Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

Connie said: “P.P., for God’s sake what is all this? Your letter?”

Mr. Period glanced at Alfred, who withdrew. He then, after a moment’s hesitation, took Connie’s hand into both of his.

“Now, now!” he said. “You mustn’t let this upset you, my dear.”

“Are you mad?”

“Connie!” he faintly ejaculated. “What do you mean? Do you — do you know ?”

“I must sit down. I don’t feel well.”

She did so. Mr. Period, his fingers to his lips, eyed her with dismay. He was about to speak when a shrill female ejaculation broke out in the direction of the servants’ quarters. It was followed by the rumble of men’s voices. Alfred reappeared, very white in the face.

“Good God!” Mr. Period said. “What now?”

Alfred, standing behind Connie Cartell, looked his employer in the eyes and said: “May I speak to you, sir?” He made a slight warning gesture and opened the library door.

“Forgive me, Connie. I won’t be a moment.”

Mr. Period went into the library followed by Alfred, who shut the door.

“Merciful heavens, Alfred, what’s the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that?”

“Mr. Cartell, sir.” Alfred moistened his lips. “I, really, I scarcely know how to put it, sir. He’s — he’s—”

“What are you trying to tell me? What’s happened?”

“There’s been an accident, sir. The men have found him. He’s—”

Alfred turned towards the library window. Through the open gate in the quickset hedge, the workmen could be seen, grouped together, stooping.

“They found him—” Alfred said — “not to put too fine a point on it, sir — in the ditch. I’m very sorry I’m sure, sir, but I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“There you are,” said Superintendent Williams. “That’s the whole story and those are the local people involved. Or not involved, of course, as the case may be. Now, the way I looked at it was this. It was odds-on we’d have to call you people in anyway, so why muck about ourselves and let the case go cold on you? I don’t say we wouldn’t have liked to go it alone, but we’re too damned busy and a damn’ side too understaffed. So I rang the Yard as soon as it broke.”

“The procedure,” Alleyn said dryly, “is as welcome as it’s unusual. We couldn’t be more obliged, could we, Fox?”

“Very helpful and clearsighted, Super,” Inspector Fox agreed with great heartiness.

They were driving from the Little Codling constabulary to Green Lane. The time was ten o’clock. The village looked decorous and rather pretty in the spring sunshine. Miss Cartell’s Austrian maid was shaking mats in the garden. The postman was going his rounds. Mr. Period’s house, as far as it could be seen from the road, showed no signs of disturbance. At first sight, the only hint of there being anything unusual might have been given by a group of three labourers who stood near a crane truck at the corner, staring at their boots and talking to the driver. There was something guarded and uneasy in their manner. One of them looked angry.

A close observer might have noticed that, in several houses round the Green, people who stood back from their windows were watching the car as it approached the lane. The postman checked his bicycle and, with one foot on the ground, also watched. George Copper stood in the path outside his corner garage and was joined by two women, a youth and three small boys. They, too, were watching. The women’s hands moved furtively across their mouths.

“The village has got on to it,” Superintendent Williams observed. “Here we are, Alleyn.”

They turned into the lane. It had been cordoned off with a rope slung between iron stakes and a Detour sign in front. The ditch began at some distance from the corner, and was defined on its inner border by neatly heaped-up soil and on its outer by a row of heavy drainpipes laid end to end. There was a gap in this row opposite Mr. Period’s gate, and a single drainpipe on the far side of the ditch.

One of the workmen made an opening for the car and it pulled up beyond the truck.

Two hundred yards away, by the side gate into Mr. Period’s garden, Sergeant Noakes waited selfconsciously by a disorderly collection of planks, tools, a twelve-foot steel ladder, and an all-too-eloquent shape covered by a tarpaulin. Nearby, on the far side of the lane, was another car. Its occupant got out and advanced: a middle-aged, formally dressed man with well-kept hands.

“Dr. Elkington, our divisional surgeon,” Superintendent Williams said, and completed the introductions.

“Unpleasant business, this,” Dr. Elkington said. “Very unpleasant. I don’t know what you’re going to think.”

“Shall we have a look?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Bear a hand, Sergeant,” said Williams. “Keep it screened from the Green, we’d better.”

“I’ll move my car across,” Dr. Elkington said. He did so. Noakes and Williams released the tarpaulin and presently raised it. Alleyn being particular in such details, he and Fox took their hats off and so, after a surprised glance at them, did Dr. Elkington.

The body of Mr. Cartell lay on its back, not tidily. It was wet with mud and water, and marked about the head with blood. The face, shrouded in a dark and glistening mask, was unrecognizable, the thin hair clotted and dirty. It was clothed in a dressing gown, shirt and trousers, all of them stained and disordered. On the feet were black socks and red leather slippers. One hand was clenched about a clod of earth. Thin trickles of muddy water had oozed between the fingers.

Alleyn knelt beside it without touching it. He looked incongruous. Not his hands, his head, nor, for that matter, his clothes, suggested his occupation. If Mr. Cartell had been a rare edition of any subject other than death, his body would have seemed a more appropriate object for Alleyn’s fastidious consideration.

After a pause he replaced the tarpaulin, rose, and, keeping on the hard surface of the lane, stared down into the drain.

“Well,” he said. “And he was found below, there?” His very deep, clear voice struck loudly across the silence.

“Straight down from where they’ve put him. On his face. With the drainpipe on top of him.”

“Yes. I see.”

“They thought he might be alive. So they got him out of it. They had a job,” said Superintendent Williams. “Had to use the gear on the truck.”

“He was like this when you saw him, Dr. Elkington?”

“Yes. There are multiple injuries to the skull. I haven’t made an extensive examination. My guess would be it’s just about held together by the scalp.”

“Can we have a word with the men?”

Noakes motioned them to come forward and they did so with every sign of reluctance. One, the tallest, carried a piece of rag and he wiped his hands on it continually, as if he had been doing so, unconsciously, for some time.

“Good morning,” Alleyn said. “You’ve had an unpleasant job on your hands.”

The tall man nodded. One of his mates said: “Terrible.”

“I want you, if you will, to tell me exactly what happened. When did you find him?”

Fox unobtrusively took out his notebook.

“When we come on the job. Eight o’clock or near after.”

“You saw him at once?”

“Not to say there and then, sir,” the tall man said. He was evidently the foreman. “We had a word or two. Nutting out the day’s work, like. Took off our coats. Further along, back there, we was. You can see where the truck’s parked. There.”

“Ah, yes. And then?”

“Then we moved up. And I see the planks are missing that we laid across the drain for a bridge. And one of the pipes gone. So I says: ‘What the hell’s all this? Who’s been mucking round with them planks and the pipe?’ That’s correct, isn’t it?” He appealed to the others.