by Ngaio Marsh
Alleyn said: “I’m so sorry to bother you, sir.”
“No matter,” said Mr Harris, “no matter.” His voice had the authentic parsonic ring.
“There’s nothing more maddening than to be interrupted when you’ve settled down to a good afternoon’s gardening,” Alleyn added.
“Twitch!” said Mr Harris violently.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Twitch! It’s the bane of my existence. It springs up like veritable dragon’s teeth and I assure you it’s a great deal more difficult to extract. Three wheelbarrow loads since last Thursday forenoon.”
“Walter,” said his wife, “these gentlemen want to speak to you.”
“We won’t keep you more than a few minutes, sir,” said Alleyn.
“Yes, dear. Where shall I take them?”
“Into your den,” said Mrs Harris, as if her husband was a carnivorous ravager.
“Certainly, certainly. Come along. Come along,” said Mr Harris in the patient voice of vicarage hospitality. “Come along.”
He took them through a french window into a little faded red room where old dim photographs of young men in cassocks hung beside old dim photographs of famous cathedrals. The shelves were full of dusty volumes of sermons and the works of Mrs Humphry Ward, Charles Kingsley, Charlotte M. Yonge, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. Between a commentary and an Imitation of Christ was a copy of The Martyrdom of Man, truculently solid. For Mr Harris had once been an earnest undergraduate and had faced things. It was a shabby, friendly old room.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Mr Harris.
He hurriedly gathered up from the chairs, parish magazines, Church Times and seed catalogues. With his arms full of these papers, he wandered vaguely about his den.
Alleyn and Fox sat down on the horsehair chairs.
“That’s right,” said Mr Harris. He incontinently dropped all his papers on the floor and sat down.
“Now, what can I have the pleasure—? Um?”
“First, sir, I must tell you we are police officers.”
“Dear me,” said Mr Harris, “not young Hockley again, I hope. Are you sure it’s not my brother you want? The rector of Barbicon-Bramley? He’s been very interested in the case and he told me that if the poor lad was not charged he could find a post for him with some kind souls who are prepared to overlook—”
“No, sir,” interrupted Alleyn gently, “it’s you we want to see.”
“But I’m retired,” said Mr Harris opening his eyes very wide. “I’m quite retired, you know.”
“I am going to ask you to go back to the days when you were rector of Falconbridge.”
“Of Falconbridge!” Mr Harris beamed at them. “Now this is really the greatest pleasure. You come from dear old Falconbridge! Let me see, I don’t recollect either of your faces though, of course, I have been retired now for fifteen years and I’m afraid my memory is not what it used to be. Now tell me your names.”
“Mr Harris, we don’t come from Falconbridge, we are from Scotland Yard. My name is Alleyn and this is Inspector Fox.”
“How do you do? I hope nothing has gone wrong in the dear old village,” ejaculated Mr Harris anxiously. He suddenly remembered his panama hat and snatched it from his head revealing a shining pink pate with an aura of astonished white fluff.
“No, no,” said Alleyn hastily. “At least, not recently.” He darted a venomous glance at Fox who was grinning broadly. “We are investigating a case, sir, and are anxious to trace a letter which we believe to have been lost in Falconbridge between seventeen and eighteen years ago.”
“A letter! Dear me, I’m afraid if it was addressed to me there is very little hope of recovery. Only this morning I found I had mislaid a most important letter from a very dear old friend, Canon Worsley of All Saints, Chipton. It’s a most extraordinary thing where that letter has gone. I distinctly remember that I put it in the pocket of this jacket and—”
He thrust his hands in the side pockets of his blazer and pulled out a collection of string, seed-packets, pencils and pieces of paper.
“Why, there it is!” he exclaimed, staring at an envelope that had fallen to the floor. “There, after all, it is! I am ASTOUNDED.”
“Mr Harris,” said Alleyn loudly. Mr Harris instantly threw his head back and looked at Alleyn through his glasses.
