by Ngaio Marsh
‘Oh, no,’ cried Miss Harris with an air of relief. ‘No indeed, Mr Alleyn, I haven’t the faintest idea. You see, after that I didn’t really hear anything at all in the next room. Nothing at all. Really.’
‘You returned to the landing?’
‘Not immediately. No.’
‘Oh!’ said Alleyn. He could think of nothing else to say. Even Fox seemed to have caught the infection of extreme embarrassment. He cleared his throat loudly. Miss Harris, astonishingly, broke into a high-pitched prattle, keeping her eyes fixed on the opposite wall and clenching and unclenching her hands.
‘No. Not for some minutes and then, of course, when I did return they had both gone. I mean when I finally returned. Of course Lord Robert went before then and—and—so that was perfectly all right. Perfectly.’
‘And the other man?’
‘He—it was most unfortunate. A little mistake. I assure you I did not see who it was. I mean as soon as he realized it was the wrong door he went out again. Naturally. The inner door being half-glass made it even more unfortunate though of course there being two rooms was—was better for all concerned than if it was the usual arrangement. And I mean that he didn’t see me so that in a way it didn’t matter. It didn’t really matter a scrap. Not a scrap.’
Alleyn, listening to this rigmarole, sent his memory back to the top gallery of Marsdon House. He remembered the Victorian ante-room that opened off the landing, the inner gloomy sanctum beyond. The chaotic fragments of Miss Harris’s remarks joggled together in his brain and then clicked into a definite pattern.
‘Not a scrap, really,’ Miss Harris still repeated.
‘Of course not,’ agreed Alleyn cheerfully. ‘I think I understand what happened. Tell me if I go wrong. While you were still in the inner room the man who had interrupted Lord Robert’s telephone conversation came out of the green sitting-room and blundered through the wrong door into the ante-room of the ladies’ lavatory. That it?’
Miss Harris blanched at the unfortunate word but nodded her head.
‘Why are you so sure it was this same man, Miss Harris?’
‘Well, because, because I heard their voices as they came to the door of the next room and then Lord Robert’s voice on the landing and then—then it happened. I just knew that was who it was.’
Alleyn leant forward.
‘The inner door,’ he said, ‘is half-glass. Could you see this intruder?’
‘Dimly, dimly,’ cried Miss Harris. ‘Greatly obscured, I assure you. I’m sorry to say I forgot for some seconds to switch off my light. The other was on.’
‘So you actually could see the shape of this person, however shadowy, through the clouded glass?’
‘Yes. For a second or two. Before he went away. I think perhaps he was feeling unwell.’
‘Drunk?’
‘No, no. Certainly not. It was not a bit like that. He looked more as if he’d had a shock.’
‘Why?’
‘He—the shape of him put its hands to its face and it swayed towards the glass partition and for a moment leant against it. Thank God,’ said Miss Harris with real fervour, ‘I had locked the door.’
‘The silhouette would be clearer, more sharply defined, as it came closer to the door?’
‘I suppose so. Yes, it was.’
‘Still you did not recognise it?’
‘No. Never for an instant.’
‘Suppose—for the sake of argument, I were to say this man was either Sir Herbert Carrados, Captain Withers, the waiter on the landing, Mr Donald Potter, or Dimitri the caterer. Which would you think most likely?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps Dimitri. I don’t know.’
‘What height?’
‘Medium.’
‘Well,’ said Alleyn, ‘what happened next?’
‘He took his hands from his face. He had turned away with his back against the door. I—I got the impression he suddenly realized where he was. Then the shape moved away and turned misty and then disappeared. I heard the outer door shut.’
‘And at last you were able to escape?’
‘I waited for a moment.’ Miss Harris looked carefully at Alleyn. Perhaps she saw something in his eye that made her feel, after all, her recital had not been such a terrible affair.
‘It was awkward,’ she said, ‘wasn’t it? Honestly?’
‘Honestly,’ said Alleyn, ‘it was.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The General
‘THEN YOUR IDEA IS,’ said Fox as they headed again for Belgrave Square, ‘that this chap in the WC was the murderer.’
