Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“That’s right,” they said.

“It’s like I told you, Mr. Noakes. We all told you.”

“All right, Bill,” Williams said easily. “The Superintendent just wants to hear for himself.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Alleyn. “To get a clear idea, you know…It’s better at first hand.”

The foreman said: “It’s not all that pleasant, though, is it? And us chaps have got our responsibility to think of. We left the job like we ought to: everything in order. Planks set. Lamps lit. Everything safe. Now look!”

“Lamps? I saw some at the ends of the working. Was there one here?”

“A-course there was. To show the planks. That’s the next thing we notice. It’s gone. Matter of fact they’re all laying in the drain now.”

“So they are,” Alleyn said. “It’s a thumping great drain you’re digging here, by the way. What is it, a relief outfall sewer or something?”

This evidently made an impression. The foreman said that was exactly what it was and went into a professional exposition.

“She’s deep,” he said. “She’s as deep as you’ll come across anywhere. Fourteen-be-three she lays, and very nasty spoil to work, being wet and heavy. One in a thou’-fall. All right. Leaving an open job you take precautions. Lamp. Planks. Notice given. The lot. Which is what we done, and done careful and according.…And this is what we find. All right; we see something’s wrong. All right; so I says, ‘And where’s the bloody lamp?’ and I walk up to the edge and look down. And then I seen.”

“Exactly what?”

The foreman ground the rag between his hands.

“First go off,” he said, “I notice the pipe, laying down there with a lot of the spoil, and then I notice an electric torch — it’s there now.”

“It’s the deceased’s,” Williams said. “His man recognized it. I thought best to leave it there.”

“Good. And then?” Alleyn asked the foreman.

“Well, I noticed all this, like, and — it’s funny when you come to think of it — I’m just going to blow my top about this pipe, when I kind of realize I’ve been looking at something else. Sticking out, they was, at the end, half sunk in mud. His legs. It didn’t seem real. Like I said to the chaps: ‘Look, what’s that?’ Daft! Because I seen clear enough what it was.”

“I know.”

“So we get the truck and go down and clear the pipe and planks out of it. Had to use the crane. The planks are laying there now, where we left them. We slung the pipe up and off him and across to the far bank like. Then we seen more — all there was to see. Sunk, he was. Rammed down, you might say, be the weight. I knew, first go off, he was a goner. Well — the back of his head was enough. But—” The foreman glared resentfully at Noakes. “I don’t give a b— what anyone tells me, you can’t leave a thing like that. You got to see if there’s anything to be done.”

Noakes made a noncommittal noise and looked at Alleyn. “I think you do, you know, Sergeant,” Alleyn said, and the foreman, gratified, continued.

“So we got ’im out like you said, sir. It was a very nasty job, what with the depth and the wet and the state he was in. And once out — finish! Gone. No mistake about it. So we give the alarm in the house there and they take a fit of the horrors and fetch the doctor.”

“Good,” Alleyn said, “couldn’t be clearer. Now look here. You can see pretty well where he was lying although, of course, the impression has been trodden out a bit. Unavoidably. Now, the head was about there, I take it, so that he was not directly under the place where the planks had been laid, but at an angle to it. The feet beneath, the head out to the left. The left hand, now. Was it stretched out ahead of him? Like that? With the arm bent? Was the right arm extended — so?”

The foreman and his mates received this with grudging approval. One of the mates said: “Dead right, innit?” and the other: “Near enough.” The foreman blew a faint appreciative whistle.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “he’s clutching a clod of mud and you can see where the fingers dragged down the side of the ditch, can’t you? All right. Was one plan — how? Half under him or what?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Superintendent Williams said: “You can see where the planks were placed all right, before they fell. Clear as mud, and mud’s the word in this outfit. The ends near the gate were only just balanced on the edge. Look at the marks where they scraped down the side. Bound to give way as soon as he put his weight on them.”

The men broke into an angry expostulation. They’d never left them like that. They’d left them safe: overlapping the bank by a good six inches at each side; a firm bridge.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “you can see that, Williams. There are the old marks. Trodden down but there, undoubtedly.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the foreman pointedly.

“Now then, let’s have a look at this lamp,” Alleyn suggested. Using their ladder, they retrieved it from its bed in the ditch, about two feet above the place where the body had lain. It was smothered in mud, but unbroken. The men pointed out an iron stanchion from which it had been suspended. This was uprooted and lying near the edge of the drain.

“The lamp was lit when you knocked off yesterday, was it?”

“Same as the others, and they was still burning, see, when we come on the job this morning.”

Alleyn murmured: “Look at this, Fox.” He turned the lamp towards Fox, who peered into it.

“Been turned right down,” he said under his breath. “Hard down.”

“Take charge of it, will you?”

Alleyn rejoined the men. “One more point,” he said. “How did you leave the drainpipe yesterday evening? Was it laid out in that gap, end to end with the others?”

“That’s right,” they said.

“Immediately above the place where the body was found?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

The foreman looked at his mates and then burst out again with some violence. “And if anyone tries to tell you it could be moved be accident you can tell him he ought to get his head read. Them pipes is main sewer pipes. It takes a crane to shift them, the way we’ve left them, and only a lever will roll them in. Now! Try it out on one of the others if you don’t believe me. Try it. That’s all.”

“I believe you very readily,” Alleyn said. “And I think that’s all we need bother you about at the moment. We’ll get out a written record of everything you’ve told us and ask you to call at the Station and look it over. If it’s in order, we’ll want you to sign it. If it’s not, you’ll no doubt help us by putting it right. You’ve acted very properly throughout, as I’m sure Mr. Williams and Sergeant Noakes will be the first to agree.”

“There you are,” Williams said. “No complaints.”

Huffily reassured, the men retired. “The first thing I’d like to know, Bob,” Alleyn said, “is what the devil’s been going on round this dump? Look at it. You’d think the whole village had been holding Mayday revels over it. Women in evening shoes, women in brogues. Men in heavy shoes, men in light shoes, and the whole damn’ mess overtrodden, of course, by working boots. Most of it went on before the event, all of it except the boots, I fancy, but what the hell was it about?”

“Some sort of daft party,” Williams said. “Cavorting through the village, they were. We’ve had complaints. It was up at the Big House: Baynesholme Manor.”

“One of Lady Bantling’s little frolics,” Dr. Elkington observed dryly. “It seems to have ended in a dogfight. I was called out at two-thirty to bandage her husband’s hand. They’d broken up by then.”

“Can you be talking about Désirée, Lady Bantling?”