The Case of the Gilded Fly

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘And now for heaven’s sake,’ said Nigel, ‘what about the motive? Surely he didn’t kill her just because she was making a nuisance of herself and sending Rachel into temporary tantrums? You’ve been liable to gnomic utterances on the subject of motive. Explain yourself.’

  ‘My gnomic utterances,’ said Fen severely, ‘reduce themselves to three: that I do not believe in the crime passionnel; that the motive for murder is almost always either money, vengeance or security, and that none the less it is sex which is at the root of this business. I’ll explain just how those assertions are justified.

  ‘The immediate motive was without any question that mysterious something for which both Yseut and the murderer were searching. And my first clue to its identity came from the admirably lucid account which you, Nigel, gave me of the morning after the party. In it, you described without any apparent sense of incongruity two people behaving in odd and inconsequent ways, and attributed their antics to the probability that Yseut had slept with Warner the previous night and was intending to make a song and dance about it. Let me capitulate what happened – you must correct me if I go astray –

  (1) Yseut came into the bar, carrying her handbag and a thin red notebook, which she threw down somewhere.

  (2) Robert, on seeing her, appeared first angry and then uncomfortable.

  (3) Yseut regarded him with “triumph and defiance”.

  (4) She chattered to him about “blackmail” and “revelations”.

  (5) Donald picked up his music and left, while

  (6) Yseut went with you to the bar, keeping her eyes on Robert all the time.

  (7) Her attention was diverted by you emptying a glass of brandy over her.

  (8) She returned with you to the table, “stiffened and flushed” suddenly, and flounced out.

  (9) Robert gazed after her with “genuine bewilderment”.

  ‘Now all this, I thought to myself, is extremely odd, and indeed only explicable at all on the assumption that it’s the red notebook which is the centre of the furore. You had seen Yseut come out of Warner’s room with it earlier that morning; on the strength of (2) and (4) I assumed that it was something of great importance to Warner and probably something which seriously incriminated him. The rest then fell into place, Yseut’s attitude, her talk about blackmail (doubtless blackmail for West End jobs rather than money), the watch she kept on him; while the last two items in my summary were particularly revealing. They obviously meant, first, that Yseut had turned back from her diversion to find that the notebook had gone, and second, that it was not Warner who had taken it.

  ‘That, you see, fitted perfectly. It explained why Yseut was searching Fellowes’ room; and it explained why she was killed. Despite the fact that the actual proof was out of her hands, she knew too much to be left alive. (There is your motive: security.) It was obvious to me, as later it became obvious to her and as it was almost immediately obvious to Warner, that it was Fellowes who had gone off with the notebook, gathering it up carelessly with his music (he could not have taken it on purpose, since he could not have known what it contained). It was at that point, however, that my logic went entirely to the winds, and I made the fatal mistake of assuming that Warner had found the book among Donald’s music, unlooked-at, when he killed Yseut – or rather when he went to fake the suicide. In fact, he did nothing of the sort. He had no time to make a search when he faked the suicide, and after that the room was under guard until 4.30 on Sunday. Then he looked round, failed to find it (as I failed to find it when I looked earlier, and thought he already had it) and went on up to the organ loft. There’s little doubt, I think, that by that time Fellowes had discovered the thing, looked at it, and realized its implications – apart from anything else, it provided the only real motive for the killing of Yseut. And as a matter of fact there were a few faint red stains on one of his pieces of music, where the cover had smeared against it. What his feelings were when he saw Warner, God only knows. But Warner realized he knew – had gone up prepared for that, in fact – and took the only possible course. Before he died, Donald left us the identity of the murderer in the only way he knew, hoping against hope that someone would notice it. You remember my remarking on the curious mixture of stops he’d left out? The Inspector thought that some tedious musical irrelevancy, but it was not. On the right-hand stop-jamb, the stops were out in the following order: Rohrflote, Oboe, Bourdon, Euphonium, another Rohrflote (on the Choir), and Tierce. They haven’t been touched since, so you can go and look for your-self.’

  ‘But I don’t quite see,’ said Nigel, ‘where the music, and the notebook, were, if not in Donald’s room.’

