Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 1: A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 14

Arthur Wilde’s announcement had a dramatic effect quite out of proportion to its real value. Nigel experienced a violent emotional shock, followed immediately by the reflection that, after all, the identity of the recipient of the plaque had very little bearing on the case.

It was odd that they should none of them have thought of locating the ‘villain’ in the game. That was all.

Complete silence followed Wilde’s statement. Rosamund broke it. ‘Oh well,’ she said evenly, ‘what of that?’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Wilde,’ said Alleyn. The inspector’s manner had undoubtedly become most convincingly official. ‘You have come forward as the first witness. You were given the plaque at dinner?’

‘Yes—Vassily slipped it into my hand as I helped myself to the savoury.’

‘Had you formed any definite plan about carrying out your role in the game?’

‘Not precisely. I was thinking it over as I lay in my bath. Mr Bathgate was in the next room. I decided against him as the victim—too obvious—then I heard the gong, and the lights went out. I was just going to call out that it couldn’t be the “murder” but an accident of some sort, when I realized that I should be giving my own show away before I had brought it off. So I pretended to think it was the “murder” and began drying myself and dressing. I thought I should find an easy “victim” in the darkness. I did too—!’

A violent exclamation from Handesley interrupted him.

‘What is it, Sir Hubert?’ asked Alleyn gently.

‘It was you, then, Arthur, who ran into me on the landing and said, “You’re the corpse”?’

‘And it was you who answered “Shut up, you ass”,’ returned Wilde. ‘Yes, you thought I was fooling. When I realized that, I got away quickly.’

‘Just a moment,’ interrupted the detective. ‘Let me get this quite clear. Really it’s frightfully muddling. When the alarm was given, Mr Wilde, you were in your bath. Knowing yourself to be the intended “murderer” in the game, you imagined the darkness and the gong sounding were accidental?’

‘I thought the gong was sounded for dinner and that the lights had possibly fused.’

‘Yes, I see. So you lay low and determined to perform your part in the game under cover of the dark?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilde. His voice was patiently courteous.

‘For a detective,’ thought Nigel, ‘the inspector seems to be making rather heavy way of this.’

Alleyn continued. ‘So you came out on to the landing, ran into Sir Hubert and instantly uttered the set phrase? You, Sir Hubert, thought he was fooling?’

‘Yes, certainly. The signal had been given. As a matter of fact I thought—I rather thought it was Rankin. I don’t know why.’

‘Mr Wilde,’ said Alleyn, ‘in the words of the popular coloured engraving, when did you last see Mr Rankin?’

‘I was talking to him alone in the hall before we went up to dress. We were the last to go up. Charles remarked that if either of us was “he” in the game, it would be no good trying to victimize the other, as everyone knew we were left alone together.’

‘Yes, exactly. Then Mr Rankin was still in the hall when you went up to dress?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone see you together?’

Wilde thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember Mary, the little between-maid, came in and went out to the entrance hall to lock the front door. She was still tidying or something as I went upstairs. I remember I asked her if she knew the right time—if the hall clock was right. She said, “Yes, ten minutes to eight”, and I said “Good lord, we’ll be late”, or something like that, and ran upstairs, leaving her there.’

‘Presumably, then, Mr Rankin was alone in the hall from a little after seven-fifty till five minutes to eight, when he was killed. About four minutes. Thank you, Mr Wilde.’

Alleyn made a brief entry in his note-book and then looked round the table.

‘Are there any questions that someone else would like to put?’ he asked. ‘I can assure you that I will honestly welcome them.’

There was a short silence, broken unexpectedly by Mrs Wilde. She leant across the table, looking with an odd air of formality at her husband.

‘I would like to ask,’ she said rapidly, ‘what you and Charles talked about during the time you were alone together.’

For the first time Arthur Wilde hesitated.

‘I don’t think,’ he said quietly, ‘that we said anything that could have any bearing on the point at issue.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Tokareff suddenly, ‘the question is asked.’

‘Well—’ there was the faintest echo of whimsicality in his answer. ‘Well, we talked about you, Doctor Tokareff.’

‘Indeed? What about me?’

‘Rankin seemed to resent your comments on his ownership of the dagger. He—he felt that it implied some sort of criticism of himself. He was rather on the defensive about it.’

Doctor Young unexpectedly uttered his throaty comment—‘Kaahoom’—and Alleyn smiled.

‘What did you say to all this?’ he asked.

Arthur Wilde rumpled up his hair. ‘I told him not to be an ass,’ he said. ‘Charles was always rather touchy—it was characteristic. I tried to explain how a knife associated, as Doctor Tokareff believed, with the innermost ritual of a bratsvo, would naturally have more significance to a Russian than to an Englishman. He soon got over his huff and said he quite saw my point. Then we chaffed each other about the Murder Game and I left him.’

