Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I’m in a blasted hole or something. Come up.”

  The car moved bodily to the left, churned, crept forward in a series of jerks and stopped. “Doan’t stop in-gine fur Lawk’s sake,” James implored and was out and up to his knees. He disappeared in the rear of the car.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Mandrake. “He’s on your side.”

  Chloris looked out on her side. “I can only see his stern. He seems to be stuffing something under the back wheel. Now, he’s waving. He wants you to go on.”

  Mandrake engaged his bottom gear, pulled out his choke a fraction, and tried. The car gripped somewhere, wallowed forward and stuck again. James returned for his shovel and set to work in front of the bonnet. Mandrake got out, leaving instructions with Chloris to keep the engine going. The noise of the storm met him like a physical blow and the drive of rain on his face numbed it. He struggled round to the front of the car and found James shovelling with a will in three feet of snow. Mandrake wore heavy driving-gloves, and set to work with his hands. In the centre the snow was still frozen but at the bottom it had turned to slush and the earth beneath was soft and muddy. The front wheels had jammed in a cross-gut which, as they cleared it, began to fill with water. James roared out something that Mandrake could not understand, thrust his shovel into his hands, and plunged away behind the car. Mandrake toiled on, looking up, once, to see Chloris’ face pressed anxiously against the wind-screen. He grinned, waved his hand and fell to again with a will. James had returned, dragging two great boughs after him. They broke them up as best they could, filled in the gut with smaller branches and thrust the remaining pieces in front of the rear wheels.

  The inside of the car seemed a different world, a world that smelt of petrol, upholstery, cigarettes and something that both Mandrake and Chloris secretly realized was peculiar to James Bewling, an aftermath of oilskin, elderly man, and agricultural activities. Mandrake slammed the door, sounded his horn as a warning to James, and speeded up his engine.

  “Now then, you old besom,” Mandrake apostrophized his car, “up with you.” With a great crackling of branches, an ominous sinking and a violent lurch, they went forward and up, with James’s voice, raised to an elderly screech, sounding like a banshee in the storm. The chains bit into firmer ground. They were going uphill.

  “That’s the first hurdle over, I fancy,” said Mandrake. “We’ll wait for James at the top.”

  In the rectory at Winton St. Giles, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn put his head round the study door and said to his wife: “I’ve been looking out of the top windows at the summit of Cloudyfold. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s raining over there. What do you say, Rector?”

  The Reverend Walter Copeland turned his head to look out of the window. The lady behind the large canvas muttered to herself and laid down her brushes.

  “Rain?” echoed the Rector. “It’s still freezing down here. Upon my word, though, I believe you’re right. Yes, yes, undoubtedly it’s pouring up round Highfold. Very odd.”

  “Very odd indeed,” said Mrs. Alleyn grimly.

  “My angel,” said her husband. “I apologize in fourteen different positions. Rector, for pity’s sake resume your pose.”

  With a nervous start the Rector turned from the window, clasped his hands, tilted his fine head and stared obediently at the top left-hand corner of the canvas.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said the lady. Her thin face, wearing a streak of green paint across the nose, looked round the side of the canvas at her husband.

  “I suppose,” she said with a surprising air of diffidence, “you wouldn’t like to read to us.”

  “Yes, I would,” said Alleyn. He came in and shut the door.

  “Now, that’s really delightful,” said Mr. Copeland. “I hope I’m not a bad parish priest,” he added, “but it is rather pleasant to know that there can be no more services today—Dinah and I had matins all to ourselves, you know—and that for once the weather is so bad that nobody is likely to come and visit me.”

  “If I were on duty,” said Alleyn, looking along the bookshelves, “I should never dare to make those observations.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I did, as sure as fate I’d be called out into the snow, like a melodrama heroine, to a particularly disagreeable case. However,” said Alleyn, taking down a copy of Northanger Abbey, “I’m not on duty, thank the Lord. Shall we have Miss Austen?”

