Ngaio Marsh - Death And The Dancing Footman

Mother

I sign this with my full name because you will have to show it.

Sandra Mary Compline

Alleyn had asked Mandrake to say nothing of the contents of the letter. “Under ordinary circumstances,” he said, “I would have had another officer with me when I opened it. I want you to fix the contents firmly in your mind, and I want you to be prepared, if necessary, to swear that it is the original letter which I have sealed in this envelope, the letter which I opened in your presence and from which you made this copy. All this may be quite unnecessary but as the most detached member of the party I thought it well to get your assistance. I’ll keep the copy, if you please.”

Mandrake gave him the copy. His hand shook so much that the paper rattled and he muttered an apology.

“It’s horrible,” Mandrake said. “Horrible. Mother love! My God!” He stared at Alleyn. “This sort of thing—” he stammered—”it can’t happen. I never dreamed of this. It’s so much worse — it’s ever so much worse.”

Alleyn watched him for a moment. “Worse than what?” he asked.

“It’s real,” said Mandrake. “I suppose you’ll think it incredible but until now it hasn’t been quite real to me. Not even,” he jerked his head towards the smoking-room door, “not even — that. One works these things out in terms of an aesthetic, but for them to happen …! God, this’ll about kill Nicholas.”

“Yes.”

“To have it before him for the rest of his life! I don’t know why it should affect me like this. After all, it’s better that it should end this way. I suppose it’s better. She’s ended it. No horrible parade of justice. She’s spared him that. But I can’t help suddenly seeing it. It’s as if a mist had cleared, leaving the solid reality of a disfigured woman writing that letter, mixing the poison, getting into bed and then, with God knows what nightmare of last memories, drinking it down.” Mandrake limped about the room and Alleyn watched him. “At least,” said Mandrake, “we are spared an arrest. But Nicholas saw the letter. He knew .”

“He still insists that Dr. Hart killed his brother.”

“Let me see the copy of that letter again.”

Alleyn gave him the copy and he muttered over the phrases. “What else can it mean? ‘You should have been my eldest son!’ ‘Hersey suspects.’ ‘I cannot face it.’ ‘Everything I have done has been for you.’ What else but that she did it? But I can’t understand. Why the other two attempts? It doesn’t make sense.” He looked up. “Alleyn, for God’s sake tell me. Does it make sense?”

“I’m afraid it makes sense, all right,” said Alleyn.

From five o’clock until seven, Alleyn worked alone. First of all he inspected the Charter blocks, handling them with tweezers and wishing very heartily for Bailey, his finger-print expert. The blocks were made of thinnish paper and the impression of heavily pencilled letters appeared on the surfaces of the unused forms. The smoking-room waste-paper baskets had been emptied, but a hunt through a rubbish bin in an outhouse brought to light several of the used forms. The rest, it appeared, had been thrown on the fire by the players after their scores had been marked. Mandrake had told him that after the little scene over the extra form, Jonathan had suddenly suggested that they play some other game, and the Charter pads had been discarded. By dint of a wearisome round of questions, Alleyn managed to identify most of the used forms. Dr. Hart readily selected his, admitting placidly that he had used “threats” as a seven-square word. Alleyn found the ghost of this word on one of the blocks, which he was then able to classify definitely as Hart’s. The Doctor had used a sharp pencil and had pressed hard upon it, so that the marks persisted through two or three of the under-papers. But neither on his used form nor on the rest of the pages did Alleyn find the faintest trace of the words: “You are warned. Keep off.” This was negative evidence. Hart might have been at pains to tear off that particular form and fill it in against the card back on the block, which would take no impression. At this stage Alleyn went to Jonathan and asked if he had a specimen of Hart’s writing. Jonathan at once produced Hart’s note accepting the invitation to Highfold. Alleyn shut himself up again and made his first really interesting discovery: The writing in the note was a script that still bore many foreign characteristics. But in his first Charter form, Dr. Hart had used block capitals throughout, though his experimental scribblings in the margin were in his characteristic script. Turning to the warning message, which was written wholly in script, Alleyn discovered indications that the letters had been slowly and carefully formed, and he thought that it began to look very much like the work of someone who was familiar with Hart’s writing and had deliberately introduced those characteristic letters.

Of the other players, an exhaustive process of enquiry and comparison showed that Mrs. Compline, Hersey and Jonathan had written too lightly to leave impressions, while William’s and Mandrake’s papers had been burnt after being marked. Alleyn could find no trace of the message on any of the blocks. At last he began to turn back the pages of each one, using his tweezers and going on doggedly, long after the faintest trace had faded, to the last leaf of each block. At the third block, about half-way through, he made his discovery. Here, suddenly, he came upon the indented trace of those five words; and a closer inspection showed him that the page before the one so marked had been torn away. Owing to its position, the perforations had not been followed and when he fitted the crumpled message to the torn edge, the serrations tallied. This, then, was the block upon which the message had been written — and it was not Dr. Hart’s block. He turned back to the first pages and gave a little sigh. They held no impressions. Alleyn got a picture of the writer hurriedly using the mass of pages as a cover, scribbling his message on the central leaf and wrenching it free of the pad. Either this writer had written his legitimate Charters with a light hand, or else he had torn away the additional pages that held an impression. The pad had belonged neither to William nor to Mandrake, for theirs bore marks that Mandrake himself had identified. Two of the remaining pads were marked by certain faint traces, visible through the lens, and these, he thought, must have been used by Madame Lisse and Chloris Wynne, whose finger-nails were long and pointed.

“Not so bad,” he murmured and, whistling softly, put the Charter pads away again.

He went up to Mrs. Compline’s room, taking the not very willing Mandrake with him.

“I like to have a witness,” he said vaguely. “As a general rule we work in pairs over the ticklish bits. It’ll be all right when Fox comes, but in the meantime you, as an unsuspected person, will do very nicely.”

Mandrake kept his back turned to the shrouded figure on the bed and watched Alleyn go through the clothes in the wardrobe. Alleyn got him to feel the shoulders and skirts of a Harris tweed overcoat.

“Damp,” said Mandrake.

“Was it snowing when you went down to the pond?”

“Yes. My God, were they her footsteps? She must have walked down inside my own, as Chloris suggested?”

Alleyn was looking at the hats on the top shelf of the wardrobe.

“This is the one she wore,” he said. “It’s still quite wettish. Blue tweedish sort of affair with a salmon fly as ornament. No, two flies. A yellow-and-black salmon fly, and a rather jaded and very large trout-fly — scarlet-and-green, an Alexandra. That seems excessive, doesn’t it?” He peered more closely at the hat. “Now, I wonder…” he said — and, when Mandrake asked him peevishly what he wondered, sent Mandrake off to find the maid who had looked after Mrs. Compline. She proved to be a Dorset girl, born and bred on the Highfold estate, a chatterbox, very trim and bright and full of the liveliest curiosity about the clothes and complexions of the ladies in Jonathan’s party. She was anxious to become a ladies’ maid, and Mrs. Pouting had been training her. This was the first time she had maided any visitors to Highfold. She burst into a descriptive rapture over the wardrobes of Madame Lisse and Miss Wynne. It was with difficulty that Alleyn hauled her attention round to the less exciting garments of Mrs. Compline. The interview took place in the passage and Alleyn held the tweed hat behind his back while the little maid chattered away about the wet coat.