by Ellis Peters
Still half-dazed, Musgrave had never questioned his discovery. Why should he? He’d opened his eyes to find two people bending over him, and one of them an innocent stranger, whose very presence was a guarantee of the correctness of Gisela’s behaviour. Why should he inquire exactly when the convenient witness had arrived on the scene, and whether Gisela had been there alone for some minutes before his coming? He had one murderer, why be in too big a hurry to look for another?
Maybe in her place, thought Johnny, I should have done the same. There was Codger dead and safely out of it, and Musgrave unconscious, and no one else by, and it was now or never. Codger couldn’t be hurt any more. Maybe I should have planted the thing on him, too. How can I tell? Who am I to blame her? Was it so terrible to leave him to carry both loads, when he’d already incurred one? Who am I to judge her? Who am I, for God’s sake, to judge anybody, the mess I’ve made of my responsibilities?
Let it go, then. He felt that Musgrave was satisfied, that he would never be able to resist this neat, well-rounded ending. Somehow every detail would be fitted into the pattern of Codger’s jealous and protective passion. It would be interesting to see the pieces of the puzzle ingeniously tailored into place. Why look for a second criminal, where one so obligingly offered himself?
‘Then – if you won’t come in—’
‘No, I’d better get home. In the morning I shall have to tell Hero.’
He saw Gisela flinch, and suddenly, as though a curtain had been drawn from between them, he saw every least imprint and mark of her history in her face, the set of her lips, indrawn and pale, the tight white lines that marked her slender bones in jaw and cheek and brow, as though they were fretting their way through the skin, and above all the silent, uncomplaining endurance of her eyes.
In all the time he had known her he had never seen tears in them, but he knew the look they had when there should have been tears, and her reticence and courtesy insisted on containing them.
‘Good night, then, Johnny.’
‘Oh, girl, girl!’ he said in a great sigh of pity and resignation and bewilderment, and reached and drew her to him, folding his arms round her and holding her to his heart. Her cheek was cold against his. He kissed her very gently, and turned and went away without saying another word, suddenly so tired that when the door was safely closed between them he could hardly fumble his way down the stairs.
‘So the case,’ said Musgrave, ‘can be regarded as closed. You must have been expecting that, I suppose. With one would-be murderer already known, it hardly seemed very probable that there should be another one hanging around in the same comparatively restricted group of people. It could happen, once in a while, but the odds are all against it. But this – this turning up in his pocket more or less clinched it.’
He spread out the strip of silk on Johnny’s desk, leaning over it with a thoughtful frown, and with something of human satisfaction, too, in the set of his features. New glasses with a more fashionable winged shape had given him an oddly quizzical expression, and made him look younger. The thin line on his neck, like a faint brown pencil-mark, was fading rapidly. His brush with death had left, as far as could be detected, no other mark on his nature or his mind, not even a touch of awe and humility.
Johnny sat looking down at the beautiful, radiant bit of brightness, the gold-thread ears of wheat, the scarlet and blue of the flowers.
‘A normal man would have burned it long ago,’ said Musgrave, kindly explaining to him the workings of the minds of all men but himself. ‘He had plenty of opportunity. I suppose he kept it because it was so pretty, and gave him pleasure to handle and look at.’
‘I suppose that could have been it,’ said Johnny woodenly.
‘So he carried it around with him, a fortnight and more after the murder. Curious that after all the hunting we’d done for the thing, it should be put into our hands so simply at the end of it.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Johnny, without joy or wonder.
He put out a hand, and moved one fingertip gently back and forth above the torn end of the baldric, and the fine, waving filaments of silk rose and clung to his finger. Magical stuff, silk. You could smooth it on to the wall, and it would cling there, too. Or perhaps the weight of the embroidery would be too much for it and bring it down. He touched the ruled line of dull brown that was all that remained of Marc Chatrier’s blood.
‘You’re wondering about that,’ said Musgrave with a slight smile.
