by Ngaio Marsh
‘In your office, please, Roderick. It would be easier. Shall I come now?’
‘If you will. Don’t be fussed. I’m so sorry to bother you.’
‘I’ll come at once,’ said the faint voice.
Fox returned with a Times which he laid on Alleyn’s desk. He pointed a stubby finger at the personal column.
‘What about the third from the top?’ he said.
Alleyn read it aloud.
‘“Childie Darling. Living in exile. Longing. Only want Daughter. Daddy.”’
‘Um,’ said Alleyn. ‘Has daddy had anything else to say to Childie during the last week or so?’
‘Not during the last fortnight, anyway. I’ve looked up the files.’
‘There’s nothing else in the agony column. The others are old friends, aren’t they?’
‘That’s right.’
‘We’d better ask Father Times about Daddy.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Fox, ‘and I’ll get going on these people for tonight.’
‘Thank you, Fox. I’ve tackled Lady Carrados who is coming to see me now. If you’ve time I’d be glad if you’d fix the others. I ought to go and see Lady Mildred about the arrangements for tomorrow.’
‘You’ll have time for that later on.’
‘Yes. I must report to the AC before this evening. I’ll go along now, I think, and see if he’s free. Ask them to show Lady Carrados up here, Fox, and ring through when she arrives.’
‘Very good, Mr Alleyn.’
Alleyn saw the Assistant Commissioner’s secretary, who sent him in to the great man. Alleyn laid the file on the desk. The AC disregarded it.
‘Well, Rory, how goes it? I hear you’ve got half the Yard mudlarking on Chelsea Embankment and the other half tailing the aristocracy. What’s it all about?’ asked the AC, who had been kept perfectly au fait with the case but whose favourite pose was one of ignorance. ‘I suppose you want me to read this damn nonsense?’ he added, laying his hand on the file.
‘If you will, sir. I’ve summed-up at the end. With your approval I’m collecting the relevant people here tonight and if the interviews go the right way I hope to be able to make an arrest. If you agree, I’d like a blank warrant.’
‘You’re a pretty cool customer, aren’t you?’ grunted the AC. ‘And if the interviews go all wrong you return the warrant and think of something else? That it?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s it.’
‘See here, Rory, our position in this affair is that we’ve got to have a conviction. If your customer gets off on this sort of evidence, opposing counsel is going to make us look like so many Aunt Sallies. It’s so damn shaky. Can’t you hear what old Harrington-Barr will do with you if he’s briefed? Make you look a boiled egg, my good man, unless you’ve got a damning admission or two to shove at the jury. And all this blackmail stuff. How are you going to get any of these people to charge their blackmailer? You know what people are over blackmail.’
‘Yes, sir. I do rather hope for a damning admission.’
‘Do you, by Gad! All right, all right. See them in here. In my room. I’d better know the worst at once, I suppose.’ He scowled at Alleyn. ‘This goes a bit close to you, doesn’t it? Lord Robert was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?’
‘He was, sir, yes.’
‘Ugh! He was a nice little chap. I understand the FO is making tender enquiries. In case a foreign power remembers him pottering about twenty years ago and has decided to assassinate him. Silly asses. Well, I’m sorry you’ve had this knock, Rory. It doesn’t seem to have cramped your style. Quick work, if it’s accurate.’
‘If!’ said Alleyn. ‘I hope to Heaven we haven’t gone wrong.’
‘What time’s the dénouement tonight?’
‘Nine o’clock, sir.’
‘All right. Trot ’em along here. Thank you, Rory.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
On his return to his own room he found Fox was waiting for him.
‘Lady Carrados is downstairs, sir.’
‘Go and bring her up, Fox, will you?’
Fox turned in the doorway.
‘I’ve got on to The Times,’ he said. ‘They were a bit dignified about it but I know one of the chaps who deals with the agony-column notices and got hold of him. He told me the Childie Darling thing came by mail with a postal order for double rates and a request that it should appear, very particular, in this morning’s edition. The note said the advertiser would call to collect the change, if any, and was signed W.A.K. Smith, address GPO, Erith.’
