Ngaio Marsh
A Man Lay Dead

For My father and in memory of My Mother

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1 ‘And There Were Present...’

Chapter 2 The Dagger

Chapter 3 ‘You Are the Corpse’

Chapter 4 Monday

Chapter 5 Mock Trial

Chapter 6 Alleyn Does His Stuff

Chapter 7 Rankin Leaves Frantock

Chapter 8 Following Information from a Baby

Chapter 9 Garden Piece

Chapter 10 Black Fur

Chapter 11 Confession?

Chapter 12 An Arrest and a Night Journey

Chapter 13 The Russian Element

Chapter 14 Meeting Adjourned

Chapter 15 Alleyn Comes Cleanish

Chapter 16 The Accused Was Charged

Epilogue

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1 ‘And There Were Present…’

Nigel Bathgate, in the language of his own gossip column, was ‘definitely intrigued’ about his weekend at Frantock. At twenty-five he had outgrown that horror of enthusiasm which is so characteristic of youth-grown-up. He was actually on his way to Frantock, and in ‘colossal form’ at the very thought of it. They were doing it in such grandeur, too! He leant back in his first-class corner seat and grinned at his cousin opposite. Odd sort of fellow, old Charles. One never knew much of what went on behind that long dark mask of his. Good-looking bloke, too; women adored him, reflected Nigel, mentally wagging his head—still flattered and made up to him although he was getting on in years…forty-six or -seven.

Charles Rankin returned his young cousin’s ruminative stare with one of those twisted smiles that always reminded Nigel of a faun.

‘Shan’t be long now,’ said Rankin. ‘The next station is ours. You can see the beginnings of Frantock over there to the left.’

Nigel stared across the patchwork landscape of little fields and hillocks to where a naked wood, fast, fast asleep in its wintry solitude, half hid the warmth of old brick.

‘That’s the house,’ said Rankin.

‘Who will be there?’ asked Nigel, not for the first time. He had heard much of Sir Hubert Handesley’s ‘unique and delightfully original house-parties’, from a brother journalist who had returned from one of them, if the truth be told, somewhat persistently enthusiastic. Charles Rankin, himself a connoisseur of house-parties, had refused many extremely enviable invitations in favour of these unpretentious weekends. And now, as the result of a dinner-party at old Charles’s flat, here was Nigel himself about to be initiated. So: ‘Who will be there?’ asked Nigel again.

‘The usual crowd, I suppose,’ answered Rankin patiently, ‘with the addition of one Doctor Foma Tokareff, who dates, I imagine, from Handesley’s Embassy days in Petrograd. There will be the Wildes, of course—they must be somewhere on the train. He’s Arthur Wilde, the archaeologist. Marjorie Wilde is…rather attractive, I think. And I suppose Angela North. You’ve met her?’

‘She’s Sir Hubert’s niece, isn’t she? Yes, she dined that night at your flat with him.’

‘So she did. If I remember, you seemed to get on rather pleasantly.’

‘Will Miss Grant be there?’ asked Nigel.

Charles Rankin stood up and struggled into his overcoat.

‘Rosamund?’ he said ‘Yes, she’ll be there.’

‘What an extraordinarily expressionless voice old Charles has got,’ reflected Nigel, as the train clanked into the little station and drew up with a long, steamy sigh.

The upland air struck chill after the stale stuffiness of the train. Rankin led the way out into a sunken country lane, where they found a group of three muffled passengers talking noisily while a chauffeur stowed luggage away into a six-seater Bentley.

‘Hullo, Rankin,’ said a thin, bespectacled man; ‘thought you must be on the train.’

‘I looked out for you at Paddington, Arthur,’ rejoined Rankin. ‘Have you met my cousin, all of you? Nigel Bathgate…Mrs Wilde…Mr Wilde. Rosamund, you have met, haven’t you?’

Nigel had made his bow to Rosamund Grant, a tall dark woman whose strange, uncompromising beauty it would be difficult to forget. Of the Hon. Mrs Wilde he could see nothing but a pair of very large blue eyes and the tip of an abbreviated nose. The eyes gave him a brief appraising glance, and a rather high-pitched ‘fashionable’ voice emerged from behind the enormous fur collar:

‘How do you do? Are you a relation of Charles? Too shattering for you. Charles, you will have to walk. I hate being steam-laundered even for five minutes.’

‘You can sit on my knee,’ said Rankin easily.

Nigel, glancing at him, noticed the peculiar bright boldness of his eyes. He was staring, not at Mrs Wilde, but at Rosamund Grant. It was as though he had said to her: ‘I’m enjoying myself: I dare you to disapprove.’

She spoke for the first time, her deep voice in marked contrast to Mrs Wilde’s italicized treble:

‘Here comes Angela in the fire-eater,’ she said, ‘so there will be tons of room for everybody.’

‘What a disappointment!’ said Rankin. ‘Marjorie, we are defeated.’

‘Nothing,’ said Arthur Wilde firmly, ‘will persuade me to drive back in that thing with Angela.’

‘Nor I neither,’ agreed Rankin. ‘Famous archaeologists and distinguished raconteurs should not flirt with death. Let us stay where we are.’

‘Shall I wait for Miss North?’ offered Nigel.

‘If you would, sir,’ said the chauffeur.

‘Do get in, Marjorie darling,’ murmured Arthur Wilde, who was sitting in the front seat. ‘I’m longing for my tea and bun.’

His wife and Rosamund Grant climbed into the back of the car, and Rankin sat between them. The two-seater sports car drew up alongside.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ shouted Miss Angela North. ‘Who’s for fresh air and the open road and the wind on the heath and what-not?’

‘They all sound loathsome to us,’ screamed Mrs Wilde from the Bentley. ‘We are leaving you Charles’s cousin.’ She opened her eyes very pointedly at Nigel. ‘He’s a fine, clean-limbed young Britisher. Just your style, Angela.’ The Bentley shot away down the lane.

