The Affair of the Mutilated Mink

by James Anderson

  Only a few seconds passed before Hugh's door opened and he joined Gerry, followed almost immediately by Maude Fry. Rex was the next to arrive; then the Earl and Countess, Sebastian and Cecily together, and Haggermeir. Allgood continued to make notes, all the while urging them into the doorway.

  It was after Haggermeir's arrival that Paul opened the bathroom door wide, took a quick glance along the corridor and then, obviously unnoticed by the others, joined the gathering. It was a further thirty seconds before Gilbert arrived, followed at last by Jemima Dove.

  Allgood stopped the watch and drew back the curtains. 'Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now, can anyone—' He broke off. 'No, we can't talk here; it's too crowded.' He addressed the Earl: 'Burford, do you think we might move into the gallery for a while? I don't want to go all the way downstairs again. There may be one or two other points I want to demonstrate up here at the scene of the crime.'

  'Oh, of course. Gladly.' Lord Burford led the way to the gallery doors, saying as he did so, 'Still locked, actually, but think I've got the key here.'

  He fumbled in his pocket, found the key, opened one of the huge double doors, and stood aside. The others trooped. As they were doing so, Chalky came along the corridor and whispered to Allgood for a few seconds. Allgood gave a satisfied nod. Then he and Chalky followed the Earl into the gallery and Chalky closed the door.

  Allgood said, 'Those of you who'd care to sit, please do. We may be here some little time.'

  Lord and Lady Burford, Cecily and Sebastian, Jemima Dove, Maude Fry, Gilbert, and Haggermeir moved to various of the sofas and upright chairs placed by the walls and sat down. Gerry, Paul, Rex, and Hugh remained on their feet, the latter ostentatiously strolling across to a Reynolds portrait of the fifth Earl and studying it lazily, his hands in his pockets and his back to Allgood. Wilkins and Leather took up position, sentry-like, at each side of the doors, with Chalky a little further along. Allgood moved to the centre of the room and surveyed his audience.

  'This has been a quite interesting little case,' he said. 'Teasing, without being too baffling. It was complicated by a number of strange incidents which preceded the actual murder, and I intend to start by looking at those. First I'd like you to begin, Lady Geraldine, by telling everybody about your adventure Thursday night.'

  Gerry looked a little aback, but collected her thoughts and gave a concise account of the struggle with the prowler in her father's study. When she'd finished and her parents and the others were still staring at her in amazement, Allgood said quietly, 'Lady Geraldine, do you know who the prowler was?'

  She nodded.

  'Tell us, please.'

  She gulped, then said, 'It - it was Mr Gilbert.'

  'What?' Gilbert leapt to his feet with a roar. 'That's a lie! I've never been near the study.'

  She said doggedly, 'You admitted it to me Friday morning in the music room.'

  'I did no such thing!'

  'I told you it was I who scratched your face.'

  His eyes bulged. 'That wasn't in the study. That was up here, near the top of the stairs.'

  She gave a gasp. 'I never struggled with anybody there.'

  'Well, I did. And I'm pretty sure it was a woman.'

  'I suppose that was after you'd finished skulking about in Rex's room, was it?' she said bitingly.

  Gilbert looked as thought he was going to burst. 'Skulking about where?'

  'You heard what I said. And don't try to deny it. Rex told me about it.'

  'Jupiter's teeth, it's a conspiracy!' Gilbert turned to Allgood. 'There's not a word of truth in any of this.'

  Gerry said, 'I'm sorry, Rex, but I'll have to ask you to back me up.'

  All eyes turned suddenly on Rex. He smiled a little nervously. 'Back you up?'

  'Confirm what you said about Gilbert being in your room. I know the other night you said I'd misunderstood you, but we both know I didn't.'

  Rex took out a cigarette case and lighter, lit up and inhaled deeply. He said, 'I'm sorry, Gerry, but Gilbert's never been in my room, as far as I know.'

  Gerry gazed at him coldly. 'You're lying,' she said quietly. 'I thought when it came to the crunch you'd have more guts.'

  Paul put his arm around her and addressed Allgood angrily, 'I don't know what's going on here, but Gerry's about the most truthful person I know. And she's certainly not crazy. I believe her implicitly.' Allgood just shrugged.

