Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“And the stamp was never found.”

“That’s right. Not for want of looking. But obviously he had it on him.”

“Miss Foster, I wouldn’t ask you this if it wasn’t important and I hope you won’t mind very much that I do ask. Will you let me see those letters?”

Prunella looked at her own hands. They were clenched tightly on her handkerchief and she hurriedly relaxed them. The handkerchief lay in a small damply crumpled heap in her lap. Alleyn saw where a fingernail had bitten into it.

“I simply can’t imagine why ,” she said. “I mean, it’s fantastic. Love letters, pure and simple, written almost forty years ago and concerning nothing and nobody but the writer. And Mummy, of course.”

“I know. It seems preposterous, doesn’t it? But I can’t tell you how ‘professional’ and detached I shall be about it. Rather like a doctor. Please let me see them.”

She glanced at the distant Fox, still absorbed in the contents of the curio table. “I don’t want to make a fuss about nothing,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

“Are they still in the not-so-secret, secret drawer of the converted sofa-table?”

“Yes.”

“I should like to see it.”

They had both risen.

“Secret drawers,” said Alleyn lightly, “are my specialty. At the Yard they call me Peeping Tom Alleyn.” Prunella compressed her lips. “Fox,” Alleyn said loudly, “may I tear you away?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox said, removing his spectacles but staying where he was. “I beg your pardon, Miss Foster. My attention was caught by this — should I call it specimen table? My aunt, Miss Elsie Smith, has just such another in her shop in Brighton.”

“Really?” said Prunella and stared at him.

Alleyn strolled down to the other end of the room and bent over the table. It contained a heterogeneous collection of medals, a vinaigrette, two miniatures, several little boxes in silver or cloisonné and one musical box, all set out on a blue velvet base.

“I’m always drawn to these assemblies,” Alleyn said. “They are family history in hieroglyphics. I see you’ve rearranged them lately.”

“No, I haven’t. Why?” asked Prunella, suddenly alerted. She joined them. It was indeed clear from indentations in the velvet that a rearrangement had taken place. “Damn!” she said. “At it again! No, it’s too much.”

“At it?” Alleyn ventured. “Again? Who?”

“Claude Carter. I suppose you know he’s staying here. He — does so fiddle and pry.”

“What does he pry into?”

“All over the place. He’s always like that. The old plans of this house and garden. Drawers in tables. He turns over other people’s letters when they come. I wouldn’t put him past reading them. I’m not living here at the moment so I daresay he’s having field days. I don’t know why I’m talking about it.”

“Is he in the house at this moment?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only just come in, myself. Never mind. Forget it. Do you want to see the letters?”

She walked out of the room, Alleyn opening the door for her. He followed her into the hall and up the staircase.

“How happy Mr. Markos will be,” he remarked, “climbing up the golden stairs. They are almost golden, aren’t they? Where the sun catches them?”

“I haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, but you should. You mustn’t allow ownership to dull the edge of appetite. One should always know how lucky one is.”

Prunella turned on the upper landing and stared at him.

“Is it your habit,” she asked, “to go on like this? When you’re on duty?”

“Only if I dare hope for a sympathetic reception. What happens now? Turn right, proceed in a westerly direction and effect an entrance?”

Since this was in fact what had to be done, Prunella said nothing and led the way into her mother’s bedroom.

A sumptuous room. There was a canopied bed and a silken counterpane with a lacy nightgown case topped up by an enormous artificial rose. A largesse of white bearskin rugs. But for all its luxury the room had a depleted air as if the heart had gone out of it. One of the wardrobe doors was open and disclosed complete emptiness.

Prunella said rapidly: “I sent everything, all the clothes, away to the nearest professional theatre. They can sell the things they don’t use: fur hats and coats and things.”

There were no photographs or feminine toys of any kind on the tables and chimney-piece, and Sybil’s sofa-cum-dressing-table, with its cupid-encircled looking-glass, had been bereft of all the pots, bottles and jars that Alleyn supposed had adorned it.

Prunella said, following his look. “I got rid of everything. Everything.” She was defiant.

“I expect it was the best thing to do.”

“We’re going to change the room. Completely. My father-in-law-to-be’s fantastic about houses — an expert. He’ll advise us.”

“Ah, yes,” said Alleyn politely.

She almost shouted at him: “I suppose you think I’m hard and modern and over-reacting to everything. Well, so I may be. But I’ll thank you to remember that Will. How she tried to bribe me, because that’s what it was, into marrying a monster, because that’s what he is, and punish me if I didn’t. I never thought she had it in her to be so mean and despicable and I’m not going to bloody cry again and I don’t in the least know why I’m talking to you like this. The letters are in the dressing-table and I bet you can’t find the hidden bit.”

She turned her back on Alleyn and blew her nose.

He went to the table, opened the central drawer, slid his finger round inside the frame and found a neat little knob that released a false wall at the back. It opened and there in the “secret” recess was the classic bundle of letters tied with the inevitable faded ribbon.

There was also an open envelope with some half-dozen sepia snapshots inside.

“I think,” he said, “the best way will be for me to look at once through the letters and if they are irrelevant return them to you. Perhaps there’s somewhere downstairs where Fox and I could make ourselves scarce and get it settled.”

Without saying anything further Prunella led the way downstairs to the “boudoir” he had visited on his earlier call. They paused at the drawing-room to collect Mr. Fox, who was discovered in contemplation of a portrait in pastel of Sybil as a young girl.

“If,” said Prunella, “you don’t take the letters away perhaps you’d be kind enough to leave them in the desk.”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn rejoined with equal formality. “We mustn’t use up any more of your time. Thank you so much for being helpful.”

He made her a little bow and was about to turn away when she suddenly thrust out her hand.

“Sorry I was idiotic. No bones broken?” Prunella asked.

“Not even a green fracture.”

“Goodbye, then.”

They shook hands.

“That child,” said Alleyn when they were alone, “turned on four entirely separate moods, if that’s what they should be called, in scarcely more than as many minutes. Not counting the drawing-room comedy which was not a comedy. You and your Aunt Elsie!”

“Perhaps the young lady’s put about by recent experience,” Fox hazarded.

“It’s the obvious conclusion, I suppose.”

In the boudoir Alleyn divided the letters — there were eight — between them. Fox put on his spectacles and read with the catarrhal breathing that always afflicted him when engaged in that exercise.

Prunella had been right They were indeed love letters, “pure and simple” within the literal meaning of the phrase, and most touching. The young husband had been deeply in love and able to say so.