by Ngaio Marsh
“We wouldn’t have broken anything open, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Wouldn’t you?” he said vaguely. Desdemona glanced in the mirror. “Well — Pauline might,” she admitted after a pause.
Alleyn waited for a moment, caught Fox’s eye and stood up. He said: “Now, Miss Ancred, I wonder if we may see your father’s room?”
“Papa’s room?”
“If we may.”
“I couldn’t — you won’t mind if I—? I’ll ask Barker—”
“If he’d just show us in the general direction we could find our own way.”
Desdemona stretched out her hands impulsively. “You do understand,” she said. “You do understand how one feels. Thank you.”
Alleyn smiled vaguely, dodged the outstretched hands and made for the door. “Perhaps Barker,” he suggested, “could show us the room.”
Desdemona swept to the bell-push and in a moment or two Barker came in. With enormous aplomb she explained what he was to do. She contrived to turn Barker into the very quintessence of family retainers. The atmosphere in the little sitting-room grew more and more feudal. “These gentlemen,” she ended, “have come to help us, Barker. We, in our turn, must help them, mustn’t we? You will help them, won’t you?”
“Certainly, miss,” said Barker. “If you would come this way, sir?”
How well Troy had described the great stairs and the gallery and the yards and yards of dead canvas in heavy frames. And the smell. The Victorian smell of varnish, carpet, wax, and mysteriously, paste. A yellow smell, she had said. Here was the first long corridor, and there, branching from it, the passage to Troy’s tower. This was where she had lost herself that first night and these were the rooms with their ridiculous names. On his right, Bancroft and Bernhardt; on his left, Terry and Bracegirdle; then an open linen closet and bathrooms. Barker’s coattails jigged steadily ahead of them. His head was stooped, and one saw only a thin fringe of grey hair and a little dandruff on his back collar. Here was the cross-corridor, corresponding with the picture gallery, and facing them a closed door, with the legend, in gothic lettering, “Irving.”
“This is the room, sir,” said Barker’s faded and breathless voice.
“We’ll go in, if you please.”
The door opened on darkness and the smell of disinfectant. A momentary fumbling, and then a bedside lamp threw a pool of light upon a table and a crimson counterpane. With a clatter of rings Barker pulled aside the window curtains and then let up the blinds.
The aspect of the room that struck Alleyn most forcibly was the extraordinary number of prints and photographs upon the walls. They were so lavishly distributed that almost all the paper, a red flock powdered with stars, was concealed by them. Next he noticed the heavy richness of the appointments; the enormous looking-glass, the brocades and velvets, the massive and forbidding furniture.
Suspended above the bed was a long cord. He saw that it ended, not in a bell-push, but in raw strands of wire.
“Will that be all, sir?” said Barker, behind them.
“Stop for a minute, will you?” Alleyn said. “I want you to help us, Barker.”
ii
He was indeed very old. His eyes were filmy and expressed nothing but a remote sadness. His hands seemed to have shrunk away from their own empurpled veins, and were tremulous. But all these witnesses of age were in part disguised by a lifetime’s habit of attentiveness to other people’s wants. There was the shadow of alacrity still about Barker.
“I don’t think,” Alleyn said, “that Miss Ancred quite explained why we are here. It’s at Mr. Thomas Ancred’s suggestion. He wants us to make fuller inquiries into the cause of Sir Henry’s death.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Some of his family believe that the diagnosis was too hastily given.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“Had you any such misgivings yourself?”,
Barker closed and unclosed his hands. “I can’t say I had, sir. Not at first.”
“Not at first?”
“Knowing what he took to eat and drink at dinner, sir, and the way he was worked up, and had been over and over again. Dr. Withers had warned him of it, sir.”
“But later? After the funeral? And now?”
“I really can’t say, sir. What with Mrs. Kentish and Mrs. Henry and Miss Desdemona asking me over and over again about a certain missing article and what with us all being very put about in the servants’ hall, I can’t really say.”
“A tin of rat-bane was the missing article?”
