by Ngaio Marsh
“… very helpful, thank you. And now, I’m sure, you’ll all be glad to get to bed. We shall be here during what’s left of the night — hardly anything, I’m afraid, but we shan’t disturb you.”
They were on their feet. Carlisle, feeling very sick, wondered what would happen if she got to hers. She looked at the others through her fingers and thought that there was something a little wrong, a little misshapen, about all of them. Her aunt, for instance. Why had she not seen before that Lady Pastern’s body was too long and her head too big? It was so. And surely Félicité was fantastically narrow. Her skeleton must be all wrong: a tiny pelvis with the hip-bones jutting out from it like rocks. Carlisle’s eyes, behind their sheltering fingers, turned to Lord Pastern and she thought how monstrous it was that his forehead should overhang the rest of his face — a blind over a shop window; that his monkey’s cheeks should bunch themselves up when he was angry. Even Hendy: Hendy’s throat was like some bird’s and now that her hair was braided one saw that it was thin on top. Her scalp showed. They were caricatures, really, all of them. Subtly off-pitch: instruments very slightly out of tune. And Ned? He was behind her, but if she turned to look at him, what, in the perceptiveness born of nervous exhaustion, would she see? Were not his eyes black and small? Didn’t his mouth, when it smiled, twist and show canine teeth a little too long? But she would not look at Ned.
And now, thought the bemused Carlisle, here was Uncle George at it again. “I’ve no intention of goin’ to bed. People sleep too much. No need for it: look at the mystics. Workin’ from this time-table I can show you…”
“That’s extremely kind of you, sir.” Alleyn’s voice was clear and pleasant. “But I think not. We have to get through our routine jobs. They’re dreary beyond words and we’re best left to ourselves while we do them.”
“Routine,” shouted Lord Pastern. “Official synonym for inefficiency. Things are straightened out for you by someone who takes the trouble to use his head and what do you do? Tell him to go to bed while you gallop about his house makin’ lists like a bumbailiff. Be damned if I’ll go to bed. Now!”
“Oh, God!” Carlisle thought desperately. “How’s he going to cope with this?” She felt the pressure of a hand on her shoulder and heard Ned’s voice.
“May I suggest that whatever Cousin George decides to do there’s no reason why the rest of us should keep a watch of supererogation.”
“None at all,” Alleyn said.
“Carlisle, my dear,” Lady Pastern murmured as if she were giving the signal to rise from a dinner party. “Shall we?”
Carlisle stood up. Edward was close by and it seemed to her that he still looked angry. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” she said. “I don’t know what possessed me. I got a bit run-down in Greece and I suppose — ” Her voice died. She was thinking of the long flight of stairs up to her room.
“My dearest child,” her aunt said, “I shall never forgive myself that you have been subjected to this ordeal.”
“But she’s wondering,” Carlisle thought, “what I’ve been up to. They’re all wondering.”
“Perhaps some wine,” her aunt continued, “or whiskey. It is useless to suggest, George, that you…”
“I’ll get it,” Edward said quickly.
But Miss Henderson had already gone and now returned with a glass in her hand. As she took it from her, Carlisle smelt Hendy’s particular smell of soap and talcum powder. “Like a baby,” she thought and drank. The almost neat whiskey made her shudder convulsively. “Hendy!” she gasped. “You do pack a punch. I’m all right. Really. It’s you, Aunt Cécile, who should be given corpse revivers.”
Lady Pastern closed her eyes momentarily upon this vulgarism. Félicité, who had been perfectly silent ever since Alleyn and Carlisle came in, said: “I’d like a drink, Ned. Let’s have a pub crawl in the dining-room, shall we?”
“The decanter’s here if you want it, dear.” Miss Henderson also spoke for the first time.
“In that case,” Edward said, “if it’s all right by you, Alleyn, I’ll take myself off.”
“We’ve got your address, haven’t we? Right.”
“Good-bye, Cousin Cile. If there’s anything I can do…” Ned stood in the doorway. Carlisle did not look at him. “Good-bye, Lisle,” he said. “Good-bye, Fée.”
