Grave Mistake

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘My dear child,’ said Mr Markos, poring over them, ‘they’re exquisite. It’s – I really can’t tell you how excited I am to see them.’

  ‘There are some more underneath.’

  ‘We mustn’t keep them too long in this strong light. Gideon, put this one back in the portfolio. Carefully. Gently. No, let me do it.’

  He looked up at Verity. ‘Have you seen them?’ he asked. ‘Come and look. Share my gloat, do.’

  Verity had seen them, as it happened, many years ago, when Sybil had first married her second husband, but she joined the party round the table. Mr Markos had arrived at a plan for the gardens at Quintern and dwelt on it with greedy curiosity.

  ‘But this has never been carried out,’ he said. ‘Has it? I mean, nicest possible daughter-in-law-to-be, the gardens today bear little resemblance in concept to this exquisite schema. Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Prunella. ‘Perhaps they ran out of cash or something. I rather think Mummy and Bruce were cooking up a grand idea about carrying out some of the scheme but decided we couldn’t afford it. If only they hadn’t lost the Black Alexander Claude could have done it.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Verity.

  Mr Markos looked up quickly. ‘The Black Alexander!’ he said. ‘What can you mean? You can’t mean –’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. You’re a collector.’

  ‘I am indeed. Tell me.’

  She told him and when she had done so he was unusually quiet for several seconds.

  ‘But how immensely rewarding it would be –’ he began at last and then pulled himself up. ‘Let us put the plans away,’ he said. ‘They arouse insatiable desires. I’m sure you understand, don’t you, Miss Preston? I’ve allowed myself to build – not castles in Spain but gardens in Kent, which is much more reprehensible. Haven’t I?’

  How very intelligent, Verity thought, finding his black eyes focused on hers, this Mr Markos is. He seems to be making all sorts of assumptions and I seem to be liking it.

  ‘I don’t remember that I saw the garden plan before,’ she said. ‘It would have been a perfect marriage, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Ah. And you have used the perfect phrase for it.’

  ‘Would you like to keep the plans here,’ asked Prunella, ‘to have another gloat?’

  He thanked her exuberantly and, luncheon having been announced, they went indoors.

  Since that first dinner-party, which now seemed quite a long time ago, and the visit to Greengages on the day of Sybil’s death, Verity had not seen much of the Markoses. She had been twice asked to Mardling for cocktail-parties and on each occasion had been unable to go and one evening Markos Senior had paid an unheralded visit to Keys House, having spotted her, as he explained, in her garden and acted on the spur of the moment. They had got on well, having tastes in common and he showing a pretty acute appreciation of the contemporary theatre. Verity had been quite surprised to see the time when he finally took his stylish leave of her. The next thing that she had heard of him was that he had ‘gone abroad’, a piece of information conveyed by village telegraph through Mrs Jim. And ‘abroad’, as far as Verity knew, he had remained until this present reappearance.

  They had their coffee in the library, now completely finished. Verity wondered what would happen to all the books if, as Mrs Jim had reported, Mr Markos really intended to sell Mardling. This was by no means the sterile, unhandled assembly made by a moneyed person more interested in interior decoration than the written word.

  As soon as she came in she saw above the fireplace the painting called ‘Several Pleasures’ by Troy.

  ‘So you did hang it there,’ she said. ‘How well it looks.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Mr Markos agreed. ‘I dote on it. Who would think it was painted by a policeman’s missus.’

  Verity said, ‘Well, I can’t see why not. Although, I suppose you’d say a rather exceptional policeman.’

  ‘So you know him?’

  ‘I’ve met him, yes.’

  ‘I see. So have I. I met him when I bought the picture. I should have thought him an exotic in the Force, but perhaps the higher you go at the Yard the rarer the atmosphere.’

  ‘He visited me this morning.’

  Prunella said, ‘You don’t tell me!’

  ‘But I do,’ said Verity.

  ‘And me. According to Mrs Jim.’

  Gideon said, ‘Would it be about the egregious Claude?’

