Ngaio Marsh - Tied Up in Tinsel

Alleyn said: “Yes. Yes, I’ve no doubt you do.” He looked round the group. “The truth is,” he said, “that when you come out of stir it’s into another kind of prison and it’s heavy going for the outsider who tries to break in.”

They looked at him with something like astonishment.

“It’s no good keeping on about this,” he said, “I’ve a job to do and so have you. If you agree with the account I’ve put to you about your part in this affair, it’ll be satisfactory to me and I believe the best thing for you. But I can’t wait any longer for the answer. You must please yourselves.”

A long pause.

Mervyn got to his feet, moved to the fireplace, and savagely kicked a log into the flames.

“We got no choice,” he said. “All right. Like you said.”

“Speak for yourself,” Vincent mumbled but without much conviction.

Blore said, “People don’t think.”

“How do you mean?”

“They don’t know. For us, each of us, it was what you might call an isolated act. Like a single outbreak — an abscess that doesn’t spread. Comes to a head and bursts and that’s it. It’s out of the system. We’re no more likely to go violent than anyone else. Less. We know what it’s like afterwards. We’re oncers. People don’t think.”

“Is that true of Nigel?”

They looked quickly at each other.

“He’s a bit touched,” Blore said. “He gets put out. He doesn’t understand.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“I’ll go with what you’ve put to us, sir,” Blore said, exactly as if he hadn’t heard Alleyn’s question. “I’ll agree it’s substantially the case. Vince found the body and came in and told us and we reached a decision. I daresay it was stupid but the way we looked at it we couldn’t afford for him to be found.”

“Who actually moved the body into the packing case?”

Blore said, “I don’t think we’ll go into details,” and Mervyn and Vincent looked eloquently relieved.

“And Nigel knows nothing about it?”

“That’s right. He’s settled that Mr. Moult was struck down by a sense of sin for mocking us and went off somewhere to repent.”

“I see.” Alleyn glanced at Fox, who put up his notebook and cleared his throat. “I’ll have a short statement written out and will ask you all to sign it if you find it correct.”

“We haven’t said we’ll sign anything,” Blore interjected in a hurry and the others made sounds of agreement.

“Quite so,” Alleyn said. “It’ll be your decision.”

He walked out followed by Fox and the driver.

“Do you reckon,” Fox asked, “there’ll be any attempt to scarper?”

“I don’t think so. They’re not a stupid lot: the stowing of the body was idiotic but they’d panicked.”

Fox said heavily, “This type of chap: you know, the oncer. He always bothers me. There’s something in what they said: you can’t really call him a villain. Not in the accepted sense. He’s funny.” Fox meditated. “That flabby job. The cook. What was it you call him?”

“ ‘Kittiwee.’ ”

“I thought that was what you said.”

“He’s keen on cats. À propos , cats come into my complicated story. I’d better put you in the picture, Br’er Fox. Step into the hall.”

Alleyn finished his recital, to which Mr. Fox had listened with his customary air: raised brows, pursed lips and a hint of catarrhal breathing. He made an occasional note and when Alleyn had finished remarked that the case was “unusual” as if a new sartorial feature had been introduced by a conservative tailor.

All this took a considerable time. When it was over, seven o’clock had struck. Curtains were still drawn across the hall windows, but on looking through Alleyn found that they were guarded on the outside by Fox’s reinforcements and that Bailey and Thompson held powerful lights to the body of Albert Moult while a heavily overcoated person stooped over it.

“The Div. Surgeon,” Alleyn said. “Here’s the key of the cloakroom, Fox. Have a shiner at it while I talk to him. Go easy. We’ll want the full treatment in there.”

The Divisional Surgeon, Dr. Moore, said that Moult had either been stunned or killed outright by a blow on the nape of the neck and that the neck had subsequently been broken, presumably by a fall. When Alleyn fetched the poker and they laid it by the horrid wound, the stained portion was found to coincide and the phenomenon duly photographed. Dr. Moore, a weathered man with a good keen eye, was then taken to see the wig, and in the wet patch Alleyn found a tiny skein of hair that had not been washed perfectly clean. It was agreed that this and the poker should be subjected to the sophisticated attention of the Yard’s pathological experts.

“He’s been thumped all right,” said Dr. Moore. “I suppose you’ll talk to Sir James.” Sir James Curtis was Consultant Pathologist to the Yard. “I wouldn’t think,” Dr. Moore added, “there’d be much point in leaving the body there. It’s been rolled about all over the shop, it seems, since he was thumped. But thumped he was.”

And he drove himself back to Downlow where he practised. The time was now seven-thirty.

Alleyn said, “He’s about right, you know, Fox. I’ll get through to Curtis but I think he’ll say we can move the body. There are some empty rooms in the stables under the clock tower. You chaps can take him round in the car. Lay him out decently, of course. Colonel Forrester will have to identify.”

Alleyn telephoned Sir James Curtis and was given rather grudging permission to remove Moult from Hilary’s doorstep. Sir James liked bodies to be in situ but conceded that as this one had been, as he put it, rattled about like dice in a box, the objection was academic. Alleyn rejoined Fox in the hall. “We can’t leave Bill-Tasman uninformed much longer,” he said, “I suppose. Worse luck. I must say I don’t relish the prospect of coming reactions.”

“If we exclude the servants, and I take it we do, we’ve got a limited field of possibilities, haven’t we, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Six, if you also exclude thirty-odd guests and Troy.”

“A point being,” said Mr. Fox, pursuing after his fashion, his own line of thought, “whether or not it was a case of mistaken identity. Taking into consideration the wig and whiskers.”

“Quite so. In which case the field is reduced to five.”

“Anyone with a scunner on the Colonel, would you say?”

“I’d have thought it a psychological impossibility. He’s walked straight out of Winnie-the-Pooh .”

“Anybody profit by his demise?”

“I’ve no idea. I understand his will’s in the tin box.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Together with the crown jewels and various personal documents. We’ll have to see.”

“What beats me,” said Mr. Fox, “on what you’ve told me, is this. The man Moult finishes his act. He comes back to the cloakroom. The young lady takes off his wig and whiskers and leaves him there. She takes them off . Unless,” Fox said carefully, “she’s lying, of course. But suppose she is? Where does that lead you?”

“All right, Br’er Fox, where does it lead you?”

“To a nonsense,” Fox said warmly. “That’s where. To some sort of notion that she went upstairs and got the poker and came back and hit him with it, Gawd knows why, and then dragged him upstairs under the noses of the servants and kids and all and removed the wig and pitched him and the poker out of the window. Or walked upstairs with him alive when we know the servants saw her go through this hall on her own and into the drawing room and anyway there wasn’t time and — Well,” said Fox, “why go on with it? It’s silly.”