by Ngaio Marsh
“Bill, don’t!” cried Chloris, and Hersey said fiercely, “Shut up, William.”
“No, but isn’t it extraordinary, Mandrake? He didn’t want to come back, you know. He said—”
“What’s happened?”
“Look.”
William stepped aside and Mandrake saw into the room.
Nicholas sat in an armchair nursing his left arm. He was deadly pale and kept turning his head to look first at Jonathan and then at his mother, who knelt beside him. Between this group and the door, lying on its back on the carpet and leering blandly at the ceiling, was an obese brass figure, and when Mandrake saw it he knew what it was he had missed from the passage. It was the Buddha that had watched him from its niche when he stole downstairs in the night.
“… It all seemed to happen at once,” Nicholas was saying shakily. “I went to push open the door — it wasn’t quite shut — and it felt as if someone was resisting me on the other side. I gave it a harder shove and it opened so quickly that I sort of jumped back. I suppose that saved me because at the same time I felt a hell of a great thud on my arm, and Elise screamed.”
From down the passage Madame Lisse said: “I saw something fall from the door and I screamed out to him.”
“A booby-trap,” said William. “It was a booby-trap, Mandrake. Balanced on the top of the door. We used to do it with buckets of water when we were kids. It would have killed him, you know. Only of course its dead weight dragged on the door and when it overbalanced the door shot open. That’s what made him jump back.”
“His arm’s broken,” said Mrs. Compline. “Darling, your arm’s broken.”
“I don’t think so. It was a glancing blow. It’s damn’ sore, but by God it might have been my head. Well, Jonathan, what have you to say? Was I right to try and clear out?” Nicholas raised his uninjured arm and pointed to the crowded doorway. “One of them’s saying to himself, ‘Third time, lucky.’ Do you realize that, Jonathan?”
Jonathan said something that sounded like “God forbid.” Mrs. Compline began again —
“Let me look at your arm, darling. Nicky, my dear, let me see it.”
“I can’t move it. Look out, Mother, that hurts.”
“Perhaps you would like me—” Dr. Hart came through the door and advanced upon Nicholas.
“No, thank you, Hart,” said Nicholas. “You’ve done enough. Keep off.”
Dr. Hart stopped short, and then, as though growing slowly conscious of the silence that had fallen upon his fellow guests, he turned and looked from one face to another. When he spoke it was so softly that only a certain increase in foreign inflexions, in the level stressing of his words, gave any hint of his agitation.
“This has become too much,” he said. “Is it not enough that I should be insulted, that Mr. Compline should insult me, I say, from the time that I have arrived in this house? Is that not enough to bear without this last, this fantastic accusation? I know well what you have been saying against me. You have whispered among yourselves that it was I who attacked Mr. Mandrake, thinking he was Compline, I who, goaded by open enmity as well as by secret antagonism, have plotted to injure, to murder Compline. I tell you now that I am not guilty of these outrages. If, as Compline suggests, anything further is attempted against him, it will not be by my agency. That I am his enemy I do not deny, but I tell him now that somewhere amongst us he has another and a more deadly enemy. Let him remember this.” He glanced at Nicholas’ injured arm. Nicholas made a quick movement. “I do not think your arm is fractured,” said Dr. Hart. “You had better let someone look at it. If the skin is broken it will need a dressing, and perhaps a sling. Mrs. Compline will be able to attend to it, I think.” He walked out of the room.
Mrs. Compline drew back the sleeve of Nicholas’ dressing-gown. His forearm was swollen and discoloured. A sort of blind gash ran laterally across its upper surface. He turned his hand from side to side, wincing at the pain. “Well,” said William, “it seems he’s right about that, Nick. It can’t be broken.”
“It’s bloody sore, Bill,” said Nicholas, and Mandrake was astounded to see an almost friendly glance pass between these extraordinary brothers. William came forward and stooped down, looking at the arm. “We could do with a first-aid kit,” he said, and Jonathan bustled away muttering that Mrs. Pouting was fully equipped.
