Grave Mistake

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Ou now – when? I couldna say with any precision. My engagements take me round the district, ye ken. I’m sleeping up at Quintern but I’m up and awa’ before eight o’clock. I take my dinner with my widowed sister, Mrs Black, pure soul, up in yon cottage on the hill there and return to Quintern in time for supper and my bed, which is in the chauffeur’s old room above the garage. Not all that far,’ said Bruce pointedly, ‘from where you unearthed him, so to speak.’

  ‘Ah yes, by the way,’ said Alleyn, ‘we’re keeping observation on those premises. For the time being.’

  ‘You are! For what purpose? Och!’ said Bruce irritably, ‘the Lord knows and you, no doubt, won’t let on.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alleyn airily, ‘it’s a formality really. Pure routine. I fancy Miss Foster hasn’t forgotten that her mother was thinking of turning part of the buildings into a flat for you.’

  ‘Has she not? I wouldna mind and that’s a fact. I wouldna say no for I’m crampit up like a hen in a wee coopie where I am and, God forgive me, I’m sick and tired of listening to the praises of the recently deceased.’

  ‘The recently deceased!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘Do you mean Mrs Foster?’

  Bruce grounded his shovel and glared at him. ‘I am shocked,’ he said at last, pursing up his mouth to show how shocked he was and using his primmest tones, ‘that you should entertain such a notion. It comes little short of an insult. I referred to the fact that my sister Mrs Black is recently widowed.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Och, well. It was an excusable misunderstanding. So there’s some idea still of fixing the flat?’ He paused and stared at Alleyn. ‘That’s not what you’d call a reason for having the premises policed, however,’ he said drily.

  ‘Bruce,’ Alleyn said. ‘Do you know what Mr Carter was doing in that room on the morning I first visited you?’

  Bruce gave a ringing sniff. ‘That’s an easy one,’ he said. ‘I told you yesterday. Spying. Trying to catch what you were speiring. To me. Aye, aye, that’s what he was up to. He’d been hanging about the premises, feckless-like, making oot he was interested in mushrooms and letting on the police were in the hoose. When he heard you coming he was through the door like a rabbit and dragging it to, behind him. You needna suppose I’m not acquainted with Mr Carter’s ways, Superintendent. My lady telt me aboot him and Mrs Jim’s no’ been backward in coming forward on the subject. When persons of his class turn aside they make a terrible bad job of themselves. Aye, they’re worse by a long march than the working-class chap with some call to slip from the paths of rectitude.’

  ‘I agree with you.’

  ‘You can depend on it.’

  ‘And you can’t think when you last saw him?’

  Bruce dragged his hand over his beard. ‘When would it have been now?’ he mused. ‘Not today. I left the premises before eight and I was hame for dinner and after that I washed myself and changed to a decent suit for the burying. I’ll tell you when it was,’ he said, brightening up. ‘It was yesterday morning. I ran into him in the stable yard and he asked me if I knew how the trains run to Dover. He let on he has an acquaintance there and might pay him a visit some time.’

  ‘Did he say anything about going to the funeral?’

  ‘Did he now? Wait, now. I canna say for certain but I carry the impression he passed a remark that led me to suppose he’d be attending the obsequies. That,’ said Bruce summing up, ‘is the length and breadth of my total recollection.’ He took up his shovel.

  The wee laddie, who had not uttered nor ceased with frantic zeal to cast earth on earth, suddenly gave tongue.

  ‘I seen ’im,’ he said loudly.

  Bruce contemplated him. ‘You seen who, you pure daftie?’ he asked kindly.

  ‘Him. What you’re talking about.’

  Bruce slightly shook his head at Alleyn, indicating the dubious value of anything the gangling creature had to offer. ‘Did ye noo?’ he said tolerantly.

  ‘In the village. It weren’t ’alf dark, ’cept up here where you was digging the grave, Mr Gardener, and had your ’ceterlene lamp.’

  ‘Where’d you been, then, young Artie, stravaging abroad in the night?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Artie, showing the whites of his eyes.

  ‘Never mind,’ Alleyn intervened. ‘Where were you when you saw Mr Carter?’

