Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“Or on keeping obbo to prevent it. Do you reckon he’ll attend the funeral?”

“He may decide we’d think it odd if he didn’t. After his being so assiduous about gracing the inquests. There you are! We’ll need to go damn’ carefully. After all, what have we got? He’s short, thin, wears spectacles and doesn’t wear overalls?”

“If you put it like that.”

“How would you put it?”

“Well,” said Fox, scraping his chin, “he’d been hanging about the premises for we don’t know how long and, by the way, no joy from the bus scene. Nobody remembers him or Gardener. I talked to the conductors on every return trip that either of them might have taken but it was a Saturday and there was a motor rally in the district and they were crowded all the way. They laughed at me.”

“Cads.”

“There’s the motive, of course,” Fox continued moodily. “Not that you can do much with that on its own. How about the lilies in the broom cupboard?”

“How about them falling off in the passage and failing to get themselves sucked up by the vacuum cleaner?”

“You make everything so difficult,” Fox sighed.

“Take heart. We have yet to see his feet. And him, if it comes to that. Bailey and Thompson may have come up with something dynamic. Where are they?”

“Like they say in theatrical circles. Below and awaiting your pleasure.”

“Admit them.”

Bailey and Thompson came in with their customary air of being incapable of surprise. Using the minimum quota of words they laid out for Alleyn’s inspection an array of photographs: of the pillowcase in toto , of the stained area on the front in detail and of one particular, tiny indentation, blown up to the limit, which had actually left a cut in the material. Over this, Alleyn and Fox concentrated.

“Well, you two,” Alleyn said at last, “what do you make of this lot?”

It was by virtue of such invitations that his relationship with his subordinates achieved its character. Bailey, slightly more communicative than his colleague, said: “Teeth. Like you thought, Governor. Biting the pillow.”

“All right. How about it?”

Thompson laid another exhibit before him. It was a sort of macabre triptych: first a reproduction of the enlargement he had already shown and beside it, corresponding in scale, a photograph of all too unmistakably human teeth from which the lips had been retracted in a dead mouth.

“We dropped in at the morgue,” said Bailey. “The bite could tally.”

The third photograph, one of Thompson’s montages, showed the first superimposed upon the second. Over this, Thompson had ruled vertical and horizontal lines.

“Tallies,” Alleyn said.

“Can’t fault it,” said Bailey dispassionately.

He produced a further exhibit: the vital section of the pillowcase itself mounted between two polythene sheets, and set it up beside Thompson’s display of photographs.

“Right,” Alleyn said. “We send this to the laboratory, of course, and in the meantime, Fox, we trust our reluctant noses. People who are trying to kill themselves with an overdose of sleeping-pills may vomit but they don’t bite holes in the pillowcase.”

“It’s nice to know we haven’t been wasting our time,” said Fox.

“You are,” said Alleyn staring at him, “probably the most remorseless realist in the service.”

“It was only a passing thought. Do we take it she was smothered, then?”

“If Sir James concurs, we do. He’ll be cross about the pillowcase.”

“You’d have expected the doctors to spot it. Well,” Fox amended, “you’d have expected the Field-Innis one to, anyway.”

“At that stage their minds were set on suicide. Presumably the great busty Jackson had got rid of the stomach-pumping impedimenta after she and Schramm, as they tell us, had seen to the bottling of the results. Field-Innis says that by the time he got there, this had been done. It was he, don’t forget, who said the room should be left untouched and the police informed. The pillow was face-downwards at the foot of the bed but in any case only a very close examination reveals the mark of the tooth. The stains, which largely obscure it, could well have been the result of the overdose. What about dabs, Bailey?”

“What you’d expect. Dr. Schramm’s, the nurse Jackson’s. Deceased’s, of course, all over the shop. The other doctor’s — Field-Innis. I called at his surgery and asked for a take. He wasn’t all that keen but he obliged. The girl Foster’s on the vanity box and her mother’s like you indicated.”

“The tumbler?”

“Yeah,” said Bailey with his look of mulish satisfaction. ‘That’s right. That’s the funny bit. Nothing. Clean. Same goes for the pill bottle and the Scotch bottle.”

“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” said Fox.

“Where do we get to, Br’er Fox?”

“Gloves used but only after she lost consciousness.”

“What I reckoned,” said Bailey.

“Or after she’d passed away?” Fox speculated.

“No, Mr. Fox. Not if smothering’s the story.

Alleyn said: “No dabs on the reverse side of the pillow?”

“That’s correct,” said Thompson.

“I tried for latents,” said Bailey. “No joy.”

He produced, finally, a polythene bag containing the back panel of the pretty lawn pillow, threaded with ribbon. “This,” he said, “is kind of crushed on the part opposite to the tooth print and stains. Crumpled up, like. As if by hands. No dabs but crumpled. What I reckon — hands.”

“Gloved. Like the Americans say: it figures. Anything else in the bedroom?”

“Not to signify.”

They were silent for a moment or two and then Bailey said: “About the Will. Dabs.”

“What? Oh, yes?”

“The lawyer’s. Mr. Rattisbon’s. Small female in holding position near edges: the daughter’s probably: Miss Foster.”

“Probably. And—?”

“That’s the lot.”

“Well, blow me down flat,” said Alleyn.

The telephone rang. It was a long distance call from Berne. Alleyn’s contact came through loud and clear.

“Monsieur le Superintendant? I am calling immediately to make an amendment to our former conversations.”

“An amendment, mon ami?”

“An addition, perhaps more accurately. In reference to the Doctor Schramm at the Sacré Coeur, you recollect?”

“Vividly.”

“Monsieur le Superintendant, I regret. My contact at the bureau has made a further search. It is now evident that the Doctor Schramm in question is deceased. In effect, since 1952.”

During the pause of the kind often described as pregnant Alleyn made a face at Fox and said: “Dead.” Fox looked affronted.

“At the risk,” Alleyn said into the telephone, “of making the most intolerable nuisance of myself, dare I ask if your source would have the very great kindness to find out if, over the same period, there is any record of an Englishman called Basil Smythe having qualified at Sacré Coeur? I should explain, my dear colleague, that there is now the possibility of a not unfamiliar form of false pretence.”

“But of course. You have but to ask. And the name again?”

Alleyn spelt it out and was told he could expect a return call within the hour. It came through in twelve minutes. An Englishman called Basil Smythe had attended the courses at the time in question but had failed to complete them. Alleyn thanked his expeditious confrere profusely. There was a further interchange of compliments and he hung up.

iv

“It’s not only in the story-books,” observed Fox on the following morning as they drove once more to Greengages, “that you get a surplus of suspects but I’ll say this for it: it’s unusual. The dates tally, don’t they?”