by Ngaio Marsh
“Let me think. No. No, I don’t believe he did. But I did. I’d forgotten to bring my case down and I was helping myself to one of his when he came into the room. I remember that,” said Mandrake and Alleyn saw the back of his neck go red, “because I felt—” He stopped and made rather a business of adjusting his wind-screen wiper which at that moment was not needed.
“Yes?”
“What? Oh, I merely felt, very stupidly, a little embarrassed.” Mandrake’s voice trailed off and then he said loudly: “I was not born into the purple, Mr. Alleyn. Until a few years ago, I lived in the odour of extreme economy, among people who waited to be invited before they smoked other people’s cigarettes.”
“I should call that a sign of courtesy rather than penury,” said Alleyn, and received a brilliant smile from Miss Wynne. “Well, you lit your cigarette, then. That’s a help. Was it still going when you heard Nicholas Compline yell?”
“Was it, now? Yes. Yes, I remember throwing it in the fire before I went upstairs but it was almost smoked out, I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure of that.”
“Good. Well, now, Madame Lisse’s alibi is vouched for by Nicholas Compline and looks pretty well cast-iron. William Compline was in the smoking-room listening to the news bulletin. He heard Mr. Royal speak to the butler in the hall, and was prepared to give the gist of the bulletin which does not come on until seven-thirty.”
“Surely that’s of academic interest, only,” said Mandrake, “considering what has happened to William Compline.”
“You are probably quite right, but you know what policemen are. Dr. Hart has no alibi. Wait a bit, I must count up. Who haven’t I got? Oh, there’s you, Miss Wynne.”
“I haven’t got one,” said Chloris quickly. “I was in my room and I had a bath next door and I changed. But I can’t prove it.”
“Oh, well,” said Alleyn, “it’d be an odd state of affairs if everybody could prove all the things they hadn’t done every minute of the day. Is there to be no privacy, not even in the bathroom? That leaves Lady Hersey Amblington.”
“But she was with Mrs. Compline,” said Mandrake. “Nicholas saw her go past his door on her way to Mrs. Compline’s room. It’s there in the notes. We’ve been over that.”
“Have we? Then I’ve got myself into a muddle, no doubt. Lady Hersey gives Mrs. Compline an alibi. Does Mrs. Compline do as much for Lady Hersey? I mean did Mrs. Compline agree that Lady Hersey was in her room from seven-thirty until the alarm?”
“Well, she — Well, I mean she wasn’t there when we talked about alibis. Lady Hersey saw her afterwards and may have spoken about it then.”
“But actually nobody else questioned Mrs. Compline about it?”
“No, but of course it’s all right. I mean it’s out of the question that Lady Hersey—”
“I expect it is,” said Alleyn. “But you see just at the moment we’re dealing with hard facts, aren’t we? And the actual fact, which may be of no importance whatever, is that Lady Hersey vouches for Mrs. Compline but Mrs. Compline doesn’t happen to have corroborated her account. Is that it?”
“She can’t,” said Chloris. “She can’t, now. She may never…”
“We won’t jump that fence,” said Alleyn, “until we meet it.”
So far the return journey had not presented many difficulties. The new set of chains worked well and Mandrake kept to his own tracks where the snow had packed down hard and was already freezing over again. They ran into desultory flurries of snow, but the rain had not crossed Cloudyfold. Beyond the hills, the sky was still terraced with storm-clouds, prolonged at their bases into down-pouring masses, as if some Olympian painter had dragged at them with a dry brush.
At Alleyn’s suggestion they broached Dinah’s luncheon hamper and he continued his examination of Mandrake’s notes in an atmosphere of ham and hard-boiled egg, plying Chloris with food and both of them with questions.
“The oddest thing about this beastly business,” he said, “seems to be your plunge in the pond, Mandrake. You say here that Dr. Hart had the best chance of bringing it off unobserved, and that he saw Compline leave the house wearing Mr. Royal’s cape which is the double of your cape which incidentally seems to be Hart’s cape. Having absorbed those fancy touches, I learn that Nicholas Compline saw you through the window of the pavilion, where he was undressing in order to plunge into the ornamental waters in pursuance of a wager. He recognized you, and exchanged waves. Then comes your plunge, attended by the Compline brothers, Hart, Miss Wynne, and Mr. Royal, in that order. Again Mrs. Compline, Madame Lisse and Lady Hersey are absent. The first two breakfasted in their rooms. Lady Hersey says she was in the smoking-room. I understand you have read these notes, Miss Wynne?”
