Grave Mistake ra-30

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Was it on that visit,” Alleyn asked, “that she gave you her Will to put in her desk here at Quintern?”

  Bruce said aye, it was that and intimated that he hadn’t fancied the commission but that her manner had been so light-hearted he had not entertained any real misgivings.

  Alleyn said: “Did Mrs. Foster give you any idea of the terms of this Will?”

  For the first time he seemed to be discomforted. He bent his blue unaligned gaze on Alleyn and muttered: she had mentioned that he wasn’t forgotten.

  “I let on,” he said, “that I had no mind to pursue the matter.”

  He waited for a moment and then said Alleyn would consider maybe that this was an ungracious response but he’d not like it to be thought he looked for anything of the sort from her. He became incoherent, shuffled his boots and finally burst out: “To my way of thinking it isna just the decent thing.”

  “Did you say as much to Mrs. Foster?”

  “I did that.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She fetched a laugh and said I’d no call to be sae squeamish.”

  “Did she tell you how much she’d left you?”

  A pause.

  “She didna,” he said at last. “She fetched a bit laugh and asked me would I like to make a guess. I said I would not.”

  “And that was all?”

  “Ou aye. I delivered the thing into the hand of Mrs. Jim, having no mind to tak’ it further, and she told me she’d put it in the desk.”

  “Was the envelope sealed?”

  “No’ sealed in the literal sense but licked up. The mistress was na’ going to close it but I said I’d greatly prefer that she should.” He waited for a moment. “It’s no’ that I wouldna have relished the acquisition of a wee legacy,” he said. “Not a great outlandish wallop, mind, but a wee, decent amount. I’d like that. I would so. I’d like it fine and put it by, remembering the bonny giver. But I wouldna have it thowt or said I took any part in the proceedings.”

  “I understand that,” said Alleyn. “By the way, did Mrs. Foster ask you to get the form for her?”

  “The forrum? What forrum would that be, sir?”

  “The Will. From a stationer’s shop?”

  “Na, na,” he said, “I ken naething o’ that.”

  “And, while we’re on the subject, did she ask you to bring things in for her? When you visited her?”

  It appeared that he had from time to time fetched things from Quintern to Greengages. She would make a list and he would give it to Mrs. Jim. “Clamjampherie,” mostly, he thought, things from her dressing-table. Sometimes, he believed, garments. Mrs. Jim would put them in a small case so that he wasn’t embarrassed by impedimenta unbecoming to a man. Mrs. Foster would repack the case with things to be laundered. Alleyn gathered that the strictest decorum was observed. If he was present at these exercises he would withdraw to the window. He was at some pains to make this clear, arranging his mouth in a prim expression as he did so.

  A picture emerged from these recollections of an odd, a rather cosy, relationship, enjoyable, one would think, for both parties. Plans had been laid, pontifications exchanged. There had been, probably, exclamatory speculation as to what the world was coming to, consultations over nurserymen’s catalogues, strolls round the rose-garden and conservatory. Bruce sustained an air of rather stuffy condescension in letting fall an occasional reference to these observances and still he gave, as Mrs. Jim in her own fashion had given, an impression of listening for somebody or something.

  Behind him in the side wall was a ramshackle closed door leading, evidently, into the main stables. Alleyn saw that it had gaps between the planks and had dragged its course through loose soil on what was left of the floor.

  He made as if to go and then looking at Bruce’s preparations asked if this was in fact to be the proposed mushroom bed. He said it was.

  “It was the last request she made,” he said. “And I prefer to carry it out.” He expanded a little on the techniques of mushroom culture and then said, not too pointedly, if that was all he could do for Alleyn he’d better get on with it and reached for his long-handled shovel.

  “There was one other thing,” Alleyn said. “I almost forgot. You did actually go over to Greengages on the day of her death, didn’t you?”

  “I did so. But I never saw her,” he said and described how he had waited in the hall with his lilies and how Prunella—“the wee lassie,” he predictably called her — had come down and told him her mother was very tired and not seeing anybody that evening. He had left the lilies at the desk and the receptionist lady had said they would be attended to. So he had returned home by bus.

