Grave Mistake

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘What was it? A telephone call?’

  ‘You knew!’

  ‘I guessed. Go on, please.’

  ‘When the waiter told me, I knew. I don’t know why but I did. I knew. I took it in one of the telephone boxes in the hall. I think he must have had something over his mouth. His voice was muffled and peculiar. It said, “You got the message.” I couldn’t speak and then it said, “You did or you’d answer. Have you followed instructions?” I – didn’t know what to say so I said, “I will,” and it said, “You better.” It said something else, I don’t remember exactly, something about the only warning, I think. That’s all,’ said Sister Jackson, and finished her cognac. She held the unsteady glass between her white-gloved paws and put it down awkwardly.

  Alleyn said, ‘Do you mind if I keep this? And would you be kind enough to refold it and put it in here for me?’ He took an envelope from his pocket and laid it beside the paper.

  She complied and made a shaky business of doing so. He put the envelope in his breast pocket.

  ‘What will he do to me?’ asked Sister Jackson.

  ‘The odds are: nothing effective. The police may get something from him but you’ve anticipated that, haven’t you? Or you will do so.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sister Jackson,’ Alleyn said, ‘don’t you think you had better tell me about your visit to Room 20?’

  She tried to speak. Her lips moved. She fingered them and then looked at the smudge of red on her glove.

  ‘Come along,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then why have you asked to see me? Surely it was to anticipate whatever the concoctor of this message might have to say to us. You’ve got in first.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything awful. I’m a fully qualified nurse.’

  ‘Of course you are. Now then, when did you pay this visit?’

  She focused her gaze on the couple in the far corner, stiffened her neck and rattled off her account in a series of disjointed phrases.

  It had been at about nine o’clock on the night of Mrs Foster’s death (Sister Jackson called it her ‘passing’). She herself walked down the passage on her way to her own quarters. She heard the television bawling away in No. 20. Pop music. She knew Mrs Foster didn’t appreciate pop and she thought she might have fallen asleep and the noise would disturb the occupants of neighbouring rooms. So she tapped and went in.

  Here Sister Jackson paused. A movement of her chin and throat indicated a dry swallow. When she began again her voice was pitched higher but not by any means louder than before.

  ‘The patient,’ she said, ‘Mrs Foster, I mean, was as I thought she would be. Asleep. I looked at her and made sure she was – asleep. So I came away. I came away. I wasn’t there for more than three minutes. That’s all. All there is to tell you.’

  ‘How was she lying?’

  ‘On her side, with her face to the wall.’

  ‘When Dr Schramm found her she was on her back.’

  ‘I know. That proves it. Doesn’t it. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘Did you turn off the television?’

  ‘No. Yes! I don’t remember. I think I must have. I don’t know.’

  ‘It was still going when Dr Schramm found her.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t then, did I? I didn’t turn it off.’

  ‘Why, I wonder?’

  ‘It’s no good asking me things like that. I’ve been shocked. I don’t remember details.’

  She beat on the table. The amorous couple unclinched and one of the card players looked over his shoulder. Sister Jackson had split her glove.

  Alleyn said, ‘Should we continue this conversation somewhere else?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  With a most uncomfortable parody of coquettishness she leant across the table and actually smiled or seemed to smile at him.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said.

  Their waiter came back and looked enquiringly at her empty glass.

  ‘Would you like another?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. No. Well, a small one, then.’

  The waiter was quick bringing it.

  ‘Right. Now – how was the room? The bedside table? Did you notice the bottle of barbiturates?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. I’ve said so. I just saw she was asleep and I went away.’

  ‘Was the light on in the bathroom?’

  This seemed to terrify her. She said, ‘Do you mean –? Was he there? Whoever it was? Hiding? Watching? No, the door was shut, I mean – I think it was shut.’

  ‘Did you see anybody in the passage? Before you went into the room or when you left it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s that alcove, isn’t there? Where the brooms and vacuum-cleaner are kept?’