“Eighteen years ago,” continued Alleyn very rapidly, “there was a motor accident on the bridge outside the rectory at Falconbridge. The driver, Captain O’Brien, was severely injured and was taken into the rectory. Do you remember?”
Mr Harris had opened his mouth in astonishment but he said nothing. He merely continued to gape at Alleyn.
“You were very kind to him,” Alleyn went on; “you kept him at the rectory and sent for help. He was taken to the hospital and died there a few hours later.”
He paused, but Mr Harris’s expression had not changed. There was something intensely embarrassing in his posture and his unexpected silence.
“Do you remember?” asked Alleyn.
Without closing his mouth Mr Harris slowly shook his head from side to side.
“But it was such a serious accident. His young wife motored down from London. She went to the hospital but he died without regaining consciousness.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mr Harris in his deepest voice. “Poor fell-oh!”
“Can’t you remember, now?”
Mr Harris made no reply but got to his feet, went to the french window, and called into the garden.
“Edith! Edith!”
“Hoo-ee?” replied a wavering voice close at hand.
“Can you spare-ah a moment?”
“Coming.”
He turned away from the window and beamed at them.
“Now we shan’t be long,” he announced.
But when Alleyn saw Mrs Harris amiably blunder up the garden path he scarcely shared in this optimistic view. They all stood up. She accepted Alleyn’s chair and drew her gardening gloves from her old hands. Mr Harris contemplated her as if she was some rare achievement of his own.
“Edith, my dear,” he said loudly, “would you tell these gentlemen about an accident?”
“Which accident?”
“That, I’m afraid, I don’t know, dear. Indeed we are depending upon you to inform us.”
“I don’t understand you, Walter.”
“I don’t understand myself very well, I must admit, Edith. I find it all very puzzling.”
“What?” said his wife. Alleyn now realized that she was slightly deaf.
“Puzzling,” shouted Mr Harris.
“My husband’s memory is not very good,” explained Mrs Harris smiling gently at Alleyn and Fox. “He was greatly shaken by his cycling accident some months ago. I suppose you have called about the insurance.”
Raising his voice Alleyn embarked once more on his recital. This time he was not interrupted, but as neither of the Harrises gave any sign of understanding, it was impossible to tell whether or not he spoke in vain. By the time he had finished, Mr Harris had adopted his former disconcerting glare. Mrs Harris, however, turned to her husband and said:
“You remember the blood on the carpet, Walter? At dear old Falconbridge?”
“Dear me, yes. Now that’s what I was trying to recollect. Of course it was. Poor fellow. Poor fell-oh!”
“Then you do remember?” Alleyn cried.
“Indeed I do,” said Mrs Harris reproachfully. “The poor young wife wrote us such a charming letter, thanking us for the little we had been able to do for him. I would have liked to answer it but unfortunately my husband lost it.”
“Edith, I have discovered dear old Worsley’s letter. It was in my pocket. Fancy!”
“Fancy, dear, yes.”
“Talking of letters,” said Alleyn to Mrs Harris. “Can you by any chance remember anything about a letter that was lost on the occasion of Captain O’Brien’s accident? I think you were asked if it had been found in the vicarage.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t catch—”
Alleyn repeated it.
“To be sure I do,” said Mrs Harris. “Perfectly.”
“You were unable to give any information about this letter?”
“On the contrary.”
“What!”
“On the contrary,” repeated Mrs Harris firmly. “I sent it after him.”
“After who?” roared Fox so loudly that even Mrs Harris gave a little jump. “I’m sure I beg pardon, sir,” said Fox hastily, “I don’t know what came over me.” He opened his notebook in some confusion.
“Mrs Harris,” said Alleyn, “will you please tell us everything you can remember about this letter?”
“Yes, please do, Edith,” said her husband unexpectedly. “She’ll find it for you,” he added in an aside. “Don’t distress yourselves.”
“Well,” began Mrs Harris. “It’s a long time ago now and I’m afraid I’m rather hazy. It was after they had taken him away, I fancy, that we found it under the couch in the study. That was when we noticed the stain on the carpet you remember, Walter. At first, of course, I thought it was one of my husband’s letters — it was not in an envelope. But when I glanced at it I realized at once that it was not, as it began ‘Dear Daddy’ and we have no children.”
