Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I don’t mind, of course,” said Mandrake uneasily, “but you must remember they’re based on hearsay as well as my own observations.”

  “I think you’ve made that quite clear. Here they are.”

  He gave Mandrake his pen and pressed the notes out flat for him. It was a decorative affair, the signature, with the tail of the “y” in “Aubrey” greatly prolonged and slashed forward to make the up-stroke of the “M” in “Mandrake.” Alleyn blotted it carefully and looked at it.

  “This is your legal signature?” he said, as he folded the notes.

  When Mandrake answered, his voice sounded astonishingly vicious. “You’ve been talking to the bereaved Nicholas, of course,” he said. “It seems that even in his sorrow he found a moment for one of his little pleasantries.”

  “He’s in a condition that might very well develop into a nervous crisis. He’s lashing out blindly and rather stupidly. It’s understandable.”

  “I suppose he told you of the incident at dinner? About my name?”

  “No. What was the incident at dinner?”

  Mandrake told him. “It’s too squalidly insignificant and stupid, of course,” he ended rapidly. “It was idiotic of me to let it get under my skin, but I happen to object rather strongly to that particular type of wholesome public-school humour. Possibly because I did not go to a public school.” Before Alleyn could answer he went on defiantly: “And now, of course, you are able to place me. I’m the kind of inverted snob that can’t quite manage to take the carefree line about my background. And I talk far too much about myself.”

  “I should have thought,” said Alleyn, “you’d have worked all that off with your writing. But then I’m not a psychologist. As for your name, you’ve had the fun of changing it, and all I want to know is whether you did it by deed poll or whether I’ve got to ask for the other signature.”

  “I haven’t, but I’m going to. ‘The next witness was Stanley Footling, better known as Aubrey Mandrake.’ It’ll look jolly in the papers, won’t it?”

  “By the time this case comes off, the papers won’t have much room for fancy touches, I believe,” said Alleyn. “If you don’t mind my mentioning it, I think you’re going to find that your particular bogey will be forgotten in a welter of what we are probably going to call ‘extreme realism.’ Now write your name down like a good chap, and never mind if it is a funny one. I’ve a hell of a lot to do.”

  Mandrake said with a grin: “How right you are, Inspector,” and re-signed his notes. “All the same,” he added, “I could have murdered Nicholas.” He caught his breath. “How often one uses that phrase! Don’t suspect me, I implore you. I could have, but I didn’t. I didn’t even murder poor William. I liked poor William. Shall I fetch Lady Hersey?”

  “Please do,” said Alleyn.

  Motive apart, Lady Hersey was, on paper, the likeliest suspect. She had opportunity to execute both attempts, if they had been attempts, as well as the actual murder. During the long journey in the car, Alleyn had found his thoughts turning to this unknown woman, as to a figure which, conjecturally, might be the key piece in a complicated pattern. In all police investigations, there is such a figure; and sometimes, but not always, it is that of the criminal himself. Though none of the interviews had disclosed the smallest hint of a motive in Lady Hersey’s case, he was still inclined to think she occupied a key position. She was the link common to the Complines, Jonathan Royal, and the two Harts. “The one person who could have done it,” Alleyn muttered, “and the one person who didn’t want to.” This was an inaccurate statement but it relieved his feelings. The case was developing along lines with which Alleyn was all too familiar. He had now very little doubt as to the identity of William Compline’s murderer and also very little substantial proof to support his theory or to warrant an arrest. The reductio ad absurdum method is not usually smiled upon by the higher powers at New Scotland Yard, and it can be a joyous romping-ground for defending counsel. Alleyn knew that a bungling murderer can give more trouble than a clever one. “And the murderer of William Compline is a bungler if ever there was one,” he thought. He was turning over Mrs. Compline’s letter to her son when he heard Lady Hersey’s voice on the stairs. He hesitated, returned the letter to his pocket and fished out the length of line he had cut from the reel in the smoking-room. When Hersey Amblington came in, he was twisting this line through his long fingers and when he rose to greet her, it dangled conspicuously from his hands.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, Mr. Alleyn,” she said. “There were things to do upstairs and nobody else to do them.”

