Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  When he saw Dr. Hart the fancy crossed Mandrake’s mind that Highfold was full of solitary figures crouched over fires. The door had opened silently and for a moment Hart was not aware of his visitors. He sat on the edge of an armchair, leaning forward, his arms resting upon his thighs, his hands dangling together between his knees. His head, a little sunken and inclined forward, was in shadow, but the firelight found those hands, whose whiteness, whose firm full flesh and square finger-tips, were expressive of their profession. “They’ve got a look of prestige,” thought Mandrake, and he repeated to himself, “professional hands.”

  Jonathan shut the door and the hands closed like traps as Dr. Hart turned and sprang to his feet.

  “Oh—er—hullo, Hart,” began Jonathan, unpromisingly. “We—ah—we thought perhaps we might have a little conference.”

  Hart did not answer, but he turned his head and stared at Mandrake. “I’ve asked Aubrey to come with me,” said Jonathan, quickly, “because, you see, he’s one of the—the victims, and because, as a complete stranger to all of you, [‘A complete stranger to Chloris?’ thought Mandrake] we can’t possibly suspect him of any complicity.”

  “Complicity?” Hart said, still staring at Mandrake. “No. No, I suppose you are right.”

  “Now,” said Jonathan, more firmly and with a certain briskness. “Let us sit down, shall we, and discuss this affair sensibly?”

  “I have said all that I have to say. I made no attack upon Mr. Mandrake, and I made no attack upon Nicholas Compline. That I am at enmity with Compline, I admit. He has insulted me, and I do not care for insults. If it were possible I should refuse to stay in the same house with him. It is not possible but I can at least refuse to meet him. I do so. I take advantage of your offer to remain here or in my room until I am able to leave.”

  “Now, my dear Hart, this really won’t do.” Jonathan drew up two chairs to the fire and, obeying a movement of his hand, Mandrake sat in one while Jonathan himself took the other. Hart remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “It won’t do, you know,” Jonathan repeated. “This last affair, this balancing of a Buddha, this preposterous and malicious trap, could have been planned and fomented with one object only, the object of doing a fatal injury to Nicholas Compline. I have made tolerably exhaustive enquiries and I find that, motive apart, it is extremely improbable that any of my guests, excepting yourself, had an opportunity to set the second trap for Nicholas Compline. I tell you this at the outset, Dr. Hart, because I feel certain that if you can advance some proof of your—your innocence, you will now wish to do so.” Jonathan struck the arms of his chair lightly with the palms of his hands. Mandrake thought, “He’s not doing so badly, after all.” He looked at Jonathan because he found himself unable to look at Dr. Hart and, on a flash of irrelevant thinking, he remembered that a barrister had once told him that if the members of a returning jury studiously averted their eyes from the prisoner, you could depend upon it that their verdict would be “Guilty.”

  “I do not know when this trap is supposed to have been set,” said Dr. Hart.

  “Can you tell us what you were doing during the fifteen or twenty minutes before Nicholas Compline cried out?”

  Dr. Hart lifted his chin, drew down his brows and glared at the ceiling. “He’s rather like Mussolini,” thought Mandrake, stealing a glance at him.

  “When Compline returned with you and with his brother,” said Hart, “I was in this room. I went to that door and saw you in the hall. I then returned and continued a conversation with Madame Lisse, who left the room some time before I did. I remained here until it was time to dress. I went upstairs at a quarter-past seven, and immediately entered my room. Perhaps it was ten minutes later that I entered the bathroom next to my bedroom. I bathed and returned directly to my room. I had almost completed my dressing when I heard Compline scream like a woman. I heard voices in the passage. I put on my dinner jacket and went out into the passage where I found all of you grouped about the doorway to his room.”

  “Yes,” said Jonathan. “Quite so. And between the time of your leaving this room and the discovery of the injury to Nicholas Compline, did you see any other member of the party or any of the servants?”

  “No.”

  “Dr. Hart, do you agree that before you came here you wrote certain letters—I’m afraid I must call them threatening letters—to Nicholas Compline?”

