by Ngaio Marsh
Silence: Alleyn turned back into the room.
“On Christmas morning,” Troy said, “just after midnight, when I hung my dress in there, I heard them having what sounded like a row.”
“Oh?”
“Well — just one remark from the Colonel. He said something was absolutely final and if she didn’t he would. He sounded very unlike himself. And then she banged a door — their bathroom door, I suppose, and I could hear her barking her way into bed. I remembered my manners with an effort and wrenched myself away.”
“Curious,” Alleyn said and after a moment’s consideration: “I must be off.”
He was halfway across the room when Mrs. Forrester screamed.
Seven — House Work
Colonel Forrester lay in a little heap face down under the window. He looked small and accidental. His wife, in her red dressing gown, knelt beside him, and as Troy and Alleyn entered the room, was in the act of raising him to a sitting position. Alleyn helped her.
Troy said, “He takes something, doesn’t he?”
“Tablets. Bedside table. And water.”
He was leaning back in his wife’s arms now, his eyes wide open and terrified and his head moving very slightly in time with his breathing. Her thin plait of hair dangled over him.
“It’s not here,” Troy said.
“Must be. Pill things. Capsules. He put them there. Be quick.”
Alleyn said: “Try his dressing gown pocket, if you can reach it. Wait. I will.” It was empty.
“I saw them. I reminded him. You haven’t looked. Fred! Fred, you’re all right, old man. I’m here.”
“Truly,” said Troy. “They’re not anywhere here. How about brandy?”
“Yes. His flask’s in the middle drawer. Dressing table.”
It was there. Troy unscrewed the top and gave it to her. Alleyn began casting about the room.
“That’ll be better. Won’t it, Fred? Better?”
Troy brought a glass of water but was ignored. Mrs. Forrester held the mouth of the flask between her husband’s lips. “Take it, Fred,” she said. “Just a sip. Take it. You must. That’s right. Another.”
Alleyn said: “Here we are!”
He was beside them with a capsule in his palm. He held it out to Mrs. Forrester. Then he took the flask from her put it beside a glass phial on the dressing table.
“Fred, look. Your pill. Come on, old boy.”
The delay seemed interminable. Into the silence came a tiny rhythmic sound: “Ah — ah — ah,” of the Colonel’s breathing. Presently Mrs. Forrester said: “That’s better. Isn’t it? That’s better, old boy.”
He was better. The look of extreme anxiety passed. He made plaintive little noises and at last murmured something.
“What? What is it?”
“Moult,” whispered the Colonel.
Mrs. Forrester made an inarticulate exclamation. She brushed her husband’s thin hair back and kissed his forehead.
“Turn,” said the Colonel, “wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All right soon.”
“Of course you will be.”
“Up.”
“Not yet, Fred.”
“Yes. Get up.”
He began very feebly to scrabble with his feet on the carpet. Mrs. Forrester, with a look of helplessness of which Troy would have thought her totally incapable, turned to Alleyn.
“Yes, of course,” he said, answering it. “He shouldn’t lie flat, should he?”
She shook her head.
Alleyn leant over the Colonel. “Will you let me put you to bed, sir?” he asked.
“Very kind. Shouldn’t bother.”
Troy heaped up the pillows on the bed and opened it back. When she looked about her she found Alleyn with the Colonel in his arms.
“Here we go,” said Alleyn and gently deposited his burden.
The Colonel looked up at him. “Collapse,” he said, “of Old Party,” and the wraith of his mischievous look visited his face.
“You old fool,” said his wife.
Alleyn chuckled. “You’ll do,” he said. “You’ll do splendidly.”
“Oh yes. I expect so.”
Mrs. Forrester chafed his hands between her two elderly ones.
Alleyn picked up the phial delicately between finger and thumb and held it up to the light.
“Where was it?” Troy asked.
He motioned with his head towards a lacquered leather wastepaper bin under the dressing table. The gesture was not so slight that it escaped Mrs. Forrester.
“In there?” she said. “In there?”
“Is there something I can put the capsules in? I’d like to keep the phial if I may?”
“Anything. There’s a pin box on the dressing table. Take that.”
He did so. He spread his handkerchief out and gingerly wrapped up the phial and its stopper.
“The stable door bit,” he muttered and put them in his pocket.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Mrs. Forrester, who was rapidly returning to form.
“It means mischief,” said Alleyn.
The Colonel in a stronger voice said, “Could there be some air?”
The curtain was not drawn across the window under which they had found him. The rain still beat against it. Alleyn said, “Are you sure?”
Mrs. Forrester said, “We always have it open at the top. Moult does it before he goes to bed. Two inches from the top. Always.”
Alleyn found that it was unlatched. He put the heels of his hands under the top sash in the lower frame and couldn’t budge it. He tried to raise it by the two brass loops at the base but with no success.
“You must push up the bottom in order to lower the top,” Mrs. Forrester observed.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“You can’t be. It works perfectly well.”
“It doesn’t, you know.”
“Fiddle,” said Mrs. Forrester.
The ejaculation was intended contemptuously, but he followed it like an instruction. He fiddled. His fingers explored the catch and ran along the junction of the two sashes.
