Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“I caught sight of something.”

He turned his hand over, opened it and exposed the crumpled head of a pink lily. It was very dead and its brown pollen had stained his palm.

“I think,” he said, “it will team up with the ones in Mrs. Foster’s last bouquet. I wondered what the electrician was doing in the broom cupboard.”

She gaped at him. “Electrician?” she said. “What electrician?”

“Don’t let it worry you. Excuse us, please. Come on, Fox. Goodbye, Sister.”

When she had starched and bosomed herself away he said: “I’m going to take another look at that broom-hide. Don’t spring any more confrontations this time. Stay here.”

He went into the alcove, drew the curtains on himself and was away for some minutes. When he rejoined Fox he said: “They’re not so fussy about housework in there. Quite a lot of dust on the floor. Plenty of prints — housemaid’s, no doubt, but on the far end, in the corner away from the vacuum cleaner where nobody would go normally, there are prints, left and right, side by side, with the heels almost touching the wall. Men’s crepe-soled shoes, and beside them — guess.”

He opened his hand and disclosed another dead lily head. “Near the curtain I could just find the prints again but overlaid by the housemaid’s and some regulation type extras. Whose, do you think?”

“All right, all right,” said Fox. “Mine.”

“When we go down we’ll look like sleuths and ask the desk lady if she noticed the electrician’s feet.”

“That’s a flight of fancy, if you like,” said Fox. “And she won’t have.”

“In any case Bailey and Thompson will have to do their stuff. Come on.”

When they were inside Number 20 he went to the bathroom where the fetid bouquet still mouldered in the basin. It was possible to see that the finds matched exactly and actually to distinguish the truss from which they had been lost.

“So I make a note: ‘Find the electrician’?” asked Fox.

“You anticipate my every need.”

“How do you fancy this gardener? Gardener?”

“Not much!” said Alleyn. “Do you?”

“You wouldn’t fancy him sneaking back with the flowers when Miss Foster and party had gone?”

“Not unless he’s had himself stretched: the reception girl said slight, short and bespectacled. Bruce Gardener’s six foot three and big with it. He doesn’t wear spectacles.”

“He’d be that chap in the Harris tweed suit at the inquest?”

“He would. I meant to point him out to you.”

“I guessed,” said Fox heavily.

“Claude Carter, on the contrary, is short, slight, bespectacled and in common with the electrician and several million other males, doesn’t wear overalls.”

“Motive? No. Hang on. He gets Mrs. Foster’s bit from her first husband.”

“Yes.”

“Ask if anyone knows about electricians? And nobody will,” Fox prophesied.

“Ask about what bus he caught back to Quintern and get a dusty answer.”

“Ask if anyone saw him any time, anywhere.”

“With or without lilies. In the meantime, Fox. I seem to remember there’s an empty cardboard box and a paper shopping bag in the wardrobe. Could you put those disgusting lilies in the box? Keep the ones from the broom cupboard separate. I want another look at her pillows.”

They lay as they had lain before: three of them: luxuriant pillowcases in fine lawn with broiderie-anglaise threaded with ribbon. Brought them with her, Alleyn thought. Even Greengages wouldn’t run to these lengths.

The smallest of them carried a hollow made by her dead or alive head. The largest lay at the foot of the bed and was smooth. Alleyn turned it over. The under surface was crumpled, particularly in the centre — crumpled and stained as if it had been wet and, in two places, faintly pink with small, more positive indentations, one of them so sharp that it actually had broken the delicate fabric. He bent down and caught a faint nauseating reek. He went to the dressing table and found three lipsticks, all of them, as was the fashion at that time, very pale. He took one of them to the pillow. It matched.

iii

During the remaining sixty hours before Sybil Foster’s burial in the churchyard of St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern the police investigations, largely carried out over the telephone, multiplied and accelerated. As is always the case, much of what was unearthed turned out to be of no relevance, much was of a doubtful or self-contradictory nature and only a scanty winnowing found to be of real significance. It was as if the components of several jig-saw puzzles had been thrown down on the table and before the one required picture could be assembled, the rest would have to be discarded.

The winnowings, Alleyn thought, were for the most part suggestive rather than definitive. A call to St. Luke’s Hospital established that Basil Smythe, as he then was, had indeed been a first year medical student at the appropriate time and had not completed the course. A contact of Alleyn’s in Swiss Police headquarters put through a call to a hospital in Lausanne confirming that a Dr. Basile Schramm had graduated from a teaching hospital in that city. Basile, Alleyn was prepared to accept, might well have been a Swiss shot at Basil. Schramm had accounted to Verity Preston for the change from Smythe. They would have to check if this was indeed his mother’s maiden name.

So far nothing had been found in respect of his activities in the United States.

Mrs. Jim Jobbin had, at Mrs. Foster’s request and a week before she died, handed a bottle of sleeping-pills over to Bruce Gardener. Mrs. Foster had told Bruce where they would be found: in her writing desk. They had been bought some time ago from a Maidstone chemist and were a proprietary brand of barbiturate. Mrs. Jim and Bruce had both noticed that the bottle was almost full. He had duly delivered it that same afternoon.

Claude Carter had what Mr. Fox called a sussy record. He had been mixed up, as a very minor figure, in the drug racket. In his youth he had served a short sentence for attempted blackmail. He was thought to have brought a small quantity of heroin ashore from S.S. Poseidon . If so, he had got rid of it before he was searched at the customs.

Verity Preston had remembered the august name of Bruce Gardener’s latest employer. Discreet enquiries had confirmed the authenticity of Bruce’s references and his unblemished record. The head gardener, named McWhirter, was emphatic in his praise and very, very Scottish.

This, thought Alleyn, might tally with Verity Preston’s theory about Bruce’s dialectical vagaries.

Enquiries at appropriate quarters in the City elicited the opinion that Nikolas Markos was a millionaire with a great number of interests of which oil, predictably, was the chief. He was also the owner of a string of luxury hotels in Switzerland, the South Pacific, and the Costa Brava. His origin was Greek. Gideon had been educated at a celebrated public school and at the Sorbonne and was believed to be in training for a responsible part in his father’s multiple business activities.

Nothing further could be discovered about the “electrician” who had taken Bruce’s flowers up to Sybil Foster’s room. The desk lady had not noticed his feet

“We’ll be having a chat with Mr. Claude Carter, then?” asked Fox, two nights before the funeral. He and Alleyn were at the Yard, having been separated during the day on their several occasions, Fox in and about Upper Quintern and Alleyn mostly on the telephone and in the City.

“Well, yes,” he agreed. “Yes. We’ll have to, of course. But we’d better walk gingerly over that particular patch, Br’er Fox. If he’s in deep, he’ll be fidgetty. If he thinks we’re getting too interested he may take off and we’ll have to waste time and men on running him down.”