Death in Ecstasy

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Yes, Mr. Ogden?”

  Mr. Ogden looked exceedingly uncomfortable. A dead silence followed.

  “What is it?” continued Alleyn patiently.

  “Why nothing, Chief. Except that I’m quite curious to know where you located that book.”

  “Anybody else know anything about it?” asked Alleyn.

  “Yes,” said Father Garnette, “I do.”

  He was still on his feet. He stretched out his hand and Alleyn gave him the book.

  “This volume,” said Father Garnette, “appeared in my shelves some weeks ago. It is not mine and I do not know where it came from. I did not even open it. Simply found it there.”

  “Next to an unexpurgated translation of Petronius?”

  “Ah—preciselah!” said Father Garnette.

  He still held the book in his hands. Perhaps the habit of the pulpit caused him to let it fall open.

  “Who left this book in my room?” he demanded.

  “Look at it,” said Alleyn.

  Garnette hesitated as though he wondered what Alleyn meant. Then he looked at the book. It had again fallen open at the page which gave the formula for sodium cyanide. For a moment Garnette scarcely seemed to take it in. Then with sudden violence he shut the book and dropped it on the table.

  “I am the victim of an infamous conspiracy,” he said. The baa-ing vowel-sounds had disappeared, and the hint of a nasal inflection had taken their place.

  “You tell us,” said Alleyn, “that this book was left in your shelves. When did you first discover it?”

  “I do not remembah,” declared Garnette, rallying slightly.

  “Try to remember.”

  “It was there three Sundays ago, anyway,” volunteered Claude.

  “Oh?” said Alleyn. “How do you know that, Mr. Wheatley?”

  “Because, I mean, I saw it. And I know it was three Sundays ago because you see I do temple service—cleaning the silver, you know—and all that, every fortnight. And it was while I was doing that, I found it, and it wasn’t last Sunday, so it must have been three Sundays ago.”

  “How did you come to find it?”

  “Well, I—well, you see—well, I’d finished and Father was out and I thought I’d wait till he came in and so I went into his room to put some things away.”

  “Where was the book?”

  “Well, it was in the shelves.”

  “Where you could see it?”

  “Not quite.”

  “It was behind the other books?”

  “Yes, if you must know, it was,” said Claude turning an unattractive crimson. “As a matter of fact I had put all the books there myself”—he stopped and looked nervously from Ogden to Garnette—“about a week before that. I was—I was tidying up in here. I didn’t look at them, then. The book on Chemistry wasn’t there that day. But it was there on the Sunday—a week later. You see I’d read most of the other books and I thought I’d try and find something else, and so—”

  “Did you handle it?”

  “I—I—just glanced at it.”

  “You touched it. You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, I am. Because I remember I had my gloves on. The ones I do the polishing in. I like to keep my hands nice. I wondered if they’d marked it. Then I put it away and—and I read something else, you see.”

  “Petronius, perhaps.”

  “Yes, it was. I thought it marvellous.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t understand,” began Miss Wade.

  “Nor do I,” interrupted Mrs. Candour. “Why is such a fuss being made about this book?”

  “It’s a treatise on poisons,” said Maurice. “Cara was poisoned. Find the owner of the book and there’s your murderer. Q.E.D. Our wonderful police!”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Mr. Ogden, with a curious inflection in his voice, “that it’s not just as simple as all that.”

  “Really?” jeered Maurice. “You seem to know a damn’ sight too much to be healthy.”

  “Maurice, please!” said Janey.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Jane.”

  “The interesting thing about the book,” said Alleyn in his quietest voice, “is that if you handle it as Mr. Garnette did, it falls open at a discourse on cyanide.” He took the book and handed it to de Ravigne. “Like to try?” he asked.

  De Ravigne took the book, but he must have handled it differently. It fell open at another place. He examined it closely, a curiously puzzled expression in his eyes.

  “Let me see,” said Lionel. “Do, please.” With him the experiment worked successfully.

  “How too marvellous!” said Claude.

  “Here,” shouted Mr. Ogden suddenly, “lemme see.”

