Death and the Dancing Footman

by Ngaio Marsh

  “We know,” said Nicholas, “that one man will keep his head in a crisis where another will go jitterbug. This war—”

  “Oh, don’t let’s talk about this war,” said Chloris.

  “There are some men in my company—” William began, but Jonathan raised his hand and William stopped short.

  “Well, I concede,” said Jonathan, “that the same ‘he’ may make so many appearances that we may gamble on his turning up under certain circumstances, but I contend that it is a gamble and that though under these familiar circumstances we may agree on the probability of certain reactions, we should quarrel about theoretical behaviour under some unforeseen, hitherto unexperienced circumstances.”

  “For example?” asked Madame Lisse.

  “Parachute invasion—” began William, but his mother said quickly: “No, William, not the war.” It was the first time since dinner that Mandrake had heard her speak without being addressed.

  “I agree,” said Jonathan, “let us not draw our examples from the war. Let us suppose that—what shall I say—”

  “That the Archangel Gabriel popped down the chimney,” suggested Hersey, “and blasted his trump in your ear.”

  “Or that Jonathan told us,” said Nicholas, “that this was a Borgia party and the champagne was lethal and we had but twelve minutes to live.”

  “Not the Barrie touch, I implore you,” said Mandrake, rallying a little.

  “Or,” said Jonathan, peering into the shadows beyond the candle-lit table, “that my new footman, who is not present at the moment, suddenly developed homicidal mania and was possessed of a lethal weapon. Let us, at any rate, suppose ourselves shut up with some great and impending menace.” He paused, and for a moment complete silence fell upon the company.

  The new footman returned. He and Caper moved round the table again. “So he’s keeping the champagne going,” thought Mandrake, “in case the women won’t have brandy or liqueurs. Caper’s being very judicious. Nobody’s tight unless it’s William or Hart. I’m not sure of them. Everybody else is nicely thank you.”

  “Well,” said Jonathan, “under some such disastrous circumstance, how does each of you believe I would behave? Come now, I assure you I shan’t cavil at the strictest censure. Sandra, what do you think I would do?”

  Mrs. Compline raised her disfigured face. “What you would do?” she repeated. “I think you would talk, Jonathan.” And for the first time that evening there was a burst of spontaneous laughter. Jonathan uttered his high-pitched giggle.

  “Touché,” he said. “And you, Madame Lisse?”

  “I believe that for perhaps the first time in your life you would lose your temper, Mr. Royal.”

  “Nick?”

  “I don’t know. I think—”

  “Come on, now, Nick. You can’t insult me. Fill Mr. Compline’s glass, Caper. Now, Nick?”

  “I think you might be rather flattened out.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Chloris, quickly. “I think he’d take us all in hand and tell us what to do.”

  “William?”

  “What? Oh, ring up the police, I suppose,” said William, and he added in a vague mumble only heard by Mandrake: “Or you might go mad, of course.”

  “I believe he would enjoy himself,” said Mandrake, quickly.

  “I agree,” said Hersey, to Mandrake’s surprise.

  “And Dr. Hart?”

  “In a measure, I too agree. I think that you would be enormously interested in the behaviour of your guests.”

  “You see?” said Jonathan in high glee. “Am I not right? So many Jonathan Royals. Now shall we go further? Shall we agree to discuss our impressions of each other, and to keep our tempers as we do so? Come now.”

  “How clever of Jonathan,” thought Mandrake, sipping his brandy. “Nothing interests people so much as the discussion of their own characters. His invitation may be dangerous, but at least it will make them talk.” And talk they did. Mrs. Compline believed that Nicholas would suffer from extreme sensibility but would show courage and resource. Nicholas, prompted, as Mandrake considered, by a subconscious memory of protective motherhood, thought his mother would console and shelter. William, while agreeing with Nicholas about their mother, hinted that Nicholas himself would shift his responsibilities. Chloris Wynne, rather defiantly, supported William. She suggested that William himself would show up very well in a crisis and her glance at Nicholas and at Mrs. Compline seemed to say that they would resent his qualities. Mandrake, nursing his brandy glass, presently felt his brain clear miraculously. He would speak to these people in rhythmic, perfectly chosen phrases and what he said would be of enormous importance. He heard his own voice telling them that Nicholas, in the event of a crisis, would treat them to a display of pyrotechnics, and that two women would applaud him and one man deride. “But the third woman,” said Mandrake solemnly, as he stared at Madame Lisse, “must remain a shadowed figure. I shall write a play about her. Dear me, I am afraid I must be a little drunk.” He looked anxiously round, only to discover that nobody had been listening to him, and he suddenly realized that he had made his marvellous speech in a whisper. This discovery sobered him. He decided to take no more of Jonathan’s brandy.