Feeling incapable of the correct sort of facetiousness, Nigel turned to Angela North and uttered some inadequate commonplace about their having met before.

‘Of course we did,’ she said. ‘I thought you very nice. Get in rather quickly, and let’s catch them up.’

He climbed in beside her, and almost immediately had his breath snatched away by Miss North’s extremely progressive ideas on acceleration.

‘This is your first visit to Frantock,’ she observed, as they skidded dexterously round a muddy bend in the lane. ‘I hope you like it. We all think Uncle Hubert’s parties great fun…I don’t know why, quite. Nothing much happens at them. Everybody comes all over childish as a rule, and silly games are played amidst loud cheers and much laughter from those present. It’s going to be Murders this time. There they are!’

She caused the horn to give birth to a continuous belching roar, mended their speed by about fifteen or twenty miles an hour, and passed the Bentley as it were in a dream.

‘Have you ever played Murders?’ she asked.

‘No, nor yet suicides, but I’m learning,’ said Nigel politely.

Angela laughed uproariously. (‘She laughs like a small boy,’ thought Nigel.) ‘Feeling flustered?’ she shouted. ‘I’m a careful driver, really.’ She turned almost completely round in her seat to wave to the receding Bentley.

‘Soon be over now,’ she added.

‘I expect so,’ breathed Nigel.

The wrought-iron posterns of a gate flashed past them, and they dived into the rushing greyness of a wood.

‘This wood’s rather pleasant in the summer,’ remarked Miss North.

‘It looks lovely now,’ Nigel murmured, closing his eyes as they made for a narrow bridge.

A few moments later they swung into a wide curve of gravelled drive and stopped with dramatic brevity in front of a delightful old brick house.

Nigel extracted himself thankfully from the car and followed his hostess indoors.

He found himself in a really beautiful hall, dim with the smoky greyness of old oak and cheerful with the dancing comfort of a huge open fire. From the ceiling an enormous chandelier caught up the light of the flames and flickered and glowed with a strange intensity. Half drowned in the twilight that was already filling the old house, a broad staircase rose indefinitely at the far end of the hall. Nigel saw that the walls were hung conventionally with trophies and weapons…the insignia of the orthodox country house. He remembered Charles had told him that Sir Hubert possessed one of the finest collections of archaic weapons in England.

‘If you don’t mind giving yourself a drink and getting warm by the fire, I’ll rouse up Uncle Hubert,’ said Angela. ‘Your luggage is in the other car, of course. They’ll be here in a moment.’

She looked squarely at him and smiled.

‘I hope I haven’t completely unmanned you…by my driving, I mean.’

‘You have…but not by your driving,’ Nigel was astonished to hear himself reply.

‘Was that gallantry? It sounded like Charles.’

Somehow he gathered that to sound like Charles was a mistake.

‘I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ said Angela. ‘There are the drinks.’ She waved towards an array of glasses and disappeared into the shadows.

Nigel mixed a whisky-and-soda and wandered to the stairs. Here he saw hanging a long strip of leather, slotted to hold a venomous company of twisted blades and tortuously wrought hafts. Nigel had stretched out his hand towards a wriggling Malay kriss, when a sudden flood of light blazed across the steel and caused him to turn abruptly. A door on his right and opened. Silhouetted against the brilliance of the room beyond was a motionless figure.

‘Excuse me,’ said an extremely deep voice, ‘we have not met, I believe. Allow me to make an introduction of myself. Doctor Foma Tokareff. You are interested in Oriental weapons?’

Nigel had given a very noticeable start at this unexpected interruption. He recovered himself and stepped forward to meet the smiling Russian, who advanced with his hand outstretched. The young journalist closed his fist on a bunch of thin fingers that lay inert for a second and then suddenly tightened in a wiry grip. Inexplicably he felt gauche and out of place.

‘I beg your pardon…how do you do? No…well, yes, interested, but I’m afraid very ill-informed,’ stammered Nigel.

‘Ah!’ ejaculated Doctor Tokareff deeply. ‘You will by compulsion learn somesing of the weapons (he pronounced it ‘ooe-ponz’) of the ancients if you stay here. Sir Hubert is a great authority and an enthusiastic collector.’

He spoke with extreme formality, and his phrases with their curiously stressed inflexions sounded pedantic and unreal. Nigel murmured something about being very ignorant, he was afraid, and was relieved to hear the hoot of the Bentley.

Angela came running back out of the shadows; simultaneously a butler appeared, and in a moment the hall was clamorous with the arrival of the rest of the party. A cheerful voice sounded from the head of the stairs, and Sir Hubert Handesley came down to welcome his guests.

Perhaps the secret of the success of the Frantock parties lay entirely in the charm of the host. Handesley was a singularly attractive man. Rosamund Grant once said that it wasn’t fair for one individual to have so many good things. He was tall, and although over fifty years of age had retained an athlete’s figure. His hair, dead white, had not suffered the indignity of middle age, but lay, thick and sleek, on his finely shaped head. His eyes were a peculiarly vivid blue, and deep-set under heavily marked brows, his lips firm and strongly compressed at the corners: altogether an almost too handsome man. His brain was of the same stereotyped quality as his looks. An able diplomat before the war, and after it a Cabinet Minister of rather orthodox brilliance, he still found time to write valuable monographs on the subject of his ruling passion—the fighting tools of the older civilizations—and to indulge his favourite hobby—he had almost made it a science—of organizing amusing house-parties.

It was characteristic of him that after a general greeting he should concentrate on Nigel, the least of his guests.

‘I’m so glad you’ve been able to come, Bathgate,’ he said. ‘Angela tells me she fetched you from the station. Ghastly experience, isn’t it? Charles should have warned you.’

