by Ngaio Marsh
“And yet—”
“I know. I know. That damn bell-push. All right, Fox. Good work. And now, I suppose, we’d better see Mrs. Henry Ancred.”
iv
Millamant was at least a change from her relations-by-marriage in that she was not histrionic, answered his questions directly, and stuck to the point. She received them in the drawing-room. In her sensible blouse and skirt she was an incongruous figure there. While she talked she stitched that same hideously involved piece of embroidery which Troy had noticed with horror and which Panty had been accused of unpicking. Alleyn heard nothing either to contradict or greatly to substantiate the evidence they had already collected.
“I wish,” he said, after a minute or two, “that you would tell me your own opinion about this business.”
“About my father-in-law’s death? I thought at first that he died as a result of his dinner and his temperament.”
“And what did you think when these letters arrived?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I don’t now. And I must say that with everybody so excited and foolish about it one can’t think very clearly.”
“About the book that turned up in the cheese-dish…” he began.
Millamant jerked her head in the direction of the glass case. “It’s over there. Someone replaced it.”
He walked over to the case and raised the lid. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take charge of it presently. You saw her reading it?”
“Looking at it. It was one evening before dinner. Some weeks ago, I think.”
“Can you describe her position and behaviour? Was she alone?”
“Yes. I came in and she was standing as you are now, with the lid open. She seemed to be turning over the leaves of the book as it lay there. When she saw me she let the lid fall. I was afraid it might have smashed, but it hadn’t.”
Alleyn moved away to the cold hearth, his hands in his pockets. “I wonder,” said Milly, “if you’d mind putting a match to the fire. We light it at four-thirty, always.”
Glad of the fire, for the crimson and white room was piercingly cold, and faintly amused by her air of domesticity, he did as she asked. She moved, with her embroidery, to a chair before the hearth. Alleyn and Fox sat one on each side of her.
“Mrs. Ancred,” Alleyn said, “do you think any one in the house knew about this second Will?”
“She knew. She says he showed it to her that night.”
“Apart from Miss Orrincourt?”
“They were all afraid he might do something of the sort. He was always changing his Will. But I don’t think any of them knew he’d done it.”
“I wondered if Sir Cedric—”
The impression that with Millamant all would be plain speaking was immediately dispelled. Her short hands closed on her work like traps. She said harshly: “My son knew nothing about it. Nothing.”
“I thought that as Sir Henry’s successor—”
“If he had known he would have told me. He knew nothing. It was a great shock to both of us. My son,” Millamant added, looking straight before her, “tells me everything — everything.”
“Splendid,” murmured Alleyn after a pause. Her truculent silence appeared to demand comment. “It’s only that I should like to know whether this second Will was made that night when Sir Henry went to his room. Mr. Rattisbon, of course, can tell us.”
“I suppose so,” said Millamant, selecting a strand of mustard-coloured silk.
“Who discovered the writing on Sir Henry’s looking-glass?”
“I did. I’d gone in to see that his room was properly done. He was very particular and the maids are old and forget things. I saw it at once. Before I could wipe it away he came in. I don’t think,” she said meditatively, “that I’d ever before seen him so angry. For a moment he actually thought I’d done it, and then, of course, he realized it was Panty.”
“It was not Panty,” Alleyn said.
He and Fox had once agreed that if, after twenty years of experience, an investigating officer has learned to recognize any one manifestation, it is that of genuine astonishment. He recognized it now in Millamant Ancred.
“What are you suggesting?” she said at last. “Do you mean—?”
“Sir Cedric has told me he was involved in one of the other practical jokes that were played on Sir Henry, and knew about all of them. He’s responsible for this one.”
She took up her embroidery again. “He’s trying to shield somebody,” she said. “Panty, I suppose.”
“I think not.”
“It was very naughty of him,” she said in her dull voice. “If he played one of these jokes, and I don’t believe he did, it was naughty. But I can’t see — I may be very stupid, but I can’t see why you, Mr. Alleyn, should concern yourself with any of these rather foolish tricks.”
