Death and the Dancing Footman (25 page)

“Did she know about
l’affaire Lisse
, do you suppose?” asked Mandrake.

“I don’t know. I daresay he kept it dark. He could be pretty quiet about his philanderings when it suited him. But even if she did know I believe she would have taken it as a perfectly natural obsession on Madame Lisse’s part. In her eyes, Nicholas was really rather like one of those Greek gods who lolled about on clouds and said ‘I’ll have
that
one!’ ”

Alleyn coughed, and Miss Wynne became aware of him. “I suppose,” she said, “you think it revolting of us to talk about him like this.”

“No,” he said, “I would find a show of excessive distress much more disagreeable.”

“Yes, I know. All the same it’s pretty ghastly not being able to get back quicker. I suppose you can’t rush her up a bit, Aubrey, can you? It’s terribly important that Dr. Hart should get these things. I mean, in a sort of way, everything depends on us.”

“I’m banging along as fast as I dare. There’s Pen Gidding ahead. We’re making much better time. Look, there’s the rain still over the Highfold country. We’ll be running into it again soon. If I stick in Deep Bottom it’s only about half a mile from the house.”

“Return to horror,” said Chloris, under her breath.

“Never mind, my dear,” whispered Mandrake. “Never mind.”

“There’s one thing that strikes me as being very odd,” said Alleyn, “and that is the house-party itself. What persuaded your host to collect such a gang of warring elements under his roof? Or didn’t he know they were at war?”

“Yes,” said Mandrake, “he knew.”

“Then why—”

“He did it on purpose. He explained it to me on the night I arrived. He wanted to work out his æsthetic frustration in a flesh-and-blood medium.”

“Good Lord!” Alleyn ejaculated. “How unbelievably rum!”

There was no wind over Cloudyfold that afternoon, but the rain poured down inexorably. By half-past two the rooms at Highfold had begun to assume a stealthy dimness. The house itself, as well as the human beings inside it, seemed to listen and to wait. Highfold was dominated by two rooms. Behind the locked doors of the smoking-room, William Compline now sat as rigidly as if he had been made of iron, his hands propped between his feet and his head fixed between his knees. In the principal visitor’s room lay his mother in bed, breathing very slowly, scarcely responding, now, to Dr. Hart when he slapped the face he had marred twenty years ago, or when he advanced his own white face close to hers and called her name as if he cried for admittance at the door of her consciousness. Hersey Amblington, too, cried out to her old friend. Three times Nicholas had come. It had been difficult for Nicholas to obey Hart and call loudly upon his mother. At first his voice cracked grotesquely into a sobbing whisper. Hart kept repeating: “Loud. Loudly. To rouse her, you understand. She must be roused.” And Hersey: “If she hears it’s you, Nick, she may try. You must, Nick, you must.” Mrs. Pouting in her sitting-room, and Thomas in the hall, and Caper in the pantry, and Madame Lisse in the green “boudoir,” and Jonathan Royal on the stairs had all heard Nicholas shout as though across a nightmare of silence: “
Mother! It’s Nicholas
! Mother!” They had all waited, listening intently, until his voice cracked into silence and they became aware once more of the hard beat of rain on the house. Jonathan, from his place on the stairs, had heard Nicholas leave his mother’s room and cross the landing. He had seen him stop at the stairhead, raise his clasped hands to his lips, and then, as if some invisible cord had been released, jerk forwards until his head rested on his arms across the balustrade. Jonathan started forward, but at the sound of harsh sobbing paused and finally stole downstairs, unseen by Nicholas. He crossed the hall, and after some hesitation, entered the green “boudoir.”

Between Hersey Amblington and Dr. Hart there had arisen a curious feeling of comradeship. Hersey had proved herself to be an efficient nurse, obeying Hart’s instructions without a question or fuss. There were certain unpleasant things that could be attempted and between them they had made the attempts. Hart had not pretended to any experience of veronal poisoning. “But the treatment must be on general common-sense lines,” he said. “There, we cannot go wrong. Unfortunately there has not been the response. We have not eliminated the poison. If only they would return from the chemist!”

