“Pellucidly explicit,” said Doctor Tokareff. “I shall enjoy immensely to take place in sush intellectual diversion.”
“He isn’t a bit pompous really,” whispered Angela in Nigel’s ear, “but he memorizes four pages of Webster’s Dictionary every morning after a light breakfast. Do you hope Vassily chooses you for ‘murderer’?” she added aloud.
“Lord, no!” laughed Nigel. “For one thing I don’t know the lie of the land. Couldn’t you show me round the house in case I have to?”
“I will…tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Rosamund Grant had wandered across to the foot of the stairs. She drew a long subtly-curving dagger from the strip of leather and laid it flat upon her palm.
“The murderer has plenty of weapons to hand,” she said lightly.
“Put the beastly thing away, Rosamund,” said Marjorie Wilde, with a note of very real terror in her voice; “they give me the horrors…all knives do. I can’t even endure watching people carve…ugh!”
Rankin laughed possessively.
“I’m going to terrify you, Marjorie,” he said. “I’m actually carrying a dagger in my overcoat pocket at this very moment.”
“Are you, Charles? But why?”
It was the first time Nigel had heard Rosamund Grant speak to his cousin that evening. She stood there on the bottom step of the stairs looking like some modern priestess of an ancient cult.
“It was sent me yesterday,” said Rankin, “by a countryman of yours, Doctor Tokareff, whom I met in Switzerland last year. I did him rather a service—lugged him out of a crevasse where he had lingered long enough to sacrifice two of his fingers to frost-bite—and he sent me this, as a thank-offering, I suppose. I brought it down to show you, Hubert.…I thought Arthur might like to have a look at it, too. Our famous archaeologist, you know. Let me get it. I left my overcoat in the porch out there.”
“Vassily, get Mr. Rankin’s coat,” said Sir Hubert.
“I hope you don’t expect me to look at it,” said Mrs. Wilde. “I’m going to dress.”
She did not move, however, but only put her hand through her husband’s arm. He regarded her with a kind of gentle whimsicality which Nigel thought very charming.
“It’s true, isn’t it, Arthur?” she said. “I haven’t read one of your books because you will butter your pages with native horrors.”
“Marjorie’s reaction to knives or pointed tools of any sort is not an uncommon one,” said Wilde. “It probably conceals a rather interesting repression.”
“Do you mean that privately she’s a blood-thirster?” asked Angela, and everyone laughed.
“Well, we shall see,” said Rankin, taking his coat from Vassily and producing a long carved silver case from one of the pockets.
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 further 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 at it 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 earning of Sir H. Handesley…and additionally of 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 half-way 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 further 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 further 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 flatlette 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 Manlicher 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.
“…so I say you’ve no right to order me down like this,” she was saying in a rapid undertone. “You treat me as if I were completely at your beck and call.”
“Well…don’t you rather enjoy it?”
Nigel felt suddenly sick. That was Charles’s voice. He heard a match scrape, and visualized his cousin’s long face and sleek head slanted forward to light his cigarette. Marjorie Wilde had begun again.
“But you are insufferable, my good Charles.…Darling, why are you such a beast to me? You might at least—”
“Well, my dear? I might at least—what?”
“What is the position between you and Rosamund?”
“Rosamund is cryptic. She tells me she is too fond of me to marry me.”
“And yet all the time…with me…you—oh, Charles, can’t you see?”
“Yes, I see.” Rankin’s voice was furry—half tender, half possessive.
“I’m a fool,” whispered Mrs. Wilde.
“Are you? Yes, you are rather a little goat. Come here.”
Her broken murmuring was suddenly checked. Silence followed, and Nigel felt positively indecent.
“Now, Madam!” said Rankin softly.
“Do you love me?”
“No. Not quite, my dear. But you’re very attractive. Won’t that do?”
“Do you love Rosamund?”
“Oh, good Lord, Marjorie!”
“I hate you!” she said quickly. “I could—I could…”
“Be quiet, Marjorie—you’re making a scene. No, don’t struggle. I’m going to kiss you again.”
Nigel heard a sharp, vicious little sound, rapid footsteps hurrying away, and a second later a door slammed.
“Damn!” exclaimed Charles thoughtfully. Nigel pictured him nursing his cheek. Then he, too, evidently went out by the far door. As this door opened Nigel heard voices in the hall beyond.
The booming of the gong filled the house with clamour. He went out of the gun-room into the drawing-room.
At that instant the drawing-room lights went out.
A moment later he heard the far door open and quietly close again.
Standing stock still in the abrupt darkness of this strange place, his mind worked quickly and coherently. Marjorie Wilde and Rankin had both gone into the hall, he knew. Obviously, no one else had entered the drawing-room while they had been there. The only explanation was that someone else had been in the drawing-room, hidden in the L-shaped alcove when he walked through to the gun-room, someone who, like himself, had overheard the scene between those two. His eyes soon adapted themselves to the comparative darkness. He made his way gingerly to the door, opened it, and walked out into the hall. Nobody noticed him. The entire house-party was collected round Rankin, who seemed to be concluding one of his “pre-prandial” stories. Under cover of a roar of laughter, Nigel joined the group.