  “I cannot submit to these intolerable questions,” said Hart breathlessly. “You have my assurance that I have made no attack.”

  “If you won’t answer me, you may find yourself questioned by a person of greater authority. You oblige me to press you still further. Do you know where Nicholas Compline was when the trap was set for him?”

  Hart’s upper lip twitched as if a moth fluttered under the skin. Twice, he made as if to speak. At the third effort he uttered some sort of noise—a kind of moan. Mandrake felt acutely embarrassed, but Jonathan cocked his head like a bird, and it seemed to Mandrake that he was beginning to enjoy himself again. “Well, Dr. Hart?” he murmured.

  “I do not know where he was. I saw nobody.”

  “He tells us that he was talking to Madame Lisse, in her room…What did you say?”

  Hart had again uttered that inarticulate sound. He wetted his lips and after a moment said loudly: “I did not know where he was.”

  Jonathan’s fingers had been at his waistcoat pocket. He now withdrew them and with an abrupt movement held out a square of paper. Mandrake saw that it was the Charter form which he had found on the previous night in Nicholas’ chair. He had time to think: “It seems more like a week ago,” as he read again the words that had seemed so preposterous: “You are warned. Keep off.”

  “Well, Dr. Hart,” said Jonathan, “have you seen this paper before?”

  “Never,” Hart cried out shrilly. “Never!”

  “Are you sure? Take it in your hand and examine it.”

  “I will not touch it. This is a trap. Of what do you accuse me?”

  Jonathan, still holding the paper, crossed to a writing-desk in the window. Mandrake and Hart watched him peer into a drawer and finally take out a sheet of note-paper. He turned towards Hart. In his right hand he held the Charter form, in his left the sheet of note-paper.

  “This is your acceptance of my invitation for the weekend,” said Jonathan. “After the Charter form came into my hands,” he smiled at Mandrake, “I bethought me of this note. I compared them and I came to an interesting conclusion. Your letters are characteristically formed, my dear doctor. You use a script, and it retains its Continental character. The slanting leg of the German ‘K’ is unusually prolonged. Here we have a ‘K’ in ‘kind invitation.’ I am looking at the note. Turning to the Charter form, we find that the letters are in script and the ‘K’ of ‘Keep’ has a slanting leg that is prolonged through the square beneath it. Now, you sat next to Nicholas on his right hand. You passed your forms to him for scoring. Instead of receiving one form from you he received two: the legitimate Charter, which curiously enough contained the word ‘threats,’ and this somewhat childish but, in the circumstances, quite significant warning, which you tell us you have never seen before. Now, you know, that simply won’t do.”

  “I did not write it. It—I must have torn two sheets off together. They were stuck together at the top. Someone else had written on the bottom form.”

  “Ridiculous!” said Jonathan very sharply. He thrust the two papers into his pocket and moved away. When he spoke again, it was with a return to his usual air of pedantry. “No, really, Dr. Hart, that will not do. I myself gave out the forms. Nobody could have foretold to whom I would hand this particular block. You are not suggesting, I hope, that a member of the party, by some sleight-of-hand trick, took your block of forms out of your fingers, wrote on the lower form, and returned it without attracting your attention?”

  “I suggest nothing. I know nothing about it. I did not write it. Perhaps Compline himself wrote it
in order to discredit me. He is capable of anything—of anything. Ach Gott!” cried Dr. Hart, “I can endure this no longer. I must ask you to leave me. I must insist that you leave me alone.” He clasped his hands together and raised them to his eyes. “I am most unhappy,” he said. “I am in great trouble. You do not understand, you are not of my race. I tell you that these accusations mean nothing to me—nothing. I am torn by the most terrible of all emotions and I cannot fight against it. I am near breaking-point. I entreat you to leave me alone.”

