by Ngaio Marsh
Hersey offered to go with Nicholas to his mother, and Chloris insisted that she would be all right left by herself in the library. “She’s a good gallant girl,” thought Mandrake, “and I’m in love with her.” He gave her shoulder a pat and thought how out of character his behaviour was.
“Come on,” said Hersey.
The library door shut behind them and they heard Chloris turn the key in the lock. The hall was quiet, a dim hollow place with a dying fire and shadows like the mouths of caverns. Bleached walls faded like smoke up into darkness; curtains, half seen, hung rigidly in the entrance. Pieces of furniture stood about with a deadly air of expectancy.
Jonathan’s hand reached out and a great chandelier flooded the hall with light. The party of four moved to the stairs. Mandrake saw Jonathan take out his pistol. He led the way upstairs and switched on the wall lamps. Hersey and Nicholas followed him and Mandrake, lifting his club-foot more quickly than he was wont to do, brought up the rear. The nail in his right shoe still pricked him and he was dimly irritated by this slight discomfort. Up the first flight was the halfway landing, where the stairs divided into two narrower flights, of which they took the one that turned to their left. They went up to the top landing, where the grandfather clock ticked loudly. Here they paused. Hersey took Nicholas’ arm. He squared his shoulders and with a gesture that for all its nervousness was a sort of parody of his old swagger, brushed up his moustache and went off with her to his mother’s room. Mandrake and Jonathan turned to the right and walked softly down the passage.
They found Nicholas’ automatic where he had told them to look for it, in a drawer of his dressing-table. William’s, Nicholas had said, was in his room, beside a rucksack containing his painting materials.
“His room’s next door to Hart’s,” whispered Jonathan. “If he’s there, he’ll hear us go in. What shall we do?”
“We can’t leave stray automatics lying about, Jonathan. Not with a homicidal lunatic at large.”
“Come on, then.”
William’s room was opposite his brother’s. Mandrake stood on guard in the passage while Jonathan, looking extraordinarily furtive, opened the door by inches and crept in. There was no light under Hart’s door. Was he there behind it, listening, waiting? Mandrake stared at it, half expecting it to open. Jonathan came back carrying a second automatic. He led the way into Mandrake’s room.
“If he’s in there, he’s in the dark,” said Mandrake.
“Quiet! You take this, Aubrey. Nicholas should have had his,” whispered Jonathan. “He should have come here first.”
“Are they loaded? I couldn’t know less about them.”
Jonathan examined the two automatics. “I think so. I myself—” His voice faded away and Mandrake caught only odd words: “…last resort…most undesirable…” He looked anxiously at Mandrake. “The safety catches are on, I think, but be careful, Aubrey. We must not fire, of course, unless something really desperate happens. Let him see we are armed. Wait one moment.”
“What is it?”
A curious smile twisted Jonathan’s lips. “It occurs to me,” he whispered, “that we are at great pains to defend ourselves, Nicholas, and three of the ladies. We have quite overlooked the fourth.”
“But—do you think? Good Heavens, Jonathan—”
“We can do nothing there. It is an abstract point. Are you ready? Let us go, then.”
Outside Hart’s door they paused. William’s automatic sagged heavily in the pocket of Mandrake’s dinner jacket. Nicholas’ automatic was in his right hand. His heart thumped uncomfortably and he thought: This is not my sort of stuff. I’m hating this.
The latch clicked as Jonathan turned the handle. If it’s locked, thought Mandrake, do we break it in, or what?
It was not locked. Jonathan pushed the door open quietly, slipped through, and switched on the light. The room was orderly and rather stuffy. Dr. Hart’s trousers were hung over the back of a chair, his underclothes were folded across the seat, his shoes neatly disposed upon the floor. These details caught Mandrake’s eye before he saw the bed which contained Dr. Hart himself.
Apparently he was fast asleep. He lay on his back, his mouth was open, his face patched with red, and his eyes not quite shut. The whites just showed under the lashes and that gave him so ghastly a look that for a fraction of a second Mandrake’s nerves leapt to a conclusion that was at once dispelled by the sound of stertorous breathing.