“Believe me, we shouldn’t do so if we thought they were irrelevant.”
“No doubt,” she said, and after a pause, “you’ve been influenced by your wife. She would have it that Panty was all innocence.”
“I’m influenced,” Alleyn said, “by what Sir Cedric and Miss Orrincourt have told me.”
She turned to look at him, moving her torso stiffly. For the first time her alarm, if she felt alarm, coloured her voice. “Cedric? And that woman? Why do you speak of them together like that?”
“It appears that they planned the practical jokes together.”
“I don’t believe it. She’s told you that. I can see it now,” said Millamant on a rising note. “I’ve been a fool.”
“What can you see, Mrs. Ancred?”
“She planned it all. Of course she did. She knew Panty was his favourite. She planned it, and when he’d altered the Will she killed him. She’s trying to drag my boy down with her. I’ve watched her. She’s a diabolical, scheming woman, and she’s trying to entrap my boy. He’s generous and unsuspecting and kind. He’s been too kind. He’s at her mercy,” Millamant cried sharply and twisted her hands together.
Confronted by this violence and with the memory of Cedric fresh in his mind, Alleyn was hard put to it to answer her. Before he could frame a sentence she had recovered something of her composure. “That settles it,” she said woodenly. “I’ve kept out of all this, as far as one can keep out of their perpetual scenes and idiotic chattering. I’ve thought all along that they were probably right but I left it to them. I’ve even felt sorry for her. Now I hope she suffers. If I can tell you anything that will help you, I’ll do so. Gladly.”
“Oh, damn!” thought Alleyn. “Oh, Freud! Oh, hell!” And he said: “There may still be no case, you know. Have you any theory as to the writer of the anonymous letters?”
“Certainly,” she said with unexpected alacrity.
“You have?”
“They’re written on the paper those children use for their work. She asked me some time ago to re-order it for them when I was in the village. I recognized it at once. Caroline Able wrote the letters.”
And while Alleyn was still digesting this, she added: “Or Thomas. They’re very thick. He spent half his time in the school wing.”
CHAPTER XIV
Psychiatry and a Churchyard
i
There was something firmly coarse about Milly Ancred. After performances by Pauline, Desdemona and Cedric, this quality was inescapable. It was incorporate in her solid body, her short hands, the dullness of her voice and her choice of phrase. Alleyn wondered if the late Henry Irving Ancred, surfeited with ancestry, fine feeling and sensibility, had chosen his wife for her lack of these qualities — for her normality. Yet was Milly, with her adoration of an impossible son, normal?
“But there is no norm,” he thought, “in human behaviour; who should know this better than Fox and I!”
He began to ask her routine questions, the set of questions that crop up in every case and of which the investigating officer grows tired. The history of the hot drink was traced again with no amendments, but with clear evidence that Milly had resented
her dethronement in favour of Miss Orrincourt. He went on to the medicine. It was a fresh bottle. Dr. Withers had suggested an alteration and had left the prescription at the chemist. Miss Orrincourt had picked it up at Mr. Juniper’s on the day she collected the children’s medicine, and Milly herself had sent Isabel with it to Sir Henry’s room. He was only to use it in the event of a severe attack, and until that night had not done so.
“She wouldn’t put it in that,” said Milly. “She wouldn’t be sure of his taking a dose. He hated taking medicine and only used it when he was really very bad. It doesn’t seem to have been much good, anyway. I’ve no faith in Dr. Withers.”
“No?”
“I think he’s careless. I thought at the time he ought to have asked more questions about my father-in-law’s death. He’s too much wrapped up in his horse racing and bridge and not interested enough in his patients. However,” she added, with a short laugh, “my father-in-law liked him well enough to leave more to him than to some of his own flesh and blood.”
“About the medicine,” Alleyn prompted.
“She wouldn’t have interfered with it. Why should she use it when she had the Thermos in her own hands?”
“Have you any idea where she could have found the tin of ratbane?”
