Ngaio Marsh - A Man Lay Dead

“It is, indeed,” agreed Alleyn. “Are you coming down, Mr. Wilde?”

Wilde glanced at the closed door.

“Yes, certainly,” he said, and they went down together.

Alleyn had finished at Frantock for the time being, but he did not yet feel entitled to call it a day. His next move was to the police station at Little Frantock, where he put through a long-distance call to London. He waited a minute and then spoke into the receiver:

“Christina!” he said. “Is it yourself? What a bit of luck! Look here, you can help me if you will. It’s your cousin the policeman, and he’s up agin it, my dear. Drag your mind away from shattered atoms and bicarbonate of soda, cast it back six years, and tell me everything — everything you can remember about one Rosamund Grant who was up at Newnham with you.”

A miniature voice crackled in the earpiece.

“Yes,” said Alleyn, getting out his pencil and straightening the message block by the telephone, “yes.”

The voice crackled on. Alleyn extended his call. He wrote busily, and gradually a curious expression — eager, doubtful, intensely concentrated — stole over his face. It was a look with which they were very familiar at the Yard.

If you don’t mind,” said Nigel to old Mr. Benningden, “I’ll walk as far as the front gates with you.”

“Pleasure, my dear fellow,” replied the lawyer, with hurried cordiality. He snapped the catch of his grip, took off his pince-nez, eyed them severely, gave Nigel a quick glance, and took his coat and hat from the attendant Robert.

“Come along,” he said decisively, and made for the door.

“You were always an imaginative, sensitive sort of individual,” said Mr. Benningden, as they walked down the drive. “I remember your mother worrying her head off about it; but I put it to her that your boyish troubles were as short-lived as they were distressing. You will soon get over your ridiculous antipathy to accepting this bequest.”

“It’s all so beastly,” said Nigel. “I know they can’t suspect me in any way, but — I dunno. It’s not that so much as the idea of it. Benefiting by a filthy murder.”

“Sir Hubert Handesley and Mr. Arthur Wilde are also legatees — they probably feel very much the same about it, but of course they have approached the matter in a much more sensible manner. Do you follow their example, my dear Nigel.”

“Very well. I’ll be jolly glad of the money in a way, of course.”

“Of course, of course. Do not suppose that I am insensible of the delicacy of your position.”

“Oh, Benny!” said Nigel, half affectionate and half irritated, “do stop talking like the old family lawyer. Really, you are quite incredible!”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Benningden amicably. “It has become automatic, possibly.”

They walked on in silence until Nigel asked him abruptly if he knew of anything in his cousin’s life that could throw light on the murder.

“I don’t want you to betray any secrets, of course,” he added quickly; “you wouldn’t pay much attention if I did. But had Charles an enemy or enemies?”

“I have been asking myself that question ever since this dreadful crime took place,” replied Mr. Benningden, “but I can think of nothing. Your cousin’s relationships with women were, shall we say, of a slightly ephemeral nature, my dear Nigel; but so are those of many bachelors of his age. Even this aspect of his life, I hoped, was soon to be stabilized. He came to me two months ago and, after a good many circumlocutions, gave me to understand he was contemplating matrimony. I think I may safely go so far as to say he asked one or two questions about a marriage settlement, and so on.”

“The devil he did!” ejaculated Nigel. “Who was the girl?”

“My dear boy, I don’t think—”

“Was it Rosamund Grant?”

“Really, Nigel — well, in confidence, after all, why not? Yes, Miss Grant’s name was — ah, it did arise in this connection.”

“Has he mentioned it more recently?”

“I ventured to bring it up a fortnight ago when he consulted me about renewing the lease of his house. He replied, as I thought, rather oddly.”

“What did he say?”

Mr. Benningden swung his umbrella out in front of him as though he were pointing it at his own statement.

“He used, as far as I can recollect, these very words: ‘It’s no go, Benny; I’ve been caught poaching and I’ve lost my licence.’ I asked him what he meant by that, and he laughed, very bitterly I thought, and said that marriage with a woman who understood you was emotional suicide, a phrase that had the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing.”

“Was that all?”

“I pressed him a little further,” said Mr. Benningden uncomfortably, “and he said that he had made an enemy of a woman who still loved him, and added something about grand opera passions and his own preference for musical comedy. He seemed very sour and, I thought, almost alarmed.

“The subject was dropped, and we did not refer to it again until he was leaving. I remember as he shook hands with me he said, ‘Good-bye, Benny. Control your curiosity. I may promise to reform, but it’ll be the death of me if I do.’ ”

Mr. Benningden stopped short and stared at Nigel.

“He said this quite gaily and irresponsibly,” he added. “It has only just occurred to me how strangely it may sound now that he is dead. Ah, well, it’s of no consequence, I dare say.”

“Probably not,” agreed Nigel abstractedly. “There are the gates, Benny. Let me know if there is anything I can do.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I am meeting Inspector-Detective Alleyn at the police station. He is a very able man, Nigel. I feel sure your cousin’s death will not go unavenged.”

“I am afraid,” said Nigel, “that in this respect I too have little of the grand opera instinct. My one hope is that Charles was not murdered by any of his friends. That old butler, the Russian — why don’t the police do something about him?”

“I feel sure they are doing quite a lot in that direction,” rejoined Mr. Benningden dryly. “Good-bye, my dear fellow. I shall be down for the inquest, of course. In the meantime, good-bye.”

Nigel walked slowly back towards the house. The prospect of spending the rest of the afternoon indoors was not an attractive one. The house-party lived on with a horrible posthumous individuality. The grotesque nature of their enforced familiarity was beginning to tell on the nerves of all the guests. Nigel was conscious of strange and hideous suspicions working like a ferment in their minds. Frantock had become envenomed. He longed to get away from it, and with this idea at the back of his head, turned off the drive and walked down a side path towards the wood. He had not gone far when a bend in the path revealed a green bench and sitting on it, curiously huddled, the figure of Rosamund Grant.

Nigel had seen very little of her since the tragedy. As soon as the official inspection of their rooms was over, Angela and Doctor Young had taken her upstairs, and there she had stayed, as far as Nigel knew, ever since. She raised her head now and caught sight of him. Feeling that he could not turn back, and conscious of the horrible restraint that came between himself and all of them, he walked up to her and made some conventional inquiry about her health.

“Better?” she said in her deep voice with its falling inflection. “Oh yes, I’m better, thank you. I shall be joining your jolly party downstairs in time for the inquest on your cousin’s murder.”

“Don’t!” said Nigel.

She flung herself back impatiently.

“Have I dropped a brick?” she said. “Do you cut the murder dead among yourselves? Angela and I talk about it, or rather Angela talks and I listen. She is a peculiar person, Angela.”