Félicité moved swiftly to him and with an abrupt compulsive movement put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He stood for a moment with his head stooped and his hand on her arm. Then he was gone.
Beneath the heavy mask of exhaustion that her aunt wore, Carlisle saw a faint glimmer of gratification. “Come, my children,” Lady Pastern said, almost briskly. “Bed.” She swept them past Alleyn, who opened the door for them. As Carlisle turned, with the others, to mount the stairs, she heard Lord Pastern.
“Here I am,” he shouted, “and here I stick. You don’t turf me off to bed or anywhere else, short of arresting me.”
“I’m not, at the moment, proposing to do that,” Alleyn said distinctly, “though I think, sir, I should warn you…”
The door shut off the remainder of his sentence.
Alleyn shut the door on the retiring ladies and looked thoughtfully at Lord Pastern. “I think,” he repeated, “I should warn you that if you do decide, against my advice, to stay with us, what you do and say will be noted and the notes may be used…”
“Oh, fiddle-faddle!” Lord Pastern interrupted shrilly. “All this rigamarole. I didn’t do it and you can’t prove I did. Get on with your precious routine and don’t twaddle so.”
Alleyn looked at him with a sort of astonishment. “You bloody little old fellow,” he thought. Lord Pastern blinked and smirked and bunched up his cheeks.
“All right, sir,” Alleyn said. “But you’re going to be given the customary warning, twaddle or not, and what’s more I’ll have a witness to it.”
He crossed the landing, opened the ballroom door, said: “Fox, can you give me a moment?” and returned to the drawing-room, where he waited in silence until Inspector Fox came in. He then said: “Fox, I’ve asked Lord Pastern to go to bed and he refuses. I want you to witness this. I warn him that from now onwards his words and behaviour will be noted and that the notes may later on be used in evidence. It’s a nuisance, of course, but short of taking a much more drastic step, I don’t see what else can be done about it. Have the extra men turned up?”
Fox, looking with marked disapproval at Lord Pastern, said that they had.
“Tell them to keep observation, will you? Thank you, Fox, I’ll carry on here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox, “I’ll get on with it in the study then.”
He turned to the door. Lord Pastern said: “Hi! Where’re you goin’? What’re you up to?”
“If you’ll excuse me for passing the remark, my lord,” said Fox severely, “you’re acting very foolishly. Very ill-advised and foolish, what you’re doing, if I may say so.” He went out.
“Great ham-fisted ass of a chap,” Lord Pastern remarked.
“On the contrary, sir,” Alleyn rejoined with perfect politeness, “an extremely efficient officer and should have had his promotion long ago.”
He left Lord Pastern, walked to the center of the long drawing-room and surveyed it for some minutes with his hands in his pockets. A clock on the landing struck five. Alleyn began a closer inspection of the room. He traversed it slowly, moving across and across it and examining any object that lay in his path. Lord Pastern watched him and sighed and groaned audibly. Presently Alleyn came to a chair beside which stood an occasional table. On the table was an embroidery frame, and a workbox of elaborate and elegant design. He opened the lid delicately and stooped to examine the contents. Here, neatly disposed, were innumerable skeins of embroidery silks. The box was fitted with every kind of tool, each in its appointed slot: needle-cases, scissors, bodkins, a thimble, an ivory measure, a tape in a cloisonné case, stilettoes held in their places by silken she
aths. One slot was untenanted. Alleyn sat down and began, with scrupulous care, to explore the box.
“Pity you didn’t bring your sewin’,” said Lord Pastern, “isn’t it?”
Alleyn took out-his notebook, glanced at his watch and wrote briefly.
“I’d thank you,” Lord Pastern added, “to keep your hands out of m’ wife’s property.” He attempted to repress a yawn, shed a tear over the effort and barked suddenly: “Where’s your search-warrant, b’ God?”
Alleyn completed another note, rose and exhibited his warrant. “Tscha!” said Lord Pastern.