  She nodded. The amorous couple were leaving. The man helped the girl into her coat. They both looked at Alleyn and Sister Jackson. She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of cigarettes.

  Alleyn said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve given up and forget to keep any on me. At least I can offer you a light.’ He did so and she made a clumsy business of using it. The door swung to behind the couple. The card players had finished their game and decided, noisily, to move into the bar. When they had gone Alleyn said, ‘You realize, don’t you – well, of course you do – that the concoctor of this threat must have seen you?’

  She stared at him. ‘Naturally,’ she said, attempting, he thought, a sneer.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a glimpse of the obvious, isn’t it? And you’ll remember that I showed you a lily-head that Inspector Fox and I found in the alcove?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And that there were similar lilies in the hand-basin in Mrs Foster’s bathroom?’

  ‘Naturally. I mean – yes, I saw them afterwards. When we used the stomach pump. We scrubbed up under the bath taps. It was quicker than clearing away the mess in the basin.’

  ‘So it follows as the night the day that the person who dropped the lily-head in the alcove was the person who put the flowers in the hand-basin. Does it also follow that this same person was your blackmailer?’

  ‘I – yes. I suppose it might.’

  ‘And does it also follow, do you think, that the blackmailer was the murderer of Mrs Foster?’

  ‘But you don’t know. You don’t know that she was – that.’

  ‘We believe we do.’

  She ought, he thought, to be romping about like a Rubens lady in an Arcadian setting – all sumptuous flesh, no brains and as happy as Larry, instead of quivering like an over-dressed jelly in a bar parlour.

  ‘Sister Jackson,’ he said, ‘why didn’t you tell the Coroner or the police or anyone at all, that you went into Room 20 at about nine o’clock that night and found Mrs Foster asleep in her bed?’

  She opened and shut her smudged lips two or three times, gaping like a fish.

  ‘Nobody asked me,’ she said. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Are you sure Mrs Foster was asleep?’

  Her lips formed the words but she had no voice. ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘She wasn’t asleep, was she? She was dead.’

  The swing door opened and Basil Schramm walked in. ‘I thought I’d find you,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Graveyard (II)

  ‘May I join you?’ asked Dr Schramm. The folds from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth lifted and intensified. It was almost a mephistophelian grin.

  ‘Do,’ said Alleyn and turned to Sister Jackson. ‘If Sister Jackson approves,’ he said.

  She looked at nothing, said nothing and compressed her mouth.

  ‘Silence,’ Dr Schramm joked, ‘gives consent, I hope.’ And he sat down.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ he invited.

  ‘Not another for me, thank you,’ said Alleyn.<
br />
  ‘On duty?’

  ‘That’s my story.’

  ‘Dot?’

  Sister Jackson stood up. ‘I’m afraid I must go,’ she said to Alleyn and with tolerable success achieved a social manner. ‘I hadn’t realized it was so late.’

  ‘It isn’t late,’ said Schramm, ‘sit down.’

  She sat down. First round to the doctor, thought Alleyn.

  ‘The bell’s by you, Alleyn,’ said Schramm. ‘Do you mind?’

  Alleyn pressed the wall bell above his head. Schramm had leant forward. Alleyn caught a great wave of whisky and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and not quite in focus.

  ‘I happened to be passing,’ he chatted. He inclined his head towards Sister Jackson. ‘I noticed your car. And yours, Superintendent.’

  ‘Sister Jackson has been kind enough to clear up a detail for us.’

  ‘That’s what’s known as “helping the police in their investigations”, isn’t it? With grim connotations as a rule.’

  ‘You’ve been reading the popular press,’ said Alleyn.

  The waiter came in. Schramm ordered a large scotch. ‘Sure?’ he asked them and then, to the waiter, ‘Correction. Make that two large scotches.’

  Alleyn said, ‘Not for me. Really.’

  ‘Two large scotches,’ Schramm repeated on a high note. The waiter glanced doubtfully at Alleyn.

  ‘You heard what I said,’ Schramm insisted. ‘Two large scotches.’

