Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“So what about this cloakroom, then?” Wrayburn suggested. “Before I take any further action?”

“Why not? Here you are.”

It was in the angle between the entrance porch and the drawing-room and, as Hilary said, had a door to the hall and another to the porch. “The plan,” Alleyn pointed out, “shows a corresponding room on the east side. It’s a symmetrical house, isn’t it?”

“So when he came out,” Wrayburn mused, “he should have walked straight ahead to the right-hand flight of stairs and up them to the gallery?”

“And along the gallery to the east corridor in the visitors’ wing. Where he disappeared into thin air?”

“Alternatively — Here! Let’s look.”

They went into the cloakroom, shutting the door behind them and standing close together, just inside the threshold.

Alleyn was transported backstage. Here was that smell of face cream and spirit-gum. Here was the shelf with a towel laid over it and the looking-glass. Neatly spread out, fan-wise, on one side of this bench, was the Druid’s golden beard and moustache and, hooked over a table lamp in lieu of a wig-block, the golden wig itself, topped by a tall crown of mistletoe.

A pair of knitted woollen gloves lay nearby.

A collection of mackintoshes, gum boots, and shooting-sticks had been shoved aside to make room for the Druid’s golden robe. There was the door opening on the porch and beside it a small lavatorial compartment. The room was icy cold.

Under the makeup bench, neatly aligned, stood a pair of fur-lined boots. Their traces from the outside door to where they had been removed were still quite damp and so were they.

“We’d better keep clear of them,” Alleyn said, “hadn’t we?” From where he stood he reached over to the bench, moved the table lamp and, without touching the wig, turned its back towards them. It had been powdered, like the beard, with gold dust. But at the place where the long hair would have overhung the nape of the neck there was a darker patch.

“Wet?” Wrayburn said, pointing to it. “Snow, would that have been? He was out in the snow, wasn’t he? But the rest of the thing’s only—” he touched the mistletoe crown “—damp.”

Alleyn flicked a long finger at the cardboard carton which Wrayburn still carried. “Did you get a good look at it?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Wrayburn said, answering a question that Alleyn had not asked. “You’re dead right. This is getting altogether different. It looks to me,” he said, “as if we’d got a bit of a case on our hands.”

“I believe you have.”

“Well,” Wrayburn said, making small movements of his shoulders and lifting his chin. “There’ll have to be an adjustment, I mean to say in the approach, won’t there?” He laid the carton on the bench as if it was made of porcelain. “There’ll need to be an analysis, of course, and a comparison. I’d better — I’d better report it to our C.I.D. But — just let’s —”

He shot a glance at Alleyn, fished in his pockets, and produced a small steel rule. He introduced the end under the hair and raised it.

“Take a look,” he said. “It’s wet, of course, but d’you reckon there’s a stain?”

“Might be.”

“I’m going to damn’ well —” Without completing his sentence, Wrayburn lifted a strand and with a fingernail and thumb separated a single hair and gave it a tweak. The wig tipped sideways and the crown of mistletoe fell off. Wrayburn swore.

“They make these things pretty solidly, don’t they?” Alleyn said. He righted the wig and held it steady. Wrayburn wound the single hair round the rule and this time jerked it free. Alleyn produced an envelope and the hair was dropped into it. Wrayburn stowed it in his tunic pocket.

“Let’s have a look at the robe,” Alleyn said. He lifted it off on its coat hanger and turned it round. A slide fastener ran right down the back, separating the high-standing collar, which showed a wet patch and was frayed.

“Cripes,” said Wrayburn, and then: “We’ll have to get this room locked up.”

“Yes.”

“Look. What seems to come out of this? I mean it’s pretty obvious the hair on the poker matches this, and there’s not much doubt, is there, that the deposit on the poker is blood. And what about the wet patch on the wig? And the collar? That’s not blood. So what? They’ve been cleaned. What with? Water? Wiped clear or washed. Which? Where? When?”

“You’re going like a train, Jack.”

“Must have been here, after the young lady left him. Unless — well, unless she did it and left him cold, in which case who got rid of him? She didn’t. Well — did she?”

“Have you met the young lady?”

“No.”

“She’s not the body-carrying type. Except her own, which she carries like Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.”

“Is that right?” Wrayburn mused. “Is that a fact? Now, about this wig and beard and all that carry-on. To begin with, this gear’s upstairs in a dressing-room. Moult supposedly puts it on, all except the whiskers, and comes down here, where the young lady meets him and fixes the whiskers. She goes to the drawing-room and he goes out by that door into the porch and then into the courtyard, where this Vincent liaises with him, then into the drawing-room, where he does a Daddy Christmas, or what passes for it, round the tree. Then he returns the same way as he came and Vincent sees him come in here by the same door and the young lady takes off his whiskers and leaves him here. And that’s the last anybody sees of him. Now. What say, somebody who knows he’s here comes in from outside with the poker from the upstairs dressing-room and lets him have it. Say he’s sitting there, nice and handy, still wearing his wig. Right. Then this character hauls him outside and dumps him, God knows where, but — Here!” Wrayburn ejaculated. “Wait a bit! What’s out there? There’s a sledge out there. And there’s this chap Vincent out there. Isn’t there?”

“There is, indeed.”

“Well!” Wrayburn said. “Tt’s a start, isn’t it? It may not do in the finish. And I’ve read your book. I know what you think about drawing quick conclusions.”

“It’s a start.”

“Following it up, then. This character, before he goes, sees the condition of the wig and cleans the stains off at the handbasin there and hitches it over the lamp like we found it with that blasted tiara on it. And he goes out and chucks the poker into the fir tree and disposes — God knows where — of the — if it’s homicide — of the body. How about it? Come on. Prove me a fool. Come on.”

“My dear chap, I think it’s a well-reasoned proposition.”

“You do?”

“There are difficulties, though.”

“There are?”

“The floor, for instance. The carpet. Clear traces of the returning wet boots but nothing else. No other boots. And nothing to suggest a body having been dragged to the door. O.K., suppose it was carried out? You’d still expect some interference with the original prints and a set of new ones pointing both ways, wouldn’t you?”

Wrayburn stared moodily at the string-coloured carpet with its clear damp incoming impressions. He picked up a boot and fitted it to the nearest print. “Tallies,” he said. “That’s something. And the boot’s still wet. No drying in here and it was only last night, after all. Well — what next? What’s left? Alternative — he did go upstairs and get clobbered.”

“Wearing his wig?”

“All right. Fair enough. Wearing his wig. God knows why, but wearing his wig. And goes up to the dressing-room. And gets clobbered with the dressing-room poker. And — here! Hold on! Hold on! And the clobberer throws the poker out of the window and it gets stuck in the tree?”