by Ngaio Marsh
“Pesky chain on off hind-wheel’s carried away, sir. Which is why she’s been skittering and skiddling the last mile or so.”
“No doubt. Well, get in James, get in, and I’ll see if I can waddle out of the hedgerow. On mature consideration, perhaps you’d better watch me.”
James hovered over the now familiar process of churning wheels, short jerks and final recoveries. He stood within view of Mandrake and made violent gyratory movements with his hands, while an enormous drop swung from the tip of his nose.
“I have never responded in the smallest degree to rustic charm,” said Mandrake. “All dialects are alike to me. James seems to me to be an extremely unconvincing piece of genre. What does he mean by these ridiculous gestures?”
“He means you’re backing us into the other ditch,” said Chloris, blowing her nose. “Oh, do be careful. Don’t you see, he’s steering an imaginary wheel.”
“His antics are revolting. Moreover he smells. There, you unspeakable old grotesque, is that right?”
James, capering in the snow and unable to hear any of this, innocently nodded and grinned.
“I think you’re beastly about him,” said Chloris, “he’s very kind.”
“Well, he can get in again. Here he comes. Are you all right, James? Have a cigarette.”
“No, thankee, sir,” said James, breathing hard. “I’ve never smoked one of they since I was so high as yer elber. A pipe’s my fancy, sir, and that be too powerful a piece of work for the lady.”
“Not a bit, James,” said Chloris. “Do have a pipe. You’ve earned it.”
James thanked her and soon the inside of the car smelt of nothing but his pipe. For some little time they lurched down the lane in silence but presently Mandrake leant his head towards Chloris and said in a low voice: “I hope you won’t mind my mentioning it, but I never expected to lose my heart to a blonde. The darker the better hitherto, I assure you. Not pitchblack, of course. White faces and black heads have been my undoing.”
“If you’re trying to cheer me up,” Chloris rejoined, “you’ve hit on an unfortunate theme. I went ashen for Nicholas and I certainly can’t revoke for you.”
“There!” cried Mandrake triumphantly. “I should have known my instinct was not at fault. You idiot, darling, why did you? Oh, all right, all right. What’s the time?”
“It’s five minutes to twelve. We shan’t be there by midday, after all.”
“We shan’t be much later, I swear. I wonder — Have you ever known anyone who took an overdose of a sleeping-draught?”
“Never. But we had something about them in my home-nursing course. I’ve been trying to remember. I think they’re all barbitones, and I think the lecturer said that people who took too much sank into a coma and might keep on like that for hours or even days. You had to try and get rid of the poison and rouse them. I–I think it’s terribly important that we should be quick. Dr. Hart said so. Aubrey, we’ve got so much to say when we get there and so little time for saying it!”
“I’ve tried to get it down to some sort of coherent form.”
“When you made your notes did you think of anything new, anything that would help to explain about William?”
Mandrake did not answer immediately. They had reached a stretch of road where the snow was less thick and was frozen hard. They had left the Cloudyfold hills behind and to their right, and had come into a level stretch between downlands and within sight of scattered cottages, each with its banner of smoke, the only signals of warmth in that cold countryside. Hedges broke through the snow, like fringes of black coral in an immobile sea. There was no wind down here and the trees, lined with snow, made frozen gestures against a sky of lead. Mandrake was visited by the notion that his car was a little world which clung precariously to its power of movement and he felt as if he himself fought, not against snow and mud, but against immobility. He wrenched his thoughts round to Chloris’ question.
“If you open that attaché-case you’ll find the notes,” he said. “Would you get them out? I don’t know if you can read in this state of upheaval. Try.”
Chloris managed to read the notes. They crept on with occasional wallowings in softer snow, and presently James Bewling said that the next turn in the road would bring them within sight of the spire of Winton St. Giles parish church, and Mandrake himself began to recognize the countryside and distant groups of trees that he had passed on his way from Winton to Cloudyfold. That was on Thursday. And, as he arrived at this point, through the open driving window came the faintest echo of a bell.