‘Postmark?’
‘They’d lost the envelope but he’ll look for it. The writing,’ said Fox, ‘was in script on common notepaper.’
‘Was it indeed?’ murmured Alleyn.
‘There’s one other thing,’ said Fox. ‘The reports have come through from the post offices. A clerk at the Main Western District says that during the rush hour yesterday someone left a parcel on the counter. He found it later on in the day. It was soft, about the right weight and had five bob in tuppenny stamps on it, one and fivepence more than was necessary. He remembers the address was to somewhere in China and it was written in script. So my Private Hoo Flung Dung may have been a fair guess. We’ve got on to Mount Pleasant and it’s too late. A parcels post went out to China this afternoon.’
‘Blast!’ said Alleyn.
‘I’ll be off,’ said Fox, ‘and get her ladyship.’
While he waited for Lady Carrados, Alleyn cut the little notice out of The Times. After a moment’s consideration he unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s gold cigarette-case. He opened it and neatly gummed the notice inside the lid.
Fox showed Lady Carrados in and went away.
‘I’m so sorry, Evelyn,’ said Alleyn. ‘I’ve been closeted with my superior. Have you been here long?’
‘No. What is it now, please, Roderick?
‘It’s this. I want you to allow what may seem a rather drastic step. I want you to give me permission to talk to your husband, in front of you, about Paddy O’Brien.’
‘You mean—tell him that we were not married?’
‘If it seems necessary.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I shouldn’t do it if it wasn’t vitally necessary. I do not believe, Evelyn, that he would’—Alleyn hesitated—‘that he would be as shocked as you imagine.’
‘But I know he would be terribly shocked. Of course he would.’
‘I think I can promise you that you have nothing to fear from this decision. I mean that Carrados’s attitude to yourself and Bridget will not be materially affected by it.’
‘I cannot believe that. I cannot believe that he will not be dreadfully wounded. Even violent.’
‘I promise you that I honestly believe that it may help you both to a better understanding.’
‘If only I could think that!’
‘It will certainly help us to see justice done on your blackmailer. Evelyn, I don’t want to be intolerably priggish, but I do believe it is your duty to do this.’
‘I had almost made up my mind to tell him.’
‘All the better. Come now. Look at me! Will you let me deal with it?’
She looked at him. Quite deliberately he used the whole force of that thing people call personality and of which he knew—how could he not know?—he had his share. He imposed his will on hers as surely as if it was a tangible instrument. And he saw her give way.
She raised her hands and let them fall limply back on her lap.
‘Very well, I’m so bemused and puzzled, I don’t know, I give up. My house is falling about my ears. I’ll do whatever you think best, Roderick.’
‘You need say very little.’ He went into details. She listened attentively and repeated his instructions. When that was over he rose and looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s no good my trying to make light of this. It is a very upsetting business for you. But take heart of grace. Bridget need not know, although I think if I were
you I should tell her. She’s got plenty of courage and the moderns don’t make nearly such heavy weather of that sort of thing as we did. My niece Sarah prattles away about people born in and out of wedlock as if it was a fifty-fifty chance. Upon my word, Evelyn, I wouldn’t be surprised if your daughter found a certain amount of romantic satisfaction in the story you have been at such pains to hide from her.’
‘That would be almost funny, wouldn’t it?’ Lady Carrados looked into Alleyn’s compassionate eyes. She reached out her hand and he took it firmly between both of his.
‘Roderick,’ she said, ‘how old are you?’
‘Forty-three, my dear.’
‘I’m nearly forty,’ and absent-mindedly she added, as women do: ‘Isn’t it awful?’
‘Dreadful,’ agreed Alleyn, smiling at her.
‘Why haven’t you married?’
‘My mother says she tried to make a match of it between you and me. But Paddy O’Brien came along and I hadn’t a chance.’
