by Ngaio Marsh
Miss Cartell sat with her hands on her knees staring dolefully at him. Her left thumb was decorated with dirty, bloodstained cotton-wool and stamp-paper. She had evidently been crying.
‘It’s pretty ghastly,’ she said. ‘Poor old Boysie! I can’t take it in. He was a bit of an old maid but a brother’s a brother. We didn’t see eye-to-eye over a lot of things, but still.’
Alleyn was visited by the fleeting wish that he could run into somebody who at least pretended to have liked Mr Cartell.
‘When,’ he asked her, ‘did you last see him?’
‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. Last evening. He came over here with that ghastly bitch. It upset Li-chi. They’re very highly strung animals, pekes. He’s still nervous. Eat up, my poppet,’ said Miss Cartell to the Pekinese. ‘Lovely livvy!’
She poked her finger temptingly in the raw liver.
‘Eat up,’ she said and wiped her finger on the Pekinese. Alleyn noticed that her hand was unsteady.
‘Was it just a casual, friendly visit?’ he asked.
Miss Cartell’s rather prominent blue eyes, slightly bloodshot, seemed to film over.
‘He was taking the bitch for a walk,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Brought it into the house, like a fool, and of course, Li became hysterical and bit me, poor little chap. I’ve fixed it up with girth-gall stuff,’ she added, ‘it smells a bit, but it’s good.’
‘Did Mr Cartell meet anybody else during his call, do you remember?’
With a manner that was at once furtive and anxious she said: ‘Not that I know. I mean, I didn’t see anything.’ She might have been a great elderly schoolgirl caught on the hop. ‘He was here when I came in,’ she added. ‘I don’t know who he’d seen.’
‘Miss Cartell,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m anxious to find out if your brother had any enemies. I expect that sounds rather melodramatic, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. Is there, do you know, anyone who had cause, for any reason, however trivial, to dislike or fear him?’
She waited much too long before she said: ‘No one in particular,’ and then after a pause: ‘he wasn’t awfully popular, I suppose. I mean he didn’t make friends with people all that easily.’ She reached down her blunt ill-kept hand to the Pekinese and fondled it. ‘He was a dry old stick,’ she said. ‘You know. Typical solicitor: I used to tell him he had ink instead of blood in his veins.’
She broke into one of her ungainly laughs and blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief.
‘There was a luncheon party,’ Alleyn said, ‘wasn’t there? Yesterday, at Mr Pyke Period’s house?’
Instead of answering him she suddenly blurted out: ‘But I thought it was an accident! The way they told me. It sounded like an accident.’
‘Who told you?’
‘P.P.,’ she said. ‘Alfred told him and he told me. He made it sound like an accident.’
‘The odds against,’ Alleyn said, ‘are considerable.’
‘Why?’
Everything about her was dull; her face, her manner, her voice. He wondered if she was really attending to him.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘accident would imply at least two lots of people behaving independently like dangerous hoodlums at the same spot with different objectives.’
‘I don’t follow that,’ said Miss Cartell.
‘Never mind, just tell me about the luncheon party. There were you and your adopted niece and Miss Nicola Maitland-Mayne and Mr Leonard Leiss. And, of course, your brother and Mr Period. Is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What did you talk about?’
Nicola had given him a pretty full account of the luncheon party. Miss Cartell was much less explicit. She described the Pixie incident with one or two dismal hoots of retrospective laughter and she dwelt, disjointedly, upon Mr Period’s references to blue blood and polite behaviour. She was clearly very ill at ease.
‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet over that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘My brother ragged him about it and he got jolly ratty. You could see. Can’t take a joke.’
‘What sort of joke?’ Alleyn ventured.
‘Well – I dunno. Some story about a baptismal register in a vestry. I didn’t listen.’
Alleyn asked her about the cigarette-case and she at once exhibited all the classic signs of a clumsy and unaccustomed liar. She changed colour, avoided his glance and again fondled the unenthusiastic Pekinese.
‘I didn’t notice anything about that,’ she said. ‘He’d got the case. I didn’t know he’d lost it. He’s an old fusspot anyway.’ The colour started out in blotches on her flattish cheeks. ‘He probably lost it himself,’ she said. ‘Muddling about.’
