Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Not so bad,” he murmured and, whistling softly, put the Charter pads away again.

  He went up to Mrs. Compline’s room, taking the not very willing Mandrake with him.

  “I like to have a witness,” he said vaguely. “As a general rule we work in pairs over the ticklish bits. It’ll be all right when Fox comes, but in the meantime you, as an unsuspected person, will do very nicely.”

  Mandrake kept his back turned to the shrouded figure on the bed and watched Alleyn go through the clothes in the wardrobe. Alleyn got him to feel the shoulders and skirts of a Harris tweed overcoat.

  “Damp,” said Mandrake.

  “Was it snowing when you went down to the pond?”

  “Yes. My God, were they her footsteps? She must have walked down inside my own, as Chloris suggested?”

  Alleyn was looking at the hats on the top shelf of the wardrobe.

  “This is the one she wore,” he said. “It’s still quite wettish. Blue tweedish sort of affair with a salmon fly as ornament. No, two flies. A yellow-and-black salmon fly, and a rather jaded and very large trout-fly—scarlet-and-green, an Alexandra. That seems excessive, doesn’t it?” He peered more closely at the hat. “Now, I wonder…” he said—and, when Mandrake asked him peevishly what he wondered, he sent Mandrake off to find the maid who had looked after Mrs. Compline. She proved to be a Dorset girl, born and bred on the Highfold estate, a chatterbox, very trim and bright and full of the liveliest curiosity about the clothes and complexions of the ladies in Jonathan’s party. She was anxious to become a ladies’ maid, and Mrs. Pouting had been training her. This was the first time she had minded any visitors to Highfold. She burst into a descriptive rapture over the wardrobes of Madame Lisse and Miss Wynne. It was with difficulty that Alleyn hauled her attention round to the less exciting garments of Mrs. Compline. The interview took place in the passage and Alleyn held the tweed hat behind his back while the little maid chattered away about the wet coat.

  “Mrs. Compline hadn’t worn that coat before, sir. She arrived in a Burberry like you see at the shooting parties, and when they took a walk on the first evening she wore it again, sir. It was yesterday morning she took out the tweed. When the two gentlemen was going to have that bet, sir,” said the little maid turning pink. “I was in Madam’s room, sir, asking what I should put out for her to wear, when poor Mr. William called out in the passage ‘It’s worth a tenner to see him do it.’ She seemed very upset, sir. She got up and went to the door and looked after him. She called out, but I don’t think he heard her because he ran downstairs. She said she didn’t require me. So I went out and she must have followed him.”

  “When did you see her again?”

  “Well, after a minute or two, I saw her go downstairs wearing that coat, sir, and a tweed hat, and I called Elsie, the second housemaid, sir, and said we could slip in and make Mrs. Compline’s bed and do her room. So we did. At least—” Here the little maid hesitated.

  “Yes?” Alleyn asked.

  “Well, sir, I’m afraid we did look out of the window because we knew about the bet. But you can’t see the pond from that window on account of the shrubs. Only the terrace. We saw the poor lady cross the terrace. It was snowing very hard. She seemed to stare down towards the pond, sir, for a little while and then she looked round and—and Elsie and I began to make the bed. It wasn’t above two minutes before she was back, as white as a sheet and trembling. I offered to take away her wet coat and hat, but she said, ‘No, no, leave them,’ rather short, so Elsie and I went out. By that time there was a great to-do, down by the pond, and Thomas came in and said one of the gentlemen had fallen in.”

  “And while Mrs. Compline was on the terrace, nobody joined her or appeared near her?”

  “No, sir. I think Miss Wynne and poor Mr. William must have gone out afterwards, because we heard their voices down there, just before Mrs. Compline got back.”

  “Well done,” said Alleyn. “And is this”— he showed her the tweed hat—“is this the hat she was wearing?”

  “That’s it, sir.”

  “Looks just the same?”

  The little maid took it in her hands and turned it round, eyeing it in a thoughtful bird-like manner. “It’s got two of those feathery hooks,” she said at last. “Funny kind of trimming I think. Two.”

  “Yes?”

  “It only had one yesterday. The big yellow-and-black one.”

  “Thank you,” said Alleyn, and quite fluttered her by the fervency of his smile.