  “With Mr. Claude Carter?” asked Alleyn.

  Bruce became very still. His hands tightened on the shovel. He stared hard at Alleya, made as if to speak and changed his mind. Alleyn waited.

  “I wasna aware, just,” Bruce said at last, “that you had spoken to that gentleman.”

  “Nor have I. Miss Preston mentioned that he arrived with you at Greengages.”

  He thought that over. “He arrived. That is so,” said Bruce, “but he did not depart with me.” He raised his voice. “I wish it to be clearly understood,” he said. “I have no perrsonal relationship with that gentleman.” And then very quietly and with an air of deep resentment: “He attached himself to me. He wurrumed the information out of me as to her whereabouts. It was an indecent performance and one that I cannot condone.”

  He turned his head fractionally toward the closed door. “And that is the total sum of what I have to say in the matter,” he almost shouted.

  “You’ve been very helpful. I don’t think I need pester you any more: thank you for co-operating.”

  “There’s no call for thanks: I’m a law-abiding man,” Bruce said, “and I canna thole mysteries. Guid day to you, sir.”

  “This is a lovely old building,” Alleyn said, “I’m interested in Georgian domestic architecture. Do you mind if I have a look round?”

  Without waiting for an answer he passed Bruce and the closed door, dragged it open and came face-to-face with Claude Carter.

  “Oh, hullo,” said Claude. “I thought I heard voices.”

  Chapter 4: Routine

  i

  The room was empty and smelt of rats with perhaps an undertone of long-vanished fodder. There was a tumbledown fireplace in one corner and in another a litter of objects that looked as if they had lain there for a century: empty tins, a sack that had rotted, letting out a trickle of cement, a bricklayer’s trowel, rusted and handleless, a heap of empty manure bags. The only window was shuttered. Claude was a dim figure.

  He said: “I was looking for Bruce. The gardener. I’m afraid I don’t know—?”

  The manner was almost convincing, almost easy, almost that of a son of the house. Alleyn thought the voice was probably pitched a little above its normal level but it sounded quite natural. For somebody who had been caught red-eared in the act of eavesdropping, Claude displayed considerable aplomb.

  Alleyn shut the door behind him. Bruce Gardener, already plying his long-handled shovel, didn’t look up.

  “And I was hoping to see you,” said Alleyn. “Mr. Carter, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. You have the advantage of me.”

  “Superintendent Alleyn.”

  After a considerable pause, Claude said: “Oh. What can I do for you, Superintendent?”

  As soon as Alleyn told him he seemed to relax. He answered all the questions readily: yes, he had spoken to Miss Preston and Prue Foster but had not been allowed to visit his stepmother. He had gone for a stroll in the grounds, had missed the return bus and had walked into the village and picked up a later one there.

  “A completely wasted afternoon,” he complained. “And I must say I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the reception I got. Particularly in the light of what happened. After all, she was my stepmother.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”
/>   “When? I don’t know when. Three — four years ago.”

  “Before you went to Australia?”

  He shot a sidelong look at Alleyn. “That’s right,” he said and after a pause: “You seem to be very well informed of my movements, Superintendent.”

  “I know you returned as a member of the ship’s complement in the Poseidon.”

  After a much longer pause, Claude said, “Oh, yes?”

  “Shall we move outside and get a little more light and air on the subject?” Alleyn suggested.

  Claude opened a door that gave directly on the yard. As they walked into the sunshine a clock in the stable turret told eleven very sweetly. The open front of the lean-to faced the yard. Bruce, shovelling vigorously, was in full view, an exemplar of ostentatious nonintervention. Claude stared resentfully at his stern and walked to the far end of the yard. Alleyn followed him.

  “How long,” he asked cheerfully, “had you been in that dark and rather smelly apartment?”

  “How long? I don’t know. No time at all really. Why?”

  “I don’t want to waste my breath and your time repeating myself, if you’ve already heard about the Will. And I think you must have heard it because, as I came up, the adjoining door in there was dragged shut.”