  Alleyn thought, This is the sort of situation where one could do with the odd drop of omnipotence. One wrong move from me and it’ll be a balls-up.

  Complete silence set in. The waiter came and went. Dr Schramm downed one of the two double whiskies very quickly. The bar parlour clock ticked. He continued to smile and began on the second whisky slowly, with concentration, absorbing it and cradling the glass. Sister Jackson remained perfectly still.

  ‘What’s she been telling you?’ Schramm suddenly demanded. ‘She’s an inventive lady. You ought to realize that. To be quite, quite frank and honest, she’s a liar of the first water. Aren’t you, sweetie?’

  ‘You followed me.’

  ‘It’s some considerable time since I left off doing that, darling.’

  Alleyn had the passing thought that it would be nice to hit Dr Schramm.

  ‘I really must insist,’ Schramm said. ‘I’m sorry, but you have seen for yourself how things are, here. I realize, perf’ly well, that you will think I had a motive for this crime, if crime it was. Because I am a legatee I’m a suspect. So of course it’s no good my saying that I asked Sybil Foster to marry me. Not,’ he said wagging his finger at Alleyn, ‘not because I’d got my sights set on her money but because I loved her. Which I did, and that,’ he added, staring at Sister Jackson, ‘is precisely where the trouble lies.’ His speech was now all over the place like an actor’s in a comic drunken scene. ‘You wouldn’t have minded if it had been like that. You wouldn’t have minded all that much if you believed I’d come back earlier and killed her for her money. You really are a bitch, aren’t you, Dotty? My God, you even threatened to take to her yourself. Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? Where’s the bloody waiter?’

  He got to his feet, lurched across the table and fetched up with the palms of his hands on the wall, the left supporting him and the right clamped down over the bell-push which could be heard distantly to operate. His face was within three inches of Alleyn’s. Sister Jackson shrank back in her chair.

  ‘Disgusting!’ she said.

  Alleyn detached Dr Schramm from the wall and replaced him in his chair. He then moved over to the door, anticipating the return of the waiter. When the man arrived Alleyn showed his credentials.

  ‘The gentleman’s had as much as is good for him,’ he said. ‘Let me handle it. There’s a side door, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said the waiter, looking dubious. ‘Sir,’ he added.

  ‘He’s going to order another scotch. Can you cook up a poor single to look like a double? Here – this’ll settle the lot and forget the change. Right?’

  ‘Well, thank you very much, sir,’ said the waiter, suddenly avid with curiosity and gratification, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Waiter!’ shouted Dr Schramm. ‘Same ’gain.’

  ‘There’s your cue,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘What’ll I say to him?’

  ‘ “Anon, anon, sir” would do.’

  ‘Would that be Shakespeare?’ hazarded the waiter.

  ‘It would, indeed.’

  ‘Waiter!’

  ‘“Anon, anon, sir,”’ said the waiter self-consciously. He collected the empty glasses and hurried away.

  ‘’Strordinary waiter,’ said Dr Schramm. ‘As I was saying. I insist on being informed for reasons that I shall make ’bundantly clear. What’s she said? ’Bout me?’

  ‘You didn’t feature in our conversation,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘That’s what you say.’

  Sister Jackson, with a groggy and terrified return to something like her habitual manner, said, ‘I wouldn’t demean myself.’ She turned on Alleyn. ‘You’re mad,’ she said, exactly as if there had been no break in their exchange. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was asleep.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report your visit, then?’ Alleyn said.

  ‘It didn’t matter.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. It would have established, if true, that she was alive at that time.’

  With one of those baffling returns to apparent sobriety by which drunken persons sometimes bewilder us, Dr Schramm said, ‘Do I understand, Sister, that you visited her in her room?’

  Sister Jackson ignored him. Alleyn said, ‘At about nine o’clock.’

  ‘And didn’t report it? Why? Why?’ he appealed to Alleyn.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because she was afraid. Perhaps because –’

  Sister Jackson gave a strangulated cry. ‘No! No, for God’s sake! He’ll get it all wrong. He’ll jump to conclusions. It wasn’t like that. She was asleep. Natural sleep. There was nothing the matter with her.’