“She complained of rats when she first came here. I asked Barker to set poison and told him there was a tin in the storeroom. She made a great outcry and said she had a horror of poison.”
Alleyn glanced at Fox, who instantly looked extremely bland.
“So,” Milly went on, “I told Barker to set traps. When we wanted rat-bane, weeks afterwards, for Bracegirdle, the tin had gone. It was an unopened tin, to the best of my knowledge. It had been in the store-room for years.”
“It must have been an old brand,” Alleyn agreed. “I don’t think arsenical rat-bane is much used nowadays.”
He stood up and Fox rose with him. “I think that’s all,” he said.
“No,” said Millamant strongly, “it’s not all. I want to know what the woman has said about my son.”
“She suggested they were partners in the practical jokes and he admitted it.”
“I warn you,” she said, and for the first time her voice was unsteady. “I warn you, she’s trying to victimise him. She’s worked on his kindness and good nature and his love of fun. I warn you—”
The door at the far end of the room opened and Cedric looked in. His mother’s back was turned to him, and, unconscious of his presence, she went on talking. Her shaking voice repeated over and over again that he had been victimized. Cedric’s gaze moved from her to Alleyn, who was watching him. He sketched a brief grimace, deprecating, rueful, but his lips were colourless and the effect was of a distortion. He came in and shut the door with great delicacy. He carried a much be-labelled suitcase, presumably Miss Orrincourt’s, which, after a further grimace at Alleyn, he placed behind a chair. He then minced across the carpet.
“Darling Milly,” he said, and his hands closed on his mother’s shoulders. She gave a startled cry. “There now! I made you jump. So sorry.”
Millamant covered his hands with her own. He waited for a moment, submissive to her restless and possessive touch. “What is it, Milly?” he asked. “Who’s been victimising Little Me? Is it Sonia?”
“Ceddie?
“I’ve been such a goose, you can’t think. I’ve come to ‘fess up,’ like a good boy,” he said nauseatingly, and slid round to his familiar position on the floor, leaning against her knees. She held him there, strongly.
“Mr. Alleyn,” Cedric began, opening his eyes very wide, “I couldn’t be more sorry about rushing away just now after Aunt Pauline. Really, it was too stupid. But one does like to tell people things in one’s own way, and there she was, huffing and puffing and going on as if I’d been trying to conceal some dire skeleton in my, I assure you, too drearily barren cupboard.”
Alleyn waited.
“You see — (Milly, my sweet, this is going to be a faint shock to you, but never mind) — you see, Mr. Alleyn, there’s been a — what shall I call it? — a — well, an understanding, of sorts, between Sonia and me. It only really developed quite lately. After dearest Mrs. Alleyn came here. She seems to have noticed quite a number of things; perhaps she noticed that.”
“If I understand you,” Alleyn said, “she, I am sure, did not.”
“Really?”
“Are you trying to tell me why you visited Miss Orrincourt’s rooms on the night of your grandfather’s death?”
“Well,” Cedric muttered petulantly, “after Aunt Pauline’s announcement — and, by the way, she gleaned her information through a nocturnal visit to the archaic offices at the end of the passage — after that there seems to be nothing for it but an elaborate cleaning of the breast, does there?”
“Cedric,” Millamant said, “what has this woman done to you?”
“My sweet, nothing, thank God. I’m trying to tell you. She really is too beautiful, Mr. Alleyn, don’t you think? I know you didn’t like her, Milly dear, and how right you seem to have been. But I really was quite intrigued and she was so bored and it was only the teeniest flutter, truly. I merely popped in on my way to bed and had a good giggle with her about the frightful doings down below.”
“Incidentally,” Alleyn suggested, “you may have hoped to hear the latest news about Sir Henry’s Will.”
“Well, that among other things. You see, I did rather wonder if the flying cow hadn’t been sort of once too often, as it were. Sonia did it before dinner, you know. And then at the dinner the Old Person announced a Will that was really quite satisfactory from both our points of view, and with the insufferable Panty not even a starter, one rather wished Sonia had left well alone.”
