Surfeit of Lampreys

by Ngaio Marsh

  Fox went into 28. The constable cleared his throat. Alleyn gazed at the lift well. The door into 25 opened and a good-looking, pale young man peered out onto the landing.

  “Oh, hullo,” he said politely. “I’m sorry to bother you. You’re Mr. Alleyn, I expect.”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn.

  “Yes, I’m so sorry to make a nuisance of myself, but I thought I’d just ask if it was likely to be a very long time before you began to pitch into us. I’m Henry Lamprey.”

  “How do you do,” said Alleyn politely. “We’ll be as quick as we can. Not long now.”

  “Oh, good. It’s just that my mother is rather exhausted, poor thing, and I think she ought to go to bed. That is, of course, if my Aunt Violet can be moved off the bed or even out of the room which I must say seems to be doubtful…What is the right technique, do you know, with widows of murdered men who are also one’s near relations?”

  “Is Lady Charles with Lady Wutherwood at the moment?” asked Alleyn. Henry came out on the landing and shut the door. He stood in the shadow of the lift.

  “Yes,” he said. “My mother is in there and so is Tinkerton who is my Aunt Violet’s maid. It appears that my Aunt Violet is in a sort of coma or trance and really doesn’t notice who goes or comes. But you won’t want to be bothered with all that. I was only going to suggest that if you could see my mother first and then Aunt Violet it would give us a chance to bundle Mama off to bed.”

  “I’ll see what can be done about it. I’m afraid in this sort of business—”

  “Oh, I know,” agreed Henry. “The rest of us are all quite prepared for the dawn to rise on our lies and evasions.”

  “I hope not,” said Alleyn.

  “Actually we are a truthful family, only the things that happen to us are so peculiar that nobody ever believes in them. Still, I expect you’ve got a sort of winnowing ear for people’s testimonies and will know in a flash if we try any hanky-panky.”

  “I expect so,” agreed Alleyn gravely. From the shadow of the lift Henry seemed to look solemnly at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I expect so too. My father suggested that you ought to be offered a drink and some sandwiches but the rest of us knew you wouldn’t break bread with suspected persons. Or is that only in books? Anyway, sir, if you would like us to send something out here or if you would like to join us for a drink, we do hope you will.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Alleyn, “but we don’t on duty.”

  “Or if there’s anything at all that we can do.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything at the moment. Oh, as you’re here, I may as well ask you. Who is the owner of those gloves?”

  “What gloves?” Henry’s voice sounded blank.

  “A pair of heavy driving gloves with stiff gauntlets.”

  “Lined with rather disgusting fur?”

  “Fur-lined, yes.”

  “Sound like mine,” said Henry. “Where are they?”

  “I’ll return them to you. My colleague took them into the flat.”

  “Where did you find them?”

  “In the lift,” said Alleyn.

  “But I wasn’t in the lift.”

  “No?”

  “No. I expect…” Henry stopped short.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. I can’t imagine how they got there. You needn’t return them, sir. I don’t really think I want them any more.”

  “I don’t think you would,” agreed Alleyn, “if you saw them.”

  Henry’s face shone like ivory on that dimly lit landing. His eyes were like black coals under the cold whiteness of his forehead.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “They are stained.”

  “Stained? With what?”

  “It looks like blood.”

  Henry turned on his heel and went blindly into the flat. Fox returned with Bailey.

  “I want to go all over the inside of the lift, Bailey,” said Alleyn. “Try the stops and the doorknobs—everything. Get Thompson to take a close-up shot of the seat and wall.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “And, Fox, we’ll go over your notes and then I think I’d better see the family.”

