Ngaio Marsh - Death And The Dancing Footman

The door opened and Hersey Amblington came in with Nicholas.

Alleyn saw a tall young man in uniform who carried his left arm in a sling. He noticed the lint-coloured hair, the blankly good-looking face with its blond moustache and faintly etched lines of dissipation, and he wondered if normally it held any trace of colour. He watched Nicholas walk slowly towards the bed, his gaze fixed, his right hand plucking at his tie. Hersey moved forward a chair and, without a word, Nicholas sat beside his mother. Hersey stooped over the bed and presently Alleyn saw that she had drawn Mrs. Compline’s hand from under the sheets and laid it close beside Nicholas. It was so flaccid it seemed already dead. Nicholas laid his own hand over it and at the touch broke down completely, burying his face beside their joined hands and weeping bitterly. For several minutes Alleyn stood in the shadow, hearing the wind and rain, the sound of distorted breathing, and the heavy sobs of Nicholas Compline. Then there was a lessening of sound. Hart moved to the head of the bed, looked at Hersey, and nodded. She had laid her hand on Nicholas’ shoulder but, before he raised his head, Alleyn had slipped out of the room.

It was darkish now in the passage and he almost collided with Jonathan Royal, who must have been standing close to the door. Jonathan had his finger to his lips. As they faced each other there, they heard Nicholas, beyond that closed door, scream out: “Don’t touch her, you—! Keep your hands off her. If it hadn’t been for you she’d never have done it.”

“My God!” said Jonathan in a whisper. “What now? What’s he doing to her?”

“Nothing that can hurt her,” said Alleyn.

At five o’clock the telephone in the library rang out. Alleyn, who was there, answered it. It was a police call from London for himself, and he took it with the greatest satisfaction. The Yard reported that Detective-Inspector Fox, together with a surgeon, a fingerprint expert and a photographer, had left London at three o’clock and would reach Penfelton by way of a branch line, at seven-thirty. The Chipping constabulary had arranged for a car to bring them on to Highfold.

“I’m damn’ glad to hear it,” said Alleyn warmly. “I’m here with a couple bodies and seven lunatics. D’you know of what’s happened to the Chipping people?”

“They got stuck somewhere, sir, and had to walk back. We’d have reported before, but the line’s only just fixed.”

“The whole thing’s damn’ silly,” said Alleyn. “We might be marooned in Antarctica. Anyway, thank Heaven for Fox and Co. Good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver, drove his hands through his hair, and returned to Mandrake’s notes. As a postscript, Mandrake had added a sort of tabulated summary —

If the Murderer mistook William for Nicholas

If the Murderer recognized William

Motive

Opp. 1st attempt

Opp. 2nd attempt

Opp. 3rd attempt

Motive

Reason for other attempts

Dr. Hart

Yes

Yes

Yes

Booby-trap?

Yes

Made against Nicholas

Nicholas Compline

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---

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None

None

Jonathan Royal

None

Possibly

Improbable

Yes?

None

None

Lady Hersey

None

Yes

Yes?

Yes

None

None

Mrs. C.

None

Yes

No

Yes

?

None

Aubrey Mandrake

None

Yes!

No

No

None

None

Madame Lisse

None

Yes

No

Yes

?

None

Chloris Wynne

None

No

Yes

No

None

None

Alleyn shook his head over the last name. “Industrious Mr. Mandrake! But he’s not to be trusted there,” he thought. “We have a young woman who has been jilted by Nicholas, who attracted her. As soon as she engages herself to William, who does not attract her, Nicholas begins to make amorous antics at her all over again. A wicked young woman might wish to get rid of William. A desperate young woman might wish to get rid of Nicholas. And is it quite impossible that Miss Wynne darted down to the pond before making her official arrival with Jonathan? Perhaps it is. I’ll have to go down to that pond.” He lit a cigarette and stared dolefully at the row of “Yeses” against Hart. “All jolly fine, but how the devil did he rig a booby-trap that neither Nicholas nor William noticed? No, it’s not a bad effort on Master Mandrake’s part. But I fancy he’s made one error. Now, I wonder .” And taking up his pen he put a heavy cross against one of Mandrake’s entries. He wandered disconsolately about the library, and finally, with a grimace, let himself into the smoking-room. He went straight to the radio, passing behind the shrouded figure in the chair. This time he did not draw back the curtains from the windows but turned up the lights and used his torch. The wireless cabinet stood on a low stool. Alleyn’s torch-light crawled over the front surface and finally came to rest on the bakelite volume control which he examined through his lens. He found several extremely faint lines inside the screw-hole. There were also faint scratches across the surface outside the hole, making tracks in a film of dust.

The stillness of the room was interrupted by a small murmur of satisfaction. Alleyn got out his pair of tweezers, introduced them delicately into the hole in the volume control. Screwing his face into an excruciating grimace he manipulated his tweezers and finally drew them out. He squatted on the carpet quite close to the motionless folds of white linen. These followed so closely the frozen posture of the figure they concealed that an onlooker might have been visited by the horrid notion that William imitated Alleyn and, under his shroud, conducted a secret scrutiny of the carpet. Allen had laid an envelope on the carpet and on its surface he dropped the minute fragment he had taken in his tweezers. It was scarcely larger than an eyelash. He peered at it through his glass.

“Scarlet. Feather, I think . And a tiny scrap of green,” said Alleyn. And whistling soundlessly he sealed his find up in the envelope.

Next he peered into the crevice between the large and small tuning controls. “Not so much as a speck of dust,” he muttered, “although there’s plenty in the screw-hole. There’s the actual shaft which rotates, of course. It’s reminiscent of a pulley.” He found one or two scratches on the surface of the tuning control. It was just possible through the lens to see that each of these marks had a sharp beginning and a gentler tail, suggesting that some very fine pointed object had struck the surface smartly and fallen away. Alleyn re-examined the carpet. Directly below the wall where the mere had hung, he found one or two marks that he had missed on his first examination. They occurred beneath the small desk that stood under the weapons. Here the pile of the carpet was protected and thick. Across its surface, running roughly parallel with the wall, were a series of marks which, when he examined them through his glass, looked like the traces of some sharp object that had torn across the surface of the pile. In one place he found a little tuft of carpet that had become detached. He photographed this area, fenced it in with chairs, and returned to the library.

Here he found a young footman with a tea-tray.

“Is that for me?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes, sir. I was to ask if there was anything further you required, sir.”

“Nothing, at the moment, thank you. Are you Thomas?”

“Yes, sir,” said Thomas with a nervous simper.