Death in Ecstasy

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Perhaps,” said Nigel doubtfully.

  “I quite agree it’s not cast-iron,” Alleyn continued. “I am breaking my own rule and going in heavily for conjecture. So far, I am convinced, we have only scratched the surface of an extremely unsavoury case.”

  “What about the others?” said Fox. “They are a very strange lot—very strange indeed. There may be motives among them, Chief.”

  “Oh, yes.’’

  “Such as jealousy,” began Nigel eagerly. “Jealousy, you know, and passion, and religious mania.”

  “Now you’re talking exactly like the Dormouse. Really, Bathgate, you are a perfect piece of pastiche this evening.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Let us take the others in turn.”

  “Very well,” said Alleyn resignedly. “It’s hideously late but let us. A: Mrs. Candour.”

  “There you are!” cried Nigel. “A warped nature if ever there was one. Did you notice how she behaved when you said you supposed Miss Quayne was very beautiful? She fairly writhed. She’s even jealous of that little squirt Wheatley. There are those two bits of paper Fox got from the grate. Obviously a letter beginning: ‘This is to warn you—’ and then later on M—S and CA and what might be the top of an N. Mrs. Candour again. And did you notice her face when she said: ‘Cara doesn’t look so pretty now?’ It was absolutely obscene.”

  “It was,” said Alleyn quietly. “You do see things, Bathgate.”

  “I suppose you are making mock of me as usual.”

  “My dear fellow,” said Alleyn quickly, “indeed I am not. Please forgive me if I am odiously facetious sometimes. It’s a bad habit I’ve got. I assure you that if I really thought you slow in the uptake I should never dream of ragging you. You’re kind enough to let me show off and I take advantage of it. Do forgive me.”

  He looked so distressed and spoke with such charming formality that Nigel was both embarrassed and delighted.

  “Chief Detective-Inspector,” he said, “I am your Watson, and your worm. You may both sit and trample on me. I shall continue to offer you the fruits of my inexperience.”

  “Very nicely put, Mr. Bathgate,” said Fox.

  Alleyn and Nigel stared at him, but he was perfectly serious.

  “Well,” said Alleyn hurriedly, “to return to the Candour. She gave, as you say, a very nasty little exhibition. Would she have done so if she’d killed Miss Quayne? It’s possible. She certainly tried to ladle out sympathy later on. She was the first to take the cup. That’s a naught that may be a rifle. So much for her. B: M. de Ravigne.”

  “Ah, now, the French gentleman,” said Fox. “He was in love with the deceased and owned up quite frank to it. Well now, it would have come out anyway, so there’s not a great deal in his frankness, you may say. There seem to have been some nice goings-on between deceased and the minister. Mr. Pringle evidently was an eyewitness. Now monsieur never hinted at anything of the sort.”

  “And therefore thought the more,” murmured Alleyn. “Yes, Fox, he was very cool, wasn’t he?”

  “Remarkable,” said Fox, “until I handled deceased’s photograph and then he blazed up like a rocket. What about this crime passionel the French jokers are always draggin’ in? They let ’em off for that sort of thing over there. Did you notice what Miss Wade said about the handkerchief?”

  “I did.”

  “He’s a very cool hand is monsieur,” repeated Fox.

  “We’ll have to trace their friendship back to Paris, I dare say,” said Alleyn wearily. “Oh, Lord! C: Miss Wade. I’m taking them in the order in which they knelt. She comes next.”

  “Nothing there,” said Nigel. “She’s just a little pagan church-hen with a difference. Rather a nice old girl, I thought.”

  “She spoke very silly to the chief,” pronounced Fox with unexpected heat. “ ‘Have you been through the Police College, officer?’ These old ladies! You could write a book on them. She’s the sort that makes point-duty what it is.”

  “I adored the way she said she had her eyes shut all through the cup ceremony, and then told you what each of them did,” said Nigel. “Didn’t you, Alleyn?”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn. “It was extremely helpful and rather interesting.”

  “D will be Mr. Pringle,” observed Fox. “And here we go again. To my way of thinking he’s the most likely type. Neurotic, excitable young gentleman and dopes, as you found out, sir.”