“Yes.”
“Have you formed any theory about the footprints which Mandrake says he saw in the snow? The small prints that led out of the top of the terrace from the house and returned to the house, suggesting that the person who made them stood on the terrace for a time at a spot from which she — apparently it must have been a woman — had a full view of the pond and the pavilion?”
“I?” said Chloris. “Why, I’ve thought a lot about it ever since Aubrey told me but I’m afraid I’ve no ideas at all. It might have been one of the maids, even, though I suppose that’s not very likely.”
“Did you notice these prints as you went down?”‘
“I’m not sure. I stood on the top of the terrace for a bit and noticed Aubrey’s and some other big footprints — William’s they must have been — and I thought I might walk dawn inside them, do you know? I’ve got a sort of feeling I did notice something out of the tail of my eye. I’ve got a sort of after-flavour of having fancied there must be someone else about but it’s much too vague to be useful. On the way back I was too concerned about Aubrey to notice.”
“Were you?” asked Mandrake with unmistakable fervour. Alleyn waited philosophically through an exchange of inaudible phrases, and remarked the air of complacency that characterizes persons who have arrived at a certain stage of mutual attraction.
“The smoking-room is on that side of the house, isn’t it?” he said at last.
“Yes,” agreed Chloris uncomfortably, “but so are the visitors’ rooms upstairs.”
“Do they overlook the lake and pavilion?”
“Madame Lisse’s room doesn’t,” said Mandrake. “I asked Jonathan that, and he said some tall evergreens on the bank would be in the way. I imagine they’d interrupt Mrs. Compline’s view too.”
“And you definitely connect these three strange events? You feel certain that the same person is behind all of them?”
“But — yes,” said Chloris blankly. “Of course we do. Don’t you?”
“It looks like it, certainly,” said Alleyn absently.
“Surely,” said Mandrake, acidly, “it would be too fantastic to suppose there has been more than one person planning elaborate deaths for Nicholas Compline during the weekend?”
“For Nicholas Compline?” Alleyn repeated. “Oh, yes. It would, wouldn’t it?”
“I assure you I had no enemies at Highfold. I’d never met a single one of the guests before.”
“Quite so,” said Alleyn mildly. “Going back still farther, we come to the first hint of trouble, the rather childish message on the Charter form which you say Dr. Hart handed to Nicholas Compline, together with a form that had been correctly filled in. ‘You are warned. Keep off.’ You say that there is no question of anyone else handing this paper to Compline.”
“No possibility of it. Nicholas simply took the paper from Hart,” said Mandrake, “and, on looking at it, found this second one underneath. Hart’s explanation was that he must have torn two papers off at once. Nicholas didn’t say, at the time, what was on the paper, but he was obviously very much upset and, later that evening, he told Jonathan he thought he ought to go. The following day, and good God it’s only yesterday, he actually tried to go and nearly drowned himself in a drift.”
“Yes. And that completes the skel
eton.” Alleyn folded the notes and put them in his pocket. “As they used to say in Baker Street: ‘You are in possession of the facts.’ I’d like a little news about the people. You say that, with the exception of your host, you had met none of them before. That’s not counting Miss Wynne, of course.”
“Yes, it is,” said Chloris, and with an air of great demureness she added: “Aubrey and I are complete strangers.”
“I don’t suppose I shall know her if I meet her again.” Alleyn sighed as Mandrake once more removed his left hand from the driving-wheel. “He will resent everything I say to her,” thought Alleyn, “and she will adore his resentment. Blow!” However, he introduced the subject of motive, which Mandrake, in his notes, had dealt with illusively, unconsciously supposing the reader would be almost as familiar as himself with the relationships of the eight guests to each other and to their host. In a very short time Alleyn discovered that these two were quite ready to talk about Madam Lisse and Lady Hersey, about Mrs. Compline and Dr. Hart, and about William’s fury when he discovered that Hart was the author of his mother’s disfigurement. They were less ready to discuss in detail Hart’s enmity to Nicholas, though they never tired of stressing it. Hart had threatened Nicholas. Nicholas had goaded Hart until he completely lost control of himself. That was the burden of their song. It was on account of Nicholas’ attentions to Madame Lisse, they said. When Alleyn asked if Nicholas knew that Madame Lisse was Madame Hart, they said they hadn’t asked him, and Chloris added, with a new edge to her voice, that it was highly probable. Alleyn said mildly that it appeared that Nicholas had acted like a fool. “He seems to have baited Hart to the top of his bent and at the same time been rather frightened of him.”