‘Any more questions?’ asked Alleyn.

There were none apparently.

‘I realize,’ said Wilde, ‘that I was probably the last person—except Mary and the man who killed him—to see Charles alive. I hope very much that if anyone does think of any questions they would like to put, they will not hesitate in asking them.’

‘I should like to say,’ said Nigel, ‘that I can corroborate most of what you have said. I left you with Charles and heard you come up a few minutes later. You remember we shouted out to each other while your bath was running and afterwards when the lights went out. I can state positively that you were in the bathroom before, during, and after the time when the crime was committed.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Marjorie Wilde, ‘and you called through to me, too, Arthur.’

‘Your rooms were all close together?’ asked Alleyn.

Nigel sketched out a rough plan of the four rooms and slid it across the table to him.

‘I see,’ said the inspector, and looked carefully at it. ‘I am sure you all appreciate,’ he said a moment later, ‘the importance of establishing Mr Wilde’s account of his movements. They have already been corroborated by Mrs Wilde and Mr Bathgate. Can anyone else bring forward any point that bears on the relative positions of these three after Mr Wilde came upstairs?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wilde eagerly, ‘I can. When I was in my room dressing, Florence, Angela’s maid, came in to ask if she could help me. She stayed a few moments—not long—but she must have heard Arthur calling out and everything—the door into the bathroom wasn’t shut properly.’

‘She will be able to verify this herself, of course,’ said the inspector. ‘We have now a fairly complete picture of the movements of three of the house-party from shortly after seven-thirty until the time of the murder. Mrs Wilde went upstairs first, Mr Bathgate second, and Mr Wilde last. They were all calling out to each other while they were dressing, and their voices were probably heard by a housemaid. Mr Bathgate, I understand that you were the first downstairs after the alarm was given and that you turned up the lights?’

Nigel’s thoughts had been wandering along a strange byway opened up by Mrs Wilde’s eager corroboration of her husband’s story. He pulled himself together and looked at the inspector. It struck him that the official manner came easily enough to Alleyn when he chose to assume it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes—I turned on the lights.’

‘You found your way downstairs after the two minutes had elapsed?’

‘Yes, the others were behind me on the stairs.’

‘You got to the main switch and turned it on immediately?’

‘Not immediately. The others were calling out from the stairs. I hesitated for a second.’

‘Why?’ asked Rosamund Grant.

‘I really can’t say. It was all rather strange and I felt—I don’t know—somehow reluctant. Then Sir Hubert called out and I pulled down the switch.’

‘You were talking to Mr Wilde right up to the time you left your room?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur Wilde, with a friendly glance towards him, ‘you were.’

‘Did you speak to anyone when you were on the landing?’

‘I don’t remember. Everyone was talking in the dark there. I struck a match.’

‘Yes,’ said Angela quickly, ‘he struck a match. I was farther along the passage and saw his face suddenly lit up from beneath. He must have been just outside his room then.’

‘Mr Bathgate,’ said the detective, ‘your match was still alight, wasn’t it, as you went downstairs?’

‘Yes. It went out about halfway down.’

‘Did anyone pass you on the stairs?’

‘No, nobody passed me.’

‘Are you certain of that?’

‘Quite positive,’ said Nigel.

‘Any more questions?’ asked Alleyn.

Nobody spoke.

Inspector Alleyn turned to Tokareff. ‘Doctor Tokareff,’ he said, ‘I shall take you next, if you please.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Russian pugnaciously.

‘You went upstairs with the first detachment—Miss North, Miss Grant, Mrs Wilde, and Sir Hubert Handesley?’

Tokareff was glaring combatively through his spectacles at the detective.

‘Certainly I did,’ he said.

‘Did you go straight to your room?’

‘Yes, immediately. This I can prove, for I am in good mood while I am in my room last night, so I sing the Death of Boris fortissimo. I am in distant wing of house, but still my voice is robust. Many should have heard.’

‘I heard,’ said Handesley, and he actually smiled.

‘Were you singing the Death of Boris all the time—until the gong sounded and the lights went out?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘A gala performance! You visited a bathroom?’

‘Niet! No! I do not bath at this hour. It is not advisable. Better at night before bed, to open the pores. Then a gentle sweat—’

‘Yes, quite. You dressed then?’

