by Ngaio Marsh
‘Where are we going, Mr Alleyn?’
‘Are you good for a two-mile walk? I think we’ll call on the Ancreds.’
‘It isn’t,’ said Alleyn as they toiled up the second flight of terraces, ‘as if we can hope to keep ourselves dark, supposing that were advisable. Thomas will have rung up his family and told them that we have at least taken notice. We may as well announce ourselves and see what we can see. More especially, this wretched old fellow’s bedroom.’
‘By this time,’ said Fox sourly, ‘they’ll probably have had it repapered.’
‘I wonder if Paul Kentish is handy with electrical gadgets. I’ll wager Cedric Ancred isn’t.’
‘What’s that?’ Fox demanded.
‘What’s what?’
‘I can hear something. A child crying, isn’t it, sir?’
They had reached the second terrace. At each end of this terrace, between the potato-field and the woods, were shrubberies and young copses. From the bushes on their left hand came a thin intermittent wailing; very dolorous. They paused uncertainly, staring at each other. The wailing stopped, and into the silence welled the accustomed sounds of the countryside—the wintry chittering of birds and the faint click of naked branches.
‘Would it be some kind of bird, should you say?’ Fox speculated.
‘No bird!’ Alleyn began and stopped short. ‘There it is again.’
It was a thin piping sound, waving and irregular and the effect of it was peculiarly distressing. Without further speculation they set off across the rough and still frost-encrusted ground. As they drew nearer to it the sound became, not articulate, but more complex, and presently, when they had drawn quite dose, developed a new character.
‘It’s mixed up,’ Fox whispered, ‘with a kind of singing.’
Goodbye poor pussy your coat was so warm,
And even if you did moult you did me no harm.
Goodbye poor pussy for ever and ever
And make me a good girl, amen.
‘For ever and ever,’ the thin voice repeated, and drifted off again into its former desolate wail. As they brushed against the first low bushes it ceased, and there followed a wary silence disrupted by harsh sobbing.
Between the bushes and the copse they came upon a little girl in a white cap, sitting by a newly-turned mound of earth. A child’s spade was beside her. Stuck irregularly in the mound of earth were a few heads of geraniums. A piece of paper threaded on a twig stood crookedly at the head of the mound. The little girl’s hands were earthy, and she had knuckled her eyes so that black streaks ran down her face. She crouched there scowling at them, rather like an animal that flattens itself near the ground, unable to obey its own instinct for flight.
‘Hallo,’ said Alleyn, ‘this is a bad job!’ And unable to think of a more satisfactory opening, he heard himself repeating Dr Withers’s phrase. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.
The little girl was convulsed, briefly, by a sob. Alleyn squatted beside her and examined the writing on the paper. It had been executed in large shaky capitals.
KARABAS,
R.S.V.P.
LOVE FROM PANTY.
‘Was Carabbas,’ Alleyn ventured, ‘your own cat?’
Panty glared at him and slowly shook her head.
Alleyn said quickly: ‘How stupid of me; he was your grandfather’s cat, wasn’t he?’
‘He loved me,’ said Panty on a high note. ‘Better than he loved Noddy. He loved me better than he loved anybody. I was his friend.’ Her voice rose piercingly like the whistle of a small engine. ‘And I didn’t,’ she screamed, ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t give him the ringworms. I hate my Auntie Milly. I wish she was dead. I wish they were all dead. I’ll kill my Auntie Milly.’ She beat on the ground with her fists, and, catching sight of Fox, screamed at him: ‘Get out of here, will you? This is my place.’
Fox stepped back hastily.
‘I’ve heard,’ said Alleyn, cautiously, ‘about Carabbas and about you. You paint pictures, don’t you? Have you painted any more pictures lately?’
‘I don’t want to paint any more pictures,’ said Panty.
‘That’s a pity, because we rather thought of sending you a box of paints for yourself from London.’
Panty sobbed dryly. ‘Who did?’ she said.
‘Troy Alleyn,’ said Alleyn. ‘Mrs Alleyn, you know. She’s my wife.’
‘If I painted a picture of my Auntie Milly,’ said Panty, ‘I’d give her pig’s whiskers, and she’d look like Judas Iscariot. They said my cat Carabbas had the ringworms, and they said I’d given them to him, and they’re all, all liars. He hadn’t, and I didn’t. It was only his poor fur coming out.’
