by Ngaio Marsh
“You didn’t sport all that hardware last night, Mrs. F,” Mr. Smith suggested.
“I did not. I had it brought out and I made my choice. The rejected pieces should have been returned to their place. By Moult. They were not and I prefer under the circumstances to keep them about me. That, however is not the matter at issue. Hilary!”
“Aunt Bed?”
“An attempt has been made upon our strongbox.”
“Oh my God! What do you mean?”
“There is evidence. An instrument — possibly a poker — has been introduced in an unsuccessful attempt upon the padlock.”
“It needed only this,” said Hilary and took his head between his hands.
“I am keeping it from your uncle: it would fuss him. What do you propose to do?”
“I? What can I do? Why,” asked Hilary wildly, “do you keep it under the dressing-room bed?”
“Because it won’t go under our bed, which is ridiculously low.”
“What’s the story, then?” Mr. Smith asked. “Did Alf Moult try to rob the till and run away in a fright when he foozled the job?”
“With the key in his pocket?” Mrs. Forrester snapped. “You’re not very bright this morning, Smith.”
“It was a joke.”
“Indeed.”
Blore came in. “A telephone call, sir, for Mrs. Alleyn,” he said.
“Me? Is it from London?”
“Yes, madam. Mr. Alleyn, madam.”
“Oh how lovely!” Troy shouted before she could stop herself. She apologized and made a bolt for the telephone.
“— so we wound the whole thing up at ninety in the shade and here I am. A Happy Christmas, darling. When shall I see you?”
“Soon. Soon. The portrait’s finished. I think. I’m not sure.”
“When in doubt, stop. Shouldn’t you?”
“I daresay. I want to. But there’s just one thing —”
“Troy: is anything the matter?”
“In a way. No — not with me. Here.”
“You’ve turned cagey. Don’t you want to talk?”
“Might be better not.”
“I see. Well — when?”
“I — Rory, hold on will you? Hold on.”
“I’m holding.”
It was Hilary. He had come in unnoticed and now made deprecatory gestures and rather silly little faces at Troy. “Please!” he said. “May I? Do forgive me, but may I?”
“Of course.”
“It’s just occurred to me. So dismal for Alleyn to be in an empty house in London at Christmas. So please, suggest he comes to us. I know you want to fly on wings of song, but you did say you might need one more sitting, and anyway I should be so delighted to meet him. He might even advise about Moult or would that be anti-protocol? But — please —?”
“I think perhaps —”
“No, you don’t. You can’t. You mustn’t ‘think perhaps.’ Ask him. Go on, do.”
Troy gave her husband the message.
“Do you,” he said, speaking close to the receiver, “want this? Or would you rather come home? There’s something up, isn’t there? Put on a carefree voice, love, and tell me. Would you like me to come? I can. I’m free at the moment.”
“Can you? Are you?”
“Then, shall I?”
“I really don’t know,” Troy said and laughed, as she trusted, gaily. “Yes. I think so.”
“When would you leave if I didn’t come?”
“Well — don’t quite know,” she said and hoped she sounded playful and cooperative.
“What the hell,” her husband asked, “is all this? Well, never mind. You can’t say, obviously.”
Hilary was making modest little gestures. He pointed to himself and mouthed, “May I?”
“Hilary,” said Troy, “would like to have a word.”
“Turn him on,” said Alleyn. “Or have you, by any chance, already done so?”
“Here he is,” Troy said severely. “Rory: this is Hilary Bill-Tasman.”
She handed over the receiver and listened to Hilary. His manner was masterly: not too overtly insistent, not too effusive, but of such a nature that it made a refusal extremely difficult. I suppose, Troy thought, these are the techniques he brings to bear on his rich, complicated business. She imagined her husband’s lifted eyebrow. Presently Hilary said: “And you are free, aren’t you? So why not? The portrait, if nothing else, will be your reward: it’s quite superb. You will? I couldn’t be more delighted. Now: about trains — there’s just time —”
When that was settled he turned, beamingly, to Troy and held out the receiver. “Congratulate me!” cried Hilary and, with that characteristic gesture of his, left the room, gaily wagging his hand above his head.
