Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  Gott was about to come rather indignantly to the assistance of Mason when Appleby forestalled him with a nod. ‘Yes, I know. It’s not Mason’s summary I’m attacking but my own earlier position. And even at that it may be I’m no more than making an academic point – or if academic is an ill-used word, say pedantic.’ He smiled at Gott. ‘I can’t see any room for conspiracy. But let us say two things: we look for opportunity and motive alike just where we can find them; and we remember, as a theory to fall back on if necessary, that more than one hand may have been at work. And now, Mason – go on.’

  ‘We come’, said Mason patiently, ‘to thirty-one people and begin to eliminate. And I suggest we begin by eliminating Lord Auldearn.’

  Gott thought he might be pedantic as well as Appleby. ‘It’s quite certain he didn’t shoot himself?’

  ‘If he did,’ replied Mason tartly, ‘it’s quite impossible to find sense or coherence in any of the previous or subsequent events; that’s all.’

  ‘It’s not all – fortunately,’ said Appleby. ‘Mr Gott here could spin a yarn in which Auldearn shot himself and yet all these other things – Bose, the messages, Bunney – would have some sort of coherence and plausibility imposed upon them. Couldn’t you, Giles?’

  ‘I’m afraid’, said Gott morosely, ‘I could.’

  ‘No, we’ve better ground than that. There was only one wound; the bullet came from the gun we possess, and we have expert evidence that it was fired at not less than two nor more than five paces. Quite apart from the weapon’s having been removed, the evidence against suicide is conclusive. Eliminate Auldearn.’

  ‘Having eliminated Auldearn, then,’ Mason continued, ‘I take it we can go on to the next victim and eliminate Bose.’

  ‘Suppose’, said Appleby, ‘that Bose sent the messages and shot Auldearn – a sort of political or ideological crime. And suppose that the Duke, say, found out and killed Bose. The Duke, after all, is a curious creature. In the business of the document – when he conceived something like national danger to be involved – he reacted normally and efficiently. But his attitude to the murder is enigmatic – except in one point. He has clearly no enthusiasm for policemen and formal justice.’ Appleby looked apologetically at Gott. ‘You may think that fantastic and gratuitous. We are both convinced that Bose was not that sort of person, and no doubt you have – quite justly – the same conviction about the Duke. It’s simply that we mustn’t think we’re locking doors when actually we’re not. The theoretical possibility remains.’

  ‘That the Duke stabbed Bose in the back in his own daughter’s bedroom, and then hauled the body about Scamnum Court for the sake of a sort of wild justice’, said Gott, ‘is not my idea of a theoretical possibility. It’s a laborious absurdity. And it still leaves you with Bunney on your hands. If Bose sent the messages, then only Bose would have an interest in attacking Bunney and getting the dangerous cylinder. And Bose was dead long before Bunney was hit on the head.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Appleby briefly – and gave Mason a nod.

  ‘If we count Bose out,’ said Mason, ‘we’re down to twenty-nine. The next people we eliminate are the Duchess and Mr Clay. They were on the front stage, in full view of the audience, and yards and yards from the rear stage. In a story, of course, it would have to be one of these two, just because they were where they were. Mr Gott’ – Mason added with friendly irony – ‘will know just how it could be done.’

  ‘It would need’, said Appleby, ‘a revolver previously trained and released from a distance. A sort of infernal machine, in fact – and that never writes up convincingly.’

  Gott meditated for a moment. ‘Oh, no it wouldn’t. You’ve forgotten something – or rather you’ve failed to guess at something which hasn’t perhaps been mentioned. When that shot was fired in the hall it echoed and re-echoed about the place like a little salvo. All Clay, say, would have needed was an exceptionally loud one-bang firework on a time-fuse. That would go off when he was approaching the rear-stage curtains; he would pause for a second and then dash through and shoot Auldearn with a small pistol. The actual shot the audience would take to be one of the final echoes. What they would take for the actual shot would be just a squib, the remains of which Clay would promptly pocket.’