  Detective-Inspector Fox, and Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, arrived at seven o’clock in a hired car from Pen Gidding. Alleyn was delighted to see them. He set Bailey to work on the brass Buddha, the Charter forms, the Maori mere, and the wireless cabinet. Thompson photographed all the details that Alleyn had already taken with his own camera. And at last the body of William Compline was taken away from the armchair in the smoking-room. There was a ballroom at Highfold. It had been added incontinently to the east side by a Victorian Royal and was reached by a short passage. Here, in an atmosphere of unused grandeur and empty anticipation, Sandra Compline lay, not far removed from the son for whom she had not greatly cared. Alleyn heard Jonathan issuing subdued but emphatic orders for flowers.

  Fox and Alleyn went together to the library.

  “Sit down, Brer Fox,” said Alleyn. “Sorry to have hauled you out, but I’m damn’ glad to see you.”

  “We had quite a job getting here,” said Fox, taking out his spectacle case. “Very unpleasant weather. Nasty affair this, sir, by the looks of it. What’s the strength of it? Murder followed by suicide, or what?”

  “There’s my report. You’d better take a look at it.”

  “Ah,” said Fox. “Much obliged. Thank you.” He settled his spectacles rather far down his nose and put on his reading face. Fox had a large rosy face. To Alleyn, his reading expression always suggested that he had a slight cold in the head. He raised his sandy eyebrows, slightly opened his mouth and placidly absorbed the words before him. For some time there was no sound but the crackle of turning leaves and Fox’s breathing.

  “Um,” he said when he had finished. “Silly sort of business. Meant to look complicated but isn’t. When do we fix this customer up, Mr. Alleyn?”

  “We’ll wait for Bailey, I think. I’d like to arrest on a minor charge, but there isn’t the smell of an excuse so far.”

  “Assault on Mr. Mandrake?”

  “Well,” said Alleyn, “we might do that. I suppose I haven’t gone wrong anywhere. The thing’s so blasted obvious I keep wondering if there’s a catch in it. We’ll have to experiment, of course, with the business next door. Might do that now, if Bailey’s finished. They’ve taken that poor chap out, haven’t they? All right. Come on, Foxkin.”

  They went into the smoking-room. Bailey, a taciturn officer with an air of permanent resentment, was packing away his fingerprint apparatus, and Thompson had taken down his camera.

  “Finished?” asked Alleyn. “Got a shot of the ash in the grate all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Thompson. “Made a little find there, Mr. Alleyn. Bailey spotted it. You know this trace in the ash, the sort of coil affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, sir, it’s what you said all right. String or cord or something. There’s a bit not quite burnt out up at the back. Charred-lace but still a bit of substance in it. Seems as if it was green originally.”

  “We’ll have it,” said Alleyn. “Good work, Bailey. I missed that.”

  The mulish expression on Sergeant Bailey’s face deepened.

  “We had a five-hundred-watt lamp on it,” he said. “Looks as if someone’d chucked this string on the fire and pulled those two side logs over it. They must have fallen apart and the stuff smouldered out slowly. Tough, fine-fibred stuff, I’d say. Might be silk. It finishes with a trace of structureless fairly tough black ash that has kept its form and run into lumps. What’s the next job, sir?”

  “We’ll have to g
et their prints. I don’t for a moment suppose they’ll object. I warned Mr. Royal about it. Thank the Lord I shan’t have to use any of the funny things they brought me from the chemist. Anything to report?”

  “There’s a couple of nice ones on that brass image affair, sir. Latent, but came up nicely under the dust. Same as the ones on the stone cosh. There’s something on the neck of the cosh, but badly blurred. As good a set as you’d want on the blade.”

  “What about the wireless?”

  “Regular mix-up, Mr. Alleyn, like you’d expect. But there’s a kind of smudge on the volume control.” Bailey looked at his boots. “Might be gloves,” he muttered.

  “Very easily,” said Alleyn. “Now, look here: Mr. Fox and I are going to make an experiment. I’ll get you two to stay in here and look on. If it’s a success, I think we might stage a little show for a select audience.” He squatted down and laid his piece of fishing-line out on the floor. “You might just lock the door,” he said.

