Death on the Air

by Ngaio Marsh

  Alleyn strolled to the gate and looked up the lane to the church. The spire shone golden in the evening sun.

  ‘The rector,’ Alleyn said, ‘tells me he’s going to do something about the balcony.’

  ‘Mrs Simpson, nee Wagstaff,’ Fox remarked, ‘suggested wire netting.’

  ‘And she ought to know,’ Alleyn said and turned back to the cottage.

  THE HAND IN THE SAND

  The Hand in the Sand was first published by American Weekly in an anthology entitled My Favourite True Mysteries in 1953

  Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction. It is certainly less logical. Consider the affair of the severed hand at Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1885. Late in the afternoon of December 16th of that year, the sergeant on duty at the central police station was visited by two brothers and their respective small sons. They crowded into his office and, with an air of self-conscious achievement, slapped down a parcel, wrapped in newspaper, on his desk. Their name, they said, was Godfrey.

  The sergeant unwrapped the parcel. He disclosed, nestling unattractively in folds of damp newsprint, a human hand. It was wrinkled and pallid like the hand of a laundress on washing day. On the third finger, left hand, was a gold ring.

  The Godfreys, brothers and sons, made a joint announcement. ‘That’s Howard’s hand,’ they said virtually in unison and then added, in explanation, ‘bit off by a shark.’

  They looked significantly at a poster pasted on the wall of the police office. The poster gave a description of one Arthur Howard and offered a reward for information as to his whereabouts. The Godfreys also produced an advertisement in a daily paper of two months earlier:

  Fifty Pounds Reward. Arthur Howard, drowned at Sumner on Saturday last. Will be given for the recovery of the body or the first portion received thereof recognizable. Apply Times Office.

  The Godfreys were ready to make a statement. They had spent the day, it seemed, at Taylor’s Mistake, a lonely bay not far from the seaside resort of Sumner, where Arthur Rannage Howard had been reported drowned on October 10th. At about two o’clock in the afternoon, the Godfreys had seen the hand lying in the sand below high-water mark.

  Elisha, the elder brother, begged the sergeant to examine the ring. The sergeant drew it off the cold, wrinkled finger. On the inside were the initials AH.

  The Godfreys were sent away without a reward. From that moment they were kept under constant observation by the police.

  A few days later, the sergeant called upon Mrs Sarah Howard. At the sight of the severed hand, she cried out – in tears – that it was her husband’s.

  Later, a coroner’s inquest was held on the hand. Three insurance companies were represented. If the hand was Howard’s hand, they were due to pay out, on three life policies, sums amounting to 2,400 pounds. The policies had all been transferred into the name of Sarah Howard.

  The circumstances of what the coroner called ‘the alleged accident’ were gone over at the inquest. On October 10, 1885, Arthur Howard, a railway workshop fitter, had walked from Christchurch to Sumner. On his way he fell in with other foot-sloggers who remembered his clothes and his silver watch on a gold chain and that he had said he meant to go for a swim at Sumner where, in those days, the waters were shark infested.

  The next morning a small boy had found Howard’s clothes and watch on the end of the pier at Sumner. A few days later insurance had been applied for and refused, the advertisement had been inserted in the paper and, as if in answer to the widow’s prayer, the Godfreys, on December 16th, had discovered the hand.

  But there also appeared the report of no less than ten doctors who had examined the hand. The doctors, after the manner of experts, disagreed in detail but, in substance, agreed upon three points.

  1) The hand had not lain long in the sea.

  2) Contrary to the suggestions of the brothers Godfrey, it had not been bitten off by a shark but had been severed by the teeth of a hacksaw.

  3) The hand was that of a woman.

  This damaging report was followed by a statement from an engraver. The initials AH, on the inside of the ring, had not been made by a professional’s tool, said this report, but had been scratched by some amateur.

  The brothers Godfrey were called in and asked whether, in view of the evidence, they would care to make a further statement.

  Elisha Godfrey then made what must have struck the police as one of the most impertinently unlikely depositions in the annals of investigation.

  Elisha said that in his former statement he had withheld certain information which he would now divulge. Elisha said that he and his brother had been sitting on the sands when from behind a boulder, there appeared a man wearing blue goggles and a red wig and saying, ‘Come here! There’s a man’s hand on the beach!’

  This multi-coloured apparition led Elisha and his brother to the hand, and Elisha had instantly declared, ‘That’s Howard’s hand.’

  The goggles and wig had then said, ‘Poor fellow…poor fellow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us before about this chap in the goggles and wig?’ the police asked.

  ‘Because,’ said Elisha, ‘he begged me to promise I wouldn’t let anyone know he was there.’

  Wearily, a sergeant shoved a copy of this amazing deposition across to Elisha. ‘If you’ve still got the nerve, sign it.’

  The Godfreys read it through and angrily signed.

  The police, in the execution of their duty, made routine inquiries for information about a gentleman in blue goggles and red wig in the vicinity of Sumner and Taylor’s Mistake on the day in question.

  To their intense astonishment they found what they were after.

  Several persons came forward saying that they had been accosted by this bizarre figure, who excitedly showed them a paper with the Godfreys’ name and address on it and told them that the Godfreys had found Howard’s hand.

  The police stepped up their inquiries and extended them the length and breadth of New Zealand. The result was a spate of information.

  The wig and goggles had been seen on the night of the alleged drowning, going north in the ferry steamer. The man who wore them had been run-in for insulting a woman, who had afterwards refused to press charges. He had taken jobs on various farms. Most strangely, he had appeared at dawn by the bedside of a fellow worker and had tried to persuade this man to open a grave for him. His name, he had said, was Watt. Finally, and most interesting of all, it appeared that on the 18th of December the goggles and wig had gone for a long walk with Mrs Sarah Howard.