  “Very well,” said Jonathan and, rather to Mandrake’s surprise, he walked to the door. “But I warn you,” he said, “if anything should happen to Nicholas Compline, you, and only you, will immediately fall under the gravest suspicion. I firmly believe you tried to kill Nicholas. If there is one more threat, one more suspicious move upon your part, Dr. Hart, I shall take it upon myself to place you under arrest.” He made a quick deft movement and the next moment Mandrake saw that in his right hand Jonathan held a very small pistol. “A few moments ago,” said Jonathan, “I removed this little weapon from my desk. I am armed, Dr. Hart, and I shall see to it that Nicholas Compline, also, is armed. I wish you good night.”

  Mandrake did not follow Jonathan from the room. Something had happened to him. He had succumbed to an irresistible feeling of pity for Dr. Hart. He had not ceased to believe that Hart was responsible for the attacks on Nicholas; on the contrary he was more than ever convinced that he was their author. But something in Hart’s attitude, in his air of isolation, in the very feebleness of his efforts to defend himself, had touched Mandrake’s sympathetic nerve. He saw Hart as a man who had been driven hopelessly off his normal course by the wind of an overwhelming jealousy. The old phrase ‘Madly in love’ occurred to him, and he thought Hart was indeed the victim of an insane passion. He found in himself a burning anxiety to prevent any further attack, not so much for Nicholas Compline’s sake as for Hart’s. It would be terrible, he thought, if Hart was to kill Nicholas and then, by this dreadful consummation of his passion, be brought to his right mind, to a full realization of the futility of what he had done. He felt that he must try and find something to say to this plump figure of tragedy, something that might reach out to him and rouse him, as some actual sound will penetrate and dispel a nightmare. Hart had turned away when Jonathan had shut the door, and had flung himself into a chair by the fire and covered his face with his hands. After a moment’s hesitation Mandrake crossed to him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. He started, looked up, and said: “I thought you had gone.”

  “I shall go in a moment. I have stayed because I want to wake you.”

  “To wake me? How often have I repeated to myself that most futile of all phrases ‘If only it was a dream.’ ‘If only I could be certain, certain. Then it would not be so bad.”

  Mandrake thought: “He is going to talk to me.” He took the chair opposite to Dr. Hart and lit a cigarette. “If only you could be certain?” he repeated.

  “That it is all lies, that he is her lover, that she has betrayed me. But when she denies I cannot help half believing her. I wish so much to believe. And then I see a look of boredom in her eyes, a look of weariness, of contempt. And with that comes the memory of the glances I have surprised between them, and although I know that with each denial, each scene, I injure myself still further, immediately I begin to make new scenes, demand fresh denials. I am caught in the toils of hell. I am so weary of it, yet I cannot be done with it.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To prove to myself, one way or the other. To know the worst. She told me he was to be here and said quite lightly: ‘Watch us and find out. It is nothing.’ And then when I saw him, with all the airs of proprietorship, of complacent ownership, laughing at me! Do you know what should have been done in my country, if anyone insulted me as this man has insulted me? We should have met and it would have been decided once and for all. I should have killed Nicholas Compline.”

  “In England,” said Mandrake, “we find it difficult to believe that in other countries duelling is still regarded as a satisfactory means of settling a difference. A successful duellist would be regarded as a murderer.”

  “In any case,” said Hart, “he would not consent. He is a poltroon as well as a popinjay.”

  Mandrake thought: “Such glorious words!” Aloud he said: “He has some cause to be nervous, don’t you think?”

  “Yet in spite of his terror,” Hart continued, beating his clenched hands against his forehead, “in spite of his terror, he goes to her room. He waits until he hears me in the bathroom and then he goes to her. This morning he was in her room. I trapped her into admitting it. And now, a few minutes after she leaves me, after she has seen my agony, she keeps another assignation.”

  “But you know, in this country we are not conventional. I mean, we wander about into each other’s room. I mean, Chloris Wynne and Lady Hersey, for example, both came and saw me. One thinks nothing of it. The modern Englishwoman…”

  “In these matters she is not an Englishwoman, and I, Mr. Mandrake, am not an Englishman. We are naturalized, but we do not change our ideas of what is convenable. For what reason should she admit him, for what innocent reason? No, it is useless to torture myself further. She has betrayed me.”

