Death in Ecstasy

by Ngaio Marsh

  “They did. I’m about to tackle the safe.”

  Alleyn moved across the room, pulled aside a strip of Javanese tapestry, and disclosed a small built-in safe. He found the key on the ring Father Garnette had given him, opened the safe and began, with great method, to remove the contents and array them neatly on the table.

  “Bankbook. Let’s see. He paid in fifty pounds last Monday. I suppose we shan’t find much cash. Any offertory tonight, Bathgate?”

  “No. I imagine we didn’t get so far.”

  “I suppose not. There’s a bag of something. Petty cash, perhaps. What’s this? Cheque from Mr. Ogden. Twenty pounds. Dated last Wednesday.”

  “How he gets it out of the gentlemen fairly beats me,” said Fox.

  “Extraordinary, isn’t it? But you know, Fox, there is a kind of simple, shrewd business brain that’ll believe any tarra-diddle outside its own province.”

  “Would you say Mr. Ogden’s was that sort, sir?” Alleyn flipped the cheque at him.

  “Looks like it,” he said, and turned again to the safe: “Hullo! This is more the sort of thing.”

  He pulled out a package and laid it on the table. It was a largish brown-paper parcel tied up with red ribbon. It was addressed to “The Reverend Father Jasper Garnette,” and the writing was undoubtedly Cara Quayne’s. Alleyn stared fixedly at the ribbon. He turned the parcel over once or twice.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” asked Nigel.

  “Oh, yes. Yes.” But he hesitated a little while longer and at last, laying the parcel on the table, slipped the ribbon very gingerly over one end, cautiously pulled out the folds of paper, and peered into the open end. He held the parcel under a lamp, and examined it even more closely. Then he dropped it back on to the table.

  “Well?” asked Nigel.

  “Well, Bathgate, I wish Mr. Garnette was not so sound asleep.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “I should like him to have a look at this.” Fox lifted the parcel by the open end and looked in.

  “Cripes!” he said.

  “Here!” Nigel ejaculated. “Let me look.”

  “Don’t pick it up. Look inside.”

  Nigel did so. Fox flashed his torch into the parcel. Nigel glanced up at the two policemen, peered again into the parcel, grinned, looked doubtful, and at last said:

  “But is that all?”

  “I think so, oh yes,” answered Alleyn.

  “But,” said Nigel, “it’s—it’s all newspaper.” He thrust a finger in and ferreted round.

  “So it is,” agreed Alleyn.

  “By gum!” ejaculated Nigel. “The motive!”

  “Very like, very like.”

  “Garnette has pinched the bonds.”

  “Somebody’s pinched them. Ask Bailey to come in and get the prints, if any, will you, Bathgate?”

  Bailey was grubbing about in the vestry. He returned with Nigel, produced his insufflator and got to work on the parcel. Alleyn had sat down at the table and was tackling the rest of the material from the safe. Fox embarked on a meticulous search of the sideboard drawers. Nigel, with a side-long glance at the Chief Detective-Inspector, pulled out his pad, sank into Father Garnette’s most spacious armchair, lit a cigarette, and began to write.

  “Copy?” inquired Alleyn mildly.

  “And why not?” said Nigel defiantly.

  “No reason at all. Let me see it before you send it in.”

  “That’s a pretty piece of effrontery, that is,” said Nigel hotly. “Who was here from the start? Who called you in? I consider I displayed remarkable presence of mind. You’ve come in on a hot scent. This is a big story and I’m going to make it so. Eyewitness of a murder. That’s what I was, and they’re going to know it.”

  “All right. All right. I merely ask to see your story.”

  “Yes, and you’ll blue pencil it out of existence.”

  “No, I won’t. Don’t mention the bearer bonds.”

  “There you go, you see!”

  “And pray, Bathgate, don’t refer to me as ‘The indefatigable Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.’

  “But, Alleyn,” Nigel protested, “that is altogether unfair. I have never made use of such a phrase. You merely speak for your own amusement.”

  “What style are you adopting? You have been reading George Moore again I notice.”

  “What makes you suppose that?” asked Nigel, turning pink.