  Gerry dashed a sudden tear from her eye. She said, 'I don't have to stay and put up with this. Take me out, Paul. Let's go away at once, after all. When we get back they'll all be gone.'

  'Yes, of course, darling.' He started to lead her towards the door.

  'Stop!'

  The voice rang out like a whipcrack. It came from Rex. Under his tan his face was pale. He said, 'It's no good. I could never stand to see a woman cry. Sorry I let you down, Gerry.' He looked at Allgood. 'It's true. Gilbert was in my room Thursday night. We had a bit of a scrap.'

  Gilbert raised both arms skywards and gave a howl of rage. 'It's a frame-up! I'll have you all in court! Slander! Libel! Defamation!' He pointed a finger at Allgood. 'You put them up to this, you - you — guttersnipe.'

  'Kindly keep a civil tongue in your head, sir. If there's any conspiracy I'll get to the bottom of it. Now sit down and be quiet.'

  Gilbert stared at him silently for a moment, then subsided, muttering, on to a sofa.

  Allgood said, 'Ransom, why did you deny this just now?'

  Rex inhaled deeply on his cigarette. 'Because - because I'm being blackmailed.'

  'Blackmailed?'

  'Yes, a photo was taken in my room Thursday night. I've since received a copy of it and a note demanding two thousand pounds for the negative. I was going to pay up. But I've changed my mind.' Suddenly his chin rose and his voice rang out proudly. 'In the immortal words of your Duke of Wellington, "Let them publish and be damned".' It was a beautifully delivered line.

  'Hear, hear, sir. Well said.' This from the Earl. For a moment Gerry thought he was going to clap. Rex made him the slightest of bows.

  'We'll look into this later,' Allgood said. 'But first tell me one thing, Ransom: what evidence do you have that the intruder was Gilbert?'

  'I punched him in the eye. Gilbert had a shiner the next morning. He said he'd bumped into the closet door.'

  'Was that true, Gilbert?' Allgood asked him. 'If not, I strongly advise you to tell the truth now, for your own sake.'

  Gilbert hesitated, then shook his head. 'No, it wasn't. The man I struggled with near the top of the stairs did it.'

  'The man? I thought you said it was a woman.'

  Gilbert's eyes flickered. 'Both,' he said gruffly.

  Allgood stared. 'Both?'

  'Yes,' Gilbert snapped. 'First a man ran into me and blacked my eye and then a minute later a woman scratched my cheek.'

  'Oh, for Pete's sake!' Rex gave a groan and looked at Allgood. 'You surely don't believe that, do you?'

  'I neither believe it nor disbelieve it for the moment. But let's for the sake of argument suppose it's true. It means that apart from yourself and Lady Geraldine, another man and another woman were prowling about the house that night. Unlikely, but perhaps a little less unlikely if they weren't acting independently of each other, but were a couple, working together. Well, apart from the Earl and Countess, there was only one couple here.'

  Allgood looked directly at Sebastian. 'Well, Mr Everard?'

  Sebastian's mouth fell open. 'Me? Us? Walking about in the dark? Oh, no. Never. Both asleep. Cec and me. Sorry and all that.'

  'You and who?'

  'Cecily. My wife.'

  'Ah, yes, of course.' Allgood suddenly swung round to face the Countess. 'Lady Burford, when did you last see your cousin, Cecily Bradshaw?'

  'Before this weekend? Oh, twenty-five years ago, I should think.'

  'You have not seen her this weekend, Lady Burford. I regret to say that Cecily Bradshaw was killed eight years ago in a car crash, in Australia.'

&nb
sp; Every eye in the room turned on the woman they'd known as Cecily. She'd gone deathly pale and didn't speak.

  Allgood said, 'I should add that her second husband, Sebastian Everard, died in the same crash.'

  He stepped across to where Sebastian and Cecily were sitting and looked down at them. 'If you have an explanation I would like to have it now.'

  Sebastian stood up. Suddenly he looked different: less limp and languid, harder and tougher altogether. When he spoke his voice was different, too. The foppish drawl had gone completely.

  'Yes, we're impostors. My name is Ned Turner. This is my wife, Mabel. And let me say first that this is absolutely nothing to do with her. I talked her into it, much against her will.'