“What’s the time now?”

“Nearly two o’clock. They should have returned.”

He bent over the bed. Hersey watched him and in a minute or two she said: “Am I mistaken, Dr. Hart, or is there a change?”

“You are not mistaken. The pupils are now contracted, the pulse is 120. Do you notice the colour of the finger-nails, a dusky red?”

“And her breathing.”

“It is gravely impeded. We shall take the temperature again. God be thanked that at least this old Pouting had a thermometer.”

Hersey fetched the thermometer and returned to the window where she waited, looking through rain across the terrace and down to the bathing-pool. Cypress trees had been planted at intervals along the terrace, and one of these hid the far end of the pool and the entrance to the pavilion. “She could not have seen Mandrake go overboard,” thought Hersey, “but she could have seen him leave the house and go down.” And she looked at the wardrobe where yesterday she had found a wet coat.

“The temperature is 102.8°,” said Hart. “It has risen two points. Well, we must try the emetic again, but I am afraid she is now quite unable to swallow.”

Hersey rejoined him, and again they worked together to no avail. After a time she suggested that he should leave her in charge. “You’ve eaten nothing and you haven’t sat down since they brought you here hours ago. I can tell you if there’s any change.” Hart glanced up with those prominent eyes of his and said: “And where should I go, Lady Hersey? To my room? Should I not be locked up again? Ever since I came to the patient, I believe there has been someone on guard in the passage or on the stairs. Is that not so? No, let me remain here until the car returns. If they have brought a medical man I shall go back to my cell.”

“I don’t believe you killed William Compline,” Hersey said abruptly.

“No? You are a sensible woman. I did not kill him… There is no doubt, I am afraid, that the condition is less satisfactory. She is more comatose. The reflexes are completely abolished. Why do you look at me in that fashion, Lady Hersey?”

“You seem to have no thought for your own position.”

“You mean that I am not afraid,” said Dr. Hart, who was again stooping over his patient. “You are right, Lady Hersey, I am an Austrian refugee and a Jew, who has become a naturalized Briton. I have developed what I believe you would call a good nose for justice. Austrian justice, Nazi justice, and English justice. I have learned when to be terrified and when not to be terrified. I am a kind of thermometer for terror. At this moment I am quite normal. I do not believe I shall be found guilty of a murder I did not commit.”

“Do you believe,” asked Hersey Amblington, after a long pause, “that the murderer will be arrested?”

“I do believe so.” He straightened his back, but he still watched his patient.

“Dr. Hart,” Hersey said harshly, “do you think you know who killed William Compline?”

“Oh, yes,” said Hart, and for the first time he looked directly at her. “Yes. I believe I know. Do you wish me to say the name?”

“No,” she said. “Let us not discuss it.”

“I agree,” said Dr. Hart.

Down in the green sitting-room, Jonathan Royal listened to Madame Lisse. An onlooker with a taste for irony might have found something to divert him in the scene, particularly if he liked his irony laced with a touch of the macabre. A nice sense of the fitness of things had prompted Madame to dress herself in black, a dead crapy black that gloved her figure with adroitness. She looked and smelt most expensive. She had sent a message to her host by Mrs. Pouting, asking for an interview. Jonathan, fresh from seeing Nicholas Compline’s breakdown on the upstairs landing, eyed his beautiful guest with a certain air of wariness.

“It is so kind of you to see me,” said Madame Lisse. “Ever since this terrible affair I have felt that of all our party you would remain the sanest, the best able to control events, the one to whom I must instinctively turn.”

Jonathan touched his glasses and said that it was very nice of her. She continued in this strain for some time. Her manner conveyed, as an Englishwoman’s manner seldom conveys, a sort of woman-to-man awareness that was touched with camaraderie. With every look she gave him, — and her glances were circumspect, — she flattered Jonathan, and, although he still made uncomfortable little noises in his throat and fidgeted with his glasses, he began to look sleek; into his own manner there crept an air of calculation that would have astonished his cousin Hersey or Chloris Wynne. He and Madame Lisse were very polite to each other, but there was a hint of insolence in their civility. Madame began to explain her reasons for keeping her marriage to Hart a secret. It had been her idea, she said. She had not wished to give up her own business, which was a flourishing one, but on the other hand Dr. Hart, before they met, had, under his own name, published a book in which he exposed what he had called the “beauty-parlour racket.”