‘My dear, he was too intrepid,’ shouted Mrs Wilde. ‘Angela took and threw him into her squalid little tumbril, and he flashed past us with set green lips and eyes that had gazed upon stark death. Charles is so proud of his relative…aren’t you, Charles?’

‘He’s a pukka sahib,’ agreed Rankin solemnly.

‘Are we really going to play the Murder Game?’ asked Rosamund Grant. ‘Angela ought to win it.’

‘We are going to play A Murder Game…a special brand of your own, isn’t it, Uncle Hubert?’

‘I’ll explain my plans,’ said Handesley, ‘when everyone has got a cocktail. People always imagine one is so much more amusing after one has given them something to drink. Will you ring for Vassily, Angela?’

‘A gam’ of murderings?’ said Doctor Tokareff, who had been examining one of the knives. The firelight gleamed on his large spectacles, and he looked, as Mrs Wilde murmured to Rankin, ‘too grimly sinister.’…‘A gam’ of murderings? That should be sush a good fun. I am ignorant of this gam’.’

‘In its cruder form it is very popular at the moment,’ said Wilde, ‘but I feel sure Handesley has invented subtleties that will completely transform it.’

A door on the left of the stairs opened, and through it came an elderly Slav carrying a cocktail shaker. He was greeted enthusiastically.

‘Vassily Vassilyevitch,’ began Mrs Wilde in Anglo-Russian of comic-opera vintage. ‘Little father! Be good enough to bestow upon this unworthy hand a mouthful of your talented concoction.’

Vassily nodded his head and smiled genially. He opened the cocktail shaker, and with an air of superb and exaggerated concentration poured out a clear yellowish mixture.

‘What do you think of it, Nigel?’ asked Rankin. ‘It’s Vassily’s own recipe. Marjorie calls it the Soviet Repression.’

‘Not much repression about it,’ murmured Arthur Wilde.

Nigel, sipping gingerly at his portion, was inclined to agree.

He watched the old Russian fussing delightedly among the guests. Angela told him that Vassily had been in her uncle’s service ever since he was a young attaché at Petersburg, Nigel’s eyes followed him as he moved amongst that little group of human molecules with whom, had he but known it, he himself was to become so closely and so horribly associated.

He saw his cousin, Charles Rankin, of whom, he reflected, he knew actually so little. He sensed some sort of emotional link between Charles and Rosamund Grant. She was watching Rankin now as he leant, with something of the conventional philanderer in his pose, towards Marjorie Wilde. ‘Mrs Wilde is more his affair, really, than Rosamund,’ thought Nigel. ‘Rosamund is too intense. Charles likes to be comfortable.’ He looked at Arthur Wilde, who was talking earnestly with their host. Wilde had none of Handesley’s spectacular looks, but his thin face was interesting and, to Nigel, attractive. There was quality in the form of the skull and jaw, and a sensitive elusiveness about the set of the lips.

He wondered how two such widely diverging types as this middle-aged student and his fashionable wife could ever have attracted each other. Beyond them, half in the shadow, stood the Russian doctor, his head inclined forward, his body erect and immobile.

‘What does he make of us?’ wondered Nigel.

‘You look very grim,’ said Angela at his elbow. ‘Are you concocting a snappy bit for your gossip page, or thinking out a system for the Murder Game?’

Before he could answer her, Sir Hubert broke in on the general conversations: ‘The dressing-bell goes in five minutes,’ he said, ‘so if you are all feeling strong enough, I’ll explain the principles of my edition of the Murder Game.’

‘Company…‘shun!’ shouted Rankin.

CHAPTER 2 The Dagger

‘The idea is this,’ began Sir Hubert, as Vassily delicately circulated his mixture: ‘you all know the usual version of the Murder Game. One person is chosen as the murderer, his identity being concealed from all the players. They scatter, and he seizes his moment to ring a bell or bang a gong. This symbolizes the “murder”. They collect and hold a trial, one person being appointed as prosecuting attorney. By intensive examination he tries to discover the “murderer”.’

‘Excuse me, please,’ said Doctor Tokareff. ‘I am still, how you say, unintelligible. I have not been so happy to gambol in susha funny sport heretobefore, so please make him for me more clearer.’

‘Isn’t he sweet?’ asked Mrs Wilde, a good deal too loudly.

‘I will explain my version,’ said Sir Hubert, ‘and I think it will then be quite clear. Tonight at dinner one of us will be handed a little scarlet plaque by Vassily. I myself do not know upon which of the party his choice will fall, but let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that Mr Bathgate is cast by Vassily for the part of the murderer. He will take his scarlet plaque and say nothing to anybody. He has between five-thirty tomorrow afternoon and eleven tomorrow night as the time allotted for the performance of his “murder”. He must try to get one of us alone, unknown to the others, and at the crucial moment tap him on the shoulder and say, “You are the corpse”. He will then switch off the lights at the main behind the stair wall. The victim must instantly fall down as though dead, and Mr Bathgate must give one good smack at that Assyrian gong there behind the cocktail tray and make off to whatever spot he considers least incriminating. As soon as the lights go off and we hear the gong, we must all remain where we are for two minutes…you can count your pulse-beats for a guide. At the end of two minutes we may turn up the lights. Having found the “corpse”, we shall hold the trial, with the right, each of us, to cross-examine every witness. If Mr Bathgate has been clever enough, he will escape detection. I hope I have made everything reasonably understandable.’

‘Pellucidly explicit,’ said Doctor Tokareff. ‘I shall enjoy immensely to take place in such intellectual diversion.’

‘He isn’t a bit pompous really,’ whispered Angela in Nigel’s ear, ‘but he memorizes four pages of Webster’s Dictionary every morning after a light breakfast. Do you hope Vassily chooses you for “murderer”?’ she added aloud.

