Ngaio Marsh - Final Curtain

“Yes, of course. But to imagine that underneath all the showings-off and temperaments this could be happening… I can’t. Of all of them… that one!”

“Remember, I may be wrong.”

“You’ve a habit of not being wrong, though, haven’t you?”

“The Yard,” said Alleyn, “is littered with my blunders. Ask Fox. Troy, is this very beastly for you?”

“No,” said Troy, “it’s mostly bewildering. I didn’t form any attachments at Ancreton. I can’t give it a personal application.”

“Thank God for that,” he said and went to the Yard.

Here he found Fox in, waiting with the tin of rat-bane. “I haven’t had a chance to hear your further adventures at Ancreton, Foxkin. The presence of Mr. Mortimer rather cramped our style last night. How did you get on?”

“Quite nicely, sir. No trouble really about getting the prints. Well, when I say no trouble, there was quite a bit of high-striking in some quarters as was to be expected in that family. Miss O. made trouble, and, for a while, stuck out she wouldn’t have it, but I talked her round. Nobody else actually objected, though you’d have thought Mrs. Kentish and Miss Desdemona Ancred were being asked to walk into the condemned cell, the way they carried on. Bailey got down by the early train in the morning and worked through the prints you asked for. We found a good enough impression in paint on the wall of Mrs. Alleyn’s tower. Miss O. all right. And her prints are in the book. Lots of others too, of course. Prints all over the cover, from when they looked at it after it turned up in the cheese-dish, no doubt. I’ve checked up on the letters, but there’s nothing in it. They handed them round and there you are. Same thing in the flower-room. Regular mess of prints and some odds and ends where they’d missed sweeping. Coloured tape off florist’s boxes, leaves and stalks, scraps of sealing-wax, fancy paper and so on. I’ve kept all of it in case there was anything. I took a chance to slip into Miss O.’s room. Nothing beyond some skittish literature and a few letters from men written before Sir Henry’s day. One, more recent, from a young lady. I memorized it. ‘Dear S. Good for you, kid, stick to it, and don’t forget your old pals when you’re Lady A. Think the boy friend’d do anything for me in the business? God knows, I’m not so hot on this Shakespeare, but he must know other managements. Does he wear bed-socks? Regards Clarrie.’ ”

“No mention of the egregious Cedric?”

“Not a word. We looked at Miss Able’s cupboard. Only her own prints. I called in at Mr. Juniper’s. He says the last lot of that paper was taken up with some stuff for the rest of the house a fortnight ago. Two sets of prints on the bell-push from Sir Henry’s room — his own and old Barker’s. Looks as if Sir Henry had grabbed at it, tried to use it and dragged it off.”

“As we thought.”

“Mr. Juniper got in a great way when I started asking questions. I went very easy with him, but he made me a regular speech about how careful he is and showed me his books. He reckons he always double-checks everything he makes up. He’s particularly careful, he says, because of Dr. Withers being uncommonly fussy. It seems they had a bit of a row. The doctor reckoned the kids’ medicine wasn’t right, and Juniper took it for an insult. He says the doctor must have made the mistake himself and tried to save his face by turning round on him. He let on the doctor’s a bit of a lad and a great betting man, and he thinks he’d been losing pretty solidly and was worried, and made a mistake weighing the kids or something. But that wouldn’t apply to Sir Henry’s medicine, because it was the mixture as before. And I found out that at the time he made it up he was out of arsenic and hasn’t got any yet.”

“Good for Mr. Juniper,” said Alleyn dryly.

“Which brings us,” Fox continued, “to this tin.” He laid his great hand beside it on the desk. “Bailey’s gone over it for dabs. And here we have got something, Mr. Alleyn, and about time too, you’ll be thinking. Now this tin has got the usual set of prints. Some of the search party’s, in fact. Latent, but Bailey brought them up and got some good photographs. There’s Mrs. Kentish’s. She must have just touched it. Miss Desdemona Ancred seems to have picked it up by the edge. Mr. Thomas Ancred grasped it more solidly round the sides and handled it again when he took it out of his bag. Mrs. Henry Ancred held it firmly towards the bottom. Sir Cedric’s prints are all over it, and there, you’ll notice, are the marks round the lid where he had a shot at opening it.”

“Not a very determined shot.”

“No. Probably scared of getting rat-bane on his manicure,” said Fox. “But the print is, you see—”

“No Orrincourt?”

“Not a sign of her. Not a sign of glove-marks either. It was a dusty affair, and the dust, except for the prints we got, wasn’t disturbed.”

“It’s a point. Well, Fox, now Bailey’s finished with it we can open it.”

The lid was firm and it took a penny and considerable force to prise it up. An accretion of the contents had sealed it. The tin was three-parts full, and the greyish paste bore traces of the implement that had been used to scoop it out.

“We’ll have a photo-micrograph of this,” Alleyn said.

“If Orrincourt’s our bird, sir, it looks as if we’ll have to hand the tin over to the defence, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll have to get an expert’s opinion, Fox. Curtis’s boys can speak up when they’ve finished the job in hand. Pray continue, as the Immortal used to say, with your most interesting narrative.”

“There’s not much more. I took a little peep at the young baronet’s room, too. Dunning letters, lawyer’s letters, letters from his stockbroker. I should say he was in deep. I’ve made a note of the principal creditors.”

“For an officer without a search warrant you seem to have got on very comfortably.”

“Isabel helped. She’s taken quite a fancy for investigation. She kept a lookout in the passage.”

“With parlour-maids,” Alleyn said, “you’re out on your own. A masterly technique.”

“I called on Dr. Withers yesterday afternoon and told him you’d decided on the exhumation.”

“How did he take it?”

“He didn’t say much but he went a queer colour. Well, naturally. They never like it. Reflection on their professional standing and so on. He thought a bit and then said he’d prefer to be present. I said we’d expect that, anyway. I was just going when he called me back. ‘Here!’ he said, kind of hurriedly and as if he wasn’t sure he might not be making a fool of himself; ‘you don’t want to pay too much attention to anything that idiot Juniper may have told you. The man’s an ass.’ As soon as I was out of the house,” said Fox, “I made a note of that to be sure the words were correct. The maid was showing me out at the time.”

“Curtis asked him last night, after we’d tidied up in the cemetery, if he’d like to come up and watch the analysis. He agreed. He’s sticking to it that the embalmers must have used something that caused the hair to fall out. Mr. Mortimer was touched to the professional quick, of course.”

“It’s a line defending counsel may fancy,” said Fox gloomily.

The telephone rang and Fox answered it.

“It’s Mr. Mortimer,” he said.

“Oh, Lord! You take it, Fox.”

“He’s engaged at the moment, Mr. Mortimer. Can I help you?”

The telephone cackled lengthily and Fox looked at Alleyn with bland astonishment. “Just a moment.” He laid down the receiver. “I don’t follow this. Mr. Alleyn hasn’t got a secretary.”

“What’s all this?” said Alleyn sharply.