“The book has had considerable publicity and is widely associated with his name,” she said. “It would have been impossible for me as his wife to continue my business. Both of us would have appeared ridiculous. So we were married very quietly, in London, and continued in our separate ménages.”

“An ambiguous position,” Jonathan said with a little smile.

“Until recently it has worked quite well.”

“Until Nicholas Compline was transferred to Great Chipping, perhaps?”

“Until then,” she agreed, and for a time both of them were silent while Jonathan looked at her steadily through those blank glasses of his. “Ah, well,” said Madame Lisse, “there it is. I was quite powerless. Francis became insanely jealous. I should never have allowed this visit, but he guessed that Nicholas had been asked and he accepted. I had hoped that Nicholas would be sensible and that Francis would become reassured. But as it was, both of them behaved like lunatics. And now the brother and the disfigured mother too, perhaps — it is too horrible. I shall blame myself to the end of my life. I shall never recover from the horror,” said Madame Lisse, delicately clasping her hands, “never.”

“Why did you wish to speak to me?”

“To explain my own position. When I heard last night of this tragedy, I was shattered. All night I stayed awake thinking — thinking. Not of myself, you understand, but of that poor gauche William, killed, as it seems, on my account. That is what people will say. They will say that Francis mistook him for Nicholas and killed him because of me. It will not be true, Mr. Royal.”

At this remarkable assemblage of contradictory data, Jonathan gaped a little, but Madame Lisse leant towards him and gazed into his spectacles, and he was silent.

“It will not be true,” she repeated.

“But — who do you suggest—”

“Do not misunderstand me. There can be no doubt who struck the blow. But the motive — the motive! You heard that unfortunate young man cry out that all the world should learn it was Francis who ruined his mother’s beauty. Why did she try to kill herself? Because she knew that it was on her account that Francis Hart had killed her son.”

Jonathan primmed his lips. Madame Lisse leant towards him. “You are a man of the world,” said this amazing lady, “you understand women. I felt it the first time we met. There was a
frisson
—how shall I describe it? We were
en rapport
. One is never mistaken in these things. There is an instinct.” She continued in this vein for some time. Presently she was holding one of Jonathan’s hands in both her own, and imperceptibly this state of affairs changed into Jonathan holding both hers in one of his. Her voice went on and on. He was to understand that she was the victim of men’s passions. She could not help it. She could not stop Nicholas falling in love with her. Her husband had treated her exceedingly ill. But the murder had nothing to do with her or with Nicholas. There were terrible days ahead, she would never recover. But — and here she raised Jonathan’s hand to her cheek — he, Jonathan, would protect her. He would keep their secret. “What secret?” cried Jonathan in alarm. The secret of Nicholas’ infatuation. Her name need never be brought into the picture. “You ask the impossible!” Jonathan exclaimed. “My dear lady, even if I—” She wept a little and said it was evident he did not return the
deep, deep
regard she had for him. She swayed very close indeed and murmured something in his ear. Jonathan changed colour and spluttered: “If I could… I should be enchanted, but it is beyond my power.” He wetted his lips. “It’s no good,” he said. “Mandrake knows. They all know. It’s impossible.”

While he still stared at her they both heard the sound of a car coming slowly up the last curve of the drive.

