The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  The most interesting comment on the whole affair, from Stuart’s point of view, was made by Constantine, who walked into the little bunshop where he and Angela Ford were having tea on the last day of the trial. He accepted their invitation to join them, and, when they were leaving, drew Stuart on one side.

  “I dined with Lord Romsey last night,” he said in a low voice. “It’s astonishing how his son’s marriage has taken the stuffing out of him. But I expect you’ve heard all about that from Angela. It took him some time to realize that it was a choice between losing Geoffrey or accepting his wife, but he has given in at last, and gets on amazingly well with his new daughter-in-law. I have an idea that Angela will marry where she pleases.”

  Stuart looked him firmly in the eye.

  “I hope so,” he announced brazenly.

  Constantine turned to go.

  “Well, it’s been an ugly business,” he concluded. “But, as others have said before me, ‘it’s an ill wind that blows no one good.’ One thing I can congratulate you on.”

  Stuart eyed him warily. He suspected the twinkle in the old man’s eye.

  “And that is?” he asked.

  “You’re not what Lord Romsey still calls ‘a Papist,’” answered Constantine, as he made his escape.

  THE END

  About The Author

  MARY ‘MOLLY’ THYNNE was born in 1881, a member of the aristocracy, and related, on her mother’s side, to the painter James McNeil Whistler. She grew up in Kensington and at a young age met literary figures like Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.

  Her first novel, An Uncertain Glory, was published in 1914, but she did not turn to crime fiction until The Draycott Murder Mystery, the first of six golden age mysteries she wrote and published in as many years, between 1928 and 1933. The last three of these featured Dr. Constantine, chess master and amateur sleuth par excellence.

  Molly Thynne never married. She enjoyed travelling abroad, but spent most of her life in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devon, where she was finally laid to rest in 1950.

  By Molly Thynne

  and available from Dean Street Press

  The Draycott Murder Mystery

  The Murder on the Enriqueta

  The Case of Sir Adam Braid

  The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: a Christmas Mystery

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair

  He Dies and Makes no Sign

  Molly Thynne

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair

  Constantine reflected on the various means dentists have at their disposal should they wish to silence their patients …

  Mr Humphrey Davenport, society dentist, has an embarrassing problem – he has managed to get locked out of his own surgery. And to make matters worse, Mrs Charles Miller is locked inside, minus her false teeth. When the door is finally opened, the patient is found with her throat cut.

  Dr. Constantine, a fellow patient at the clinic, is a witness to the gruesome discovery. He lends his chess player’s brain to solving a locked room mystery with a difference, ably assisted by Detective-Inspector Arkwright. Was the murderer the theatrical Mrs Vallon? Or little Mr Cattistick, who recognized the fortune in jewels around the dead woman's neck? Or perhaps it was Sir Richard Pomfrey, the subject of an unusually venomous look from Mrs Miller shortly before her demise?

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair was first published in 1932. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  CHAPTER I

  “Rinse, please.”

  The words reached the patient faintly, coming, it seemed, from an immeasurable distance. Barely conscious though he was, he experienced the mere ghost of a sense of satisfaction. He was still alive, then.

  He opened his eyes. Mr. Humphrey Davenport was standing over him holding a glass full of a pinkish liquid in his hand, his long, yellow countenance wrinkled into an encouraging smile.

  “Rinse, please,” he repeated. This time the words came briskly and clearly.

  The patient sat up and rinsed obediently. The liquid, as it left his mouth, took on a much deeper shade of red, and, at the sight of it, the full significance of this weird ritual came home to him. He made a swift exploration with his tongue and discovered a truly awful void.

  “’Ou-ve thathen them au’ outh!” he ejaculated faintly.

  Long experience had made Mr. Davenport familiar with this form of elocution. He beamed.

  “All the upper incisors,” he assented cheerfully. “Eight altogether. They came out beautifully. Like to see them?”

