Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

Only Alleyn and Fox looked at him.

“Mr. Phinn,” Alleyn said, “you normally wear spectacles, I think, don’t you?”

Mr. Phinn made a strange little gesture with his thumb and forefinger as if he actually adjusted his glasses. Thus, momentarily, he hid the red groove across the top of his nose and the flush that had begun to spread across his face. “Not all the time,” he said. “Only for reading.”

Lady Lacklander suddenly clapped the palms of her hands down on the arms of her chair. “So there we are,” she said. “And having said my say, George, I should like you, if you please, to take me home.”

She put out her right arm and as George was a little slow in coming, Alleyn took her hand, braced himself and hauled.

“ ‘Up she rises,’ ” Lady Lacklander quoted self-derisively, and up she rose. She stared for a moment at Mr. Phinn, who gaped back at her and mouthed something indistinguishable. She looked straight into Alleyn’s eyes. “Do you, after all,” she said, “propose to let me go home?”

Alleyn raised an eyebrow. “I shall feel a good deal safer,” he said, “with you there than here, Lady Lacklander.”

“Take me to my car. I have to shuffle a bit because of my damn’ toe. It’s no better, Kettle. George, you may join me in five minutes. I want to have a word with Roderick Alleyn.”

She said goodbye to Rose, holding her for a moment in her arms. Rose clung to her and gave a shuddering sob. Lady Lacklander said, “My poor child, my poor little Rose; you must come to us as soon as possible. Get Mark to give you something to make you sleep.”

Kitty had risen. “It was awfully kind of you to come,” she said and held out her hand. Lady Lacklander took it and after a scarcely perceptible pause let it be known that Kitty was expected to kiss her. This Kitty did with caution.

“Come and see me to-morrow, Kettle,” said Lady Lacklander, “unless they lock you up.”

“Let ’em try,” said Nurse Kettle, who had been entirely silent ever since Mr. Phinn’s arrival. Lady Lacklander gave a short laugh. She paid no attention to Mr. Phinn but nodded to Alleyn. He hastened to open the door and followed her through a large and charmingly shaped hall to the main entrance. Outside this a vast elderly car waited.

“I’ll sit in the back,” she said. “George will drive. I find him an irritating companion in time of trouble.”

Alleyn opened the door and switched on a light in the car.

“Now, tell me,” she said, after she had heaved herself in, “tell me, not as a policeman to an octogenarian dowager but as a man of discretion to one of your mother’s oldest friends, what did you think of Occy Phinn’s behaviour just now?”

Alleyn said, “Octogenarian dowagers, even if they are my mother’s oldest friend, shouldn’t lure me out of doors at night and make improper suggestions.”

“Ah,” she said, “so you’re not going to respond.”

“Tell me, did Mr. Phinn have a son called Ludovic? Ludovic Danberry-Phinn?”

In the not very bright light he watched her face harden as if, behind its mask of fat, she had set her jaw. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“It could hardly not be, could it, with those names?”

“I wouldn’t mention the boy if I were you. He was in the Foreign Service and blotted his copybook, as I daresay you know. It was quite a tragedy. It’s never mentioned.”

“Is it not? What sort of a man was Colonel Cartarette?”

“Pigheaded, quixotic fellow. Obstinate as a mule. One of those pathetically conscientious people who aim so high they get a permanent crick in their conscience.”

“Are you thinking of any particular incident?”

“No,” Lady Lacklander said firmly, “I am not.”

“Do you mind telling me what you and Colonel Cartarette talked about?”

“We talked,” Lady Lacklander said coolly, “about Occy poaching and about a domestic matter that is for the moment private and can have no bearing whatever on Maurice’s death. Good-night to you, Roderick. I suppose I call you Roderick, don’t I?”

“When we’re alone together.”

“Impudent fellow!” she said and aimed a sort of dab at him. “Go back and bully those poor things in there. And tell George to hurry.”

“Can you remember exactly what Mr. Phinn and Colonel Cartarette said to each other when they had their row?”

She looked hard at him, folded her jewelled hands together and said, “Not word for word. They had a row over the fish. Occy rows with everybody.”

“Did they talk about anything else?”

Lady Lacklander continued to look at him and said, “No,” very coolly indeed.

Alleyn made her a little bow. “Good-night,” he said. “If you remember specifically anything that they said to each other, would you be terribly kind and write it down?”

“Roderick,” Lady Lacklander said, “Occy Phinn is no murderer.”

“Is he not?” Alleyn said, “Well, that’s something to know, isn’t it? Good-night.”

He shut the door. The light in the car went out.

As he turned back to the house, Alleyn met George Lacklander. It struck him that George was remarkably ill at ease in his company and would greatly have preferred to deal exclusively with Fox.

“Oh… ah, hullo,” George said. “I… ah… I wonder, may I have a word with you? I don’t suppose you remember, by the way, but we have met a thousand years ago, ha, ha, when, I think, you were one of my father’s bright young men, weren’t you?”

Alleyn’s twenty-five-year-old recollection of George rested solely on the late Sir Harold Lacklander’s scorching comments on his son’s limitations. “No damn’ use expecting anything of George,” Sir Harold had once confided. “Let him strike attitudes at Nunspardon and in the ripeness of time become a J.P. That is George’s form.” It occurred to Alleyn that this prophecy had probably been fulfilled.

He answered George’s opening question and blandly disregarded its sequel. “Please do,” he said.

“Fact is,” George said, “I’m wondering just what the drill is. I am, by the way, and not that it makes any real difference, a Beak. So I suppose I may be said to fill my humble pigeonhole in the maintenance of the Queen’s peace, what?”

“And why not?” Alleyn infuriatingly replied.

“Yes,” George continued, goggling at him in the dark. “Yes. Well, now, I wanted to ask you what exactly will be the drill about poor Maurice Cartarette’s — ah — about the — ah — the body. I mean, one is concerned for Kitty’s sake. For their sake, I mean. His wife and daughter. One can perhaps help with the arrangements for the funeral and all that. What?”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn agreed. “Colonel Cartarette’s body will remain where it is under guard until to-morrow morning. It will then be taken to the nearest mortuary and a police surgeon will make an examination and possibly an extensive autopsy. We will, of course, let Mrs. Cartarette know as soon as possible when the funeral may be held. I think we shall probably be ready to hand over in three days, but it doesn’t do to be positive about these things.”

“O, quite!” George said. “Quite. Quite. Quite.”

Alleyn said, “Simply for the record — I shall have to put this sort of question to everybody who was in Colonel Cartarette’s landscape last evening — you and Mrs. Cartarette began your round of golf, I think you said, at seven?”

“I didn’t notice the exact time,” George said in a hurry.

“Perhaps Mrs. Cartarette will remember. Did she meet you on the course?”

“Ah — no. No, I — ah — I called for her in the car. On my way back from Chyning.”

“But you didn’t drive her back?”

“No. Shorter to walk, we thought. From where we were.”