Alleyn said: ‘Miss Cartell, I’m sorry to badger you when you’ve had such a shock, but I’m sure you want to get this wretched business cleared up, don’t you?’
‘Don’t know,’ she countered. ‘Not if it’s going to lead to a lot of unpleasantness. Won’t bring poor old Boysie back, will it?’
Alleyn disregarded this. ‘Your adopted niece and a friend of hers, called Mr Leiss, were at the luncheon, weren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ she said, staring at him. She seemed to be in two minds whether to go on. Then she said: ‘You don’t want to pay any attention to what P.P. says about them. He’s out of touch with the young. Expects them to behave like his generation; and a lot of pie-faced little humbugs they were, if you like.’
‘Was there some talk of Mr Leiss buying a car?’
She bent over the dog. ‘That’s enough,’ she said to it. ‘You’ve had enough.’ And then to Alleyn: ‘It all petered out. He didn’t buy it.’
The door opened and her Austrian maid came in with a letter.
‘From Mr Period, please,’ she said. ‘The man left it.’
Miss Cartell seemed unwilling to take the letter. The maid put it on the desk at her elbow.
‘All right, Trudi,’ Miss Cartell mumbled. ‘Thank you,’ and the maid went out.
‘Pay no attention to me,’ Alleyn said.
‘It’ll wait.’
‘Don’t you think, perhaps, you should look at it?’
She opened the letter unhandily and as she read it turned white to the lips.
‘What is it?’ he asked, ‘Miss Cartell, what’s the matter?’
The letter was still quivering in her hands.
‘He must be mad,’ she said. ‘Mad!’
‘May I see it?’
She seemed to consider this but in an aimless sort of way as if she only gave him half her attention. When he took the sheet of paper from her fingers she suffered him to do so as if they were inanimate.
Alleyn read the letter.
‘My dear: What can I say? Only that you have lost a devoted brother and I a very dear friend. I know so well, believe me so very well, what a shock this has been for you and how bravely you will have taken it. If it is not an impertinence in an old friend to do so, may I offer you these few simple lines written by my dear and so Victorian Duchess of Rampton? They are none the worse, I hope, for their unblushing sentimentality.
So it must be, dear heart, I’ll not repine
For while I live the Memory is Mine.
I should like to think that we know each other well enough for you to believe me when I say that I hope you won’t dream of answering this all-too-inadequate attempt to tell you how sorry I am.
Yours sincerely,
Percival Pyke Period
Alleyn folded the paper and looked at Miss Cartell. ‘But why,’ he said, ‘do you say that? Why do you say he must be mad?’
She waited so long, gaping at him like a fish, that he thought she would never answer. Then she made a fumbling, inelegant gesture towards the letter.
‘Because he must be,’ she said. ‘Because it’s all happening twice. Because he’s written it before. The lot. Just the same.’
‘You mean –? But when?’
‘This morning,’ Connie said and began rootling in the litter on her desk. ‘Before breakfast.
Before I knew.’
She drew in her breath with a whistling noise. ‘Before anybody knew,’ she said. ‘Before they had found him.’
She stared at Alleyn, nodding her head and holding out a sheet of letter-paper.
‘See for yourself,’ she said miserably. ‘Before they had found him.’
Alleyn looked at the two letters. Except in one small detail they were, indeed, exactly the same.
CHAPTER 5
Postscript to a Party
Connie raised no objections to his keeping the letters and with them both in his pocket he asked if he might see Miss Ralston and Mr Leiss. She said that they were still asleep in their rooms and added, with a slight hint of gratification, that they had attended the Baynesholme festivities.
‘One of Desirée Bantling’s dotty parties,’ she said. ‘They go on till all hours. Moppett left a note asking not to be roused.’
‘It’s now one o’clock,’ Alleyn said, ‘and I’m afraid I shall have to disturb Mr Leiss.’
He thought she was going to protest but at that moment the Pekinese set up a petulant demonstration, scratching at the door and raising a crescendo of imperative yaps.
‘Clever boy!’ Connie said distractedly. ‘I’m coming!’ She went to the door. ‘I’ll have to see to this,’ she said. ‘In the garden.’
