Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“No. I suppose, finding him not at home, Daddy followed him down to the stream. Of course, I mustn’t tell you what his errand was, but if ever,” Rose said in a trembling voice, “if ever there was an errand of — well, of mercy — Daddy’s was one, yesterday afternoon.”

Rose had an unworldly face with a sort of Pre-Raphaelitish beauty: very unmodish in its sorrow and very touching.

Alleyn said gently, “I know. Don’t worry. I can promise we won’t blunder.”

“How kind you are,” she said. Mark muttered indistinguishably.

As Alleyn turned away towards the police car, her voice halted him. “It must be somebody mad,” she said. “Nobody who wasn’t mad could possibly do it. Not possibly. There’s somebody demented that did it for no reason at all.” She extended her hand towards him a little way, the palm turned up in a gesture of uncertainty and appeal. “Don’t you think so?” she said.

Alleyn said, “I think you are very shocked and bewildered, as well you might be. Did you sleep last night?”

“Not much. I am sorry, Mark, but I didn’t take the thing you gave me. I felt I mustn’t. I had to wake for him. The house felt as if he was looking for me.”

“I think it might be a good idea,” Alleyn said to Mark, “if you drove Miss Cartarette to Hammer Farm, where perhaps she will be kind enough to hunt up her own and Mrs. Cartarette’s garments of yesterday. Everything, please, shoes, stockings and all. And treat them, please, like eggshell china.”

Mark said, “As important as that?”

“The safety of several innocent persons may depend upon them.”

“I’ll take care,” Mark said.

“Good. We’ll follow you and collect them.”

“Fair enough,” Mark said. He smiled at Rose. “And when that’s done,” he said, “I’m going to bring you back to Nunspardon and put my professional foot down about nembutal. Kitty’ll drive herself home. Come on.”

Alleyn saw Rose make a small gesture of protest. “I think perhaps I’ll stay at Hammer, Mark.”

“No, you won’t, darling.”

“I can’t leave Kitty like that.”

“She’ll understand. Anyway, we’ll be back here before she leaves. Come on.”

Rose turned as if to appeal to Alleyn and then seemed to give up. Mark took her by the elbow and led her away.

Alleyn watched them get into the sports car and shoot off down a long drive. He shook his head slightly and let himself into the front seat beside Fox.

“Follow them, Br’er Fox,” he said. “But sedately. There’s no hurry. We’re going to Hammer Farm.”

On the way he outlined the general shape of his visit to Nunspardon.

“It’s clear enough, wouldn’t you agree,” he ended, “what has happened about the memoirs. Take the facts as we know them. The leakage of information at Zlomce was of such importance that Sir Harold Lacklander couldn’t, in what is evidently an exhaustive autobiography, ignore it. At the time of the catastrophe we learnt in the Special Branch from Lacklander himself that after confessing his treachery, young Phinn, as a result of his wigging, committed suicide. We know Lacklander died with young Phinn’s name on his lips, at the same time showing the greatest anxiety about the memoirs. We know that Cartarette was entrusted with the publication. We know Cartarette took an envelope from the drawer that was subsequently broken open and went to see old Phinn on what Miss Cartarette describes as an errand of mercy. When he didn’t find him at home, he followed him into the valley. Finally, we know that after they fell out over the poaching, they had a further discussion about which, although she admits she heard it, Lady Lacklander will tell us nothing. Now, my dear Br’er Fox, why should the Lacklanders or Mr. Phinn or the Cartarettes be so uncommonly touchy about all this? I don’t know what you think, but I can find only one answer.”

Fox turned the car sedately into the Hammer Farm drive and nodded his head.

“Seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, Mr. Alleyn, I must say. But is there sufficient motive for murder in it?”

“Who the hell’s going to say what’s a sufficient motive for murder? And anyway, it may be one of a bunch of motives. Probably is. Stick to ubi, quibus, auxiliis, quomodo and quando, Foxkin; let cur look after itself, and blow me down if quis won’t walk in when you’re least expecting it.”

“So you always tell us, sir,” said Fox.

“All right, all right; I grow to a dotage and repeat myself. There’s the lovelorn C.P.’s car. We wait here while they hunt up the garments of the two ladies. Mrs. Cartarette’s will be brand-new extra-loud tweeds smelling of Schiaparelli and, presumably, of fish.”

“Must be a bit lonely,” Fox mused.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Cartarette. An outsider, you might say, dumped down in a little place where they’ve known each other’s pedigrees since the time they were all using bows and arrows. Bit lonely. More she tries to fit in, I daresay, the less they seem to take to her. More polite they get, the more uncomfortable they make her feel.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “true enough. You’ve shoved your great fat finger into the middle of one of those uncomfortable minor tragedies that the Lacklanders of this world prefer to cut dead. And I’ll tell you something else, Fox. Of the whole crowd of them, not excluding your girl-friend, there isn’t one that wouldn’t feel a kind of relief if she turned out to have murdered her husband.”

Fox looked startled. “One, surely?” he ejaculated.

“No,” Alleyn insisted with a sort of violence that was very rare with him. “Not one. Not one. For all of them she’s the intruder, the disturber, the outsider. The very effort some of them have tried to make on her behalf has added to their secret resentment. I bet you. How did you get on in Chyning?”

“I saw Dr. Curtis. He’s fixed up very comfortably in the hospital mortuary and was well on with the P.M. Nothing new cropped up about the injuries. He says he thinks it’s true enough about the fish scales and will watch out for them and do the microscope job with all the exhibits. The Yard’s going to look up the late Sir Harold’s will and check Commander Syce’s activities in Singapore. They say it won’t take long if the Navy List gives them a line on anybody in the Service who was there at the time and has a shore job now. If they strike it lucky, they may call us back in a couple of hours. I said the Boy and Donkey and the Chyning station to be sure of catching us.”

“Good,” Alleyn said without much show of interest. “Hullo, listen who’s coming! Here we go.”

He was out of the car before Fox could reply and with an abrupt change of speed began to stroll down the drive. His pipe was in his hands and he busied himself with filling it. The object of this unexpected pantomime now pedalled into Mr. Fox’s ken: the village postman.

Alleyn, stuffing his pipe, waited until the postman was abreast with him.

“Good morning,” said Alleyn.

“Morning, sir,” said the postman, braking his bicycle.

“I’ll take them, shall I?” Alleyn suggested.

The postman steadied himself with one foot on the ground. “Well, ta,” he said and with a vague suggestion of condolence added, “Save the disturbance, like, won’t it, sir? Only one, anyway.” He fetched a long envelope from his bag and held it out. “For the deceased,” he said in a special voice. “Terrible sad, if I may pass the remark.”

“Indeed, yes,” Alleyn said, taking, with a sense of rising excitement, the long, and to him familiar, envelope.

“Terrible thing to happen in the Vale,” the postman continued. “What I mean, the crime, and the Colonel that highly respected and never a word that wasn’t kindness itself. Everybody’s that upset and that sorry for the ladies. Poor Miss Rose, now! Well, it’s terrible.”