  “His style has touched your conversation and left it self-conscious.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Nevertheless it is an admirable style, though I shall be interested to see how you apply it to journalism and the mechanics of police investigation.”

  “That is merely ridiculous,” said Nigel. He returned pointedly to his work and after a moment’s consideration erased a word or two.

  “Any prints on the parcel, Bailey?” asked Alleyn.

  “Yes, sir. All one brand. The Reverend, I’ll bet. I’ve got a sample of him off that glass.”

  “Ah,” said Alleyn.

  “Ah-ha,” said Nigel.

  “No, not quite ‘Ah-ha’ I fancy,” murmured the inspector.

  “Hullo!” exclaimed Fox suddenly.

  “What’s up?” asked Alleyn.

  “Look here, sir.” Fox came to the table and put down a small slip of paper.

  “I found it in the cigarette-box,” he said. “It’s the lady again.”

  “Yes,” agreed Alleyn, “it’s the lady. Bless my soul,” he added, “the damn’ place is choc-a-bloc full of dubious correspondence.”

  Nigel came across to look. Fox’s new find was a very small page of shiny paper. Monday’s date was printed in one corner and underneath was scribbled the word: “Sunday.” Three edges were gilt, the fourth was torn across at an angle as though it had been wrenched from a book. Cara Quayne had written in pencil: “Must see you. Terrible discovery. After service tonight.”

  “Where exactly was it?” asked Alleyn.

  “In this.” Fox displayed an elaborated Benares box almost full of Turkish cigarettes. “It was on the sideboard and the paper lay on top of the cigarettes. Like this.” He picked up the paper and put it in the box.

  “This is very curious,” said Alleyn. He raised an eyebrow and stared fixedly at the little message. “Get the deceased’s handbag,” he said after a minute. “It’s out there.”

  Fox went out and returned with a morocco handbag. Alleyn opened it and turned out the contents, and arranged them on the table. They were: A small case containing powder, a lipstick, a handkerchief, a purse, a pair of gloves, and a small pocketbook bound in red leather with a pencil attached.

  “That’s it,” said Alleyn.

  He opened the book and laid the note beside it. The paper corresponded exactly. He scribbled a word or two with the pencil.

  “That’s it,” he repeated. “The lead is broken. There’s the same double line in each case.” He turned the leaves of the book. Cara Quayne had written extensively in it—shopping lists, appointments, memoranda. The notes came to an end about halfway through. Alleyn read the last one and looked up quickly.

  “Got an evening paper, either of you?”

  “I have,” said Fox, producing one, neatly folded, from his pocket.

  “Does the new show at the Criterion open tomorrow?”

  “You needn’t bother to look,” interrupted Nigel. “It does.”

  “You have your uses,” grunted the inspector. “That fixes it then. She wrote the note today.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Nigel.

  “There’s a note on today’s page: ‘Dine and go “Hail Fellow.” Criterion, Raoul, tomorrow.’ I wanted to be sure she stuck to the printed date. The next page, tomorrow’s, is the one she tore out. There’s the date. She must have torn it out today.”

  “Things are looking up a bit, aren’t they?” ventured Fox.

  “Are they, Fox? Perhaps they are. And yet—it’s a sticky business, this. Light your pipe, my Foxkin,
and do a bit of ’teckery. What’s in your mind, you sly old box of tricks?”

  Fox lit his pipe, sat down, and gazed solemnly at his superior.

  “Come on, now,” said Alleyn.

  “Well, sir, it’s a bit early to speak anything like for sure, but say the lady knew what we know about the parcel there. Say she found it out today, when the parson was out—called in to see him perhaps.”

  “And found the safe open?”

  “Might be. Sounds kind of careless, but might be. Anyway, say she found out somehow and wanted to tell him. Say he came in, read the note, and—well, sir, say he thought something would have to be done about it.”

  “I don’t think he has read the note Fox.”

  “Don’t you, sir?”

  “No. We can see if his prints are on it. If he has read it I don’t think he’s a murderer.”

  “Why not?” asked Nigel.

  “He’d have destroyed it.”

  “That’s so,” admitted Fox.

  “But,” Alleyn went on, “as I say, I don’t think he’s read it. There are no cigarette-ends of that brand about, are there?”

