Tied Up In Tinsel

by Ngaio Marsh

  The silence was long enough to make him wonder if there was to be no response. At last Cuthbert said: ‘It’s understood, sir, I suppose, by all of us.’

  ‘But not necessarily believed? Is that it?’

  This time the silence was unbroken. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t blame you. It’s a natural reaction. I can only hope you will come to accept the proposition.’

  He turned to the boy who stood apart looking guarded. ‘You’re a local chap, aren’t you?’ Alleyn said.

  He extracted with some difficulty that the boy, whose name was Thomas Appleby, was a farmer’s son engaged for the festive season. He had never spoken to Moult, had with the other servants come into the drawing-room for the Christmas tree, had had no idea who the Druid was, had received his present and had returned to his kitchen and outhouse duties as soon as the ceremony ended and had nothing whatever to offer in the way of information. Alleyn said he could go off to bed, an invitation he seemed to accept with some reluctance.

  When he had gone Alleyn told the men what he had learnt about their movements at the time of the Christmas tree: that they too had seen the Druid, failed to recognize him, received their gifts and returned to their duties. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that you, cook, with the extra women helpers, completed the arrangements for the children’s supper and that you saw Miss Tottenham return to the drawing-room but didn’t see anything of Moult. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Kittiwee, setting his dimples. ‘And I was concerned with my own business, if I may put it that way, sir, and couldn’t be expected to be anything else.’

  ‘Quite so. And you,’ Alleyn said to Vincent, ‘did exactly what it had been arranged you should do in respect of the tree. At half past seven you stationed yourself round the corner of the west wing. Right?’

  Vincent nodded.

  ‘Tell me, while you were there did anyone throw open a window in the west frontage and look out? Do you remember?’

  ‘’Course I remember,’ said Vincent who had an indeterminate accent and a bronchial voice. ‘He did. To see if I was there like he said he would. At seven-thirty.’

  ‘The colonel? Or Moult?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, would I? I took him for the colonel because I expected him to be the colonel, see?’

  ‘Was he wearing his beard?’

  ‘I never took no notice. He was black-like against the light.’

  ‘Did he wave or signal in any way?’

  ‘I waved according, giving him the office to come down. According. Now they was all in the drawing-room. And he waved back, see, and I went round to the front. According.’

  ‘Good. Your next move was to tow the sledge round the corner and across the courtyard, where you were met by Moult whom you took to be Colonel Forrester. Where exactly did you meet him?’

  Behind Nigel’s effigy, it appeared. There, Vincent said, he relieved the Druid of his umbrella and handed over the sledge and there he waited until the Druid returned.

  ‘So you missed the fun?’ Alleyn remarked.

  ‘I wouldn’t of bothered anyway,’ said Vincent.

  ‘You waited for him to come out and then you took over the sledge and he made off through the porch and the door into the cloakroom? Right.’

  ‘That’s what I told Mr Bill-Tasman and that’s what I tell everyone else who keeps on about it, don’I?’

  ‘Did you give him back the umbrella?’

  ‘No. He scarpered off smartly.’

  ‘Where were you exactly when you saw him go into the cloakroom?’

  ‘Where was I? Where would I be? Out in the bloody snow, that’s where.’

  ‘Behind the effigy?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Vincent flaring up. ‘You trying to be funny ? You trying to make a monkey outa me ? You said no funny business, that’s what you said.’

  ‘I’m not making the slightest attempt to be funny. I’m simply trying to get the picture.’

  ‘How could I see him if I was be’ind the bloody statcher?’

  Cuthbert, in his great voice, said: ‘Choose your words,’ and Kittiwee said: ‘Language!’

  ‘You could have looked round the corner, I imagine, or even peered over the top,’ Alleyn suggested.

  Vincent, in a tremulous sulk, finally revealed that he saw Moult go through the cloakroom door as he, Vincent, was about to conceal the sledge round the corner of the west wing.

  Alleyn asked when the Christmas tree was demolished and Cuthbert said this was effected by Vincent, Nigel and the boy while the party was at dinner. The children had finished their supper and had been let loose, with their presents, in the library. The ornaments were stripped from the tree, packed into their boxes and removed. The tree itself, on its movable base, was wheeled out through the french windows, and the curtains were drawn to conceal it.

