by Ngaio Marsh
‘I’m always drawn to these assemblies,’ Alleyn said. ‘They are family history in hieroglyphics. I see you’ve rearranged them lately.’
‘No, I haven’t. Why?’ asked Prunella, suddenly alerted. She joined them. It was indeed clear from indentations in the velvet that a rearrangement had taken place. ‘Damn!’ she said. ‘At it again! No, it’s too much.’
‘At it?’ Alleyn ventured. ‘Again? Who?’
‘Claude Carter. I suppose you know he’s staying here. He – does so fiddle and pry.’
‘What does he pry into?’
‘All over the place. He’s always like that. The old plans of this house and garden. Drawers in tables. He turns over other people’s letters when they come. I wouldn’t put him past reading them. I’m not living here at the moment so I dare say he’s having field days. I don’t know why I’m talking about it.’
‘Is he in the house at this moment?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve only just come in myself. Never mind. Forget it. Do you want to see the letters?’
She walked out of the room. Alleyn opened the door for her. He followed her into the hall and up the staircase.
‘How happy Mr Markos will be,’ he remarked, ‘climbing up the golden stairs. They are almost golden, aren’t they? Where the sun catches them?’
‘I haven’t noticed.’
‘Oh, but you should. You mustn’t allow ownership to dull the edge of appetite. One should always know how lucky one is.’
Prunella turned on the upper landing and stared at him. ‘Is it your habit,’ she asked, ‘to go on like this ? When you’re on duty?’
‘Only if I dare hope for a sympathetic reception. What happens now? Turn right, proceed in a westerly direction and effect an entrance?’
Since this was in fact what had to be done, Prunella said nothing and led the way into her mother’s bedroom.
A sumptuous room. There was a canopied bed and a silken counterpane with a lacy nightgown case topped up by an enormous artificial rose. A largesse of white bearskin rugs. But for all its luxury the room had a depleted air as if the heart had gone out of it. One of the wardrobe doors was open and disclosed complete emptiness.
Prunella said rapidly, ‘I sent everything, all the clothes, away to the nearest professional theatre. They can sell the things they don’t use – fur hats and coats and things.’
There were no photographs or feminine toys of any kind on the tables and chimney-piece and Sybil’s sofa-cum-dressing-table with its cupid-encircled looking-glass, had been bereft of all the pots, bottles and jars that Alleyn supposed had adorned it.
Prunella said, following his look, ‘I got rid of everything. Everything.’ She was defiant.
‘I expect it was the best thing to do.’
‘We’re going to change the room. Completely. My father-in-law-to-be’s fantastic about houses – an expert. He’ll advise us,’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Alleyn politely.
She almost shouted at him, ‘I suppose you think I’m hard and modern and over-reacting to everything. Well, so I may be. But I’ll thank you to remember that Will. How she tried to bribe me, because that’s what it was, into marrying a monster, because that’s what he is, and punish me if I didn’t. I never thought she had it in her to be so mean and despicable and I’m not going to bloody cry again and I don’t in the least know why I’m talking to you like this. The letters are in the dressing-table and I bet you can’t find the hidden bit.’
She turned her back on Alleyn and blew her nose.
He went to the table, opened the central drawer, slid his finger round inside the frame and found a neat little knob that released a false wall at the back. It opened and there in the ‘secret’ recess was the classic bundle of letters tied with the inevitable faded ribbon.
There was also an open envelope with some half-dozen sepia snapshots inside.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘the best way will be for me to look at once through the letters and if they are irrelevant return them to you. Perhaps there’s somewhere downstairs where Fox and I could make ourselves scarce, and get it settled.’
Without saying anything further Prunella led the way downstairs to the ‘boudoir’ he had visited on his earlier call. They paused at the drawing-room to collect Mr Fox, who was discovered in contemplation of a portrait in pastel of Sybil as a young girl.
‘If,’ said Prunella, ‘you don’t take the letters away perhaps you’d be kind enough to leave them in the desk.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Alleyn rejoined with equal formality. ‘We mustn’t use up any more of your time. Thank you so much for being helpful.’
