The Case of the Four Friends

by J. C. Masterman

  Toby flushed angrily, but he did not pursue the topic, for Charles Sandham was already preparing to move.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that we’re conforming to convention and turning out for this fancy-dress ball to see the New Year in. It’s a confounded bore, but I like to do what’s expected of me.’ In fact, in spite of his age, Charles Sandham enjoyed putting on fancy dress. The actor in him was never put aside for long, and it gave him pleasure to involve himself for a night both in the dress and the character of some historical personage. ‘Personally I’m going as Metternich, it’s a fine court dress of that period, and I don’t really believe that any dress which dates from after the 1848 revolution is quite worthy of a gentleman. What are the rest of you doing?’

  ‘I’ve got an eighteenth-century dress,’ said Gradon, ‘which belonged to an ancestor – and it is said to have been worn by him at the Hell-Fire Club – that ought to satisfy your aristocratic requirements.’

  Bannister laughed. ‘Then I’m afraid that I shall pull the party down in the social scale, for I’m going as a Neapolitan peasant – it’s such an easy dress to put on. It’s true that my sort of blouse affair is of first-rate silk, and I venture to doubt whether an Italian peasant would have much use for it, but, still, I can only describe myself as a simple Italian peasant. What about you, Toby?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m just as far down the scale as you are. You see, I’m awfully keen on dancing, and so I stick to the old pierrot costume. I can manage silk, too, and of course with the pierrot rig shoes don’t present any difficulty.’ He shot a glance at Piers. ‘Sometimes, you know, the girls are just as fond of dancing with a pierrot as with an eighteenth-century rake.’

  ‘I suppose Dahlia Constant approves your choice, Toby,’ said Sandham, ‘for I imagine that you won’t have many dances to spare for others.’

  ‘What?’ ejaculated Gradon. ‘Is Dahlia here?’

  It was at that moment that Brendel received yet another and a violent shock. Up to that moment he had not paid very much attention to Gradon. He thought him stupid and conceited, and it had not occurred to him that his character was worth examination. There was no earthly reason, so far as Brendel could see, why he should play any part in the difficulty which seemed to involve both Sandham and Barrick, and perhaps also Bannister. Brendel had therefore paid but slight attention to the Hon. Piers Gradon, and had only noted, almost subconsciously, that he and Toby Barrick were clearly temperamentally hostile to each other, and that they might easily quarrel during the course of their holiday. But the mention of Dahlia Constant’s name abruptly caused him to change his mind, for his eyes had turned towards Gradon at that moment, and, as in the case of Sandham earlier, that moment had been sufficient. For on the instant that he learned that Dahlia was in the hotel his face had turned as black as thunder and he had glared at Toby as though he could scarcely restrain himself from striking him then and there. Was it, thought Brendel, that he was himself truly in love with Dahlia, or was it that his pride could not bear the spectacle of a successful rival dancing and making love to a woman who had – in fact – rejected him? Or was it even that he suspected that the party had been arranged at the Magnifico simply in order that Toby might have an audience for his successful wooing of the heiress? Perhaps their engagement would be announced that night? Brendel could be sure of none of these things, but of one thing he was certain. In that instant of self-revelation Gradon had made it quite obvious that he was dangerous. The look that he gave Toby was not merely the scowl of a disappointed lover – it was a look of unrestrained hatred, the look of a killer.

  But meantime he must not miss the conversation – there might be pointers to be picked up from it.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Toby had replied, ‘Dahlia’s here for the New Year – she arranged to come with the two aunts a long time ago. As a matter of fact, I believe she was here in the autumn too. But I thought you knew she was here; didn’t Charles tell you?’

  Bannister chipped in, for Gradon’s mouth had set in a firm hard line and he made no effort to answer.

  ‘I don’t think anyone told me either that she would be here, but what likelier? All the world comes here sooner or later, and at any rate it’s delightful to know that she is here just now. I suppose that we shall be able to congratulate you soon, Toby?’

