Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

When they had gone, Alleyn retired to the parlour and began operations upon Miss Cost’s desk, which, on first inspection, appeared to be a monument to the dimmest kind of disorder. Bills, dockets, trade leaflets and business communications were jumbled together in ill-running drawers and overcrowded pigeonholes. He sorted them into heaps and secured them with rubber bands.

He called out to Fox, who was in the kitchen: “As far as I can make out she was doing very nicely indeed, thank you. There’s a crack-pot sort of day book. No outstanding debts and an extremely healthy bank statement. We’ll get at her financial position through the income tax people, of course. What’ve you got?”

“Nothing to rave about,” Fox said.

“Newspapers?”

“Not yet. It’s a coal range, though.”

“Damn.”

They worked on in silence. Bailey reported a good set of impressions from a tumbler by the bed, and Thompson, relieved of the switchboard, photographed them. Fox put on his mackintosh and retired with a torch to an outhouse, admitting, briefly, the cold and uproar of the storm. After an interval he returned, bland with success, and bearing a coal-grimed, wet, crumpled and scorched fragment of newsprint.

“This might be something,” he said and laid it out for Alleyn’s inspection.

It was part of a sheet from the local paper from which a narrow strip had been cleanly excised. The remainder of a headline read: “…to well-known beauty spot” and underneath: “The Natural Amenities Association. At a meeting held at Dunlowman on Wednesday it was resolved to lodge a protest at the threat to Hatcherds Common, where it is proposed to build…”

“That’s it, I’m sure,” Alleyn said. “Same type. The original messages are in my desk, blast it, but one of them reads threat (in these capitals) ‘to close You are warned’: a good enough indication that she was responsible. Any more?”

“No. This was in the ash-bin. Fallen into the grate, most likely, when she burned the lot. I don’t think there’s anything else but I’ll take another look by daylight. She’s got a bit of a darkroom rigged up out there. Quite well equipped, too, by the look of it.”

“Has she now? Like to take a slant at it, Thompson?”

Thompson went out and presently returned to say it was indeed a handy little job of a place and he wouldn’t mind using it. “I’ve got that stuff we shot up at the spring,” he said. “How about it, sir?”

“I don’t see why not. Away you go. Good. Fox, you might penetrate to the bedchamber. I can’t find her blasted diary anywhere.”

Fox retired to the bedroom. Pender came back and said it was rougher than ever out of doors, and he didn’t see himself getting back to the village. Would it be all right if he spent the rest of the night on Miss Cost’s bed? “When vacant, in a manner of speaking,” he added, being aware of Fox’s activities. Fox emerged from a pitchpine wardrobe, obviously scandalized by Sergeant Pender’s unconventional approach, but Alleyn said he saw nothing against the suggestion and set Pender to tend the switchboard and help Thompson.

He returned to his own job. The parlour was a sort of unfinished echo of the front shop. Rows of plastic ladies, awaiting coats of green, yellow and pink paint, smirked blankly from the shelves. There were stacks of rhyme-sheets and stationery, and piles of jerkins, still to be sewn up the sides. Through the open door he could see the kitchen table with a jug and sugar-basin and a dirty cup with a sodden crust in its saucer. Miss Cost would have washed them up, no doubt, if she had returned from early service and not gone walking through the rain to her death.

In a large envelope he came across a number of photographs. A group of village maidens, Cissy prominent among them, with their arms upraised in what was clearly intended for corybantic ecstasy. Wally, showing his hands. Wally with his mouth open. Miss Cost, herself, in a looking-glass with her thumb on the camera trigger and smiling dreadfully. Several snapshots, obviously taken in the grounds of the nursing home, with Dr. Mayne, caught in moments of reluctance shading into irritation. View of the spring and one of a dark foreign-looking lady with an intense expression.

He heard Fox pull a heavy piece of furniture across the wooden floor and then give an ejaculation.

“Anything?” Alleyn asked.

“Might be. Behind the bed-head. A locked cupboard. Solid, mortise job. Now, where’d she have stowed the key?”

“Not in her bag. Where do spinsters hide keys?”

“I’ll try the chest of drawers for a start,” said Fox.

“You jolly well do. A favourite cache. Association of ideas. Freud would have something to say about it.”

Drawers were wrenched open, one after another.

“By gum!” Fox presently exclaimed. “You’re right, Mr. Alleyn. Two keys. Here we are.”

“Where?”

“Wrapped up in her com’s.”

“In the absence of a chastity belt, no doubt.”

“What’s that, Mr. Alleyn?”

“No matter. Either of them fit?”

“Hold on. The thing’s down by the skirting board. Yes. Yes, I do believe… Here we are.”

A lock clicked.

“Well?”

“Two cash boxes, so far,” Fox said, his voice strangely muffled.

Alleyn walked into the bedroom and was confronted by his colleague’s stern, up-ended beneath an illuminated legend which read:

Jog on, jog on the footpath way

And merrily hent the stile-a .

This was supported by a bookshelf on which the works of Algernon Blackwood and Dennis Wheatley predominated.

Fox was on his knees with his head to the floor and his arm in a cupboard. He extracted two japanned boxes and put them on the unmade bed, across which lay a rumpled nightgown embroidered with lazy-daisies.

“The small key’s the job for both,” he said. “There you are, sir.”

The first box contained rolled bundles of banknotes and a well-filled cashbag; the second, a number of papers. Alleyn began to examine them.

The top sheet was a carbon copy with a perforated edge. It showed, in type, a list of dates and times covering the past twelve months.

The Spring.

August 15th—8:15 p.m.

August 21st—8:30 p.m.

August 29th—8:30 p.m.

There were twenty entries. Two, placed apart from the others, and dated the preceding year, were heavily underlined.

July 22nd —5 p.m. and September 30th —8:45.

“From a duplicating book in her desk,” Alleyn said. “A page has been cut out. It’ll be the top copy of this one.”

“Typewritten,” Fox commented. “There’s a decrepit machine in the parlour. We’ll check, but I think this’ll be it.”

“Do the dates mean anything to you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“The underlined item does. Year before last. July 22nd—5 p.m. That’s the date and time of the Wally’s warts affair. Yesterday was the second anniversary.”

“Would the others be notes of later cures? Was any record kept?”

“Not to begin with. There is, now. The book’s on view at Wally’s cottage. We can check, but I don’t think that’s the answer. The dates are too closely bunched. They give — let’s see; they give three entries for August of last year, one for September, and then nothing until April 27th of this year. Then a regular sequence over the last three months up to — yes, by George! — up to a fortnight ago. What do you make of it, Br’er Fox? Any ideas?”

“Only that they’re all within licensing hours. Very nice bitter they serve up at the Boy-and-Lobster. It wouldn’t go down too badly. Warm in here, isn’t it?”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. “You’re perfectly right,” he said. He went into the shop. “Pender,” he called out, “who’s the bartender in the evenings at the Boy-and-Lobster?”