Death And The Dancing Footman

Chapter XV Document

Alleyn’s interview with Nicholas was an uncomfortable affair. They had not been together for two minutes before he realized that he had to deal with a man who had pretty well reached the end of his tether. Nicholas was bewildered and dazed. He answered Alleyn’s questions abruptly and almost at random. Even when the question of the murderer’s identity was directly broached, Nicholas merely flared up weakly like a damp squib and went out. Alleyn became insistent and Nicholas made an effort to concentrate, saying that Hart must have done it and escaped after Thomas left the hall. When Alleyn asked if he thought it was a case of mistaken identity, he said he did and spoke incoherently of the two earlier attempts. “It was me all along,” he said, “that he was after. I thought, at first, Bill’s fiddling about with the radio had sent him off his head; but Mandrake pointed out that Hart must have come in by the door from the hall and that, leaning over like that, the back of Bill’s head and tunic would look like mine. And he must have heard me tell Bill to go to bed.”

“When was that?”

Nicholas passed his hand across his eyes, pressing down with his finger-tips. “Oh, God,” he said, “when was it? I can’t sort of think. It was when Hart turned bloody-minded over the radio. He and Mandrake were in the room they call the ‘boudoir.’ He opened the door and raised hell about the wireless. I slammed the door in his face and Mandrake yelled out that I was to turn off the radio. I got suddenly fed up with the whole show. I said to my brother something like: ‘Oh, all right, the wireless is no go. Get to bed, Bill.’ Mandrake and Hart must have heard. I turned the radio down to a whisper. We didn’t say anything and I suppose he thought Bill did go away. I heard him switch off the light. He must have done it as a blind or something, to make us think he had gone.”

“Was that long afterwards?”

“I don’t know. I heard Mandrake go out. It was after that.”

“Did you and your brother not speak at all?”

“Yes. When, as I thought, I heard Hart go, I said it was all right now if Bill wanted to use the wireless. He was furious with Hart, you know. We both were, but I saw I’d been making a fool of myself. I was suddenly sick of the whole thing. I tried to calm Bill down. He’d turned pretty grim and wouldn’t talk. I hung about a bit and then I came away.”

“Can you tell me exactly what he was doing when you left?”

Nicholas went very white. “He was sitting by the fire. He didn’t look up. He just grunted something, and I went into the library.”

“Did you shut the door?” Alleyn had to repeat this question. Nicholas was staring blankly at him.

“I don’t remember,” he said at last. “I suppose so. Yes, I did. They all began asking me about my brother. Whether he was still livid with Hart, that kind of thing. I sort of tried to shut them up because of Bill hearing us, but I think I’d shut the door. I’m sorry, I’m not sure about that. Is it important?”

“I’d like an exact picture, you know. You are certain, then, that the door was shut?”

“I think so. Yes. I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Do you remember exactly at what moment Mr. Royal left the library?”

“How the devil should I remember?” said Nicholas with a sort of peevish violence. “He can tell you that himself. What is all this?” He stared at Alleyn and then said quickly: “Look here, if you’re thinking Jonathan… I mean it’d be too preposterous. Jonathan! Good God, he’s our greatest friend. God, what are you driving at?”

“Nothing in the world,” said Alleyn gently. “I only want facts. I’m sorry to have to hammer away at details like this.”

“Well, all I can tell you is that at some time during the news bulletin Jonathan went into the hall for a minute or two.”

“The red leather screen in the smoking-room was stretched in front of the door, as it is now?”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes. To get back to the wireless. You tell me that you turned it down after the outburst from Dr. Hart. Did you look closely at it?”

“Why the hell should I look closely at it?” demanded Nicholas, in a fury. “I turned it down. You don’t peer at a wireless when you turn it down.”

“You turned it down,” Alleyn murmured. “Not off. Down.”

“You’ve grasped it. Down,” said Nicholas, and burst into hysterical laughter. “I turned it down, and five minutes later somebody turned it up, and a little while after that Hart murdered my brother. You’re getting on marvellously, Inspector.”

Alleyn waited for a moment. Nicholas had scrambled out of his chair and had turned away, half weeping, half laughing. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I can’t help it. He’s in there, murdered, and my mother — my mother. I can’t help it.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Alleyn. “All this insistence on detail must seem unbearably futile, but I promise you it has its purpose. You see, this is unhappily a police matter, a matter, if you can stomach the phrase, of serving justice, and in that cause very many things must be sacrificed, including the nerves of the witnesses.”

