Death and the Dancing Footman (16 page)

“
GOTT IM HIMMEL
,” he screamed out, “must I be tortured by that devilish, that intolerable noise? TURN IT OFF. I INSIST THAT YOU TURN IT OFF!”

Nicholas appeared in the doorway. “You go to hell,” he said pleasantly. “If I choose to listen to the wireless I’ll bloody well listen to it.” He slammed the door in Hart’s face. Mandrake stumbled between Hart and the door. With a string of expletives that rather astonished himself, he shouted out instructions to Nicholas to switch off the radio, which was now roaring “Roll out the barrel…” It stopped abruptly, and William was heard to say: “Pipe down, for God’s sake.” Nicholas said: “Oh
all
right. Go to bed, Bill.” Mandrake and Hart stared at each other for some seconds without speaking.

“Dr. Hart,” said Mandrake, at last, “if you cannot give me your assurance that you will either go to your own room or remain in this one, I shall — I shall lock you in.”

Hart sank back into his chair. “I shall do nothing,” he said. “What can I do?” And to Mandrake’s unbounded dismay he uttered a loud sob and buried his face in his hands.

“Oh,
God
!” thought Mandrake, “this is too much.” He tried to form soothing phrases, but was dismayed by their inadequacy and finally ran out of words. For a moment he watched Dr. Hart, who was now fetching his breath in shuddering gasps and beating his hands on the arms of his chair. Mandrake remembered Jonathan’s treatment for Chloris. He went to the dining-room, found a decanter of whiskey, poured out a stiff nip, and returned with it to the boudoir.

“Try this,” he said. Hart motioned to him to leave it beside him. Seeing he could do no more, Mandrake prepared to leave. As an afterthought he turned at the door. “May I give you one word of advice?” he said. “Keep clear of both the Complines.” And he limped away to the library.

Here he found Jonathan with Hersey Amblington and Chloris. It seemed quite natural to Mandrake to go at once to Chloris and sit on the arm of her chair, it seemed enchantingly natural that she should look up at him with pleasure.

“Well,” she said, “any good?”

“None. He’s in an awful state. What about the brothers Compline? We could hear snatches of their crosstalk act in there.”

“Lady Hersey’s been in to see them.”

“And I may say,” said Hersey, “that I got a surprise. Nick’s pulled himself together, it seems, and is doing his best to let a little sense into poor old William.”

“He has also been doing his best to drive Dr. Hart into an ecstasy of hatred by not quite tuning in at full volume to a particularly distressing rendering of ‘The Beer Barrel Polka,’ ” said Mandrake, and described the incident. “Possibly this was an essential step in the soothing of William.”

“It must have happened after I left,” said Hersey.

“I wonder you didn’t hear us yelling at each other from here.”

“This room is practically sound-proof,” said Jonathan.

“It must be. How is Nicholas getting on with William, Lady Hersey?”

“He’s not made a great deal of headway but at least he’s trying. They’re supposed to go and see their mother, but they don’t seem to be very keen on the idea. They said they particularly want to be left to themselves. What do we do now, Mr. Mandrake?”

“It’s nearly ten o’clock,” said Mandrake. “I’m damned if I know what we do. What do you think, Jonathan?”

Jonathan waved his hands and said nothing.

“Well,” Mandrake said, “I suppose we see Nicholas to his room when he wants to go to bed. Do we lock William in
his
room or what?”

“I think we shut up Dr. Hart,” said Hersey, “then William can’t get at Dr. Hart and Dr. Hart can’t get at Nicholas. Or am I confused?”

“They may not fancy being locked up,” Chloris pointed out. “Honestly, it’s
too
difficult.”

