The Case of the Gilded Fly (20 page)

‘Then you know who the other person was?' said Fen softly.

Nicholas set his lips. ‘No,' he answered.

‘I suggest that even if you didn't know at the time, Fellowes would have told you when he returned.'

‘Why should he?'

‘It would have been natural. Unless' – Fen paused – ‘unless of course he already knew that a murder had been committed, and was anxious to cover up.'

Nicholas went white. ‘I don't know who the other person was,' he repeated slowly and emphatically.

Fen grunted and got up. ‘You're being very unhelpful,' he said, ‘though fortunately it's of no importance. There's already sufficient evidence to hang someone – perhaps you know whom. I assure you, it's only for my own satisfaction that I want things nicely ticketed and catalogued, and I suppose I can't expect you to subscribe to that.' Nicholas glanced across at Donald. ‘It's all right,' added Fen ironically, ‘I'll give you plenty of time to fix your story with Fellowes before I question him. Fools are too easy prey without courtesies of that kind.' His eyes were hard.

‘ –
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen die Lore-Ley getan
,' the parrot concluded with hoarse triumph, and fell abruptly silent.

Fen turned back again to Nicholas. ‘Tell me,' he said, ‘your opinion on the ethics of murder.'

Nicholas looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Very well,' he said at last. ‘I believe killing to be an inescapable necessity of
the world in which we live, the abominable, sentimental, mob-ruled world of cheap newspapers and cheaper minds, where every imbecile is articulate and every folly tolerated, where the arts are dying out and the intellect is scorned, where every little cheap-jack knows what he likes and what he thinks. Our moralities, our democracy, have taught us to suffer fools gladly, and now we suffer from an overplus of fools. Every fool dead is an advance, and be damned to humanity and virtue and charity and Christian tolerance.'

Fen nodded. ‘Quite the little fascist,' he said. ‘Julius Vander, in
The Professor
, would appeal to you very much. The facts, allowing for a certain wildness, may be correct; the conclusion is fortunately false. What you need,' he said benevolently, ‘is a little elementary education; I think you would find it helpful.' He smiled sweetly and was gone.

Fen studied Sheila McGaw curiously as he put his drink on the table and settled down opposite her. The immediate impression was that she was somewhere in her thirties. Her sharply-cut features were pale and lined; her voice was hoarse with overmuch smoking, and she coughed frequently. Only after a while did one realize that she was in fact much younger than this – hardly more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Small gestures, a sort of underlying softness in the features, and little mannerisms of speech and expression betrayed this. Less tough than she looks, thought Fen, who was prone to slightly out-of-date Americanisms.

She offered him a cigarette saying: ‘Well? More about the murder?'

Fen nodded. ‘In a way. All I really wanted was to confirm the business about the ring.'

‘Oh, that. I gather it puts me in the front line of suspects. And the fact that I had a motive. And the fact that I haven't got an alibi.' She blew smoke in two tapering jets from her rather prominent narrow nostrils.

‘No alibi?'

‘I was in my room reading all last evening. The police have made the brilliant deduction that I might have slipped out and back again at any time without anyone knowing.'

Fen sighed. ‘There's an almost total lack of alibis in this case. Lots of motives, no alibis, and, in the Inspector's opinion, an impossible crime.'

‘You mean it was suicide?'

‘I'm certain it was nothing of the sort. It would be too perfect an example of dramatic irony to be real.'

She nodded, and then said: ‘If the police think it's suicide, must you disabuse them? Suicide or murder, it was really an awfully good thing.'

‘This young woman must have been very much disliked,' Fen murmured. ‘I sometimes wonder if you haven't all lost your sense of proportion over her.'

‘If you'd worked with her for a couple of years you wouldn't say that.'

‘Tell me: this ring of yours; has anyone ever particularly remarked on it?'

‘I should think it's provoked a witticism of some sort from everyone in the theatre.'

Fen grunted, gazed at his beer with distaste, and swallowed half of it at a gulp. Just such an expression must Brother Barbaro have had when, at Francis' behest, he swallowed the ass's dung. Whisky was unobtainable at the ‘Aston Arms'.

