Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 1: A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder

Nigel, who was standing beside his cousin, heard a curiously thin, sibilant noise close behind him. He turned his head involuntarily. At his elbow stood the old servant transfixed, his eyes riveted on the sheath in Rankin’s hands. Instinctively Nigel glanced at Doctor Tokareff. He too, from the farther side of the cocktail tray, was looking, quite impassively, at the new dagger.

‘By Jove!’ murmured Sir Hubert quietly.

Rankin, gripping the silver sheath, slowly drew out an excessively thin, tapering blade. He held the dagger aloft. The blade, like a stalactite, gleamed blue in the firelight.

‘It is extremely sharp,’ said Rankin.

‘Arthur…don’t touch it!’ cried Marjorie Wilde.

But Arthur Wilde had already taken the dagger, and was examining it under a wall-bracket lamp.

‘This is quite interesting,’ he murmured. ‘Handesley, come and look.’

Sir Hubert joined him, and together they bent their heads over Rankin’s treasure.

‘Well?’ asked Rankin carelessly.

‘Well,’ returned Wilde, ‘your service to your friend, whoever he may have been, should have been of considerable value to have merited such a reward, my dear Charles. The dagger is a collector’s piece. It is of extreme antiquity. Handesley and Doctor Tokareff will correct me if I am mistaken.’

Sir Hubert was staring as if, by the very intensity of his gaze, he could see back through the long perspective of its history into the mind of the craftsman who had fashioned it.

‘You are right, Wilde. Of the very greatest antiquity. Obviously Mongolian. Ah, you beauty!’ he whispered.

He straightened his back, and Nigel thought that he made a supreme effort to wipe away from his face and his voice all the covetousness of the ardent collector.

‘Charles,’ he said lightly, ‘you have aroused my worst passion. How dare you!’

‘What does Doctor Tokareff say?’ asked Rosamund suddenly.

‘I should deferentiate,’ said the Russian, ‘to zis august learning of Sir H. Handesley…and additionally to Mr Ooilde. Nevertheless, I make a suggestion that to possess zis knife is not altogezzer enviable.’

Vassily stood motionless behind Nigel. Somehow the latter was aware of his vehement concentration. Could he understand the pedantic English of his countryman?

‘What do you mean?’ asked Mrs Wilde sharply.

Doctor Tokareff seemed to deliberate.

‘Certainly you have read,’ he began at last, ‘of Russian secret brotherhoods. In my country, for many ages so unhappy, there have always been sush brotherhoods. Offten very strange, with erotic performances and mutilations…not so pretty, you know. In reign of Pyotr the Great, very many indeed. English shilling shockers frequently make sush silly nonsense mention. Also journalists. Excuse me, please,’ to Nigel.

‘Not a bit,’ murmured Nigel.

‘Zis knife,’ continued Doctor Tokareff, ‘is sacred…how you say?…symbol of one society…very ancient. To make presentation…’ his voice rasped suddenly, ‘was not orthodox. Therefore to personage, however noble, outside of bratsvo or brotherhood, to have zis knife is unenviable.’

Vassily surprisingly uttered a short rumbling phrase in Russian.

‘This peasant agrees wis me,’ said Doctor Tokareff.

‘You may go, Vassily,’ said Sir Hubert.

‘Dressing-gong should have gone a long time ago,’ said Vassily, and hurried away.

‘Help!’ exclaimed Angela, ‘it’s eight o’clock! Dinner in half an hour! Hurry, everybody.’

‘Are we all in our usual rooms?’ asked Mrs Wilde.

‘Yes…oh, wait a minute…Mr Bathgate doesn’t know. Do show him, Arthur. He’s in the little Welsh room and will share your bath, my angel. Don’t be late, will you, or Uncle Hubert’s cook will give notice.’

‘Which heaven forbid!’ said Rankin fervently. ‘One more…a very little one…and I’m gone.’

He poured himself out a half portion of Vassily’s cocktail, and without consulting her filled Mrs Wilde’s glass again.

‘Charles, you’ll make me drunk,’ she announced. Why does a certain type of young woman think this remark unfailingly funny? ‘Don’t wait for me, Arthur. I shall have Angela’s bathroom when she’s out of it.’

Angela and Sir Hubert had already gone. Doctor Tokareff was halfway upstairs. Arthur Wilde turned his spectacles on Nigel.

‘Are you coming?’

‘Yes, rather.’

Nigel followed him up the shallow staircase to a dimly lit landing.

‘This is our room,’ explained Wilde, pointing to the first door on the left. ‘The next little room I use as a dressing-room.’ He opened a door farther along. ‘Here you are…the bathroom is between us.’

Nigel found himself in a charming little oak room furnished austerely with one or two heavy old Welsh pieces. In the left wall was a door.

‘This leads into our joint bathroom,’ said Wilde, opening it. ‘My dressing-room communicates too, you see. You go first with the bath.’

‘What a jolly house it is!’

‘Yes, it is extraordinarily right in every way. One grows very attached to Frantock. I expect you will find that.’

‘Oh,’ said the diffident Nigel. ‘I don’t know…this is my first visit…I may not come again.’

Wilde smiled pleasantly.

‘I’m sure you will. Handesley never asks anybody unless he is sure he will want them again. I must go and help my wife find all the things she thinks her maid has forgotten. Sing out when you’ve finished with the bath.’

He went out through the farther door of the bathroom, and Nigel heard him humming to himself in a thin, cheerful tenor.

Finding that his very battered suitcase had already been unpacked, Nigel lost no time in bathing, shaving, and dressing. He thought of his rather grim little flatette in Ebury Street, and reflected that it would be pleasant to be able to abandon geysers and gas-rings for a cook who must not be kept waiting, and for constant hot water. In fifteen minutes he was dressed, and as he left the room could hear Wilde still splashing in the bath next door.

Nigel ran blithely downstairs, hoping that Miss Angela North had also gone down early. A door across the hall to the right of the stairs was standing open. The room beyond being brilliantly lit, he walked in and found himself alone in a big, green-panelled salon that meandered away into an L-shaped alcove, beyond which was another smaller room. This proved to be a sort of library and gun-room combined. It smelt delectably of leather bindings, gun-oil, and cigars. A bright fire was burning on the open hearth, and the gleaming barrels of Sir Hubert’s sporting armoury spoke to Nigel of all the adventures he had longed for and never been able to afford.

He was gazing enviously at a Männlicher eight when he suddenly became aware of voices in the drawing-room behind him.

It was Mrs Wilde who was speaking, and Nigel, horrified, realized that she and her companion had come in after him, had been there for some minutes, and that he had got himself into the odious position of an unwilling eavesdropper, and finally that, distasteful as this was to him, it was too late for him to announce his presence.

Hideously uncomfortable, and completely at a loss, he stood and perforce heard.