  ‘No,’ said Verity. ‘It wouldn’t. Not so far as I was concerned. Not specifically, anyway. It seemed to be –’ she hesitated – ‘as much about this new Will as anything.’

  And in the silence that followed the little party in the library quietly collapsed. Prunella began to look scared and Gideon put his arm round her.

  Mr Markos had moved in front of his fireplace. Verity thought she saw a change in him – the subtle change that comes over men when something has led a conversation into their professional field – a guarded attentiveness.

  Prunella said, ‘I’ve been pushing things off. I’ve been pretending to myself nothing is really very much the matter. It’s not true. Is it?’ she insisted, appealing to Verity.

  ‘Perhaps not quite, darling,’ Verity said, and for a moment it seemed to her that she and Prunella were, in some inexplicable way, united against the two men.

  III

  It was half past two when Alleyn and Fox arrived at Greengages. The afternoon being clement, some of the guests were taking their post-prandial ease in the garden. Others, presumably, had retired to their rooms. Alleyn gave his professional card in at the desk and asked if they might have a word with Dr Schramm.

  The receptionist stared briefly at Alleyn and hard at Mr Fox. She tightened her mouth, said she would see, appeared to relax slightly and left them.

  ‘Know us when she sees us again,’ said Fox placidly. He put on his spectacles and, tilting back his head, contemplated an emaciated water-colour of Canterbury Cathedral. ‘Airy-fairy,’ he said. ‘Not my notion of the place at all,’ and moved to a view of the Grand Canal.

  The receptionist returned with an impeccably dressed man who had Alleyn’s card in his hand and said he was the manager of the hotel. ‘I hope,’ he added, ‘that we’re not in for any further disruption.’ Alleyn cheerfully assured him that he hoped so too and repeated that he would like to have a word or two with Dr Schramm. The manager retired to an inner office.

  Alleyn said to the receptionist, ‘May I bother you for a moment? Of course you’re fussed we’re here to ask tedious questions and generally make nuisances of ourselves about the death of Mrs Foster.’

  ‘You said it,’ she returned, ‘not me.’ But she touched her hair and she didn’t sound altogether antagonistic.

  ‘It’s only a sort of tidying-up job. But I wonder if you remember anything about flowers that her gardener left at the desk for her.’

  ‘I wasn’t at the desk at the time.’

  ‘Alas!’

  ‘Pardon? Oh yes. Well, as a matter of fact I do happen to remember. The girl on duty mentioned that the electrical repairs man had taken them up when I was off for a minute or two.’

  ‘When would that be?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘Is the repairs man a regular visitor?’

  ‘Not that I know. He wasn’t called in from the desk, that I can tell you.’

  ‘Could you by any merciful chance find out when, where and why he was here?’

  ‘Well, I must say!’

  ‘It would be very kind indeed. Really.’

  She said she would see what she could do and retired into her office. Alleyn heard the whirr of a telephone dial. After a considerable interlude a highly starched nurse of opulent proportions appeared.

  ‘Dr Schramm will see you now,’ she said in a clinical voice. Only the copies of Punch, Alleyn felt, were missing.

  The nurse rustled them down a passage to a door bearing the legend: ‘Dr Basil Schramm, MB. Hours 3-5 p.m. and by appoi
ntment.’

  She ushered them into a little waiting-room and there, sure enough, were the copies of Punch and The Tatler. She knocked at an inner door, opened it and motioned them to go in.

  Dr Schramm swivelled round in his desk chair and rose to greet them.

  A police officer of experience and sensibility may come to recognize mannerisms common to certain persons with whom he has to deal. If he is wise he will never place too much reliance on this simplification. When, for instance, he is asked by the curious layman if the police can identify certain criminal types by looking at them, he will probably say no. Perhaps he will qualify this denial by adding that he does find that certain characteristics tend to crop up – shabby stigmata – in sexual offenders. He is not referring to raincoats or to sidelong lurking but to a look in the eyes and about the mouth, a look he is unable to define.