‘I dress. While I dress I sing. When I come to great cry of agony, I interpret in the manner of Fedor Chaliapin—’ He suddenly gave tongue to a galvanizing bellow. Mrs Wilde suppressed a little shriek. ‘At this moment,’ ended Doctor Tokareff, ‘gong goes and lights go out. It is the game. I cease to sing and count sixty twice in Russian. Then I come out.’

‘Thank you very much. I understand that you were the first to realize what happened to Mr Rankin?’

‘Yes, I was first. I have seen the knoife from the stairs.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Miss Angela was saying in joking, “No one’s to touch the body”. I was agreeing, not jokingly, because I have seen the man is dead.’

‘But I understand you did not examine the body—’

‘Excuse me, please,’ began the Russian with a great deal of emphasis.

Alleyn glanced quickly round the table. A swift wave of consternation and panic seemed to have galvanized the faces of all the guests. Mrs Wilde was white to the lips and Rosamund Grant was staring fixedly at her. Wilde leant swiftly towards his wife. She spoke suddenly, her voice breathlessly unlike the fashionable squeak that they were all accustomed to.

‘Wait a minute, I had better explain.’

‘Never mind now, old girl,’ said Wilde. Even then the conjugal endearment struck Nigel as being singularly inept.

‘It’s all right,’ said Marjorie Wilde. ‘I know what Doctor Tokareff is going to say. I lost my head. I pushed them all aside and knelt down by him. I pulled him over and looked at his face and I tried to call him back; when I saw he wasn’t there any more, I tried to call him back, tried to force him to come back. I dragged his shoulders away from the blood, and I felt the knife gritting on the floor underneath him, gritting about inside him. He was very heavy, I only moved him a little way. They all said I wasn’t to touch him—I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I touched him.’ She stopped as abruptly and breathlessly as she had begun.

‘It was much better for you to tell me this at once, Mrs Wilde,’ said Alleyn, very matter of fact. ‘One quite appreciates the emotional stress and shock of this terrible discovery. I should like,’ he continued generally, ‘to fix the actual grouping of this scene in my mind. Mrs Wilde was kneeling beside the body. She had moved it over on to its back. Doctor Tokareff, you were standing beside her?’

‘Certainly. I stood there saying, “Do not touch”. Still she continued to shake at him. I have seen immediately that she is hysterical and I tried to raise her upwards, but she resisted me. In hysteria sometimes zere is sush a strength. Then Miss Grant said quite quietly, “It’s no use to call Charles now, he is gone for good”, and at once Mrs Wilde stopped. Then I have raised her away and Sir Hubert Handesley said, “For God’s sake please make sure he is dead”. I have known immediately that he is dead, but nevertheless I examine, and Miss North say, “Telephone Doctor Young”, so she does.’

‘Is everyone agreed that this is substantially correct?’ asked Alleyn—formally.

There was a general murmur of assent.

‘Since I prove that from seven-thirty to seven fifty-five I sing very loud in my room,’ announced the Russian, ‘is not this an Ali Baba? I should like now to go to London, where I have appointment for a meeting.’

‘I am afraid that is impossible,’ said Alleyn smoothly.

‘But—’ began the Russian.

‘I will explain afterwards, Doctor Tokareff. At the moment we will see out the consummation of the Murder Game. Sir Hubert, what were your movements from the time you went upstairs until the alarm?’

Handesley looked at his own interlocked fingers lying before him on the table. He did not raise his eyes. His voice was even and unbroken.

‘I went to my dressing-room at the far end of the corridor. I undressed and spoke to Vassily, who was putting out my things. Then he went out and I had my bath. I had finished bathing and had dressed—all except my dinner jacket—when there was a knock at my door. Angela came in. She wanted to know if I had any aspirin. Miss Grant had a headache and would like to take some. I found the aspirin and gave it to Angela. She went out and almost immediately afterwards the alarm sounded. I joined the party on the landing, and it was then that Arthur—Mr Wilde—tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You are the corpse.” I think that is all.’

‘Any questions?’

The vague negative murmur floated round the table.

‘Miss Grant,’ said the inspector, ‘you also went upstairs with the first party. Where was your room?’

‘At the far end of the cross-corridor at the back of the house, next to Angela’s—to Miss North’s. We went along together. Angela came into my room after we had bathed. It was then I asked her for aspirin.’

‘Where is the bathroom you used?’

‘Opposite my bedroom. We both used it—I first.’

‘And you merely crossed the passage to this bathroom and back to your own room?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go anywhere else while you were upstairs?’

‘No. I came down after the alarm.’

‘You, Miss North? What were your movements?’

‘I came up with Rosamund. While she bathed I read in my own room. On my return from the bathroom I went in to her, and after that to my uncle’s room for the aspirin. I had just got back to Rosamund’s door when the lights went out.’

