Tied Up In Tinsel

by Ngaio Marsh

  It was a sledge. The torchlight concentrated on the ground beside the catafalque and into this area gloved hands and heavy boots shoved and manœuvred a large, flat-topped sledge.

  Alleyn changed his position on the window-seat. He squatted. He slid up the fastening device on the shutters and held them against the wind almost together but leaving a gap for observation.

  Three men. The wind still made a great to-do, howling about the courtyard, but he could catch the sound of their voices. The torch, apparently with some bother, was planted where it shone on the side of the packing case. A figure moved across in the field of light: a man with a long-handled shovel.

  Two pairs of hands grasped the top of the packingcase. A voice said: ‘Heave.’

  Alleyn let go the shutters. They swung in the wind and banged open against the outside wall. He stepped over the sill and flashed his own light.

  Into the faces of Kittiwee and Mervyn and, across the top of the packingcase – Vincent.

  ‘You’re early to work,’ said Alleyn.

  There was no answer and no human movement. It was as if the living men were held inanimate at the centre of a boisterous void.

  Kittiwee’s alto voice was heard. ‘Vince,’ it said, ‘asked us to give him a hand, like. To clear.’

  Silence. ‘That’s right,’ said Vincent at last.

  Mervyn said: ‘It’s no good now. Sir. Ruined. By the storm.’

  ‘Quite an eyesore,’ said Kittiwee.

  ‘Nigel’s not giving a hand?’ Alleyn said.

  ‘We didn’t want to upset him,’ Mervyn explained. ‘He’s easy upset.’

  They had to shout these ridiculous observations against the noise of the gale. Alleyn moved round the group until he gently collided with something he recognized as one of the pillars supporting the entrance porch. He remembered that when Wrayburn’s men collected their gear from the porch, one of them had switched on the converted lanterns that adorned the pillars.

  Alleyn kept his torchlight on the men. They turned to follow his progress, screwing up their eyes and sticking close together. His hand reached out to the end pillar and groped round it. He backed away and felt for the wall of the house.

  ‘Why,’ he called out, ‘didn’t you wait for the light for this job?’

  They all began to shout at once and very confusedly. Scraps of unlikely information were offered: Hilary’s dislike of litter, Nigel’s extreme sensitivity about the fate of his masterpiece. It petered out.

  Vince said, ‘Come on. Get moving,’ and the pairs of gloved hands returned to the packing case.

  Alleyn had found a switch. Suddenly the porch and the courtyard were there to be seen: all lit up as they had been for Hilary’s party.

  The drama of darkness, flashing lights and half-seen ambiguous figures was gone. Three heavily clad men stood round a packing case and glowered at a fourth man.

  Alleyn said: ‘Before you take it away I want to see inside that thing.’

  ‘There’s nothing in it,’ Kittiwee shrilly announced, and at the same time Vincent said: ‘It’s nailed up. You can’t.’

  Mervyn said: ‘It’s just an old packing case, sir. The pianner come in it. It’s got a lot of rubbish inside thrown out for disposal.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Alleyn said. ‘I want to look at it, if you please.’

  He walked up to them. The three men crowded together in front of the case. God! he thought. How irremediably pitiable and squalid.

  He saw that each of them was using the others, hopelessly, as some sort of protection for himself. They had a need to touch each other, to lose their separate identities, to congeal.

  He said: ‘This is no good, you know. You’ll only harm yourselves if you take this line. I must see inside the case.’

  Like a frightened child making a show of defiance, Kittiwee said: ‘We won’t let you. We’re three to one. You better watch out.’

  Mervyn said: ‘Look, sir, don’t. It won’t do you any good. Don’t.’

  And Vincent, visibly trembling, ‘You’re asking for trouble. You better not. You didn’t ought to take us on.’ His voice skipped a register. ‘I’m warning you,’ he squeaked. ‘See? I’m warning you.’

  ‘Vince!’ Kittiwee said. ‘Shut up.’

  Alleyn walked up to them and in unison they bent their knees and hunched their shoulders in a travesty of squaring up to him.

  ‘The very worst thing you could do,’ he said, ‘would be to attack me. Think!’

  ‘O Gawd!’ Kittiwee said. ‘O Gawd, Gawd, Gawd.’