“It’s Hart all right,” said William. He turned to contemplate Madame Lisse, who still waited with Chloris and Mandrake in the passage. “Yes,” William repeated with an air of thoughtfulness, “it’s Hart. I think he’s probably mad, you know.”
“William,” said his mother, “what are you saying? You have been keeping something from me, both of you. What do you know about this man?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mother,” said Nicholas impatiently.
“It does matter. I will know. What have you found out about him?”
“Sandra,” cried Hersey Amblington, “don’t. It’s not that. Don’t Sandra.”
“Nicky, my dear! You know! You’ve guessed.” Mrs. Compline’s eyes seemed to Mandrake to be living fires in her dead face. She, like Nicholas, looked at Madame Lisse. “I see,” she said. “You know too. You’ve told my son. Then it is true.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother,” said Nicholas querulously.
“Nor I,” said Madame Lisse, and her voice was shriller than Mandrake could have imagined it. “This is ridiculous. I have said nothing.”
“Hersey,” said Mrs. Compline, “do you see what has happened?” She put her arms round Nicholas’ neck and her hand, with agonized possessiveness, caressed his shoulder. “Nicky has found out and threatened to expose him. He has tried to kill Nicholas.”
“Look here,” William demanded, “what is all this?”
“It’s a complete and miserable muddle,” said Hersey sharply, “and it’s certainly not for publication. Mr. Mandrake, do you mind…?”
Mandrake muttered “Of course,” turned away and shut the door, leaving himself, Chloris Wynne, and Madame Lisse alone in the passage.
“This woman is evidently insane,” said Madame Lisse. “What mystery is this she is making? What am I supposed to have told Nicholas Compline?”
Mandrake, conscious of a violent and illogical distaste for Madame Lisse, said loudly: “Mrs. Compline thinks you have told her son that Dr. Hart is the surgeon who operated on her face.”
He heard Chloris catch her breath, and whisper: “No, no, it’s impossible. It’s too fantastic.” He heard his own voice trying to explain that Jonathan was responsible. He was conscious, in himself, of a sort of affinity with Mrs. Compline, an affinity born of disfigurement. He wanted to explain to Chloris that there was nothing in the world as bad as a hideous deformity. Through this confusion of emotions and thoughts, he was aware of Madame Lisse watching him very closely, of the closed door at his back, of the murmur of Mrs. Compline’s voice beyond it in Nicholas’ room where, Mandrake supposed, her sons listened to the story of Dr. Franz Hartz of Vienna. The truth is, Mandrake was suffering from a crisis of nerves. His experience of the morning, his confession to Chloris, the sense of impending disaster that, like some grotesque in a dream, half comic, half menacing, seemed to advance upon Nicholas — all these circumstances had scraped at his nerves and wrought upon his imagination. When Jonathan came hurrying along the passage with a first-aid outfit in his hands, Mandrake saw him as a shifty fellow as cold-blooded as a carp. When Madame Lisse began to protest that she knew nothing of Dr. Hart’s past, that Mrs. Compline was insane, that she herself could endure no longer to be shut up at Highfold, Mandrake was conscious only of a sort of wonder that this cool woman should suddenly become agitated. He felt Chloris take him by the elbow and heard her say: “Let’s go downstairs.” He was steadied by her touch and eager to obey it. Before they moved away, the door opened and William came stumbling out, followed by Jonathan.
“Wait a bit, Bill,” Jonathan cried. “Wait a bit.”
“The bloody sw
ine,” William said. “Oh God, the bloody swine.” He went blindly past them and they heard him run downstairs. Jonathan remained in the doorway. Behind him, Mandrake saw Hersey Amblington with her arms about Mrs. Compline, who was sobbing. Nicholas, very pale, stood, looking on.