  He pushed forward a chair and she sat down slowly and wearily, letting her head fall back against the chair. A sequence of fine lines appeared about her mouth and eyes, and her hands looked exhausted. “If you’re going to ask me to provide myself with three nice little alibis,” said Hersey, “you may as well know straight away that I can’t do it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that that makes me innocent and I’m sure I hope it’s true.”

  “It’s in the best tradition of detective fiction, I understand,” said Alleyn with a smile.

  “That’s not very comforting. Am I allowed to smoke?”

  Alleyn offered her his case and lit her cigarette for her, dropping his length of fishing line over her wrist as he did so. He apologized and gathered it into his hand.

  “Is that a clue or something?” asked Hersey. “It looks like fishing line.”

  “Are you a fisherman, Lady Hersey?”

  “I used to be. Jonathan’s father taught me when I was a child. He’s the old party in the photograph in that ghastly room next door.”

  “Hubert St. John Worthington Royal, who caught a four-and-a-half-pounder in Penfelton Reach?”

  “If I wasn’t so tired,” said Hersey, “I’d fall into a rapture over your powers of observation. That’s the man. And the rod on the wall is his rod. Now I come to think of it, your bit of string looks very much like his line.”

  Alleyn opened his hand. Without moving her head or her hands she looked languidly at it.

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s it. It’s been looped back from the point of the rod to the reel, for years.” She looked up into Alleyn’s face. “There’s something in this, isn’t there? What is it?”

  “There’s a lot in it,” Alleyn said, slowly. “Lady Hersey, will you try to remember, without straining at your memory, when you last saw the line in its customary position?”

  “Friday night,” said Hersey instantly. “There was an old cast on it, shrivelled up with age, and a fly. I remember staring at it while I was trying to fit in a letter in that foul parlour game of Jo’s. It was the cast that caught the famous four-and-a-half-pounder. Or so we’ve always been told.”

  “You went into the smoking-room last night some little time before the tragedy, but when the two brothers were there?”

  “Yes. I went in to see if they had calmed down. That was before the row over the radio.”

  “You didn’t by any chance look at the old rod, then?”

  “No. No, but I did at lunch-time. Just before lunch I was warming my toes at the fire, and I stared absently at it as one does at things one has seen a thousand times before.”

  “And there was the line looped from the tip to the reel?”

  Hersey knitted her brows, and for the first time her full attention seemed to be aroused. “Now you ask me,” she said, “it wasn’t. I remember thinking vaguely that someone must have wound it up or something.”

  “You are positive?”

  “Yes. Yes, absolutely positive.”

  “Suppose I began to heckle you about it.”

  “I should dig my toes in.”

  “Good!” said Alleyn heartily, and wrote it down.

  When he looked up, Hersey’s eyes were closed, but she opened them and said: “Before I forget or go to sleep there’s one thing I must say. I don’t believe that face-lifter did it.”

  “Why?” asked Alleyn, without
emphasis.

  “Because I’ve spent a good many hours working for him up there in Sandra Compline’s room. I like him and I don’t think he’s a murderer, and anyway I don’t see how you can get over the dancing footman’s story.” Alleyn dropped the coil of fishing line on the desk. “That little man’s no killer,” Hersey added. “He worked like a navvy over Sandra, and if she’d lived she’d have done her best, poor darling, to have him convicted of homicidal lunacy. He knew that.”

  “Why are you so sure she would have taken that line?”

  “Don’t forget,” said Hersey, “I was the last person to see her alive. I gave her a half-dose of that stuff. She wouldn’t take more and she said she had no aspirin. I suppose she wanted— wanted to make sure later on. Nick had broken Bill’s death to her. She seemed absolutely stunned, almost incredulous if that’s not too strange a word to use. Not sorrowful so much as horrified. She wouldn’t say anything much about it, although I did try gently to talk to her. It seemed to me it would be better if she broke down. She was stony with bewilderment. But just as I was going she said: ‘Dr. Hart is mad, Hersey. I thought I could never forgive him but I think my face has haunted him as badly as it has haunted me.’ And then she said: ‘Don’t forget, Hersey, he’s out of his mind.’ I haven’t told anyone else of this. I can’t tell you how strange her manner was, and how astonished I was to hear her say all that so deliberately when a moment before she had seemed so confused.”

