The Case of the Gilded Fly

by Edmund Crispin

  Nigel, who had stood for a minute or two watching one of the Sergeants playing about with insufflator powder, camel-hair brushes, plates of glass and unpleasant-smelling ointments, became quickly bored, and wandered back to talk to Fen.

  The change in Fen, he told himself, was astonishing. His usual slightly fantastic naivety had completely disappeared, and its place was taken by a rather formidable, ice-cold concentration. Sir Richard, who knew the signs, looked up from his conference with the Inspector and sighed. At the opening of an investigation, the mood was invariable, as always when Fen was concentrating particularly hard; when he was not interested in what was going on, he relapsed into an excessively irritating form of boisterous gaiety; when he had discovered anything of importance, he ‘quickly became melancholy’, after the manner of the young lady whose folly induced her to sit on a holly; and when an investigation was finally concluded, he became sunk in such a state of profound gloom that it was days before he could be aroused from it. Moreover these perverse and chameleon-like habits tended not unnaturally to get on people’s nerves.

  The fingerprint Sergeant put his head out of the bedroom door. ‘What about the window, sir?’ he said addressing the company at large with a fine impartiality. ‘Am I to do that?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Sir Richard. ‘We can’t leave it all night for anyone to mess about with. Never mind the black-out – there isn’t an alert, and I’ll take the responsibility – but get finished as quickly as you can.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ said the Sergeant, and disappeared again. A moment later a flood of light went up into the heavens. A passing Free French pilot shook his head mournfully. ‘Le black-out anglais,’ he said to himself with the air of one whose worst suspicions have been confirmed.

  It was not long before the fingerprinting was finished, and the doctor went back to make a second and more detailed examination. Before he went, however, Fen crossed the room and said something to him in a low voice. The doctor looked inquiringly at Sir Richard.

  ‘That’s all right, Henderson,’ said Sir Richard. ‘The Professor is helping us over the case.’

  The doctor nodded and disappeared into the bedroom; the second examination did not take him long. ‘Not much to add,’ he said when he emerged again. ‘Slight abrasions on the left buttock and the left side of the head, caused presumably by the fall. Nothing else that I can see for the moment.’ He turned to Fen. ‘And you were quite right. The tendons of both knees are badly strained.’

  The Inspector looked sharply at Fen, but for the moment refrained from comment.

  ‘Oh, and there’s one other thing; I don’t know whether you noticed it,’ the doctor continued. ‘The ring on the fourth finger of the right hand is jammed over the knuckle, rather as if it had been put on after death; though what could induce anyone to do such a thing I can’t imagine. It makes the idea of suicide a bit doubtful, you know. People don’t go about wearing their rings in an uncomfortable position like that.’

  The Inspector grunted. ‘Go and take it off, Spencer,’ he said to the Sergeant. ‘It may be useful. You’ve tested it for prints, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Nothing, I’m afraid.’ Spencer went into the bedroom.

  ‘That in itself is odd,’ said the Inspector. ‘The girl’s left-hand prints should be on it if she put it on. However, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  ‘With all due deference to that well-worn metaphor,’ said Fen, ‘I have never quite been able to see how you can cross a bridge before you come to it,’ and attracted to himself a malignant glare from the Inspector.

  ‘If you’ve finished all your flapdoodle,’ said the doctor, though it was not at all clear to what exactly he was referring, ‘will it be all right for me to take the girl away?’

  Fen and Sir Richard and the Inspector looked inquiringly at one another, but no one raised any objection, and Fen appeared to have lost interest in the proceedings altogether.

  ‘Yes, take her away,’ said the Inspector wearily. And the doctor went out, to return with two constables and a stretcher, on which the body was deposited and borne out to a waiting ambulance.

  In the meantime, Sergeant Spencer had returned with the ring, which he laid on the table in front of the Inspector, and at which they all gazed with some interest. It was a heavy, gilt affair of some size, the oval set with a curious, formalized pattern representing some kind of insect with wings.

  ‘Looks Egyptian to me,’ said the Inspector. ‘It’s not gold, I suppose?’ he inquired generally.

