Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“So what do we wonder about?”

“Whether somebody else put them there. By the way, Sir James looked for traces of cyanide.”

“Why?” Mr. Fox asked economically.

“There’d been a smell of almonds in the room and in the contents of the stomach but it turned out that she used sweet almond oil in one of those glass-slipper things they put over lamp bulbs and that she’d wolfed quantities of marzipan petits-fours from La Marquise de Sevigné in Paris. The half-empty box was on her bedside table along with the vanity box and other litter.”

“Like — the empty bottle of Scotch?”

“And the overturned glass. Exactly.”

Anybody know how much there’d been in the bottle? That day, for instance?”

“Apparently not. She kept it in a cupboard above the hand-basin. One gathers it lasted her a good long time.”

“What about dabs?”

“The local chaps had a go before calling us in. Bailey and Thompson are coming down to give the full treatment.”

“Funny sort of set-up though, isnt it?” Fox mused.

“The funniest bit is yet to come. Cast your mind back, however reluctantly, to the contents of the stomach as examined by Doctors Field-Innis and Schramm.”

“Oodles of barbiturate?”

“According to Schramm. But according to Sir James an appreciable amount but not enough, necessarily, to have caused death. You know how guarded he can be. Even allowing for what he calls ‘a certain degree of excretion’ he would not take it as a matter of course that death would follow. He could find nothing to suggest any kind of susceptibility or allergy that might explain why it did.”

“So now we begin to wonder about the beneficiaries in the recent and eccentric Will?”

“That’s it. And who provided her with the printed form. Young Mr. Rattisbon allowed me to see it. It looks shop-new: fresh creases, sharp corners and edges.”

“And all in order?”

“He’s afraid so. Outrageous though the terms may be. I gather, by the way, that Miss Prunella Foster would sooner trip down the aisle with a gorilla than with the Lord Swingletree.”

“So her share goes to this Dr. Schramm?”

“In addition to the princely dollop he would get in any case.”

“It scarcely seems decent,” said Fox primly.

“You should hear the Rattisbons, père et fils , on the subject.”

“It’s twenty to one,” Fox said wistfully as they entered a village. “There’s a nice-looking little pub ahead.”

“So there is. Tell me your thoughts.”

“They seem to dwell upon Scotch eggs, cheese and pickle sandwiches and a pint of mild-and-bitter.”

“So be it,” said Alleyn and pulled in.

ii

Prunella Foster arrived from London at Quintern Place on her way to lunch with her fiancé and his father at Mardling. At Quintern Mrs. Jim informed her of Alleyn’s visit earlier in the morning. As a raconteuse , Mrs. Jim was strong on facts and short on atmosphere. She gave a list of events in order of occurrence, answered Prunella’s questions with the greatest possible economy and expressed no opinion of any sort whatsoever. Prunella was flustered.

“And he was a policeman , Mrs. Jim.?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Do you mean there was any doubt about it?”

“Not to say doubt. It’s on his card.”

“Well — what?”

Cornered, Mrs. Jim said Alleyn had seemed a bit on the posh side for it. “More after the style of one of your friends, like,” she offered and added that he had a nice way with him.

Prunella got her once more to rehearse the items of the visit, which she did with accuracy.

“So he asked about—?” Prunella cast her eyes and jerked her head in the direction, vaguely, of that part of the house generally frequented by Claude Carter.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Jim conceded. She and Prunella understood each other pretty well on the subject of Claude.

“But it was only to remark he’d noticed him dodging up and down in the rose-garden. He went out, after, to the stables. The gentleman did.”

“To find Bruce?”

“That’s right. Mr. Claude too, I reckon.”

“Oh?”

“Mr. Claude come in after the gentleman had gone and went into the dining-room.”

This, Prunella recognized, was an euphemism for “helped himself to a drink.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

Mrs. Jim said she’d no idea. They’d come to an arrangement about his meals, it emerged. She prepared a hot luncheon for one o’clock and laid the table in the small morning-room. She then beat an enormous gong and left for home. When she returned to Quintern in two days’ time she would find the disjecta membra of this meal, together with those of any subsequent snacks, unpleasantly congealed upon the table.

“How difficult everything is,” Prunella muttered. “Thank you, Mrs. Jim. I’m going to Mardling for lunch. We’re making plans about Quintern: you know, arranging for Mr. Gideon’s father to have his own quarters with us. He’s selling Mardling, I think. After all that he’d done to it! Imagine! And keeping the house in London for his headquarters.”

“Is that right, Miss?” said Mrs. Jim and Prunella knew by the wooden tone she employed that she was deeply stimulated. “We’ll be hearing wedding-bells one of these days, then?” she speculated.

“Well — not yet, of course.”

“No,” Mrs. Jim agreed. “That wouldn’t be the thing. Not just yet.”

“I’d really rather not having a ‘ wedding ,’ Mrs. Jim. I’d rather be just married early in the morning in Upper Quintern with hardly anyone there. But he — Gideon — wants it the other way so I suppose my aunt — Auntie Boo—” she whispered her way into inaudibility and her eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at Mrs. Jim and thought how much she liked her. For the first time since her mother died it occurred to Prunella that, apart, of course, from Gideon, she was very much alone in the world. She had never been deeply involved with her mother and had indeed found her deviousness and vanities irritating when not positively comical and even that degree of tolerance had been shaken by the preposterous terms of this wretched Will. And yet now, abruptly, when she realized that Sybil was not and never would be there to be laughed at or argued with: that where she had been there was — nothing, a flood of desolation poured over Prunella and she broke down and cried with her face in Mrs. Jim’s cardigan, which smelt of floor polish.

Mrs. Jim said: “Never mind, then. It’s been a right shock and all. We know that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Prunella sobbed. I’m awfully sorry.”

“You have your cry out, then.”

This invitation had the opposite result to what had been intended. Prunella blew her nose and pulled herself together. She returned shakily to her wedding arrangements. “Somebody will have to give me away,” she said.

“As long as it’s not that Mr. Claude,” said Mrs. Jim loudly.

“God forbid. I wondered — I don’t know — can one be given away by a woman? I could ask the Vicar.”

“Was you thinking of Miss Verity?”

“She is my godmother. Yes, I was.”

“Couldn’t do better,” said Mrs. Jim.

“I must be off,” said Prunella, who did not want to run into Claude. “You don’t happen to know where those old plans of Quintern are? Mr. Markos wants to have a look at them. They’re in a sort of portfolio thing.”

“Library. Cupboard near the door. Bottom shelf.”

“How clever of you, Mrs. Jim.”

“Your mother had them out to show Bruce. Before she went to that place. She left them out and he ”—the movement of the head they both used to indicate Claude—“was handling them and leaving them all over the place so I put them away.”