‘That seems odd, now, doesn’t it? If it’s true. I don’t remember that you ever paid me any particular attention.’
He saw that she had reached the lull in the sensibilities that sometimes follows extreme emotional tension. She spoke idly with an echo of her customary gentle gaiety. She sounded as if her mind had gone as limp as the thin hand he still held.
‘You ought to marry,’ she said vaguely and added: ‘I must go.’
‘I’m coming down. I’ll see you to your car.’
As she drove away he stood looking after her for a second or two, and then shook his head doubtfully and set out for Cheyne Walk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Interlude for Love
ALLEYN WONDERED if it was only because he knew the body of his friend had come home that he felt its presence. Perhaps the house was not more quiet than it had been that morning. Perhaps the dead did not in truth cast about them so deep a spell. And then he smelt lilies and all the hushed chill of ceremonial death closed about his heart. He turned to Bunchy’s old butler who was in the condition so often found in the faithful retainers of Victorian melodrama. He had been weeping. His eyes were red and his face blotted with tears, and his lips trembled. He showed Alleyn into Mildred’s sitting-room. When she came forward in her lustreless black clothes, he found in her face the same unlovely reflection of sorrow. Mildred wore the customary expression of bereavement, and though he knew it to be the stamp of sincere grief, he felt a kind of impatience. He felt a profound loathing of the formalities of death. A dead body was nothing, nothing but an intolerable caricature of something someone had loved. It was a reminder of unspeakable indignities, and yet people surrounded their dead with owlish circumstances, asked you, as Mildred was asking him now, in a special muted voice, to look at them.
‘I know you’d like to see him, Roderick.’
He followed her into a room on the ground floor. The merciless scent of flowers was so heavy here that it hung like mist on the cold air. The room was crowded with flowers. In the centre, on three shrouded trestles, Robert Gospell’s body lay in its coffin.
It was the face of an elderly baby, dignified by the possession of some terrific secret. Alleyn was not troubled by the face. All dead faces looked like that. But the small fat hands, which in life had moved with staccato emphasis, were obediently folded, and when he saw these his eyes were blinded by tears. He groped in his overcoat pocket for a handkerchief and his fingers found the bunch of rosemary from Mr Harris’s garden. The grey-green spikes were crisp and unsentimental and they smelt of the sun. When Mildred turned aside, he gave them to the dead.
He followed her back to her drawing-room and she began to tell him about the arrangements for the funeral.
‘Broomfield, who as you know is the head of the family, is only sixteen. He’s abroad with his tutor and can’t get back in time. We are not going to alter his plans. So that Donald and I are the nearest. Donald is perfectly splendid. He has been such a comfort all day. Quite different. And then dear Troy has come to stay with me and has answered all the letters and done everything.’
Her voice, still with that special muted note, droned on, but Alleyn’s thoughts had been arrested by this news of Troy and he had to force himself to listen to Mildred. When she had finished he asked her if she wished to know anything about his side of the picture and discovered that she was putting all the circumstances of her brother’s death away from her. Mildred had adopted an ostrich attitude towards the murder and he got the impression that she rather hoped the murderer would never be caught. She wished to cut the whole thing dead and he thought it was rather clever and rather nice of her to be able to welcome him so cordially as a friend and pay no attention to him as a policeman.
After a minute or two there seemed to be nothing more to say to Mildred. Alleyn said good-bye to her, promised to attend the memorial service at eleven and to do his part at the funeral. He went out into the hall.
In the doorway he met Troy.
He heard his own voice saying: ‘Hullo, you’re just in time. You’re going to save my life.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘It’s nearly five. I’ve had six hours’ sleep in the last fifty-eight hours. That’s nothing for us hardy coppers but for some reason I’m feeling sorry for myself. Will you take tea or a drink or possibly both with me? For God’s sake say you will.’
‘Very well, where shall we go?’
‘I thought,’ said Alleyn, who up to that moment had thought nothing of the sort, ‘that we might have tea at my flat. Unless you object to my flat.’
