Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“I will, sir.” Fox offered.

“You keep your great boots out of this,” Alleyn rejoined cheerfully.

He placed the foot of the steel ladder near the place vhere the body was found and climbed down it. The drain sweated dank water and smelt sour and disgusting. From where he stood, on the bottom rung, he pulled out his flashlight.

From above they saw him stoop and reach under the plank that rested against the wall.

When he came up he carried something wrapped in his handkerchief. He knelt and laid his improvised parcel on the ground.

“Look at this,” he said and they gathered about him.

He unfolded his handkerchief.

On it lay a gold case, very beautifully worked. It had a jewelled clasp and was smeared with slime.

“His?” Williams said.

“Or somebody else’s?…I wonder.”

They stared at it in silence. Alleyn was about to wrap it again when they were startled by a loud, shocking and long-drawn-out howl.

About fifty yards away, sitting in the middle of the lane in an extremely dishevelled condition, with a leash dangling from her collar, was a half-bred boxer bitch, howling lamentably.

“Pixie,” said Noakes.

They met with difficulty trying to catch Pixie. If addressed she writhed subserviently, threshed her tail, and whined. If approached she sprang aside, ran a short distance in a craven manner, sat down again, and began alternately to bark and howl.

The five men whistled, stalked, ran and cursed, all to no avail. “She’ll rouse the whole bloody village at this rate,” Superintendent Williams lamented, and indeed several persons had collected beyond the cars at the road barrier.

Alleyn and Dr. Elkington tried a scissors movement, Noakes and Williams an ill-conceived form of indirect strategy. Fox made himself hot and cross in a laughable attempt to jump upon Pixie’s lead and all had come to nothing before they were aware of the presence of a small, exceedingly pale man in an alpaca jacket on the far side of Mr. Period’s gate. It was Alfred Belt.

How long he had been there it was impossible to say. He was standing quite still with his well-kept hands on the top of the gate and his gaze directed respectfully at Alleyn.

“If you will allow me, sir,” he said. “I think I may be able to secure the dog.”

“For God’s sake do,” Alleyn rejoined.

Alfred whistled. Pixie, with a travesty of canine archness, cocked her head on one side. “Here, girl,” Alfred said disgustedly. “Meat.” She loped round the top end of the drain and ran along the fence towards him. “You bitch,” he said dispassionately as she fawned upon him.

Superintendent Williams, red with his exertions, formally introduced Alfred across the drain. Alfred said: “Good morning, sir. Mr. Period has asked me to present his compliments and to say that if there is anything you require he hopes you will call upon him.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn rejoined. “I was going to. In about five minutes. Will you tell him?”

“Certainly, sir,” Alfred said and withdrew.

Alleyn said to Williams: “When the flash-and-dabs lot turn up, ask them to cover the whole job, will you, Bob? Everything. I’ll be in the house if I’m wanted. You know the story and can handle this end of it better than I. I’d be glad if you’d stay in.”

It was by virtue of such gestures as these that Alleyn maintained what are known as “good relations” with the county forces. Williams said: “Be pleased to,” and filled out his jacket.

Dr. Elkington said: “What about the body?”

“Could you arrange for it to be taken to the nearest mortuary? Sir James Curtis will do the p.m. and will be hoping to see you. He’ll be here by midday.”

“I’ve laid on the ambulance. The mortuary’s at Rimble.”

“Good. Either Fox or I will look you up at the Station at noon. There’s one other thing. What do you make of that?” He walked a few paces up the lane and pointed to a large damp patch on the surface. “There was no rain last night and it’s nothing to do with the digging. Looks rather as if a car with a leaky radiator had stood there. Might even have been filled up and overflowed. Damn this hard surface. Yes, look. There’s a bit of oil there, too, where the sump might well have dripped. Ah, well, it may not amount to a row of beans. Ready, Fox? Let’s go in through the side gate, shall we?”

They fetched a circuitous course round the drain and entered Mr. Period’s garden by the side gate. Near the house, Alleyn noticed a standpipe with a detached hose coiled up beside it and a nearby watering can from which the rose had been removed.

“Take a look at this, Br’er Fox,” he said and indicated a series of indentations about the size of sixpence leading to and from the standpipe.

“Yes,” Fox said. “And the can’s been moved and replaced.”

“That’s right. And who, in this predominantly male household, gardens in stiletto heels? Ah, well! Come on.”

They walked round the house to the front door, where Alfred formally admitted them.

“Mr. Period is in the library, sir,” he said. “May I take your coat?”

Fox, who, being an innocent snob, always enjoyed the treatment accorded to his senior officer on these occasions, placidly removed his own coat.

“What,” Alleyn asked Alfred, “have you done with the dog?”

“Shut her up, sir, in the woodshed. She ought never to have been let loose.”

“Quite so. Will you let me have her leash?”

“Sir?”

“The lead. Inspector Fox will pick it up. Will you, Fox? And join us in the library?”

Alfred inclined his head, straightened his arms, turned his closed hands outward from the wrists and preceded Alleyn to the library door.

“Mr. Roderick Alleyn, sir,” he announced.

It was perhaps typical of him that he omitted the rank and inserted the Christian name. “Because, after all, Mrs. M,” he expounded later on to his colleague, “whatever opinions you and I may form on the subject, class is class and to be treated as such. In the Force he may be, and with distinction. Of it, he is not.”

Mrs. Mitchell put this detestable point of view rather more grossly. “The brother’s a baronet,” she said. “And childless, at that. I read it in the News of the World . ‘The Handsome Super,’ it was called. Fancy!”

Meanwhile Alleyn was closeted with Mr. Pyke Period, who, in a different key, piped the identical tune.

“My dear Alleyn,” he said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you. If anything could lessen the appalling nature of this calamity it would be the assurance that we are in your hands.” There followed, inevitably, the news that Mr. Period was acquainted with Alleyn’s brother and was also an ardent admirer of Alleyn’s wife’s paintings. “She won’t remember an old backwater buster like me,” he said, wanly arch, “but I have had the pleasure of meeting her.”

All this was said hurriedly and with an air of great anxiety. Alleyn wondered if Mr. Period’s hand was normally as tremulous as it was this morning or his speech as breathless and uneven. As soon as Alleyn decently could, he got the conversation on a more formal basis.

He asked Mr. Period how long Mr. Cartell had been sharing the house, and learned that it was seven weeks. Before that Mr. Cartell had lived in London, where he had been the senior partner of an extremely grand and vintage firm of solicitors, from which position he had retired upon his withdrawal into the country. The family, Mr. Period said, came originally from Gloucestershire — Bloodstone Parva, in the Cotswolds. Having got as far as this he pulled himself up short and, unaccountably, showed great uneasiness.

Alleyn asked him when he had last seen Mr. Cartell.