‘In a way, yes. Such a curious sort of mark. No doubt it tells a detailed story to you, but I haven’t been able to make much of it.’
‘Well, I suppose these are small professional mysteries. You have others as complex in your own field.’
‘But I leave you yours,’ said Johnny, with the first faint gleam of humour and malice. ‘You’re sure you’re not making too much of this? Does it really make a complete case in itself? It looks a bit flimsy, lying there alone.’
‘Possession of it was almost more revealing than even what the ribbon itself can tell us. The thing has been missing ever since the night of the murder, it was clearly torn away in the course of the murder; and after that it turns up again for the first time in Bayliss’s pocket. Who but the murderer was likely to have torn it loose and removed it? I admit I didn’t pay enough attention to Codger Bayliss in the first place. He seemed to me too simple and harmless to conceive such an act, let alone carry it out. These cases can be very complex. Who knows what goes on inside their minds?’
‘Who, indeed?’
The thought of Codger, imprisoned within his speechless world and struggling to communicate with the world outside, made Johnny’s heart turn in him with a convulsion of sickness. And yet had Codger been more isolated than the rest of human kind? If he could not reach a hand to Gisela, nor she to him?
‘And that stain … that is blood, I suppose?’
‘It is, and the same group as Chatrier’s. There can be very little doubt that it is Chatrier’s. Which takes us a step further. And then, the form of this is peculiarly interesting. And so were some of the details of the wound, though I didn’t tell you that earlier. It seems that the point of deepest penetration showed signs of a double thrust, as though an attempt had been made to withdraw the blade, and then, finding it too difficult and having no time to make a job of it, the murderer had thrust it back in and abandoned it. At the farthest point of the wound, for no more than a minute fraction of an inch, this dual penetration showed.
‘Now, what we think happened is something like this. Bayliss was upstairs with Mrs Glazier in the bar all through the third act and for part of the fourth, then he slipped away unnoticed, and he was down in the wings when the alarm was given. No one was clear about exactly when he arrived there, but with so many people moving about that isn’t surprising, and they were all quite used to him. It seems probable that in his own way he had been disturbed for some days by the unrest he felt around him, and by a feeling that Chatrier was making himself a nuisance and perhaps even a danger to you. He’s in the wings when Chatrier sings Figaro’s last-act aria and withdraws into the pine-grove to hide. Chatrier’s back would be to Bayliss, his eyes naturally on what was going on on the stage. Bayliss has found Miss Truscott’s sword where Miss Salberg put it ready to hand. It’s a pretty thing in itself, and the broken baldric is even more attractive. He’s playing with it when Chatrier backs towards him. I’ve seen he was used to ways of silent killing, and you’ve confirmed that he had training in those techniques. Was he also, in his time, expert with knives and bayonets?’
‘He’d handled every kind of steel. But it’s a long time ago.’
‘He hadn’t forgotten what to do with a cord, had he? So he has a very fine, keen sword in his hand, and your enemy backing on to it … and he follows his instinct, and kills.’
‘So efficiently? Not a murmur out of Figaro?’
‘I didn’t tell you this, either, but Figaro’s lips were, as you might expect, marked by slight but unmistakab
le bruises. A hand was clamped over his mouth. And the sword, I think, was gripped through the baldric, which is why there were no fingerprints on it but yours, Selverer’s and Miss Truscott’s. Figaro falls, and dies probably within a minute. Bayliss knows enough to lower him gently to the boards. He then tries to pull out the sword, but it’s lodged fast, and he hardly succeeds in moving it. But in that attempt, which he very soon abandoned, I think this mark was made.
‘He can’t shift it by pulling from the hilt, he tears off this end of the baldric, which is already dangling loose, and through it grips the blade with his right hand, close to the body, and so tries to ease it out. He moves it a little, and in doing so encourages the very slight bleeding. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, or if you remember offhand, but the sword has some very fine chasing up the edges of the blade near the point, and the blood had been drawn up these grooves for a few inches. Here he held the blade through this ribbon, and the edge over which the silk was folded left this stain on it. You can see what a thin, straight line it is.’
