Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“Who found him?”

“A district nurse. About an hour ago.”

“Fancy,” said Alleyn mildly, and after a pause, “I wonder just why that old lady has come plunging in after me.”

“I daresay,” Fox said with great simplicity, “she has a fancy for someone of her own class.”

Alleyn replied absently, “Do you, now?” and it said something for their friendship that neither of them felt the smallest embarrassment. Alleyn continued to ruminate on the Lacklanders. “Before the war,” he said, “the old boy was Chargé d’Affaires at Zlomce. The Special Branch got involved for a time, I remember. There was a very nasty bit of leakage: a decoded message followed by the suicide of the chap concerned. He was said to have been in cahoots with known agents. I was with the Special Branch at that time and had quite a bit to do with it. Perhaps the dowager wishes to revive old memories or something. Or perhaps she merely runs the village of Swevenings, murdered colonels and all, with the same virtuosity she brought to her husband’s public life. Do you know Swevenings, Br’er Fox?”

“Can’t say I do, sir.”

“I do. Troy did a week’s painting there a summer or two ago. It’s superficially pretty and fundamentally beautiful,” Alleyn said. “Quaint as hell, but take a walk after dusk and you wouldn’t be surprised at anything you met. It’s one of the oldest in England. ‘Swevenings,’ meaning Dreams. There was some near-prehistoric set-to in the valley, I forget what, and another during Bolingbroke’s rebellion and yet another in the Civil Wars. This Colonel’s blood is not the first soldier’s, by a long chalk, to be spilt at Swevenings.”

“They will do it,” Fox said cryptically and with resignation. For a long time they drove on in a silence broken at long intervals by the desultory conversation of old friends.

“We’re running into a summer storm,” Alleyn said presently. Giant drops appeared on the windscreen and were followed in seconds by a blinding downpour.

“Nice set-up for field-work,” Fox grumbled.

“It may be local. Although… no, by gum, we’re nearly there. This is Chyning. Chyning: meaning, I fancy, a yawn or yawning.”

“Yawns and dreams,” Fox said. “Funny sort of district! What language would that be, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Chaucerian English, only don’t depend on me. The whole district is called the Vale of Traunce, or brown-study. It all sounds hellishly quaint, but that’s how it goes. There’s the blue lamp.”

The air smelt fresher when they got out. Rain drummed on roofs and flagstones and cascaded down the sides of houses. Alleyn led the way into a typical county police-station and was greeted by a tall sandy-haired sergeant.

“Chief Inspector Alleyn, sir? Sergeant Oliphant. Very glad to see you, sir.”

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said, introducing him. There followed a solemn shaking of hands and a lament that has become increasingly common of late years in the police force. “We’re that short of chaps in the county,” Sergeant Oliphant said, “we don’t know which way to turn if anything of this nature crops up. The Chief Constable said to me, “Can we do it, Oliphant? Suppose we call on Siminster, can we do it? And look, Mr. Alleyn, I had to say no, we can’t.”

Fox said, “T’ch.”

“Well, exactly, Mr. Fox,” Oliphant said. “If you haven’t got the chaps, it’s no good blundering in, is it? I’ve left my one P.C. in charge of the body, and that reduces my staff to me. Shall we move off, Mr. Alleyn? You’ll find it wettish.”

Alleyn and Fox accompanied the sergeant in his car while Bailey, Thompson and the Yard driver followed their lead. On the way Sergeant Oliphant gave a business-like report. Sir George Lacklander had rung up Sir James Punston, the Chief Constable, who in turn had rung Oliphant at a quarter to nine. Oliphant and his constable had then gone to Bottom Meadow and had found Dr. Mark Lacklander, Nurse Kettle and the body of Colonel Cartarette. They had taken a brief statement from Nurse Kettle and asked her to remain handy. Dr. Lacklander, who, in Oliphant’s presence, made a very brief examination of the body, had then gone to break the news to the relatives of the deceased, taking Nurse Kettle with him. The sergeant had returned to Chyning and reported to the Chief Constable, who decided to call in the Yard. The constable had remained on guard by the body with Colonel Cartarette’s spaniel, the latter having strenuously resisted all attempts to remove him.

“Did you form any opinion at all, Oliphant?” Alleyn asked. This is the most tactful remark a C.I.D. man can make to a county officer, and Oliphant coruscated under its influence.

“Not to say opinion, sir,” he said. “Not to say that. One thing I did make sure of was not to disturb anything. He’s lying on a patch of shingle screened in by a half-circle of willows and cut off on the open side by the stream. He’s lying on his right side, kind of curled up as if he’d been bowled over from a kneeling position, like. His hat was over his face. Nurse Kettle moved it when she found him, and Dr. Lacklander moved it again when he examined the wound which is in the left temple. A dirty great puncture,” the sergeant continued, easing off his official manner a point or two, “with what the doctor calls extensive fractures all round it. Quite turned my chap’s stomach, drunks-in-charge and disorderly behaviour being the full extent of his experience.”

Alleyn and Fox having chuckled in the right place, the sergeant continued. “No sign of the weapon, so far as we could make out, flashing our torches round. I was particular not to go hoofing over the ground.”

“Admirable,” said Alleyn.

“Well,” said Sergeant Oliphant, “it’s what we’re told, sir, isn’t it?”

“Notice anything at all out of the way?” Alleyn asked. The question was inspired more by kindliness than curiosity, and the sergeant’s reaction surprised him. Oliphant brought his two freckled hams of hands down on the driving-wheel and made a complicated snorting noise. “Out of the way!” he shouted. “Ah, my God, I’ll say we did. Out of the way! Tell me, now, sir, are you a fly-fisherman?”

“Only fair to middling to worse. I do when I get the chance. Why?”

“Now listen,” Sergeant Oliphant said, quite abandoning his official position. “There’s a dirty great fish in this Chyne here would turn your guts over for you. Pounds if he’s an ounce, he is. Old in cunning, he is, wary and sullen and that lordly in his lurkings and slinkings he’d break your heart. Sometimes he’ll rise like a monster,” said Sergeant Oliphant, urging his car up Watt’s Hill, “and snap, he’s took it, though that’s only three times. Once being the deceased’s doing a matter of a fortnight ago, which he left his cast in his jaws, he being a mighty fighter. And once the late squire Sir Harold Lacklander, which he lost him through being, as the man himself frankly admitted, overzealous in the playing of him, and NOW,” the sergeant shouted, “NOW, for the last and final cast, hooked, played and landed by the poor Colonel, sir, and lying there by his dead body, or I can’t tell a five-pound trout from a stickleback. Well, if he had to die, he couldn’t have had a more glorious end. The Colonel, I mean, Mr. Alleyn, not the Old ’Un,” said Sergeant Oliphant.

They had followed Watt’s Lane down into the valley and up the slope through blinding rain to the village. Oliphant pulled up at a spot opposite the Boy and Donkey. A figure in a mackintosh and tweed hat stood in the lighted doorway.

“The Chief Constable, sir,” said Oliphant. “Sir James Punston. He said he’d drive over and meet you.”

“I’ll have a word with him, before we go on. Wait a moment.”