  “This yurr be Pen Gidding,” said James Bewling. “Just to right, sir. We’m half-way theer. A nasty stretch she’ll be, round those-thurr hills, and by the looks of her thurr’s bin no rain hereabouts.”

  “What’s the time?” asked Chloris.

  Mandrake held out his wrist. “Have a look.”

  She pushed up his cuff. “Ten past eleven.”

  “With any luck we’ll be ringing the rectory doorbell before noon.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Alleyn

  “NICHOLAS,” SAID MADAME Lisse, “come here to me.”

  He had been staring through the windows of the green sitting-room at the rain, which still came down like a multitude of rods, piercing all that remained of snow on the drive, filling the house with a melancholy insistence of sound. After she had spoken, though not immediately, he turned from the window and slowly crossed the room.

  “Well?” he asked. “Well, Elise?”

  She reached out her hand to him, touching his wrist, compelling him with her fingers to come nearer to her. “I am deeply grieved for you. You know that?” she said.

  He took the hand and rubbed it between his two palms as if he hoped to get some warmth from it. “If she goes,” he said, “I’ve no one else, no one at all but you.” He stood beside her, still moving her fingers between his hands and peering at her oddly, almost as if he saw her for the first time. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  Madame Lisse pulled him down to the footstool beside her chair. He yielded quite obediently.

  “We have got to think, to plan, to decide,” said Madame Lisse. “I am, as I have said, deeply grieved for you. If she does not live it will be a great loss, of course. Your mother having always favoured you, one is much puzzled that she should despair to extremity at the death of your brother. For myself I believe her action should rather be attributed to a morbid dread of publicity about the misfortune to her beauty.” Madame Lisse touched her hair with the tips of her fingers. “The loss of beauty is a sufficient tragedy, but to that she had become resigned. Your brother’s threat to expose Francis, as well as the shock she sustained on recognizing Francis, no doubt unhinged her. It is very sad.” She looked down at the top of his head. It was a speculative and even a calculating glance. “Of course,” she said, “I have not seen her letter.” Nicholas’ whole body seemed to writhe. “I can’t talk about it,” he muttered.

  “Mr. Royal has taken it?”

  “Yes. In case—he said…”

  “That was quite sensible, of course.”

  “Elise, did you know it was Hart who did it—to her—in Vienna?”

  “He told me on Friday night that he had recognized her.”

  “My God, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why should I? I was already terrified of the situation between you. Why should I add to your antagonism? No, my one desire was to suppress it, my one terror that she should recognize him and that we should be ruined.” She clenched her hands and beat the arms of her chair. “And now what am I to do? It will all come out. That he is my husband. That you are my lover. He will say terrible things when they arrest him. He will bring me down in his own ruin.”

  “I swear you won’t suffer.” Nicholas pressed his face against her knees and began to mutter feverish endearments and reassurances. “Elise…when it’s over—it seems frightful to speak of it…everything different now…Elise…alone together. Elise.”

  She stopped him at last, pressing her hands on his head. “Very well,�
�� she said. “When it’s all over. Very well.”

  Dr. Hart leant back on his heels, looked at the prostrate figure on the mattress, bent forward again and slapped the discoloured and distorted face. The eyes remained not quite closed, the head jerked flaccidly. He uttered a disconsolate grunt, turned the figure on its face again, and placed his hands over the ribs. Sweat was pouring down his own face and arms.

  “Let me go on,” said Hersey. “I know what to do.”

  He continued three or four times with the movements of artificial respiration and then said suddenly: “Very well. Thank you, I have cramp.”

  Hersey knelt on the floor.

  “It is so long,” said Hart, “since I was in general practice. Twenty-three years. I cannot remember my poisons. The stomach should be emptied, that is certain. If only they can return soon from the chemist. If only they can find the police surgeon!”

  “Is there any improvement?” asked Jonathan.

  Hart raised his shoulders and arms and let them fall.

  “Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Jonathan and wrung his hands. “What possessed her?”

  “I cannot understand it. It is the other son to whom she gave her devotion.”

