Off with His Head

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘But it couldn’t. No. Nobody went near with the sword. I swear nobody went near. I swear.’

  ‘Do you? Well, that’s a very helpful thing for us to know.’

  Dr Otterly said: ‘I do, too, you know, Alleyn.’

  Camilla threw a look of agonized gratitude at him and Alleyn thought: ‘Has she already learnt at her drama school to express the maximum of any given emotion at any given time? Perhaps, but she hasn’t learned to turn colour in six easy lessons. She was frightened, poor child, and now she’s relieved and it’s pretty clear to me she’s fathoms deep in love with Master Stayne.’

  He offered Camilla a cigarette and moved round behind her as he struck a match for it.

  ‘Dr Otterly,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you’d be terribly kind and ring up Yowford about the arrangements there? I’ve only just thought of it, fool that I am. Fox will give you the details. Sorry to be such a bore.’

  He winked atrociously at Dr Otterly, who opened his mouth and shut it again.

  ‘There, now!’ said Mr Fox, ‘and I’d meant to remind you. ’T, ’t, ’t! Shall we fix it up, now, Doctor? No time like the present.’

  ‘Come back,’ Alleyn said, ‘when it’s all settled, won’t you?’

  Dr Otterly looked fixedly at him, smiled with constraint upon Camilla and suffered Mr Fox to shepherd him out of the room.

  Alleyn sat down opposite Camilla and helped himself to a cigarette.

  ‘All wrong on duty,’ he said, ‘but there aren’t any witnesses. You won’t write a complaint to the Yard, will you?’

  ‘No,’ Camilla said and added: ‘Did you send them away on purpose?’

  ‘How did you guess?’ Alleyn asked admiringly.

  ‘It had all the appearance of a piece of full-sized hokum.’

  ‘Hell, how shaming! Never mind, I’ll press on. I sent them away because I wanted to ask you a personal question and, having no witnesses makes it unofficial. I wanted to ask you if you were about to become engaged to be married.’

  Camilla choked on her cigarette.

  ‘Come on,’ Alleyn said. ‘Do tell me, like a nice comfortable child.’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.’

  ‘Can’t you make up your mind?’

  ‘There’s no reason that I can see,’ Camilla said, with a belated show of spirit, ‘why I should tell you anything at all about it.’

  ‘Nor there is, if you’d rather not.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘It makes it easier to talk to people,’ Alleyn said, ‘if you know about their preoccupations. A threatened engagement is a major preoccupation, as you will allow and must admit.’

  ‘All right,’ Camilla said. ‘I’ll tell you. I’m not engaged but Ralph wants us to be.’

  ‘And you? Come,’ Alleyn said, answering the brilliant look she suddenly gave him. ‘You’re in love with him, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s not as easy as all that.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘You see, my mother was Bess Andersen. She was the feminine counterpart of Dan and Andy and Chris and Nat, and talked and thought like them. She was their sister. I loved my mother,’ Camilla said fiercely, ‘with all my heart. And my father, too. We should have been a happy family, and, in a way, we were, in our attachment for each other. But my mother wasn’t really happy. All her life she was homesick for South Mardian and she never learned to fit in with my father’s setting. People tell you differences of that sort don’t matter any more. Not true. They matter like hell.’

  ‘And that’s the trouble?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Anything more specific?’

  ‘Look,’ Camilla said, ‘forgive my asking, but did you get on in the Force by sheer cheek or sheer charm or what?’

  ‘Tell me your trouble,’ Alleyn said, ‘and I’ll tell you my success story. Of course, there’s your pride, isn’t there?’

  ‘All right. Yes. And there’s also the certainty of the past being rehashed by the more loathsome daily newspapers in the light of this ghastly crime. I don’t know,’ Camilla burst out, ‘how I can think of Ralph and I am thinking all the time of him, after what has happened.’

  ‘But why shouldn’t you think of him?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Ralph’s a South Mardian man. His mother was a Mardian. His aunt was jilted by my papa when he ran away with my mum. My Mardian relations are the Andersen boys. If Ralph married me, there’d be hell to pay. Every way there’d be hell. He’s Dame Alice’s heir, after his aunt, and, although I agree that doesn’t matter so much—he’s a solicitor and able to make his own way—she’d undoubtedly cut him off.’