‘Yes, Fox, that is my idea. There’s no earthly reason why an innocent person should not admit to interrupting the telephone call and nobody has admitted to it. I’m afraid we’ll have to go again through the whole damn boiling, guests, servants and all, to make sure of our ground. And we’ll have to ask every man jack of ’em if they burst across the threshold of Miss Harris’s outer sanctuary. Every man jack. Thank the Lord there’s no need for the women, though from what I know of my niece Sarah we wouldn’t meet with many mantling cheeks and conscious looks among the débutantes. If nobody admits to the telephone incident, or to the sequel in the usual offices, then we can plot another joint in our pattern. We can say there is a strong probability that our man overheard Bunchy telephone to me, interrupted the sentence: “and he’s working with—” waited in the green sitting-room until Bunchy had gone and then blundered into the ante-room.’
‘But why would he do that?’ said Fox. ‘Did he think it was a man’s, or was he trying to avoid somebody? Or what?’
‘It’s a curious picture, isn’t it? That dim figure seen through the thick glass. Even in her mortal shame Miss Harris noticed that he seemed to be agitated. The hands over the face, the body leaning for a moment against the door. And then suddenly he pulls himself together and goes out. He looked, said Miss Harris, as though he’d had a shock. He’d just intercepted a telephone call to the Yard from a man who apparently knew all there was to know about his blackmailing activities. He might well feel he must blunder through the first door he came to and have a moment alone to pull himself together.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Fox, ‘so he might. I’d like something a bit more definite to hinge it on, though.’
‘And so, I promise you, would I. The detestable realms of conjecture! How I hate them.’
‘Miss Harris didn’t get us any further with the business down in the hall.’
‘The final departures? No, she didn’t. She simply bore out everything we’d already been told.’
‘She’s an observant little lady, isn’t she?’ said Fox.
‘Yes, Fox, she’s no fool, for all her tender qualms. And now we have a delightful job ahead of us. We’ve got to try to bamboozle, cajole, or bully Mrs Halcut-Hackett into giving away her best young man. A charming occupation.’
‘Will we be seeing the General, too? I suppose we’ll have to. I don’t think the other chaps will have tackled him. I told them not to touch any of our lot.’
‘Quite right,’ said Alleyn, with a sigh. ‘We shall be seeing the General. And here we are at Halkin Street. The Halcut-Hacketts of Halkin Street! An important collection of aspirates and rending consonants. The General first, I suppose.’
The General was expecting them. They walked through a hall which, though it had no tongue, yet it did speak of the most expensive and most fashionable house decorator in London. They were shown into a study smelling of leather and cigars and decorated with that pleasant sequence of prints of the Nightcap Steeplechase. Alleyn wondered if the General had stood with his cavalry sabre on the threshold of this room, daring the fashionable decorator to come on and see what he would get. Or possibly Mrs Halcut-Hackett, being an American, caused her husband’s study to be aggressively British. Alleyn and Fox waited for five minutes before they heard a very firm step and a loud cough. General Halcut-Hackett walked into the room.
‘Hullo! Afternoon! What!’ he shouted.
&n
bsp; His face was terra-cotta, his moustache formidable, his eyes china blue. He was the original ramrod brass-hat, the subject of all army jokes kindly or malicious. It was impossible to believe his mind was as blank as his face would seem to confess. So true to type was he that he would have seemed unreal, a two-dimensional figure that had stepped from a coloured cartoon of a regimental dinner, had it not been for a certain air of solidity and a kind of childlike constancy that was rather appealing. Alleyn thought: ‘Now, he really is a simple soldier-man.’
‘Sit down,’ said General Halcut-Hackett. ‘Bad business! Damn blackguardly killer. Place is getting no better than Chicago. What are you fellows doing about it? What? Going to get the feller? What?’
‘I hope so, sir,’ said Alleyn.
‘Hope so! By Gad, I should hope you hope so. Well, what can I do for you?’
‘Answer one or two questions, if you will, sir.’
‘’Course I will. Bloody outrage. The country’s going to pieces in my opinion and this is only another proof of it. Men like Robert Gospell can’t take a cab without gettin’ the life choked out of them. What it amounts to. Well?’