  Hersey raised her head for a moment to give Dr. Hart a very direct stare. “Do not stop or hesitate,” he said at once, “steady rhythmic movements are essential…Where is the other son now?”

  “Nicholas is downstairs,” Hersey grunted. “We thought it better to keep him out of this. All things considered.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” He knelt again, close to Sandra Compline’s head, and stooped down. “Where is that woman? That Pouting, who was to prepare the emetic and find me a tube. She is too long coming.”

  “I’ll see,” said Jonathan, and hurried out of the room.

  For a time Hersey worked on in silence. Then Hart took the patient’s pulse and respiration. Jonathan came panting back with a tray covered by a napkin. Hart looked at the contents, “A poor substitute,” he said. “We can but try it. It will be better, perhaps, if you leave us, Mr. Royal.”

  “Very well.” Jonathan walked to the door, where he turned and spoke in a high voice. “We are trusting you, Dr. Hart, because we have no alternative. You will remember, if you please, that you are virtually under arrest.”

  “Ah! Ah!” Hart muttered. “Go away. Don’t be silly. Go away.”

  “Honestly!” said Hersey, and then: “You’d better go, Jo.”

  Jonathan went, but no further than the passage, where he paced up and down for some ten minutes. It is a peculiarity of some people to sing when they are agitated or annoyed. Jonathan was one of these. As, with mincing steps, he moved about his guest-wing passage, he hummed breathily: “Il était une bergère…” and beat time with his finger-tips on the back of his hand. Past the niche in the wall where the brass Buddha had stood, as far as the grandfather clock and back down the whole length of the passage, he trotted, with closed doors on each side of him and his figure passing in and out of shadows. Once, he broke off his sentry-go to enter Hart’s room, where he stood at the window, tapping the pane, breathily humming, staring at the rain. But in a moment or two he was back and down the passage, pausing to listen outside Mrs. Compline’s door and then on again to the grandfather clock. Hersey found him at this employment when she came out. She took his arm and fell into step with him.

  “Well, Jo,” said Hersey, and her voice was not very steady, “I’m afraid we’re not doing much good. At the moment nothing’s worked.”

  “Hersey, she must recover, I—I can’t believe—what’s happening to us, Hersey? What’s happening?”

  “Oh, well,” said Hersey, “it’ll be worse in the air raids. Dr. Hart’s doing his best, Jo.”

  “But is he? Is he? A murderer, Hersey. A murderer, to stand between our dear old friend Sandra and death! What an incredible—what a frightful situation!”

  Hersey stood stock-still. Her hand closed nervously on Jonathan’s arm and she drew in a long breath. “I don’t believe he is a murderer,” she said.

  Jonathan pulled his arm away as violently as if she’d pinched it.

  “My dear girl,” he said loudly, “don’t be a fool. Great Heaven…!” He checked himself. “I’m sorry, my dear. I was discourteous. You will forgive me. But to suggest that Hart, Hart, who has scarcely attempted to conceal his guilt—”

  “That’s not true, Jo. I mean, if he did it, he managed to provide himself with an alibi that none of us can easily break.”

  “Nonsense, Hersey. We have broken it. He committed his crime after William had turned on the news, or else he himself turned it on and waited his chance to dart out of the room.”

  “Yes, I know. Why didn’t you run into him?”

  “Because he took very good care to avoid me.”

  “He seems to have done a tidy lot of dodging,” said Hersey dubiously. Jonathan uttered an exasperated noise.

  “What has come over you, Hersey? You agreed that he had done it. Of course he did it. Of course he killed William. Killed him brutally and deliberately, believing him to he his brother. Aubrey has made that much clear.”

  “I don’t believe he did it,” Hersey repeated, and added shakily: “After all it’s not an easy thing to say. I don’t enjoy facing the implication. But I—”

  “Don’t say it again,” whispered Jonathan, and took her by the wrists. “Who else? Who else? What has come over you?”

