by Ngaio Marsh
‘Oh, really?’ said Bimbo. ‘Ha-ha. Yes.’
‘You must answer all his questions very carefully because it seems as if Hal was murdered. Imagine!’
Interpreting this speech to be in the nature of a general warning, Alleyn said: ‘I wonder if I may have a word with you, Mr Dodds.’ And to Desirée: ‘Thank you so much for my delicious luncheon-without-prejudice.’
For a split second she looked irritated and then she said: ‘Not a bit. Do I gather that you want to go into a huddle with my husband?’
‘Just a word,’ Alleyn said equably, ‘if we may. Perhaps somewhere else –’
‘Not at all. I’ll go and snip the dead heads off roses except that there aren’t any roses and it’s the wrong time of the year.’
‘Perhaps you could get on with your embroidery,’ said Alleyn and had the satisfaction of seeing her blink.
‘Suppose,’ she suggested, ‘that you adjourn to Bimbo’s study. Why not?’
‘Why not?’ Bimbo echoed without cordiality.
As Alleyn passed her on his way out, she looked full in his face. It was impossible to interpret her expression, but he’d have taken a long bet that she was worried.
Bimbo’s study turned out to be the usual sporting-print job with inherited classics on the shelves, together with one or two paperbacks, looking like Long Acre in its more dubious reaches. Bimbo, whose manner was huffy and remote, said: ‘This is a very unpleasant sort of thing to happen.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
‘Anything we can do, of course.’
‘Thank you very much. There are one or two points,’ Alleyn said without refurbishing the stock phrases, ‘that I’d like to clear up. It’s simply a matter of elimination, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’
‘Naturally,’ said Bimbo.
‘Well, then. You’ll have heard that Mr Cartell’s body was found in a trench that has been dug in Green Lane, the lane that runs past Mr Period’s garden. Did you drive down Green Lane at any time last evening?’
‘Ah –’ Bimbo said. ‘Ah – let me think. Yes, I did. When going round the clues.’
He paused while Alleyn reflected that this was a fair enough description of his own preoccupation.
‘The clues for the treasure hunt?’ he said. ‘When?’
‘That’s right. Oh, I don’t know. About half past ten. Might be later. I simply drove over the territory to see how they were all getting on.’
‘Yes, I see … Was there anybody in the lane?’
‘Actually,’ Bimbo said casually, ‘I don’t remember. Or do I? No, there wasn’t.’
‘Did you get out of the car?’
‘Did I? I believe I did. Yes. I checked to make sure the last clue was still there.’
‘“If you don’t know what to do, think it over in the loo.”’
‘Quite. Was it still there this morning?’ Bimbo asked sharply.
‘When did you get back?’
‘Here? I don’t know exactly.’
‘Before Lady Bantling, for instance?’
‘Oh, yes. She drove old Period home. That was later. I mean, it was while I was out. I mean, we were both out, but I got home first.’
‘You saw her come in?’
‘I really don’t remember that I actually saw her. I heard her, I think. I was looking round the ballroom to see everything was all right.’
‘Any idea of the time?’
‘I’m afraid I really wasn’t keeping a stop-watch on our movements. It was before twelve because they were all meant to be back by midnight.’
‘Yes, I see. And did you leave the house again?’
‘I did not.’
‘I believe there was some sort of dog-fight.’
‘My God, yes! Oh, I see what you mean. I went out with the others to the terrace and dealt with it. That ghastly bitch –’ Here Bimbo made one or two extremely frank comments upon Pixie.
‘She bit you, perhaps?’
‘She certainly did,’ Bimbo said, nursing his hand.
‘Very professional bandage.’
‘I had to get the doctor.’
‘After the party?’
‘That’s right. I fixed it up myself at the time, but it came unstuck.’
‘You tied it up?’
Bimbo stared at him. ‘I did. I went to a bathroom, where there’s a first-aid cupboard, and stuck a bandage on. Temporarily.’
‘How long did this take you, do you know?’
‘I don’t know. How the hell should I?’
‘Well – at a guess.’
‘Quite a time. It kept oozing out, but in the end I fixed it. Quite a time really. I should think all of twenty minutes before I rejoined the party. Or more. Some bloody mongrel tore my trousers and I had to change.’