With the abandon which Troy had witnessed in the little theatre, Panty flung herself face forward on the ground and kicked. Tentatively Alleyn bent over her, and after a moment’s hesitation picked her up. For a moment or two she fought violently, but suddenly, with an air of desolation, let her arms fall and hung limply in his hands.
‘Never mind, Panty,’ Alleyn muttered helplessly. ‘Here, let’s mop up your face.’ He felt in his pocket and his fingers closed round a hard object. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Look what I’ve got,’ and pulled out a small packet. ‘Do you ever play Happy Families?’ he said. He pushed the box of cards into her hands and not very successfully mopped her face with his handkerchief. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said to Fox.
He carried the now inert Panty across to the third flight of steps. Here she began to wriggle, and he put her down.
‘I want to play Happy Families,’ said Panty thickly. ‘Here,’ she added. She squatted down, and, still interrupting herself from time to time with a hiccuping sob, opened her pack of picture cards, and with filthy fingers began to deal them into three heaps.
‘Sit down, Fox,’ said Alleyn. ‘You’re going to play Happy Families.’
Fox sat uneasily on the second step.
Panty was a slow dealer, principally because she examined the face of each card before she put it down.
‘Do you know the rules?’ Alleyn asked Fox.
‘I can’t say I do,’ he replied, putting on his spectacles. ‘Would it be anything like euchre?’
‘Not much, but you’ll pick it up. The object is to collect a family. Would you be good enough,’ he said, turning to Panty, ‘to oblige me with Mrs Snips the Tailor’s Wife?’
‘You didn’t say “Please,” so it’s my turn,’ said Panty. ‘Give me Mr Snips, the Tailor, and Master Snips and Miss Snips, please.’
‘Damn,’ said Alleyn. ‘Here you are,’ and handed over the cards, each with its cut of an antic who might have walked out of a Victorian volume of Punch.
Panty pushed these cards underneath her and sat on them. Her bloomers, true to her legend, were conspicuous. ‘Now,’ she said, turning a bleary glance on Fox, ‘you give me—’
‘Don’t I get a turn?’ asked Fox.
‘Not unless she goes wrong,’ said Alleyn. ‘You’ll learn.’
‘Give me,’ said Panty, ‘Master Grit, the Grocer’s Son.’
‘Doesn’t she have to say “please”?’
‘Please,’ yelled Panty. ‘I said “please.” Please.’
Fox handed over the card.
‘And Mrs Grit,’ Panty went on.
‘It beats me,’ said Fox, ‘how she knows.’
‘She knows,’ said Alleyn, ‘because she looked.’
Panty laughed raucously. ‘And you give me Mr Bull, the Butcher,’ she demanded, turning on Alleyn. ‘Please.’
‘Not at home,’ said Alleyn triumphantly. ‘And now, you see, Fox, it’s my turn.’
‘The game seems crook to me,’ said Fox, gloomily.
‘Master Bun,’ Panty remarked presently, ‘is azzakerly like my Uncle Thomas.’ Alleyn, in imagination, changed the grotesque faces on all the cards to those of the Ancreds as Troy had drawn them in her notebook. ‘So he is,’ he said. ‘And now I know you’ve got him. Please give me Master Ancred, the Actor’s Son.
’ This sally afforded Panty exquisite amusement. With primitive guffaws she began to demand cards under the names of her immediate relations and to the utter confusion of the game.
‘There now,’ said Alleyn at last, in a voice that struck him as being odiously complacent. ‘That was a lovely game. Suppose you take us up to see the—ah—’
‘The Happy Family,’ Fox prompted in a wooden voice.
‘Certainly,’ said Alleyn.
‘Why?’ Panty demanded.
‘That’s what we’ve come for.’
Panty stood squarely facing him. Upon her stained face there grew, almost furtively, a strange expression. It was compounded, he thought, of the look of a normal child about to impart a secret and of something less familiar, more disquieting.
‘Here!’ she said. ‘I want to tell you something. Not him. You.’
She drew Alleyn away, and with a sidelong glance pulled him down until she could hook her arm about his neck. He waited, feeling her breath uncomfortably in his ear.
