A Man Lay Dead

‘Well,’ broke in Handesley, noting perhaps the two little scarlet danger signals in Rankin’s cheeks, ‘let us hope it will give no offence by hanging for tonight at the foot of my stairs. Come and have a cocktail.’

Charles Rankin lingered in the drawing-room with his cousin. He slipped his arm through Nigel’s.

‘Not a very delicious gentleman, that dago,’ he said loudly.

‘Look out, he’ll hear you!’

‘I don’t give a damn.’

Wilde paused in the doorway and detained them.

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you, Charles,’ he said in his diffident voice. ‘His point of view is not unreasonable. I know something of these societies.’

‘Oh, hell, what’s it matter, anyway? Come and let’s drink. This murder’s got to be done.’

Nigel glanced at him sharply.

‘No, no,’ laughed Rankin, ‘not by me…I didn’t mean that. By someone.’

‘I’m not going to be left alone with anyone,’ Mrs Wilde was announcing.

‘I wonder,’ speculated Handesley, ‘if that’s true—or is it a bluff? Or am I bluffing?’

‘I’m going to take my drink up with me,’ said Rosamund. ‘No one will try to murder me in my bath, I hope, and I shan’t come down till I hear voices in the hall.’

‘I’ll come up with you, Rosamund,’ said Mrs Wilde and Angela simultaneously.

‘I also will make myself for the dining,’ announced Doctor Tokareff.

‘Wait a bit!’ called Handesley. ‘I’m coming up. I won’t go down that passage alone!’

There was a concerted stampede upstairs, only Nigel, Rankin, and Wilde being left in the hall.

‘Shall I bath first?’ Nigel asked Wilde.

‘Yes, do,’ he agreed. ‘It’s safe enough for Charles and me to be left together. Whichever of us tries to do in the other would be accused by you as the last person to see the corpse alive. I claim the bath in ten minutes.’

Nigel ran upstairs, leaving the two men to finish their drinks. He bathed quickly and dressed at leisure. The Murder Game was distinctly amusing. For some reason he rather thought that Vassily had given the scarlet plaque to his compatriot. Nigel determined not to go down until he heard Doctor Tokareff’s voice. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘it would be easy enough for him to catch me as I opened my door and then go downstairs as if nothing had happened, choose his moment to put out the lights, sound the gong, and then move away in the darkness and stand still for the two minutes, asking at the top of his voice who had done it. That wouldn’t be a bad plan of action, by Jove.’

He heard the bathroom door open. A moment later the taps were turned on, and Wilde’s voice called out to him:

‘No bloodshed yet, Bathgate?’

‘Not yet,’ shouted Nigel. ‘But I’m much too frightened to go down.’

‘Let’s wait till Marjorie is ready,’ suggested Wilde, ‘and all go down together. If you don’t agree, I’ll know you are the murderer.’

‘All right, I’ll agree,’ yelled Nigel cheerfully, and he heard Wilde laugh to himself and shout the suggestion through to his wife, who was presumably still dressing in the room beyond.

Nigel walked over to his bedside table and picked up the book he had been reading the night before. It was Joseph Conrad’s Suspense. He had just opened it at the title-page when there was a light tap on the door.

‘Come in,’ shouted Nigel.

A rather flustered and extremely pretty housemaid appeared.

‘Oh, please, sir,’ she began, ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgot your shaving-water.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Nigel. ‘I managed with—’ Suddenly the room was completely blacked out.

He stood in thick darkness with the invisible book in his hand while the voice of the gong—primitive and threatening—surged up through the empty throat of the house. It filled the room with an intolerable clamour and then died away grudgingly. Silence flowed back again and, trickling through it, the noise of the bath-water still running next door. Then Wilde’s voice shouting excitedly:

‘I say…what’s all this—?’

‘Pretty nippy, wasn’t it?’ shouted Nigel. ‘What about the two minutes? Wait a bit. I’ve got a luminous wrist watch. I’ll keep time for both of us.’

‘Yes, but look here—do I have to lie in this bath,’ queried Wilde plaintively, ‘or do you imagine I may get out and dry myself?’

‘Pull out the plug and reach for the towel. Did you leave Charles downstairs?’

‘Yes, I did. Full of complaints about Tokareff. I say, do you think…’ Wilde’s voice became muffled. Evidently he had found the towel.

‘Time!’ said Nigel. ‘I’m off.’

‘Turn up the lights, for heaven’s sake,’ urged Wilde. ‘I’m going to miss all the fun if I can’t find my pants.’

His wife’s voice screeched excitedly from the far room.

‘Arthur, wait for me!’

‘Me wait for you—’ began Wilde in an injured voice.

Nigel struck a match and made his way to the door. Out on the landing it was pitch dark, but farther back along the passage he could see little points of matchlight and the dramatic uncertainty of faces, dimly lit from below. Far down beneath him in the hall was the comfortable flicker of a fire. The house was alive with the voices of the guests, calling, laughing, questioning. Cosseting his match, he groped his way downstairs; it burnt out, but the firelight enabled him to round the bottom of the stairs and find the main switch.

For a second he hesitated. Obscurely, unaccountably, he did not want to wipe away the darkness. As he stood with his hand on the switch, time seemed to hang still.

From the stairs Handesley’s voice called out:

‘Anyone find the switch?’

‘I’m there,’ answered Nigel, and his hand jerked it down.

The sudden blaze from the chandelier was blinding. On the stairs Wilde, his wife, Tokareff, Handesley, and Angela all shrank back from it. Nigel, blinking, came round the stairs. Facing him was the cocktail tray, and beside him the great Assyrian gong.

A man was lying on his face alongside the table. He was lying at right angles to the gong.

Nigel, still blinking, turned his face towards the others.

‘I say,’ he said, peering at them and shading his eyes. ‘I say, look…here he is.’