Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  It was a successful speech. Some of the company felt that by going through an unpleasant formality they would in some way avoid scandal; the more perceptive were put in good humour by the consciousness of being more perceptive and of so appreciating this young policeman’s wiliness. Only Bunney protested, but he was assured by Malloch – confidentially and as between scholars – that in good society in England one never objected to being searched by the police. Peter Marryat, who had been beguiling the time by trying – sotto voce and with the assistance of Tommy Potts – to get the abandoned Norwegian Captain right at last, interjected an intrigued rather than an indignant ‘I say!’ The Duke expressed curt and slightly absent agreement and the Duchess, knowing the next move to be with her and seeming to recognize herself as still too shaken for effective action, murmured to Mrs Terborg. And Mrs Terborg promptly took charge: if the police had a respectable woman there would be no difficulty.

  This gained, Appleby made discreet haste to another point. ‘After leaving the hall nobody, I hope, will be disturbed again for the night. But a constable will be in the green-room and you will please go in one by one as you leave and give names; I must have a record, I think, in that form. And one ether thing. It may be that some of you have something to say that you feel should be said soon, but which is too indefinite for other than the most confidential communication to the police. You will all understand me. While Lord Auldearn’s death remains a mystery there must be suspicion, weighing of doubtful circumstances, possibly significant recollections. And any matter of that sort with the least substance it is your duty to advance. A word to the constable will bring me at once.’ And having with these words baited a traditional but often-successful trap, Appleby gave certain further directions to the constables and then turned to the Duke. ‘And now, sir, I must find the sergeant and the missing guest – the one who stayed guarding Lord Auldearn’s room.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the Duke. ‘Yes: Giles Gott.’

  Appleby’s response had just that quality of vehemence which made Stella Terborg jump.

  ‘Giles Gott!’

  3

  ‘Hullo,’ said Gott – whom, when excited, nothing could surprise.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Appleby. The two men looked at each other in silence and with profound satisfaction – a proceeding which Sergeant Trumpet, who was versed in the literature of crime, interpreted as that intent matching of swords proper to the first meeting of fated antagonists.

  ‘My eye’s been on him,’ said Sergeant Trumpet heavily.

  Appleby nodded gravely. ‘Quite right, sergeant. The man Gott has planned many a murder before tonight.’

  ‘Has he now!’ said Sergeant Trumpet, deeply gratified and edging a little nearer to his suspect.

  Gott spread himself more comfortably in Lord Auldearn’s easy chair. ‘The sergeant thinks I must be the central figure because I alone have broken away from the pack. He has given it out that he’s sleuthing the third boot-boy, but actually he’s been hanging on to me grimly.’ He looked at Appleby lazily. ‘And what may this mean that thou, dear corse, again, in complete steel, revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon? Whence comest thou, shade?’

  Sergeant Trumpet frowned. Appleby sighed – he thought he knew this mood. ‘Les Présages,’ he answered absently. ‘Sergeant, a word.’ He led his colleague from the room and presently returned alone. ‘That better?’ he asked.

  ‘Inspector Buxton’, said Gott, ‘has chicken-pox and Inspector Lucas has gone on holiday as far as Bridlington, where his late wife’s sister keeps a boarding-house not far from the front. I had it all from the sergeant while his eye was on me, but during the last half-hour it palled… Well, here’s a mess…what’s happening below?’

  ‘Search. Which has at last lured away your sergeant. Now talk. Better than the Duke if you can – and he’s not bad.’

  ‘On the Duke’s suggestion I came up here with Gervase Crispin. The room was, of course, unlocked. Nothing seemed disturbed. But Gervase knew of a safe – behind the Walcot drypoint there – and it was cracked. Gervase went back and I sat down on guard, and to think – if I could. Presently the sergeant came and sat down to guard the guard. In the intervals of strained conversation I continued to attempt to think.’

  ‘Good,’ said Appleby. ‘Results, please.’

  ‘The shooting has to do with the play. It’s been thought out in the context of the play. They’ll have told you of the messages? Someone with a real sense of effect. Motive: perhaps just effect.’

