Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“She’s not an aesthetic snob,” Alleyn said mildly.

“She’s a damn’ good painter, however,” Lady Lacklander continued. “There you are. Help yourself.”

He lifted a canvas haversack to which were strapped an easel and an artist’s umbrella. “Did you use the umbrella?” he asked.

“William, the boy, put it up. I didn’t want it; the sun was gone from the valley. I left it, standing but shut, when I came home.”

“We’ll see if it showed above the hollow.”

“Roderick,” said Lady Lacklander, suddenly, “what exactly were the injuries?”

“Hasn’t your grandson told you?”

“If he had I wouldn’t ask you.”

“They were cranial.”

“You needn’t be in a hurry to return the things. I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s very kind of you to lend them.”

“Kettle will tell me,” said Lady Lacklander, “all about it!”

“Of course she will,” he agreed cheerfully, “much better than I can.”

“What persuaded you to leave the Service for this unlovely trade?”

“It’s a long time ago,” Alleyn said, “but I seem to remember that it had something to do with a liking for facts.”

“Which should never be confused with the truth.”

“I still think they are the raw material of the truth. I mustn’t keep you any longer. Thank you so much for helping us,” Alleyn said and stood aside to let her pass.

He and Fox were aware of her great bulk, motionless on the steps, as they made their way back to the Home Coppice. Alleyn carried the shooting-stick by its middle and Fox the sketching gear. “And I don’t mind betting,” Alleyn said, “that from the rear we look as self-conscious as a brace of snowballs in hell.”

When they were out of sight in the trees, they examined their booty.

Alleyn laid the shooting-stick on a bank and squatted beside it.

“The disk,” he said, “screws on above the ferrule leaving a two-inch spike. Soft earth all over it and forced up under the collar of the disk, which obviously hasn’t been disengaged for weeks! All to the good. If it’s the weapon, it may have been washed in the Chyne and wiped, and it has, of course, been subsequently rammed down in soft earth, but it hasn’t been taken apart. There’s a good chance of a blood trace under the collar. We must let Curtis have this at once. Now let’s have a look at her kit.”

“Which we didn’t really want, did we?”

“You never know. It’s a radial easel with spiked legs, and it’s a jointed gamp with a spiked foot. Lots of spikes available, b,ut the shooting-stick fits the picture best. Now for the interior. Here we are,” Alleyn said, unbuckling the straps and peering inside. “Large water-colour box. Several mounted boards of not-surface paper. Case of brushes. Pencils. Bunjy. Water-jar. Sponge. Paint-rag. Paint-rag,” he repeated softly and bent over the kit sniffing. He drew a length of stained cotton rag out of the kit. It was blotched with patches of watery colour with one dark brownish-reddish stain that was broken by a number of folds as if the rag had been twisted about some object.

Alleyn looked up at his colleague.

“Smell, Fox,” he said.

Fox squatted behind him and sniffed stertorously.

“Fish,” he said.

Before returning, they visited the second tee and looked down on the valley from the Nunspardon side. They commanded a view of the far end of the bridge and the reaches of the Chyne above it. As from the other side of the valley, the willow grove, the lower reaches and the Nunspardon end of the bridge were hidden by intervening trees through which they could see part of the hollow where Lady Lacklander had worked at her sketch.

“So you see,” Alleyn pointed out, “it was from here that Mrs. Cartarette and that ass George Lacklander saw Mr. Phinn poaching under the bridge, and it was from down there in the hollow that Lady Lacklander glanced up and saw them.” He turned and looked back at a clump of trees on the golf course. “And I don’t mind betting,” he added, “that all this chat about teaching her to play golf is the cover-story for a pompous slap-and-tickle.”

“Do you reckon, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s Oliphant at the bridge,” Alleyn said, waving his hand. “We’ll get him to take this stuff straight to Curtis, who’ll be in Chyning by now. He’s starting his P.M. by eleven. Dr. Lacklander’s arranged for him to use the hospital mortuary. I want a report, as soon as we can get it, on the rag and the shooting-stick.”

“Will the young doctor attend the autopsy, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I think our next move had better be a routine check-up on Commander Syce.”

“That’s the chap Miss Kettle mentioned, with lumbago, who lives in the middle house,” Fox observed. “I wonder would he have seen anything.”

“Depends on the position of his bed.”

“It’s a nasty thing, lumbago,” Fox mused.

They handed over Lady Lacklander’s property to Sergeant Oliphant with an explanatory note for Dr. Curtis and instructions to search the valley for the whole or part of the missing trout. They then climbed the river path to Uplands.

They passed through the Hammer Farm spinney and entered that of Commander Syce. Here they encountered a small notice nailed to a tree. It was freshly painted and bore in neatly executed letters the legend: “Beware of Archery.”

“Look at that!” Fox said. “And we’ve forgotten our green tights.”

“It may be a warning to Nurse Kettle,” Alleyn said.

“I don’t get you, sir?”

“Not to flirt with the Commander when she beats up his lumbago.”

“Very far-fetched,” Fox said stiffly.

As they emerged from Commander Syce’s spinney into his garden, they heard a twang followed by a peculiar whining sound and the “tuck” of a penetrating blow.

“What the hell’s that!” Fox ejaculated. “It sounded like the flight of an arrow.”

“Which is not surprising,” Alleyn rejoined, “as that is what it was.”

He nodded at a tree not far from where they stood and there, astonishing and incongruous, was embedded an arrow prettily flighted in red and implanted in the centre of a neatly and freshly carved heart. It still quivered very slightly. “We can’t say we weren’t warned,” Alleyn pointed out.

“Very careless!” Fox said crossly.

Alleyn pulled out the arrow and looked closely at it. “Deadly if they hit the right spot. I hope you’ve noticed the heart. It would appear that Commander Syce has recovered from his lumbago and fallen into love’s sickness. Come on.”

They emerged from the spinney to discover Commander Syce himself some fifty yards away, bow in hand, quiver at thigh, scarlet-faced and irresolute.

“Look here!” he shouted. “Damn’ sorry and all that, but, great grief, how was I to know, and, damn it all, what about the notice!”

“Yes, yes,” Alleyn rejoined. “We’re here at our own risk.”

He and Fox approached Syce, who, unlike Lady Lacklander, evidently found the interval between the first hail and, as it were, boarding distance extremely embarrassing. As they plodded up the hill, he looked anywhere but at them and when, finally, Alleyn introduced himself and Fox, he shied away from them like an unbroken colt.

“We are,” Alleyn explained, “police officers.”

“Good Lord!”

“I suppose you’ve heard of last night’s tragedy?”

“What tragedy?”

“Colonel Cartarette.”

“Cartarette?”

“He has been murdered.”

“Great grief!”

“We’re calling on his neighbours in case…”

“What time?”

“About nine o’clock, we think.”

“How d’you know it’s murder?”