Another Little Christmas Murder

by Lorna Nicholl Morgan

  But she was worried. Furthermore, she was oppressed by a feeling very akin to a headache, from which she rarely suffered. For want of something better to do, rather than any liking for the job, she washed up, and since there was still no sign of Inigo, she left the remains of the food upon the table, picked up her coat and went upstairs to her room.

  As usual, it was bitterly cold, but the bed looked inviting. Here was a chance to demonstrate the efficacy of one of her own cures. A couple of Nurelief tablets and an hour in bed, and she ought to be feeling wonderful. She poured out half a glass of water from the carafe, and opened her case of samples. She was in the act of taking out the little phial of white tablets, when it occurred to her that there was something missing from the orderly row of bottles. One bottle of Necktar, that was all right, she had used it on Mr Brown. But it did not take much of a mental effort to realise that two bottles of Quickease had also disappeared. Since when? She sat down on the side of the bed to think about it.

  She had not opened the case since the night she had seen Mr Brown, of that she was positive. But somebody had, and had also lifted two bottles of her special curative oil. Now why should they want to do that? They could have had it for the asking. She put a hand to her head and tried to visualise the motive that might lie behind so petty a theft. She could think of nothing sensible. Obviously the person concerned wished to keep his or her identity secret, but why? Two possibilities came to mind, either that there was someone in the house whom she had not yet seen and who had no intention of being seen, or that the person who took the oil had some sinister reason for doing so. Whichever it was, she did not like it. Moreover, it angered her to think of someone coolly going through her possessions.

  She extracted two of the white tablets and swallowed them with a draught of water, before beginning a systematic search through the remainder of her things to ascertain whether anything else had been rifled or disturbed. She could not be sure, but having spent some time over the investigation, it seemed as if the interest of the intruder had not strayed beyond the sample case. Thoroughly perplexed and annoyed, she locked it away inside her travelling case, and abandoning all thought of rest, she went out into the passage.

  The house was enjoying one of its sombre silences. Automatically, her mind turned to the early morning, to Ashley, to Ledgrove, and to the man who had dropped the torch. She walked slowly along the corridors, and at the head of the main staircase she paused. Inigo was ascending, two at a time. Reaching her side, he said:

  ‘Hallo, Dyl. I was just coming to see where you’d got to. I was worried about you.’

  ‘Why should you be?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been on edge since this morning, I suppose. Has anything happened? You look grim.’

  ‘I’m feeling grim. About one and a half times as grim as you did when you discovered your car. Someone has pinched a couple of samples out of my case.’

  ‘Samples of what?’

  ‘Oil. The stuff we call Quickease. No, don’t laugh, Inigo. This isn’t a bit funny. I believe there’s a lunatic at large in this house.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t really amused, but you look so murderous.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I feel. It’s not the loss of anything so trivial. I’d have given it to anyone, had they asked for it. But the idea of someone sneaking about my room … It’s too much. And don’t ask me if I’m absolutely sure, or I’ll scream.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. I told you I’d believe anything now. But where’s the sense in it?’

  ‘There isn’t any. Unless …’ She lowered her voice. ‘You know what I suggested about your uncle’s death. I left a half-empty bottle of oil on his table, and that disappeared, too. I noticed that when I was up there this morning. Suppose I’m right, and someone is trying to pin this thing on me?’

  She expected him to protest, but he merely frowned and said:

  ‘But I don’t see how it could be done.’

  ‘Neither do I, but I’m going to find out before this goes any further.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m going down to have a little talk with Theresa.’

  ‘I shouldn’t do that just yet.’ He put a hand on her arm, and she was surprised to see that his face wore a strained expression unnatural to him. ‘I should have told you this earlier, but it didn’t seem very important. I don’t know that it is now. But this morning when I first went downstairs, I heard Theresa talking to someone in the drawing-room, a man, with a voice I couldn’t place.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I could have sworn it was a voice I hadn’t heard around here before. That’s what made me hesitate as I was about to barge in. And then as I opened the door, I heard someone go out by the french windows, although naturally I didn’t see him. So I asked Theresa who she was talking to, and she said it was one of the servants.’

  ‘And you don’t think it was?’

  ‘At the time I didn’t think much about it. But this oil business, well, it just crossed my mind that there might be someone in this house not accounted for.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. What kind of a voice was it?’

  ‘Not very loud, cultured, quite pleasant. I didn’t hear what they were saying.’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t sound like one of the servants.’

  ‘No. So I’d rather you didn’t have a showdown with Theresa just now. If she has been up to anything, she’s hardly likely to admit it. When we’ve got the car going, we’ll find that doctor, and then I’d like to go into this thing thoroughly.’

  ‘How long is it likely to take?’

  ‘Any time now. Charlie’s a wizard with cars.’

  ‘Are you sure you can trust him?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can trust anyone, except you. But if not, he can hardly get up to any tricks while I’m away, because I should know then that he’d done it in the first place.’ He was silent for a while, and then asked suddenly, ‘Have you seen Ashley yet?’

  ‘No, he didn’t come down to lunch.’

