Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘Just consider them. Macdonald has worked in the gardens here – man and laddie as he would say – for something like forty years. You’ve gathered his type: severe, steady, dignified, and a bit of a tartar – a compendium, in fact, of all the most uncompromising Scottish virtues. It’s simply unbelievable that he should break out into murders and murderous assaults. And there is nothing whatever against him except the local sergeant’s story that early this morning he was found lurking about the hall. Somehow I can’t attach much importance to that.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Appleby.

  ‘It needs explaining, all the same,’ said Mason.

  ‘Then Mrs Terborg. Isn’t she another type one just knows about? Polite New England with a lot of Europe on top. And we’re to suppose her guilty of two murders, a murderous assault and miscellaneous activities including dragging a dead body about the house in the small hours. I don’t see it.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Appleby. ‘She and Macdonald, in fact, belong to the two most inflexibly virtuous traditions that the Western World has produced. The kind who might, perhaps, commit a crime under some severe provocation, but who would not embark on a series of consequential crimes to save themselves. It’s an impressive psychological argument. Go ahead.’

  ‘Max Cope. One can just conceive a crazy old man determining to kill Auldearn because of some mortal grievance buried in the past. And one can conceive Cope sending the messages. He knew the sources of Gervase’s message: Hamlet, revenge! And I remember his asking the Duchess if there was to be a detective in the house: you might consider that suspicious. And he’s a cunning old man – and perhaps malevolent. But I can’t see him as having the drive to put through the whole series of events. I’ve seen quite a lot of him and unless he has been simulating a failing brain for years he just doesn’t possess the intellectual grasp and tenacity to proceed, move by move, as the criminal has done. For you’ll agree, I think, that there has been more than just cunning at work. There has been something like incisive intellect.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Appleby. ‘And now Malloch – the last man in.’

  ‘Don’t forget’, said Mason, ‘that even these four are in only negatively, so to speak. They’re just the four that are left over at the moment and to be questioned by Inspector Appleby presently. It may be possible to eliminate more of them.’

  ‘It may be possible’, said Gott, ‘to eliminate them all.’

  ‘Malloch,’ interposed Appleby invitingly: ‘the great scholar. And you can’t say, Giles, that scholars don’t at times behave in a distinctly curious way.’

  ‘No. I’ve no psychological arguments to advance about Malloch. And if Tucker’s story is true it’s impressive.’

  ‘It’s true all right,’ said Appleby, ‘as far as the stuff being in Anderson’s book goes. It’s all here – the whole story of the Jacobites and the Mallets.’ And he tapped a book on the table.

  ‘You’ve wasted no time. But my point about Malloch is simply that he will probably eliminate himself out of hand on our no-conspiracy basis. He came straight from Aberdeen on the Friday.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘Yes, I know. And we’ll be certain soon. But I’m leaving him to the very last – to cook.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Which reminds me: we’re not going to be left entirely in peace much longer. The local Chief Constable’s on his way here now. He’s come pelting over from Ireland.’

  ‘What sort?’ asked Mason.

  ‘A very gallant officer. And quite new to the job.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mason darkly – and added after a moment: ‘But Mr Gott hasn’t given us those ideas of his yet.’

  Gott shook his head. ‘I haven’t exactly got ideas. I just think there are other possible lines to take up – that material is before us which might lead straight to a solution. I think we want to know just why Auldearn was killed when and where he was. That it was simply to set his death in a context of Hamlet and so make an enigmatic statement or manifesto about delayed revenge – the Malloch theory in short – seems to me ingenious but not quite adequate. The circumstances of the murder were not merely decorative but structural – you understand me? That is my first feeling.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Appleby; ‘I did some thinking along that path too. It was so because it had to be so. I find that satisfactory as a general proposition; I mean I feel the criminal to be the sort of person who would like it that way. But at the moment I can’t drive the idea further.’

  ‘That is my one point,’ said Gott. ‘And the other is this. Something went wrong.’

  Mason stirred in his seat. ‘Wrong, sir?’

