Nurse Cherry gripped the balustrade to keep herself from falling. Everything was growing dark. She knew that she was on the point of fainting, when she was revived by sheer astonishment and joy.
Above the balustrade appeared the head of Nurse Silver.
Nurse Cherry called out to her in warning.
“Come quickly. There’s a man in the house.”
She saw Nurse Silver start and fling back her head, as though in alarm. Then occurred the culminating horror of a night of dread.
A mouse ran across the passage. Raising her heavy shoe, Nurse Silver stamped upon it, grinding her heel upon the tiny creature’s head.
In that moment, Nurse Cherry knew the truth. Nurse Silver was a man.
Her brain raced with lightning velocity. It was like a searchlight, piercing the shadows and making the mystery clear.
She knew that the real Nurse Silver had been murdered by Sylvester Leek, on her way to the case. It was her strangled body which had just been found in the quarry. And the murderer had taken her place. The police description was that of a slightly-built youth, with refined features. It would be easy for him to assume the disguise of a woman. He had the necessary medical knowledge to pose as nurse. Moreover, as he had the night-shift, no one in the house had come into close contact with him, save the patient.
But the patient had guessed the truth.
To silence his tongue, the killer had drugged him, even as he had disposed of the obstructing presence of Mrs. Iles. It was he, too, who had emptied the oxygen-cylinder, to get Iles out of the way.
Yet, although he had been alone with his prey for hours, he had held his hand.
Nurse Cherry, with her new mental lucidity, knew the reason. There is a fable that the serpent slavers its victim before swallowing it. In like manner, the maniac—before her final destruction—had wished to coat her with the foul saliva of fear.
All the evening he had been trying to terrorize her—plucking at each jangled nerve up to the climax of his feigned unconsciousness.
Yet she knew that he in turn was fearful lest he should be frustrated in the commission of his crime. Since his victim’s body had been discovered in the quarry, the establishment of her identity would mark his hiding-place. While Nurse Cherry was at the attic window, he had cut the telephone-wire and donned his own shoes for purposes of flight.
She remembered his emotion during the knocking at the door. It was probable that it was Dr. Jones who stood without, come to assure himself that she was not alarmed. Had it been the police, they would have effected an entry. The incident proved that nothing had been discovered and that it was useless to count on outside help.
She had to face it—alone.
In the dim light from the young moon, she saw the murderer enter the attic. The grotesque travesty of his nursing disguise added to the terror of the moment.
His eyes were fixed on the open window. It was plain that he was pretending to connect it with the supposed intruder. She in her turn had unconsciously deceived him. He probably knew nothing of the revealing footprint he had left in the basement passage.
“Shut the window, you damned fool,” he shouted.
As he leaned over the low ledge to reach the swinging casement window, Nurse Cherry rushed at him in the instinctive madness of self-defence—thrusting him forward, over the sill.
She had one glimpse of dark distorted features blotting out the moon and of arms sawing the air, like a star-fish, in a desperate attempt to balance.
The next moment, nothing was there.
She sank to the ground, covering her ears with her hands to deaden the sound of the sickening slide over the tiled roof.
It was a long time before she was able to creep down to her patient’s room. Directly she entered, its peace healed her like balm. Glendower slept quietly—a half-smile playing round his lips as though he dreamed of her.
Thankfully she went from room to room, unbarring each window and unlocking each door—letting in the dawn.
The Long Shot
Nicholas Blake
Nicholas Blake was the pen-name which Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972) adopted for writing detective fiction. The first Blake novel, A Question of Proof, introduced Nigel Strangeways, who became a popular series character. He appears in Blake’s most renowned mystery, The Beast Must Die, although that story—which has been filmed twice, once by Claude Chabrol—is structured very differently from the stereotypical whodunit.
In the 1930s, Blake became a Communist, and was one of a number of writers with passionately held left-wing opinions who wrote interesting Golden Age detective fiction, although his views modified with the passage of time. “The Long Shot”, written and set in the post-war era, is a late example of a short story whodunit in the classic tradition. Strangeways, as usual, does the detective work.