  ‘They were in the organ loft, of course; the obvious place. As to the contents of the notebook, I could only guess. But I remembered Warner had been in South America several times before the war, and I thought it just possible that he might be remotely connected with the industry for which that part of the globe is notorious – procuring. I rang up a friend on the secretariat of the League, and learned from him that Warner had in fact been suspected of complicity in the matter, but that nothing could be proved against him. That was before the war, naturally; nothing of that sort can be carried on now. But I claim no credit for that part of it; it was the merest fluke. But that was what I meant when I said that the questing beast was in fact, at the root of this business, though the actual motive was security. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to whip up much indignation about Warner’s goings-on. It’s always seemed to me that unless these girls are actually shanghaied, they’re less sinned against than sinning. It seems an extraordinary sideline for a great playwright, but there was a sort of ironic twist in Warner’s character, a kind of deep fatalism, which forbade him to take anything seriously. Even the murders he didn’t take seriously; they were both brilliant, chancy affairs.’

  There was a long silence. Then Helen said slowly:

  ‘I’m glad the play couldn’t go on after that one performance, even if Rachel could have done it. It – it seems somehow right that there should have been just one – and a perfect one.’

  Fen nodded. ‘A magnificent final exit, I agree,’ he said. ‘But a final exit, none the less. The world is the poorer for it.’

  ‘What has happened to Rachel, by the way?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘She’s gone off to the country. And Jean has been sent home to her parents. In the circumstances we couldn’t possibly have proceeded against her, as she was “helping to apprehend an escaping murderer”. Not that he ever had any chance to escape – and least of all when that thing crushed him.’ Fen’s voice was hard.

  They all looked at him. As he smoothed back his unruly hair, he seemed suddenly old and tired. ‘It has been an abominable business,’ he said, ‘and we are all the worse as a result. There will be no more Metromanias. And I for one cannot thank God for it.’

  16. Epilogue: The Gilded Fly

  Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,

  Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.

  Webster

  The journey from Oxford to Didcot (and thence to Paddington) involves difficulties of a different kind from those experienced in travelling in the inverse direction. The train, once it gets started at all, moves at a uniform if unspectacular pace. The problem is to know when it is going to start. Nicholas always insisted that the first train to leave in the morning was deliberately made ten minutes late, that this made the next train even later and that the process went on cumulatively throughout the day. At a certain stage in the day, however, he averred, the train behind caught up with the one in front – the 12.35 left at 1.10 and the 1.10 at 1.35, so that at the end of the day there were probably several trains which never ran at all. Be that as it may, it is certain that if you reached the station in time for your train you had to wait at least half an hour, whereas if you relied – as you reasonably might – on its being even ten minutes late, it invariably left on time and you missed it. It was this which led Nicholas to insist that the blind god of
Chance wore the uniform of the G.W.R.

  The six people who travelled up during the week of 19–26 October 1940 were, however, little affected by this difficulty. One way and another they were all too happy to care.

  Nicholas, who was seen off by his blonde at the station, was pleased at the melodramatic conclusion of the case; also, he thought it had enlarged his conception of certain Shakespearean characters. Goneril, for example, should always be played by a young woman with red hair.

  ‘Fen is a clever devil,’ he said grudgingly to the blonde, after they had discussed the case ad nauseam, ‘despite the fact that he considers me a fascist.’

  ‘Aren’t you a fascist?’ said the blonde in apparent surprise.

  ‘Certainly not. I’m an earnest supporter of this war; that’s why I’m going back to town.’

  ‘What are you going to do when you get there?’

  ‘Find a war job. Not, heaven help me, in a factory with odious machines and odious jazzes blaring away half the day from mechanical contrivances, but something civilized and useful.’

  The train came in. He climbed into a first-class compartment and leaned out of the window. The reluctance of most trains to start, he reflected, makes the pleonasm of one’s carefully prepared parting phrases rather tedious. He said:

  ‘There’s no need for you to wait now,’ to which the blonde replied:

  ‘I’m not going to wait. I’m coming with you. Look out of the way.’ She climbed in, and Nicholas gazed at her severely.

  ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘this sudden decision?’

  ‘Sooner or later I intend to marry you, for the purposes described in the Order of the Solemnization of Holy Matrimony. I’m sorry to be so pushing, but I’m really rather fond of you, and you’re such an ass that you’d never succeed in getting married on your own initiative.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Nicholas. ‘I must re-read Much Ado. My situation becomes more Benedickian every moment.’ Then he grinned. ‘But do you know,’ he added, ‘I think I should find it rather pleasant.’ The train moved out towards London.

