Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“I was going to ask you about that, sir,” Alleyn said. “It’s a clumsy attempt, isn’t it?”

“Clumsy? Well, yes. But one couldn’t be anything else but clumsy with a thing like a poker, could one?”

“You know about the poker?”

“Oh rather! Hilary told us.”

“What, exactly, did he tell you?”

“That he’d found one in the fir tree out there. Now, that was a pretty outlandish sort of place for it to be, wasn’t it?”

“Did he describe it?”

The Colonel looked steadily at Alleyn for some seconds. “Not in detail,” he said, and after a further pause: “But in any case when we found the marks on the box we thought: ‘poker,’ B and I, as soon as we saw them.”

“Why did you think ‘poker,’ sir?”

“I don’t know. We just did. ‘Poker,’ we thought. Or B did, which comes to much the same thing. Poker.”

“Had you noticed that the one belonging to this room had disappeared?”

“Oh dear me, no. Not a bit of it. Not at the time.”

“Colonel Forrester, Troy tells me that you didn’t see Moult after he had put on your Druid’s robe.”

“Oh, but I did,” he said, opening his eyes very wide. “I saw him.”

“You did?”

“Well — ‘saw,’ you may call it. I was lying down in our bedroom, you know, dozing, and he came to the bathroom door. He had the robe and the wig on and he held the beard up to show me. I think he said he’d come back before he went down. I think I reminded him about the window and then I did go to sleep, and so I suppose he just looked in and went off without waking me. That’s what Mrs. Alleyn was referring to. I rather fancy , although I may be wrong here, but I rather fancy I heard him look out.”

“Heard him? Look out?”

“Yes. I told him to look out of the dressing-room window for Vincent with the sledge at the corner. Because when Vincent was there it would be time to go down. That was how we laid it on. Dead on the stroke of half-past seven it was to be, by the stable clock. And so it was.”

“What!” Alleyn exclaimed. “You mean —?”

“I like to run an exercise to a strict timetable and so, I’m glad to say, does Hilary. All our watches and clocks were set to synchronize. And I’ve just recollected: I did hear him open the window and I heard the stable clock strike the half-hour immediately afterwards. So, you see, at that very moment Vincent would signal from the corner and Moult would go down to have his beard put on, and — and there you are. That was, you might say, phase one of the exercise, what?”

“Yes, I see. And — forgive me for pressing it, but it is important — he didn’t present himself on his return?”

“No. He didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t,” said the Colonel very doubtfully.

“I mean — could you have still been asleep?”

“Yes!” cried the Colonel as if the Heavens had opened upon supreme enlightenment. “I could! Easily, I could. Of course!”

Alleyn heard Mr. Wrayburn fetch a sigh.

“You see,” the Colonel explained, “I do drop off after my Turns. I think it must be something in the stuff the quack gives me.”

“Yes, I see. Tell me — those fur-lined boots. Would he have put them on up here or in the cloakroom?”

“In the cloakroom. He’d put them all ready down there for me. I wanted to dress up here because of the big looking-glass, but the boots didn’t matter and they’re clumsy things to tramp about the house in.”

“Yes, I see.”

“You do think, don’t you,” asked the Colonel, “that you’ll find him?”

“I expect we will. I hope so.”

“I tell you what, Alleyn,” said the Colonel, and his face became as dolorous as a clown’s. “I’m afraid the poor fellow’s dead.”

“Are you, sir?”

“One shouldn’t say so, of course, at this stage. But — I don’t know — I’m very much afraid my poor old Moult’s dead. He was an awful ass in many ways but we suited each other, he and I. What do you think about it?”

“There’s one possibility,” Alleyn said cautiously.

“I know what you’re going to say. Amnesia. Aren’t you?”

“Something, at any rate, that caused him to leave the cloakroom by the outer door and wander off into the night. Miss Tottenham says he did smell pretty strongly of liquour.”

“Did he? Did he? Yes, well, perhaps in the excitement he may have been silly. In fact — In fact, I’m afraid he was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because when he found me all tied up in my robe and having a Turn, he helped me out and put me to bed and I must say he smelt most awfully strong of whisky. Reeked. But, if that was the way of it,” the Colonel asked, “where is he? Out on those moors like somebody in a play? On such a night, poor feller? If he’s out there,” said the Colonel with great energy, “he must be found. That should come first. He must be found.”

Alleyn explained that there was a search party on the way. When he said Major Marchbanks was providing police dogs and handlers, the Colonel nodded crisply, rather as if he had ordered this to be done. More and more the impression grew upon Alleyn that here was no ninny. Eccentric in his domestic arrangements Colonel Forrester might be, and unexpected in his conversation, but he hadn’t said anything really foolish about the case. And now when Alleyn broached the matter of the tin box and the dressing-room, the Colonel cut him short.

“You’ll want to lock the place up, no doubt,” he said. “You fellers always lock places up. I’ll tell Moult—” he stopped short and made a nervous movement of his hands. “Force of habit,” he said. “Silly of me. I’ll put my things in the bedroom.”

“Please don’t bother. We’ll attend to it. There’s one thing, though: would you mind telling me what is in the uniform box?”

“ In it? Well. Let me see. Papers, for one thing. My commission. Diaries. My Will.” The Colonel caught himself up. “One of them,” he amended. “My investments, scrip or whatever they call them.” Again, there followed one of the Colonel’s brief meditations. “Deeds,” he said. “That kind of thing. B’s money: some of it. She likes to keep a certain amount handy. Ladies do, I’m told. And the jewels she isn’t wearing. Those sorts of things. Yes.”

Alleyn explained that he would want to test the box for fingerprints, and the Colonel instantly asked if he might watch. “It would interest me no end,” he said. “Insufflators and latent ones and all that. I read a lot of detective stories: awful rot, but they lead you on. B reads them backwards but I won’t let her tell me.”

Alleyn managed to steer him away from this theme and it was finally agreed that they would place the box, intact, in the dressing-room wardrobe pending the arrival of the party from London. The Colonel’s effects having been removed to the bedroom, the wardrobe and the dressing-room itself would then be locked and Alleyn would keep the keys.

Before these measures were completed, Mrs. Forrester came tramping in.

“I thought as much,” she said to her husband.

“I’m all right, B. It’s getting jolly serious, but I’m all right. Really.”

“What are you doing with the box? Good evening,” Mrs. Forrester added, nodding to Mr. Wrayburn.

Alleyn explained. Mrs. Forrester fixed him with an embarrassing glare but heard him through.

“I see,” she said. “And is Moult supposed to have been interrupted trying to open it with the poker, when he had the key in his pocket?”

“Of course not, B. We all agree that would be a silly idea.”

“Perhaps you think he’s murdered and his body’s locked up in the box.”

“Really, my dear!”