  ‘No, gilded,’ said Nigel. ‘Not of much value, I imagine.’

  ‘I think it is Egyptian,’ said Fen, ‘or, at any rate, an imitation of an Egyptian model. I can easily find out if you think it’s important,’ – his expression indicated that he did not – ‘because the Professor of Egyptology is a Fellow here, and I think he’s in college tonight. At all events he was in hall.’

  ‘It might be as well, sir,’ said the Inspector. ‘If the ring proves not to have belonged to Miss Haskell, we shall have to try and trace it, you know.’

  ‘Um. Yes,’ said Fen dubiously. ‘Nigel, go and see if you can find Burrows, will you? You know where his room is.’

  Burrows was discovered without difficulty, and expressed himself delighted to assist a murder investigation in any way he could. The ring, he said, was a reproduction of a piece of jewellery of the twelfth dynasty at present in the British Museum. Asked if it was usual for such objects to be copied in modern jewellery, he replied that the question was somewhat outside his sphere, but that he imagined not, and that in any case it would be an expensive business, and would presumably have required special permission from the trustees of the Museum. The Inspector made a note of this last fact, and reflected that it would make the job of tracing the ring a good deal easier. Sir Richard, afflicted apparently by a sudden disinterested passion for knowledge, asked what sort of insect it was supposed to represent, and was told somewhat pityingly that it was a fly. On his remarking that the wings pointed forwards, and not backwards as with the majority of flies, he was further informed that as far as it was possible to judge from such a formalized representation, it was intended to be a gold-girdled fly, chrysotoxum bicinctum. Some reference was made at this point to the Professor of Entomology, but the Inspector, feeling that matters were getting a little out of hand, hastily brought the discussion to a close, and Burrows retired amid expressions of thanks, looking intensely pleased with himself.

  A sort of round-table conference, involving an initial summing-up of the case, now took place. And the next object to which they turned their attention was the gun.

  ‘Well now, Spencer,’ said the Inspector, leaning back in his chair with a sigh, ‘what about fingerprints?’

  But Nigel interrupted before the Sergeant could speak. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I can tell you where the gun came from.’ And he recounted the incident at the party, and his discovery that the gun was missing. ‘Of course,’ he concluded, ‘I’ve no means of telling for certain whether that’s the same one, but if you get on to the owner he’ll know.’

  ‘Ah, thank you, sir,’ said the Inspector. ‘That’s very helpful – very helpful indeed. Although,’ he added somewhat suspiciously, ‘I don’t quite see what made you go back to see if the gun was gone.’

  Nigel felt somewhat ridiculous, and thanked his stars that he had a cast iron alibi for the time of the murder. He muttered something about an impulse.

  ‘A sudden impulse – quite so,’ said the Inspector, making an unnecessary note on the subject. ‘We all act from such impulses upon occasion,’ he continued pedantically, with the air of one who has propounded a metaphysical theory of startling originality and importance. ‘Now, what time would it have been when you went back and found that the gun was gone?’

  ‘Let’s see now – I left Nicholas in the corridor about 1.30,’ said Nigel. ‘And I can’t have spent more than ten minutes or so undressing. Say 1.40.’

  ‘1.40
a.m. approximately,’ repeated the Inspector, making another note. ‘And the name of the owner of the gun – the gentleman who gave the party?’

  ‘Captain Peter Graham.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Elbow!’ the Inspector called to the constable on duty at the door. ‘Ring up the “Mace and Sceptre”, will you, and ask Captain Graham if he’d be so kind as to step over here some time during the evening, as soon as he can conveniently manage.’ Elbow vanished on this mission. ‘Now, Spencer,’ said the Inspector, relaxing again. ‘The fingerprints.’

  ‘Yes, sir. A few old prints on the barrel and chambers, which of course I haven’t been able to identify. Nothing on the cartridges. And nothing on the butt and trigger except the prints of the young lady’s right hand: thumb on the trigger, fingers round the back and the right side of the butt.’