‘Maddening for you,’ Alleyn said sympathetically. ‘Tell me: you are a member of the Hacienda Club?’
Bimbo went very still. Presently he said: ‘I simply cannot conceive what that has to do with anything at issue.’
‘It has, though,’ Alleyn said cheerfully. ‘I just wondered, you see, whether you’d ever run into Leonard Leiss at the Hacienda. His name’s on their list.’
‘I certainly have not,’ Bimbo said. He moved away. Alleyn wondered if he was lying.
‘I’m no longer a member and I’ve never seen Leiss to my knowledge,’ Bimbo said, ‘until yesterday. He got himself asked to our party. In my opinion he’s the rock-bottom. A frightful person.’
‘Right. So that settles that. Now, about the business of your step-son and the Grantham Galleries.’
He gave Bimbo time to register the surprise that this change in tactics produced. It was marked by a very slight widening of the eyes and recourse to a cigarette-case. Alleyn sometimes wondered how much the cigarette-smoking person scored over an abstainer when it came to police investigations. ‘Oh, that!’ Bimbo said. ‘Yes, well, I must say I think it’s quite a sound idea.’
‘You talked it over with Bantling?’
‘Yes, I did. We went into it pretty thoroughly. I’m all for it.’
‘To the extent of taking shares in it yourself?’
Bimbo said airily: ‘Even that. Other things being equal.’
‘What other things?’
‘Well – fuller inquiries and all that.’
‘And the money of course?’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you got it?’ Alleyn asked calmly.
‘I must say!’ Bimbo ejaculated.
‘In police inquiries,’ Alleyn said, ‘no question is impertinent, I’m afraid.’
‘And I’m afraid I disagree with you.’
‘Would you mind telling me if you are still an undischarged bankrupt?’
‘I mind very much, but the answer is no. The whole thing was cleared up a year ago.’
‘That would be at the time of your marriage, I think?’
Bimbo turned scarlet and said not a word.
‘Still,’ Alleyn went on after a slight pause, ‘I suppose the Grantham Gallery plan will go forward now, don’t you?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘No reason why it shouldn’t, one imagines, unless Mr Period, who’s a trustee, objects.’
‘In any case it doesn’t arise.’
‘No?’
‘I mean it’s got nothing to do with this ghastly business.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, now,’ Alleyn said briskly. ‘I fancy that’s about all. Except that I ought to ask you if there’s anything in the wide world you can think of that could be of help to us.’
‘Having no idea of the circumstances I can hardly be expected to oblige,’ Bimbo said with a short laugh.
‘Mr Cartell’s body was found in the open drain outside Mr Period’s house. He had been murdered. That,’ Alleyn lied, ‘is about all anyone knows.’
‘How had he been murdered?’
‘Hit on the head, it appears, and smothered.’
‘Poor old devil,’ said Bimbo. He stared absently at his cigarette. ‘Look!’
he said. ‘Nobody likes to talk wildly about a thing like this. I mean it just won’t do to put a wrong construction on what may be a perfectly insignificant detail, will it?’
‘It’s our job to forget insignificant details.’
‘Yes, I know. Of course. All the same –’
‘Mr Dodds, I really think I can promise you I won’t go galloping down a false trail with blinkers over my eyes.’
Bimbo smiled. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Fair enough. No doubt I’m behaving like the original Silly Suspect or something. It’s just that, when it comes to the point, one doesn’t exactly fancy trotting out something that may turn out to be – well –’
‘Incriminating?’
‘Well, exactly. Mind you, in principle, I’m for weighing in with the police. We belly-ache about them freely enough but we expect them to protect us. Of course everybody doesn’t see it like that.’
‘Not everybody.’
‘No. And anyway with all the rot-gut that the long-haired gentry talk about understanding the thugs, it’s up to the other people to show the flag.’
Disregarding a certain nausea in the region of his midriff, Alleyn said: ‘Quite.’
Bimbo turned away to the window and seemed to be contemplating the landscape. Perhaps because of this, his voice had taken on a different perspective.
‘Personally,’ Alleyn heard him say, ‘I’m in favour of capital punishment.’