“Jo,” said Hersey suddenly, “do you remember the conversation at dinner last night? When we said what we thought everybody would do in a crisis? It seems we were all wrong about each other. We agreed that you, for instance, would talk. You’ve not uttered a word since you came into this room. Somebody said Mr. Mandrake would be the impractical member of the party and here he is showing the most superb efficiency. Chloris — I hope you don’t mind me calling you Chloris — suggested that Bill would turn up trumps, while his mother was all for Nicholas. Hopelessly incorrect! It looks as if you were right, Jo. We know nothing about each other.”

“Jonathan was eloquent in the boudoir,” said Mandrake listlessly.

They made disjointed conversation until Nicholas, wearing a dubious expression, came out of the smoking-room. He grimaced at the others and shut the door.

“How goes it?” Hersey asked. “Thumbs up?”

Nicholas, with exaggerated emphasis, mimed “Thumbs down.”

“It’s all right,” said Jonathan impatiently. “He can’t hear.”

“He’s still pretty bloody-minded,” said Nicholas, throwing himself into a chair. “He’s left off threatening to beat up the Doctor, thank God, but he’s gone into a huddle over the fire and does
not
exactly manifest the party spirit. You know how he used to go as a kid, Hersey. All thunderous.”

“Black Bill?” said Hersey. “I remember. Couldn’t you do anything?”

“I’ve been kicked out,” said Nicholas with a sheepish grin. “Hart’s gone to bed, I fancy. We heard him snap off the light. So perhaps Bill might work his black dog off on the wireless.”

“This is a shocking state of affairs,” cried Jonathan. “I suppose we’d better leave him to himself, um?”

“Well, he’s not so hot when he’s like this. He’ll get over it. I think I’ve persuaded him to keep away from Hart.”

“You
think
!”

“I tell you Hart’s gone upstairs. Possibly,” said Nicholas, showing the whites of his eyes, “he’s thought up a really foolproof way of bumping me off.”

“My dear Nick, we shall go up with you. I cannot believe, when he knows what we suspect, and I may say in the face of the little speech I made him, that he will attempt — but of course,” added Jonathan in a fluster, “we must take every precaution. Your door, now…”

“Make no mistake,” said Nicholas grimly. “I shall lock my door.”

There was a short pause, broken by Hersey. “I simply can’t believe it,” she said abruptly. “It’s so preposterous it just isn’t true. All of us sitting round like a house-party in a play, waiting for frightfulness. And that booby-trap! A brass Buddha! No, it’s
too
much. To-morrow, Dr. Hart will apologize to all of us and say he’s sorry his sense of fun carried him too far, and he’ll explain that in the Austrian Tyrol they all half-kill each other out of sheer
joie de vivre
, and we’ll say we’re sorry we didn’t take it in the spirit in which it was meant.”

“A murderous spirit,” Jonathan muttered. “No, no, Hersey. We’ve got to face it. The attack on Nicholas was deliberately planned to injure him.”

“Well, what are we going to
do
?”

“At least we could hear the war news,” said Mandrake. “It might work as a sort of counter-irritant.”

“We’d better not disturb William,” said Jonathan quickly.

“I daresay he’ll turn it on in a minute,” Nicholas said, wearily. “He’s keen on the news. Shall I ask him?”

“No, no,” said Jonathan. “Leave him alone. It’s not quite time yet. Would you like a drink, my dear Nick?”

“To be quite frank, Jonathan, I’d adore a very very large drink.”

“You shall have it. Would you ring? The bell’s beside you. No, you needn’t trouble. I hear them coming.”

A jingle of glasses sounded in the hall and the new footman came in with a tray. For the few seconds that he was in the room Chloris and Hersey made a brave effort at conversation. When he had gone Jonathan poured out the drinks. “What about William?” he asked. “Shall we…? Will you ask him?”

Nicholas opened the study door and stuck his head round it. “Coming in for a drink, Bill? Not? All right, old thing, but would you mind switching on the wireless? It’s just about time for the news and we’d like to hear it. Thanks.”

They all waited awkwardly. Nicholas glanced over his shoulder and winked. The study wireless came to life.

