Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“That’s the lady. The main object of the party was a treasure hunt, I understand,”

“A hideous curse on it,” Alleyn said heartily. “We’ve about as much hope of disentangling anything useful in the way of footprints as you’d get in a wine press. How long did it go on?”

“The noise abated before I went to bed,” Dr. Elkington said, “which was at twelve. As I’ve mentioned, I was dragged out again.”

“Well, at least we’ll be able to find out if the planks and lantern were untouched until then. In the meantime we’d better go through the hilarious farce of keeping our own boots off the area under investigation.…What’s this?…Wait a jiffy.”

He was standing near the end of one of the drainpipes. It lay across a slight depression that looked as if it had been scooped out. From this he drew a piece of blue letter paper. Williams looked over his shoulder. “Poytry,” Williams said disgustedly. The two lines had been amateurishly typed. Alleyn read them aloud.

If you don’t know what to do

Think it over in the loo .

“Elegant, I must say!” Dr. Elkington ejaculated.

“That’ll be a clue, no doubt,” Fox said and Alleyn gave it to him.

“I wish the rest of the job were as explicit,” he remarked.

“What,” Williams asked, “do you make of it, Alleyn? Any chance of accident?”

“What do you think yourself?”

“I’d say, none.”

“And so would I. Take a look at it. The planks had been dragged forward until the ends were only just supported by the lip of the bank. There’s one print, the deceased’s by the look of it, on the original traces of the planks before they were moved. It suggests that he came through the gate, where the path is hard and hasn’t taken an impression. I think he had his torch in his left hand. He stepped on the trace and then on the planks, which gave under him. I should say he pitched forward as he fell, dropping his torch, and one of the planks pitched back, striking him in the face. That’s guesswork, but I think, Elkington, that when he’s cleaned up you’ll find the nose is broken. As he was face down in the mud, the plank seems a possible explanation. All right. The lantern was suspended from an iron stanchion. The stanchion had been driven into the earth at an angle and overhung the edge between the displaced drainpipe and its neighbour. And, by the way, it seems to have been jammed in twice: there’s a second hole nearby. The lantern would be out of reach for him and he couldn’t have grabbed at it. How big is the dog?”

“What’s that?” Williams asked, startled.

“Prints that have escaped the boots of the drainlayers suggest a large dog.”

“Pixie,” said Sergeant Noakes, who had been silent for a considerable time.

“Oh!” said Superintendent Williams disgustedly. “Her.”

“It’s a dirty great mongrel of a thing, Mr. Alleyn,” Noakes offered. “The deceased gentleman called it a boxer. He was in the habit of bringing it out here before he went to bed, which was at one o’clock, regular as clockwork. It’s a noisy brute. There have been,” Noakes added, sounding a leitmotif , “complaints about Pixie.”

“Pixie,” Alleyn said, “must be an athletic girl. She jumped the ditch. There are prints if you can sort them out. But have a look at Cartell’s right hand, Elkington, would you?”

Dr. Elkington did so. “There’s a certain amount of contusion,” he said, “with ridges. And at the edges of the palm, well-defined grooves.”

“How about a leather leash, jerked tight?”

“It might well be.”

“Now the stanchion, Fox.”

Fox leant over from his position on the hard surface of the lane. He carefully lifted and removed the stanchion. Handling it as if it were some fragile objet d’art , he said: “There are traces, Mr. Alleyn. Lateral rubbings. Something dragged tight and then pulled away might be the answer.”

“So it’s at least possible that as Cartell dropped, Pixie jumped the drain. The lead jerked. Pixie entangled herself with the stanchion, pulled it loose, freed herself from it and from the hand that had led her, and made off. The lantern fell in the drain. Might be. Where is Pixie, does anyone know?”

“Shall I inquire at the house?” Noakes asked.

“It can wait. All this is the most shameless conjecture, really.”

“To me,” Williams said, considering it, “it seems likely enough.”

“It’ll do to go on with. But it doesn’t explain,” Alleyn said, “why the wick in the lantern’s been turned hard off, does it?”

“Is that a fact!” Noakes remarked, primly.

“This stanchion…” said Williams, who had been looking at it. “Have you noticed the lower point? You’d expect it to come out of the soil clean, or else dirty all round. But it’s dirty on one side and sort of scraped clean on the other.”

“You’ll go far in the glorious profession of your choice.”

“Come off it!” said Williams, who had done part of his training with Alleyn.

“Look at the ground where that great walloping pipe was laid out. That at least is not entirely obliterated by boots. See the scars in the earth on this side? Slanting holes with a scooped depression on the near side.”

“What of them?”

“Try it, Fox.”

Fox, who was holding the stanchion by its top, laid the pointed end delicately in one of the scars. “Fits,” he said. “There’s your lever, I reckon.”

“If so, the mud on one side was scraped off on the pipe. Wrap it up and lay it by. The flash-and-dabs boys will be here any moment now. We’ll have to take casts, Br’er Fox.”

Dr. Elkington said: “What’s all this about the stanchion?”

“We’re wondering if it was used as a lever for the drainpipe. We’re not very likely to find anything on the pipe itself, after the rough handling it’s been given, but it’s worth trying.”

He walked to the end of the drain, returned on the far side to the solitary pipe and squatted, beside it. Presently he said: “There are marks — scrapings — same distance apart, at a guess. I think we’ll find they fill the bill.”

When he had rejoined the others, he stood for a moment and surveyed the scene. A capful of wind blew down Green Lane, snatched at a corner of the tarpaulin and caused it to ripple very slightly, as if Mr. Cartell had stirred. Fox attended to it, tucking it under, with a macabre suggestion of coziness.

Alleyn said: “If ever it behooved us to keep open minds about a case it behooves us to do so over this one. My reading, so far, may be worth damn’-all, but such as it is I’ll make you a present of it…

“On the surface appearance it looks to me as though this was a premeditated job and was carried out with the minimum of fancywork. Some time before Cartell tried to cross it, the plank bridge was pulled towards the road side of the drain until the further ends rested on the extreme edge. The person who did this then put out the light in the lantern, and hid: very likely by lying down on the hard surface alongside one of the pipes. The victim came out with his dog on a leash. He stepped on the bridge, which collapsed. He was struck in the face by a plank and stunned. The leash bit into his right hand before it was jerked free. The dog jumped the drain, possibly got itself mixed up with the iron stanchion and, if so, probably dislodged the lantern, which fell into the drain. The concealed person came back, used the stanchion as a lever and rolled the drainpipe into the drain. It fell fourteen feet on his victim and killed him. He — Hullo! What’s that?”

He leant forward, peering into the ditch: “This looks like something,” he sighed. “Down, I fear, into the depths I go.”