  “Look here, it’s none of my business but, if you are so certain, why not make a clean break? Why take a course that must lead to disaster? Let them go their ways. Things can never be as they were. Why ruin your career,” —Mandrake stammered over his series of conventional phrases,—“and jeopardize your own life over Nicholas Compline? Is he worth it? And, after all, is she worth it? Let her go. You could never be happy with her, now. Even if she married you—”

  “Married me!” cried Hart. “Married me! She has been my wife for five years.”

  Mandrake stayed with Hart for a time, hearing a story in which the themes of Madame Lisse’s business instinct, her husband’s enslavement, and Nicholas Compline’s perfidy were strangely interwoven. Madame, it seemed, had decided that their respective professions, though allied, were in a public sense incompatible. “She felt that as my wife she could not recommend me to her clients. I have always expressed considerable scepticism about the efficacy of face massage and creams. I have even published a short treatise on the subject. She said that to announce our marriage would be to embarrass my prestige with my clientele.” His voice went on and on in a breathless hurry. He seemed unable to stop. Always he returned to Nicholas Compline and with each return he rekindled his own fury against Nicholas. The sudden outpouring of a long-suppressed emotion is supposed to bring relief, but Dr. Hart did not appear to take comfort from his self-revelation. He looked wretchedly ill and his nervous distress mounted with his recital. “He really is not responsible,” Mandrake thought; “I’ve done no good at all. I’d better clear out.” He could think of no suitable speech with which to end the conversation. Ridiculous phrases occurred to him (“Now, you won’t kill Nicholas, will you?”) and he wished with all his heart that he could rid himself of the notion that in some way Dr. Hart was making an appeal to him. He pulled himself to his feet. Dr. Hart, his finger pressed against that twitching lip of his, looked up desolately. At that moment, beyond the communicating door into the smoking-room, Nicholas Compline uttered a laugh loud enough to reach the ears of Dr. Hart and Mandrake. Hart sprang to his feet and for a moment Mandrake thought that he would actually make a blackguard rush into the smoking-room and go for his tormentor. Mandrake grabbed at his arm. They heard Nicholas’ voice say “All right” so clearly that he must have crossed the room. There was a discordant burst of static and distorted music from the wireless, just inside the door. Hart cried out for all the world as if he had been struck, tore himself away from Mandrake and flung open the door into the smoking-room.

  “GOTT IM HIMMEL,” he screamed out, “must I be tortured by that devilish, that intolerable noise? TURN IT OFF. I INSIST THAT YOU TURN IT OFF!”

  Nicholas appeared
in the doorway. “You go to hell,” he said pleasantly. “If I choose to listen to the wireless I’ll bloody well listen to it.” He slammed the door in Hart’s face. Mandrake stumbled between Hart and the door. With a string of expletives that rather astonished himself, he shouted out instruction to Nicholas to switch off the radio, which was now roaring “Roll out the barrel…” It stopped abruptly, and William was heard to say: “Pipe down, for God’s sake.” Nicholas said: “Oh all right. Go to bed, Bill.” Mandrake and Hart stared at each other for some seconds without speaking.

  “Dr. Hart,” said Mandrake, at last, “if you cannot give me your assurance that you will either go to your own room or remain in this one, I shall—I shall lock you in.”

  Hart sank back into his chair. “I shall do nothing,” he said. “What can I do?” And to Mandrake’s unbounded dismay he uttered a loud sob and buried his face in his hands.

  “Oh, God!” thought Mandrake, “this is too much.” He tried to form soothing phrases, but was dismayed by their inadequacy and finally ran out of words. For a moment he watched Dr. Hart, who was now fetching his breath in shuddering gasps and beating his hands on the arms of his chair. Mandrake remembered Jonathan’s treatment for Chloris. He went to the dining-room, found a decanter of whiskey, poured out a stiff nip, and returned with it to the boudoir.