Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“We’re all abominations before the Lord,” Nigel suddenly announced. “And I’m the worst of the lot.” His lips trembled. “Sin lies bitter in my belly,” he said.

“Stuff it!” Mervyn shouted and then, with profound disgust: “Oh Gawd, now he’s going to cry!”

And cry poor Nigel did, noisily, into a handkerchief held to the lower half of his face like a yashmak. Over this he gazed dolorously at Alleyn through wet, white eyelashes.

“Now, look here,” Alleyn said, “Nigel. Listen to me. No,” he added quickly, anticipating a further demonstration. “Listen. You say you’re a sinner. All right. So you may be. Do you want to cleanse your bosom or your belly or whatever it is, of its burden? Well, come on, man. Do you?”

Without removing the handkerchief, Nigel nodded repeatedly.

“Very well, then. Instead of all this nonsense, how about helping us save another sinner who, for all you know, may be out there dying of exposure?”

Nigel blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes.

“Come on,” Alleyn pressed. “How about it?”

Nigel seemed to take council with himself. He gazed mournfully at Alleyn for some moments and then said: “It’s a judgment.”

“On Moult? Why?”

There was no marked — there was scarcely any discernible— movement among the other four men: it was more as if they jointly held their breath and barely saved themselves from leaning forward.

“He was a wine-bibber,” Nigel shouted. “Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging.”

And now there was a distinct reaction: an easing of tension, a shifting of feet, a leaning back in chairs, a clearing of throats.

“Is that the case?” Alleyn asked at large. “What do you say? Blore? Do you agree?”

“Allowing for the extravagant style of expression, sir,” Blore conceded, “I would say it is the case.”

“He tippled?”

“He did, sir, yes. Heavily.”

“Have you any reason to think, any of you, that he had taken more than was good for him yesterday afternoon?” Suddenly they were loquacious. Moult, they said, had undoubtedly been tippling all day. Mervyn volunteered that he had seen Moult sneak out of the dining-room and had subsequently discovered that the whisky decanter on the sideboard which he had only lately filled had been half-emptied. Kittiwee had an unclear story about the total disappearance of a bottle of cooking brandy from the pantry. Vincent unpersuasively recollected that when Moult met him, in druidical array, he had smelt very strongly of alcohol. Blore adopted a patronizing and Olympic attitude. He said that while this abrupt spate of witness to Mr. Moult’s inebriety was substantially correct, he thought it only proper to add that while Mr. Moult habitually took rather more than was good for him, yesterday’s excesses were abnormal.

“Do you think,” Alleyn said, “that Colonel and Mrs. Forrester know of this failing?”

“Oh, really, sir,” Blore said with a confidential deference that clearly derived from his headwaiter days, “you know how it is. If I may say so, the Colonel is a very unworldly gentleman.”

“And Mrs. Forrester?”

Blore spread his hands and smirked. “Well, sir,” he said. “The ladies!” which seemed to suggest, if it suggested anything, that the ladies were quicker at spotting secret drinkers than the gentlemen.

“While I think of it,” Alleyn said. “Colonel Forrester has had another attack. Something to do with his heart, I understand. It seems he really brought it upon himself trying to open their bedroom window. He didn’t,” Alleyn said to Nigel, who had left off crying, “notice the wedge, and tried to force it. He’s better, but it was a severe attack.”

Nigel’s lips formed the word “wedge.” He looked utterly bewildered.

“Didn’t you wedge it, then? To stop it rattling in the storm? When you shut up their room for the night?”

He shook his head. “I never!” he said. “I shut it, but I never used no wedge.” He seemed in two minds: whether to cut up rough again or go into an aimless stare. “You see me,” he muttered, “when you come in.”

“So I did. You were wet. The window came down with a crash, didn’t it, as I walked in.”

Nigel stared at him and nodded.

“Why?” Alleyn asked.

Again, a feeling of general consternation.

Nigel said, “To see.”

“To see what?”

“They don’t tell me anything!” Nigel burst out. “I seen them talking, I heard.”

“What?”

“Things,” he said and became sulky and uncommunicative.

“Odd!” Alleyn said without emphasis. “I suppose none of you knows who wedged the Colonel’s window? No? Ah, well, it’ll no doubt emerge in due course. There’s only one other thing I’d like to ask you. All of you. And before I ask it I want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. I do most earnestly beg you not to think I’m setting a trap for you, not to believe I’m influenced in the smallest degree by your past histories. All right. Now, I expect you all know about the booby-trap that was set for my wife. Did you tell them about it, Cox?”

After a considerable pause, Mervyn. said: “I mentioned it, sir,” and then burst out: “Madam knows I didn’t do it. Madam believes me. I wouldn’t of done it, not to her, I wouldn’t. What would I do it to her for? You ask madam, sir. She’ll tell you.”

“All right, all right, nobody’s said you did it. But if you didn’t, and I accept for the sake of argument that you didn’t, who did? Any ideas?”

Before Mervyn could reply, Nigel came roaring back into action.

“With malice aforethought, he done it,” Nigel shouted.

“Who?”

The other four men all began to talk at once: their object very clearly being to shut Nigel up. They raised quite a clamour between them. Alleyn stopped it by standing up: if he had yelled at the top of his voice it would have been less effective.

“Who,” he asked Nigel, “did it with malice aforethought?”

“You leave me alone, Mr. Blore. Come not between the avenger and his wrath, Mr. Blore, or it’ll be the worse for all of us.”

“Nobody’s interrupting you,” Alleyn said and indeed it was true. They were turned off like taps.

“Come on, Nigel,” Alleyn said. “Who was it?”

“Him. Him that the wrath of the Almighty has removed from the midst.”

“Moult?”

“That’s perfectly correct,” said Nigel with one of his plummet-like descents into the commonplace.

From this point, the interview took on a different complexion. Nigel withdrew into a sort of omniscient gloom, the others into a mulish determination to dissociate themselves from any opinion upon any matter that Alleyn might raise. Blore, emerging as a reluctant spokesman, said there was proof — and he emphasized the word — that Moult had set the booby-trap, and upon Nigel uttering in a loud voice the word “spite,” merely repeated his former pantomime to indicate Nigel’s total irresponsibility. Alleyn asked if Moult was, in fact, a spiteful or vindictive character and they all behaved as if they didn’t know what he was talking about. He decided to take a risk. He said that no doubt they all knew about the anonymous and insulting messages that had been left in the Forresters’ and Cressida Tottenham’s rooms and the lacing of Mr. Smith’s barley water with soap.

They would have liked, he thought, to deny all knowledge of these matters, but he pressed them and gradually collected that Cressida had talked within hearing of Blore, that Mr. Smith had roundly tackled Nigel, and that Moult himself had “mentioned” the incidents.

“When?” Alleyn asked.

Nobody seemed exactly to remember when.

“Where?”

They were uncertain where.