by Ngaio Marsh
“Okay, chief,” drawled Rankin.
“Meet me behind the arras, be your purpose bloody,” said Wilde sweetly.
“Any questions?” asked Handesley.
“Sush admirable terse discourse makes no jot of confusion. Already I am, as you say, on tendercooks,” murmured Doctor Tokareff.
“Well,” concluded Handesley cheerfully, “let us wish the murdered at any rate an interesting amount of success.”
“I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Wilde, “that this game isnt going to be rather terrifying.”
“I call it a definite thrill,” remarked Angela.
Sir Hubert walked over to the gong and took the leather-padded hammer in his hand. They all watched the grandfather clock that stood in the farthest corner of the hall. The long hand jerked across the last division, and the clock, deep voiced, told the half hour. At the same moment Hendesley struck the gong.
“Murder is afoot,” he said theatrically; “the gong shall not sound again until it is accomplished… Shall we move into the drawing-room?”
Nigel, thankful that Vassily’s choice had not fallen upon himself, speculated on the possible identity of the “murderer,” determined to make a mental note of everybody’s movements, and equally to be left alone with no single member of the house-party, since he felt that the role of “corpse” would be less amusing than that of witness or Prosecuting Attorney.
In the drawing-room Mrs. Wilde started a rag by suddenly hurling a cushion at — of all people — Doctor Tokareff. To the astonishment and discomfiture of every body the Russian, after a brief moment of blank bewilderment, suddenly developed a species of mad playfulness. Always, to English people, there is something rather embarrassing about a foreigner playing the fool. Doctor Tokareff, however, was quite unaware of this racial self-consciousness.
“Is not this,” he exclaimed joyously, “indication of British tatter or scrap? I am reading that when English lady propels cush at head of gentleman, she connotes sporting desire.” And with that he hurled the cushion at Mrs. Wilde with such accuracy and force that she completely lost her balance and fell into Rankin’s arms. With one hand he held her closely against him and with the other whirled the cushion about his head, striking the Russian full in the face.
For a second Nigel saw that Doctor Tokareff’s face was capable of expressing something divorced from tranquil amiability.
“Look out!” he shouted involuntarily.
But the doctor had stepped back with a little bow and was smilingly holding up his hands. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“I’m on Doctor Tokareff’s side,” said Angela suddenly, and collared Rankin about the knees.
“So am I,” said Rosamund. “Charles, do you like your face rubbed up or down?”
“Let’s de-bag old Arthur,” suggested Rankin, emerging breathless from the hurly-burly. “Come on, Nigel… come on, Hubert.”
“There’s always something wrong with old Charles when he rags,” thought Nigel. But he held the protesting Wilde while his trousers were dragged off, and joined in the laugh when he stood pale and uncomfortable, clutching a hearthrug to his recreant limbs and blinking short-sightedly.
“You’ve smashed my spectacles,” he said.
“Darling!” screamed Mrs. Wilde, “you look too stupid to be believed. Charles, what a horror you are to make such nonsense of my husband!”
“I feel I look rather magnificent,” declared Wilde. “Who’s got my trousers? You, Angela! My Edwardian blood congeals at the sight. Give them up, child, or I grow churlish.”
“Here you are, Adonis,” said Rankin, snatching the trousers from Angela and tying them round Wilde’s neck. “Gosh, what a lovely sight! Perfect picture of a gentleman who has stroked his eight to victory.”
“Run and put them on, my pet,” said Mrs. Wilde, “or you’ll get growing pains.”
Wilde obediently disappeared.
“Last time I de-bagged Arthur was at Eton,” said Rankin. “God, what ages ago it seems!”
He turned to the wireless and began tuning in to a concert of dance music.
“Come on, Rosamund,” he said, “let’s dance.”
“I’m too hot,” said Rosamund, who had been talking to Tokareff.
“Marjorie!” shouted Rankin, “can you bear to trip a measure?”
“Has Rosamund turned you down? Too dreary for you, Charles.”