  ‘I wonder. Talking of wills, by the way, do you know if your grandfather made one?’

  Camilla caught back her breath. ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered. ‘I hope not. Oh, I hope not.’

  Alleyn waited.

  ‘He talked about it,’ Camilla said, ‘last time I saw him. Four days ago. We had a row about it.’

  ‘If you’d rather not tell me, you needn’t.’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t touch a penny of his money, ever, and that, if he left me any, I’d give it to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund. That rocked him.’

  ‘He’d spoken of leaving you something?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of back-handedly. I didn’t understand, at first. It was ghastly. As if I’d come here to—ugh!—to sort of worm my way into his good books. Too frightful it was.’

  ‘The day before yesterday,’ Alleyn said, watching her, ‘he visited his solicitors in Biddlefast.’

  ‘He did? Oh, my goodness me, how awful. Still, perhaps it was about something else.’

  ‘The solicitors are Messrs Stayne and Stayne.’

  ‘That’s Ralph’s office,’ Camilla said instantly. ‘How funny. Ralph didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Alleyn suggested lightly, ‘it was a secret.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said quickly.

  ‘A professional secret.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Is Mr Ralph Stayne your own solicitor, Miss Campion?’

  ‘Lord, no,’ Camilla said. ‘I haven’t got one.’

  The door opened and a dark young man, wearing a face of thunder, strode into the room.

  He said in a magnificent voice: ‘I consider it proper and appropriate for me to be present at any interviews Miss Campion may have with the police.’

  ‘Do you?’ Alleyn said mildly. ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘As her solicitor.’

  ‘My poorest heavenly old booby!’ Camilla ejaculated, and burst into peals of helpless laughter.

  ‘Mr Ralph Stayne,’ Alleyn said, ‘I presume.’

  III

  The five Andersens, bunched together in their cold smithy, contemplated Sergeant Obby. Chris, the belligerent brother, slightly hitched his trousers and placed himself before the sergeant. They were big men and of equal height.

  ‘Look yur,’ Chris said, ‘Bob Obby. Us chaps want to have a tell. Private.’

  Without shifting his gaze, which was directed at some distant object above Chris’s head, Obby very slightly shook his own. Chris reddened angrily and Dan intervened:

  ‘No harm in that now, Bob: natural as the day, seeing what’s happened.’

  ‘You know us,’ the gentle Andy urged. ‘Soft as doves so long’s we’re easy-handled. Harmless.’

  ‘But mortal set,’ Nat added, ‘on our own ways. That’s us. Come on, now, Bob.’

  Sergeant Obby pursed his lips and again shook his head.

  Chris burst out: ‘If you’re afraid we’ll break one of your paltry by-laws you can watch us through the bloody winder.’

  ‘But out of earshot, in simple decency,’ Nat pursued, ‘for ten minutes you’re axed to shift. Now!’

  After a longish pause and from behind an expressionless face, Obby said: ‘Can’t be done, souls.’

  Ernie broke into aimless laughter.

  ‘Why, you damned fool,’ Chris shou
ted at Obby, ‘what’s gone with you? D’you reckon one of us done it!’

  ‘Not for me to say,’ Obby primly rejoined, ‘and I’m sure I hope you’re all as innocent as new-born babes. But I got my duty which is to keep observation on the whole boiling of you guilty or not, as the case may be.’

  ‘We got to talk PRIVATE!’ Chris shouted. ‘We got to.’ Sergeant Obby produced his notebook.

  ‘No got about it,’ he said. ‘Not in the view of the law.’

  ‘To oblige, then?’ Andy urged.

  ‘The suggestion,’ Obby said, ‘is unworthy of you, Andrew.’

  He opened his book and licked his pencil.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Chris demanded.

  Obby looked steadily at him and made a note.

  ‘Get out!’ Chris roared.

  ‘That’s a type of remark that does an innocent party no good,’ Obby told him. ‘Let alone a guilty.’

  ‘What the hell d’you mean be that?’

  ‘Ax yourself.’

  ‘Are you trying to let on you reckon one of us is a guilty party? Come on. Are you?’

  ‘Any such caper on my part would be dead against the regulations,’ Obby said stuffily.

  ‘Then why do you pick on me to take down in writing? What ’ave I done?’

  ‘Only yourself and your Maker,’ Obby remarked, ‘knows the answer to that one.’

