gallery, with a dais for the band at one end, and a glass and chromium bar at the other, a double staircase curving up to it from the dancing floor with an incongruous Baroque swirl. Beneath the gallery the walls were lined with semi-circular alcoves fitted with seats, in every alcove an arched niche with a white plaster dancer; Empire, this part of it, if it could be said to have a style at all. Small tables nestled in the curves of the balustrade all the way round the gallery. The walls were white and gold and a glitter of mirrors. The palais crowd, thought George, dazed, will love it. Poor Leslie Armiger, he’d never see his beautiful bare, spacious studio home again. He’d never have been able to afford to heat it properly, in any case, it would have been Arctic in winter.
So much for the setting in general. Of notable disarrangements in this vacant and immaculate order there were only two, apart from the body itself. One of the plaster statuettes, from the alcove on the right of the door, lay smashed at the foot of the wall. There was no apparent reason for it, it was a good fifty feet from where Armiger lay, and apart from the broken shards there was no sign of any struggle, no trace even of a passing foot. The other detail struck a curiously ironical note. Someone, almost certainly Armiger himself, had fetched two champagne glasses from the bar and set them out on the small table nearest to the gilded dais at the top of the staircase. Evidently he had had no forewarning, he had still been in high feather, still bent on celebrating; but he had never got as far as opening the magnum.
George paced out thoughtfully the few yards between the sprawling feet in their hand-made shoes, and the foot of the staircase. No marks on the high gloss of the floor. He eyed the broken magnum; there was not much doubt it was the instrument which had killed Armiger. It was slimed with his blood right to the gold foil on the cork, and no artificial aids were necessary to see clearly the traces of his hair and skin round the rim of the base.
George cast one last look round the glaring white ballroom, and went out to the three men who waited nervously for him in the courtyard.
“Which of you actually found him?”
“Clayton and I went in together,” said Calverley.
There was a sort of generic resemblance in all the men Armiger chose as managers for his houses, and it struck George for the first time why; they were all like Armiger. He singled out people of his own physical and mental type, and what could be more logical? This Calverley was youngish, thick-set but athletic, like an ex-rugby- player run very slightly to flesh; moustached, self-confident, tough as fibre-glass. Not at his debonair best just now, understandably; the face made for beaming good-fellowship was strained and greyly pale, and the quick eyes alert for profit and trouble alike were trained on trouble now, and saw it as something more personal than he cared for. He’d even gone to meet trouble halfway, it seemed, by arming himself with a companion. People whose daily lives were spent in Armiger’s vicinity soon learned to be careful.
“What time would that be?” They’d know, to the minute; they’d been watching the clock for him over an hour, waiting to get him off the premises and call it a day.
“About four or five minutes after midnight,” said Calverley, licking his lips. It was not yet one o’clock. “We gave him until midnight, that’s how I know. We’d been waiting for him ever since closing-time, but he’d said he didn’t want to be disturbed, so, well, we waited. But from half past eleven we began to wonder if everything was all right, and we said we’d give him until twelve, and then go in. And we did. When it struck we left the snug at once, and came straight over here.”
“All the lights were on like that? You touched nothing? Was the door open or closed?”
“Closed.” Clayton fumbled a cigarette out of the pocket of his tight uniform jacket, and struck a match to light it. A lean, wiry, undatable man, probably about thirty-five, would look much the same at sixty; flat sandy hair brushed straight back from a narrow forehead, intelligent, hard eyes that fixed George unblinkingly and didn’t mind the light. And his hands were as steady as stone. “I was first in, I handled the door. Yes, the lights were on. We never touched a thing once we’d seen him. We only went near enough to see he was a goner. Then I run back to the house to tell Bennie to call the police, and Mr. Calverley waited by the door.”
“Had anyone seen Mr. Armiger since he came over here?” George looked at old Bennie, who was shivering in the background.
“Not that I know of, Mr. Felse. Nobody from the house has been across here. He never showed up after he took the champagne off the ice and walked off with it. I saw him go out of the side door. You know, Mr. Felse, you just come into the hall then yourself.”
“I know,” said George. “Any idea who this fellow was, the one to whom he wanted to show the ballroom? You didn’t see him?”
“No, he wasn’t with him when I saw him go out.”
“He made quite a point of not wanting to be disturbed?”
“Well, , , ” Bennie hesitated. “Mr. Armiger was in the habit of laying off very exact, if you know what I mean. I wa’n’t nothing out of the way this time.”
“Can you remember his exact words? Try. I’m interested in this appointment he had.”
“Well, I says to him, ‘Mr. Clayton’s ‘ere with the car.’ And he says: “Then he can damn’ well wait until I’m ready, if it’s midnight. I’m just going over to show a young pal of mine my ballroom, he’ll be right interested, he says, to see what you can do with a place like that, given the money and the enterprise, and I don’t want anybody butting in on us,’ he says, ‘I’ll be back when I’m good and ready, not before.’ .And then he goes.”
“But he didn’t sound upset or angry about it?” The words might have indicated otherwise in another man, but this was how Armiger habitually dealt with his troops.
“Oh, no, Mr. Felse, he was on top of the world. Well, like he was all evening, sir, you saw him yourself.”
“Odd he didn’t mention a name.”
“With that much money,” said Clayton in his flat, cool voice, “he could afford to be odd.”
“He was laughing like a drain,” said Bennie. “When he said that about showing off the ballroom he was fair hugging himself.”
“Somebody must have seen this other fellow,” said George. “We shall want to talk to all the rest of the staff, but I take it all those who don’t live on the premises have gone home long ago.” That would be the first job, once the body was handed over to the surgeon. “Any of the waiters living in, besides Ben?”
“Two,” said Calverley, “and two girls. They’re all up, I thought they might be needed, though I don’t suppose they know anything. My wife’s waiting up, too.”
