Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

Mr. Smith and Mrs. Forrester arrived in that order, the former in trousers, shirt, braces and stocking feet, the latter in her sensible dressing gown and a woollen cap rather like a baby’s.

“Hilary!” she said on a rising note. “Your uncle and I are getting very tired of this sort of thing. It’s bad for your uncle. You will put a stop to it.”

“Auntie Bed, I assure you —”

“Missus!” said Mr. Smith, “you’re dead right. I’m with you all the way. Now! What about it, ’Illy?”

“I don’t know,” Hilary snapped, “anything. I don’t know what’s occurred or why Cressida’s sitting here in her nighty. And I don’t know why you all turn on me. I don’t like these upsets any more than you do. And how the devil, if you’ll forgive me, Aunt Bed, you can have the cheek to expect me to do something about anything when everything’s out of my hands, I do not comprehend.”

Upon this they all four looked indignantly at Alleyn.

“They’re as rum a job lot as I’ve picked up in many a long day’s night,” he thought and addressed himself to them.

“Please stay where you are,” he said. “I shan’t, I hope, keep you long. As you suggest, this incident must be cleared up, and I propose to do it. Miss Tottenham, are you feeling better? Do you want a drink?”

(“Darling! Do you?” urged Hilary.)

Cressida shuddered and shook her head.

“Right,” Alleyn said. “Then please tell me exactly what happened. You woke up, did you, and found a cat on your bed?”

“Its eyes ! Two inches away! It was making that awful tumbling noise and doing its ghastly pounding bit. On me! On me ! I smelt its fur. Like straw.”

“Yes. What did you do?”

“ Do ! I screamed.”

“After that?”

After that, it transpired, all hell was let loose. Cressida’s reaction set up an equally frenzied response. Her visitor tore round her room and cursed her. At some stage she turned on her bedside lamp, and revealed the cat glaring out from under the petticoats of her dressing table.

“Black-and-white?” Hilary asked. “Or tabby?”

“What the hell does it matter?”

“No, of course. No. I just wondered.”

“Black-and-white.”

“Smartypants, then,” Hilary muttered.

After the confrontation, it seemed, Cressida, on the verge of hysteria, had got off her bed, sidled to the door, opened it, and then thrown a pillow at Smartypants, who fled from the room. Cressida, greatly shaken, slammed the door, turned back to her bed, and was softly caressed round her ankles and shins.

She looked down and saw the second cat, Slyboots, the tabby, performing the tails-up brushing ceremony by which his species make themselves known.

Cressida had again screamed, this time at the top of her voice. She bolted down the corridor and into the gallery and Alleyn’s reluctant embrace.

Closely wrapped in her eiderdown, inadequately solaced by the distracted Hilary, she nodded her head up and down, her eyes like great damp pansies and her teeth still inclined to chatter.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Two questions. How do you think the cats got into your room? When you visited Troy, did you leave your door open?”

Cressida had no idea.

“You do leave doors open, rather, my darling,” Hilary said, “don’t you?”

“That queen in the kitchen put them there. Out of spite. I know it.”

“Now, Cressida ! Really!”

“Yes, he did! He’s got a thing about me. They all have. They’re jealous. They’re afraid I’m going to make changes. They’re trying to frighten me off.”

“Where,” Alleyn asked before Hilary could launch his protests, “is the second cat, now? Slyboots?”

“He was walking about the corridor,” Troy began and Cressida immediately began a sort of internal fight with her eiderdown cocoon. “It’s all right,” Troy said quickly. “He came into my room and I’ve shut the doors.”

“Do you swear that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“In Heaven’s name!” Mrs. Forrester ejaculated, “Why don’t you take her to bed, Hilary?”

“Really, Aunt B! Well, all right. Well, I will.”

“Give her a pill. She takes pills, of course. They all do. Your uncle mustn’t have any more upsets. I’m going back to him. Unless,” she said to Alleyn, “you want me.”

“No, do go. I hope he’s all right. Was he upset?”

“He woke up and said something about a fire engine. Good-morning, to you all,” snorted Mrs. Forrester and left them.

She had scarcely gone when Hilary himself uttered a stifled scream. He had risen and was leaning over the bannister. He pointed downwards like an accusing deity at a heap of broken porcelain lying near a standard lamp.

“God damn it!” Hilary said, “that’s my K’ang Hsi vase. Who the hell’s broken my K’ang Hsi vase!”

“Your K’ang Hsi vase,” Alleyn said mildly, “missed my head by a couple of inches.”

“What do you mean? Why do you stand there saying things with you arm in your chest like Napoleon Bonaparte?”

“My arm’s in my chest because the vase damn’ nearly broke it. It’s all right,” Alleyn said, catching Troy’s eye. “It didn’t.”

“Very choice piece, that,” Mr. Smith observed. “ Famille verte . You bought it from Eichelbaum, didn’t you? Pity.”

“I should bloody well think it is a pity.”

“Insurance O.K.?”

“Naturally. And cold comfort that is, as you well know. The point is, who did it? Who knocked it over.” Hilary positively turned on his beloved. “Did you?” he demanded.

“I did not!” she shouted. “And don’t talk to me like that. It must have been the cat.”

“The cat! How the hell —”

“I must say,” Alleyn intervened, “a cat did come belting downstairs immediately afterwards.”

Hilary opened his mouth and shut it again. He looked at Cressida, who angrily confronted him, clutching her eider-down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My darling. Forgive me. It was the shock. And it was one of our treasures.”

“I want to go to bed.”

“Yes, yes. Very well. I’ll take you.”

They left, Cressida waddling inside her coverlet.

“Oh dear!” said Mr. Smith. “The little rift what makes the music mute,” and pulled a dolorous face.

“Your room’s next to hers, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “Did you hear any of this rumpus?”

“There’s her bathrom between. She’s got the class job on the northeast corner. Yes, I heard a bit of a how-d’yer-do but I thought she might be having the old slap-and-tickle with ’Illy. You know.”

“Quite.”

“But when she come screeching down the passage, I thought Hullo-ullo. So I come out. Gawd love us,” said Mr. Smith, “it’s a right balmy turn-out though, and no error. Good-night again.”

When he had gone Alleyn said, “Come out of retirement,” and Troy emerged from the background. “Your arm,” she said. “Rory, I’m not interfering, but your arm?”

With a creditable imitation of the Colonel, Alleyn said: “Don’t fuss me, my dear,” and put his right arm round his wife. “It’s a dirty great bruise, that’s all,” he said.

“Did somebody —?”

“I’ll have to look into the Pussyfoot theory and then, by Heaven, come hell or high water, we’ll go to bed.”

“I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”

“Please, my love. Before you do, though, there’s a question. From your bedroom window, after the party, and at midnight, you looked out and you saw Vincent come round the northeast corner of the house. He was wheeling a barrow and in the barrow was the Christmas tree. He dumped the tree under the Colonel’s dressing-room window. You saw him do it?”