Turning, Macdonald saw Jane Austen sitting just behind the door, concealed from any one who entered the room until they turned their back on the fireplace opposite. She was laughing at him with evident enjoyment.
“Two people present have never had a book published by the firm of Coombe,” she quoted, “and you’re one of them. All Coombe’s authors get a copy of that Quarterly. They don’t need to study it here. Q.E.D. You’ve been very snappy over clues and things, Izaak Walton. You lost time over Angostura, but you hared through the little questionnaire about police procedure in a manner that was highly incriminating. The proper study of mankind is man. Ben Jonson had to go to Whitaker & Co., to look up about coroners and procurators fiscal, but he knew that Bolivar was on the Orinoco, because he’d been there.”
Macdonald bowed. “Your verdict, madam, is strictly according to the evidence,” he replied, “but why make me a present of the information?”
“It’s a fair cop so far as you and Ben Jonson are concerned, isn’t it?” she pleaded. “I’m not being altruistic or anything goopy like that, but I want a quid pro quo. I’ve spotted you as one of the ‘non-authors’ and I’m nearly certain about the other. You’re a Scot, you gave it away first when you said ‘Losh,’ and when you’ve finished a clue your r’s roll like kettledrums. I’m willing to bet on your occupation, rank and name, but I want to know if Mrs. Gaskell talks Glasgow or Edinburgh. Can you tell me?”
“I’ve got my own ideas on the subject,” replied Macdonald, “but what about my quid pro quo? You haven’t told me anything I didn’t know.”
“Said he scathingly. I’ll give you a clue to Mrs. Gaskell, if you’ll answer my question about her accent.”
“I don’t know if it’s in the best traditions of Treasure Hunting, but I’d say she hails from the Highlands and went to school in Edinburgh,” replied Macdonald, and Jane Austen laughed.
“I’m right then. Is imagination the most noticeable feature of a Scotswoman?”
“No, not in the sense of literary imagination, if that’s what you mean.”
“Scots are always heads of departments, aren’t they?—having critical constructive and methodical minds. Ask old Graham if his best reader isn’t a Scotswoman. That’s your quid. Tell me, before you came to this party, did one of your friends come and spill the beans about who might be present? I think that was arranged beforehand, but photographs and personal descriptions were strictly verboten. Cunning, wasn’t it? The carrot which brought me was Scotland Yard.”
Macdonald began to laugh in his turn.
“That’s called a double cross in gangster circles,” he chuckled. “You’re handing me the office that you’re a detective writer after inside information, and you’re much too canny to give yourself away like that. I shall ask you if you took a first in history at Oxford. You pipped me over Marie Thèrése and Pragmatic Sanctions in clue 7. I remember now.”
Jane Austen threw back her head and laughed so that her small white teeth gleamed between her parted lips and made her look younger than ever.
“We’re both fifty per cent up in the final test,” she chuckled. “Personally, I enjoy the deductive method as applied to my fellow beings much better than working out paper clues.”
“So I have observed,” said Macdonald. “Your asides have been most helpful.”
She looked at him with raised brows. “I’m sorry about that. I ought to emulate Anna Seward, who talks a lot without telling you anything. I just can’t place her.” Getting up, she added, “We’d better get on with it or we shall be also-rans. I hate looking things up. I always guess or cadge information on a fifty-fifty basis. You owe me another small return. What was the origin of the quotation, ‘darkness which may be felt’?”
“There’s a very good dictionary of quotations—” began Macdonald, but he got no further. As though in answer to Jane Austen’s query, the lights went out, and the small room became black save for a rectangle of fading red which was the electric fire, also dimming to blackness.
“Mercy!” she laughed. “I didn’t do that. Honest to God, I’m not being funny. I hate being in the dark, so if you did it—”
“I didn’t,” said Macdonald. “The main fuse must have gone… You’d better stay where you are for the moment. Don’t move about, or you’ll knock things over.”
A confused clamour came from below. The stairway was in darkness, and startled voices were calling and exclaiming. A crash of glass followed by a voice saying “Hell! I’m sorry. I say, what the devil’s happened?” occurred on the landing close below where Macdonald was standing, and then Graham Coombe’s voice made itself heard.