  The impassive Mason was shaken at last. He stared at Gott round-eyed. ‘But isn’t that just what may have happened?’

  Appleby interposed. ‘No, it’s very ingenious – but it won’t fit this case. Clay was too long in getting through the curtain for the reverberations to be anything but very faint. Indeed, they must have been quite over. He was marking time because he didn’t want to break the scene.’

  Mason got out a large handkerchief and blew into it vigorously. ‘I haven’t come across anything so ingenious since I read a crazy thing called Murder at the Zoo–’

  ‘Clay and the Duchess out,’ said Gott hastily. ‘Twenty-seven.’

  ‘And I suppose twenty-seven more battles,’ said Mason. ‘At which rate we’ll be talking here till midnight.’

  ‘The battles are healthy,’ said Appleby. ‘We can’t have too much of them. Twenty-seven. Go ahead.’

  ‘Well, sir, at this point – keeping in mind what you have said about possible confederates – we have to make a distinction. We have to put people in three ’classes: those who are vouched for by other people at the moment of the shooting (though there again conspiracy might come in); those who could not have stabbed Bose or attacked Bunney or been concerned with one or more of the messages; and those who have no alibi for any of the relevant matter at all.

  ‘I’ll take first the people who are vouched for by other people. And there is, as it happens, a simplifying factor there – one that seems to rule out conspiracy in that regard. People were in groups. Wherever a person is vouched for he is vouched for by two or more companions. That is the greatest luck we’ve had; and I’m inclined to say the only luck we’ve had. It means that these people – a wild improbability of multiple conspiracy apart – really do go out. And here they are.

  ‘The two dressers and the Duke’s valet were together by the dressing cubicles and they had just called up one of the two footmen. That’s a group of four. And the other footman was under the eye of Mr Gott and one of the American ladies, Miss Stella Terborg – vouched for by two. Mr Gott himself, this Miss Stella Terborg, Mr Noel Gylby, and Lady Elizabeth Crispin were all together – a group of four. Mr Piper, Mr Potts, and Lord Traherne were together – group of three – and Lord Traherne says he saw the parson, Dr Crump, and Miss Sandys a little way off. And as these two vouch for each other, each of them is thus vouched for by two. Finally, there were Mr Tucker, Dr Bunney, and the other Miss Terborg – Miss Vanessa. In a way that group is a special case, Bunney’s testimony not being available. But I think we can accept it all the same. And that is as far as we have been able to get. As I say, we’ve been, lucky to get so far. We might have had impressions and doubts to weigh up and we haven’t; the evidence as far as it goes is decided and clear cut. When you allow for the confusion and shock we counted on it’s good going. Twenty-one people are eliminated outright. Ten are left for the other categories.’

  ‘I can’t see’, said Gott, ‘that it’s really good going. I was prepared for confusion – and yet it seems to me quite extraordinary that at the moment the shot was fired there should have been ten people in that backstage area, each invisible to the other or to anyone else. And each, it seems, able to give a plausible account of his or her whereabouts.’

  Mason shook his head doggedly. ‘It followed partly from the lighting, sir, and partly from the rather elaborate way the area had been partitioned off – the number of little cubicles and so on – and partly just from flurry and confusion. And they do all give a reasonable account of themselves; I haven’t been able really to rattle a single one of the ten.’ He turned to Appleby. ‘Shall I go over that ground?’


  Appleby nodded.

  ‘The Duke, when he came off after the prayer scene, went straight to the little telephone hutch behind the green-room. He had remembered some instructions he wanted to give about the calling round of people’s cars after the show. He was just about to pick up the instrument, he says, when he heard the shot and hurried to the rear stage. Nothing shaky there. Mrs Terborg was alone in her cubicle; Macdonald and Dr Biddle the same; Mr Marryat was alone in the sort of general men’s room that the men’s cubicles give upon. So far, there are two points to make. All these people account for themselves perfectly naturally; and all profess to have been at a considerable distance from the stage. But that last point is not conclusive: a sharp person could, I believe, have slipped about fairly freely. Still, these people were in considerably less interesting positions than the remaining five to whom I am coming.’

