by Ngaio Marsh
She wetted her lips. Dimitri was listening avidly. Carrados had slumped down in his chair with his chin on his chest. Alleyn felt he was giving, for anybody that had time to notice it, a quiet performance of a broken man. Lady Carrados sat upright, her hands folded in her lap, her face looked exhausted. The AC was motionless behind the green lamp.
‘Well, Mrs Halcut-Hackett? Your partner fetched your case from the green sitting-room, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
The door opened and Withers walked in after Fox. He stood with his hands in his pockets and blinked his white eyelashes.
‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘What’s the idea?’
‘I have invited you to come here, Captain Withers, in order that the Assistant Commissioner may hear your statement about your movements on the night of the ball at Marsdon House. I have discovered that although you left Marsdon House at three-thirty you did not arrive at the Matador Night Club until four-fifteen. You therefore have no alibi for the murder of Lord Robert Gospell.’
Withers looked at Mrs Halcut-Hackett with a sort of sneer.
‘She can give me one,’ he said.
She looked at him and spoke to Alleyn. Her voice was quite expressionless.
‘I’d made up my mind it would have to come out. Between the time we left the ball and the time we got to the Matador, Captain Withers drove me about in his car. I was afraid of my husband. I had seen him watching me. I wanted to talk to Captain Withers. I was afraid to say this before.’
‘I see,’ said Alleyn. ‘You accept that, Captain Withers?’
‘It’s true enough.’
‘Very well. Now, to return to Marsdon House. You told me that at one o’clock you were in the sitting-room at the head of the stairs.’
‘So I was.’
‘You did not tell me you were also in the telephone-room.’
Withers stared at Mrs Halcut-Hackett. She had been watching him like a frightened animal but as soon as his eyes turned towards her she looked away from him.
‘Why should I?’ said Withers
‘You were in the telephone room with Mrs Halcut-Hackett before you went to the other room. You returned to it from the other room to fetch this.’
Alleyn’s long arm shot up. Seven heads followed the movement. Seven pairs of eyes were concentrated on the gold cigarette-case with the jewelled medallion.
‘And what if I did?’
‘Where did you find this case?’
‘On a table in the room with the telephone.’
‘When I asked you yesterday if you overheard Lord Robert telephoning in this room, as we know he did at one o’clock, you denied it.’
‘There wasn’t anybody in the room when I fetched the case. I told you I heard the dialling tinkle on the extension a bit before then. If it was Gospell I suppose he’d gone when I got there.’
‘Is there any reason why anybody, say Mr Dimitri in the corner there, should not have gone into the telephone-room after you left it with Mrs Halcut-Hackett, and before you returned for the case?’
‘No reason at all as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Dimitri,’ said Alleyn, ‘have you seen this case before? Look at it. Have you seen it before?’
‘Never. I have never seen it. I do not know why you ask. I have never seen it.’
‘Take it in your hands. Look at it.’
Dimitri took the case.
‘Open it.’
Dimitri opened it. From where Alleyn stood he could see the little cutting taken from The Times. Dimitri saw it too. His eyes dilated. The case dropped through his hands to the floor. He pointed a shaking finger at Alleyn.
‘I think you must be the devil himself,’ he whispered.
‘Fox,’ said Alleyn, ‘will you pass the case round?’
It passed from hand to hand. Withers, Evelyn Carrados and Carrados all looked at it. Withers handled it as if he had done so before, but seemed quite unmoved by the cutting. The Carradoses both looked blankly at it and passed it on. Mrs Halcut-Hackett opened the case and stared at the scrap of paper.
‘This wasn’t here before,’ she said. ‘What is it? Who put it here?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Alleyn. ‘It’s done no damage. It will come off quite easily.’
He took the case from her.
Dimitri suddenly leapt to his feet. Fox who had never taken his eyes off him moved in front of the door.
‘Sit down, Mr Dimitri,’ said Alleyn.
‘I am going. You can keep me here no longer against my will. You accuse, you threaten, you lie! I say I can endure it no longer. I am an innocent man, a man of standing with a clientèle of great excellence. I will see a lawyer. My God, let me pass!’
