Surfeit of Lampreys

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Yes, of course. Where do you do it? Not much room in here, is there?”

  Mike shrugged his shoulders. “Hopeless,” he said. “We used the passage. And then, just when he’d got the coupling mended and everything, Giggle had to go.”

  “So I suppose you simply carried on without him?”

  “As a matter of fac’, I didn’t. Ackshully, Robin was going to play with me. You see I had to give Uncle G. the parcel.” Mike looked out of the corners of his eyes at Nanny. “I say,” he said, “it’s pretty funny to think of, isn’t it? I mean, where is dead?”

  “Heaven,” said Nanny firmly. “Your Uncle Gabriel’s as happy as the day’s long. Well content, he is, you may depend upon it.”

  “Well, Henry said this afternoon that Uncle G. could go to hell for all he cared.”

  “Nonsense. You didn’t hear Henry properly.”

  “Where was the parcel?” asked Alleyn.

  “In Mummy’s room. Just by the screen inside the door. I couldn’t find it when Robin said Mummy wanted me to give it to Uncle G.”

  “When was that?” asked Alleyn, taking out his cigarette case.

  “Oh, before. After they’d done their charade. The others were horribly waxy because Uncle G. didn’t look at the charade. Stephen said he was an old—”

  “That’ll do, Michael.”

  “Well, Nanny, he did. I heard him when I was looking for the parcel.”

  “Did you give the parcel up as a bad job?” asked Alleyn.

  Mike shrugged again. It was a gesture that turned him momentarily into a miniature of his mother. “Sort of,” he admitted. “I went back to Giggle and the Hornby and then I saw the parcel. We were by the door.”

  “Was anyone in the bedroom?”

  “Mummy and Aunt V. and Aunt Kit had come in. They were gassing away behind the screen.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Oh, I just scooped it up and took it to Uncle G. in the drawing-room. Uncle G. looked as waxy as hell.”

  “Michael!”

  “Well, sorry, Nanny, but he did. He didn’t say anything. Not thank you or anything like that. He just goggled at me and Daddy told me to put it down and bunk. So I bunked. Patch said they had the manners of hogs and I think they had too. Not Daddy, of course.”

  “Don’t speak like that, Michael,” said Nanny “It’s silly and rude. Mr. Alleyn doesn’t want to hear—”

  “I say.” Mike sat up abruptly. “You’re not Handsome Alleyn, are you?”

  Alleyn’s face turned a brilliant red. “You’ve been reading the lower type of newspapers, young Lamprey.”

  “I say, you are! Gosh! I read all about the Gospell murder in the True Detective! A person in my form at school knew a person whose father is a friend of—Gosh, of yours. He bucked about it for weeks. He won’t buck much longer, ha-ha. I say, sir, I’m sorry I mentioned that name. You know—H.A.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I suppose you think it’s a pretty feeble sort of nickname to have. At school,” said Mike lowering his voice, “some people call me Potty. Potty Lamprey.”

  “One lives down these things.”

  “I know. Ackshully, I suppose you wouldn’t remember a person called N. Bathgate. He’s a reporter.”

  “Nigel Bathgate? I know him very well indeed.”

  Mike achieved an admirable expression of detachment. “So,” he said off-handedly, “as a matter of fac’ do we. He told me he called you Hand—you know—as a sort of joke. In the paper. To make you waxy.”

  “He did.”

  Mike giggled and gave Alleyn a sidelong glance.

  “I suppose there’s not much hope nowadays,” he said, “for anybody to get into detection. I suppose you have to be rather super at everything.”

  “Are you thinking of it?”

  “As a matter of fac’ I am, rather. But I suppose I’m too much of a fool to be any use.”

  “It’s largely a matter of training. What sort of memory have you got?”

  “He’s the most forgetful boy I ever had the training of,” said Nanny. Mike gave Alleyn a man-to-mannish look.

  “Let’s see how you shape,” Alleyn suggested. “Have a stab at telling me as closely as you can remember just exactly what happened, let’s say from the time you picked up the parcel and onwards. Go along inch by inch and tell me exactly what you saw and heard and smelt for the next fifteen minutes. That’s the sort of stuff you have to do at this game.” He opened his notebook. “We’ll say you’re an expert witness and I’m taking your statement. Off you go. You picked up the parcel? With which hand?”

