I must say, he doesn’t conform to my mental pictures of a sleuth-hound. I had an idea they lived privately amidst inlaid linoleum, aspidistras, and enlarged photographs of constabulary groups.’
‘Taking a strong cuppa at six-thirty in their shirt sleeves. Well, pooh to us for a couple of snobs, anyway.’
‘All the same,’ said Nigel, ‘I do think he’s a bit unorthodox. He must be a gent with private means who sleuths for sleuthing’s sake.’
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ said Alleyn in the doorway. ‘Have one of Vassily’s “corktails”, and then let us dine.’
Vassily, important and beaming, rolled back sliding doors, and the inspector ushered them into the dining-room. The dinner was a very pleasant little ceremony. When Vassily had brought in coffee, set a decanter in front of the inspector, and taken himself off, Alleyn looked at his watch.
‘We can talk for fifteen minutes,’ he said, ‘and then I want you to do a job of work for me. Perhaps I should say I can talk for fifteen minutes because I should like, if it wouldn’t bore you, to go over the history of this case. It is of enormous help, I find, to talk to someone who is not a CID man. You needn’t look so inordinately perky, Bathgate. I don’t expect you to solve the mystery; I merely want you to tell me how clever I am, whether you think so or not.’
‘Oke,’ said Nigel tractably.
Alleyn gave him a friendly grin, lit a cigarette, and with a faintly didactic air began his résumé.
‘I shall return to the official manner,’ he said. ‘I find it impresses you. Rankin was stabbed in the back at five minutes to eight. That was the time by your watch when the gong sounded, and your watch synchronized with Mary’s, who told Wilde it was ten-to as he went upstairs. She saw him go up. You spoke to him when he went into the bathroom and during the time that followed; that leaves four minutes when Rankin was alone until the murder took place—less, because Mary didn’t go away immediately. He was stabbed from behind, either by somebody over six feet, or by somebody standing on a raised area. In falling back he struck the gong with his head.’
‘Oh!’ gasped Angela and Nigel together.
‘Yes, indeed. You were slow there. Baby-class stuff at the Yard, I do assure you. There was a very slight abrasion on the head, and I am pretty sure that was how it was caused. You all described the sound as a single, slightly muffled, booming note. “Skulls and brass in musical conjunction”, said I to myself. The moving of the body was definitely naughty—I was very cross about it—but that is how I reconstruct it. Rankin was bending over pouring out his drink, poor chap! The shaker was beside him on the floor and the glass overturned. Miss Grant noticed that. The murderer—I shan’t bother to add “or murderess” every time—then switched off the lights, wearing a glove or having something wrapped round the hand. He then ran away. Where to? For reasons that I shan’t bore you with, I think he went upstairs.
‘Now, at that precise moment where was everybody? The servants are all accounted for, even that old goat Vassily, who was alone in the boot-room. You, Bathgate, were in your room. A housemaid saw you there when the gong sounded, and I have other excellent reasons for believing your evidence. Sir Hubert says he was in his dressing-room. You saw him there, Miss Angela, when you fetched the aspirin, and you had only just got back to Miss Grant’s room when the alarm sounded. Sir Hubert is a very active man for his age, but he could not have got downstairs in that time, be he ever so nippy. You might possibly have managed it, but in your case, Miss Angela, there is a complete absence of motive and I have washed you out as a possibility. No cause célèbre for you this time.’
‘Too kind,’ muttered Nigel.
‘Besides, Florence saw you in the passage. “Saved by the Servants” is the subtitle as far as you two are concerned. Miss Grant went upstairs, bathed, went to Rankin’s room, returned, found Florence in her room. Miss Grant, in her account, deliberately gave a miss to her visit to Rankin’s room, but unless she had bribed Florence to tell a tarradiddle for her, their meeting, although it does not save her from coming definitely under suspicion, gives her a very short time in which to get downstairs, take the dagger from the wall, drive it home, and return. She studied medicine at the university, clever girl, and intended to become a doctor. Please don’t interrupt, either of you.
‘Tokareff sang in his bedroom, and Florence tells me she heard him. So did Sir Hubert. They are under the impression he was rendering the bellows of Boris unceasingly until the gong sounded. Such impressions are not very trustworthy. He may well have stopped for four minutes without their having any recollection of it.
‘Mrs Wilde, whose room is at the head of the stairs, was nearest to the victim. You say you heard her talking after the lights went out. There are certain other features that go far towards scratching her off the list of possibles, but she has subsequently done one or two things that show she was desperately anxious to conceal certain aspects of her friendship for Rankin.’
‘Surely,’ ventured Angela gently, ‘that is very understandable.’
‘I think so too, but all the same, they must be cleared up. That is why you are going to help me tonight. Wilde we have dealt with exhaustively. We are all sick of Wilde. He has tried to give himself up for the murder, but his movements have been described from the time he left Rankin and went upstairs under the gaze of the housemaid until the gong sounded. Bathgate talked to him all the time, and Florence heard them. The bath gave an excellent fingerprint, and so on, and so on. He also left some prints on the banister, just to make it more difficult.
‘Lastly, there is the melodramatic Russian element. Your uncle has written several excellent essays on Russian characteristics and customs. In my opinion, the truest thing he ever wrote about Russians was that no Englishman could understand them. The idea of a villainous secret brotherhood belongs to Merejkowski and contributors to Chums. The idea of Russians stabbing people in England because someone has given away a sacred dagger is so highly coloured that a decent policeman blushes to advance it. Yet Krasinski the Pole was murdered for this reason, Rankin was the man to whom the knife was given, and two members of the association were in the house when it happened. One is already under arrest for sedition, but—blast his eyes!—he sang while the murder was going on.’
‘That,’ said Angela mildly, ‘establishes a beautiful alibi, doesn’t it?’
‘A bit too beautiful, you think,’ observed Alleyn appreciatively. ‘Sagacious woman, you have stolen my stock bit of thunder. Yet sing he did, and—unless, as I have said, he did pause without anyone noticing the sudden lull, or unless he’s a ventriloquist and threw the Death of Boris upstairs and along the back corridor—it’s a teaser to get rid of. Well, here we are again. Let me say finally that there were no fingerprints on the dagger or on the strap from which it was taken, only Bathgate’s prints on the electric switch and a muck-up of everybody’s on the banister. Talking of the banister, Miss Angela, do you ever slide down it?’
‘Yes—often,’ said Angela, startled. ‘We have competitions, face first without hanging on.’
‘You did this on Saturday, perhaps?’
‘No.’
‘Can you go down face first? It’s a bit tricky.’
‘I can. Marjorie can’t, and Doctor Tokareff was hopeless when we did it last weekend.’
‘Look here!’ shouted Nigel suddenly, ‘what about Mary?’
‘Mystery solved,’ said Alleyn.