  ‘And there it remained, I suppose. Until when?’

  Another long silence.

  ‘Well,’ Alleyn said cheerfully, ‘it’s not there now. It’s round the corner outside the study window. Who put it there? Did you, Vincent?’

  He hung fire but finally conceded that he had moved the tree. ‘When?’ Alleyn asked, remembering Troy’s midnight observation from her window. Vincent couldn’t say exactly when. It emerged that after the dining-room had been cleared, the mammoth washing-up disposed of and the rest of the exhaustive chores completed, the staff, with the outside help, had sat down to a late supper. Vincent, upon whose forehead a thread of minute sweat-beads had come into being, said that he’d been ordered by Mr Bill-Tasman to clear away the tree because, Alleyn gathered, the sight of it, denuded and disreputable, would be too anti-climactic. In all the fuss Vincent had forgotten to do so until he was going to bed.

  He had put on his oilskins, fetched a wheelbarrow from the woodshed, collected the tree and dumped it in the wreckage of the old conservatory.

  ‘Why there?’ Alleyn asked.

  With an air strangely compounded of truculence and something that might be fear Vincent asked at large where he was expected to take it in the dead of night.

  It would be shifted anyway, he said, when the bulldozers got round to making a clean sweep of all that glass and muck, which they were due to do any day now, for filling in their excavations.

  Alleyn said: ‘I’m sure you know, all of you, don’t you, why you were asked to search the area where the tree lies? It was because it was thought that Moult might have wandered there and collapsed or even, for some reason, leant too far out of an upstairs window and fallen.’

  ‘What an idea!’ said Kittiwee and tittered nervously.

  Vincent said that half a dozen bloody Moults might have fallen in that lot and he wouldn’t have seen them. He had tipped the tree out and slung his hook.

  ‘Tell me,’ Alleyn said, looking round the circle, ‘you must have seen quite a lot of Moult off and on? All of you?’

  If they had been so many oysters and he had poked them, they couldn’t have shut up more smartly. They looked anywhere but at him and they said nothing.

  ‘Come –’ he began and was interrupted by Nigel, who suddenly proclaimed in a high nasal twang: ‘He was a sinner before the Lord.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Mervyn savagely.

  ‘He was given to all manner of mockery and abomination.’

  ‘Oh, do stop him, somebody!’ Kittiwee implored. He struck out with his legs and the cats, indignant, sprang to the ground. Kittiwee made faces at Alleyn to indicate that Nigel was not in full possession of his wits.

  ‘In what way,’ Alleyn asked Nigel, ‘was Moult an abomination?’

  ‘He was filled with malice,’ muttered Nigel who appeared to be at a slight loss for anathemas. ‘To the brim,’ he added.

  ‘Against whom?’

  ‘Against the righteous,’ Nigel said quickly.

  ‘Meaning you,’ said Mervyn. ‘Belt up, will you?’

  Cuthbert said: ‘That’s quite enough, Nigel. You’re exciting yourself and you know what it leads to.’ He turn
ed to Alleyn. ‘I’m sure, sir,’ he boomed, ‘you can see how it is, here. We’ve been over-stimulated and we’re a little above ourselves.’

  ‘We’re all abominations before the Lord,’ Nigel suddenly announced. ‘And I’m the worst of the lot.’ His lips trembled. ‘Sin lies bitter in my belly,’ he said.

  ‘Stuff it!’ Mervyn shouted and then, with profound disgust. ‘O Gawd, now he’s going to cry!’

  And cry poor Nigel did, noisily, into a handkerchief held to the lower half of his face like a yashmak. Over this he gazed dolorously at Alleyn through wet, white eyelashes.

  ‘Now, look here, Nigel,’ Alleyn said. ‘Listen to me. No,’ he added quickly anticipating a further demonstration. ‘Listen. You say you’re a sinner. All right. So you may be. Do you want to cleanse your bosom or your belly or whatever it is, of its burden? Well, come on, man. Do you?’

  Without removing the handkerchief, Nigel nodded repeatedly.

  ‘Very well, then. Instead of all this nonsense, how about helping us save another sinner who, for all you know, may be out there dying of exposure?’

