Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“By the nature of the injuries, which are particularly savage ones, to the head.”

“Who found him?”

“The District Nurse. Nurse Kettle.”

Commander Syce turned scarlet. “Why didn’t she get me?” he said.

“Would you expect her to?”

“No.”

“Well then…”

“I say, come in, won’t you? No good nattering out here, what!” shouted Commander Syce.

They followed him into his desolate drawing-room and noted the improvised bed, now tidily made-up, and a table set out with an orderly array of drawing materials and water-colours. A large picture-map in the early stages of composition was pinned to a drawing board. Alleyn saw that its subject was Swevenings and that a number of lively figures had already been sketched in.

“That’s very pleasant,” Alleyn said, looking at it.

Commander Syce made a complicated and terrified noise and interposed himself between the picture-map and their gaze. He muttered something about doing it for a friend.

“Isn’t she lucky?” Alleyn remarked lightly. Commander Syce turned, if anything, deeper scarlet, and Inspector Fox looked depressed.

Alleyn said he was sure Commander Syce would understand that as a matter of routine the police were calling upon Cartarette’s neighbours. “Simply,” he said, “to try and get a background. When one is casting about in a case like this…”

“Haven’t you got the fellah?”

“No. But we hope that by talking to those of the Colonel’s neighbours who were anywhere near…”

“I wasn’t. Nowhere near.”

Alleyn said with a scarcely perceptible modulation of tone, “Then you know where he was found?”

“ ’Course I do. You say nine o’clock. Miss… ah… the… ah… the lady who you tell me found him left here at five to nine and I saw her go down into the valley. If she found him at nine, he must have been in the perishing valley, mustn’t he? I watched her go down.”

“From where?”

“From up here. The window. She told me she was going down the valley.”

“You were on your feet, then? Not completely prostrate with lumbago?”

Commander Syce began to look wretchedly uncomfortable. “I struggled up, don’t you know,” he said.

“And this morning you’ve quite recovered?”

“It comes and goes.”

“Very tricky,” said Alleyn. He still had the arrow in his hand and now held it up. “Do you often loose these things off into your spinney?” he asked.

Commander Syce muttered something about a change from target shooting.

“I’ve often thought I’d like to have a shot at archery,” Alleyn lied amiably. “One of the more blameless sports. Tell me, what weight of bow do you use?”

“A sixty-pound pull.”

“Really! What’s the longest… is clout the word?… that can be shot with a sixty-pounder?”

“Two hundred and forty yards.”

“Is that twelve score? ‘A’ would have clapped i’ the clout at twelve score’?”

“That’s right,” Commander Syce agreed and shot what might have been an appreciative glance at Alleyn.

“Quite a length. However, I mustn’t keep you gossiping about archery. What I really want to ask you is this. I understand that you’ve known Colonel Cartarette a great many years?”

“Off and on. Neighbours. Damn’ nice fellah.”

“Exactly. And I believe that when Cartarette was in the Far East, you ran up against him… at Hong Kong, was it?” Alleyn improvised hopefully.

“Singapore.”

“Oh, yes. The reason why I’m asking you is this. From the character of the crime and the apparently complete absence of motive, here, we are wondering if it can possibly be a back-kick from his work out in the East.”

“Wouldn’t know.”

“Look here, can you tell us anything at all about his life in the East? I mean, anything that might start us off. When actually did you see him out there?”

“Last time would be four years ago. I was still on the active list. My ship was based on Singapore and he looked me up when we were in port. I was axed six months later.”

“Did you see much of them put there?

“Them?”

“The Cartarettes.”

Commander Syce glared at Alleyn. “He wasn’t married,” he said, “then.”

“So you didn’t meet the second Mrs. Cartarette until you came back here, I suppose?”

Commander Syce thrust his hands into his pockets and walked over to they window. “I had met her, yes,” he mumbled. “Out there.”

“Before they married?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring them together?” Alleyn asked lightly and he saw the muscles in the back of Syce’s neck stiffen under the reddened skin.

“I introduced them, as it happens,” Syce said loudly without turning his head.

“That’s always rather amusing. Or I find it so, being,” Alleyn said looking fixedly at Fox, “an incorrigible match-maker.”

“Good God, nothing like that!” Syce shouted. “Last thing I intended. Good God, no!”

He spoke with extraordinary vehemence and seemed to be moved equally by astonishment, shame and indignation. Alleyn wondered why on earth he himself didn’t get the snub he had certainly invited and decided it was because Syce was too embarrassed to administer one. He tried to get something more about Syce’s encounters with Cartarette in Singapore but was unsuccessful. He noticed the unsteady hands, moist skin and patchy colour, and the bewildered, unhappy look in the very blue eyes. “Alcoholic, poor devil,” he thought.

“It’s no good asking me anything,” Syce abruptly announced. “Nobody tells me anything. I don’t go anywhere. I’m no good to anybody.”

“We’re only looking for a background, and I hoped you might be able to provide a piece of it. Miss Kettle was saying last night how close the Swevenings people are to each other; it all sounded quite feudal. Even Sir Harold Lacklander had young Phinn as his secretary. What did you say?”

“Nothing. Young perisher. Doesn’t matter.”

“…and as soon as your ship comes in, Cartarette naturally looks you up. You bring about his first meeting with Miss… I don’t know Mrs. Cartarette’s maiden name.”

Commander Syce mumbled unhappily.

“Perhaps you can give it to me,” Alleyn said apologetically. “We have to get these details for the files. Save me bothering her.”

He gazed mildly at Syce, who threw one agonized glance at him, swallowed with difficulty, and said in a strangulated voice, “De Vere.”

There was a marked silence. Fox cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes,” Alleyn said.

“Would you have thought,” Fox asked as he and Alleyn made their way through Mr. Phinn’s coppice to Jacob’s Cottage, “that the present Mrs. Cartarette was born into the purple, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I wouldn’t have said so, Br’er Fox. No.”

“De Vere, though?”

“My foot.”

“Perhaps,” Fox speculated, reverting to the language in which he so ardently desired to become proficient, “perhaps she’s… er… déclassée. ”

“I think, on the contrary, she’s on her way up.”

“Ah. The baronet, now,” Fox went on; “he’s sweet on her, as anyone could see. Would you think it was a strong enough attraction to incite either of them to violence?”

“I should think he was going through the silly season most men of his type experience. I must say I can’t see him raising an amatory passion to the power of homicide in any woman. You never know, of course; I should think she must find life in Swevenings pretty dim. What did you collect from Syce’s general behaviour, Fox?”

“Well, now, he did get me wondering what exactly are his feelings about this lady? I mean, they seem to be old acquaintances, don’t they? Miss Kettle said he made a picture of Mrs. Cartarette before she was married. And then he didn’t seem to have fancied the marriage much, did he? Practically smoked when it was mentioned, he got so hot. My idea is there was something between him and her and the magnolia bush wherever East meets West.”