Troy said, “It’s me again.”
“Good.”
“I’ll come to the station.”
“Too kind.”
“So nice to see you again!”
“Always pleasant to pick up the threads.”
“Good-morning.”
“Good-morning.”
When Hilary announced that Vincent would put on his chauffeur’s uniform and take the small car to the main line station, Troy suggested that she herself could do so. This clearly suited him very well. She gathered that some sort of exploratory work was to be carried out in the grounds. (“Though really,” Hilary said, “one holds out little hope of it”) and that Vincent’s presence would be helpful.
Soon after luncheon Troy got ready for the road. She heard a commotion under her window and looked out.
Vincent and three other men were floundering about in a halfhearted way among broken glass and the dense thicket that invested the site of the old conservatory. They poked and thrust with forks and spades. “But that’s ridiculous,” thought Troy.
She found Hilary downstairs waiting to see her off.
He stared at her. “You look,” he said, “as if somebody had given you a wonderful present. Or made love to you. Or something.”
“And that’s exactly how I feel,” she said.
He was silent for so long and stared so hard that she was obliged to say: “Is anything more the matter?”
“I suppose not,” he said slowly. “I hope not. I was just wondering. However! Watch out for icy patches, won’t you? You can’t miss the turnings. Bon voyage.”
He watched her start up her engine, turned on his heel, and went quickly into the house.
In her walks Troy had always taken paths that led up to the moors: “The Land Beyond the Scarecrow,” she had called it to herself as if it belonged to a children’s story. Now she drove down the long drive that was to become a grand avenue. The bulldozer men were not at work over Christmas. Their half-formed hillock, and the bed for the lake that would reflect it, were covered with snow — the tractors looked ominous and dark under their tarpaulins. Further away stood a copse of bare trees that was evidently a feature of the original estate and beyond this, fields stretching downhill, away from the moors and towards a milder and more humanized landscape. At the end of the drive she crossed a bridge over a rapid brook that Hilary had told her would be developed, further upstream, into water gardens.
A drive of some twelve miles brought her to her destination. The late afternoon sun shone bravely, there was an air of normality and self-containment about the small country town of Downlow. Troy drove along the main street to the station, parked her car, and went through the office to the platform. Here, in the familiar atmosphere of paste, disinfectant and travel posters, Halberds seemed absurd and faintly distasteful.
She was early and walked up and down the platform, partly to keep warm and partly to work off her overstimulated sense of anticipation. Strange notions came into her head. As, for instance, would Cressida in — say — ten years’ time, feel more or less like this if she had been absent from Hilary for three weeks? Was Cressida much in love with Hilary? Did she passionately want to be mistress of Halberds? Judging by those representatives of county fam
ilies who had rather uneasily attended the party, Cressida was unlikely to find a kindred spirit among them. Perhaps she and Hilary would spend most of their time in their S.W.1 flat, which Troy supposed to be on a pretty lavish scale. Would they take some of their murderers to look after them when they came up to London? Troy found that she felt uneasy about Cressida and obscurely sorry for her.
With a loud clank the signal arm jerked up. A porter and one or two other persons strolled onto the platform, and from down the line came the banshee whistle of the London train.
“Mind? Of course I don’t mind,” Alleyn said. “I thought I should be hanging about the flat waiting for you to come home! Instead of which, here we are, bold as brass, driving somebody else’s car through a Christmas tree landscape and suiting each other down to the ground. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’ve no complaints.”
“In that case you must now tell me what’s up in the Bill-Tasman outfit. You sounded greatly put out this morning.”
“Yes, well… all right. Hold on to your hat and fetch up all your willing suspension of unbelief. You’ll need it.”
“I’ve heard of Bill-Tasman’s experiment with villains for flunkies. Your letter seemed to suggest that it works.”