  ‘Corner of Stile Lane, under the yedge, weren’t I? And him coming down into Long Lane.’ He began to laugh again: the age-old guffaw of the rustic oaf. ‘I give him a proper scare, din’ I?’ He let out an eldritch screech. ‘Like that. I was in the yedge and he never knew where it come from. Reckon he was dead scared.’

  ‘What did he do, Artie?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Artie muttered, suddenly uninterested.

  ‘Where did he go, then?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You must know,’ Bruce roared out. ‘Oot wi’ it. Where did he go?’

  ‘I never see. I was under the yedge, wasn’ I? Up the steps then, he must of, because I yeard the gate squeak. When I come out ’e’d gone.’

  Bruce cast his eyes up and shook his head hopelessly at Alleyn. ‘What are you trying to tell us, Artie?’ he asked patiently. ‘Gone wheer? I never saw the man and there I was, was I no’? He never came my way. Would he enter the church and keep company wi’ the dead?’

  This produced a strange reaction. Artie seemed to shrink into himself. He made a movement with his right hand, almost as if to bless himself with the sign of the cross, an age-old self-defensive gesture.

  ‘Did you know,’ Alleyn asked quietly, ‘that Mrs Foster lay in the church last night?’

  Artie looked into the half-filled grave and nodded. ‘I seen it. I seen them carry it up the steps,’ he whispered.

  ‘That was before you saw Mr Carter come down the lane?’

  He nodded.

  Bruce said, ‘Come awa’, laddie. Nobody’s going to find fault with you. Where did Mr Carter go? Just tell us that now.’

  Artie began to whimper. ‘I dunno,’ he whined. ‘I looked out of the yedge, din’ I? And I never saw ’im again.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  Bruce said, ‘Yah!’ and with an air of hardly controlled exasperation returned to his work.

  ‘You must have gone somewhere,’ Alleyn said. ‘I bet you’re quite a one for getting about the countryside on your own. A night bird, aren’t you, Artie?’

  A look of complacency appeared. ‘I might be,’ he said, and then with a sly glance at Bruce, ‘I sleep out,’ he said, ‘of a night. Often.’

  ‘Did you sleep out last night? It was a warm night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Artie conceded off-handedly, ‘it was warm. I slep’ out.’

  ‘Where? Under the hedge?’

  ‘In the yedge. I got a place.’

  ‘Where you stayed hid when you saw Mr Carter?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Stimulated by the recollection he repeated his screech and raucous laugh.

  Bruce seemed about to issue a scandalized reproof but Alleyn checked him. ‘And after that,’ he said, ‘you settled down and went to sleep? Is that it?’

  ‘ ’Course,’ said Artie haughtily and attacked his shovelling with renewed energy.

  ‘When you caught sight of him,’ Alleyn asked, ‘did you happen to notice how he was dressed?’

  ‘I never see nothing to notice.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything? A bag or suitcase?’ Alleyn persisted.

  ‘I never see nothing,’ Artie repeated morosely.

  Alleyn jerked his head at Artie’s back. ‘Is he to be relied on?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Hard to say. Weak in the head but truthful as far as he goes and that’s not far.’ Bruce lowered his voice. ‘There’s a London train goes through at five past eleven: a slow train with a passenger carriage. Stops at Great Quintern. You can walk it in an hour,’ said Bruce
with a steady look at Alleyn.

  ‘Is there indeed?’ said Alleyn. ‘Thank you, Bruce. I won’t keep you any longer but I’m very much obliged to you.’

  As he turned away Artie said in a sulky voice and to nobody in particular, ‘He were carrying a pack. On his back.’ Pleased with the rhyme he improvised, ‘Pack on ’is back and down the track,’ and, as an inspired addition, ‘’E’d got the sack.’

  ‘Alas, alack,’ Alleyn said and Artie giggled. ‘Pack on ’is back and got the sack,’ he shouted.

  ‘Och, havers!’ said Bruce disgustedly. ‘You’re nowt but a silly, wanting kind of crittur. Haud your whist and get on with your work.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Alleyn, and to Artie, ‘Did you sleep out all night? When did you wake up?’