He made her a little bow and was about to turn away when she suddenly thrust out her hand.
‘Sorry, I was idiotic. No bones broken?’ Prunella asked.
‘Not even a green fracture.’
‘Goodbye then.’
They shook hands.
‘That child,’ said Alleyn when they were alone, ‘turned on four entirely separate moods, if that’s what they should be called, in scarcely more than as many minutes. Not counting the drawing-room comedy which was not a comedy. You and your Aunt Elsie!’
‘Perhaps the young lady’s put about by recent experience,’ Fox hazarded.
‘It’s the obvious conclusion, I suppose.’
In the boudoir Alleyn divided the letters – there were eight – between then. Fox put on his spectacles and read with the catarrhal breathing that always afflicted him when engaged in that exercise.
Prunella had been right. They were indeed love letters, ‘pure and simple’ within the literal meaning of the phrase, and most touching. The young husband had been deeply in love and able to say so.
As his regiment moved from the Western Desert to Italy, the reader became accustomed to the nicknames of brother officers and regimental jokes. The Corp, who was indeed Captain Carter’s servant, featured more often as time went on. Some of the letters were illustrated with lively little drawings. There was one of the enormous Corp being harassed by bees in Tuscany. They were represented as swarming inside his kilt and he was depicted with a violent squint and his mouth wide open. A balloon issued from it with a legend that said, ‘It’s no’ saw much the ticklin’, it’s the imperrtinence, ye ken.’
The last letter was as Prunella had described it. The final sentences read: ‘So my darling love, I shan’t see you this time. If I don’t stop I’ll miss the bloody train. About the stamp – sorry, no time left. Your totally besotted husband, Maurice.’
Alleyn assembled the letters, tied the ribbon and put the little packet in the desk. He emptied out the snapshots: a desolate faded company well on its slow way to oblivion. Maurice Carter appeared in all of them and in all of them looked like a near relation of Rupert Brooke. In one, he held by the hand a very small nondescript child: Claude, no doubt. In another he and a ravishingly pretty young Sybil appeared together. A third was yet another replica of the regimental group still in her desk drawer. The fourth and last showed Maurice kilted and a captain now, with his enormous ‘Corp’ stood to attention in the background.
Alleyn took it to the window, brought out his pocket lens and examined it. Fox folded his arms and watched him.
Presently he looked up and nodded.
‘We’ll borrow these four,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave a receipt.’
He wrote it out, left it in the desk and put the snapshots in his pocket. ‘Come on,’ he said.
They met nobody on their way out. Prunella’s car was gone. Fox followed Alleyn past the long windows of the library and the lower west flank of the house. They turned right and came at last to the stables.
‘As likely as not, he’ll still be growing mushrooms,’ Alleyn said.
And so he was. Stripped to the waist, bronzed, golden-bearded and looking like a much younger man, Bruce was hard at work in the converted lean-to. When he saw Alleyn he grounded his shovel and arched his earthy hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.
; ‘Ou aye,’ he said, ‘so it’s you again, Chief Superintendent. What can I do for you, the noo?’
‘You can tell us, if you will, Corporal Gardener, the name of your regiment, and of its captain,’ said Alleyn.
II
‘I canna credit it,’ Bruce muttered and gazed out of his non-aligned blue eyes at Alleyn. ‘It doesna seem within the bounds of possibility. It’s dealt me a wee shock, I’ll say that for it.’
‘You hadn’t an inkling?’
‘Don’t be saw daft man,’ Bruce said crossly. ‘Sir, I should say. How would I have an inkling, will you tell me that? I doubt if her first husband was ever mentioned in my hearing and why would he be?’
‘There was this stepson,’ Fox said to nobody in particular. ‘Name of Carter.’
‘Be damned to that,’ Bruce shouted. ‘Carrrter! Carrrter! Why would he not be Carrrter? Would I be saw daft as to say my captain, dead nigh on forty years, was a man o’ the name of Carrrter so you must be his son and he the bonniest lad you’d ever set eyes on and you, not to dra’ it mild, a pure, sickly, ill-put-taegither apology for a man? Here, sir, can I have anither keek at them photies?’