  “I agree,” said Alleyn. “He is a likely type. He’s in a bad way. He’s had a violent emotional jolt and he’s suffering from the after-effects of unbridled hero-worship. Silly young dolt. I hope it’s not Pringle.”

  “Obviously,” ventured Nigel, “he would look on Miss Quayne as Garnette’s evil genius.”

  “Yes,” murmured Alleyn. “I don’t pretend to speak with any sort of authority, but I should expect a person in Pringle’s condition to turn against the object of his worship rather than against the—what shall I call her?—the temptress. I should expect him in the shock of his discovery to direct his violence against Garnette there and then, not against Miss Quayne some three weeks later. I may be quite wrong about that,” he added after a minute or two. “However—there is Pringle. He’s neurotic, he’s dopey, and he’s had a severe emotional shock. He hero-worshipped Garnette and made a hideous discovery. He’s probably been living in an ugly little hell of his own for the last three weeks. By the way, we haven’t sampled Mr. Garnette’s cigarettes, have we? Another little job for the analyst.”

  “Now Miss Jenkins,” said Fox. “She’s E.”

  “She struck me as being a pleasant creature,” said Nigel. “Rather amusing I should think. Not a ‘lovely’ of course, but moderately easy to look at. Intelligent.”

  “Very intelligent,” agreed Alleyn.

  “How she got herself mixed up in this show beats me,” confessed Fox. “A nice young lady like that.”

  “She practically said herself,” Nigel interrupted. “She’s attached to that ass Pringle. Women are—”

  “Yes, yes,” interrupted Alleyn hastily. “We needn’t go into all that, I think. As far as we’ve got there’s no motive apparent in Miss Jenkins’ case. We are back at Ogden.”

  “F. Mr. Ogden,” said Fox solemnly. “It seems to me, sir, the only call we’ve got for suspecting Mr. Ogden more than anybody else is that he’s an American, and it seems as if Father Garnette’s another. It don’t amount to much.”

  “It don’t,” said Alleyn. “Personally I fancy the Atlantic meeting was their first one. I agree with you, Fox.”

  “As regards Father Garnette’s later utterances,” said Nigel, “we had a clear case of in vino veritas.”

  “Someone was bound to say in vino veritas sooner or later,” said Alleyn, “but you are quite right, Bathgate.”

  “That’s the lot, then,” said Nigel.

  “No. Again you’ve forgotten Opifex.”

  “Opifex? What do you mean?”

  “Another classical touch. Don’t you remember the rhyme in the Latin textbooks:

  “Common are to either sex

  Artifex and Opifex.”

  “Quite good names for Lionel and Claude.”

  “Really, Inspector!” protested Nigel, grinning broadly.

  “Artifex was busy with the censer and seems unlikely. Opifex had, of course, less opportunity than the others. I understand he did not handle the cup?”

  “I don’t think he did,” said Nigel. “Of course he was bending over the Initiates while they passed it round.”

  “Meaning Mr. Wheatley?” asked Fox.

  “Yes. Mr. Claude Wheatley.”

  “Hardly got the guts to kill anybody, would you think, sir?”

  “I’d say not,” agreed Nigel heartily.

  “They call poison a woman’s weapon, don’t they?” asked Alleyn vaguely. “A dangerous generalisation. Well, let’s go home. There’s one more point I want to clear up. Any prints of interest, Bailey?”

  Detective-Sergeant Bailey had returned from
the bedroom and had been at work on the parcel and the book. He had not uttered a word for some time. He now said with an air of disgruntled boredom: “Nothing on the book. Reverend Garnette’s on the parcel, I think, but I’ll take a photograph. There’s some prints in the bedroom beside the Reverend’s. I think they are Mr. Pringle’s. I got a good one of his from that rail out there. Noticed him leaning on it.”

  “Did you find out how the torch is worked?”

  “Yes. Naphtha. Bottle in the vestry.”

  “Can you ginger it up for a moment, Bailey?”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Have you got any cigarette-papers on you?”

  Bailey, looking completely disinterested, produced a packet and went out. Alleyn got a silver cup from side-board, half filled it with some of Father Garnette’s Invalid Port, emptied some salt into a cigarette-paper, stuck the margins together, and screwed up the end. Meanwhile, Fox locked the safe and sealed it with tape and wax. Alleyn pocketed the keys.

