Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘This unexpected and shattering pistol-shot in the hall: would you class that, Sir Richard, as a substantially traumatic event an event following upon which most people’s minds would be confused?’

  Nave appeared to consider almost anxiously. ‘That again is interesting – very interesting indeed. I will tell you why. If the shot had been fired on some other occasion – say when we were all seated at dinner – the effect would have been startling, of course – but not, I believe, shocking in a technical sense. In the middle of the play it was different. I don’t know if you have experience of the atmosphere of amateur theatricals; it is distinctive and peculiar. Everyone is oddly wrapped up in himself and his part. One seems to attend to other people without in fact attending to them. In making your inquiries about what was happening before the shot you will, I imagine, be surprised to find how vague everybody is about everybody else.’

  Appleby nodded. This agreed significantly with something Gott had said.

  Nave continued. ‘And it was upon this absorbed company that the pistol-shot irrupted. The effect upon most of us present behind the scenes may not have been incomparable with the effect of being run over. Certainly I should expect a good deal of blurring and confusion of memory.’

  ‘The murderer could have counted on that?’

  ‘If the murderer has a flair for psychology – yes.’

  ‘He has a flair for display,’ said Appleby.

  ‘That’, said Nave, ‘is abundantly clear.’

  Noel Gylby and Diana Sandys walked round and round the lily pond. And conversation would not take the straight line it ought; it went round and round like the path. Partly it was because the gardens were without their usual privacy. Policemen – some meditative amid the beauties of Scamnum, others awkward before its splendours – still haunted the middle distance with unobtrusive efficiency. And partly it was because Noel and Diana had their minds on different things. Noel wanted Diana’s view on the universe – but was shy on the job. Diana wanted Noel’s explanation of the Scamnum murders – and was persistent. Irritation was just round the next curve.

  ‘It’s absurd,’ said Diana. ‘Here’s almost a whole day gone and nothing seems to have happened at all. I don’t believe they know anything. Who do you think did it?’

  ‘Some silly ass,’ said Noel with exasperating vagueness. ‘Silly-ass thing to do.’

  ‘It all seems to me remarkably smart. Everybody baffled.’

  ‘Yes, just as you’d be baffled by some kid’s trick that you can’t get the hang of because it’s simply too silly. Murders are done by people with kids’ minds. Arrested development. Peter Pans – have you ever thought what a sinister affair that is? And if I had to pick among the people here for the murders I’d pick the prime silly ass, Peter Marryat. But I don’t know that it’s interesting. The poor devils are dead – and let the police do what they can about the loonie responsible.’

  ‘That’s just the air that the Duke has,’ said Diana. ‘I suppose it’s Crispin hauteur.’

  ‘Oh, come, Diana–’

  ‘Exactly. “Come, come.” And as for Silly-ass Marryat I don’t know that he’s more arrested than anyone else – though his mental age is about eight. If you were going sleuthing on those principles you’d have to tip almost the whole distinguished company.’

  ‘All half-wits, you mean?’

  ‘No. Just kids. All – or nearly all – with the motives of kids just underneath. Peter Marryat simply lacks a protective covering of conventional adulthood – that’s all.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather a desperate view – average mental age human race eight?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you can’t sell soap and toothpaste without knowing that people in general are sub-adult. Perhaps it’s just in our time – a sort of progressive dotage. That’s what I thought when I was doing Woman’s-page before I got to copy-writing. The average mental age seemed to drop every week. In fact, we had a rule. If a thing was just too steep to put over – too unfathomably childish and imbecile – we simply put it in a drawer for a month or six weeks. Then folk were ripe for it. I suppose that’s what’s called history.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Noel hesitantly. He had got his discussion of the universe after all – and it rather alarmed him. ‘Then what’s to be done? Let the eight-year-olds and homicidal adolescents rip and look out for oneself?’

