Free A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

door.”
    “Yes?”
    “The door wasn’t shut and when I tapped it, it swung in a bit like and at the same time Mr. Bathgate calls out, ‘Come in.’ So I went in and just as I was asking about the shaving water the lights went out and I felt all confused, sir, so I went out too, and kind of groped my way back to my own room, sir.”
    “What was Mr. Bathgate doing?”
    “Smoking a cigarette, sir, with a book in his hand. I think he had just called out something to Mr. Wilde who was bathing next door.”
    “Thank you, Ethel.”
    “Thank
you
, sir,” said Ethel plaintively. She withdrew with some reluctance.
    Alleyn, with a mental shrug at Nigel’s amazing imbecility in having overlooked his own cast-iron alibi, got on with the work. Roberts, the pantry man, proved unprofitable. He had been in his pantry solidly for twenty minutes when the gong sounded. The cook and odd-boy were also completely without interest Alleyn turned his attention to the hall itself.
    He produced a tape measure and carefully took measurements between the cocktail table and the foot of the stairs. The tray with its sordid array of used glasses had been left untouched.
    “All very nice and proper,” grumbled Alleyn to Detective-Sergeant Bailey, “nothing disturbed except the minor detail of the body.”
    “Lovely funeral if we’d only had a corpse, sort of,” responded Bailey.
    “Well, young Bathgate says the body was lying at right angles to the gong. The last that Mary saw of Mr. Rankin he was standing at the cocktail tray. Presumably at the end of it when he was struck. Come here, Bunce. How tall are you?”
    “Five-foot-eleven in me socks, sir.”
    “Good enough. The body is just on six foot. Stand here, will you?”
    Bunce stood to attention and Alleyn walked round him, looking at him carefully.
    “What do you make of this, Bailey?” he said. “This job was done inside five minutes at the most. The knife was in that leather slot by the stairs, unless it had been previously removed, which I think unlikely. Therefore, the murderer started off from here, took the thing in his right hand — so — and struck from the back.”
    He went through the pantomime of stabbing the constable. “Now see what I mean. I’m six-foot-two, but I can’t get the right angle. Bend over, will you, Bunce. Ah, that’s more like it, but the bannister gets in the way. He may have been leaning over the tray. It’s too far if I stand on the bottom step. Wait a bit. See if you can get anything from the bottom knob of the bannister, will you, Bailey?”
    “It’ll be a fair mess of prints,” said the expert glumly. He opened a small grip and busied himself with the contents.
    Alleyn nosed round the hall. He inspected the main switch, the glasses, the cocktail shaker, the gong, all the tables and woodwork. He paused by the grate. The dead clinkers of last night’s fire were still there.
    “I ses, ‘don’t you touch none of them grates,’ ” said Bunce suddenly, “there’s only gas upstairs.”
    “Quite right,” rejoined the Inspector, “we will deal with the fireplaces ourselves.” He bent over the fireplace and taking a pair of tongs, removed the clinkers one by one, laying them on a piece of newspaper. As he did this he kept up a running commentary to Detective-Constable Bailey.
    “You’ll find Miss North’s prints on that sketch plan of the house that I put on the tray there. Also Bathgate’s. We must have everyone’s, of course. The tooth mugs upstairs will be profitable in that direction. I hate asking for prints, it makes me feel so self-conscious. There’s nothing on the knife, needless to say— nor yet the switch. A nit-wit wouldn’t leave a print behind him nowadays if he could help it.”
    “That’s right, sir,” agreed Bailey. “There’s a proper muck up on the bannister, but I rather think we’ll get something a bit better from the knob.”
    “The knob, eh?” said Alleyn, who had now drawn out the ash tray from