Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 4: A Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Marsh, Ngaio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007531387
Google: ZaYvRtoxYSMC
Amazon: B00D0VYEE4
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2013-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

III

They did not have a great deal of trouble with Dr Hart after that. He seemed at first to be completely bewildered and (the word leapt unbidden into Mandrake’s thoughts) disgusted. Mandrake found himself quite unable to make up his mind whether Hart was bluffing, whether his air of confusion, his refusal to take alarm, and his obstinate denials were false or genuine. He seemed at once to be less panic-stricken and more hopeless than he was when he believed, or feigned to believe that the victim was Nicholas. He also seemed to be profoundly astonished. After a few minutes, however, he roused himself and appeared to consider his own position. He gave them quite a clear account of his movements from the time Mandrake left him alone in the green boudoir, until he fell asleep. He said that he had taken some minutes to recover from his breakdown in Mandrake’s presence. He was fully roused by tentative noises from the wireless, not loud but furtive. He found these sounds as intolerable to his raw nerves as the defiant blasts that preceded them. They must have affected Hart, Mandrake thought, in much the same way as he himself was affected by stealthy groping in chocolate boxes at the play. The intermittent noises continued, snatches of German and French, scraps of music, muffled bursts of static. Hart imagined Nicholas Compline turning the dial-control and grinning to himself. At last the maddened doctor had rushed to the communicating door and found it locked. He had not, he seemed to suggest, meant to do more than expostulate with Nicholas, turn off the wireless at the wall switch and leave the room. However, the locked door checked him. He merely shouted a final curse at Nicholas and after a minute or two decided to fly from torment. He switched off the lights in the boudoir and went upstairs. As he crossed the hall to the foot of the stairs he passed the new footman with his tray of glasses. He said the man saw him come out of the boudoir and that he was about halfway up the first flight when the man returned from the smoking room and moved about the hall. He was still in the hall, locking up, when Hart reached the halfway landing and turned off to the left-hand flight. ‘He will tell you,’ said Hart, ‘that I did not enter the smoking room.’

‘You could very easily have finished your work in the smoking room before the man came,’ Jonathan said icily. ‘You could have returned to the boudoir and come out when you heard the man crossing the hall.’

Mandrake, by a really supreme effort of self-control, held his tongue. He wanted with all his soul to cry out: ‘No! Don’t you see, don’t you see …?’ He knew Jonathan was wrong, off the track altogether. He was amazed at Jonathan’s blindness. Yet because he felt certain that somewhere, beyond his own reach, lay the answer to Hart’s statement, he said nothing.

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