  “It’s seeing him in there, working over Sandra. Why, I believe he’d even forgotten he was accused until you reminded him just now. It’s the one or two things that he’s said while I’ve been in there. I don’t think he was saying them to me so much as to himself. I believe he’s got an idea that if he can save Sandra, it’ll atone, in a queer sort of way, for what he did to her beauty.”

  “Good God, what rubbish is this? He wants to save her because he thinks he’ll impress us, as it seems he has impressed you, with his personal integrity. Of course he doesn’t want Sandra to die.”

  “If he was guilty of murdering her son? That’s not good reasoning, Jo. Sandra would be one of the most damaging witnesses against him.”

  “You must be demented,” Jonathan said breathlessly, and stood looking at her and biting his fingers. “What does all this matter? I suppose you agree that whoever set the booby-trap committed the murder? Only Hart could have set the booby-trap. But I’ll not argue with you, Hersey. You’re distracted, poor girl, distracted, as we all are.”

  “No,” said Hersey. “No, Jo, it’s not that.”

  “Then God knows what it is,” cried Jonathan, and turned away.

  “I think I heard him,” said Hersey. “I must go back.”

  In a moment she had gone and Jonathan was left to stare at the closed door of Sandra Compline’s room.

  “Only five more miles to go,” said Mandrake. “If the snow’s frozen hard all the way I believe we’ll do it.”

  They were in a narrow lane. The car churned, squeaked, and skidded through snow that packed down under the wheels, mounted in a hard mass between the front bumpers and the radiator, and clogged the axles. Their eyes were wearied with whiteness, Mandrake’s arms and back ached abominably, James Bewling had developed a distressing tendency to suck his teeth.

  “Queer though it may seem in these surroundings,” said Mandrake, “the engine’s getting hot. I’ve been in bottom gear for the last two miles. Chloris, be an angel and light me a cigarette.”

  “Downhill now, sir, every foot of her,” said James.

  “That may or may not be an unmixed blessing. Why the hell is she sidling like this? What’s happened to the chains? Never mind. On we go.”

  Chloris lit a cigarette and put it between his lips. “You’re doing grand, dearie,” she said in Cockney.

  “I’ve been trying to sort things out a little for a quick news bulletin when we get there, always adding the proviso, if we get there. What’s best to do? Shall I, while you push on to the chemist, tell Alleyn in a few badly ch
osen words, as few as possible, what’s happened; and shall we implore him to come back at once, reading my notes on the way?”

  “I suppose so. Perhaps he’ll insist on our going on to Great Chipping for the local experts. Perhaps he won’t play.”

  “It’s a poisonous distance to Great Chipping. He can ring up. Surely the lines won’t be down all over this incredibly primitive landscape. We must get back with the things from the chemist.” The rear of the car moved uncannily sideways. “She’s curtseying again. Damn, that’s a bad one. Damn.”

  They were nearly into the hedgerow. Mandrake threw out his clutch and rammed on the brake. “I’m going to have a look at those chains.”

  “Don’t ’ee stir, sir,” said James. “I’ll see.”

  He got out. Chloris leant forward and covered her face with her hands.

  “Hullo,” said Mandrake. “Eye-strain?” She didn’t answer but some small movement of her shoulders prompted him to put his arm about them and then he felt her trembling. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “so terribly sorry. Darling Chloris, I implore you not to cry.”

  “I won’t. I’m not going to. It’s not what you think, not sorrow. Though I am terribly sorry. It must be shock or something. I’ve been so miserable and ashamed about the Complines. I’ve so wanted to be rid of them. And now—look how it’s happened. It was foul of me to get engaged to Bill on the rebound. That’s what it was, no denying it. And I knew all the time what I was up to. Don’t be nice to me, I feel like a sweep.”

  “I can’t be as nice as I’d like to because here, alas, comes Mr. Bewling. Blow your nose, my sweet. There’ll always be an England where there’s a muddy lane, a hoarding by a cowslip field, and curates in the rain. Well, James, what have you discovered?”

  “Pesky chain on off hind-wheel’s carried away, sir. Which is why she’s been skittering and skiddling the last mile or so.”