  ‘Well, isn’t that what you were putting over? The deaths of Auldearn and the little nigger man not interesting: let’s talk about Life and Woman and Art and–’

  ‘I meant–’ began Noel, aggrieved.

  ‘Never mind. But when one’s sold soap and written up Woman’s-page and seen people such trapped helpless mutts one feels that if one knew an honest, no-gup uplift one would go for it all out.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Noel – more happily. He was a fundamentally serious youth and much concerned to establish Diana’s seriousness.

  ‘Or perhaps just do a good mop-up where one happens to stand. Hunt out this public nuisance of a murderer, for instance.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Noel – with only a hint of doubt. This basing of a pertinacious interest in Lord Auldearn’s murder on impressive if sketchy ground of high moral principle was not perhaps altogether consistent with Diana’s first reactions to the same event in the hall. But it would have been a maturer Noel who could have reflected on this. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Certainly he should be hunted out. Appleby’s job, though.’

  ‘That,’ said Diana, ‘is what the Duke thinks–’

  ‘You don’t suppose we could take a hand ourselves? We haven’t any of the information that the police have – and I can’t see that we should have a single advantage over them.’

  ‘I’m not sure. For instance, Noel, take people in the most general categories you can think of. And begin placing the type of the criminal that way.’

  Noel considered dubiously. ‘Oh well – to begin with I suppose it’s a man’s crime–’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Diana, at once triumphant and indignant.

  ‘I say, have I been tactless? Women’s rights and all?’

  ‘No. Just over-confident – as this policeman will be. Too much guts in the affair to think of a woman.’

  ‘I doubt if Appleby will take for granted–’

  ‘He thinks he won’t but he will,’ said Diana firmly. ‘And, anyway, you and I are going to canvass the ladies.’ She glanced at Noel, saw that she had gained her point, and promptly added: ‘Please, Noel.’ To study the masculine temperament was – after all – part of her job.

  4

  It was late afternoon. Appleby and Sergeant Mason, sitting in the green-room with pencil and paper before them as if playing a parlour game, had been joined by Gott.

  ‘I never thought we’d get as far,’ said Mason soberly.

  ‘It’s not far enough,’ said Appleby, looking at the lengthening shadows on the floor.

  Gott looked restlessly from one to the other. ‘Are you on a sound track?’ he asked. ‘I should imagine that if you work purely on eliminations the evidence will almost certainly stop before it becomes useful. How many do you reckon left now?’

  ‘Four,’ said Mason. He had little enthusiasm for amateurs. ‘That’s impressive. But even so–’

  ‘We may get something more yet,’ said Appleby. ‘And anyway, Giles, do you see any other method open to us at present – any other way of getting at the truth?’

  ‘I think we’ve got it.’

  Mason sighed. ‘You mean you know, sir?’ he asked gently, Gott looked doubtfully from one professional to the other.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in a sense that one knows where the kettle is – at the bottom of the sea.’ He frowned at the tips of his fingers. ‘It sounds very absurd, no doubt. But I feel that at the bottom of my mind, I know. And it’s just a matter of getting it up to the surfa
ce.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ said Mason.

  But Appleby was really interested. ‘In other words, we have sufficient evidence before us – if we could see it. May be so. But surely, Giles, it’s not a merely intuitive feeling you’ve got – a vague sensation in the back of the head? You must feel that your feeling comes – so to speak – from this and that?’

  Gott nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. And first and foremost is the strong impression one has of the dramatic aspect of the affair. In the light of that alone we should see our way farther than by all this alibi business.’

  Mason, an intelligent man, reacted unexpectedly to this. ‘I think you have a line, sir; I don’t think it’s impossible that you may get there first just by fishing in the depths of your own mind. I wouldn’t like to be short with a thing merely because it’s not my own way. But what about summing up our facts first – alibis and everything else? It might give you the start you want.’