“I’ve let him off his duty dance,” said Rosamund. “Doctor Tokareff is telling a story a thousand years old, and I must hear the end.”
“This is a history,” began Tokareff, “of a hospodin… a noble… and two ladies. It is what you call eternal triangle… very old motif in human history.”
“So old that it is, don’t you think, rather boring?” asked Rankin.
“Do dance, Marjorie,” said Angela.
Without waiting for her consent, Rankin put his arm round Mrs. Wilde, and at once Nigel saw that she was translated.
There are some women who, when they dance, express a depth of feeling and of temperament that actually they do not possess. He saw that Mrs. Wilde was one of these women. Under the spell of that blatantly exotic measure she seemed to flower, to become significant and dangerous. Rankin, rapt and serious, was at once her foil and her master. He never took his eyes off hers, and she, unfriendly, provocative, stared back at him as though she were insulting him. Nigel, Angela, and Handesley stopped talking to watch these two, and Wilde, returning, stood stock still in the doorway. Only the Russian seemed disinterested. He had bent over the wireless set and was examining it intently.
The quicker second movement slid back into the original theme of the tango. The dancers had come together in the first steps of their final embrace, when an ear-splitting shriek from the wireless shattered the spell.
“What the devil!” exclaimed Rankin angrily.
“Please forgive,” said Tokareff calmly. “Evidently I have blundered. Sush a funny muck-up and screechiness I never before have heard…”
“Wait a moment… I’ll get it back,” suggested Handesley.
“No, no, don’t bother — it would be too stupid to go on,” answered Rankin ungraciously. He lit a cigarette and walked away from his partner.
“Charles,” said Handesley quickly, “Arthur and I have been discussing your dagger. It really is enormously interesting. Do be a little more forthcoming about its history.”
“All I can tell you,” said Rankin, “is this. I pulled a wild-looking gentleman out of a crevasse in Switzerland last year. I don’t speak Russian, and he didn’t speak English. I never saw him again, but apparently he traced me — through my guide, I suppose — to my hotel, and thence, presumably, to England. The knife with the two words ‘Switzerland’ (so lavish) and ‘thanks’ only reached me yesterday. I conclude it was from him.”
“Will you sell it to me, Charles?” asked Sir Hubert. “I’ll give you much more than you deserve for it.”
“No, Hubert, I won’t. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll leave it to you. Nigel here gets all my possessions. Nigel! If I kick the bucket, my lad, Hubert is to have the dagger. Bear witness, all of you.”
“It shall be done,” said Nigel.
“Considering I’m ten years your senior, it’s not what I should call a handsome offer,” complained Handesley. “Still, let’s have it in writing.”
“You old ghoul, Hubert!” laughed Rankin.
“Hubert!” shrieked Marjorie Wilde, “how can you be so utterly bloodsucking!”
Rankin had walked to the writing-desk.
“Here you are, you maniac,” he said. “Nigel and Arthur can witness.”
He wrote the necessary phrase and signed it. Nigel and Wilde witnessed, and Rankin handed it to Handesley.
“You’d much better sell it to me,” said Handesley coolly.
“Excuse me, please,” boomed Doctor Tokareff. “I do not entirely understand.”
“No?” The note of antagonism had crept into Rankin’s voice. “I m
erely leave instructions that if a sticky end should overtake me—”
“Excuse me, please… a sticky end?”
“Oh, damn! If I should die, or be murdered, or disappear from view, this knife which you, Doctor Tokareff, consider has no business to be in my possession, shall become the property of our host.”
“Thank you,” said Doctor Tokareff composedly.
“You do not approve?”
“Niet. No. By my standpoint of view, zis knoife does not belong by you.”
“The knife was given to me.”
“Such indiscretion has doubtless been suitably chastised,” remarked the Russian peacefully.
“Well,” broke in Handesley, noting perhaps the two little scarlet danger signals in Rankin’s cheeks, “let us hope it will give no offence by hanging for to-night at the foot of my stairs. Come and have a cocktail.”
