Ngaio Marsh - Death in a White Tie

When he saw that she was indeed greatly shaken an intolerable wave of compassion drowned his thoughts. He stammered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Troy began to speak slowly.

“Let me go away now. I want to think. I will try to be honest. I promise you I did not believe I loved you. It seemed to me that I couldn’t love you when I resented so much the feeling that you made some sort of demand whenever we met. I don’t understand physical love. I don’t know how much it means. I’m just plain frightened, and that’s a fact.”

“You shall go. I’ll get a taxi. Wait a moment.”

He ran out and got a taxi. When he returned she was standing in front of the fire holding her cap in her hand and looked rather small and lost. He brought her coat and dropped it lightly across her shoulders.

“I’ve been very weak,” said Troy. “When I said I’d come I thought I would keep it all very peaceful and impersonal. You looked so worn and troubled and it was so easy just to do this. And now see what’s happened?”

“The skies have opened and the stars have fallen. I feel as if I’d run the world in the last hour. And now you must leave me.”

He took her to the taxi. Before he shut the door he said: “Your most devoted turkey-cock.”

The assistant Commissioner’s clock struck a quarter to nine as Alleyn walked into the room.

“Hello, Rory.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“As you have no doubt observed with your trained eye, my secretary is not present. So you may come off the official rocks. Sit down and light your pipe.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn.

“Feeling a bit shaky?”

“A bit. I shall look such an egregious ass if they don’t come up to scratch.”

“No doubt. It’s a big case, Chief Inspector.”

“Don’t I know it, sir!”

“Who comes first?”

“Sir Herbert and Lady Carrados.”

“Any of ’em arrived yet?”

“All except Dimitri. Fox has dotted them about the place. His room, mine, the waiting-room and the charge-room. As soon as Dimitri arrives, Fox’ll come and report.”

“Right. In the meantime, we’ll go over the plan of action again.”

They went over the plan of action.

“Well,” said the Assistant Commissioner, “it’s ticklish, but it may work. As I see it, everything depends on the way you handle them.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Alleyn grimly, “for those few reassuring words.”

The Assistant Commissioner’s clock struck nine. Alleyn knocked out his pipe. There was a tap on the door and Fox came in.

“We are all ready, sir,” he said.

“All right, Mr Fox. Show them in.”

Fox went out. Alleyn glanced at the two chairs under the central lamp, and then at the Assistant Commissioner sitting motionless in the green-shaded light from his desk. Alleyn himself stood before the mantelpiece.

“Stage set,” said the quiet voice beyond the green lamp. “And now the curtain rises.”

There was a brief silence, and then once more the door opened.

“Sir Herbert and Lady Carrados, sir.”

They came in. Alleyn moved forward, greeted them formally, and then introduced them to the Assistant Commissioner. Carrados’s manner as he shook hands was a remarkable mixture of the condescension of a viceroy and the fortitude of an early Christian martyr.

The Assistant Commissioner was crisp with them.

“Good evening, Lady Carrados. Good evening, Sir Herbert. In view of certain information he has received, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn and I decided to invite you to come and see us. As the case is in Mr Alleyn’s hands, I shall leave it to him to conduct the conversation. Will you both sit down?”

They sat. The light from the overhead lamp beat down on their faces, throwing strong shadows under the eyes and cheek-bones. The two heads turned in unison to Alleyn.

Alleyn said: “Most of what I have to say is addressed to you, Sir Herbert.”

“Indeed?” said Carrados. “Well, Alleyn, as I fancy I told you yesterday afternoon, I am only too anxious to help you to clear up the wretched business. As Lord Robert’s host on that fatal night—”

“Yes, we quite realize that, sir. Your attitude encourages one to hope that you will understand, or at any rate excuse, my going over old ground, and also breaking into new. I am in a position to tell you that we have followed a very strange trail since yesterday — a trail that has led us to some remarkable conclusions.”

Carrados turned his eyes, but not his head, towards his wife. He did not speak.

“We have reason to believe,” Alleyn went on, “that the murder of Lord Robert Gospell is the outcome of blackmail. Did you speak, sir?”

“No. No! I cannot see, I fail to understand—”

“I’ll make myself clearer in a moment, I hope. Now, for reasons into which I need not go at the moment, the connection between this crime and blackmail leads us to one of two conclusions. Either Lord Robert was a blackmailer, and was killed by one of his victims, or possibly someone wishing to protect his victim—”

“What makes you say that?” asked Carrados hoarsely. “It’s impossible!”

“Impossible? Why, please?”

“Because, Lord Robert, Lord Robert was not — it’s impossible to imagine — have you any proof that he was a blackmailer?”

“The alternative is that Lord Robert had discovered the identity of the blackmailer, and was murdered before he could reveal it.”

“You say this,” said Carrados, breathlessly, “but you give no proof.”

“I ask you, sir, simply to accept my statement that rightly or wrongly we believe our case to rest on one or the other of those alternatives.”

“I don’t pretend to be a detective, Alleyn, but—”

“Just a minute, sir, if you don’t mind. I want you now to go back with me to a day nearly eighteen years ago, when you motored Lady Carrados down to a village called Falconbridge in Buckinghamshire. You were not married then.”

“I frequently motored her into the country in those days.”

“You will have no difficulty in remembering this occasion. It was the day on which Captain Paddy O’Brien met with his accident.”

Alleyn waited. He saw the sweat round Carrados’s eyes shine in the strong lamplight.

“Well?” said Carrados.

“You do remember that day?” Alleyn asked.

“But Herbert,” said Lady Carrados, “of course you do.”

“I remember, yes. But I fail to see—”

“Please, sir! I shall fire point-blank in a moment. You remember?”

“Naturally.”

“You remember that Captain O’Brien was taken first to the vicarage and from there, in an ambulance, to the hospital, where he died a few hours later?”

“Yes.”

“You remember that, after he died, your wife, as she is now, was very distressed because she believed that a certain letter which Captain O’Brien carried had been lost?”

“I have no recollection of this.”

“Let me help you. She said that he had probably carried it in his pocket, that it must have fallen out, that she was most anxious to recover it. Am I right, Lady Carrados?”

“Yes — quite right.”

Her voice was low, but perfectly steady. She was looking at Alleyn with an air of shocked bewilderment.

“Did you ask Sir Herbert if he had enquired everywhere for this missing letter?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember now, Sir Herbert?”

“I think — I remember — something. It was all very distressing. I tried to be of some use; I think I may have been of some use.”

“Did you succeed in finding the letter?”

“I — don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”