Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“Who was that, I wonder?”

“None other,” said Lady Lacklander, “than poor Maurice Cartarette himself. He saw it and the devil of a row they had over it, I may tell you.”

If the Lacklanders had been a different sort of people, Alleyn thought, they would have more clearly betrayed the emotion that he suspected had visited them all. It was, he felt sure from one or two slight manifestations, one of relief rather than surprise on Mark’s part and of both elements on his father’s. Rose looked troubled and Kitty merely stared. It was, surprisingly, Nurse Kettle who made the first comment.

“That old fish,” she said. “Such a lot of fuss!”

Alleyn looked at her and liked what he saw. “I’ll talk to her first,” he thought, “when I get round to solo interviews.”

He said, “How do you know, Lady Lacklander, that they had this row?”

“A: because I heard ’em, and B: because Maurice came straight to me when they parted company. That’s how, my dear man.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“I gathered that Maurice Cartarette came down intending to try the evening rise when I’d done with him. He came out of his own spinney and saw Occy Phinn up to no good down by the bridge. Maurice crept up behind him. He caught Occy red-handed, having just landed the Old ’Un. They didn’t see me, ” Lady Lacklander went on, “because I was down in my hollow on the other bank. Upon my soul, I doubt if they’d have bridled their tongues if they had. They sounded as if they’d come to blows. I heard them tramping about on the bridge. I was debating whether I should rise up like some rather oversized deity and settle them when Occy bawled out that Maurice could have his so-and-so fish and Maurice said he wouldn’t be seen dead with it.” A look of absolute horror appeared for one second in Lady Lacklander’s eyes. It was as if they had all shouted at her, “But he was seen dead with it, you know.” She made a sharp movement with her hands and hurried on. “There was a thump, as if someone had thrown something wet and heavy on the ground. Maurice said he’d make a county business of it, and Occy said if he did, he, Occy, would have Maurice’s dog empounded for chasing his, Occy’s, cats. On that note they parted. Maurice came fuming over the hillock and saw me. Occy, as far as I know, stormed back up the hill to Jacob’s Cottage.”

“Had Colonel Cartarette got the fish in his hands, then?”

“Not he. I told you, he refused to touch it. He left it there, on the bridge. I saw it when I went home. For all I know, it’s still lying there on the bridge.”

“It’s lying by Colonel Cartarette,” Alleyn said, “and the question seems to be, doesn’t it, who put it there?”

This time the silence was long and completely blank.

“He must have come back and taken it, after all,” Mark said dubiously.

“No,” Rose said strongly. They all turned to her. Rose’s face was dimmed with tears and her voice uncertain. Since Alleyn’s arrival she had scarcely spoken, and he wondered if she was so much shocked that she did not even try to listen to them.

“No?” he said gently.

“He wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s not at all the sort of thing he’d do.”

“That’s right,” Kitty agreed. “He wasn’t like that,” and she caught her breath in a sob.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said at once. “Stupid of me. Of course, you’re right. The Colonel wasn’t like that.”

Rose gave him a look that told Alleyn as much as he wanted to know about their relationship. “So they’re in love,” he thought. “And unless I’m growing purblind, his father’s got more than half an eye on her stepmother. What a very compact little party, to be sure.”

He said to Lady Lacklander, “Did you stay there long after he left you?”

“No. We talked for about ten minutes and then Maurice re-crossed the bridge, as I told you, and disappeared behind the willows on the right bank.”

“Which way did you go home?”

“Up through the Home Spinney to Nunspardon.”

“Could you see into the willow grove at all?”

“Certainly. When I was half-way up I stopped to pant, and I looked down and there he was, casting into the willow-grove reach.”

“That would be about eight.”

“About eight, yes.”

“I think you said you left your painting gear to be collected, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Who collected it, please?”

“One of the servants. William, the footman, probably.”

“No,” Mark said. “No, Gar. I did.”

“You?” his grandmother said. “What were you doing…” and stopped short.

Mark said rapidly that after making a professional call in the village he had gone in to play tennis at Hammer and had stayed there until about ten minutes past eight. He had returned home by the river path and as he approached Bottom Bridge had seen his grandmother’s shooting-stick, stool and painting gear in a deserted group on a hillock. He carried them back to Nunspardon and was just in time to prevent the footman from going down to collect them. Alleyn asked him if he had noticed a large trout lying on Bottom Bridge. Mark said that he hadn’t done so, but at the same moment his grandmother gave one of her short ejaculations.

“You must have seen it, Mark,” she said. “Great gaping thing lying there where Octavius Phinn must have chucked it down. On the bridge, my dear boy. You must have practically stepped over it.”

“It wasn’t there,” Mark said. “Sorry, Gar, but it wasn’t, when I went home.”

“Mrs. Cartarette,” Alleyn said, “you must have crossed Bottom Bridge a few minutes after Lady Lacklander had gone home, mustn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Kitty said. “We saw her going into the Nunspardon Home Spinney as we came over the hill by the second tee.”

“And Sir George, then, in his turn, went home through the Home Spinney, and you came down the hill by the river path?”

“That’s right,” she said drearily.

“Did you see the fabulous trout lying on Bottom Bridge?”

“Not a sign of it, I’m afraid.”

“So that between about ten to eight and ten past eight the trout was removed by somebody and subsequently left in the willow grove. Are you all of the opinion that Colonel Cartarette would have been unlikely to change his mind and go back for it?” Alleyn asked.

George looked huffy and said he didn’t know, he was sure, and Lady Lacklander said that judging by what Colonel Cartarette had said to her, she was persuaded that wild horses wouldn’t have induced him to touch the trout. Alleyn thought to himself, “If he was disinclined to touch it, still less would he feel like wrapping it up in grass in order to stow it away in his creel, which apparently was what he had been doing when he died.”

“I suppose there’s no doubt about this fish being the classic Old ’Un?” Alleyn asked.

“None,” Mark said. “There’s not such another in the Chyne. No question.”

“By the way, did you look down at the willow grove as you climbed up the hill to the Home Spinney?”

“I don’t remember doing so. I was hung about with my grandmother’s sketching gear and I didn’t…”

It was at this moment that Kitty Cartarette screamed.

She did not scream very loudly; the sound was checked almost as soon as it was born, but she had half risen from her sofa and was staring at something beyond and behind Alleyn. She had clapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide open beneath their raised brows. He noticed that they were inclined to be prominent.

They all turned to discover what it was that Kitty stared at but found only an uncovered French window reflecting the lighted room and the ghosts of their own startled faces.