Alleyn had turned to examine Lady Pastern’s embroidery. It was stretched over a frame and was almost completed. A riot of cupids in postures of extreme insouciance circled about a fabulous nosegay. The work was exquisite. He gave a slight appreciative chuckle which Lord Pastern instantly parodied. Alleyn resumed his search. He moved steadily on at a snail’s pace. Half an hour crawled by. Presently an odd little noise disturbed him. He glanced up. Lord Pastern, still on his feet, was swaying dangerously. His eyes were glazed and horrible and his mouth was open. He had snored.
Alleyn tiptoed to the door at the far end of the room, opened it and slipped into the study. He heard a sort of roaring noise behind him, shut the door and, finding a key in the lock, turned it.
Inspector Fox, in his shirt-sleeves, was examining the contents of an open drawer on the top of the desk. Laid out in front of him were a tube of plastic wood, an empty bottle marked “gun oil,” with no cork in it, and a white ivory handle into which some tool had once fitted.
Fox laid a broad finger on the desk beside these exhibits, not so much for an index as to establish their presence and significance. Alleyn nodded and crossed quickly to the door that gave on the landing. He locked it and waited near it with his head cocked. “Here he comes,” he said.
There was a patter of feet outside. The handle of the door was turned and then rattled angrily. A distant voice said: “I’m sorry, my lord, but I’m afraid that room’s under inspection just now.”
“Who the hell d’you think you are?”
“Sergeant Marks, my lord.”
“Then let me tell you…”
The voices faded out.
“He won’t get into the ballroom either,” said Fox, “unless he tries a knock-up with Sergeant Whitelaw.”
“How about the dining-room?”
“They’ve finished there, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Anything?”
“Wine had been spilt on the carpet. Port, I’d say. And there’s a bit of a mark on the table near the centre flower bowl as if a drop or two of water had laid there. White carnations in the bowl. Nothing else. The tables had been cleared, of course.”
Alleyn looked at the collection on the desk. “Where did you beat this lot up, Foxkin?”
“In this drawer which was pulled out and left on top of the desk like it is now. Half a junk shop in it, isn’t there, sir? These articles were lying on the surface of the other mess.”
“Bailey had a go at it?”
“Yes. No prints on any of ’em,” said Fox. “Which is funny.”
“How about the typewriter?”
“We’ve printed it. Only his lordship’s dabs and they’re very fresh.”
“No cap on the plastic wood tube.”
“It was on the floor.”
Alleyn examined the tube. “It’s set hard, of course, at the open end but not very deep. Tube’s three-quarters full.”
“There are crumbs of plastic wood in the drawer and on the desk and the carpet.”
Alleyn said absently, “Are there, by Gum!” and turned his attention to the small white handle. “Exhibit B,” he said. “Know what it is, Fox?”
“I can make a healthy guess, I fancy, Mr. Alleyn.”
“It’s the fellow of a number of gadgets in a very elegant French work-box in the drawing-room. Crochet hooks, scissors and so on. They’re fixed inside the lid, in slots. One slot’s empty.”
“This is just a handle, you’ll notice, sir.”
“Yes. Do you think it ought to have an embroidery stiletto fitted in the hollow end?”
“It’s what I reckoned.”
“I think you’re right.”
Fox opened his bag and took out a narrow cardboard box. In this, secured and protected by strings, was the dart. The jewels in the spring clip, tiny emeralds and brilliants, glittered cheerfully. Only a narrow platinum band near the top and the stiletto itself were dulled with Rivera’s blood.
“Bailey’ll have a go for latent prints,” Fox said.
“Yes, of course. We can’t disturb it. Later on it can be dismembered, but on looks, Fox, we’ve got something.”
Alleyn held the ivory handle beside the stiletto. “I’ll swear they belong,” he said, and put it down. “Here’s exhibit C. An empty gun-oil bottle. Where’s that cork?”
Fox produced it. “It fits,” he said. “I’ve tried. It fits and it has the same stink. Though why the hell it should turn up on the bandstand…”
“Ah me,” Alleyn said. “Why the hell indeed. Well, look what turns up in your particular fancy’s very own drawer in his very own study! Could anything be more helpful?”