  ‘At least, not documents of state?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Appleby had been inspecting the safe. Now something in his friend’s voice made him turn round. ‘Giles!–’ He was interrupted by a question – and by the knowledge that Gott, despite his lazy way, was as much in earnest as himself.

  ‘Have they found this damned thing, John? You forget I don’t know what’s happened down there. I only know there was something, and that this safe’s cracked.’

  ‘Yes, they found it. Auldearn was keeping an eye on it, though in a precious queer way. He’d stowed it in a sort of scroll he was due to hang on to, apparently, throughout the show.’

  ‘I see. And you’ve decided the spies are moonshine?’

  ‘It seems very probable that they are.’

  ‘Materials for sensational fiction, not dealt in by Messrs Appleby and Gott?’

  ‘Clearer-headed reasons than that, I hope. Everything points to quite a different sort of affair.’

  ‘Everything except what Elizabeth – the daughter, that is: by the way, John, I want to marry her – everything except what Elizabeth and I saw in the garden.’

  ‘Good luck to you… What?’

  Gott told of the flitting figure in the moonlight and of the mysterious something tossed over the wall. Appleby shook his head. ‘I think Lady Elizabeth jumped to conclusions, though I know there has been spy-activity here before. I suspect I know something about this safe-cracking business that might interpret what you saw. Briefly, there’s circumstantial evidence that a certain cracksman and jewel-thief, one Happy Hutton by name, has been operating hereabouts. And what you saw was not improbably Happy making contact with his inside stand. I shouldn’t be surprised to find some of the other safes like this one cracked too, and that it has nothing to do with the nasty business downstairs. And why should spy-business be thought out, as you say, in the context of Hamlet?’

  ‘Why indeed. But you believe, don’t you, in the delicate processes we lump together as feeling something in the air?’

  ‘Yes. And so, no doubt, does the sergeant. But talk about the people first, the whole bewildering crowd of them.’

  For a moment Gott looked querulous. ‘But I’m still trying to think. And why aren’t you superintending your search?’

  ‘Because I’m hoping that when left to the simple and unintimidating rural bobby somebody may be moved to drop dark – and misleading – hints. I’ve left half an invitation that way. And as for thinking, think as you go.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll talk. I’ll talk like Marlow in Lord Jim, who made a habit of delivering a hundred thousand words – uncommonly well – to casual after-dinner audiences while contriving to smoke a succession of cigars.’ During this empty prologue Gott kicked off the Dumb-show King’s slippers and undid his ruff. Then he plunged, slightly eccentrically, into exposition.

  ‘Talking of Conrad, I hope you read Wodehouse. If so, you will have realized that the Duke cultivates the part of Lord Emsworth – you remember? Mark him, and you expect to mark that immortal porker, the Empress of Blandings, round the corner. The man cultivates ineffectiveness and it is moderately amusing. Obviously enough, he is able; and his hobby-horse is the first thing, no doubt, that gives one the feeling of Scamnum’s keeping a good deal below the surface.

  ‘The Duchess, who is a sort of relation o
f mine, is clever, charming, and oddly determined to have me for a son in-law. In that ultimately, I suspect, lies the genesis of Hamlet played at Scamnum Court – and so of this old man’s death.’ Gott paused. ‘Auldearn was her friend chiefly and – I believe – part of her past, in a respectable way. In fact Auldearn was to the Duchess what I, with bad luck, may be to the Duchess’ daughter – but that is by the by.

  ‘In the present generation Gervase, as you probably know, is the centre of all things Crispin. He controls a big whack of the planet; too big. I imagine, for him to deal in miching mallecho and mean mischief. Scamnum is, as it has always been, simply the Crispin show-case, dukedom and all. And the Duke has a show-case role. He’s an Elder Statesman. When the public shows signs of getting worked up about something the Prime Minister and such-like come down and consult him. Scamnum is put on the picture-page with an inset of the Duke in knickerbockers – faintly evocative of the Empress – or at his desk writing a monograph on trout-fishing. The effect is soothing and England stands firm. One has some respect for the technique. But whether the Duke is actually deep in the counsels of our rulers I don’t know. Gervase, of course, is a junior minister from time to time but doesn’t much exert himself along those lines.