  Upon this information, the police arrested the Godfrey brothers and Mrs Howard on a charge of attempting to defraud the insurance companies.

  But a more dramatic arrest was made in a drab suburb of the capital city. Here the police ran to earth a strange figure in clothes too big for him, wearing blue goggles and a red wig. It was the missing Arthur Howard.

  At the trial, a very rattled jury found the Godfreys and Mrs Howard ‘not guilty’ on both counts and Howard guilty on the second count of attempting to obtain money by fraud.

  So far, everything ties up quite neatly. What won’t make sense is that Howard did his best to look like a disguised man, but came up with the most eye-catching ‘disguise’ imaginable.

  No clue has ever been produced as to the owner of the hand. Of eight graves that were subsequently opened in search for the body to match the hand, none contained a dismembered body. But the hand had been hacked off by an amateur. Could Howard have bribed a dissecting-room janitor or enlisted the help of some undertaker’s assistant? And if, as seemed certain, it was a woman’s hand, where was the rest of the woman?

  Then there is Howard’s extraordinary masquerade. Why make himself so grotesquely conspicuous? Why blaze a trail all over the country? Did his project go a little to his head? Was he, after all, a victim of the artistic temperament?

  The late Mr Justice Alper records that Howard’s lawyer told him he knew the answer. But, soon after this, the lawyer died.

>   I have often thought I would like to use this case as the basis for a detective story, but the material refuses to be tidied up into fiction form. I prefer it as it stands, with all its loose ends dangling. I am loath to concoct the answers. Let this paradoxical affair retain its incredible mystery. It is too good to be anything but true.

  THE CUPID MIRROR

  The Cupid Mirror was first published by William Collins in an anthology entitled The Case of the Vanished Spinster in 1972

  ‘Bollinger ’21,’ said Lord John Challis.

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ said the wine waiter.

  He retrieved the wine list, bowed and moved away with soft assurance. Lord John let his eyeglass fall and gave his attention to his guest. She at once wrinkled her nose and parted her sealing-wax lips in an intimate smile. It was a pleasant and flattering grimace and Lord John responded to it. He touched his little beard with a thin hand.

  ‘You look charming,’ he said, ‘and you dispel all unpleasant thoughts.’ ,

  ‘Were they unpleasant?’ asked his guest.

  ‘They were uncomplimentary to myself. I was thinking that Benito – the wine waiter, you know – had grown old.’

  ‘But why—?’

  ‘I knew him when we were both young.’

  The head waiter materialized, waved away his underlings, and himself delicately served the dressed crab. Benito returned with the champagne. He held the bottle before Lord John’s eyeglass and received a nod.

  ‘It is sufficiently iced, my lord,’ said Benito.

  The champagne was opened, tasted, approved, poured out, and the bottle twisted down in the ice. Benito and the head waiter withdrew.

  ‘They know you very well here,’ remarked the guest.

  ‘Yes. I dined here first in 1907. We drove from the station in a hansom cab.’

  ‘We?’ murmured his guest.

  ‘She, too, was charming. It is extraordinary how like the fashions of today are to those of my day. Those sleeves. And she wore a veil, too, and sat under the china cupid mirror as you do now.’

  ‘And Benito poured out the champagne?’

  ‘And Benito poured out the champagne. He was a rather striking looking fellow in those days. Black eyes, brows that met over his nose. A temper, you’d have said.’

  ‘You seem to have looked carefully at him,’ said the guest lightly.

  ‘I had reason to.’

  ‘Come,’ said the guest with a smile, ‘I know you have a story to tell and I am longing to hear it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Very well, then.’

  Lord John leant forward a little in his chair.

  ‘At the table where that solitary lady sits – yes – the table behind me – I am looking at it now in the cupid mirror – there sat in those days an elderly woman who was a devil. She had come for the cure and had brought with her a miserable niece whom she underpaid and bullied and humiliated after the manner of old devils all the world over. The girl might have been a pretty girl, but all the spirit was scared out of her. Or so it seemed to me. There were atrocious scenes. On the third evening—’

  ‘The third?’ murmured the guest, raising her thinned eyebrows.

  ‘We stayed a week,’ explained Lord John. ‘At every meal that dreadful old woman, brandishing a repulsive ear trumpet, would hector and storm. The girl’s nerves had gone, and sometimes from sheer fright she was clumsy. Her mistakes were anathematized before the entire dining room. She was reminded of her dependence and constantly of the circumstance of her being a beneficiary under the aunt’s will. It was disgusting – abominable. They never sat through a meal without the aunt sending the niece on some errand, so that people began to wait for the moment when the girl, miserable and embarrassed, would rise and walk through the tables, pursued by that voice. I don’t suppose that the other guests meant to be unkind but many of them were ill-mannered enough to stare at her and wait for her reappearance with shawl, or coat, or book, or bag, or medicine. She used to come back through the tables with increased gaucherie. Every step was an agony and then, when she was seated, there would be merciless criticism of her walk, her elbows, her colour, her pallor. I saw it all in the little cupid mirror. Benito came in for his share too. That atrocious woman would order her wine, change her mind, order again, say it was corked, not the vintage she ordered, complain to the head waiter – I can’t tell you what else. Benito was magnificent. Never by a hairsbreadth did he vary his courtesy.’

  ‘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 soidisant 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, sympathized, 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 formidable scene. The aunt screamed abuse, the doctor supported and soothed her, another bottle was brou
ght 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 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.’