Ngaio Marsh - Death in a White Tie

Miss Harris’s voice stopped for a moment. She moved her writing-pad on the arm of her chair.

“We danced,” she continued. “Three successive dances with repeats. Lord Robert introduced me to several of his friends and then he took me into the buffet on the street-level. We drank champagne. He then remembered that he had promised to dance with the Duchess of Dorminster —” Here Miss Harris appeared to lose her place for a moment. She repeated: “Had promised to dance with the Duchess of Dorminster,” and cleared her throat again. “He took me to the ballroom and asked me for the next Viennese waltz. I remained in the ballroom. Lord Robert danced with the Duchess and then with Miss Agatha Troy, the portrait painter, and then with two ladies whose names I do not know. Not at once, of course,” said Miss Harris in parenthesis. “That would be ridiculous. I still remained in the ballroom. The band played the ‘Blue Danube’. Lord Robert was standing in a group of his friends close to where I sat. He saw me. We danced the ‘Blue Danube’ together and revisited the buffet. I noticed the time. I had intended leaving much earlier and was surprised to find that it was nearly three o’clock. So I stayed till the end.”

She glanced up at Alleyn with the impersonal attentive air proper to her position. He felt so precisely that she was indeed his secretary that there was no need for him to repress a smile. But he did glance at Fox, who for the first time in Alleyn’s memory, looked really at a loss. His large hand hovered uncertainly over his own notebook. AHeyn realized that Fox did not know whether to take down Miss Harris’s shorthand in his own shorthand.

Alleyn said: “Thank you, Miss Harris. Anything else?”

Miss Harris turned a page.

“Details of conversation,” she began. “I have not made memos of all the remarks I have remembered. Many of them were merely light comments on suitable subjects. For instance, Lord Robert spoke of Lady Carrados and expressed regret that she seemed to be tired. That sort of thing.”

“Let us have his remarks under this heading,” said Alleyn with perfect gravity.

“Certainly, Mr Alleyn. Lord Robert asked me if I had noticed that Lady Carrados had been tired for some time. I said yes I had, and that I was sorry because she was so nice to everybody. He asked if I thought it was entirely due to the season. I said I expected it was, because many ladies I have had posts with have found the season very exhausting, although in a way Lady Carrados took the entertaining side very lightly. Lord Robert asked me if I liked being with Lady Carrados. I replied that I did, very much. Lord Robert asked me several questions about myself. He was very easy to talk to. I told him about the old days at the rectory and how we ought to have been much better off, and he was very nice, and I told about my father’s people in Bucks and he seemed quite interested in so many of them being parsons and what an old Buckinghamshire family we really are.”

“Oh, God,” thought Alleyn on a sudden wave of painful compassion. “And so they probably are and because for the last two or three generations they’ve had to haul down the social flag inch by inch their children are all going to talk like this and nobody’s going to feel anything but uncomfortably incredulous.”

He said: “You come from Barbicon-Bramley? That’s not far from Bassicote, is it? I know that part of Bucks fairly well. Is your father’s rectory anywhere near Falconbridge?”

“Oh, no. Falconbridge is thirty miles away. My uncle Walter was rector at Falconbridge.”

Alleyn said: “Really? Long ago?”

“When I was a small girl. He’s retired now and lives in Barbicon-Bramley. All the Harrises live to ripe old ages. Lord Robert remarked that many of the clergy do. He said longevity was one of the more dubious rewards of virtue,” said Miss Harris with a glance at her notes.

Alleyn could hear the squeaky voice uttering this gentle epigram.

“He was amusing,” added Miss Harris.

“Yes. Now look here, Miss Harris, we’re coming to something rather important. You tell me you went up to the top landing between, say, a quarter to one and one-fifteen. Do you think you were up there all that time?”

“Yes, Mr Alleyn, I think I was.”

“Whereabouts were you?”

Miss Harris turned purple with the rapidity of a pantomime fairy under a coloured spotlight.

“Well, I mean to say, I sat on the gallery, I went into the ladies’ cloakroom on the landing to tidy and see if everything was quite nice, and then I sat on the gallery again and — I mean I was just about.”

“You were on the gallery at one o’clock, you think?”

“I — really I’m not sure if I—”

“Let’s see if we can get at it this way. Did you go into the cloakroom immediately after you got to the landing?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“How long were you in the cloakroom?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“So you were back on the gallery again well before one.”

“Yes,” said Miss Harris without enthusiasm, “but—”

“At about the time I am trying to get at, Captain Withers and Mr Donald Potter were on the gallery, from where they moved into the sitting-room on that landing. Sir Herbert Carrados was in and out of the sitting-room and you may have heard him order the servant on duty up there to attend to the ash-trays and matches. Do you remember this?”

“No. Not exactly. I think I remember seeing Captain Withers and Mr Potter through the sitting-room door as I passed to go downstairs. The larger sitting-room — not the one with the telephone. Lord Robert was in the telephone-room.”

“How do you know that?”

“I — heard him.”

“From the cloakroom?”

“The — I mean—”

“The room between the cloakroom and the telephone-room, perhaps,” said Alleyn, mentally cursing the extreme modesty of Miss Harris.

“Yes,” said Miss Harris looking straight in front of her. Her discomfiture was so evident that Alleyn himself almost began to feel shy.

“Please don’t mind if I ask for very exact information,” he said. “Policemen are rather like doctors in these instances. Things don’t count. When did you go into this ladies’ room?”

“As soon as I got upstairs,” said Miss Harris. “Hem!”

“Right. Now let’s see if we can get things straight, shall we? You came upstairs at, say, about ten or fifteen minutes to one. You went straight to this door next the green sitting-room with the telephone. Did you see anyone?”

“Captain Withers was just coming out of the green sitting-room. I think there was a lady in there. I saw her through the open door as I — as I opened the other.”

“Yes. Anyone else?”

“I think I noticed Sir Herbert in the other sitting-room, the first one, as I passed the door. That’s all.”

“And then you went into the ladies’ room?”

“Yes,” admitted Miss Harris, shutting her eyes for a moment and opening them again to stare with something like horror at Fox’s pencil and notebook. Alleyn felt that already she saw herself being forced to answer these and worse questions shouted at her by celebrated counsel at the Old Bailey.

“How long did you remain in this room?” he asked.

White to the lips Miss Harris gave a rather mad little laugh. “Oh,” she said, “oh, quayte a tayme. You know.”

“And while you were there you heard Lord Robert telephoning in the next room?”

“Yes, I did,” said Miss Harris loudly with an air of defiance.

“She’s looking at me,” thought Alleyn, “exactly like a trapped rabbit.”

“So Lord Robert probably came upstairs after you. Do you suppose the lady you had noticed was still in the green room when he began telephoning?”