  ‘Stand aside, now. And if you knock me over the head and try the same game with another job you’ll come to worse grief. You must know that. Come, now.’

  Vincent made an indeterminate gesture with his shovel. Alleyn took three steps forward and ducked. The shovel whistled over his head and was transfixed in the side of the packing case.

  Vincent stared at him with his mouth open and his fingers at his lips. ‘My oath, you’re quick!’ he said.

  ‘Lucky for you, I am,’ Alleyn said. ‘You bloody fool, man! Why do you want to pile up trouble for yourself? Now stand away, the lot of you. Go on, stand back.’

  ‘Vincey!’ Kittiwee said in scandalized tones. ‘You might of cut his head off!’

  ‘I’m that upset.’

  ‘Come on,’ Mervyn ordered them. ‘Do like ’e says. It’s no good.’

  They stood clear.

  The case was not nailed up. It was hinged at the foot and fastened with hook-and-eye catches at the top. They were stiff and Alleyn could use only one hand. He wrenched the shovel from its anchorage and saying: ‘Don’t try that again,’ dropped it to the ground at his feet.

  He forced open the first two catches and the side gaped a little, putting a strain on the remaining one. He struck at it with the heel of his hand. It resisted and then flew up.

  The side of the case fell against him. He stepped back and it crashed on the paved courtyard.

  Moult, having lain against it, rolled over and turned his sightless gaze on Alleyn.

  CHAPTER 9

  Post Mortem

  Moult, dead on the flagstones, seemed by his grotesque entry to inject a spasm of activity into his audience.

  For a second or two after he rolled into view, the three servants were motionless. And then, without a word, they bolted. They ran out of the courtyard and were swallowed up by the night.

  Alleyn had taken half a dozen steps after them when they returned as wildly as they had gone, running and waving their arms like characters in some kind of extravaganza. To make the resemblance more vivid, they were now bathed in light as if from an off-stage spot. As it intensified they turned to face it, made prohibitive gestures, shielded their eyes, and huddled together.

  The field of light contracted and intensified as a police car moved into the courtyard and stopped. Vincent turned and ran straight into Alleyn’s arms. His companions dithered too long, made as if to bolt and were taken by four large men who had quitted the car with remarkable expertise.

  They were Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, finger-print and photography experts, respectively; the driver, and Detective-Inspector Fox.

  ‘Now then!’ said Mr Fox, the largest of the four men, ‘what’s all the hurry?’

  Kittiwee burst into tears.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Alleyn said. ‘Pipe down the lot of you. Where d’you think you’re going? Over the hill to The Vale? Good morning, Fox.’

  ‘’Morning, Mr Alleyn. You’ve been busy.’

  ‘As you see.’

  ‘What do we do with this lot?’

  ‘Well may you ask! They’ve been making a disgusting nuisance of themselves.’

  ‘We never done a thing. We never touched him,’ Kittiwee bawled. ‘It’s all a bloody misunderstanding.’

  Alleyn, whose arm had been excruciatingly stirred up by Vincent, jerked his head towards the packing case. ‘Him,’ he said.

  ‘Well, well!’ Fox observed. ‘A body, eh?’ />
  ‘A body.’

  ‘Would this be the missing individual?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘Do we charge these chaps, then?’

  ‘We get them indoors, for heaven’s sake,’ said Alleyn crossly: ‘Bring them in. It’ll have to be through the window over there. I’ll go ahead and switch on the lights. They’d better be taken to their own quarters. And keep quiet all of you. We don’t want to rouse the household. Cook – what’s your name? – Kittiwee – for the love of decency – shut up.’

  Fox said: ‘What about the remains?’

  ‘One thing at a time. Before he’s moved the divisional surgeon will have to take a look. Bailey – Thompson.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You get cracking with this set-up. As it lies. Dabs. Outside and inside the packing case. The sledge. All surfaces. And the body of course. Complete job.’ Alleyn walked to the body and stooped over it. It was rigid and all askew. It lay on its back, the head at a grotesque angle to the trunk. One arm was raised. The eyes and the mouth were open. Old, ugly, scars on jaw and fattish cheek and across the upper lip started out lividly.

  But the beard and moustache and wig would have covered those, Alleyn thought. There’s nothing in that.