“It’s most unfortunate,” Jonathan said. He shut the door delicately. “Poor Sandra has convinced William that there has been a conspiracy against her. That Hart has made a story of the catastrophe for Madame Lisse, that — Oh, you’re there, Madame. Forgive me, I hadn’t noticed. It’s all too distressing, Aubrey. Now William’s in a frightful tantrum and won’t listen to reason. Nicholas assures us he knew nothing of the past but he might as well speak to the wind. We’re in the very devil of a mess, it’s snowing harder than ever, and what in Heaven’s name am I to do?”
A loud and ominous booming sound welled up through the house. Caper, finding no one to whom he could announce dinner, had fallen upon an enormous gong and beaten it. Jonathan uttered a mad little giggle.
“Well,” he said, “shall we dine?”
The memory of that night’s dinner party was to be a strange one for Mandrake. It was to have the intermittent vividness and the unreality of a dream. Certain incidents he would never forget, others were lost the next day. At times his faculty of observation seemed abnormally acute and he observed, exactly, inflexions of voices, precise choice of words, details, of posture. At other times he was lost in a sensation of anxiety, an intolerable anticipation of calamity, and at these moments he was blind and deaf to his surroundings.
Only six of the party appeared for dinner. Madame Lisse, Mrs. Compline, and Dr. Hart had all excused themselves. Dr. Hart was understood to be in the “boudoir,” where he had gone after his speech in his own defence and where, apparently at Jonathan’s suggestion, he was to remain, during his waking hours, for the rest of his stay at Highfold. Mandrake wondered what Jonathan had told the servants. The party at dinner was therefore composed of the less antagonistic elements. Even the broken engagement of William and Chloris seemed a minor dissonance, quite overshadowed by the growing uneasiness of the guests. Nicholas, Mandrake decided, was now in a state of barely suppressed nerves. His injured arm was not in a sling but evidently gave him a good deal of pain and he made a clumsy business of cutting up his food, finally allowing Hersey Amblington to help him. He had come down with Hersey, and something in their manner suggested that this arrangement was not accidental. “And really,” Mandrake thought, “it would be better not to leave Nicholas alone. Nothing can happen to him if somebody is always at his side.” Mandrake was now positive that it was Hart who had made the attacks upon Nicholas and himself and he found that the others shared this view and discussed it openly. His clearest recollection of the dinner party was to be of a moment when William, who had been silent until now, leant forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table, and said: “What’s the law about attempted murder?” Jonathan glanced nervously at the servants, and Mandrake saw Hersey Amblington nudge William. “Oh, damn,” William muttered, and was silent again. As soon as they were alone, he returned to the attack. He was extraordinarily inarticulate and blundered about from one accusation to another, returning always to the ruin of his mother’s beauty. “The man who did that would do anything,” seemed to be the burden of his song. “The Oedipus complex with a vengeance,” thought Mandrake, but he was still too bemused and shaken to crystallize his attention upon William, and listened through a haze of weary lassitude. It was useless for Nicholas to say that he had never heard the name of his mother’s plastic surgeon. “Hart must have thought you knew,” William said. “He thought that Mother had told you.”
“Rot, Bill,” said Nicholas. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s because of Elise Lisse. The fellow’s off his head with jealousy.”
“I’m older than you,” William roared out with startling irrelevancy. “I remember what she was like. She was beautiful. I remember the day she came back. We went to the station to meet her. She had a veil on, a thick veil. And when I kissed her she didn’t lift it up and I felt her face through the veil and it was stiff.”
“Don’t, Bill,” Hersey said.
“You heard what she said — what Mother herself said. She said up there in your room: ‘Nicky’s found out. He’s afraid Nicky will expose him.’ God, I’ll expose him. He’s gone to earth, has he? I’m damn well going to lug him out and—”
“William!” Jonathan’s voice exploded sharply, and Mandrake roused himself to listen. “William, you will be good enough to pull yourself together. Whether you choose to do your mother an appalling wrong by reviving for public discussion a tragedy that is twenty years old, is your affair. I do not attempt to advise you. But this is my house and I am very much your senior. I must ask you to attend to me.”