  ‘Kincrae – the heir, that is – is eccentric and has gone to govern a Crown Colony. He writes fish-monographs rebutting his father. Then there is Elizabeth. Elizabeth is twenty-one, serious, romantic, practical, childlike, mature, passionate, detached, ironical, and baffling.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Appleby. As Gott talked he was systematically examining the dead man’s bedroom. ‘Now go on to the mob,’ he directed.

  ‘It’s rather a large order. Shall I begin alphabetically? A’s for Auldearn, the man who was shot. B is for Bunney, the man who was not. Very little to say about Bunney. He’s rather like yourself – same policemanly figure and something of a detective mind. C is for Clay–’

  ‘It might be better’, said Appleby, ‘if you didn’t go right through but simply picked out the type of the amazingly foolhardy murderer.’

  ‘You think he – or she – must have been that?’

  Appleby nodded. ‘He walked out on the rear stage, shot Auldearn almost point-blank in what might have been full view of the prompter, was lucky in having five seconds to get off and amazingly lucky in manoeuvring into some uncompromising position thereafter without exciting remark, I call him foolhardy.’

  ‘But I think’, said Gott, suddenly serious again, ‘none of the conditions you have been describing necessarily holds.’

  Appleby stopped exploring and sat down. ‘Explain,’ he said.

  ‘Well, begin this way. You must thoroughly explore from a likely premise before you go on to one less likely. Now a likely premise is: The murderer exposes himself to as little risk as possible; he is not foolhardy. Take that and base a question on it. Why did the murderer, being resolved to expose himself to as little risk as possible, choose for his act the precise place and time that he did?’

  ‘Why indeed.’

  ‘Because, John, he could foresee your mind moving on the level on which it has actually begun to move. Literally, level. Did you look up when you were on the rear stage?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Appleby, ‘and I see what you mean. And it didn’t occur to me. And I hope the reason that it didn’t occur to me was that it won’t do.’

  ‘Immediately above the rear stage there’s what is called the upper stage. It has a trap-door. And in a shadowy corner of the upper stage was an old gentleman painting a picture. And anyone lying flat on the upper stage would be invisible to the audience–’

  ‘It won’t do,’ said Appleby. ‘Auldearn, as it happens, was shot from floor level. I’m almost certain of that at this moment, and I think the medical report will prove it. And I doubt if the distance could be more than six feet – though that’s for experts too.’ He looked at Gott and added: ‘Giles, you have another shot in the locker!’

  ‘I think I have. It comes from having produced the play. I suggest that Auldearn might have been shot where he was because one would immediately begin to think in terms of someone coming through the rear-stage curtains; of an “amazingly foolhardy murderer”, as you said, who would half-announce his intention in sinister messages and so forth. But I think there’s another Why. Why was Auldearn shot when he was? Conceivably because he had just lain down, preparatory to being discovered “dead” after Hamlet had stabbed through the curtain. And a shot from above when he was prone would carry on the suggestion that he had been shot from a level when standing. And the distance would be about eight feet.’

  There was a little silence – and then Appleby smiled. ‘Round One to you,’ he said. And getting up he resumed his inspection of the room.

  ‘So you have one suspect,’ continued Gott, “aloft”. And you have a possible maximum of – let me see – twenty-seven suspects “within”.’

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ said Appleby. ‘Excellent.’ He was examining a bowler hat. ‘By the way, had Auldearn a man with him, do you know?’

  ‘He had no man – and kept nothing of the sort, I understand, in town. He lived very simply in a service-flat. His only establishment was in Scotland somewhere. But I’m giving you the biographies – by express invitation – of twenty-seven suspects.’

  Appleby had turned to examine the contents of the dead man’s wardrobe. He seemed to consider the process as of some importance, for he delayed Gott’s further narrative with absentminded banter. ‘I say, Giles – what if you were all in it together? Twenty-seven conspirators getting up all this Hamlet stuff. But why should twenty-seven people wish away ‘a Lord Chancellor?’

