Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

He was beside them with a capsule in his palm. He held it out to Mrs. Forrester. Then he took the flask from her put it beside a glass phial on the dressing table.

“Fred, look. Your pill. Come on, old boy.”

The delay seemed interminable. Into the silence came a tiny rhythmic sound: “Ah — ah — ah,” of the Colonel’s breathing. Presently Mrs. Forrester said: “ That’s better. Isn’t it? That’s better, old boy.”

He was better. The look of extreme anxiety passed. He made plaintive little noises and at last murmured something.

“What? What is it?”

“Moult,” whispered the Colonel.

Mrs. Forrester made an inarticulate exclamation. She brushed her husband’s thin hair back and kissed his forehead.

“Turn,” said the Colonel, “wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“All right soon.”

“Of course you will be.”

“Up.”

“Not yet, Fred.”

“Yes. Get up.”

He began very feebly to scrabble with his feet on the carpet. Mrs. Forrester, with a look of helplessness of which Troy would have thought her totally incapable, turned to Alleyn.

“Yes, of course,” he said, answering it. “He shouldn’t lie flat, should he?”

She shook her head.

Alleyn leant over the Colonel. “Will you let me put you to bed, sir?” he asked.

“Very kind. Shouldn’t bother.”

Troy heaped up the pillows on the bed and opened it back. When she looked about her she found Alleyn with the Colonel in his arms.

“Here we go,” said Alleyn and gently deposited his burden.

The Colonel looked up at him. “ Collapse ,” he said, “ of Old Party ,” and the wraith of his mischievous look visited his face.

“You old fool,” said his wife.

Alleyn chuckled. “You’ll do,” he said. “You’ll do splendidly.”

“Oh yes. I expect so.”

Mrs. Forrester chafed his hands between her two elderly ones.

Alleyn picked up the phial delicately between finger and thumb and held it up to the light.

“Where was it?” Troy asked.

He motioned with his head towards a lacquered leather wastepaper bin under the dressing table. The gesture was not so slight that it escaped Mrs. Forrester.

“In there ?” she said. “In there ?”

“Is there something I can put the capsules in? I’d like to keep the phial if I may?”

“Anything. There’s a pin box on the dressing table. Take that.”

He did so. He spread his handkerchief out and gingerly wrapped up the phial and its stopper.

“The stable door bit,” he muttered and put them in his pocket.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Mrs. Forrester, who was rapidly returning to form.

“It means mischief,” said Alleyn.

The Colonel in a stronger voice said, “Could there be some air?”

The curtain was not drawn across the window under which they had found him. The rain still beat against it. Alleyn said, “Are you sure?”

Mrs. Forrester said, “We always have it open at the top. Moult does it before he goes to bed. Two inches from the top. Always.”

Alleyn found that it was unlatched. He put the heels of his hands under the top sash in the lower frame and couldn’t budge it. He tried to raise it by the two brass loops at the base but with no success.

“You must push up the bottom in order to lower the top,” Mrs. Forrester observed.

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“You can’t be. It works perfectly well.”

“It doesn’t, you know.”

“Fiddle,” said Mrs. Forrester.

The ejaculation was intended contemptuously, but he followed it like an instruction. He fiddled. His fingers explored the catch and ran along the junction of the two sashes.

“It’s wedged,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s a wedge between the sashes.”

“Take it out.”

“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said, “Mrs. Forrester. You just wait a bit.”

“Why!”

“Because I say,” he replied and the astounded Troy saw that Mrs. Forrester relished this treatment.

“I suppose,” she snapped, “you think you know what you’re about.”

“What is it, B?” asked her husband. “Is something wrong with the window?”

“It’s being attended to.”

“It’s awfully stiff. Awfully stiff.”

Alleyn returned to the bed. “Colonel Forrester,” he said. “Did you wrestle with the window? With your hands above your head? Straining and shoving?”

“You needn’t rub it in,” said the Colonel.

“Fred!” cried his wife, “what am I to do with you! I said —”

“Sorry, B.”

“I’ll open the other window,” Alleyn said. “I want this one left as it is. Please. It’s important. You do understand, don’t you? Both of you? No touching?”

“Of course, of course, of course,” the Colonel drawled. His eyes were shut. His voice was drowsy. “When he isn’t the White Knight,” Troy thought, “he’s the Dormouse.”

His wife put his hands under the bedclothes, gave him a sharp look, and joined Alleyn and Troy at the far end of the room.

“What’s all this about wedges?” she demanded.

“The houseman or whatever he is — ”

“Yes. Very well. Nigel.”

“Nigel. He may have wedged the sashes to stop the windows rattling in the storm.”

“I daresay.”

“If so, he only wedged one.”

As if in confirmation, the second window in the Forresters’ bedroom suddenly beat a tattoo.

“Ours haven’t been wedged,” said Troy.

“Nor has the dressing-room. May I borrow those scissors on your table? Thank you.”

He pulled a chair up to the window, took off his shoes, stood on it, and by gentle manipulation eased a closely folded cardboard wedge from between the sashes. Holding it by the extreme tip he carried it to the dressing table.

“It looks like a chemists’s carton,” he said. “Do you recognize it? Please don’t touch.”

“It’s the thing his pills come in. It was a new bottle.”

Alleyn fetched an envelope from the writing table, slid the wedge into it and pocketed it.

He put on his shoes and replaced the chair, “Remember,” he said, “don’t touch the window and don’t let Nigel touch it. Mrs. Forrester, will you be all right, now? Is there anything we can do?”

She sat down at her dressing table and leant her head on her hand. With her thin grey plait dangling and bald patches showing on her scalp she looked old and very tired.

“Thank you,” she said. “Nothing. We shall be perfectly all right.”

“Are you sure?” Troy asked and touched her shoulder.

“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’m quite sure. You’ve been very kind.” She roused herself sufficiently to give Alleyn one of her looks. “So have you,” she said, “as far as that goes. Very.”

“Do you know,” he said, “if I were you I’d turn the keys in the doors. You don’t want to be disturbed, do you?”

She looked steadily at him, and after a moment, shook her head. “And I know perfectly well what you’re thinking,” she said.

When Alleyn arrived downstairs it was to a scene of activity. Superintendent Wrayburn, now dressed in regulation waterproofs, was giving instructions to five equally waterproofed constables. Two prison warders and two dogs of super-caninely sharp aspect waited inside the main entrance. Hilary stood in front of one of the fires looking immensely perturbed.

“Ah!” he cried on seeing Alleyn. “Here you are! We were beginning to wonder —?”

Alleyn said that there had been one or two things to attend to upstairs, that the Colonel had been unwell but was all right again, and that he and Mrs. Forrester had retired for the night.