  The question was innocent enough, but Toby was on edge, and he seemed to be aware of a suspicious or even a sinister note in Bannister’s voice. He knew that he must pull himself together and give no hint of his anxiety, for it was above all necessary that all the world should think that his engagement and marriage were imminent. He managed, therefore, to answer with the right mixture of good temper and nonchalance – and his slight embarrassment was, after all, in place.

  ‘It’s awfully good of you,’ he stammered. ‘I’m a terribly lucky man and all that, but well, if you don’t mind, don’t say anything about it to Dahlia, for instance – you know women are odd about this sort of thing – I mean, you know, there isn’t a formal engagement yet and nothing in the papers. I’d rather let her decide just when – well – ’

  Bannister lifted and emptied his glass, smiling at Toby. ‘But, my dear chap, of course I’ll be the soul of discretion. Meantime, I’ll only offer my private congratulations and drink to your happiness. You are indeed a lucky fellow.’

  Toby breathed a sigh of relief. Bannister was the shrewdest man he knew, and he appeared to have taken exactly the view of the situation which Toby wished him to take.

  Gradon had said no word to Toby since his exclamation when Dahlia’s name was mentioned, and now he turned away from him and addressed himself to Brendel.

  ‘And you, Brendel,’ he said, ‘you’ve not told us how you will disguise yourself tonight.’

  The tension eased as Brendel laughed and replied. ‘Oh me – a rather too stout and elderly foreigner. Oh, I couldn’t possibly compete – my dancing days are long over, and I don’t think the young ladies would be glad if they had to find excuses to refuse me as a partner. No, I shall go in Frack, as we call it, and then I shall – what’s that odd expression? – yes, I shall sit on the side-lines.’

  ‘Won’t that be awfully dull for you – why not join our party?’

  Brendel shook his head. ‘Thank you – you are most kind, but let it be another day that I join you – tomorrow perhaps. No, I shall not be dull. Have you not a saying – “the looker-on sees the most of the game”? Besides, I really have to be a little careful what I drink during a long evening like this – I don’t want to have a great hangover, as you call it, tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, I can put that right for you,’ said Gradon. ‘I have the most effective remedy for that – made from a recipe that I’ve found infallible. I believe that P. G. Wodehouse used to let Jeeves turn out something of the same sort, but I’m ready to bet that my concoction is better still. I have a bottle of this stuff always with me, and I pour some of it into a jug of water before I go down to dinner. Then, however tight I am when I turn in, I drink a glass of the stuff as I get into bed, and a second glass when I wake in the morning. I’ve never known it to fail yet. You try it, Brendel, and you’ll never have to worry about a hangover.’

  Brendel smiled. ‘I fear I’m too old for experiments,’ he replied. ‘What did your George III write to Lord North? “Water and abstinence are the safest and surest physicians”, wasn’t it? I think I must try to follow that advice. I really dare not drink too much during the evening. But I’ll join you, if I may, for a quarter of an hour or so when we see the New Year in.’

  Sandham got up from his seat. ‘By all means join us then, and many thanks to you, Brendel – you’ve been most kind. I’m off to my bath – when shall we dine? Let’s make it eight or soon after. Is that all right for everyone?’

  ***

  Piers Gradon was telephoning from his room to the inquiry office.

  ‘Let me know where Mr Barrick’s room is, please.’

  ‘Certainly, sir, shall we put you throu
gh to him now?’

  ‘Oh no, thank you, it’s only that I have a couple of letters I want to show him – I’ll stroll up and give them to him some time. Let me see, he said he was on the fourth floor, I think?’

  ‘Yes, sir, his number is 416, it’s the last room but one at end of the corridor, and in the main block. You turn to the left when you get out of the lift.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me, sir, did the gentleman who came down with you, Mr Bannister, get through to you just now?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. What did he want?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but he rang up to ask what your number was, and I told him where you were. Shall I ring him again now?’

  ‘Oh no, don’t bother. It can’t be anything of importance, and I shall see him at dinner, anyhow.’

  ***

  Brendel went slowly and thoughtfully to his room.

