Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

“Oh, yes.”

“Here! You think you know who done it? Don’t you? Well — do you?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Innit marvellous?” said Mr. Smith. “Blimey, innit blinkin’ marvellous!”

“Mr. Smith,” Alleyn said, “tell me something. Why do you go to such pains to preserve your original turn of speech? If it is your original style. Or is it — I hope you’ll excuse this — a sort of embellishment? To show us there’s no nonsense about Bert Smith? Do forgive me — it’s nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand. I’ve no right to ask you, but it puzzles me.”

“Look,” said Mr. Smith, “you’re a peculiar kind of copper, aren’t you? What’s your game. What are you on about? Christ, you’re peculiar!”

“There! You are offended. I’m sorry.”

“Who says I’m offended? I never said so, did I? All right, all right, Professor ’Iggins, you got it second time. Put it like this. I see plenty of fakes in our business, don’t I? Junk tarted up to look like class? And I see plenty of characters who’ve got to the top same way as I did: from the bottom. But with them it’s putting on the class. Talking posh. Plums in their gullets. Deceiving nobody but themselves. ‘Educated privately’ in Who’s Who and coming a gutser when they loose their cool and forget themselves. Not for mine. I’m me. Born Deptford, Ejjercation, where I could pick it up. Out of the gutter mostly. Me.” He waited for a moment and then, with an indescribably sly glance at Alleyn, said ruefully, “Trouble is, I’ve lost touch. I’m not contemp’ry. I’m mixing with the wrong sort and it’s a kind of struggle to keep the old flag flying, if you can understand. P’raps I’m what they call an inverted snob. Right?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “That may be it. It’s an understandable foible. And we all have our affectations, don’t we?”

“It’s not a bloody affectation,” Mr. Smith shouted and then with another of his terribly prescient glances: “And it works,” he said. “It rings the bell, don’ it? They tell you George V took a shiner to Jimmy Thomas, don’t they? Why? Because he was Jimmy Thomas and no beg yer pardons. If ’e forgot ’imself and left an aitch in, ’e went back and dropped it. Fact!” Mr. Smith stood up and yawned like a chasm. “Well, if you’ve finished putting the screws on me,” he said, “I think I’ll toddle. I intended going back tomorrow, but if this weather keeps up I might alter me plans. So long as the telephone lines are in business, so am I.”

He moved to the foot of the stairs and looked back at Alleyn. “Save you the trouble of keeping obbo on me, if I stay put. Right?”

“Were you ever in the Force, Mr. Smith?”

“Me! A copper! Do me a favour!” said Mr. Smith and went chuckling up to bed.

Alone, Alleyn stood for a minute or two, staring at the moribund fire and listening to the night sounds of a great house. The outer doors were shut and barred and the curtains closed. The voice of the storm was transmitted only through vague soughing noises, distant rattling of shutters and an ambiguous mumbling that broke out intermittently in the chimneys. There were characteristic creaks and percussion-like cracks from the old woodwork and, a long way off, a sudden banging that Alleyn took to be a bout of indigestion in Hilary’s central-heating system. Then a passage of quiet.

He was accustomed and conditioned to irregular hours, frustrations, changes of plan and lack of sleep, but it did seem an unconscionable time since he landed in England that morning. Troy would be sound asleep, he expected, when he went upstairs.

Some change in the background of small noises caught his attention. A footfall in the gallery upstairs? What? He listened. Nothing. The gallery was in darkness but he remembered there was a time-button at the foot of each stairway and a number of switches controlling the lights in the hall. He moved away from the fireplace and towards the standard lamp near the right-hand flight of stairs and just under the gallery.

He paused, looking to see where the lamp could be switched off. He reached out his left arm towards it.

A totally unexpected blow can bring about a momentary dislocation of time. Alleyn, for a split second, was a boy of sixteen, hit on the right upper arm by the edge of a cricket bat. His brother George, having lost his temper, had taken a swipe at him. The blunted thump was as familiar as it was shocking.

With his right hand clapped to his arm, he looked down and saw at his feet, shards of pale green porcelain gaily patterned.

His arm, from being numb, began to hurt abominably. He thought, no, not broken, that would be too much, and found that with an effort he could close and open his hand and then, very painfully, slightly flex his elbow. He peered at the shards scattered round his feet and recognized the remains of the vase that stood on a little table in the gallery: a big and, he was sure, extremely valuable vase. No joy for Bill-Tasman, thought Alleyn.

The pain was settling into a sort of rhythm, horrid but endurable. He tried supporting his forearm inside his jacket as if in a sling. That would do for the present. He moved to the foot of the stairs. Something bolted down them, brushed past him, and shot into the shadows under the gallery. He heard a feline exclamation, a scratching and a thud. That was the green baize door, he thought.

A second later, from somewhere distant and above him, a woman screamed. He switched on the gallery lights and ran upstairs. His arm pounded with every step.

Cressida came galloping full tilt and flung herself at him. She grabbed his arms and he gave a yelp of pain.

“No!” Cressida babbled. “No! I can’t stand it. I won’t take it! I hate it. No, no, no!”

“For the love of Mike!” he said. “What is it? Pull yourself together.”

“Cats! They’re doing it on purpose. They want to get rid of me.”

He held her off with his right hand and felt her shake as if gripped by a rigor. She laughed and cried and clung to him most desperately.

“On my bed,” she gabbled. “It was on my bed. I woke up and touched it. By my face. They know! They hate me! You’ve got to help.”

He managed agonizingly to get hold of her wrists with both his hands and thought, “Well, no bones broken, I suppose, if I can do this.”

“All right,” he said. “Pipe down. It’s gone. It’s bolted. Now, please. No!” he added as she made a sort of abortive dive at his chest. “There isn’t time and it hurts. I’m sorry but you’d better just sit on the step and get hold of yourself. Good. That’s right. Now, please stay there.”

She crouched on the top step. She was clad in a short, diaphanous nightgown and looked like a pin-up girl adapted to some kind of sick comedy.

“I’m cold,” she chattered.

The check system on the stair lights cut out and they were in near darkness. Alleyn swore and groped for a wall-switch. At the same moment, like a well-timed cue in a French farce, the doors at the far ends of the gallery opened simultaneously, admitting a flood of light. Out came Troy, on the left hand, and Hilary on the right. A row of wall-lamps sprang to life.

“What in the name of Heaven—” Hilary began but Alleyn cut him short. “Cover her up,” he said, indicating Cressida. “She’s cold.”

“Cressida! Darling! But what with?” Hilary cried. He sat beside his fiancée on the top step and made an ineffectual attempt to enclose her within the folds of his own dressing gown. Troy ran back into the guest-room corridor and returned with an eiderdown counterpane. Voices and the closure of doors could be heard. Alleyn was briefly reminded of the arousing of the guests at Forres.