“I’m awfully sorry, everybody. This isn’t part of the entertainment. There must have been a fuse. Will everybody stay put until we can get some illumination. Sorry, old chap. Better stand still a minute.”
Macdonald had got a lighter in his pocket but no matches. The tiny flame at least made a focus of illumination. At the door of the drawing-room Ben Jonson held a lighted match in his fingers for a moment and it shone on the startled face of Mrs. Gaskell just behind him. After it went out, eyes growing accustomed to the darkness could see the firelight shining through the open doors of the drawing-room.
A voice from the stairway said, “Are you there, Val? I’ve made hay with a whole tray of cocktails and stamped on the sausages. Are you all right, angel?”
“I don’t know where your girl friend is, or who she is,” retorted the spirited voice of Jane Austen, “but don’t go being familiar, Thomas Traherne.”
“I say, wouldn’t it be rather a lark to have question time now, before the lights come on again?” inquired Laurence Sterne’s voice. “It’d make rather a good inquisition in the firelight.”
“Don’t they grow candles in this house?” inquired a superior female voice on the stairs just above Macdonald. He did not recognise the lady’s voice, but drew aside to let her pass, observing the glint of her reddish grey hair just before his rather futile lighter expired. It was Fanny Burney, looking not too amiable.
“Don’t mind me. I like being trodden on,” said another voice. “My first question is, do you weigh twenty stone or twenty-five? Oh, hooray! Some one’s found a candle. What do you bet that Mr. Coombe’s first edition of David Copperfield’s been lifted in the melée? Not a bad plot, darling. You could throw the loot out of the window to an accomplice on the pavement.”
Laughter gradually spread among the startled company as Graham Coombe and a parlourmaid appeared, the one bearing two very dilapidated looking candles, the other an electric torch.
“Ladies and gentlemen, follow the torch bearers into the drawing-room until repairs are effected,” cried the voice of the major-domo. “First aid will be rendered in case of need and stimulants in plenty… oh, excellent! Music is being provided to calm the company.”
Some one in the drawing-room had begun to play the piano and Macdonald heard the liquid notes with pleasure. Bach’s first prelude, delicately played, seemed to smooth out the awkwardness of the situation. He stood where he was, and Jane Austen passed him, whispering:
“I say, doesn’t it get the old professional instincts all on the qui vive? Darkness always makes me suspicious. You never know, you know!”
Seeing Coombe going downstairs again, after having left the candles on the drawing-room mantelshelf—a quaintly inadequate illumination in a room over thirty feet long—Macdonald following him said, “Can I do anything to help? I’m fairly handy with fuses.”
“Thanks very much, but I think it’s a case for the Electric Light Company,” replied Coombe. “It’s the main fuse, we can’t get at it. Everything in the house has gone, including the cooker. If you’d come and hold this damned torch while I telephone, I’d be glad. We’re not used to this sort of thing. We ought to have candles somewhere, but no one can find them. What a picnic! The phone’s in here.”
“No harm done,” replied Macdonald, “and the authorities are generally very quick on occasions like t
his. I’ll hold the torch while you phone.”
“What the devil do I look for?” said Coombe, hunting in the telephone book. “Marylebone? St. Marylebone?… Town Hall… Damn it, that’s no good, Meters, Emergency calls… that’s it. Doesn’t it strike you a bit fishy,” he added as he dialled. “Been here for years. Never known anything like this happen before. Hullo! Speaking from Caroline House…”
The authorities having promised to send a man immediately, Coombe cheered up a little. “I hope there hasn’t been any funny stuff going on here,” he said. “Can’t quite understand it. Heard of a burglary done the other day, a pile of stuff cleared off while the whole household was in darkness… Jolly sporting of some one to start playing the piano up there… Funny thing—people can’t talk normally in the dark. Nice touch the chap’s got too. What’s that? Haydn, isn’t it?”
They went back into the drawing-room and found the company gathered round the fire, save for the pianist who was playing in a shadowed corner. Ben Jonson was sitting on the floor close to the fire, his brow corrugated over a paper in his hand. “Bloody hand,” he murmured meditatively, “where have I met that one?”