  Mason, it seemed to Gott, was a man resolved to get somewhere – confident that he was getting somewhere minute by minute. Beside him Appleby, very still and absorbed, seemed a personification of wary doubt. They made, unquestionably, a formidable combination. Gott began to feel his own imaginative tinkering with the case a very ineffective method of attack indeed.

  ‘Five people,’ said Mason. ‘Mr Cope, Sir Richard Nave, Professor Malloch, Mr Gervase Crispin, and Mme Merkalova. Cope, we know, was on what is called the upper stage – immediately above the scene of the crime; he was alone and if he shot Auldearn he shot through the little trap. So much for him – he was close enough anyway. And so was Malloch. Malloch affirms that at the moment of the shot, he was climbing up the little staircase to the upper stage; it had come into his head, he says, to take a glance at Cope. Again, it’s a likely enough story, I suppose; and he could easily be there without being seen, for the staircase is quite elaborately match-boarded in. But there he is too, as close to the scene of action as could be. And next Nave. Nave had been close to the back curtains of the rear stage, listening to the prayer-scene. At the close of it he lingered a minute or so and then turned round and walked towards the green-room. He was a little more than halfway when he heard the shot. So he also was warm. And finally Mr Gervase Crispin and the Russian lady. They were together in the green-room when it occurred to them to have a look at the audience – again a likely enough story, particularly in the light of the affair of the snapshot camera: no doubt the lady wanted to see who was where. Well, they came out of the green-room and moved towards the stage. But at the back of the rear stage, they separated, Mr Crispin going to the left and the lady to the right, so that they were hidden from each other by the rear stage itself. Each, that is to say, was going to peer through one of the entrances to the front stage – the entrances that flank the rear stage on either side. Once more, it is perfectly reasonable – and yet one could see it as the first movement in a concerted attack. There they were, both free from observation, and in a dead line between them – and separated from each merely by the double curtains that form the rear stage – was Lord Auldearn.’

  Appleby stirred. ‘Bose,’ he said. ‘Within these double curtains, close by where Gervase Crispin went to stand, was Bose, the one man who might have had an eye on the rear stage.’

  Mason nodded. ‘That carries on the idea of a concerted attack. Mme Merkalova, say, was to shoot Lord Auldearn while Gervase Crispin somehow distracted Bose’s attention. Only Gervase Crispin failed.’

  ‘That’s a theory,’ said Appleby; ‘or a bit of one. And now let’s have the last batch of facts.’