‘Of course,’ Alleyn agreed. He followed them into the hall and saw them out through the front door. Once in the garden the Pekinese bolted for a newly raked flowerbed.
‘Oh, no!’ Connie ejaculated. ‘After lunch,’ she shouted as she hastened in pursuit of her pet. ‘Come back later.’
The Pekinese tore round a corner of the house and she followed it.
Alleyn re-entered the house and went quickly upstairs.
On the landing he encountered Trudi, the maid, who showed him the visitors’ rooms. They were on two sides of a passage.
‘Mr Leiss?’ Alleyn asked.
A glint of feminine awareness momentarily transfigured Trudi’s not very expressive face.
‘He is sleeping,’ she said. ‘I looked at him. He sleeps like a god.’
‘We’ll see what he wakes like,’ Alleyn said, tipping her rather handsomely. ‘Thank you, Trudi.’
He tapped smartly on the door and went in.
The room was masked from its entrance by an old-fashioned scrap screen. Behind this a languid, indefinably Cockney voice said: ‘Come in.’
Mr Leiss was awake but Alleyn thought he saw what Trudi meant: the general effect was in Technicolor. The violet silk pyjama jacket was open, the torso was bronzed, smooth and rather shiny as well as hirsute. A platinum chain lay on the chest. The glistening hair was slightly disarranged and the large brown eyes were open. When they lighted on Alleyn they narrowed. There was a slight convulsive movement under the bedclothes. The room smelt dreadfully of some indefinable unguent.
‘Mr Leiss?’ Alleyn said. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I am a police officer.’
A very old familiar look started up in Leonard’s face: a look of impertinence, caginess, conceit and fear. It was there as if it had been jerked up from within and in a moment it was gone.
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ Leonard said. Something had gone amiss with his voice. He cleared his throat and recovered. ‘Is anything wrong?’ he asked.
He raised himself on his elbow, plumped up his pillows and lay back on them. He reached out languidly for a cigarette-case and lighter on his bedside table. The ash-tray was already overloaded.
‘How can I help you?’ he said and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and blew out a thin vapour.
‘You can help me,’ Alleyn said, ‘by answering one or two questions about your movements since you arrived at Little Codling yesterday morning.’
Leonard raised his eyebrows and exhaled a drift of vapour. ‘And just why,’ he asked easily, ‘should I do that small thing?’
‘For reasons,’ Alleyn said, ‘that will explain themselves in due course. First of all, there’s the matter of an attempted car purchase. You gave Mr Pyke Period and Mr Cartell and Miss Cartell as references. They considered you had no authority to do so. I suggest,’ Alleyn went on, ‘that you don’t offer the usual unconvincing explanations. They really won’t do. Fortunately for the other persons involved, the deal collapsed and, apart from adding to your record, the incident has only one point of interest: it made Mr Cartell very angry.’ He stopped and looked hard at Leonard. ‘Didn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Look,’ Leonard drawled, ‘do me a favour and get the hell out of this, will you?’
‘Next,’ Alleyn went on, ‘there’s the business of Mr Period’s cigarette-case.’
It was obvious that Leonard was prepared for this. He went at once into an elaborate pantomime of turning up his eyes, wagging his head and waving his fingers.
‘No, honestly,’ he ejaculated. ‘It’s too much. Not again!’
‘Oh?’ Alleyn mildly remarked. ‘Again? Who’s been tackling you about Mr Period’s cigarette-case? Mr Cartell?’
Leonard took his time. ‘I don’t,’ he said at last, ‘like your tone. I resent it in fact.’ He looked at Alleyn through half-closed eyes and seemed to come to a decision. ‘Pardon me,’ he added, ‘if I appear abrupt. As a matter of fact, we had a latish party up at Baynesholme. Quite a show. Her ladyship certainly knows how to turn it on.’
Alleyn caught himself wondering what on earth in charity and forbearance could be said for Leonard Leiss.
‘Mr Cartell spoke to you about the cigarette-case,’ he said, taking a sizeable chance, ‘when he called here yesterday evening.’