“Good Lord!” he thought, “it’s Sunday. Suppose they’re all in church. James,” he called out, “what time is morning service at St. Giles?”
“Ah. Rector do set most store by early service,” James rejoined. “She be at eight. T’others at half-past ten. Reckon he’ll have it to hisself this morning.”
“That’s all right, then. But what’s that bell?”
“Rector do ring bell at noon.”
“The Angelus,” said Mandrake. Chloris looked up from her papers and for a little while they listened to that distant clear-cold voice.
“They’re friends of yours, aren’t they?” said Chloris.
“The Copelands? Yes. Dinah’s beginning to be quite a good actress. She’s going to play in my new thing, if the Blitzkrieg doesn’t beat us to it. I suppose it won’t seem odd to you, but for at least twelve hours I haven’t thought about my play. What do you make of the notes?”
“There are some things I didn’t know about, but not many.” Chloris caught her breath. “You say at the end: ‘Could Hart have set a second booby-trap?’ ” Do you mean could he have done something with that frightful weapon that would make it fall on…? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. I can’t get any further though. I can’t think of anything.”
“A Busman’s Honeymoon-ish sort of contraption? But there are no hanging flower-pots at Highfold.”
“Well, if you can think of anything! I must tell you I went into the room before we left. I looked all round, trying to see if some little thing was out of order in the arrangement of the room, unusual in any way. I — didn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t see anything remotely suggestive of booby-traps. The ceiling’s a high one. Anyway, how could Hart have dangled a stone weapon from the ceiling?”
As soon as these words had fallen from his lips, Mandrake experienced a strange foreknowledge of how they could be answered. So vivid was this impression that when Chloris did speak, it was to him exactly as though she echoed his thoughts.
“Are you so certain,” she said, “that it must be Dr. Hart?”
And he heard his own voice answer, as if it spoke to a given cue: “I thought I was. Aren’t you?” She didn’t reply and a moment later he said with an air of conviction: “It must be. Who else?” And as she still kept silence: “Who else?”
“Nobody, I suppose. Nobody, of course.”
“If it was anybody else the original booby-trap goes unexplained. We know that only Hart could have set it. Don’t we?”
“I suppose so. Although, reading your notes, mightn’t it be just possible that one of the alibis…? It’s your evidence.”
“I know what you mean, but it’s beyond all bounds incredible. Why? Not a motive in the wide world! Besides, I can’t believe it, It’s monstrous.”
“Yes, I know. Well then, what about a second booby-trap? The detective stories tell you to look for the unusual, don’t they?”
“I don’t read them,” said Mandrake with some slight return to his professional manner. “However, I did look for the unusual.”
“And found nothing?”
“And found nothing. The room had a ghastly air of interrupted normality.”
They were ploughing through a small drift. The snow yielded, mounted in a wall in front of the radiator and splashed across the wind-screen. They felt a familiar and ominous quiver and in a moment had come to a standstill.
“Out comes wold shovel agin,” said
James cheerfully. “She’s not a bad ’un this time, sir.”
Mandrake backed out of the drift and again James set to work.
“There’s one detail,” said Mandrake, “that for some reason annoys me. No doubt there’s nothing in it.”
“What’s that?”
“You saw it. Do you remember the drawing-pin in the sole of my shoe? I picked it up in the smoking-room. There’s dried paint on it and it’s the same as the ones that are stuck in the lid of William’s paint-box.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see…”
“I said there was nothing in it. The only thing is, why should William have had a drawing-pin in the study? He did no painting at Highfold.”
“Yes, he did,” Chloris contradicted. “At least he did a drawing of me yesterday before lunch. It was while he was doing it that we had our row. And the paper was pinned down to a bit of board. And he dropped one of the pins.”
“Oh,” said Mandrake, flatly. “Well, you might add that to the notes. That’s a flop then. What do we think of now?”
“Well, I can’t think of anything,” said Chloris hopelessly.
“What the devil,” said Mandrake, “is that old mountebank doing?”