  “With my left hand because I had a Hornby signal in my right.”

  “Good. Go on.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “Well, I stepped over the rails. Giggle was fitting two curved bits together. I said I wouldn’t be a jiffy and he said ‘All Right, Master Mike.’ And I walked down the passage past the curtain of Robin’s room. Robin’s room is generally a sort of hall in 26 but Mummy had the curtains put there to make a room and a passage. Is this the right way, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “The curtains were shut. They’re a kind of blue woolly stuff. The door at the end of the passage was shut. I opened it and went onto the landing.”

  “Did you shut the door?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mike simply. “I hardly ever do. No, I didn’t, because I heard Giggle winding up the engine of the Hornby and I looked back at him.”

  “Good. Then?”

  “Well, I crossed the landing.”

  “Was the lift up?”

  “Yes, it was. You can see the light through the glass in the tops of the doors. There wasn’t anybody on the landing or outside the lift. Not standing up, anyway. So I went into the hall of No. 25 and I don’t suppose I shut the door. I’m afraid I’ll be a bit feeble if you say I’ve got to describe the hall because there were all the things the others had had for their charade. They’d just sort of bished them into the cupboard and they were bulging out and there were coats lying on the table and…” Mike stopped and screwed up his eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, sir, I’m just sort of trying to see.”

  “That’s right,” said Alleyn quietly. “You know your brain is really rather like a camera. It takes a photograph of everything you see, only very often you never develop the photograph. Try to develop the photograph your brain took of the hall.”

  Nanny said: “The boy’s getting flushed.”

  “I’m not,” said Mike, without opening his eyes. “Honestly, Nanny. Well, in my photograph the light is sort of coming through the window in front of me. Into my eyes. So everything has got its shadow coming my way. There’s a thing of flowers on the round table and a bowler. I think it was Uncle G.’s bowler. And I saw Henry’s gloves. And a scarf and some race glasses and one of those hats people wear in hot places. Wait a bit, sir. There’s something else. It’s sort of on the edge of the picture. Not quite developed, like you said.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll get it in a jiffy, all right. It’s a shining kind of thing. Not ’zackly big but long and bright.”

  Nanny uttered a brusque exclamation and made an anxious gesture with her hands as though she fended something away from herself and from Mike.

  “Wait a bit,” Mike repeated impatiently. “Don’t tell me. Long and thin and bright.”

  He opened his eyes and stared triumphantly at Alleyn. “I’ve got it,” he said. “It was on the edge of the table. One of those long pointed things they keep in the sideboard drawer. A skewer. That’s what it was, sir. A skewer.”

  Mike paused and regarded Alleyn with some complacency. Nobody stirred. The nursery clock ticked loudly on the mantel-piece. A little gust of wind shook the window-panes. Down below in Pleasaunce Court a sequence of cars changed gears and accelerated. A paper-seller yelled something indistinguishable and somebody shouted “Taxi!” Nanny’s roug
hened hands, working together stealthily against her apron, made a faint susurration.

  “They used it in their charade,” said Mike. “I heard Frid yelling out for it.”

  “The charade?” Alleyn echoed. “Well, never mind. Go on.”

  “About the skewer? Well, there’s one thing…”

  Mike stopped. His face lost its look of eagerness and, as small boys’ faces can, became extremely blank.

  “What’s up?” asked Alleyn.

  “I was only wondering. Is the skewer a clue?”

  “Anything might be a clue,” said Alleyn carefully.

  “I know. Only—”

  “Yes?”

  Mike asked in a small voice: “What happened to Uncle G.?”

  Alleyn took his time over this. “He was hurt,” he said. “Somebody went for him. It’s all over now. Nothing of the sort can possibly happen again.”

  Mike said: “What was wrong with his eye?”

  “It was hurt. People’s eyes bleed rather easily, you know. Are you a boxer?”

  “A bit. I was only wondering—”

  “Yes?”