Alleyn, who was one of an extremely small minority among his brother-officers, said: ‘Ah, yes?’
‘Anyway, that’s nothing to do with the point at issue,’ Bimbo said, turning back into the room. ‘I don’t know why I launched out like this.’
‘We can forget it.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You were going to tell me –?’
‘Yes, I was. It’s about this bloody fellow Leiss and his ghastly girl. They hung on to the bitter end of the party, of course. I’ve never seen anybody drink more or show it less, I’ll say that for them. Well, the last car was leaving – except his bit of wreckage – and it was about two o’clock. I thought I’d give them the hint. I collected his revolting overcoat and went to hunt them out. I couldn’t find them at first, but I finally ran them down in my study, here, where they had settled in with a bottle of my champagne. They were on the sofa with their backs to the door and didn’t hear me come in. They were pretty well bogged down in an advanced necking party. He was talking. I heard the end of the sentence.’ Bimbo stopped and frowned at his cigarette. ‘Of course, it may not mean a damn’ thing.’ He looked at Alleyn who said nothing.
‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ Bimbo went on. ‘He said: “And that disposes of Mr Harold Cartell: for keeps.” And she said something like: “When do you think they’ll find it?” and he said: “In the morning, probably. Not windy are you? For Christ’s sake, keep your head: we’re in the clear.”’
CHAPTER 6
Interlude
With this piece of reportage, spurious or not as the case might prove to be, it appeared that Bimbo had reached saturation point as a useful witness. He had nothing more to offer. After noticing that a good deal of unopened mail lay on the desk, including several bills and a letter from a solicitor, addressed to Benedict Arthur Dodds, Alleyn secured Bimbo’s uneasy offer to sign a statement and took his leave.
‘Please don’t move,’ Alleyn said politely, ‘I can find my way out.’ Before Bimbo could put himself in motion, Alleyn had gone out and shut the study door behind him.
In the hall, not altogether to his surprise, he found Desirée. She was, if anything, a little wilder in her general appearance and Alleyn wondered, if this was to be attributed to another tot of brandy. But, in all other respects she seemed to be more or less herself.
‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. There’s a sort of crise.’
‘What sort?’
‘It may not be a crise at all, but I thought I’d better tell you. I really feel a bit awkward about it. I seem to have made a clanger, showing you P.P.’s funny letter. It wasn’t meant for me.’
‘Who was it meant for?’
‘He wouldn’t say. He’s just rung up in a frightful taking-on, asking me to throw it on the fire and forget about it. He went on at great length, talking about his grand ancestors and I don’t know what else.’
‘You didn’t tell him I’d seen the letter?’
Desirée looked fixedly at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t but I felt like a housemaid who’s broken a cup. Poor P.P. What can it all be about? He is so fussed, you can’t imagine.’
‘Never mind,’ Alleyn said, ‘I dare say it’s only his over-developed social sense.’
‘Well, I know. All the same –’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Rory,’ she said, ‘if you don’t awfully mind, don’t tell him I gave you the letter. He’d think me such a sweep.’
At that moment Alleyn liked her very much. ‘I won’t tell him,’ he said carefully, ‘unless I have to. And, for your part, I’ll be obliged if you don’t tell him, either.’
‘I’m not likely to am I? And, anyway, I don’t quite see why the promises about this letter should all be on my side.’
‘It may be important.’
‘All right, but I can’t think how. You’ve got it. Are you going to use it in some way?’
‘Not if it’s irrelevant.’
‘I suppose it’s no good asking you to give it back to me. No, I can see it’s not.’
‘It isn’t, really, Desirée,’ Alleyn said, using her name for the first time. ‘Not till I make quite sure it’s of no account. I’m sorry.’
‘What a common sort of job you’ve got. I can’t think how you do it.’ She gave one of her harsh barks of laughter.
He looked at her for a moment. ‘I expect that was a very clever thing to say,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid it makes no difference. Goodbye. Thank you again for my lunch.’
When he was in the car he said: ‘To Ribblethorpe. It’s about five miles, I think. I want to go to the parish church.’
It was a pleasant drive through burgeoning lanes. There were snowdrops in the hedgerows and a general air of freshness and simplicity. Desirée’s final observation stuck in his gullet.
Ribblethorpe was a tiny village. They drove past a row of cottages and a shop-post-office and came to a pleasant if not distinguished church with a big shabby parsonage beyond it.
Alleyn walked through the graveyard and very soon found a Victorian headstone to ‘Frances Ann Patricia, infant daughter of Alfred Molyneux Piers Period Esquire and Lady Frances Mary Julia, his wife. She is not dead but sleepeth’. Reflecting on the ambiguity of the quotation, Alleyn moved away and had not long to search before he found carved armorial bearings exactly similar to those in Mr Period’s study. These adorned the grave of Lord Percival Francis Pyke who died in 1701 and had conferred sundry and noble benefits upon this parish. The name recurred pretty regularly up and down the graveyard from Jacobean times onward. When he went into the church it was the same story. Armorial fish, brasses and tablets, all confirmed the eminence of innumerable Pykes.
Alleyn was in luck. The baptismal register was not locked away in the vestry but chained to a carved desk, hard by the font. In the chancel a lady wearing an apron and housemaid’s gloves was polishing brasses. Her hat, an elderly toque, had been for greater ease, lifted up on her head, giving her a faint air of recklessness. He approached her.
‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘if I may look in the baptismal register? I’m doing a bit of extremely amateurish research. I’ll be very careful.’
‘Oh, rather!’ said the lady, jollily. ‘Do. My husband’s over at Ribblethorpe-Parva with the mothers or he’d help like a shot. I don’t know if I –’
‘Thank you so much but it’s really quite a simple job,’ Alleyn said hastily. ‘Just a family thing, you know.’
‘We haven’t been here long: only three months, so we’re not up to the antiquities.’ The rector’s wife, as Alleyn sup
posed she must be, gave a final buffet with her polisher, tossed her head at her work in a jocular manner, bobbed to the altar and made for the vestry. ‘I’m Mrs Nicholls,’ she said. ‘My husband followed dear old Father Forsdyke. You’ll find all the entries pretty erratic,’ she added over her shoulder. ‘Father Forsdyke was a saint but as vague as could be. Over ninety when he died, rest his soul.’ She disappeared. Somehow, she reminded him of Connie Cartell.
The register was bound in vellum and bore the Royal Arms on its cover. Its pages were divided into columns headed ‘When Baptized: Child’s Christian Name: Parents’ Names: Abode: Quality, Trade or Profession and By Whom Performed’. It had been opened in July 1874.
How old was Mr Pyke Period? Fifty-eight? Over sixty? Difficult to say. Alleyn started his search at the first entry in 1895. In that year the late Mr Forsdyke was already at the helm and although presumably not much over thirty, pretty far advanced in absence of mind. There was every sort of mistake and erasure, Mr Forsdyke madly representing himself by turns as Officiating Priest, Infant, Godmother, and in one entry as Abode. These slips were sometimes corrected by himself, sometimes by another person and sometimes not at all. In several places, the sponsors appeared under Quality, Trade or Profession, in others they were crammed in with the parents. In one respect, however, all was consistency. Where a male Pyke was in question the Quality was invariably Gentleman.
At the bottom of a particularly wild page in the year 1897, Alleyn found what he wanted. Here on the 7th of May (altered to the 5th) was baptized Frances Ann Patricia, daughter of Alfred Molyneux Piers Period and Lady Frances Mary Julia Period née Pyke, with a huddle of amended sponsors.
In another hand, crammed in under Frances Ann Patricia, a second infant had been entered: Percival Pyke. Brackets had been added, enclosing the word ‘twins’.
It would seem that on the occasion of his baptism, Mr Pyke Period had fallen a victim to the rector’s peculiarity and had been temporarily neglected for his twin sister who, Alleyn remembered from her headstone, had died in infancy.
He spent a long time over this additional entry, using a strong pocket lens. He would have been very glad to remove the page and give it the full laboratory treatment. As it was he could see that a fine-pointed steel nib had been used and he noted that such another nib was rusting in the pen on the desk which also carried an old-fashioned inkpot. The writing was in a copperplate style, without character and rather laborious.