Scales of Justice ra-18

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Ah,” Fox said complacently, “that would be the day, wouldn’t it, Mr. Alleyn? I like a nice compact woman,” he added.

  “Drag your fancy away from thoughts of Nurse Kettle’s contours, compact or centrifugal, and consider. Colonel Cartarette left this house about ten past seven to call on Octavius Danberry-Phinn. Presumably there was no one at home, because the next we hear of him he’s having a violent row with Phinn down by the bottom bridge. That’s at about half past seven. At twenty to eight he and Phinn part company. The Colonel crosses the bridge and at twenty minutes to eight is having an interview with Lady Lacklander, who is sketching in a hollow on the left bank almost opposite the willow grove on the right bank. Apparently this alfresco meeting was by arrangement. It lasted about ten minutes. At ten to eight Cartarette left Lady Lacklander, re-crossed the bridge, turned left and evidently went straight into the willow grove because she saw him there as she herself panted up the hill to Nunspardon. Soon after eight Mrs. Cartarette said goodbye to that prize ass George Lacklander and came down the hill. At about a quarter past seven she and he had seen old Phinn poaching, and as she tripped down the path, she looked along his fishing to see if she could spot him anywhere. She must have just missed Lady Lacklander, who, one supposes, had by that time plunged into this Nunspardon Home Spinney they talk so much about. Kitty…”

  Fox said, “Who?”

  “Her’s name’s Kitty, Kitty Cartarette. She came hipping and thighing down the hill with her eye on the upper reaches of the Chyne, where she expected to see Mr. Phinn. She didn’t notice her husband in the willow grove, but that tells us nothing until we get a look at the landscape, and anyway, her attention, she says, was elsewhere. She continued across the bridge and so home. She saw nothing unusual on the bridge. Now Lady Lacklander saw a woundy great trout lying on the bridge where, according to Lady L., Mr. Phinn had furiously chucked it when he had his row, thirty-five minutes earlier, with Colonel Cartarette. The next thing that happens is that Mark Lacklander (who has been engaged in tennis and, one supposes, rather solemn dalliance with that charming girl Rose Cartarette) leaves this house round about the time Mrs. Cartarette returns to it and goes down to the bottom bridge, where he does not find a woundy great trout and is certain that there was no trout to find. He does however, find his grandmother’s sketching gear on the left bank of the Chyne and like a kind young bloke carries it back to Nunspardon, thus saving the footman a trip. He disappears into the spinney, and as far as we know, this darkling valley is left to itself until a quarter to nine when Nurse Kettle, who has been slapping Commander Syce’s lumbago next door, descends into Bottom Meadow, turns off to the right, hears the dog howling and discovers the body. Those are the facts, if they are facts, arising out of information received up to date. What emerges?”

  Fox dragged his palm across his jaw. “For a secluded district,” he said, “there seems to have been quite a bit of traffic in the valley of the Chyne.”

  “Doesn’t there? Down this hill. Over the bridge. Up the other hill and t’other way round. None of them meeting except the murdered man and old Phinn at half past seven and the murdered man and Lady Lacklander ten minutes later. Otherwise it seems to have been a series of near misses on all hands. I can’t remember the layout of the valley with any accuracy, but it appears that from the houses on this side only the upper reaches of the Chyne and a few yards below the bridge on the right bank are visible. We’ll have to do an elaborate check as soon as it’s light, which is hellish soon, by the way. Unless we find signs of angry locals hiding in the underbrush or of mysterious coloured gentlemen from the East lurking in the village, it’s going to look a bit like a small field of suspects.”

  “Meaning this lot,” Fox said with a wag of his head in the direction of the drawing-room.

  “There’s not a damn’ one among them except the nurse who isn’t holding something back; I’ll swear there isn’t. Let’s have a word with young Lacklander, shall we? Fetch him in, Foxkin, and while you’re there, see how Mr. Phinn’s getting on with his statement to the sergeant. I wanted an ear left in that room, the sergeant’s was the only one available and the statement seemed the best excuse for planting him there. We’ll have to go for dabs on those spectacles we picked up, and I swear they’ll be Mr. Phinn’s. If he’s got off his chest as much as he’s decided to tell us, let him go home. Ask him to remain on tap, though, until further notice. Away you go.”

  While Fox was away, Alleyn looked more closely at Colonel Cartarette’s study. He thought he found in it a number of interesting divergences from the accepted convention. True, there were leather saddleback chairs, a pipe-rack and a regimental photograph, but instead of sporting prints the Colonel had chosen half a dozen Chinese drawings, and the books that lined two of his walls, although they included army lists and military biographies, were for the greater part well-worn copies of Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists and poets with one or two very rare items on angling. With these Alleyn was interested to find a sizable book with the title The Scaly Breed by Maurice Cartarette. It was a work on the habits and characteristics of fresh-water trout. On his desk was a photograph of Rose, looking shy and misty, and one of Kitty looking like an imitation of something it would be difficult to define.

  Alleyn’s gaze travelled over the surface of the desk and down the front. He tried the drawers. The top pair were unlocked and contained only writing paper and envelopes and a few notes written in a distinguished hand, evidently by the Colonel himself. The centre pairs on each side were locked. The bottom left-hand drawer pulled out. It was empty. His attention was sharpened. He had stooped down to look more closely at it when he heard Fox’s voice in the hall. He pushed the drawer to and stood away from the desk.

  Mark Lacklander came in with Fox.

  Alleyn said, “I shan’t keep you long; indeed I have only asked you to come in to clear up one small point and to help us with another, not so small. The first question is this: when you went home at quarter past eight last evening, did you hear a dog howling in Bottom Meadow?”

  “No,” Mark said. “No, I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “Did Skip really stick close to the Colonel?”

  “Not when he was fishing,” Mark said at once. “The Colonel had trained him to keep a respectful distance away.”

  “But you didn’t see Skip?”

  “I didn’t see or hear a dog but I remember meeting a tabby cat. One of Occy Phinn’s menagerie, I imagine, on an evening stroll.”

  “Where was she?”

  “This side of the bridge,” said Mark, looking bored.

  “Right. Now, you’d been playing tennis here, hadn’t you, with Miss Cartarette, and you returned to Nunspardon by the bottom bridge and river path. You collected your grandmother’s sketching gear on the way, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Were you carrying anything else?”

  “Only my tennis things. Why?”

  “I’m only trying to get a picture. Collecting these things must have taken a few moments. Did you hear or see anything at all out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think I looked across the river at all.”

  “Right. And now will you tell us, as a medical man, what you make of the injuries to the head?”

  Mark said very readily, “Yes, of course, for what my opinion’s worth on a superficial examination.”

  “I gather,” Alleyn said, “that you went down with Miss Kettle after she gave the alarm and that with exemplary economy you lifted up the tweed hat, looked at the injury, satisfied yourself that he was dead, replaced the hat and waited for the arrival of the police. That it?”

  “Yes. I had a torch and I made as fair an examination as I could without touching him. As a matter of fact, I was able to look pretty closely at the injuries.”

  “Injuries,” Alleyn repeated, stressing the plural. “Then you would agree that he was hit more than once?”

  “I’d like to look again before giving an opinion.
It seemed to me he had been hit on the temple with one instrument before he was stabbed through it with another. Although — I don’t know — a sharp object striking the temple could of itself produce very complex results. It’s useless to speculate. Your man will no doubt make a complete examination and what he finds may explain the appearances that to me are rather puzzling.”

  “But on what you saw your first reaction was to wonder if he’d been stunned before he was stabbed? Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Mark said readily. “That’s right.”

  “As I saw it,” Alleyn said, “there seemed to be an irregular bruised area roughly about three by two inches and inside that a circular welt that might have been made by a very big hammer with a concave striking surface, if such a thing exists. And inside that again is the actual puncture, a hole that, it seemed to me, must have been made by a sharply pointed instrument.”

  “Yes,” Mark said, “that’s an accurate description of the superficial appearance. But, of course, the queerest appearances can follow cranial injuries.”

  “The autopsy may clear up the ambiguities,” Alleyn said. He glanced at Mark’s intelligent and strikingly handsome face. He decided to take a risk.