“I’m all to pieces,” Nicholas mumbled. “I’m no good. It must be shock or something.” His voice died away in a trail of inaudibilities: “… can’t concentrate… enough to send you mad…” He pulled out his handkerchief and retired to the window, where he blew his nose very violently, caught his breath in a harsh sob, and stared out at the teeming rain, beating his uninjured hand on the sill. Alleyn waited for a little while and presently Nicholas turned and faced him. “All right,” said Nicholas. “Go on.”

“I’ve nearly done. If you would rather, I can wait…”

“No, no. For God’s sake, get it over.”

Alleyn went back to the incidents of the pond and the Buddha and at first learnt nothing new from Nicholas. He had seen Mandrake through the pavilion window and they had waved to each other. He had then turned away and gone on with the dismal business of undressing. He had heard the sound of a splash but had not immediately looked out, thinking that Mandrake might have thrown something into the pond. When he did go out to the rescue he had seen nobody else, but the assailant would have had time to dodge behind the pavilion. He had not noticed any footprints. When Hart came upon the scene, Nicholas had already thrown the serio-comic lift-belt into the pond. As for his escape from the brass Buddha, it had fallen out exactly as Madame Lisse had described it. He had felt the door resist him and then give way suddenly. Almost simultaneously with this, he had started back and immediately afterwards something had fallen on his forearm. “It’s damned sore,” said Nicholas querulously, and didn’t need much persuasion to exhibit his injury, which was sufficiently ugly. Alleyn said it should have a surgical dressing and Nicholas, with considerable emphasis, said he’d see Hart in hell before he let him near it.

“Madame Lisse watched you as you walked down the passage?”

It appeared that he had glanced back and seen her in the doorway. He said that but for this distraction he might have noticed the Buddha, but he didn’t think he would have done so. Alleyn asked him the now familiar questions: Had he gone straight to her room on leaving his own and had they been together the whole time?

“Yes, the whole time,” said Nicholas, and looked extremely uncomfortable. “We were talking. She wanted to see me, to warn me about him. I hope to Heaven you’ll keep her name out of this as much as possible, Alleyn.”

Alleyn blandly disregarded this.

“You heard nothing suspicious? No noise in the passage outside?”

“We did, as a matter of fact. I thought it was somebody at the door. It was a very slight sound. We sort of — sensed it. You don’t want to get a wrong idea, you know,” said Nicholas. “I suppose you’ve heard how he’s made life hideous for her. She told me all about it.” For the first time Alleyn saw a wan shadow of Nicholas’ old effrontery. He stroked the back of his head and there was a hint of complacency in the gesture. “I wasn’t going to be dictated to by the fellow,” he said.

“What did you do?” Alleyn enquired. Nicholas began to stammer again and Alleyn had some little trouble in discovering that he had taken cover behind a screen while the lady looked into the passage.

“So, in point of fact, you were not together the whole time?”

“To all intents and purposes, we were. She was away only for about a minute. Of course what we had heard was Hart going past the door with that blasted image in his hands. I suppose when Elise looked out he was in my room. She’ll tell you it was only for a minute.”

Alleyn did not tell him that in giving her account of their meeting, Madame Lisse had made no mention of this incident.

Before he let Nicholas go, Alleyn asked him, as he had asked Hart, to give a description of the smoking-room. Nicholas appeared to find this request suspicious and distressing and at first made a poor fist of his recital. “I don’t know what’s in the ghastly place. It’s just an ordinary room. You’ve seen it. Why do you want to ask me for an inventory?” Alleyn persisted, however, and Nicholas gave him a list of objects, rattling it off in a series of jerks: “The wireless. Those filthy knives. There are seven of them and the thing that did it—” he wetted his lips—”hung in the middle. I remember looking at it while we were talking. There were some flowering plants in pots, I think. And there’s a glass-topped case with objets d’art in it. Medals and miniatures and things. And sporting prints and photographs. There’s a glass-fronted cupboard with china and old sporting trophies inside, and a small bookcase with Handley Cross and Stonehenge and those sort of books in it. Leather chairs and an occasional table with cigars and cigarettes. I can’t think of anything else. My God, when I think of that room I see only one thing and I’ll see it to the end of my days!”

“You’ve given me a very useful piece of information,” Alleyn said. “You told me that when you left your brother, the Maori mere was still in its place on the wall.”

Nicholas stared dully at him. “I hadn’t thought of it before,” he said. “I suppose it was.”

“Are you quite certain?”

