Death in a White Tie ra-7

by Ngaio Marsh

  His mother’s voice asked if he would dine with her.

  “I don’t suppose you can get away, my dear, but as this flat is only five minutes in a taxi it might suit you to come in.”

  “I’d like to,” said Alleyn. “When?”

  “Eight, but we can have it earlier if you like. I’m all alone.”

  “I’ll come now, mama, and we’ll have it at eight. All right?”

  “Quite all right,” said the clear little voice. “So glad, darling.”

  Alleyn left his mother’s telephone number in case anybody should want him, and went by taxi to the flat she had taken in Catherine Street for the London season. He found Lady Alleyn surrounded by newspapers and wearing horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Hullo, darling,” she said. “I shan’t pretend I’m not reading about poor Bunchy, but we won’t discuss it if you don’t want to.”

  “To tell you the truth,” said Alleyn, “I rather feel I want to sit in an armchair, stare at nothing, and scarcely speak. Charming company for you, mama.”

  “Why not have a bath?” suggested Lady Alleyn without looking up from her paper.

  “Do I smell?” asked her son.

  “No. But I always think a bath is rather a good idea when you’ve got to the staring stage. What time did you get up this morning?”

  “ Yesterday morning. But I have bathed and shaved since then.”

  “No bed at all last night? I should have a bath. I’ll run it for you. Use my room. I’ve sent for a change of clothes.”

  “Good Lord!” said Alleyn, and then: “You’re something rather special in the maternal line, aren’t you?”

  He bathed. The solace of steaming water wrapped him in a sort of luxurious trance. His thoughts, that for sixteen hours had been so sharply concentrated, became blurred and nebulous. Was it only ‘this morning’ that he had crossed the courtyard to a taxi, half-hidden by wreaths of mist? This morning! Their footsteps had sounded hollow on the stone pavement. “I got to look after meself, see?” A door opened with a huge slow movement that was full of horror. “Dead, ain’t ’e? Dead, ain’t ’e? DEAD, AIN’T ’E?” “Suffocated!” gasped Alleyn and woke with his nose full of bath-water.

  His man had sent clean linen and a dinner-suit. He dressed slowly, feeling rarefied, and rejoined his mother in the sitting-room.

  “Help yourself to a drink,” she said from behind her newspaper.

  He got his drink and sat down. He wondered vaguely why he should feel so dog-tired. He was used to missing a night’s sleep and working straight through the twenty-four hours. It must be because it was Bunchy. And the thought came into his mind that there must be a great many people at this hour who with him remembered that comic figure and regretted it.

  “He had a great deal of charm,” said Alleyn aloud and his mother’s voice answered him tranquilly.

  “Yes, a great deal of charm. The most unfair of all the attributes.”

  “You don’t add: ‘I sometimes think,’ ” said Alleyn.

  “Why should I?”

  “People so often use that phrase to water down their ideas. You are too positive to use it.”

  “In Bunchy’s case the charm was one of character and then it is not unfair,” said Lady Alleyn. “Shall we dine? It’s been announced.”

  “Good Lord,” said Alleyn, “I never noticed.”

  Over their coffee he asked: “Where’s Sarah?”

  “She’s dining and going to a play with a suitably chaperoned party.”

  “Does she see anything of Rose Birnbaum?”

  “My dear Roderick, who on earth is Rose Birnbaum?”

  “She’s Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s burden for the season. Her professional burden.”

  “Oh, that gel! Poor little thing, yes. I’ve noticed her. I don’t know if Sarah pays much attention. Why?”

  “I wish you’d ask her here some time. Not a seasonable party. She’s got an inferiority complex about them. She’s one of the more unfortunate by-products of the season.”

  “I see. I wonder why that singularly hard woman has involved herself with a paying protégée. Are the Halcut-Hacketts short of money?”

  “I don’t know. I should think she might be at the moment.”

  “Withers,” said Lady Alleyn.

  “Hullo. You know all about Withers, do you?”

  “My dear Rory, you forget I sit in chaperones’ corner.”

  “Gossip,” said Alleyn.