‘Well, sir, the first point is this. Did you walk into the green sitting-room on the top landing at one o’clock this morning while Lord Robert Gospell was using the telephone?’
‘No. Never went near the place. Next!’
‘What time did you leave Marsdon House?’
‘Between twelve and one.’
‘Early,’ remarked Alleyn.
‘My wife’s charge had toothache. Brought her home. Whole damn business had been too much for her. Poodle-faking and racketing! All people think of nowadays. Goin’ through her paces from morning till night. Enough to kill a horse.’
‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘One wonders how they get through it.’
‘Is your name Alleyn?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘George Alleyn’s son, are you? You’re like him. He was in my regiment. I’m sixty-seven,’ added General Halcut-Hackett with considerable force. ‘Sixty-seven. Why didn’t you go into your father’s regiment? Because you preferred this? What?’
‘That’s it, sir. The next point is—’
‘What? Get on with the job, eh? Quite right.’
‘Did you return to Marsdon House?’
‘Why the devil should I do that?’
‘I thought perhaps your wife was—’
The General glared at the second print in the Nightcap series and said:
‘M’wife preferred to stay on. Matter of fact, Robert Gospell offered to see her home.’
‘He didn’t do so, however?’
‘Damn it, sir, my wife is not a murderess.’
‘Lord Robert might have crossed the square as escort to your wife, sir, and returned.’
‘Well, he didn’t. She tells me they missed each other.’
‘And you, sir. You saw your daughter in and then—’
‘She’s not my daughter!’ said the General with a good deal of emphasis. ‘She’s the daughter of some friend of my wife’s.’ He glowered and then muttered half to himself: ‘Unheard of in my day, that sort of thing. Makes a woman look like a damn trainer. Girl’s no more than a miserable scared filly. Pah!’
Alleyn said: ‘Yes, sir. Well, then, you saw Miss—’
‘Birnbaum. Rose Birnbaum, poor little devil. Call her Poppet.’
‘—Miss Birnbaum in and then—’
‘Well?’
‘Did you stay up?’
To Alleyn’s astonishment the General’s face turned from terra-cotta to purple, not, it seemed, with anger, but with embarrassment. He blew out his moustache several times, pouted like a baby, and blinked. At last he said:
‘Upon my soul, I can’t see what the devil it matters whether I went to bed at twelve or one.’
‘The question may sound impertinent,’ said Alleyn. ‘If it does I’m sorry. But, as a matter of police routine, we want to establish alibis—’
‘Alibis!’ roared the General. ‘Alibis! Good God, sir, are you going to sit there and tell me I’m in need of an alibi? Hell blast it, sir—’
‘But, General Halcut-Hackett,’ said Alleyn quickly, while the empurpled General sucked in his breath, ‘every guest at Marsdon House is in need of an alibi.’
‘Every guest! Every guest! But, damn it, sir, the man was murdered in a bloody cab, not a bloody ballroom. Some filthy bolshevistic fascist,’ shouted the General, having a good deal of difficulty with this strange collection of sibilants. He slightly dislodged his upper plate but impatiently champed it back into position. ‘They’re all alike!’ he added confusedly. ‘The whole damn boiling.’
Alleyn hunted for a suitable phrase in a language that General Halcut-Hackett would understand. He glanced at Fox who was staring solemnly at the General over the top of his spectacles.
‘I’m sure you’ll realize, sir,’ said Alleyn, ‘that we are simply obeying orders.’
‘What!’
‘That’s done it,’ thought Alleyn.
‘Orders! I can toe the line as well as the next fellow,’ said the General, and Alleyn, remembering Carrados had used the same phrase, reflected that in this instance it was probably true. The General, he saw, was preparing to toe the line.
‘I apologize,’ said the General. ‘Lost me temper. Always doing it nowadays. Indigestion.’
‘It’s enough to make anybody lose their temper, sir.’
‘Well,’ said the General, ‘you’ve kept yours. Come on, then.’
‘It’s just a statement, sir, that you didn’t go out again after you got back here and, if possible, someone to support the statement.’
Once again the General looked strangely embarrassed.
‘I can’t give you a witness,’ he said. ‘Nobody saw me go to bed.’
‘I see. Well then, sir, if you’ll just give me your word that you didn’t go out again.’