  ‘With the showmanship – the producing. Even if the dramatic manner of the thing served some practical purpose which we can’t at present place – even so, the dramatic manner of the thing was something that the murderer delighted in for itself. And there was a hitch. Something went wrong.’

  Appleby was tidying accumulated papers on the table. Mason looked at Gott with a sort of perplexed respect. ‘How do you make that out, sir? I mean, how do you know?’

  ‘I’m quite prepared to believe I’m making an ass of myself. Or perhaps something canine – believing I can usefully work by smell. But I seem to know out of a dramatic sense – akin to the murderer’s, I suppose – that has been sharpened at the moment by the business of producing the play. But you mustn’t attend to me too seriously. I know how much it is something in the air.’

  Appleby finished straightening his papers. ‘The Chief Constable’, he said, ‘will find our dockets on the table even if our ideas are in the air. And I’ve had sufficiently airy beckonings in this case too, goodness knows. For one thing, I should like to spot why I’m so constantly beckoned by Fate in Les Présages–’ He stopped to stare at Gott. ‘Giles, what on earth–?’

  Gott’s eye had fallen on the topmost paper of one of the little piles. And now he had sprung up, seized the pile, and was beating the air with it like a maniac.

  ‘Giles – for heaven’s sake! It’s only the telegrams sent out for people this morning. What’s come over you?’

  But Gott was pacing about in a blaze of excitement that made even Mason’s eyes grow round. ‘Yes,’ he cried presently. ‘Yes…yes…and yes!’ He whirled about on Appleby. ‘I will not cry Hamlet, revenge!’ He paced about the room again; stopped. ‘There’s a snag – of course there’s a snag.’ He flung out an arm, snapped a finger in extravagant bafflement. Decidedly, thought Appleby, Giles had never behaved like this before. ‘There’s a snag – a horrid snag. But there it is – there it is!’ And he swung round the green-room, chanting:

  ‘Come, seeling night,

  Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,

  And with thy bloody and invisible hand–’

  From the door of the green-room came a respectful but desperate cough.

  ‘The Chief Constable,’ announced Sergeant Trumpet.

  5

  ‘Sandford’s come,’ the Duke announced. Sandford was the Chief Constable – but from the tone he might have been the Last Straw. ‘Took it upon himself to hurry back from a holiday in Ireland. When we were getting on very nicely with that unobtrusive young man.’

  The Duchess looked at her watch. ‘How rather awkward! Will he stop to dinner?’

  ‘And take a short view of the suspects over the soup?’ suggested Noel.

  ‘You can’t have murders without these awkwardnesses turning up,’ said Mrs Terborg placidly. ‘Perhaps, Anne, he will like to dine with the detective – and confer, don’t you think? The detective seems quite–’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Duchess. ‘But I don’t know that I could just suggest it.’

  ‘The last time Sandford came here to dinner’, said the Duke, ‘he began by talking nonsense on dry-fly, went on to a boring description of the Harrow match, and ended by being impertinent about the port. Nevertheless, An
ne, you must ask him – and let him have a view of us as Noel says. Go along.’

  The Duchess rose with a sigh. ‘Teddy,’ she said, ‘they don’t suspect you by any chance – or you, Noel? And they can’t suspect Elizabeth?’

  The Duke shook his head. ‘I don’t think they can reasonably suspect any of us.’ He glanced in surprise at his wife’s troubled face. ‘And I don’t know that we need exactly commiserate ourselves over it. I’ve no desire to be gossiped about as Ian’s possible murderer.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ The Duchess crushed out a cigarette. ‘But I wish I hadn’t been sitting in sober innocence on the front stage. And I wish the family weren’t clean out of it. We ask a lot of people down and Ian and Mr Bose are murdered. And we keep well clear and have Colonel Sandford in to suspect the poor wretches round the dinner-table. It’s rather mean.’

  ‘There’s still Gervase,’ said Noel cheerfully. ‘I’m not sure they’re not hot after him still. So there’s a chance for the family yet. Bear up, Aunt Anne.’