  ‘That’s funny, isn’t it? I can understand him skipping breakfast, as he was tooling about last night, but you’d think he’d be up by now. Let’s give him a knock.’

  ‘On what excuse?’

  ‘We can ask him if he’d like coffee or something. That man intrigues me.’

  All was silent inside and outside Mr Ashley’s room. Inigo knocked, and they waited. He knocked again, several times, called, whistled and made other noises indicative of his presence. There was still no reply. He tried the handle of the door and found that it was locked.

  ‘Is he one of the lucky ones supplied with a key?’ Dylis asked.

  ‘I suppose so. Some of the rooms have keys, and some haven’t. But it’s a damned queer thing to lock the door of his bedroom, isn’t it?’

  ‘A sensible thing in a house like this,’ Dylis said. ‘Although he didn’t strike me as being afraid of the dark. Have a look through the keyhole. It’s not done in the best circles, but we’ll overlook that.’

  ‘Can’t see a thing apart from the furniture,’ Inigo reported a minute later. ‘He must have gone somewhere or other. But where?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone altogether,’ Dylis suggested.

  ‘What, skipped out without so much as a “Thank you for having me”?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t too shy about skipping in. Don’t you think you ought to force that door? Something may have happened to him.’

  ‘Good Lord! You don’t think …?’ They stood and stared at each other. A prickly sensation crept up and down Dylis’s spine. Her head felt better, though. If ever she got out of this mix-up she could add her personal testimonial to those which already upheld Nurelief. ‘I was marooned in a House of Death, but Nurelief brought me true relief.’ Webber would be pleased with that. But meanwhile, something had to be done, and Inigo, transformed into a man of action, was about to do it.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea than that,’ he said. ‘There�
��s a ledge runs along outside from the bathroom to Ashley’s room. I can nip along that, and get a good view in through the window.’

  ‘But suppose he is in there? It’ll be a shock for him, seeing a man suddenly peering at him through the window.’

  ‘Can’t help that. I’ve got to get this thing settled. And I need only peer a little way to see, well, whatever it is we’re trying to see.’

  ‘But someone may see you from below.’

  ‘Not very likely. This side of the house is sheltered. Come and have a look.’

  Dylis was doubting her wisdom in having urged Inigo to do something. Turned into a man of action, he was a trifle disconcerting. Her doubts increased when, having followed him into the bathroom, she discovered that the ledge he had described running from the window there to that of Ashley’s room was scarcely a foot wide and built above a sheer drop of more feet than she cared to think about. As he had said, the windows here were screened by trees, and set at an angle whereby they could not be easily overlooked. She stared out and down and along the snow-covered ledge, drew in her head and shook it with some vigour.

  ‘It’s silly,’ she said. ‘You might fall and break your neck.’

  ‘Not me. I’ve negotiated trickier things than that. You haven’t much faith in my climbing prowess. And you yourself said something might have happened to Ashley.’

  ‘If it’s happened, it’s happened,’ she said, suddenly callous towards that gentleman. ‘And it won’t help if anything happens to you.’

  ‘Nothing will,’ he said, opening the window wide and preparing to ease his person on to the ledge.

  ‘Inigo!’ She grasped a portion of his coat and held on. ‘I’m not going to let you do anything so crazy.’

  One leg already out upon the sill, he regarded her in amazement.

  ‘Why, Dyl, you’re quite agitated. That’s not like you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be agitated if I suggested turning myself into a mangled corpse?’

  ‘I’ll answer that when I come back,’ he said. ‘Shan’t be a tick.’ Firmly he disengaged himself and drew up his other leg, and stood for a moment testing his weight upon the ledge. ‘You never know with these old houses,’ he explained. ‘They sometimes give way in the most unexpected places.’

  ‘If you must commit suicide,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to watch you. I’ll be out on the landing.’

  She withdrew from the window and went out, closing the door of the bathroom upon the scene of action. She listened again outside Mr Ashley’s room, but all remained silent. In some agitation, she lit a cigarette, and began to pace up and down the corridor, muttering things uncomplimentary to the character of men in general, and Inigo Brown in particular, asking herself why she had to get involved with anyone so completely foolhardy. One moment he was all calmness and tolerance, ready figuratively, if not literally, to let anyone get away with murder, the next he was up in arms and balancing on window ledges, and prepared to lay down his life in all directions. No one had asked him to take any such risks. All she had said was that he should not allow people to run about the house making strange noises, without looking into it.

  Pausing again outside Mr Ashley’s door, she was relieved to hear a thud which could only be Inigo entering through the window. At least, she hoped so. She was about to call out to him, when another sound reached her ears. Someone was approaching along the corridors from the direction in which lay her own room, someone who whistled in a tuneless sort of way. It sounded like a man’s whistle. She moved quickly away from the door, took a few steps forward, hesitated as the man appeared. It was Mr Ashley. Her emotions at sight of him were somewhat confused. She could not have said now exactly what she had expected Inigo to find on the other side of that locked door, but Mr Ashley had figured vaguely in her imagination as a man lying drugged upon the bed, an inanimate body stuffed beneath the bed, a figure bound and gagged and locked inside the wardrobe.

