Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

“What is that?” demanded Colonel Brammington. “Glass? Ah, the orts and fragments of the brandy glass, perhaps”

“That’s it, sir,” said Alleyn.

“And pray why do you put them on the scales?”

“Sir,” murmured Alleyn politely, “to find out their weight.”

Colonel Brammington said mildly: “You mock me, by Heaven. And what do they weigh?”

“Two ounces, forty-eight grains. That right, Dr. Shaw?”

“That’s it.”

Alleyn returned the fragments to their box and took a second box from his pocket.

“In this,” he said, “are the pieces of an identically similar glass for which I gave Mr. Pomeroy one and sixpence. They are his best glasses. Now then.”

He tipped the second shining heap into the scales.

“Yes, by George,” said Alleyn softly. “Look. Two ounces, twenty-four grains.”

“Here!” exclaimed Harper. “That’s less. It must be a lighter glass.”

“No,” said Alleyn. “It’s the same brand of glass. Abel took the glasses for the brandy from a special shelf. I’ve borrowed two more, unbroken. Let’s have them, Fox.”

Fox produced two tumblers. Each of them weighed two ounces, twenty-four grains.

“But look here,” objected Harper. “We didn’t get every scrap of that glass up. Some of it had been ground into the boards. Watchman’s glass should, if anything, weigh less than the others.”

“I know,” said Alleyn.

“Well then—”

“Some other glass must have fallen,” said Colonel Brammington. “They were full of distempering draughts, red-hot with drinking. One of them may have let fall some other glass. A pair of spectacles. Didn’t Watchman wear an eyeglass?”

“It was round his neck,” said Dr. Shaw, “unbroken.”

“There seems to have been no other glass broken, sir,” said Alleyn. “I’ve asked. Did you find all the pieces in one place, Harper?”

“Like you’d expect, a bit scattered and trampled about. I daresay there were pieces in the soles of their boots. Damn it all,” cried Harper in exasperation, “ it must weigh lighter.”

He weighed the glass again, peering suspiciously at the scales. The result was exactly the same. The fragments of Watchman’s glass weighed twenty-four grains heavier than the unbroken tumbler.

“This is rather amusing,” said Colonel Brammington.

Alleyn sat at the table and spread the broken glass over a sheet of paper. Fox gave him a pair of tweezers and he began to sort the pieces into a graduated row. The other men drew closer.

“It’s the same tumbler,” said Colonel Brammington. “There, you see, are the points of one of those loathsome stars.”

Alleyn took a jeweller’s lens from his pocket. “Ah!” muttered Colonel Brammington, staring at him with a bulging and raffish eye. “He peers. He screws a glass into his orb and with enlarged vision feeds his brain.”

“We always feel rather self-conscious about these things,” said Alleyn, “but they have their uses. Here, I think, are three, no four small pieces of glass that might be different from — well, let’s weigh them.” He put them in the scales.

“Thirty-one grains. That, Harper, leaves a margin of eleven grains for the bits you missed. Any good?”

“Do you think these bits are a different class of stuff, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Harper.

“I think so. There’s a difference in colour and if you look closely you can see they’re a bit thicker.”

“He has written a monograph on broken tumblers,” cried Colonel Brammington delightedly. “Let me look through your lens.”

He crouched over the table.

“They are different,” he said. “You are quite right, my dear Alleyn. What can it mean? The iodine bottle? No, it was found unbroken beneath the settle.”

“What did you discover at Woolworth’s, Fox?” asked Alleyn.

“Nothing much, Mr. Alleyn. I tried all the other places as well. They haven’t sold any and they say there’s very little shop-lifting in Illington.”

“Veil upon veil will lift,” remarked Colonel Brammington, “but there will be veil upon veil behind. What is this talk of shop-lifting?”

“I’ll explain, sir,” began Alleyn.