“ ‘Dear Daddy,’ ” repeated Alleyn.
“I decided afterwards that it was perhaps ‘Dear Paddy’ but as my husband’s name is Walter Bernard it didn’t signify. ‘Why,’ I said, or something of that sort. ‘Why, it must have dropped out of that poor fellow’s coat when the ambulance man examined him.’ And — of course, I remember it now as clearly as if it was yesterday — and I said to little Violet: ‘Pop on your bicycle and take it to the hospital as quickly as you can, dear, because they may be looking for it.’ So little Violet—”
“Who was she, please?” asked Alleyn rather breathlessly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who was little Violet?” shouted Alleyn.
“My small niece. My husband’s brother’s third daughter. She was spending her holidays with us. She is grown up now and has a delightful post in London with a Lady Carrados.”
“Thank you,” said Alleyn. “Please go on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Alleyn Plots a Dénouement
But there was not much more to tell. Apparently Violet Harris had bicycled off with Paddy O’Brien’s letter and had returned to say she had given it to the gentleman who had brought the lady in the motor-car. The gentleman had been sitting in the motor-car outside the hospital. As far as Mrs Harris could state, and she and her husband went into a mazed avuncular family history to prove their point, little Violet had been fifteen years old at the time. Alleyn wrote out her statement, shorn of its interminable parentheses, and she signed it. Throughout the interview neither she nor her husband gave the faintest sign of any form of curiosity. Apparently it did not strike either of them as singular that the interest in a letter lost eighteen years ago should suddenly be excited to such a pitch that CID officers thought it necessary to seek for signed statements in the heart of Buckinghamshire.
They insisted on taking Alleyn and Fox round their garden. Alleyn hadn’t the heart to refuse and besides he had a liking for gardens. Mrs Harris gave them each a bunch of lavender and rosemary, which flowers, she said, were less conspicuous for gentlemen to carry than the gayer blossoms of summer. The sight of Fox solemnly grasping a posy in his enormous fist and examining a border of transplanted pansies was almost too much for his superior officer. It was two o’clock when the tour of the garden was completed.
“You must come in whenever you are passing,” said Mrs Harris, blinking cordially at Alleyn, “and I shall remember what you say about your mother’s herb garden.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Mr Harris. “Whenever you are passing. Of course. Anybody from dear old Falconbridge is doubly welcome.”
They stood side by side at the gate and waved, rather in the manner of children, as Alleyn turned the car and drove away down Oakapple Lane.
“Well!” ejaculated Fox. “Well!”
“Not another word,” said Alleyn, “until we get to that pub outside Barbicon-Bramley. Do you realize we’ve had no lunch? I refuse to utter another word until I’ve drunk a pint of bitter.”
“And some bread and cheese and pickles,” said Fox. “Pickles with plenty of onions in them.”
“Lord! Lord! Fox, what a choice! Now I come to think of it, though, it sounds damn good. ‘Bread and cheese and pickles,’ Fox, it’s what we need. New white bread, mouse-trap cheese, home-made pickles and bitter.”
“That’s the idea, Mr Alleyn. You’re a great gourmet,” said Fox who had taught himself French, “and don’t think I haven’t enjoyed some of those dinners you’ve given me when everything seemed to sort of slide into something else. I have. But when you’re famished and in the English countryside you can’t beat bread and cheese and pickles.”
The pub provided them with these delicacies. They took about a quarter of an hour over their meal and then set out again.
“Now then,” said Alleyn.
“The thing that beats me,” said Fox, wiping his short moustache with his handkerchief, “is little Violet. We knew she was a niece of this old gentleman’s but, by gum, we didn’t know she was staying there at the time, now, did we?”
“No, Brer Fox, we didn’t.”
“I suppose she may not know it herself,” continued Fox. “I mean to say, Miss Violet Harris may not realize that Lady Carrados was this Mrs O’Brien whose husband was brought into her uncle’s vicarage when she was a kid of fifteen.”