  Claude gave a rather shrill titter. “You are quick, aren’t you?” he said. He lowered his voice. “As I said,” he confided, “I was looking for that gardener-man in there. As a matter of fact I thought he might be in the other room and then when you came in and began talking it was jolly awkward. I didn’t want to intrude so I–I mean I — you know — it’s difficult to explain—”

  “You’re making a brave shot at it, though, aren’t you? Your sense of delicacy prompted you to remove into the next room, shut that same openwork door and remain close by it throughout our conversation. Is that it?”

  “Not at all. You haven’t understood.”

  “You’d seen us arrive in a police car, perhaps, and you left the house in a hurry for the rose-garden and thence proceeded round the left wing to the stables?”

  “I don’t know,” said Claude with a strange air of frightened effrontery, “why you’re taking this line with me, Superintendent, but I must say I resent it.”

  “Yes, I thought you might be a bit put out by our appearance. Because of an irregularity in your departure from the Poseidon.”

  Claude began feverishly to maintain that there had been some mistake and the police had had to climb down and he was thinking of lodging a complaint only it didn’t seem worth while.

  Alleyn let him talk himself to a standstill and then said his visit had nothing to do with any of this and that he only wanted to be told if Claude did in fact know of a recent Will made by Mrs. Foster shortly before her death.

  An elaborate shuffling process set in, hampered, it seemed, by the proximity of the ever-industrious Bruce. By means of furtive little nods and becks Claude indicated the desirability of a remove. Alleyn disregarded these hints and continued on a loudish, cheerful note.

  “It’s a perfectly simple question,” he said. “Nothing private about it. Have you, in fact, known of such a Will?”

  Claude made slight jabs with his forefinger, in the direction of Bruce’s rear elevation.

  “As it happens, yes,” he mouthed.

  “You have? Do you mind telling me how it came to your knowledge?”

  “It’s — I — it just so happened—”

  “What did?”

  “I mean to say—”

  “Havers!” Bruce suddenly roared out. He became upright and faced them. “What ails you, man?” he demanded. “Can you no’ give a straight answer when you’re speired a straight question? Oot wi’ it, for pity’s sake. Tell him and ha‘ done. There’s nothing wrong wi’ the facts o’ the matter.”

  “Yes, well, all right, all right,” said the wretched Claude and added with a faint show of grandeur: “And you may as well keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  Bruce spat on his hands and returned to his shovelling.

  “Well, Mr. Carter?” Alleyn asked.

  By painful degrees it emerged that Claude had happened to be present when Bruce came into the house with the Will and had happened to see him hand it over to Mrs. Jim and had happened to notice what it was on account of the word “Will” being written in large letters on the envelope.

  “And had happened,” Bruce said without turning round but with a thwack of his shovel on the heap of earth he had raised, “to inquire with unco perrrsistence as to the cirrrcumstances.”

  “Look here, Gardener, I’ve had about as much of you as I can take,” said Claude with a woeful show of spirit.

  “You can tak’ me or leave me, Mr. Carter, and my preference would be for the latter procedure.”

  “Do you know the terms of the Will?” Alleyn cut in.

  “No, I don’t. I’m not interested. Whatever they are they don’t affect me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “My father provided for me. With a trust fund or whatever it’s called. Syb couldn’t touch that and she’s not bloody likely to have added to it,” said Claude with a little spurt of venom.

  Upon this note Alleyn left them and returned deviously, by way of a brick-walled vegetable garden, to Fox. He noticed two newly made asparagus beds and a multitude of enormous cabbages and wondered where on earth they all went and who consumed them. Fox, patient as ever, awaited him in the car.

  “Nothing to report,” Fox said. “I took a walk round but no signs of anyone.”

  “The gardener’s growing mushrooms in the stables and the stepson’s growing butterflies in the stomach,” said Alleyn and described the scene.

  “Miss Preston,” he said, “finds Bruce’s Scots a bit hard to take.”

  “Phoney?”