  Chapter Seven

  Brendel laughed a little ruefully, ‘I can’t keep up this talk about my “third person Brendel”,’ he said, ‘I really can’t – it was all so personal, and I’m dealing with my own reactions, my own suspicions, my own deductions. You must forgive me if I go back to my “I’s”, for I must convey to you as fluently as I can all the alarming thoughts that crowded into my mind during and after that conversation in the Moroccan Bar.

  ‘You must remember that I entered light-heartedly enough on my task. Mary Sandham was worried in her mind – she thought that Charles was in some sort of trouble. Well, she was a woman with a woman’s intuition, and no doubt she was right, but everything suggested that she exaggerated the seriousness of the matter. What could be easier for me than to take the appropriate opportunity on my holiday and invite Charles Sandham’s confidence? I could say that he seemed a bit out of sorts, I could murmur some sort of sympathetic comment, I could surely induce him to talk. And what did I expect him to say? Perhaps that his firm had committed some professional mistake or advised some course to a client which had turned out ill. If it was a legal matter I might well be able to help him. Or perhaps that Toby Barrick had involved the firm in some sort of difficulty, and there again my advice might be helpful and could do him no harm. Really, I did not speculate further. The matter would arrange itself at the Magnifico, and any help I could give to Mary Sandham would be readily given.

  ‘But during that conversation in the Moroccan Bar the whole picture changed. I had begun light-heartedly, almost casually, to investigate what might possibly be at worst a case of financial jobbery or professional misconduct or even only a personal misunderstanding – and then, almost before I had begun, I was plunged into the investigation of a murder. Yes, murder, for that it was murder with which I was concerned I had no sort of doubt at all.’

  Brendel’s voice took on a more serious, indeed a grimmer, note, and he had ceased to smile. ‘That statement may surprise you, and you may think it a little ridiculous that I assert that murder was planned – so dogmatically, and after half an hour’s conversation in a bar. Nonsense, you say to yourselves, it’s only cranks who imagine such things on such a slender foundation of evidence. But it was not nonsense. I knew that I was concerned with murder. I have been much concerned with crime all through my life, sometimes professionally, sometimes as a kind of informed amateur. For my sins I know the atmosphere of crime, and I am perhaps more sensitive to that atmosphere (if I use the word properly) than most men. At least you know what I mean. I cannot help saying, without conceit, that I am quicker to sense crime in the air than any other person that I have met. Murder is an ugly thing, a terrifying thing. I have met it often, but never have I seen it more clearly, and never did it revolt me more, than in the Moroccan Bar of the Magnifico that night. I say that I saw it, but I don’t quite mean that. It was rather that I was conscious of it with every sense and every faculty that I possess. Gott in Himmel, I felt it, I heard it, I saw it, I almost smelt it! And the horrible thing was that murder seemed to be everywhere. Why did Toby Barrick, whom I had known as a rather irresponsible bon viveur or socialite (as the young call them), now seem to me to be poised on the edge of some dreadful crime or calamity? Why did Bannister appear to me, not as a reasonably agreeable acquaintance, but as someone sinister and capable of any dreadful act? Why had Gradon, in his look of sudden rage and hatred, revealed himself to me in all the naked clarity of the killer? Why, above all, why had my old friend Charles Sandham dropped for an instant his actor’s mask when he turned on Bannister that look of horror and fear and murderous hatred?’

  ‘ “I saw Murder in the Way. He had a mask like Castlereagh”,’ murmured Gresham.

  ‘Exactly, indeed I saw Murder that evening, but whose was the mask? Murder was in the way, but which was the face of the murderer and which was the face of the victim?’

  ‘In short,’ said the General, ‘you had before you a perfect case for what you called pre-construction of the crime and pre-detection of the criminal.’

  ‘Precisely, and it was of all that that I thought as I slowly dressed for dinner. But I could go a little further – for, you see, I knew both how and when the murder would be committed.’

  ‘Oh, come, Brendel, you must substantiate that one,’ said the General. ‘How could you know?’

  Brendel did not answer the question directly. Instead he seemed to be talking to himself, and recapturing the atmosphere of a scene in the past.

