Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“More Force?” Moppett remarked. “Delicious!”

“This is Inspector Fox,” Aileyn said as his colleague appeared. He handed Leonard’s dinner suit and overcoat to Fox. “General routine check,” he said, “and I’d like you to witness something I’m going to say to Miss Mary Ralston.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Ralston,” Fox said pleasantly. He hung Leonard’s garments over the bannister and produced his notebook. The half-smile did not leave Moppett’s face but seemed, rather, to remain there by a sort of oversight.

“Understand this,” Alleyn continued, speaking to Moppett. “We are investigating a capital crime and I have, I believe, proof that last night the cigarette case in question was in the possession of that unspeakable young man of yours. It was found by Mr. Cartell’s body and Mr. Cartell has been murdered.”

“Murdered!” she ejaculated. “He hasn’t !” And then she went very white round the mouth. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “People like him don’t get murdered. Why?”

“For one of the familiar motives,” Alleyn said. “For knowing something damaging about someone else. Or threatening to take action against somebody. Financial troubles. Might be anything.”

“Auntie Con said it was an accident.”

“I daresay she didn’t want to upset you.”

“Bloody dumb of her!” Moppett said viciously.

“Obviously you don’t feel the same concern for her. But if you did, in the smallest degree, you would answer my questions truthfully. If you’ve any sense, you’ll do so for your own sake.”

“Why?’

“To save yourself from the suspicion of something much more serious than theft.”

She seemed to contract inside Leonard’s dressing-gown. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know anything about it.”

Alleyn thought: Are these two wretched young no-goods in the fatal line? Is that to be the stale, deadly familiar end?

He said: “If you stole the cigarette case, or Mr. Leiss stole it, or you both stole it in collusion, and, if, for one reason or another, you dropped it in the ditch last night, you will be well advised to say so.”

“How do I know that? You’re trying to trap me.”

Alleyn said patiently: “Believe me, I’m not concerned to trap the innocent. Nor, at the moment, am I primarily interested in theft.”

“Then you’re trying to bribe me.”

This observation, showing as it did a flash of perception, was infuriating.

“I can neither bribe nor threaten,” he said. “But I can warn you, and I do. You’re in a position of great danger. You, personally. Do you know what happens to people who withhold evidence in a case of homicide? Do you know what happens to accessories before the fact of such a crime? Do you ?”

Her face crumpled suddenly like a child’s and her enormous shallow eyes overflowed.

“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll tell you. But it wasn’t anything. You’ve got it all wrong. It was—”

“Well?”

“It was all a mistake,” Moppett whispered.

The bedroom door opened and Leonard came out in his violet pajamas.

“You keep your great big beautiful trap shut, honey,” he said. He stood behind Moppett, holding her arms. He really would, Alleyn had time to consider, do rather well in a certain type of film.

“Mr. Leiss,” he said, “will you be kind enough to take yourself out of this?”

But, even as he said it, he knew it was no good. With astonishing virtuosity Moppett, after a single ejaculation of pain and a terrified glance at Leonard, leant back against him, falling abruptly into the role of seductive accessory. The tears still stood in her eyes and her mouth twitched as his fingers bit into her arm. She contrived a smile.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said, rubbing her head against Leonard. “I’m not saying a thing.”

“That’s my girl,” said Leonard savagely.

“Not,” Mr. Fox remarked as they drove away, “the type of young people you’d expect to find in this environment.”

“Not County, you think?” Alleyn returned.

“Certainly not,” Fox said primly. “Leiss, now — a bad type that. Wide boy. Only a matter of time before he’s inside for a tied stretch. But the young lady’s a different story. Or ought to be,” Fox said after a pause. “Or ought to be,” he repeated heavily.

“The young lady,” Alleyn said tartly, “is a young stinker. Look, Fox! There are threads of the Period cigarette tobacco in Leiss’s pocket. Bob Williams’ll lay on a vacuum cleaner, I daresay. Go through the pockets and return the unspeakable garments, will you? And check his dabs from the oddments in the pockets. To my mind, there’s no doubt they pinched the cigarette case. Suppose Cartell or Period or both cut up rough? What then?”

“Ah,” Fox said. “Exactly. And suppose Mr. Cartell threatend to go to the police and they set the trap for him and accidentally dropped the case in doing it?”

“All right. Suppose they did. Now as to their actions on the scene of the crime, we’ve got that pleasant child, Nicola Maitland-Mayne, for a witness; but she was in the throes of young love and may have missed one or two tricks. I’ll check with her young man, although he was probably further gone than she. All right. I’ll drop you at the Station and return to the genteel assault on Mr. Pyke Period. He’ll have lunched by now. What about you?”

“Or you, Mr. Alleyn, if it comes to that.”

“I think I’ll press on, Br’er Fox. Get yourself a morsel of cheese and pickle at the pub and see if there’s anything more to be extracted from that cagey little job, Alfred Belt.”

“As a matter of fact,” Fox confessed, “Mr. Belt and Mrs. Mitchell, the cook, who seems to be a very superior type of woman, suggested I should drop in for a snack later in the day. Mrs. Mitchell went so far as to indicate she’d set something cold aside.”

“I might have known it,” Alleyn said. “Meet you at the Station at fiveish.” The car pulled up at Mr. Pyke Period’s gate and he got out, arranging for it to pick him up again in half an hour.

Mr. Period received him fretfully in the drawing-room. He was evidently still much perturbed and kept shooting unhappy little glances out of the corners of his eyes. Alleyn could just hear the stutter of Nicola’s typewriter in the study.

“I can’t settle to anything. I couldn’t eat my lunch. It’s all too difficult and disturbing,” said Mr. Period.

“And I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier,” Alleyn rejoined. He waited for a moment and decided to fire point-blank. “Mr. Period,” he said, “will you tell me why you wrote two letters of condolence to Miss Cartell, why they are almost exactly the same, and why the first was written and sent to her before either of you had been informed of her brother’s death?”

There was nothing to be learnt from Mr. Period’s face. Shock, guilt, astonishment, lack of comprehension or mere deafness might have caused his jaw to drop and his eyes to glaze. When he did speak it was politely and conventionally. “I beg your pardon? What did you say?”

Alleyn repeated his question. Mr. Period seemed to think it over. After a considerable pause he said flatly: “But I didn’t.”

“You didn’t what?”

“Write twice. The thing’s ridiculous.”

Alleyn drew the two letters from his pocket and laid them before Mr. Period, who screwed his glass in his eye and stooped over them. When he straightened up, his face was the colour of beetroot. “There has been a stupid mistake,” he said.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to explain it.”

“There’s nothing to explain.”

“My dear Period!” Alleyn ejaculated.