‘Lord, no!’ laughed Nigel. ‘For one thing, I don’t know the lie of the land. Couldn’t you show me round the house in case I have to?’

‘I will…tomorrow.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’

Rosamund Grant had wandered across to the foot of the stairs. She drew a long, subtly-curving dagger from the strip of leather and laid it flat upon her palm.

‘The murderer has plenty of weapons to hand,’ she said lightly.

‘Put that beastly thing away, Rosamund,’ said Marjorie Wilde, with a note of very real terror in her voice; ‘they give me the horrors…all knives do. I can’t even endure watching people carve…ugh!’

Rankin laughed possessively.

‘I’m going to terrify you, Marjorie,’ he said. ‘I’m actually carrying a dagger in my overcoat pocket at this very moment.’

‘Are you, Charles? But why?’

It was the first time Nigel had heard Rosamund Grant speak to his cousin that evening. She stood there on the bottom step of the stairs looking like some modern priestess of an ancient cult.

‘It was sent me yesterday,’ said Rankin, ‘by a countryman of yours, Doctor Tokareff, whom I met in Switzerland last year. I did him rather a service—lugged him out of a crevasse where he had lingered long enough to sacrifice two of his fingers to frostbite—and he sent me this, as a thank-offering, I suppose. I brought it down to show you, Hubert…I thought Arthur might like to have a look at it, too. Our famous archaeologist, you know. Let me get it. I left my overcoat in the porch out there.’

‘Vassily, get Mr Rankin’s coat,’ said Sir Hubert.

‘I hope you don’t expect me to look at it,’ said Mrs Wilde. ‘I’m going to dress.’

She did not move, however, but only put her hand through her husband’s arm. He regarded her with a kind of gentle whimsicality which Nigel thought very charming.

‘It’s true, isn’t it, Arthur?’ she said. ‘I haven’t read one of your books because you will butter your pages with native horrors.’

‘Marjorie’s reaction to knives or pointed tools of any sort is not an uncommon one,’ said Wilde. ‘It probably conceals a rather interesting repression.’

‘Do you mean that privately she’s a blood-thirster?’ asked Angela, and everyone laughed.

‘Well, we shall see,’ said Rankin, taking his coat from Vassily and producing a long, carved silver case from one of the pockets.

Nigel, who was standing beside his cousin, heard a curiously thin, sibilant noise close behind him. He turned his head involuntarily. At his elbow stood the old servant transfixed, his eyes riveted on the sheath in Rankin’s hands. Instinctively Nigel glanced at Doctor Tokareff. He too, from the farther side of the cocktail tray, was looking, quite impassively, at the new dagger.

‘By Jove!’ murmured Sir Hubert quietly.

Rankin, gripping the silver sheath, slowly drew out an excessively thin, tapering blade. He held the dagger aloft. The blade, like a stalactite, gleamed blue in the firelight.

‘It is extremely sharp,’ said Rankin.

‘Arthur…don’t touch it!’ cried Marjorie Wilde.

But Arthur Wilde had already taken the dagger, and was examining it under a wall-bracket lamp.

‘This is quite interesting,’ he murmured. ‘Handesley, come and look.’

Sir Hubert joined him, and together they bent their heads over Rankin’s treasure.

‘Well?’ asked Rankin carelessly.

‘Well,’ returned Wilde, ‘your service to your friend, whoever he may have been, should have been of considerable value to have merited such a reward, my dear Charles. The dagger is a collector’s piece. It is of extreme antiquity. Handesley and Doctor Tokareff will correct me if I am mistaken.’

Sir Hubert was staring as if, by the very intensity of his gaze, he could see back through the long perspective of its history into the mind of the craftsman who had fashioned it.

‘You are right, Wilde. Of the very greatest antiquity. Obviously Mongolian. Ah, you beauty!’ he whispered.

He straightened his back, and Nigel thought that he made a supreme effort to wipe away from his face and his voice all the covetousness of the ardent collector.

‘Charles,’ he said lightly, ‘you have aroused my worst passion. How dare you!’

‘What does Doctor Tokareff say?’ asked Rosamund suddenly.

‘I should deferentiate,’ said the Russian, ‘to zis august learning of Sir H. Handesley…and additionally to Mr Ooilde. Nevertheless, I make a suggestion that to possess zis knife is not altogezzer enviable.’

Vassily stood motionless behind Nigel. Somehow the latter was aware of his vehement concentration. Could he understand the pedantic English of his countryman?

‘What do you mean?’ asked Mrs Wilde sharply.

Doctor Tokareff seemed to deliberate.

‘Certainly you have read,’ he began at last, ‘of Russian secret brotherhoods. In my country, for many ages so unhappy, there have always been sush brotherhoods. Offten very strange, with erotic performances and mutilations…not so pretty, you know. In reign of Pyotr the Great, very many indeed. English shilling shockers frequently make sush silly nonsense mention. Also journalists. Excuse me, please,’ to Nigel.

‘Not a bit,’ murmured Nigel.

‘Zis knife,’ continued Doctor Tokareff, ‘is sacred…how you say?…symbol of one society…very ancient. To make presentation…’ his voice rasped suddenly, ‘was not orthodox. Therefore to personage, however noble, outside of bratsvo or brotherhood, to have zis knife is unenviable.’

Vassily surprisingly uttered a short rumbling phrase in Russian.

‘This peasant agrees wis me,’ said Doctor Tokareff.

‘You may go, Vassily,’ said Sir Hubert.

‘Dressing-gong should have gone a long time ago,’ said Vassily, and hurried away.

‘Help!’ exclaimed Angela, ‘it’s eight o’clock! Dinner in half an hour! Hurry, everybody.’

‘Are we all in our usual rooms?’ asked Mrs Wilde.

