Ngaio Marsh - Death in a White Tie

“Tonight? My dear, you’ll fall asleep with the customary warning on your lips.”

“Not I. And I’m afraid there’s no occasion as yet for the customary warning.”

“Does Evelyn Carrados come into the picture at all?”

Alleyn sat up.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because I could see that Bunchy had his eye on her too.”

“We’d better change jobs, darling. You can go into the Yard and watch people having their eyes on each other and I’ll sit in chaperones’ corner, pounce at young men for Sarah, and make conversation with Lady Lorrimer. I’ve got to see her some time soon, by the way.”

“Lucy Lorrimer! You don’t mean to tell me she’s in this business. I can well understand somebody murdering her , but I don’t see her on the other side of the picture. Of course she is mad.”

“She’s got to supply half an alibi for Sir Daniel Davidson.”

“Good heavens, who next! Why Davidson?”

“Because he was the last man to leave before Bunchy.”

“Well, I hope it’s not Sir Daniel. I was thinking of showing him my leg. Roderick, I suppose I can’t help you with Lucy Lorrimer. I can easily ring her up and ask her to tea. She must be seething with excitement and longing to talk to everybody. Bunchy was to dine with her tonight.”

“Why?”

“For no particular reason. But she kept saying she knew he wouldn’t come, that he’d forget. I can easily ring her up and she shouts so loudly you need only sit beside me to hear every word.”

“All right,” said Alleyn, “let’s try. Ask her if she saw anything of Bunchy as she was leaving. You sit in the chair here, darling, and I’ll perch on the arm. We can have the receiver between us.”

Lady Lorrimer’s telephone was persistently engaged but at last they got through. Her ladyship, said a voice, was at home.

“Will you say it’s Lady Alleyn? Thank you.”

During the pause that followed Lady Alleyn eyed her son with a conspiratorial air and asked him to give her a cigarette. He did so and provided himself with pencil and paper.

“We’ll be ages ,” she whispered, waving the receiver to and fro rather as if it were a fan. Suddenly it emitted a loud crackling sound and Lady Alleyn raised it gingerly to within four inches of her right ear.

“Is that you, Lucy?”

“My dear ,” shouted the receiver, “I’m so glad. I’ve been longing to speak to you for, of course, you can tell us everything . I’ve always thought it was such a pity that good-looking son of yours turning himself into a policeman because, say what you will, it must be frightfully bad for them so long in the one position only moving their arms and the internal organs taking all the strain which Sir Daniel tells me is the cause of half the diseases of women, though I must own I think his practice is getting rather beyond him. Of course in the case of the Prime Minister everything must be excused.”

Lady Alleyn looked an inquiry at her son who nodded his comprehension of this amazing tarradiddle.

“Yes, Lucy?” murmured Lady Alleyn.

“Which brings me to this frightful calamity,” continued the telephone in a series of cracks and splutters. “Too awful! And you know he was to dine with me tonight. I put my brother off because I felt I could never accustom myself to the idea that there but for the Grace of God sat Bunchy Gospell. Not perhaps the Grace of God but His ways are inscrutable indeed and when I saw him come down the staircase humming to himself I little thought that he was going to his grave. I shall never forgive myself, of course, that I did not offer to drive him and as it turned out with the Prime Minister being so ill I might have done so.”

“Why do you keep introducing the Prime Minister into this story, Lucy?” asked Lady Alleyn. She clapped her hand over the mouthpiece and said crossly: “But I want to know, Roderick.”

“It’s all right,” said Alleyn. “Davidson pretended — do listen, darling, she’s telling you.”

“ — I can’t describe the agony, Helena,” quacked the telephone, “I really thought I should swoon with it. I felt Sir Daniel must examine me without losing a moment, so I told my chauffeur to look out for him because I promise you I was too ill to distinguish one man from another. Then I saw him coming out of the door. ‘Sir Daniel, Sir Daniel!’ He did not hear me and all would have been lost if one of the linkmen had not seen my distress and drawn Sir Daniel’s attention to me. He crossed the street and as a very old patient I don’t mind admitting to you, Helena, I was rather disappointed but of course with the country in the state it is one must make sacrifices. He was extremely agitated. The Prime Minister had developed some terrible complaint. Please tell nobody of this, Helena. I know you are as silent as the grave but Sir Daniel would no doubt be gravely compromised if it were ever to leak out. Under those conditions I could do nothing but bear my cross in silence and it was not until he had positively run away that I thought of driving him to Downing Street. By the time my fool of a chauffeur had started the car, of course, it was too late. No doubt Sir Daniel had raced to the nearest taxi-cab and, although I have rung up to inquire tactfully, he is continually engaged, so that one fears the worst.”

“Mad!” said Lady Alleyn to her son.

“ — I can’t tell you how much it has upset me but I hope I know my duty, Helena, and having just recollected that your boy was a constable I said to myself that he should learn of this extraordinary man whom I am firmly persuaded is an assassin. What other explanation can there be?”

“Sir Daniel Davidson!” exclaimed Lady Alleyn.

“Good heavens, Helena, are you mad! For pity’s sake tell your son to come and see me himself in order that there may be no mistake. How could it be my poor Sir Daniel, who was already on his way to Downing Street? I attribute my appalling condition at this moment to the shock I received. Do you remember a play called The Face at the Window ? I was reminded of it. I assure you I screamed aloud — my chauffeur will bear witness. The nose was flat and white and the moustache quite frightful, like some hairy monster gummed to the window-pane. The eyes rolled, I could do nothing but clutch my pearls. ‘Go away!’ I screamed. My chauffeur, fool that he is, had seen nothing and by the time he roused himself it had disappeared.”

Alleyn held a sheet of paper before his mother’s nose. On it he had written: “Ask her who it was.”

“Have you any idea who it was, Lucy?” asked Lady Alleyn.

“There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind, Helena, and I should have thought little in yours. These appalling cases that have occurred! The papers are full of them. The Peeping Tom of Peckham, though how he has managed to go there every night from Halkin Street—”

Alleyn gave a stifled exclamation.

“From Halkin Street?” repeated Lady Alleyn.

“There is no doubt that his wife’s appalling behaviour has turned his head. He suspected poor Robert Gospell. You must have heard, as I did, how he asked her to let him take her home. No doubt he was searching for them. The jury will bring in a strong recommendation for mercy or perhaps they will find him guilty but insane, as no doubt he is.”

“But, Lucy! Lucy, listen. Whom are you talking about ?”

“Don’t be a fool, Helena, who should it be but George Halcut-Hackett?”

Well Roderick,” said Lady Alleyn when she had at last got rid of Lucy Lorrimer, “you may be able to make something of this but it seems to me that Lucy has at last gone completely insane. Do you for an instant suppose that poor old General Halcut-Hackett is the Peeping Tom of Peckham?”