“That was early days. That was a week ago. I didn’t write again because there wasn’t time. Now, listen.”
“ ‘List, list, O list.’ ”
“Yes, well, it’s an earful.”
“ ‘Speak, I am bound to hear.’ ”
“Rory! Don’t be a detective.”
“Oops! Sorry.”
“Here I go, then.”
Troy had got about a third of the way through her narrative when her husband stopped her.
“I suppose,” he said, “I have to take it that you are not making this up as you go along.”
“I’m not even making the most of my raw material. Which part do you find difficult to absorb?”
“My trouble is quantitative rather than particular, but I find I jib at Aunt Bed. I don’t know why. I suppose she’s not somebody in disguise and camping it up?”
“That really would be a more appropriate theory for Mr. Smith.”
“Oh,” said Alleyn. “I know about your Mr. Smith. The firm of Bill-Tasman and Smith is at the top of the British if not the European antiquarian trade, and Albert Smith, from the police angle, is as pure as the driven snow. We’ve sought their opinions before now in cases of fraud, robbery from collections, and art forgeries. He started as a barrow-boy, he had a flair, and with the aid of Bill-Tasman, Senior, he got to the top. It’s not an unusual story, darling. It’s merely an extreme example. Press on.”
Troy pressed on with mileage and narrative. They reached the signpost for the Vale turn-off and began to climb the lower-reaches of the moors. Patches of snow appeared. In the far distance, Troy thought she recognized the high tor above the Vale.
Alleyn became quieter and quieter. Every now and then he questioned her and once or twice asked her to go over the ground again. She had got as far as the anonymous messages and the booby-trap when she interrupted herself. “Look,” she said. “See those plumes of smoke beyond the trees? We’re nearly there. That’s Halberds.”
“Could you pull up? I’d like to hear the lot while we’re at it.”
“O.K.”
She turned the car on to the verge of the road and stopped the engine. The sky had begun to darken, mist rose from hollows and blurred their windscreen. Rime glittered on a roadside briar.
“You must be starved with cold after Sydney in midsummer.”
“I’m treble-sweatered and quilted. Carry on, my love.”
Ten minutes later Troy said, “And that’s it. When I left, Vincent and some chaps were tramping about with forks and spades in the ruins of the conservatory.”
“Has Bill-Tasman reported to his local police?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He damn’ well ought to.”
“I think he’s holding back for you.”
“Like hell he is!”
“For your advice.”
“Which will be to call up the local station. What else, for pity’s sake? What’s he like, Bill-Tasman? He sounded precious on the telephone.”
“He’s a bit like a good-looking camel. Very paintable.”
“If you say so, darling.”
“He’s intelligent, affected and extremely companionable.”
“I see. And what about this chap Moult? Does he drink, did you say?”
“According to Aunt Bed, occasionally.”
“Jim Marchbanks is at the Vale.”
“I forgot to tell you — we’ve chummed up.”
“Have you now? Nice creature, isn’t he?”
They were silent for a minute or so. Presently Alleyn said his wife’s nose was as cold as an iced cherry but not as red. After a further interval she said she thought they should move on.
When they reached the turn in the drive where Halberds was fully revealed, Alleyn said that everything had become as clear as mud: Troy had obviously got herself into a film production, on location, of The Castle of Otranto and had been written into the script as the best way of keeping her quiet.
Blore and Mervyn came out to meet them. They both seemed to Troy to be excessively glum faced but their behaviour was impeccable. Mervyn, carrying Alleyn’s suitcase, led the way upstairs to a dressing-room on the far side of Troy’s bathroom and connecting with it.
“Mr. Bill-Tasman is in the boudoir, madam,” said Mervyn with his back to Alleyn. He cast a rather wild glance at Troy and withdrew.
“Is that chap’s name Cox?” Alleyn asked.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Mervyn Cox. Booby-trap. Flat iron. Killed Warty Thompson the cat-burglar. That’s the boy.”