“Yes, sir. I understand they’ve found it now.”
“And the question they want settled is whether it was an opened or unopened tin before it was lost. Is that it?”
“I understand that’s it, sir. But we’ve had that stuff on the premises these last ten years and more. Two tins there were, sir, in one of the outside store-rooms and there was one opened and used up and thrown out. That I do know. About this one that’s turned up, I can’t say. Mrs. Henry Ancred recollects, sir, that it was there about a year ago, unopened, and Mrs. Bullivant, the cook, says it’s been partly used since then, and Mrs. Henry doesn’t fancy so, and that’s all I can say, sir.”
“Do you know if rat poison has ever been used in Miss Orrincourt’s room?”
Barker’s manner became glazed with displeasure.
“Never to my knowledge, sir,” he said.
“Are there no rats there?”
“The lady in question complained of them, I understand, to one of the housemaids, who set traps and caught several. I believe the lady said she didn’t fancy the idea of poison, and for that reason it was not employed.”
“I see. Now, Barker, if you will, I should like you to tell me exactly what this room looked like when you entered it on the morning after Sir Henry’s death.”
Barker’s sunken hand moved to his lips and covered their trembling. A film of tears spread over his eyes.
“I know it’s distressing for you,” Alleyn said, “and I’m sorry. Sit down. No, please sit down.”
Barker stooped his head a little and sat on the only high chair in the room.
“I’m sure,” Alleyn said, “that if there was anything gravely amiss you’d want to see it remedied.”
Barker seemed to struggle between his professional reticence and his personal distress. Finally, in a sudden flood of garrulity, he produced the classical reaction: “I wouldn’t want to see this house mixed up in anything scandalous, sir. My father was butler here to the former baronet, Sir Henry’s second cousin — Sir William Ancred, that was — I was knife-boy and then footman under him. He was not,” said Barker, “anything to do with theatricals, sir, the old gentleman wasn’t. This would have been a great blow to him.”
“You mean the manner of Sir Henry’s death?”
“I mean”—Barker tightened his unsteady lips—“I mean the way things were conducted lately.”
“Miss Orrincourt?”
“T’uh!” said Barker, and thus established his life-long service to the Ancreds.
“Look here,” Alleyn said suddenly, “do you know what the family have got into their heads about this business?”
There was a long pause before the old voice whispered: “I don’t like to think. I don’t encourage gossip below stairs, sir, and I don’t take part in it myself.”
“Well,” Alleyn suggested, “suppose you tell me about this room.”
It was, after all, only a slow enlargement of what he had already heard. The darkened room, the figure hunched on the bed, “as if,” Barker said fearfully, “he’d been trying to crawl down to the floor,” the stench and disorder and the broken bell-cord.
“Where was the end?” Alleyn asked. “The bell-push itself?”
“In his hand, sir. Tight clenched round it, his hand was. We didn’t discover it at first.”
“Have you still got it?”
“It’s in his dressing-table drawer, sir. I put it there, meaning to get it mended.”
“Did you unscrew it or examine it in any way?”
“Oh, no, sir. No. I just put it away and disconnected the circuit on the board.”
“Right! And now, Barker, about the night before, when Sir Henry went to bed. Did you see anything of him?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir. He rang for me as usual. It was midnight when the bell went, and I came up to his room. I’d valeted him, sir, since his own man left.”
“Did he ring his room bell?”
“No, sir. He always rang the bell in the hall as he went through. By the time he reached his room, you see, I had gone up the servants’ stairs and was waiting for him.”
“How did he seem?”
“Terrible. In one of his tantrums and talking very wild and angry.”
“Against his family?”
“Very hot against them.”
“Go on.”
“I got him into his pyjamas and gown and him raging all the while and troubled with his indigestion pain as well. I put out the medicine he took for it. He said he wouldn’t take it just then so I left the bottle and glass by his bed. I was offering to help him into bed when he says he must see Mr. Rattisbon. He’s the family solicitor, sir, and always comes to us for The Birthday. Well, sir, I tried to put Sir Henry off, seeing he was tired and upset, but he wouldn’t hear of it. When I took him by the arm he got quite violent. I was alarmed and tried to hold him but he broke away.”
