impossibly vulgar. No. I am not telling you because there is still that bit of my brain that cannot quite accept the Q.E.D. of the theorem. There is only one tangible bit of evidence in this whole case. That is the button of the glove worn by the murderer. The glove was burnt, but the fastening, a press-button, was recovered. That miserable little button fastens the whole structure of my case. It is not enough. So I have decided to make an extraordinary experiment, Bathgate. I am going to ask the group of suspected persons to look on while we go through a performance of the murder. One of the guests must slide down the bannister and in dumb-show re-enact that terrible little scene. I want you, with the ‘very comment of your soul,’ if that was the phrase, to observe the others. Yes, it’s Hamlet’s old stunt over again and if it comes off I hope I shan’t make the muck he did of the result. You have made some friends here, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Nigel, surprised.
“Then I am afraid the result is going to come as a shock to you. For that reason I have told you this much. I have enjoyed your companionship, Bathgate,” ended the Chief Inspector with one of those curious twists of formality that Nigel had grown accustomed to. “Perhaps we may have a final talk together—afterwards.”
“1 shall insist on it,” Nigel assured him.
“Well! Do one last job of work for me. Will you play the murderer’s part in the play within the play and help me to trick this shadowy figure into betraying itself?”
“I must say—” said Nigel coldly.
“Ah! you don’t care to do it. It is detestable to you. I hate illogical sentimentality. It is so conceited.”
There was a note of bitterness in Alleyn’s voice that Nigel had not heard before.
“You don’t understand—” he began.
“I think I do. For you it’s all over. Rankin was your cousin; you have had a shock. You have also, you must confess, enjoyed the part you have played up to date in helping to round up a
bunch of mad Russians. But now, when a criminal who is prepared—even schemes—to let an innocent person hang, turns out to be someone you know, you become all fastidiousness and leave the dirt to the policeman. Quite understandable. In a couple of years you will be dining out on this murder. Pity you can’t write it up.”
“You’re unfair,” said Nigel angrily.
“Am I? Well, don’t let’s quarrel. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind asking Bunce, who is out on the drive, to report to me. I am afraid that it is part of my schedule that you should witness, with the others, this final scene. Your train goes in half an hour.”
Nigel walked to the door. “I’ll tell Bunce,” he volunteered.
“Thank you,” said Alleyn wearily.
“And,” continued Nigel rather indistinctly, “I still think you are unfair, Alleyn, but if you like, if you’ll allow me to—I’ll do whatever you suggest to help.”
Alleyn’s singularly charming smile lightened his eyes for a moment.
“All right,” he said. “Sorry! I’m a bundle of nerves at the moment, and I do so hate murders. Perhaps someone else will do, after all. Come back with the bluebottle and I’ll explain.”
Nigel found Bunce, P.C., staring disconsolately at a dead chrysanthemum in a border by the side lawn.