The Case of the Gilded Fly

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘(2) the fact that there was a smell of gunpowder smoke in the room when we entered it;

  ‘(3) the fact that nothing was touched for at least a quarter of an hour after we came in.

  ‘If that doesn’t give it you,’ he concluded, comfortable in the assurance that it would do nothing of the sort, ‘then you’re an imbecile.’

  Nigel rapidly suppressed several unworthy desires, and contented himself with asking: ‘You really know who did it?’

  ‘I know,’ said Fen sombrely. ‘One way and another I’ve interviewed all the possibles now. But there’s still a lot that wants confirming, fixing, strengthening. It was an ill-contrived crime – a rotten piece of work.’ He turned suddenly to Helen. ‘What would your reaction be if I were to let the person who killed your sister get away with it? It’s a real problem, remember, not an argumentation; as far as I can see, the police don’t seem likely to tumble to the real facts – not the way they’re going about it now, anyway.’

  Helen thought for a moment. Then she said frankly: ‘It would depend who it was. If it were Robert or – yes, or Rachel, or even Sheila or Jean, I don’t think I should mind. If it were Donald or Nick – it sounds beastly, I know, but – well, yes, I would.’

  Fen nodded his head gravely. ‘Very sensible,’ he said. ‘Personally, I should be in favour of giving a flimsy chance all round – a warning to get out, say. In this wilderness of ration-books and registration and identity cards, if anyone could get away, they’d really deserve it. All this is highly immoral, you know,’ he said quizzically, unjustly involving Helen and Nigel in the accusation, ‘and I’m not sure that I shouldn’t in law be an accessory after the fact. But your sister, Helen – forgive me – was, it appears, rather a pest in a number of ways.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Nigel said: ‘But what about the ring, Gervase? The Gilded Fly?’

  ‘Gilded Fly, indeed: you old poetizer,’ said Fen. ‘That, I admit, puzzles me still. We shall have to dig that up with hard labour. And now’ – he looked at his watch – ‘we – and you, Helen – had better get off to this rehearsal, if we’re not going to be late. In the doubtless immortal words of Mr Herbert Morrison, we must go to it. We should be able – Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers!’ He broke off, staring blankly in front of him. ‘Lord, Lord, what a fool I’ve been! And yes – it fits – absolutely characteristic. Heaven grant Gideon Fell never becomes privy to my lunacy; I should never hear the end of it.’ He gaped.

  Nigel regarded him coldly. ‘Stop this exhibition,’ he said, ‘which you know perfectly well is unintelligible to everyone but yourself, and let’s go. It’s five minutes to eleven. We shall have to run all the way as it is.’

  With some difficulty they removed him from the room.

  On the way to the theatre he recovered something of his high spirits, which manifested themselves in the normal way by an incessant stream of complaint. He complained impartially and at length about the weather, the progress of the war, food, and the University in general. On this latter subject he subsequently particularized to a libellous extent. As he talked he strode along at a rate which by the time they had reached the theatre had reduced Helen and Nigel to a state of mild exhaustion.

  The reaction of the company at large to the news of Yseut’s death appeared to be salutory; a sense of relief was plainly discernible, and no one seemed to be at all concerned at the reflection that a murderer might be in their midst. The general feeling was, in fact, that this could hardly be considered as murder, and was on a par with such actions as the drowning of superfluous kittens, the painless putting-away of aged dogs, and the necessary destruction of vermin. The rehearsal began well and went on well. Nigel sat and watched it from the front, while Fen prowled about getting in everyone’s way, exhibiting an exaggerated interest in the proceedings, and asking idiotic questions.

