Death of a Peer ra-10

by Ngaio Marsh

  So Alleyn went slow, finished his examination of the flat and the servants, had his general interview with the family and his separate interviews with Mike and Patch. Patch, under pressure and with evidence of the livliest reluctance, had informed him that while father and uncle talked together in the drawing-room she and her brothers and sister, together with Roberta, had lain on the dining-room floor. It had been a kind of game, she said. “Game be damned,” Alleyn had said after Patch left them. “Look at that corner of the room. It’s out of the regular beat and the carpet retains its pristine pile. That’s where they lay. There’s a smudge of brown boot polish off the toes of one of those blasted twin’s shoes. Come over here.” He knelt by the sealed door. “Yes, and there’s a bit of red close to the crack. I can hear a murmuring of voices. Have a listen, Br’er Fox.”

  Fox lay on the carpet and advanced his brick-coloured face towards the crack.

  “By gum,” he said, “They’re talking French. It’s the twin that doesn’t stammer. Can you beat that? Taisez-vous, donc. That’s French.”

  “So it is,” said Alleyn. “Leave them to it, just now, Br’er Fox. Yes, there’s no doubt about it they had their ears to that sealed-up door there. Listening. Have you seen the bum, Fox?”

  “Yes, Mr. Alleyn. It’s a matter of forty-one pounds. Lane & Eagle, house decorators of Beauchamp Place, put him in. Carpet, and a couple of arm-chairs. His name is Grimball, not Grumball. They wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Giggle is really called Higgins or something. They’re like that — funny.”

  “If they continue funny through this case,” Alleyn rejoined, “it’ll be a tour de force. Let them crack jokes at the coroner and see how he likes it.”

  “Grimball says they’re a very nice family.”

  “So they may be. Damn’ good company and as clever as a cage full of monkeys. Theyll diddle us if we don’t look out, Br’er Fox. The Lady Friede’s as hard as they come. They’ve taken a line and they’re going to stick to it. Look at those blasted twins. The noble lords Stephen and Colin, doing a Syracuse and Ephesus comedy turn. How the devil are we to find out which of them went down in the lift?”

  “The widow?” Fox suggested.

  “Don’t you believe it. If they weren’t very certain of themselves they wouldn’t have taken the risk. I’ll bet you their aunt will say she didn’t know which twin it was. Equally I’ll bet you their mother knows, and has taken her cue from her lily-white boys. Of course she knows. Can a mother’s tender care muddle up the kids she bare, bad luck to them?”

  “I never heard anything like it,” said Fox warmly. “Trying to work off this twin stuff on the investigating officers. It’s unheard of. You can’t have that sort of nonsense.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  “It’s disgraceful. Come to think of it, it’s a kind of contempt.”

  “It’s no good getting cross, Foxkin. Let us but once lose our tempers with the Lampreys and we’re done. Yes? Come in. Open the door, Gibson.”

  The red-headed constable, who had tapped on the door, was admitted by his mate.

  “Why have you left your post?” snapped Fox.

  “What is it, Martin?” asked Alleyn.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought I’d better come. The Dowager Lady Wutherwood’s in the passage and wants to see you. So I thought I’d better come.”

  “And as soon as you turned your back,” said Fox angrily, “they got together and agreed on the tale they’d tell.”

  “They’ve already done that, sir.”

  “What!”

  “While you were there?” asked Alleyn.

  “Yes, sir. They spoke in French, sir. I’ve got it down in shorthand. They speak quite good French, with the exception of Lady Patricia. I thought that before proceeding, you’d like to see what they said.”

  “Here!” said Fox. “Do you understand French?”

  “Yes, Mr. Fox. I lived at Concarneau until I was fifteen. I didn’t know, Mr. Alleyn, what the ruling was about listening-in under those circumstances. I don’t remember anything in the regulations as to whether it could be put in as evidence. Seeing they didn’t know.”

  “We’ll look it up,” said Alleyn drily.

  “Yes, sir. Will you see the Dowager Lady Wutherwood, sir?”