  The waiter came back with a single glass, half full.

  ‘Take that away,’ Schramm ordered. ‘I’ve got to have a clear head. Bring some ice. Bring me a lot of ice.’

  The waiter looked at Alleyn, who nodded. He went out.

  ‘I’m going,’ said Sister Jackson.

  ‘You’ll stay where you are unless you want a clip over the ear.’

  ‘And you,’ said Alleyn, ‘will stay where you are unless you want to be run in. Behave yourself.’

  Schramm stared at him for a moment. He said something that sounded like, ‘Look who’s talking,’ and took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast pocket, laid it on the table and began to fold it diagonally. The waiter reappeared with a jug full of ice.

  ‘I really ought to mention this to the manager, sir,’ he murmured. ‘If he gets noisy again, I’ll have to.’

  ‘I’ll answer for you. Tell the manager it’s an urgent police matter. Give him my card. Here you are.’

  ‘It – it wouldn’t be about that business over at Greengages, would it?’

  ‘Yes, it would. Give me the ice and vanish, there’s a good chap.’

  Alleyn put the jug on the table. Schramm, with shaking hands, began to lay ice on his folded handkerchief.

  ‘Sister,’ he said impatiently. ‘Make a pack, if you please.’

  To Alleyn’s utter astonishment she did so in a very professional manner. Schramm loosened his tie and opened his shirt. It was as if they both responded like Pavlovian dogs to some behaviouristic prompting. He rested his forehead on the table and she placed the pack of ice on the back of his neck. He gasped. A trickle of water ran down his jawline. ‘Keep it up,’ he ordered and shivered.

  Alleyn, watching this performance, thought how unpredictable the behaviour of drunken persons could be. Sister Jackson had been in the condition so inaccurately known as ‘nicely, thank you’. Basil Schramm had been in an adv
anced stage of intoxication but able to assess his own condition and after a fashion deal with it. And there they were, both of them, behaving like automata and, he felt sure, frightened out of what wits they still, however precariously, commanded.

  She continued to operate the ice packs. A pool of water enlarged itself on the table and began to drip to the carpet.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Schramm said presently. Sister Jackson squeezed his handkerchief into the jug. Alleyn offered his own and Schramm mopped himself up with it. He fastened his shirt and reknotted his tie. As if by common consent he and Sister Jackson sat down simultaneously, facing each other across the table with Alleyn between them on the banquette – like a referee, he thought. This effect was enhanced when he took out his notebook. They paid not the smallest attention to him. They glared at each other. He with distaste and she with hatred. He produced a comb and used it.

  ‘Now, then,’ he said. ‘What’s the story? You went to her room at nine. You say she was asleep. And you –’ he jabbed a finger at Alleyn – ‘say she was dead. Right?’

  ‘I don’t say so positively. I suggested it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For several reasons. If Mrs Foster was sleeping, peacefully and naturally, it’s difficult to see why Sister Jackson did not report her visit.’

  ‘If there’d been anything wrong, I would have,’ she said.

  Schramm said, ‘Did you think it was suicide?’

  ‘She was asleep.’

  ‘Did you see the tablets – spilled on the table?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Did you think she’d been drugged?’

  ‘She was asleep. Peacefully and naturally. Asleep.’

  ‘You’re lying, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Come on!’

  She began to gabble at Alleyn. ‘It was the shock you know. When he rang through and told me, I came and we did everything – such a shock – I couldn’t remember anything about how the room had looked before. Naturally not.’

  ‘It was no shock to you,’ Dr Schramm said profoundly. ‘You’re an old hand. An experienced nurse. And you didn’t regret her death, my dear. You gloated. You could hardly keep a straight face.’

  ‘Don’t listen to this,’ Sister Jackson gabbled at Alleyn, ‘it’s all lies. Monstrous lies. Don’t listen.’