  ‘That’s a curious arrangement, isn’t it?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘Not if you come to think of it, sir,’ said the Inspector. He picked up the gun and pointed it at his forehead, holding it round the back of the butt and with his thumb on the trigger. ‘Only comfortable way to hold it, really, if you’re going to shoot yourself as she apparently did.’

  ‘Were there any prints on the hammer?’ asked Fen. ‘Any indication that the gun had been cocked, that is?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s a bit difficult. There’s a sort of criss-cross pattern on the hammer which doesn’t take prints. But I think I can safely say it hasn’t been touched.’ Fen nodded and became gloomy.

  ‘Anything else in the room?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘A lot of old marks which I suppose belong to whoever lives in here.’ The Sergeant looked about him with distaste, as though he expected to see some bearded hermit, indescribably filthy, cavorting in a corner. ‘The girl’s prints on both doorknobs, on the drawers of the desk in here, and on the drawers of the chest of drawers by the window in the bedroom.’

  ‘H’m. It appears she must have been looking for something. There are such things as gloves, of course,’ the Inspector added rather obviously. ‘But apart from the business of the ring, which I grant you is queer, it looks up to now like a pretty plain case of suicide.’

  ‘No, no, Inspector,’ said Fen, who had been gazing reflectively at an unattractive Modigliani which was hanging on the wall near him, ‘I’m afraid I can’t agree.’

  The Inspector looked at him gloomily for a moment. Then he said: ‘Well, sir?’ in a longsuffering voice.

  ‘Everything militates against it. Leaving aside for a moment the question of why the girl should have wanted to commit suicide in any case, why she didn’t leave a suicide note, why she should have chosen a singularly unattractive bedroom not belonging to her to do it in, and why, moreover, she should have interrupted herself in the middle – not at the end, mind – of a particularly intensive search to do it – you remember one of the drawers was still open –’

  ‘Well, sir,’ the Inspector put in, ‘isn’t it possible that she came across the gun in that very drawer – we don’t know who took it – and shot herself on an impulse, as it were?’

  ‘I don’t say it’s impossible; but I think it’s extremely unlikely. Anyway, look at the material evidence. And use your common sense,’ Fen added somewhat frantically. ‘Oh Lord! Look – wait a moment and I’ll show you what I mean.’ And he rushed out of the room and returned a minute later with his wife. After she had greeted the Inspector with a slow, pleasant smile, Fen seized up the gun and handed it to her, saying:

  ‘Dolly, would you mind committing suicide for a moment?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Mrs Fen remained unperturbed at this alarming request, and took the gun in her right hand, with her forefinger on the trigger; then she pointed it at her right temple.

  ‘There!’ said Fen triumphantly.

  ‘Shall I pull the trigger?’ asked Mrs Fen.

  ‘By all means,’ he said absently, but Sir Richard surged up from his chair crying hoarsely: ‘Don’t! It’s loaded!’ and snatched the gun away from her. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Sir Richard,’ she said benignly, ‘but Gervase is hopelessly forgetful, and I shouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing. Is that all I can do for you gentlemen?’

  The Inspector nodded dumbly, and glared at Fen, who remained unmoved by the incident.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Mrs Fen. ‘In that case, Gervase, I’m going home now. Try not to be late, and don’t disturb the children when you come in.’ She bestowed an approving smile on each of them in turn, and went.

  Fen cut Sir Richard’s expostulations short by saying: ‘You see what I mean? Try it with any woman you like, and they’ll all do the same thing.a The other way is psychologically impossible, though I agree that abstractly one wouldn’t think it so; and someone has obviously been a little too clever. Besides, look at the weight of the thing, and the comparatively big leverage you have to put on the trigger. Try and pull it when you’re holding the thing in the position suggested by the prints, and you’ll find you have the devil of a job. And then think of yourself committing suicide in that laborious and nerve-racking manner, and you’ll realize it’s hopelessly improbable. The only way to eliminate the difficulty would be to cock the gun, which makes the trigger into a hair trigger. And as Spencer has told us, that simply wasn’t done.’

  That’s right, sir,’ said Spencer, seeming to feel that something was expected of him.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the Inspector, who was beginning to look unhappy, ‘I agree with that, as far as it goes. But what else?’