  Mrs Terborg interposed briskly. ‘This is great nonsense. To begin with the poor wretches take the police and so on as quite in the day’s round. This horrid thing has happened and we must expect to be badgered. And for another thing, Anne, you don’t care two pence for the poor wretches. You care only for what’s been and done with – and anxiety for the feelings of your guests is merely defensive social disguisement. And for a final thing I’m sure they can’t suspect Mr Crispin. They’re much more likely to suspect his–’

  ‘Friend,’ said the Duchess firmly. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Lucy – and you’re a great comfort. And now for Colonel Sandford.’

  The Duke got up. ‘I’m coming too. Bagot must go down and find a bad Bordeaux. I promised myself never to give that man Scamnum port again.’

  Noel was left on the terrace with Mrs Terborg. He eyed her warily, misliking his job. But the exigent Diana stood behind him in the spirit, as ineluctable as some invisible Homeric goddess commanding the hero to engage. For a few minutes they conversed indifferently. Then Mrs Terborg prepared to rise. ‘Almost time to go up,’ she said.

  Noel did not like to contemplate what would happen if he missed his chance. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘did you ever go round to Peter’s Gothic pavilion, Mrs Terborg?’

  ‘Gothic pavilion?’

  ‘Yes.’ Noel was guardedly eager. ‘Everybody doesn’t know of it; it’s tucked away beyond the rock-gardens. I’d like to show it to you.’

  Mrs Terborg may have been shrewdly surprised at the attention, but all she displayed was mild gratification. ‘How interesting – such an interesting man Peter must have been! If we have time–’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Noel. ‘Do come.’ And artfully he held out to Mrs Terborg the bait of polite learning: ‘A Gothic pavilion convertible into a greenhouse. I believe it was taken from Repton’s Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. Long afterwards, of course, because Repton died – didn’t he? – quite early in the century. We go round this way.’ And he led Mrs Terborg through the gardens.

  Diana had prepared a questionnaire; getting it skilfully across, she had said, would be good diplomatic training. Noel rather wished he had it before him in black and white. It had run so smoothly when rehearsed by Diana – was such an innocent excess of friendly curiosity. But now it went so badly that Noel felt that, like Peter Marryat with the Norwegian Captain, he must be muddling it all up. Or perhaps it was just that Mrs Terborg’s responses didn’t end where they ought, so that there was difficult steering to the next point. Still, Mrs Terborg seemed unaware of guile, and by the time he had got to Question Six Noel was beginning to have some confidence in his ability to extemporize approaches.

  ‘What magnificent Dorothy Perkins!’ said Mrs Terborg.

  Noel leapt at an opportunity for Question Seven; he didn’t understand it but Diana thought it particularly important. ‘Frightfully prickly, though,’ he replied. ‘You need gardening gloves before you think of touching them. By the way, did you happen to leave a pair of kid gloves in the hall last night?’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t,’ said Mrs Terborg firmly – and gave Noel what might have been described as a long look.

  Noel felt a little trickle of sweat down his spine. The thing was like a horrible drawing-room game in which you have to insinuate outlandish words into your conversation undetected. And that last attempt had been almost fatally clumsy and precipitate; he must go slow and strive for the authentic Crispin finesse.

  So he abandoned the questionnaire during the inspection of the Gothic pavilion and talked glibly about Repton and Capability Brown.

  At Scamnum, Croome, and Caversham we trace

  Salvator’s wildness, Claude’s enlivening grace,

  Cascades and Lakes as fine as Risdale drew,

  While Nature’s vary’d in each charming view.

  The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting Parks – you know it? Very amusing?’

  This was what Mrs Terborg liked; the expedition to the convertible greenhouse became for a time a great success. ‘Mason,’ Noel continued easily, ‘in his English Gardens – a romantic tragedy of landscape gardening, you know – Mason is thought to describe one of the Scamnum conservatories; not this one but the classical one beyond the orangery:

  High on Ionic shafts he bade it tower

  A proud rotunda; to its sides conjoin’d

  Two broad piazzas in theatric curve,

  Ending in equal porticos sublime.

  Glass roofed the whole.