  ‘Because’, said Gott sadly, ‘the Lord Chancellor is a wholesale blackmailer and keeps twenty-seven micro-photographs of compromising documents permanently secreted beneath a wig and false skull… Are you ready?’

  ‘Where were the originals?’ asked Appleby seriously; he was peering inside an old and shabby deer-stalking hat. ‘Well, never mind; I’m ready.’

  ‘There were thirty-one behind-stage folk. Subtract Auldearn – thirty; the Duchess and Clay, visible on the front stage – twenty-eight; old Cope, the suspect “aloft” if you like – twenty-seven. Twenty-seven suspects “within”. And beyond that it’s a matter of which of them can swear to which. Elizabeth, Noel Gylby, a girl called Stella Terborg, and myself you will find swearing to each other; we were in a group. And I can swear to one of the two footmen; I had him in the corner of my eye when the pistol went off. You will probably find other more or less authenticated alibis; but you will find too that people will be remarkably confused. Quite apart from the notion of a Royal Academician sniping from the heavens. I’m really not convinced of any absolute foolhardiness. The man knew his bloody game. On an occasion of this sort – for acting, you know, is a curiously exacting business even to the least nervous amateur – its remarkable to what an extent each individual off-stage is wrapped up in himself. One would almost hazard that the criminal had a developed sense of crowd psychology – like the fellow Nave or the advertising girl, Sandys.’

  ‘Suspicions’, said Appleby, ‘crowd thick and fast upon us. Nave I remarked; the advertising girl, not yet.’

  ‘I don’t know that it’s much use my talking about the people in detail before you’ve more than glimpsed them. But I was going to say something of the party in general, and of feelings in the air. I find I have two conflicting impressions about the party. First, it was particularly pleasant and well-contrived – one of those socially skilful mixtures in which each element finds the other charming, and so on. Secondly – and quite contradictorily, I’m afraid – it was on edge from the first. And the messages…well, worked something up. If I say another word I shall be dealing with things so tenuous as to appear fanciful. It’s best, perhaps, to go back to the statement that everything was bound up with the play – the first thing it occurred
to me to say to you. The murder has been woven somehow into the play – and the play had woven itself into the party. Not the mere fact that we were play-acting, though that did at times engender a curious self-consciousness. I mean the particular atmosphere aimed at – by men, heaven help me! – in this particular production of the play Hamlet. The conflicts which are in the play were present with us as we sat at dinner; that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see,’ said Appleby; and there was no fear that Gott should feel him to be taking this difficult exploration lightly even when he added briskly: ‘Well – to seize on something more concrete – I think there’s no doubt that friend Happy has been present with us too. In fact I suspect this of being his hat.’ And Appleby poked the bowler that had interested him.

  ‘Happy’s? Why not Auldearn’s? It’s a gentleman’s hat, as they say.’

  ‘Oh, for that matter Happy is quite the gentleman. He comported himself in a most gentlemanlike way – and with a hat – the last time I saw him. But not Auldearn’s hat because not size of Auldearn’s hats. See wardrobe. And probably Happy’s because I see what Happy’s been doing – gate-crashing. When I met him making a get-away some hours ago he was wearing a high hat – but of the collapsible sort. You see, Giles?’

  Giles didn’t altogether see.

  ‘He specializes in raiding houses when there’s a big affair on. And to get at the bedrooms his best chance would be to pass as a valet; half a dozen people have probably brought men-servants – some quite strangers to the Scamnum staff. Dark coat, appropriate sort of scarf, bowler discreetly in hand, upper-servant walk – and Happy might successfully make this bedroom or that. Business in bedrooms over, he abandons bowler, produces opera-hat – a thing easily concealed – puts scarf in pocket, opens dark overcoat on immaculate tails – and stands an excellent chance of snooping round usefully among the sahibs before being politely asked to leave.’

  Gott sighed. ‘You certainly know the habits of your friends. Round Two to you. But are you not jumping about more than your habit was?’