“What was Mr. Rankin doing?”
“Smoking a cigarette sir, quite happy like. I say, ‘Shall I take away the cocktail tray?’ and he says, ‘Don’t do that,’ he says, ‘I’ll have a quick one,’ he says, ‘and spoil that schoolboy complexion.’ So I goes away, sir, and then only a few seconds later, sir, the lights went out and — oh, isn’t it awful?”
“Terrible. Thank you, Mary.”
After a hesitating glance at Handesley the maid went out.
“Doesn’t the butler usually answer that bell?” asked Alleyn after a pause.
“Yes,” said Angela vaguely, “yes, of course, Mary’s the between-maid. She never answers the bell. I don’t know why he didn’t come — everyone is so upset, I suppose Vassily—”
She was interrupted by the entrance of Florence, a darkish wooden-faced individual of about thirty-five.
“Florence,” said Angela, “Mr. Alleyn wants to ask you something about last night.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Will you tell me, please,” began Alleyn, “which of the rooms you went into last night when the guests were upstairs dressing?”
“Very good, sir. I went first to Miss Angela’s room.”
“How long were you there?”
“Only a few minutes. Miss Angela wished me to ask Mrs. Wilde if I could assist her.”
“So you went to Mrs. Wilde’s room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened there?”
“Madam asked me to fasten her dress. I fastened it,” said Florence sparsely.
“Did Mrs. Wilde speak to you?”
“Madam was speaking to Mr. Wilde who was in the bathroom next door to the dressing-room.”
“Did Mr. Wilde answer?”
“Yes, sir. He was speaking to Mrs. Wilde and also to Mr. Bathgate who was in his own room beyond.”
“When you left Mrs. Wilde where did you go?”
“To Miss Grant’s room.”
“How long were you there?”
“I waited a moment, sir. Miss Grant was not there. She came in a few minutes later and said she did not require me. I left. Miss Angela was coming along the passage. Then the lights went out.”
“Did Miss Grant come from the bathroom?”
Florence hesitated. “I think not, sir. Miss Grant bathed earlier — before Miss Angela.”
“Thank you very much. I think that’s all I wanted to ask you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The door shut behind Florence. No one had looked at Rosamund Grant. No one had spoken.
Alleyn turned a page of his note-book.
“By the way, Miss Grant,” he said, “did you not say that apart from your visit to the bathroom you did not leave your room until the gong sounded?”
“Wait a moment!” ejaculated Doctor Young.
“Rosamund — it’s all right,” cried Angela, running across to her friend. But Rosamund Grant had slid from her chair to the floor in a dead faint.
In the sort of horribly false confusion that followed, Nigel was aware only of one thing, and that was the pounding at the bell-push in answer to some confused order of Sir Hubert’s.
“Brandy — that’s what she wants.” Handesley was shouting.
“Better some sal volatile,” said Doctor Young. “Just open those windows one of ye.”
“I’ll fetch some,” Angela said and hurried away.
The flustered Mary had reappeared.
“Tell Vassily to bring some brandy,” said Handesley.
“Please, sir, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, sir, he’s gone — he’s disappeared, sir, and none of us liked to tell you!”
“Hell’s teeth!” ejaculated Alleyn.
Chapter VI
Alleyn Does His Stuff
Detective-Inspector Alleyn had been most particular about the state of the house. Nothing must be touched, he said, until he had finished what he called his nosey-parkering. Nothing had been touched. Little Doctor Young, in his capacity as police surgeon for the district, had stressed the point from the moment of his arrival and Bunce, P.C., in his brief and enjoyable supremacy, had scared the life out of the servants, keeping them all confined to their own quarters. He had, however, set no watch at the gate and Vassily apparently escaped by the simple method of walking out at the back door.
Alleyn recovered from his momentary rage at the disappearance of the butler, rang up the station and found that the old Russian had, with peculiar ingenuousness, caught the ten-fifteen for London. The Inspector telephoned the Yard and gave orders that he should be traced and detained immediately.
By this time a detachment of plainclothes men had appeared at Frantock. Alleyn had the tall and quite unsurmountable fence inspected, mounted a guard of helmets, felt hats and waterproofs at the gates, and invited Detective-Sergeant Bailey, the finger-print expert who had come down with him, to attend him in the house. Mr. Bunce was also on tap in the hall. Handesley had been requested to detain his guests in the library or to let them loose in the garden.
“Now,” said Detective-Inspector Alleyn, “I’ll see Ethel, the only housemaid remaining. Ask her to come in, Bunce.”
Mary had been scared and Florence calm. Ethel, a pretty girl of about twenty-seven, was intelligent and interested.
“Where were you,” Alleyn asked her, “at ten to eight last night?”
“I was in my room upstairs, sir, at the end of the back corridor. I had just changed my apron and noticed the time and thought I would go downstairs and help Mary tidy the hall. So I came along the back corridor into the passage past the best bedrooms.”
“You mean past Mr. Bathgate’s room?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right. I got as far as the head of the stairs and looked over and I saw Mr. Rankin was still in the hall. Mary was there too, sir, locking the front door, and she looked up at me and jerked her head like, so I said to myself that I’d wait till the hall was clear before I came down. I turned back and as I passed Mr. Bathgate’s door I remembered I hadn’t brought his shaving water and that there was only two cigarettes left in his box. So I tapped on the door.”
“Yes?”
“The door wasn’t shut and when I tapped it, it swung in a bit like and at the same time Mr. Bathgate calls out, ‘Come in.’ So I went in and just as I was asking about the shaving water the lights went out and I felt all confused, sir, so I went out too, and kind of groped my way back to my own room, sir.”
“What was Mr. Bathgate doing?”
“Smoking a cigarette, sir, with a book in his hand. I think he had just called out something to Mr. Wilde who was bathing next door.”
“Thank you, Ethel.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ethel plaintively. She withdrew with some reluctance.
Alleyn, with a mental shrug at Nigel’s amazing imbecility in having overlooked his own cast-iron alibi, got on with the work. Roberts, the pantry man, proved unprofitable. He had been in his pantry solidly for twenty minutes when the gong sounded. The cook and odd-boy were also completely without interest Alleyn turned his attention to the hall itself.
He produced a tape measure and carefully took measurements between the cocktail table and the foot of the stairs. The tray with its sordid array of used glasses had been left untouched.
“All very nice and proper,” grumbled Alleyn to Detective-Sergeant Bailey, “nothing disturbed except the minor detail of the body.”
“Lovely funeral if we’d only had a corpse, sort of,” responded Bailey.
“Well, young Bathgate says the body was lying at right angles to the gong. The last that Mary saw of Mr. Rankin he was standing at the cocktail tray. Presumably at the end of it when he was struck. Come here, Bunce. How tall are you?”
“Five-foot-eleven in me socks, sir.”
“Good enough. The body is just on six foot. Stand here, will you?”