  “Give me your notes,” said Alleyn, “and three minutes to look at them. Then bring her along. Wait a second. Did they say anything of importance?”

  “They argued a good deal, sir. Principally about the two younger gentlemen. The twins. His lordship and Lady Friede wanted them to come clean. Her ladyship seemed to be frightened and rather in favour of nobody knowing which twin went down in the lift. Lord Henry was non-committal. They spoke principally about the motive against themselves, sir. I gather that Lord Charles — Lord Wutherwood—”

  “Stick to Lord Charles,” said Fox irritably. “The whole thing’s lousy with lords and ladies. I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn.”

  “Not a bit, Brer Fox. Well, Martin?”

  “It seems he’s in debt for about two thousand, sir. Pressing, I mean. He asked Lord Wutherwood to lend him two thousand and he refused.”

  “Yes, I see.” Alleyn had been looking at the notes. “Well done, Martin. Now go and tell Lady Wutherwood that I shall be very pleased and grateful and all the rest of it, if she’ll be good enough to come in here. Then return to your shorthand. What’s your impression of Lady Wutherwood?”

  “Well, sir, she looks very peculiar to me. Either she’s out of her mind, sir, or else she’d like everybody to think she was. That’s how she struck me, sir.”

  “Indeed? Well, off you go, Martin.”

  The red-headed constable went out and Fox stared at Alleyn. “We get some unexpected chaps in the force these days,” he said. “In your time, sir, you were a bit of a rarity. Now they go round splitting foreign tongues all over the place. Did you know he spoke French?”

  “I did, as it happened, Br’er Fox.”

  “I must get him to try some on me,” said Fox with his air of simplicity. “I don’t get on as fast as I’d like.”

  “You’re getting on very nicely. Here she comes. Or rather, I fancy, here they come. I think I hear the voices of the medical gents.”

  The door opened and the curious procession came in.

  II

  And now Alleyn faced the woman whom he had previously begun to think of as his principal witness. It was his practice to discourage in himself any imaginative speculation, but on seeing her he could not escape the feeling that with the belated appearance of Lady Wutherwood the case had darkened. She was, he thought, such a particularly odd-looking woman. She sat very still at the foot of the table and stared at him with remarkable fixedness. The presence of Dr. Kantripp, and of the nurse and the maid, lent an air of preposterous consequence to the scene. Lady Wutherwood might almost have been holding some sort of audience. There was no doubt that she was antagonistic, but she had asked to see Alleyn and he decided that he would wait for her to open the conversation; and so it fell out that Lady Wutherwood and Alleyn, for perhaps half a minute, contemplated each other in silence across the long table.

  At last she spoke. Her deep voice was unemphatic, her enunciation so level as to suggest that English was not her native tongue.

  “When,” asked Lady Wutherwood, “will my husband’s body be given to me? They have taken him away. He must return.”

  “If you wish it,” said Alleyn, “certainly.”

  “I do wish it. When?”

  “To-morrow night, perhaps?” Alleyn looked at Curtis who nodded. “To-morrow night, Lady Wutherwood.”

  “What are they going to do with him?”

  Curtis and Kantripp made deprecatory noises. The nurse put her hand on Lady Wutherwood’s shoulder. Tinkerton the maid, clucked thinly.

  “Under the circumstances,” said Alleyn, “there will be an examination.”

  “What will they do to him?”

  Dr. Kantr
ipp went to her and took her hand. “Now, now,” he said, “you must not distress yourself by thinking about these things.” He might have been a hundred miles away for all the notice she paid him. She did not withdraw her hand but he moved away, quickly and awkwardly.

  “Will they do dreadful things to him?” she asked.

  “The surgeon will examine the injury,” Alleyn said.

  She was silent for a moment and then, on the same level note, “Before he returns,” she said, “tell them to cover his face.”

  Curtis murmured something inaudible. Alleyn said: “That will be done.”

  “Tell them to cover it with something heavy and thick. Close down his eyes. The eyes of the dead can see where the eyes of the living are blind. That is established, else how could they find their way, as they sometimes do, into strange houses?”