Jonathan shut the door. He and Mandrake eyed each other and then, upon a common impulse, approached closer to the sleeping beauty-doctor. Mandrake was conscious of a great reluctance to waken Hart, a profound abhorrence of the scene that must follow the awakening. His imagination called up a picture of terrified expostulations, or, still worse, of a complete breakdown and confession. He found himself unable to look at Hart, his glance wandered from Jonathan’s pistol to the bedside table where it was arrested by a small chemist’s jar, half full of a white crystalline powder, and by a used tumbler, stained with white sediment. “Veronal?” wondered Mandrake, who had once used it himself. “If it is I didn’t know it made you look so repellent. He must have taken a big dose.”
How big a dose Dr. Hart had taken appeared only when Jonathan tried to wake him.
Under other circumstances Jonathan would have cut a comic figure. First, keeping his own pistol pointed at the sleeping Doctor, he called his name. There was no response and Jonathan repeated his effort, raising his voice, finally to a cracked falsetto. “Hart, Dr. Hart! Wake up!”
Hart stirred, uttered an uncouth sound, and began to snore again. With an incoherent exclamation, Jonathan pocketed his pistol and advanced upon the bed.
“Look out,” said Mandrake, “he may be foxing.”
“Nonsense!” said Jonathan crisply. He shook Hart by the shoulder and: “Never heard of such a thing,” said Jonathan, furiously. “Dr. Hart? Wake up.”
“A-a-ah? Was haben sie…” The prominent eyes opened and stared into Jonathan’s. The voice trailed away, the eyes became bored and closed again. There followed a slightly ridiculous scene, Jonathan scolding and shaking Hart, Hart mumbling and sagging off into a doze. Finally Jonathan, his face pink with vexation, dipped a towel in the water jug and slapped the Doctor’s cheeks with it. This did the trick. Hart shuddered and shook his head. When he spoke again his voice was normal.
“Well,” said Dr. Hart, “what in Heaven’s name is all this? What now? May I not sleep, even? What now?”
He touched his head and saw Mandrake. “What are you doing with that thing in your hand?” he demanded. “Do not point at me. It is a firearm. What has happened?” Mandrake fidgeted uneasily with the automatic and curled the toes of his right foot in an attempt to avoid that pestilent shoe-nail. Hart rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and shook his head vigorously.
Jonathan said: “We are armed because we have come to speak with a murderer.”
Hart uttered a sound of exasperation. “Mr. Royal,” he said, “how often am I to explain that I know nothing about it? Am I to be awakened at intervals during the night to tell you that I was in my bath?”
“What, again?” Mandrake ejaculated.
“Again? Again!” shouted Hart. “I do not know what you mean by again. I was in my bath at the time it was done. I know nothing. I did not sleep all last night. For weeks I have been suffering from insomnia, and tonight I have taken a soporific. If I do not sleep I shall go mad. Leave me alone.”
“There is the body of a murdered man downstairs, Dr. Hart,” said Mandrake. “I think you must stay awake a little longer to answer for it.”
Hart sat up in bed. His pyjama jacket was unbuttoned and the smooth whiteness of his torso made a singularly disagreeable impression on Mandrake. Hart was fully awake, now; on his guard, and sharply attentive.
“Murdered?” he repeated, and to Mandrake’s astonishment he smiled. “I see. So he has done it after all. I did not think he would go so far.”
“What the devil are yo
u talking about?” Jonathan demanded.
“He is killed, you say? Then I am speaking of his brother. I guessed that the brother set that trap. A booby-trap you call it, do you not? He betrayed himself when he reminded them of the tricks they played in their childhood. It was obvious the lady still loved her first choice. He was attractive to women.” He paused and rubbed his lips again. Jonathan and Mandrake found nothing to say. “How was it done?” asked Hart.
Jonathan suddenly began to stutter. Mandrake saw that he was beside himself with rage. He cut in loudly before Jonathan had uttered a coherent phrase:—
“Wait a moment, Jonathan.” Mandrake limped nearer to the bed. “He was killed,” he said, “by a blow on the head from a stone club that hung with other weapons on the wall of the smoking-room. He was bending over the wireless. His murderer must have crept up behind him. No, Jonathan, wait a minute, please. A short while before he was killed, Dr. Hart, we were all in the library, and we heard him turn on the radio. You will remember that the smoking-room is between the library and the green sitting-room, called ‘boudoir’— the room that you were in, alone. You will remember that it communicates with both these rooms and with the hall. With the exception of Mr. Royal, who did not enter either of the other two rooms, none of us left the library after we heard the wireless until Lady Hersey went in and found him there—murdered.”