  ‘When ’e went ’ome,’ said Artie, indicating the indignant Bruce. ‘You woke me up, Mr Gardener, you passed that close. Whistling. I could of put the wind up you, proper, couldn’t I? I could of frown a brick at you, Mr Gardener. But I never,’ said Artie virtuously.

  Bruce made a sound of extreme exasperation.

  ‘When was this, Artie? You wouldn’t know, would you?’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Yes, I would, then. Twelve. Church clock sounded twelve, din’ it?’

  ‘Is that right?’ Alleyn asked Bruce.

  ‘He can’t count beyond ten. It was nine when I knocked off.’

  ‘Long job you had of it.’

  ‘I did that. There’s a vein of solid clay runs through, three-foot depth of it. And after that the pine boughs to push in. It was an unco’ weird experience. Everybody in the village asleep by then and an owl overhead and bats flying in and out of the lamplight. And inside the kirk, the leddy herself, cold in her coffin and me digging her grave. Aye, it was, you may say, an awfu’, uneasy situation, yon. In literature,’ said Bruce, lecturing them, ‘it’s an effect known as Gothic. I was pleased enough to have done with it.’

  Alleyn lowered his voice. ‘Do you think he’s got it right?’

  ‘That he slept under the hedge and woke as I passed? I dare say. It might well be, pure daftie.’

  ‘And that he saw Carter, earlier?’

  ‘I’d be inclined to credit it. I didna see anything of the man mysel’ but then I wouldn’t, where I was.’

  ‘No, of course not. Well, thanks again,’ Alleyn said. He returned to the front of the church, ran down the steps and found Fox waiting in the car.

  ‘Back to Quintern,’ he said. ‘The quest for Charmless Claude sets in with a vengeance.’

  ‘Skedaddled?’

  ‘Too soon to say. Bruce indicates as much.’

  ‘Ah, to hell with it,’ said Fox in a disgusted voice. ‘What’s the story?’

  Alleyn told him.

  ‘There you are!’ Fox complained when he had finished. ‘Scared him off, I dare say, putting our chap in. Here’s a pretty kettle of fish.’

  ‘We’ll have to take up the Dover possibility, of course, but I don’t like it much. If he’d considered it as a getaway port he wouldn’t have been silly enough to ask Bruce about trains. Still, we’ll check. He’s thought to have some link with a stationer’s shop in Southampton.’

  ‘Suppose we do run him down, what’s the charge?’

  ‘You may well ask. We’ve got nothing to warrant an arrest unless we can hold him for a day or two on the drug business and that seems to have petered out. We can’t run him in for grubbing up an old fireplace in a disused room in his stepmother’s stable yard. Our chap’s found nothing to signify, I suppose?’

  ‘Nothing, really. You’ve had a better haul, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘I don’t know, Foxkin, I don’t know. In one respect I think perhaps I have.’

  III

  When Verity drove home from the funeral it was with the expectation of what she called ‘putting her boots up’ and relaxing for an hour or so. She found herself to be suddenly used up and supposed that the events of the past days must have been more exhausting, emotionally, than she had realized. And after further consideration, an inborn honesty prompted her to conclude that the years were catching up on her.

  ‘Selfishly considered,’ she told herself, ‘this condition has its advantages. Less is expected of one.’ And then she pulled herself together. Anyone would think she was involved up to her ears in this wretched business, whereas, of course, apart from being on tap whenever her goddaughter seemed to want her, she was on the perimeter.

  She had arrived at this reassuring conclusion when she turned in at her own gate and saw Basil Schramm’s car drawn up in front of her house.

  Schramm himself was sitting at the iron table under the lime trees.

  His back was towards her but at the sound of her car, he swung round and saw her. The movement was familiar.

  When she stopped he was there, opening the door for her.

  ‘You didn’t expect to see me,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be a bore. I’d like a word or two if you’ll let me.’

  ‘I can’t very well stop you,’ said Verity lightly. She walked quickly to the nearest chair and was glad to sit on it. Her mouth was dry and there was a commotion going on under her ribs.

