Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  “We have so,” said Fox sombrely. “I wonder how Bailey’s getting on with that mob in there.”

  “See here, Fox, let’s make sure we’ve got it right.”

  Fox looked benignly at his chief: “It’s all right, sir. You’ve worked it out to a hair. It can’t go wrong. Why, we’ve tried it half-a-dozen times.”

  “I meant the case as a whole.”

  “You’ve got your usual attack of the doubts, Mr. Alleyn. I’ve never seen a clearer case.”

  Alleyn moved restlessly about the room. “Disregard those two earlier farces and we’ve still got proof,” he said.

  “Cast-iron proof.”

  “In a funny sort of way it all hangs on this damned cheerful fellow, Thomas. The dancing footman. He defines the limit of the time factor and the possible movements of the murderer. Add to this the ash, H. St. J. W. R.’s fishing-line, the stuff on the wireless, and William’s drawing-pin, and there’s our case.”

  “And a very pretty case, too.”

  “Not so pretty,” Alleyn muttered. And then: “I’ve never asked for your views on this war, Foxkin.”

  Fox stared at him. “On the war? Well, no, sir, you haven’t. My view is that it hasn’t started.”

  “And mine. I believe that in a year’s time we shall look back on these frozen weeks as on a strangely unreal period. Does it seem odd to you, Fox, that we should be here, so solemnly tracking down one squalid little murderer, so laboriously using our methods to peer into two deaths, while over our heads are stretched legions of guns? It’s as if we stood on the edge of a cracking landslide, swatting flies.”

  “It’s our job.”

  “And will continue to be so. But to hang someone—now! My God, Fox, it’s almost funny.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “It’s nothing. Only one of those cold moments. We’ll get on with our cosy little murder. Here comes Bailey.”

  Bailey came in carrying his gear.

  “Well,” said Alleyn, “have you fixed that up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any objections?”

  “The foreign lady. She didn’t like the idea of blacking her fingers. Or that’s what she said. Gave quite a bit of trouble in a quiet way.”

  “And the rest of the party?”

  “Jumpy,” said Bailey. “Not saying much for stretches at a time and then all talking at once, very nervous and quick. Mr. Royal and Mr. Compline seem unfriendly to the Doctor and keep looking sideways at him. He’s the coolest of the lot, though. You’d think he wasn’t interested. He doesn’t take any notice of the lady except to look at her as if he was surprised or something. Will you see the prints, Mr. Alleyn?”

  “Yes, we’ll look at them and check them with what you found on the rest of the stuff. It won’t be very illuminating but it’s got to be done. Then we’ll have those four in here, and try for results. It’ll do no harm to keep them guessing for a bit. Come on, Fox.”

  “What’s the time?” asked Nicholas. Hersey Amblington looked at her wrist-watch. “A quarter past eight.”

  “I have explained, haven’t I,” said Jonathan, “that there’s a cold buffet in the dining-room?”

  “You have, Jo,” said Hersey. “I’m afraid none of us feels like it.”

  “I am hungry,” Dr. Hart observed. “But I cannot accept the hospitality of a gentleman who believes me to be a murderer.” Jonathan made an angry little noise in his throat.

  “My dear Dr. Hart,” Hersey ejaculated, “I really shouldn’t let a point of etiquette hold you off the cold meats. You can’t starve.”

  “I expect to be released tomorrow,” said Hart, “and a short abstinence will be of no harm. I habitually overeat.” He looked at his wife, who was staring at him with a sort of incredulous wonder. “Do I not, my dear?” asked Dr. Hart.

  Nicholas moved to her side. She turned to him and very slightly shrugged her shoulders.

  “It is strange,” continued Dr. Hart, “that when my wife would not acknowledge our relationship I was plagued with the desire to make it known. Now that it is known, I take but little satisfaction in the privilege.”

  Nicholas produced a cliché. “There is no need,” he said stiffly, “to be insulting.”

  “But whom do I insult? Not my wife, surely. Would it not be more insulting to deny the legal status?”

  “This is too much,” Jonathan burst out, but Hersey said: “Oh, let it go, for pity’s sake, Jo.”