  Mr. Fox wrote in his note-book; the nurse looked significantly towards Dr. Kantripp. Tinkerton, over her mistress’ shoulder, executed a little series of nods and grimaces and shakes of the head. Alleyn and Lady Wutherwood stared into each other’s faces.

  “That is all,” said Lady Wutherwood, “but for one thing. It must be understood that I will not be touched or persecuted or followed. I warn you that there is a great peril in wait for anybody who intercepts me. I have a friend who guards me well. A very powerful friend. That is all.”

  “Not quite,” said Alleyn. “Lady Wutherwood, if you had not asked for this interview I should have done so. You see, the circumstances of your husband’s death have obliged me to make very close inquiries.”

  Without changing her posture or the fixed blankness of her gaze, she said: “You had better be careful. You are in danger.”

  “I,” murmured Alleyn. “How should I be in danger?”

  “My husband died because he offended against one greater than himself. I have not been told by whose agency he died. But I know the force that killed him.”

  “What force is that?”

  The corners of the shifting mouth moved up. Small wrinkles appeared about her eyes. Her face became a mask of an unlovely Comedy. She did not answer Alleyn’s question.

  “I must tell you,” he said, “that if you know of anything that would explain even the smallest detail in the sequence of events that led to his death, you should let the police know what it is. On the other hand we cannot compel you to give information. You may think it advisable to send for your solicitor who, if he considers that you are likely to prejudice yourself by answering any question, will advise you not to do so.”

  “I know very well,” said Lady Wutherwood, “by what means I may be brought to betray myself into a confession of things I have not done and words I have never uttered. But I remember Marguerite Luondman of Gebweiler and Anna Ruffa of Douzy. As for a solicitor, I have no need or desire for such protection. I am well protected. I am in no danger.”

  “In that case,” said Alleyn equitably, “you will not object, perhaps, to answering one or two questions.”

  She did not reply. He waited for a moment and had time to notice the scandalized expression of Mr. Fox, and the alert and speculative glances of the two doctors.

  “Lady Wutherwood,” said Alleyn, “who took you down in the lift?”

  She answered at once: “It seemed to be one of his nephews.”

  “Seemed?”

  Lady Wutherwood laughed. “Yes,” she said, “seemed.”

  “I don’t understand that,” said Alleyn. “Lady Charles Lamprey asked for one of her sons to take you down in the lift, didn’t she?”

  Lady Wutherwood nodded.

  “And one of them came out of the flat and, in fact, entered the lift and took you down? You saw him come out? And you stood close beside him in the lift? It was one of the twins, wasn’t it?”

  “I thought so, then.”

  “You thought so, then,” Alleyn repeated and was silent for a moment. Lady Wutherwood laughed again and her laughter, Alleyn thought, was for all the world like the cackle of one of the witches in a traditional rendering of “Macbeth.” This idea startled him and he went back in his mind over the string of inconsequent statements to which she had treated them. He was visited by an extremely odd notion.

  “Lady Wutherwood,” he began, “do you think it is possible that somebody impersonated one of the twin brothers?”

  She gave him an extraordinary look and, with a movement that startled them all by its abruptness and shocking irrelevancy, wrapped her arms across her breast and hugged herself. Then with a sidelong glance, horridly knowing, she nodded again very slightly.

  “Was there any recognizable mark?” asked Alleyn.

  Her right hand crept up to her neck and round to the back of it. She moved her head slightly and, catching sight of the nurse, hurriedly withdrew her hand and laid one of her fingers across her lips. And through Alleyn’s thoughts ran the memory of three lines:

  You seem to understand me

  By each at once her choppy finger laying

  Upon her skinny lips.

  “Only,” thought Alleyn, “Lady Wutherwood’s finger is not choppy nor are her lips skinny. Damnation, what the devil is all this?” And aloud he said: “He stood with his back towards you in the lift?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you noticed the mark on the back of his neck?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Just there?” asked Alleyn pointing to the startled Fox.

  “Just there. It was a sign. Ssh! He does that sometimes.”

