by Ngaio Marsh
“Like a poker?”
“At first glance perhaps. We’ll have to take charge of this. I’ll talk to the Colonel.”
“What about the contents?”
“It’s big enough, in all conscience, to house the crown jewels but I imagine Mrs. Forrester’s got the lion’s share dotted about her frontage. Troy thinks they carry scrip and documents in it. And you did hear, didn’t you, that Moult has charge of the key?”
Wrayburn, with a hint of desperation in his voice, said, “I don’t know! Like the man said: you wouldn’t credit it if you read it in a book. I suppose we pick the lock for them, do we?”
“Or pick it for ourselves if not for them? I’ll inquire of the Colonel. In the meantime they mustn’t get their hands on it.”
Wrayburn pointed to the scarred area. “By Gum! I reckon it’s the poker,” he said.
“Oh for my Bailey and his dab-kit.”
“The idea being,” Wrayburn continued, following out his thought, “that some villain unknown was surprised trying to break open the box with the poker.”
“And killed? With the poker? After a struggle? That seems to be going rather far, don’t you think? And when you say ‘somebody’ —”
“I suppose I mean Moult.”
“Who preferred taking a very inefficient whang at the box to using the key?”
“That’s right — we dismiss that theory, then. It’s ridiculous. How about Moult coming in after he’d done his Christmas tree act and catching the villain at it and getting knocked on the head?”
“And then—?
“Pushed through the window? With the poker after him?”
“In which case,” Alleyn said, “he was transplanted before they searched. Let’s have a look at the window.”
It was the same as all the others: a sash window with a snib locking the upper to the lower frame.
“We’d better not handle anything. The damn’ bore of it is that with this high standard of house management the whole place will have been dusted off. But if you look out of this window, Jack, it’s at the top of the sapling fir where Bill-Tasman picked up the poker. His study is directly beneath us. And if you leant out and looked to your left, it would be at the southeast corner of the east wing. Hold on a jiffy. Look here.”
“What’s up?”
Alleyn was moving about, close to the window. He dodged his head and peered sideways through the glass.
“Turn off the lights, Jack, will you? There’s something out there — yes, near the top of the fir. It’s catching a stray gleam from somewhere. Take a look.”
Mr. Wrayburn shaded his eyes and peered into the night. “I don’t get anything,” he said. “Unless you mean a little sort of shiny wriggle. You can hardly catch it.”
“That’s it. Quite close. In the fir.”
“Might be anything. Bit of string.”
“Or tinsel?”
“That’s right. Blowing about.”
“So what?”
“So nothing, I daresay. A passing fancy. We’ve still got a hell of a lot to find out. About last night’s ongoings — the order of events and details of procedure and so on.”
“Mrs. Alleyn will be helpful, there, I make no doubt.”
“You know,” Alleyn said, austerely, “my views under that heading, don’t you?”
“That was before you took over, though.”
“So it was. And now I’m in the delirious position of having to use departmental tact and make routine inquiries with my wife.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Wrayburn dimly speculated, “she’ll think it funny.”
Alleyn stared at him. “You know,” he said at last, “you’ve got something there. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she did.” He thought for a moment. “And I daresay,” he said, “that in a macabre sort of way she’ll be, as usual, right. Come on. We’d better complete the survey. I’d like one more look at this blasted padlock, though.”
He was on his knees before it and Wrayburn was peering over his shoulder when Colonel Forrester said: “So you have found it. Good. Good. Good.”
He had come in by the bathroom door behind their backs. He was a little bit breathless but his eyes were bright and he seemed to be quite excited.
“I didn’t join the ladies,” he explained. “I thought I’d just pop up and see if I could be of any use. There may be points you want to ask about. So here I am and you must pack me off if I’m a nuisance. If one wasn’t so worried it would be awfully interesting to see the real thing. Oh — and by the way — your wife tells me that you’re George Alleyn’s brother. He was in the Brigade in my day, you know. Junior to me, of course: an ensign. In the Kiddies, I remember. Coincidence, isn’t it? Do tell me: what did he do after he went on the reserve? Took to the proconsular service, I seem to remember.”