  The twins stood side-by-side on the hearthrug. The lamplight glinted on their blonde heads. They wore grey flannel suits and dark green pull-overs that their mother had knitted for them. Their hands were in their pockets; their heads were tilted slightly to one side. Their faces were screwed into an expression of apologetic attentiveness. From her stool by the fire Roberta watched them and felt a cold pang of alarm. For behind the twins Roberta saw not the coal fire of a London grate but the sweetly aromatic logs that burnt in the drawing-room at Deepacres in New Zealand. And with the sharpest emphasis of memory she heard each twin confess that he had taken out the forbidden big car, and had driven it through a water-race into a bank. She saw herself sitting mum, knowing all the time that it was Stephen who had taken the car while Colin was indoors. She heard herself asking Colin privately why he had made this Quixotic gesture and she again heard his answer. “It’s a kind of arrangement we have!” “Always?” she had asked him, and Colin, rumpling up his fair hair, had answered, “Oh, no. Only when there’s a really major row.” “A twinny sort of arrangement.” Roberta had said, and Colin had agreed. “Yes, that’s the idea. As between twins.” So insistent was this memory that the past was clearer for a moment than the present and she was unaware of the voices in the drawing-room. Her mind seemed to change gear and she found herself thinking of the Lampreys as strangers. “I don’t know what they are like,” thought Roberta in her cold panic. “I have no knowledge of their reality. I have fitted their words and actions into my own idea of them but my idea may be quite wrong.” And she began to wonder confusedly if anybody had a complete secret reality or if each layer of thought merely represented the level of someone else’s idea of the thinker. “This won’t do,” thought Roberta. “Stop!” Her mind changed gear again and Lord Charles’s voice came back, familiar, gentle, a voice she knew and loved.

  “Now listen to me,” Lord Charles was saying. “There is going to be no more of this. One of you went down in the lift with Violet and with him. Which was it?”

  “I d-did,” said Stephen.

  “Shut up,” said Colin. “I did.”

  “Do you realize,” said Henry, “that one of you is making things look just about as murky as may be for the other?”

  “If you imagine,” said Lord Charles, “that the police are to be checked by a childish trick of this sort, you are…” He paused and with a deflated air added hurriedly: “you simply couldn’t be more mistaken.”

  “What about fingerprints?” said Frid.

  “I didn’t touch anything,” said Colin.

  “I kept my hands in my p-pocket,” said Stephen.

  “Whichever it was, must have worked the lift,” Frid pointed out.

  “The lift’s been used twice since then,” said Stephen.

  “Twice, at least,” said Colin. “There won’t be any fingerprints worth talking about.”

  “At any moment now,” Henry said, “Alleyn will come in and begin to ask questions. As soon as he sees what you are up to he’ll talk to you separately. If you think you’ve one sickly misbegotten hope of taking him in, you’re bigger bloody fools than anybody outside a bug-house.”

  “Mummy’ll be back in a minute,” said Frid. “Don’t let’s have this going on when she comes in.”

  Lord Charles said: “Stephen, did you commit this crime?”

  “No, Father, I didn’t.”

  “Colin?”

  “No, Father, honestly.”

  “On your most solemn word of honour, both of you.”

  “No, Father,” repeated the twins. And Stephen added: “We’re not sorry he’s dead, of course, but it’s a filthy way to k-kill anybody.”

  “Lousy,” agreed Colin cheerfully.

  “I know very well that it seems grossly stupid an
d fantastic to ask you,” said Lord Charles. “Of course you are quite incapable of it. What I—I implore you to believe is that it is the last word in dangerous lunacy for an innocent man to lie to the police.”

  “That’s what I keep telling Colin,” said Stephen.

  “Then why don’t you take your own advice?” asked Colin. “Don’t be a fool. I went down in the lift, Father, and Stephen stayed in the drawing-room.”

  “Which is a complete and sweltering lie,” added Stephen.

  “So there you are,” said Frid. “Come off it, twins. It’s jolly clever, we all admit it’s jolly clever, but this is a serious affair. You can’t pit your puny wits against the master brain of Handsome Alleyn. You know, chaps, if it wasn’t for the fact that Uncle G. was murdered, it’d be rather a big moment for me having Handsome Alleyn in the flat. I’ve nursed an illicit passion for that man ever since the Gospell murder. Is he really the answer to the maiden’s prayer, Henry?”

  “Do stop being crisp and modish, Frid,” begged Henry irritably. “You know that, like all the rest of us, you’re nearly dead with terror.”

  “No, I’m not, honestly. I may wake up in the night bathed in a cold sweat but at the moment I’m sort of stimulated. Only I wish one of the twins would stop being mad.”

  “I wish to God you’d all stop being mad,” said Lord Charles with sudden violence. “I feel as if I were looking at you and listening to you for the first time. Someone in this flat killed my brother.”

