The Case of the Gilded Fly

by Edmund Crispin

  Fen nodded. ‘Did the shot sound very loud?’

  ‘Well, sir, the wireless was makin’ a lot o’ noise, if you remember. No, I can’t say as ’ow it sounded very loud. Not to make yer jump, like.’

  ‘Did you see, or hear, Mr Warner come down to the lavatory?’

  ‘No, sir, I didn’t, but there’s a carpet on them stairs, an’ I was facin’ the opposite direction, so I wouldn’t ’a’ done. I may ’ave ’eard the door shut be’ind ’im, but I wouldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘That’s not very helpful,’ said the Inspector when he had finally been dismissed. ‘But I suppose we needn’t have expected that it would be. There’s one thing, though – we’ve established that no one came into this room after the girl.’

  ‘We’re assuming, you know,’ said Fen, ‘that she remained in one or other of these rooms from the time she came in to the time she was shot.’

  ‘Where else could she have gone?’

  ‘She might have gone up the staircase to the door of my room (without coming in), or she might have gone into the lavatory.’

  The Inspector contemplated this new complication with unconcealed gloom. ‘That will have to be investigated,’ he admitted reluctantly, though if pressed as to how he was to set about it he would not have had the slightest idea – ‘that will have to be investigated, but later, I think. For the moment we’d better see Parsons the porter, and try and get these times settled.’

  Nigel seized the opportunity of going up to Fen’s room and ringing Helen. He found Robert reading there when he arrived, but he only nodded and returned to his book.

  Helen herself answered the stage-door telephone. Nigel told her without beating about the bush what had happened. There was a long silence at the other end. Then she said softly:

  ‘Oh, my God! How did it happen?’

  ‘At the moment it looks like suicide,’ Nigel lied for the second time that evening.

  ‘But – why?’

  ‘Heaven knows, darling. I don’t.’ There was another silence. Then Helen said slowly:

  ‘I can’t say I’m really sorry, though I suppose I ought to be. It’s – it’s just the shock. Do they know when it happened? Everything’s been in a frightful mess here, and Jane had to go on in her place, and dried every few seconds. Sheila’s furious.’

  ‘It was about two hours ago.’

  There was a little gasp. ‘Two hours – oh, my God!’

  ‘Helen darling: are you all right? Shall I come round?’

  ‘No, dearest, I’ll be all right. I suppose the police will want to ask me questions?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. They’re coming round in the morning.’

  ‘All right, Nigel. I must go now, and finish taking my makeup off. It’s cold here, and I’ve got next to nothing on.’

  ‘God bless, darling. See you in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, dear, of course.’ Nigel rang off and returned downstairs.

  Parsons, the porter, was on the point of leaving when he arrived. He was as Nigel remembered him – a large formidable man with horn-rimmed glasses, whose attitude of invariable ferocity and aggressiveness combined ill with his status in the college. Like all the other college porters, he had read, Nigel suspected, in innumerable books on Oxford the statement that the porter is the uncrowned king of his college, and this conception had deeply affected his outlook, refusing to be eradicated by many years of bitter experience to the contrary. His attitude to undergraduates was one of overt intimidation incongruously combined with the conventional expressions of servility, and he respected none of them except those who declined to be intimidated. In any generation these were few in number, but Nigel had been one of them, and was greeted with warmth on his appearance.

  His evidence was brief and to the point. Yseut had entered the college at six minutes to eight – he had looked automatically at the clock, since women were not allowed in after nine – and had gone, as far as he had been able to see, direct to Mr Fellowes’ room. Robert Warner had come in at five past, and inquired his way to Fen’s room, also going there direct, after he had ascertained that he was expected. No other strangers had come in since dinner, though Mr Fellowes had brought a guest to hall earlier in the evening – about half past six, he thought. Members of the college had been in and out as usual, but he could not remember who or at what times. He retired with dignity, leaving the Inspector looking a little better pleased with himself.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Fen, who had been growing increasingly fidgety. ‘Thank heavens we can go up to my room now and sit in comfort.’ And they all decamped.