***
“His Lordship,” announced Amphlett as he received me in the hall, “his lordship is in the rookery, sir.”
He crooked a little finger at the maid. “Alice, Mr. Strangeways’ baggage. We have put you in your old room, sir. I trust you will enjoy your visit.”
Did I detect a faint, quite unprofessional lack of conviction in the butler’s tone? Why shouldn’t I enjoy my visit? Any civilised person is bound to enjoy staying at a beautiful, perfectly run country house, where money is no object. Besides, Gervase was an old friend of mine, and I hadn’t seen him for nearly two years.
“I think I’ll go straight out,” I said.
“Very good, sir. His lordship has been anticipating your arrival with the keenest pleasure.”
I noticed that Gervase had still not succeeded in training dear old Amphlett to disregard his title. Twenty years ago, as a young man, Gervase had had a sort of Tolstoyan conversion. The eldest son of the Earl of Wessex, he had decided to give up his title and be called by the family name, plain Mr. Musbury. Friends, neighbours, relations, servants—all had to toe the line. That was the time he started to run his estate on a co-operative basis.
His struggles to become poor had been singularly unsuccessful, however. His co-operative farming prospered; the fortune left him in securities by his American mother throve on his neglect of it. And if he lost any friends through discarding his title, it may be assumed that they were not worth keeping anyway.
As we walked over the lawn, Amphlett delicately mopped his brow. It was certainly a very hot day for April. The cawing of rooks in the elm trees we were approaching sounded cool as a waterfall. I quite envied Gervase up there; but I didn’t much fancy climbing the rope ladder to reach him.
Looking up, I descried a small object, which presently resolved itself into a ginger-beer bottle on a string descending erratically from the top of the nearest elm.
A young footman silently received it, took a fresh bottle from a silver tray, tied the string round its neck, and gave a signal to haul away. The bottle was drawn up again into the heights, toward a narrow, well-camouflaged platform laid across two of the topmost branches.
“You’ve got a new footman, I see. A nice-looking young chap.”
“Henry gives satisfaction, sir,” said Amphlett gloomily, and not—I thought—with entire conviction.
“Been with you long?” I asked.
“Some eight months, sir.”
Henry had held his job, under the exacting Amphlett, for eight months. Well, perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he did give satisfaction.
“His lordship finds it very hot up there,” remarked Amphlett.
I perceive that the reader may be feeling a certain resistance to my narrative. Either this friend of yours was a lunatic, he is saying, or else you’re making the whole thing up. That is because he did not know Gervase Musbury.
Gervase was an eccentric who could afford to give his eccentricities a blank cheque and knew how to run them at a profit. Eccentricity, as I see it, is nothing
more than the visible track of the libido taking a short cut to the desired object. When Amphlett told me his master was in the rookery, knowing Gervase I never doubted but that he was there for some rational purpose.
Equally when I saw the bottle travelling up to that eyrie in the elm top, I accepted it as something quite natural; it was much simpler for Gervase to haul up his ginger-beer than for the footman to scale the rope ladder every time his master wanted a drink.
The ladder began to wriggle. Gervase had seen me and was climbing down—with great agility for a man approaching fifty. He jumped the last six feet, put his hands eagerly on my shoulders, and said, “You’ve not changed, Nigel.”
Nor had he. The piercing blue eyes, the moustache cut like a thicker version of Adolphe Menjou’s and appearing to bristle with electricity, the infectious manner of the enthusiast—Gervase was just the same.
“You’d better stay here, Henry,” he said to the footman. “I’ll be back presently.” Then to me, “Henry gives me my bottles at regular intervals. Like a baby.”
His blue eyes grew abstracted. “Let me see, Amphlett: who have we staying in the house? I am rather out of touch.”
“Your brother and his wife, sir. Mr. Prew. And Miss Camelot.”
