The Case of the Gilded Fly (11 page)

‘And Mr Blake –' said Sir Richard, turning to Nigel.

‘Oh, don't send Nigel away,' Fen interrupted. ‘I want him to stand guard with me. I suppose,' he continued rather wistfully, ‘that I'm to be allowed to help?'

Sir Richard grinned. ‘By all means. But I don't think you'll have much detecting to do in this case. Suicide is the obvious verdict.'

‘Yes?' said Fen, looking at him curiously. ‘I'll keep an eye on things, just the same, if you don't mind.'

‘Just as you like. I must go and phone. Don't let anyone in.' And he went off upstairs with Robert.

Now for the first time Nigel had leisure to look about him. Yseut was lying on her side, with her legs bent up under her, her left arm pinioned under her, and the right flung out with palm upwards. Near it lay a heavy, blue-metal revolver, and on one of the fingers was a ring of curious design. She was wearing a dark brown coat and a green skirt, brown shoes and silk stockings, but was apparently without hat or gloves or bag. She lay in front of a chest of drawers, one of whose drawers was open with the contents untidily displayed, and on which lay a hand-mirror, a brush and comb and an expensive-looking bottle of hair-lotion. The rest of the room offered little to Nigel's inexperienced eye. There was a bed, a wash-stand and a wardrobe, a rug beside the bed, a bedside table with a lamp, a book and an ashtray containing one or two stale cigarette stubs, and several odd shoes were scattered about the floor. A shirt had been tossed carelessly on to the chair at the foot of the bed. The smell of gunpowder still hung on the air. The window, apparently, was shut, but at the moment that could not be investigated.

So Nigel turned his attention back to what was left of Yseut. It was curious, he thought, how completely death had drained her of personality. And yet not curious: for her personality had centred entirely on her sex, and now that life was gone, that too had vanished, leaving her a neuter, an uninteresting construction of clay, suddenly pathetic. She
had been
an attractive girl. But that ‘had been' was not a conventional gesture to the fact of death. It was an honest admission that without life the most beautiful body is an object of no interest. We are not bodies, thought Nigel, we are lives. And oddly, there came to
him at that moment a new and firm conviction of the nature of love.

He looked again; remembered Yseut singing and dancing; remembered Helen's ‘She's not bad, you know, just silly'; and with all his heart, and despite the discomfort she had caused, wished her alive again.

‘Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot …'

Just as for Claudio the fact of virginity had been nothing compared with the fact of death, so for Nigel all other considerations paled beside it.… He shook himself irritably; this was not a time for literary quotation. If Yseut had been murdered.… He looked inquiringly at Fen, but that expert, guessing the unspoken question, merely said non-committally: ‘It looks like suicide', and continued his perplexed examination of the floor round the body.

Sir Richard came back rubbing his hands together. ‘Your wife is going to wait,' he told Fen. ‘She's talking to Warner at the moment. And I've managed to pack old Wilkes off to his room. The police are going to be here as soon as they can get, which will put an end, officially, to my responsibility, thank heaven.'

Fen nodded. Then said abruptly: ‘Where on earth is that noise coming from? Nigel, go and tell them to shut it off.'

Nigel realized that ‘The Hero's Works of Peace' were being trumpeted forth on the evening air, apparently from the room opposite. He had forgotten about the radio he had heard earlier in the evening. He went across and tapped on the door; then, being convinced that if there was a reply he would never hear it above the din, walked straight in.

He was more than surprised to discover that the two occupants of the room were Donald Fellowes and Nicholas Barclay. They were sitting in armchairs by the fire, listening to a radio which stood on a table beside them. Nigel stopped short on seeing them, and Nicholas performed an elaborate pantomime to demand silence, but Nigel waved him impatiently aside.

‘Yseut's dead,' he said with unnecessary abruptness, and added to Donald: ‘In your room. And for God's sake turn that
thing off. I can't hear myself speak.' Nicholas turned it off. ‘Well, well, well!' was his only comment.

Donald sat silent. He showed no reaction at all that Nigel could see, except to go a little pale. ‘How do you mean, dead?' he muttered. ‘And why in my room?'

‘She's been shot in the head.'

‘Murdered?' asked Nicholas, and added callously: ‘Can't say I'm surprised. Did you do it, Donald?' he inquired with interest.

‘No, damn you, I didn't.'

‘The indications,' said Nigel, ‘point to suicide.'