  'Talked her into what exactly?' Allgood asked in a silky soft voice. 'Into - murder?'

  'No! We had nothing to do with that. I mean talked her into coming here and posing as Sebastian and Cecily Everard.'

  In a bewildered voice, Lady Burford addressed his wife: 'But I don't understand. You knew everything about our family and the old days, people and places. And you look like Cecily.'

  Mabel Turner nodded. 'That's the reason Cecily and I happened to meet in the first place. I was her understudy.'

  'In Australia?' Gerry said.

  'Yes, over twenty years ago. It was her first big part — well, really the only big part she ever got. Unfortunately the play folded after about a month and we were both out of a job. Well, I'd been a singer and dancer before, and she'd been in the chorus, and we looked so much alike that we got up a sister act. We toured the music halls and vaudevilles all over Australia for a couple of years. As you can imagine, we got pretty close. In some of those little towns there was just nothing for respectable girls to do when we weren't performing but sit in the boarding house and talk. I was fascinated by Cecily's background. It was so different from my own, and I used to make her talk to me about it for hours. After a couple of years I knew as much about her family and friends as she did herself. Then she met and married a Philip Brown, a sheepfarmer, and gave up the stage. She'd told me so much about England that I decided to try my luck over here. Well, I didn't make the big time, but luckily I did meet Ned. We fell in love and got married. Cecily and I kept in touch, however, and I knew about Philip dying and about her marrying Sebastian three years later - though, of course, I never met him. Then eight years ago they were both killed. I doubted very much if any of her English relatives were aware of it, though, because I knew she'd had nothing to do with any of them for years. So when this — this business cropped up, I thought I'd stand a fair chance of getting away with it. And I did, until now.'

  Lady Burford said, 'But getting away with what?'

  'The silver, most likely,' Gilbert said.

  Ned flushed. 'Nothing like that. We're not crooks. I talked Mabel into it because I wanted a chance to perform for Mr Haggermeir.'

  Haggermeir sat up. 'Me? You're an actor?'

  'No. I'm - I'm a stuntman.'

  'Holy Moses.' Haggermeir looked baffled. 'Perform for me? I don't get it.'

  'It's like this. I was one of the best stuntmen in Britain—'

  'The best,' Mabel said quietly.

  'Some people said so: cars, horses, planes, trains, falls, dives, anything. Then two and a half years ago I had my accident.'

  Gilbert snapped his fingers. 'I remember. Some actress was badly injured.'

  'What happened?' Gerry asked.

  'It was a simple climbing job,' Ned said. 'The hero was supposed to shin up the outside of this building to rescue the heroine's cat, which was trapped on a ledge. The director wanted one shot of her on the ground, looking up at me - standing in for the hero, doing the climb. And when they were shooting that, I fell.'

  'Were you hurt?' Lord Burford asked.

  'Hardly at all. The lady cushioned my fall. I landed right on top of her. Her leg was broken. She was OK eventually, but the picture had to be scrapped. And I was black-listed.'

  'Why did you fall?' Haggermeir asked him.

  'They said I was drunk.'

  'Were you?'

  'No. Someone had smeared grease on one of my footholds. I knew who it was, but I couldn't prove it. It was wiped off before I could go and check. But the result was that I've never worked in films since, and never will in this country again.'

  Rex said, 'How have you been earning your living?'

  'Some circus and fairground work. But I hate it. I must get back into movies. I love them. They're my life. I thought my only chance was to get to Hollywood, where they probably wouldn't know of my trouble. I knew if I could get just one opportunity to prove what I could do I'd be OK. But we couldn't afford the fare. Then I read about Mr Haggermeir being over here and heard that he was actually going to stay with relatives of Cecily's, where Mabel could almost certainly wangle an invitation to stay if she could pass herself off as Cecily. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss.'

  Haggermeir said, 'But how the heck were you figuring on giving me a performance?'

  'I thought I might be able to pull off some spectacular stunt, which would impress you so much you'd want to give me a real chance in America. I spent the first two days here trying to work something out. Eventually I hit on something. And I have an apology to make.' He looked at Hugh, who had by now turned and was leaning against the wall. 'It was me who took your motorbike. I'm very sorry.'

  Hugh stared. 'But why on earth did you bring it up here?'

