Donald Bain - Gin and Daggers

I entered the hallway, stepping gingerly as the ancient floorboards creaked beneath my feet, a sound I hadn’t heard since awakening.

I stood outside Marjorie’s bedroom door. It was ajar, not enough so that you could see through the opening, but certainly not closed tight. I put my ear to it and listened, heard nothing but silence. The steeple bell at a nearby country church suddenly went into action: one, two, three chimes. It was three o’clock in the morning, unless the clock controlling the bell hadn’t been set correctly.

I placed my fingertips against the door and pushed. It was heavy and did not swing open, had to be pushed more. I did that and peered into the room. Marjorie’s bed was king-sized and covered with a canopy. The room was dark except for a sharp shaft of moonlight that poured through an opening in the drapes. It was perfectly aimed, as though a theater lighting technician had highlighted a section of a stage where major action would occur.

I stepped over the threshold and walked to the side of the bed, like a moth drawn to a summer candle. A whole arsenal of grotesque sounds rose up inside me but stopped at my throat-sounds of protest, of outrage, of shock and horror. Yet not a sound came from me as I looked down at the body of Marjorie Ainsworth, the grande dame of murder mystery fiction, sprawled on her back, arms and legs flung out, a long dagger protruding from her chest like a graveyard marker.

All I managed to say-and it was in a whisper-was “Oh my God.” As I turned to leave, my slippered foot hit a metal object and propelled it under the bed. I didn’t stop to see what it was. I returned to the hallway and stood at the railing, my hands gripping it as I drew a deep breath to fill my lungs. I shouted, “Help! Please come quickly! There’s been a murder!”

We huddled together in the study like survivors of a shipwreck or plane accident, each having experienced a tragedy that bound us to one another. As expected, everyone reacted to the shocking event in his or her own way. There was the hysterical camp, which included Archibald Semple, Marjorie’s British publisher; Bruce Herbert, her New York agent; Sir James Ferguson, the producer of Who Killed Darby and Joan? (his lack of control surprised me, based upon my observation of him at the dinner table); and, even more surprising, Renée Perry, the wife of Marjorie’s American publisher, Clayton Perry. My surprise wasn’t based upon any dramatic change in her demeanor, although it certainly had changed. Murder tends to cause that. It was more a matter of wondering why she was so personally distraught over Marjorie’s death. She acted as though she had lost her dearest friend, which, of course, wasn’t true.

I was relieved when the local police inspector arrived, accompanied by two young constables in uniform. Marshall, the butler, brought them to the library. The young police officers took positions at opposite ends of the room as the inspector assumed a stance in the middle. He was a little man, no taller than five feet six inches, which, I reasoned, accounted for his habit of moving up and down on his toes. He wore heavy laced boots and a well-worn red plaid outdoor jacket over an ill-fitting and wrinkled suit that had a distinct green cast to it. He held a notebook to his chest as he continued to rock up and down.

“I am Inspector Montgomery Coots, in charge of Crumpsworth. Miss Ainsworth has been killed, has she? Where might the body be?”

“Upstairs, in her bedroom,” Jane Portelaine said. She stood with Jason Harris behind a large oak table.

Coots turned at the sound of her voice. “Miss Portelaine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I am Jane Portelaine, Marjorie Ainsworth’s niece.”

“I take it you found the body,” Coots said.

“No, I did,” I said from my chair, causing him to have to turn again.

“And who might you be?”

“My name is Jessica Fletcher, Inspector. I’m an old friend of Marjorie Ainsworth and was invited here as a weekend guest.”

“American, I can hear.”

“Yes, I am from the United States.”

“You flew all the way here to attend a party?”

“No, you see…” Bruce Herbert interrupted to explain who I was and why I was there.

“A mystery writer.” He took in the others: “Is that the case with all of you?”

“No,” said Herbert, “we are all involved- were professionally involved with Marjorie Ainsworth.”

“Excuse me, Inspector, but don’t you want to see the body before we get into this kind of questioning?” Clayton Perry asked.

Coots fixed him with a hard stare. “I think I’ll be the judge from this point forward, sir, of how we proceed with investigating this case. You are?”

Perry told him.

“Well now, where is the body?” he asked imperiously. He was a dislikable man, filled with pomposity. His left eye twitched, and he had a habit of moving his nose as though a foreign object were lodged in it.

Jane came around the table and said, “Come with me, Inspector.”

Coots said to his men, “Stay here and see that no one leaves.” He asked the room, “Has anyone left since the body was discovered?” We assured him no one had.

“Household staff?” he asked Jane.

“All present and accounted for,” she said.

“Well then, let’s proceed.”

After Coots and Jane left the room, Archibald Semple, who’d resumed drinking upon being summoned to the library, started pacing, drink in hand. He said, “What we have here is right out of the cozy school of murder mysteries, it seems to me. It may be irreverent for me to be speaking this way at such a time, but Dame Agatha could not have created a more perfect setting or assembled a more fitting cast of suspects.”

“This isn’t the time to be discussing fictitious murders, Archie,” Strayhorn, the critic, snapped. “We have a real murder here on our hands, and not only have we lost a treasured friend and colleague, the world has lost the sort of talent that comes along only once in a lifetime.”

I was tempted to shout, “Bravo!”

I looked over to where Renée Perry sat hunched in a chair, her sobs soft and steady. Her husband, the patrician Clayton Perry, stood next to her but offered no solace-did not touch her or try to comfort her in any way. My attention then shifted to the table, where Jason Harris casually perched on its comer, his eyes fixed on the high ceiling, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

I asked, “Did anyone see or hear anything last night?” Everyone shook their heads and said that they hadn’t. Harris did not bother to respond. “Mr. Harris, did you see or hear anything last night?”

He turned slowly and removed the cigarette from his mouth. The ashes fell to the rug, and he ground them in with his shoe. “No,” he answered.

Sir James Ferguson sat in a corner of the room shaking his head and muttering over and over, “Can’t be, it just can’t be. It was obviously someone from the household staff. No one in this room would have had any reason to kill Marjorie. Who hires the staff here? Whoever that person is hired Marjorie’s killer.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “It could have been”-I took in everyone quickly before ending with-“anyone in the house or, for that matter, someone who entered from outside.”

“Good point, Mrs. Fletcher. Perhaps we should check for broken glass, footprints in the soft soil outside the windows,” Semple said as he refilled his drink.

“I think that would be for Inspector Coots to accomplish,” I said.

“He doesn’t look too swift to me,” William Strayhorn said, “a typical bumbling country copper who’ll undoubtedly muck things up and make it difficult for higher-ups to do their jobs.”