by Ngaio Marsh
Carlisle was in her room when the call came through and she took it there, sitting on her bed and staring aimlessly at a flower print on the wall. A hammer knocked at her ribs and her throat constricted. In some remote part of her mind she thought: ‘As if I was in love, instead of frightened sick.’
The unusually deep and clear voice said: ‘Is that you, Miss Wayne? I’m sorry to bother you again so soon but I’d like to have another word with you.’
‘Yes,’ said Carlisle. ‘Would you? Yes.’
‘I can come to Duke’s Gate or, if you would rather, can see you here at the Yard.’ Carlisle didn’t answer at once and he said: ‘Which would suit you best?’
‘I—I think—I’ll come to your office.’
‘It might be easier. Thank you so much. Can you come at once?’
‘Yes. Yes, I can, of course.’
‘Splendid.’ He gave her explicit instructions about which entrance to use and where to ask for him. ‘Is that clear? I shall see you in about twenty minutes, then.’
‘In about twenty minutes,’ she repeated, and her voice cracked into an absurd cheerful note as if she was gaily making a date with him. ‘Right-ho,’ she said and thought with horror: ‘But I never say “right-ho.” He’ll think I’m demented.’
‘Mr Alleyn,’ she said loudly.
‘Yes? Hallo?’
‘I’m sorry I made such an ass of myself this morning. I don’t know what happened. I seemed to have gone extremely peculiar.’
‘Never mind,’ said the deep voice easily.
‘Well—all right. Thank you. I’ll come straight away.’
He gave a small polite not unfriendly sound and she hung up the receiver.
‘Booking a date with the attractive inspector, darling?’ said Félicité from the door.
At the first sound of her voice Carlisle’s body had jerked and she had cried out sharply.
‘You are jumpy,’ Félicité said, coming nearer.
‘I didn’t know you were there.’
‘Obviously.’
Carlisle opened her wardrobe. ‘He wants to see me. Lord knows why.’
‘So you’re popping off to the Yard. Exciting for you.’
‘Marvellous isn’t it?’ Carlisle said, trying to make her voice ironical. Félicité watched her change into a suit. ‘Your face wants a little attention,’ she said.
‘I know.’ She went to the dressing-table. ‘Not that it matters.’
When she looked in the glass she saw Félicité’s face behind her shoulder. ‘Stupidly unfriendly,’ she thought, dabbing at her nose.
‘You know, darling,’ Félicité said, ‘I’m drawn to the conclusion you’re a dark horse.’
‘Oh, Fée!’ she said impatiently.
‘Well, you appear to have done quite a little act with my late best young man, last night, and here you are having a sly assignation with the dynamic inspector.’
‘He probably wants to know what kind of tooth-paste we all use.’
‘Personally,’ said Félicité, ‘I always considered you were potty about Ned.’
Carlisle’s hand shook as she pressed powder into the tear stains under her eyes.
‘You are in a state, aren’t you?’ said Félicité.
Carlisle turned on her. ‘Fée, for pity’s sake come off it. As if things weren’t bad enough without your starting these monstrous hares. You must have seen that I couldn’t endure your poor wretched incredibly phoney young man. You must see that Mr Alleyn’s summons to Scotland Yard has merely frightened seven bells out of me. How you can!’
‘What about Ned?’
Carlisle picked up her bag and gloves. ‘If Ned writes the monstrous bilge you’ve fallen for in Harmony I never want to speak to him again,’ she said violently. ‘For the love of Mike pipe down and let me go and be grilled.’
But she was not to leave without further incident. On the first-floor landing she encountered Miss Henderson. After her early-morning scene with Alleyn on the stairs, Carlisle had returned to her room and remained there, fighting down the storm of illogical weeping that had so suddenly overtaken her. So she had not met Miss Henderson until now.
‘Hendy!’ she cried out, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘Good-morning, Carlisle. The matter, dear?’
‘I thought you looked—I’m sorry. I expect we all look a bit odd. Are you hunting for something?’