“Ah, just so.” He took my arm. “Better come and meet them. Get it over. Then we can spend the rest of the afternoon watching the rooks. Absorbing, I assure you. I built a nice little hide up there before the nesting season. Fit you in easily.”
“No, Gervase,” I said firmly. “There is not room for two on that appalling little platform. And I am not madly interested in the habits of rooks. Since when have you taken up bird-watching?”
“Just a relaxation, dear boy, that’s all. I got a bit stale this winter, working on a new explosive. MacMaster called me in. Working against time—that’s the trouble. We shall have war in two years. Or sooner.”
We emerged from the shadow of the elm trees, to be greeted by a small, stoutish man, whose photograph I had seen often enough in the papers. It was Thomas Prew, M.P., a notable defender of lost causes. If Gervase was right, the hardest-fought cause of Prew’s life was now as good as lost too, for he was an out-and-out pacifist, who had gone to prison for his convictions in the last war and cried them up and down the country ever since.
I was surprised to find the pacifist Member of Parliament here, and when we left Prew I asked Gervase about it.
“Oh, Tom Prew’s an honest man,” he said. “Besides, he’s an education for my brother. You know what an old war-monger Hector is. He and Tom had quite an argument at dinner the other night. Tom won on a technical knockout. Hector and Diana have barely been on speaking terms with him since. Let’s go and find them.”
We found them at last in the garage yard, up to the elbows in the engine of their Bentley. I had almost forgotten what a magnificent couple they made. Tall, handsome, golden-haired—there was something leonine about them, both in their restlessness and repose. Hector had all his elder brother’s super-abundance of energy, but lacked Gervase’s many outlets for it: war might well prove his release and métier.
Diana I admired without liking; she was too ambitious, too overpowering for my taste. Besides, she was wrapped up in her husband. They gave one, more than any other couple I ever met, the impression of being a team, of physical and mental co-ordination. I felt it again now, watching them as they worked in a sort of telepathic unison over the engine of the car in which they tore restlessly over the face of Europe.
My sensation was obviously shared by the beautiful Miss Anthea Camelot, who had been standing by with an odd-man-out expression on her face. She turned to Gervase with relief—and something more than relief, I fancied. Poor girl, I thought: if you were Circe and Sheba rolled into one, your enchantments would break against Gervase; the name written on his heart is burned too deep for any other woman to erase it.
Though ten years younger than Gervase, I had been for a long time his confidant. I was one of the very few people outside his own family who knew about the tragedy of Rose Borthwick. She had been the daughter of one of his father’s tenant farmers. Gervase, in his youth, had fallen passionately in love with her. His father, knowing that Gervase was determined to marry the girl, had managed to have her sent away out of his reach.
There were terrible scenes and a final estrangement between Gervase and his father. Gervase had nearly gone off his head, trying to find Rose again. But all his searches were in vain.
I was still thinking of this sad business a quarter of an hour later, as we were all at sea on the lawn. Presently the conversation turned to Hitler.
“We should have called his bluff long ago,” said Hector Musbury. “If our politicians hadn’t all got cold feet—”
“Your politicians have a responsibility, too,” said Thomas Prew, in the beautiful deep voice that contrasted so strangely with his dumpy, rather insignificant figure. “Look at that young man”—he pointed toward Henry, who was standing a little distance away, in the shadow of the elm trees. “Multiply him by several millions. Imagine those millions torn, maimed, rotting in the earth…Can you wonder if the politicians have cold feet?”
A shade of anger came over Hector’s face. “That’s just sentimental special-pleading. The alternatives are possible death or certain slavery for us. Evidently some of you people prefer the idea of being slaves.”
Diana flicked a warning glance at him, I noticed. Anthea Camelot broke in, “But Mr. Prew wasn’t talking about the politicians. He was talking about the people who’d have to be killed. About Henry. Let’s see what he thinks. Henry!” she called.
The young footman came a few paces forward. There was a piquant blend of respectfulness and irony on his face.