  He held out a repulsive little tray before which his victim recoiled, the full sense of his loss slowly dawning on him. His front teeth had gone and nothing in the world would bring them back. He returned to his rinsing. There seemed nothing else to do and, as he bent over his task, he heard the door close softly behind the doctor. The whole ghastly business was over.

  The dentist chatted on.

  “We’ll give the gums time to recover and then fit you up with a temporary plate. Meanwhile, I should like to see the mouth again. Sometime tomorrow, if you can manage it.”

  The patient’s sense of humor had never been very conspicuous and, at the moment, it was greatly in abeyance, but even he could see the irony of such an implication.

  “I’m harthy lithy tho hathe athy enthathemeth,” he lisped bitterly. Then, with a more acute realisation of the disaster that had befallen him. “Goo’ Heatheth, I carth eveth torth dithincly!”

  Once more Mr. Davenport exhibited uncanny skill in interpretation.

  “You’ll soon get used to that,” he asserted reassuringly. “By tomorrow we shall have you talking splendidly. It’s only a question of habit.”

  He flicked over the leaves of his engagement book.

  “Three o’clock tomorrow, then,” he said. “And the address? You gave it to me, I remember, but, for the moment, I have forgotten.”

  The patient suspended his rinsing operations.

  “Therthothethy Thotheth,” he volunteered painfully.

  For a moment even Mr. Davenport was baffled.

  “Perthoaythy Hothay,” amended the patient, with an immense effort.

  The dentist’s face cleared.

  “Of course. The Pergolese Hotel. Mr. Cattistock.”

  Mr. Davenport inscribed a neat little card and handed it to him. Ten minutes later he was being bowed out and when, badly shaken, morally and physically, he returned to the waiting room, a large handkerchief pressed to the lower part of his face, he presented a spectacle calculated to inspire terror in the minds of any other of Mr. Davenport’s patients unfortunate enough to see him.

  There was only one. Sir Richard Pomfrey, already a prey to uneasiness, gave one glance in his direction and retired behind the decayed periodical in which he had been trying to interest himself.

  “Good Lord,” he murmured and wished, sincerely and devoutly, that the morning was over.

  A moment later his summons came and, squaring his shoulders, he strode out to meet his fate.

  One ordeal still remained to Mr. Cattistock. Left to himself, he rose shakingly to his feet and, approaching the mirror over the mantelpiece, removed the handkerchief from his mouth. He gave one glance at his reflection and, with a low moan, tottered back to his seat and retired once more behind his already nauseating yashmak.

  He sat huddled in his chair, slowly recovering from Mr. Davenport’s ministrations. The effects had been moral rather than physical and, as his mind readjusted itself, his despair increased. Never again, he felt convinced, would he enjoy the sound of his own voice, mellow and well-modulated, faultlessly articulating the noble prose he loved so well. He realised, now that it was too late, how sinfully proud he had been of his delivery. No doubt this was a judgment, and a just one, on his vanity.

  He had reached this depressing, but far from comforting, stage in his reflections when the door opened and another patient invaded his solitude. He regarded her over the edge of
his handkerchief with the faint interest of the wholly miserable.

  She swept in, exuding opulence and well-being, and Mr. Cattistock, who in his normal state was a kindly, tolerant person, took an instant and violent dislike to her. And for this he had some excuse, though his mental denunciations were perhaps unnecessarily acrimonious. She was too fat, he told himself viciously, too old for her ultra-fashionable and expensive clothes, and altogether too dyed, painted and powdered. He took exception to the small, scarlet, bad-tempered mouth, but, most of all, he hated her for her teeth which showed, small and white and even, between the painted lips. Mr. Cattistock was an unsophisticated person and none too observant at the best of times and he had no inkling that those teeth owed their being to the skill of Mr. Humphrey Davenport. Had he known this, a faint ray of light might have illuminated his gloom. As it was he was thrust, if possible, even more deeply into the abyss by the atrocious manners of the newcomer, who gave one glance at his now revolting handkerchief, turned away with an exaggerated shudder of disgust and, pointedly altering the position of an armchair, sat down with her back to him. Mr. Cattistock loathed her as he crouched in his corner, trying to summon up sufficient energy to go away.