  “The gossip is not as malicious as you may think. I always maintain that men are just as avid scandalmongers as women.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Mrs Halcut-Hackett is not very popular, so they don’t mind talking about her in chaperones’ corner. She’s an opportunist. She never gives an invitation that will not bring its reward and she never accepts one that is likely to lower her prestige. She is not a kind woman. She’s extremely common, but that doesn’t matter. Lots of common people are charming. Like bounders. I believe no woman ever falls passionately in love with a man unless he has just the least touch of the bounder somewhere in his composition.”

  “Really, mama!”

  “I mean in a very rarified sense. A touch of arrogance. There’s nothing like it, my dear. If you’re too delicately considerate of a woman’s feelings she may begin by being grateful, but the chances are she’ll end by despising you.”

  Alleyn made a wry face. “Treat ’em rough?”

  “Not actually, but let them think you might. It’s humiliating but true that ninety-nine women out of a hundred like to feel their lover is capable of bullying them. Eighty of them would deny it. How often does one not hear a married woman say with a sort of satisfaction that her husband won’t let her do this or that? Why do abominably written books with strong silent heroes still find a large female public? What do you suppose attracts thousands of women to a cinema actor with the brains of a mosquito?”

  “His ability as a cinema actor.”

  “That, yes. Don’t be tiresome, Roderick. Above all, his arrogant masculinity. That’s what attracts ninety-nine out of a hundred, you may depend upon it.”

  “There is, perhaps fortunately, always the hundredth woman.”

  “And don’t be too sure of her. I am not, I hope, one of those abominable women who cries down her own sex. I’m by way of being a feminist, but I refuse to allow the ninety-nine (dear me, this begins to sound like a hymn) to pull the wool over the elderly eyes.”

  “You’re an opinionated little party, mama, and you know it. But don’t suppose you can pull the wool over my eyes either. Do you suggest that I go to Miss Agatha Troy, haul her about her studio by her hair, tuck her under my arrogant masculine arm, and lug her off to the nearest registry office?”

  “Church, if you please. The Church knows what I’m talking about. Look at the marriage service. A direct and embarrassing expression of the savagery inherent in our ideas of mating.”

  “Would you say the season came under the same heading?”

  “In a way I would say so. And why not? As long as one recognizes the more savage aspects of the season, one keeps one’s sense of proportion and enjoys it. As I do. Thoroughly. And as Bunchy Gospell did. When I think of him,” said Lady Alleyn, her eyes shining with tears, “when I think of him this morning, gossiping away to all of us, so pleased with Evelyn’s ball, so gay and — and real, I simply cannot realize—”

  “I know.”

  “I suppose Mrs Halcut-Hackett comes into the picture, doesn’t she? And Withers?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “He had his eye on them. Both there and at the Halcut-Hacketts’ cocktail-party. Bunchy knew something about Captain Withers, Roderick. I saw that and I remarked on it to him. He told me not to be inquisitive, bless him, but he admitted I was right. Is there anything more in it than that?”

  “A good deal. Withers has a bad record and Bunchy knew it.”

  “Is that a motive for murder?” asked Lady Alleyn.

  “It might be
. There are several discrepancies. I’ve got to try to settle one of them tonight.”

  “Tonight? My dear, you’ll fall asleep with the customary warning on your lips.”

  “Not I. And I’m afraid there’s no occasion as yet for the customary warning.”

  “Does Evelyn Carrados come into the picture at all?”

  Alleyn sat up.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because I could see that Bunchy had his eye on her too.”

  “We’d better change jobs, darling. You can go into the Yard and watch people having their eyes on each other and I’ll sit in chaperones’ corner, pounce at young men for Sarah, and make conversation with Lady Lorrimer. I’ve got to see her some time soon, by the way.”

  “Lucy Lorrimer! You don’t mean to tell me she’s in this business. I can well understand somebody murdering her, but I don’t see her on the other side of the picture. Of course she is mad.”

  “She’s got to supply half an alibi for Sir Daniel Davidson.”

  “Good heavens, who next! Why Davidson?”