‘But, damme, I did take a—take a—take a turn round the Square before I went to bed. Always do.’
‘What time was this?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can’t give me an idea? Was it long after you got home?’
‘Some time. I saw the child to her room and stirred up my wife’s maid to look after her. Then I came down here and got myself a drink. I read for a bit. I dare say I dozed for a bit. Couldn’t make up my mind to turn in.’
‘You didn’t glance at the clock on the mantelpiece there?’
Again the General became acutely self-conscious.
‘I may have done so. I fancy I did. Matter of fact, I remember now I did doze off and woke with a bit of a start. The fire had gone out. It was devilish chilly.’ He glared at Alleyn and then said abruptly: ‘I felt wretchedly down in the mouth. I’m getting an old fellow nowadays and I don’t enjoy the small hours. As you say, I looked at the clock. It was half-past two. I sat there in this chair trying to make up my mind to go to bed. Couldn’t. So I took a walk round the Square.’
‘Now that’s excellent, sir. You may be able to give us the very piece of information we’re after. Did you by chance notice anybody hanging about in the Square?’
‘No.’
‘Did you meet anybody at all?’
‘Constable.’
Alleyn glanced at Fox.
‘PC Titheridge,’ said Fox. ‘We’ve got his report, sir.’
‘All right,’ said Alleyn. ‘Were people beginning to leave Marsdon House when you passed, sir?’
The General muttered something about ‘might have been,’ paused for a moment and then said: ‘It was devilish murky. Couldn’t see anything.’
‘A misty night; yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘Did you happen to notice Captain Maurice Withers in the mist?’
‘No!’ yelled the General with extraordinary vehemence. ‘No, I did not. I don’t know the feller. No!’
There was an uncomfortable pause and then the General said: ‘Afraid that’s all I can tell you. When I got in again I went straight to
bed.’
‘Your wife had not returned?’
‘No,’ said the General very loudly. ‘She had not.’
Alleyn waited for a moment and then he said:
‘Thank you very much, sir. Now, we’ll prepare a statement from the notes Inspector Fox has taken, and if you’ve no objection, we’ll get you to sign it.’
‘I—um—um—um—I’ll have a look at it.’
‘Yes. And now, if I may, I’d like to have a word with Mrs Halcut-Hackett.’
Up went the General’s chin again. For a moment Alleyn wondered if they were in for another outburst. But the General said: ‘Very good. I’ll tell her,’ and marched out of the room.
‘Crikey!’ said Fox.
‘That’s Halcut-Hackett, that was,’ said Alleyn. ‘Why the devil,’ he added rubbing his nose, ‘why the devil is the funny old article in such a stew over his walk round the Square?’
‘Seems a natural thing for a gentleman of his kind to do,’ Fox ruminated. ‘I’m sure I don’t know. I should have thought he’s the sort that breaks the ice on the Serpentine every morning as well as walking round the Square every night.’
‘He’s a damn bad liar, poor old boy. Or is he a poor old boy? Is he not perhaps a naughty old boy? Blast! Why the devil couldn’t he give us a nice straight cast-iron alibi? Poking his nose into Belgrave Square; can’t tell us exactly when or exactly why or for exactly how long. What did the PC say?’
‘Said he’d noticed nothing at all suspicious. Never mentioned the General. I’ll have a word with Mr PC Titheridge about this.’
‘The General is probably a stock piece if he walks round Belgrave Square every night,’ said Alleyn.
‘Yes, but not at half-past two in the morning,’ objected Fox.
‘Quite right, Fox, quite right. Titheridge must be blasted. What the devil was old Halcut-Hackett up to last night! We can’t let it go, you know, because, after all, if he suspects—’
Alleyn broke off. He and Fox stood up as Mrs Halcut-Hackett made her entrance.
Alleyn, of course, had met her before, on the day she came to his office with the story of Mrs X and the blackmailing letters. He reflected now that in a sense she had started the whole miserable business. ‘If it hadn’t been for this hard, wary, stupid woman’s visit,’ he thought, ‘I shouldn’t have asked Bunchy to poke his head into a deathtrap. Oh, God!’ Mrs Halcut-Hackett said: