Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“We shan’t keep it any longer than is necessary,” Alleyn assured him.

Fox put the kit in order and slung it over his massive shoulder.

“And also, I’m afraid,” Alleyn said apologetically, “the shoes and suit that you wore on your fishing expedition.”

“My shoes? My suit! But why, why! I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“It may be some comfort to you to know that I shall make the same awkward demands of at least four other persons.”

Mr. Phinn seemed to brighten a little. “Blood?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” Alleyn said coolly. “This and that, you know, and the other thing. May we have them?”

“A fat lot of use,” Mr. Phinn muttered, “if I said no. And in any case you are perfectly welcome to every garment I possess. Homicidally speaking, they are as pure as the driven snow.”

When he saw them, Alleyn reflected that although, homicidally speaking, this might be true, from any other point of view it was grossly inaccurate: Mr. Phinn’s angling garments were exceedingly grubby and smelt quite strongly of fish. Alleyn saw with satisfaction a slimy deposit on the right leg of a pair of old-fashioned knickerbockers. The shoes were filthy and the stockings in holes. With a gesture of defiance, their owner flung on top of them a dilapidated tweed hat with the usual collection of flies in the band.

“Make what you like of them,” he said grandly, “and see that you let me have them back in the order in which you receive them.”

Alleyn gave him grave assurance to this effect and wrapped up the garments. Fox wrote out a receipt for the unlovely bundle.

“We won’t keep you any longer,” Alleyn said, “unless by any chance you would care to give us a true account of your ramblings in the watches of the night.”

Mr. Phinn gaped at him and in doing so resembled for the moment the Old ’Un himself.

“Because,” Alleyn went on, “you haven’t done so yet, you know. I mean, your story of seeing lighted windows and calling to tell the Colonel of your catch was completely blown-up by Lady Lacklander. And your latest version… that you were on the hunt for your mother-cat… really won’t do at all. Feline nursing mothers, and you tell us this is a particularly devoted one, do not desert their kittens for six hours on end. Moreover, we came upon Mrs. Twitchett last night on her way home about half past twelve. And why, if the Twitchett story was the true one, did you not produce it in the first instance?” Alleyn waited for some seconds. “You see,” he said, “you have no answer to any of these questions.”

“I shall not make any further statements. I prefer to remain silent.”

“Shall I tell you what I think may have happened last night? I think that when you made your first remark as you stood in the French window at Hammer, you said something that was near the truth. I think that either then, or perhaps earlier in the evening, you had sallied out in search of your great trout. I think you regretted having flung it down on the bridge during your quarrel with Colonel Cartarette. You knew he wouldn’t touch it, because he had told you so and had gone off, leaving it there. Did you not go down into the valley of the Chyne to retrieve the trout, and did you not find it gone from the bridge when you got there?”

The colour mounted in Mr. Phinn’s face in uneven patches. He lowered his chin and looked quickly at Alleyn from under his meagre brows. But he said nothing.

“If this is so,” Alleyn went on, “and I am encouraged by your silence to hope that it may be, I can’t help wondering what you did next. Did you come straight back to Hammer and seeing the lighted windows make up your mind to accuse the Colonel of having pinched your fish after all? But no. If that had been so, your behaviour would have been different. You would not, before you were aware of his death, have trembled and gone white to the lips. Nor would you have invented your cock-and-bull story of wanting to tell the Colonel all about your catch: a story that was at once disproved when Lady Lacklander told us about your row with the Colonel over that very catch and by the fact that for a long time you have not been on visiting terms with your neighbour.”

Mr. Phinn had turned aside, and Alleyn walked round him until they were again face-to-face.

“How,” he said, “is one to explain your behaviour of last night? Shall I tell you what I think? I think that when you arrived at Hammer Farm at five past one this morning, you knew already that Colonel Cartarette was dead.”

Still Mr. Phinn said nothing.

“Now if this is true,” Alleyn said, “and again you don’t deny it, you have misinformed us about your movements. You let us understand that you returned to the bottom meadow just before you came to Hammer Farm at about one o’clock. But your coat was as dry as a chip. So it must have been much earlier in the evening before the rain that you returned to the bridge in the hope of retrieving the fish and found it gone. And knowing that the Colonel was fishing his own waters not far away, would you not seek him out? Now, if you did behave as I have suggested, you did so at a time when nobody saw you. That must have been after Lady Lacklander, Mrs. Cartarette and Dr. Lacklander had all gone home. Mrs. Cartarette reached Hammer Farm at about five past eight, and Dr. Lacklander went home at a quarter past eight. Neither of them saw the trout. On my working hypothesis, then, you revisited the valley after a quarter past eight and, one would suppose, before a quarter to nine when Nurse Kettle did so. And there, Mr. Phinn, in the willow grove you found Colonel Cartarette’s dead body with your mammoth trout beside it. And didn’t Nurse Kettle very nearly catch you in the willow grove?”

Mr. Phinn ejaculated, “Has she said—” and caught his voice back.

“No,” Alleyn said. “Not specifically. It is I who suggest that you hid and watched her and crept away when she had gone. I suggest, moreover, that when you bolted for cover, your reading spectacles were snatched from your hat by an envious sliver and that in your panic and your terror of being seen, you dared not look for them. Possibly you did not realize they had gone until you got home. And that’s why, after the rain, you stole out again — to try and find your glasses in case they were lost in a place where they might incriminate you. Then you saw the lights of Hammer Farm and dared go no further. You couldn’t endure the suspense of not knowing if the Colonel had been found. You drew nearer and Sergeant Oliphant’s torchlight shone in your eyes.”

Alleyn turned to the window and looked down at Mr. Phinn’s spinney, at the upper reaches of the Chyne and at a glimpse, between trees, of the near end of the bridge.

“That,” he said, “is how I think you moved about the landscape yesterday evening and last night.” Alleyn drew a pair of spectacles from the breast pocket of his coat and dangled them before Mr. Phinn. “I’m afraid I can’t let you have them back just yet. But”—he extended his long finger toward Mr. Phinn’s breast pocket—“isn’t that a magnifying glass you have managed to unearth?”

Mr. Phinn was silent.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there’s our view of your activities. It’s a picture based on your own behaviour and one or two known facts. If it is accurate, believe me, you will be wise to say so.”

Mr. Phinn said in an unrecognizable voice, “And if I don’t choose to speak?”

“You will be within your rights, and we shall draw our own conclusions.”

“You still don’t give me the famous Usual Warning one hears so much about?”

“No.”

“I suppose,” Mr. Phinn said, “I am a timid man, but I know, in respect of this crime, that I am an innocent one.”