“If you will accept a commission, dear and honoured lady, it would be to investigate the relationships between the various members of the company, their activities on the third night of the play and whether by any chance an outsider could have had any chance of changing over the daggers. I am a student of psychology in an amateur way, and I do not rule out the possibility that the murderer is a woman, particularly if the right (!) person was killed and the dagger was indeed intended for Bourton and not for Rinkley.”
Dame Beatrice showed the letter to Jonathan and Deborah. Deborah said, “Emma wrote that, but Marcus supplied the summary for it.”
Jonathan asked whether Dame Beatrice intended to accept the commission. She cackled and replied that he who supped with the devil must have a long spoon.
Chapter 11
Mytilus Edulis Has Orange Gills
“An actor, too, perhaps, if I see cause.”
« ^ »
Give you a summary of the loves and hates among the cast, my most eccentric and delightful of aunts?” said Jonathan. “Nothing easier, but then I think you had better canvas Deb’s opinion. We see eye to eye in all aspects of living and loving, but we don’t always agree in our reactions towards our acquaintances.”
“That only applies to the people each of us knew before we married,” said Deborah. “It’s a funny thing, and I’ve often noticed it, but hardly any wife can put up with the friends and cronies of her husband’s bachelor days, and that goes for the husband’s view of his wife’s girlhood confidantes. He can’t stand them, as a general rule, unless he falls for one of them. Then the fat really is in the fire.”
“If you are accepting Lynn’s commission,” said Jonathan, “mind you sting him good and plenty. He’s got oodles of money and will be glad to write you off against tax.”
“He couldn’t do that, could he?” asked Deborah seriously.
“I ought to demand payment by results,” said Dame Beatrice. “Payment must be geared to productivity. We are always being told so. Of course, the first thing which would strike an unbiased observer is that the offer of this commission is an attempt, and a crude one, to throw dust in my eyes. You see, other things being equal, (which, of course, they never are), my primary suspect would be Mr Lynn himself. He held the only key to the cupboard in which the properties were kept, so it is obvious that he, among all of you, had very much the best chance of substituting one dagger for another without being detected. I said at the beginning, and I adhere to it, that the daggers were changed over before the last performance began.”
“If that is so, it seems to let out Narayan Rao,” said Jonathan. Dame Beatrice looked enquiringly at him. “Narayan lost an appeal against Rinkley for damage to his car. I don’t know the details. It happened some time ago, but Narayan was on the loser’s end and can’t have been very pleased about it.”
“Would he have been in a position to change over the daggers?”
“Well, he had a chair in the wings not too far from the trestle tables, but the third performance was the only one he saw, so although he may be familiar with the text of the play—he’s got a London B.A. degree in English—he certainly knew nothing of our production of it. I really think he should be ruled out.”
“How came it that he was given a seat in the wings?”
“He lent us his two-year-old son as the fairy changeling.”
“I do not remember the child.”
“No, you wouldn’t. He had a tummy upset on the first and second nights and did not appear, but he was all right on the Saturday, so Narayan Rao brought him along and looked after him until he was needed. Little Sharma was only on stage for a few minutes and, when Deb handed him back, his father changed him into his street clothes, left his little gold tunic and headband on the chair and took him straight home. The chap Lynn hired to supervise the parking of cars saw them go.”
“So Narayan Rao knew nothing of Mr Rinkley’s illness?”
“Not at the time, nor, of course, that Bourton killed himself with the substituted dagger. He knows by now, I suppose. Even if he doesn’t read the papers he must have heard the gossip. The story is all over the town. It takes Cook and Carrie twice as long as usual to do the marketing, and as for Deb and me, we dread having to stick our noses outside the front door. Fortunately the servants love all the notoriety and fuss and Cook, I believe, lives in hope of selling her story to one of the Sunday papers and reaping a rich harvest.”
“Are you really accepting a commission from Lynn?” Deborah asked, as Dame Beatrice took out a notebook and, seated at the breakfast table which had just been cleared, began to write.
“I am not in a position to do so. He is not calling me in as consultant psychiatrist, but to find a murderer. The Home Office sometimes calls upon me to do that, and no man can serve two masters.”
“You don’t really suspect Lynn of changing over the daggers, do you?” asked Jonathan.
“My previous point, that he would have had much the best opportunity to do so, should be borne in mind, and there is another thing which may be of equal importance. On his own showing, he is an expert on weapons and would have seen the possibility of turning a narrow-bladed rapier into a dagger of the required size. He may also have known of a man who could do the work for him, a man who would have had no suspicions because he had repaired weapons, replaced lost parts, restored mountings and so on and so forth for Mr Lynn, probably over a period of years.”
“If Lynn has anything on his conscience—and what you say, Aunt, does make one think a bit—wasn’t it rather rash of him to point out to you and to the police that the murder weapon was a cut-down rapier?”
“I think he felt he had no option. If I myself had been given an opportunity to examine the weapon, the chances are that I should have known at once that it was made from a rapier. The expert the police will call in will not only realise the same thing, but will date the rapier and may even be able to make a fair estimate of when its transformation to a dagger took place. The weakness of my theory that a modern blacksmith did the work is that the cutting-down process may have been done as early as the seventeenth century, you see.”
“In which case Lynn could be as innocent as I believe him to be,” said Jonathan.
“Hasn’t Aunt Adela undermined your confidence in him just a little, though?” asked Deborah.
“Dented it a trifle; not undermined it.”
“I have made a list of twelve people who were in the play,” said Dame Beatrice, indicating her notebook. “What I would like from you and Deborah is your view of the interrelationships among these twelve people so far as you were able to observe them during the rehearsals.”
“Twelve people? Which of us are you leaving out?” asked Deborah.
“Your two selves, Rosamund and Edmund, the fairies en bloc, the child Yolanda, the boy who played Puck and, only for the time being, the young man who was Egeus.”
“The last one is Jasper Lynn, Marcus’s adopted son, whose head is too full of A-levels to bother itself with murder, and the other is Tom Woolidge’s younger brother Peter. You would be right to call him charming,” said Deborah. “He is quite the nicest possible type of really nice boy and has been wonderful in helping to look after the children. I’m glad you’ve left him out of your calculations.”
“Pro tem only. I am like Long John Silver. He was fond of young Jim Hawkins and I always wonder whether even Fagin did not feel some affection for the Artful Dodger and the other little rapscallions. Categorically, how did Marcus Lynn regard the other eleven on my list?”