Grave Mistake

by Ngaio Marsh

‘You mean?’

  ‘She laughs a little too kindly at my dated jokes. She remembers not to forget I’m there. She includes me, with scarcely an effort, in their conversations. She’s even taken to bestowing the odd butterfly kiss on the top of my head. I might as well be bald,’ said Mr Markos bitterly.

  ‘I’ll undertake not to do that, at least. But I’m not much of a cook.’

  ‘My dear, my adorable lady, I said Egg and I meant Egg. I am,’ said Mr Markos, ‘your slave for ever and if you will allow me will endorse the declaration with what used to be called a bottle of the Widow. Perhaps, at this juncture I should warn you that I shall also present you with a problem. A demain and a thousand thanks.’

  He gets away with it, Verity thought, but only just. And if he says eggs, eggs he shall have. On creamed spinach. And my standby: iced sorrel soup first and the Stilton afterwards.

  And as it was a lovely day they did have lunch under the limes. Mr Markos, good as his word, had brought a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and the slightly elevated atmosphere that Verity associated with him was quickly established. She could believe that he enjoyed himself as fully as he professed to do, but he was as much of an exotic in her not very tidy English garden as frangipani. His hair luxuriant but disciplined, his richly curved, clever mouth and large black eyes, his clothes that, while they avoided extravagance, were inescapably very, very expensive – all these factors reminded Verity of Sybil Foster’s strictures.

  The difference is, she thought, that I don’t mind him being like this. What’s more I don’t think Syb would have minded either if he’d taken a bit more notice of her.

  When they had arrived at the coffee stage and he at his Turkish cigarette, he said, ‘I would choose, of course, to hear you talk about your work and this house and lovely garden. I should like you to confide in me and perhaps a little to confide in you myself.’ He spread his hands. ‘What am I saying! How ridiculous! Of course I am about to confide in you – that is my whole intention, after all. I think you are accustomed to confidences – they are poured into your lap and you are discreet and never pass them on. Am I right?’

  ‘Well,’ said Verity, who was not much of a hand at talking about herself and didn’t enjoy it. ‘I don’t know so much about that.’ And she thought how Alleyn, though without any Markosian floridity, had also introduced confidences. Ratsy too, she remembered, and thought irrelevantly that she had become quite a one for gentlemen callers over the last fortnight.

  Mr Markos fetched from his car two large sheets of cardboard tied together. ‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘when we examined Prunella’s original plans of Quintern Place there was a smaller plan of the grounds that you said you had not seen before?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘This is it.’

  He put the cardboards on the table and opened them out. There was the plan.

  ‘I think it is later than the others,’ he said, ‘and by a different hand. It is drawn on the scale of a quarter of an inch to the foot and is very detailed. Now. Have a close, a very close look. Can you find a minute extra touch that doesn’t explain itself? Take your time,’ Mr Markos invited, with an air of extraordinary relish. He took her arm and led her close to the table.

  Verity felt that he was making a great build-up and that the climax had better be good but she obediently pored over the map.

  Since it was a scheme for laying out the grounds, the house was shown simply as an outline. The stable block was indicated in the same manner. Verity, not madly engaged, plodded conscientiously over elaborate indications of water-gardens, pavilions, fountains, terraces and spinneys but although they suggested a prospect that Evelyn himself would have treasured, she could find nothing untoward. She was about to say so when she noticed that within the empty outline of the stables there was an interior line suggesting a division into two rooms, a line that seemed to be drawn freehand in pencil rather than ruled in the brownish ink of the rest of the plan. She bent down to examine it more closely and found, in one corner of the indicated stable-room a tiny x, also, she was sure, pencilled.

  Mr Markos, who had been watching her intently, gave a triumphant little crow. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘You see! You’ve spotted it.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Verity. ‘If you mean –’ and she pointed to the pencilled additions.

  ‘Of course, of course. And what, my dear Miss Preston-Watson, do you deduce? You know my methods. Don’t bustle.’

  ‘Only, ‘I’m afraid, that someone at some time has thought of making some alteration in the old stable buildings.’