He plunged forward. Alleyn caught him by one arm. Fox by the other. He struggled violently. The AC pressed a bell on his desk, the door was opened from the outside and two plain-clothes men walked into the room. Beyond, in the brightly lit secretary’s room three startled faces, Bridget’s, Davidson’s and Miss Harris’s, peered over the shoulders of more Yard men, and through the doorway.
Dimitri, mouthing and panting, was taken over by the two officers.
‘Now then,’ they said. ‘Now then.’
‘Lady Carrados,’ said Alleyn, ‘will you formally charge this man?’
‘I do charge him.’
‘In a moment,’ said Alleyn to Dimitri, ‘you will be taken to the charge-room, but before we talk about the exact nature of the charge—’ He looked through the door: ‘Sir Daniel? I see you’re still there. May I trouble you again for a moment?’
Davidson, looking very startled, came through.
‘Good God, Alleyn!’ he said, staring at Dimitri. ‘What’s this?’
Alleyn said: ‘You can, I believe, give me the final piece of evidence in an extremely involved affair. You see this cigarette-case?’
Davidson took it.
‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘that’s the abortion. I told you about it. It’s part of the collection at Marsdon House. You remember?’
He moved to the light and after another startled glance at Dimitri, who had gone perfectly still and stared at him like a lost soul, Davidson put up his glasses and examined the case.
‘You know, I believe it is Benvenuto,’ he said, looking over his glasses at Alleyn.
‘Yes, yes, I dare say. Will you tell us where you saw it?’
‘Among a collection of objets d’art on a pie-crust table in an upstairs room at Marsdon House.’
‘At what time, Sir Daniel?’
‘My dear Alleyn, I told you. About eleven-thirty or so. Perhaps earlier.’
‘Would you swear you noticed it no later than eleven-thirty?’ insisted Alleyn.
‘But of course I would,’ said Davidson. ‘I did not return to that room. I am quite ready to swear it.’
He held the cigarette-case up in his beautifully shaped hand.
‘I swear I saw this case on the table in the green sitting-room not later than eleven-thirty. That do?’
The silence was broken only by Dimitri’s laboured breathing.
And then, surprisingly clear and firm, Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s voice:
‘But that can’t be true.’
Alleyn said: ‘Will you open the case?’
Davidson, who was gazing in amazement at Mrs Halcut-Hackett, opened the cigarette-case and saw the notice.
‘Will you read that press cutting?’ said Alleyn. ‘Aloud, please.’
The deep expressive voice read the absurd message.
‘“Childie Darling. Living in exile. Longing. Only want Daughter. Daddy.”’
‘What in the name of all wonders is this?’
‘We believe it to be a murderer’s message,’ said Alleyn. ‘We think this man, Dimitri, can translate it.’
Davidson shut the case with a snap.
Something had gone wrong with his hands. They shook so violently that the diamonds on the gold case seemed to have a separate flashing life of their own.
‘So
Dimitri is a murderer,’ he said.
‘Look out!’ said Alleyn loudly.
Dimitri flung himself forward with such extreme and sudden violence that the men who held him were taken off their guard and his hands were at Davidson’s throat before they had regained their hold on him. In a moment the room was full of struggling men. Chairs crashed to the floor, a woman screamed. Fox’s voice shouted urgently: ‘Get to it. What are you doing?’ There was a concerted upheaval against the edge of the desk. The green-shaded lamp smashed into oblivion.
‘That’s better,’ said Alleyn’s voice. ‘Now then. Hands together.’
A sharp click, a cry from Dimitri, and then the figures resolved themselves into a sort of tableau: Dimitri, hand-cuffed and held by three men, against the desk; Davidson in the centre of the room with Alleyn, Fox and a plainclothes man grasping his arms behind his back; the Assistant Commissioner, between the two groups, like a distinguished sort of referee.
‘Murderer!’ screamed Dimitri. ‘Treacherous, filthy assassin! I confess! Gentlemen, I confess! I have worked for him for seven years and now, now, now he will stand aside and let me go to the gallows for the crime he has himself committed. I will tell you everything. Everything.’
‘Speak up, Rory,’ said the AC.