James Bewling, having cleared a passage in front of the car, had, with great difficulty, climbed the bank under the buried hedgerow and now stood waving his arms and pointing down the road. Mandrake sounded his horn and James instantly plunged down the bank and across the intervening snowdrift to the car. He climbed into the back seat, shouting excitedly as he came.
“Road’s clear, down-along,” shouted James. “There’s a mort of chaps with shovels and one of they scrapers. On ’ee go, sir, us’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank God!” said Mandrake and Chloris sincerely.
Dinah Copeland trudged down the side path and pressed her face against the French window, instantly obscuring it with her breath. Alleyn put down his book and let her in.
“You do look wholesome,” he said.
“Did you hear me ring the Angelus?” she demanded. “Was it all right, Daddy?”
“Very nice, my dear,” said the Rector out of the corner of his mouth, “but I mustn’t talk. Mrs. Alleyn’s doing my bottom lip.”
“I’ve finished,” said Troy.
“For the morning?”
“Yes. Would you like to look?”
Dinah kicked off her snow-boots and hurried round the easel. Troy grinned at her husband, who upon that signal joined her. She thrust her thin arm in its painty sleeve through his and with Dinah they looked at the portrait.
“Pleased?” Alleyn asked his wife.
“Not so bad from my point of view, but what about Dinah?”
“It’s Heaven,” said Dinah emphatically.
“Not quite what the church-hen ordered, I’m afraid,” Troy murmured.
“No, thank the Lord. I was wondering if by any chance you’d gone surrealist and would mix Daddy up with some nice symbols. I’ve got rather keen on surrealism since I’ve been working with Aubrey Mandrake. But now I see it, I’m quite glad you haven’t put in any eggshells or phallic trimmings.”
“Dinah!”
“Well, Daddy, everybody recognizes the frightful importance — all right, darling, I won’t. I do wish my young man was here to see it,” said Dinah. “Daddy, aren’t you glad we scraped acquaintance with Mr. Alleyn over our murder?”
“I’m very glad, at all events,” said Troy. “Do you know this is the only time since we were married that he’s let me meet any of his criminal acquaintances?” She laughed, squinted at her work and asked: “Do you think it’s all right, Roderick?”
“I like it,” said Alleyn gravely.
The Rector, who wore the diffident simper of the subject, joined the group at Troy’s easel. Alleyn, gripping his pipe between his teeth and humming gently to himself, began to roll up and put away his wife’s tubes of paint. She lit a cigarette and watched him.
“For a long time,” said Troy, “he endured my paint-box in silence, and then one day he asked me if dirt was an essential to self-expression. Since then it’s got more and more like the regulation issue for investigating officers at C.I.”
“Whereas before, it was a test case for advanced students at Hendon. I found,” said Alleyn, “characteristic refuse from Fiji, Quebec, Norway, and the Dolomites. Hullo! What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asked Troy.
“There’s a car struggling outside in the church lane.”
“Church lane!” Dinah ejaculated. “It must be driven by a lunatic if it’s come from anywhere round Cloudyfold. They’ve cleared the lane up to the first turning but above that it’s thick snow. Your car must have come in from the main road, Mr. Alleyn. It’ll very soon have to stop.”
“It has stopped,” said Alleyn. “And I fancy at your gate, Oh, dear me!”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked his wife.
“By the pricking of my thumbs! Well, it can’t be for me, anyway.”
“Somebody’s coming up the side path,” cried Dinah, and a moment later she turned an astonished face upon the others. “It’s Aubrey Mandrake.”
“Mandrake?” said Alleyn sharply. “But he ought to be on the other side of Cloudyfold.”
“It can’t be Mandrake, my dear,” said the Rector.
“But it is. And the car’s driven away. Here he comes. He’s seen me and he’s coming to this window.” Dinah stared at Alleyn. “I think there must be something wrong,” she said. “Aubrey looks — different.”
She opened the French window and in another moment Aubrey Mandrake walked in.
“Alleyn!” said Mandrake. “Thank God you’re here. There’s been a most appalling tragedy at Highfold, and we’ve come to get you.”
“You detestable young man,” said Alleyn.
“So you see,” Mandrake said, “there really was nothing for it but to come to you.”
“But it’s not—” Alleyn protested piteously, “it’s really not my cup of tea. It’s the Chief Constable’s cup of tea, and old Blandish’s. Is Blandish still the Superintendent at Great Chipping, Rector?”
“Yes, he is. This is an appalling thing, Mandrake. I–I simply can’t believe it. William Compline seemed such a nice fellow. We don’t know them very well, they’re rather beyond our country at Penfelton, but I liked what I saw of William.”
“Mrs. Compline’s in desperate case. If we don’t get back quickly—” Mandrake began, and Alleyn cut in crisply: “Yes, of course.” He turned to Mr. Copeland. “I’ve forgotten the name of your Chief Constable, sir.”
“Lord Hesterdon. Miles and miles away to the north; and if, as Mandrake says, the telephone wires over Cloudyfold are down, I’m afraid you won’t get him.”
“I’ll get Blandish if I have to wade to Great Chipping,” Alleyn muttered. “May I use your telephone?”
He went into the hall.
“I’m sorry,” said Mandrake. “He’s livid with rage, isn’t he?”
“Not really,” said Troy. “It’s only his pretty little ways. He’ll do his stuff I expect. He’ll have to be asked, you know, by the local police. C.I. people don’t as a rule just nip in and take a case wherever they happen to be.”
“Red tape,” said Mandrake gloomily. “I guessed as much. Murderers can ramp about country houses, women can kill themselves with overdoses of veronal, well-intentioned guests can wallow in and out of snow-drifts in an effort to help on an arrest, and when, after suffering the most disgusting privations, they win home to the fountain-head, it is only to become wreathed, Laocoön-like, in the toils of red tape.”
“I don’t think,” said Troy, “that it will be quite as bad as that.” And Dinah, who was listening shamelessly at the door, said: “He’s saying: ‘Well, you’ll have to ring up C.I., blast you.’ ”
“Dinah, darling,” said her father, “you really mustn’t.”
“It’s all right,” said Dinah, shutting the door. “He’s cursing freely and a
sking for Whitehall 1212. When do you think your girl-friend will get back, Aubrey?”
“She’ll have to beat up the Little Chipping chemist. We only remembered it was Sunday when we heard your bell.”
“That was me,” said Dinah. “Mr. Tassy is our chemist and he lives over his shop, so that’ll be all right. The road from here to Chipping has been cleared pretty well but I hear there are masses of frightful drifts beyond, on the way to Great Chipping. So I don’t see how you’ll get the police-surgeon or Mr. Blandish.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Troy, “I believe I’ll pack my husband’s bag.”
“Then you think he’ll come?” cried Mandrake.
“Oh, yes,” said Troy vaguely, “he’ll come, all right.”
She went out and as the door opened they heard Alleyn’s voice saying: “I haven’t got a damn’ thing. I’ll ring up the local chemist and get some stuff from him. Is Dr. Curtis there? At the Yard? Well, get him to speak to me. You’d better find out…” The door shut off the rest of his remarks.
“Daddy,” said Dinah, “hadn’t we better give Aubrey a drink?”
“Yes, yes, of course. My dear boy, forgive me, of course you must be exhausted. I’m so sorry. You must have a glass of sherry. Or—”
“You’d better have a whiskey, Aubrey. It’s almost lunch-time, so why not eat while you’re waiting? And if you can’t wait for Miss Wynne, when she comes, we can at least send something out to the car. I’ll bustle them up in the kitchen. Bring him along to the dining-room, Daddy.”
She hurried out and met Alleyn in the hall. “I’m so sorry,” Alleyn said, “Nobody could want to go away less than I do, but here’s Blandish gibbering at Great Chipping with a cracked water-tank in his car and a story of drifts six feet between us and him. He’s going to get hold of a doctor, commandeer a car, and ginger up the road-clearing gang, but in the meantime he wants me to go ahead. I’ve rung up my atrocious superior and he’s all for it, blast his eyes. May Troy stay on, as we originally planned, and finish her portrait?”