‘I’ve dropped my little silver pencil somewhere. It can’t be here,’ she said, as Carlisle began vaguely to look. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Mr Alleyn wants me to call and see him.’
‘Why?’ Miss Henderson said sharply.
‘I don’t know. Hendy, isn’t this awful, this business? And to make matters worse I’ve had a sort of row with Fée.’
The light on the first landing was always rather strange, Carlisle told herself, a cold reflected light coming from a distant window making people look greenish. It must be that, because Henderson answered her quite tranquilly and with her usual lack of emphasis. ‘Why, of all mornings, did you two want to have a row?’
‘I suppose we’re both scratchy. I told her I thought the unfortunate Rivera was ghastly and she thinks I’m shaking my curls at Mr Alleyn. It was too stupid for words.’
‘I should think so, indeed.’
‘I’d better go.’
Carlisle touched her lightly on the arm and crossed to the stairs. She hesitated there, without turning to face Miss Henderson, who had not moved. ‘What is it?’ Miss Henderson said. ‘Have you forgotten something?’
‘No. Hendy, you know, don’t you, about the fantastic thing they say killed him? The piece of parasol with an embroidery stiletto in the end.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember—I know this is ridiculous—but do you remember, last night when there was that devastating bang from the ballroom? Do you remember you and Aunt Cile and Fée and I were in the drawing-room and you were sorting Aunt Cile’s work-box?’
‘Was I?’
‘Yes. And you jumped at the bang and dropped something.’
‘Did I?’
‘And Fée picked it up.’
‘Did she?’
‘Hendy, was it an embroidery stiletto?’
‘I remember nothing about it. Nothing at all.’
‘I didn’t notice where she put it. I wondered if you had noticed.’
‘If it was something from the work-box, I expect she put it back. Won’t you be late, Carlisle?’
‘Yes,’ Carlisle said without turning. ‘Yes, I’ll go.’
She heard Miss Henderson walk away into the drawing-room. The door closed gently and Carlisle went downstairs. There was a man in a dark suit in the hall. He got up when he saw her and said: ‘Excuse me, Miss, but are you Miss Wayne?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Thank you, Miss Wayne.’
He opened the glass doors for her and then the front door. Carlisle went quickly past him and out into the sunshine. She was quite unaware of the man who stepped out from the corner a little way down Duke’s Gate and who, glancing impatiently at his watch, waited at the bus stop and journeyed with her to Scotland Yard. ‘Keep observation on the whole damn’ boiling,’ Alleyn had said irritably at six o’clock that morning. ‘We don’t know what we want.’
She followed a constable who looked oddly domesticated without his helmet down a linoleumed corridor to the Chief Inspector’s room. She thought: ‘They invite people to come and make statements. It means something. Suppose they suspect me. Suppose they’ve found out some little thing that makes them think I’ve done it.’ Her imagination galloped wildly. Suppose, when she went into the room, Alleyn said: ‘I’m afraid this is serious. Carlisle Loveday Wayne I arrest you for the murder of Carlos Rivera and I warn you…’ They would telephone for any clothes she wanted. Hendy, perhaps, would pack a suitcase. Perhaps, secretly, they would all be a little lightened, almost pleasurably worried, because they would no longer be in fear for themselves. Perhaps Ne
d would come to see her.
‘In here, if you please, Miss,’ the constable was saying with his hand on the doorknob.
Alleyn rose quickly from his desk and came towards her. ‘Punctilious,’ she thought. ‘He’s got nice manners. Are his manners like this when he’s going to arrest people?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he was saying. ‘This must be a nuisance for you.’
The solid grizzled detective was behind him. Fox. That was Inspector Fox. He had pulled up a chair for her and she sat in it, facing Alleyn. ‘With the light on my face,’ she thought. ‘That’s what they do.’
Fox moved away and sat behind a second desk. She could see his head and shoulders but his hands were hidden from her.
