Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“Horrid, isn’t it? Could you just give us a picture of how things were when you arrived on the scene?”

She did so, eyeing him closely and with a certain air of appraisal. It emerged that she had been in her room and thinking of retiring when Dr. Schramm telephoned her, asking her to come at once to Number 20. There she found him stooping over the bed on which lay Mrs. Foster, dead and cooling. Dr. Schramm had drawn her attention to the table and its contents and told her to go to the surgery and fetch the equipment needed to empty the stomach. She was to do this without saying anything to anyone she met.

“We knew it was far too late to be of any use,” she said, “but we did it. Dr. Schramm said the contents should be kept and they were. In a sealed jar. We had to move the table away from the bed but nothing else was disturbed. Dr. Schramm was very particular about that. Very.”

“And then?”

“We informed Mr. Delaware, the manager. He was upset, of course. They don’t like that sort of thing. Then we got Dr. Field-Innis to come over from Upper Quintern and he said the police should be informed. We couldn’t see why but he said he thought they ought to be. So they were.”

Alleyn noticed the increased usage of the first person plural in this narrative and wondered if he only imagined that it sounded possessive.

He thanked Sister Jackson warmly and handed her a glossy photograph of Mr. Fox’s Aunt Elsie which was kept for this purpose. Aunt Elsie had become a kind of code-person between Alleyn and Fox and was sometimes used as a warning signal when one of them wished to alert the other without being seen to do so. Sister Jackson failed to identify Aunt Elsie and was predictably intrigued. He returned the photograph to its envelope and said they needn’t trouble her any longer. Having dropped his handkerchief over his hand, he opened the door to her.

“Pay no attention,” he said. “We do these things, hoping they give us the right image. Goodbye, Sister.” In passing between him and Fox her hand brushed his. She rustled off down the passage, one hundred and fifty pounds of active femininity if she was an ounce.

“Cripes,” said Fox thoughtfully.

“Did she establish contact?”

“ En passant ,” he confessed in his careful French. “What about you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“ En passant, moi aussi. ”

“Do you reckon,” Mr. Fox mused, “she knew about the engagement?”

“Do you?”

“If she did, I’d say she didn’t much fancy it,” said Fox.

“We’d better push on. You might pack up that glass slipper, Fox. We’ll get Sir James to look at it.”

“In case somebody put prussic acid in it?”

“Something like that. After all there was and is a strong smell of almonds. Only ‘Oasis,’ you’ll tell me, and I’m afraid you’ll be right.”

On their way out the receptionist said she had made enquiries as to the electrical repairs man. Nobody knew anything about him except the girl who had given him Mrs. Foster’s flowers. He told her he had been sent to repair a lamp in Number 20 and the lady had asked him to collect her flowers when he went down to his car to get a new bulb for the bedside lamp. She couldn’t really describe him except that he was slight, short and well-spoken and didn’t wear overall but did wear spectacles.

“What d’you make of that?” said Alleyn when they got outside.

“Funny,” said Fox. “Sussy. Whatever way you look at it, not convincing.”

“There wasn’t a new bulb in the bedside lamp. Old bulb, murky on top. Ready to conk out.”

“Lilies in the basin, though.”

“True.”

“What now, then?”

Alleyn looked at his watch. “I’ve got a date with the coroner,” he said. “In one hour. At Upper Quintern. In the meantime Bailey and Thompson had better give these premises the full treatment. Every inch of them.”

“Looking for what?”

“All the usual stuff. Latent prints, including Sister J.’s on Aunt Elsie, of course. Schramm’s will be on the book wrapping and Prunella Foster’s and her mother’s on the vanity box. We’ve got to remember the room was done over in the morning by the housemaids so anything that crops up will have been established during the day. We haven’t finished with that sickening little room, Br’er Fox. Not by a long bloody chalk.”

i

“—in view of which circumstances, members of the jury,” said the coroner, “you may consider that the appropriate decision would be again to adjourn these proceedings sine die .”

Not surprisingly the jury embraced this suggestion and out into the age-old quietude of Upper Quintern village walked the people who, in one way or another, were involved, or had been obliged to concern themselves in the death of Sybil Foster: her daughter, her solicitor, her oldest friend, her gardener, the doctor she had disregarded and the doctor who had become her fiancé. And her stepson, who by her death inherited the life interest left by her first husband. Her last and preposterous Will and Testament could not upset this entailment nor, according to Mr. Rattisbon, could this Will itself be upset. G. M. Johnson and Marleena Briggs, chambermaids on the second floor of the hotel, confessed with uneasy giggles that they had witnessed Mrs. Foster’s signature a week before she died.

This Will provided the only sensation of the inquest. Nobody seemed to be overwhelmingly surprised at Bruce Gardener’s legacy of £25,000 but the Swingletree clause and the sumptuous inheritance of Dr. Schramm caused a sort of stupefaction in court. Three reporters from the provincial press were seen to be stimulated. Verity Preston, who was there because her goddaughter seemed to expect it, had a horrid foreboding of growing publicity.

The inquest had again been held in the parish hall. The spire of St Crispin’s-in-Quintern cast its shadow over an open space at the foot of steps that led up to the church. The local people referred to this area as the “green” but it was little more than a rough lateral bulge in the lane. Upper Quintern was really a village only by virtue of its church and was the smallest of its kind: hamlet would have seemed a more appropriate title.

Sunlight, diffused by autumnal haze, the absence of wind and, until car engines started up, of other than countrified sounds, all seemed to set at a remove any process other than the rooted habit of the Kentish soil. Somehow or another, Verity thought, whatever the encroachments, continuity survives. And then she thought that it had taken this particular encroachment to put the idea into her head.

She wondered if Young Mr. Rattisbon would expect a repetition of their former conviviality and decided to wait until he emerged. People came together in desultory groups and broke up again. They had the air of having been involved in some social contretemps.

Prunella came out between the two Markos men. Clearly she was shaken; Gideon held her hand and his father with his elegant head inclined, stooped over her. Again, Verity had the feeling that they absorbed Prunella.

Prunella saw her godmother, said something to the men and came to Verity.

“Godma V,” she said. “Did you know? I meant to let you know. It’s the day after the day after tomorrow-Thursday — they’re going to — they say we can—”

“Well, darling,” said Verity, “that’s a good thing, isn’t it? What time?”

“Three-thirty. Here. I’m telling hardly anyone: just very old friends like you. And bunches of flowers out of our gardens, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed. Would you like me to bring you? Or — are you—?”

Prunella seemed to hesitate and then said: “That’s sweet of you, Godma V. Gideon and Papa M are — coming with me but — could we sit together, please?”