‘Daniel Davidson,’ said Alleyn, ‘I arrest you for the murder of Lord Robert Gospell, and I warn you…’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Confessions from Troy
‘I THOUGHT,’ SAID ALLEYN, ‘that you would like to know at once, Mildred.’
Lady Mildred Potter shook her head, not so much in disagreement as from a sort of general hopelessness.
‘It was nice of you to come, Roderick. But I’m afraid I simply cannot take it in. Sir Daniel has always been perfectly charming to both of us. Bunchy liked him very much. He told me so. And there’s no doubt Sir Daniel did wonders with my indigestion. Quite cured it. Are you sure you are not mistaken?’
‘Quite sure, I am afraid, Mildred. You see, Dimitri has confessed that Davidson has been in a sort of infamous partnership with him for seven years. Davidson knew something about Dimitri in the first instance, I think. That’s probably how he managed to get his hold over Dimitri. Davidson has been extremely careful. He has found the data but he has left Dimitri to carry out the practical work. Davidson saw the open drawer and the letter in Carrados’s writing-cabinet. Davidson came in on the scene between Carrados and Bridget. He was careful never to be left alone in the room himself, but he told Dimitri about the secret drawer and instructed Dimitri how to steal the letter. He told Dimitri that there might be something interesting there. Dimitri did all the dirty work. He collected the handbags of the blackmailed ladies. He wrote the letters. Sometimes he got the ideas. Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s trinket-box was one of Dimitri’s brightest ideas, I imagine.’
‘I’m lost in it, Roderick. Troy, darling, do you understand?’
Alleyn looked at Troy, sitting on the floor at Mildred’s feet.
‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ said Troy.
‘Well, go on, Roderick,’ said Mildred drearily.
‘There were three things that I could not fit into the pattern,’ said Alleyn, and he spoke more to Troy than to Mildred. ‘It seemed at first that if Dimitri overheard the telephone call he had an overwhelming motive. We knew he was a blackmailer, and we knew Bunchy was on his track. But we found that Dimitri literally could not have done the murder. His alibi stood up to the time factor and came out on top.
‘Withers is a bad lot, and Bunchy knew that too, but somehow I could not see Withers as the killer. He’s hard, wary and completely unscrupulous. If he did ever murder it would be deliberately, and with forethought. The whole thing would be worked out to the last second. This job was, we believed, unpremeditated until within two and a half hours of its execution. Still Withers had to be considered. There was a gap in his alibi. I now know that he spent that gap driving his woman-dupe about in his car in order to discuss a situation which had become acute. Into this department, and again I implore your silence because I certainly shouldn’t tell you about it, came old General Halcut-Hackett like an elderly harlequin dodging about in the fog of Belgrave Square at the crucial time when the guests left Marsdon House. He, of course, was looking for his wife. Next came Carrados. Old Carrados was an infernal bore. His alibi, which overlapped Dimitri’s, held good, but his behaviour was rum in the extreme. It was not until I heard of an incident eighteen years old that I managed to fit him into the pattern. And all the time there were three things about Davidson for which I could find only one explanation. He told me he saw a certain cigarette-case in the green sitting-room at about eleven-thirty. Certainly not later. We found that the cigarette-case in question was only in this room for about four minutes round about one o’clock during which the telephone conversation took place. Why should Davidson lie? He had thought the case was a set-piece—one of the Marsdon House possessions; he had not realized that it was the personal property of one of the guests. He stated most emphatically that he did not overhear the conversation and indeed did not return to the room after eleven-thirty. But there is a curious point about the telephone conversation. Bunchy said to me: “He might as well mix his damn brews with poison.” Davidson must have overheard that sentence because it came just before Bunchy broke off. Bunchy was talking about Dimitri, of course, but I believe Davidson thought he was talking about him. The broken sentence: “with such filthy ingenuity,” or something of that sort. Davidson probably thought the next word Bunchy spoke would be his (Davidson’s) name. That’s odd, isn’t it?
‘As for the figure Miss Harris saw beyond the glass panel, undoubtedly it was Davidson’s. At his wits’ end he must have dived through the nearest door and there, I suppose, pulled himself together and decided to murder Bunchy.