  There was an awkward silence broken by Frid.

  “But, Daddy,” said Frid, “you didn’t like Uncle G. Now did you?”

  “Be quiet, Frid,” ordered Henry. “You don’t think any of the family did it, do you, Father?”

  “Good God, of course I don’t!”

  “Well, who does everybody think did it?” asked Frid brightly.

  “Tinkerton,” said Colin.

  “Or Giggle,” said Stephen.

  “You only say Tinkerton or Giggle because you don’t know them as well as Baskett and the maids,” Henry pointed out.

  “And Nanny,” added Frid.

  “If I’d been Uncle G.’s or Aunt V.’s servant,” said Colin, “I’d have murdered both of them long ago. I must say I’m rather glad it’s going to be Alleyn. If we’ve got to be grilled it may as well be by a gent. But then I’m a snob, of course.”

  “I th-think it’ll be rather uncomfortable,” said Stephen. “I’d rather it was the old-fashioned sort that says: ‘ ’Ere, ’ere, ’ere, wot’s all this?’ ”

  “Which shows how ignorant you are,” said Frid. “No detective speaks like that. But I do think, Daddy, that Henry ought to ring up Nigel Bathgate. You know how he raves about Mr. Alleyn. He’s his Watson and glories in it.”

  “Why should I ring him up?” Henry demanded. “Ring him up yourself.”

  “Well, I will presently. I think it’s only kind.”

  “What’s Alleyn like?” asked Colin.

  “Oh, very nice,” said Henry. “Sort of old-world without any Blimpishness. Rather frighteningly polite and quiet.”

  “Hell!” said Stephen.

  The drawing-room door opened and Patch came in wearing pyjamas and a dressing-gown. Her hair had been lugged off her forehead by Nanny with such ferocious emphasis that her eyebrows were slightly raised. Two hard plaits hung between her shoulders. Her round face shone and she smelt of bath-powder. To Roberta she was a mere enlargement of herself at twelve and still very much of the nursery.

  “Mike’s asleep,” said Patch, “and I’ve never been wider awake in my life. Please, Daddy, don’t send me back. My teeth keep chattering.”

  “Oh, Patch, darling!” said Lord Charles helplessly. “I’m so sorry. Come up to the fire.”

  “You can’t face the police like that, Patch,” said Frid, “You’re too fat for négligé appearances.”

  “I don’t care. I’m going to sit by darling Roberta and get warm. Daddy, are the police here now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Mummy?”

  “With Aunt Violet.”

  “Was Uncle G. murdered? Nanny’s being so maddening. She won’t talk about it.”

  “Yes, he was,” said Frid impatiently. “It’s no good trying to fob Patch off with a vague story, Daddy. Uncle G.’s been dotted one, Patch, and he’s dead.”

  “Who dotted him one?” asked Patch, rubbing her hands slowly over her knees.

  “It must have been someone—” Lord Charles waved his hand “—some lunatic who wandered up here. A wandering lunatic. Obviously. Don’t think about it, Patch. The police will find out about it.”

  “Golly, how thrilling,” said Patch. She had squatted down by Roberta who could feel her quivering like a puppy. “Daddy,” she said, “I’ve thought of something.”

  “What is it?” asked her father wearily.

  “You’ll be able to get rid of the bum.”

  “Be quiet, Patch,” said Henry. “You’re not to talk about the bum.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I tell you.”

  Patch looked impertinently at Henry. “O.K., Rune,” she said.

  “What!” cried Roberta.

  “It’s quite right,” said Patch. “Henry’s to be called the Earl of Rune now. Isn’t he, Daddy?”

  “Good God!” said Henry slowly. “So I am.”

  “Yes,” said Patch with a certain complacency, “you are. And I, for instance, am now the Lady Patricia Lamprey. Aren’t I, Daddy?”

  “Shut up, Patch,” said Colin.

  “Yes, yes,” said Lord Charles hurriedly. “Never mind about it now, Patch.”

  “And Daddy,” Patch persisted stubbornly, “you’re now—”

  The drawing-room door opened. Alleyn stood on the threshold with Fox behind him.

  “May I come in, Lord Wutherwood?” asked Alleyn.

  Afterwards, when Roberta had time to review the events of that incredible day, she remembered that until Alleyn appeared, an image of a fictitious detective had hung about at the back of all her thoughts; an image of a man coldly attentive, with coarse hands and a large, soapy-shining face. Alleyn was so little like this image that for a moment she thought he must be some visitor, fantastically de trop, who had dropped in to see the Lampreys. The sight of Fox disabused her of this idea. There was no mistake about Fox.

  The new Lord Wutherwood put his glass in his waistcoat pocket and, with his usual air of punctilious courtesy, hurried forward. He shook hands, bending his elbow sharply and holding his hand out at a right angle to his fore-arm—a modish, diplomatic handshake.

  “Do come in,” he said. “We have left you very much to yourselves out there but I hoped if there was anything we could do you would let us know.”

  “There was nothing, thank you so much,” said Alleyn, “until now. I felt I should go over the information Fox had already got before I bothered all of you. But now—”

  “Yes, yes, of course. My wife and my small son are not here at the moment but this is the rest of the family…My eldest son you have already met. My daughter…”

  The introductions were solemnly performed. Alleyn bowed to each of the Lampreys. Roberta on her footstool was so much in shadow that Lord Charles forgot her, but Alleyn’s dark eyes turned gravely to the small figure.

  “I beg your pardon, Robin, my dear,” said Lord Charles. “Miss Grey is a New Zealand friend of ours, Mr. Alleyn.”

  “How do you do,” said Roberta.

  “New Zealand?” said Alleyn.

  “Yes. I only got here yesterday,” said Roberta and wondered why he looked so gently at her before he turned to Lord Charles.

  “This is a dreadful thing, Alleyn,” Lord Charles was saying. “We are quite bewildered and—and of course rather shaken. I hope you will forgive us if we are not very intelligent about remembering everything.”

  “We know that it must have been a very grave shock,” agreed Alleyn. “I shall try to be as quick as possible but I am afraid that at the
best it will be a long and unavoidably distressing business.”

  “What happens?” asked Henry.

  “First of all I want to get a coherent account of the events that preceded the moment when Lord and Lady Wutherwood entered the lift. I think I should tell you that Fox has seen the commissionaire downstairs. He was on duty in the hall all the afternoon and although he does not work the lift he can account for everybody who used it after Lord and Lady Wutherwood arrived. He also states very positively that no strangers used it earlier in the afternoon. There is of course the outside stairway, the iron fire-escape. To get into this flat by its aid you must pass through the kitchen. Your cook is prepared to make a definite statement that during the afternoon nobody came in by that entrance. Of course the commissionaire and the cook may be mistaken but, on the face of it, it appears that no strangers have been up here since lunch.”

  “I see.”

  “We shall, of course, make much more exhaustive inquiries on this point. But you will see that under the circumstances—”

  “It m-must have been been someone in the flat,” said Stephen loudly.

  “Yes,” said Alleyn, “it looks like that. I only stress this point to make it clear to you that we must have a very accurate picture of everybody’s movements.”

  The Lampreys all murmured “Yes.” Alleyn placed his hands palm down on the arms of his chair and looked round the circle of faces. Patch, huddled in her woollen dressing-gown, still sat by Roberta. The twins, long-legged and blond, were collapsed as usual on the sofa; Henry sat in a deep chair, his hands driven into his trousers pockets, his shoulders hunched, his head dipped a little to one side. Henry, thought Roberta, looks like a watchful bird. Lord Charles sat elegantly on a thin chair and swung his glass like a pendulum above his crossed knees. Frid still leant against the mantelpiece in an attitude that was faintly histrionic.

  “Before all this business starts,” Alleyn began, “there is just one thing I would like to say. It is not very much use my pretending to avoid the implications in this case. It is scarcely possible that it can be a case of suicide or of accident. The word that must be in all your minds is one that, unfortunately, calls up all sorts of extravagant images. Detective fiction has made so much of homicide investigations that I’m afraid to most people they suggest official misunderstandings, dozens of innocent persons in jeopardy, red herrings by the barrowload, and surprise arrests. Actually, of course, the investigation in a case of homicide is a dull enough business and it is extremely seldom that any innocent person is in the smallest degree likely to suffer anything but the inconvenience of routine.”