Ngaio Marsh - Death in a White Tie

“Bailey hasn’t much. There’s nothing in the taxi. He got Withers’s prints from my cigarette-case but, as we expected, the green sitting-room was simply a mess. He has found Withers’s and young Potter’s prints on the pages of Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence . The pages that refer to asphyxiation.”

“By gum, that’s something.”

“Not such a great deal, Fox. They will tell us that when the newspaper report came out they were interested and turned up Taylor on suffocation; and who is to call them liars? The man who went to Leatherhead had a success. Apparently Withers keeps a married couple there. Our man pitched a yarn that he had been sent by the borough to inspect the electrical wiring in the house, and got in. What’s more he seems to have had a good look round. He found a roulette wheel and had the intelligence to examine it pretty closely. The middle dozen slots had been very slightly opened. I expect the idea is that Master Donald or some other satellite of Withers should back the middle dozen. The wheel seems brand new. There was an older one that showed no signs of irregularity. There were also several packs of cards which had been lightly treated with the favourite pumice-stone. Luckily for us the married couple had a violent row with the gallant Captain and were prepared to talk. I think we’ve got enough to pull him in on a gambling-hell charge. Thompson reports that Withers has stayed in all day. The telephone was disconnected as soon as we left. Donald Potter’s clothes were returned to him by taxi. Nobody has visited Withers. Dimitri comes next. Dimitri went home after he left here, visiting a chemist on the way to get his hand bandaged. He, too, has remained indoors, and has made no telephone calls. Most exemplary behaviour. How the blazes are we going to get any of these victims to charge Dimitri?”

“You’re asking me!” said Fox.

“Yes. Not a hope in a hundred. Well now, Fox, I’ve been over this damnable, dreary, involved, addling business of the green sitting-room. It boils down to this. The people who could have overheard Lord Robert’s telephone conversation were Withers, Sir Herbert Carrados, Miss Harris, Mrs Halcut-Hackett and Donald. They were all on or about the top landing and wouldn’t have to lie particularly freely in avoiding any reference to a brief dart in and out of the telephone-room. But, but, but, and a blasted but it is, it is quite possible that while Lord Robert telephoned, someone came upstairs and walked into the telephone-room. Mrs Halcut-Hackett was in the cloakroom; Withers, Donald and Carrados in the other sitting-room, Miss Harris in the lavatory. Dimitri says he was downstairs but who the devil’s to prove it? If the others are speaking the truth, anybody might have come up and gone down again unseen.”

“The gentleman who burst into the lavatory?”

“Precisely. He may even have hidden in there till the coast was clear, though I can’t see why. There’s nothing particularly fishy in coming out of a sitting-room.”

“Ugh,” said Fox.

“As I see the case now, Fox, it presents one or two highlights. Most of them seem to be concentrated on cigarette-cases. Two cigarette-cases. The murderer’s and Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s.”

“Yes,” said Fox.

“After the cigarette-cases comes the lost letter. The letter written by Paddy O’Brien’s friend in Australia. The letter that somebody seems to have stolen eighteen years ago in Buckinghamshire. It’s odd, isn’t it, that Miss Harris’s uncle was sometime rector of Falconbridge, the village where Paddy O’Brien met with his accident? I wonder if either Miss Harris or Lady Carrados realizes there is this vague connection. I think our next move after the inquest is to go down to Barbicon-Bramley where we may disturb the retirement of Miss Harris’s uncle. Then we’ll have to dive into the past history of the hospital in Falconbridge. But what a cold trail! A chance in a thousand.”

“It’s a bit of a coincidence Miss Harris linking up in this way, isn’t it?” ruminated Fox.

“Are you building up a picture with Miss Harris as the agent of an infamous old parson who had treasured a compromising letter for eighteen years, and now uses it? Well, I suppose it’s not so impossible. But I don’t regard it as a very great coincidence that Miss Harris has drifted into Lady Carrados’s household. Coincidences become increasingly surprising as they gain in importance. One can imagine someone telling Miss Harris about Paddy O’Brien’s accident and Miss Harris saying the parson at Falconbridge was her uncle. Everybody exclaims tiresomely at the smallness of the world and nobody thinks much more of it. Mix a missing letter up in the story and we instantly incline to regard Miss Harris’s remote connection with Falconbridge as a perfectly astonishing coincidence.”

“She’d hardly have mentioned it so freely,” admitted Fox, “if she’d had anything to do with the letter.”

“Exactly. Still, we’ll have to follow it up. And, talking of following things up, Fox, there’s Lady Lorrimer. We’ll have to check Sir Daniel Davidson’s account of himself.”

“That’s right, sir.”

Fox unhooked his spectacles and put them in their case.

“On what we’ve got,” he asked, “have you any particular leaning to anyone?”

“Yes. I’ve left it until we had a moment’s respite to discuss it with you. I wanted to see if you’d arrived independently at the same conclusion yourself.”

“The cigarette-case and the telephone call.”

“Yes. Very well, Fox: ‘in a contemplative fashion and a tranquil frame of mind,’ let us discuss the cigarette-cases. Point one.”

They discussed the cigarette-cases.

At seven o’clock Fox said:

“We’re not within sight of making an arrest. Not on that evidence.”

Alleyn said: “And don’t forget we haven’t found the cloak and hat.”

Fox said: “It seems to me, Mr Alleyn, we’ll have to ask every blasted soul that hasn’t got an alibi if we can search their house. Clumsy.”

“Carrados,” began Alleyn, “Halcut-Hackett, Davidson, Miss Harris. Withers and Potter go together. I swear the hat and cloak aren’t in that flat. Same goes for Dimitri.”

“The garbage-tins,” said Fox gloomily. “I’ve told the chaps about the garbage-tins. They’re so unlikely they’re enough to make you cry. What would anybody do with a cloak and hat, Mr Alleyn, if they wanted to get rid of ’em? We know all the old dodges. You couldn’t burn ’em in any of these London flats. It was low tide, as you’ve pointed out, and they’d have had to be dropped off the bridge which would have been a pretty risky thing to do. D’you reckon they’ll try leaving ’em at a railway office?”

“We’ll have to watch for it. We’ll have to keep a good man to tail our fancy. I don’t somehow feel it’ll be a left-luggage affair, Brer Fox. They’ve been given a little too much publicity of late years. Limbs and torsos have bobbed up in corded boxes with dreary insistence, not only up and down the LNER and kindred offices, but throughout the pages of detective fiction. I rather fancy the parcels post myself. I’ve sent out the usual request. If they were posted it was probably during the rush hour at one of the big central offices, and how the suffering cats we’re to catch up with that is more than I can tell. Still, we’ll hope for a lucky break, whatever that may be.”

The desk telephone rang. Alleyn, suddenly and painfully reminded of Lord Robert’s call, answered it.

His mother’s voice asked if he would dine with her.

“I don’t suppose you can get away, my dear, but as this flat is only five minutes in a taxi it might suit you to come in.”

“I’d like to,” said Alleyn. “When?”