  To Alleyn it seemed that there were traits held in common by men who, in Victorian times, were called ladykillers – a display, covert or open, of sexual vainglory that sometimes, not always, made less heavily endowed acquaintances want, they scarcely knew why, to kick the possessors.

  If ever he had recognized this element he did so now in Dr Basil Schramm. It declared itself in the brief, perfectly correct but experienced glance which he gave his nurse. It was latent in the co-ordinated ease with which he rose to his feet and extended his hand, in the boldish glance of his widely separated eyes and in the fold that joined his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Dr Schramm was not unlike a better-looking version of King Charles II.

  As a postscript to these observations he thought that Dr Schramm looked like a heavy, if controlled, drinker.

  The nurse left them.

  ‘I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,’ said Dr Schramm. ‘Do sit down.’ He glanced at Alleyn’s card and then at him. ‘Should I say Superintendent or Mr or just plain Alleyn?’

  ‘It couldn’t matter less,’ said Alleyn. ‘This is Inspector Fox.’

  ‘Sit, sit, sit, do.’

  They sat.

  ‘Well, now, what’s the trouble?’ asked Dr Schramm. ‘Don’t tell me it’s more about this unhappy business of Mrs Foster?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do tell you. It’s just that, as I’m sure you realize, we have to tidy up rather exhaustively.’

  ‘Oh yes. That – of course.’

  ‘The local Force has asked us to come in on the case. I’m sorry, but this does entail a tramp over ground that I dare say you feel has already been explored ad nauseam.’

  ‘Well –’ He raised his immaculately kept hands and let them fall. ‘Needs must,’ he said and laughed.

  ‘That’s about it,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘I believe her room has been kept as it was at the time of her death? Locked up and sealed.’

  ‘Certainly. Your local people asked for it. To be frank it’s inconvenient, but never mind.’

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ said Alleyn cheerfully.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. I’ll take you up to her room.’

  ‘If I could have a word before we go.’

  ‘Oh? Yes, of course.’

  ‘I really wanted to ask you if you were at all, however slightly, uneasy about Mrs Foster’s general health and spirits?’

  Schramm started to make an instantly controlled gesture. ‘I’ve stated repeatedly, to her solicitors, to the Coroner and to the police, that Mrs Foster was in improved health and in good spirits when I last saw her before I went up to London.’

  ‘And when you returned she was dead.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You didn’t know, did you, that she had Parkinson’s disease?’

  ‘That is by no means certain.’

  ‘Dr Field-Innis thought so.’

  ‘And is, of course, entitled to his opinion. In any case, it is not a positive diagnosis. As I understand it, Dr Field-Innis merely considers it a possibility.’

  ‘So does Sir James Curtis.’

  ‘Very possibly. As it happens I have no professional experience of Parkinson’s disease and am perfectly ready to bow to their opinion. Of course, if Mrs Foster had been given any inkling –’

  ‘Dr Field-Innis is emphatic that she had not –’

  ‘– there would certainly have been cause for anxiety, depression –’

  ‘Did she strike you as being anxious or depressed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘On the contrary?’

  ‘On the contrary. Quite. She was –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘In particularly good form,’ said Dr Schramm.

  ‘And yet you are persuaded it was suicide?’

  An ornate little clock on Dr Schramm’s desk ticked through some fifteen seconds before he spoke. He raised his clasped hands to his pursed lips and stared over them at Alleyn. Mr Fox, disregarded, coughed slightly.

  With a definitive gesture – abrupt and incisive, Dr Schramm clapped his palms down on the desk and leant back in his chair.

  ‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that it wouldn’t come to this.’

  Alleyn waited.

  ‘I have already told you she was in particularly good form. That was an understatement. She gave me every reason to believe she was happier than she had been for many years.’

  He got to his feet, looked fixedly at Alleyn and said loudly, ‘She had become engaged to be married.’

  The lines from nostril to mouth tightened into a smile of sorts.

  ‘I had gone up to London,’ he said, ‘to buy the ring.’