‘Yes…oh, wait a minute…Mr Bathgate doesn’t know. Do show him, Arthur. He’s in the little Welsh room and will share your bath, my angel. Don’t be late, will you, or Uncle Hubert’s cook will give notice.’

‘Which heaven forbid!’ said Rankin fervently. ‘One more…a very little one…and I’m gone.’

He poured himself out a half portion of Vassily’s cocktail, and without consulting her filled Mrs Wilde’s glass again.

‘Charles, you’ll make me drunk,’ she announced. Why does a certain type of young woman think this remark unfailingly funny? ‘Don’t wait for me, Arthur. I shall have Angela’s bathroom when she’s out of it.’

Angela and Sir Hubert had already gone. Doctor Tokareff was halfway upstairs. Arthur Wilde turned his spectacles on Nigel.

‘Are you coming?’

‘Yes, rather.’

Nigel followed him up the shallow staircase to a dimly lit landing.

‘This is our room,’ explained Wilde, pointing to the first door on the left. ‘The next little room I use as a dressing-room.’ He opened a door farther along. ‘Here you are…the bathroom is between us.’

Nigel found himself in a charming little oak room furnished austerely with one or two heavy old Welsh pieces. In the left wall was a door.

‘This leads into our joint bathroom,’ said Wilde, opening it. ‘My dressing-room communicates too, you see. You go first with the bath.’

‘What a jolly house it is!’

‘Yes, it is extraordinarily right in every way. One grows very attached to Frantock. I expect you will find that.’

‘Oh,’ said the diffident Nigel. ‘I don’t know…this is my first visit…I may not come again.’

Wilde smiled pleasantly.

‘I’m sure you will. Handesley never asks anybody unless he is sure he will want them again. I must go and help my wife find all the things she thinks her maid has forgotten. Sing out when you’ve finished with the bath.’

He went out through the farther door of the bathroom, and Nigel heard him humming to himself in a thin, cheerful tenor.

Finding that his very battered suitcase had already been unpacked, Nigel lost no time in bathing, shaving, and dressing. He thought of his rather grim little flatette in Ebury Street, and reflected that it would be pleasant to be able to abandon geysers and gas-rings for a cook who must not be kept waiting, and for constant hot water. In fifteen minutes he was dressed, and as he left the room could hear Wilde still splashing in the bath next door.

Nigel ran blithely downstairs, hoping that Miss Angela North had also gone down early. A door across the hall to the right of the stairs was standing open. The room beyond being brilliantly lit, he walked in and found himself alone in a big, green-panelled salon that meandered away into an L-shaped alcove, beyond which was another smaller room. This proved to be a sort of library and gun-room combined. It smelt delectably of leather bindings, gun-oil, and cigars. A bright fire was burning on the open hearth, and the gleaming barrels of Sir Hubert’s sporting armoury spoke to Nigel of all the adventures he had longed for and never been able to afford.

He was gazing enviously at a Männlicher eight when he suddenly became aware of voices in the drawing-room behind him.

It was Mrs Wilde who was speaking, and Nigel, horrified, realized that she and her companion had come in after him, had been there for some minutes, and that he had got himself into the odious position of an unwilling eavesdropper, and finally that, distasteful as this was to him, it was too late for him to announce his presence.

Hideously uncomfortable, and completely at a loss, he stood and perforce heard.

‘…so I say you’ve no right to order me down like this,’ she was saying in a rapid undertone. ‘You treat me as if I were completely at your beck and call.’

‘Well…don’t you rather enjoy it?’

Nigel felt suddenly sick. That was Charles’s voice. He heard a match scrape, and visualized his cousin’s long face and sleek head slanted forward to light his cigarette. Marjorie Wilde had begun again.

‘But you are insufferable, my good Charles…Darling, why are you such a beast to me? You might at least—’

‘Well, my dear? I might at least—what?’

‘What is the position between you and Rosamund?’

‘Rosamund is cryptic. She tells me she is too fond of me to marry me.’

‘And yet all the time…with me…you—oh, Charles, can’t you see?’

‘Yes, I see.’ Rankin’s voice was furry—half tender, half possessive.

‘I’m a fool,’ whispered Mrs Wilde.

‘Are you? Yes, you are rather a little goat. Come here.’

Her broken murmuring was suddenly checked. Silence followed, and Nigel felt positively indecent.

‘Now, Madam!’ said Rankin softly.

‘Do you love me?’

‘No. Not quite, my dear. But you’re very attractive. Won’t that do?’

‘Do you love Rosamund?’

‘Oh, good lord, Marjorie!’

‘I hate you!’ she said quickly. ‘I could—I could…’

‘Be quiet, Marjorie—you’re making a scene. No, don’t struggle. I’m going to kiss you again.’

Nigel heard a sharp, vicious little sound, rapid footsteps hurrying away, and a second later a door slammed.

‘Damn!’ exclaimed Charles thoughtfully. Nigel pictured him nursing his cheek. Then he, too, evidently went out by the far door. As this door opened Nigel heard voices in the hall beyond.

The booming of the gong filled the house with clamour. He went out of the gun-room into the drawing-room.

At that instant the drawing-room lights went out.

A moment later he heard the far door open and quietly close again.

Standing stock still in the abrupt darkness of this strange place, his mind worked quickly and coherently. Marjorie Wilde and Rankin had both gone into the hall, he knew. Obviously, no one else had entered the drawing-room while they had been there. The only explanation was that someone else had been in the drawing-room hidden in the L-shaped alcove when he walked through to the gun-room, someone who, like himself, had overheard the scene between those two. His eyes soon adapted themselves to the comparative darkness. He made his way gingerly to the door, opened it, and walked out into the hall. Nobody noticed him. The entire house-party was collected round Rankin, who seemed to be concluding one of his ‘pre-prandial’ stories. Under cover of a roar of laughter, Nigel joined the group.