  Alleyn asked Hersey to repeat this statement and wrote it down. When he had finished she said: “There’s one other thing. Have you examined her room?”

  “Only superficially. I had a look round, after Compline went out.”

  “Did you look at her clothes?” asked Hersey.

  “Yes.”

  “The blue Harris tweed overcoat?”

  “The one that is still very damp? Yes.”

  “It was soaking wet yesterday afternoon, and she told me she hadn’t stirred out of the house all day.”

  Alleyn opened Mrs. Compline’s letter to her son in the presence of Jonathan Royal, Nicholas Compline, and Aubrey Mandrake. He did not read it aloud, but he showed it to Mandrake and asked him to make a copy. While they waited, in an uncomfortable silence, Mandrake performed this office and at Alleyn’s request re-sealed the original in a fresh envelope, across the flap of which Jonathan was asked to sign his name. Alleyn then tied a string round the envelope and sealed the knot down with wax from his chemist’s parcel. He said that he would be obliged if Jonathan and Nicholas would leave him alone with Mandrake. Jonathan seemed perfectly ready to comply with this request, but Nicholas treated them to a sudden and violent outbreak of hysteria. He demanded that the letter should be returned, stormed at Alleyn, threatened Hart, and at last, sobbing breathlessly, flung himself into a chair and refused to move. As the best means of cutting this performance short, Alleyn gathered up his possessions and, followed by a very much shaken Mandrake, moved to the green “boudoir.” Here he asked Mandrake to read over the copy of the letter.

  My darling [Mandrake read],

  You must not let this make you very sad. If I stayed with you, even for the little time there would be left to me, the memory of these terrible days would lie between us. I think that during these last hours I have been insane. I cannot write a confession. I have tried but the words were so terrible I could not write them. What I am going to do will make everything clear enough, and the innocent shall not suffer through me. Already Hersey suspects that I went out of the house this morning. I think she knows where I went. I cannot face it. You should have been my eldest son, my darling. If I could have taken any other way—but there was no other way. All my life, everything I have done has been for you, even this last terrible thing is for you, and however wicked it may seem, you must always remember that. And now, darling, I must write down what I mean to do. I have kept the sleeping powders they took from that man’s room, and I have an unopened bottle of aspirins. I shan’t feel anything at all. My last thoughts and my last prayers are for you.

  MOTHER

  I sign this with my full name because you will have to show it.

  SANDRA MARY COMPLINE

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Arrest

  ALLEYN HAD ASKED Mandrake to say nothing of the contents of the letter. “Under ordinary circumstances,” he said, “I would have had another officer with me when I opened it. I want you to fix the contents firmly in your mind, and I want you to be prepared, if necessary, to swear that it is the original letter which I have sealed in this envelope, the letter which I opened in your presence and from which you made this copy. All this may be quite unnecessary but as the most detached member of the party I thought it well to get your assistance. I’ll keep the copy, if you please.”

  Mandrake gave him the copy. His hand shook so much that the paper rattled and he muttered an apology.

  “It’s horrible,” Mandrake said. “Horrible. Mother love! My God!” He stared at Alleyn. “This sort of thing”— he stammered—“it can’t happen. I never dreamed of this. It’s so much worse—it’s ever so much worse.”

  Alleyn watched him for a moment. “Worse than what?” he asked.

  “It’s real,” said Mandrake. “I suppose you’ll think it incredible but until now it hasn’t been quite real to me. Not even,” he jerked his head towards the smoking-room door, “not even—that. One works these things out in terms of an aesthetic, but for them to happen…! God, this’ll about kill Nicholas.”

  “Yes.”