  ‘Then, of course, there’s the ring. Can you in your wildest imaginings suppose that anyone is going to commit suicide with a ring in that foully uncomfortable position on the hand in which they’re holding the gun? Of course not Suicides invariably take the utmost pains to make themselves comfortable. So quite obviously, for heaven knows what purpose, someone crammed that ring on to the girl’s finger after she was dead, and someone in very much of a hurry, too, if I’m not mistaken.

  ‘And finally, there’s the fact that the girl was kneeling when she was shot; kneeling by the chest of drawers, which as you saw is rather a low one.’

  The Inspector leaned forward. ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘Look at the position of the body, man. If she’d been standing when she was shot, one leg might have been doubled up under her by the fall, but not both of them, neatly folded up like that. And then consider the effect of the impact of a heavy-calibre bullet on a person kneeling: they’d be thrown brusquely back with the knees as pivot. I asked the doctor to see if the tendons of the knees were strained, and lo, they were. Et voilà.’

  Nigel gaped, the Inspector looked even more unhappy, and Sir Richard nodded. ‘Good for you, Gervase,’ he said. ‘Well, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Accident?’ suggested Nigel tentatively.

  The Inspector, relieved at this fortunate manifestation of an intelligence lower than his own, regarded him with disdain.

  ‘Hardly, sir,’ he said. ‘The bullet entered horizontally, remember. It would have to be a pretty fantastic set of circumstances.’

  ‘If the circumstances weren’t fantastic, accidents wouldn’t happen,’ Nigel persisted doggedly, not liking to think of the third possibility. ‘People take ordinary precautions.’

  ‘No, Nigel, it won’t do,’ said Fen, ‘there’s no evidence for it at all.’ Nigel relapsed into a mild fit of sulks.

  ‘And that,’ said Sir Richard thoughtfully, ‘leaves us with just one thing.’

  There was an uneasy, silence at his words. It was broken by the Inspector suddenly banging excitedly on the table and saying:

  ‘But, good heavens, it can’t be that either! This man Williams says that nobody followed the girl in here from outside. No one came down from your room, Professor –’

  ‘Here, wait a minute!’ Nigel interrupted. ‘Someone did. Robert Warner came down here to the lavatory two or three minutes before we heard the shot.’

  ‘Um,’ was the Inspector’s only r
eaction to this intelligence.

  ‘Yes, exactly, Inspector,’ said Sir Richard. ‘No one could possibly have shot the girl and done all that faking in the half-minute or so before Williams came in, or for that matter even in the minute-and-a-half before we arrived. Besides, I’m sure Warner’s alibi is genuine. I heard him pull the plug as we were coming downstairs, and he unbolted the door and came out just as we reached the bottom.’

  Nigel grunted agreement.

  ‘There was no one hidden in the room when we arrived, and even if anyone had been waiting here when the girl came in, he couldn’t have got away again afterwards.’

  Nigel had a third idea. ‘The window,’ he said, unabashed by two previous failures.

  ‘Ye-es,’ said the Inspector dubiously. ‘You mean whoever did it would conceal himself in here early on, kill the girl, wait until he saw Williams coming in, and then, with the guard outside removed, as it were, pop out again. But it would be devilish risky.’

  ‘And it still doesn’t get you over the difficulty that he’d have no time to do the faking,’ added Sir Richard. Nigel sighed, and ventured no further ideas.

  ‘However,’ said the Inspector, ‘it’s worth looking into a bit more closely. Anyone getting out of the window would certainly have left marks. Apart from that, I don’t quite know –’

  ‘Suicide,’ said Sir Richard, ‘we’ve agreed is most unlikely, because of the ring, and the fact that the girl was kneeling, and the whole business about the gun; quite apart from the problem of why she should elect to do it here. Accident practically impossible. And murder, apparently, quite impossible. So the only conclusion is –’

  ‘The only conclusion is,’ put in the Inspector, ‘that the thing never happened at all. Quia,’ he added gloomily, with a sudden recollection of his schooldays, ‘absurdum est.’