Fox shifted bulkily in his chair and contemplated his superior officer for some moments. “I know it seems funny,” he said at last. “Leaving evidence all over the place: making no attempt to clear himself, piling up a case against himself, you might say. But then he is funny.
“Would you say he was not responsible within the meaning of the act?”
“I’m never sure what is the precise meaning of the infernal act. Responsible. Not responsible. Who’s to mark a crucial division in the stream of human behaviour running down from something we are pleased to call sanity into raving lunacy? Where’s the point at which a human being ceases to be a responsible being? Oh, I know the definitions, and I know we do our best with them, but it seems to me it’s here, over this business of the pathology of behaviour, that any system of corrective and coercive law shows at its dimmest. Is this decidedly rum peer so far south in the latitude of behaviour that he would publicly murder a man by a ridiculously elaborate method that points directly to himself, and then, in effect, do everything in his power to get himself arrested? There have been cases of the sort, but is this going to be one of them?”
“Well, sir,” said Fox stolidly, “I must say I think it is. It’s early days yet, but as far as we’ve got I think it looks like it. This gentleman’s previous record and his general run of behaviour point to a mental set-up that, without going beyond the ordinary view, is eccentric. Everyone knows he’s funny.”
“Yes. Everyone. Everyone knows,” Alleyn agreed. “Everyone would say: ‘It’s in character. It’s just like him!’ ”
With as near an approach to exasperation as Alleyn had ever heard from him, Fox said: “All right, Mr. Alleyn, then. I know what you’re getting at. But who could have planted it on him? Tell me that. Do you believe any of the party at the table could have got at the revolver when it was under the sombrero and shoved this silly dart or bolt or what-have-you up it? Do you think Bellairs could have planted the bolt and picked it up after his lordship searched him? Where could he have planted it? In a bare band-room with nothing in it but musical instruments and other men? And how could he have got it into the revolver when his lordship had the revolver on his person and swears to it that it never left him? Skelton. Skelton handled the gun while a roomful of people watched him do it. Could Skelton have palmed this thing up the barrel? The idea’s laughable. Well, then.”
“All right, old thing,” Alleyn said. “Let’s get on with it. The servants will be about soon. How far have you got in here?”
“Not much further than what you’ve seen, sir. The drawer was a daisy. The bullets he extracted when he made his dummies are in the waste-paper basket there.”
“Carlisle Wayne watched him at that. How about the ballroom?”
“Bailey and Thompson are in there.
”
“Oh, well. Let’s have another look at Lord Pastern’s revolver, Fox.”
Fox lifted it from his bag and laid it on the desk. Alleyn sat down and produced his lens.
“There’s a very nice lens here, in his lordship’s drawer,” Fox remarked. Alleyn grunted. He was looking into the mouth of the barrel.
“We’ll get a photomicrograph of this,” he muttered. “Two longish scratches and some scrabbles.” He gave the revolver to Fox, who was sitting in the chair which, nine hours earlier, Carlisle had occupied. Like Carlisle, Fox used Lord Pastern’s lens.
“Did you notice,” Alleyn said, “that when I gave the thing to that old freak to look at, it was the underside of the butt near the trigger guard that seemed to interest him. I can’t find anything there. The maker’s plate’s on the heel. What was he up to, do you suppose?”
“God knows,” Fox grunted crossly. He was sniffing at the muzzle.
“You look like an old maid with smelling salts,” Alleyn observed.
“So I may, sir, but I don’t smell anything except gun oil.”
“I know. That’s another thing. Listen.”
In some distant part of the house there was movement. A door slammed, shutters were thrown back and a window opened.
“The servants are stirring,” Alleyn said. “We’ll seal this room, leave a man to watch it and come back to it later on. Let’s collect everything we’ve picked up, find out what the others have got and catch three hours’ sleep. Yard at ten o’clock, don’t forget. Come on.”