  ‘A strictly Watsonian conclusion. I must tell you that at the moment a workman is converting the outer half of the amended portion – now an open-fronted broken-down lean-to, into a mushroom bed.’

  ‘That will be Bruce, the gardener. Perhaps he and Sybil, in talking over the project, got out this plan and marked the place where it was to go.’

  ‘But why “the point marked x”? It does not indicate the mushroom bed. It is in a deserted room that opens off the mushroom shed.’

  ‘They might have changed their minds.’

  ‘It is crammed into a corner where there are the remains of an open fireplace. I must tell you that after making this discovery I strolled round the stable yard and examined the premises.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything else,’ said Verity.

  ‘I have cheated. I have withheld evidence. You must know, as Scheherazade would have said, meaning that you are to learn, that a few evenings after Prunella brought the plans to Mardling she found me poring over this one in the library. She remarked that it was strange that I should be so fascinated by it and then, with one of her nervous little spurts of confidence (she is, you will have noticed, unusually but Heaven knows, understandably, nervous just now) she told me that the egregious Claude Carter exhibited a similar interest in the plans and had been discovered examining this one through a magnifying glass. And I should like to know,’ cried Mr Markos sparkling at Verity, ‘what you make of all that!’

  Verity did not make a great deal of it. She knew he expected her to enter into zestful speculation but, truth to tell, she found herself out of humour with the situation. There was something unbecoming in Nikolas Markos’s glee over his discovery and if, as she suspected, he was going to link it in some way with Sybil Foster’s death, she herself wanted no part in the proceedings. At the same time she felt apologetic – guilty even – about her withdrawal, particularly as she was sure he was very well aware of it. He really is, she thought, so remarkably sharp.

  ‘To look at the situation quite cold-bloodedly,’ he was saying, ‘and of course that is the only sensible way to look at it, the police clearly are treating Mrs Foster’s death as a case of homicide. This being so, anything untoward that has occurred at Quintern either before or after the event should be brought to their notice. You agree?’

  Verity pulled herself together. ‘I suppose so. I mean, yes of course. Unless they’ve already found it out for themselves. What’s the matter?’

  ‘If they have not, we have, little as I welcome the intrusion, an opportunity to inform them. Alas, you have a visitor, dear Verity,’ said Mr Markos and quickly kissed her hand.

  Alleyn, in fact, was walking up the drive.

  IV

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘to come at such an unlikely time of day but I’m on my way back from Quintern Place and I thought perhaps you might like to know about the arrangements for this evening and tomorrow.’

  He told them. ‘I dare say the vicar will let you know,’ he said, ‘but in case he doesn’t, that’s what will happen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Verity said. ‘We were to do flowers first thing in the morning. It had better be this afternoon, hadn’t it? Nice of you to think of it.’

  She told herself she knew precisely why she was glad Alleyn had arrived. Idiotically it was because of Mr Markos’s manner which had become inappropriately warm. Old hand though she was, this had flustered Verity.
He had made assumptions. He had been too adroit. Quite a long time had gone by since assumptions had been made about Verity and still longer since she had been ruffled by them. Mr Markos made her feel clumsy and foolish.

  Alleyn had spotted the plan. He said Prunella had mentioned the collection. He bent over it, made interested noises, looked closer and finally took out a pocket lens. Mr Markos crowed delightedly. ‘At last!’ he cried, ‘we can believe you are the genuine article.’ He put his arm round Verity and gave her a quick little squeeze. ‘What is he going to look at?’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  And when Alleyn used his lens over the stable buildings, Mr Markos was enraptured.

  ‘There’s an extra bit pencilled in,’ Alleyn said. ‘Indicating the room next the mushroom bed.’

  ‘So, my dear Alleyn, what do you make of that?’

  ‘Nothing very much, do you?’

  ‘Not of the “point marked x”? No buried treasure, for instance? Come!’

  ‘Well,’ said Alleyn, ‘you can always dig for it, can’t you? Actually it marks the position of a dilapidated fireplace. Perhaps there was some thought of renovating the rooms. A flat for the gardener, for instance.’