‘You’ll think my object in asking you to come very aimless, I expect,’ Alleyn said, ‘and my first question will no doubt strike you as being completely potty. However, here it is. You told us last night that you were with Lord Pastern when he made the dummies and loaded the revolver.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, now, did anything happen, particularly in respect of the revolver, that struck you both as being at all comic?’
Carlisle gaped at him. ‘“Comic.”’
‘I told you it was a potty question,’ he said.
‘If you mean did we take one look at the revolver and then shake with uncontrollable laughter, we didn’t.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was afraid not.’
‘The mood was sentimental if anything. The revolver was one of a pair given to Uncle George by my father and he told me so.’
‘You were familiar with it, then?’
‘Not in the least. My father died ten years ago, and when he lived was not in the habit of showing me his armoury. He and Uncle George were both crack shots, I believe. Uncle George told me my father had the revolvers made for target shooting.’
‘You looked at the gun last night? Closely?’
‘Yes—because—’ Beset by nervous and unreasoned caution she hesitated.
‘Because?’
‘My father’s initials are scratched on it. Uncle George told me to look for them.’
There was a long pause. ‘Yes, I see,’ Alleyn said.
She found she had twisted her gloves tightly together and doubled them over. She felt a kind of impatience with herself and abruptly smoothed them out.
‘It was one of a pair,’ Alleyn said. ‘Did you look at both of them?’
‘No. The other was in a case in the drawer on his desk, I just saw it there. I noticed it because the drawer was under my nose, almost, and Uncle George kept putting the extra dummies, if that’s what you call them, into it.’
‘Ah, yes. I saw them there.’
‘He made a lot more than he wanted, in case,’ her voice faltered, ‘in case he was asked to do his turn again some time.’
‘I see.’
‘Is that all?’ she said.
‘As you’ve been kind enough to come,’ Alleyn said with a smile, ‘perhaps we should think up something more.’
‘You needn’t bother, thank you.’
He smiled broadly. ‘Fée was doing her stuff for him on the stairs this morning,’ Carlisle thought. ‘Was she actually showing the go-ahead signal or was she merely trying to stall him off?’
‘It’s about the steel end in this eccentric weapon. The bolt or dart,’ Alleyn said, and her attention snapped taut again. ‘We are almost certain that it’s the business end of an embroidery stiletto from the work-box in the drawing-room. We found the discarded handle. I wonder if by any chance you remember when you last noticed the stiletto. If, of course, you happen to have noticed it?’
‘So this is it,’ she thought. ‘The revolver was nothing, it was a red herring. He’s really got me here to talk about the stiletto.’
She said: ‘I don’t think the work-box was open when I was in the drawing-room before dinner. At any rate I didn’t notice it.’
‘I remember you told me that Lady Pastern showed you and Manx her petit-point. That was when you were all in the drawing-room before dinner, wasn’t it? We found the petit-point, by the way, beside the work-box.’
‘Therefore,’ she thought, ‘Aunt Cile or Ned or I might have taken the stiletto.’ She repeated: ‘I’m sure the box wasn’t open.’
She had tried not to think beyond that one time, that one safe time about which she could quickly speak the truth.
‘And after dinner?’ Alleyn said casually.
She saw again the small gleaming tool drop from Miss Henderson’s fingers when the report sounded in the ballroom. She saw Félicité automatically stoop and pick it up and a second later burst into tears and run furiously from the room. She heard her loud voice on the landing: ‘I’ve got to speak to you,’ and Rivera’s: ‘But certainly, if you wish it.’
‘After dinner?’ she repeated flatly.
‘You were in the drawing-room then. Before the men came in. Perhaps Lady Pastern took up her work. Did you, at any time, see the box open or notice the stiletto?’
How quick was thought? As quick as people said? Was her hesitation fatally long? Here she moved, on the brink of speech.
She could hear the irrevocable denial, and yet she had not made it. And suppose he had already spoken to Félicité about the stiletto? ‘What am I looking like?’ she thought in a panic. ‘I’m looking like a liar already.’
‘Can you remember?’ he asked. So she had waited too long.
