by Ngaio Marsh
Bimbo, Andrew and an advance guard went down into the arena and at first added greatly to the confusion. They shouted, swore, grabbed and kicked. Désirée suddenly joined them, was momentarily hidden, but emerged carrying an outraged poodle by the scruff of its neck. Servants ran out, offering hunting crops and umbrellas. Expressions of human as well as canine anguish were now perceptible. Andrew detached himself, dragging two frenzied Aberdeens by their collars. They were Baynesholme dogs and were thrust with the poodle into a cloakroom, where they got up a halfhearted row on their own account.
Bimbo now appeared carrying an air-gun. He waved the other men aside and presented his weapon at the central mêlée. There was a mild explosion, followed by cries of distress, and suddenly the arena had emptied and the night was plangent with the laments of rapidly retreating dogs.
Only one remained. Exhausted, gratified, infamous and complacent, her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth, and her lead trailing from her collar, sat a boxer bitch: Mr. Cartell’s Pixie, the Helen of the engagement. When Bimbo approached her she gathered herself together and bit him.
The next morning Connie Cartell woke slowly from a heavy sleep. She experienced that not unusual sensation, during half-consciousness, in which the threat of something unpleasant anticipates the recollection of the thing itself. She lay, blinking and yawning for a second or two. She heard her Austrian maid stump along the passage and knock on a door.
Damn! Connie thought. I forgot to tell her not to disturb either of them.
Then the full realization of all the horrors of the preceding evening came upon her.
She was not an imaginative woman, but it hadn’t taken much imagination, after her brother’s visit, to envisage what would happen to Moppett if Mr. Period’s cigarette case was not discovered. Connie had tried to tackle Moppett, and, as usual, had got nowhere at all. Moppett had merely remarked that P.P. and Mr. Cartell had dirty minds. When Connie had broached the topic of Leonard Leiss and his reputation, Moppett had reminded her of Leonard’s unhappy background and of how she, Moppett, was pledged to redeem him. She had assured Connie, with tears in her eyes and a great many caresses, that Leonard was indeed on the upward path.
If Connie herself had had any experience at all of the Leiss milieu and any real inclination to cope with it, she might possibly have been able to bring a salutary point of view to bear on the situation. She might, it is not too preposterous to suppose, have been able to direct Moppett towards a different pattern of behaviour. But she had no experience and no real inclination. She only doted upon Moppett with the whole force of her unimaginative and uninformed being. She was in a foreign country, and, like many another woman of her class and kind, behaved stupidly, as a foreigner.
So she bathed and dressed and went down to breakfast in a sort of fog, and ate large quantities of eggs, bacon and kidneys indifferently presented by her Austrian maid. She was still at her breakfast when she saw Alfred, in his alpaca jacket and the cloth cap he assumed for such occasions, crossing the Green with an envelope in his hand.
In a moment he appeared before her.
“I beg pardon, Miss,” Alfred said, laying the envelope on the table, “for disturbing you, but Mr. Period asked me to deliver this. No answer is required, I understand.”
She thanked him and, when he had withdrawn, opened the letter.
Silent minutes passed. Connie read and reread the letter. Incredulity followed bewilderment, and was replaced in turn by alarm. A feeling of horrid unreality possessed her and again she read the letter.
My dear:
What can I say? Only that you have lost a devoted brother and I a very dear friend. I know so well, believe me so very well, what a grievous shock this has been to you and how bravely you will have taken it. If it is not an impertinence in an old fogy to do so, may I offer you these very simple lines written by my dear and so Victorian Duchess of Rampton? They are none the worse, I hope, for their unblushing sentimentality.
So must it be, dear heart, I’ll not repine,
For while I live the Memory is Mine.
I should like to think that we know each other well enough for you to believe me when I say that I hope you won’t dream of answering this all-too-inadequate attempt to tell you how sorry I am.
Yours sincerely,
Percival Pyke Period
The Austrian maid came in and found Connie still gazing at this letter.