Donald showed his first sign of genuine emotion. ‘Suicide?' he queried.

‘You seem to be surprised.'

Donald went red and stammered. ‘I – well – she wasn't well liked, you know. And she didn't seem the sort to – kill herself.' He suddenly buried his face in his hands. ‘Oh God!' he said.

Nigel felt uncomfortable and at a loss as to what to say.

‘I suppose I ought to come across,' said Donald after a moment.

‘You can please yourself about that, I imagine. It's your room. And no doubt the police will want to ask you some questions when they arrive.'

‘Oh!' said Nicholas. ‘So they're not here yet? When did this happen?'

‘About ten minutes ago. Sir Richard Freeman is in charge at the moment, and Fen's helping him.'

Nicholas pursed his lips and looked solemn. ‘The college's tame detective, eh? So they think it's suicide. Ten minutes ago; that must have been the noise we heard, Donald. But the Battle section was making such an infernal row that we didn't take any notice; and you said it was only a group of second-year men fooling about. Do you think they'll want to see me?' he asked Nigel. ‘Or can I go home?'

‘I imagine that sooner or later they'll want to see everyone who had any connection with Yseut. So you may as well stay.'

‘I shan't go back,' said Donald suddenly. ‘I – don't – want – to – see –'

‘All right, laddie,' said Nicholas. ‘We'll stop here and console
one another. And if either of us tries to do a bunk for the next boat-train to Ostend, the other can stop him. See you later, Nigel.'

Nigel nodded and went out. The reactions of both of them, he thought, had been typical: Nicholas' flippancy was habitual. He was struck, though, by the lack of surprise with which they had received the news. It was almost as though they had been expecting it.

He found Fen and Sir Richard in the sitting-room, endeavouring to keep up a pretence of activity, though until the doctor and the fingerprint and photograph people had got finished, there was practically nothing they could do. Nigel told them of the whereabouts of Nicholas and Donald, and Sir Richard, after a few questions concerning their identity and their connection with Yseut, nodded his approval of the arrangement he had made.

‘We can't possibly keep an eye on everyone,' he said, ‘and if anyone other than the girl herself is responsible, they'd be mad to try and clear out.'

A quarter of an hour later the police arrived, and were made
au fait
with the situation. The Inspector, an alert, sharp-eyed little man with a harsh voice, called Cordery, asked the ordinary pertinent questions and took a brief look round. Then he went into conference with Sir Richard, while the Sergeants who dealt with fingerprints and photography went about their business. The police surgeon, a tall, laconic, deep-voiced man, made a cursory inspection of the body and then waited patiently for them to finish.

‘You'd better fingerprint anything likely,' the Inspector had said. ‘For the moment, of course, we shan't have anything except the girl's prints for purposes of comparison.'

The doctor's preliminary report was brief and to the point. ‘Death anything from twenty minutes to half an hour ago,' he announced. ‘Cause of death the obvious one, unless there are any poisons unknown to science lurking around. The bullet's presumably lodged somewhere at the back of the cerebellum. Angle of penetration about horizontal, I should say. Can't tell you any more until I've had a proper look – and of course there'll have to be a P.M.'

Nigel, who had stood for a minute or two watching one of the Sergeants playing about with insufflator powder, camel-hair brushes, plates of glass and unpleasant-smelling ointments, became quickly bored, and wandered back to talk to Fen.

The change in Fen, he told himself, was astonishing. His usual slightly fantastic naivety had completely disappeared, and its place was taken by a rather formidable, ice-cold concentration. Sir Richard, who knew the signs, looked up from his conference with the Inspector and sighed. At the opening of an investigation, the mood was invariable, as always when Fen was concentrating particularly hard; when he was not interested in what was going on, he relapsed into an excessively irritating form of boisterous gaiety; when he had discovered anything of importance, he ‘quickly became melancholy', after the manner of the young lady whose folly induced her to sit on a holly; and when an investigation was finally concluded, he became sunk in such a state of profound gloom that it was days before he could be aroused from it. Moreover these perverse and chameleon-like habits tended not unnaturally to get on people's nerves.

The fingerprint Sergeant put his head out of the bedroom door. ‘What about the window, sir?' he said addressing the company at large with a fine impartiality. ‘Am I to do that?'

‘Yes, Sergeant,' said Sir Richard. ‘We can't leave it all night for anyone to mess about with. Never mind the black-out – there isn't an alert, and I'll take the responsibility – but get finished as quickly as you can.'