  Odd to bring a design for a greenhouse back from the Grand Tour. Have you been in Greece much?’

  Mrs Terborg had been in Greece, knew Turkey – and yes, she had been in Russia several times. This, on the other hand, was perhaps an over-ingenious approach to the groups of questions dealing with Movements and Interests, but eminently it had finesse. Noel was once more rather pleased with himself and all went well until, when they were again in the rock-gardens, he got to Question Fifteen, which was almost the last. But at Question Fifteen, although Noel considered it particularly adroitly introduced, Mrs Terborg halted.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said Mrs Terborg.

  Noel was overwhelmed. ‘Oh, I say, I’m most frightfully–’

  But Mrs Terborg had stooped down to the border. ‘This one with the tiny flat leaves,’ she said. ‘Such a quaint name: mind your own business! And everything is here: elecampane, birthwort, lovage, rosemary, clary…’ And she held to her own favourite species of polite learning, until they reached the house. Noel made no attempt to deflect her; he concluded – as he presently explained to Diana – that there had been a Hint.

  But still Diana would not be put off. ‘We’re getting on,’ she said.

  ‘Getting on! I’ve been getting on Mother Terborg’s nerves, if that’s any good. And I don’t see that the women offer any field at all. There’s only the Merkalova that’s fishy–’

  ‘She’s a wrong ’un, all right,’ said Diana viciously.

  ‘And we’re only down on her, really, because she spat out nasty about you. In fact – I think this is where we stop.’

  ‘The next thing’, said Diana, ‘is to get into the hall. Do you think we can? I want to nose round.’

  ‘Nose round?’

  ‘Just that. Nose, Noel: Noel, do get me in – please!’

  ‘Well,’ said Noel, melting but judicial, ‘as long as there’s no more Terborg-stalking stuff, and provided the heavies aren’t still lurking there after dinner, I expect we could reconnoitre.’

  ‘Oh, good. But, Noel, there is more on the Terborgs. Think of the twins.’

  ‘I have in the past. But at the moment I’m not promiscuously minded.’

  ‘Thanks. But think of them.’

  Noel made a resigned gesture. ‘I suppose this to be the way my un
mellowed Aunt Anne treated the young Teddy. All right; I’m thinking of them. Then what?’

  ‘Don’t you see–’ Diana paused as Gott came out on the terrace and stood looking at them dreamily. ‘But here’s an authority. Please, Giles Gott, if you were writing a mystery story – one all about x being here while y was over there – wouldn’t you find two people who might pass for one another uncommonly useful?’

  For a full ten seconds Gott stared at her.

  ‘Invaluable,’ he said, ‘Miss Sandys – invaluable.’

  Colonel Sandford put down the telephone with a clatter. ‘That was the Home Secretary,’ he said. ‘Inspector! – the Home Secretary. We must act.’

  ‘Did he say we must act, sir?’ asked Appleby mildly.

  ‘No, no. Not that. But he is concerned – gravely concerned.’

  ‘We’re all concerned, sir,’ said the sober Mason.

  ‘Quite so. But we must prepare to move in this affair – to move, you know. Now, Inspector, where are we? I have great confidence in you – confidence. Now what grasp have you? Grasp on it – grasp.’

  Appleby did not think the pompously agitated Chief Constable too bad a fellow. He replied carefully. ‘At the moment it’s like this, sir. We’re trying to get people into three groups. The first group comprises those who could not have shot Lord Auldearn. The second group comprises those who could have shot Lord Auldearn but who could not have committed one or more of the other acts: sending messages, stabbing Bose, attacking Bunney. The third group – one we’re trying to establish – comprises people who could both have shot Auldearn and done everything else. And shortly before you arrived we had four people left to deal with. These were the only four people left who might have done everything. So you see where we were. We had, so to speak, four chances left of proving the possibility of its having been a one-man affair. If all those four people could prove that they belonged to the second group – the group of those who could have shot Auldearn but not done something else – then we should be faced with the certainty of a conspiracy; the certainty that a criminal and one or more accomplices must be involved.’