  Jonathan did not keep the men long in the dining-room and Mandrake, who had taken stock of himself and had decided that he would do very well if he was careful, considered that his host had judged the drinks nicely as far as he and the Complines were concerned but that in the case of Dr. Hart, Jonathan had been over-generous. Dr. Hart was extremely pale, there were dents in his nostrils and a smile on his lips. He was silent and fixed his gaze, which seemed a little out of focus, on Nicholas Compline. Nicholas was noisily cheerful. He moved his chair up to William’s and subjected his brother to a kind of banter that made Mandrake shudder and caused William to become silent and gloomy. Jonathan caught Mandrake’s eye and suggested that they should move to the drawing-room.

  “By all means,” said Nicholas. “Here’s old Bill as silent as the grave, Jonathan, longing for his love. And Dr. Hart not much better, though whether it’s from the same cause or not, we mustn’t ask.”

  “You are right,” said Dr. Hart thickly. “It would not be amusing to ask such a question.”

  “Come along, come along,” said Jonathan quickly, and opened the door. Mandrake hurriedly joined him and William followed. At the door Mandrake turned and looked back. Nicholas was still in his chair. His hands rested on the table, he leant back and smiled at Dr. Hart who had risen and was leaning heavily forward. Mandrake was irresistibly reminded of an Edwardian problem picture. It was a subject for the Honourable John Collier. There was the array of glasses, each with its highlight and reflection, there was the gloss of mahogany, of boiled shirt-front, of brass buttons. There was Dr. Hart’s face so violently expressive of some conjectural emotion, and Nicholas’, flushed, and wearing a sneer that dated perfectly with the Honourable John’s period; all this unctuously lit by the candles on Jonathan’s table. “The title,” thought Mandrake, “would be ‘The Insult.’ ”

  “Come along, Nick,” said Jonathan, and when it appeared that Nicholas had not heard him, he murmured in an undertone: “You and William go on, Aubrey. We’ll follow.”

  So Mandrake and William did not hear what Nicholas and Dr. Hart had to say to each other.

  Mandrake had suspected that if Jonathan failed it would be from too passionate attention to detail. He feared that Jonathan’s party would die of overplanning. Having an intense dislike of parlour games, he thought gloomily of sharpened pencils and pads of paper neatly set out by the new footman. In this he misjudged his host. Jonathan introduced his game with a tolerable air of spontaneity. He related an anecdote of another party at which the game of Charter had been played. Jonathan had found himself with a collection of six letters and one blank. When the next letter was called it chimed perfectly with his six, but the resulting word was one of such gross impropriety that even Jonathan hesitated to use it. A duchess of formi
dable rigidity had been present. “I encountered her eye. The glare of a basilisk, I assure you. I could not venture. But the amusing point of the story,” said Jonathan, “is that I am persuaded her own letters had fallen in the same order. We played for threepenny points and she loathes losing her money. I hinted at my own dilemma and saw an answering glint. She was in an agony.”

  “But what is the game?” asked Mandrake, knowing that somebody was meant to ask this question.

  “My dear Aubrey, have you never played Charter? It is entirely vieux jeu nowadays, but I still confess to a passion for it.”

  “It’s simply a crossword game,” said Hersey. “You are each given the empty crossword form and the letters are called one by one from a pack of cards. The players put each letter as it is read out into a square of the diagram. This goes on until the form is full. The longest list of complete words wins.”

