by Ngaio Marsh
“I see,” he said. “Very well.” Alleyn went to the door, followed by Wrayburn carrying the carton. “Mr. Wrayburn!” Hilary said loudly.
“Sir?”
“I am sure you are going to talk about my staff.”
“I was only,” Wrayburn said in a hurry, “going to ask, as a matter of routine, for the names of your guests and the staff. We — er — we have to make these inquiries, sir.”
“Possibly. Very well, you shall have them. But I must tell you, at once, that whatever theory you may form as to the disappearance of this man, there is no question, there can never be any question, no matter what emerges, that any one of my staff, in even the remotest fashion, is concerned in it. On that point,” said Hilary, “I am and I shall remain perfectly adamant.”
“Strong,” said Mr. Wrayburn.
“And meant to be,” said Hilary.
Six — Storm Rising
“It’s a very impressive residence, this,” Superintendent Wrayburn observed.
He and Alleyn paused in the hall, which was otherwise deserted. Great swags of evergreen still hung from the gallery. Fires blazed on the enormous hearths.
“What I mean,” Superintendent Wrayburn said, “it’s impressive,” and after a moment: “Take a look at this.”
A framed plan of Halberds hung near the entrance.
“Useful,” said Wrayburn. They studied it and then stood with their backs to the front doors getting, as Wrayburn put it, the hang of the place. Beyond that, the open courtyard, flanked east and west by the projecting wings. On their left was the east wing with a corridor opening off the hall serving library, breakfast-room, boudoir, study and, at the rear angle of the house, the chapel. On their right were the drawing-room, dining-room serveries and, at the northwest rear corner, the kitchen. Doors under the gallery, one of them the traditional green baize swinger, led from the back of the hall, between the twin flights of stairs; into a passage which gave on the servants’ quarters and various offices, including the flower-room.
Alleyn looked up at the gallery. It was dimly lit, but out of the shadows there glimmered a pale greenish shape of extreme elegance. One’s meant to look at that, he thought. It’s a treasure.
“So what about this cloakroom, then?” Wrayburn suggested. “Before I take any further action?”
“Why not? Here you are.”
It was in the angle between the entrance porch and the drawing-room and, as Hilary said, had a door to the hall and another to the porch. “The plan,” Alleyn pointed out, “shows a corresponding room on the east side. It’s a symmetrical house, isn’t it?”
“So when he came out,” Wrayburn mused, “he should have walked straight ahead to the right-hand flight of stairs and up them to the gallery?”
“And along the gallery to the east corridor in the visitors’ wing. Where he disappeared into thin air?”
“Alternatively — Here! Let’s look.”
They went into the cloakroom, shutting the door behind them and standing close together, just inside the threshold.
Alleyn was transported backstage. Here was that smell of face cream and spirit-gum. Here was the shelf with a towel laid over it and the looking-glass. Neatly spread out, fan-wise, on one side of this bench, was the Druid’s golden beard and moustache and, hooked over a table lamp in lieu of a wig-block, the golden wig itself, topped by a tall crown of mistletoe.
A pair of knitted woollen gloves lay nearby.
A collection of mackintoshes, gum boots, and shooting-sticks had been shoved aside to make room for the Druid’s golden robe. There was the door opening on the porch and beside it a small lavatorial compartment. The room was icy cold.
Under the makeup bench, neatly aligned, stood a pair of fur-lined boots. Their traces from the outside door to where they had been removed were still quite damp and so were they.
“We’d better keep clear of them,” Alleyn said, “hadn’t we?” From where he stood he reached over to the bench, moved the table lamp and, without touching the wig, turned its back towards them. It had been powdered, like the beard, with gold dust. But at the place where the long hair would have overhung the nape of the neck there was a darker patch.
“Wet?” Wrayburn said, pointing to it. “Snow, would that have been? He was out in the snow, wasn’t he? But the rest of the thing’s only—” he touched the mistletoe crown “—damp.”