  ‘Do you know,’ Verity exclaimed, ‘I believe I remember Sybil said something about doing just that. Setting him up on the premises because his room at his sister’s house was tiny and he’d nowhere to put his things and they didn’t hit it off anyway.’

  ‘No doubt you are right, both of you,’ admitted Mr Markos, ‘but what a dreary solution. I am desolate.’

  ‘Perhaps I can cheer you up with news of an unexpected development,’ said Alleyn. ‘It emerges that Bruce Gardener was Captain Maurice Carter’s soldier-servant during the war.’

  After a considerable interval Mr Markos said, ‘The gardener. You mean the local man? Are you saying that this was known to Sybil Foster? And to Prunella? No. No, certainly not to Prunella.’

  ‘Not, it seems, even to Gardener himself.’

  Verity sat down abruptly. ‘What can you mean?’ she said.

  Alleyn told her.

  ‘I have always,’ Mr Markos said, ‘regarded stories of coincidence in a dubious light. My invariable instinct is to discredit them.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Verity. ‘I always believe them and find them boring. I am prepared to acknowledge, since everyone tells me so, that life is littered with coincidences. I don’t much mind. But this,’ she said to Alleyn, ‘is something else again. This takes a hell of a lot of acceptance.’

  ‘Is that perhaps because of what has happened? If Mrs Foster hadn’t died and if one day in the course of conversation it had emerged that her Maurice Carter had been Bruce Gardener’s Captain Carter what would have been the reaction?’

  ‘I can tell you what Syb’s reaction would have been. She’d have made a big tra-la about it and said she’d always sensed there was “something”.’

  ‘And you?’

  Verity thought it over. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I’d have said, Fancy! Extraordinary coincidence, but wouldn’t have thought much more about it.’

  ‘If one may ask?’ said Mr Markos, already asking. ‘How did you find out? You or whoever it was?’

  ‘I recognized him in an old photograph of the regiment. Not at first. I was shamefully slow. He hadn’t got a beard in those days but he had got his squint.’

  ‘Was he embarrassed?’ Verity asked. ‘When you mentioned it, I mean?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so. Flabbergasted is the word that springs to mind. From there he passed quickly to the “what a coincidence” bit and then into the realms of misty Scottish sentiment on “who would have thought it” and “had I but known” lines.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Your Edinburgh Castle guide would have been brassy in comparison.’

  ‘Castle?’ asked Mr Markos. ‘Edinburgh?’ Verity explained.

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ Mr Markos sharply demanded. ‘Still cultivating mushrooms? Next door, by yet another coincidence –’ he tapped the plan – ‘to the point marked x.’

  ‘When we left him he was going to the church.’

  ‘To the church! Why?’

  Verity said, ‘I know why.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. Oh,’ said Verity, ‘this is all getting too much. Like a Jacobean play. He’s digging Sybil’s grave.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mr Markos.

  ‘Because Jim Jobbin has got lumbago.’

  ‘Who is – no,’ Mr Markos corrected himself, ‘it doesn’t matter. My dear Alleyn, forgive me if I’m tiresome, but doesn’t all this throw a very dubious light upon the jobbing Gardener?’

  ‘If it does, he’s not the only one.’

  ‘No? No, of course. I am forgetting the egregious Claude. By the way – I’m sorry, but you may slap me back if I’m insufferable – where does all this information come from?’

  ‘In no small part,’ said Alleyn, ‘from Mrs Jim Jobbin.’

  Mr Markos flung up his hands. ‘These Jobbins!’ he lamented and turned to Verity. ‘Come to my rescue. Who are the Jobbins?’

  ‘Mrs Jim helps you out once a week at Mardling. Her husband digs drains and graves and mows lawns. I dare say he mows yours if the truth were known.’

  ‘Odd-job Jobbins, in fact,’ said Alleyn and Verity giggled.

  ‘Gideon would know,’ his father said. ‘He looks after that sort of thing. In any case, it doesn’t matter. Unless – I suppose she’s – to be perfectly cold-blooded about it – trustworthy?’