  ‘And me,’ Ernie announced unexpectedly. ‘I know.’

  Sergeant Obby became quite unnaturally still. The Andersens, too, seemed to be suspended in a sudden, fierce attentiveness. After a considerable pause, Obby said: ‘What might you know, then, Ernest?’

  ‘Ar-ar-ar! That’d be telling!’

  ‘So it would,’ Chris said shortly. ‘So shut your big silly mouth and forget it.’

  ‘No, you don’t, Christopher,’ Obby rejoined. ‘If Ern’s minded to pass a remark, he’s at liberty to do so. Speak up, Ernest. What was you going to say? You don’t,’ Obby added hastily, ‘have to talk, if you don’t want to. I’m here to see fair play. What’s on your mind, Ernest?’

  Ernie dodged his head and looked slyly at his brothers. He began to laugh with the grotesquerie of his kind. He half shut his eyes and choked over his words. ‘What price Sunday, then? What price Chrissie and the Guiser? What price you know who?’

  He doubled himself up in an ecstasy of bucolic enjoyment. ‘How’s Trix?’ he squeaked and gave a shrill cat-call. ‘Poor old Chrissie.’ He exulted.

  Chris said savagely: ‘Do you want the hide taken off you?’

  ‘When’s the wedding, then?’ Ernie asked, dodging behind Andy. ‘Nothing to hold you now, is there?’

  ‘By God—!’ Chris shouted and lunged forward. Andy laid his hands on Chris’s chest.

  ‘Steady, naow, Chris, boy, steady,’ Andy begged him.

  ‘And you, Ernie,’ Dan added, ‘you do like what Chris says and shut your mouth.’ He turned to Obby. ‘You know damn well what he’s like. Silly as a sheep. You didn’t ought to encourage him. ’Tain’t neighbourly.’

  Obby completed his notes and put up his book. He looked steadily from one of the Andersens to another. Finally, he addressed himself to them collectively.

  ‘Neighbourliness,’ he said, ‘doesn’t feature in this job. I don’t say I like it that way, but that’s the way it is. I don’t say if I could get a transfer at this moment I wouldn’t take it and pleased to do so. But I can’t, and that being so, souls, here I stick according to orders.’ He paused and buttoned his pocket over his notebook. ‘Your dad,’ he said, ‘was a masterpiece. Put me up for the Lodge did your dad. Worth any two of you, if you’ll overlook the bluntness. And, unpleasant though it may be to contemplate, whoever done him in, ghastly and brutal, deserves what he’ll get. I said “whoever”,’ Sergeant Obby repeated with sledgehammer emphasis and let his gaze dwell in a leisurely manner, first on Ernest Andersen and then on Chris.

  ‘All right. All right,’ Dan said disgustedly. ‘Us all knows you’re a monument.’

  Nat burst out: ‘What d’you think we are, then? Don’t you reckon we’re all burning fiery hot to lay our hands on the bastard that done it? Doan’t you!’

  ‘Since you ax me,’ Sergeant Obby said thoughtfully, ‘no. Not all of you. No, I don’t.’

  IV

  ‘I am not in the least embarrassed,’ Ralph said angrily. ‘You may need a solicitor, Camilla, and, if you do, you will undoubtedly consult me. My firm has acted for your family—ah—for many years.’

  ‘There you are!’ Alleyn said cheerfully. ‘The point is, did your firm act for Miss Campion’s family in the person of her grandfather, the day before yesterday?’

  ‘That,’ Ralph said grandly, ‘is neither here nor there.’

  ‘Look,’ Camilla said, ‘darling. I’ve told Mr Alleyn that grandfather intimated to me that he was thinking of leaving me some of his cash and that I said I wouldn’t have it at any price.’

  Ralph glared doubtfully at her. It seemed to Alleyn that Ralph was in that degree of love which demands of its victim some kind of emphatic action. ‘He’s suffering,’ Alleyn thought, ‘from ingrowing knight-errantry. And I fancy he’s also very much worried about something.’ He told Ralph that he wouldn’t at this stage press for information about the Guiser’s visit but that, if the investigation seemed to call for it, he could insist.

  Ralph said that, apart from professional discretion and propriety, there was no reason at all why the object of the Guiser’s visit should not be revealed and he proceeded to reveal it. The Guiser had called on Ralph, personally, and told him he wished to make a will. He had been rather strange in his manner, Ralph thought, and beat about the bush for some time.