Alleyn answered this inquiry as shortly as, with civility, he could. The Colonel sat on the bed and beamed at him, still fetching his breath rather short but apparently enjoying himself. Alleyn introduced Mr. Wrayburn, whom the Colonel was clearly delighted to meet. “But I oughtn’t to interrupt you both,” he said. “There you are in the thick of it with your magnifying glass and everything. Do tell me: what do you make of my box?”
“I was going to ask you about that, sir,” Alleyn said. “It’s a clumsy attempt, isn’t it?”
“Clumsy? Well, yes. But one couldn’t be anything else but clumsy with a thing like a poker, could one?”
“You know about the poker?”
“Oh rather! Hilary told us.”
“What, exactly, did he tell you?”
“That he’d found one in the fir tree out there. Now, that was a pretty outlandish sort of place for it to be, wasn’t it?”
“Did he describe it?”
The Colonel looked steadily at Alleyn for some seconds. “Not in detail,” he said, and after a further pause: “But in any case when we found the marks on the box we thought: ‘poker,’ B and I, as soon as we saw them.”
“Why did you think ‘poker,’ sir?”
“I don’t know. We just did. ‘Poker,’ we thought. Or B did, which comes to much the same thing. Poker.”
“Had you noticed that the one belonging to this room had disappeared?”
“Oh dear me, no. Not a bit of it. Not at the time.”
“Colonel Forrester, Troy tells me that you didn’t see Moult after he had put on your Druid’s robe.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said, opening his eyes very wide. “I saw him.”
“You did?”
“Well — ‘saw,’ you may call it. I was lying down in our bedroom, you know, dozing, and he came to the bathroom door. He had the robe and the wig on and he held the beard up to show me. I think he said he’d come back before he went down. I think I reminded him about the window and then I did go to sleep, and so I suppose he just looked in and went off without waking me. That’s what Mrs. Alleyn was referring to. I rather fancy, although I may be wrong here, but I rather fancy I heard him look out.”
“Heard him? Look out?”
“Yes. I told him to look out of the dressing-room window for Vincent with the sledge at the corner. Because when Vincent was there it would be time to go down. That was how we laid it on. Dead on the stroke of half-past seven it was to be, by the stable clock. And so it was.”
“What!” Alleyn exclaimed. “You mean —?”
“I like to run an exercise to a strict timetable and so, I’m glad to say, does Hilary. All our watches and clocks were set to synchronize. And I’ve just recollected: I did hear him open the window and I heard the stable clock strike the half-hour immediately afterwards. So, you see, at that very moment Vincent would signal from the corner and Moult would go down to have his beard put on, and — and there you are. That was, you might say, phase one of the exercise, what?”
“Yes, I see. And — forgive me for pressing it, but it is important — he didn’t present himself on his return?”
“No. He didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t,” said the Colonel very do
ubtfully.
“I mean — could you have still been asleep?”
“Yes!” cried the Colonel as if the Heavens had opened upon supreme enlightenment. “I could! Easily, I could. Of course!”
Alleyn heard Mr. Wrayburn fetch a sigh.
“You see,” the Colonel explained, “I do drop off after my Turns. I think it must be something in the stuff the quack gives me.”
“Yes, I see. Tell me — those fur-lined boots. Would he have put them on up here or in the cloakroom?”
“In the cloakroom. He’d put them all ready down there for me. I wanted to dress up here because of the big looking-glass, but the boots didn’t matter and they’re clumsy things to tramp about the house in.”
“Yes, I see.”
“You do think, don’t you,” asked the Colonel, “that you’ll find him?”
“I expect we will. I hope so.”
“I tell you what, Alleyn,” said the Colonel, and his face became as dolorous as a clown’s. “I’m afraid the poor fellow’s dead.”
“Are you, sir?”
“One shouldn’t say so, of course, at this stage. But — I don’t know — I’m very much afraid my poor old Moult’s dead. He was an awful ass in many ways but we suited each other, he and I. What do you think about it?”
“There’s one possibility,” Alleyn said cautiously.