  Fen and Sir Richard travelled up together. Fen had practically forgotten about the case already, though if tackled on the subject he would have strenuously denied it. His interest in what was going on around him was so intense that it really precluded any very prolonged recollection; he was a man who lived almost entirely in the present. At the moment he was engaged in a strenuous dissertation on the merits of Wyndham Lewis, and at intervals trying to dissuade Sir Richard, with well-calculated rudenesses, from writing the critical and appreciative volume on Robert Warner’s work which he contemplated. He was as happy as a schoolboy on a half-holiday, and commented in penetrating whispers and with increasing offensiveness on the physical appearance and probable vices of the other persons in the compartment.

  Helen and Nigel, married four days previously, were more or less oblivious to everything except each other. They had spent their all-too-brief honeymoon cycling in the countryside round Oxford, and now Nigel was returning to his work and Helen was going to begin rehearsals with the Eminent Actor.

  ‘Good-bye, Oxford!’ said Helen, looking out of the window as the train moved away from the station; then, turning to Nigel: ‘You know, I’m sorry to be leaving.’

  Nigel nodded. ‘Oxford is a wearing place,’ he said. ‘The idle, free-and-easy, unconventional life is too stern a test of character for me. I always loathe it at the time. And yet – I can never resist the temptation to go back.’

  She took his hand. ‘We’ll go back one day and have a little private requiem for the dead. Not for Robert, because – I don’t think he needs it.’

  They were silent for a while, thinking of many things. Then Helen said more lightly:

  ‘I think it was sensible of Sheila to get another play into rehearsal straight away. And she did it well, too. Did you see the Inspector and his wife, two rows in front of us?’

  ‘Yes, good heavens. She looks exactly like Hedy Lamarr. What a capture! “White as the sun, fair as the lily.” An odd comparison. Is the sun white?’

  ‘Don’t be dismal, Nigel,’ said Helen practically. ‘I can’t understand,’ she added, returning to her copy of Cymbeline, ‘why a man of “so fair an outward and such stuff within” should get drunk and make such a silly bet in the first place.’

  ‘By the way, did you go and say good-bye to Gervase?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. We talked about gardens and food and the state of Christ’s church militant on earth. He had on his extraordinary hat.’

  ‘There’s been too much Shakespeare in this case already,’ said Fen gloomily.

  He and Nigel had met in the bar during the first interval of a performance of King Lear, and Nigel, tortured by the recollections of a problem still unsolved, had taken the opportunity to ask him about the ring – the Gilded Fly.

  ‘Too much Shakespeare,’ Fen repeated, as though fascinated with the phrase. ‘I’m preparing a new anthology “Awful lines from Shakespeare”. “Alas, poor Gloster? Lost he his other eye?” will have pride of place.’

  ‘The ring,’ Nigel persisted. Fen drank deeply; he appeared unwilling to be reminded of the subject.

  ‘Purely a baroque flourish on the main structure,’ he said eventually. ‘A little cynical personal touch. I didn’t recognize the reference until I happened to mention the Gilded Fly in the same breath with Mr Morrison’s slogan. It was partly, I think, an ironic salute to Yseut’s main interest in life, and partly an intimation of “measure for measure”. By sex she lived; by sex, or because of sex, she died – a poetic retribution. The ring just happened to be a handy symbol. Few murderers can resist decorating.’

  ‘But what is the reference?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘These people have cut the play about so badly,’ said Fen, ‘that one doesn’t know where it will turn up. But if I remember rightly, it’s in Act IV, scene 4.’

  The second bell rang. Gervase Fen finished his drink with reluctance.

  ‘I can’t understand,’ he said dismally as they moved towards the door, ‘why they allow foreign actors to play in Shakespeare. One can’t make out a word they’re saying half the time …’

  A Note on the Author

  Edmund Crispin (1921–1978) was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (usually credited as Bruce Montgomery), an English crime writer and composer. Montgomery wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin (taken from a character in Michael Innes's Hamlet, Revenge!). The stories feature Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the university and a fellow of St Christopher's College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John's College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E. Moore. The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and music. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience.

  Discover books by Edmund Crispin published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/EdmundCrispin

  Frequent Hearses

  Glimpses of the Moon

  Beware of the Trains

  Fen Country

  Footnotes

  a If the reader cares to try this experiment for himself, Fen’s assertion will be found to be correct. – E.C.

  b Nigel Blake’s account was a shortened version of that given in chapters 2-4. Nothing was omitted and nothing added. – E.C.

  c See page 71. 194

  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is
a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © 1944 Edmund Crispin

  All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The moral right of the author is asserted.

  eISBN: 9781448214242

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