  ‘Think to yourself of the end of a fancy-dress ball held in a great house or in a great hotel. It is two or three or four o’clock in the morning, and the scene which has been so gay and full of colour becomes dim and sordid and dishevelled. The lights have almost all been extinguished. The staff have scattered to get, if possible, an hour’s uneasy sleep, for they, poor devils, must restore some sort of order before breakfast-time. There in the dining-room an overturned bottle, still partly full, is dripping from the cloth on to the floor. A few, a very few, shadowy figures are still out of bed. Is that shape in the armchair in the corner of the Moroccan Bar a Barbary pirate who has fallen asleep there, or is it Henry VIII who has drunk too much and cannot summon up the energy to stagger to his bedroom? And that dark shadow on the sofa? You would think it another solitary reveller did you not hear a faint murmur of words, telling you that the semi-darkness conceals not one figure but two. And on the corridor above – is that not an inebriated Charles II trying door after door? When will his fuddled senses tell him that his room is on the second floor, and that he is wasting time in searching for it on the first? And what is that – that dim shadow that seemed to flit down the corridor? Was it only a figment of the imagination, or was it Harlequin looking for his room? Or even, since we must not be too charitable, could it have been Harlequin searching for the room of Columbine, or even for that bedroom the number of which Mary, Queen of Scots, whispered an hour ago into his ear? Yes, if ever you have been the “last survivor” of a fancy dress ball you will have some conception of the meaning of the word chaos. Of course I could pre-construct the crime. I don’t mean that I knew if it would be poison, or a knife, or even a revolver, but the main thing was sure. A door would be opened – and the murder would be done. What evidence could there be? The evidence, you say, of Charles II or Harlequin or a Barbary pirate? “I thought I saw someone walk along towards the bedroom where the corpse was found some time late that night.” Why, any defending counsel could tear any such so-called evidence to tatters in three minutes of cross-examination! That was how the murder would be committed. And the time? You know, when a murder has been actually committed the police surgeon examines the body and pronounces that death must have occurred, let us say, not earlier than six p.m. and not later than ten p.m. But I, in my pre-construction, could go nearer than that. Knowing or guessing the form at the Magnifico, I should say that the ball would last till somewhere between three and four in the morning. Very well, then, the time of death was not earlier than three or later than five. Do I convince you, General?’

  ‘I think you do, but –’


  ‘Precisely, you were going to say that the major part of my task was still before me, and that I had only seven or eight hours at the most to find the criminal and the victim. If I could work quickly – if I could pre-construct the whole crime and put my finger on the criminal, I might be able to prevent the crime – and if not I might at least be very sure that the guilty man should suffer the penalty and that innocent men should not be suspected. Is that what you were going to say?’

  The General smiled. ‘I was going to say that I guessed that we had arrived at the moment when you began to play what you called your “little Blackwood game”. Let me see the ace of spades was opportunity, was it not, and I reckon that you have that in your own hand, for the end of the ball gave the ideal opportunity. So I’m going to guess that you made your asking bid, and tried to make up your mind which of the suspects held all the other three aces, after you had sorted out the information which you had about each. Now it’s your turn to answer a question. Is my guess a good one?’

  Brendel gave an appreciative nod of his head.

  ‘I’m delighted that you’ve followed my lengthy disquisition so carefully,’ he replied, ‘and your guess is entirely correct; but I’ll tell you all about that later on. Meantime, gentlemen, we have, so to speak, arrived at the critical moment. If I remember rightly, a bet was made between Prendergast and the General that the one would guess the criminal and the other would not. Now I’ve told you all I can about the four suspects, indeed I’ve told you far more about some of them than I knew at the time. Are you prepared to state your conclusions now, or are there any questions you would like to ask me first, in case I’ve forgotten some piece of information or other?’

  ‘There’s just one point,’ said Gresham hesitatingly.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘It’s this. Are you quite sure that at the time when you were having those drinks before dinner you were really convinced that a murder was contemplated? You see what I mean.’ (Gresham’s tone was almost apologetic.) ‘It’s so fatally easy to persuade ourselves after the event that we had foreseen it, and to attribute thoughts and ideas to an earlier time than that at which they first in fact occurred to us.’