‘Hullo, here he is!’ exclaimed Sir Hubert. ‘Everybody down? Then let’s go in.’

CHAPTER 3 ‘You Are the Corpse’

Nobody got up very early at Frantock on Sunday mornings. Nigel, wandering down to breakfast at half-past nine, found himself alone with the sausages.

He had scarcely turned his attention to the Sunday Times when he was told that a long-distance call had come through for him from London. He found Jamison, his taciturn chief, at the other end of the wire. ‘Hullo, Bathgate. Sorry to tear you away from your champagne. How are the seats of the mighty?’

‘Very much like other people’s seats, only not so kick-worthy.’

‘Coarse is never comic, my boy. Look here, isn’t your host a bit of an authority on Russia? Well, an unknown Pole has been stuck in the gizzard in Soho, and there’s some hare been started about a secret society in the West End. Sounds bogus to me, but see if you can get a story out of him. “Are Poles Russians, or are they Poles apart?” Something of that sort. Remember me to the third footman. Good morning.’

Nigel grinned and hung up the receiver. Then he paused meditatively.

‘What with daggers, deaths, and eavesdroppings,’ he pondered, ‘there’s an undercurrent of sensation in this house-party. All rather fun, but I wish old Charles wasn’t cast for the first philanderer’s part.’

He walked back to the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was joined by his host, who suggested a leisurely excursion through the fields.

‘Arthur has a paper to write for the British Ethnological Conference, Doctor Tokareff spends his mornings in improving his vocabulary and performing other mysterious intellectual rites, Angela housekeeps, and the others are so late always that I have given up making plans for them. So if it wouldn’t bore you…’

Nigel said eagerly that he would be anything but bored. They set out together. A thin, clear flood of wintry sunshine warmed the stark trees and rimy turf of Frantock. A sudden wave of goodwill towards anybody and everybody exhilarated Nigel. The covert ugliness of Rankin’s relationship to Mrs Wilde and perhaps to Rosamund Grant was forgotten. He had been an unwilling eavesdropper—well, what of it? It could be forgotten. On an impulse he turned to his host and told him how much he was enjoying himself.

‘But that is really charming of you,’ said Handesley. ‘I’m as susceptible as a woman to compliments about my parties. You must come again if journalism—a tiresomely exacting job, I know—will allow you the time.’

This seemed a very excellent opportunity for Nigel to get his story. He plucked up his courage and told Sir Hubert of the telephone call from his office.

‘Jamison suggested that perhaps you could give me some personal experiences of these societies—please don’t if it’s a nuisance—but apparently the murder of this Pole is attributed to some sort of feud in a similar organization in London.’

‘I suppose it is a possibility,’ said Handesley cautiously. ‘But I should like to know a great deal more about the circumstances. I have written a short monograph on the Russian “brotherhoods”, or rather on certain aspects of them. I’ll let you have it when we go in.’

Nigel thanked him, but tentatively made the journalist’s monotonous appeal for ‘something a little more personal’.

‘Well,’ said Handesley, ‘give me time, and I’ll try. Why not attack Doctor Tokareff? He seems to be full of information on the subject.’

‘Wouldn’t he be furious? He is so very…is it remote?’

‘And therefore beyond annoyance. He will either oblige with a sententious dissertation or refuse with a wealth of symbolism. You never know, with the Russian, whether he is really talking about the things he seems to be talking about, or whether they merely represent an abstract procession of ideas. Try him.’

‘I will,’ said Nigel, and they finished their walk in companionable silence.

Looking back on the Frantock affair after it was all over, Nigel always thought of that walk as the one perfect and peaceful episode during his visit. At luncheon he was aware once more of the secondary theme of dissonance between Rankin, Rosamund, and Mrs Wilde. He suspected, too, an antagonism between Tokareff and Rankin and, being particularly sensitive to the timbre of emotional relationships, was mentally on tenterhooks.

After luncheon they all went their ways—Handesley and Tokareff to the library, Mrs Wilde and Rankin for a stroll, Nigel and Angela to explore the house (with a view to the former learning his way about it for the Murder Game), and then to play badminton in the barn. Rosamund Grant and Wilde had disappeared, whether severally or together Nigel had no idea. He and Angela got extremely hot, laughed a great deal and, each delighted with the other’s company, arrived back in the hall in time for tea.

‘Now,’ said Handesley, when Angela had poured out the last cup, ‘it’s twenty-five minutes past five. At half-past the Murder Game is on. By eleven it must be an accomplished fact. You all know the rules. Last night Vassily gave the scarlet plaque to whichever one of us he selected as murderer. I remind you that the “murderer” is to turn out the lights and sound the gong, that you are not by word or look to suggest that you have been discarded or selected by Vassily as actor for the part of assassin. The “murderer” has had a day in which to formulate his plans. There—that’s all.’

‘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 murderer at any rate an interesting amount of success.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Wilde, ‘that this game isn’t 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 Handesley 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 everybody, 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 smiling 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 quietly, ‘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 merely 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 chastized,’ 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 tonight 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 open. 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 Marjorie 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 farther back along the passage he could see little points of matchlight 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 4 Monday

Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn was accosted by Detective-Inspector 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.

PC Bunce of the local constabulary eyed the inspector cautiously.

‘A very nasty 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 immediately. 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.

‘Beg parding, doctor,’ said PC Bunce.

‘It has been moved into the study,’ explained the doctor; ‘it had already been greatly disturbed. I could see no point in leaving it here—in the hall—very difficult.’

‘Greatly disturbed? By whom? But let me have the whole story. Shall we sit down, Doctor Young? I really know nothing of the case.’

They sat down before the great fireplace, where only twelve hours ago Rankin had warmed himself as he told one of his ‘pre-prandial’ stories.