  “This is a big house,” said Chloris, “and yet there seems nowhere to go. I’ve no stomach for the party in the drawing-room.”

  “There’s the ‘boudoir,’ ” Mandrake suggested.

  “Aren’t the police overflowing into that?”

  “Not now, Alleyn and that vast red man went down to the pond a few minutes ago. Now they’ve gone back into the smoking-room. Let’s try the ‘boudoir.’ ”

  “All right, let’s.”

  They went into the “boudoir.” The curtains were closed and the lamps alight. A cheerful fire crackled in the grate. Chloris moved restlessly about the room and Mandrake intercepted a quick glance at the door into the smoking-room. “It’s all right,” she said. “William’s gone, you know, and the police seem to have moved into the library.” There was a sudden blare of radio on the other side of the door, and both Mandrake and Chloris jumped nervously. Chloris gave a little cry. “They’re in there,” she whispered. “What are they doing?”

  “I’ll damn’ well see!”

  “No, don’t,” cried Chloris, as Mandrake stooped to the communicating door and applied his eye to the keyhole.

  “It’s not very helpful,” he murmured. “The key’s in the lock. What can they be doing? God, the noise! Wait a minute.”

  “Oh, do come away.”

  “I’m quite shameless. I consider they are fair game. One can see a little past the key, but only in a straight line. Keyhole lurking is not what it’s said to be in eighteenth-century literature. Hardly worth doing, in fact. I can see nothing but that red screen in front of the door into the library. There’s no one—” He broke off suddenly.

  “What is it?” Chloris said and he held up his hand warningly. The wireless was switched off. Mandrake got up and drew Chloris to the far end of the “boudoir.”

  “It’s very curious,” he said. “There are only four of them. I know that, because I saw the others come. There’s Alleyn and the red man and two others. Well, they’ve all just walked out of the library into the smoking-room. Who the devil turned on the radio?”

  “They must have gone into the library after they turned it on.”

  “But they didn’t. They hadn’t time. The moment that noise started, I looked through the keyhole and I looked straight at the door. Why should they turn on the wireless and make a blackguard rush into the library?”

  “It’s horrible. It sounded so like…”

  “It’s rather intriguing, though,” said Mandrake.

  “How you can!”

  He went quickly to her and took her hands. “Darling Chloris,” he said, “it wouldn’t be much use if I pretended I wasn’t interested, would it? You’ll have to get used to my common ways, because I think I might want to marry you. I’m going to alter my name by deed poll, so you wouldn’t have to be Mrs. Stanley Footling. And if you think Mrs. Aubrey Mandrake is too arty, we could find something else. I can’t conceive why people are so dull about their names. I don’t suppose deed polls are very expensive. One could have a new name quite often, I daresay. My dear darling,” Mandrake continued, “you’re all white and trembly and I really and truly believe I love you. Could you possibly love me, or shan’t we mention it just now?”

  “We shan’t mention it just now,” said Chloris. “I don’t know why, but I’m frightened. I want to be at home, going to my W.R.E.N. classes, and taking dogs for walks. I’m sick of horrors.”

  “But you won’t mix me up with horrors when you get back to your lusty girl-friends, will you? You won’t say: ‘There was a killing highbrow cripple who made a pass at me during the murder’?”

  “No. Honestly, I won’t. I’ll ask you to come and stay and we might even have a gossip about the dear old days at Highfold. But at the moment I want my mother,” said Chloris, and her lower lip trembled.

  “Well, I expect you’ll be able to go quite soon. I fancy the police have finished with you and me.”

  There was a tap on the door and Detective-Sergeant Bailey came in.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said sombrely. “Chief-Inspector Alleyn’s compliments, and he’d be obliged if you’d let me take your fingerprints. Yours and the young lady’s. Just a matter of routine, sir.”

  “Oh,” said Chloris under her breath, “that’s what they always say to reassure murderers.”

  “I beg pardon, Miss?”

  “We should be delighted.”

  “Much obliged,” said Bailey gloomily, and laid his case down on a small table. Mandrake and Chloris stood side by side in awkward silence while Bailey set out on the table a glass plate, two sheets of paper, some cotton wool, a rubber roller, a fat tube, and a small bottle which, when he uncorked it, let loose a strong smell of ether.

