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

‘Any questions?’ asked Handesley.

‘Sush admirable terse discourse makes no jot of confusion. Already I am, as you say, on tendercooks,’ murmured Doctor Tokareff.

‘Well,’ concluded Handesley cheerfully, ‘let us wish the murderer at any rate an interesting amount of success.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Wilde, ‘that this game isn’t going to be rather terrifying.’

‘I call it a definite thrill,’ remarked Angela.

Sir Hubert walked over to the gong and took the leather-padded hammer in his hand. They all watched the grandfather clock that stood in the farthest corner of the hall. The long hand jerked across the last division, and the clock, deep voiced, told the half-hour. At the same moment Handesley struck the gong.

‘Murder is afoot,’ he said theatrically; ‘the gong shall not sound again until it is accomplished…Shall we move into the drawing-room?’

Nigel, thankful that Vassily’s choice had not fallen upon himself, speculated on the possible identity of the ‘murderer’, determined to make a mental note of everybody’s movements, and equally to be left alone with no single member of the house-party, since he felt that the role of ‘corpse’ would be less amusing than that of witness or Prosecuting Attorney.

In the drawing-room Mrs Wilde started a rag by suddenly hurling a cushion at—of all people—Doctor Tokareff. To the astonishment and discomfiture of everybody, the Russian, after a brief moment of blank bewilderment, suddenly developed a species of mad playfulness. Always, to English people, there is something rather embarrassing about a foreigner playing the fool. Doctor Tokareff, however, was quite unaware of this racial self-consciousness.

‘Is not this,’ he exclaimed joyously, ‘indication of British tatter or scrap? I am reading that when English lady propels cush at head of gentleman, she connotes sporting desire.’ And with that he hurled the cushion at Mrs Wilde with such accuracy and force that she completely lost her balance and fell into Rankin’s arms. With one hand he held her closely against him and with the other whirled the cushion about his head, striking the Russian full in the face.

For a second Nigel saw that Doctor Tokareff’s face was capable of expressing something divorced from tranquil amiability.

‘Look out!’ he shouted involuntarily.

But the doctor had stepped back with a little bow and was smiling holding up his hands. There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘I’m on Doctor Tokareff’s side,’ said Angela suddenly, and collared Rankin about the knees.

‘So am I,’ said Rosamund. ‘Charles, do you like your face rubbed up or down?’

‘Let’s de-bag old Arthur,’ suggested Rankin, emerging breathless from the hurly-burly. ‘Come on, Nigel…come on, Hubert.’

‘There’s always something wrong with old Charles when he rags,’ thought Nigel. But he held the protesting Wilde while his trousers were dragged off, and joined in the laugh when he stood pale and uncomfortable, clutching a hearthrug to his recreant limbs and blinking short-sightedly.

‘You’ve smashed my spectacles,’ he said.

‘Darling!’ screamed Mrs Wilde, ‘you look too stupid to be believed. Charles, what a horror you are to make such nonsense of my husband!’

‘I feel I look rather magnificent,’ declared Wilde. ‘Who’s got my trousers? You, Angela! My Edwardian blood congeals at the sight. Give them up, child, or I grow churlish.’

‘Here you are, Adonis,’ said Rankin, snatching the trousers from Angela and tying them round Wilde’s neck. ‘Gosh, what a lovely sight! Perfect picture of a gentleman who has stroked his eight to victory.’

‘Run and put them on, my pet,’ said Mrs Wilde, ‘or you’ll get growing pains.’

Wilde obediently disappeared.

‘Last time I de-bagged Arthur was at Eton,’ said Rankin. ‘God, what ages ago it seems!’

He turned to the wireless and began tuning in to a concert of dance music.

‘Come on, Rosamund,’ he said, ‘let’s dance.’

‘I’m too hot,’ said Rosamund, who had been talking to Tokareff.

‘Marjorie!’ shouted Rankin, ‘can you bear to trip a measure?’

‘Has Rosamund turned you down? Too dreary for you, Charles.’

‘I’ve let him off his duty dance,’ said Rosamund. ‘Doctor Tokareff is telling a story a thousand years old, and I must hear the end.’

‘This is a history,’ began Tokareff, ‘of a hospodin…a noble…and two ladies. It is what you call eternal triangle…very old motif in human history.’

‘So old that it is, don’t you think, rather boring?’ asked Rankin.

‘Do dance, Marjorie,’ said Angela.

Without waiting for her consent, Rankin put his arm round Mrs Wilde, and at once Nigel saw that she was translated.

There are some women who, when they dance, express a depth of feeling and of temperament that actually they do not possess. He saw that Mrs Wilde was one of these women. Under the spell of that blatantly exotic measure she seemed to flower, to become significant and dangerous. Rankin, rapt and serious, was at once her foil and her master. He never took his eyes off hers, and she, unfriendly, provocative, stared back at him as though she were insulting him. Nigel, Angela, and Handesley stopped talking to watch these two, and Wilde, returning, stood stock still in the doorway. Only the Russian seemed disinterested. He had bent over the wireless set and was examining it intently.

The quicker second movement slid back into the original theme of the tango. The dancers had come together in the first steps of their final embrace, when an ear-splitting shriek from the wireless shattered the spell.

‘What the devil!’ exclaimed Rankin angrily.

‘Please forgive,’ said Tokareff calmly. ‘Evidently I have blundered. Sush a funny muck-up and screechiness I never before have heard…’

‘Wait a moment…I’ll get it back,’ suggested Handesley.

‘No, no, don’t bother—it would be too stupid to go on,’ answered Rankin ungraciously. He lit a cigarette and walked away from his partner.

‘Charles,’ said Handesley quietly, ‘Arthur and I have been discussing your dagger. It really is enormously interesting. Do be a little more forthcoming about its history.’

‘All I can tell you,’ said Rankin, ‘is this. I pulled a wild-looking gentleman out of a crevasse in Switzerland last year. I don’t speak Russian, and he didn’t speak English. I never saw him again, but apparently he traced me—through my guide, I suppose—to my hotel, and thence, presumably, to England. The knife with the two words, “Switzerland” (so lavish) and “thanks” only reached me yesterday. I conclude it was from him.’

‘Will you sell it to me, Charles?’ asked Sir Hubert. ‘I’ll give you much more than you deserve for it.’

‘No, Hubert, I won’t. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll leave it to you. Nigel here gets all my possessions. Nigel! If I kick the bucket, my lad, Hubert is to have the dagger. Bear witness, all of you.’

‘It shall be done,’ said Nigel.

‘Considering I’m ten years your senior, it’s not what I should call a handsome offer,’ complained Handesley. ‘Still, let’s have it in writing.’

‘You old ghoul, Hubert!’ laughed Rankin.

‘Hubert!’ shrieked Marjorie Wilde, ‘how can you be so utterly bloodsucking!’

Rankin had walked to the writing-desk.

‘Here you are, you maniac,’ he said. ‘Nigel and Arthur can witness.’