  “To have it before him for the rest of his life! I don’t know why it should affect me like this. After all, it’s better that it should end this way. I suppose it’s better. She’s ended it. No horrible parade of justice. She’s spared him that. But I can’t help suddenly seeing it. It’s as if a mist had cleared, leaving the soiled reality of a disfigured woman writing that letter, mixing the poison, getting into bed and then, with God knows what nightmare of last memories, drinking it down.” Mandrake limped about the room and Alleyn watched him. “At least,” said Mandrake, “we are spared an arrest. But Nicholas saw the letter. He knew.”

  “He still insists that Dr. Hart killed his brother.”

  “Let me see the copy of that letter again.”

  Alleyn gave him the copy and he muttered over the phrases. “What else can it mean? ‘You should have been my eldest son!’ ‘Hersey suspects.’ ‘I cannot face it.’ ‘Everything I have done has been for you.’ What else but that she did it? But I can’t understand. Why the other two attempts? It doesn’t make sense.” He looked up. “Alleyn, for God’s sake tell me. Does it make sense?”

  “I’m afraid it makes sense, all right,” said Alleyn.

  From five o’clock until seven, Alleyn worked alone. First of all he inspected the Charter blocks, handling them with tweezers and wishing very heartily for Bailey, his finger-print expert. The blocks were made of thinnish paper and the impression of heavily pencilled letters appeared on the surfaces of the unused forms. The smoking-room wastepaper baskets had been emptied, but a hunt through a rubbish bin in an outhouse brought to light several of the used forms. The rest, it appeared, had been thrown on the fire by the players after their scores had been marked. Mandrake had told him that after the little scene over the extra form, Jonathan had suddenly suggested that they play some other game, and the Charter pads had been discarded. By dint of a wearisome round of questions, Alleyn managed to identify most of the used forms. Dr. Hart readily selected his, admitting placidly that he had used “threats” as a seven-square word, Alleyn found the ghost of this word on one of the blocks, which he was then able to classify definitely as Hart’s. The Doctor had used a sharp pencil and had pressed hard upon it, so that the marks persisted through two or three of the under-papers. But neither on his used form nor on the rest of the pages did Alleyn find the faintest trace of the words: “You are warned. Keep off.” This was negative evidence. Hart might have been at pains to tear off that particular form and fill it in
against the card back on the block, which would take no impression. At this stage Alleyn went to Jonathan and asked if he had a specimen of Hart’s writing. Jonathan at once produced Hart’s note accepting the invitation to Highfold. Alleyn shut himself up again and made his first really interesting discovery: The writing in the note was a script that still bore many foreign characteristics. But in his first Charter form, Dr. Hart had used block capitals throughout, though his experimental scribblings in the margin were in his characteristic script. Turning to the warning message, which was written wholly in script, Alleyn discovered indications that the letters had been slowly and carefully formed, and he thought that it began to look very much like the work of someone who was familiar with Hart’s writing and had deliberately introduced those characteristic letters.

  Of the other players, an exhaustive process of enquiry and comparison showed that Mrs. Compline, Hersey and Jonathan had written too lightly to leave impressions, while William’s and Mandrake’s papers had been burnt after being marked. Alleyn could find no trace of the message on any of the blocks. At last he began to turn back the pages of each one, using his tweezers and going on doggedly, long after the faintest trace had faded, to the last leaf of each block. At the third block, about half-way through, he made his discovery. Here, suddenly, he came upon the indented trace of those five words; and a closer inspection showed him that the page before the one so marked had been torn away. Owing to its position, the perforations had not been followed and when he fitted the crumpled message to the torn edge, the serrations tallied. This, then, was the block upon which the message had been written—and it was not Dr. Hart’s block. He turned back to the first pages and gave a little sigh. They held no impressions. Alleyn got a picture of the writer hurriedly using the mass of pages as a cover, scribbling his message on the central leaf and wrenching it free of the pad. Either this writer had written his legitimate Charters with a light hand, or else he had torn away the additional pages that held an impression. The pad had belonged neither to William nor to Mandrake, for theirs bore marks that Mandrake himself had identified. Two of the remaining pads were marked by certain faint traces, visible through the lens, and these, he thought, must have been used by Madame Lisse and Chloris Wynne, whose finger-nails were long and pointed.