Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“Size about four,” he said. “They were hand-made by the best bootmaker in London in the days when Lady Lacklander still played golf. Here’s her name sewn in. They’ve been cleaned, but the soles are still dampish and—” He turned the shoe over and was looking at the heel. It carried miniature spikes. Alleyn looked at Fox, who, without a word, brought from the end of the shelf a kitchen plate on which were laid out, as if for some starvation-diet, the remains of the Colonel’s fish. The flap of skin with its fragment of an impression was carefully spread out. They waited in silence.

“It’ll fit all right,” Alleyn said. “Do your stuff, of course, but it’s going to fit. And the better it fits, the less I’m going to like it.”

And with this illogical observation he went out of the mortuary.

“What is biting him?” Dr. Curtis asked Fox.

“Ask yourself, Doctor,” Fox said. “It’s one of the kind that he’s never got, as you might say, used to.”

“Like that, is it?” Dr. Curtis, for the moment unmindful of his own terrible explicit job, muttered, “I often wonder why on earth he entered the Service.”

“I’ve never liked to enquire,” Fox said in his plain way, “but I’m sure I’m very glad he did. Well, I’ll leave you with your corpse.”

“…seeing you,” Dr. Curtis said absently, and Fox rejoined his principal. They returned to the police station, where Alleyn had a word with Sergeant Oliphant. “We’ll leave you here, Oliphant,” Alleyn said. “Sir William Roskill will probably go straight to the hospital, but as soon as there’s anything to report, he or Dr. Curtis will ring you up. Here’s a list of people I’m going to see. If I’m not at one of these places, I’ll be at another. See about applying for a warrant; we may be making an arrest before nightfall.”

“ ’T, ’t, ’t,” Sergeant Oliphant clicked. “Reely? In what name, sir? Same as you thought?”

Alleyn pointed his forefinger at a name on the list he had given the sergeant, who stared at it for some seconds, his face perfectly wooden.

“It’s not positive,” Alleyn said, “but you’d better warn your tame J.P. about the warrant in case we need it in a hurry. We’ll get along with the job now. Put a call through to Brierley and Bentwood, will you, Oliphant? Here’s the number. Ask for Mr. Timothy Bentwood and give my name.”

He listened while Sergeant Oliphant put the call through and noticed abstractedly that he did this in a quiet and business-like manner.

Alleyn said, “If Bentwood will play, this should mean the clearing-up of Chapter 7.”

Fox raised a massive finger and they both listened to Oliphant.

“O, yerse?” Oliphant was saying. “Yerse? Will you hold the line, sir, while I enquire?”

“What is it?” Alleyn demanded sharply.

Oliphant placed the palm of his vast hand over the mouthpiece. “Mr. Bentwood, sir,” he said, “is in hospital. Would you wish to speak to his secretary?”

“Damnation, blast and bloody hell!” Alleyn said. “No, I wouldn’t. Thank you, Oliphant. Come on, Fox. That little game’s gone cold. We’d better get moving. Oliphant, if we can spare the time, we’ll get something to eat at the Boy and Donkey, but on the way, we’ll make at least one call.” His finger again hovered over the list. The sergeant followed its indication.

“At Uplands?” he said. “Commander Syce?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Have everything laid on, and if you get a signal from me, come at once with suitable assistance. It’ll mean an arrest. Come on, Fox.”

He was very quiet on the way back over Watt’s Hill.

As they turned the summit and approached Jacob’s Cottage, they saw Mr. Phinn leaning over his gate with a kitten on his shoulder.

Alleyn said, “It might as well be now as later. Let’s stop.”

Fox pulled up by the gate and Alleyn got out. He walked over to the gate and Mr. Phinn blinked at him.

“Dear me, Chief Inspector,” he said, taking the kitten from his neck and caressing it, “how very recurrent you are. Quite decimalite, to coin an adjective.”

“It’s our job, you know,” Alleyn said mildly. “You’ll find we do tend to crop up.”

Mr. Phinn blinked and gave a singular little laugh. “Am I to conclude, then, that I am the subject of your interest? Or are you on your way to fresh fields of surmise and conjecture? Nunspardon, for instance. Do you perhaps envisage my Lady Brobdignagia, the Dowager Tun, the Mammoth Matriarch, stealing a tip-toe through the daisies? Or George aflame with his newly acquired dignities, thundering through the willow grove in plus fours? Or have the injuries a clinical character? Do we suspect the young Aesculapius with scalpel or probe? You are thinking I am a person of execrable taste, but the truth is there are other candidates for infamy. Perhaps we should look nearer at hand. At our elderly and intemperate merryman of the shaft and quiver. Or at the interesting and mysterious widow with the dubious antecedents? Really, how very footling, if you will forgive me, it all sounds, doesn’t it? What can I do for you?”

Alleyn looked at the pallid face and restless eyes. “Mr. Phinn,” he said, “will you let me have your copy of Chapter 7?”

The kitten screamed, opening its mouth and showing its tongue. Mr. Phinn relaxed his fingers, kissed it and put it down.

“Forgive me, my atom,” he said. “Run to Mother.” He opened the gate. “Shall we go in?” he suggested, and they followed him into a garden dotted about with rustic furniture of an offensive design.

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “you can refuse. I shall then have to use some other form of approach.”

“If you imagine,” Mr. Phinn said, wetting his lips, “that as far as I am concerned this Chapter 7, which I am to suppose you have seen on my desk but not read, is in any way incriminating, you are entirely mistaken. It constitutes, for me, what may perhaps be described as a contra-motive.”

“So I had supposed,” Alleyn said. “But don’t you think you had better let me see it?”

There was a long silence. “Without the consent of Lady Lacklander,” Mr. Phinn said, “never. Not for all the sleuths in Christendom.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “that’s all very correct, I daresay. Would you suggest, for the sake of argument, that Chapter 7 constitutes a sort of confession on the part of the author? Does Sir Harold Lacklander, for instance, perhaps admit that he was virtually responsible for the leakage of information that tragic time in Zlomce?”

Mr. Phinn said breathlessly, “Pray, what inspires this gush of unbridled empiricism?”

“It’s not altogether that,” Alleyn rejoined with perfect good-humour. “As I think I told you this morning, I have some knowledge of the Zlomce affair. You tell us that the new version of Chapter 7 constitutes for you a contra-motive. If this is so, if, for instance, it provides exoneration, can you do anything but welcome its publication?”

Mr. Phinn said nothing.

“I think I must tell you,” Alleyn went on, “that I shall ask the prospective publishers for the full story of Chapter 7.”

“They have not been informed—”

“On the contrary, unknown to Colonel Cartarette, they were informed by the author.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Phinn, trembling slightly. “If they profess any vestige of professional rectitude, they will refuse to divulge the content.”

“As you do?”

“As I do. I shall refuse any information in this affair, no matter what pressure is put upon me, Inspector Alleyn.”

Mr. Phinn had already turned aside when his garden gate creaked and Alleyn said quietly, “Good morning once again, Lady Lacklander.”