  'The stunt I planned was to set myself on fire. I have a fireproof suit, crash helmet, and lots of other equipment in the car. Then I was going to ride the bike at full speed the whole length of the gun room, through the French windows, up a ramp formed by that plank, and leap off the balcony into the lake.'

  There was a gasp in the room. The Earl said, 'But you'd kill yourself!'

  'I don't think so, my lord. I've done similar stunts before. I carefully measured the distance and height and worked out the speed that would be necessary. I had to make the preparations on Friday. I played cards as badly as I could so the Countess and Miss Fry wouldn't want to go on playing with me for long, and as soon as Miss Dove fortuitously arrived I slipped outside and disconnected the bike from the sidecar. I put a little fuel in the tank, took the bike out to the road, and tested it. It's light, but it's got really tremendous acceleration. I brought it back and, while Mabel was making sure the other ladies were safely playing cards, I manhandled it up the back stairs and brought it in here. Naturally, I never imagined Mr Quartus would be going out again that night and would notice it was missing. Then I fetched the plank, which I'd discovered in the stables earlier. On Saturday morning I intended to ask his lordship to let me have the key to the gun room, so I could take another look at the collection on my own. If he insisted on coming with me, I was going to tell him the whole story. I think he's keen enough on movies, and a good enough sport, to have gone along with me. Then, when Mr Haggermeir went outside to photograph the exterior of the house, Mabel was going to go with him, give me a yell when he was in the right position, and make sure he watched. And that would have been it.'

  'And good-bye to my motor-bike,' Hugh said dryly.

  'No, it could have been brought up and without being too badly damaged. I would have paid for any repairs. I could just about afford that. But in the end, of course, the murder stopped everything.'

  'Why play the idiot fop?' Gerry asked.

  'I guess it was partly the name: Sebastian Everard sounds foppish. And I wanted to adopt a personality as different as possible from my own. I thought, too, that if I made myself a silly-ass type, without too much to say for himself, I could avoid serious conversations and be less likely to get caught out. Of course, I didn't anticipate having to keep it up all through a police murder investigation. Must admit, though, I did rather get caught up in the part.' He gave a weak and sheepish grin.

  Mabel said, 'I really am terribly sorry. I feel awful. Of course, we'll leave as soon as Mr Allgood says we may.'

  'N
ot so fast,' Allgood said. 'You two have admitted being here under false pretences. A murder has been committed. I have every right to detain you for further questioning.'

  Ned went pale. He said, 'We know nothing about the murder. We told you the absolute truth about that. There's only one small point. Years ago, before she became a star, Laura did appear in a couple of films in this country. I worked on one of them. She didn't positively recognise me this time, but my face was obviously vaguely familiar to her. She was trying to remember where she'd seen me before and she went out of her way to talk to me. That's the only thing I didn't tell you, I swear.'

  Allgood regarded him silently. At last he said, 'Very well. I believe you. Please don't leave yet, though.'

  Ned gave a sigh of relief. He sat down beside Mabel, who was sobbing silently, and took her hand.

  Allgood looked at Haggermeir. 'Tell me, if Turner had pulled off this stunt, would you have given him work?'

  Haggermeir pursed his lips. 'Hard to say. Possibly. He'd have sure proved he knew his stuff. Trouble is, there are so many first-rate American stuntmen in Hollywood already.'

  'How about the film you're making here, The Kings Man? Couldn't you use him on that?'

  'I, er, wouldn't like to commit myself at this stage.'

  'Oh, come. I'm sure there'll be plenty of work for stuntmen in a Rex Ransom picture. If he proves his ability, can't you promise him work on The King's Man here and now?'

  'Well, no, I'm sorry, at this stage I couldn't.'

  'Is that because you have no intention of making The King's Man, and never have had?'

  For long seconds Haggermeir just sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Allgood's face. Then: 'Don't know what you mean,' he said.

  'Oh, I think you do, Haggermeir. The whole story of wanting to make a film here at Alderley was a ruse, a way of getting yourself an invitation to the house. You had your own private reason for wanting to spend a few days at Alderley.'

  'Horsefeathers.'

  'I don't think so. And I'm not the first to discover the truth, either.' He looked at Paul. 'Carter, I'd like you to recount the conversation which you inadvertently overheard in the breakfast room on Friday morning.'