Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 1: A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder. Ngaio Marsh
the ‘villain’ in the game. That was all.
Complete silence followed Wilde’s statement. Rosamund broke it. ‘Oh well,’ she said evenly, ‘what of that?’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Wilde,’ said Alleyn. The inspector’s manner had undoubtedly become most convincingly official. ‘You have come forward as the first witness. You were given the plaque at dinner?’
‘Yes—Vassily slipped it into my hand as I helped myself to the savoury.’
‘Had you formed any definite plan about carrying out your role in the game?’
‘Not precisely. I was thinking it over as I lay in my bath. Mr Bathgate was in the next room. I decided against him as the victim—too obvious—then I heard the gong, and the lights went out. I was just going to call out that it couldn’t be the “murder” but an accident of some sort, when I realized that I should be giving my own show away before I had brought it off. So I pretended to think it was the “murder” and began drying myself and dressing. I thought I should find an easy “victim” in the darkness. I did too—!’
A violent exclamation from Handesley interrupted him.
‘What is it, Sir Hubert?’ asked Alleyn gently.
‘It was you, then, Arthur, who ran into me on the landing and said, “You’re the corpse”?’
‘And it was you who answered “Shut up, you ass”,’ returned Wilde. ‘Yes, you thought I was fooling. When I realized that, I got away quickly.’
‘Just a moment,’ interrupted the detective. ‘Let me get this quite clear. Really it’s frightfully muddling. When the alarm was given, Mr Wilde, you were in your bath. Knowing yourself to be the intended “murderer” in the game, you imagined the darkness and the gong sounding were accidental?’
‘I thought the gong was sounded for dinner and that the lights had possibly fused.’
‘Yes, I see. So you lay low and determined to perform your part in the game under cover of the dark?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilde. His voice was patiently courteous.
‘For a detective,’ thought Nigel, ‘the inspector seems to be making rather heavy way of this.’
Alleyn continued. ‘So you came out on to the landing, ran into Sir Hubert and instantly uttered the set phrase? You, Sir Hubert, thought he was fooling?’
‘Yes, certainly. The signal had been given. As a matter of fact I thought—I rather thought it was Rankin. I don’t know why.’
‘Mr Wilde,’ said Alleyn, ‘in the words of the popular coloured engraving, when did you last see Mr Rankin?’
‘I was talking to him alone in the hall before we went up to dress. We were the last to go up. Charles remarked that if either of us was “he” in the game, it would be no good trying to victimize the other, as everyone knew we were left alone together.’
‘Yes, exactly. Then Mr Rankin was still in the hall when you went up to dress?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did anyone see you together?’
Wilde thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember Mary, the little between-maid, came in and went out to the entrance hall to lock the front door. She was still tidying or something as I went upstairs. I remember I asked her if she knew the right time—if the hall clock was right. She said, “Yes, ten minutes to eight”, and I said “Good lord, we’ll be late”, or something like that, and ran upstairs, leaving her there.’
‘Presumably, then, Mr Rankin was alone in the hall from a little after seven-fifty till five minutes to eight, when he was killed. About four minutes. Thank you, Mr Wilde.’
Alleyn made a brief entry in his note-book and then looked round the table.
‘Are there any questions that someone else would like to put?’ he asked. ‘I can assure you that I will honestly welcome them.’
There was a short silence, broken unexpectedly by Mrs Wilde. She leant across the table, looking with an odd air of formality at her husband.
‘I would like to ask,’ she said rapidly, ‘what you and Charles talked about during the time you were alone together.’
For the first time Arthur Wilde hesitated.
‘I don’t think,’ he said quietly, ‘that we said anything that could have any bearing on the point at issue.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Tokareff suddenly, ‘the question is asked.’
‘Well—’ there was the faintest echo of whimsicality in his answer. ‘Well, we talked about you, Doctor Tokareff.’
‘Indeed? What about me?’
‘Rankin seemed to resent your comments on his ownership of the dagger. He—he felt that it implied some sort of criticism of himself. He was rather on the defensive about it.’
Doctor Young unexpectedly uttered his throaty comment—‘Kaahoom’—and Alleyn smiled.
‘What did you say to all this?’ he asked.
Arthur Wilde rumpled up his hair. ‘I told him not to be an ass,’ he said. ‘Charles was always rather touchy—it was characteristic. I tried to explain how a knife associated, as Doctor Tokareff believed, with the innermost ritual of a bratsvo, would naturally have more significance to a Russian than to an Englishman. He soon got over his huff and said he quite saw my point. Then we chaffed each other about the Murder Game and I left him.’
‘Any more questions?’ asked Alleyn.
There were none apparently.
‘I realize,’ said Wilde, ‘that I was probably the last person—except Mary and the man who killed him—to see Charles alive. I hope very much that if anyone does think of any questions they would like to put, they will not hesitate in asking them.’
‘I should like to say,’ said Nigel, ‘that I can corroborate most of what you have said. I left you with Charles and heard you come up a few minutes later. You remember we shouted out to each other while your bath was running and afterwards when the lights went out. I can state positively that you were in the bathroom before, during, and after the time when the crime was committed.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Marjorie Wilde, ‘and you called through to me, too, Arthur.’
‘Your rooms were all close together?’ asked Alleyn.
Nigel sketched out a rough plan of the four rooms and slid it across the table to him.
‘I see,’ said the inspector, and looked carefully at it. ‘I am sure you all appreciate,’ he said a moment later, ‘the importance of establishing Mr Wilde’s account of his movements. They have already been corroborated by Mrs Wilde and Mr Bathgate. Can anyone else bring forward any point that bears on the relative positions of these three after Mr Wilde came upstairs?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wilde eagerly, ‘I can. When I was in my room dressing, Florence, Angela’s maid, came in to ask if she could help me. She stayed a few moments—not long—but she must have heard Arthur calling out and everything—the door into the bathroom wasn’t shut properly.’
‘She will be able to verify this herself, of course,’ said the inspector. ‘We have now a fairly complete picture of the movements of three of the house-party from shortly after seven-thirty until the time of the murder. Mrs Wilde went upstairs first, Mr Bathgate second, and Mr Wilde last. They were all calling out to each other while they were dressing, and their voices were probably heard by a housemaid. Mr Bathgate, I understand that you were the first downstairs after the alarm was given and that you turned up the lights?’
Nigel’s thoughts had been wandering along a strange byway opened up by Mrs Wilde’s eager corroboration of her husband’s