Nicholas passed his hand over his eyes again. “Certain?” he repeated. “I thought I was, but now you ask me again I’m not so sure. It might have been when Bill and I were in the smoking-room in the morning. What were we talking about? Yes. Yes, we were talking about Mandrake in the pond. Yes, it was in the morning. Oh, hell, I’m sorry. I can’t say it was there in the evening. I don’t think I looked at the wall, then. I can’t remember.”

“There’s only one other thing,” Alleyn said. “I must tell you that Mr. Royal has given me the letter that was found in your mother’s room.”

“But,” said Nicholas, “that’s horrible! It was for me. There’s nothing in it — Can’t you — Must you pry into everything? There’s nothing in it that can help you.”

“If that’s how it is,” said Alleyn, “it will go no further than the inquest. But I’m sure you will see that I must read it.”

Nicholas’ lips had bleached to a mauve line. “You won’t understand it,” he said. “You’ll misread it. I shouldn’t have given it to them. I should have burnt it.”

“You’d have made a really bad mistake if you’d done that.” Alleyn took the letter from his pocket and laid it on the desk.

“For God’s sake,” Nicholas said, “remember that when she wrote it she was thinking of me and how much I’d miss her. She’s accusing herself of deserting me. For God’s sake remember that.”

“I’ll remember,” Alleyn said. He put the letter aside with his other papers and said that he need keep Nicholas no longer. Now that he was free, Nicholas seemed less anxious to go. He hung about the library looking miserably at Alleyn out of the corners of his eyes. Alleyn wrote up his notes and wondered what was coming. He became aware that Nicholas was watching him. For some little time he went on sedately with his notes but at last looked up to find, as he had expected, those rather prominent grey eyes staring at him.

“What is it, Mr. Compline?” said Alleyn quietly.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just — there doesn’t seem anywhere to go. It gets on your nerves, wandering about the house. This damned mongrel rain and everything. I–I was going to ask you where he was.”

“Dr. Hart?”

“Yes.”

“He’s locked up at the moment, at his own request.”

“So long as he is locked up. Mandrake and Hersey seem to have gone silly over him. Because he attended my mother! God, she was at his mercy! Hart! The man who ruined her beauty and had just murdered her son. Pretty, wasn’t it! How do I know what he was doing to her?”

“From what Lady Hersey tells me, his treatment was exactly what the doctor I spoke to prescribed. I’m sure you need not distress yourself by thinking that any other treatment would have made the smallest difference.”

“Why didn’t Mandrake get here sooner? They wanted the stuff from the chemist urgently, didn’t they? What the hell was he doing? Nearly four hours to go sixty miles! My mother was dying and the best they could do was to send a bloody little highbrow cripple with a false name.”

“A false name!” Alleyn ejaculated.

“Yes. Didn’t Jonathan tell you? He told me. He’s as common as dirt, is Mr. Aubrey Mandrake, and his name’s Footling. Jonathan put me up to pulling his leg about it, and he’s had his knife into me ever since.”

The door opened and Aubrey Mandrake looked in.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know you were still engaged.”

“We’ve finished, I think,” said Alleyn. “Thank you so much, Mr. Compline. Come in, Mr. Mandrake.”

“I only came in,” said Mandrake, “to say Lady Hersey is free now, if you want to see her. She asked me to tell you.”

“I shall be glad to see her in a minute or so. I just want to get my notes into some sort of order. I suppose you can’t do shorthand, can you?”

“Good Heavens, no,” said Mandrake languidly. “What an offensive suggestion.”

“I wish I could. Never mind. I’ve been going through your notes. They’re of the greatest help. You haven’t signed them and I’ll get you to do so, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind, of course,” said Mandrake uneasily, “but you must remember they’re based on hearsay as well as on my own observations.”

“I think you’ve made that quite clear. Here they are.”

He gave Mandrake his pen and pressed the notes out flat for him. It was a decorative affair, the signature, with the tail of the “y” in “Aubrey” greatly prolonged and slashed forward to make the up-stroke of the “M” in “Mandrake.” Alleyn blotted it carefully and looked at it.

“This is your legal signature?” he said, as he folded the notes.

When Mandrake answered, his voice sounded astonishingly vicious. “You’ve been talking to the bereaved Nicholas, of course,” he said. “It seems that even in his sorrow he found a moment for one of his little pleasantries.”

“He’s in a condition that might very well develop into a nervous crisis. He’s lashing out blindly and rather stupidly. It’s understandable.”

