Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

“Yeah, and do you know why, mate?” Pollock said. “Because he wasn’t there. Because he’d followed her and done bloody murder on her up the hill. Because he’s not a bloody doctor but a bloody murderer. Now!”

Alleyn moved to face Dr Natouche. Tillottson, who had been taking notes walked to the foot of the companionway. At the head of it the constable could be seen beyond the half-door.

Dr Natouche had risen.

“Do you want to make a statement?” Alleyn asked and knew that they all waited for the well-worn sequel. But already the enormous voice had begun.

“I am alone,” it said, “and must defend myself. When these men who accuse me had gone to their cabins I was, as Mr Hewson has said, on deck. The mist or fog was dense and I could see nothing but a few feet of deck and the glow of the lockhouse windows and that only very faintly. The night was oppressive and damp. I was about to go back when Miss Hewson came very quickly up the stairway, crying out and weeping and in a condition of advanced hysteria. She ran into me and would have fallen. I took her by the arms and tried to calm her. She became violent and screamed ‘Let me go’ several times. Since I frightened her — she was I believe allergic to people of my colour — I did let her go and she stumbled across the deck and was hidden by the fog. I thought she might injure herself. I drew nearer but she heard me and screamed again: ‘Let me go’. By that time these gentlemen were approaching. They came up on deck calling to her and plunging about in the fog. I waited unseen until I heard the Captain’s voice and then, since obviously there was nothing I could do, I went below and to bed. I remained in my cabin until the arrival of your colleagues.”

He waited for a moment. “That is all,” he said and sat down.

Alleyn had the impression, an obscene and grotesque one, of Lazenby, Pollock and Hewson running together and coagulating into a corporate blob of enormity. They did actually move towards each other. They stood close and watched Natouche.

Caley Bard said: “I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry but I can’t accept that. It’s just not true. It can’t be true.”

The group of three moved very slightly. Pollock gave a little hiss of satisfaction. Lazenby said: “Ah!” and Hewson: “Even he sees that,” as if Caley were an implacable enemy.

“Why can’t it be true?” Alleyn said.

Caley walked up to Natouche and looked steadily at him. “Because,” he said, “I never left the top of the companionway. I stood there, listening to the hullabaloo and not knowing what to do. I stayed there until after the Skipper arrived and after the constable came on board. He—” he moved his head at Natouche—“Well, look at him. The size of him. He never passed me or went down the companionway. Never. He wasn’t there.”

Natouche’s arms rose naked from the sleeves of his gown, his hands curled above his head and his teeth were bared. He looked like an effigy, carved from ebony. Before the curled hands could do their work, Alleyn and Tillottson grabbed him. They lurched against the bar. Troy’s Signs of the Zodiac fell from their firmament and Hewson screamed: “Get him! Get him! Get him!”

Above the uproar, voices shouted on deck. A rival commotion had broken out and even as Alleyn and Tillottson screwed the great arms behind the heavy back, somebody came tumbling-down the companionway, followed by Inspector Fox and two deeply perturbed constables.

He was a Dickensian little man: bald, bespectacled and irritated. He contemplated the outlandish scene with distaste and cried in a shrillish voice:

“Once and for all, I demand to know the meaning of this masquerade.”

Fox arrived at his side and, seeing his principal engaged in strenuous activity, lent his aid. Natouche no longer struggled. He looked at the men who had subdued him as if he himself was in the ascendant.

Alleyn moved away from him and confronted the little man. “May I have your name, sir,” he said.

“My name!” the little man ejaculated. “My name ! Certainly you may have my name, sir. My name, sir, is Caley Bard.”

“And that,” Alleyn said, laying down his file, “was virtually the end of the Jampot. He is now, together with his chums, serving a life sentence and good behaviour is not likely to release him in the foreseeable future. I understand he finds it particularly irksome not to be able to lepidopterise on Dartmoor where, as we know from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there are butterflies. Or perhaps none of you has read The Hound of the Baskervilles. All right, Carmichael, I dare say you have.

“A little time before Foljambe arrived in England the real Caley Bard, who is a gifted amateur of the net and killing-bottle, had advertised in The Times for a fellow-lepidopterist who would share expenses on a butterfly hunt in South America. Foljambe’s agents in England—Messrs. Dinky Dickson alias the Reverend Mr Lazenby and Stanley Pollock—noted this circumstance. Further discreet inquiries satisfied them that Mr Bard had left for a protracted visit to South America, that he was something of a recluse and had private means fortified by occasional coaching in mathematics for tutorial organisations. So it was decided that the mantle of Lepidoptery should descend upon the Jampot’s shoulders. Lepidoptery was his hobby as a schoolboy and he knew enough to pass muster with a casual enthusiast. If, by an outlandish chance, he had encountered an expert or an acquaintance of his original he would have exclaimed: ”Me? oh, no, not that Caley Bard. I wish I were!” or words to that effect. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was that the real Caley Bard should return, two months before his time, having picked up an unpleasant bug in the country beyond La Paz.

“So that when, at my suggestion, one of our chaps called at the address they found the house occupied by an extremely irate little man whom they promptly flew by helicopter to Tollardwark for what I am obliged to call a confrontation.

“There was, of course, no doubt about his identity and guilt, once we had established alibis for the others in the Andropulos business. However, he did make a mistake. He talked about Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s bit of Fabergé before he should have known it was anything of the sort. A rare thing, though, for him to slip up. He’s a brilliant villain.

“He presented himself to my wife in exactly the light best calculated to produce a tolerant and amused acceptance. She was not likely, as he realised, to succumb to his well-tested but, to a man, inexplicable charms but she found him companionable and entertaining. I am told that a swivel-eye is, to many people, sexually alluring. The Jampot’s swivel-eye was the result of a punch-up, or a jab-up, with a rival gang in Santa Cruz. He subsequently underwent a bit of very efficient plastic surgery. Lazenby—Dickson to you—had lost his eye, by the way, in the Second World War where he was an Australian army chaplain until they found him out. He was born in the West Indies, went to a European mission-school and had in fact been ordained and unfrocked. He had no difficulty at all in passing himself off to the Bishop of Norminster who was very cross about it.

“That, more or less, is it. I’ll be glad to answer questions.” Carmichael’s instant boots had already scraped the floor when Alleyn caught the eye of a quiet-looking type in the back row.

“Yes?” he said. “Something?”

“Sir. I would like to ask, sir, if the missing pages from the diary ever came to hand?”

“No. We searched, of course, but it was a hopeless job. Lazenby probably reduced them to pulp and put them down the lavatory.”