  His hands were busy for a moment. He extracted an empty flat half-pint bottle from a jacket in the coat and sniffed at it. Whisky. From the waistcoat pocket he took a key. Finding nothing more, he then turned away from the body and contemplated Vincent and his associates.

  ‘Are you lot coming quietly?’ he asked. ‘You’ll be mad if you don’t.’

  They made affirmative noises.

  ‘Good. You,’ Alleyn said to the driver of the police car, ‘come with us. You,’ to Bailey and Thompson, ‘get on with it. I’ll call up the Div Surgeon. When you’ve all finished wait for instructions. Where’s your second car, Fox?’

  ‘Puncture. They’ll be here.’

  ‘When they come,’ Alleyn said to Bailey, ‘stick them along the entrances. We don’t want people barging out of the house before you’ve cleared up here. It’s getting on for six. Come on, Fox. Come on, you lot.’

  Alleyn led the way through the library window, down the corridor, across the hall, through the green baize door and into the servants’ common-room. Here they surprised the boy in the act of lighting the fire. Alleyn sent him with his compliments to Cuthbert whom he would be pleased to see. ‘Is Nigel up?’ he asked. The boy, all eyes, nodded. Nigel, it appeared, was getting out early morning tea-trays in the servery.

  ‘Tell him we’re using this room and don’t want to be disturbed for the moment. Got that? All right. Chuck some coal on the fire and then off you cut, there’s a good chap.’

  When the boy had gone Alleyn rang up Wrayburn on the staff telephone, told him of the discovery and asked him to lay on the divisional surgeon as soon as possible. He then returned to the common-room where he nodded to the Yard car-driver who took up a position in front of the door.

  Mervyn, Kittiwee and Vincent stood in a wet, dismal and shivering group in the middle of the room. Kittiwee mopped his great dimpled face and every now and then, like a baby, caught his breath in a belated sob.

  ‘Now then,’ Alleyn said. ‘I suppose you three know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve tried to obstruct the police in the execution of their duty which is an extremely serious offence.’

  They broke into a concerted gabble.

  ‘Pipe down,’ he said, ‘stop telling me you didn’t do him. Nobody’s said anything to the contrary. So far. You could be charged with accessories after the fact if you know what that means.’

  Mervyn, with some show of dignity, said: ‘Naturally.’

  ‘All right. In the meantime I’m going to tell you what I think is the answer to your cockeyed behaviour. Get in front of the fire, for pity’s sake. I don’t want to talk to a set of castanets.’

  They moved to the hearthrug. Pools formed round their boots and presently they began to smell and steam. They were a strongly contrasted group: Kittiwee with his fat, as it were, gone soggy; Vincent ferret-like, with the weathered hide of his calling, and Mervyn, dark about the jaws, black-browed and white-faced. They looked at nobody. They waited.

  Alleyn eased his throbbing arm a little farther into his chest and sat on the edge of the table. Mr Fox cleared his throat, retired into a sort of self-made obscurity and produced a notebook.

  ‘If I’ve got this all wrong,’ Alleyn said, ‘the best thing you can do is to put me right, whatever the result. And I mean that. Really. You won’t believe me, but really. Best for yourselves on all counts. Now. Go back to the Christmas tree. The party. The end of the evening. At about midnight, you,’ – he looked at Vincent’ – wheeled the dismantled tree in a barrow to the glasshouse wreckage under the west wing. You tipped it off under Colonel Forrester’s dressing-room window near a sapling fir. Right?’

  Vincent’s lips moved inaudibly.

  ‘You made a discovery. Moult’s body, lying at the foot of the tree. I can only guess at your first reaction. I don’t know how closely you examined it but I think you saw enough to convince you he’d been murdered. You panicked in a big way. Then and there, or later, after you’d consulted your mates –’

  There was an involuntary shuffling movement, instantly repressed.

  ‘I see,’ Alleyn said. ‘All right. You came indoors and told Cuthbert and these two what you’d found. Right?’

  Vincent ran his tongue round his lips and spoke.

  ‘What say I did? I’m not giving the OK to nothing. I’m not concurring, mind. But what say I did? That’d be c’rrect procedure, wouldn’t it? Report what I seen? Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly. It’s the subsequent on-goings that are not so hot.’