  They hunted around the room. Alleyn went into the bedroom and came back in a few moments.

  “None there,” he said, “and dear Mr. Garnette looks very unattractive with his mouth open. But I think we’d better look for prints in there, Bailey. There’s that open door. Did you run anything to earth in the bedroom, Fox?”

  “A very small trace of a powder in the washstand cupboard, sir. That’s all.”

  “Well, what about cigarette-butts?”

  “None here,” announced Fox, who had examined the grate as well as all the ashtrays in the room. “There are several Virginians—Mr. Bathgate’s and Dr. Curtis’s I think they are—no Turkish anywhere.”

  “Then he hasn’t opened the box.”

  “I must say I can’t help thinking that note’s got a bearing on the case,” said Fox.

  “I think you’re right, Fox. Put it in my bag, box and all. Let’s finish off and go home.”

  “And tomorrow?” asked Nigel.

  “Tomorrow we’ll get Mr. Garnette to open the surprise packet.”

  “What about the gentleman in question, sir?”

  “What about him?”

  “Will he be all right? All alone?”

  “Good Heavens, Fox, what extraordinary solicitude! He’ll wake up with a hirsute tongue and a brazen belly. And he will be very, very troubled in his mind. There’s that back door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll have to leave a couple of men here. Let’s tidy up. Put all that stuff back in the safe, Fox, will you? I’ll tackle the desk.”

  The two detectives replaced everything with extreme accuracy. Alleyn locked the safe and the desk and pocketed the keys. He strolled over to the bookcase, and as Fox packed up the police bag he murmured titles to himself: The Koran, Spiritual Experiences of a Fakir, From Wotan to Hitler, The Soul of the Lotus Bud, The Meaning and the Message, Jnana Yoga… “Hullo, here’s something of his own invent. As I live, a little book of poems. Purple suede, Heaven help us, purple suede! Eros on Calvary and Other Poems, by Jasper Garnette. Old pig!”

  He opened the book and read.

  The grape and thorn together bind my brows;

  Delight and torment is my double mead.

  “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, how inexpressibly beastly!”

  He shoved the poems back and then, with a grimace at Nigel, thrust his hand behind the books and, after a little groping, pulled out several dusty volumes, all covered in brown paper.

  “Petronius,” he said, “and so on. This is his nasty little secret hoard. Notice the disguise, will you! Hullo, what’s this?”

  He turned to the table and held a very battered old book under the lamp.

  “Abberley’s Curiosities of Chemistry. What a remarkably rum old book! Published by Gasock and Hauptmann, New York, 1865. I’ve met it before somewhere. Where was it?”

  He screwed up his face with the effort to remember and, holding the book lightly in his long, fastidious hands, let it fall open.

  “I’ve got it,” said Alleyn. “It was in the Bodleian, twenty years ago.”

  He opened his eyes and turned to Nigel. That young man was standing with his mouth agape and his eyes bulging.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Alleyn.

  Nigel pointed to the book in the inspector’s hands. Fox and Alleyn both looked down.

  The book had fallen open at a page headed: “A simple but little-known method of making sodium cyanide.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Alleyn Takes Stock

  “DEAR ME!” SAID ALLEYN as he laid the book on the table. “This is a quaint coincidence.” He paused a moment and then murmured: “I wonder if coincidence is quite the right word.”

  “H’m,” said Fox, deeply.

  “I’d call it the Hand of—of Fate, or Providence, or Nemesis or something,” said Nigel.

  “I dare say you would—on the front page. Not this time, however.” But Nigel was reading excitedly.

  “Do listen, Alleyn. It says you can make sodium cyanide from wool and washing soda.”

  “Really? It sounds a most unpalatable mixture.”

  “You have to heat them terrifically in a retort or something. It says: ‘It is, perhaps, a fortunate circumstance that this simple recipe is not generally known. The tyro is advised to avoid the experiment as it is attended by a certain amount of danger, so deadly is the poison thus produced.’”