  “About the skewer. You see I sort of remembered. After I tried to give the parcel to Uncle G. I went to the dining-room and after I went to the dining-room I went back with Giggle to the landing because Giggle was going away and we went through the hall and I said good-bye to Giggle because he’s rather a friend of mine, and I saw him go downstairs and I leant on the table and—well I was only just mentioning it because I happened to remember—well, anyway, the skewer wasn’t on the table then.”

  “Michael,” said Nanny loudly, “don’t make things up.”

  “It wasn’t. I put my hands where it would have been.” There was another silence. Mike sat up and clasped his arms around his knees. “Shall I go back?” he asked. “Back to where I took the parcel to Uncle G.?”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn, “go back.”

  “Well, that’s everything I can remember about the first time in the hall. I went through the hall into the drawing-room. Daddy and him were by the fire. So I gave him the parcel. Well, I mean I didn’t give it to him because of what Daddy told me. I mean it was a bit awkward.”

  “What was awkward?”

  “Uncle G. being in such a stink about something. Gosh, he was in a stink.”

  “You mean he was upset?”

  “Absolutely livid. Gosh, you should have seen his face! Jiminy cricket!”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” said Nanny. “You’re letting your fancy run away with you.”

  “I am not,” cried Mike indignantly. “He wants me to tell him ezackly all I can remember and I am telling him. You are silly, Nanny.”

  “That will do, Michael.”

  “Well, anyway—”

  “Never mind,” Alleyn interrupted. “Have you any idea why your uncle was angry?”

  Nanny said: “I don’t think Michael ought to answer these questions without his parents say that he may.”

  “O Nanny!” cried Mike in accents of extreme provocation. “You are!”

  “Then we shall ask them to come in,” said Alleyn. “Bailey.” A figure stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the scrap-covered screen by Mike’s bed. “Will you give my compliments to his lordship and ask him if he would mind coming to the nursery?”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Is he another detective?” asked Mike when Bailey had gone.

  “He’s a finger-print expert.”

  Mike suddenly gave a galvanic leap, ending in a luxurious writhe among the blankets. “I suppose he’s brought his insnufferlater,” he said.

  “All his kit,” agreed Alleyn gravely. “What happened when you left the drawing-room?”

  “Well, I went to the dining-room and talked to Robin. The others had gone out. And then Giggle came along and said he had to go because Uncle G. was yelling in the lift. So I went to the landing with Giggle and he went downstairs. When he’d gone Uncle G. yelled out for Aunt V. So I bunked into 26. Gosh, he did sound livid. Absolutely waxy. I bet I know why.”

  “Are you sure he called out after Giggle had gone?”

  “Yes, of course I am. Certain-sure.”

  “Did you see anybody else?”

  “What? Let’s see. Oh, yes. I saw Tinkerton in the hall. I sort of just spotted her out of the tail of my eye. She was tidying up the wardrobe, I think.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “No.” Mike thrashed his legs about. “Well, anyway,” he said, “I’ll jolly well tell you why—”

  “You wait for your father, Michael,” said Nanny. Somewhat childishly, Mike thrust his fingers in his ears and, fixing a defiant gaze on his nurse, he shouted. “It was because Mr. Grumball and all the other—”

  “Michael,” said Nanny in a really terrible voice. “Do you hear what I tell you? Be quiet.” She reached out and pulled Mike’s hands away from his ears. “Be quiet,” she repeated.

  Mike flew into a Lamprey rage of some violence. His cheeks flamed and his eyes blazed. He roared out a confused sequence of orders. Nanny was to leave him alone. Must he remind her that he was no longer under her complete authority? Did she realize his age? Why did she continue to treat him like a child? “Like a silly damned kid,” roared poor Mike and, pausing to take breath, glared about him and encountered the cold gaze of his father. Lord Charles had come round the corner of the screen.

  “Mike,” he said, “may I ask why you are making an ass of yourself?”

  “Overexcited, m’lord,” said Nanny. “I knew how it would be.”

  Mike opened his mouth, found nothing to say, and beat on the counterpane with closed fists.

  Alleyn, who had risen, said: “You’re not shaping too well at the moment, you know. You won’t make anything of a policeman if you can’t keep your temper.”