  ‘A chap reports what he seen to the authorities. Over to them.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you call Mr Bill-Tasman the authority in this case?’

  ‘A chap puts it through the right channels. If. If. See? I’m not saying –’

  ‘I think we’ve all taken the point about what you’re not saying. Let’s press on, shall we, and arrive at what you do say. Let’s suppose you did come indoors and report your find to Cuthbert. And to these two. But not to Nigel, he being a bit tricky in his reactions. Let’s suppose you four came to a joint decision. Here was the body of a man you all heartily disliked and whom you had jointly threatened and abused that very morning. It looked as if he’d been done to death. This you felt to be an acute embarrassment. For several reasons. Because of your records. And because of singular incidents occurring over the last few days: booby-traps, anonymous messages, soap in the barley water and so on. And all in your several styles.’

  ‘We never –’ Mervyn began.

  ‘I don’t for a moment suggest you did. I do suggest you all believed Moult had perpetrated these unlovely tricks in order to discredit you and you thought that this circumstance, too, when it came to light, would incriminate you. So I suggest you panicked and decided to get rid of the corpse.’

  At this juncture Cuthbert came in. He wore a lush dressing-gown over silk pyjamas. So would he have looked, Alleyn thought, if nocturnally disturbed in his restaurant period before the advent of the amorous commis.

  ‘I understand,’ he said to Alleyn, ‘sir, that you wished to see me.’

  ‘I did and do,’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘For your information, Cuthbert, Alfred Moult’s body has been found in the packing case supporting Nigel’s version of the Bill-Tasman effigy. These men were about to remove the whole shooting box on a sledge. The idea, I think, was to transfer it to an appropriate sphere of activity where, with the unwitting aid of bulldozers, it would help to form an artificial hillock overlooking an artificial lake. End result, an artefact known, appropriately, as a Folly. I’ve been trying to persuade them that their best course – and yours, by the way – is to give me a factual account of the whole affair.’

  Cuthbert looked fixedly at the men who did not look at him.

  ‘So:
first,’ Alleyn said, ‘did Vincent come to you and report his finding of the body on Christmas night? Or, rather, at about ten past midnight, yesterday morning?’

  Cuthbert dragged at his jaw and was silent.

  Vincent suddenly blurted out. ‘We never said a thing, Cuthbert. Not a thing.’

  ‘You did, too, Vince,’ Kittiwee burst out. ‘You opened your great silly trap. Didn’t he, Merv?’

  ‘I never. I said “if”.’

  ‘If what?’ Cuthbert asked.

  ‘I said supposing. Supposing what he says was right it’d be the c’rrect and proper procedure. To report to you. Which I done. I mean –’

  ‘Shut up,’ Mervyn and Kittiwee said in unison.

  ‘My contention,’ Alleyn said to Cuthbert, ‘is that you decided, among you, to transfer the body to the packing case there and then. You couldn’t take it straight to the dumping ground because in doing so you would leave your tracks over a field of unbroken snow for all to see in the morning and also because any effort you made to cover it at the earthworks would be extremely difficult in the dark and would stand out like a sore thumb by the light of day.

  ‘So one of you was taken with the very bright notion of transferring it to the packing case which was destined for the earthworks anyway. I suppose Vincent wheeled it round in his barrow and one or more of you gave him a hand to remove the built-up box steps, to open the side of the case, stow away the body and replace and re-cover the steps. It was noticed next morning that the northern aspect appeared to have been damaged by wind and rain but there had been a further fall of snow which did something to restore them.’

  Alleyn waited for a moment. Kittiwee heaved a deep sigh. His associates shuffled their feet.

  ‘I really think we’d all better sit down,’ Alleyn said. ‘Don’t you?’

  They sat in the same order as in yesterday’s assembly. Mr Fox, after his habit remained unobtrusively in the background and the driver kept his station in front of the door.

  ‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘why you decided to shift the case at five o’clock this morning? Had you lost your collective nerve? Had its presence out there become a bit more than some of you could take? Couldn’t you quite face the prospect of dragging it away in the full light of morning and leaving it to the bulldozers to cover. What were you going to do with it? Has the storm produced some morass in the earthworks or the lake site into which it could be depended upon to sink out of sight?’