“I suppose he told you of the incident at dinner? About my name?”

“No. What was the incident at dinner?”

Mandrake told him. “It’s too squalidly insignificant and stupid, of course,” he ended rapidly. “It was idiotic of me to let it get under my skin, but I happen to object rather strongly to that particular type of wholesome public-school humour. Possibly because I did not go to a public school.” Before Alleyn could answer he went on defiantly: “And now, of course, you are able to place me. I’m the kind of inverted snob that can’t quite manage to take the carefree line about my background. And I talk far too much about myself.”

“I should have thought,” said Alleyn, “you’d have worked all that off with your writing. But then I’m not a psychologist. As for your name, you’ve had the fun of changing it, and all I want to know is whether you did it by deed poll or whether I’ve got to ask for the other signature.”

“I haven’t, but I’m going to. ‘The next witness was Stanley Footling, better known as Aubrey Mandrake.’ It’ll look jolly in the papers, won’t it?”

“By the time this case comes off, the papers won’t have much room for fancy touches, I believe,” said Alleyn. “If you don’t mind my mentioning it, I think you’re going to find that your particular bogey will be forgotten in a welter of what we are probably going to call ‘extreme realism.’ Now write your name down like a good chap, and never mind if it is a funny one. I’ve a hell of a lot to do.”

Mandrake said with a grin: “How right you are, Inspector,” and re-signed his notes. “All the same,” he added, “I could have murdered Nicholas.” He caught his breath. “How often one uses that phrase! Don’t suspect me, I implore you. I could have, but I didn’t. I didn’t even murder poor William. I liked poor William. Shall I fetch Lady Hersey?”

“Please do,” said Alleyn.

Motive apart, Lady Hersey was, on paper, the likeliest suspect. She had opportunity to execute both attempts, if they had been attempts, as well as the actual murder. During the long journey in the car, Alleyn had found his thoughts turning to this unknown woman, as to a figure which, conjecturally, might be the key piece in a complicated pattern. In all police investigations, there is such a figure; and sometimes, but not always, it is that of the criminal himself. Though none of the interviews had disclosed the smallest hint of a motive in Lady Hersey’s case, he was still inclined to think she occupied a key position. She was the link common to the Complines, Jonathan Royal, and the two Harts. “The one person who could have done it,” Alleyn muttered, “and the one person who didn’t want to.” This was an inaccurate statement but it relieved his feelings. The case was developing along lines with which Alleyn was all too familiar. He had now very little doubt as to the identity of William Compline’s murderer and also very little substantial proof to support his theory or to warrant an arrest. The reductio ad absurdum method is not usually smiled upon by the higher powers at New Scotland Yard, and it can be a joyous romping-ground for defending counsel. Alleyn knew that a bungling murderer can give more trouble than a clever one. “And the murderer of William Compline is a bungler if ever there was one,” he thought. He was turning over Mrs. Compline’s letter to her son when he heard Lady Hersey’s voice on the stairs. He hesitated, returned the letter to his pocket and fished out the length of line he had cut from the reel in the smoking-room. When Hersey Amblington came in, he was twisting this line through his long fingers and when he rose to greet her, it dangled conspicuously from his hands.

“I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, Mr. Alleyn,” she said. “There were things to do upstairs and nobody else to do them.”

He pushed forward a chair and she sat down slowly and wearily, letting her head fall back against the chair. A sequence of fine lines appeared about her mouth and eyes, and her hands looked exhausted. “If you’re going to ask me to provide myself with three nice little alibis,” said Hersey, “you may as well know straight away that I can’t do it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that that makes me innocent and I’m sure I hope it’s true.”

“It’s in the best tradition of detective fiction, I understand,” said Alleyn with a smile.

“That’s not very comforting. Am I allowed to smoke?”

Alleyn offered her his case and lit her cigarette for her, dropping his length of fishing line over her wrist as he did so. He apologized and gathered it into his hand.

“Is that a clue or something?” asked Hersey. “It looks like fishing line.”

“Are you a fisherman, Lady Hersey?”

“I used to be. Jonathan’s father taught me when I was a child. He’s the old party in the photograph in that ghastly room next door.”

“Hubert St. John Worthington Royal, who caught a four-and-a-half-pounder in Penfelton Reach?”

“If I wasn’t so tired,” said Hersey, “I’d fall into a rapture over your powers of observation. That’s the man. And the rod on the wall is his rod. Now I come to think of it, your bit of string looks very much like his line.”