  “Come on out,” he said.

  They all returned to the sanctuary. Bailey had got the torch flaring again. The hall had taken on a new but rather ghastly lease of life. It looked like a setting for a film in extremely bad taste: The nude gods, the cubistic animals, the velvets and the elaborate ornaments flickered in the torchlight with meretricious theatricality. It was, Nigel told himself, altogether too much of a good thing. And yet, over-emphasised as it was, it did make its gesture. It was not, as it might well have been, merely silly. As the light flared up, the faces of the plaster figures flushed and seemed to move a little. The shadows under the eyes and nostrils of the Wotan wavered and the empty scowl deepened. One god seemed to puff out his cheeks, another to open and close his blank eyes. It was very still; there was no sound at all but the roar of the naphtha. The men’s voices sounded forlorn and small. It had grown very cold.

  Alleyn walked down to the chancel steps and peered out into the body of the hall.

  “I want you all up here for a moment,” he said.

  His voice seemed to echo a little. A plain-clothes man came out of the vestry and another appeared in the aisle. A constable came out of the porch.

  When they were all assembled under the torch Alleyn asked them to kneel in a circle. They did this, the constable and Fox very stolidly, Bailey with morose detachment, the two plain-clothes men with an air of mild interest. Nigel was unpleasantly moved by this performance. His imagination fashioned out of shadows the figure of Cara Quayne.

  Alleyn knelt with them. All their hands were shadowed by the sconce. They held them folded as Nigel showed them. They passed the cup from hand to hand, beginning with Fox who knelt in Mrs. Candour’s place. Alleyn made them send it twice round the circle. Then they all stood up.

  “Notice anything?” asked Alleyn.

  Nobody spoke.

  Alleyn suddenly flung the cup from him. It fell with a dull thud and the wine seeped into the carpet. Alleyn bent down and invited them all to look. In the bottom of the cup were the dregs of the wine and tiny piece of paper.

  “You see it’s stuck to the side,” said Alleyn.

  “When did you put it in, sir?” asked Fox.

  “The first time round. You see, none of you noticed it. It’s much too dark. The little tube tipped up, the salt slipped out of the open end, the paper went transparent. I hadn’t coloured mine red, but still you didn’t see it.”

  “By gum,” said Fox.

  Bailey said: “Cuh!” and bent down again to examine the paper.

  “Yes,” added Fox suddenly, “but how did the murderer know it would be so safe?”

  “That,” said Alleyn, “is another matter altogether. I rather think it’s the crux of the whole case.”

  Part II

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nannie

  WHEN NIGEL WOKE on the morning after his visit to the House of the Sacred Flame, it was with a vague sense of disquietude as though he had been visited by nightmare. As the memory of the night’s adventure came back to him it still seemed unreal. He could scarcely believe that only a few hours ago, he had knelt under a torch among images of Nordic gods, that he had seen a woman, who seemed to be possessed of an evil spirit, drink and die horribly. He closed his eyes and the faces of the Initiates appeared again. There was Miss Wade with prim lips, Pringle talking, talking, Ogden perspiring gently, M. de Ravigne who seemed to bow his head with grotesque courtesy, Janey Jenkins, and Mrs. Candour, who opened her mouth wider and wider—

  He jerked himself back from sleep, got out of bed, and went to his window. The rain still poured down on the roofs. Wet umbrellas bobbed up and down Chester Terrace. A milk-man’s cart with a dejected and irritated pony was drawn up at the corner of Knocklatchers Row. Nigel looked down Knocklatchers Row. Perhaps he would not have been very surprised if there had been no Sign of the Sacred Flame, but there it was, swinging backwards and forwards in the wind, and underneath it he could just see the narrow entry.

  He bathed, breakfasted, opened his paper and found no reference to the tragedy. So much the better. He rang up his office, got out his notes, sat down to the typewriter and worked solidly for an hour. Then he rang up Scotland Yard. Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn was in his room and would speak to Mr. Bathgate.

  “Hullo!” said Nigel with extreme cordiality.

  “What do you want?” asked Alleyn guardedly.

  “How are you?”

  “In excellent health, thank you. What do you want?”