  Nigel blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ Alleyn pressed. ‘How about it?’

  Nigel seemed to take counsel with himself. He gazed mournfully at Alleyn for some moments and then said: ‘It’s a judgment.’

  ‘On Moult? Why?’

  There was no marked – there was scarcely any discernible – movement among the other four men: it was more as if they jointly held their breath and barely saved themselves from leaning forward.

  ‘He was a wine-bibber,’ Nigel shouted. ‘Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging.’

  And now there was a distinct reaction: an easing of tension, a shifting of feet, a leaning back in chairs, a clearing of throats.

  ‘Is that the case?’ Alleyn asked at large. ‘What do you say? Cuthbert? Do you agree?’

  ‘Allowing for the extravagant style of expression, sir,’ Cuthbert conceded, ‘I would say it is the case.’

  ‘He tippled?’

  ‘He did, sir, yes. Heavily.’

  ‘Have you any reason to think, any of you, that he had taken more than was good for him yesterday afternoon?’

  Suddenly they were loquacious. Moult, they said, had undoubtedly been tippling all day. Mervyn volunteered that he had seen Moult sneak out of the dining-room and had subsequently discovered that the whisky decanter on the sideboard which he had only lately filled had been half emptied. Kittiwee had an unclear story about the total disappearance of a bottle of cooking brandy from the pantry. Vincent unpersuasively recollected that when Moult met him, in the Druidical array, he had smelt very strongly of alcohol. Cuthbert adopted a patronizing and Olympic attitude. He said that while this abrupt spate of witness to Mr Moult’s inebriety was substantially correct he thought it only proper to add that while Mr Moult habitually took rather more than was good for him, yesterday’s excesses were abnormal.

  ‘Do you think,’ Alleyn said, ‘that Colonel and Mrs Forrester know of this failing?’

  ‘Oh, really, sir,’ Cuthbert said with a confidential deference that clearly derived from his head-waiter days, ‘you know how it is. If I may say so, the colonel is a very unworldly gentleman.’

  ‘And Mrs Forrester?’

  Cuthbert spread his hands and smirked. ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘The ladies!’ which seemed to suggest, if it suggested anything, that the ladies were quicker at spotting secret drinkers than the gentlemen.

  ‘While I think of it,’ Alleyn said. ‘Colonel Forrester has had another attack. Something to do with his heart, I understand. It seems he really brought it upon himself trying to open their bedroom window. He didn’t,’ Alleyn said to Nigel who had left off crying, ‘notice the wedge and tried to force it. He’s better but it was a severe attack.’

  Nigel’s lips formed the word ‘wedge’. He looked utterly bewildered.

  ‘Didn’t you wedge it, then? To stop it rattling in the storm? When you shut up their room for the night?’

  He shook his head. ‘I never!’ he said. ‘I shut it, but I never used no wedge.’ He seemed in two minds whether to cut up rough again or go into an aimless stare. ‘You seen me,’ he muttered, ‘when you come in.’

  ‘So I did. You were wet. The window came down with a crash, didn’t it, as I walked in.’

  Nigel stared at him and nodded.

  ‘Why?’ Alleyn asked.

  Again, a feeling of general consternation.

  Nigel said: ‘To see.’

  ‘To see what?’

  ‘They don’t tell me anything!’ Nigel burst out. ‘I seen them talking, I heard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Things,’ he said and became sulky and uncommunicative.

  ‘Odd!’ Alleyn said without emphasis. ‘I suppose none of you knows who wedged the colonel’s window? No? Ah, well, it’ll no doubt emerge in due course. There’s only one other thing I’d like to ask you. All of you. And before I ask it I want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. I do most earnestly beg you not to think I’m setting a trap for you, not to believe I’m influenced in the smallest degree by your past histories. All right. Now, I expect you all know about the booby-trap that was set for my wife. Did you tell them about it, Cox?’

  After a considerable pause, Mervyn said: ‘I mentioned it, sir,’ and then burst out: ‘Madam knows I didn’t do it. Madam believes me. I wouldn’t of done it, not to her, I wouldn’t. What would I do it to her for? You ask madam, sir. She’ll tell you.’

  ‘All right, all right, nobody’s said you did it. But if you didn’t, and I accept for the sake of argument that you didn’t, who did? Any ideas?’

