Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“According to the records at St. Luke’s, he was a medical student in London in 1950. It would seem he didn’t qualify there.”

“And now we begin to wonder if he qualified anywhere at all?”

“Does the doctor practise to deceive, in fact?” Alleyn suggested.

“Perhaps if he was at the hospital and knew the real Schramm he might have got hold of his diploma when he died. Or am I being fanciful?” asked Fox.

“You are being fanciful. And yet I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“Funnier things have happened.”

“True,” said Alleyn and they fell silent for the rest of the drive.

They arrived at Greengages under the unenthusiastic scrutiny of the receptionist. They went directly to Number 20 and found it in an advanced stage of unloveliness.

“It’s not the type of case I like,” Fox complained. “Instead of knowing who the villain is and getting on quietly with routine until you’ve collected enough to make a charge, you have to go dodging about from one character to another like the chap in the corner of a band.”

“Bang, tinkle, crash?”

“Exactly. Motive,” Fox indignantly continued. “Take motive. There’s Bruce Gardener who gets twenty-five thousand out of it and the stepson who gets however much his father entailed on him after his mother’s death and there’s a sussy-looking quack who gets a fortune. Not to mention Mr. Markos who fancied her house and Sister Jackson who fancies the quack. You can call them fringe characters. I don’t know! Which of the lot can we wipe? Tell me that, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I’m sorry too many suspects makes you so cross, Br’er Fox, but I can’t oblige. Let’s take a look at an old enemy, modus operandi , shall we? Now that Bailey and Thompson have done their stuff what do we take out of it? You tell me that, my Foxkin.”

“Ah!” said Fox. “Well now, what? What happened, eh? I reckon — and you’ll have to give me time, Mr. Alleyn — I reckon something after this fashion. After deceased had been bedded down for the night by her daughter and taken her early dinner, a character we can call the electrician, though he was nothing of the kind, collected the lilies from the reception desk and came up to Number 20. While he was still in the passage he heard or saw someone approaching and stepped into the curtained alcove.

“As you did, we don’t exactly know why.”

“With me it was what is known as a reflex action,” said Fox modestly. “While in the alcove two of the lily’s heads got knocked off. The electrician (soi disant) came out and entered Number 20. He now — don’t bustle me—”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. He now?”

“Went into the bedroom and bathroom,” said Fox and himself suited the action to the word, raising his voice as he did so, “and put the lilies in the basin. They don’t half stink now. He returned to the bedroom and kidded to the deceased?”

“Kidded?”

“Chatted her up,” Fox explained. He leant over the bed in a beguiling manner. “She tells him she’s not feeling quite the thing and he says why not have a nice drink and a sleeping-pill. And, by the way, didn’t the young lady say something about putting the pill bottle out for her mother? She did? Right! So this chap gets her the drink — Scotch and water. Now comes the nitty-gritty bit.”

“It did, for her at any rate.”

“He returns to the bathroom which I shan’t bother to do. Ostensibly,” said Fox, looking his superior officer hard in the eye, “ ostensibly to mix the Scotch and water but he slips in a couple, maybe three, maybe four pills. Soluble in alcohol, remember.”

“There’s a water jug on her table.”

“I thought you’d bring that up. He says it’ll be stale. The water. Just picks up the Scotch and takes it into the bathroom.”

“Casual-like?”

“That’s it.”

“Yes. I’ll swallow that, Br’er Fox. Just.”

“So does she. She swallows the drink knowing nothing of the tablets and he gives her one or maybe two more which she takes herself thinking they’re the first, with the Scotch and water.”

“How about the taste, if they do taste?”

“It’s a strong Scotch. And,” Fox said quickly, “she attributes the taste, if noticed, to the one or maybe two tablets she’s given herself. She has now taken, say, six tablets.”

“Go on. If you’ve got the nerve.”

“He waits. He may even persuade her to have another drink. With him. And put more tablets in it.”

“What’s he drink out of? The bottle?”

“Let that be as it may. He waits, I say, until she’s dopey.”

“Well?”

“And he puts on his gloves and smothers her,” said Fox suddenly. “With the pillow.”

“I see.”

“You don’t buy it, Mr. Alleyn?”

“On the contrary, I find it extremely plausible.”

“You do? I forgot to say,” Fox added, greatly cheered, “that he put the extra tablets in her mouth after she was out. Gave them a push to the back of the tongue. That’s where he overdid it. One of those fancy touches you’re so often on about. Yerse. To make suicide look convincing he got rid of a lot more down the loo.”

“Was the television going all this time?”

“Yes. Because Dr. Schramm found it going when he got there. Blast,” said Fox vexedly. “Of course if he’s our man—”

“He got home much earlier than he makes out. The girl at reception would hardly mistake him for an itinerant electrician. So someone else does that bit and hides with the vacuum cleaner and puts the lilies in the basin and goes home as clean as a whistle.”

“Yerse,” said Fox.

“There’s no call for you to be crestfallen. It’s a damn’ good bit of barefaced conjecture and may well be right if Schramm’s not our boy.”

“But if this Claude Carter is?”

“It would fit.”

“Ah! And Gardener? Well,” said Fox, “I know he’s all wrong if the receptionist girl’s right. I know that. Great hulking cross-eyed lump of a chap,” said Fox crossly.

There followed a discontented pause at the end of which Fox said, with a touch of diffidence: “Of course, there is another fringe character, isn’t there? Perhaps two. I mean to say, by all accounts the deceased was dead set against the engagement, wasn’t she?”

Alleyn made no reply. He had wandered over to the dressing table and was gazing at its array of Sybil Foster’s aids to beauty and at the regimental photograph in a silver frame. Bailey had dealt delicately with them all and scarcely disturbed the dust that had settled on them or upon the looking-glass that had reflected her altered face.

After another long silence Alleyn said: “Do you know, Fox, you have, in the course of your homily, proved me, to my own face and full in my own silly teeth, to be a copybook example of the unobservant investigating officer.”

“You don’t say!”

“But I do say. Grinding the said teeth and whipping my cat, I do say.”

“It would be nice,” said Fox mildly, “to know why.”

“Let’s pack up and get out of this and I’ll tell you on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Fox reasonably inquired.

“To the scene where I was struck down with sand-blindness or whatever. To the source of all our troubles, my poor Foxkin.”

“Upper Quintern, would that be?”

“Upper Quintern it is. And I think, Fox, we’d better find ourselves rooms at a pub. Better to be there than here. Come on.”

i

Prunella was at home at Quintern Place. Her car was in the drive and she herself answered the door, explaining that she was staying at Mardling and had merely called in to pick up her mail. She took Alleyn and Fox into the drawing-room. It was a room of just proportions with appointments that had occurred quietly over many years rather than by any immediate process of collective assembly. The panelling and ceiling were graceful. It was a room that seemed to be full of gentle light.