Alleyn went alone to the smoking-room. On their arrival Mandrake had gone at once to find Jonathan and had returned to say he would be down in a minute or two. “And in the meantime,” Mandrake said, “I am deputed to show you anything you want to see. I suppose — I mean, I’ve got the keys…” Alleyn thanked him, took the keys, and let himself into the smoking-room. He drew back the curtains from the windows and a very cold light discovered the body of William Compline. The greenstone blade lay on the floor about two feet from William’s left shoe. The striking edge was stained. There was a short thong around the narrow grip. Alleyn had seen Maori
meres
in New Zealand museums and had reflected on the deadly efficiency of this beautifully shaped and balanced weapon. “The nearest thing,” he murmured as he bent over it, “to the deadly Gurkha
kukri
that is possible in stone, and that only in the extremely hard and tough New Zealand greenstone. Unless this expert is a lunatic there’ll be no prints, of course.” He looked very closely at the wireless. It was an all-wave instrument made by a famous firm. There were five bakelite control knobs under the dial. From left to right the knobs were marked Brilliance, Bass, Tuner, Wave-band and Volume. The screws that attached them were sunk in small holes. The tuner control, placed above the others, was formed by a large quick-turning knob from the centre of which a smaller knob, for more delicate tuning, projected. The main switch was on the side facing the “boudoir” door. Alleyn noted the position of the tuning indicator and reflected that if a time check was needed he could get one from the B.B.C. He turned from the wireless to a writing-desk that stood against the same wall, between two windows. Above this desk was hung an array of weapons, a Malay kris, a boomerang, a Chinese dagger, and a Javanese knife; the fruits, thought Alleyn, of some Royal tour through the East to Oceania. An empty space on the extreme left of the group suggested the position of the
mere
and an unfaded patch on the wall gave a clear trace of its shape. It had been in full view of William as he sat fiddling with the radio control. This conjured up a curious picture. Was William so absorbed in the radio that he did not notice his assailant take the weapon from its place on the wall? That was scarcely credible. Had his assailant removed the weapon some time previously? Or did William notice the removal and see no cause for alarm? In that case the assailant could surely not have been Hart since William’s antagonism to Hart was so acute that it was impossible to imagine him regarding such a move with anything but the deepest suspicion. Had Hart, then, previously removed the
mere
? But when? Before Mandrake spoke to him in the “boudoir”? Not afterwards, because William was there with Nicholas, who locked the communicating door in his face. Again he looked from the volume control to the space on the wall and wondered suddenly if Hart’s ignorance of radio could possibly be assumed. But suppose Hart removed the
mere
? He had not been present at dinner. Had he taken it while the others were dining? Alleyn turned from the wall to the desk, a small affair with two drawers, one of which was not quite closed. He opened it with his finger-nail. Inside were a number of small pads. “Charter forms, by gum,” Alleyn muttered.

He had brought with him the parcel ordered by telephone from the chemist. He opened it and transferred the contents to his own attaché-case. Among them were two pairs of tweezers. With these he took the Charter pads, one by one, from the drawer and laid them out on the desk. There were nine, and most of them were complete with their own small pencils. At the back of the drawer he found a number of India-rubbers.

“A little dreary labour,” he thought, “should no doubt be expended. Later, perhaps.” And taking great pains not to touch the pads, he transferred them, together with the pencils and India-rubbers, to an empty stationery box he found in another drawer. This he placed in his attaché-case. He then moved on from the desk toward the library door. A four-fold red leather screen stood in front of the library door. It almost touched the outside wall and extended, at an angle, some five or six feet out into the room. Alleyn went round it and faced the door itself, which was in the corner of the room. The door-knob was on his right. He unlocked it, glanced into the library, and shut it again. As he stooped to the lock he noticed a small hole in the white paint on the jamb. At first sight it resembled the usual marks left by wood-rot. The one tool of his trade that Alleyn had about him was his pocket lens. He took it out, squatted down and squinted through it at the hole. Alleyn fetched a disgruntled sigh and moved to the fireplace. Above the mantelpiece, the wall was decorated with an old-fashioned fishing-rod, complete with reel. Beneath it hung a faded photograph in an Oxford frame. It presented a Victorian gentleman wearing an ineffable air of hauteur and a costume which suggested that he had begun to dress up as Mr. Sherlock Holmes but, suddenly losing interest, had gone out fishing instead. With sorry success, it seemed, as from his right hand depended a large languid trout, while with his left hand he supported a rod. Across this gentleman’s shins, in faded spidery letters, was written the legend: “Hubert St. John Worthington Royal, 1900. 4½ lbs. Penfelton Reach.” This brief but confusing information was supplemented by a label which hung from the old rod. “With this rod,” said the label dimly, “and this fly, an Alexandra, I caught a four-and-a-half-pounder above Trott’s Bridge in Penfelton Reach. It now enters an honourable retirement. H. St. J. W. Royal, 1900.”