  Lionel handed him the book, and he experimented with it while they all watched him. The book fell open repeatedly and each time at the same page.

  “Well, for crying out loud!” said Mr. Ogden, and slammed it down on the table.

  “Now,” Alleyn went on, “there’s one more exhibit. This box of cigarettes. Yours, isn’t it, Mr. Garnette?” He laid the Benares box on the table.

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Will you open it?”

  “Is this a sleight of hand act?” asked Maurice Pringle. “No deception practised.”

  “None, on my part,” replied Alleyn good-humouredly. “As I think you will agree, Mr. Garnette.”

  Garnette had opened the box. Cara Quayne’s note lay on the top of the cigarettes.

  “What is this?” asked Garnette. And then: “My God, it’s her writing.”

  “Will you read it aloud?”

  Garnette read slowly. The habit of the pulpit was so strong in him that he pitched his voice and read deliberately with round vowels and stressed final consonants.

  “Must see you. Terrible discovery. After service tonight.”

  He put the paper down on the table and again looked at Alleyn. His lips twitched, but he did not speak. He moved his hands uncertainly. He looked neither guilty nor innocent, but simply puzzled.

  “Where did this come from?” he said at last.

  “It was found last night in that box,” Alleyn said.

  “But—I did not know. I did not see it there.”

  “Does anyone,” asked Alleyn, “know anything of this note?” Nobody spoke.

  “Had Miss Quayne spoken to any of you of this terrible discovery she had made?”

  “When was it written?” asked Maurice suddenly.

  “Yesterday.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s dated,” answered Alleyn politely.

  “Oh, Maurice, my poor pet!” said Janey, and for the first time that morning somebody laughed.

  “Shut up!” exclaimed Maurice.

  “You did not open this box yesterday, Mr. Garnette?” Alleyn went on.

  “No.”

  “When did Miss Quayne call?”

  “I do not know. I did not see her. I was out from midday until about three o’clock.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Father Garnette was my guest at luncheon,” said de Ravigne. “I had invited Cara also, but she desired, she said, to spend the day in meditation in her own house.”

  “She changed her mind, it seems. How would she get in here?”

  “The key to the front door of the church is always left in the porch, monsieur. It is concealed behind the torch there. We all use it.”

  “Did any of you come here yesterday between two-thirty and three o’clock while Miss Quayne was in the hall?”

  No one had come, it seemed. Alleyn asked them all in turn where they had been. Maurice had lunched with Janey in her flat and had stayed there till four. Mrs. Candour had been at home for lunch, and so had Miss Wade. Miss Wade to everybody’s surprise said she had been in the hall when Cara went through and into Garnette’s flat. Miss Wade had been engaged in a little meditation, it appeared. She had seen Cara come out again and had thought she seemed “rather put out.”

&n
bsp; “Why did you say nothing of this before?” asked Alleyn.

  “Because you did not ask me, officer,” said Miss Wade.

  “Touché,” said Alleyn, and turned to the others.

  Mr. Ogden had lunched at his club and afterwards taken a “carnstitootional” in the park, arriving home at tea-time. Garnette and de Ravigne had remained in the latter’s house until two-forty, when de Ravigne had asked Garnette the time in order to set his clock right. About ten minutes later, Garnette left. He had a Neophytes’ class at three-thirty, and it seemed that two selected advanced Neophytes always stayed on for what Father Garnette called a little repast in his flat, and then went to the evening instruction. This was a regular routine. That would account, Nigel reflected, for Cara Quayne leaving the note in the cigarette-box. Whatever her terrible discovery was, she would know she had no chance of a private conversation before the evening ceremony. After he left de Ravigne’s house Father Garnette had gone straight to the hall. There he had found one or two people who had come in early for the ceremony. He had not looked at the safe, but he felt sure he would have noticed if it had been open. De Ravigne lived in Lowrides Square, so it would not have taken many minutes for the priest to walk back to Knocklatchers Row. He probably arrived at about three o’clock. De Ravigne said he had remained at home until it was time to go to the evening ceremony. Claude and Lionel, it transpired, had not got up until half-past three in the afternoon.