  Shortly after twelve Robert called a halt, and the majority of the company retreated to the ‘Aston Arms’, Fen and Nigel following with Helen. The ‘Aston Arms’ was none of your brightly-painted, up-and-coming hostelries. It exuded so strongly an atmosphere of the past that drinkers living were spiritually cowed and jostled by the shades of drinkers long dead and gone. Every suggestion of improvement or modernization was grimly resisted by the management, which consisted of a large, ancient man manifestly disintegrating at a great rate into his component chemical elements. An elaborate ritual, the abandonment of which was anathema, presided over the ordering and consumption of drinks; a strict social hierarchy was maintained; irregular visitors were unwelcome, and regular customers, particularly the acting profession, were treated with a mild pervasive contempt. The only salient feature of the small, rather shabby public bar was an enormous nude parrot, which had early contracted the habit of pecking out all its feathers, and which now, with the exception of the ruff and head, which it could not reach, presented a dismal and ludicrous grey, scraggy body to the gaze. It had been given to the proprietor of the ‘Aston Arms’ in a fit of lachrymose gratitude by a visiting German professor, and was in the habit of reciting a lyric of Heine, which feat, however, it could only be induced to perform by the careful repetition of two lines from the beginning of Mallarmeé’s L’Apres-midi d’un Faune, this appearing to start some appropriate train of suggestion in its mind. This aptitude aroused the deepest suspicions in such soldiery as frequented the ‘Aston Arms’, equalled only by their suspicion of those of their countrymen who were capable of similar or greater achievements in the same direction; it was employed by the proprietor to warn customers of the imminence of closing-time, and the raucous tones of Ich weiss nicht, was soll es be-deuten, dass ich so traurig bin were the normal prelude to more forcible means of ejection.

  In the small room Fen’s entrance was overwhelming; even the sibyl behind the bar appeared to be cowed by his exuberant presence. He ordered drinks in a profane and iconoclastic manner.

  ‘When I was a proctor,’ he said, ‘I used to have great difficulties – about pubs, I mean. The people I found in pubs were invariably my most brilliant pupils, and I wanted nothing better than to stop and drink and talk books with them. So I used only to come when I simply had to, and then march through, with a stern expression, taking no notice of anyone. When the junior proctor was going out, I discovered his itinerary and rang up my best friends and warned them. All very illegal, I fear.’ He sighed.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Nigel mockingly. ‘What a picaro character you are, to be sure!’ Fen gazed at him reproachfully.

  Sheila McGaw and Nicholas were standing in a corner together, Nicholas making uncertain attempts to ruffle the parrot’s poll.

  ‘If it tries to bite you,’ said Sheila helpfully, ‘don’t take your hand away; that only encourages it.’ Nicholas suffered some moments of acute agony, then pulled his finger away and regarded it ruefully. ‘That,’ he remarked briefly, ‘is a fallacy.’

  Fen went across to them. ‘Ah, Barclay,’ he said. ‘A brief moment of conversation, if I may.’ He smiled affably at Sheila, who drifted away to join Robert and Rachel at the bar. An uneasy silence fell, through which Donald Fellowes, in another part of the room, could clearly be heard discoursing on the technique of orchestration. ‘Dear me,’ said Fen. ‘How quiet everything is. I don’t want our conversation to be as public as all this.’ He apostrophized the parrot in French: it became launched on Die Lorelei; general conversation hurriedly reasserted itself in self-defence. Through the hubbub Fen said:

  ‘Has the Inspector been to visit you this morning?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Thanks be to God. No doubt he found my evidence so lucid last night that he had nothing further to ask. How are things going?’

  Fen looked at him curiously for a moment. ‘As well as can be expected,’ he said. ‘You’re perfectly certain that neither you nor Donald left that room at any time last night?’

  ‘ – Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet dort oben wunderbar,’ the parrot was saying in heartfelt tones; it paused and
breathed stertorously before proceeding with the next couplet.

  Nicholas threw up his arms in mock surrender. ‘Maestro, I am discovered,’ he said. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘I guessed,’ answered Fen uncommunicatively. ‘It was, I suppose, Donald who went out – immediately after doing the black-out?’

  Nicholas sat up sharply. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘A conjecture merely. I believe that when he went to the windows he saw someone he knew, and went out to speak to them. There are certain things which can’t be explained in any other way.’

  ‘As it happens, you’re right. He and the other person chattered just round the bend in the passage which leads through to the courtyard. I don’t suppose that fool of a workman noticed anything. Anyway, Donald was back in under two minutes. There’s no reason to suppose either of them had anything to do with the murder.’

  ‘Then you know who the other person was?’ said Fen softly.