‘Has there been any comment on it just recently?' he asked. ‘Within the last week?'

‘There was some talk about it in the green room after rehearsal on Wednesday, in which more or less everyone joined. Afterwards I went into one of the dressing-rooms to wash some paint off my hands, took it off and left it on the wash-basin. When I went back for it half-an-hour later it was gone.'

‘Whose dressing-room?'

‘Well, they're swapped about a good deal; it's the one Rachel will have next week. It happens to be the first you come to.'

‘And who was present when there was this talk about the ring?'

‘Almost everyone, I think, including the hangers-on.'

‘Including – ?' Fen named a name which made Sheila sit up abruptly and stare at him for a moment or two before replying.

‘Yes,' she said slowly, ‘but surely –'

‘Don't misinterpret me,' said Fen. ‘It would be most unwise to jump to conclusions.' He relapsed into a moody silence. Then he said:

‘Have you any objection to Warner's coming here and producing this play over your head, as it were?'

Sheila shrugged, and fell into a paroxysm of coughing. ‘Damn,' she said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I'm sorry. What were you saying? Oh yes, about Robert's producing this play. Well, I suppose it would have been good publicity if I could have done it. But he's an infinitely better producer than I am, and it's only reasonable that he should have wanted to produce his own play. No, I don't mind. I could have prevented it being put on here if I'd chosen, but I didn't choose.'

‘You admire his work, then?'

Sheila grinned. ‘ “Admire”: hardly the appropriate word, I think. Does one venture to “admire” Shakespeare?'

Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘All that, eh? Of course,' he added hastily, ‘I'm no judge of contemporary literature, but I think I agree. Yes, I think I agree. And
Metromania
is –'

‘The best thing he's ever done.'

Donald Fellowes joined them, clutching a half-pint. ‘Nicholas tells me,' he said stiffly to Fen, ‘that I am now under suspicion.'

‘Fellowes,' said Fen kindly, ‘you are every sort of imbecile. You don't, alas, realize that withheld information always comes out in the end. Then why do you withhold it? It makes you look so silly to go on like that when everyone knows exactly what you're hiding.'

Donald muttered: ‘Well, go on then. Tell me what I'm hiding.'

‘My good young man,' said Fen with some asperity, ‘I'm not here to do what you think fit. I shall tell you when I'm ready. In the meantime –'

‘In the meantime,' Donald put in with sudden violence, ‘what the hell's it got to do with you, anyway? You're not the police.'

Fen got to his feet; he towered over Donald as a liner towers over a tug. ‘You are,' he said, ‘without exception the most
imbecile ignominious cretinous poltroon it has ever been my evil fortune to meet. What is worse, you become more imbecile, ignominious, cretinous and poltroonish with every hour that passes. You are, one must grudgingly admit, a very good organist and choirmaster. Otherwise it's extremely unlikely that the college would have tolerated you for so long. Several times I've had to use my influence to prevent you being sent down for idleness. And now you have the impertinence to come to me and question my right to discover what I can about this case. I'd better warn you here and now that if you continue this idiotic policy of concealment you'll quite justly get yourself landed in gaol; and this time I shall not get you out of it.'

Donald was pale. ‘Damn you!' he said. ‘What right have you got to talk to me like that? Oh my God, I shall be glad to get out of this place – with its lousy traditions and cheap minds and jacks-in-office. If you imagine I care twopence about your threats, I can assure you you're quite mistaken.' He glared at Fen for a moment, then turned and went out.

Nigel, who had come in on the tail-end of this unexpected and disgraceful scene, whistled softly. ‘Well, well!' he said. ‘Invective with a vengeance!'

Fen grinned cheerfully. ‘A calculated performance on my part, I fear, designed to a perfectly dispassionate end. Maybe I shouldn't have done it.' He looked dubious. ‘Still, it might have helped.' He rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

Sheila chuckled. ‘Donald on his dignity is always slightly ludicrous,' she said. ‘He'll have got over it in half-an-hour or so.' She yawned and stretched.