‘I’m not a débutante,’ said Troy. ‘I don’t think I need coddle my reputation. Your flat let it be.’
‘Good,’ said Alleyn. ‘I’ve got mother’s car. I’ll just warn my servant and tell the Yard where to find me. Do you think I may use the telephone?’
‘I’m sure you may.’
He darted to telephone and was back in a minute. ‘Vassily is tremendously excited,’ he said. ‘A lady to tea! Come on.’
On the way Alleyn was so filled with astonishment at finding himself agreeably alone with Troy that he fell into a trance from which he only woke when he pulled the car up outside his own flat. He did not apologize for his silence: he felt a tranquillity in Troy that had accepted it, and when they were indoors he was delighted to hear her say: ‘This is peaceful,’ and to see her pull off her cap and sit on a low stool before the fireplace.
‘Shall we have a fire?’ asked Alleyn. ‘Do say yes. It’s not a warm day, really.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ agreed Troy.
‘Will you light it while I see about tea?’
He went out of the room to give Vassily a series of rather confused orders, and when he returned there was Troy before the fire, bareheaded, strangely familiar.
‘So you’re still here,’ said Alleyn.
‘It’s a nice room, this.’
He put a box of cigarettes on the floor beside her and took out his pipe. Troy turned and saw her own picture of Suva at the far end of the room.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alleyn, ‘there’s that.’
‘How did you get hold of it?’
‘I got someone to buy it for me.’
‘But why—’
‘I don’t know why I was so disingenuous about it except that I wanted it so very badly for reasons that were not purely aesthetic and I thought you would see through them if I made a personal business of it.’
‘I should have been rather embarrassed, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’ Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: ‘Do you remember how I found you that day, painting and cursing? It was just as the ship moved out of Suva. Those sulky hills and that ominous sky were behind you.’
‘We had a row, didn’t we?’
‘We did.’
Troy’s face became rather pink.
‘In fact,’ said Alleyn, ‘there is scarcely an occasion on which we have met when we have not had a row. Why is that, do you suppose?’
‘Have you? For a long time I thought you merely disliked me.’
‘No. You got under my guard.’
‘If it hadn’t been for that damned case, things might have gone better,’ said Alleyn. ‘What a pity it is that we cannot sometimes react to situations like characters in the less honest form of novel. The setting should have been ideal, you know. A murder in your house. You with just enough motive to make a “strong situation” and not enough seriously to implicate you. Me, as the grim detective finding time for a bit of Rochester stuff. You should have found yourself drawn unwillingly into love, Troy. Instead of which I merely acquired a sort of post-mortem disagreeableness. If you painted a surrealist picture of me I would be made of Metropolitan Police notebooks, one eye would be set in a keyhole, my hands would be occupied with somebody else’s private correspondence. The background would be a morgue and the whole pretty conceit wreathed with festoons of blue tape and hangman’s rope. What?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Troy.
‘I suppose so. Yes. The vanity of the male trying to find extraordinary reasons for a perfectly natural phenomenon. You don’t happen to love me. And why the devil should you?’
‘You don’t happen to understand,’ said Troy shortly, ‘and why the devil should you.’
She took a cigarette and tilted her face up for him to give her a light. A lock of her short dark hair had fallen across her forehead. Alleyn lit the cigarette, threw the match into the fire and tweaked the lock of hair.
‘Abominable woman,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come to see me.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Troy more amiably. ‘I’ve always been frightened of the whole business. Love and so on.’
‘The physical side?’
‘Yes, that, but much more than that. The whole business. The breaking down of all one’s reserves. The mental as well as the physical intimacy.’
‘My mind to me a kingdom is.’
‘I feel it wouldn’t be,’ said Troy.
‘I feel it rather terrifyingly still would be. Don’t you think that in the closest possible union there must always be moments when one feels oneself completely separate, completely alone? Surely it must be so, otherwise we would not be so astonished on the rare occasions when we read each other’s thoughts.’