“Trudi,” she said with an effort, I've had a shock.”
“Bitte?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going out. I won’t be long.”
And she went out. She crossed the Green and tramped up Mr. Pyke Period’s drive to his front door.
The workmen were assembled in Green Lane.
Alfred opened the front door to her.
“Alfred,” she said, “what’s happened?”
“Happened, Miss?”
“My brother. Is he—?”
“Mr. Cartell is not up yet, Miss.”
She looked at him as if he had addressed her in an incomprehensible jargon.
“He’s later than usual, Miss,” Alfred said. “Did you wish to speak to him?”
“Hull — Oh, Connie! Good morning to you.”
It was Mr. Pyke Period, as fresh as paint, but perhaps not quite as rubicund as usual. His manner was overeffusive.
Connie said: “P.P., for God’s sake what is all this? Your letter?”
Mr. Period glanced at Alfred, who withdrew. He then, after a moment’s hesitation, took Connie’s hand into both of his.
“Now, now!” he said. “You mustn’t let this upset you, my dear.”
“Are you mad?”
“Connie!” he faintly ejaculated. “What do you mean? Do you — do you know?”
“I must sit down. I don’t feel well.”
She did so. Mr. Period, his fingers to his lips, eyed her with dismay. He was about to speak when a shrill female ejaculation broke out in the direction of the servants’ quarters. It was followed by the rumble of men’s voices. Alfred reappeared, very white in the face.
“Good God!” Mr. Period said. “What now?”
Alfred, standing behind Connie Cartell, looked his employer in the eyes and said: “May I speak to you, sir?” He made a slight warning gesture and opened the library door.
“Forgive me, Connie. I won’t be a moment.”
Mr. Period went into the library followed by Alfred, who shut the door.
“Merciful heavens, Alfred, what’s the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that?”
“Mr. Cartell, sir.” Alfred moistened his lips. “I, really, I scarcely know how to put it, sir. He’s — he’s—”
“What are you trying to tell me? What’s happened?”
“There’s been an accident, sir. The men have found him. He’s—”
Alfred turned towards the library window. Through the open gate in the quickset hedge, the workmen could be seen, grouped together, stooping.
“They found him—” Alfred said — “not to put too fine a point on it, sir — in the ditch. I’m very sorry I’m sure, sir, but I’m afraid he’s dead.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Alleyn
“There you are,” said Superintendent Williams. “That’s the whole story and those are the local people involved. Or not involved, of course, as the case may be. Now, the way I looked at it was this. It was odds-on we’d have to call you people in anyway, so why muck about ourselves and let the case go cold on you? I don’t say we wouldn’t have liked to go it alone, but we’re too damned busy and a damn’ side too understaffed. So I rang the Yard as soon as it broke.”
“The procedure,” Alleyn said dryly, “is as welcome as it’s unusual. We couldn’t be more obliged, could we, Fox?”
“Very helpful and clearsighted, Super,” Inspector Fox agreed with great heartiness.
They were driving from the Little Codling constabulary to Green Lane. The time was ten o’clock. The village looked decorous and rat
her pretty in the spring sunshine. Miss Cartell’s Austrian maid was shaking mats in the garden. The postman was going his rounds. Mr. Period’s house, as far as it could be seen from the road, showed no signs of disturbance. At first sight, the only hint of there being anything unusual might have been given by a group of three labourers who stood near a crane truck at the corner, staring at their boots and talking to the driver. There was something guarded and uneasy in their manner. One of them looked angry.
A close observer might have noticed that, in several houses round the Green, people who stood back from their windows were watching the car as it approached the lane. The postman checked his bicycle and, with one foot on the ground, also watched. George Copper stood in the path outside his corner garage and was joined by two women, a youth and three small boys. They, too, were watching. The women’s hands moved furtively across their mouths.
“The village has got on to it,” Superintendent Williams observed. “Here we are, Alleyn.”