“Try Macbeth, old drink-to-me-only,” said Thomas Traherne mendaciously, and Macdonald noticed that the young man was sitting on the arm of Jane Austen’s chair. Laurence Sterne was standing by the corner of the mantelshelf, his thin face looking dreamy in the candlelight as he listened to the music, obviously oblivious of his fellows. Anna Seward was murmuring to Madame de Sevigné, “My dear, what a tragedy, such a lovely frock too!”
Macdonald noticed that Madame de Sevigné’s golden gown was sadly marred by a stain which spread right down the front of it, as though a glass of wine had been upset on it. He also saw that the lady’s hands were trembling a little, and heard her murmuring in reply:
“Oh, that doesn’t matter, but I do feel a bit weak in the knees. I was in the lounge when the lights failed, looking at those books in the case by the grandfather clock, and some one banged into me and knocked me right over. I’m a perfect fool in the dark, I always get a sense of vertigo when I can’t see anything, and I was frightened. It’s all right now, but I could have screamed at the time. Something uncanny about darkness… How well that woman plays! I do envy people who always keep their heads in an emergency.”
“I was a bit shattered myself,” murmured the low deep voice of Anna Seward. “I’d just popped into the pay-a-penny, you know, and I couldn’t get out. At first I thought it was a rather inconsiderate clue, and decided to look for that book of Guy Thorne’s When it was dark. All these young people would scarcely have heard of it.”
A diversion was caused here by the entrance of the two maids, the first carrying a very antiquated oil lamp and the second bearing a branched candelabra complete with lighted candles. Miss Susan Coombe followed them talking cheerfully.
“I do apologise to everybody. I feel that this contretemps is a reflection on my housekeeping. We always keep candles—lots of them—only it’s so many years since they were needed that we couldn’t find them. They’d got hidden behind the soaps and sodas in the store-room cupboard. Oh! my dear Thomas Traherne! Whatever have you done? Is that a cut?”
“Bloody hand! Got you! Own up!” boomed Ben Jonson.
In the comparatively bright light which now filled the room, everybody blinked a little. Thomas Traherne, Macdonald noticed, had got a handkerchief twisted round his hand, with marks of gore on it.
“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Coombe. I cannoned into a tray of drinks in the lounge and I’m afraid I did an awful smash. I cut my hand a bit, but it’s nothing. I’m terribly sorry about breaking your glasses.”
“Oh, bother the glasses! They don’t matter. Geoffrey, take Thomas Traherne upstairs and find iodine and lint. You know where things are in the medicine cupboard. I do hope there aren’t any other casualties.”
Laurence Sterne was looking round the room with his quick bird-like stare.
“We seem to be a man short,” he observed. “Where’s Samuel Pepys?”
“In the dining-room, making the best of his opportunities,” suggested Ben Jonson. “Do we now resume the status quo and get on with the clues? I’ve remembered my ‘Bloody Hand’ poser and I’m ready for the next.”
“It’s anagrams that get me down.” It was the pianist who spoke—Fanny Burney—“I haven’t a synthetic mind.”
“I’m afraid the Hunt will have to be in abeyance until the electrician comes,” said Coombe. “We’re getting candles put everywhere, but they’re not very adequate in a house this size.”
“Personally I’m only too glad to give my wretched wits an interval of repose,” said Anna Seward. “Though I’m going to ask Ben Jonson if he had much trouble with the Customs when he landed at Southampton last month.”
There was an outburst of laughter and general conversation and Macdonald heard Graham Coombe’s voice beside him.
“I say, have you seen anything of Samuel Pepys? We’d better find him.”
Macdonald stepped from the room with his host, and they stood together on the dimly lighted landing where a couple of candles glimmered among the shadows.
“I don’t seem to have seen him since the word ‘go,’” he replied. “Perhaps he found Treasure Hunting not to his taste and folded his tent like the Arabs.”
“I think I’d better make certain,” said Coombe. “I was a bit put about earlier on. I’m afraid Samuel Pepys got a bit fresh with Jane Austen and found he’d made a mistake. Confound the fellow!”
