Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“Nigel?”

“That’s right. The bloodless wonder.”

“What’s your opinion of the entourage, Mr. Smith?”

“Come again?”

“The setup? At Halberds?”

“Ah. I get you. Well, now: it’s peculiar. Look at it any way you like, it’s eccentric. But then in a manner of speaking, so’s ’Illy. It suits him. Mind, if he’d set ’imself up with a bunch of smashers and grabbers or job-buyers or magsmen or any of that lot, I’d of spoke up very strong against. But murderers — when they’re oncers, that is. — they’re different.”

“My husband agrees with you.”

“And he ought to know, didn’t ’e? Now, you won’t find Alf Moult agreeing with that verdict. Far from it.”

“You think he mistrusts the staff?”

“Hates their guts, if you’ll pardon me. He comes of a class that likes things to be done very, very regular and respectable does Alf Moult. Soldier-servant. Supersnob. I know. I come from the one below myself: not up to his mark, he’d think, but near enough to know how he ticks. Scum of the earth, he calls them. If it wasn’t that he can’t seem to detect any difference between the Colonel and Almighty God, he’d refuse to demean hisself by coming here and consorting with them.”

Mr. Smith put down his empty glass, wiped his fingers across his mouth and twinkled. “Very nice,” he said. “You better come and see my place one of these days. Get ’Illy to bring you. I got one or two works might interest you. We do quite a lot in the old master lurk ourselves. Every now and then I see something I fancy and I buy it in. What’s your opinion of Blake?”

“Blake?”

“William. Tiger, tiger.”

“Superb.”

“I got one of ’is drawings.”

“Have you, now!”

“Come and take a butcher’s.”

“Love to,” said Troy. “Thank you.”

Hilary came in overflowing with apologies. “What you must think of us!” he exclaimed. “One nuisance treads upon another’s heels. Judge of my mortification.”

“What’s the story up to date, then?” asked Mr. Smith.

“Nothing more, really, except that Cressida has been very much disturbed.”

“What a shame. But she’s on the road to recovery, I see.”

“What do you see?”

“It was worse when they favoured the blood red touch. Still and all, you better wipe it off.”

“What a really dreadful old man you are, Uncle Bert,” said Hilary, without rancour but blushing and using his handkerchief.

“I’m on me way to me virtuous couch. If I find a dirty message under the door I’ll scream. Good-night, all.”

They heard him whistling as he went upstairs.

“You’re not going just yet, are you?” Hilary said to Troy. “Please don’t or I’ll be quite sure you’ve taken umbrage.”

“In that case I’ll stay.”

“How heavenly cool you are. It’s awfully soothing. Will you have a drink? No? I shall. I need one.” As he helped himself Hilary said, “Do you madly long to know what was in Uncle Flea’s note?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“It’s not really so frightful.”

“It can’t be since you seemed inclined to laugh.”

“You are a sharp one, aren’t you? As a matter of fact, it said quite shortly that Uncle Flea’s a cuckold spelt with three k’s . It was the thought of Aunt Bed living up to her pet name that almost did for me. Who with, one asks oneself? Moult?”

“No wonder she was enraged.”

“My dear, she wasn’t. Not really. Basically she was as pleased as Punch. Didn’t you notice how snappy she got when Uncle Flea said it was ridiculous?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You may as well, I promise you.”

Troy giggled.

“Of course she’d love it if Uncle Flea did go into action with a horsewhip. I can never understand how it’s managed, can you? It would be so easy to run away and leave the horsewhipper laying about him like a ringmaster without a circus.”

“I don’t think it’s that kind of horsewhip. It’s one of the short jobs like a jockey’s. You have to break it in two when you’ve finished and contemptuously throw the pieces at the victim.”

“You’re wonderfully well informed, aren’t you?”

“It’s only guesswork.”

“All the same, you know, it’s no joke, this business. It’s upset my lovely Cressida. She really is cross. You see, she’s never taken to the staff. She was prepared to put up with them because they do function quite well, don’t you think? But unfortunately she’s heard of the entire entourage of a Greek millionaire who died the other day, all wanting to come to England because of the Colonels. And now she’s convinced it was Nigel who did her message and she’s dead set on making a change.”

“You don’t think it was Nigel?”

“No. I don’t think he’d be such an ass.”

“But if — I’m sorry but you did say he was transferred to Broadmoor.”

“He’s as sane as sane can be. A complete cure. Oh, I know the message to Cressida is rather in his style but I consider that’s merely a blind.”

“ Do you!” Troy said thoughtfully.

“Yes, I do. Just as — well — Uncle Flea’s message is rather in Blore’s vein. You remember Blore slashed out at the handsome busboy who had overpersuaded Mrs. Blore. Well, it came out in evidence that Blore made a great to-do about being a cuckold. The word cropped up all over his statements.”

“How does he spell it?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What is your explanation?”

“To begin with I don’t countenance any notion that both Nigel and Blore were inspired, independently, to write poison-pen notes on the same sort of paper (it’s out of the library), in the same sort of capital letters.”

(Or, thought Troy, that Mervyn was moved at the same time to set a booby-trap.)

“—Or, equally,” Hilary went on, “that one of the staff wrote the messages to implicate the other two. They get on extremely well together, all of them.”

“Well, then?”

“What is one left with? Somebody’s doing it. It’s not me and I don’t suppose it’s you.”

“No.”

“No. So we run into a reductio ad absurdum , don’t we? We’re left with a most improbable field. Flea. Bed. Cressida. Uncle Bert.”

“And Moult?”

“Good Heavens,” said Hilary. “Uncle Bert’s fancy! I forgot about Moult. Moult, now. Moult .”

“Mr. Smith seems to think —”

“Yes, I daresay.” Hilary glanced uneasily at Troy and began to walk about the room as if he were uncertain what to say next. “Uncle Bert,” he began at last, “is an oddity. He’s not a simple character. Not at all.”

“No?”

“No. For instance there’s his sardonic-East-End-character act. ‘I’m so artful, you know, I’m a cockney.’ He is a cockney, of course. Vintage barrow-boy. But he’s put himself in inverted commas and comes out of them whenever it suits him. You should hear him at the conference table. He’s as articulate as the next man and, in his way, more civilized than most.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes. He’s got a very individual sense of humour, has Uncle Bert.”

“Tending towards black comedy?”

“He might have invented the term. All the same,” Hilary said, “he’s an astute judge of character and I–I can’t pretend he isn’t, although —”

He left this observation unfinished. “I think I’ll do the tree,” he said. “It settles one’s nerves.”

He opened the lid of the packing-case that had been placed near the tree.

Mr. Smith had left ajar the double doors into the great hall from whence there now came sounds of commotion. Somebody was stumbling rapidly downstairs and making ambiguous noises as he came. A slither was followed by an oath and an irregular progress across the hall. The doors burst wide open and in plunged Mr. Smith: an appalling sight.