  “Ah, well,” said Alleyn, with the ghost of a sigh, “I shall not keep you here any longer, ladies and gentlemen. The meeting is adjourned.”

  One by one the Initiates got to their feet. Garnette remained seated at the table, his face buried in his hands. Evidently most of them felt desperately uncomfortable at the thought of Father Garnette. They eyed him surreptitiously and made uneasy noises in their throats. Ogden still glared at him and, alone of the Initiates, seemed disinclined to leave. M. de Ravigne clicked his heels, made a formal bow which included Alleyn and Garnette, said “Gentlemen”; made a rather more willowy bow, said “Ladies,” and walked out with an air of knowing how to deal with the stiffest social contretemps.

  Miss Wade, after some hesitation, made a sudden dart at Garnette, extended a black kid claw and said:

  “Father! Faithful! Last ditch! Trust!”

  Whereupon Mrs. Candour, who had been waiting for a cue from somebody, uttered a lamentable bellow and surged forward, saying: “Yes—yes—yes.”

  Garnette pulled himself together and cast upon both ladies a sort of languishing glare.

  He said: “Faithful! Faithful unto—” and then, disliking the sound of the phrase, hurriedly abandoned it.

  Ogden let them all go and then walked up to Alleyn.

  “Can I have a word with you, Chief?” he asked.

  “Certainly, Mr. Ogden.”

  “What are you going to say?” demanded Garnette.

  “That’s nobody’s business, Garnette,” said Ogden. “C’m on, Chief!”

  He led the way out into the hall, followed by Alleyn, Nigel and Fox. When they were down in the aisle, he jerked his thumb at Nigel.

  “I ain’t giving interviews this trip, Mr. Bathgate,” he said, “and something seems to tell me you’re a Pressman.”

  “Mr. Bathgate is not here in his official capacity,” said Alleyn. “I think we can trust him.”

  “Seems like I’m doing a helluva lot of trusting. Well—if you say so, Chief, that’s O.K. by me.”

  Nigel returned to his old perch in the front pews, and Mr. Ogden paid no further attention to him. He addressed himself to Alleyn.

  “Listen, Chief. I’ve spent quite a lot of my time in this little old island, but right now is the first occasion I’ve come into contact with the Law. Back home in God’s Own Country I’d say a guy was crazy to do what I’m doing. But listen, Chief. I guess you’re on the level, and I guess you ain’t so darned polite you can’t do your stuff.”

  Here Mr. Ogden paused, drew out a large silk handkerchief and wiped his neck with it.

  “Hell,” he said. “This has got me all shot to bits.”

  “What’s in your mind, Mr. Ogden?” asked Alleyn.

  “Hell,” repeated Mr. Ogden. “Well, listen. They opine that in this country you don’t get the hot squat, not without you earn it good and plenty.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Alleyn, gazing at him. “Oh! I see. I think you’re quite right. There are no miscarriages of justice in capital charges on the conviction side. Only, we hang them over here, you know.”

  “That’s so,” agreed Mr. Ogden, “but the principle’s the same.”

  “True,” said Alleyn.

  Mr. Ogden seemed to find extreme difficulty in coming to the point. He rolled his eyes and goggled solemnly at Alleyn.

  “Listen, Chief,” he said again, “I guess that you’ve got it figured out that whoever owns the book of the words and songs did the murder.”

  “You mean the book on chemistry?”

  “Yup.’’

  “It certainly looks rather like that.”

  “Then it looks all cockeyed,” said Mr. Ogden violently. “It looks all too—Hell! Do you know why?”

  “I think I can guess,” said Alleyn, smiling.

  “You can! Well I’d be—”

  “I rather fancied that book belonged to you.”

  “Chief, you said it,” said Mr. Ogden.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Mr. Ogden Grows Less Trustful

  “YOU SAID IT,” repeated Mr. Ogden and collapsed into a pew.

  “Cheer up, Mr. Ogden,” said Alleyn.

