Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“He visited me this morning.”

Prunella said: “You don’t tell me!”

“But I do,” said Verity.

“And me. According to Mrs. Jim,” said Prue.

Gideon said: “Would it be about the egregious Claude?”

“No,” said Verity. “It wouldn’t. Not so far as I was concerned. Not specifically, anyway. It seemed to be—” she hesitated, “—as much about this new Will as anything.”

And in the silence that followed the little party in the library quietly collapsed. Prunella began to look scared and Gideon put his arm around her.

Mr. Markos had moved in front of his fireplace. Verity thought she saw a change in him: the subtle change that comes over men when something has led a conversation into their professional field: a guarded attentiveness.

Prunella said: “I’ve been pushing things off. I’ve been pretending to myself nothing is really very much the matter. It’s not true. Is it?” she insisted, appealing to Verity.

“Perhaps not quite, darling.” Verity said and for a moment it seemed to her that she and Prunella were, in some inexplicable way, united against the two men.

iii

It was half past two when Alleyn and Fox arrived at Greengages. The afternoon being clement some of the guests were taking their postprandial ease in the garden. Others, presumably, had retired to their rooms. Alleyn gave his professional card in at the desk and asked if they might have a word with Dr. Schramm.

The receptionist stared briefly at Alleyn and hard at Mr. Fox. She tightened her mouth, said she would see, appeared to relax slightly and left them.

“Know us when she sees us again,” said Fox placidly. He put on his spectacles and, tilting back his head, contemplated an emaciated water-colour of Canterbury Cathedral. “Airy-fairy,” he said. “Not my notion of the place at all,” and moved to a view of the Grand Canal.

The receptionist returned with an impeccably dressed man who had Alleyn’s card in his hand and said he was the manager of the hotel. “I hope,” he added, “that we’re not in for any further disruption.” Alleyn cheerfully assured him that he hoped so too and repeated that he would like to have a word or two with Dr. Schramm. The manager retired to an inner office.

Alleyn said to the receptionist: “May I bother you for a moment? Of course you’re fussed we’re here to ask tedious questions and generally make nuisances of ourselves about the death of Mrs. Foster.”

“You said it,” she returned, “not me.” But she touched her hair and she didn’t sound altogether antagonistic.

“It’s only a sort of tidying-up job. But I wonder if you remember anything about flowers that her gardener left at the desk for her.”

“I wasn’t at the desk at the time.”

“Alas!”

“Pardon? Oh, yes. Well, as a matter of fact I do happen to remember. The girl on duty mentioned that the electrical repairs man had taken them up when I was off for a minute or two.”

“When would that be?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Is the repairs man a regular visitor?”

“Not that I know. He wasn’t called in from the desk, that I can tell you.”

“Could you by any merciful chance find out when, where and why he was here?”

“Well, I must say!”

“It would be very kind indeed. Really.”

She said she would see what she could do and retired into her office. Alleyn heard the whirr of a telephone dial. After a considerable interlude a highly starched nurse of opulent proportions appeared.

Dr. Schramm will see you now,” she said in a clinical voice. Only the copies of Punch , Alleyn felt, were missing.

The nurse rustled them down a passage to a door bearing the legend: “Dr. Basil Schramm, M.B. Hours 3–5 p.m. and by appointment.”

She ushered them into a little waiting-room and there, sure enough, were the copies of Punch and The Tatler . She knocked at an inner door, opened it and motioned them to go in.

Dr. Schramm swivelled round in his desk chair and rose to greet them.

A police officer of experience and sensibility may come to recognize mannerisms common to certain persons with whom he has to deal. If he is wise he will never place too much reliance on this simplification. When, for instance, he is asked by the curious layman if the police can identify certain criminal types by looking at them, he will probably say no. Perhaps he will qualify this denial by adding that he does find that certain characteristics tend to crop up — shabby stigmata — in sexual offenders. He is not referring to raincoats or to sidelong lurking but to a look in the eyes and about the mouth, a look he is unable to define.

To Alleyn it seemed that there were traits held in common by men who, in Victorian times, were called lady-killers: a display, covert or open, of sexual vainglory that sometimes, not always, made less heavily endowed acquaintances want, they scarcely knew why, to kick the possessors.

If ever he had recognized this element he did so now in Dr. Basil Schramm. It declared itself in the brief, perfectly correct but experienced glance that he gave his nurse. It was latent in the co-ordinated ease with which he rose to his feet and extended his hand, in the boldish glance of his widely separated eyes and in the folds that joined his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Dr. Schramm was not unlike a better-looking version of King Charles II.

As a postscript to these observations Alleyn thought that Dr. Schramm looked like a heavy, if controlled, drinker.

The nurse left them.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” said Dr. Schramm. “Do sit down.” He glanced at Alleyn’s card and then at him. “Should I say Superintendent or Mr. or just plain Alleyn?”

“It couldn’t matter less,” said Alleyn. “This is Inspector Fox.”

“Sit, sit, sit, do.”

They sat.

“Well, now, what’s the trouble?” asked Dr. Schramm. “Don’t tell me its more about this unhappy business of Mrs. Foster?”

“I’m afraid I do tell you. It’s just that, as I’m sure you realize, we have to tidy up rather exhaustively.”

“Oh, yes. That — of course.”

“The local Force has asked us to come in on the case. I’m sorry but this does entail a tramp over ground that I daresay you feel has already been explored ad nauseam.”

“Well—” He raised his immaculately kept hands and let them fall. “Needs must,” he said and laughed.

“That’s about it,” Alleyn agreed. “I believe her room has been kept as it was at the time of her death? Locked up and sealed.”

“Certainly. Your local people asked for it. To be frank it’s inconvenient but never mind.”

“Won’t be long now,” said Alleyn cheerfully.

“I’m glad to hear it. I’ll take you up to her room.”

“If I could have a word before we go.”

“Oh? Yes, of course.”

“I really wanted to ask you if you were at all, however slightly, uneasy about Mrs. Foster’s general health and spirits?”

Schramm started to make an instantly controlled gesture. “I’ve stated repeatedly: to her solicitors, to the coroner and to the police that Mrs. Foster was in improved health and in good spirits when I last saw her before I went up to London.”

“And when you returned she was dead.”

“Precisely.”

“You didn’t know, did you, that she had Parkinson’s disease?”

“That is by no means certain.”

“Dr. Field-Innis thought so.”

“And is, of course, entitled to his opinion. In any case it is not a positive diagnosis. As I understand it, Dr. Field-Innis merely considers it a possibility.”

“So does Sir James Curtis.”

“Very possibly. As it happens I have no professional experience of Parkinson’s disease and am perfectly ready to bow to their opinion. Of course, if Mrs. Foster had been given any inkling—”