“Well done, H. St. J. W. R.,” said Alleyn. “Would you be Jonathan’s papa, now, or his grandpapa? Not that it matters. I want to have a look at your reel.”

It appeared that somebody else had been interested in the reel. For whereas the rod and the reel itself had escaped the attention of Jonathan’s housemaids, the mass of rolled line was comparatively free from dust; and although, on the one side, this roll of line was discoloured and faded, the centre and the other side were clean and new-looking. Alleyn saw that the loose end of line that hung down had a clean cross-section. He caught this end in his tweezers, pulled out a good stretch of line, cut it off with Troy’s nail-scissors, which he had pocketed before leaving, and put it away in another envelope. Mandrake was an observant fellow, he thought, but evidently he had missed the trout line.

Alleyn now examined the fireplace and, looking at the dead ash in the grate, sighed for his case bag and his usual band of assistants. It had been a wood fire and, in burning out, had missed the two side logs which had fallen apart, showing their charred inner surfaces. Between these were a heap of ash and small pieces of charcoal. Alleyn squatted down and peered through his pocket lens at this heap without disturbing it. Lying across the surface, broken at intervals but suggesting, rather than forming, a thread-like pattern, trailed a fine worm of ash. It was the ghost of some alien substance that had been thrown on the fire not long before it died out. Alleyn decided to leave the ash for the moment and continued his prowl round the room. The door into the library was a massive affair, felted, and lined, on the library side, with shelves and dummy books, bearing titles devised by some sportive Royal.

“I fancy the radio’d have to blast its head off before you’d hear much of it in the library,” thought Alleyn. “Damn, I’d like to try. Better not, though, till I’ve printed the knobs and trimmings.”

He hunted over the floor, using his torch and pressing his fingers into the pile of the carpet. He found nothing that seemed to him to be of interest. He completed his examination of the room and returned at last to the body of William Compline.

Alleyn’s camera was a very expensive instrument. He had brought it with him to make records of his wife’s work during its successive stages. He now used it to photograph William Compline’s body, the area of floor surrounding his feet, his skull, the
mere
, the wireless cabinet, the ash in the fireplace, and the library door-jamb. “In case,” he muttered, “Thompson and Co. don’t get through tonight.” Detective-Sergeant Thompson was his photographic expert.

Having taken his pictures he stood for a time, looking down at William. “I don’t imagine
you
knew anything about it.” And he thought, “Life’s going to be pretty cheap when summer comes, but you’ve caught a
Blitzkrieg
of your own and so for you it’s different. You’ve conjured up the Yard, you poor chap. You’ve cranked up the majesty of the law and by the time
your
killer reaches the dock, Lord knows how many of your friends will be there to give evidence. There ought to be a moral lurking somewhere round this but I’m damned if I know what it is.” He replaced the sheet, looked round the room once more, locked the two inner doors, gathered up his possessions and went into the hall. As he was locking the door he heard a sort of male twittering, and turning round saw on the stairs a small rotund gentlemen dressed in plus fours and wearing thick-lensed glasses.

“I’m so awfully sorry to keep you waiting,” said this person. “Mandrake looked after you?”

“Very well indeed, thank you.”

“Yes. He told me you were here,” said Jonathan. “I begged him to — to give you the keys of that terrible room. I–I find myself very much upset. I’m quite ashamed of myself.”

“A very natural reaction, sir,” said Alleyn politely. “May we have a word or two somewhere?”

“Eh? Yes. Yes, of course. Er — in the drawing-room, shall we? This way.”

“I fancy Mandrake and Miss Wynne are in the drawing-room. Perhaps the library?”

Jonathan nervously agreed to the library and Alleyn had a notion that he would have preferred somewhere farther away from the smoking-room. He saw Jonathan look quickly at the communicating door and then turn away abruptly to the fire.