  From his position he could only see her hand now, fat, coarsely moulded and heavily beringed, the fingers beating an impatient tattoo on the arm of her chair. Insensibly he began appraising the rings which loaded the pudgy fingers. He possessed a love and appreciation of precious stones quite out of keeping with his circumstances and hated to see them in uncongenial surroundings. There was an emerald on her third finger that must have cost a fortune. Then she rose and, bending over the table, tossed the papers over impatiently in an attempt to find something to read. The full panoply of her regalia was now revealed to Mr. Cattistock and he gasped at the sight. For above the diamond star that heaved upon her bosom hung another emerald, the finest he had ever seen, and Mr. Cattistock, in his day, had handled some of the rarest jewels in the world.

  He was still blinking at it when the door opened to the sound of voices and Sir Richard Pomfrey came in, in animated conversation with another patient he had encountered in the hall. His face showed the complacence of one whose visit to the dentist is over, but Cattistock, watching him idly, saw the satisfaction cloud for a second, as his eyes fell on the wearer of the emeralds. Then he turned away and gave all his attention to his companion. Cattistock, interested, cast a glance at the face of the stout lady and was shocked at the venom he saw there. Her lips parted, and he thought she was about to give expression to her feelings; then, before the little drama could develop further, the door opened and she was swept out of the room in the wake of Mr. Davenport’s deferential manservant. Sir Richard did not seem to notice her departure, but Cattistock could have sworn that there was relief in his eyes as he bent over the lady he was addressing. Everything about her was in delightful contrast to her predecessor, and Mr. Cattistock, even in his present jaundiced state, found pleasure in looking at her. He continued to do so until she happened to glance in his direction and he surprised a look of mingled sympathy and repugnance in her eyes. He glanced at his handkerchief and realised, with a shock, that it was deeply stained with red. Feeling suddenly abominably conspicuous, he rose and left the room.

  Sir Richard’s relief at his departure was undisguised. He hitched his chair closer to that of his companion and took up the conversation where it had ceased on their entrance into the room. For another five minutes or so it flowed on uninterruptedly and Mrs. Vallon had almost forgotten the aching tooth that had brought her to Mr. Davenport’s dread portals, when the turning of the door handle and the soft murmur of the manservant’s voice gave warning of a further intrusion.

  Sir Richard turned, with something approaching a scowl on his good-tempered face, and glowered at the new arrival. The latter, unperturbed, regarded him quizzically.

  Sir Richard’s annoyance vanished abruptly.

  “Dr. Constantine!” he exclaimed. “What’s brought you here?”

  Constantine placed his hat and stick on the table.

  “‘The aching void the world can never fill,’” he quoted, with a sigh. “Only that or wild horses would drag me to Illbeck Street. Am I really the third on the list?”

  Sir Richard grinned.

  “Your turn will come soon enough,” he assured him. “Davenport’s finished with me, thank the Lord. You know Mrs. Vallon, I think. She’s for it in a minute.”

  Constantine bowed gravely.

  “Moritorus te saluto,” he murmured. “I knew your husband well, Mrs. Vallon, in the great days of the Pagoda, but I don’t think we ever met. The old theatre has gone deplorably downhill since then.”

  He was rewarded by an appreciative glance from her fine eyes. Her late husband had been the most brilliant actor-manager of his day, but she was already beginning to learn that reputations swiftly made are, nowadays, as swiftly forgotten, and she was grateful for so genuine a tribute.

  “I am glad sometimes that he did not live to see it in other hands,” was all she said, but she looked on Constantine now with friendliness as well as interest.