He paused, but William said nothing, and, after a moment, Jonathan cleared his throat and touched his spectacles. Mandrake thought dimly: “Good Heavens, he’s going to make another of his speeches.”
“Until this evening,” Jonathan said, “I refused to believe that among my guests there could be one — ah — individual, who had planned, who still plans a murderous assault upon a fellow guest. I argued that the catastrophe at the swimming-pool was the result of a mischievous, rather than a malicious attack. I even imagined that it was possible poor Aubrey had been mistaken for myself.” Here Jonathan blinked behind his spectacles and the trace of a smirk appeared on his lips. He smoothed it away with his plump hand and went on very gravely. “This second attempt upon Nicholas has convinced me. If that idol, which I may say I have always rather disliked, had fallen, as without a shadow of doubt it was intended to fall, upon his head, it would have killed him. There is no doubt at all, my dear Nick, it would have killed you.”
“Thank you, Jonathan,” said Nicholas with a kind of sneer, “I think I realize that.”
“Well, now, you know,” Jonathan continued, “this sort of thing is pretty bad. It’s preposterous. It’s like some damn pinchbeck story-book.”
“Jo,” Hersey Amblington interjected suddenly, “you really can’t keep us all waiting while you grizzle about the aesthetic poverty of your own show. We’re all agreed it’s a rotten show, but at least it has the makings of a tragedy. What are you getting at? Do you think Dr. Hart’s out for Nick’s blood?”
“I am forced to come to that conclusion,” said Jonathan primly. “Who else are we to suspect? Not one of ourselves, surely. I am not breaking confidence, I hope, Nick, when I say that Hart has threatened you, and threatened you repeatedly.”
“We’ve heard all about that,” Hersey grunted.
“Ah — yes. So I supposed. Well, now, I am a devotee of crime fiction. I have even dabbled in quite solemn works on the detection of crime. I don’t pretend to the smallest degree of proficiency, but I have ventured to carry out a little investigation. Nicholas tells me that ten minutes before he so nearly became the victim of that atrocious booby-trap, he left his room and — ah — visited that of Madame Lisse.”
“Oh Lord!” Hersey muttered, and Mandrake thought he heard Chloris utter a small contemptuous sound.
“This was, of course, a reckless and foolish proceeding,” said Jonathan. “However, it has this merit — it frees Madame Lisse from any imputation of guilt. Because Nick, when he left his room, opened and shut the door with impunity, and was talking to Madame Lisse until he returned to sustain the injury to his arm. Nick tells me he heard the clock on the landing strike the half-hour as he walked down the passage to Madame’s room. I had glanced at the drawing-room clock not more than a minute before the crash and it was then twenty to eight. The two clocks are exactly synchronized. As the trap could not have been set until after Nick left his room, that gives us ten minutes for our field of enquiry. Now, at the time of the accident, Aubrey and I were both in the drawing-room. I found him there when I came down and actually heard him go downstairs some little time before that. I am therefore able to provide Aubrey with an alibi and I hope he will
vouch for me. Now, can any of you do as much for each other?”
“I can for Sandra,” said Hersey, “and I imagine she can for me. I was in her room talking to her when Nick yelled, and I’m sure I’d been there longer than ten minutes. I remember quite well that when I passed Nick’s door it was half open and the light on. I saw him beyond the door in his room and called out something.”
“I remember that,” said Nicholas. “I left the room a very short time afterwards.”
“So there was no Buddha on the top of the door then,” said Jonathan. “I am persuaded that apart from Nick having gone out in safety, proving that the trap was laid later than this, we might rest assured that if the room light was on the trap had not been set. One would be almost certain to see the dark shape on the top of the door if the light was on. I have found out, by dint of cautious enquiries, that there were no servants upstairs at that time. It appears that those members of my staff who were not with Caper, in the dining-room, were listening to the wireless in the servants’ hall. Now you see, I have done quite well, haven’t I, with my amateur detection? Let me see. We have found alibis for Sandra, Hersey, Madame Lisse, Aubrey and, I hope, myself. What do you think, Aubrey?”