Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

As his regiment moved from the Western Desert to Italy, the reader became accustomed to the nicknames of fellow officers and regimental jokes. The Corp, who was indeed Captain Carter’s servant, featured more often as time went on. Some of the letters were illustrated with lively little drawings. There was one of the enormous Corp being harassed by bees in Tuscany. They were represented as swarming inside his kilt and he was depicted with a violent squint and his mouth wide open. A balloon issued from it with a legend that said: “It’s no sae much the ticklin’, it’s the imperrtinence, ye ken.”

The last letter was as Prunella had described it. The final sentences read: “So my darling love, I shan’t see you this time. If I don’t stop I’ll miss the bloody train. About the stamp — sorry, no time left Your totally besotted husband, Maurice.”

Alleyn assembled the letters, tied the ribbon and put the little packet in the desk. He emptied out the snapshots: a desolate, faded company well on its slow way to oblivion. Maurice Carter appeared in all of them and in all of them looked like a near relation of Rupert Brooke. In one, he held by the hand a very small nondescript child: Claude, no doubt. In another, he and a ravishingly pretty young Sybil appeared together. A third was yet another replica of the regimental group still in her desk drawer. The fourth and last showed Maurice kilted and a captain now, with his enormous “Corp” stood-to-attention in the background.

Alleyn took it to the window, brought out his pocket lens and examined it. Fox folded his arms and watched him,

Presently he looked up and nodded.

“We’ll borrow these four,” he said. “I’ll leave a receipt.”

He wrote it out, left it in the desk and put the snap-shots in his pocket. “Come on,” he said.

They met nobody on their way out. Prunella’s car was gone. Fox followed Alleyn past the long windows of a library and the lower west flank of the house. They turned right and came at last to the stables.

“As likely as not, he’ll still be growing mushrooms,” Alleyn said.

And so he was. Stripped to the waist, bronzed, golden-bearded and looking like a much younger man. Bruce was hard at work in the converted lean-to. When he saw Alleyn he grounded his shovel and arched his earthy hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

“Ou aye,” he said, “so it’s you again, Chief Superintendent. What can I do for you, the noo?”

“You can tell us, if you will, Corporal Gardener, the name of your regiment, and of its captain,” said Alleyn.

ii

“I canna credit it,” Bruce muttered and gazed out of his nonaligned blue eyes at Alleyn. “It doesna seem within the bounds of possibility. It’s dealt me a wee shock. I’ll say that for it.”

“You hadn’t an inkling?”

“Don’t be sae daft, man,” Bruce said crossly. “Sir, I should say. How would I have an inkling, will you tell me that? I doubt if her first husband was ever mentioned in my hearing and why would he be?”

“There was this stepson,” Fox said to nobody in particular. “Name of Carter.”

“Be damned to that,” Bruce shouted. “Carrrter! Carrrter! Why would he not be Carrrter? Would I be sae daft as to say: my Captain, dead nigh on forty years, was a man o’ the name of Carrrter so you must be his son and he the bonniest lad you’d ever set eyes on and you, not’ to dra’ it mild, a puir, sickly, ill-put-taegither apology for a man? Here, sir, can I have another keek at them photies?”

Alleyn gave them to him.

“Ah,” he said, “I mind it fine, the day that group was taken. I’d forgotten all about it but I mind it fine the noo.”

“But didn’t you notice the replica of this one in her bedroom at the hotel?”

Bruce stared at him. His expression became prudish. He half-closed his eyes and pursed his enormous mouth. He said, in a scandalized voice: “Sir, I never set fut in her bedroom. It would have not been the thing at a’. Not at a’.”

“Indeed?”

“She received me in her wee private parlour upstairs or in the garden.”

“I see. I beg your pardon.”

“As for these ither ones: I never saw them before.”

He gazed at them in silence for some moments. “My God,” he said quietly, “look at the bairn, just. That’ll be the bairn by the first wife. My God, it’ll be this Claude! Who’d’ve thought it. And here’s anither wi’ me in the background. It’s a strange coincidence, this, it is indeed.”

“You never came to Quintern or heard him speak of it?”

“If I did, the name didna stick in my mind. I never came here. What for would I? When we had leave and we only had but one before he was kilt, he let me gang awa’ home. Aye, he was a considerate officer. Christ !”

“What’s the matter?” Alleyn asked. Bruce had dealt his knees a devastating smack with his ginger-haired earthy hands.

“When I think of it,” he said. “When I mind how me and her would have our bit crack of an evening when I came in for my dram. Making plans for the planting season and a’ that. When I remember how she’d talk sae free and friendly and there, all unbeknownst, was my captain’s wife that he’d let on to me was the sonsiest lass in the land. He had her picture in his wallet and liked fine to look at it. I took a wee keek mysel’ one morning when I was brushing his tunic. She was bonny, aye she was that. Fair as a flooer. She seems to have changed and why wouldn’t she over the passage of the years? Ou aye,” he said heavily. “She changed.”

“We all do,” said Alleyn. “You’ve changed, yourself. I didn’t recognize you at first, in the photographs.”

“That’d be the beard,” he said seriously and looked over his lightly sweating torso with the naïve self-approval of the physically fit male. “I’m no’ so bad in other respects,” he said.

“You got to know Captain Carter quite well, I suppose?”

“Not to say well, just. And yet you could put it like that. What’s that speil to the effect that no man’s a hero to his valet? He can be so to his soldier-servant and the Captain came near enough to it with me.”

“Did you get in touch with his wife after he was killed? Perhaps write to her?”

“Na, na. I wadna tak’ the liberty. And foreby I was back wi’ the regiment that same night and awa’ to the front. We didna get the news until after we landed.”

“When did you return to England?”

“After the war. I was taken at Cassino and spent the rest of the duration in a prison camp.”

“And Mrs. Carter never got in touch? I mean: Captain Carter wrote quite a lot about you in his letters. He always referred to you as The Corp. I would have thought she would have liked to get in touch.”

“Did he? Did he mention me, now?” said Bruce eagerly. “To think o’ that.”

“Look here, Gardener, you realize by this time, don’t you, that we are considering the possibility of foul play in this business?”

Bruce arranged the photographs carefully like playing cards, in his left fist and contemplated them as if they were all aces.

“I’m aware of that,” he said absently. “It’s a horrid conclusion but I’m aware of it. To think he made mention of me in his correspondence. Well, now!”

“Are you prepared to help us if you can? Do,” begged Alleyn, “stop looking at those damn’ photographs. Here — give them to me and attend to what I say.”

Bruce with every sign of reluctance yielded up the photographs.

“I hear you,” he said. “Ou aye. I am prepared.”

“Good. Now. First question. Did Captain Carter ever mention to you or in your hearing, a valuable stamp in his possession?”

“He did not. Wait!” said Bruce dramatically. “Aye. I mind it now. It was before he went on his last leave. He said it was in his bank in the City but he was no’ just easy in his mind on account of the blitz and intended to uplift it.”