Ngaio Marsh - Death And The Dancing Footman

“I’d like to get Lady Hersey’s movements fixed in my head,” he said. “She went into the smoking-room with the drink, disappeared round the screen, returned to the doorway, said something you couldn’t hear, disappeared again, and called out to Mr. Royal, who then joined her. Finally she re-entered the library and asked you, Mandrake, to go to your host.”

“That’s it.” Mandrake changed down and crawled the car over its own skid marks. Chloris drew in her breath audibly. “It’s all right,” he said. “No trouble this time.” But Alleyn, who had been watching her, knew that it was not their progress that had scared her. She looked quickly at him and away again. “Lady Hersey,” she said, “is an old friend of the Complines. She’s terribly nice and she’s been absolutely marvellous since it happened. She was helping Dr. Hart with Mrs. Compline. She couldn’t be more sorry and upset about it all.”

These somewhat conventional phrases were shot out at nobody in particular and were followed by an odd little pause.

“Ah,” Alleyn murmured, “those are the sort of touches that help to clothe the bare bones of a case. We’ll collect some more, I hope, as we go along. I’m working backwards through your notes, Mandrake, and arrive at the booby-trap. A heavy brass Buddha, of all disagreeable objects, is perched on the top of a door, so that when the door is opened it is bound to fall on the person who pushes the door. The room is Nicholas Compline’s and it is upon his arm the Buddha falls. This trap was set, you say, during a visit Compline paid to Madame Lisse. You’ve worked out a time check on two clocks; the grandfather clock at the top of the stairs and the drawing-room clock which agrees with it. On this reckoning it appears that the trap was set some time between half-past seven, which struck as Nicholas Compline left his room, and a minute or so past twenty to eight, when you heard him cry out as the Buddha struck his arm. You suggest that you have found alibis during this period for everybody but Dr. Hart, who was in the bathroom. Lady Hersey gives Mrs. Compline her alibi, Mr. Royal gives you yours, Mandrake. Can you return the gesture?”

“I can say that I think he arrived in the drawing-room some little time before the crash.”

“Ten minutes before?”

“I feel sure it must have been. I — we were talking. Yes, it must have been at least ten minutes.”

“There’s no way by which you could come a little nearer to it? For example, did he light a cigarette when he came into the room?”

“Let me think. No. No, I don’t believe he did. But I did. I’d forgotten to bring my case down and I was helping myself to one of his when he came into the room. I remember that,” said Mandrake and Alleyn saw the back of his neck go red, “because I felt—” He stopped and made rather a business of adjusting his wind-screen wiper which at that moment was not needed.

“Yes?”

“What? Oh, I merely felt, very stupidly, a little embarrassed.” Mandrake’s voice trailed off and then he said loudly: “I was not born into the purple, Mr. Alleyn. Until a few years ago, I lived in the odour of extreme economy, among people who waited to be invited before they smoked other people’s cigarettes.”

“I should call that a sign of courtesy rather than penury,” said Alleyn, and received a brilliant smile from Miss Wynne. “Well, you lit your cigarette, then. That’s a help. Was it still going when you heard Nicholas Compline yell?”

“Was it, now? Yes. Yes, I remember throwing it in the fire before I went upstairs but it was almost smoked out, I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure of that.”

“Good. Well, now, Madame Lisse’s alibi is vouched for by Nicholas Compline and looks pretty well cast-iron. William Compline was in the smoking-room listening to the news bulletin. He heard Mr. Royal speak to the butler in the hall, and was prepared to give the gist of the bulletin which does not come on until seven-thirty.”

“Surely that’s of academic interest, only,” said Mandrake, “considering what has happened to William Compline.”

“You are probably quite right, but you know what policemen are. Dr. Hart has no alibi. Wait a bit, I must count up. Who haven’t I got? Oh, there’s you, Miss Wynne.”

“I haven’t got one,” said Chloris quickly. “I was in my room and I had a bath next door and I changed. But I can’t prove it.”

“Oh, well,” said Alleyn, “it’d be an odd state of affairs if everybody could prove all the things they hadn’t done every minute of the day. Is there to be no privacy, not even in the bathroom? That leaves Lady Hersey Amblington.”

“But she was with Mrs. Compline,” said Mandrake. “Nicholas saw her go past his door on her way to Mrs. Compline’s room. It’s there in the notes. We’ve been over that.”

“Have we? Then I’ve got myself into a muddle, no doubt. Lady Hersey gives Mrs. Compline an alibi. Does Mrs. Compline do as much for Lady Hersey? I mean did Mrs. Compline agree that Lady Hersey was in her room from seven-thirty until the alarm?”

“Well, she — Well, I mean she wasn’t there when we talked about alibis. Lady Hersey saw her afterwards and may have spoken about it then.”

“But actually nobody else questioned Mrs. Compline about it?”

“No, but of course it’s all right. I mean it’s out of the question that Lady Hersey—”

“I expect it is,” said Alleyn. “But you see just at the moment we’re dealing with hard facts, aren’t we? And the actual fact, which may be of no importance whatever, is that Lady Hersey vouches for Mrs. Compline but Mrs. Compline doesn’t happen to have corroborated her account. Is that it?”

“She can’t,” said Chloris. “She can’t, now. She may never…”

“We won’t jump that fence,” said Alleyn, “until we meet it.”

So far the return journey had not presented many difficulties. The new set of chains worked well and Mandrake kept to his own tracks where the snow had packed down hard and was already freezing over again. They ran into desultory flurries of snow, but the rain had not crossed Cloudyfold. Beyond the hills, the sky was still terraced with storm-clouds, prolonged at their bases into down-pouring masses, as if some Olympian painter had dragged at them with a dry brush.

At Alleyn’s suggestion they broached Dinah’s luncheon hamper and he continued his examination of Mandrake’s notes in an atmosphere of ham and hard-boiled egg, plying Chloris with food and both of them with questions.

“The oddest thing about this beastly business,” he said, “seems to be your plunge in the pond, Mandrake. You say here that Dr. Hart had the best chance of bringing it off unobserved, and that he saw Compline leave the house wearing Mr. Royal’s cape which is the double of your cape which incidentally seems to be Hart’s cape. Having absorbed those fancy touches, I learn that Nicholas Compline saw you through the window of the pavilion, where he was undressing in order to plunge into the ornamental waters in pursuance of a wager. He recognized you, and exchanged waves. Then comes your plunge, attended by the Compline brothers, Hart, Miss Wynne, and Mr. Royal, in that order. Again Mrs. Compline, Madame Lisse and Lady Hersey are absent. The first two breakfasted in their rooms. Lady Hersey says she was in the smoking-room. I understand you have read these notes, Miss Wynne?”

“Yes.”

“Have you formed any theory about the footprints which Mandrake says he saw in the snow? The small prints that led out of the top of the terrace from the house and returned to the house, suggesting that the person who made them stood on the terrace for a time at a spot from which she — apparently it must have been a woman — had a full view of the pond and the pavilion?”