“On second thoughts, pray don’t. I prefer, Alleyn, to be your Watson. You dine with me to-night? Very good. Give me the evidence, and let me brood.”

“But don’t you wish to hear Mr. Alleyn’s case, sir?” asked Harper in a scandalized voice. “Your position—”

“I do not. I prefer to listen to voices in the upper air nor lose my simple faith in mysteries. I prefer to take the advice of the admirable Tupper and will let not the conceit of intellect hinder me from worshipping mystery. But nevertheless, give me your plain plump facts. I will sing, with Ovid, of facts.”

“You will not have Ovid’s privilege of inventing them,” rejoined Alleyn. “I have brought a copy of my report on the case. It’s up-to-date.”

Colonel Brammington took the file and seemed to become the victim of an intolerable restlessness. He rose, hitched up his shapeless trousers and said rapidly in a high voice: “Well, good-bye, Shaw. Come to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, thank you very much, sir,” said Dr. Shaw. “I’d like to. Black tie?”

“As the fancy takes you. I shall make some gesture. Broadcloth and boiled line. You come, Harper?”

“Thank you, sir, I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got to—”

“All right. I see. Three then. You, Alleyn; Shaw, and — ah—”

“Ah yes. Splendid. Well au revoir .”

“Fox,” said Alleyn.

“Ah yes. Splendid. Well, au revoir .”

“I was going to ask you, sir—” began Harper.

“Oh God! What?”

“It doesn’t matter, sir, if you’re in a hurry,” Harper opened the door with emphasized politeness. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Oh, good-bye to you, Harper, good-bye,” said Colonel Brammington, impatiently, and plunged out.

“If that,” said Harper sourly, “is the modern idea of a Chief Constable it’s not mine. You wouldn’t credit it, would you, that when the gentleman’s brother dies, he’ll be a Lord. A lord, mind you! Bawling hurricane. Where’s he get the things he says, Doctor? Out of his head or out of books?”

“Not having his brains, his memory, or his library I can’t tell you,” said Dr. Shaw.

iii

Alleyn, Fox, and Harper went to the police station. Here they had a long reiterative conversation. They compared Alleyn’s casts with the shoes Watchman wore on the day of his death, and found that they tallied exactly. They went over the case step by step. Alleyn expounded, the others listened. They laid their collection of oddments on Harper’s table; the brandy-bottle, the broken glass, the iodine bottle, the stained newspaper, the small china vessel from the rat-hole, and the bottle of Scheele’s acid. Harper gave Alleyn a stoppered bottle.

“Ah,” said Alleyn, “that’s the stuff out of the rat-hole jar? I want you to get it analyzed. Perhaps Dr. Mordant would do it. No, I suppose that would be too unofficial. It had better go to London.”

“You think our murderer got the stuff from the garage?” asked Harper.

“I do.”

“But the thing was full.”

“Because it was full,” said Alleyn.

“You reckon that was water,” asked Harper slowly.

“Yes, Nick.”

“I see,” said Harper.

“The poison-party,” said Alleyn, “was attended by Abel, who put the prussic acid in the china pot and stopped the hole; by Will, by Miss Moore, by Legge, who only looked in for a moment, and by a couple of fishermen who were on their way to the public bar and who don’t come into the picture. Subsequently Abel warned everybody in the place about what he had done, so that the actual attendance at the poison-party may not give us our answer. On the other hand it is possible that one of them lagged behind and pinched the poison. They all profess to have forgotten in what order they left. Now prussic acid in Mr. Noggins’ fifty-per-cent solution is a highly volatile liquid. Judging by the stench, its fumes have accounted for at least one rat, so probably it was not removed immediately. On the other hand, it seems it would evaporate considerably in something under an hour. I’m not sure on this point. We’ll experiment. The experts say, in their report, under an hour. Very good. My contention is that the murderer must have nipped into the garage, within an hour after Abel left it, and taken the poison, which would be kept in a tightly corked bottle until it was needed.”