Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

Fox remarked that he had no doubt that they would meet.

When Alfred had gone Mrs. Mitchell said: “Mr. Belt feels strongly on the subject. I don’t like to think of destroying the dog, I must say. I wonder if my sister would like her for the kiddies. Of course with her out of the way and the other matter settled, it will seem more like old times.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “That sounds terrible. Don’t take me up wrong, Mr. Fox, but we was all very comfortably situated before and therefore sorry to contemplate making a change.”

“Were you thinking of it? Giving notice?”

“Mr. Belt was. Definitely. Though reluctant to do so, being he’s stayed all his working life with our gentleman. However, he spoke to Mr. Period on the subject, and the outcome was promising.”

Mrs. Mitchell enlarged upon this theme at some length. “Which was a relief to all concerned,” she ended, “seeing we are in other respects well situated, and the social background all that you could fancy. Tonight, for instance, there’s the Church Social, which we both attend regular and will in spite of everything. But after what passed between him and Mr. Cartell over the missing article, nothing else could be expected. Mr. Belt,” Mrs. Mitchell added, “is a man who doesn’t forget. Not a thing of that sort. During the war,” she added obscurely, “he was in the signalling.”

The back doorbell rang and Mrs. Mitchell attended it. Fox could hear, but not distinguish, a conversation in which a male voice played the predominant part. He strolled to an advantageous position in time to hear Mrs. Mitchell say, “Fancy! I wonder why!” and to see a man in a shabby suit who said: “Your guess is as good as mine. Well, I’ll be on my way.”

Fox returned to his chair and Mrs. Mitchell re-entered.

“Mr. Copper from the garage,” she said. “To inquire about the Church Social. He saw your Superintendent coming out of Ribblethorpe Church. I wonder why.”

Fox said Superintendent Alleyn was much interested in old buildings, and, with the inner calm that characterized all his proceedings, took his leave and went to the Little Codling constabulary. Here he found Superintendent Williams with his wife’s vacuum cleaner. “Not the Yard job,” Williams said cheerfully, “but it’s got a baby nozzle and should do.”

They gave Leonard Leiss’s dinner suit and overcoat a very thorough going-over, extracting soil from the excavations and enough of Mr. Period’s Turkish cigarette tobacco to satisfy, as Fox put it, a blind juryman in a total eclipse.

They paid particular attention to Leonard’s wash-leather gloves, which were, as Nicola had suggested, on the dainty side.

“Soiled,” Williams pointed out, “but he didn’t lift any planks with those on his hands.” Fox wrote up his notes and, in a reminiscent mood, drank several cups of strong tea with the Superintendent and Sergeant Noakes, who was then dispatched to return the garments to their owner.

At five o’clock Alleyn arrived in the police car and they all drove to the mortuary at Rimble. It was behind the police station and had rambling roses trained up its concrete walls. Here they found Sir James Curtis, the Home Office Pathologist, far enough on with his autopsy on Harold Cartell’s body to be able to confirm Alleyn’s tentative diagnosis. The cranial injuries were consistent with a blow from the plank. The remaining multiple injuries were caused by the drainpipe falling on the body and ramming it into the mud. The actual cause of death had been suffocation. Dr. Elkington was about to leave and they all stood looking down at what was left of Mr. Cartell. The face was now cleaned. A knowledgeable, faintly supercilious, expression lay about the mouth and brows.

In an adjoining shed, Williams had found temporary storage for the planks, the lantern and the stanchion. Here, Detective-Sergeants Thompson and Bailey were to be found, having taken further and more extensive photographs.

“I’m a bit of a camera-fiend myself and they’ve been using my darkroom,” said Williams. “We’re getting the workmen to bring the drainpipe along in their crane-truck. Noakes’ll come back with them and keep an eye on it, but these chaps of yours tell me they got what they wanted on the spot.”

Alleyn made the appropriate compliments, which were genuine, indeed. Williams was the sort of colleague that visiting Superintendents yearn after, and Alleyn told him so.

Bailey, a man of few words, great devotion and mulish disposition, indicated the two foot-planks which had been laid across packing cases, underside up.

“Hairs,” he said. “Three. Consistent with deceased’s.”

“Good.”

“There’s another thing.” Bailey jerked his finger at a piece of microphotographic film and a print laid out under glass on an improvised bench. “The print brings it up. Still wet, but you can make it out. Just.”

The planks were muddy where they had dug into the walls of the ditch, but at the edges and ten inches from the ends of microphotograph showed confused traces. Alleyn spent some time over them.

“Yes,” he said. “Gloved hands, I don’t mind betting. Big, heavy gloves.” He looked up at Bailey. “It’s a rough undersurface. If you can find as much leather as would go in the eye of a needle we’re not home and dry but we may be in sight. Which way were they carried here?”

“Underside up,” Bailey said.

“Right. Well, you can but try.”

“I have, Mr. Alleyn. Can again.”

“Do,” said Alleyn. He was going over the undersurface of the planks with his lens. “Tweezers,” he said.

Bailey put a pair in his hand and fetched a sheet of paper.

“Have a go at these,” Alleyn said and dropped two minute specks on the paper. “They may be damn’-all but it looks as if they might have rubbed off the seam of a heavy glove. Not wash leather, by the way. Strong hide — and … Look here.”

He had found another fragment. “String,” he said. “Heavy leather and string.”

“You got to have the eyes for it,” Detective-Sergeant Thompson said to nobody in particular.

During the brief silence that followed this pronouncement, the unmistakable racket of a souped-up engine made itself heard.

“That,” Mr. Fox observed, “sounds like young Mr. Leiss’s sports car.”

“Stopping,” Williams observed.

“Come on, Fox,” Alleyn said. They went out to the gate. It was indeed Mr. Leiss’s sports car, but Mr. Leiss was not at the wheel. The car screamed to a halt, leaving a trail of water from its radiator. Moppett, wearing a leather coat and jeans, was leaning out of the driving window.

With allowances for her make-up, which contrived to look both dirty and extreme, Alleyn would have thought she was pale. Her manner was less assured than it had been: indeed, she seemed to be in something of an emotional predicament.

“Oh, good,” she said. “They told me you might be here. Sorry to bother you.”

“Not at all,” Alleyn said. Moppett’s fingers, over-fleshed, sketchily nail-painted and stained with nicotine, moved restlessly on the driving wheel.

“It’s like this,” she said. “The local cop’s just brought Lenny’s things back: the overcoat and dinner suit.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Well, the thing is, his gloves are missing.”

Alleyn glanced at Fox.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Ralston,” Fox said, “but I saw to the parcel myself. The gloves were returned. Cream wash leather, size seven.”

“I don’t mean those,” Moppett said. “I mean his driving gloves. They’re heavy leather ones with string backs. I ought to know. I gave them to him.”

“Suppose,” Alleyn suggested, “you park your car and we get this sorted out.”