“
Hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy
,” sang the wireless, robustly.

“Oh, God!” said Mandrake automatically, but he felt an illogical sense of relief.

“Can you stick it for a minute or two?” asked Nicholas. “It’s almost news-time. I’ll leave the door open.”

“Hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy…
”

“I think,” said Jonathan, at the third repetition of the piece, “that I’ll just make certain Dr. Hart is
not
in the ‘boudoir.’ ” He got up. At the same moment the dance band ended triumphantly: “
Turn to your partner and bow-wow-wow
.”

“Here’s the news,” said Hersey.

Jonathan, after listening to the opening announcement, went out into the hall. The others heard the recital of a laconic French bulletin and a statement that heavy snow was falling in the Maginot Line sector. The announcer’s voice went on and on, but Mandrake found himself unable to listen to it. He was visited by a feeling of nervous depression, a sort of miserable impatience. “I can’t sit here much longer,” he thought. Presently Jonathan returned and, in answer to their glances, nodded his head. “No light in there,” he said. He poured himself out a second drink. “He’s feeling the strain, too,” thought Mandrake.

“I wish old Bill’d come in,” said Nicholas suddenly.

“He’s better left alone,” said Jonathan.

“Shall I take him in a drink?” Hersey suggested. “He can but throw it in my face. I
will
. Pour him out a whiskey, Jo.”

Jonathan hesitated. She swept him aside, poured out a good three fingers of whiskey, splashed in the soda, and marched off with it into the smoking-room.

“
It is learned in London tonight
,” said the announcer, “
that Mr. Cedric Hepbody, the well-known authority on Polish folk-music, is a prisoner in Warsaw. At the end of this bulletin you will hear a short recorded talk made by Mr. Hepbody last year on the subject of folk-music in its relation and reaction to primitive behaviourism. And now
…”

Hersey was standing in the doorway. Mandrake saw her first and an icy sensation of panic closed like a hand about his heart. The red leather screen at her back threw her figure into bold relief. The others turned their heads, saw her, and, as if on a common impulse, rose at once to their feet. They watched her lips moving in her sheep-white face. She mouthed at them and turned back into the smoking-room. The announcer’s voice was cut off into silence.

“Jo,” Hersey said. “Jo, come here.”

Jonathan’s fingers pulled at his lips. He did not move.

“Jo.”

Jonathan crossed the library and went into the smoking-room. There was another long silence. Nobody moved or spoke. At last Hersey came round the screen.

“Mr. Mandrake,” she said, “will you go in to Jonathan?”

Without a word Mandrake went into the smoking-room. The heavy door with its rows of book-shelves shut behind him.

It was then that Nicholas cried out: “My God, what’s happened?”

Hersey went to him and took his hands in hers. “Nick,” she said, “he’s killed William.”

William was sitting in a low chair beside the wireless. He was bent double. His face was between his knees and his hands were close to his shoes. His posture suggested an exaggerated scrutiny of the carpet. If Mandrake had walked in casually he might have thought at first glance that William was staring at some small object that lay between his feet. The cleft in the back of his head looked like some ugly mistake, preposterous rather than ghastly, the kind of thing one could not believe. Mandrake had taken in this much before he looked at Jonathan, who stood with his back against the door into the “boudoir.” He was wiping his hands on his handkerchief. Mandrake heard a tiny spat of sound. A little red star appeared on the toe of William’s left shoe.

“Aubrey, look at this.”

“Is he…? Are you sure…?”

“Good God,
look
at him.”