‘Where is Mr Rankin’s room?’

‘Next to mine and immediately opposite the entrance of the top passage into the corridor. May I complete the sketch there?’ Alleyn pushed the sheet of paper along to her, and she traced in the remaining rooms.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Alleyn. ‘That completes the position of the characters. It also brings to a close the opening phase of the reconstruction of the game. Before we go I should like to speak to Florence your maid, Miss North. I am sure you will all see that it is most important to establish the positions of Mr and Mrs Wilde and Mr Bathgate.’

Angela got up and crossed to a bell-push by the mantelpiece. The others moved back their chairs, and Wilde began a low-voiced conversation with Handesley.

The bell was answered, not by Vassily, but by a small, agitated maid. She looked as if she belonged to the back stairs and had got into the drawing-room by mistake.

‘Will you ask Florence to come in for a moment, Mary?’ said Angela.

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Oh, just a second, Mary,’ said Alleyn, with a glance at Angela. ‘Were you in the hall last night when Mr Wilde went upstairs and Mr Rankin was left alone?’

‘Oh—yes, yes, sir, I was. Mr Roberts don’t usually send me to the front of the ‘ouse, sir, but last night—’

‘Did Mr Wilde speak to you?’

‘He arst me the time, and I says, “Ten to”, and he says, “Hell, I’m late”, and skedaddles upstairs.’

‘What was Mr Rankin doing?’

‘Smoking a cigarette, sir, quite happy like. I says, “Shall I take away the cocktail tray?” and he says, “Don’t do that,” he says, “I’ll have a quick one”, he says, “and spoil the schoolboy complexion”. So I goes away, sir, and then only a few seconds later, sir, the lights went out and—oh, isn’t it awful?’

‘Terrible. Thank you, Mary.’

After a hesitating glance at Handesley, the maid went out.

‘Doesn’t the butler usually answer that bell?’ asked Alleyn after a pause.

‘Yes,’ said Angela vaguely—‘yes, of course. Mary’s the between-maid. She never answers the bell. I don’t know why he didn’t come—everyone is so upset, I suppose Vassily—’

She was interrupted by the entrance of Florence, a darkish wooden-faced individual of about thirty-five.

‘Florence,’ said Angela, ‘Mr Alleyn wants to ask you something about last night.’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Will you tell me, please,’ began Alleyn, ‘which of the rooms you went into last night when the guests were upstairs dressing?’

‘Very good, sir. I went first to Miss Angela’s room.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘Only a few minutes. Miss Angela wished to ask Mrs Wilde if I could assist her.’

‘So you went to Mrs Wilde’s room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What happened there?’

‘Madam asked me to fasten her dress. I fastened it,’ said Florence sparsely.

‘Did Mrs Wilde speak to you?’

‘Madam was speaking to Mr Wilde, who was in the bathroom next door to the dressing-room.’

‘Did Mr Wilde answer?’

‘Yes, sir. He was speaking to Mrs Wilde and also to Mr Bathgate, who was in his own room beyond.’

‘When you left Mrs Wilde, where did you go?’

‘To Miss Grant’s room.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘I waited a moment, sir. Miss Grant was not there. She came in a few minutes later and said she did not require me. I left. Miss Angela was coming along the passage. Then the lights went out.’

‘Did Miss Grant come from the bathroom?’

Florence hesitated. ‘I think not, sir. Miss Grant bathed earlier—before Miss Angela.’

‘Thank you very much. I think that’s all I wanted to ask you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The door shut behind Florence. No one had looked at Rosamund Grant. No one had spoken.

Alleyn turned a page of his note-book.

‘By the way, Miss Grant,’ he said, ‘did you not say that apart from your visit to the bathroom you did not leave your room until the gong sounded?’

‘Wait a moment!’ ejaculated Doctor Young.

‘Rosamund—it’s all right,’ cried Angela, running across to her friend. But Rosamund Grant had slid from her chair to the floor in a dead faint.

In the sort of horribly false confusion that followed, Nigel was aware only of one thing, and that was the pounding at the bell-push in answer to some confused order of Sir Hubert’s.

‘Brandy—that’s what she wants,’ Handesley was shouting.

‘Better some sal volatile,’ said Doctor Young. ‘Just open those windows, one of ye.’

‘I’ll fetch some,’ Angela said and hurried away.

The flustered Mary had reappeared.

‘Tell Vassily to bring some brandy,’ said Handesley.

‘Please, sir, I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, sir, he’s gone—he’s disappeared, sir, and none of us liked to tell you!’

‘Hell’s teeth!’ ejaculated Alleyn.