A Man Lay Dead. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ an athlete’s figure. His hair, dead white, had not suffered the indignity of middle age, but lay, thick and sleek, on his finely shaped head. His eyes were a peculiarly vivid blue, and deep-set under heavily marked brows, his lips firm and strongly compressed at the corners: altogether an almost too handsome man. His brain was of the same stereotyped quality as his looks. An able diplomat before the war, and after it a Cabinet Minister of rather orthodox brilliance, he still found time to write valuable monographs on the subject of his ruling passion—the fighting tools of the older civilizations—and to indulge his favourite hobby—he had almost made it a science—of organizing amusing house-parties.

      It was characteristic of him that after a general greeting he should concentrate on Nigel, the least of his guests.

      ‘I’m so glad you’ve been able to come, Bathgate,’ he said. ‘Angela tells me she fetched you from the station. Ghastly experience, isn’t it? Charles should have warned you.’

      ‘My dear, he was too intrepid,’ shouted Mrs Wilde. ‘Angela took and threw him into her squalid little tumbril, and he flashed past us with set green lips and eyes that had gazed upon stark death. Charles is so proud of his relative…aren’t you, Charles?’

      ‘He’s a pukka sahib,’ agreed Rankin solemnly.

      ‘Are we really going to play the Murder Game?’ asked Rosamund Grant. ‘Angela ought to win it.’

      ‘We are going to play A Murder Game…a special brand of your own, isn’t it, Uncle Hubert?’

      ‘I’ll explain my plans,’ said Handesley, ‘when everyone has got a cocktail. People always imagine one is so much more amusing after one has given them something to drink. Will you ring for Vassily, Angela?’

      ‘A gam’ of murderings?’ said Doctor Tokareff, who had been examining one of the knives. The firelight gleamed on his large spectacles, and he looked, as Mrs Wilde murmured to Rankin, ‘too grimly sinister.’…‘A gam’ of murderings? That should be sush a good fun. I am ignorant of this gam’.’

      ‘In its cruder form it is very popular at the moment,’ said Wilde, ‘but I feel sure Handesley has invented subtleties that will completely transform it.’

      A door on the left of the stairs opened, and through it came an elderly Slav carrying a cocktail shaker. He was greeted enthusiastically.

      ‘Vassily Vassilyevitch,’ began Mrs Wilde in Anglo-Russian of comic-opera vintage. ‘Little father! Be good enough to bestow upon this unworthy hand a mouthful of your talented concoction.’

      Vassily nodded his head and smiled genially. He opened the cocktail shaker, and with an air of superb and exaggerated concentration poured out a clear yellowish mixture.

      ‘What do you think of it, Nigel?’ asked Rankin. ‘It’s Vassily’s own recipe. Marjorie calls it the Soviet Repression.’

      ‘Not much repression about it,’ murmured Arthur Wilde.

      Nigel, sipping gingerly at his portion, was inclined to agree.

      He watched the old Russian fussing delightedly among the guests. Angela told him that Vassily had been in her uncle’s service ever since he was a young attaché at Petersburg, Nigel’s eyes followed him as he moved amongst that little group of human molecules with whom, had he but known it, he himself was to become so closely and so horribly associated.

      He saw his cousin, Charles Rankin, of whom, he reflected, he knew actually so little. He sensed some sort of emotional link between Charles and Rosamund Grant. She was watching Rankin now as he leant, with something of the conventional philanderer in his pose, towards Marjorie Wilde. ‘Mrs Wilde is more his affair, really, than Rosamund,’ thought Nigel. ‘Rosamund is too intense. Charles likes to be comfortable.’ He looked at Arthur Wilde, who was talking earnestly with their host. Wilde had none of Handesley’s spectacular looks, but his thin face was interesting and, to Nigel, attractive. There was quality in the form of the skull and jaw, and a sensitive elusiveness about the set of the lips.

      He wondered how two such widely diverging types as this middle-aged student and his fashionable wife could ever have attracted each other. Beyond them, half in the shadow, stood the Russian doctor, his head inclined forward, his body erect and immobile.

      ‘What does he make of us?’ wondered Nigel.

      ‘You look very grim,’ said Angela at his elbow. ‘Are you concocting a snappy bit for your gossip page, or thinking out a system for the Murder Game?’

      Before he could answer her, Sir Hubert broke in on the general conversations: ‘The dressing-bell goes in five minutes,’ he said, ‘so if you are all feeling strong enough, I’ll explain the principles of my edition of the Murder Game.’

      ‘Company…‘shun!’ shouted Rankin.

       CHAPTER 2 The Dagger

      ‘The idea is this,’ began Sir Hubert, as Vassily delicately circulated his mixture: ‘you all know the usual version of the Murder Game. One person is chosen as the murderer, his identity being concealed from all the players. They scatter, and he seizes his moment to ring a bell or bang a gong. This symbolizes the “murder”. They collect and hold a trial, one person being appointed as prosecuting attorney. By intensive examination he tries to discover the “murderer”.’

      ‘Excuse me, please,’ said Doctor Tokareff. ‘I am still, how you say, unintelligible. I have not been so happy to gambol in susha funny sport heretobefore, so please make him for me more clearer.’

      ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ asked Mrs Wilde, a good deal too loudly.

      ‘I will explain my version,’ said Sir Hubert, ‘and I think it will then be quite clear. Tonight at dinner one of us will be handed a little scarlet plaque by Vassily. I myself do not know upon which of the party his choice will fall, but let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that Mr Bathgate is cast by Vassily for the part of the murderer. He will take his scarlet plaque and say nothing to anybody. He has between five-thirty tomorrow afternoon and eleven tomorrow night as the time allotted for the performance of his “murder”. He must try to get one of us alone, unknown to the others, and at the crucial moment tap him on the shoulder and say, “You are the corpse”. He will then switch off the lights at the main behind the stair wall. The victim must instantly fall down as though dead, and Mr Bathgate must give one good smack at that Assyrian gong there behind the cocktail tray and make off to whatever spot he considers least incriminating. As soon as the lights go off and we hear the gong, we must all remain where we are for two minutes…you can count your pulse-beats for a guide. At the end of two minutes we may turn up the lights. Having found the “corpse”, we shall hold the trial, with the right, each of us, to cross-examine every witness. If Mr Bathgate has been clever enough, he will escape detection. I hope I have made everything reasonably understandable.’

      ‘Pellucidly explicit,’ said Doctor Tokareff. ‘I shall enjoy immensely to take place in such 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 СКАЧАТЬ