‘Then there is the other cigarette-case.’
Alleyn looked at Lady Mildred. Her head nodded like a mandarin’s. He turned back to Troy and spoke softly.
‘I mean the weapon. On the morning after the murder I asked to see Davidson’s case. He showed me a cigarette-case that was certainly too small for the job and said it was the one he had carried last night. I noticed how immaculate it was, looked closely at it, and found traces of plate-powder in the tooling. We learnt that Davidson’s cases were cleaned the morning before the ball and had not been touched after the ball. It seemed to me that this case had certainly not been out all night. It shone like a mirror and I would have sworn had not been used since it was put in his pocket. It was a thin bit of evidence but it did look as if he had lied when he said it was the case he took to Marsdon House. And then there was the condition—is Mildred asleep?’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Mildred. ‘Do you mind very much, dear Roderick, if I go to bed? I’m afraid I shall never understand, you see, and I am really so very tired. I think sorrow is one of the most tiring things, don’t you? Troy, my dear, you will look after poor Roderick, won’t you? Donald will be in late and I don’t know where he is just now.’
‘I think he took Bridget Carrados home,’ said Alleyn, opening the door for Mildred. ‘Evelyn and her husband wanted to be alone and Donald was in the waiting-room looking hopeful.’
‘He seems to be very attached to her,’ said Mildred, pausing at the door and looking at Alleyn with tear-stained eyes. ‘Is she a nice girl, Roderick?’
‘Very nice. I think she’ll look after him. Good night, Mildred.’
‘Good night.’
Alleyn shut the door after her and returned to Troy.
‘May I stay for a little longer?’
‘Yes, please. I want to hear the end of it all.’ Troy looked sideways at him. ‘How extraordinarily well-trained your eye must be! To notice the grains of plate-powder in the tooling of a cigarette-case; could anything be more admirable? What else did you notice?’
‘I notice that although your eyes are grey there are little flecks of green in them and that the iris is ringed with black. I notice that when
you smile your face goes crooked. I notice that the third finger of your left hand has a little spot of vermilion on the inside where a ring should hide it; and from that, Miss Troy, I deduce that you are a painter in oils and are not so proud as you should be of your lovely fingers.’
‘Please tell me the end of the case.’
‘I would rather tell you that since this afternoon in the few spare moments I have had to spend upon it I have considered your case and that I have decided to take out a warrant for your arrest. The charge is impeding an officer of the law in the execution of his duty.’
‘Don’t be so damned facetious,’ said Troy.
‘All right. Where was I?’
‘You had got to the third point against Davidson.’
‘Yes. The third point was in the method used in committing the crime. I don’t think Bunchy would mind if he knew that even while I described his poor little body I was thinking of the woman to whom I spoke. Do you? He was such an understanding person, wasn’t he, with just the right salty flavour of irony? I’m sure he knew how short-lived the first pang of sorrow really is if only people would confess as much. Well, Troy, the man who killed him knew how easy it was to asphyxiate people and I didn’t think many killers would know that. The only real mark of violence was the scar made by the cigarette-case. A doctor would realize how little force was needed and Bunchy’s doctor would know how great an ally that weak heart would be. Davidson told me about the condition of the heart because he knew I would discover he had examined Bunchy. He kept his head marvellously when I interviewed him, did Sir Daniel. He’s as clever as paint. We’re searching his house tonight. Fox is there now. I don’t think we’ll find anything except perhaps the lethal cigarette-case, but I’ve more hopes of Dimitri’s desk. I couldn’t get into that yesterday.’
‘What about the cloak and hat?’
‘That brings us to a very curious episode. We have searched for the cloak and hat ever since four o’clock yesterday morning and we have not found them. We did our usual routine stuff, going round all the dust-bin experts and so on and we also notified the parcels-post offices. This afternoon we heard of a parcel that had been dumped at the Main Western office during the rush hour yesterday. It was over-stamped with tuppenny stamps and addressed to somewhere in China. The writing was script which was our blackmailer’s favourite medium of expression. It’s gone, alas, but I think there’s just a chance we may trace it. It’s a very long chance. Now who is likely to have an unlimited supply of tuppenny stamps, my girl?’