Charles Rankin lingered in the drawing-room with his cousin. He slipped his arm through Nigel’s.
“Not a very delicious gentleman, that dago,” he said loudly.
“Look out, he’ll hear you!”
“I don’t give a damn.”
Wilde paused in the doorway and detained them.
“I shouldn’t let it worry you, Charles,” he said in his diffident voice. “His point of view is not unreasonable. I know something of these societies.”
“Oh, hell, what’s it matter anyway? Come and let’s drink. This murder’s got to be done.”
Nigel glanced at him sharply.
“No, no,” laughed Rankin, “not by me… I didn’t mean that. By someone.”
“I’m not going to be left alone with anyone,” Mrs. Wilde was announcing.
“I wonder,” speculated Handesley, “if that’s true— or is it a bluff? Or am I bluffing?”
“I’m going to take my drink up with me,” said Rosamund. “No one will try to murder me in my bath, I hope, and I shan’t come down till I hear voices in the hall.”
“I’ll come up with you, Rosamund,” said Mrs. Wilde and Angela simultaneously.
“I also will make myself for the dining,” announced Doctor Tokareff.
“Wait a bit!” called Handesley. “I’m coming up. I won’t go down that passage alone!”
There was a concerted stampede upstairs, only Nigel, Rankin, and Wilde being left in the hall.
“Shall I bath first?” Nigel asked Wilde.
“Yes, do,” he agreed. “It’s safe enough for Charles and me to be left together. Whichever of us tries to do in the other would be accused by you as the last person to see the corpse alive. I claim the bath in ten minutes.”
Nigel ran upstairs, leaving the two men to finish their drinks. He bathed quickly and dressed at leisure. The Murder Game was distinctly amusing. For some reason he rather thought that Vassily had given the scarlet plaque to his compatriot. Nigel determined not to go down until he heard Doctor Tokareff’s voice. “After all,” he thought, “it would be easy enough for him to catch me as I opened my door and then go downstairs as if nothing had happened, choose his moment to put out the lights, sound the gong, and then move away in the darkness and stand still for the two minutes, asking at the top of his voice who had done it. That wouldn’t be a bad plan of action, by Jove.”
He heard the bathroom door opened. A moment later the taps were turned on, and Wilde’s voice called out to him.
“No bloodshed yet, Bathgate?”
“Not yet,” shouted Nigel; “but I’m much too frightened to go down.”
“Let’s wait till Majorie is ready,” suggested Wilde, “and all go down together. If you don’t agree, I’ll know you are the murderer.”
“All right, I’ll agree,” yelled Nigel cheerfully, and he heard Wilde laugh to himself and shout the suggestion through to his wife, who was presumably still dressing in the room beyond.
Nigel walked over to his bedside table and picked up the book he had been reading the night before. It was Joseph Conrad’s Suspense. He had just opened it at the title page when there was a light tap on the door.
“Come in,” shouted Nigel.
A rather flustered and extremely pretty housemaid appeared.
“Oh, please, sir,” she began, “I’m afraid I’ve forgot your shaving-water.”
“It’s all right,” said Nigel. “I managed with—”
Suddenly the room was completely blacked out.
He stood in thick darkness with the invisible book in his hand while the voice of the gong — primitive and threatening — surged up through the empty throat of the house. It filled the room with an intolerable clamour and then died away grudgingly. Silence flowed back again and, trickling through it, the noise of the bath water still running next door. Then Wilde’s voice shouting excitedly:
“I say… what’s all this—?”
“Pretty nippy, wasn’t it?” shouted Nigel. “What about the two minutes? Wait a bit. I’ve got a luminous wrist watch. I’ll keep time for both of us.”
“Yes, but look here — do I have to lie in this bath,” queried Wilde plaintively, “or do you imagine I may get out and dry myself?”
“Pull out the plug and reach for the towel. Did you leave Charles downstairs?”
“Yes, I did. Full of complaints about Tokareff. I say, do you think…” Wilde’s voice became muffled. Evidently he had found the towel.
