Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“Dr. Field-Innis is emphatic that she had not—”

“—there would certainly have been cause for anxiety, depression—”

“Did she strike you as being anxious or depressed?”

“No.”

“On the contrary?”

“On the contrary. Quite. She was—”

“Yes?”

“In particularly good form,” said Dr. Schramm.

“And yet you are persuaded it was suicide?”

An ornate little clock on Dr. Schramm’s desk ticked through some fifteen seconds before he spoke. He raised his clasped hands to his pursed lips and stared over them at Alleyn. Mr. Fox, disregarded, coughed slightly.

With a definitive gesture — abrupt and incisive, Dr. Schramm clapped his palms down on the desk and leant back in his chair.

“I had hoped,” he said, “that it wouldn’t come to this.”

Alleyn waited.

“I have already told you she was in particularly good form. That was an understatement. She gave me every reason to believe she was happier than she had been for many years.”

He got to his feet, looked fixedly at Alleyn and said loudly: “She had become engaged to be married.”

The lines from nostril to mouth tightened into a smile of sorts.

“I had gone up to London,” he said, “to buy the ring.”

iv

“I knew, of course, that it would probably have to come out,” said Dr. Schramm, “but I hoped to avoid that. She was so very anxious that we should keep our engagement secret for the time being. The thought of making a sort of — well, a posthumous announcement at the inquest — was indescribably distasteful. One knew how the press would set about it and the people in this place — I loathed the whole thought of it.”

He took one or two steps about the room. He moved with short strides, holding his shoulders rigid like a soldier. “I don’t offer this as an excuse. The thing has been a — an unspeakable shock to me. I can’t believe it was suicide. Not when I remember — Not unless something that I can’t even guess at happened between the time when I said goodbye to her and my return.”

“You checked with the staff, of course?”

“Of course. She had dinner in bed and watched television. She was perfectly well. No doubt you’ve seen the report of the inquest and know all this. The waiter collected her tray round about eight-thirty. She was in her bathroom and he heard her singing to herself. After that — nothing. Nothing, until I came back. And found her.”

“That must have been a terrible shock.”

Schramm made a brief sound that usually indicates a sort of contempt. “You may say so,” he said. And then, suddenly: “Why have you been called in? What’s it mean? Look here, do you people suspect foul play?”

“Hasn’t the idea occurred to you?” Alleyn asked.

“The idea has. Of course it has. Suicide being inconceivable, the idea occurred. But that’s inconceivable, too. The circumstances. The evidence. Everything. She had no enemies. Who would want to do it? It’s—” He broke off. A look of — what? Sulkiness? Derision? — appeared. It was as if he sneered at himself.

“It was meant to be a secret,” he said.

“Are you wondering if Mrs. Foster did after all confide in somebody about your engagement?”

He stared at Alleyn. “That’s right,” he said. “And then: there were visitors that afternoon, as of course you know.”

“Her daughter and the daughter’s fiancé and Miss Preston.”

“And the gardener.”

“Didn’t he leave his flowers with the receptionist and go away without seeing Mrs. Foster?” Alleyn asked.

“That’s what he says, certainly.”

“It’s what your receptionist says too, Dr. Schramm.”

“Yes. Very well, then. Nothing in that line of thinking. In any case the whole idea is unbelievable. Or ought to be.”

“I gather you don’t much fancy the gardener?”

“A complete humbug, in my opinion. I tried to warn her. Out to get all he could from her. And he has,” said Dr. Schramm.

“Including the right to stay on at Quintern?”

“By God, he wouldn’t have lasted there for long if things had gone differently. I’d have seen to that. And he knew it.”

“You think, then, that he knew about the engagement?”

“I think, poor darling, she’d said something that gave him the idea. As a matter of fact, I ran into him going up to her room one afternoon without asking at the desk. I tore a strip off him and he came back at me with a bloody impertinent sneer. To the effect that I wasn’t yet in a position to — to order her private affairs. I’m afraid I lost my temper and told him that when I was he’d be the first to know it.”

Mr. Fox, using a technique that Alleyn was in the habit of alluding to as his disappearing act, had contrived to make his large person unobservable. He had moved as far away from Alleyn as possible and to a chair behind Dr. Schramm. Here he palmed a notebook and his palm was vast. He used a stub of pencil and kept his work on his knee and his eyes respectfully on nothing in particular.

Alleyn and Fox made a point of not looking at each other but at this juncture he felt sure Fox contemplated him, probably with that air of bland approval that generally meant they were both thinking the same thing.

Alleyn said: “Are you still considering motive, Dr. Schramm?”

Schramm gave a short meaningless laugh. His manner, unexpected in a doctor, seemed to imply that nothing under discussion was of importance. Alleyn wondered if he treated his patients to this sort of display. “I don’t want to put ideas in your head,” Schramm said, “but to be quite, quite frank that did occur to me. Motive.”

“I’m resistant to ideas,” said Alleyn. “could you explain?”

“It’s probably a lot of bumph but it does seem to me that our engagement wouldn’t have been madly popular in certain quarters. Gardener, for one. And her family, to make no bones about it.”

“Are you thinking of Mrs. Foster’s stepson?”

“You said it. I didn’t.”

“Motive?”

“I know of no motive but I do know he sponged on her and pestered her and has a pretty disgraceful record. She was very much upset at the thought of his turning up here and I gave orders that if he did he must not be allowed to see her. Or speak to her on the telephone. I tell you this,” Dr. Schramm said, “as a fact. I don’t for a moment pretend that it has any particular significance.”

“But I think you have something more than this in mind, haven’t you?”

“If I have, I wouldn’t want too much weight to be given to it.”

“I shall not give too much weight to it, I hope.”

Dr. Schramm thumbed up the ends of his moustache. “It’s just that it does occur to me that he might have expectations. I’ve no knowledge of any such thing. None.”

“You know, do you, that Carter was on the premises that afternoon?”

“I do not!” he said sharply. “Where did you get that from?”

“From Miss Verity Preston,” said Alleyn.

Again the shadow of a smile: not quite a sneer, not entirely complacent.

“Verity Preston?” he said. “Oh, yes? She and Syb were old friends.”

“He arrived in the same bus as Bruce Gardener. I gather he was ordered off seeing Mrs. Foster.”

“I should bloody well hope so,” said Dr. Schramm. “Who by?”

“By Prunella Foster.”

“Good for her.”

“Tell me,” said Alleyn, “speaking as a medical man, and supposing, however preposterously, that there was foul play, how would you think it could be accomplished?”

“There you are again! Nothing to indicate it! Everything points to the suicide I can’t believe in. Everything. Unless,” he said sharply, “something else has been found.”