“Henry, would you rather be killed by the Germans or enslaved by them?”
Henry took his time, gazing levelly at us all. “If it comes to that, Miss Camelot,” he said at last, “many might think I’m a slave already.”
I saw Amphlett flinch. Even for Gervase’s equalitarian ménage, this was a bit too much. No wonder the old butler had been unconvincing about Henry’s giving satisfaction. Diana evidently felt the same.
“Your servants, Gervase,” she exclaimed, “seem to enjoy a perpetual Saturnalia.”
“You mustn’t be hard on Henry,” said Anthea Camelot. “After all, he’s spent most of the day standing at attention over a tray of ginger-beer bottles. If that isn’t slavery, my name is Pharaoh.”
I was sitting very near Gervase, and got the feeling that the words he now murmured were for my ears alone. “Youth must have its tests, its ordeals,” I heard.
Diana broke in, “Oh, dear, I’ve left my handkerchief indoors. Henry”—she was the kind of woman who gives orders to servants without bothering to look at them—“fetch the handkerchief from my dressing table.”
“My orders are to stay here, madam.”
I was afraid there would be an explosion. Gervase evidently intended to give no help: he was glancing quizzically from Diana to the young footman. But Hector was already on his feet, moving toward the house, as though his wife’s wish had been communicated to him before she uttered it.
“I’ll fetch it,” he said.
After tea, Gervase retired up his elm tree again. Hector and Diana set up a target on the lawn and tried to lure the rest of us into archery. But Anthea, well aware no doubt that this particular sport would set off her charms to less advantage than Diana’s, indicated that she would not object to my walking her round the rose garden.
As we strolled off, in the wake of Amphlett and Henry who were bearing the tea-things back to the house, we noticed Hector and Diana fastening upon a not-too-obviously-enthusiastic Mr. Prew and beginning to instruct him in the art of drawing a six-foot bow.
“The thin end of the wedge,” remarked Anthea. “Start off the wee pacifist on a bow and arrow, and he’ll soon be romping ro
und with a loaded Tommy gun.”
Gervase’s rose garden is a charming enough place even when there are no roses out, with its neat grass walks, its fountains and statues, and the box-hedges yielding their fragrance to the sun. Anthea and I sat down on deck chairs, prepared to enjoy each other’s company. At least, I was. But it soon became clear that she had brought me here for a purpose.
“You are a detective of sorts, aren’t you?” she said.
“Of sorts. Why?”
Her eyes followed an early butterfly for a moment. “Oh, everything seems so queer here this time.”
“Such as?”
“Well, little Prew wandering about like a lost soul, and Hector quarrelling with him, and Diana nagging at Gervase about that new footman, and Gervase sitting up a tree ignoring us all.”
And ignoring you in particular, I thought. I said, “It’s odd, no doubt. But this always was an odd household.”
“Gervase does treat young Henry in an extraordinary way, though, don’t you think? Spoiling him half the time, and tyrannising over him the rest. He’s hardly let him out of his sight this afternoon, for instance.”
“Perhaps it’s Henry who’s guarding Gervase,” I said idly.
“Guarding him!” Anthea gave me a look from her warm, dark eyes. “You’d not say that if— Listen. The other night I came down late to get a book out of the library, and I heard Gervase telling somebody off in the study next door. He was shouting, ‘You’ll not get any more of my money! I’ve a better use for it now.’”
“That is interesting. You don’t know who he was talking to?”
“No. But any fool could make a good guess. There’s only one person in this household who fits the role of blackmailer.”
“You’re judging Henry on rather flimsy evidence. Why, it might have been Hector. Hasn’t Hector been sponging on Gervase most of his life?”
Anthea rose impatiently. I had not taken her seriously enough. Or so she thought. We strolled back to the lawn, where the archers were still at it. Diana made a fine goddess, standing bright-haired with the bow at full stretch. Hector was near her, his hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket. Thomas Prew looked an uninspiring figure beside them.
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