Mandrake had no wish to look at William but he limped over to the chair. Has anyone measured the flight of thought? In a timeless flash it can embrace a hundred images, and compass a multitude of ideas. In the second that passed before Mandrake stooped over William Compline, he was visited by a confused spiral of impressions and memories. He thought of William’s oddities, of how he himself had never seen any of William’s paintings, of how William’s mouth might now be open and full of spilling blood. He thought, in a deeper layer of consciousness, of Chloris, who must have been kissed by William, of Dr. Hart’s hands, of phrases in detective novels, of the fact that he might have to give his own name if he was called as a witness. The name of Roderick Alleyn was woven in his thoughts and over all of them rested an image of deep snow. He knelt by William and touched his right hand. It moved a little, flaccidly, under the pressure of his fingers, and that shocked him deeply. Something hit the back of his own hand and he saw a little red star like the one on William’s shoe. He wiped it off with a violent movement. He stooped lower and looked up into William’s face and that was terrible because the eyes as well as the mouth were wide open. Then Mandrake rose to his feet and looked at the back of William’s head and felt abominably sick. He drew away with an involuntary sideways lurch and his club-foot struck against something on the floor. It lay in shadow and he had to stoop again to see it. It was a flatfish spatulate object that narrowed to a short handle. He heard Jonathan’s voice babbling behind him —

“It hung on the wall there, you know. I showed it to you. It came from New Zealand. I told you. It’s called a
mere.
[Pronounced ‘merry.’] I told you. It’s made of stone.”

“I remember,” said Mandrake.

When he turned to speak to Jonathan he found that Nicholas had come into the room.

“Nick,” said Jonathan, “my dear Nick.”

“He’s not dead,” Nicholas said. “He can’t be dead.”

He thrust Jonathan from him and went to his brother. He put his hands on William’s head and made as if to raise it.

“Don’t,” said Mandrake. “I wouldn’t. Not yet.”

“You must be mad. Why haven’t you tried…? Leaving him! You must be mad.” He raised William’s head, saw his face, and uttered a deep retching sound. The head sagged forward again loosely as he released it. He began to repeat William’s name — “Bill, Bill, Bill—” and walked distractedly about the room, making strange uneloquent gestures.

“What are we to do?” asked Jonathan, and Mandrake repeated to himself: “What are we to do?”

Aloud he said: “We can’t do anything. We ought to get the police. A doctor. We can’t do anything.”

“
Where’s Hart
?” Nicholas demanded suddenly. “
Where is he
?”

He stumbled to the door beyond Jonathan, fumbled with the key and flung it open. The green “boudoir” was in darkness and the fire there had sunk to a dead glow.

“By God, yes, where is he?” cried Mandrake.

Nicholas turned to the door into the hall and on a common impulse Mandrake and Jonathan intercepted him. “Clear out of my way,” shouted Nicholas.

“Wait a minute, for Heaven’s sake, Compline,” said Mandrake.

“Wait a minute
!”

“We’re up against a madman. He may be lying in wait for you. Think, man.”

He had Nicholas by the arm and he felt him slacken. He thought he saw something of the old nervousness come into his eyes.

“Aubrey’s right, Nick,” Jonathan was gabbling. “We’ve got to keep our head, my dear fellow. We’ve got to lay a plan of campaign. We can’t rush blindly at our fences. No, no. There’s — there’s your mother to think of, Nick. Your mother must be told, you know.”

Nicholas wrenched himself free from Mandrake, turned away to the fireplace and flung himself into a chair. “For Christ’s sake leave me alone,” he said. Mandrake and Jonathan left him alone and whispered together.

“Look here,” Mandrake said, “I suggest we lock up this room and go next door where we can talk. Are those two women all right in there? Better not leave them. We’ll go back into the library, then.” He turned to Nicholas. “I’m terribly sorry, Compline, but I don’t think we ought to — to make any changes here just yet. Jonathan, are there keys in all these doors? Yes, I see.”

The door into the “boudoir” was locked. He withdrew the key, locked the door into the hall, and gave both keys to Jonathan. As he crossed the room to open the library door he felt a slight prick in the sole of his normal foot and, in one layer of his conscious thoughts, cursed his shoemaker. They shepherded Nicholas back into the library. Mandrake found that, behind its rows of dummy books, the door into the library also had a lock.