“Did you —?”
“No. One of Fox’s cases. I just remembered.”
“I’m certain he didn’t rig that thing up for me.”
“You may well be right. Suspect anyone else?”
“No. Unless —”
“Unless?”
“It’s so farfetched. It’s just that there does appear to have been some sort of feud between Moult and the staff.”
“And Moult fixed the things up to look like Mervyn’s job? And wrote the messages in the same spirit? Out of spite?”
“He doesn’t seem to be particularly spiteful.”
“No?”
“He obviously adores the Colonel. You know — one of those unquestioning, dogged sort of attachments.”
“I know.”
“So what?”
“Well may you ask. What’s he like to look at?”
“Oh — rather upsetting, poor chap. He’s got a scarred face. Burns, I should imagine.”
“Come here to me.”
“I think you’d better meet Hilary.”
“Blast Hilary,” said Alleyn. “All right. I suppose so.”
It was abundantly clear to Troy, when they found Hilary alone in the boudoir, that something had been added to the tale of inexplicable events. He greeted Alleyn with almost feverish enthusiasm. He gushed about the portrait (presently they would look at it), and he also gushed about Troy, who refused to catch her husband’s eye. He talked more than a little wildly about Alleyn’s welcome return from the Antipodes. He finally asked, with a strange and most unsuccessful attempt at off-handedness, if Troy had told Alleyn of their “little mystery.” On hearing that she had he exclaimed, “No, but isn’t it a bore? I do so hate mysteries, don’t you? No, I suppose you don’t, as you perpetually solve them.”
“Have there been any developments?” Troy asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Yes. I was leading up to them. I–I haven’t made it generally known as yet. I thought I would prefer —”
Cressida came in and Hilary madly welcomed her as if they had been parted for a week. She stared at him in amazement. On being introduced to Alleyn she gave herself a second or two to run over his points and
from then until the end of the affair at Halberds made a dead set at him.
Cressida was not, Troy had to admit, a gross practitioner. She kept fractionally to the right of a frontal attack. Her method embraced the attentive ear, the slight smile of understanding, the very occasional glance. She made avoidance about ninety per cent more equivocal than an accidental brush of the hands, though that was not lacking either, Troy noticed, when Cressida had her cigarette lit.
Troy wondered if she always went into action when confronted with a personable man or if Alleyn had made a smash hit. Was Hilary at all affected by the manifestations? But Hilary, clearly, was fussed by other matters and his agitation increased when Mrs. Forrester came in.
She, in her way, also made a dead set at Alleyn, but her technique was widely different. She barely waited for the introduction.
“Just as well you’ve come,” she said. “High time. Now we shall be told what to do.”
“Aunt Bed — we mustn’t —”
“Nonsense, Hilary. Why else have you dragged him all this way? Not,” she added as an afterthought, “that he’s not pleased to see his wife, of course.”
“I’m delighted to see her,” said Alleyn.
“Who wouldn’t be!” Hilary exclaimed. Really, Troy thought, he was showing himself in a most peculiar light.
“Well?” Mrs. Forrester began on a rising inflexion.
Hilary intervened. He said, with a show of firmness, that perhaps a little consultation in the study might be an idea. When his aunt tried to cut in he talked her down, and as he talked he seemed to gain authority. In the upshot he took Alleyn by the elbow and, coruscating with feverish jokelets, piloted him out of the boudoir.
“Darling!” said Cressida to Troy before the door had shut. “Your husband! You know? And I mean this. The mostest.”
The study was in the east wing, next door to the boudoir. Hilary fussed about, turning on lamps and offering Alleyn tea (which he and Troy had missed), or a drink. “Such a mongrel time of day, I always think,” he said. “Are you sure you won’t?”
Alleyn said he was sure. “You want to talk about this business, don’t you?” he asked. “Troy’s told me the whole story. I think you should call your local police.”
“She said you’d say that. I did hope you wouldn’t mind if I just consulted you first.”