“Time!” said Nigel. “I’m off.”
“Turn up the lights for heaven’s sake,” urged Wilde. “I’m going to miss all the fun if I can’t find my pants.”
His wife’s voice screeched excitedly from the far room.
“Arthur, wait for me!”
“Me wait for you—” began Wilde in an injured voice.
Nigel struck a match and made his way to the door. Out on the landing it was pitch dark, but further back along the passage he could see little points of match-light and the dramatic uncertainty of faces, dimly lit from below. Far down beneath him in the hall was the comfortable flicker of a fire. The house was alive with the voices of the guests, calling, laughing, questioning. Cosseting his match, he groped his way downstairs; it burnt out, but the firelight enabled him to round the bottom of the stairs and find the main switch.
For a second he hesitated. Obscurely, unaccountably, he did not want to wipe away the darkness. As he stood with his hand on the switch, time seemed to hang still.
From the stairs Handesley’s voice called out:
“Anyone find the switch?”
“I’m there,” answered Nigel, and his hand jerked it down.
The sudden blaze from the chandelier was blinding. On the stairs Wilde, his wife, Tokareff, Handesley, and Angela all shrank back from it. Nigel, blinking, came round the stairs. Facing him was the cocktail tray, and beside him the great Assyrian gong.
A man was lying on his face alongside the table. He was lying at right angles to the gong.
Nigel, still blinking, turned his face towards the others.
“I say,” he said, peering at them and shading his eyes. “I say, look… here he is.”
“It’s Charles,” exclaimed Mrs. Wilde shrilly.
“Poor old Charles!” said Handesley jovially.
They were all pushing and shouting. Only Rankin did not move.
“Don’t touch him… don’t touch him, anybody,” said Angela; “you must never disturb the body, you know.”
“A moment, please.” Doctor Tokareff put her gently aside. He came downstairs, glanced at Nigel, who stood transfixed, staring at his cousin, and bent down slowly.
“This young lady speaks with wisdom,” said Doctor Tokareff. “Undoubtedly, let us not touch.”
“Charles!” screamed Mrs. Wilde suddenly. “My God, Charles!.. Charles!”
But Rankin lay heavily silent and, their eyes having grown accustomed to the light, they all saw the hilt of his Russian dagger jutting out like a little horn between his shoulder blades.
Chapter IV
Monday
Chief Inspector-Detective Alleyn was accost
ed by Inspector-Detective Boys in the corridor outside his office.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Inspector Boys. “Has someone found you a job?”
“You’ve guessed my boyish secret. I’ve been given a murder to solve — aren’t I a lucky little detective?”
He hurried out into the main corridor, where he was met by Detective-Sergeant Bailey who carried a fingerprint apparatus, and by Detective-Sergeant Smith who was burdened with a camera. A car was waiting for them, and in two hours’ time they were standing in the hall at Frantock.
P.C. Bunce of the local constabulary eyed the Inspector cautiously.
“A very narsty business, sir,” he said with relish. “The superintendent being took very bad with the ’flu and no one else here to handle the case except the sergeant, we rang up the Yard immediate. This is Doctor Young, the divisional surgeon who made the examination.” A sandy-coloured, palish man had stepped forward.
“Good morning,” said Inspector Alleyn. “No doubt about the medical verdict, I suppose?”
“None whatever, I’m grieved to say,” said the doctor, whose accent had a smack of Scots in it. “I was called in immediately after the discovery. Life had been extinct about thirty minutes. There is no possibility of the injury being self-inflicted. The superintendent here has an acute attack of gastric influenza and is really quite unfit to do anything. I gave definite instructions that he was not to be worried about the case. In view of the most extraordinary circumstances and also of Sir Hubert’s position, the local office decided to approach Scotland Yard.” Doctor Young stopped talking suddenly as if someone had turned his voice off at the main. He then made a deep uncomfortable noise in his throat, a noise that sounded like “Kaahoom.”
“The body?” queried Inspector Alleyn.
The constable and the doctor began to speak together.