  IV

  ‘I knew, of course, that it would probably have to come out,’ said Dr Schramm, ‘but I hoped to avoid that. She was so very anxious that we should keep our engagement secret for the time being. The thought of making a sort of – well, posthumous announcement at the inquest was indescribably distasteful. One knew how the Press would set about it and the people in this place – I loathed the whole thought of it.’

  He took one or two steps about the room. He moved with short strides, holding his shoulders rigid like a soldier. ‘I don’t offer this as an excuse. The thing has been a – an unspeakable shock to me. I can’t believe it was suicide. Not when I remember – not unless something that I can’t even guess at happened between the time when I said goodbye to her and my return.’

  ‘You checked with the staff, of course.’

  ‘Of course. She had dinner in bed and watched television. She was perfectly well. No doubt you’ve seen the report of the inquest and know all this. The waiter collected her tray round about eight-thirty. She was in the bathroom and he heard her singing to herself. After that – nothing. Nothing, until I came back. And found her.’

  ‘That must have been a terrible shock.’

  Schramm made the brief sound that usually indicates a sort of contempt. ‘You may say so,’ he said. And then, suddenly: ‘Why have you been called in? What’s it mean? Look here, do you people suspect foul play?’

  ‘Hasn’t the idea occurred to you?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘The idea has. Of course it has. Suicide being inconceivable, the idea occurred. But that’s inconceivable, too. The circumstances. The evidence. Everything. She had no enemies. Who would want to do it? It’s –’ He broke off. A look of – what? sulkiness? derision? – appeared. It was as if he sneered at himself.

  ‘But she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she didn’t –’

  ‘Didn’t –?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s silly.’

  ‘Are you wondering if Mrs Foster did, after all, confide in somebody about your engagement?’

  He stared at Alleyn. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And then, there were visitors that afternoon, as of course you know.’

  ‘Her daughter and the daughter’s fiancé and Miss Preston.’

  ‘And the gardener.’

  ‘Didn’t he leave his flowers with the receptionist and go away without seeing Mrs Foster?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘That’s what he says, certainly.’

  ‘It’s what your receptionist
says, too, Dr Schramm.’

  ‘Yes. Very well, then. Nothing in that line of thinking. In any case the whole idea is unbelievable. Or ought to be.’

  Mr Fox, using a technique that Alleyn was in the habit of alluding to as his disappearing act, had contrived to make his large person unobservable. He had moved as far away from Alleyn as possible and to a chair behind Dr Schramm. Here he palmed a notebook and his palm was vast. He used a stub of pencil and kept his work on his knee and his eyes respectfully on nothing in particular. Alleyn and Fox made a point of not looking at each other but at this juncture he felt sure Fox contemplated him, probably with that air of bland approval that generally meant they were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘When you say “or ought to be”,’ Alleyn said, ‘are you thinking about motive?’

  Schramm gave a short meaningless laugh. His manner, unexpected in a doctor, seemed to imply that nothing under discussion was of importance. Alleyn wondered if he treated his patients to this sort of display. ‘I don’t want to put ideas in your head,’ Schramm said, ‘but to be quite, quite frank that did occur to me. Motive.’

  ‘I’m resistant to ideas,’ said Alleyn. ‘Could you explain?’

  ‘It’s probably a lot of bumph but it does seem to me that our engagement wouldn’t have been madly popular in certain quarters. Her family, to make no bones about it.’

  ‘Are you thinking of Mrs Foster’s stepson?’

  ‘You said it. I didn’t.’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘I know of no motive, but I do know he sponged on her and pestered her and has a pretty disgraceful record. She was very much upset at the thought of his turning up here and I gave orders that if he did he must not be allowed to see her. Or speak to her on the telephone. I tell you this,’ Dr Schramm said, ‘as a fact. I don’t for a moment pretend that it has any particular significance.’

  ‘But I think you have something more than this in mind, haven’t you?’

  ‘If I have, I wouldn’t want too much weight to be given to it.’

  ‘I shall not give too much weight to it, I hope.’