  “Are we to be anaesthetized?” asked Mandrake with nervous facetiousness. Bailey gave him a not very complimentary stare. He squeezed some black substance from the tube onto the plate, and rolled it out into a thin film.

  “I’ll just clean your fingers with a drop of ether, if you please,” he said.

  “Our hands are quite clean,” cried Mandrake.

  “Not chemically,” Bailey corrected. “There’ll be a good deal of perspiration, I daresay. There usually is. Now, sir. Now, Miss.”

  “It’s quite true,” said Chloris. “There is a good deal of perspiration. Speaking for myself, I’m in a clammy sweat.”

  Bailey cleaned their fingers and seemed to cheer up a little. “Now, we’ll just roll them gently on the plate.” he said, holding Mandrake’s forefinger. “Don’t resist me.”

  Chloris was making her last finger-print, and Mandrake was cleaning the ink off his own fingers, when Fox came in and beamed upon them.

  “Well, well,” said Fox. “So they’re fixing you up according to the regulations? Quite an ingenious little process, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Quite.”

  “Yes. Miss Wynne won’t care for it so well, perhaps. Nasty dirty stuff isn’t it? The ladies never fancy it for that reason. Well now, that’s very nice,” continued Fox, looking at Chloris’ prints on the paper. “You wouldn’t believe how difficult a simple little affair like this can be made if people resist the pressure. Never resist the police in the execution of their duty. That’s right, isn’t it, sir?” Bailey looked enquiringly at him. “In the drawing-room,” said Fox in exactly the same tone of voice. Bailey wrote on the papers, put them away in his case, and took himself and his belongings out of the room.

  “The Chief,” said Fox, who occasionally indulged himself by alluding to Alleyn in this fashion, “would be glad if you could spare him a moment in about ten minutes’ time, Mr. Mandrake. In the library, if you please.”

  “All right. Thanks.’

  “Do I stay here?” asked Chloris in a small voice.

  “Wherever you like, Miss Wynne,” rejoined Fox, looking mildly at her. “It’s not very pleasant waiting about. I daresay you find the time hangs rather heavy on your hands. Perhaps you’d like to join the party in the drawing-room?”

  “Not much,” said Chlo
ris, “but I can tell by your style that I’m supposed to go. So I’d better.”

  “Thank you, Miss,” said Fox simply. “Perhaps Mr. Mandrake would like to go with you. We’ll see you in the library then, in about ten minutes. As soon as Bailey has finished in the drawing-room. He’ll give you the word when to come along. You might quietly drop a hint to Mr. Royal and Mr. Compline to come with you, if you don’t mind.”

  He held the door open and Mandrake and Chloris went out.

  “Well, Brer Fox,” said Alleyn, looking up from the library desk, “did that pass off quietly?”

  “Quite pleasantly, Mr. Alleyn. Bailey’s in the drawing-room now, doing the rest of the party. I unloosed the Doctor. It seemed silly, him being up there behind a lock a moron could fix in two minutes. So he’s in with the rest. His good lady doesn’t much fancy being printed.”

  Alleyn grinned. “The expression ‘His good lady’ as applied to la belle Lisse-Hart,” he said, “is perfect, Fox.”

  “I put the young couple in with the others,” Fox continued: “I’ve got an idea that Mr. Mandrake was a bit inquisitive about what we were doing in the smoking-room. He kept looking over at the door and when he saw I’d noticed, he looked away again. So I told him to come along and bring the other two with him as soon as we tip him the wink. You want independent witnesses, I suppose, sir?”

  “Yes. What about Lady Hersey?”

  “I haven’t said anything. We can fetch her away when we want her.”

  “We’ll send Bailey to fetch her away, fetch her away, fetch her away,” Alleyn murmured under his breath. And then: “I’ve never felt less sympathy over a homicide, Brer Fox. This affair is not only stupid but beastly, and not only beastly but damn’ cold-blooded and unnatural. However, we must watch our step. There’s a hint of low cunning in spite of the mistakes. I hate the semipublic reconstruction stunt—it’s theatrical and it upsets all sorts of harmless people. Still, it has its uses. We’ve known it to come off, haven’t we?”