  Before Mervyn could reply, Nigel came roaring back into action.

  ‘With malice aforethought, he done it,’ Nigel shouted.

  ‘Who?’

  The other four men all began to talk at once: their object very clearly being to shut Nigel up. They raised quite a clamour between them. Alleyn stopped it by standing up: if he had yelled at the top of his voice it would have been less effective.

  ‘Who,’ he asked Nigel, ‘did it with malice aforethought?’

  ‘You leave me alone. Come not between the avenger and his wrath, or it’ll be the worse for all of us.’

  ‘Nobody’s interrupting you,’ Alleyn said and indeed it was true. They were turned off like taps.

  ‘Come on, Nigel,’ Alleyn said. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Him. Him that the wrath of the Almighty has removed from the midst.’

  ‘Moult?’

  ‘That’s perfectly correct,’ said Nigel with one of his plummet-like descents into the commonplace.

  From this point, the interview took on a different complexion. Nigel withdrew into a sort of omniscient gloom, the others into a mulish determination to dissociate themselves from any opinion upon any matter that Alleyn might raise. Cuthbert, emerging as a reluctant spokesman, said there was proof – and he emphasized the word – that Moult had set the booby-trap and upon Nigel uttering in a loud voice the word ‘Spite’, merely repeated his former pantomime to indicate Nigel’s total irresponsibility. Alleyn asked if Moult was, in fact, a spiteful or vindictive character and they all behaved as if they didn’t know what he was talking about. He decided to take a risk. He said that no doubt they all knew about the anonymous and insulting messages that had been left in the Forresters’ and Cressida Tottenham’s rooms and the lacing of Mr Smith’s barley water with soap.

  They would have liked, he thought, to deny all knowledge of these matters but he pressed them and gradually collected that Cressida had talked within hearing of Blore, that Mr Smith had roundly tackled Nigel and that Moult himself had ‘mentioned’ the incidents.

  ‘When?’ Alleyn asked.

  Nobody seemed exactly to remember when.

  ‘Where?’

  They were uncertain where.

  ‘Was it here, in the staff common-room, yesterday morning?’

  This, he saw
, had alarmed and bewildered them. Nigel said ‘How –?’ and stopped short. They glared at him.

  ‘How did I know, were you going to say?’ said Alleyn. ‘It seems the conversation was rather noisy. It was overheard. And Moult was seen leaving by that door over there. You’d accused him, hadn’t you, of playing these tricks with the deliberate intention of getting you into trouble?’

  ‘We’ve no call to answer that,’ Vincent said. ‘That’s what you say. It’s not what we say. We don’t say nothing.’

  ‘Come,’ Alleyn said, ‘you all disliked him, didn’t you? It was perfectly apparent. You disliked him and his general attitude gave you some cause to do so.’

  ‘Be that as it may, sir,’ said Cuthbert, ‘it is no reason for supposing the staff had anything to do with –’ His enormous voice trembled. He made a violent dismissive gesture ‘– with whatever he’s done or wherever he’s gone.’

  ‘I agree. It doesn’t follow.’

  ‘We went our way, sir, and Mr Moult went his.’

  ‘Quite. Where to? What was Mr Moult’s way and where did it take him? That’s the question, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you’ll excuse the liberty,’ Kittiwee said, ‘that’s your business, sir. Not ours.’

  ‘Of course it’s my business,’ Alleyn cheerfully rejoined. ‘Otherwise, you know, I shouldn’t waste half an hour butting my head against a concrete wall. To sum up. None of you knows anything about or is prepared to discuss, the matter of the insulting messages, booby-trap, soapy barley water or wedged window. Nor is anyone prepared to enlarge upon the row that took place in this room yesterday morning. Apart from Nigel’s view that Moult was steeped in sin and, more specifically, alcohol (which you all support), you’ve nothing to offer. You’ve no theories about his disappearance and you don’t appear to care whether he’s alive or dead. Correct?’

  Silence.

  ‘Right. Not only is this all my eye and Betty Martin but it’s extremely damaging to what I’d hoped would be a sensible relationship between us. And on top of all that it’s so bloody silly that I wonder you’ve got the faces to go on with it. Goodnight to you.’