  ‘Yes, sir. The final facts concern the movements, at the other significant times, of those ten people who are unvouched for at the time of Auldearn’s murder. They relate to the messages, to the stabbing of Bose and to the attack on Bunney. And they are facts, we are agreed, which may be considered as positively carrying the eliminative process further only if we neglect the possibility of conspiracy. Here they are as far as they go – for we haven’t yet finished checking up. I needn’t go into details, I think. I’ll just sum up: The Duke could not have got the message into Auldearn’s car either in town or subsequently. He could not have attacked Bose; he could not have attacked Bunney; he could not have been at the post office in Scamnum Ducis within two hours of the time endorsed on Mr Gervase Crispin’s telegram. And the same holds of Mr Marryat: he could have done none of these things. Mme Merkalova has not a set of alibis like that but she has one. She cannot account for herself throughout the periods within which occurred the attacks on Bose and Bunney: on both these occasions she claims to have been alone in her room. Nor can it be shown that it was impossible for her to have sent the telegram; she was already staying here on Monday and she had gone out for a longish walk in the park, alone. But she could not have got the message into Auldearn’s car. Dr Biddle has a similar partial alibi – one similarly conclusive on one point. He could not have stabbed Bose: we have that on the authority of our own local men – he was down here, fussing round them, all the time. But he seems unable to bring evidence that he wasn’t lurking on the roof of the south lodge, or that he didn’t send the telegram or that he didn’t go upstairs after breakfast and hit Bunney on the head. Nave is in the same position as Biddle. He can clear himself on one point only – the attack on Bunney. He was in the hall with yourselves and Lady Elizabeth during the whole period at which that could have happened. And Gervase Crispin, finally, has an alibi on all counts but one. He couldn’t have run down and sent himself the telegram; he couldn’t have attacked either Bose or Bunney: but he could have been up on the south lodge pitching a message into Auldearn’s car. And that is as far as we have got, the remaining four people not yet having been fully questioned. At the moment it comes down to this: if we allow the possibility of conspiracy we have ten suspects for Auldearn’s murder and no very clear means of getting further: if we rule out conspiracy we are down to these four people who remain to be questioned – and it may be possible to eliminate some of them. Notice that there is nobody who has failed to produce an alibi – sound alibi, I guarantee – for at least one event yet. And the four people left are Macdonald, Mrs Terborg, Cope, and Malloch.’

  There was a little silence. Mason sat back in the consciousness of honest work accomplished. It was Gott who spoke first. ‘It would be uncommonly injudicious to abandon the notion of conspiracy while it stares one in the face.’

  ‘Two things stare us in the face,’ said Appleby. ‘And one involves conspiracy and the other virtually excludes it. You are back on the old ground of Gervase and the Merkalova, Giles – and certainly here they are again in startling enough concert. They bear down on the flanks of the rear stage at the critical moment with more than a suggestion of deliberate manoeuvre. And then when we come to study people’s movements in relation to the other events, we find their alibis over the series coming together like the pieces of a puzzle. The one thing the Merkalova couldn’t do – get the message into Auldearn’s car – is the one thing Gervase could do. As you say, it stares us in the face. But what of a motive – a motive of a conspiratorial sort? They weren’t after a document of Gervase’s own composition. Then what were they after? At the moment one sees no glimmer of motive. The only motive that one sees anywhere is the motive one can attribute to Malloch. That, of course, is the other thing that stares us in the face. And it takes us right away from conspiracy: we agree, I suppose, that if the motive is a stored-up revenge from the remote past the notion of confederates and so on is an unlikely one.’

  ‘It comes to this,’ said Mason. ‘If there was no conspiracy we have four suspects: Macdonald, Mrs Terborg, Cope, and Malloch – with a strong line on Malloch. If there was conspiracy we must add to these as possible murderers of Auldearn: the Duke, Marryat, Biddle, Nave, Gervase Crispin, and Mme Merkalova. With a line, in that case, on the last two. But not, I put it, a strong line. The interlocked alibis and the movements at the time of the shooting are startling at first, I admit. But they’re a good deal less impressive after you’ve had a st
eady look at them. You were impressed, Mr Gott, because you had these two people linked in your head earlier on, when the document was on the carpet.’

  This sound observation Mason apparently designed as his last word for the moment. He applied himself to stuffing a pipe and looked expectantly at Gott, as if awaiting the promised innings. Logic had got as far as it could: if imagination could get further – let it. But Gott, too, was filling his pipe; and having lit it he puffed silently until prompted by Appleby. ‘What do you think, Giles: have we got anywhere?’

  ‘I’m bound to think you have. I don’t see Auldearn’s death as a conspiratorial affair. And that being so, and taking your eliminations as valid step by step, I admit that you are confronted by four suspects: Macdonald, Mrs Terborg, Cope, and Malloch. But they don’t impress me as I feel they should.’ He looked apologetically at the impassive Mason. ‘In fact, as suspects they don’t appeal to me.’

  But Mason was not to be drawn. And Appleby’s formula came as usual: ‘Go on.’