Death and the Dancing Footman (The Ngaio Marsh Collection) by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Marsh, Ngaio]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Series - Ngaio Marsh, Crime
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2009-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Nicholas, wearing an expression that reminded Mandrake of a nervous colt, stood at the end of the passage outside his mother’s door. He hurried to meet them.

‘Well,’ he whispered, ‘for God’s sake, what’s happened? What’s wrong?’

‘At the moment, nothing,’ said Mandrake.

‘But I heard Jonathan shouting. Hart’s in his room, then? Why have you left him?’

‘He’s locked up. Come downstairs, Compline. We’ve got to talk.’

‘I’m deadly tired,’ said Nicholas suddenly. And indeed he looked exhausted. ‘It was pretty ghastly, telling my mamma, you know.’

‘How is she?’ asked Jonathan, taking Nicholas’s arm. They moved towards the stairs.

‘Hersey’s with her. She’s all to blazes, to be quite frank. She’s got it into her heard that it all hangs on—you know. What he did to her face. She thinks it’s because of what Bill said about it. I couldn’t do anything much. Of course she’s—God, it sounds a rotten thing to say, but you know how things are—she’s—in a sort of way—glad it’s not me. That makes me feel pretty foul, as you may imagine. I’d better tell Hersey it’s safe for her to come out when she wants to.’

He put his head in at his mother’s door and gave this message. They went downstairs to the library. Chloris was sitting very upright in her chair with her hands pressed together in her lap.

‘All right?’ Mandrake asked.

‘Me? Yes; all right. It’s nice to see you again. What’s happened?’

Jonathan gave Chloris and Nicholas an account of the interview. It was an accurate narrative until he came to Hart’s story. Then his indignation seemed to get the better of him, and abandoning Hart’s statement altogether, Jonathan talked excitedly of preposterous evasions, trumped-up alibis, and intolerable hardihood. Seeing that Chloris and Nicholas grew more and more anxious and bewildered, Mandrake waited until Jonathan had exhausted his store of phrases and then cut in with an explicit account of Hart’s movements according to himself.

‘A monstrous conglomeration of lies!’ Jonathan fumed.

‘I don’t think we can altogether dismiss them, Jonathan. I take it that we none of us doubt his guilt, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be easy to get over that business of his meeting the footman—supposing, of course, that the man confirms Hart’s story. There must be an explanation, of course, but—’

‘My good Aubrey,’ cried Jonathan, ‘of course there’s an explanation. When he encountered Thomas—that’s the fellow’s name, Thomas—it was all over. That’s your explanation.’

‘Yes, but it isn’t, you know. Because it was after Thomas came in with the drinks that we heard William turn up the wireless.’

There was a rather stony silence, broken by Jonathan. ‘Then he came downstairs and slipped into the smoking room.’

‘But he says Thomas stayed in the hall.’

‘He says, he says. The answer is that he waited in the shadows on the stairs until Thomas left the hall.’

‘Do you remember,’ Mandrake asked the other two, ‘the sequence of events? You, Compline, came out of the smoking room, leaving your brother—where?’

‘He was over by the fire, I think. He wouldn’t talk much, but I remembered he did say he was damned if Hart was going to stop him getting the news.

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