  “Yes. Don’t blow down my neck and don’t touch the book, there’s a good chap. Bailey will have to get to work on it. Not nearly so much dust on this as on the other hidden books, you notice, Fox, and the brown paper cover is newer. The others are stained. Blast! I don’t like it at all.”

  Bailey reappeared and was given the book.

  “I don’t think the results will be very illuminating,” said Alleyn. “Try the open page as well as the cover. What is it these books smell of?”

  He sniffed at them.

  “It’s those stains, I seem to imagine. It’s very faint. Perhaps I do imagine. What about you, Bailey?”

  Alleyn examined the Curiosities closely.

  “It smells faintly. There’s no stain on the cover.” He slipped the blade of his pocketknife beneath the brown paper and peered under it: “And there is no stain on the red cover of the book. There you are, Bailey.”

  “But, Alleyn,” interrupted Nigel, “surely it’s of the first importance. If the pathologist finds cyanide—sodium cyanide—and Garnette has this book and—”

  “I know, I know. Extraordinary careless of him to leave it there, don’t you think? Stupid, what?”

  “Do you mean you think it is coincidence?”

  “Bless my soul, Bathgate, how on earth am I to know? Your simple faith is most soothing, but I can assure you it’s misplaced.”

  “Well, but what do you think? Tell me what you think.”

  “I ‘think naught a trifle, though it small appear.’”

  “That has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing.”

  “Not altogether. Look here. We know Miss Quayne was probably murdered by cyanide poisoning. We believe that it must have been done by one of eight persons.”

  Nigel counted beneath his breath.

  “Only seven, six Initiates and Garnette.”

  “Mr. Wheatley, sir,” Fox reminded him. “The young fellow that handed round, you know.”

  “Oh—true. Well?”

  “Well,” Alleyn went on composedly, “we have reason to suppose the stuff was dropped into the cup in a cigarette-paper. The paper was later found on the place where the cup fell. So much for the actual event. We have learned that Miss Quayne had deposited bearer-bonds, to the tune of five thousand, in the safe. We have found a parcel that appeared to be the original wrapping of these bonds. If so the bonds have been taken and newspaper substituted. We have found a message in Cara Quayne’s wri
ting, addressed yesterday, presumably to Garnette. This message says she must see him at once as she had made a terrible discovery. I think the odds are he has not read the message. Whether it referred to the bonds or not we have no idea. We have found an antique work on chemistry hidden among Garnette’s books. It falls open at a recipe for homemade cyanide. So much for our tangible data.”

  “What about motive?” suggested Nigel.

  “Motive. You mean Garnette’s motive, don’t you? I gather you are no longer wedded to Mr. Ogden as the villain of the piece.”

  “I wasn’t really serious about Ogden, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he and Garnette were rogues together in the States.”

  “What’s your view, Fox?” asked Alleyn.

  “Well, sir, I must say I don’t think so. Father Garnette was very frank under the influence and he said he met Mr. Ogden crossing the Atlantic. That tallies with Mr. Ogden’s statement.”

  “Exactly, Fox.”

  “And I must say, sir, Mr. Ogden isn’t my notion of a Chicago racketeer.”

  “Nor mine either. Perhaps we are too conservative, Brer Fox. But because two men come from the United States of America and one’s a rogue, it doesn’t mean they are old associates.”

  “If you put it like that,” said Nigel, “it does sound a bit far-fetched.”

  “Of course they are associates now,” ruminated Fox, “but Mr. Ogden seems more like a victim than a crook.”

  “Well, then—Garnette,” urged Nigel.

  “If,” said Alleyn, “Mr. Garnette stole the bonds and killed Miss Quayne with a jorum of sodium cyanide, he set about it in a most peculiar manner. He chose a moment when he and seven other persons would be equally suspected. He must have known that a search would be made of these rooms, yet he left his recipe book in a place where it was sufficiently concealed to look furtive, and not well enough hidden to escape discovery. He destroyed, so far as we know, none of her letters. He left, inside a cigarette-box, her note, suggesting that she had discovered something very upsetting.”

  “But you said he never found it,” objected Nigel.

  “If that’s so why did he think it necessary to kill her?”

  “She may have rung up or something.”

  “She may, certainly, but wouldn’t she have mentioned the note?”