They turned into the lane. It had been cordoned off with a rope slung between iron stakes and a Detour sign in front. The ditch began at some distance from the corner, and was defined on its inner border by neatly heaped-up soil and on its outer by a row of heavy drainpipes laid end to end. There was a gap in this row opposite Mr. Period’s gate, and a single drainpipe on the far side of the ditch.
One of the workmen made an opening for the car and it pulled up beyond the truck.
Two hundred yards away, by the side gate into Mr. Period’s garden, Sergeant Noakes waited selfconsciously by a disorderly collection of planks, tools, a twelve-foot steel ladder, and an all-too-eloquent shape covered by a tarpaulin. Nearby, on the far side of the lane, was another car. Its occupant got out and advanced: a middle-aged, formally dressed man with well-kept hands.
“Dr. Elkington, our divisional surgeon,” Superintendent Williams said, and completed the introductions.
“Unpleasant business, this,” Dr. Elkington said. “Very unpleasant. I don’t know what you’re going to think.”
“Shall we have a look?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Bear a hand, Sergeant,” said Williams. “Keep it screened from the Green, we’d better.”
“I’ll move my car across,” Dr. Elkington said. He did so. Noakes and Williams released the tarpaulin and presently raised it. Alleyn being particular in such details, he and Fox took their hats off and so, after a surprised glance at them, did Dr. Elkington.
The body of Mr. Cartell lay on its back, not tidily. It was wet with mud and water, and marked about the head with blood. The face, shrouded in a dark and glistening mask, was unrecognizable, the thin hair clotted and dirty. It was clothed in a dressing gown, shirt and trousers, all of them stained and disordered. On the feet were black socks and red leather slippers. One hand was clenched about a clod of earth. Thin trickles of muddy water had oozed between the fingers.
Alleyn knelt beside it without touching it. He looked incongruous. Not his hands, his head, nor, for that matter, his clothes, suggested his occupation. If Mr. Cartell had been a rare edition of any subject other than death, his body would have seemed a more appropriate object for Alleyn’s fastidious consideration.
After a pause he replaced the tarpaulin, rose, and, keeping on the hard surface of the lane, stared down into the drain.
“Well,” he said. “And he was found below, there?” His very deep, clear voice struck loudly across the silence.
“Straight down from where they’ve put him. On his face. With the drainpipe on top of him.”
“Yes. I see.”
“They thought he might be alive. So they got him out of it. They had a job,” said Superintendent Williams. “Had to use the gear on the truck.”
“He was like this when you saw him, Dr. Elkington?”
“Yes. There are multiple injuries to the skull. I haven’t made an extensive examination. My guess would be it’s just about held together by the scalp.”
“Can we have a word with the men?”
Noakes motioned them to come forward and they did so with every sign of reluctance. One, the tallest, carried a piece of rag and he wiped his hands on it continually, as if he had been doing so, unconsciously, for some time.
“Good morning,” Alleyn said. “You’ve had an unpleasant job on your hands.”
The tall man nodded. One of his mates said: “Terrible.”
“I want you, if you will, to tell me exactly what happened. When did you find him?”
Fox unobtrusively took out his notebook.
“When we come on the job. Eight o’clock or near after.”
“You saw him at once?”
“Not to say there and then, sir,” the tall man said. He was evidently the foreman. “We had a word or two. Nutting out the day’s work, like. Took off our coats. Further along, back there, we was. You can see where the truck’s parked. There.”
“Ah, yes. And then?”
“Then we moved up. And I see the planks are missing that we laid across the drain for a bridge. And one of the pipes gone. So I says: ‘What the hell’s all this? Who’s been mucking round with them planks and the pipe?’ That’s correct, isn’t it?” He appealed to the others.
“That’s right,” they said.
“It’s like I told you, Mr. Noakes. We all told you.”
“All right, Bill,” Williams said easily. “The Superintendent just wants to hear for himself.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Alleyn. “To get a clear idea, you know…It’s better at first hand.”