Alleyn flicked a long finger at the cardboard carton which Wrayburn still carried. “Did you get a good look at it?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Wrayburn said, answering a question that Alleyn had not asked. “You’re dead right. This is getting altogether different. It looks to me,” he said, “as if we’d got a bit of a case on our hands.”
“I believe you have.”
“Well,” Wrayburn said, making small movements of his shoulders and lifting his chin. “There’ll have to be an adjustment, I mean to say in the approach, won’t there?” He laid the carton on the bench as if it was made of porcelain. “There’ll need to be an analysis, of course, and a comparison. I’d better — I’d better report it to our C.I.D. But — just let’s —”
He shot a glance at Alleyn, fished in his pockets, and produced a small steel rule. He introduced the end under the hair and raised it.
“Take a look,” he said. “It’s wet, of course, but d’you reckon there’s a stain?”
“Might be.”
“I’m going to damn’ well —” Without completing his sentence, Wrayburn lifted a strand and with a fingernail and thumb separated a single hair and gave it a tweak. The wig tipped sideways and the crown of mistletoe fell off. Wrayburn swore.
“They make these things pretty solidly, don’t they?” Alleyn said. He righted the wig and held it steady. Wrayburn wound the single hair round the rule and this time jerked it free. Alleyn produced an envelope and the hair was dropped into it. Wrayburn stowed it in his tunic pocket.
“Let’s have a look at the robe,” Alleyn said. He lifted it off on its coat hanger and turned it round. A slide fastener ran right down the back, separating the high-standing collar, which showed a wet patch and was frayed.
“Cripes,” said Wrayburn, and then: “We’ll have to get this room locked up.”
“Yes.”
“Look. What seems to come out of this? I mean it’s pretty obvious the hair on the poker matches this, and there’s not much doubt, is there, that the deposit on the poker is blood. And what about the wet patch on the wig? And the collar? That’s not blood. So what? They’ve been cleaned. What with? Water? Wiped clear or washed. Which? Where? When?”
“You’re going like a train, Jack.”
“Must have been here, after the young lady left him. Unless — well, unless she did it and left him cold, in which case who got rid of him? She didn’t. Well — did she?”
“Have you met the young lady?”
“No.”
“She’s not the body-carrying type. Except her own, which she carries like Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.”
“Is that right?” Wrayburn mused. “Is that a fact? Now, about this wig and beard and all that carry-on. To begin with, this gear’s upstairs in a dressing-room. Moult supposedly puts it on, all except the whiskers, and comes down here, where the young lady meets him and fixes the whiskers. She goes to the drawing-room and he goes out by that door into the porch and then into the courtyard, where this Vincent liaises with him, then into the drawing-room, where he does a Daddy Christmas, or what passes for it, round the tree. Then he returns the same way as he came and Vincent sees him come in here by the same door and the young lady takes off his whiskers and leaves him here. And that’s the last anybody sees of him. Now. What say, somebody who knows he’s here comes in from outside with the poker from the upstairs dressing-room and lets him have it. Say he’s sitting there, nice and handy, still wearing his wig. Right. Then this character hauls him outside and dumps him, God knows where, but — Here!” Wrayburn ejaculated. “Wait a bit! What’s out there? There
’s a sledge out there. And there’s this chap Vincent out there. Isn’t there?”
“There is, indeed.”
“Well!” Wrayburn said. “Tt’s a start, isn’t it? It may not do in the finish. And I’ve read your book. I know what you think about drawing quick conclusions.”
“It’s a start.”
“Following it up, then. This character, before he goes, sees the condition of the wig and cleans the stains off at the handbasin there and hitches it over the lamp like we found it with that blasted tiara on it. And he goes out and chucks the poker into the fir tree and disposes — God knows where — of the — if it’s homicide — of the body. How about it? Come on. Prove me a fool. Come on.”
“My dear chap, I think it’s a well-reasoned proposition.”
“You do?”
“There are difficulties, though.”