  ‘I gathered,’ Ralph said to Camilla, ‘that he felt he wanted to atone—although he certainly didn’t put it like that—for his harshness to your mama. It was clear enough you had completely won his heart and I must say,’ Ralph went on in a rapid burst of devotion, ‘I wasn’t surprised at that.’

  ‘Thank you, Ralph,’ said Camilla.

  ‘He also told me,’ Ralph continued, addressing himself with obvious difficulty to Alleyn, ‘that he believed Miss Campion might refuse a bequest and it turned out that he wanted to know if there was some legal method of tying her up so that she would be obliged to accept it. Of course I told him there wasn’t.’ Here Ralph looked at Camilla and instantly abandoned Alleyn. ‘I said—I knew, dar—I knew you would want me to—that it might be better for him to think it over and that, in any case, his sons had a greater claim, surely, and that you would never want to cut them out.’

  ‘Darling, I’m terribly glad you said that.’

  ‘Are you? I’m so glad.’

  They gazed at each other with half smiles. Alleyn said: ‘To interrupt for a moment your mutual rejoicing—‘ and they both jumped slightly.

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said rapidly. ‘So then he told me to draft a will on those lines, all the same, and he’d have a look at it and then make up his mind. He also wanted some stipulation made about keeping Copse Forge on as a smithy and not converting it into a garage which the boys, egged on by Simon Begg, rather fancy. He asked me if I’d frame a letter that he could sign, putting it to Miss Campion—’

  ‘Darling, I have told Mr Alleyn we’re in love, only not engaged on account I’ve got scruples.’

  ‘Camilla, darling! Putting it to her that she ought to accept for his ease of spirit, as it were, and for the sake of the late Mrs Elizabeth Campion’s memory.’

  ‘My mum,’ Camilla said in explanation.

  ‘And then he went. He proposed, by the way, to leave Copse Forge to his sons and everything else to Camilla.’

  ‘Would there be much else?’ Alleyn asked, remembering what Dan Andersen had told him. Camilla answered him almost in her uncle’s words. ‘All the Andersens are great ones for putting away. They used to call Grandfather an old jackdaw.’

  ‘Did you, in fact, frame a draft on those lines?’ Alleyn asked Ralph.

  �
�No. It was only two days ago. I was a bit worried about the whole thing.’

  ‘Sweetest Ralph, why didn’t you ask me?’

  ‘Darling (a) because you’d refused to see me at all and (b) because it would have been grossly unprofessional.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Camilla.

  ‘But you already knew, of course,’ Alleyn pointed out, ‘that your grandfather was considering this step?’

  ‘I told you. We had a row about it.’

  ‘And you didn’t know he’d gone to Biddlefast on Tuesday?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t go down to the forge on Tuesday. I didn’t know.’

  ‘All right,’ Alleyn said and got up. ‘Now I want to have a word or two with your young man, if I’m allowed to call him that. There’s no real reason why you should leave us, except that I seem to get rather less than two-fifths of his attention while you are anywhere within hail.’ He walked to the door and opened it. ‘If you see Inspector Fox and Dr Otterly,’ he said, ‘would you be very kind and ask them to come back?’

  Camilla rose and walked beautifully to the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to discover Ralph’s major preoccupation?’ she asked and fluttered her eyelashes.

  ‘It declares itself abundantly. Run along and render love’s awakening. Or don’t you have that one at your drama school?’

  ‘How did you know I went to drama school?’

  ‘I can’t imagine. Star quality, or something.’

  ‘What a heavenly remark!’ she said.

  He looked at Camilla. There she was; loving, beloved, full of the positivism of youth, immensely vulnerable, immensely resilient. ‘Get along with you,’ he said. No more than a passing awareness of something beyond her field of observation seemed to visit Camilla. For a moment she looked puzzled. ‘Stick to your own preoccupation,’ Alleyn advised her, and gently propelled her out of the room.

  Fox and Dr Otterly appeared at the far end of the passage. They stood aside for Camilla who, with great charm, said: ‘Please, I was to say you’re wanted.’

  She passed them. Dr Otterly gave her an amiable buffet. ‘All right, Cordelia?’ he asked. She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘As well as can be expected, thank you,’ said Camilla.