  “The Little Master?” asked Alleyn.

  “Ssh! Yes. Yes.”

  “Do you think it happened before you were there? The attack on your husband, I mean.”

  “He sat huddled in the corner, not speaking. I knew he was angry. He called for me in an angry voice. He had no right to treat me as he did. He should have been more careful. I warned him of his peril.”

  “Did you speak to him when you entered the lift?”

  “Why should I speak to him?” This was unanswerable. Alleyn pressed his questions, however, and gathered that Lady Wutherwood had scarcely glanced at her husband, who was sitting in the corner of the lift with his hat over his eyes. With an unexpected turn for mimicry she slumped down in her own chair and sunk her chin on her chest. “Like that,” she said, looking slyly at them from under her brows. “He sat like that. I thought he was asleep.” Alleyn asked her when she first noticed that something was amiss. She said that when the lift was half-way down she turned to rouse him. She spoke to him and finally, thinking he was asleep, put her hand on his shoulder. He fell forward. When she had reached this point in her narrative she began to speak with great rapidity. Her words clattered together and her voice became shrill. Dr. Kantripp gave the nurse a warning signal and they moved nearer to Lady Wutherwood.

  “And there he was,” she gabbled, “with a ring in his eye and a red ribbon on his face. He was yawning. His mouth was wide, wide open. To see him like that! Wasn’t it wonderful, Tinkerton? Tinkerton, when I saw him, I knew it was all true and I opened my mouth like Gabriel and I screamed and screamed—”

  “She’s off,” said Dr. Curtis gloomily, and rose to his feet. Lady Wutherwood’s voice soared in the indecent crescendo of hysteria. Fox began methodically to shut the windows. Dr. Kantripp issued crisp orders to Tinkerton, who showed signs of following the example of her mistress and was thrust out of the room by the nurse. The nurse suddenly became a dominant figure, bending in an authoritative manner over her patient. Alleyn went to the sideboard, dipped a handkerchief in a jug of water, and looked on with distaste while Dr. Kantripp slapped it across and across the screaming face. The screams were broken by gasps and the disgusting sound of gnashing teeth. Kantripp who had his fingers on her wrist said loudly: “You’ll have to bring me that jug of water, nurse, if you please.”

  Alleyn fetched the water. Curtis said: “Unfortunate for the carpet,” and pulled a grimace. The nurse said in a firm, brightly genteel voice: “Now, Lady Wutherwood, I’m afraid we must pour this
all over you. Isn’t that a shame?” Lady Wutherwood scarcely seemed to be aware of this impending disaster, yet her paroxysms began to abate and in a few minutes she was led away by Dr. Kantripp and the nurse.

  Iii

  “Open the window again, Br’er Fox, if you please,” said Alleyn. “Let’s get some air into the room. That was a singularly distasteful scene.”

  “I suppose you know what you were both talking about,” said Dr. Curtis, “but I’m damned if I did.”

  “What’s your opinion of her, Curtis? No sign of epilepsy, was there?”

  “None that I could see. Plain hysteria. That doesn’t say there’s nothing wrong mentally, of course.”

  “No. What about it? Think she’s ga-ga?”

  “Ah,” said Dr. Curtis, “you’re wondering if she’s the answer to the detective’s prayer for a nice homicidal lunatic.”

  “Well,” said Alleyn, “what about it? Is she?”

  Dr. Curtis pulled down his upper lip. “Well, my dear chap, you know how tricky it is. She seemed to speak very wildly, of course, although I must say you appeared to take an intelligent hand in the conversation.”

  “What was she getting at, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Fox. “All that stuff about having a powerful protector and it seemed to be one of the twins. You don’t seriously suggest anybody impersonated one of those young fellows?”

  “I don’t, Fox, but she does.”

  “Then she must be dotty. What was the big idea, anyway?”

  “It’s so damned preposterous that I hardly dare to think I’m on the right track. However, I’ll tell you what I imagine was the burden of her song.”

  Dr. Kantripp returned. “The nurse and the maid are getting her to bed,” he said. “The maid will come along as soon as she can.”