  “I cannot expect,” said Madame Lisse, “that Lady Hersey will neglect to find enjoyment in my humiliation.”

  “I don’t see that you are particularly humiliated.”

  “A husband who has committed the most—” began Madame Lisse, but Dr. Hart interrupted her.

  “Do you know what she has said, this woman?” he demanded of nobody in particular. “She has told me that if she knew of a grain of evidence against me she would use it. I tell you this—if I was accused of the murder of this poor simpleton and if she, without doing harm to herself, could speak the word that would hang me, she would speak it. This is the woman for whom I have tortured myself. You are all thinking it is not nice to make a scene by speaking of her, it is not what an English gentleman would do. You are right. I am not English and I am not a gentleman. I am an Austrian peasant with a little of the South in my veins, and I have suddenly awakened. I am angry when I remember all the idiotic sorrow that I have wasted on this cold and treacherous wife.”

  “You bloody murderer!” Nicholas burst out, and Madame Lisse seized his arm.

  “No,” she said, “no, Nicholas. For my sake.”

  “For all our sakes,” said Mandrake suddenly, “let’s have no more scenes.” And a kind of murmur, profoundly in agreement, came from Hersey, Chloris, and Jonathan. Dr. Hart smiled and made a little bow. “Very well. By all means, no more scenes. But you”—he pointed a short white finger at Nicholas—“will have cause to remember what I have said.”

  The door opened and Bailey looked in. “Mr. Alleyn’s compliments, sir,” he said to Jonathan, “and he’d be glad to see you if you’re free.” His glance travelled to Mandrake and Nicholas. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, and held open the door. The three men went out. “Mr. Alleyn would be obliged if the rest of the party stayed where they are,” said Bailey. “Sergeant Thompson is on duty in the hall.”

  He closed the door gently, leaving the three women and Dr. Hart together.

  “Before we go any further,” said Alleyn, “I must explain that we have arrived at a definite conclusion in this case. It is therefore my duty to tell you that the questions I shall now put to you are of importance and that your answers may possibly be used in evidence. I have asked you to come into the library in order that we may go over the event immediately preceding the discovery of Mr. William Compline’s body in the next room. I have not asked those members of the party who were upstairs to be present. They cannot help us. I have left Miss Wynne out of the experiment. Her part was entirely negative and there is no need to distress her. I’m afraid that we shall have to ask Lady Hersey to come in, but I thought that first of all I should explain to you, sir, and to Mr. Compline, exactly what we mean to do. You have all heard of police reconstructions. This very short experiment may be regarded as a reconstruction, and if we are at fault in the smallest detail, we ask you to put us right. That’s all quite clear, I hope. Now, I must ask you if you have any objection to helping us in this way.”

  “Do you mean,” asked Jonathan, “that you want us to do everything we did last night?”

  “Yes, if you will.”

  “I’m—I’m not sure that I recollect precisely the order of events.”

  “Mr. Mandrake and Mr. Compline will, I hope, help you.”

  “God, I can remember!” said Nicholas. “I’ll never forget.”

  “And I,” said Mandrake. “I think I remember.”

  “Good. Then, will you help us, Mr. Royal?”

  “Very well,” said Jonathan, and Mandrake and N
icholas said they too were ready to help.

  “We’ll begin,” said Alleyn, “at the moment when Lady Hersey had returned from the smoking-room, where she had talked for a time with you, Mr. Compline, and your brother. Mr. Mandrake is in the green ‘boudoir’ beyond, talking to Dr. Hart. Lady Hersey has left the two brothers together. The door into the ‘boudoir’ is now locked on the smoking-room side. The door from here into the smoking-room is shut, as you can see. Right, Fox.”

  Fox went out.

  “Will you please take up your positions?” said Alleyn. “Mr. Mandrake, you are not here yet. Mr. Compline, you are in the next room. Sergeant Bailey is there, and I’ll get you to tell him, as well as you can remember, exactly where you were and what you and your brother did.”

  Alleyn opened wide the door into the smoking-room. The red leather screen still hid the interior, which seemed to be very dimly lit. Nicholas hung back, white and nervous.