The uneven patches of red in Hart’s cheeks were blotted out by a uniform and extreme pallor.
“This is infamous,” he whispered. “You suggest that I—I killed him.” With a movement of his hand, Mandrake checked a further outburst from Jonathan.
“I could not,” said Hart. “The door was locked.”
“How do you know?”
“After you had gone, I tried it. He had turned that intolerable thing on again. I could not endure it. I admit—I admit I tried it. When I found it locked I—I controlled myself. I decided to leave that room of torture. I came up here and to bed. The door was locked, I tell you.”
“The door from the hall into the smoking-room was not locked.”
“I did not do it. There must be some proof. It is the brother. The brother hated him as much as I. It is a pathological case. I am a medical man. I have seen it. He had stolen the mother’s love and the girl still adored him.”
“Dr. Hart,” said Mandrake, “it is not Nicholas Compline who is dead. It is his brother, William.”
In the silence that followed Mandrake heard a door, some distance down the passage, open and close. He heard voices, a footfall, somebody coughing.
“William,” repeated Hart, and his hands moved across his chest; fumbling with his pyjama coat. “William Compline? It cannot be William. It cannot.”
They did not have a great deal of trouble with Dr. Hart after that. He seemed at first to be completely bewildered and (the word leapt unbidden into Mandrake’s thoughts) disgusted. Mandrake found himself quite unable to make up his mind whether Hart was bluffing, whether his air of confusion, his refusal to take alarm, and his obstinate denials were false or genuine. He seemed at once to be less panic-stricken and more helpless than he was when he believed, or feigned to believe, that the victim was Nicholas. He also seemed to be profoundly astonished. After a few minutes, however, he roused himself and appeared to consider his own position. He gave them quite a clear account of his own movements, from the time Mandrake left him alone in the green boudoir, until he fell asleep. He said that he had taken some minutes to recover from his breakdown in Mandrake’s presence. He was fully roused by tentative noises from the wireless, not loud but furtive. He found these sounds as intolerable to his raw nerves as the defiant blasts that preceded them. They must have affected Hart, Mandrake thought, in much the same way as he himself was affected by stealthy groping in chocolate boxes at a play. The intermittent noises continued, snatches of German and French, scraps of music, muffled bursts of static. Hart imagined Nicholas Compline turning the dial control and grinning to himself. At last the maddened doctor had rushed to the communicating door and found it locked. He had not, he seemed to suggest, meant to do more than expostulate with Nicholas, turn off the wireless at the wall switch and leave the room. However, the locked door checked him. He merely shouted a final curse at Nicholas and decided to fly from torment. He switched off the lights in the “boudoir,” and went upstairs. As he crossed the hall to the foot of the stairs, he passed the new footman with his tray of glasses. He said the man saw him come out of the “boudoir” and that Hart was about half-way up the first flight when the man returned from the smoking-room and moved about the hall. He was still in the hall, locking up, when Hart reached the half-way landing and turned off to the left-hand flight. “He will tell you,” said Hart, “that I did not enter the smoking-room.”
“You could very easily have finished your work in the smoking-room before the man came,” Jonathan said, icily. “You could have returned to the ‘boudoir’ and come out when you heard the man crossing the hall.”
Mandrake, by a really supreme effort of self-control, held his tongue. He wanted with all his soul to cry out: “No! Don’t you see, don’t you see…” He knew Jonathan was wrong, off the track altogether. He was amazed at Jonathan’s blindness. Yet, because he felt certain that somewhere, beyond his own reach, lay the answer to Hart’s statement, he said nothing. Better, he thought, to wait until he had that answer.