Alleyn had a sudden vision of the two old men struggling together in this grandiose bedroom.
“Seeing there was nothing for it,” Barker went on, “I did as he ordered, and took Mr. Rattisbon up to his room. He called me back and told me to find the two extra helps we always get in for The Birthday. A Mr. and Mrs. Candy, sir, formerly on the staff here and now in a small business in the village. I understood from what Sir Henry said that he wished them to witness his Will. I showed them up, and he then told me to inform Miss Orrincourt that he would be ready for his hot drink in half an hour. He said he would not require me again. So I left him.”
“And went to give this message?”
“After I had switched over the mechanism of his bell, sir, so that if he required anything in the night it would sound in the passage outside Mrs. Henry’s door. It has been specially arranged like this, in case of an emergency, and, of course, sir, it must have broke off in his hand before it sounded, because even if Mrs. Henry had slept through it, Miss Dessy was sharing her room and must have heard. Miss Dessy sleeps very light, I understand.”
“Isn’t it strange that he didn’t call out?”
“He wouldn’t be heard, sir. The walls in this part of the house are very thick, being part of the original outer walls. The previous baronet, sir, added this wing to Ancreton.”
“I see. At this time where was Miss Orrincourt?”
“She had left the company, sir. They had all moved into the drawing-room.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, sir. Except her and Mr. Rattisbon. And Mrs. Alleyn, who was a guest. They were all there. Mrs. Kentish said the young lady had gone to her room and that’s where I found her. Mr. Rattisbon was in the hall.”
“What was the business with the hot drink?”
The old man described it carefully. Until the rise of Sonia Orrincourt, Millamant had always prepared the drink. Miss Orrincourt had taken over this routine. The milk and ingredients were left in her room by the housemaid, who turned down her bed. She brewed the drink over a heater, put it in a Thermos flask, and, half an hour after he had retired, took it to his room. He slept badly and sometimes would not drink it until much later in the night.
“What happened to the Thermos flask and the cup and saucer?”
“They were taken away and washed up, sir. They’ve been in use since.”
“Had he drunk any of it?”
“It had been poured into the cup, sir, at all events, and into the saucer for that cat, as was always done, and the saucer set on the floor. But the cup and the flask and the medicine bottle had been overturned and there was milk and medicine soaked into the carpet.”
“Had he taken his medicine?”
“The glass was dirty. It had fallen into the saucer.”
“And has, of course, been washed,” said Alleyn. “What about the bottle?”
“It had been knocked over, sir, as I mentioned. It was a new bottle. I was very much put out, sir, but I tried to tidy the room a bit, not knowing exactly what I was doing. I remember I took the dirty china and the bottle and Thermos downstairs with me. The bottle was thrown out, and the other things cleared up. The medicine cupboard has been cleaned out thoroughly. It’s in the bathroom, sir, through that door. The whole suite,” said Barker conscientiously, “has been turned out and cleaned.”
Fox mumbled inarticulately.
“Well,” said Alleyn. “To go back to the message you took to Miss Orrincourt that night. Did you actually see her?”
“No, sir. I tapped on the door and she answered.” He moved uneasily.
“Was there anything else?”
“It was a queer thing—” His voice faded.
“What was a queer thing?”
“She must have been alone,” Barker mused, “because, as I’ve said, sir, the others were downstairs, and afterwards, just afterwards, when I took in the grog-tray, there they all were. But before I knocked on her door, sir, I could have sworn that she was laughing.”
iii
When Barker had gone, Fox sighed gustily, put on his spectacles and looked quizzically through them at the naked end of the bell-cord.
“Yes, Br’er Fox, exactly,” said Alleyn, and went to the dressing-table. “That’ll be the lady,” he said.
A huge photograph of Sonia Orrincourt stood in the middle of the dressing-table.