Alleyn gave them to him.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I mind it fine, the day that group was taken. I’d forgotten all about it but I mind it fine the noo.’
‘But didn’t you notice the replica of this one in her bedroom at the hotel?’
Bruce stared at him. His expression became prudish. He half-closed his eyes and pursed his enormous mouth. He said, in a scandalized voice, ‘Sir, I never set fut in her bedroom. It would not been the thing at a’. Not at a’.’
‘Indeed?’
‘She received me in a wee private parlour upstairs or in the garden.’
‘I see. I beg your pardon.’
‘As for these ither ones: I never see them before.’ He gazed at them in silence for some moments. ‘My God,’ he said quietly, ‘look at the bairn, just. That’ll be the bairn by the first wife. My God, it’ll be this Claude. Who’d’ve thought it? And here’s anither wi’ me in the background. It’s a strange coincidence, this, it is indeed.’
‘You never came to Quintern or heard him speak of it?’
‘If I did, the name didna stick in my mind. I never came here. What for would I? When we had leave and we only had but one before he was kilt, he let me gang awa’ home. Aye, he was a considerate officer. Christ!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Alleyn asked, Bruce had dealt his knees a devastating smack with his ginger-haired earthy hands.
‘When I think of it,’ he said. ‘When I mind how me and her would have our bit crack of an evening when I came in for my dram. Making plans for the planting season and that. When I remember how she’d talk saw free and friendly and there, all unbeknownst, was my captain’s wife that he’d let on to me was the sonsiest lass in the land. He had her picture in his wallet and liked fine to look at it. I took a wee keek mysel’ one morning when I was brushing his tunic. She was bonny, aye, she was that. Fair as a flooer. She seems to have changed and why wouldn’t she over the passage of years? Ou aye,’ he said heavily. ‘She changed.’
‘We all do,’ said Alleyn. ‘You’ve changed yourself. I didn’t recognize you at first, in the photographs.’
‘That’d be the beard,’ he said seriously and looked over his lightly sweating torso with the naïve self-approval of the physically fit male. ‘I’m no’ so bad in other respects,’ he said.
‘You got to know Captain Carter quite well, I suppose?’
‘Not to say well, just. And yet you could put it like that. What’s that spiel to the effect that no man’s a hero to his valey? He can be so to his soldier-servant and the captain came near enough to it with me.’
‘Did you get in touch with his wife after he was killed? Perhaps write to her?’
‘Na, na. I wadna tak’ the liberty. And forby I was back wi’ the regiment that same night and awa’ to the front. We didna get the news until after we landed.’
‘When did you return to England?’
‘After the war. I was taken at Cassino and spent the rest of the duration in a prison camp.’
‘And Mrs Carter never got in touch? I mean, Captain Carter wrote quite a lot about you in his letters. He always referred to you as the Corp. I would have thought she would have liked to get in touch.’
‘Did he? Did he, mention me, now?’ said Bruce eagerly. ‘To think o’ that.’
‘Look here, Gardener, you realize by this time, don’t you, that we are considering the possibility of foul play in this business?’
Bruce arranged the photographs carefully like playing cards in his left fist and contemplated them as if they were all aces.
‘I’m aware of that,’ he said absently. ‘It’s a horrid conclusion but I’m aware of it. To think he made mention of me in his correspondence. Well, now!’
‘Are you prepared to help us if you can? Do,’ begged Alleyn, ‘stop looking at those damn photographs. Here – give them to me and attend to what I say.’
Bruce, with every sign of reluctance, yielded up the photographs.
‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘Ou aye, I am prepared.’
‘Good. Now. First question. Did Captain Carter ever mention to you or in your hearing a valuable stamp in his possession?’
‘He did not. Wait!’ said Bruce dramatically. ‘Aye. I mind it now. It was before he went on his last leave. He said it was in his bank in the City but he was no’ just easy in his mind on account of the blitz and intended to uplift it.’
‘Did he say what he meant to do with it?’
‘Na, na. Not a wurrd to that effect.’
‘Sure?’
‘Aye, I’m sure,’ said Bruce indifferently.