“I know what you’re going to say. Amnesia. Aren’t you?”
“Something, at any rate, that caused him to leave the cloakroom by the outer door and wander off into the night. Miss Tottenham says he did smell pretty strongly of liquour.”
“Did he? Did he? Yes, well, perhaps in the excitement he may have been silly. In fact — In fact, I’m afraid he was.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because when he found me all tied up in my robe and having a Turn, he helped me out and put me to bed and I must say he smelt most awfully strong of whisky. Reeked. But, if that was the way of it,” the Colonel asked, “where is he? Out on those moors like somebody in a play? On such a night, poor feller? If he’s out there,” said the Colonel with great energy, “he must be found. That should come first. He must be found.”
Alleyn explained that there was a search party on the way. When he said Major Marchbanks was providing police dogs and handlers, the Colonel nodded crisply, rather as if he had ordered this to be done. More and more the impression grew upon Alleyn that here was no ninny. Eccentric in his domestic arrangements Colonel Forrester might be, and unexpected in his conversation, but he hadn’t said anything really foolish about the case. And now when Alleyn broached the matter of the tin box and the dressing-room, the Colonel cut him short.
“You’ll want to lock the place up, no doubt,” he said. “You fellers always lock places up. I’ll tell Moult—” he stopped short and made a nervous movement of his hands. “Force of habit,” he said. “Silly of me. I’ll put my things in the bedroom.”
“Please don’t bother. We’ll attend to it. There’s one thing, though: would you mind telling me what is in the uniform box?”
“In it? Well. Let me see. Papers, for one thing. My commission. Diaries. My Will.” The Colonel caught himself up. “One of them,” he amended. “My investments, scrip or whatever they call them.” Again, there followed one of the Colonel’s brief meditations. “Deeds,” he said. “That kind of thing. B’s money: some of it. She likes to keep a certain amount handy. Ladies do, I’m told. And the jewels she isn’t wearing. Those sorts of things. Yes.”
Alleyn explained that he would want to test the box for fingerprints, and the Colonel instantly asked if he might watch. “It would interest me no end,” he said. “Insufflators and latent ones and all that. I read a lot of detective stories: awful rot, but they lead you on. B reads them backwards but I won’t let her tell me.”
Alleyn managed to steer him away from this theme and it was finally agreed that they would place the box, intact, in the dressing-room wardrobe pending the arrival of the party from London. The Colonel’s effects having been removed to the bedroom, the wardrobe and the dressing-room itself would then be locked and Alleyn would keep the keys.
Before these measures were completed, Mrs. Forrester came tramping in.
“I thought as much,” she said to her husband.
“I’m all right, B. It’s getting jolly serious, but I’m all right. Really.”
“What are you doing with the box? Good evening,” Mrs. Forrester added, nodding to Mr. Wrayburn.
Alleyn explained. Mrs. Forrester fixed him with an embarrassing glare but heard him through.
“I see,” she said. “And is Moult supposed to have been interrupted trying to open it with the poker, when he had the key in his pocket?”
“Of course not, B. We all agree that would be a silly idea.”
“Perhaps you think he’s murdered and his body’s locked up in the box.”
“Really, my dear!”
“The one notion’s as silly as the other.”
“We don’t entertain either of them, B. Do we, Alleyn?”
“Mrs. Forrester,” Alleyn said, “what do you think has happened? Have you a theory?”
“No,” said Mrs. Forrester. “It’s not my business to have theories. Any more than it’s yours, Fred,” she tossed as an aside to her husband. “But I do throw this observation out, as a matter you may like to remember, that Moult and Hilary’s murderers were at loggerheads.”
“Why?”
“Why! Why, because Moult’s the sort of person to object to them. Old soldier-servant. Service in the Far East. Seen plenty of the seamy side and likes things done according to the Queen’s regulations. Regimental snobbery. Goes right through the ranks. Thinks this lot a gang of riffraff and lets them know it.”
“I tried,” said the Colonel, “to get him to take a more enlightened view but he couldn’t see it, poor feller, he couldn’t see it.”
“Was he married?”