“If Jane Austen ticked him off, it’s quite reasonable to suppose that Samuel Pepys packed up and went home,” replied Macdonald. “If so, his hat and cloak will have been taken from the cloak-room. Let’s think, how many men guests have you here? Ben Jonson, Thomas Traherne, Samuel Pepys, Laurence Sterne, the major-domo and myself. Six.”
“No. Five. The major-domo is my secretary, Geoffrey Manton, and he lives here, I got him to do the announcing touch. I’ll take this candle and go along to the cloak-room. I hope to the deuce that electrician gets a move on.”
Macdonald went with Coombe to the men’s cloak-room which opened from the entrance lobby, and looked round in the light from the candle. Five hats and caps on the pegs and Macdonald made a guess at the owners of the different hats. The Gibus he attributed to Thomas Traherne, the black Trilby to Laurence Sterne. The rather shapeless dark velour looked like Ben Jonson’s and the dark Homburg was his own. Coombe lifted down a bowler and glanced inside it.
“This belongs to Samuel Pepys,” he said, “and here’s his coat. He’s still in the house. It’s damned odd, isn’t it?… Oh! thank the Lord! Here are the lights again. Quick work, what!”
“Very quick,” agreed Macdonald. “If Samuel Pepys is still in the house, we’d better find him. Speaking without prejudice, he looks as though he could lower a few. Shall we try the dining-room? He wasn’t in the drawing-room, or on the stairs, or in the small library.”
They went back into the lounge hall, and Coombe opened a door which led into a panelled room with a fine rosewood table and Sheraton sideboard. The curtains were drawn across the windows, the room immaculately neat and obviously empty. Coombe chuckled nervously as he bent and looked under the table—the only place where a man could possibly be concealed. “This is a sort of Mad Hatter’s Party,” he said. “I set my guests on a Treasure Hunt and end by hunting for one of them myself. Damn the fellow! Where is he? He can’t have taken it into his head to go upstairs and have a snooze. Try Susan’s sitting-room.”
Miss Coombe’s study—a workman-like looking room with built in bookcases, filled cabinets, and a big kneehole desk, did nothing to assist them. No one was there, and Coombe looked nonplussed.
“This is silly,” he observed. “The chap wasn’t in the library when the lights went out, because I was there myself, and I was alone. Laurence Sterne had just been in looking up a clue, and he went out a minute before the lights failed. I turned the key in the door when I came out
and shut it, because I didn’t want people blundering about there in the dark.”
“You’ve probably locked him in then,” replied Macdonald. “We’ll just look in the telephone-room again to make sure before we go on.”
“But damn it, we were in there just now, and the room was empty,” expostulated Graham Coombe.
“We didn’t really look. That electric torch of yours throws a very small beam,” replied Macdonald. “Might as well make sure.”
They went again to the small room at the back of the house and Coombe threw open the door, saying irritably:
“Of course he’s not here.”
There was a desk by the window, on which stood the telephone. A large arm-chair stood in the middle of the small floor space, and against the wall facing the window was a fine mahogany bureau, whose heavy front was pulled out, though the flap was not let down. Pulling aside the chair a little, Macdonald said, “I’m afraid he is here. Very much here.” Coombe wheeled round and stood looking down at the floor with horror on his face. In the space between the arm-chair and the flat-fronted bureau Samuel Pepys lay on the floor his arms flung wide, his eyes staring at the ceiling. Macdonald knew at a glance that he was dead.
“My God! How ghastly. Chap must have had a heart attack when the lights failed,” groaned Coombe. “Get some brandy, there’s a good chap. I’ll ring up a doctor. I hope to God it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“I’m afraid it is. Just as bad,” replied Macdonald. “Stand by that door, sir. We don’t want any one blundering in here.”
Kneeling down beside the big man on the floor, Macdonald felt for a pulse which he was certain had stopped beating. He went further, and loosened the fine tucked shirt and felt for the heart, then tested the temperature of the hands with his own. They were already cold, though the large body retained enough heat to tell that death had only occurred a short time ago.
These Names Make Clues Page 3