‘What is it?’
The whispering was disembodied but unexpectedly clear. ‘We’ve got,’ it said, ‘a murderer in our family.’
When he drew back and looked at her she was smiling nervously.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Bell and the Book
SO ACCURATE AND LIVELY were Troy’s drawings that Alleyn recognized Desdemona Ancred as soon as she appeared on the top step of the third terrace and looked down upon the group, doubtless a curious one, made by himself, Panty and Fox. Indeed, as she paused, she struck precisely the attitude, histrionic and grandiose, with which Troy had invested her caricature.
‘Ah!’ said Dessy richly. ‘Panty! At last!’
She held out her hand towards Panty and at the same time looked frankly at Alleyn. ‘How do you do?’ she said. ‘Are you on your way up? Has this terrible young person waylaid you? Shall I introduce myself?’
‘Miss Ancred?’ Alleyn said.
‘He’s Mrs Alleyn’s husband,’ Panty said. ‘We don’t much want you, thank you, Aunt Dessy.’
Dessy was in the act of advancing with poise down the steps. Her smile remained fixed on her face. Perhaps she halted for a fraction of time in her stride. The next second her hand was in his, and she was gazing with embarrassing intensity into his eyes.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said in her deepest voice. ‘So glad! We are terribly, terribly distressed. My brother has told you, I know.’ She pressed his hand, released it, and looked at Fox.
‘Inspector Fox,’ said Alleyn. Desdemona was tragically gracious.
They turned to climb the steps. Panty gave a threatening wail.
‘You,’ said her aunt, ‘had better run home as fast as you can. Miss Able’s been looking everywhere for you. What have you been doing, Panty? You’re covered in earth.’
Immediately they were confronted with another scene. Panty repeated her former performance, roaring out strange threats against her family, lamenting the cat Carabbas, and protesting that she had not infected him.
‘Really, it’s too ridiculous,’ Dessy said in a loud aside to Alleyn. ‘Not that we didn’t all feel it. Poor Carabbas! And my father so attached always. But honestly, it was a menace to all our healths. Ringworm, beyond a shadow of doubt. Fur coming out in handfuls. Obviously it had given them the disease in the first instance. We did perfectly right to have it destroyed. Come on, Panty.’
By this time they had reached the top terrace, with Panty waddling lamentably behind them. Here they were met by Miss Caroline Able, who brightly ejaculated: ‘Goodness, what a noise!’ cast a clear sensible glance at Alleyn and Fox, and removed her still bellowing charge.
‘I’m so distressed,’ Desdemona cried, ‘that you should have had this reception. Honestly, poor Panty is simply beyond everything. Nobody loves children more than I do, but she’s got such a difficult nature. And in a house of tragedy, when one’s nerves and emotions are lacerated—’
She gazed into his eyes, made a small helpless gesture, and finally ushered them into the hall. Alleyn glanced quickly at the space under the gallery, but it was still untenanted.
‘I’ll tell my sister and my sister-in-law,’ Dessy began, but Alleyn interrupted her. ‘If we might just have a word with you first,’ he said. And by Dessy’s manner, at once portentous and dignified, he knew that this suggestion was not unpleasing to her. She led them to the small sitting-room where Troy had found Sonia Orrincourt and Cedric giggling together on the sofa. Desdemona placed herself on this sofa. She sat down, Alleyn noticed, quite beautifully; not glancing at her objective, but sinking on it in one movement and then elegantly disposing her arms.
‘I expect,’ he began, ‘that your brother has explained the official attitude to this kind of situation. We’re obliged to make all sorts of inquiries before we can take any further action.’
‘I see,’ said Desdemona, nodding owlishly. ‘Yes, I see. Go on.’
‘To put it baldly, do you yourself think there is any truth in the suggestion made by the anonymous letter-writer?’
Desdemona pressed the palms of her hands carefully against her eyes. ‘If I could dismiss it,’ she cried. ‘If I could!’
‘You have no idea, I suppose, who could have written the letters?’ She shook her head. Alleyn wondered if she had glanced at him through her fingers.
‘Have any of you been up to London since your father’s funeral?’
‘How frightful!’ she said, dropping her hands and gazing at him. ‘I was afraid of this. How frightful!’