‘The victim’s name,’ began Doctor Young in a businesslike voice, ‘was Rankin. He was one of a party of five guests spending the weekend with Sir Hubert Handesley and his niece. They had been playing one of these new-fangled games, one called—’ he paused for a second—‘called “Murders”. You may have heard of it.’

‘Don’t play it myself,’ said Inspector Alleyn. ‘I’m not frightfully keen on busman’s holidays. But I think I know what you mean. Well?’

‘Well, I gather they were all dressing for dinner—you will hear all the details from the guests, of course—when the signal agreed upon was sounded, and on coming down they found not a sham but a real victim.’

‘Where was he lying?’

‘Over here.’ The doctor crossed the hall, and Inspector Alleyn followed him. The floor in front of the gong had been newly washed and smelt of disinfectant.

‘On his face?’

‘In the first instance, yes, but as I say, the body had been moved. A dagger, Russo-Chinese and his own property, had been driven in between the shoulders at such an angle that it had pierced the heart. Instantaneous.’

‘I see. It’s no good my making a song and dance about the moving of the body and washing the floor—now. The damage is done. You should never have allowed it, Doctor Young. Never, no matter how much the original position had been lost.’

Doctor Young looked extremely uncomfortable.

‘I am very sorry. Sir Hubert was most anxious—it was, it was very difficult. The body had been moved some considerable distance.’

‘Do you think I could have a word with Sir Hubert,’ asked Alleyn—‘before we go any further, I mean?’

‘I am sure you can presently. He is very much shocked, of course, and I have suggested his trying to rest for a couple of hours. His niece, Miss Angela North, is expecting you, and is to let him know of your arrival. I’ll just find her.’

‘Thank you. By the way, where are the rest of the house-party?’

‘They’ve bin warned not to leave the house,’ said Mr Bunce capably, ‘and in addition they bin kept away from the hall and the drawing-room and asked particular to only frequent the library. Except for the floor being cleaned up nothing here’s bin touched, sir, nothing. And the drawing-room’s left just as it was too—just in case.’

‘Excellent; aren’t our policemen wonderful? And so they are—where?’

‘One of the ladies is in bed and the rest of the bunch is in the librar-rary,’ he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, ‘a-solving of the mystery.’

‘That should prove very interesting,’ said the inspector without any taint of irony in his pleasant voice. ‘If you would get Miss North, Doctor Young.’

The doctor hurried upstairs and the Law was left in possession.

Inspector Alleyn held a brief colloquy with his two subordinates.

‘If there has really been no interference, there ought to be something for you here, Bailey,’ he said to the fingerprint expert. ‘From information received we’ll want prints of the entire household. While I am seeing the people, get busy in here. And you, Sergeant Smith, get me a picture of the area where the body was found, and of course a photo of the body itself.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

PC Bunce listened appreciatively.

‘Ever had any dealings with a case of this sort before, constable?’ asked the inspector absent-mindedly.

‘Never, sir. Petty larceny’s the best they can do in these parts, with a smack of furious driving, and one haryplane smash three years ago. Bit of an ad. for the village if looked on in the right light. We’ve got a special reporter on the spot, too.’

‘Really! How do you mean?’

‘A Mr Bathgate, sir, of the Clarion. He’s staying here, sir.’

‘Singularly fortunate,’ said Inspector Alleyn drily.

‘Yes, sir. Here he is, sir.’

Angela came downstairs with the doctor and with Nigel. She was extremely white and had about her the pathetic dignity of the very young when they meet disaster with fortitude. Inspector Alleyn met her at the foot of the stairs.

‘I’m so sorry to have to bother you like this,’ he said, ‘but I understand from Doctor Young…’

‘Not a bit,’ said Angela. ‘We were expecting you. This is Mr Bathgate, who has been very kind about telegraphing and helping us. He is—he is Mr Rankin’s cousin.’

Nigel shook hands. Since he had seen Charles lying—empty, unmeaning, coldly remote—at his feet, he could feel neither sorrow nor horror—not even pity; and yet he supposed he had been fond of Charles.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Inspector Alleyn; ‘this must have been distressing for you. May we go and talk somewhere?’

‘There’s no one in the drawing-room,’ said Angela. ‘Shall we go in there?’

They sat in the drawing-room where Charles Rankin had danced a tango with Mrs Wilde the previous afternoon. Between them Angela and Nigel recounted to the inspector the history of the Murder Game.

Angela had time for a good long stare at her first detective. Alleyn did not resemble a plain-clothes policeman, she felt sure, nor was he in the romantic manner—white faced and gimlet eyed. He looked like one of her Uncle Hubert’s friends, the sort that they knew would ‘do’ for house-parties. He was very tall, and lean, his hair was dark, and his eyes grey, with corners that turned down. They looked as if they would smile easily, but his mouth didn’t. ‘His hands and his voice are grand,’ thought Angela, and subconsciously she felt less miserable.

Angela told Nigel afterwards that she approved of Inspector Alleyn. He treated her with a complete absence of any show of personal interest, an attitude that might have piqued this modern young woman under less tragic circumstances. As it was, she was glad of his detachment. Little Doctor Young sat and listened, repeating every now and then his inarticulate, consolatory noise. Alleyn made a few notes in his pocket-book.

‘The parlour-game, you say,’ he murmured, ‘was limited to five and a half hours—that is to say, it began at five-thirty, and should have ended before eleven—ended with the mock trial. The body was found at six minutes to eight. Doctor Young arrived some thirty minutes later. Just let me get that clear—I’ve a filthy memory.’

At this unorthodox and slightly unconvincing statement Doctor Young and Angela started.

‘And now, if you please,’ said the inspector, ‘I should like to see the other members of the household—one by one, you know. In the meantime Doctor Young can take me into the study. Perhaps you and Miss North will find out if Sir Hubert is feeling up to seeing me.’