“It’s wedged,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s a wedge between the sashes.”
“Take it out.”
“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said, “Mrs. Forrester. You just wait a bit.”
“Why!”
“Because I say,” he replied and the astounded Troy saw that Mrs. Forrester relished this treatment.
“I suppose,” she snapped, “you think you know what you’re about.”
“What is it, B?” asked her husband. “Is something wrong with the window?”
“It’s being attended to.”
“It’s awfully stiff. Awfully stiff.”
Alleyn returned to the bed. “Colonel Forrester,” he said. “Did you wrestle with the window? With your hands above your head? Straining and shoving?”
“You needn’t rub it in,” said the Colonel.
“Fred!” cried his wife, “what am I to do with you! I said —”
“Sorry, B.”
“I’ll open the other window,” Alleyn said. “I want this one left as it is. Please. It’s important. You do understand, don’t you? Both of you? No touching?”
“Of course, of course, of course,” the Colonel drawled. His eyes were shut. His voice was drowsy. “When he isn’t the White Knight,” Troy thought, “he’s the Dormouse.”
His wife put his hands under the bedclothes, gave him a sharp look, and joined Alleyn and Troy at the far end of the room.
“What’s all this about wedges?” she demanded.
“The houseman or whatever he is — ”
“Yes. Very well. Nigel.”
“Nigel. He may have wedged the sashes to stop the windows rattling in the storm.”
“I daresay.”
“If so, he only wedged one.”
As if in confirmation, the second window in the Forresters’ bedroom
suddenly beat a tattoo.
“Ours haven’t been wedged,” said Troy.
“Nor has the dressing-room. May I borrow those scissors on your table? Thank you.”
He pulled a chair up to the window, took off his shoes, stood on it, and by gentle manipulation eased a closely folded cardboard wedge from between the sashes. Holding it by the extreme tip he carried it to the dressing table.
“It looks like a chemists’s carton,” he said. “Do you recognize it? Please don’t touch.”
“It’s the thing his pills come in. It was a new bottle.”
Alleyn fetched an envelope from the writing table, slid the wedge into it and pocketed it.
He put on his shoes and replaced the chair, “Remember,” he said, “don’t touch the window and don’t let Nigel touch it. Mrs. Forrester, will you be all right, now? Is there anything we can do?”
She sat down at her dressing table and leant her head on her hand. With her thin grey plait dangling and bald patches showing on her scalp she looked old and very tired.
“Thank you,” she said. “Nothing. We shall be perfectly all right.”
“Are you sure?” Troy asked and touched her shoulder.
“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’m quite sure. You’ve been very kind.” She roused herself sufficiently to give Alleyn one of her looks. “So have you,” she said, “as far as that goes. Very.”
“Do you know,” he said, “if I were you I’d turn the keys in the doors. You don’t want to be disturbed, do you?”
She looked steadily at him, and after a moment, shook her head. “And I know perfectly well what you’re thinking,” she said.
When Alleyn arrived downstairs it was to a scene of activity. Superintendent Wrayburn, now dressed in regulation waterproofs, was giving instructions to five equally waterproofed constables. Two prison warders and two dogs of super-caninely sharp aspect waited inside the main entrance. Hilary stood in front of one of the fires looking immensely perturbed.
“Ah!” he cried on seeing Alleyn. “Here you are! We were beginning to wonder —?”
Alleyn said that there had been one or two things to attend to upstairs, that the Colonel had been unwell but was all right again, and that he and Mrs. Forrester had retired for the night.
“Oh, Lor’!” Hilary said. “That too! Are you sure he’s all right? Poor Uncle Flea, but how awkward.”
“He’s all right.”
Alleyn joined Wrayburn, who made quite a thing of, as it were, presenting the troops for inspection. He then drew Alleyn aside and in a portentous murmur, said that conditions out-of-doors were now so appalling that an exhaustive search of the grounds was virtually impossible. He suggested, however, that they should make a systematic exploration of the area surrounding the house and extend it as far beyond as seemed feasible. As for the dogs and their handlers, Wrayburn said, did Alleyn think that there was anything to be got out of laying them on with one of the boots in the cloakroom and seeing if anything came of it? Not, he added, that he could for the life of him believe that anything would.
Alleyn agreed to this. “You’ve got a filthy night for it,” he said to the men. “Make what you can of a bad job. You do understand the position, of course. The man’s missing. He may be injured. He may be dead. There may be a capital charge involved, there may not. In any case it’s urgent. If we could have afforded to leave it till daylight, we would have done so. As it is — do your best. Mr. Wrayburn will give you your instructions. Thank you in advance for carrying out a foul assignment.”
To the handlers he made suitable acknowledgments and was at some pains to put them in the picture.
“On present evidence,” he said, “the missing man was last seen in that cloakroom over there. He may have gone outdoors, he may have gone upstairs. We don’t know where he went. Or how. Or in what state. I realize, of course, that under these conditions, as far as the open ground is concerned there can be nothing for the dogs to pick up, but there may be something in the entrance porch. If, for instance, you can find more than two separate tracks, that would be something, and you might cast round the front and sides of the east wing, especially about the broken conservatory area. I’ll join you when you do that. In the meantime Mr. Wrayburn will show you the ropes. All right?”