‘I—don’t think I can.’ Now, she had said it. Somehow it wasn’t quite as shaming to lie about remembering as about the fact itself. If things went wrong she could say afterwards: ‘Yes, I remember, now, but I had forgotten. It had no significance for me, at the time.’
‘You don’t think you can.’ She had nothing to say but he went on almost at once: ‘Miss Wayne, you will please try to look squarely at this business. Will you try to pretend that it’s an affair that you have read about and in which you have no personal concern. Not easy. But try. Suppose, then, a group of complete strangers was concerned in Rivera’s death and suppose one of them, not knowing much about it, unable to see the factual wood for the emotional trees, was asked a question to which she knew the answer. Perhaps the answer seems to implicate her. Perhaps it seems to implicate someone she is fond of. She doesn’t in the least know, it may be, what the implications are but she refuses to take the responsibility of telling the truth about one detail that may fit in with the whole truth. She won’t, in fact, speak the truth if by doing so she’s remotely responsible for bringing an extraordinarily callous murderer to book. So she lies. At once she finds that it doesn’t end there. She must get other people to tell corroborative lies. She finds herself, in effect, whizzing down a dangerous slope with her car out of control, steering round some obstacles, crashing into others, doing irreparable damage and landing herself and possibly other innocent people in disaster. You think I’m overstating her case, perhaps. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen very often.’
‘Why do you say all this to me?’
‘I’ll tell you why. You said just now that you didn’t remember noticing the stiletto at any time after dinner. Before you made this statement you hesitated. Your hands closed on your gloves and suddenly twisted them. Your hands behaved with violence and yet they trembled. After you had spoken they continued to have a sort of independent life of their own. Your left hand kneaded the gloves and your right hand moved rather aimlessly across your neck and over your face. You blushed deeply and stared very fixedly at the top of my head. You presented me, in fact, with Example A from any handbook on behaviour of the lying witness. You were a glowing demonstration of the bad liar. And now, if all this is nonsense, you can tell counsel for the defence, how I bullied you and he will treat me to as nasty a time as his talents suggest when I’m called to give evidence. Now I come to think of it, he’ll be very unpleasant indeed. So, however, will prosecuting counsel if you stick to your lapse of memory.’
Carlisle said angrily: ‘My hands feel like feet.
I’m going to sit on them. You don’t play fair.’
‘My God!’ Alleyn said, ‘this isn’t a game! It’s murder.’
‘He was atrocious. He was much nastier than anyone else in the house.’
‘He may have been the nastiest job of work in Christendom. He was murdered and you’re dealing with the police. This is not a threat but it’s a warning: we’ve only just started: a great deal more evidence may come our way. You were not alone in the drawing-room after dinner.’
She thought: ‘But Hendy won’t tell and nor will Aunt Cile. But William came in some time, about then. Suppose he saw Fée on the landing? Suppose he noticed the stiletto in her hand? And then she remembered the next time she had seen Félicité. Félicité had been on top of the world, in ecstasy, because of the letter from GPF. She had changed into her most gala dress and her eyes were shining. She had already discarded Rivera as easily as she had discarded all her previous young men. It was fantastic to tell lies for Félicité. There was something futile about this scene with Alleyn. She had made a fool of herself for nothing.
He had taken an envelope from a drawer on his desk and now opened it and shook its contents out before her. She saw a small shining object with a sharp end.
‘Do you recognize it?’ he asked.
‘The stiletto.’
‘You say that because we’ve been talking about the stiletto. It’s not a bit like it really. Look again.’
She leant over it. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘it’s a—pencil.’
‘Do you know whose pencil?’
She hesitated. ‘I think it’s Hendy’s. She wears it on a chain like an old-fashioned charm. She always wears it. She was hunting for it on the landing this morning.’
‘This is it. Here are her initials. PXH. Very tiny. You almost need a magnifying glass. Like the initials you saw on the revolver. The ring at the end was probably softish silver and the gap in it may have opened with the weight of the pencil. I found the pencil in the workbox. Does Miss Henderson ever use Lady Pastern’s work-box?’