‘I had noticed. It was puzzling me. You make everything very plain. And the other edge didn’t mark it, or cut it?’
‘Try holding a very sharp blade through a fold of silk. You don’t shut your hand on it, you fold the silk round the edge that’s towards your palm, and hold the centre of the blade firmly between fingertips and thumb. The rest of the ribbon hung free. The threads weren’t cut because there was no actual pressure against the edge, and no friction. But these very fine roving strands took up the blood and retained this stain. And then he gave up, because it was inevitable the alarm must be given any moment. He left the sword and scabbard, but he took his piece of ribbon away with him – perhaps at first hardly realising he was still holding it, but afterwards he kept it because he liked it, and it seemed no harm.’
‘I see. Everything explained,’ said Johnny, with a hollow smile.
‘It leaves nothing unaccounted for, I think.’
‘Nothing. I congratulate you.’
Musgrave folded the strip of silk again carefully, and slipped it back into the plastic folder in which he had brought it.
‘I know you were fond of the fellow, Mr Truscott. I know it’s a tragic case. But be thankful it’s over. You can go ahead with your work, now, with an easy mind.’
‘May I tell my people the case is closed? To some extent the cloud’s been over us all.’
‘Yes, of course, tell them. They have a right to know.’ He rose, buckling the straps of his briefcase. ‘Miss Truscott’s sword can be returned to you very soon. And the inquest – yes, an ordeal, I know, in the circumstances, but it’ll soon be over.’
‘I don’t think Hero wants the sword back,’ said Johnny, going to the door with his visitor. ‘She’s upset enough about Codger, I don’t want her to see it again. But there’s one thing I did want to ask you …’
Musgrave halted in the doorway, looking back with an encouraging smile. ‘Yes?’
‘After the inquest – I don’t know the drill when a case ends like this, without a trial. Shall I be able to claim his body? I’d like to take care of the funeral.’
‘Yes,’ said Musgrave, after a long moment of studying him in silence, ‘I think I can promise you that you shall have his body.’
The word had gone round within the hour.
A shadow lifted from the Leander Theatre and its company as the news passed from lip to lip. Johnny told Franz, and Franz told the morning rehearsal of The Magic Flute. Inga, a truly electrifying Astrofiammante, spoke to Tonda, her Pamina, for the first time in ten days voluntarily and even civilly. Max Forrester, an imposing Sarastro even in slacks and a sweater, remarked to Monostatos that celebrations would be in order, and Monostatos agreed that the Blackcock’s Feather, just round the corner, would be open any minute.
In the regions backstage the shadow that had fallen some days ago kept the sky still cloudy and Codger’s place in the corner of Sam Priddy’s box ached with emptiness. But even there some urgency of heart began to lift from them, and left them looking forward instead of back.
But the news fell with the most profound effect of all upon Hans Selverer.
Papageno turned with a face suddenly full of shining purpose, put down his magic chime of bells with a ringing peal, and walked unnoticed out of the rehearsal. When next they should have heard his voice there was blank silence, and the birdcatcher was nowhere to be found. Such a thing had never been known to happen before; he was normally a very conscientious young man.
Hans was looking for Hero. He knew she had come to the theatre with her father that morning, though he had not seen her since. She was not anywhere about the stage, she was not in Johnny’s office, she was not in her own dressing-room. Hans knew at least where to ask after her next.
He put his head in at Sam’s box, and there she was. She was sitting lonely in the most retired corner, where Codger Bayliss had so often sat with his knitting, and it seemed she had inherited the function with the seat, for she had Codger’s unfinished sweater on its plastic needles before her, and was counting stitches with a deep frown of concentration. She went on counting even when Hans came in. The narrowings at the top of a sleeve can be tricky when you have no pattern, and are following in the steps of somebody who has left you no clues.
