Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“You feel certain he wrote it?”

“Who else would?” Cressida reasoned. “Whatever they might think? It’s his theme song, isn’t it — the sinful lady bit?”

“Very much so. When did you go down to dinner?”

“I don’t know. Last, as usual, I expect.”

“Did you at any stage meet anybody going into or coming out of the Forresters’ rooms?”

Cressida helplessly flapped her arms. “Yes,” she said. “Nigel again. Coming out. He’d been doing his turning down the bed lot. This time he only shrank back against the wall as if I had infective hepatitis.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “I must be off.” He looked at his wife.

“All right?” he asked.

“All right.”

When he had gone Cressida said, “Let’s face it, darling. I’m wasting my powder.”

Before he went out into the night, Alleyn visited the study and found it deserted. He turned on all the lights, opened the window curtains, and left, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket. He listened for a moment or two outside the library door and heard the drone of two male voices topped by Mr. Smith’s characteristic short bark of laughter. Then he joined Wrayburn, who waited in the great porch with four of his men and the two handlers with their dogs. They moved out into the open courtyard.

“Rain’s lifted,” Wraybuni shouted. It had spun itself into a thin, stinging drive. The noise out-of-doors was immense: a roar without definition as if all the trees at Halberds had been given voices with which to send themselves frantic. A confused sound of water mingled with this. There were whistles and occasional clashes as of metal objects that had been blown out of their places and clattered about wildly on their own account.

Nigel’s monument was dissolving into oblivion. The recumbent figure, still recognizable, was horridly mutilated.

They rounded the front of the east wing, and turned right into the full venom of the wind.

The library windows were curtained and emitted only thin blades of light, and the breakfast-room was in darkness. But from the study a flood of lamplight caught the sapling fir, lashing itself to and fro distractedly, and the heaps of indeterminate rubble that surrounded it. Broken glass, cleaned by the rain, refracted the light confusedly.

Their faces were whipped by the wind, intermittent shafts of rain, and pieces of blown litter. The men had powerful search-lamps and played them over the area. They met at the discarded Christmas tree from which tatters of golden tinsel madly streamed. They searched the great heaps of rubble and patches of nettle and docks. They found, all over the place, evidence of Hilary’s men with their forks and shovels and trampling boots. They explored the sapling fir and remained, focussed on it, while Alleyn with his back to the wind peered up into the branches. He saw, as he had already seen from the dressing-room window, that the tender ones were bent into uncouth positions. He actually found, in a patch of loamy earth beneath the study window, prints of Hilary’s smart shoes where he had climbed over the sill to retrieve the poker.

He took a light, moved up to the tree, and searched its inward parts. After a minute or two he called to one of the men and asked him to hold the light steady as it was. He had to yell into the man’s ear, so boisterous was the roar of the wind.

The man took the light and Alleyn began to climb the tree. He kept as close as he could to the trunk where the young boughs were strongest. Wet pine needles brushed his face. Cascades of snow fell about his neck and shoulders. Branches slapped at him and he felt resin sticking to his hands. As he climbed, the tree swayed, he with it, and the light moved. He shifted round the trunk and hauled himself upward.

Suddenly an oblong sliver of fresh light appeared below and to his right. There was Hilary Bill-Tasman’s face, upturned and staring at Alleyn. He had come to the library window.

Cursing, Alleyn grasped the now slender trunk with his left hand, leant outward, and looked up. Dislodged snow fell into his face.

There it was. He reached up with his right hand, touched it, made a final effort and secured it. His fingers were so cold that he could scarcely feel sure of his capture. He put it in his mouth, and slithering, swaying and scrambling, came down to earth.

He moved round until the tree was between him and the library window and warmed his hands at the lamp. Wrayburn, standing close by, said something Alleyn could not catch and jerked his thumb in the direction of the library. Alleyn nodded, groped in his mouth and extracted a slender strip of metallic gold. He opened his mackintosh and tucked it away in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Come indoors,” he signalled.

They had moved away and were heading back to the front of the house when they were caught in the beams of two lights. Above the general racket and clamour they heard themselves hailed.

The lights jerked, swayed and intensified as they approached. The men behind them suddenly plunged into the group. Alleyn shone his torch into their excited faces.

“What’s up?” Wrayburn shouted. “Here? What’s all the excitement?”

“We’ve found ’im, Mr. Wrayburn, we’ve seen ’im! We’ve got ’im.”

“Where?”

“Laying on the hillside, up yonder. I left my mate to see to ’im.”

“Which hillside?” Alleyn bawled.

“Acrost there, sir. On the way to the Vale road.”

“Come on, then,” said Wrayburn excitedly.

The whole party set off along the cinder path that Troy so often had taken on her afternoon walks.

They had not gone far before they saw a stationary light and a recumbent figure clearly visible spread-eagled and face down in the snow. Someone was stooping over it. As they drew near the stooping figure rose and began to kick the recumbent one.

“My God!” Wrayburn roared out, “what’s he doing! My God ! Is he mad! Stop him.”

He turned to Alleyn and found him doubled up.

The man on the hillside, caught in his own torchlight, gave two or three more tentative kicks to the prostrate form and then, with an obvious effort, administered a brief and mighty punt that sent it careering into the gale. It gesticulated wildly and disintegrated. Wisps of rank, wet straw were blown into their faces.

Hilary would have to find another scarecrow.

A further ill-tempered, protracted and exhaustive search turned out to be useless, and at five minutes past twelve they returned to the house.

The rest of the search party had come in with nothing to report. They all piled up a shining heap of wet gear and lamps in the porch, left the two dogs in the unfurnished east-wing cloakroom, and in their stockinged feet entered the hall. The overefficient central heating of Halberds received them like a Turkish bath.

Hilary, under a hard drive of hospitality, came fussing out from the direction of the library. He was full of commiseration and gazed anxiously into one frozen face after another, constantly turning to Alleyn as if to call witness to his own distress.

“Into the dining-room! Everybody. Do do do do,” cried Hilary, dodging about like a sheepdog. And, rather sheepishly, the search party allowed itself to be mustered.

The dining-room table displayed a cold collation that would have done honour to Dingley Dell. On a side table was ranked an assembly of bottles: whisky, rum, brandy, Alleyn saw, and a steaming kettle. If Hilary had known how, Alleyn felt, he would have set about brewing a punch bowl. As it was, he implored Wrayburn to superintend the drinks and set himself to piling up a wild selection of cold meats on plates.

None of the servants appeared at this feast.