  “Look here,” he said, “it’s no good us trying to look as if we’re uninterested in Mr. Danberry-Phinn. He and Colonel Cartarette had a flaming row less than an hour, probably, before Cartarette was murdered. What do you feel about that? I don’t have to tell you this is entirely off the record. What sort of a chap is Mr. Phinn? You must know him pretty well.”

  Mark thrust his hands into his pockets and scowled at the floor. “I don’t know him as well as all that,” he said. “I mean, I’ve known him all my life, of course, but he’s old enough to be my father and not likely to be much interested in a medical student or a young practitioner.”

  “Your father would know him better, I suppose.”

  “As a Swevenings man and my father’s elder contemporary, yes, but they hadn’t much in common.”

  “You knew his son, Ludovic, of course?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mark said composedly. “Not well,” he added; “he was at Eton and I’m a Wykehamist. He trained for the Diplomatic, and I left Oxford for the outer darkness of the dissecting rooms at Thomas’s. Completely déclassé. I dare say,” Mark added, with a grin, “that my grandfather thought much the same about you, sir. Didn’t you desert him and the Diplomatic for Lord Trenchard and the lonely beat?”

  “If you like to put it that way, which is a good deal more flattering to me than it is to either of my great white chiefs. Young Phinn, by the way, was at your grandfather’s embassy in Zlomce, wasn’t he?”

  “H «was,” Mark said, and as if he realized that this reply sounded uncomfortably short, he added, “My grandfather was a terrific ‘Vale Man,’ as we say in these parts. He liked to go all feudal and surround himself with local people. When Viccy Phinn went into the Service, I fancy grandfather asked if he could have him with the idea of making one corner of a Zlomcefield forever Swevenings. My God,” Mark added, “I didn’t mean to put it like that. I mean…”

  “You’ve remembered, perhaps, that young Phinn blew out his brains in one corner of a Zlomce field.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “It must have been a great shock to your grandfather.”

  Mark compressed his lips and turned away. “Naturally,” he said. He pulled out a case and still with his back to Alleyn lit himself a cigarette. The match scraped and Fox cleared his throat.

  “I believe,” Alleyn said, “that Sir Harold’s autobiography is to be published.”

  Mark said, “Did Phinn tell you that?”

  “Now, why in the wide world,” Alleyn asked, “should Mr. Octavius Phinn tell me?”

  There was a long silence broken by Mark.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Mark said. “I must decline absolutely to answer any more questions.”

  “You are perfectly within your rights. It’s not so certain that you are wise to do so.”

  “After all,” Mark said, “I must judge of that for myself. Is there any objection now to my driving to the dispensary?”

  Alleyn hesitated for the fraction of a second. “No objection in the world,” he said. “Good morning to you, Dr. Lacklander.”

  Mark repeated, “I’m sorry,” and with a troubled look at both of them went out of the room.

  “Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said, “we shall snatch a couple of hours sleep at the Boy and Donkey, but before we do so, will you drag your fancy away from thoughts of District Nurses and bend it upon the bottom drawer on the left-hand side of Colonel Cartarette’s desk?”

  Fox raised his eyebrows, stationed himself before the desk, bent his knees, placed his spectacles across his nose and did as he was bidden.

  “Forced,” he said. “Recent. Chipped.”

  “Quite so. The chip’s on the floor. The paper knife on the desk is also chipped and the missing bit is in the otherwise empty drawer. The job’s been done unhandily by an amateur in a hurry. We’ll seal this room and to-morrow we’ll put in the camera-and-dabs boys. Miss Kettle’s, Mr. Phinn’s and Dr. Lacklander’s prints’ll be on their statements. Lacklander’s and Mrs. Cartarette’s grog glasses had better be rescued and locked up in here. If we want dabs from the others, we’ll pick them up in the morning.” He took a folded handkerchief from his pocket, put it on the desk and opened it up. A pair of cheap spectacles was revealed. “And before we go to bed,” he said, “we’ll discover if Mr. Danberry-Phinn has left his dabs on his reach-me-down specs. And in the morning, Foxkin, if you are a good boy, you shall be told the sad and cautionary story of Master Ludovic Phinn.”