‘Hero!’ said Hans, and halted, unsure of his English though not of himself.
She looked up quickly, grey eyes flaring wide. For two days they’d lost their clarity and brightness, crying in private over Codger; but she was nineteen, and her world was full enough of people to repair the hole torn in it by the passing of one among so many. The sadness that lingered in her face was the impending shadow of maturity. She looked at him in doubt and astonishment, and with something of offence, too. He had been avoiding her for days, and now he walked in on her with a bright, possessive face, as if he owned her.
‘Hero, have you heard that this case of Figaro is now closed? But officially. Franz has just told us, and he had it from your father.’
He sat down beside her, and looked grave for her sake, but still he could not help shining.
‘I know you are sad, and I am sorry about Codger, you know I am. But now I am able to come to you and ask you something, a thing I could not ask before.’ He took the knitting firmly out of her hands, careful not to spill the stitches, and laid it down at a safe distance; and because the spark of indignation was alight suddenly in her eyes and her colour was rising, he made haste to take possession of the hands he had thus emptied, in case she should slip out of his reach and run away from him.
‘I wish to ask you if you will marry me,’ said Hans firmly, looking her in the eyes with those gentian-blue eyes of his that had been so steadily staring in the opposite direction for the past week and more.
The kindling flush left her cheeks abruptly, her lips fell apart in a gasp of astonishment, wariness and, of all things, consternation. She had imagined such a moment fondly in her own private fantasies times out of number, and while there had seemed no possibility of its ever being translated into reality it had seemed to her the last prodigy of human bliss. She had even imagined her own response to it; but never like this. Now that it was suddenly pitched into her lap in good earnest she reacted to it with a strong impulse of panic and recoil.
It was too soon, too sudden, she wasn’t ready. She was only nineteen, and it wasn’t something you could undo in a year or so if you didn’t like it – not the way the Truscotts understood it, anyhow. And she hadn’t been anywhere yet, or seen anything, or sung half the roles she wanted to sing. And then, just one man, and you couldn’t whistle up another one when you got bored, or sort your dates by the half-dozen and shut your eyes and draw for it. Even if you did want him very much, even if you were sure you loved him very much, it took a bit of thinking about to jettison everything else for him. And the end of it was unreasoning rage, for he shouldn’t have sprung it on her like this, without any warning or any time to think.
‘No!’ she
said, not manoeuvring any longer, but in plain and resolute retreat. She tried to withdraw her hands, but it wasn’t so easy. He was taken aback, but he held on; perhaps he couldn’t believe his ears, or perhaps he simply didn’t intend to give up so easily.
‘Hero, you must know that I am in love with you. These things women always know.’
Someone must have told him that, perhaps one of the older women who found him so irresistible. Inga, maybe.
‘You have a nerve, Hans Selverer!’ she said hotly. ‘All this time you’ve been avoiding me as if I had the plague, you could hardly say “Good morning” to me. And now you come making up to me, and expect – expect—’
‘Not you had the plague, Hero, but I. Don’t you see how hopeless was my position until this case was solved? That Inspector Musgrave, he believed that I had done it. He knew about my father, and he thought – he was sure I had killed this man. How could I ask you to have anything to do with me? How could I try to make you like me better, when I was suspect like that?’
‘I don’t believe you care anything about me,’ she persisted, holding her reeling defences together against the assault of his near presence, with treason already budding in her soul. ‘It isn’t much of a way of showing you love a person, to refuse her a share in your worries. Anybody can be generous with the good things.’
‘If I was wrong I am sorry. I could only do what I thought was right. But now I am free to tell you how much I love you, and to ask you—’
‘But you don’t, you can’t! You called me a spoiled, self-willed child.’
She turned her head away from him, straining out of reach, aware of the crumbling walls of her resistance, and fascinated by the spectacle they made as they toppled. The very crash might be rather glorious.