“His skull is fractured, you say.” Hart’s voice, more composed than it had been since their last interview, roused Mandrake to listen. “Very well, then. You must lock up the room. The weapon must not be touched. It may have the assassin’s finger-prints. The door into the hall must be examined by the police. A medical practitioner must be found. Naturally I cannot act in the matter. My own position…”
“You!” Jonathan ejaculated; “Great merciful Heavens, sir—”
Again Mandrake interrupted. “Dr. Hart,” he asked, “suppose the rest of the party agreed, would you be prepared, in the presence of witnesses, to look at the body of William Compline?”
“Certainly,” said Hart promptly. “If you wish, I will do so, though it can serve no purpose. In view of your preposterous accusations, I will not prejudice myself by making an examination, but I am perfectly ready to look. But I repeat you must immediately procure a medical man and communicate with the police.”
“Have you forgotten that we’re isolated?” And repeating the phrase which he had learned to dread, Mandrake added: “It’s snowing harder than ever.”
“This is most awkward,” said Hart primly.
Jonathan burst incontinently into a tirade of abuse. Mandrake had never, until that day, seen him put out of countenance, and it was a strange and disagreeable experience to hear his voice grow shrill and his speech incoherent. His face was scarlet, his small mouth pouted and trembled, and behind those blind glasses of his Mandrake caught distorted glimpses of congested eyeballs. Without a trace of his usual precision he poured out a stream of accusations. “In my house,” he kept repeating, “in my house.” He ordered Hart to admit his guilt, he predicted what would happen to him. In the same breath he reminded him of Mrs. Compline’s ruined beauty, of his threats to Nicholas, and of Mandrake’s immersion. His outburst had the curious effect of steadying Hart. It was as though that house could hold only one hysterical middle-aged man at a time. Finally Jonathan flung himself into a chair, took out his handkerchief, saw a dark stain upon it, and with singular violence hurled it from him. He looked at Mandrake and perhaps he read astonishment and distaste in Mandrake’s face, for when he spoke again it was with something of his old manner.
“You must forgive me, Aubrey. I’m exceedingly upset. Known that boy all his life. His mother’s one of my oldest friends. I beg of you, Aubrey, to tell me what we should do.”
Mandrake said: “I think, if Dr. Hart consents, we should leave him and lock the door after us.”
“If I did not consent,” said Hart, “you would still do so. One thing I shall ask of you. Will you arrang
e that someone, Lady Hersey perhaps, explains my present dilemma to my wife? If you permit I should like to speak to her.”
“His wife? His wife!”
“Yes, yes, Jonathan,” said Mandrake. “Madame Lisse is Madame Hart. We can’t go into it now. Do you agree to these suggestions?”
Jonathan waved his hands and, taking this as an assent, Mandrake went to the bedside table and picked up the chemist’s jar. “I’ll take charge of this, I think,” he said. “Is it veronal?”
“I most strongly object, Mr. Mandrake.”
“I thought you would. Coming, Jonathan?”
He dropped the jar in his pocket and led the way to the door. He stood aside, allowing Jonathan to go out before him. He removed the key from inside the door. The last thing he saw before closing the door was Dr. Hart, his hands on his chest, staring after him. Then he stepped back over the threshold, pulled to the door and locked it.
“Jonathan,” he said, “somewhere or another we’ve gone incredibly wrong. Let’s find Nicholas. We’ve got to talk.”
Nicholas, wearing an expression that reminded Mandrake of a nervous colt, stood at the end of the passage outside his mother’s door. He hurried to meet them.
“Well,” he whispered, “for God’s sake, what’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“At the moment, nothing,” said Mandrake.
“But I heard Jonathan shouting. Hart’s in his room, then? Why have you left him?”
“He’s locked up. Come downstairs, Compline. We’ve got to talk.”
“I’m deadly tired,” said Nicholas suddenly. And indeed he looked exhausted. “It was pretty ghastly, telling my Mama, you know.”
“How is she?” asked Jonathan, taking Nicholas’ arm. They moved towards the stairs.
“Hersey’s with her. She’s all to blazes, to be quite frank. She’s got it into her head that it all hangs on—you know. What he did to her face. She thinks it’s because of what Bill said about it. I couldn’t do anything much. Of course she’s—God, it sounds a rotten thing to say but you know how things are— she’s—in a sort of way—glad it’s not me. That makes me feel pretty foul as you may imagine. I’d better tell Hersey it’s safe for her to come out when she wants to.”