‘Oh, well,’ Alleyn said after a pause and looked at Fox.
‘You can’t win all the time,’ said Fox.
Bruce shook himself like a wet dog. ‘I’ll not deny this has been a shock to me,’ he said. ‘It’s given me an unco’ awkward feeling. As if,’ he added, opening his eyes very wide and producing a flight of fancy that seemed to surprise him, ‘as if time, in a manner of speaking, had got itself mixed. That’s a gey weird notion, to be sure.’
‘Tell me, Gardener. Are you a Scot by birth?’
‘Me? Na, na, I’m naething of the sort, sir. Naething of the sort. But I’ve worked since I was a laddie in Scotland and under Scots instruction. I enlisted in Scotland. I served in a Scots regiment and I dare say you’ve noticed I’ve picked up a trick or two of the speech.’
‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘I had noticed.’
‘Aye,’ said Bruce complacently. ‘I dare say I’d pass for one in a crowd and proud to do it.’ As if to put a signature to his affirmation he gave Alleyn a look that he would have undoubtedly described as ‘canny’. ‘I ken weel enough,’ he said, ‘that I must feature on your short list if it’s with homicide that you’re concerning yourself, Superintendent. For the simple reason the deceased left me twenty-five thousand pounds. That’s correct, is it not?’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘That’s correct.’
‘I didna reckon to be contradicted and I can only hope it won’t be long before you eliminate me from the file. In the meantime, I can do what any guiltless man can do under the circumstances: tell the truth and hope I’m believed. For I have told you the truth, Chief Superintendent. I have indeed.’
‘By and large, Bruce,’ said Alleyn, ‘I believe you have.’
‘There’s no “by” and there’s no “large” in it,’ he said seriously, ‘and I don’t doubt you’ll come to acknowledge the fact.’ He looked at his wristwatch, a Big Ben of its species, glanced at the sun, and said he ought to be getting down to the churchyard.
‘At St Crispin’s?’
‘Aye. Did ye no’ hear? Jim Jobbin has the lumbago on him and I’m digging the grave. It’s entirely appropriate that I should do so.’
‘Yes?’
‘Aye, ’tis. I’ve done her digging up here and s
he’d have been well content I’d do it down there in the finish. The difference being we canna have our bit crack over the matter. So if you’ve no further requirements of me, sir, I’ll bid you good day and get on with it.’
‘Can we give you a lift?’
‘I’m much obliged, sir, but I have my ain auld car. Mrs Jim has left a piece and a bottle ready and I’ll take them with me. If it’s a long job, and it may be that, I’ll get a bite of supper at my sister’s. She’s a wee piece up Stile Lane, overlooking the kirk. When would the deceased be brought for burying, can you tell me that?’
‘This evening. After dark, very likely.’
‘And rest in the kirk overnight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ou aye,’ said Bruce on an indrawn breath. ‘That’s a very decent arrangement. Aweel, I’ve a long job ahead of me.’
‘Thank you for your help.’
Alleyn went to the yard door of the empty room. He opened it and looked in. Nothing had changed.
‘Is this part of the flat that was to be built for you?’ he called out.
‘Aye, that was the idea,’ said Bruce.
‘Does Mr Carter take an interest in it?’
‘Ach, he’s always peering and prying. You’d think,’ said Bruce distastefully, ‘it was him that’s the lawful heir.’
‘Would you so,’ said Alleyn absently. ‘Come along, Fox.’
They left Bruce pulling his shirt over his head in an easy workmanlike manner. He threw his jacket across his shoulder, took up his shovel and marched off.
‘In his way,’ said Fox, ‘a remarkable chap.’
III
Verity, to her surprise, was entertaining Nikolas Markos to luncheon. He had rung her up the day before and asked her to ‘take pity’ on him.
‘If you would prefer it,’ he had said, ‘I will drive you somewhere else, all the way to the Ritz if you like, and you shall be my guest. But I did wonder, rather wistfully, if we might have an egg under your lime trees. Our enchanting Prue is staying with us and I suddenly discover myself to be elderly. Worse, she, dear child, is taking pains with me.’