  ‘She’s a long-standing friend,’ said Verity, ‘and the salt of the earth. I’d sooner suspect the vicar’s wife of hanky-panky than Mrs Jim.’

  ‘Well, of course, my dear Verity’ (Damn, thought Verity. I wish he wouldn’t), ‘that disposes of her, no doubt.’ He turned to Alleyn. ‘So the field is, after all, not extensive. Far too few suspects for a good read.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘You may have overlooked a candidate.’

  In the pause that followed a blackbird somewhere in Verity’s garden made a brief statement and traffic on the London motorway, four miles distant, established itself as a vague rumour.

  Mr Markos said, ‘Ah, yes. Of course. But I hadn’t overlooked him. You’re talking about my acquaintance, Dr Basil Schramm.’

  ‘Only because I was going to ring up and ask if I might have a word with you about him. I think you introduced him to the Upper Quintern scene, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well – fleetingly, I suppose I did.’

  Verity said, ‘Would you excuse me? I’ve got a telephone call I must make and I must see about the flowers.’

  ‘Are you being diplomatic?’ Mr Markos asked archly.

  ‘I don’t even know how,’ she said and left them not, she hoped, too hurriedly. The two men sat down.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, shall I?’ Alleyn said. ‘Can you, and if so, will you, tell me anything of Dr Schramm’s history? Where he qualified, for instance? Why he changed his name? Anything?’

  ‘Are you checking his own account of himself? Or hasn’t he given a satisfactory one? You won’t answer that of course and very properly not.’

  ‘I don’t in the least mind answering. I haven’t asked him.’

  ‘As yet?’

  ‘That’s right. As yet.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Markos, airily waving his hand, ‘I’m afraid I’m not much use to you. I know next to nothing of his background except that he took his degree somewhere in Switzerland. I had no idea he’d changed his name, still less why. We met when crossing the Atlantic in the QE2 and subsequently in New York at a cocktail-party given at the St Regis by fellow passengers. Later on that same evening at his suggestion we dined together and afterwards visited some remarkable clubs to which he had the entrée. The entertainment was curious. That was the last time I saw him until he rang me up at Mardling on his way to Greengages. On the spur of the moment I asked him to dinner. I have not seen him sin
ce then.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his professional activities – I mean whether he had a practice in New York or was attached to a hospital or clinic or what have you?’

  ‘Not in any detail. In the ship going over he was the life and soul of a party that revolved round an acquaintance of mine – the Princess Palevsky. I rather gathered that he acquired her and two American ladies of considerable renown as – patients. I imagine,’ said Mr Markos smoothly, ‘that he is the happy possessor of a certain expertise in that direction. And, really, my dear Alleyn, that is the full extent of my acquaintance with Basil Schramm.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’ said Alleyn abruptly.

  ‘Think of him? What can I say? And what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Did you form an opinion of his character, for instance? Nice chap? Lightweight? Man of integrity?’

  ‘He is quite entertaining. A lightweight, certainly, but good value as a mixer and with considerable charm. I would trust him,’ said Mr Markos, ‘no further than I could toss a grand piano. A concert grand.’

  ‘Where women are concerned?’

  ‘Particularly where women are concerned.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alleyn cheerfully and got up. ‘I must go,’ he said, ‘I’m running late. By the way, is Miss Foster at Quintern Place, do you happen to know?’

  ‘Prunella? No. She and Gideon went up to London this morning. They’ll be back for dinner. She’s staying with us.’

  ‘Ah yes. I must go. Would you apologize for me to Miss Preston?’

  ‘I’ll do that. Sorry not to have been more informative.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘the visit has not been unproductive. Goodbye to you.’

  Fox was in the car in the lane. When he saw Alleyn, he started up his engine.

  ‘To the nearest telephone,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ll use the one at Quintern Place. We’ve got to lay on surveillance and be quick about it. The local branch’ll have to spare a copper. Send him up to Quintern as a labourer. He’s to dig up the fireplace and hearth and dig deep and anything he finds that’s not rubble, keep it. And when he’s finished tell him to board up the room and seal it. If anyone asks what he’s up to he’ll have to say he’s under police orders. But I hope no one will ask.’