The foreman said: “It’s not all that pleasant, though, is it? And us chaps have got our responsibility to think of. We left the job like we ought to: everything in order. Planks set. Lamps lit. Everything safe. Now look!”
“Lamps? I saw some at the ends of the working. Was there one here?”
“A-course there was. To show the planks. That’s the next thing we notice. It’s gone. Matter of fact they’re all laying in the drain now.”
“So they are,” Alleyn said. “It’s a thumping great drain you’re digging here, by the way. What is it, a relief outfall sewer or something?”
This evidently made an impression. The foreman said that was exactly what it was and went into a professional exposition.
“She’s deep,” he said. “She’s as deep as you’ll come across anywhere. Fourteen-be-three she lays, and very nasty spoil to work, being wet and heavy. One in a thou’-fall. All right. Leaving an open job you take precautions. Lamp. Planks. Notice given. The lot. Which is what we done, and done careful and according.…And this is what we find. All right; we see something’s wrong. All right; so I says, ‘And where’s the bloody lamp?’ and I walk up to the edge and look down. And then I seen.”
“Exactly what?”
The foreman ground the rag between his hands.
“First go off,” he said, “I notice the pipe, laying down there with a lot of the spoil, and then I notice an electric torch — it’s there now.”
“It’s the deceased’s,” Williams said. “His man recognized it. I thought best to leave it there.”
“Good. And then?” Alleyn asked the foreman.
“Well, I noticed all this, like, and — it’s funny when you come to think of it — I’m just going to blow my top about this pipe, when I kind of realize I’ve been looking at something else. Sticking out, they was, at the end, half sunk in mud. His legs. It didn’t seem real. Like I said to the chaps: ‘Look, what’s that?’ Daft! Because I seen clear enough what it was.”
“I know.”
“So we get the truck and go down and clear the pipe and planks out of it. Had to use the crane. The planks are laying there now, where we left them. We slung the pipe up and off him and across to the far bank like. Then we seen more — all there was to see. Sunk, he was. Rammed down, you might say, be the weight. I knew, first go off, he was a goner. Well — the back of his head was enough. But—” The foreman glared resentfully at Noakes. “I don’t give
a b— what anyone tells me, you can’t leave a thing like that. You got to see if there’s anything to be done.”
Noakes made a noncommittal noise and looked at Alleyn. “I think you do, you know, Sergeant,” Alleyn said, and the foreman, gratified, continued.
“So we got ’im out like you said, sir. It was a very nasty job, what with the depth and the wet and the state he was in. And once out — finish! Gone. No mistake about it. So we give the alarm in the house there and they take a fit of the horrors and fetch the doctor.”
“Good,” Alleyn said, “couldn’t be clearer. Now look here. You can see pretty well where he was lying although, of course, the impression has been trodden out a bit. Unavoidably. Now, the head was about there, I take it, so that he was not directly under the place where the planks had been laid, but at an angle to it. The feet beneath, the head out to the left. The left hand, now. Was it stretched out ahead of him? Like that? With the arm bent? Was the right arm extended — so?”
The foreman and his mates received this with grudging approval. One of the mates said: “Dead right, innit?” and the other: “Near enough.” The foreman blew a faint appreciative whistle.
“Well,” Alleyn said, “he’s clutching a clod of mud and you can see where the fingers dragged down the side of the ditch, can’t you? All right. Was one plan — how? Half under him or what?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Superintendent Williams said: “You can see where the planks were placed all right, before they fell. Clear as mud, and mud’s the word in this outfit. The ends near the gate were only just balanced on the edge. Look at the marks where they scraped down the side. Bound to give way as soon as he put his weight on them.”
The men broke into an angry expostulation. They’d never left them like that. They’d left them safe: overlapping the bank by a good six inches at each side; a firm bridge.
“Yes,” Alleyn said, “you can see that, Williams. There are the old marks. Trodden down but there, undoubtedly.”