  Robert put down his book and rose to his feet as they appeared. He greeted them in turn, and asked a few amiable questions about how things were going. Fen collapsed into an armchair and pleaded with him to pour out some whisky for them all. The others settled down more austerely. Spencer bustled about taking Robert’s fingerprints.

  ‘Now, Mr Warner,’ said the Inspector. ‘Just a few things, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘You were acquainted with the – with Miss Haskell?’

  ‘Yes. I met her in town at a first-night party rather more than a year ago. We were friendly for a few weeks, and then she left to come back here. We did not communicate with each other, but of course we met again when I came here.’

  ‘What is your business in Oxford, Mr Warner?’

  ‘I’m producing a new play of mine at the Repertory Theatre.’

  ‘Quite so. And you arrived when?’

  ‘Sunday. Rehearsals didn’t begin till Tuesday, but I wanted a day to look round and get acquainted with the company.’

  ‘And your relations with Miss Haskell were –’

  Robert looked uneasy. ‘Extremely poor. She wasn’t the sort of person to make herself liked at the best of times, and when I arrived she threw herself at my head and wanted to re-open our previous affair. I’d no desire to do anything of the sort, so naturally things became a bit difficult. Also, she was a poor actress, couldn’t or wouldn’t take direction, and constantly criticized the play and the production behind my back. In general, I frankly admit that she was a damned nuisance to me in every way.’

  The Inspector was slightly overwhelmed at this outburst of frankness, which he vaguely felt was in some way indecent.

  ‘De mortuis nil nisi malum,’ added Robert as an afterthought.

  ‘I understand, then, sir, that you gave the young lady no encouragement in her – er – attachment to you?’

  ‘None whatever.’

  ‘She did not visit your room on Wednesday night? You must forgive my asking such a personal question, but I can assure you that unless your answer is in anyway relevant to the case it will go no further.’

  Robert looked surprised, but Nigel was unable to decide whether the surprise was genuine or not. ‘No,’ he said, ‘unless she crept in while I was asleep. At all events I saw nothing of her.’

  ‘On that Wednesday night, Mr Warner, did you – er, were you –?’

  ‘The Inspector wishes to ask,’ put in Sir Richard, cutting short his desperate search for a suitable euphemism, ‘whether you were sleeping with Miss West on that night.’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, unperturbed, ‘as a matter of fact I wasn’t.’

  ‘Now, sir,’ pursued the Inspector. ‘You were present at the party. No doubt you observed the incident with the revolver?’

  ‘Oh God, yes. In fact, I was a party to it. The little –’ He checked himself, and went on: ‘Yseut insisted that I should knock Graham down for taking it away from her. She was pretty tight by that time.’

  ‘Quite so. What did you do when the party was over? Were you one of the last to leave?’

  ‘I think so; yes. Rachel and I went straight to our rooms, muttered a few commonplaces about the unpleasantness of parties in general and Yseut in particular, and said good night. Then I undressed, went to the bathroom, took some aspirin to get rid of any after-effects’ – characteristic of
the man, thought Nigel – ‘and went to bed. I read for half an hour or so, and then went to sleep.’

  ‘Were you up early next morning?’

  ‘At eight o’clock, if you count that early. I don’t.’

  ‘I asked for you when I came down,’ put in Nigel, suddenly suspicious. ‘The porter said he hadn’t seen you, and the head waiter said you hadn’t been in to breakfast.’

  ‘Oh?’ queried Robert coolly. ‘I went straight out for a walk, as it happens, and I very seldom eat breakfast.’

  ‘You didn’t return to your room at any time before ten o’clock?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘No. Why should I? Rachel, unlike myself, never gets up early, and I didn’t expect to see her before half past ten.’

  ‘Did you see anyone on your walk?’

  ‘There were a few people about. No one I knew. And I may say, Inspector,’ he added rather unpleasantly, ‘that if you’re trying to prove I spent the night with Yseut, you’re going to have a hard job of it.’