  “She didn’t say that. More, ‘laid on with a trowel.’ She might have said with a long-handled shovel if she’d seen him this morning. But — I don’t know. I’m no expert on dialects, Scots or otherwise, but it seemed to me he uses it more in the manner of someone who has lived with the genuine article long enough to acquire and display it inconsistently and inaccurately. His last job was in Scotland. He may think it adds to his charm or pawkiness or whatever.”

  “What about the stepson?”

  “Oh, quite awful, poor devil. Capable of anything if he had the guts to carry it through.”

  “We move on?”

  “We do. Hark forrard, hard forrard away to Greengages and the point marked X if there is one. Shall I drive and you follow the map?”

  “Fair enough, if you say so, Mr. Alleyn. What do I look for?”

  “Turn right after Maidstone and follow the road to the village of Greendale. Hence ‘Greengages,’ no doubt”

  “Colicky sort of name for a hospital.”

  “It’s not a hospital.”

  “Colicky sort of a name for whatever it is.”

  “There’s no suggestion that the lady in question died of that, at least.”

  “Seeing I’ve only just come in could we re-cap on the way? What’ve we got for info?”

  “We’ve got the lady who is dead. She was in affluent circumstances, stinking rich, in fact, and probably in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease but unaware of it, and we’ve got the medical incumbent of an expensive establishment that is neither hospital nor nursing home but a hotel that caters for well-to-do invalids, whose patient the lady was, and who did not spot the disease. We’ve got a local doctor called Field-Innis and a police pathologist who did. We’ve got the lady’s daughter who on the afternoon of her mother’s death announced her engagement to a rich young man who did not meet with the lady’s approval. We’ve got the rich young man’s millionaire papa who coveted the lady’s house, failed to buy it but will now live in it when his son marries the daughter.”

  “Hold on,” said Fox, after a pause. “O.K. I’m with you.”

  “We’ve got an elderly Scottish gardener, possible pseudoish, to whom the l
ady has left twenty-five thousand deflated quid in a recent Will. The rest of her fortune is divided between her daughter if she marries a peer called Swingletree and the medical incumbent who didn’t diagnose Parkinson’s disease. If the daughter doesn’t marry Swingletree the incument gets the lot.”

  “That would be Dr. Schramm?”

  “Certainly. The rest of the cast is made up of the lady’s stepson by her first marriage who is the archetype of all remittance-men and has a police record. Finally we have a nice woman of considerable ability called Verity Preston.”

  “That’s the lot?”

  “Give and take a trained nurse and a splendid lady called Mrs. Jim who obliges in Upper Quintern, that’s the lot.”

  “What’s the score where we come in? Exactly, I mean?”

  “The circumstances are the score really, Br’er Fox. The Will and the mise-en-scène. The inquest was really adjourned because everybody says the lady was such an unlikely subject for suicide and had no motive. An extended autopsy seemed to be advisable. Sir James Curtis performed it. The undelicious results of Dr. Schramm’s stomach pump had been preserved and Sir James confirms that they disclosed a quantity of the barbiturate found in the remaining tablets on the bedside table and in the throat and at the back of the tongue. The assumption had been that she stuffed down enough of the things to become so far doped as to prevent her swallowing the last lot she put in her mouth.”

  “Plausible?”

  “Dr. Schramm thought so. Sir James won’t swallow it but says she would have — if you’ll excuse a joke in bad taste, Br’er Fox. He points out that there’s a delay of anything up to twenty minutes before the barbiturate in question, which is soluble in alcohol, starts to work and it’s hard to imagine her waiting until she was too far under to swallow before putting the final lot in her mouth.”

  “So what do we wonder about?”

  “Whether somebody else put them there. By the way, Sir James looked for traces of cyanide.”

  “Why?” Mr. Fox asked economically.

  “There’d been a smell of almonds in the room and in the contents of the stomach but it turned out that she used sweet almond oil in one of those glass-slipper things they put over lamp bulbs and that she’d wolfed quantities of marzipan petits-fours from La Marquise de Sevigné in Paris. The half-empty box was on her bedside table along with the vanity box and other litter.”