  Mike stared at Alleyn. Tears welled into his large eyes. He hauled the bed-clothes over his head and turned his face to the wall.

  “Oh, damn!” said Alleyn softly.

  “What is all this?” asked Lord Charles rather peevishly. Alleyn looked significantly at the crest of mouse-coloured hair which was all that could be seen of Mike, and turned down his thumb.

  “I’ve blundered,” he said.

  “Come outside,” said Lord Charles.

  In the nursery passage, Alleyn closed the door and said: “I’m afraid Michael is upset because your nurse quelled the remarkably steady flow of his narrative. He told me that in your interview with him Lord Wutherwood had been annoyed about something. Nanny very properly suggested that you should be present. Michael, who is an enthusiastic maker of statements, resented her taking a hand.”

  “Did he—”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he did deliver himself of one rather curious phrase. I’m so sorry he’s upset. If I may I should like to try and mend matters a little. If I could just say good night to him?” Alleyn looked at Lord Charles and added rather drily: “I hope you will come with me, sir.”

  “The horse having apparently bolted,” said Lord Charles, “I shall be glad to assist at the ceremony of closing the stable door.”

  They returned to the nursery. Nanny had tidied up the bed. Mike lay with the sheet clutched to the lower part of his face. His eyes were tightly shut and his cheeks stained with tears.

  “Sorry to wake you up again,” said Alleyn. “I just wanted to ask if you would very kindly lend me that lens of yours. I could do with it.”

  Without opening his eyes, Mike scuffled under the pillow and produced his Woolworth magnifying glass. He thrust it up. Alleyn took it. Mike was shaken by a sob and retreated farther under the sheet.

  “It’s a jolly good glass,” said a muffled voice.

  “I can see that. Thank you so much. Good night, Lord Michael.”

  The sheet was thrown back and Mike’s eyes opened accusingly upon his father.

  “Daddy!” he said. “It’s not going to be that!”

  “Well,” said Lord Charles, “well, yes. I’m afraid—well
, yes, Mike, it is.”

  “Good lord, that puts the absolute lid on it! Good lord, that’s absolutely frightful! Good lord,” repeated Mike on a note of tragedy, “it’s a damn’ sight worse than Potty!”

  Mr. Fox had remained in the drawing-room with the Lampreys and Roberta Grey. Alleyn, on his return with Lord Charles, found Fox sitting in a tranquil attitude on a small chair, with the family grouped round him rather in the manner of an informal conversation piece. Fox had the air of a successful raconteur, the Lampreys that of an absorbed audience. Frid, in particular, was discovered sitting on the floor in an attitude of such rapt attention that Alleyn was immediately reminded of a piece of information gleaned earlier in the evening: Frid attended dramatic classes. On his superior’s entrance, Fox rose to his feet. Frid turned upon Alleyn a gaze of embarrassing brilliance and said: “Oh, but you can’t interrupt him. He’s telling us all about you.” Alleyn looked in astonishment at Fox who coughed slightly and made no remark. Alleyn turned to Lady Charles.

  “Has Dr. Kantripp come back?” he asked her.

  “Yes. He’s seeing my sister-in-law now. The nurse says she’s a good deal better. So that’s splendid, isn’t it?”

  “Splendid. We can’t go very much further without Lady Wutherwood. I think, as you have kindly suggested, Lady Charles, the best plan will be for us to use the dining-room for a sort of office. I shall ask the police-constable on duty on the landing to come in here. Fox and I will go to the dining-room and as soon as we have sorted out our notes I shall ask you to come in separately.”

  Fox went out into the hall. “What’s the time?” asked Henry suddenly.

  Alleyn looked at his watch. “It’s twenty past ten.”

  “Good God!” Lord Charles ejaculated. “I would have said it was long past midnight.”

  “I think we ought to ring up Aunt Kit again, Charlie,” murmured Lady Charles.

  “I think we ought to ring up Nigel Bathgate,” said Frid. “Bathgate!” cried Alleyn, jerked to attention by this recurrence of his friend’s name. “Bathgate? But why?”

  “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Mr. Alleyn? So he is of ours. As he’s a press-man I thought it would be nice,” said Frid, “to let him in at the death.”