Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

Alleyn exclaimed with pleasure.

“Do you like it?” Prunella said. “Most people seem to like it.”

“I’m sure you do, don’t you?”

“I expect so. It always feels quite nice to come back to. It’s not exactly rivetting, of course. Too predictable. I mean it doesn’t send one, does it? I don’t know though. It sends my father-in-law-to-be up like a rocket. Do sit down.”

She herself sat between them. She arranged her pretty face in a pout almost as if she parodied some Victorian girl. She was pale and, Alleyn thought, very tense.

“We won’t be long about this,” he said. “There are one or two bits and pieces we’re supposed to tidy up. Nothing troublesome, I hope.”

“Oh,” said Prunella. “I see. I thought that probably you’d come to tell me my mother was murdered. Officially tell me, I mean. I know, of course, that you thought so.”

Until now she had spoken in her customary whisper but this was brought out rapidly and loudly. She stared straight in front of her and her hands were clenched in her lap.

“No,” Alleyn said. “That’s not it.”

“But you think she was, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid we do think it’s possible. Do you?”

Prunella darted a look at him and waited a moment before she said: “I don’t know. The more I wonder the less I can make up my mind. But then, of course, there are all sorts of things the police dig up that other people know nothing about. Aren’t there?”

“I suppose so.”

“My first reason for coming is to make sure you have been properly consulted about the arrangements for tomorrow and to ask if there is anything we can do to help. The service is at half-past-three, isn’t it? The present suggestion is that your mother will be brought from Maidstone to the church arriving about two o’clock but it has occurred to me that you might like her to rest there tonight. If so, that can easily be arranged.”

Prunella for the first time looked directly at him. “That’s kind,” she said. “I’d like that, I think. Please.”

“Good. I’ll check with our chaps in Maidstone and have a word with your Vicar. I expect he’ll let you know.”

“Thank you.”

“All right, then?”

“Super,” said Prunella with shaking lips. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d got over all this. I thought I was O.K.” She knuckled her eyes and fished a handkerchief out of her pocket. Mr. Fox rose and walked away to the farthest windows through which he contemplated the prospect.

“Never mind,” Alleyn said. “That’s the way delayed shock works. Catches you on the hop when you least expect it”

“Sickening of it,” Prunella mumbled into her handkerchief. “You’d better say what you wanted to ask.”

“It can wait a bit.”

“No!” said Prunella and stamped like an angry child. “Now.”

“All right. I’d better say first what we always say. Don’t jump to conclusions and read all sorts of sinister interpretations into routine questions. You must realize that in a case of this sort everyone who saw anything at all of your mother or had contact, however trivial, with her during the time she was at Greengages, and especially on the last day, has to be crossed off.”

“All except one.”

“Perhaps not excepting even one and then we do look silly.”

Prunella sniffed. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Do you know a great deal about your mother’s first husband?”

Prunella stared at him.

“ Know ? Me? Only what everyone knows. Do you mean about how he was killed and about the Black Alexander stamp?”

“Yes. We’ve heard about the stamp. And about the unfinished letter to your mother.”

“Well then—. There’s nothing else that I can think of.”

“Do you know if she kept that letter? And any other of his letters?”

Prunella began: “If I did I wouldn’t—” and pulled herself up. “Sorry,” she said, “yes, she did. I found them at the back of a drawer in her dressing-table. It’s a converted sofa-table and it’s got a not terribly secret, secret drawer.”

“And you have them still?”

She waited for a second or two and then nodded. “I’ve read them,” she said. “They’re fantastic, lovely letters. They can’t possibly have anything at all to do with any of this. Not possibly.”

“I’ve seen the regimental group photograph.”

“Mrs. Jim told me.”

“He was very good-looking, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. They used to call him Beau Carter. It’s hard to believe when you see Claude, isn’t it? He was only twenty-one when his first wife died. Producing Claude. Such an awful waste, I’ve always thought. Much better if it’d been the other way round though of course in that case I would have been — just not. Or would I? How muddling.”

She glanced down the long room to where Mr. Fox, at its furthest extreme, having put on his spectacles, was bent over a glass-topped curio table. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

“Being tactful.”

“Oh. I see.”

“About your mother — did she often speak of her first husband?”

“Not often. I think she got out of the way of it when my papa was alive. I think he must have been jealous, poor love. He wasn’t exactly a heart-throb to look at, himself. You know — pink and portly. So I think she kept things like pre-papa photographs and letters discreetly out of circulation. Sort of. But she did tell me about Maurice — that was his name.”

“About his soldiering days? During the war when I suppose that photograph was taken?”

“Yes. A bit about him. Why?”

“About his brother officers, for instance? Or the men under him?”

“ Why ?” Prunella insisted. “Don’t be like those awful pressmen who keep bawling out rude questions that haven’t got anything to do with the case. Not,” she added hastily, “that you’d really do that because you’re not at all that kind. But, I mean what on earth can my mum’s first husband’s brother officers and men have to do with his wife’s murder when most of them are dead, I daresay, themselves?”

“His soldier-servant, for instance? Was there anything in the letters about him ? The officer-batman relationship can be, in its way, quite a close one.”

“Now you mention it,” said Prunella on a note of impatience, “there were jokey bits about somebody he called The Corp, who I suppose might have been his servant but they weren’t anything out of the way. In the last letter, for instance. It was written here. He’d got an unexpected leave and come home but Mummy was with her WRENS in Scotland. It says he’s trying to get a call through to her but will leave the letter in case he doesn’t. It breaks off abruptly saying he’s been recalled, urgently to London and has just time to get to the station. I expect you know about the train being bombed.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well,” said Prunella shortly, “it was a direct hit. On his carriage. So that’s all.”

“And what about The Corp? In the letter?”

“What? Oh. There’s a very effing bit about — sorry,” said Prunella. “ ‘Effing’ is family slang for ‘affecting’ or kind of ‘terribly touching.’ This bit is about what she’s to do if he’s killed and how much — how he feels about her and she’s not to worry and anyway The Corp looks after him like a nanny. He must have been rather a super chap, Maurice, I always think.”

“Anything about the Black Alexander?”

“Oh, that! Well — actually, yes, there is something. He says he supposes she’ll think him a fuss-pot but, after all, his London bank’s in the hottest blitz area and he’s taken the stamp out and will store it elsewhere. There’s something about it being in a waterproof case or something. It was at that point he got the urgent recall to London. So he breaks off — and — says goodbye. Sort of.”