  ‘You are aware that Miss Haskell went to your room the following morning?’ said the Inspector, unruffled.

  ‘So she told me.’

  ‘Have you any idea why she went there?’.

  ‘Not the slightest.’

  ‘You’re sure, sir?’

  Robert suddenly became angry. ‘Yes, damn you,’ he said.

  ‘Very well, sir.’ The Inspector smiled slightly. ‘Now as to this evening. Would you mind detailing your movements during the later part of today?’

  ‘Rehearsal finished at 4.30. I went back with Rachel to the hotel and we had tea together. At six o’clock we went and had a drink in the bar with Donald Fellowes and Nicholas Barclay, who went off just before half past. Rachel left shortly after-wards to have dinner with some friends in North Oxford, and I dined alone at the hotel. Then I returned, to the bar, and some time towards eight left to come here.’

  ‘Were you in the bar after dinner with anyone you knew?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t know exactly what time you left?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Is it important?’

  ‘It may be, sir, and then again it may not,’ said the Inspector heavily. ‘We’re simply trying to collect what details we can. Can you tell me how Miss West reacted to Miss Haskell’s advances to yourself?’

  Robert looked suddenly worried. ‘I was surprised to find she was very annoyed, though usually she’s extremely sensible about these things; and it wasn’t as if the “advances”, as you call them, were being reciprocated. Yes, she was annoyed both with me and with Yseut.’

  ‘Though with no justification in the former case?’ said the Inspector quickly.

  Two red spots burned in Robert’s cheeks, but he said levelly: ‘None whatever.’

  ‘If she was generally “sensible about these things”, as you put it, then surely –’

  ‘I say she had no justification whatever.’

  The Inspector leaned back with a rather fatuous smile of complacency. ‘And on arriving here?’

  ‘I stopped at the lodge to ask my way to this room, as I didn’t know the place at all, came straight up here, listened to a pleasant little ghost story for ten minutes or so, and then slipped out for a minute to go to the lavatory. While I was in there I heard an explosion close at hand, and when I came out I met the others coming down the stairs. The rest you know.’

  ‘Were you carrying gloves, Mr Warner?’

  ‘Gloves? Good Lord, no, not in this heat.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I think that’s all for the moment. Sir Richard, Professor: have you anything you’d like to ask?’

  Sir Richard shook his head and looked inquiringly at Fen.

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Fen comfortably from behind a glass of whisky. ‘Do you know anything about Egypt, Warner?’

  Robert looked puzzled. ‘I was there before the war,’ he said. ‘But I only know tourist’s stuff – the sort of thing anyone can pick up.’

  ‘Nothing about the symbolism of ancient Egyptian religion, for example?’

  Robert looked at him intently for a moment. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘Nothing at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, sir, that’ll be all then,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘In that case,’ said Robert, getting up, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  Fen, becoming belatedly aware of his duties as host, surged hurriedly to his feet. ‘My dear fellow,’ he cried, ‘I really must apologize for giving you a most abominable evening. I’m afraid you’ll never want to come here again. And I did so want to talk to you about your play. But I shall see it on Monday night, and I’d like to come to the rehearsal tomorrow, if I may.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Robert agreeably. ‘And for heaven’s sake don’t apologize. It’s not your fault if a murder’s committed under our noses. I wish you joy of it. Anything more I can do, let me know.’

  ‘I’m afraid this business is going to make things very difficult for you,’ said Fen. ‘You’ll have to find someone at short notice to play the girl’s part.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Robert. ‘Jane, who’s understudying her, is perfectly competent.’

  Fen nodded, and Robert, after bowing slightly to Sir Richard, Nigel and the Inspector, went to the door. There he turned and looked back.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘am I right in supposing that the gun which killed Yseut is the one she was playing about with at the party? It seems the most likely thing.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Warner,’ the Inspector answered. ‘Someone – we don’t know who – went back after the party and removed it.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Robert, ‘I can help you a little more. You see, I saw the person who took it.’

  ‘You what!’ exclaimed the Inspector, sitting up abruptly.

  ‘Of course I didn’t realize what they were up to until this evening. But as I went to the bathroom, on my way to bed, I saw someone slip into Graham’s room without turning on the light, and come out again carrying something which at the time I didn’t recognize. I simply thought that a guest at the party had left something behind.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ the Inspector almost shouted. ‘And that person was – ?’

  ‘Jean Whitelegge,’ said Robert.

  8. A Fine and Private Place

  The grave’s a fine and private place,

  But none, I think, do there embrace.

  Marvell

  The Inspector gazed at Robert severely. One felt that this surprising piece of information had existed all along at the bottom of his mind in a pure and immaterial form, and that he was offended at this brutal thrusting of it into the coarse and limited medium of words. He regarded Robert as a man might be regarded who has capped a peculiarly subtle and appropriate literary allusion with the hackneyed banality of a proverb.

  ‘You would swear to that?’ he inquired automatically. The question was a perfectly rhetorical one, and manifestly he had no notion that the method of compelling truth which it involved was something like three centuries outworn.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert kindly, relapsing into the constatation of obvious extenuating circumstances which is employed in instructing the very unsophisticated, ‘I’d swear to the fact that she went back to that room. Naturally I can’t be certain that she took the gun away with her.’

  The Inspector dismissed this cautious and scholarly emendation with a slight frown. ‘We may draw our own conclusions about that, sir,’ he said, with the aggressive air of one claiming a prerogative. ‘Thank you, Mr Warner, you have been very helpful – very helpful indeed,’ he added more emphatically, feeling the expression to be inadequate. Robert vanished almost imperceptibly from the room. The Inspector cast about in his mind for words suitably expressive of gratified surprise, and finding none, abandoned the responsibility of comment and asked of the company in general:

  ‘Well, now: and what have we to say to that?’

  Nigel at least had nothing to say. There was the fact, and there seemed to b
e nothing further to say about it at the moment; doubtless it was interesting. ‘Interesting.’ He proffered the opinion with a certain gloom, conscious of its futility.

  ‘Entirely valueless,’ opined Fen infuriatingly.

  ‘Something to be investigated,’ said Sir Richard prosaically.

  This last comment appeared adequately to fill a disturbing blank in the Inspector’s mind. ‘And investigated it shall be,’ he said with something of the procrastinating valour of Achilles when required to fight against the Trojans. ‘As to the rest of the interview, to me at any rate’ – he underlined the pronoun as though challenging anyone to submit it to pejorative scrutiny – ‘it appears obvious that Mr Warner did spend that Wednesday night with Miss Haskell.’ He breathed heavily.

  ‘If you think that has anything to do with the case, Cordery,’ said Sir Richard coldly, ‘doubtless you were right to be as persistent as you were. But you must remember that you are a policeman, and not a Watch Committee.’

  The Inspector received the rebuke with appropriately qualified penitence. ‘None the less, sir,’ he said, ‘you must admit it may very well have some bearing on the matter in hand.’

  ‘I’m getting very bored with all this,’ interposed Fen suddenly. ‘I shall go away if it continues. We have completely lost the point in a maze of routine investigation.’ He became minatory. ‘There are only two points to decide: first, whether this was suicide – I have given the reasons why it obviously was not (incidentally, did you notice there was no dent in the soft pine-wood floor where the gun fell? Another slip). And second, since it was evidently murder, how it was done.’ He became plaintive. ‘There are only a few relevant questions to be asked, and the whole thing’s over. Yet they have to be submerged in a mass of irrelevant – stuff.’ He pronounced the word with a disgust intensified by his inability to think of a better one. ‘That’s all very well in a detective novel, where it has to be put in to camouflage the significant things – though I must say I think some more entertaining form of camouflage might be devised –’

  Sir Richard roused himself acerbly. ‘Really, Gervase: if there’s anything I profoundly dislike, it is the sort of detective story in which one of the characters propounds views on how detective stories should be written. It’s bad enough having a detective who reads the things – they all do –’