“There are?”
“The floor, for instance. The carpet. Clear traces of the returning wet boots but nothing else. No other boots. And nothing to suggest a body having been dragged to the door. O.K., suppose it was carried out? You’d still expect some interference with the original prints and a set of new ones pointing both ways, wouldn’t you?”
Wrayburn stared moodily at the string-coloured carpet with its clear damp incoming impressions. He picked up a boot and fitted it to the nearest print. “Tallies,” he said. “That’s something. And the boot’s still wet. No drying in here and it was only last night, after all. Well — what next? What’s left? Alternative — he did go upstairs and get clobbered.”
“Wearing his wig?”
“All right. Fair enough. Wearing his wig. God knows why, but wearing his wig. And goes up to the dressing-room. And gets clobbered with the dressing-room poker. And — here! Hold on! Hold on! And the clobberer throws the poker out of the window and it gets stuck in the tree?”
“It seems possible.”
“It does?”
“And the body? If he’s dead?” Alleyn asked.
“Through the window too? Hang on. Don’t rush me.”
“Not for the world. Is the body wearing the wig when it takes the high jump?”
Wrayburn swallowed. “The bloody wig,” he said. “Leave the wig for the time being. Now. I know this bunch of domestic villains are supposed to have searched the area. I know that. But what say someone — all right, one of that lot for the sake of argument — had already removed the body? In the night? Will you buy that?”
“I’ll take it on approval. Removed the body and to confuse the issue returned the unmentionable wig to the cloakroom?”
“I quite like it,” said Wrayburn with a slight attempt at modesty. “Well, anyway, it does sort of fit. It snowed up here, last night. We won’t get anything from the ground, worse luck.”
“Until it thaws.”
“That’s right. That’s dead right.” Wrayburn cleared his throat. “It’s going to be a big one,” he said and after a considerable pause: “Like I said, it’s for our C.I.D. I’ll have to ring the Detective Chief Super about this one and I reckon I know what he’ll say. He’ll say we set up a search. Look, I’ll get onto this right away. You wait here. Will you?”
“Well—”
“I’d be obliged.”
“All right.”
So Wrayburn went off to telephone his Detective Chief Superintendent and Alleyn, a prey to forebodings, was left to contemplate the cloakroom.
Wrayburn came back, full of business. “There you are!” he said. “Just as I thought: He’s going to talk to his senior ’tecs and in the meantime I’m to carry on here. As from now. I’m to lay on a search party and ask Major Marchbanks for dogs. You’ll hang on, won’t you?” Alleyn promised and did so. When Wrayburn had gone he reexamined the wig, plucked a hair for himself, touched the still-damp robe, and fell into an abstraction from which Mr. Wrayburn’s return aroused him.
“No joy,” grumbled Wrayburn. “Breaking and entering with violence and Lord knows what else at the D.C.S.’s. He is calling up as many chaps as he can and the Major’s sending us what he can spare. They should be here within the hour. In the meantime—” he broke off, glanced at Alleyn, and made a fresh start. “There’ll have to be confirmation of all this stuff — statements from the party. The lot.”
“Big thing for you.”
“Are you joking? While it lasts, which will be until the C.I.D. comes waltzing in. Then back down the road smartly for me, to the drunks-in-charge. Look!” he burst out. “I don’t reckon our lot can handle it. Not on their own. Like the man said: we’re understaffed and we’re busy. We’re fully extended. I don’t mind betting the D.C.S.’ll talk to the C.C. before the hour’s out.”
“He’ll be able to call on the county for extra men.”
“He’d do better to go straight to the Yard. Now!”
Alleyn was silent.
“You know what I’m getting at, don’t you?”
“I do, but I wish you wouldn’t. The situation’s altogether too freakish. My wife’s a guest here and so am I. I’m the last person to meddle. I’ve told Bill-Tasman as much. Let them call in the Yard if they like, but not me. Leave me out. Get a statement from my wife, of course. You’ll want to do that. And then, unless there’s any good reason against it, I’ll take her away and damn’ glad to do so. And that’s final. I’ll leave you to it. You’ll want to lock up this place and then you can get cracking. Are there keys? Yes. There you are.”