“But that’s Nicholas all over,” said Chloris quickly. “It was exactly that. ‘The small boy tweaking the dog’s tail.’ That’s Nicholas.” Mandrake cut in rather hurriedly but Alleyn stopped him. “You know Compline well, Miss Wynne?” She took so long to answer that he was about to repeat the question, which he was certain she had heard, when without turning her head, she said: “Yes. Quite well. I was engaged to him. You’d better hear all about it, I suppose.”
“I can’t see…” Mandrake began, but this time it was Chloris who stopped him: “It hasn’t anything to do with it, I know, but I think Mr. Alleyn would rather see for himself.”
“An admirable conclusion,” said Alleyn lightly, and he heard without further comment the story of the two engagements. When she had finished, he made her a little speech, saying he was sorry under such tragic circumstances to be obliged to pester her with questions. Nothing could have been more uncomfortable than their reception of this simple offer of sympathy. Their silence was eloquent of embarrassment. Chloris did not turn her head and when Alleyn caught sight of Mandrake’s face in the driving glass it was scarlet and scowling.
“You needn’t bother,” said Chloris in a high voice. “I wasn’t in love with William. Didn’t you guess that? As I have already explained to Aubrey, I did it on the rebound from Nicholas.” In spite of herself, her voice lost composure and she ended up shakily: “That doesn’t say I’m not terribly sorry. I liked old Bill. I liked him tremendously.”
“I liked him too,” said Mandrake. “He was an oddity, wasn’t he?” Chloris nodded, and Alleyn thought that in making this unemphatic comment on William Compline, Mandrake had shown sureness of touch and a certain delicacy of understanding. He went on quietly: “He would have interested you, I believe, Alleyn. He was one of those people who speak a thing almost at the same time as they think it, and as he had a curious simplicity about him, some of the things he said were odd and disconcerting. He was quite like his brother to look at. The shape of his head—” Mandrake stumbled a little and then went on rather hurriedly. “From behind, as I explained in those notes, it was difficult to tell them apart. But they couldn’t have been more unalike in temperament, I should say.”
“And he painted?”
“Yes. I haven’t seen any of his works.”
“They were queer,” Chloris said. “You might like them, Aubrey. They might be quite your cup of tea, but most people thought his pictures too embarrassingly bad. I must say I always felt rather shy when I saw them. I never knew what to say.”
“What are they like?” asked Alleyn.
“Well, a bit as if a child had done them, but not quite like that.”
“Very thick oil paint,” said Mandrake, under his breath.
“Why, have you seen one?” asked Chloris, in astonishment.
“No. He told me. He said it rather quaintly. If there was something childlike in his painting, it must have come from himself.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Chloris, and they began quite tranquilly to discuss William. Alleyn wondered how old they were. Miss Wynne was not more than twenty, he thought, and he remembered a critique of one of Mandrake’s poetic dramas in which the author had been described as extremely young. Perhaps he was twenty-six. They were fortified with all the resilience that youth presents to an emotional shock. In the midst of murder and attempted suicide, they had managed, not only to behave with address and good sense, but also to fall in love with each other. Very odd, thought Alleyn, and listened attentively to what they had to say about William Compline. They were discussing him with some animation. Alleyn was pretty sure they had almost forgotten his presence. This was all to the good, and a firm picture of the murdered and elder Compline began to take form. With owlish gravity, Chloris and Mandrake discussed poor William’s “psychology” and decided that unconscious jealousy of Nicholas, a mother-fixation, an inferiority complex, and a particularly elaborate Œdipus complex were at the bottom of his lightest action and the sole causes of his violent outburst against Hart. “Really,” said Mandrake, “it’s the Ugly Duckling and Cinderella themes. Extraordinarily sound, those folk tales.”