  Nicholas set his lips. ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘I suggest that even if you didn’t know at the time, Fellowes would have told you when he returned.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘It would have been natural. Unless’ – Fen paused – ‘unless of course he already knew that a murder had been committed, and was anxious to cover up.’

  Nicholas went white. ‘I don’t know who the other person was,’ he repeated slowly and emphatically.

  Fen grunted and got up. ‘You’re being very unhelpful,’ he said, ‘though fortunately it’s of no importance. There’s already sufficient evidence to hang someone – perhaps you know whom. I assure you, it’s only for my own satisfaction that I want things nicely ticketed and catalogued, and I suppose I can’t expect you to subscribe to that.’ Nicholas glanced across at Donald. ‘It’s all right,’ added Fen ironically, ‘I’ll give you plenty of time to fix your story with Fellowes before I question him. Fools are too easy prey without courtesies of that kind.’ His eyes were hard.

  ‘ – Und das hat mit ihrem Singen die Lore-Ley getan,’ the parrot concluded with hoarse triumph, and fell abruptly silent.

  Fen turned back again to Nicholas. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘your opinion on the ethics of murder.’

  Nicholas looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I believe killing to be an inescapable necessity of the world in which we live, the abominable, sentimental, mob-ruled world of cheap newspapers and cheaper minds, where every imbecile is articulate and every folly tolerated, where the arts are dying out and the intellect is scorned, where every little cheap-jack knows what he likes and what he thinks. Our moralities, our democracy, have taught us to suffer fools gladly, and now we suffer from an overplus of fools. Every fool dead is an advance, and be damned to humanity and virtue and charity and Christian tolerance.’

  Fen nodded. ‘Quite the little fascist,’ he said. ‘Julius Vander, in The Professor, would appeal to you very much. The facts, allowing for a certain wildness, may be correct; the conclusion is fortunately false. What you need,’ he said benevolently, ‘is a little elementary education; I think you would find it helpful.’ He smiled sweetly and was gone.

  Fen studied Sheila McGaw curiously as he put his drink on the table and settled down opposite her. The immediate impression was that she was somewhere in her thirties. Her sharply-cut features were pale and lined; her voice was hoarse with overmuch smoking, and she coughed frequently. Only after a while did one realize that she was in fact much younger than this – hardly more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Small gestures, a sort of underlying softness in the features, and little mannerisms of speech and expression betrayed this. Less tough than she looks, thought Fen, who was prone to slightly out-of-date Americanisms.

  She offered him a cigarette saying: ‘Well? More about the murder?’

  Fen nodded. ‘In a way. All I really wanted was to confirm the business about the ring.’

  ‘Oh, that. I gather it puts me in the front line of suspects. And the fact that I had a motive. And the fact that I haven’t got an alibi.’ She blew smoke in two tapering jets from her rather prominent narrow nostrils.

  ‘No alibi?’

  ‘I was in my room reading all last evening. The police have made the brilliant deduction that I might have slipped out and back again at any time without anyone knowing.’

  Fen sighed. ‘There’s an almost total lack of alibis in this case. Lots of motives, no alibis, and, in the Inspector’s opinion, an impossible crime.’

  ‘You mean it was suicide?’

  ‘I’m certain it was nothing of the sort. It would be too perfect an example of dramatic irony to be real.’

  She nodded, and then said: ‘If the police think it’s suicide, must you disabuse them? Suicide or murder, it was really an awfully good thing.’

  ‘This young woman must have been very much disliked,’ Fen murmured. ‘I sometimes wonder if you haven’t all lost your sense of proportion over her.’

  ‘If you’d worked with her for a couple of years you wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Tell me: this ring of yours; has anyone ever particularly remarked on it?’

  ‘I should think it’s provoked a witticism of some sort from everyone in the theatre.’

  Fen grunted, gazed at his beer with distaste, and swallowed half of it at a gulp. Just such an expression must Brother Barbaro have had when, at Francis’ behest, he swallowed the ass’s dung. Whisky was unobtainable at the ‘Aston Arms’.

  ‘Has there been any comment on it just recently?’ he asked. ‘Within the last week?’