They found Hersey and Chloris sitting together by the fire. Mandrake saw that Chloris had been crying. “I’m out of this,” he thought, “I can’t try to help.” And, unrecognized by himself, a pang of jealousy shook him, jealousy of William who, by getting himself murdered, had won tears from Chloris.

Mandrake, for the first time, noticed that Jonathan was as white as a ghost. He kept opening and closing his lips, his fingers went continually to his glasses and he repeatedly gave a dry nervous cough. “I daresay I look pretty ghastly myself,” thought Mandrake. Jonathan, for all his agitation, had assumed a certain air of authority. He sat down by Hersey and took her hand.

“Now, my dears,” he began, and though his voice shook, his phrases held their old touch of pedantry, “I know you will be very sensible and brave. This is a most dreadful calamity, and I feel that I am myself, in a measure, responsible for it. That is an appallirg burden to carry upon one’s conscience but at the moment I dare not let myself consider it. There is an immediate problem and we must deal with it as best we may. There is no doubt at all, I am afraid, that it is Dr. Hart who has killed William, and in my mind there is no doubt that he is insane. First of all, then, I want you both to promise me that you will not separate, and also that when we leave you alone together you will lock this door after us and not unlock it until one of us returns.”

“But he’s not going for either of us,” said Hersey. “He’s got nothing against us, surely.”

“What had he against William?”

“William had quite a lot against
him
,” said Hersey.

“It must have been the radio,” Mandrake said to Nicholas. “He nearly went for you when you turned it on.”

Nicholas said: “I told him to go to hell and locked the door in his face.” He leant his arms on the mantelpiece and beat his skull with his fists.

“You
locked
the door?” Mandrake repeated.

“He looked like barging in. I was sick of it all. Going for me. Screaming out his orders to me! I wanted to shut him up.”

“I remember now. I heard you lock it. He must have gone out into the hall, and then into the smoking-room through the hall door.”

“I suppose so,” said Nicholas, and drove his fingers through his hair.

“Look here,” Mandrake said slowly, “this makes a difference.”

“If it does,” Jonathan interrupted him, “we can hear what it is later, Aubrey. Nick, my dear chap, I think you must see your mother. And we”—he looked at Mandrake—”must find Hart.” They made a plan of action. The men were to search the house together, leaving the two women in the library with the doors locked on the inside. Nicholas said that his service automatic was in his room. They decided to go upstairs at once and get it. “Bill had his,” Nicholas said, and Jonathan said they would take it for Mandrake.

Hersey offered to go with Nicholas to his mother, and Chloris insisted that she would be all right left by herself in the library. “She’s a good gallant girl,” thought Mandrake, “and I’m in love with her.” He gave her shoulder a pat and thought how out of character his behaviour was.

“Come on,” said Hersey.

The library door shut behind them and they heard Chloris turn the key in the lock. The hall was quiet, a dim hollow place with a dying fire and shadows like the mouths of caverns. Bleached walls faded like smoke up into darkness; curtains, half seen, hung rigidly in the entrance. Pieces of furniture stood about with a deadly air of expectancy.

Jonathan’s hand reached out and a great chandelier flooded the hall with light. The party of four moved to the stairs. Mandrake saw Jonathan take out his pistol. He led the way upstairs and switched on the wall lamps. Hersey and Nicholas followed him and Mandrake, lifting his club-foot more quickly than he was wont to do, brought up the rear. The nail in his right shoe still pricked him and he was dimly irritated by this slight discomfort. Up the first flight was the halfway landing, where the stairs divided into two narrower flights, of which they took the one that turned to their left. They went up to the top landing, where the grandfather clock ticked loudly. Here they paused. Hersey took Nicholas’ arm. He squared his shoulders and with a gesture that for all its nervousness was a sort of parody of his old swagger, brushed up his moustache and went off with her to his mother’s room. Mandrake and Jonathan turned to the right and walked softly down the passage.