  “Because he was the last man to leave before Bunchy.”

  “Well, I hope it’s not Sir Daniel. I was thinking of showing him my leg. Roderick, I suppose I can’t help you with Lucy Lorrimer. I can easily ring her up and ask her to tea. She must be seething with excitement and longing to talk to everybody. Bunchy was to dine with her tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “For no particular reason. But she kept saying she knew he wouldn’t come, that he’d forget. I can easily ring her up and she shouts so loudly you need only sit beside me to hear every word.”

  “All right,” said Alleyn, “let’s try. Ask her if she saw anything of Bunchy as she was leaving. You sit in the chair here, darling, and I’ll perch on the arm. We can have the receiver between us.”

  Lady Lorrimer’s telephone was persistently engaged but at last they got through. Her ladyship, said a voice, was at home.

  “Will you say it’s Lady Alleyn? Thank you.”

  During the pause that followed Lady Alleyn eyed her son with a conspiratorial air and asked him to give her a cigarette. He did so and provided himself with pencil and paper.

  “We’ll be ages,” she whispered, waving the receiver to and fro rather as if it were a fan. Suddenly it emitted a loud crackling sound and Lady Alleyn raised it gingerly to within four inches of her right ear.

  “Is that you, Lucy?”

  “My dear,” shouted the receiver, “I’m so glad. I’ve been longing to speak to you for, of course, you can tell us everything. I’ve always thought it was such a pity that good-looking son of yours turning himself into a policeman because, say what you will, it must be frightfully bad for them so long in the one position only moving their arms and the internal organs taking all the strain which Sir Daniel tells me is the cause of half the diseases of women, though I must own I think his practice is getting rather beyond him. Of course in the case of the Prime Minister everything must be excused.”

  Lady Alleyn looked an inquiry at her son who nodded his comprehension of this amazing tarradiddle.

  “Yes, Lucy?” murmured Lady Alleyn.

  “Which brings me to this frightful calamity,” continued the telephone in a series of cracks and splutters. “Too awful! And you know he was to dine with me tonight. I put my brother off because I felt I could never accustom myself to the idea that there but for the Grace of God sat Bunchy Gospell. Not perhaps the Grace of God but His ways are inscrutable indeed and when I saw him come down the staircase humming to himself I little thought that he was going to his grave. I shall never forgive myself, of course, that I did not offer to drive him and as it turned out with the Prime Minister being so ill I might have done so.”

  “Why do you keep introducing the Prime Minister into this story, Lucy?” asked Lady Alleyn. She clapped her hand over the mouthpiece and said crossly: “But I want to know, Roderick.”

  “It’s all right,” said Alleyn. “Davidson pretended — do listen, darling, she’s telling you.”

  “ — I can’t describe the agony, Helena,” quacked the telephone, “I really thought I should swoon with it. I felt Sir Daniel must examine me without losing a moment, so I told my chauffeur to look out for him because I promise you I was too ill to distinguish one man from another. Then I saw him coming out of the door. ‘Sir Daniel, Sir Daniel!’ He did not hear me and all would have been lost if one of the linkmen had not seen my distress and drawn Sir Daniel’s attention to me. He crossed the street and as a very old patient I don’t mind admitting to you, Helena, I was rather disappointed but of course with the country in the state it is one must make sacrifices. He was extremely agitated. The Prime Minister had developed some terrible complaint. Please tell nobody of this, Helena. I know you are as silent as the grave but Sir Daniel would no doubt be gravely compromised if it were ever to leak out. Under those conditions I could do nothing but bear my cross in silence and it was not until he had positively run away that I thought of driving him to Downing Street. By the time my fool of a chauffeur had started the car, of course, it was too late. No doubt Sir Daniel had raced to the nearest taxi-cab and, although I have rung up to inquire tactfully, he is continually engaged, so that one fears the worst.”

  “Mad!” said Lady Alleyn to her son.

  “ — I can’t tell you how much it has upset me but I hope I know my duty, Helena, and having just recollected that your boy was a constable I said to myself that he should learn of this extraordinary man whom I am firmly persuaded is an assassin. What other explanation can there be?”