“Hullo, here he is!” exclaimed Sir Hubert. “Everybody down? Then let’s go in.”
CHAPTER THREE
“You Are the Corpse”
NOBODY GOT UP very early at Frantock on Sunday mornings. Nigel, wandering down to breakfast at half-past nine, found himself alone with the sausages.
He had scarcely turned his attention to the Sunday Times when he was told that a long-distance call had come through for him from London. He found Jamison, his taciturn chief, at the other end of the wire. “Hullo, Bathgate. Sorry to tear you away from your champagne. How are the seats of the mighty?”
“Very much like other people’s seats, only not so kick-worthy,” said Nigel.
“Coarse is never comic, my boy. Look here, isn’t your host a bit of an authority on Russia? Well, an unknown Pole has been stuck in the gizzard in Soho, and there’s some hare been started about a secret society in the West-End. Sounds bogus to me, but see if you can get a story out of him. ‘Are Poles Russians, or are they Poles apart?’ Something of that sort. Remember me to the third footman. Good morning.”
Nigel grinned and hung up the receiver. Then he paused meditatively.
“What with daggers, deaths, and eavesdroppings,” he pondered, “there’s an undercurrent of sensation in this house-party. All rather fun, but I wish old Charles wasn’t cast for the first philanderer’s part.”
He walked back to the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was joined by his host, who suggested a leisurely excursion through the fields.
“Arthur has a paper to write for the British Ethnological Conference, Doctor Tokareff spends his mornings in improving his vocabulary and performing other mysterious intellectual rites, Angela housekeeps, and the others are so late always that I have given up making plans for them. So if it wouldn’t bore you…”
Nigel said eagerly that he would be anything but bored. They set out together. A thin clear flood of wintry sunshine warmed the stark trees and rimy turf of Frantock. A sudden wave of goodwill towards anybody and everybody exhilarated Nigel. The covert ugliness of Rankin’s relationship to Mrs. Wilde and perhaps to Rosamund Grant was forgotten. He had been an unwilling eavesdropper—well, what of it? It could be forgotten. On an impulse he turned to his host and told him how much he was enjoying himself.
“But that is really charming of you,” said Handesley. “I’m as susceptible as a woman to compliments about my parties. You must come again if journalism, a tiresomely exacting job, I know, will allow you the time.”
This seemed a very excellent opportunity for Nigel to get his story. He plucked up his courage and told Sir Hubert of the telephone call from his office.
“Jamison suggested that perhaps you could give me some personal experiences of these societies—please don’t if it’s a nuisance—but apparently the murder of this Pole is attributed to some sort of feud in a similar organization in London.”
“I suppose it is a possibility,” said Handesley cautiously. “But I should like to know a great deal more about the circumstances. I have written a short monograph on the Russian ‘brotherhoods,’
or rather on certain aspects of them. I’ll let you have it when we go in.”
Nigel thanked him, but tentatively made the journalist’s monotonous appeal for “something a little more personal.”
“Well,” said Handesley, “give me time, and I’ll try. Why not attack Doctor Tokareff? He seems to be full of information on the subject.”
“Wouldn’t he be furious? He is so very…is it remote?”
“And therefore beyond annoyance. He will either oblige with a sententious dissertation or refuse with a wealth of symbolism. You never know with the Russian whether he is really talking about the things he seems to be talking about, or whether they merely represent an abstract procession of ideas. Try him.”
“I will,” said Nigel, and they finished their walk in companionable silence.
Looking back on the Frantock affair after it was all over,Nigel always thought of that walk as the one perfect and peaceful episode during his visit. At luncheon he was aware once more of the secondary theme of dissonance between Rankin, Rosamund, and Mrs. Wilde. He suspected, too, an antagonism between Tokareff and Rankin and, being particularly sensitive to the timbre of emotional relationships, was mentally on tenterhooks.
After luncheon they all went their ways—Handesley and Tokareff to the library, Mrs. Wilde and Rankin for a stroll,Nigel and Angela to explore the house (with a view to the former learning his way about it for the Murder Game), and then to play badminton in the barn. Rosamund Grant and Wilde had disappeared, whether severally or together Nigel had no idea. He and Angela got extremely hot, laughed a great deal and, each delighted with the other’s company, arrived back in the hall in time for tea.
“Now,” said Handesley, when Angela had poured out the last cup, “it’s twenty-five minutes past five. At half-past the Murder Game is on. By eleven it must be an accomplished fact. You all know the rules. Last night Vassily gave the scarlet plaque to whichever one of us he selected as murderer. I remind you that the ‘murderer’ is to turn out the lights and sound the gong, that you are not by word or look to suggest that you have been discarded or selected by Vassily as actor for the part of assassin. The ‘murderer’ has had a day in which to formulate his plans. There—that’s all.”