Fox joined Alleyn. “Very taking,” he said. “Funny, you know, Mr. Alleyn. That’s what they call a pin-up girl. Plenty of teeth and hair and limbs. Sir Henry put it in a silver frame, but that, you might say, is the only difference. Very taking.”
Alleyn opened the top drawer on the left.
“First pop,” Fox remarked.
Alleyn pulled on a glove and gingerly took out a pear-shaped wooden bell-push. “One takes these pathetic precautions,” he said, “and a hell of a lot of use they are. Now then.” He unscrewed the end of the bell-push and looked into it.
“See here, Fox. Look at the two points. Nothing broken. One of the holding-screws and its washer are tight. No bits of wire. The other screw and washer are loose. Got your lens? Have a look at that cord again.”
Fox took out a pocket lens and returned to the bed. “One of the wires is unbroken,” he said presently. “No shiny end, and it’s blackened like they do get with time. The other’s different, though. Been dragged through and scraped, I’d say. That’s what must have happened. He put his weight on it and they pulled through.”
“In that case,” Alleyn said, “why is one of the screws so tight, and only one wire shiny? We’ll keep this bell-push, Fox.”
He had wrapped his handkerchief round it and dropped it in his pocket, when the door was opened and Sonia Orrincourt walked in.
iv
She was dressed in black, but so dashingly that mourning was not much suggested. Her curtain of ashen hair and her heavy fringe were glossy, her eyelids were blue, her lashes incredible and her skin sleek. She wore a diamond clasp and bracelet and ear-rings. She stood just inside the room.
“Pardon the intrusion,” she said, “but am I addressing the police?”
“You are,” said Alleyn. “Miss Orrincourt?”
“That’s the name.”
“How do you do? This is Inspector Fox.”
“Now listen!” said Miss Orrincourt, advancing upon them with a professional gait. “I want to know what’s cooking in this icehouse. I’ve got my rights to look after, same as anybody else, haven’t I?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Thank you. Very kind I’m sure. Then perhaps you’ll tell me who a
sked you into my late fiancé’s room and just what you’re doing now you’ve got there.”
“We were asked by his family and we’re doing a job of work.”
“Work? What sort of work? Don’t tell me the answer to that one,” said Miss Orrincourt angrily. “I seem to know it. They’re trying to swing something across me. Is that right? Trying to pack me up. What is it? That’s what I want to know. Come on. What is it?”
“Will you first of all tell me how you knew we were here and why you thought we were police officers?”
She sat on the bed, leaning back on her hands, her hair falling vertically from her scalp. Behind her was spread the crimson counterpane. Alleyn wondered why she had ever attempted to be an actress while there were magazine artists who needed models. She looked in a leisurely manner at Fox’s feet. “How do I know you’re police? That’s a scream! Take a look at your boy friend’s boots.”
“Yours, partner,” Alleyn murmured, catching Fox’s eye.
Fox cleared his throat. “Er—touché,” he said carefully. “Not much good me trying to get by with a sharp-eyed young lady, is it, sir?”
“Well, come on,” Miss Orrincourt demanded. “What’s the big idea? Are they trying to make out there’s something funny in the Will? Or what? What are you doing, opening my late fiancé’s drawers? Come on?”
“I’m afraid,” said Alleyn, “you’ve got this situation the wrong way round. We’re on a job, and part of that job is asking questions. And since you’re here, Miss Orrincourt, I wonder if you’d mind answering one or two?”
She looked at him, he thought, as an animal or a completely unselfconscious child might look at a stranger. It was difficult to expect anything but perfect sounds from her. He experienced a shock each time he heard the Cockney voice with its bronchial overtones, and the phrases whose very idiom seemed shoddy, as if she had abandoned her native dialect for something she had half-digested at the cinema.
“All upstage and county?” she said. “Fancy! And what were you wanting to know?”
“About the Will, for instance.”
“The Will’s all right,” she said quickly. “You can turn the place inside out. Crawl up the chimney if you like. You won’t find another Will. I’m telling you, and I know.”