  “You score by the length of the words,” said Chloris. “Seven-letter words get fifteen points, three-letter words two points, and so on. You may not make any alterations, of course.”

  “It sounds entertaining,” said Mandrake with a sinking heart.

  “Shall we?” asked Jonathan, peering at his guests. “What does everybody think? Shall we?”

  His guests, prompted by champagne and brandy to desire, vaguely, success rather than disaster, cried out that they were all for the game, and the party moved to the smoking-room. Here, Jonathan, with a convincing display of uncertainty, hunted in a drawer where Mandrake had seen him secrete the printed blocks of diagrams and the requisite number of pencils. Soon they were sitting in a semicircle round the fire with their pencils poised and with expressions of indignant bewilderment on their faces. Jonathan turned up the first card:

  “X,” he said; “X for Xerxes.”

  “Oh, can’t we have another?” cried Madame Lisse. “There aren’t any— Oh no, wait a moment. I see.”

  “K for King.”

  Mandrake, finding himself rather apt at the game, began to enjoy it. With the last letter he completed his long word, “extract,” and with an air of false modesty handed his Charter to Chloris Wynne, his next-door neighbour, to mark. He himself took William’s Charter and was embarrassed to find it in a state of the strangest confusion. William had either failed to understand the game, or else had got left so far behind that he could not catch up with the letters. Many of the spaces were blank and in the left-hand corner William had made a singular little drawing of a strutting rooster with a face that certainly bore a strong resemblance to his brother Nicholas.

  “Anyway,” said William looking complacently at Mandrake, “the drawing is quite nice. Don’t you think so?”

  Mandrake was saved from making a reply by Nicholas who at that moment uttered a sharp ejaculation.

  “What’s up, Nick?” asked Jonathan.

  Nicholas had turned quite pale. In his left hand he held two of the Charter forms. He separated them and crushed one into a wad in his right hand.

  “Have I made a mistake?” asked Dr. Hart softly.

  “You’ve given me two forms,” said Nicholas.

  “Stupid of me. I must have torn them off the block at the same time.”

  “They have both been used.”

  “No doubt I forgot to remove an old form and tore them off together.”

  Nicholas looked at him. “No doubt,” he said.

  “You can see which is the correct form by my long word. It is ‘threats.’”

  “I have not missed it,” said Nicholas, and turned to speak to Madame Lisse.

  Mandrake went to his room at midnight. Before switching on his light he pulled aside the curtains and partly opened the window. He saw that at last the snow had come. Fleets of small ghosts drove steeply forward from darkness into the region beyond the window-panes, where they became visible in the firelight. Some of them, meeting the panes, slid down their surface and lost their strangeness in the cessation of their flight. Though the room was perfectly silent, this swift enlargement of oncoming snowflakes beyond the windows suggested to Mandrake a vast nocturnal whispering. He suddenly remembered the black-out and closed the window. He let fall the curtain, switched on the light, and turned to stir his fire. He was accustomed to later hours and felt disinclined for sleep. His thoughts were busy with memories of the evening. He was filled with a nagging curiosity about the second Charter form which had caused Nicholas Compline to turn pale and to look so strangely at Dr. Hart. He could see Nicholas’ hand, thrusting the crumpled form down between the seat and the arm of his chair. “Perhaps it is still there,” Mandrake thought. “Without a doubt it is still there. Why should it have upset him so much? I shall never go to sleep. It is useless to undress and get into bed.” And the prospect of the books Jonathan had chosen so carefully for his bedside filled him with dismay. At last he changed into pyjamas and dressing-gown, visited the adjoining bathroom, and noticed that there was no light under the door from the bathroom into William’s bedroom at the further side. “So William is not astir.” He returned to his room, opened the door into the passage, and was met by the indifferent quiet of a sleeping house. Mandrake left his own door open and stole along the passage as far as the stairhead. In the wall above the stairs was a niche from which a great brass Buddha, indestructible memorial to Jonathan’s Anglo-Indian grandfather, leered peacefully at Mandrake. He paused here, thinking. “A few steps down to the landing then the lower flight to the hall. The smoking-room door is almost opposite the foot of the stairs.” Nicholas had sat in the fourth chair from the end. Why should he not go down and satisfy himself about the crumpled form? If by any chance someone was in the smoking-room, he could get himself a book from the library next door and return. There was no shame in looking at a discarded paper from a round game.