“But —”
“My dear man, no. Not another word. Please.”
Alleyn went out, quickly, into the hall.
He encountered Hilary standing about six feet away with an air strangely compounded of diffidence flavoured with defiance.
“I don’t know what you’ll think of me,” said Hilary. “I daresay you may be very cross. You see, I’ve been talking to our local pundit. The Detective Chief-Superintendent. And to your boss-person at the C.I.D.”
“— It’s just,” Hilary blandly explained, “that I do happen to know him. Soon after I was first settled with the staff here, he paid a visit to the Vale, and Marchbanks brought him over for tea. He was interested in my experiment. But we mustn’t keep him waiting, must we?”
“He’s still on the line?”
“Yes. He’d like to have a word with you. There’s a telephone over there. I know you’re going to forgive me,” Hilary said to Alleyn’s back.
“Then you know a damn’ sight more than’s good for you,” Alleyn thought. He gave himself a second or two to regain his temper and lifted the receiver. Hilary left him with ostentatious tact. Alleyn wondered if he was going to have a sly listen in from wherever he had established the call.
The Assistant Commissioner was plaintive and slightly facetious. “My dear Rory,” he said, “what very odd company you keep: no holiday like a busman’s, I see.”
“I assure you, sir, it’s none of my seeking.”
“So I supposed. Are you alone?”
“Ostensibly.”
“Quite. Well, now your local D.C. Super rang me before Bill-Tasman did. It seems there’s no joy down your way: big multiple stores robbery, with violence, and a near riot following some bloody sit-in. They’re sending a few chaps out but they’re fully extended and can’t really spare them. As far as I can gather this show of yours —”
“It’s not mine.”
“Wait a minute. This show of yours looks as if it might develop into something, doesn’t it?” This was the Assistant Commissioner’s stock phrase for suspected homicide.
“It might, yes.”
“Yes. Your host would like you to take over.”
“But the D.C.S. is in charge, sir. In the meantime Wrayburn, the Div. Super from Downlow’s holding the fort.”
“Has the D.C.S. expressed his intention of going it alone?”
“I understand he’s bellyaching —”
“He is indeed. He wants the Yard.”
“But he’ll have to talk to his Chief Constable, sir, before —”
&n
bsp; “His Chief Constable is in the Bermudas.”
“Damnation!”
“This is a very bad line. What was that you said?”
Alleyn repressed an impulse to say “you ’eard.”
“I swore,” he said.
“That won’t get you anywhere, Rory.”
“Look, sir — my wife — Troy — she’s a guest in the house. So am I. It’s a preposterous setup. Isn’t it?”
“I’ve thought of that. Troy had better come back to London, don’t you agree? Give her my best respects and tell her I’m sorry to visit the policeman’s lot upon her.”
“But, sir, if I held the other guests I’d have to — you see what a farcical situation it is.”
“Take statements and let ’em go if you think it’s O.K. You’ve got a promising field without them, haven’t you?”
“I’m not so sure. It’s a rum go. It’s worse than that, it’s lunatic.”
“You’re thinking of the homicidal domestics? An excellent if extreme example of rehabilitation. But of course you may find that somewhere among them there’s a twicer. Rory,” said the A.C., changing his tone, “I’m sorry but we’re uncommonly busy in the department. This job ought to be tackled at once, and it needs a man with your peculiar talents.”
“And that’s an order?”
“Well, yes. I’m afraid it is.”
“Very good, sir.”
“We’ll send you down Mr. Fox for a treat. Would you like to speak to him?”
“I won’t trouble him.” Alleyn said sourly. “But — wait a moment.”
“Yes?”
“I believe Wrayburn has a list of the domestic staff here. I’d like to get a C.R.O. report.”