  He took the other chair. She saw him through a kind of mental double focus: as he had been when, twenty-five years ago, she made a fool of herself, and as he was now, not so much changed or aged as exposed.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to be terribly, terribly kind,’ he said and waited.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Of course you’ll think it bloody cool. It is bloody cool but you’ve always been a generous creature, Verity, haven’t you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t depend on it, if I were you.’

  ‘Well – I can but try.’ He took out his cigarette case. It was silver with a sliding action. ‘Remember?’ he said. He slid it open and offered it to her. She had given it to him.

  Verity said, ‘No, thank you, I don’t.’

  ‘You used to. How strong-minded you are. I shouldn’t, of course, but I do.’ He gave his rather empty social laugh and lit a cigarette. His hands were unsteady.

  Verity thought, I know the line I ought to take if he says what I think he’s come here to say. But can I take it? Can I avoid saying things that will make him suppose I still mind? I know this situation. After it’s all over you think of how dignified and quiet and unmoved you should have been and remember how you gave yourself away at every turn. As I did when he degraded me.

  He was preparing his armoury. She had often, even when she had been most attracted, thought how transparent and silly and predictable were his ploys.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he was saying, ‘I’m going to talk about old times. Will you mind very much?’

  ‘I can’t say I see much point in the exercise,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I don’t mind, really.’

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t.’

  He waited, thinking perhaps that she would invite him to go on. When she said nothing he began again.

  ‘It’s nothing, really. I didn’t mean to give it a great buildup. It’s just an invitation for you to preserve what they call “a masterly inactivity”.’ He laughed again.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘About – well, Verity, I expect you’ve guessed what about, haven’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t tried.’

  ‘Well, to be quite honest and straightforward –’ He boggled for a moment.

  ‘Quite honest and straightforward?’ Verity couldn’t help repeating but she managed to avoid a note of incredulity. She was reminded of another stock phrase-maker – Mr Markos and his ‘quite cold-bloodedly’.

  ‘It’s about that silly business a thousand years ago at St Luke’s,’ Schramm was saying. ‘I dare say you’ve forgotten all about it.’

  ‘I could hardly do that.’

  ‘I know it looked bad. I know I ought to have – well – asked to see you and explain. Instead of – all right, then –’

  ‘Bolting?’ Verity suggested
.

  ‘Yes. All right. But you know there were extenuating circumstances. I was in a bloody bad jam for money and I would have paid it back.’

  ‘But you never got it. The bank questioned the signature on the cheque, didn’t they? And my father didn’t make a charge.’

  ‘Very big of him! He only gave me the sack and shattered my career.’

  Verity stood up. ‘It would be ridiculous and embarrassing to discuss it. I think I know what you’re going to ask. You want me to say I won’t tell the police. Is that it?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest –’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Verity said, and closed her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes, that’s it. It’s just that they’re making nuisances of themselves and one doesn’t want to present them with ammunition.’

  Verity was painfully careful and slow over her answer. She said, if you are asking me not to go to Mr Alleyn and tell him that when you were one of my father’s students I had an affair with you and that you used this as a stepping-stone to forging my father’s signature on a cheque – no, I don’t propose to do that.’

  She felt nothing more than a reflected embarrassment when she saw the red flood into his face, but she did turn away.

  She heard him say, ‘Thank you for that, at least. I don’t deserve it and I didn’t deserve you. God, what a fool I was!’

  She thought, I mustn’t say ‘in more ways than one’. She made herself look at him and said, ‘I think I should tell you that I know you were engaged to Sybil. It’s obvious that the police believe there was foul play and I imagine that as a principal legatee under the Will –’

  He shouted her down, ‘You can’t – Verity, you would never think I – I –? Verity?’

  ‘Killed her?’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘No. I don’t think you did that. But I must tell you that if Mr Alleyn finds out about St Luke’s and the cheque episode and asks me if it was all true, I shan’t lie to him. I shan’t elaborate or make any statements. On the contrary I shall probably say I prefer not to answer. But I shan’t lie.’

  ‘By God,’ he repeated, staring at her. ‘So you haven’t forgiven me, have you?’