Alleyn opened his hand. Without moving her head or her hands she looked languidly at it.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s it. It’s been looped back from the point of the rod to the reel, for years.” She looked up into Alleyn’s face. “There’s something in this, isn’t there? What is it?”

“There’s a lot in it,” Alleyn said, slowly. “Lady Hersey, will you try to remember, without straining at your memory, when you last saw the line in its customary position?”

“Friday night,” said Hersey instantly. “There was an old cast on it, shrivelled up with age, and a fly. I remember staring at it while I was trying to fit in a letter in that foul parlour game of Jo’s. It was the cast that caught the famous four-and-a-half-pounder. Or so we’ve always been told.”

“You went into the smoking-room last night some little time before the tragedy, but when the two brothers were there?”

“Yes. I went in to see if they had calmed down. That was before the row over the radio.”

“You didn’t by any chance look at the old rod, then?”

“No. No, but I did at lunch-time. Just before lunch I was warming my toes at the fire, and I stared absently at it as one does at things one has seen a thousand times before.”

“And there was the line looped from the tip to the reel?”

Hersey knitted her brows, and for the first time her full attention seemed to be aroused. “Now you ask me,” she said, “it wasn’t. I remember thinking vaguely that someone must have wound it up or something.”

“You are positive?”

“Yes. Yes, absolutely positive.”

“Suppose I began to heckle you about it.”‘

“I should dig my toes in.”

“Good!” said Alleyn heartily, and wrote it down.

When he looked up, Hersey’s eyes were closed, but she opened them and said: “Before I forget or go to sleep there’s one thing I must say. I don’t believe that face-lifter did it.”

“Why?” asked Alleyn, without emphasis.

“Because I’ve spent a good many hours working for him up there in Sandra Compline’s room. I like him and I don’t think he’s a murderer, and anyway I don’t see how you can get over the dancing footman’s story.” Alleyn dropped the coil of fishing line on the desk. “That little man’s no killer,” Hersey added. “He worked like a navvy over Sandra, and if she’d lived she’d have done her best, poor darling, to have him convicted of homicidal lunacy. He knew that.”

“Why are you so sure she would have taken that line?”

“Don’t forget,” said Hersey, “I was the last person to see her alive. I gave her a half-dose of that stuff. She wouldn’t take more and she said she had no aspirin. I suppose she wanted — wanted to make sure later on. Nick had broken Bill’s death to her. She seemed absolutely stunned, almost incredulous if that’s not too strange a word to use. Not sorrowful so much as horrified. She wouldn’t say anything much about it, although I did try gently to talk to her. It seemed to me it would be better if she broke down. She was stony with bewilderment. But just as I was going she said: ‘Dr. Hart is mad, Hersey. I thought I could never forgive him but I think my face has haunted him as badly as it has haunted me.’ And then she said: ‘Don’t forget, Hersey, he’s out of his mind.’ I haven’t told anyone else of this. I can’t tell you how strange her manner was, and how astonished I was to hear her say all that so deliberately when a moment before she had seemed so confused.”

Alleyn asked Hersey to repeat this statement and wrote it down. When he had finished she said: “There’s one other thing. Have you examined her room?”

“Only superficially. I had a look round, after Compline went out.”

“Did you look at her clothes?” asked Hersey.

“Yes.”

“The blue Harris tweed overcoat?”

“The one that is still very damp? Yes.”

“It was soaking wet yesterday afternoon, and she told me she hadn’t stirred out of the house all day.”

Alleyn opened Mrs. Compline’s letter to her son in the presence of Jonathan Royal, Nicholas Compline, and Aubrey Mandrake. He did not read it aloud, but he showed it to Mandrake and asked him to make a copy. While they waited, in an uncomfortable silence, Mandrake performed this office and at Alleyn’s request re-sealed the original in a fresh envelope, across the flap of which Jonathan was asked to sign his name. Alleyn then tied a string round the envelope and sealed the knot down with wax from his chemist’s parcel. He said that he would be obliged if Jonathan and Nicholas would leave him alone with Mandrake. Jonathan seemed perfectly ready to comply with this request, but Nicholas treated them to a sudden and violent outbreak of hysteria. He demanded that the letter should be returned, stormed at Alleyn, threatened Hart, and at last, sobbing breathlessly, flung himself into a chair and refused to move. As the best means of cutting this performance short, Alleyn gathered up his possessions and, followed by a very much shaken Mandrake, moved to the green “boudoir.” Here he asked Mandrake to read over the copy of the letter.