Swan Song (25 page)

‘Oh, Lord,' groaned Adam, ‘if only I'd known . . .'

‘But you didn't know,' said Fen, ‘so there's no earthly use worrying about it . . . Anyway, let's watch what happens when the lift is lowered. Mudge is the lift for the purposes of this test . . . Haul away, Mudge,' he called. ‘Haul away, oh, haul away.' He broke into a sea-shanty, but was silenced by the Chief Constable.

The rope tied round the ankles of the skeleton tightened,
and in another moment, still suspended by the neck, its feet were lifted from the stool and dragged upwards towards the skylight. The back of the neck was pressed against the angle of the ceiling, and when the feet were within an inch or two of the skylight, there was a crack as one of the cervical vertebrae gave way under the strain.

‘Well, there we are,' said Fen. ‘Mudge,' he called, ‘can you fasten the rope somewhere, and undo the knot at the ankles?'

‘Right you are, sir,' came Mudge's disembodied answer. And after a moment's pause his hand appeared through the skylight, groped, found the knot, and loosened it. The skeleton swung down again like a pendulum, and the rope was withdrawn.

‘Hence his panic at your mention of suspending the laws of gravity,' Fen explained to Elizabeth. ‘Hanging a man feet upwards is certainly rather phenomenal . . . Now the stool, Mudge.'

One strand of the rope attached to the stool was jerked, and it fell on its side; the other, and the Highwayman's Hitch came undone. (‘That's lucky,' said Fen in mild surprise. ‘I don't often get it right first time.') This rope vanished, like its predecessor, and they were alone in the room with a skeleton swinging from a hook.

‘Neat,' said Fen with admiration. ‘Complex but neat. Of course once one had grasped the
method,
the
culprit
was obvious. As you see, the arrangements have taken me about ten minutes – which means that even if some other person had entered the dressing-room while Furbelow was showing Stapleton off the premises, he or she would not have had time to fix the trap, since Furbelow was away only three minutes. Stapleton was helped, of course, by the fact that there were plenty of hiding-places about the theatre, and what's more, his plan couldn't have been carried out if it hadn't been for Furbelow's habit of staying up till midnight, and of sitting with the door of his room open in order to minimize the
noxious gases from his electric fire. That was essential to Stapleton's alibi. After he'd dismantled his apparatus, he no doubt came down from the roof, and got away from the theatre, while Shand was in here with Furbelow . . . It's odd, though, to think that all the time he was dying of arsenic supplied by the man he was killing – and didn't know it.'

There was a long pause. Mudge could be heard clattering down the iron ladder from the roof. Elizabeth said to Adam: ‘Darling, I've been intolerable. But now it's all over, I'll really try to behave myself. And I do love you so much.'

Peacock said to Joan:

‘Levi's given me the job, my dear. Let's get married quickly.'

And in the place where, a week ago almost to the minute, Edwin Shorthouse had died, two couples embraced. Sir Richard began to display a marked interest in the litter of articles on the dressing-table. Fen, less discreet, looked on with an air of sentimental indulgence.

The Master, who had watched the entire proceedings open-mouthed, now spoke.

‘Extraordinary,' he said. ‘Very extraordinary and interesting. And how like Edwin to make a fuss and nuisance about even the simple act of dying. I won't say,' he added generously, ‘that I've quite fathomed it all yet . . .'

‘By the way,' said Fen, ‘where did you and Miss Thorn go when you left Wilkes that evening?'

‘Oh we never left him at all,' said the Master innocently. Then a spasm of annoyance passed over his face. ‘There now – I shouldn't have said that.'

‘Why not?' Fen asked, suddenly suspicious.

‘I promised Wilkes,' said the Master naïvely. ‘He rang up on the morning after my brother's death, and particularly asked me to say I had left him shortly before the time of the murder. I admit,' the Master went on unhappily, ‘that his motives were not clear to me, but he
was so insistent that I thought it would be discourteous to refuse. He mentioned, I believe, that it would have the effect of confusing you, though I cannot understand
why
. . .'

‘I see,' said Fen with deep and inexpressible emotion. ‘
I see
.'

‘But before you go, my dear fellow,' the Master pursued, ‘we must have a word about the New York production of my
Oresteia
.'

‘Surely you realize by now that I'm
not
the agent of the Metropolitan Opera House?'

‘Nor you are.' The Master's countenance was sad. ‘Well, never mind. I expect they wanted a younger man for the job. Better luck next time.' He grew more cheerful. ‘I'll tell you what I'll do, though. I'll let you sell me that nice little car of yours.'

Anyone passing through the bar of the ‘Mace and Sceptre' before lunch the following morning would have seen three people seated at a corner table. The girl, who was small and brown-haired, held an open note-book and a pencil, and there was an expression of unnatural gravity on her face. The younger of the two men sat gazing at his pint tankard with the greatest amiability. And the third member of the party was tall and lanky, with a ruddy, clean-shaven face and dark hair which stood up in rebellious spikes at the crown of his head. He held a glass of whisky, was frowning with the effort of concentration, and appeared to be making some oracular pronouncement. He said:

‘The era of my greatest successes . . .'

MARGERY ALLINGHAM

Mystery Mile

Police at the Funeral

Sweet Danger

Flowers for the Judge

The Case of the Late Pig

Dancers in Mourning

The Fashion in Shrouds

Traitor's Purse

Coroner's Pidgin

More Work for the Undertaker

The Tiger in the Smoke

The Beckoning Lady

Hide My Eyes

The China Governess

The Mind Readers

Cargo of Eagles

E.F. BENSON

The Blotting Book

The Luck of the Vails

NICHOLAS BLAKE

A Question of Proof

Thou Shell of Death

There's Trouble Brewing

The Beast must Die

The Smiler with the Knife

Malice in Wonderland

The Case of the Abominable Snowman

Minute for Murder

Head of a Traveller

The Dreadful Hollow

The Whisper in the Gloom

End of Chapter

The Widow's Cruise

The Worm of Death

The Sad Variety

The Morning After Death

EDMUND CRISPIN

Buried for Pleasure

The Case of the Gilded Fly

Holy Disorders

Love Lies Bleeding

The Moving Toyshop

Swan Song

A.A. MILNE

The Red House Mystery

GLADYS MITCHELL

Speedy Death

The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

The Longer Bodies

The Saltmarsh Murders

Death and the Opera

The Devil at Saxon Wall

Dead Men's Morris

Come Away, Death

St Peter's Finger

Brazen tongue

Hangman's Curfew

When Last I Died

Laurels are Poison

Here Comes a Chopper

Death and the Maiden

Tom Brown's Body

Groaning Spinney

The Devil's Elbow

The Echoing Strangers

Watson's Choice

The Twenty-Third Man

Spotted Hemlock

My Bones Will Keep

Three Quick and Five Dead

Dance to your Daddy

A Hearse on May-Day

Late, Late in the Evening

Faults in the Structure

Nest of Vipers

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781407092195

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Vintage 2009

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © 1947 Rights Limited (a Chorion company).

All rights reserved

Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 1947 by Victor Gollancz

Vintage

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

www.vintage-books.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099542148