  “Sir Daniel Davidson!” exclaimed Lady Alleyn.

  “Good heavens, Helena, are you mad! For pity’s sake tell your son to come and see me himself in order that there may be no mistake. How could it be my poor Sir Daniel, who was already on his way to Downing Street? I attribute my appalling condition at this moment to the shock I received. Do you remember a play called The Face at the Window? I was reminded of it. I assure you I screamed aloud — my chauffeur will bear witness. The nose was flat and white and the moustache quite frightful, like some hairy monster gummed to the window-pane. The eyes rolled, I could do nothing but clutch my pearls. ‘Go away!’ I screamed. My chauffeur, fool that he is, had seen nothing and by the time he roused himself it had disappeared.”

  Alleyn held a sheet of paper before his mother’s nose. On it he had written: “Ask her who it was.”

  “Have you any idea who it was, Lucy?” asked Lady Alleyn.

  “There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind, Helena, and I should have thought little in yours. These appalling cases that have occurred! The papers are full of them. The Peeping Tom of Peckham, though how he has managed to go there every night from Halkin Street—”

  Alleyn gave a stifled exclamation.

  “From Halkin Street?” repeated Lady Alleyn.

  “There is no doubt that his wife’s appalling behaviour has turned his head. He suspected poor Robert Gospell. You must have heard, as I did, how he asked her to let him take her home. No doubt he was searching for them. The jury will bring in a strong recommendation for mercy or perhaps they will find him guilty but insane, as no doubt he is.”

  “But, Lucy! Lucy, listen. Whom are you talking about?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Helena, who should it be but George Halcut-Hackett?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Night Club

  Well Roderick,” said Lady Alleyn when she had at last got rid of Lucy Lorrimer, “you may be able to make something of this but it seems to me that Lucy has at last gone completely insane. Do you for an instant suppose that poor old General Halcut-Hackett is the Peeping Tom of Peckham?”

  “Some case the Press had made into a front-page story — no, of course, it’s completely irrelevant. But all the same it does look as though old Halcut-Hackett flattened his face against the window of Lucy Lorrimer’s car.”

  “But Lucy stayed till the end, she says, and I know he took that unfortunate chil
d away soon after midnight. What was the poor creature doing in Belgrave Square at half-past three?”

  “He told me he went for a constitutional,” murmured Alleyn.

  “Rubbish. One doesn’t peer into old ladies’ cars when one takes constitutionals at half-past three in the morning. The whole thing’s preposterous.”

  “It’s so preposterous that I’m afraid it must be included in my dreary programme. Would you care to come to a night club with me, mama?”

  “No thank you, Rory.”

  “I thought not. I must go alone to the Matador. I imagine they open at about eleven.”

  “Nobody goes until after midnight or later,” said Lady Alleyn.

  “How do you know?”

  “Sarah is forever pestering me to allow her to ‘go on to the Matador’. She now hopes to produce a chaperone, but I imagine it is scarcely the haunt of chaperones. I have no intention of letting her go.”

  “It’s one of those places that offer the attractions of a tiny dancing-floor, a superlative band and a crowd so dense that you spend the night dancing cheek-to-cheek with somebody else’s partner. It is so dimly lit that the most innocent visitor takes on an air of intrigue and the guiltiest has at least a sporting chance of going unrecognized.”

  “You seem to be remarkably familiar with its amenities,” said his mother dryly.

  “We’ve had our eye on the Matador for some time. It will meet with one of three fates. The smartest people will get tired of it and it will try to hold them by relaxing its vigilance in the matter of drink; or the smartest people will get tired of it and it will gradually lose its prestige and continue to make money out of the less exclusive but equally rich; or the smartest people will get tired of it and it will go bust. We are interested in the first contingency and they know it. They are extremely polite to me at the Matador.”

  “Shall you be long there?”

  “No. I only want to see the commissionaire and the secretary. Then I’ll go home and to bed. May I use your telephone?”

  Alleyn rang up Fox and asked him if he had seen the constable on night duty in Belgrave Square.