  Gott nodded. ‘By all means. And perhaps my innings later.’ Appleby looked at his friend attentively. From Gott’s mind, he believed, something really was going to emerge. He recognized in him just the same excitement that he had himself felt earlier in the day on making the significant link between Tucker’s Malloch–Auldearn story and the delay-theme in Hamlet. Such starts of mind may be will-o’-the-wisps – or they may be arrows to a mark. But now he turned to Mason. ‘Go ahead,’ he said briefly.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll begin with the first murder, although there are earlier events to be considered. Lord Auldearn was shot through the heart just on eleven o’clock last night. Owing to the construction of what they call the rear stage no one could see what happened, with the probable exception of the prompter – the Indian gentleman – who seems to have paid for his knowledge with his life. But we have a certain amount of evidence as to what occurred, nevertheless. There is the remarkable fact that the shot was not fired from the shelter of the double curtains: the experts swear to that on the strength of the powder-marks. Just conceivably the shot might have come from above when Lord Auldearn was in the act of lying down; in other words, just conceivably the shot might have come from the painter, Mr Cope. But it seems more likely that the shot was fired by a person who walked straight across the rear stage to effect it – risking the observation of the prompter in doing so. There may have been a moment’s struggle or flurried movement, because an iron cross was knocked off what they call, I think, the faldstool; or this may have happened when the murderer was making his hurried escape back to the curtains. We must notice that the revolver – a small foreign weapon which it will not be easy to trace – was carried off the scene of the shooting and hidden in a very odd spot in this green-room here. And there’s a point where I differ from you a little, sir. You see that as evidence of deliberate hardihood – one of a number of such. pieces of evidence. But whatever we may think of placing the gun in the skull, I feel that carrying it away would be automatic. Calculation would no doubt tell the murderer to drop it before attempting his getaway through the curtains – I admit that. But calcution may not have come in. It isn’t a man’s instinct to drop a gun after firing; he makes off, gun and all.’

  ‘A good point,’ said Appleby quietly. ‘Perhaps I was astray.’

  ‘Well, sir, the next point is: No fingerprints, no material clues. And nobody saw anything; at least nobody had anything to report. At this stage – except for what’s coming in the matter of Mr Bose – we seem to be faced with a perfectly successfully accomplished crime. We know that it must be the work of one of a defined but large group of people – the behind-stage people – and we know nothing else.’

  Mason paused for a minute to take his bearings. ‘The next point – or rather not the next point – is the presence of spies who are concerned to steal a document from Lord Auldearn. I say they are not a point in our case. They are distinct from it, run parallel to it, and by tackling them we won’t get nearer Lord Auldearn’s murderer. For a time it seemed that they might have succeeded in taking advantage of the murder. But that supposition is now dissipated. One of the spies – we presume there was a little gang of them – at first sent his principals a hopeful message: he thought either that the shooting had been a successful stroke of a confederate’s or that a confederate had successfully taken advantage of it. But later he corrected himself, reporting that Auldearn’s death was another affair altogether, and that their chance was gone. We take the spies, therefore, as having been present, but ineffective. They merely lead away from our business now.’

  ‘No doubt true,’ said Gott, who had been following Mason’s methodical recapitulation with considerable respect. ‘But nevertheless it seems likely that there is a spy among us still. It would be satisfactory to know who he or she is.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But we must have concentration on the vital object before indulging miscellaneous curiosity.’

  It was a crushing reply and Gott acknowledged it as such with a gesture. Mason plodded on.‘Next and as a matter of routine we look for bad characters. And we find reason to believe that a cracksman called Happy Hutton has been on the premises and has broken into three safes. Conceivably, he may later have insinuated himself among the audience during the interval. But after the interval he would be as cut off from behind-scenes as anyone else. Therefore, like the spies, he is irrelevant. We have his hat, it seems. But we can’t jug him on that. Happy fades out.’

  Appleby interrupted. ‘Sorry; there’s been a telegram you haven’t seen.’ He rummaged for a form on the table. ‘It wasn’t Happy’s hat after all – not his size. So we’ve got nothing on him whatever except that I saw him scuttling for town like a scared rabbit some eight miles from Scamnum – and that the safe-work was his technique. That hat is another guest’s as like as not.’