‘Certainly,’ agreed Angela. She turned to Nigel. ‘Afterwards, will you wait for me?’

‘I’ll wait for you, Angela,’ said Nigel.

In the study Inspector Alleyn bent over the silent heaviness of Rankin’s body. He stared at it for a full two minutes, his lips closed tightly and a sort of fastidiousness wringing the corners of his mouth, his nostrils, and his eyes. Then he stooped, and turning the body on to its side, closely examined, without touching, the dagger that had been left there, still eloquent of the gesture that had driven it through Rankin’s bone and muscle into the citadel of his heart.

‘You can be no end of a help to me here,’ said Alleyn. ‘The blow, of course, came from above. Looks beastly, doesn’t it? The point entered the body as you see—here. Surely something of an expert’s job.’

The little doctor, who had been greatly chastened by the official rebuke on the subject of the removal of the body, leapt at the chance of re-establishing himself.

‘Great force and, I should have thought, a considerable knowledge of anatomy are indicated. The blade entered the body to the right of the left scapula and between the third and fourth ribs, avoiding the spine and the vertebral border of the scapula. It lies at an acute angle and the point has penetrated the heart.’

‘Yes, I rather imagined it had done that,’ said Alleyn sweetly, ‘but mightn’t this have been due to—shall we say luck, possibly?’

‘Possibly,’ said the doctor stiffly. ‘I think not!’

The faintest hint of a smile crept into Alleyn’s eyes.

‘Come on, Doctor Young,’ he said quietly, ‘you’ve got your own ideas, I see. What are they?’

The little doctor looked down his little nose and a glint of mild defiance hardened his uneventful face.

‘I realize, of course, that under such very grave circumstances one should put a guard upon one’s tongue,’ he said, ‘nevertheless, perhaps in camera, as it were…’

‘Every detective,’ remarked Alleyn, ‘has to acquire something of the attitude of the priest. “In camera” let it be, Doctor Young.’

‘I have only this to say. Before I arrived last night the body had been turned over and—and—gone over by a Russian gentleman who appears to be a medico. This in spite of the fact—’ here Doctor Young’s accent became more definitely Northern—‘that I was summoned immediately after the discovery. Possibly in Soviet Russia the finer shades of professional etiquette are not considered.’

Inspector Alleyn looked at him. ‘A considerable knowledge of anatomy, you said,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘Ah, well, we shall see what we shall see. How extraordinary it is,’ he went on, gently laying Rankin down; ‘his face is quite inscrutable. If only something could be written there. I should like to see Sir Hubert now if that is possible.’

‘I will ascertain,’ said Doctor Young formally, and left Rankin and Alleyn alone in the study.

Handesley was already waiting in the hall. Nigel and Angela were with him. Nigel was perhaps more shocked by the change in his host and more alive to it than to anything else that had happened since Rankin’s death. Handesley looked ghastly. His hands were tremulous and he moved with a kind of controlled hesitancy.

Alleyn came into the hall and was formally introduced by little Doctor Young, who seemed to be somewhat nonplussed by the inspector’s markedly Oxonian voice.

‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting,’ said Handesley. ‘I am quite ready to answer any questions that you would like to put to me.’

‘There are very few at the moment,’ returned Alleyn.’ ‘Miss North and Mr Bathgate have given me a clear account of what happened since yesterday afternoon. Could we, do you think, go into some other room?’

‘The drawing-room is just here,’ answered Handesley. ‘Do you wish to see us there in turn?’

‘That will do splendidly,’ agreed Alleyn.

‘The others are in the library,’ said Nigel. Handesley turned to the detective. ‘Then shall we go into the drawing-room?’

‘I think I can ask you the few questions I want to put immediately. The others can come in there afterwards. I understand, Sir Hubert, that Mr Rankin was an old friend of yours?’

‘I have known him all his life—I simply cannot take it in—this appalling tragedy. It is incredible. We—we all knew him so well. It must have been someone from outside. It must.’

‘How many servants do you keep? I should like to see them later on. But in the meantime if I may have their names.’

‘Yes, of course. It is imperative that everyone should—should be able to give an account of himself. But my servants! I have had them for years, all of them. I can think of no possible motive.’

‘The motive is not going to be one of the kind that socks you on the jaw. If I may have a list.’

‘My butler is a Little Russian. He was my servant twenty years ago in Petersburg, and has been with me ever since.’

‘He was well acquainted with Mr Rankin?’

‘Very well acquainted. Rankin has stayed here regularly for many years and has always been on excellent terms with my servants.’

‘They tell me the dagger is of Russian origin.’

‘Its history is Russian, its origin Mongolian,’ said Sir Hubert. He briefly related the story of the knife.

‘H’m,’ said Alleyn. ‘Scratch a Russian and you use a Mongolian knife. Had your servant seen this delightful museum piece?’

‘Yes. He must have seen it. Now I come to think of it, he was in the hall when Rankin first produced it.’

‘Did he comment on it in any way?’

‘Vassily? No,’ Handesley hesitated and turned to Nigel and Angela. ‘Wait a moment, though. Didn’t he say something when Tokareff was holding forth about the knife and its association with a bratsvo?’

‘I think he did,’ said Nigel slowly. ‘He made some remark in Russian. Doctor Tokareff said, “This peasant agrees with me,” and you, sir, told Vassily he could go.’

‘That is how it was,’ agreed Angela.

‘I see. Rum coincidence that the knife, your butler, and your guest should all be of the same nationality.’

‘Not very odd,’ said Angela. ‘Uncle Hubert has always kept up his interest in Russia—especially since the war. Charles was familiar with his collection of weapons and brought this horrible thing down specially for Uncle Hubert to see.’

‘Yes. Is the dagger interesting from the point of view of the collector?’

Handesley winced and glanced at Angela. ‘It interested me enormously,’ he said. ‘I offered to buy it.’

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