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“I’m not sure. I think so.”
“Well, it may not be necessary — I’ll spare you if I can. Would you mind ringing that bell?”
The summons was answered by the ubiquitous Ethel.
“Would you find Miss North, Ethel?” asked the Inspector. “Ask her, if it is not very inconvenient, to speak to me for a moment.”
“Very good, sir.”
Angela came in looking as if the drive up to London had agreed with her.
“I put back the letters quite successfully,” she said, “but I do wish you hadn’t kept those two. It makes me feel abominable. Where are they?”
“At the police station,” Alleyn told her. “They proved to be of considerable value. You need not feel abominable. All you have done is to save Mrs. Wilde from the indignity of an official search through her house. Your part in obtaining the letters will never appear.”
“That’s not quite the point,” objected Angela. “I’ve played Marjorie a dirty trick but if it’s helped Rosamund—”
“It has helped to establish evidence which I needed,” said Alleyn firmly. “I ca
“You are not very human this morning,” said Angela unsteadily.
“So Bathgate has intimated. If you feel qualms in your conscience on Mrs. Wilde’s account, you shall be given ample opportunities of helping her. Has she any great woman friend?”
“I don’t know,” said Angela, nervously. “I don’t really believe she has.”
“That sort don’t as a rule. ‘Cats that walk by their wild lone.’ ”
“I have never liked you less,” said Angela vigorously.
“I seem to be generally unpopular. However that, too, is irrelevant. I have only asked to see you for a moment in order to say that I would be deeply grateful if you could muster your guests and Sir Hubert for the last time in the hall. Perhaps you could suggest that there is just time for a cocktail before they leave for the train.”
“Certainly,” said Angela rather grandly.
Alleyn was ahead of Nigel in opening the door to her. He looked at her very searchingly.
“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,” he said wryly. “This case has now reached a point which I invariably find almost intolerable. Will you remember that?”
Angela had turned rather pale.
“Very well,” she said, “I’ll remember,” and went away on his errand.
“Now, Bathgate,” said Alleyn, “go out into the hall and keep quiet and don’t look as if anything in particular is afoot. Remember — I want as many unbiassed records as possible of the reconstruction. Off with you, for heaven’s sake. The buzzer is ringing, the house-lights are down, the curtain’s going up. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, for the last act.”
Chapter XVI
The Accused Was Charged
The house-party was assembled for the last time in the hall at Frantock. The grouping, the lighting, the clothes, the faces, the background, were all much as they had been on that previous Sunday, not yet a week ago. It was a repetition of the same theme in a minor key, a theme less rich, impoverished since it lacked the colour of Rankin’s verve and Tokareff’s robust vowels.
The cocktail tray was in its accustomed place. No one stood near it. It was as though the ghost of Rankin’s body set up a barrier there and were best avoided.
Sir Hubert came slowly down the stairs and joined his guests. He seemed to feel some obligation to smother the dismal silence with words and made painfully disjointed conversation to Wilde and Nigel, who answered him with punctilious constraint. The others were quite silent. The cars would come soon and they just waited.
The study door opened and Alleyn came through into the hall. They all looked at him warily, united in a profound and subtle antagonism. In their thoughts, so secret to each other, they were yet conscious of this one common feeling of enmity to the detective. Perhaps, thought Nigel, it is an instinctive animal opposition to discipline. They waited for the detective to speak. He walked into the centre of the hall and faced them.
“May I ask for your attention?” he began formally. “I have been obliged to detain you here until the inquest, a delay of four days which I realize many of you have found inconvenient and all of you extremely distasteful. This restriction is now withdrawn, and in a few minutes Frantock will be left to its own meditations. Before you go, however, I have decided to let you all understand the theory of the police as to the ma
He paused, and a dead, shocked silence held the echo of his voice. After a moment he began to speak again:.
“The simplest way of making myself clearly understood is to reconstruct the machinery of the murder. To do this I must ask for your assistance. We shall need two persons to play the parts of the victim and of the murderer as the police have visualized them. Perhaps someone will volunteer to give me this much assistance.”
“No — oh no — no!” Mrs. Wilde’s voice, shrill and out of tune, disconcerted them by its vehemence.
“Steady, darling,” said Arthur Wilde quietly. “It’s all right. It will be better for all of us to learn everything that Inspector Alleyn can tell us. It is very largely our ignorance of the official theory that has made this suspense intolerable.”
“I agree, Arthur,” said Handesley. He turned to Alleyn. “If I can be of any help I am quite willing.”
Alleyn looked steadily at him.
“Thank you very much indeed, Sir Hubert, but I think I won’t ask you to perform the curious feat that I believe to be necessary. I want a man who can slide down the ba
“I am afraid I ca
“No. Perhaps you, Mr. Wilde?”
“I?” said Wilde. “Well, I’m getting a bit stiff in the joints for that sort of exercise, Inspector.”
“Still, I understand you have accomplished it before, so if you don’t mind—”
“Very well,” agreed Wilde and Nigel felt that Alleyn was letting him off a piece of pantomime he had been so loath to perform.
“Now,” Alleyn continued, “I shall get the constable who assisted me before to impersonate Mr. Rankin, as that, perhaps, would be too painful an obligation to put upon any of his friends. Are you there, Bunce?” he said loudly. That officer emerged from the study.
“Just stand as you did before, will you,” said Alleyn. The constable moved to the cocktail tray, picked up the shaker and bent over with his back to the stairs.
“Thank you,” said Alleyn, “that will do. Now, Mr. Wilde. It is my theory that the murderer slid down the ba
“It seems a bit fantastic,” said Wilde dubiously.
“Doesn’t it? Let us begin.”
Another silence and then Wilde slowly climbed the stairs. Two men had appeared in the hall, standing unobtrusively in the dining-room and drawing-room doorways. A third could be seen darkly through the glass door into the entrance lobby.
The lights, with the exception of the wall bracket above the cocktail tray, had all been switched off.
“What exactly is the procedure?” Wilde’s voice sounded plaintively from the shadowy stair head. Alleyn repeated his description.
“I’m not a star performer at this,” murmured the voice.
“Never mind — do your best”
The slight figure could scarcely be seen straddling the ba
“I can’t stand it!” screamed a woman’s voice suddenly. It was Mrs. Wilde. Nigel, resting his hands against Rosamund Grant’s chair, could feel it shaking.
“Faster!” said Alleyn urgently.