  “Not too pleasant,” he muttered, and then: “It wasn’t dark like that.”

  “The small shaded lamp by the fireside is turned on,” said Alleyn. “There are no bulbs in the other lamps.”

  “Why?” Nicholas demanded.

  “Because we’ve removed them,” said Alleyn blandly. “Will you go in?”

  From behind the screen Bailey gave a slight cough. Nicholas said: “Oh, all right,” and went into the smoking-room. Alleyn shut the door. At the same moment Fox came in with Hersey Amblington. Evidently he had explained the procedure, because she went straight to a chair opposite Jonathan’s and sat down. “That’s what I did when I came in,” said Hersey. “I’d left Nicholas and William in the smoking-room, and I came here by way of the hall. Is that what you wanted to know, Mr. Alleyn?”

  “The beginning of it,” said Alleyn. “What next?”

  “In a few minutes,” said Jonathan, “Aubrey came in. He went to that chair on the far side of the fire. Miss Wynne was sitting there.”

  Alleyn looked at Mandrake, who at once walked to the chair. “I’d come directly from the ‘boudoir’ by way of the hall, leaving Dr. Hart alone in the ‘boudoir,’ ” he said.

  “And then?”

  “We discussed the situation,” said Hersey. “I reported that I’d left the two brothers talking quite sensibly, and then Mr. Mandrake told us how Dr. Hart and Nicholas had had a row over the wireless and how Nicholas had slammed the door, between the ‘boudoir’ and the smoking-room, in Dr. Hart’s face.”

  “We talked for perhaps a minute and then Nicholas came in.” She looked from Jonathan to Mandrake. “It wasn’t longer, was it?”

  “I should say about a minute,” Mandrake agreed.

  Fox tapped on the door into the smoking-room. There was a pause. Hersey Amblington caught her breath in a nervous sigh. Mandrake heard his own heart-beat in the drums of his ears.

  The door opened slowly into the smoking-room and Nicholas stood on the threshold, his face like parchment against the dim scarlet of the screen. Bailey came past him and sat on a low stool just inside the door.

  “Did you come straight in?” Alleyn asked Nicholas.

  “I don’t know. I expect I did.”

  “Does anyone else remember?”

  “I do,” said Mandrake. “I remember, Compline, that you came in and shut the door. I suppose you paused for a moment with your hand on the knob.”

  “Is it agreed that Mr. Compline shut the door?” Alleyn asked.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Jonathan cried out shrilly. “It was shut.”

  “Then will you please go on?” said Alleyn quietly.

  “Will somebody be very kind,” said Nicholas in a high voice, “and tell me precisely what I did next? It would be a pity if I stepped off on the wrong foot, wouldn’t it?”

  “We may as well keep our tempers, Nick,” said Hersey.

  “You made a face as if to say Bill was still pretty tricky. I did ‘Thumbs up?’ and you did ‘Thumbs down,’ and then you sat in that chair by the door and we talked about Bill. After a bit, Jo offered you a drink.”

  “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Mandrake. Jonathan uttered an impatient sound and added very querulously: “Yes. Oh, yes.” Nicholas said: “Oh, by all means, agreed,” and laughed.

  “There’s the chair,” said Alleyn.

  Nicholas dropped into the armchair on the opposite side of the door from Bailey’s stool.

  “Jonathan asked me to ring for drinks,” said Mandrake, “but, before I could do so, we heard a clink of glasses in the hall and—”

  He stopped short. Fox had opened the door into the hall and in the complete silence that followed they all heard the faint jingling of glasses.

  Thomas came in with the grog tray.

  He set it on the table and went out, shutting the door behind him.

  “He is now tidying the hall,” said Alleyn.

  “I’m not enjoying this,” said Hersey Amblington loudly. “I’m hating it.”

  “It will not be much longer,” said Alleyn. Mandrake heard his own voice saying: “But it is horrible. We’re creating it all over again. It’s as if we were making something take form—in there.”

  “Oh, don’t,” said Hersey.

  “There is no one in the smoking-room,” said Alleyn, and he spoke with unexpected emphasis. “The other doors are locked. There is no one in there. Please go on. Did you have your drinks?”