They found Nicholas’ automatic where he had told them to look for it, in a drawer of his dressing-table. William’s, Nicholas had said, was in his room, beside a rucksack containing his painting materials.

“His room’s next door to Hart’s,” whispered Jonathan. “If he’s there, he’ll hear us go in. What shall we do?”

“We can’t leave stray automatics lying about, Jonathan. Not with a homicidal lunatic at large.”

“Come on, then.”

William’s room was opposite his brother’s. Mandrake stood on guard in the passage while Jonathan, looking extraordinarily furtive, opened the door by inches and crept in. There was no light under Hart’s door. Was he there behind it, listening, waiting? Mandrake stared at it, half expecting it to open. Jonathan came back carrying a second automatic. He led the way into Mandrake’s room.

“If he’s in there, he’s in the dark,” said Mandrake.

“Quiet! You take this, Aubrey. Nicholas should have had his,” whispered Jonathan. “He should have come here first.”

“Are they loaded? I couldn’t know less about them.”

Jonathan examined the two automatics. “I think so. I myself—” His voice faded away and Mandrake caught only odd words: “… last resort… most undesirable…” He looked anxiously at Mandrake. ‘The safety catches are on, I think, but be careful, Aubrey. We must not fire, of course, unless something really desperate happens. Let him see we are armed. Wait one moment.”

“What is it?”

A curious smile twisted Jonathan’s lips. “It occurs to me,” he whispered, “that we are at great pains to defend ourselves, Nicholas, and three of the ladies. We have quite overlooked the fourth.”

“But — do you think? Good Heavens, Jonathan—”

“We can do nothing there. It is an abstract point. Are you ready? Let us go, then.”

Outside Hart’s door they paused. William’s automatic sagged heavily in the pocket of Mandrake’s dinner jacket. Nicholas’ automatic was in his right hand. His heart thumped uncomfortably and he thought: This is
not
my sort of stuff. I’m hating this.

The latch clicked as Jonathan turned the handle. If it’s locked, thought Mandrake, do we break it in, or what?

It was not locked. Jonathan pushed the door open quietly, slipped through, and switched on the light. The room was orderly and rather stuffy. Dr. Hart’s trousers were hung over the back of a chair, his underclothes were folded across the seat, his shoes neatly disposed upon the floor. These details caught Mandrake’s eye before he saw the bed which contained Dr. Hart himself.

Apparently he was fast asleep. He lay on his back, his mouth was open, his face patched with red, and his eyes not quite shut. The whites just showed under the lashes and that gave him so ghastly a look that for a fraction of a second Mandrake’s nerves leapt to a conclusion that was at once dispelled by the sound of stertorous breathing.

Jonathan shut the door. He and Mandrake eyed each other and then, upon a common impulse, approached closer to the sleeping beauty-doctor. Mandrake was conscious of a great reluctance to waken Hart, a profound abhorrence of the scene that must follow the awakening. His imagination called up a picture of terrified expostulations, or, still worse, of a complete breakdown and confession. He found himself unable to look at Hart, his glance wandered from Jonathan’s pistol to the bedside table where it was arrested by a small chemist’s jar, half full of a white crystalline powder, and by a used tumbler, stained with white sediment. “Veronal?” wondered Mandrake, who had once used it himself. “If it is I didn’t know it made you look so repellent. He must have taken a big dose.”

How big a dose Dr. Hart had taken appeared only when Jonathan tried to wake him.

Under other circumstances Jonathan would have cut a comic figure. First, keeping his own pistol pointed at the sleeping Doctor, he called his name. There was no response and Jonathan repeated his effort, raising his voice, finally to a cracked falsetto. “Hart, Dr. Hart! Wake up!”

Hart stirred, uttered an uncouth sound, and began to snore again. With an incoherent exclamation, Jonathan pocketed his pistol and advanced upon the bed.

“Look out,” said Mandrake, “he may be foxing.”