  “It’s just that matter of my copy—”

  “I knew it.”

  “I want to put it in as soon as possible.”

  “I’m seeing the A.C. in half an hour, and then I’m going out.”

  “I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

  “Come, birdie, come,” said Alleyn.

  Nigel gathered up his copy and hurried out.

  He found Alleyn in his office, writing busily. The inspector grinned at Nigel.

  “You persistent devil,” he said, “sit down. I won’t be five minutes.”

  Nigel coyly laid the copy before him and subsided into a corner. Alleyn presently turned to the copy, read it, blue-pencilled a word or two, and then handed it back.

  “You are learning to behave quite prettily,” he said. “I suppose you’ll take that straight along to Fleet Street.”

  “I’d better,” agreed Nigel. “It’s front-page stuff. They’ll pull the old rag to bits for me this time. What are you up to this morning, Inspector?”

  “I’m going to Shepherd Market when I’ve seen the boss-man.”

  “Cara Quayne’s house? I’ll meet you there.”

  “Will you indeed?”

  “Don’t you want me?”

  “I’ll be very glad to see you. Don’t let any of your brother bloodsuckers in.”

  “I can assure you there is no danger of that. I’ll sweep past like a May Queen.”

  “You’d better have my card. Give it back to me—I remember your previous performances, you see.” He flipped a card across to Nigel. “I feel like a form master who goes in for favourites.”

  “Oh, sir, thanks most horribly, sir. It’s frightfully decent of you, sir,” bleated Nigel.

  “For the honour of the Big Dorm., Bathgate.”

  “You bet, sir.”

  “Personally,” said Alleyn, “I consider schoolboys were less objectionable when they did talk like that.”

  “When cads were cads and a’ that?”

  “Yes. They talk like little men of the world nowadays. They actually take refuge in irony, a commodity that should be reserved for the middle-aged. However, I maunder. Meet me at the Chateau Quayne in half an hour.”

  “In half an hour.”

  Nigel hurried to his office where he made an impressive entry with his copy and had the intense satisfaction of seeing sub-editors tear their hair while the front page was wrecked and rewritten. A photographer was shot off to Knocklatchers Row and another to Shepherd Market. Nigel accompanied the latte
r expert, and in a few minutes rang the bell at Cara Quayne’s front door.

  It was opened by a gigantic constable whom he had met before, P.C. Allison.

  “I’m afraid you can’t come in, sir,” began this official very firmly.

  “Do you know, you are entirely mistaken?” said Nigel. “I have the entrée. Look.”

  He produced Alleyn’s card.

  “Quite correct, Mr. Bathgate,” said P.C. Allison. “Now you move off there, sir,” he added to a frantic young man who had darted up the steps after Nigel and now endeavoured to follow him in.

  “I’m representing—” began the young man.

  “Abandon hope,” said Nigel over his shoulder. The constable shut the door.

  Nigel found Alleyn in Cara Quayne’s drawing-room. It was a charming room, temperately, not violently, modern. The walls were a stippled green, the curtains striped in green and cerise, the chairs deep and comfortable and covered in dyed kid. An original Van Gogh hung over the fireplace, vividly and almost disconcertingly alive. A fire crackled in the grate. Alleyn sat at a pleasantly shaped writing-desk. His back was turned towards Nigel, but his face was reflected in a mirror that hung above the desk. He was absorbed in his work and apparently had not heard Nigel come in. Nigel stood in the doorway and looked at him.

  “He isn’t in the least like a detective,” thought Nigel. “He looks like an athletic don with a hint of the army somewhere. No, that’s not right: it’s too commonplace. He’s faunish. And yet he’s got all the right things for ’teckery. Dark, thin, long. Deep-set eyes—”

  “Are you lost in the pangs of composition, Bathgate?” asked Alleyn suddenly.

  “Er—oh—well, as a matter of fact I was,” said Nigel. “How are you getting on?”

  “Slowly, slowly. Unfortunately Miss Quayne has very efficient servants. I’m just going to see them. Care to do your shorthand stuff? Save calling in the sergeant.”

  “Certainly,” said Nigel.

  “If you sit in that armchair they won’t notice you are writing.”

  “Right you are.”

  He sat down and took out his pad.