  ‘There was some talk about it in the green room after rehearsal on Wednesday, in which more or less everyone joined. Afterwards I went into one of the dressing-rooms to wash some paint off my hands, took it off and left it on the wash-basin. When I went back for it half-an-hour later it was gone.’

  ‘Whose dressing-room?’

  ‘Well, they’re swapped about a good deal; it’s the one Rachel will have next week. It happens to be the first you come to.’

  ‘And who was present when there was this talk about the ring?’

  ‘Almost everyone, I think, including the hangers-on.’

  ‘Including – ?’ Fen named a name which made Sheila sit up abruptly and stare at him for a moment or two before replying.

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘but surely –’

  ‘Don’t misinterpret me,’ said Fen. ‘It would be most unwise to jump to conclusions.’ He relapsed into a moody silence. Then he said:

  ‘Have you any objection to Warner’s coming here and producing this play over your head, as it were?’

  Sheila shrugged, and fell into a paroxysm of coughing. ‘Damn,’ she said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry. What were you saying? Oh yes, about Robert’s producing this play. Well, I suppose it would have been good publicity if I could have done it. But he’s an infinitely better producer than I am, and it’s only reasonable that he should have wanted to produce his own play. No, I don’t mind. I could have prevented it being put on here if I’d chosen, but I didn’t choose.’

  ‘You admire his work, then?’

  Sheila grinned. ‘ “Admire”: hardly the appropriate word, I think. Does one venture to “admire” Shakespeare?’

  Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘All that, eh? Of course,’ he added hastily, ‘I’m no judge of contemporary literature, but I think I agree. Yes, I think I agree. And Metromania is –’

  ‘The best thing he’s ever done.’

  Donald Fellowes joined them, clutching a half-pint. ‘Nicholas tells me,’ he said stiffly to Fen, ‘that I am now under suspicion.’

  ‘Fellowes,’ said Fen kindly, ‘you are every sort of imbecile. You don’t, alas, realize that withheld information always comes out in the end. Then why do you withhold it? It makes you look so silly to go on like that when everyone knows exactly what you’re hiding.’

  Donald muttered: ‘Well, go on then. Tell me what I’m hiding.’

&
nbsp; ‘My good young man,’ said Fen with some asperity, ‘I’m not here to do what you think fit. I shall tell you when I’m ready. In the meantime –’

  ‘In the meantime,’ Donald put in with sudden violence, ‘what the hell’s it got to do with you, anyway? You’re not the police.’

  Fen got to his feet; he towered over Donald as a liner towers over a tug. ‘You are,’ he said, ‘without exception the most imbecile ignominious cretinous poltroon it has ever been my evil fortune to meet. What is worse, you become more imbecile, ignominious, cretinous and poltroonish with every hour that passes. You are, one must grudgingly admit, a very good organist and choirmaster. Otherwise it’s extremely unlikely that the college would have tolerated you for so long. Several times I’ve had to use my influence to prevent you being sent down for idleness. And now you have the impertinence to come to me and question my right to discover what I can about this case. I’d better warn you here and now that if you continue this idiotic policy of concealment you’ll quite justly get yourself landed in gaol; and this time I shall not get you out of it.’

  Donald was pale. ‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘What right have you got to talk to me like that? Oh my God, I shall be glad to get out of this place – with its lousy traditions and cheap minds and jacks-in-office. If you imagine I care twopence about your threats, I can assure you you’re quite mistaken.’ He glared at Fen for a moment, then turned and went out.

  Nigel, who had come in on the tail-end of this unexpected and disgraceful scene, whistled softly. ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Invective with a vengeance!’

  Fen grinned cheerfully. ‘A calculated performance on my part, I fear, designed to a perfectly dispassionate end. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.’ He looked dubious. ‘Still, it might have helped.’ He rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

  Sheila chuckled. ‘Donald on his dignity is always slightly ludicrous,’ she said. ‘He’ll have got over it in half-an-hour or so.’ She yawned and stretched.

  ‘And now,’ said Fen, looking anxiously about him, ‘I must see Miss West, before this rehearsal gets on the move again.’ He pointed at his tankard. ‘Nigel, be a dear boy and get me some more of this odious concoction.’ He moved off purposefully in the direction of Rachel, who was talking to Robert.