‘What?’
‘You think one of us wrote the letter? Someone at Ancreton?’
‘Well, really,’ said Alleyn, stifling his exasperation, ‘it’s not a preposterous conjecture, is it?’
‘No, no. I suppose not. But what a disturbing thought.’
‘Well, did any of you go to London—’
‘Let me think, let me think,’ Desdemona muttered, again covering her eyes. ‘In the evening. After we had—had—after Papa’s funeral, and after Mr Rattisbon had—’ She made another little helpless gesture.
‘—had read the Will?’ Alleyn suggested.
‘Yes. That evening, by the seven-thirty. Thomas and Jenetta (my sister-in-law) and Fenella (her daughter) and Paul (my nephew, Paul Kentish) all went up to London.’
‘And returned? When?’
‘Not at all. Jenetta doesn’t live here and Fenella and Paul, because of—However, Fenella has joined her mother in a flat and I think Paul’s staying with them. My brother Thomas, as you know, lives in London.’
‘And nobody else has left Ancreton?’
Yes, it seemed that the following day Millamant and Cedric and Desdemona herself had gone up to London by the early morning train. There was a certain amount of business to be done. They returned in the evening. It was by that evening’s post, the Wednesday’s, Alleyn reflected, that the anonymous letter reached the Yard. He found by dint of cautious questioning that they had all separated in London and gone their several ways to meet in the evening train.
‘And Miss Orrincourt?’ Alleyn asked.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Desdemona grandly, ‘that I’ve really no knowledge at all of Miss Orrincourt’s movements. She was away all day yesterday; I imagine in London.’
‘She’s staying on here?’
‘You may well look astonished,’ said Desdemona, though Alleyn, to his belief, had looked nothing of the sort. ‘After everything, Mr Alleyn. After working against us with Papa! After humiliating and wounding us in every possible way. In the teeth, you might say, of the Family’s feelings, she stays on. T’uh!’
‘Does Sir Cedric—?’
‘Cedric,’ said Desdemona, ‘is now the head of the Family, but I have no hesitation in saying that I think his attitude to a good many things inexplicable and revolting. Particularly where Sonia Orrincourt (you’ll never get me to believe she was born Orrincourt) is concerned. What he’s up to, what both of them—However!’
; Alleyn did not press for an exposition of Cedric’s behaviour. At the moment he was fascinated by Desdemona’s. On the wall opposite her hung a looking-glass in a Georgian frame. He saw that Desdemona was keeping an eye on herself. Even as she moved her palms from before her eyes, her fingers touched her hair and she slightly turned her head while her abstracted yet watchful gaze noted, he thought, the effect. And as often as she directed her melting glance upon him, so often did it return to the mirror to affirm with a satisfaction barely veiled its own limpid quality. He felt as if he interviewed a mannequin.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that it was you who found the tin of rat-bane in Miss Orrincourt’s suitcase?’
‘Wasn’t it awful? Well, it was three of us, actually. My sister Pauline (Mrs Kentish), my sister-in-law, and Cedric and I. In her box-room, you know. A very common-looking suitcase smothered in Number Three Company touring labels. As I’ve pointed out to Thomas a thousand times, the woman is simply a squalid little ham actress. Well, not an actress. All eyes and teeth in the third row of the chorus when she’s lucky.’
‘Did you yourself handle it?’
‘Oh, we all handled it. Naturally. Cedric tried to prise up the lid, but it wouldn’t come. So he tapped the tin, and said he could tell from the sound that it wasn’t full.’ She lowered her voice. ‘ “Only half-full,” he said. And Milly (my sister-in-law, Mrs Henry Ancred) said—’ She paused.
‘Yes?’ Alleyn prompted, tired of these genealogical parentheses. ‘Mrs Henry Ancred said?’
‘She said that to the best of her knowledge it had never been used.’ She changed her position a little and added: ‘I don’t understand Milly. She’s so off-hand. Of course I know she’s frightfully capable but—well, she’s not an Ancred and doesn’t feel as we do. She’s—well, let’s face it, she’s a bit MC, do you know?’
Alleyn did not respond to this appeal from blue blood to blue blood. He said: ‘Was the suitcase locked?’
‘We wouldn’t have broken anything open, Mr Alleyn.’