  Nobody answered. At last Mandrake forced himself to speak. “Jonathan poured them out and then he said: ‘What about William?’ ”

  “One moment. You should be at the table, then, Mr. Royal.”

  Jonathan went to the table. Mandrake’s voice went on: “He said: ‘What about William?’ meaning would he like a drink, and Compline stuck his head in at the door and sang out: ‘Coming in for a drink, Bill?’ ”

  Nicholas reached out and opened the door. He made an attempt to speak, boggled over it, and finally said: “I asked him to come in. I think he sort of grunted. Then I asked him to turn on the news. Mandrake had suggested that we might listen to it.”

  “What exactly did you say?”

  “I can’t remember the precise words.”

  “I can,” said Mandrake. “Or pretty nearly. You said: ‘Do you mind switching on the wireless? It’s time for the news and we’d like to hear it.’ Then there was a slight pause.”

  Nicholas said: “I waited, and heard someone walk across the floor; and I called out: ‘Thanks!’ ”

  Another heavy silence fell upon the room. Fox stood motionless by the door into the hall, Bailey by the door into the smoking-room, Alleyn close to Jonathan by the table.

  “And then?” Alleyn asked.

  “And then we heard the wireless,” said Mandrake. Bailey’s hand moved.

  And in the empty smoking-room a voice roared:—

  …out the barrel,

  Roll out the barrel again.

  Jonathan Royal screamed out an oath and backed away from the table, his hand to his mouth.

  He was almost knocked over. Nicholas had stumbled towards the door, where he was checked by Bailey. He struck at Bailey, turned, and made for the door into the hall, where Alleyn barred the way. Nicholas mouthed at him.

  “Steady,” said Alleyn. Nicholas stretched out his uninjured arm, pointing back to the empty room: “I didn’t touch it,” he gabbled, “I didn’t touch it. Hart did it. It’s the second booby-trap. Don’t look at me like that. You can’t prove anything against me.” He fell back a pace. Alleyn made a move and Nicholas sprang at him. Bailey and Fox closed in on Nicholas Compline.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Departure

  THE RAIN FELL steadily over Highfold all through that night. When in the dead light of dawn Alleyn shaved and washed in the downstairs cloak-room, the house still drummed faintly to the inexorable onslaught of the rain. At five o’clock the Great Chipping police had telephoned to say they were coming through by the Pen-Gidding road and that an ambulance was already on its way. At half-past five, Nicholas Compline l
ifted a blotched face from his arm and, breaking a silence of six hours, told Fox he wished to make a statement. At six o’clock, Dr. Francis Hart had an interview with Alleyn. He arrived fully dressed and said that with the permission of the authorities he would attempt to drive home by the long route. “My wife has asked me to take her with me,” he said. “I have agreed to do so, if you allow.” Alleyn consented readily. Dr. Hart then made him a formal speech causing him acute embarrassment by many references to the courtesy and integrity of the British police.

  “Never for a moment,” Dr. Hart said, “was I in doubt of the issue. As soon as I heard of William Compline’s death I knew that it must be his brother.”

  “You seem to have been the only member of the party who refused to be bamboozled by fancy touches,” said Alleyn. “Why were you so certain?”

  “I understand my wife,” said Dr. Hart simply. He clasped his hands over his waistcoat, frowned judicially, and continued: “My wife is extremely mercenary and an almost perfect egoist. She was in love with Nicholas Compline. That I perceived and with that knowledge I tortured myself. She loved him as much as she could love anyone other than herself and obviously he was quite determined to have her. Whether she was his mistress or not I am unable to decide, but in any case my own suspicious attitude and the scenes I created so continually must have been very irksome. I have no doubt he wished to see her break with me and if possible obtain a divorce. That, of course, she would refuse to do. A young man with little money would never persuade her to embark on a damaging scandal. But a young man with a large estate and fine prospects—how different! No doubt she told him so. I do not believe she was aware of his guilt, still less that she was a partner in his crime. She would never risk such a proceeding. No. She thought I killed William Compline, and that when I was hanged she would wait for a discreet period and then marry his brother. She will now strain every nerve to disassociate herself from Nicholas.”