‘And now,' said Fen, looking anxiously about him, ‘I must see Miss West, before this rehearsal gets on the move again.' He pointed at his tankard. ‘Nigel, be a dear boy and get me some more of this odious concoction.' He moved off purposefully in the direction of Rachel, who was talking to Robert.

Robert said: ‘I hope you're not too bored with the rehearsal.' His eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

‘On the contrary, I find it fascinating,' said Fen, ‘and inconceivable.'

‘Inconceivable?'

‘In this, as in a very few other works of literature, there are
things which one can only put down to divine inspiration. Normally one can easily follow the rather laborious and mechanical processes of an author's thought. It's the unexpected, inconceivable things which don't fit into that process, and which yet are absolutely
right
, that I mean.'

Robert chuckled. ‘Tricks! A bag of tricks solely, I assure you. I'm going to begin on another shortly which I hope will be better – or less bad.'

Fen was pensive. ‘Another?'

‘As soon as I get finished here. And next time it will go on in town, with all the bunting and flags out. I hope and think this will, too. In fact I'm certain of it, now we've got this far. Even after years of experience one never quite knows when one's writing a thing how it will turn out in practice.' Under the sober indifference of his tone there was a strain of fanaticism which led Fen to ask:

‘Why, chiefly, do you write?'

Robert smiled. ‘For money – and for the sake of showing off; I think that's why most men, even the very greatest, have written. The Creation of Art' – he succeeded in making the capitals articulate – ‘is an object which seldom enters into their calculations. Necessarily. Most original artists don't know what art is, or beauty. They're almost invariably hopeless critics; writers never know the first thing about music, or musicians about writing, or painters about either, so it can't be beauty they're all intent on. That presumably is a sort of incidental occurrence, like the pearl in an oyster.'

There was a fractional pause. Then Fen nodded vigorously. ‘I look forward,' he said, ‘to Monday night. Are you getting on all right without Yseut?'

Robert looked uncomfortable. ‘Callous as it seems, we're getting on like wildfire without Yseut. Her habit of unintelligent but persistent criticism was becoming very wearing. I've no objection to having my plays criticized, providing it's along the right lines. But she, dear child, never knew the first thing about plays, and simply slanged anything that offended her commercial-bred prejudices. Slanged publicly and offensively, what's more. I may say it was getting to be something of a serious problem.'

‘Granted that,' said Rachel, ‘I think everyone has been making too much of her nuisance-value, particularly since they've heard she's dead. After all, she wasn't more than one of many tiresome people Providence has seen fit to inflict on the world.'

‘I quite agree,' said Fen. ‘The forked tail has been overmuch in evidence. It's been very harassing.' He sighed. ‘Everyone has been so anxious to tell the police how much they disliked her – to divert suspicion from themselves, I suppose, by a sort of sophisticated double-bluff – that it's been impossible to sort out any finer and more significant shades of opinion.'

‘Is it usual,' asked Robert mildly, ‘for the detective to discuss the crime with his suspects in this impartial and informative fashion?'

‘A
sine qua non,'
said Fen cheerfully. ‘In the course of the discussion they are supposed to give away their inmost feelings. But do you regard yourself as a suspect?'

‘Well,' said Robert a trifle vaguely, ‘I suppose I could have rushed out of the lavatory, shot the girl, rushed back again, and re-appeared at the appropriate moment.'

‘I'm sorry to say,' said Fen, ‘that for reasons which have been discussed, you could have done nothing of the sort. You're quite cleared from that imputation.'

‘I won't say I'm relieved, because I never really considered it seriously. But it's nice to have things cleared up.' Robert appeared to be filing the matter away in some remote corner of his mind. Rachel said:

‘And what about me? Am I above suspicion too?'

‘That depends,' Fen replied affably. ‘What were you doing at the time of the crime?' he apostrophized her sternly.

‘Please, sir, I was at a cinema, brooding over the failings of the male sex.'

‘Oh?' Fen was surprised. ‘But I expected you to be impeccably vouched for by someone in North Oxford.'

‘My fault,' said Robert. ‘What with my literal mind and my personal vanity, I couldn't believe that was only an excuse to get away from me.'