“Before anything else,” Alleyn said, “I must ask how Mrs. Compline is. Mandrake will have told you that the local police are trying to find a doctor. In the meantime I hope—”

“She’s very ill indeed,” said Jonathan. “That’s why you find me so greatly upset. She — they think she’s going to die.”

Jonathan was not easy to deal with. He was both restless and lugubrious and it was with difficulty that Alleyn contrived to nail him down to hard facts. For five minutes he listened to a recital in which such matters as Jonathan’s affection for the Complines, his bewilderment, the sacred laws of hospitality and the infamy of Dr. Hart were strangely mingled. At last, however, Alleyn managed to pin him down to giving direct answers to questions based on Mandrake’s notes. Jonathan gave a fairly coherent account of his own talks with Nicholas, and laid great stress on the point of Hart’s practically admitting that he had written threatening letters. “And in
my
house Alleyn, in
my
house he had the effrontery to make use of a round game—” Alleyn cut short this lament with a direct question.

“Who is with Mrs. Compline at the moment?”

“Hart!” Jonathan exclaimed. “There it is, you see! Hart! I know it’s a most improper, a monstrous arrangement, but what could we do?”

“Nothing else, sir, I’m sure. Is he alone?”

“No. No, my cousin, Lady Hersey Amblington, who is an experienced V.A.D., is there. I spoke to her on my way down. I did not go in. She came to the door. They — ah — they’re doing something — I understand you brought — but Hart appears to think she is almost beyond help.”

“In that case,” said Alleyn, “as soon as it’s possible, I should like to see Dr. Hart. At once, if he can leave his patient.”

“I don’t think he can do so just yet. There’s one other thing, Mr. Alleyn.” Jonathan’s hand went to the inside pocket of his coat. He drew out a long envelope.

“This,” he said, “contains the letter she left behind for Nicholas. He has read it, but nobody else has done so. I persuaded him to place it in this envelope in the presence of my cousin, Hersey Amblington, and myself. We have signed a statement to that effect on the outside. I now,” said Jonathan with a small bow to Alleyn, “hand it to you.”

“That’s very correct, sir,” said Alleyn.

“Oh well, I’m a J.P. you know, and if, as we fear, poor Sandra does not recover…”

“Yes, of course. I think I should see Mr. Compline before I open the letter. It’s more important at the moment that I should talk to Dr. Hart. Perhaps we had better go upstairs. Dr. Hart may be able to come out for a moment. Will you take me up, please?”

“But — is it absolutely necessary…”

“I’m afraid Mrs. Compline’s condition makes it imperative, sir. Shall we go?”

Jonathan pulled at his lower lip, eyed Alleyn over the top of his glasses, and finally made a little dart at him. “In your hands,” he chattered, “unreservedly. Come on.”

He led the way upstairs. They turned off to the left and came up to the visitors’ wing. Alleyn paused at the stairhead. A little to his right and facing the stairs, he saw an empty niche in the wall and, remembering the plan Mandrake had sketched in the margin of his notes, he recognized this as the erstwhile perch of the brass Buddha. The men’s rooms, then, would be down the passage. Madame Lisse’s, he remembered, was opposite the stairhead, and Mrs. Compline’s next door to the left. Indeed Jonathan now pointed to the door of this room and, with a wealth of finicking gestures, indicated that Alleyn should wait where he stood. “Just a moment, Alleyn,” he mouthed. “Better just — if you don’t mind — one doesn’t know…”

He tiptoed to the door and, staring apprehensively at Alleyn, tapped very gently, paused, shook his head and tapped again. In a moment or two the door opened. Alleyn saw a tallish woman, with a well-groomed head and a careful make-up on a face that wore an expression of extreme distress. Jonathan whispered and the lady looked quickly over his shoulder at Alleyn. “Not now, Jo,” she said. “Surely, not now.” Jonathan whispered again and she said with a show of irritation: “There’s no need to do that.
She
can’t hear, poor dear.”

Alleyn moved towards them. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I must see Dr. Hart as soon as possible.”