‘Right you are, sir,' said the Sergeant, and disappeared again. A moment later a flood of light went up into the heavens. A passing Free French pilot shook his head mournfully. ‘Le black-out anglais,' he said to himself with the air of one whose worst suspicions have been confirmed.

It was not long before the fingerprinting was finished, and the doctor went back to make a second and more detailed examination. Before he went, however, Fen crossed the room and said something to him in a low voice. The doctor looked inquiringly at Sir Richard.

‘That's all right, Henderson,' said Sir Richard. ‘The Professor is helping us over the case.'

The doctor nodded and disappeared into the bedroom; the
second examination did not take him long. ‘Not much to add,' he said when he emerged again. ‘Slight abrasions on the left buttock and the left side of the head, caused presumably by the fall. Nothing else that I can see for the moment.' He turned to Fen. ‘And you were quite right. The tendons of both knees are badly strained.'

The Inspector looked sharply at Fen, but for the moment refrained from comment.

‘Oh, and there's one other thing; I don't know whether you noticed it,' the doctor continued. ‘The ring on the fourth finger of the right hand is jammed over the knuckle, rather as if it had been put on after death; though what could induce anyone to do such a thing I can't imagine. It makes the idea of suicide a bit doubtful, you know. People don't go about wearing their rings in an uncomfortable position like that.'

The Inspector grunted. ‘Go and take it off, Spencer,' he said to the Sergeant. ‘It may be useful. You've tested it for prints, I suppose?'

‘Yes, sir. Nothing, I'm afraid.' Spencer went into the bedroom.

‘That in itself is odd,' said the Inspector. ‘The girl's left-hand prints should be on it if she put it on. However, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

‘With all due deference to that well-worn metaphor,' said Fen, ‘I have never quite been able to see how you can cross a bridge before you come to it,' and attracted to himself a malignant glare from the Inspector.

‘If you've finished all your flapdoodle,' said the doctor, though it was not at all clear to what exactly he was referring, ‘will it be all right for me to take the girl away?'

Fen and Sir Richard and the Inspector looked inquiringly at one another, but no one raised any objection, and Fen appeared to have lost interest in the proceedings altogether.

‘Yes, take her away,' said the Inspector wearily. And the doctor went out, to return with two constables and a stretcher, on which the body was deposited and borne out to a waiting ambulance.

In the meantime, Sergeant Spencer had returned with the ring, which he laid on the table in front of the Inspector, and at
which they all gazed with some interest. It was a heavy, gilt affair of some size, the oval set with a curious, formalized pattern representing some kind of insect with wings.

‘Looks Egyptian to me,' said the Inspector. ‘It's not gold, I suppose?' he inquired generally.

‘No, gilded,' said Nigel. ‘Not of much value, I imagine.'

‘I think it is Egyptian,' said Fen, ‘or, at any rate, an imitation of an Egyptian model. I can easily find out if you think it's important,' – his expression indicated that he did not – ‘because the Professor of Egyptology is a Fellow here, and I think he's in college tonight. At all events he was in hall.'

‘It might be as well, sir,' said the Inspector. ‘If the ring proves not to have belonged to Miss Haskell, we shall have to try and trace it, you know.'

‘Um. Yes,' said Fen dubiously. ‘Nigel, go and see if you can find Burrows, will you? You know where his room is.'

Burrows was discovered without difficulty, and expressed himself delighted to assist a murder investigation in any way he could. The ring, he said, was a reproduction of a piece of jewellery of the twelfth dynasty at present in the British Museum. Asked if it was usual for such objects to be copied in modern jewellery, he replied that the question was somewhat outside his sphere, but that he imagined not, and that in any case it would be an expensive business, and would presumably have required special permission from the trustees of the Museum. The Inspector made a note of this last fact, and reflected that it would make the job of tracing the ring a good deal easier. Sir Richard, afflicted apparently by a sudden disinterested passion for knowledge, asked what sort of insect it was supposed to represent, and was told somewhat pityingly that it was a fly. On his remarking that the wings pointed forwards, and not backwards as with the majority of flies, he was further informed that as far as it was possible to judge from such a formalized representation, it was intended to be a gold-girdled fly,
chrysotoxum bicinctum
. Some reference was made at this point to the Professor of Entomology, but the Inspector, feeling that matters were getting a little out of hand, hastily brought the discussion to a close, and Burrows retired amid expressions of thanks, looking intensely pleased with himself.