‘Who –?’ Leonard began and pulled himself together. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘have you been talking to other people?’
‘Oh, yes, several.’
‘To him?’ Leonard demanded. ‘To Cartell?’
There was a long pause.
‘No,’ Alleyn said. ‘Not to him.’
‘Then who –? Here!’ Leonard ejaculated. ‘There’s something funny about all this. What is it?’
‘I’ll answer that one,’ Alleyn said, ‘when you tell me what you did with Mr Period’s cigarette-case. Now don’t,’ he went on, raising a finger, ‘say you don’t know anything about it. I’ve seen the dining-room window. It can’t be opened from the outside. It was shut during luncheon. You and Miss Ralston examined the case by the window and left it on the sill. No one else was near the window. When the man came in to clear, the window was open and the case had gone.’
‘So he says.’
‘So he says and I believe him.’
‘Pardon me if I seem to be teaching you your job,’ Leonard said, ‘but if I was going to pinch this dreary old bit of tat, why would I open the window? Why not put it in my pocket there and then?’
‘Because you would then quite obviously be the thief, Mr Leiss. If you or Miss Ralston left it on the sill and returned by way of the garden path –’
‘How the hell –’ Leonard began, and then changed his mind. ‘I don’t accept that,’ he said. ‘I resent it, in fact.’
‘Did you smoke any of Mr Period’s cigarettes?’
‘Only one, thank you very much. Turkish muck.’
‘Did Miss Ralston?’
‘Same story. Now, look,’ Leonard began with a sort of spurious candour. ‘There’s such a thing as collusion, isn’t there? We left this morsel of antiquity on the sill. All right. This man – Alfred What-have-you – opens the window. The workmen in the lane get the office from him and it’s all as sweet as kiss your hand.’
‘And would you suggest that we search the men in the lane?’
‘Why not? Do no harm, would it?’
‘We might even catch them handing the case round after elevenses?’
‘That’s right,’ Leonard said coolly, ‘you might at that. Or, they might have cached it on the spot. You can search this room, or me or my car or my girlfriend. Only too pleased. The innocent don’t have anything to hide, do they?’ asked Leonard.
; ‘Nor do the guilty, when they’ve dumped the evidence.’
Leonard ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘So what?’
‘Mr Leiss,’ Alleyn said, ‘the cigarette-case has been found.’
A second flickered past before Leonard, in a tone of righteous astonishment said: ‘Found! Well, I ask you! Found! so why come at me? Where?’
‘In my opinion, exactly where you dropped it. Down the drain.’
The door was thrust open. On the far side of the screen a feminine voice said: ‘Sorry, darling, but you’ll have to rouse up.’ The door was shut. ‘We are in a spot of bother,’ the voice continued as its owner came round the screen. ‘Old Cartell, dead as a doornail and down the drain.’
II
When Moppett saw Alleyn she clapped her hand to her mouth and eyed him over the top.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said. ‘Auntie C. thought you’d gone.’
She was a dishevelled figure, half-saved by her youth and held together in a negligée that was as unfresh as it was elaborate. ‘Isn’t it frightful,’ she said. ‘Poor Uncle Hal! I can’t believe it!’
Either she was less perturbed than Leonard or several times tougher. He had turned a very ill colour and had jerked cigarette ash across his chest.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said.
‘Didn’t you know?’ Moppett exclaimed and then to Alleyn, ‘haven’t you told him?’
‘Miss Ralston,’ Alleyn said, ‘you have saved me the trouble. It is Miss Ralston, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Sorry,’ Moppett went on after a moment, ‘if I’m interrupting something. I’ll sweep myself out, shall I? See you, ducks,’ she added in Cockney to Leonard.
‘Don’t go, if you please,’ said Alleyn. ‘You may be able to help us. Can you tell me where you and Mr Leiss lost Mr Period’s cigarette-case?’
‘No, she can’t,’ Leonard intervened. ‘Because we didn’t. We never had it. We don’t know anything about it.’
Moppett opened her eyes very wide and her mouth slightly. She turned in fairly convincing bewilderment from Leonard to Alleyn.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘P.P.’s cigarette-case? Do you mean the old one he showed us when we lunched with him?’