“And of course the painting was simply an effort to overcome the inferiority complex — er, on the pain-pleasure principle,” added Chloris uncertainly. Mandrake remarked that Mrs. Compline’s strong preference for Nicholas was extremely characteristic, but of what Alleyn could not quite make out. However he did get a clear picture of two unhappy people dominated by the selfish, vain, and, according to the two experts in the front seat, excessively oversexed Nicholas. Shorn of intellectual garnishings it was still a sufficiently curious story. One phrase of Chloris’ struck him as being particularly illuminating. “I would have liked to be friends with her,” she said, “but she hated me from the beginning, poor thing. First because I was engaged to Nick, and secondly and even more violently, because, as she made herself suppose, I jilted him for William. I think she knew well enough that Nick hadn’t been exactly the little gent, but she wouldn’t let herself believe that he could do anything that wasn’t perfect. For her he just had to be heroic, don’t you know, and she had a fantastic hatred for anyone who made him look shabby.”
“Did she know about l’affaire Lisse, do you suppose?” asked Mandrake.
“I don’t know. I daresay he kept it dark. He could be pretty quiet about his philanderings when it suited him. But even if she did know I believe she would have taken it as a perfectly natural obsession on Madame Lisse’s part. In her eyes, Nicholas was really rather like one of those Greek gods who lolled about on clouds and said ‘I’ll have that one!’ ”
Alleyn coughed, and Miss Wynne became aware of him. “I suppose,” she said, “you think it revolting of us to talk about him like this.”
“No,” he said, “I would find a show of excessive distress much more disagreeable.”
“Yes, I know. All the same it’s pretty ghastly not being able to get back quicker. I suppose you can’t rush her up a bit, Aubrey, can you? It’s terribly important that Dr. Hart should get these things. I mean, in a sort of way, everything depends on us.”
“I’m banging along as fast as I dare. There’s Pen Gidding ahead. We’re making much better time. Look, there’s the rain still over the Highfold country. We’ll be run
ning into it again soon. If I stick in Deep Bottom it’s only about half a mile from the house.”
“Return to horror,” said Chloris, under her breath.
“Never mind, my dear,” whispered Mandrake. “Never mind.”
“There’s one thing that strikes me as being very odd,” said Alleyn, “and that is the house-party itself. What persuaded your host to collect such a gang of warring elements under his roof? Or didn’t he know they were at war?”
“Yes,” said Mandrake, “he knew.”
“Then why—”
“He did it on purpose. He explained it to me on the night I arrived. He wanted to work out his æsthetic frustration in a flesh-and-blood medium.”
“Good Lord!” Alleyn ejaculated. “How unbelievably rum!”
There was no wind over Cloudyfold that afternoon, but the rain poured down inexorably. By half-past two the rooms at Highfold had begun to assume a stealthy dimness. The house itself, as well as the human beings inside it, seemed to listen and to wait. Highfold was dominated by two rooms. Behind the locked doors of the smoking-room, William Compline now sat as rigidly as if he had been made of iron, his hands propped between his feet and his head fixed between his knees. In the principal visitor’s room lay his mother in bed, breathing very slowly, scarcely responding, now, to Dr. Hart when he slapped the face he had marred twenty years ago, or when he advanced his own white face close to hers and called her name as if he cried for admittance at the door of her consciousness. Hersey Amblington, too, cried out to her old friend. Three times Nicholas had come. It had been difficult for Nicholas to obey Hart and call loudly upon his mother. At first his voice cracked grotesquely into a sobbing whisper. Hart kept repeating: “Loud. Loudly. To rouse her, you understand. She must be roused.” And Hersey: “If she hears it’s you, Nick, she may try. You must, Nick, you must.” Mrs. Pouting in her sitting-room, and Thomas in the hall, and Caper in the pantry, and Madame Lisse in the green “boudoir,” and Jonathan Royal on the stairs had all heard Nicholas shout as though across a nightmare of silence: “Mother! It’s Nicholas! Mother!” They had all waited, listening intently, until his voice cracked into silence and they became aware once more of the hard beat of rain on the house. Jonathan, from his place on the stairs, had heard Nicholas leave his mother’s room and cross the landing. He had seen him stop at the stairhead, raise his clasped hands to his lips, and then, as if some invisible cord had been released, jerk forwards until his head rested on his arms across the balustrade. Jonathan started forward, but at the sound of harsh sobbing paused and finally stole downstairs, unseen by Nicholas. He crossed the hall, and after some hesitation, entered the green “boudoir.”