  Mr. Ogden passed his handkerchief across his brow and contemplated the inspector with a certain expression of low cunning that reminded Nigel of a precocious baby.

  “Maybe I seemed a mite too eager about that book,” he said. “Maybe I kinda gave you the works.”

  “My inspiration dates a little further back than that,” said Alleyn. “You told us last night that you were interested in gold-refining. A letter which we found in your pockets referred rather fully to a new process. It assumed a certain knowledge of chemistry on your part. The book is an American publication. It was a little suggestive, you see.”

  “Yup,” said Mr. Ogden, “I see. Now listen. I bought that book years ago, way back in the pre-war period when I first began to sit up and take notice. I was a junior clurk at the time in the offices of a gold-refining company. Junior clurk is a swell name for office-boy. I lit on that book layout in the rain on a five-cent stall, and I was ambitious to educate myself. It’s kinda stayed around ever since. The book, I mean. When I came over here it was laying in one of my grips, and I let it lay. I know a bit more than I useter, and some of them antique recipes tickled me. Well, anyhow, it stuck, and when I got fixed where I am now I packed it in the bookshelves along with the Van Dines and the National Geographics and the Saturday Evening Posts. I never opened it. And get this, Chief, I never missed it till last night.”

  “Last night? At what time?”

  “After I got home. I got to thinking about Cara, and I figured it out that she passed in her checks very, very sudden, and that the suddenest poison I knew was prussic acid. Hydrocyanic acid if you want to talk ritzy. I thought maybe I’d refresh my memory and I looked for the old book. Nothing doing. It was gone. What do you know about that?”

  “What do you know about it?” rejoined Alleyn.

  “Listen,” said Mr. Ogden for about the twentieth time that afternoon. “I know this far. It was there four weeks back. Four weeks back from tonight I threw a party. All the Sacred Flame crowd was there. Garnette was there. And Reveenje. And Cara Quayne. All the gang, even Miss Wade, who has a habit of getting mislaid or overlooked: she was there and cracking hardy. Well, Raveenje, he’s enthusiastic about literature. First editions are all published by Pep and Kick as he sees it. I saw him looking along the shelves and I yanked down the old Curiosities for him to have a slant at. Well, maybe it hadn’t enough whiskers on it, but it seemed to
excite him about as much as a raspberry drink at a departmental store. He gave it a polite once-over and lost interest. But that’s how I remember it was there. From that night till last evening I never gave it a thought.”

  “Did anyone take it away that night?”

  “How should I know? I never missed the blamed thing.”

  “You can’t remember anything that would help? The next time you looked at your bookshelves?”

  “Nope. Wait a while. Wait a while.”

  Mr. Ogden clapped a plump hand to the top of his head as if to prevent an elusive thought from escaping him.

  “The next day or maybe the day after—it was around that time—Claude stopped in and he took Garnette’s books away with him. I was out at the time.”

  “Mr. Garnette’s books? What books?”

  Mr. Ogden looked remarkably sheepish.

  “Aw Gee!” he said. “Just something for a rainy day. He loaned ’em to me. He said they were classics. Classics? And how! Boy, they were central-heated.”

  “Are they among the lot in brown paper covers, behind the others?”

  “You said it.”

  “And Claude Wheatley took them away?”

  “Sure. He told the maid Garnette had sent him for them. He wanted to keep hold of them because they were rare. I’ll say they were rare! Anyhow, that’s when I last remember anything about books. I suppose Garnette told Claude where they were.”

  “Was the Curiosities in your shelves then?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m aiming to remember!” exclaimed Mr. Ogden desperately. “Lemme think! Next day Claude told me he’d called for Garnette’s books and I said: ‘Those were the ones in brown paper overalls,’ and he said he’d recognised them by that.”

  “The Curiosities was not in brown paper, then?”

  “No, sir. I’d no call to camouflage it. It was respectable.”

  Alleyn laughed.

  “Can you remember noticing it that day?”

  “Nope.”

  “Would you have noticed if it had already gone?”

  “Lordy, no!” said Mr. Ogden.

  He stared wildly into space for an appreciable time and then said slowly: