Ngaio Marsh - Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh

“I suppose it is all in their day’s work,” said the guest.

“I suppose so. Let us hope there are not many cases as advanced as that harridan’s. Once I saw him glance with a sort of compassion at the niece. I mean, I saw his image in the cupid mirror.”

Lord John filled his guest’s glass and his own.

“There was also,” he continued, “her doctor. I indulge my hobby of speaking ill of the dead and confess that I did not like him. He was the local fashionable doctor of those days; a soi-disant gentleman with a heavy moustache and clothes that were just a little too immaculate. I was, and still am, a snob. He managed to establish himself in the good graces of the aunt. She left him the greater part of her very considerable fortune. More than she left the girl. There was never any proof that he was aware of this circumstance but I can find no other explanation for his extraordinary forbearance. He prescribed for her, sympathised, visited, agreed, flattered. God knows what he didn’t do. And he dined. He dined on the night she died.”

“Oh,” said the guest lifting her glass in both hands, and staring at her lacquered fingertips, “she died, did she?”

“Yes. She died in the chair occupied at this moment by the middle-aged lady with nervous hands.”

“You are very observant,” remarked his companion.

“Otherwise I should not be here again in such delightful circumstances. I can see the lady with nervous hands in the cupid mirror, just as I could see that hateful old woman. She had been at her worst all day, and at luncheon the niece had been sent on three errands. From the third she returned in tears with the aunt’s sleeping tablets. She always took one before her afternoon nap. The wretched girl had forgotten them and on her return must needs spill them all over the carpet. She and Benito scrambled about under the table, retrieving the little tablets, while the old woman gibed at the girl’s clumsiness. She then refused to take one at all and the girl was sent off lunchless and in disgrace.”

Lord John touched his beard with his napkin, inspected his half bird, and smiled reminiscently.

“The auguries for dinner were inauspicious. It began badly. The doctor heard of the luncheon disaster. The first dish was sent away with the customary threat of complaint to the manager. However, the doctor succeeded in pouring oil, of which he commanded a great quantity, on the troubled waters. He told her that she must not tire herself, patted her claw with his large white hand, and bullied the waiters on her behalf. He had brought her some new medicine which she was to take after dinner, and he laid the little packet of powder by her plate. It was to replace the stuff she had been taking for some time.”

“How did you know all this?”

“Have I forgotten to say she was deaf? Not the least of that unfortunate girl’s ordeals was occasioned by the necessity to shout all her answers down an ear-trumpet. The aunt had the deaf person’s trick of speaking in a toneless yell. One lost nothing of their conversation. That dinner was quite frightful. I still see and hear it. The little white packet lying on the right of the aunt’s plate. The niece nervously crumbling her bread with trembling fingers and eating nothing. The medical feller talking, talking, talking. They drank red wine with their soup and then Benito brought champagne. Veuve Clicquot, it was. He said, as he did a moment ago, ‘It is sufficiently iced,’ and poured a little into the aunt’s glass. She sipped it and said it was not cold enough. In a second there was another formidible scene. The aunt screamed abuse, the doctor supported and soothed her, another bottle was brought and put in the cooler. Finally Benito gave them their Clicquot. The girl scarcely touched hers, and was asked if she thought the aunt had ordered champagne at thirty shillings a bottle for the amusement of seeing her niece turn up her nose at it. The girl suddenly drank half a glass at one gulp. They all drank. The Clicquot seemed to work its magic even on that appalling woman. She became quieter. I no longer looked into the cupid mirror but rather into the eyes of my vis-à-vis.”

Lord John’s guest looked into his tired amused old face and smiled faintly.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No. When I next watched the party at that table a waiter had brought their coffee. The doctor feller emptied the powder from the packet into the aunt’s cup. She drank it and made a great fuss about the taste. It looked as though we were in for another scene when she fell sound asleep.”

“What!” exclaimed the guest.

“She fell into a deep sleep,” said Lord John. “And died.”

The lady with the nervous hands rose from her table and walked slowly past them out of the dining-room.

“Not immediately,” continued Lord John, “but about two hours later in her room upstairs. Three waiters carried her out of the dining-room. Her mouth was open, I remember, and her face was puffy and had reddish-violet spots on it.”

“What killed her?”

“The medical gentleman explained at the inquest that her heart had always been weak.”

“But — you didn’t believe that? You think, don’t you, that the doctor poisoned her coffee?”

“Oh, no. In his own interest he asked that the coffee and the remaining powder in the paper should be analysed. They were found to contain nothing more dangerous than a very mild bromide.”

“Then—? You suspected something I am sure. Was it the niece? The champagne—?”

“The doctor was between them. No. I remembered, however, the luncheon incident. The sleeping tablets rolling under the table.”

“And the girl picked them up?”

“Assisted by Benito. During the dispute at dinner over the champagne, Benito filled the glasses. His napkin hid the aunt’s glass from her eyes. Not from mine, however. You see, I saw his hand reflected from above in the little cupid mirror.”

There was a long silence.

“Exasperation,” said Lord John, “may be the motive of many unsolved crimes. By the way I was reminded of this story by the lady with the nervous hands. She has changed a good deal of course, but she still has that trick of crumbling her bread with her fingers.”

The guest stared at him.

“Have we finished?” asked Lord John. “Shall we go?” They rose. Benito, bowing, held open the dining-room door.

“Good evening, Benito,” said Lord John.

“Good evening, my lord,” said Benito.

“Where money is concerned,” Harold Hancock told his audience at the enormous cocktail party, “my poor Hersey — and she won’t mind my saying so, will you, darling? — is the original dumbbell. Did I ever tell you about her trip to Dunedin?”

Did he ever tell them? Hersey thought. Wherever two or three were gathered did he ever fail to tell them? The predictable laugh, the lovingly coddled pause, and the punchline led into and delivered like an act of God—did he, for pity’s sake, ever tell them!

Away he went, mock-serious, empurpled, expansive, and Hersey put on the comic baby face he expected of her. Poor Hersey, they would say, such a goose about money. It’s a shame to laugh.

“It was like this—” Harold began…

It had happened twelve years ago when they were first in New Zealand. Harold was occupied with a conference in Christchurch and Hersey was to stay with a friend in Dunedin. He had arranged that she would draw on his firm’s Dunedin branch for money and take in her handbag no more than what she needed for the journey. “You know how you are,” Harold said.

He arranged for her taxi, made her check that she had her ticket and reservation for the train, and reminded her that if on the journey she wanted cups of tea or synthetic coffee or a cooked lunch, she would have to take to her heels at the appropriate stations and vie with the competitive male. At this point her taxi was announced and Harold was summoned to a long-distance call from London.