  Gott chuckled. ‘And how you crowed over it, John! Happy Hutton’s habit with high hats and the vivid account you gave of them – well, well!’

  Mason, possibly not without amusement, looked stolidly at his own large fingers. ‘Happy fades out,’ he repeated. ‘And next we come to the second murder, that of Mr Bose. It seems next to certain that Mr Bose, as prompter, saw enough of what happened to be a mortal danger to the murderer. But instead of coming out with the story be went off in an outlandish heathen way to write home about it – as the custom was with him, it seems. And so he was killed too. His death has just two points of significance for us: it gives us – though much less precisely – another place and time at which the criminal was active; and it gives another of the evidences – undoubted this time – of something like foolhardiness in the criminal’s conduct of the affair: he dragged the body about the house just for display. And the theme of display, as we all seem to be agreed, is a crux.’

  Gott was stirring slightly impatiently again. His mind was too rapid for this stolid march; it wanted to leap about. But Mason, who felt there had been enough leaping about, went steadily on. ‘This murder was planned, deliberately and at obvious risk, to take place bang in the middle of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And it was preceded by various more or less lurid messages, the burden of which was the idea of revenge. The point there, then, is clear. Vengeance – and vengeance in highly theatrical and sensational circumstances – is either the real motive or a fake motive for Auldearn’s murder. For there is always the possibility that this Hamlet revenge business is a screen and that some quite different motive is at work. When we come to the people concerned – the definite number of people who could have killed Auldearn – we have to look about both for one sort of motive and the other. And we do come to the people now, after just one minute more with the messages.

  ‘The messages, although they were launched with great cunning, give us certain further places and times. And one of them turned out to be dangerous to the sender – dangerous because Bunney’s machine is an instrument, as it happens, of such phonetic precision that a voice recording for it would not be secure against identification however disgu
ised. Hence the attack on Bunney and the stealing of that particular record from his collection.

  ‘And now we come to the thirty-one people who were concerned one way or another with the play. We have to scrutinize their movements and – if we can – their minds and their pasts. In other words, we have to look for the cardinal things in a murder investigation: opportunity and motive. But we needn’t trouble over motive where there was no opportunity whatever.’

  Mason, Gott was thinking, was unafraid of the obvious. And yet Mason, maybe, was the type of the successful policeman; beside him John Appleby seemed to have something of a lingering and speculative mind – a mind of which the true territory lay, possibly, elsewhere. But now Appleby interrupted with a hard saying: ‘That depends entirely on the class of motive involved.’

  Mason looked at him dubiously. ‘I don’t quite see–’

  ‘What I say applies both to the shooting and to the sending of the messages. Take the point you’re on now, the actual shooting. You say we needn’t trouble over motive where there was no opportunity whatever. That holds, I say, only if a particular sort of motive is involved, the sort of motive that practically rules out conspiracy. If we were certain that the motive here were what it seems – a matter of private passion and long-cherished revenge – we would be justified in hunting only among the persons who had an opportunity to commit the crime. But suppose the sort of motive that is compatible with conspiracy to murder – murder for the sake of great gain, political murder, murder resulting from some anarchist or terrorist ideology, and so on – then what you say wouldn’t hold. We might find the motive most readily in the mind or past of somebody who had not the opportunity, and go on from that to establish the fact of conspiracy with someone who had the opportunity. And again, there is the possibility of an actual murderer who is not so much a confederate as an agent or creature – who might himself be unaware of the ultimate motive behind his deed. And, obviously, the same considerations apply to the messages. Grant the possibility of the sort of murder to effect which men combine and the whole business of eliminations takes on a different aspect. To clear anyone of Auldearn’s murder it will then not be enough to show that he could not have murdered Bose or attacked Bunney or been concerned with this or that message; his confederate may have dealt with these.’