“Quite possible. I hope she remembers the bicycle ride. We’ll have to jog her memory, I dare say.”
“Yes. Now I reckon, on what we’ve heard, that it was Carrados who took that letter from little Violet. Carrados, sitting in the car outside the hospital, while the poor chap who’d got the letter from Australia was dying inside. And then, later on, when there’s all the fuss about a missing letter, what does he do?”
Alleyn knew this question was purely rhetorical and didn’t interrupt.
“He tells the widow,” said Fox; “he tells the widow that he’s made every inquiry and there isn’t a letter to be found.”
“Yes,” agreed Alleyn. “No doubt he tells her that.”
“Right. Now, why does he do that? I reckon it’s because Sir Herbert Carrados is what you might call a bit of a moral coward with a kind of mental twist. What these psycho-johnnies call a repression or some such thing. As I see it he didn’t want to admit to having seen the letter because he’d actually read it. This Australian bloke knew Captain O’Brien had married a loony and wrote to tell him he was now a widower. If what Lady Carrados told you was correct and he’d fancied her for a long time, that letter must have shaken him up a bit. Now perhaps he says to himself, being a proud, snobbish sort of chap and yet having set his heart on her, that he’ll let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Cut the whole thing dead? Yes. That’s sound enough. It’s in character.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Fox in a gratified voice. “But all the same he doesn’t destroy the letter. Or does he?”
“That,” said Alleyn, “is exactly what we’ve got to find out.”
“Well, sir, we’ve got our suspicions, haven’t we?”
“Yes. Before this evening, Fox, I want to make certainties of our suspicions.”
“By gum, Mr Alleyn, if we can do that we’ll have made a tidy job of this case. Don’t count your chickens, as well I know, but if we can get an arrest within two days after the crime, in a complicated case like this, we’re not doing too badly, now are we?”
“I suppose not, you old warrior, I suppose not.” Alleyn gave a short sigh. “I wish—” he said. ”Oh God, Fox, I do wish he hadn’t died. No good maundering. I also wish very much that we’d been able to find some trace of something, just something in the taxi. But not a thing.”
“The funeral’s at three o’clo
ck tomorrow, isn’t it?” asked Fox.
“Yes. Lady Mildred has asked me to be one of the bearers. It’s pretty strange under the circumstances, but I’d like to do it. And I’d like to think we had our killer locked up before then. When we get back, Fox, we’ll have to arrange for these people to come round to the Yard. We’ll want Miss Harris, Bridget O’Brien, her mother, Carrados himself, Davidson, Withers, Dimitri and Mrs Halcut-Hackett. I’ll see Lady Carrados alone first. I want to soften the shock a little if it’s possible.”
“When shall we get them to come, sir?”
“It’ll be four o’clock by the time we’re back to the Yard. I think we’ll make it this evening. Say nine o’clock. It’s going to be devilish tricky. I’m counting on Dimitri losing his head. It’s a cool head, blast it, and he may keep his wits about him. Talking of wits, there’s the gallant Captain to be reckoned with. Unless I’m a Dutchman, Donald Potter’s given me enough in his statement to lock the gallant Captain up for a nice long stretch. That’s some comfort.”
They were silent until they got as far as the Cromwell Road and then Fox said: “I suppose we are right, Mr Alleyn. I know that seems a pretty funny thing to say at this stage, but it’s a worrying business and that’s a fact. It’s the trickiest line of evidence I’ve ever come across. We seem to be hanging our case on the sort of things you usually treat with a good deal of suspicion.”
“Don’t I know it. No, Fox, I think it’ll hold firm. It depends on what these people say in their second interviews tonight, of course. If we can establish the facts about the two cigarette-cases, the secret drawer, the telephone conversation and the stolen letter, we’re right. Good Lord, that sounds like a list of titles from the old Sherlock Holmes stories. I think part of the charm of those excellent tales lies in Watson’s casual but enthralling references to cases we never hear of again.”