  Kitty Cartarette lay in a great Jacobean bed. She had asked, when she was first married, to have it done over in quilted and buttoned peach velvet, but had seen at once that this would be considered an error in taste. Anxious at that time to establish her position, she had given up this idea, but the dressing-table and chairs and lamp had all been her own choice. She stared miserably at them now, and a fanciful observer might have found something valedictory in her glance. By shifting across the bed, she was able to see herself in her long glass. The pink silk sheet billowed up round her puffed and tear-stained face. “I do look a sight,” she muttered. She may have then remembered that she lay in her husband’s place, and if a coldness came over her at this recollection, nobody in Swevenings would have suggested that it was because she had ever really loved him. Lady Lacklander had remarked, indeed, that Kitty was one of those rare women who seem to get through life without forming a deep attachment to anybody, and Lady Lacklander would have found it difficult to say why Kitty had been weeping. It would not have occurred to her to suppose that Kitty was lonelier than she had ever been before, but merely that she suffered from shock, which, of course, was true.

  There was a tap on the door and this startled Kitty. Maurice, with his queer old-fashioned delicacy, had always tapped.

  “Hullo?” she said.

  The door opened and Rose came in. In her muslin dressing-gown and with her hair drawn into a plait she looked like a school-girl. Her eyelids, like Kitty’s, were swollen and pink, but even this disfigurement, Kitty noticed with vague resentment, didn’t altogether blot out Rose’s charm. Kitty supposed she ought to have done a bit more about Rose. “But I can’t think of everything,” she told herself distractedly.

  Rose said, “Kitty, I hope you don’t mind my coming in. I couldn’t get to sleep and I came out and saw the light under your door. Mark’s fetching me some sleeping things from Chyning and I wondered if you’d like one.”

  “I’ve got some things of my own, thanks all the same. Has everybody gone?”

  “Lady Lacklander and George have and, I think, Occy Phinn. Would you like Mark to look in?”

  “What for?”

  “You might find him sort of helpful,” Rose said in a shaky voice. “I do.”

  “I daresay,” Kitty rejoined dryly. She saw Rose blush faintly. �
�It was nice of you to think of it, but I’m all right. What about the police? Are they still making themselves at home in your father’s study?” Kitty asked.

  “I think they must have gone. They’re behaving awfully well, really, Kitty. I mean it is a help, Mr. Alleyn being a gent.”

  “I daresay,” Kitty said again. “O.K., Rose,” she added. “Don’t worry. I know.”

  Her manner was good-naturedly dismissive, but Rose still hesitated. After a pause she said, “Kitty, while I’ve been waiting — for Mark to come back, you know — I’ve been thinking. About the future.”

  “The future?” Kitty repeated and stared at her. “I should have thought the present was enough!”

  “I can’t think about that,” Rose said quickly. “Not yet. Not about Daddy. But it came into my mind that it was going to be hard on you. Perhaps you don’t realize — I don’t know if he told you, but — well—”

  “Oh, yes,” Kitty said wearily, “I know. He did tell me. He was awfully scrupulous about anything to do with money, wasn’t he?” She looked up at Rose. “O.K., Rose,” she said. “Not to fuss. I’ll make out. I wasn’t expecting anything. My sort,” she added obscurely, “don’t.”

  “But I wanted to tell you; you needn’t worry. Not from any financial point of view. I mean — it’s hard to say and perhaps I should wait till we’re more used to what’s happened, but I want to help,” Rose stammered. She began to speak rapidly. It was almost as if she had reached that point of emotional exhaustion that is akin to drunkenness. Her native restraint seemed to have forsaken her and to have been replaced by an urge to pour out some kind of sentiment upon somebody. She appeared scarcely to notice her stepmother as an individual. “You see,” she was saying, weaving her fingers together, “I might as well tell you. I shan’t need Hammer for very long. Mark and I are going to be engaged.”

  Kitty looked up at her, hesitated, and then said, “Well, that’s fine, isn’t it? I do hope you’ll be awfully happy. Of course, I’m not exactly surprised.”

  “No,” Rose agreed. “I expect we’ve been terribly transparent.” Her voice trembled and her eyes filled with réitérant tears. “Daddy knew,” she said.