“No,” they both said and Mrs. Forrester added: “Why?”
“There’s a snapshot in his pocket-book —”
“You’ve found him!” she ejaculated with a violence that seemed to shock herself as well as her hearers.
Alleyn explained.
“I daresay,” the Colonel said, “it’s some little girl in the married quarters. One of his brother-soldiers’ children. He’s fond of children.”
“Come to bed, Fred.”
“It isn’t time, B.”
“Yes, it is. For you.”
Mr. Wrayburn, who from the time Mrs. Forrester appeared had gone quietly about the business of removing the Colonel’s effects to the bedroom, now returned to say he hoped they’d find everything in order. With an air that suggested they’d better or else, Mrs. Forrester withdrew her husband, leaving both doors into the bathroom open, presumably with the object of keeping herself informed of their proceedings.
Alleyn and Wrayburn lifted the box by its end handles into the wardrobe, which they locked. Alleyn walked over to the window, stood on a Victorian footstool, and peered for some time through Hilary’s glass at the junction of the two sashes. “This hasn’t been dusted, at least,” he muttered, “but much good will that be to us, I don’t mind betting.” He prowled disconsolately.
Colonel Forrester appeared in the bathroom door in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. He made apologetic faces at them, motioned with his head in the direction of his wife, bit his underlip, shut the door, and could be heard brushing his teeth.
“He’s a caution, isn’t he?” Mr. Wrayburn murmured.
Alleyn moved alongside his colleague and pointed to the window.
Rain still drove violently against the pane, splayed out and ran down in sheets. The frame rattled intermittently. Alleyn turned out the lights, and at once the scene outside became partly visible. The top of the fir tree thrashed about dementedly against an oncoming multitude of glistening rods across which, in the distance, distorted beams of light swept and turned.
“Chaps from the Va
le. Or my lot.”
“Look at that sapling fir.”
“Whipping about like mad, isn’t it? That’s the Buster. Boughs broken. Snow blown out of it. It’s a proper shocker, the Buster is.”
“There is something caught up in it. Do you see? A tatter of something shiny?”
“Anything might be blown into it in this gale.”
“It’s on the lee side. Still — I suppose you’re right. We’d better go down. You go first, will you, Jack? I’ll lock up here. By the way, they’ll want that shoe of Moult’s to lay the dogs on. But what a hope!”
“What about one of his fur-lined boots in the cloakroom?”
Alleyn hesitated and then said: “Yes. All right. Yes.”
“See you downstairs then.”
“O.K.”
Wrayburn went out. Alleyn pulled the curtains across the window. He waited for a moment in the dark room and was about to cross it when the door into the bathroom opened and admitted a patch of reflected light. He stood where he was. A voice, scarcely articulate, without character, breathed: “Oh,” and the door closed.
He waited. Presently he heard a tap turned on and sundry other sounds of activity.
He locked the bathroom door, went out by the door into the corridor, locked it, pocketed both keys, took a turn to his left, and was in time to see Troy going into her bedroom.
He slipped in after her and found her standing in front of her fire.
“You dodge down passages like Alice’s rabbit,” he said. “Don’t look doubtfully at me. Don’t worry. You aren’t here, my love. We can’t help this. You aren’t here.”
“I know.”
“It’s silly. It’s ludicrous.”
“I’m falling about, laughing.”
“Troy?”
“Yes. All right. I’ll expect you when I see you.”
“And that won’t be —”
Troy had lifted her hand. “What?” he asked, and she pointed to her built-in wardrobe. “You can hear the Forresters,” she said, “if you go in there and if they’ve left their wardrobe door open. I don’t suppose they have and I don’t suppose you want to. Why should you? But you can.”
He walked over to the wardrobe and stuck his head inside. The sound of voices in tranquil conversation reached him, the Colonel’s near at hand, Mrs. Forrester’s very distant. She’s still in the bathroom, Alleyn thought. Suddenly there was a rattle of coat hangers and the Colonel, startlingly close at hand, said, “— jolly difficult to replace —” and a few seconds later: “Yes, all right, I know. Don’t fuss me.”