  He limped softly to the head of the stairs. Here, in the diffused light, he found a switch and turned it on. A wall-lamp halfway down the first flight came to life. Mandrake descended the stairs. The walls sighed to his footfall, and near the bottom one of the steps creaked so loudly that he started and then stood rigid, his heart beating hard against his ribs. “This is how burglars and illicit lovers feel,” thought Mandrake, “but why on earth should I?” Yet he stole cat-footed across the hall, pushed open the smoking-room door with his finger-tips, and waited long in the dark before he groped for the light-switch and snapped it down.

  There stood the nine armchairs in a semicircle before a dying fire. They had an air of being in dumb conclave and in their irregular positions were strangely eloquent of their late occupants. There was Nicholas Compline’s chair, drawn close to Madame Lisse’s and turned away contemptuously from Dr. Hart’s saddleback. Mandrake actually fetched a book from a sporting collection in a revolving case before he moved to Nicholas’ chair, before his fingers explored the crack between the arm and the seat. The paper was crushed into a tight wad. He smoothed it out on the arm of the chair and read the five words that had been firmly pencilled in the diagram.

  The fire settled down with a small clink of dead embers, and Mandrake, smiling incredulously, stared at the scrap paper in his hand. It crossed his mind perhaps was the victim of an elaborate joke, that Jonathan had primed his guests, had invented their antipathies, and now waited maliciously for Mandrake himself to come to him, agog with his latest find. “But that won’t wash,” he thought. “Jonathan could not have guessed I would return to find the paper. Nicholas DID change colour when he saw it. I must presume that Hart DID write this message and hand it to Nicholas with the other. He must have been crazy with fury to allow himself such a ridiculous gesture. Can he suppose that Nicholas will be frightened off the lady? No, it’s too absurd.”

  But, as if in answer to his speculations, Mandrake heard a voice speaking behind him: “I tell you, Jonathan, he means trouble. I’d better get out.”

  For a moment Mandrake stood like a stone, imagining that Jonathan and Nicholas had entered the smoking-room behind his back. Then he turned, found the room still empty, and r
ealized that Nicholas had spoken from beyond the door into the library, and for the first time noticed that this door was not quite shut. He was still speaking, his voice raised hysterically.

  “It will be better if I clear out, now. A pretty sort of party it’ll be! The fellow’s insane with jealousy. For her sake—don’t you see—for her sake—”

  The voice paused, and Mandrake heard a low murmur from Jonathan, interrupted violently by Nicholas.

  “I don’t give a damn what they think.” Evidently Jonathan persisted, because in a moment Nicholas said: “Yes, of course I see that, but I can say…” His voice dropped, and the next few sentences were half lost. “…It’s not that…I don’t see why… urgent call from headquarters…Good Lord, of course not!… Miserable, fat little squirt, I’ve cut him out and he can’t take it.” Another pause, and then: “I don’t mind if YOU don’t. It was more on your account than…But I’ve told you about the letter, Jonathan…not at first…Well, if you think…Very well, I’ll stay.” And for the first time Mandrake caught Jonathan’s words: “I’m sure it’s better, Nick. Can’t turn tail, you know. Good night.” “Good night,” said Nicholas, none too graciously, and Mandrake heard the door from the library to the hall open and close. Then from the next room came Jonathan’s reedy tenor:—

  Il était une bergère,

  Qui ron-ton-ton, petit pat-a-plan.

  Mandrake stuck out his chin, crossed the smoking-room and entered the library by the communicating door.

  “Jonathan,” he said, “I’ve been eavesdropping.”

  Jonathan was sitting in a chair before the fire. His short legs were drawn up, knees to chin, and he hugged his shins like some plump and exultant kobold. He turned his spectacles towards Mandrake and, by that familiar trick of light, the thick lenses obscured his eyes and glinted like two moons.

  “I’ve been eavesdropping,” Mandrake repeated.