“Cedric,” said his mother suddenly, “I don’t think, dear, you should go on. Mr. Alleyn won’t understand. Stop.”
“But, Milly, my sweet, don’t you see dear old Pauline has already planted a horrid little seed of suspicion, and one simply must tweak it up before it sprouts. Mustn’t one, Mr. Alleyn?”
“I think,” Alleyn said, “you’ll be well advised to make a complete statement.”
“There! Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Now, all would have been well if Carol Able, who is so scientific and ‘un-thing’ that she’s a sort of monster, hadn’t made out a water-tight alibi for that septic child. This, of course, turned the Old Person’s suspicious glare upon all of us equally, and so he wrote the second Will and so we were all done in the eye except Sonia. And to be quite frank, Milly and Mr. Alleyn, I should so like to have it settled whether she’s a murderess or not, rather quickly.”
“Of course she is,” Millamant said.
“Yes, but are you positive? It really is of mountainous significance for me.”
“What do you mean, Cedric? I don’t understand—”
“Well — well, never mind.”
“I think I know what Sir Cedric means,” Alleyn said. “Isn’t it a question of marriage at some time in the future with Miss Orrincourt?”
Millamant, with a tightening of her hold on Cedric’s shoulder, said, “No!” loudly and flatly.
“Oh, Milly darling,” he protested, wriggling under her hand, “please let’s be civilised.”
“It’s all nonsense,” she said. “Tell him it’s all nonsense. A disgusting idea! Tell him.”
“What’s the use when Sonia will certainly tell him something else?” He appealed to Alleyn. “You do understand, don’t you? I mean, one can’t deny she’s decorative and in a way it would have been quite fun. Don’t you think it would have worked, Mr. Alleyn? I do.”
His mother again began to protest. He freed himself with ugly petulance and scrambled to his feet. “You’re idiotic, Milly. What’s the good of hiding things?”
“You’ll do yourself harm.”
“What harm? I’m in the same position, after all, as you. I don’t know the truth about Sonia but I want to find out.” He turned to Alleyn with a smile. “When I saw her that
night she told me about the new Will. I knew then that if he died I’d be practically ruined. There’s no collaboration where I’m concerned, Mr. Alleyn. I didn’t murder the Old Person. Pas si bête!”
ii
“ ‘Pas si bête,’ ” Fox quoted as they made their way to the school wing. “Meaning, ‘not such a fool.’ I shouldn’t say he was, either, would you, Mr. Alleyn?”
“Oh, no. There are no flies on the egregious Cedric. But what a cold-blooded little worm it is, Fox! Grandpapa dies, leaving him encumbered with a large unwanted estate and an insufficient income to keep it up. Grandpapa, on the other hand, dies leaving his extremely dubious fiancée a fortune. What more simple than for the financially embarrassed Cedric to marry the opulent Miss O.? I could kick that young man,” said Alleyn thoughtfully, “in fourteen completely different positions and still feel half-starved.”
“I reckon,” said Fox, “it’s going to be a case for the Home Secretary.”
“Oh, yes, yes, I’m afraid you’re right. Down this passage, didn’t they say? And there’s the green baize door. I think we’ll separate here, Fox. You to collect your unconsidered trifles in Isabel’s case and, by the way, you might take charge of Miss Orrincourt’s. Here it is. Then, secretly, Foxkin, exhume Carabbas, deceased, and enclose him in a boot-box. By the way, do we know who destroyed poor Carabbas?”
“Mr. Barker,” said Fox, “got Mr. Juniper to come up and give him an injection. Strychnine, I fancy.”
“I hope, whatever it was, it doesn’t interfere with the autopsy. I’ll meet you on the second terrace.”
Beyond the green baize door the whole atmosphere of Ancreton was charged. Coir runners replaced the heavy carpets, passages were draughty and smelt of disinfectant, and where Victorian prints may have hung there were pictures of determined modernity that had been executed with a bright disdain for comfortable, but doubtless undesirable, prettiness.