“Very good, sir,” they said.
“All right, Jack,” Alleyn said. “Over to you.”
Wrayburn produced the fur-lined boot — an incongruous and somehow rather piteous object — from under his cape and consulted with the handlers. The front doors were opened, letting in the uproar of the Nor’east Buster and letting out the search parties. Fractured torch beams zigzagged across the rain. Alleyn shut out the scene and said to Hilary, “And now, if you please, I’ll talk to the staff.”
“Yes. All right. I’ll ring —”
“Are they in their own quarters — the staff common-room, you call it, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think so. Yes, yes, they are.”
“I’ll see them there.”
“Shall I come?”
“No need. Better not, I think.”
“Alleyn: I do beg that you won’t — won’t —”
“I shall talk to them exactly as I shall talk to any one of you. With no foregone conclusions and without prejudice.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes. Well, good. But — look here, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I mean, you do think — don’t you? — that there’s been — violence?”
“When one finds blood and hair on the business end of a poker, the thought does occur, doesn’t it?”
“Oh Lord!” said Hilary. “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, what a bore it all is! What a disgusting, devastating bore!”
“That’s one way of putting it. The staff-room’s at the back through there, isn’t it? I’ll find my own way.”
“I’ll wait in the study, then.”
“Do.”
Beyond the traditional green baize door was a passage running behind the hall, from the chapel, at the rear of the east wing, to the serveries and kitchen at the rear of the dining room in the west wing. Alleyn, guided by a subdued murmur of voices, tapped on a central door and opened it.
“May I come in?” he asked.
It was a large, comfortable room with an open fire, a television and a radio. On the walls hung reproductions of post-impressionist paintings, chosen, Alleyn felt sure, by Hilary. There were bookshelves lined with reading matter that proclaimed Hilary’s hopes for the intellectual stimulation of his employees. On a central table was scattered a heterogeneous company of magazines that perhaps reflected, more accurately, their natural inclination.
The apple-cheeked boy was watching television, the five members of the regular staff sat round the fire, their chairs close together. As Alleyn came in they got to their feet with the air of men who have been caught offside. Blore moved towards him and then stood still.
Alleyn said, “I thought it would be easier if we talked this business over here where we won’t be interrupted. May we sit down?”
Blore, with a quick look at the others, pulled back the central chair. Alleyn thanked him and took it. The men shuffled their feet. A slightly distorted voice at the other end of the room shouted, “What you guys waitin’ for? Less go.”
“Turn that off,” Blore commanded in his great voice, “and come over here.”
The rosy boy switched off the television set and slouched, blushing, towards them.
“Sit down, all of you,” Alleyn said. “I won’t keep you long.”
They sat down and he got a square look at them. At Blore: once a headwaiter, who had knifed his wife’s lover in the hanging days and narrowly escaped the rope, swarthy, fattish, baldish and with an air of consequence about him. At Mervyn, the ex-signwriter, booby-trap expert, a dark, pale man who stooped and looked sidelong. At Cooke, nicknamed Kittiwee, whose mouth wore the shadow of a smirk, who loved cats and had bashed a warder to death. At Slyboots and Smartypants, who lay along his ample thighs, fast asleep. At Nigel, p
allid as uncooked pastry, almost an albino, possibly a lapsed religious maniac, who had done a sinful lady. Finally at Vincent, now seen by Alleyn for the first time at Halberds and instantly recognized since he himself had arrested him when, as gardener to an offensive old lady, he had shut her up in a greenhouse heavy with arsenical spray. His appeal, based on the argument that she had been concealed by a date palm and that he was unaware of her presence, was successful and he was released. At the time Alleyn had been rather glad of it. Vincent was a bit ferrety in the face and gnarled as to the hands.
They none of them looked at Alleyn.
“The first thing I have to say,” he said, “is this. You know that I know who you are and that you’ve all been inside and what the convictions were. You,” he said to Vincent, “may say you’re in a different position from the others, having been put in the clear, but where this business is concerned and at this stage of the inquiry, you’re all in the clear. By this I mean that your past records, as far as I can see at the moment, are of no interest and they’ll go on being uninteresting unless anything crops up to make me think otherwise. A man has disappeared. We don’t know why, how, when or where and we’ve got to find him. To use the stock phrase, alive or dead. If I say I hope one or more or all of you can help us, I don’t mean, repeat don’t mean, that one or more or all of you is or are suspected of having had anything to do with his disappearance. I mean what I say: I’m here to see if you can think of anything at all, however trivial, that will give us a lead, however slight. In this respect you’re on an equal footing with every other member of the household. Is that understood?”
The silence was long enough to make him wonder if there was to be no response. At last Blore said, “It’s understood, sir, I suppose, by all of us.”
“But not necessarily believed? Is that it?”
This time the silence was unbroken. “Well,” he said, “I can’t blame you. It’s a natural reaction. I can only hope you will come to accept the proposition.”