  She had heard of him, of course, but, until now, they had never met. The only son of a rich Greek merchant, he had been a notable figure in London society when she was still a girl at school, partly owing to his good looks, partly to sheer force of character. He was one of the finest chess players in England, but Society recks little of the game and had this bpen his only claim to distinction, he would have been unknown outside the chess columns of the daily papers. As it was, it would be difficult to define the reasons for his success. “Constantine has a flair for everything,” Mrs. Valion’s shrewd old father had once said, “from cooking to Grand Opera, and his taste’s hardly ever at fault.” With the instinct of an acknowledged beauty she knew now that this flair extended to pretty women and that, as he faced her, his dark eyes ablaze with a vitality disconcerting in so old a man, he was appreciating her to the full. With the frankness that was part of her charm she returned the compliment. Beside Constantine’s clear-cut, olive-skinned features, a trifle fine-drawn now with age, surmounted by the still thick, virile white hair, Sir Richard’s florid good looks seemed blunted and coarsened. With a queer litde feeling of protection she turned to the younger man, found his gaze, as usual, fixed upon her, and for reasons she could not define, liked him all the better for the clumsiness of his patent adoration.

  “Richard’s crowing too soon,” she said. “He’s only reached the temporary stopping stage, so far. His time’s to come.”

  Constantine smiled.

  “Then I’ve the advantage of both of you,” he declared. “My tooth was stopped on Thursday! I’ve only dropped in for a final polish. Judging by the unfortunate remnant of humanity I met on the doorstep, Davenport’s in a savage mood today!”

  Mrs. Vallon shuddered.

  “Don’t!” she implored him. “Do you realise that my tooth hurts? Goodness knows what he may be going to do to me!”

  Sir Richard moved uneasily. He was in no mood for a three-cornered conversation.

  “I’ll just ring my man up,” he said. “Then I must be going. It takes hours to get anywhere in this beastly fog. In case you’re in Davenport’s clutches when I get back, good luck! I hope he’ll stop it aching, anyway,” he added, as he shook hands with Mrs. Vallon.

  The manservant was not in the hall, but Sir Richard had used Davenport’s telephone before and knew where to find it. He switched on the light and, shutting himself into the dark little cupboard under the stairs, rang up his flat.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Vallon and Constantine settled down to the task of knowing each other better. They possessed a host of common acquaintances and it was due only to the fact that she still clung to the theatrical set in which she had moved during her husband’s lifetime that they had not met before. With unerring instinct Constantine led the conversation to Sir Richard, whom he had known since his schooldays, and found instantaneous response. It was easy to see
how things stood between these two.

  The minutes passed. Mrs. Vallon’s tooth, which, after the manner of aching teeth, had become steadily less painful since she had made her appointment with Mr. Davenport, had now ceased to hurt. Indeed, until Constantine alluded to it, she had forgotten all about it.

  “Does Davenport know that you’re in pain?” he asked. “It isn’t like him to keep you waiting.”

  “I’m not,” she answered. “It’s stopped aching altogether! If he doesn’t see me soon, I shall turn tail and go home! I can’t keep my courage screwed up to concert pitch for-ever!”

  Constantine looked at his watch.

  “My appointment was for twelve,” he said, “and it’s a quarter past now. Richard must be ringing up half London.”

  As he spoke the door opened and Sir Richard came in.

  “Couldn’t get through for ages,” he said. “There’s no end of a fuss going on in the hall outside. Davenport can’t get into his own consulting room! He’s sent down for some tools, his man tells me. Doesn’t look as if you were going to get your turn for some time yet.”

  Constantine looked up quickly.

  “Has the last patient gone, then?” he asked.

  Sir Richard shrugged his shoulders.

  “The chap outside says he hasn’t let her out. I thought I should find her in here.”

  Constantine rose and moved swiftly to the door.

  “I say,” expostulated Sir Richard, “she can’t be locked in there. She’d have made an appalling shindy by this time!”

  But Constantine had left the room, inspired by two motives: one, an inveterate dislike to playing gooseberry, the other, that flair for a situation that lay behind the insatiable curiosity that had led him into so many strange places in the course of his varied life.