  But here he was, looking very much alive, though still tired as if he had not slept for a week, and whistling. In face of these indisputable facts, her fears appeared not only groundless but senseless. Furthermore, at any moment now Inigo would fling open the door of that room … She raised her voice and called out:

  ‘Why, Mr Ashley! I was wondering where you were. We had lunch ages ago.’

  To her own ears, her voice and words sounded highly artificial and unconvincing. But he did not appear to notice anything wrong, as he came abreast of her and remarked:

  ‘I expect you did. Sorry I wasn’t down. I had a bit of a head this morning, and didn’t fancy anything.’

  ‘Oh.’ She regarded him with some suspicion. If her tablets had disappeared she could understand it. But he would hardly have wanted the oil to massage his head. ‘I could let you have some tablets for it, if you like. They’re very good.’

  She was standing in the middle of the passage, so it would be difficult for him to get by without deliberately pushing past her. And Dylis was not the sort of woman whom a man might push, except in the gravest extremity.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘But I feel better now. I’ve been having a talk with Mr Howe. He’s quite an interesting chap, when you get to know him.’

  ‘You’re the only one who thinks so.’ She hoped that her expression would pass as a smile. Could Inigo hear all this, she wondered? At least he must know she was talking to someone. He had not opened the door, that was a good sign. But of course he could not open the door, because Mr Ashley had the key. She was still thinking in terms of inanimate bodies. If she could only keep this conversation going long enough, Inigo would take the hint and hop out by the window again and along the ledge to the bathroom, providing he did not fall in the process. The thought of his large feet slithering about on that slippery surface sent a chill all over her. But she continued, ‘I didn’t know Mr Howe was up, or rather, down? He sent word to say he was keeping to his room today.’

  ‘So he is. I went along there to see him. Have a cigarette?’

  ‘Thank you.’ If she was in no hurry to move, neither, it seemed, was Ashley. Yet he had been making for his room, of that she was certain. Perhaps he did not wish her to know that he kept it locked. It would be rather a blatant admission of mistrust on his part. And whom did he mistrust, and why? More likely he had something in there he did not want anyone to see. She said, still very loudly:

  ‘You won’t have heard about the cars being put out of action last night? Or did Mr Howe tell you?’

  ‘No. What cars?’

  ‘All the cars.’

  ‘Not my car?’

  ‘I meant all those here. Mrs Brown’s, and Inigo’s, and the van. Someone messed them all up so they can’t be driven.’

  ‘That’s very strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ He must, by now, be thinking she was half-witted. She felt rather like that, and blamed herself for having got into such a ludicrous position. She had given up blaming Inigo, for right now, if nothing worse had happened to him, he was probably struggling to climb through the bathroom window and getting stuck in that restricted space.

  ‘Haven’t you any idea who did it?’

  ‘None at all. At least, I haven’t, but everyone else is going about hinting darkly.’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing. And we were all getting along so nicely last night, too. Most upsetting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ She thought she heard a faint noise come from the bathroom. She added, ‘I suppose you didn’t hear anything in the night, Mr Ashley? Someone must have been prowling around.’

  ‘No, not a thing. Did you?’

  ‘I saw someone in the grounds. Or rather, I saw a light which must have been attached to someone.’

  ‘And you didn’t go down to investigate?’

  ‘Why should I? It didn’t strike me as important at the time.’

  ‘I suppose not. But you must have heard something, to have got you out of bed.’

  ‘I did hear somethi
ng …’ She hesitated. This discussion was not moving along the right lines. It was she who ought to be asking the questions, since it was he who had been walking about the house in his overcoat. She added, ‘At least, I thought I heard something, but I believe now it was just imagination. These old houses …’

  ‘And then you went back to bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They were silent for a moment. He appeared to be pondering on something, and she was watching him with close attention. He said at last, edging towards the bathroom to which she was turned obliquely:

  ‘I think I’ll have a wash and brush up and come down and get some tea. I could do with a cup.’

  She had a mental vision of Mr Ashley bending over the washbasin, and Inigo blithely stepping through the window on to his back. She said, barring the way:

  ‘You can’t go in there. Mr Brown is having a bath.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that. Do you always wait around while he has a bath?’

  She could not be sure, in the dimness of the passage lighting, but she thought there was a hint of amusement in his weary eyes. She said hastily:

  ‘I only came up to see where he was. He seemed to be gone such a long time. He got all messed up doing the car.’

  In miraculous confirmation of her words, there came from the bathroom the sound of splashing water, and Inigo’s voice rose softly on the air, singing, ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, one man in a tub,’ to an improvised tune. He had got back safely, then. The shadow of inanimate bodies vanished completely, and she became severely practical. When Mr Ashley said:

  ‘Well, the other bathroom’s free, isn’t it?’ She took him by the arm, and began to urge him in the direction of the staircase.

  ‘The water’s not very hot this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Mr Brown told me it goes off like that sometimes and then comes on hot again later. Now you come downstairs and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. I should like one, too.’

  She thought he looked at her rather queerly, but she no longer cared. She had steered a way through the worst of the business, and Inigo could look after himself for a while. She hardly heard Ashley say, as they went downstairs together: