by Ngaio Marsh
“Money for jam,” said Nigel to himself, and waited another two minutes, and then returned to the path following down into the thicket.
He had not gone very far before he came to the source of the blue smoke. A little fire, such as gardeners build from underbrush and damp leaves, was smouldering in a clearing. Nigel examined it closely. It looked as though someone had been raking it over, and it now smelt less pleasantly. He pushed the top layer of smoking rubbish on one side, and there, sure enough, was a solid wedge of crisp note-paper, already half burnt away.
“Crikey!” ejaculated Nigel, snatching a page from the burning and examining it excitedly. It was covered in ridiculous pen and ink marks that he felt every justification in calling Russian. He drew in his breath, and was instantly choked with smoke. Gasping and spluttering and burning his fingers, he dragged out the rest of the paper and danced on it. His eyes streamed, and he coughed insufferably.
“Are you keen on war dances, Mr. Bathgate?” said a voice beyond the smoke.
“Hell’s boots!” panted Nigel, and sat down on the trophy.
Inspector Alleyn bore down on him through the smoke. “Two minds with but a single thought,” he said politely. “I was just going to try a little rescue work myself.”
Nigel was speechless, but he got off the papers.
Alleyn picked them up and looked them over.
“These are old acquaintances,” he said, “but I think we’ll keep them this time. Thank you very much, Mr. Bathgate.”
Chapter X
Black Fur
To the members of the house-party at Frantock the days before the inquest seemed to have avoided the dimensions of time and slipped into eternity.
Alleyn refused Sir Hubert’s offer of a room, and was believed to be staying at the Frantock Arms in the village. He appeared at different times and in different places, always with an air of faint preoccupation, unvaryingly courteous, completely remote. Rosamund Grant was reported by Doctor Young to be suffering from severe nervous shock, and still kept to her room. Mrs. Wilde was querulous and inclined to be hysterical. Arthur Wilde spent most of his time answering her questions and listening to her complaints, and running useless errands for her. Tokareff drove them all demented with his vehement expostulations, and seriously annoyed Angela by suddenly developing a tendency to make comic opera love to her. “He is mad, of course,” she said to Nigel on Wednesday morning in the library. “Imagine it! A flirtation with a charge of murder hanging over all our heads.”
“All Russians seem a bit dotty to me,” rejoined Nigel. “Look at Vassily. Do you think now that he did it?”
“I’m certain he didn’t. The servants say he was in and out of the pantry the whole time, and Roberts, the other man, says he was speaking to Vassily in there two minutes before the gong sounded.”
“Then why did he do a bolt?”
“Nerves, I should think,” said Angela thoughtfully. “Uncle Herbert says all Russians of Vassily’s age and class are terrified of the police.”
“The others all think he did it,” Nigel ventured.
“Yes, and Marjorie says so about forty times a day. Oh, dear, how short-tempered I’m getting!”
“You’re a — a wonder,” finished Nigel nervously.
“Don’t you start!” said Miss North cryptically. She was silent for a moment, and then burst out suddenly: “Oh, poor Charles! poor old Charles — it’s so horrible to be thankful they’ve taken him away. We were always so sorry when he went,” and, for the first time since the tragedy, she burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.
Nigel ached to put his arms round her. He stood above her muttering. “Angela dear. Please, Angela—”
She held out a hand to him gropingly, and he took it and rubbed it between both of his. A voice sounded in the hall outside, and Angela sprang to her feet and ran out of the room.
Following her, Nigel bumped into Alleyn in the hall.
“Wait a second,” said the detective. “I wanted to see you. Come into the library.”
Nigel hesitated, and then followed him.
“What’s the matter with Miss North?” asked Alleyn.
“What’s the matter with all of us?” rejoined Nigel. “It’s enough to drive anyone dippy.”
“It’s a pity about you!” commented Alleyn tartly. “How would you like to be a detective, the lousiest job in creation?”
“I wouldn’t mind changing with you,” said Nigel.
“Wouldn’t you, then! Well, you can have a stab at it since you’re so eager. Every sleuth ought to have a tame half-wit, to make him feel clever. I offer you the job, Mr. Bathgate — no salary, but a percentage of the honour and glory.”
“You’re very good,” said Nigel, who never knew quite where he was with Alleyn. “Am I to conclude I have been degummed from the list of suspects?”
“Oh, yes,” groaned the detective wearily. “You’re cleared. Ethel the Intelligent spoke to you half a second before the lights went out.”
“Who is Ethel the Intelligent?”
“The second housemaid.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Nigel, “I remember; she was actually there when the lights went out. I’d quite forgotten her.”
“Well, you are a bright lad. A pretty girl establishes your alibi for you, and you forget all about her.”
“I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Wilde are safe enough, too?” said Nigel.
“See Florence the Farsighted. You do, do you? Shall we take a stroll to the gate?”
“If you like. A gentleman in a mackintosh will be there pretending to botanize in the iron railings.”
“One of my myrmidons. Never mind, a walk will do you good.”
Nigel consented, and they went out into the thin sunshine.
“Mr. Bathgate,” said Alleyn quietly, “every single member of this household is concealing something from me. You are yourself, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say. Look here, I’m going to be frank with you. This murder was committed from inside the house. Roberts had the front door locked at six-thirty, a regular trick of his apparently, and anyway it had rained before six o’clock, was fine until eight, and after that there was a hard frost. Your crime books will have told you that under those conditions the gardens of the great are as an open book to us sleuths. His murderer was inside the house.”
“What about Vassily? Why hasn’t he been caught?”
“He has been caught.”
“What!”
“Certainly, and released again. We managed to keep your brothers of the penny press quiet over that.”
“You say he didn’t do it.”
“Do I?”
“Well, don’t you?”
“I say you are all, each one of you, hiding something from me.” Nigel was silent.
“It’s a horrible affair,” continued Alleyn after a pause, “but believe me you can do no good, no manner of good, by keeping me in the dark. Look here, Mr. Bathgate, you are a poor actor. I saw you watching Mrs. Wilde and Miss Grant. There’s something there that hasn’t come out and I fancy you know what it is.”
“I — oh Lord, Alleyn, it’s all so beastly. Anyway, if I do know anything, it doesn’t amount to a row of beans.”
“Forgive me, but you don’t know in the least little bit what it may amount to. Had you met Mrs. Wilde before you came here?”
“No.”
“Miss Grant?”
“Once — at my cousin’s house.”
“Had your cousin ever talked to you about either of them?”
“Apart from casually mentioning them, never.”
“How far had this flirtation with Mrs. Wilde gone?”
“I don’t know — I mean — how do you know—?”
“He held her in his arms on Saturday night.”
Nigel felt and looked extremely uncomfortable.
“If he had her in his room,” said Alleyn brutally.
“It was not in his room,” said Ni
gel, and could have bitten his tongue out.
“Ah! Then where was it? Come now, I’ve got under your guard. Better tell me.”
“How do you know he held her in his arms?”
“ ‘You have just told me, said the great detective quietly,’ ” quoted Alleyn. “I know because his dinner jacket was significantly stained with her liquid powder. Presumably it was clean when he arrived, and he had not changed on the night he was killed. Therefore, it was on Saturday night. Am I right?”
“I suppose so.”
“It must have been before dinner. When did you handle the Manlicher in the gunroom?”
“Oh, hell!” said Nigel. “I’ll come clean.”
He gave as sparse an account as he could of the duologue between Rankin and Mrs. Wilde. By the time he had finished they had crossed the little footbridge in the wood and were in sight of the gates.
“You tell me,” said Alleyn, “that after you had heard Rankin and Mrs. Wilde leave the room and had entered it yourself someone turned out the lights. Might that not have been Rankin himself returning to do so?”
“No,” said Nigel. “I heard him shut the door and go away. No, it was someone who had sat at the far end of the drawing-room, beyond the ‘elbow’ of the room, you know, and, like me, had overheard.”
“Have you any impression of them?”
“How could I?”
“It is possible. Their sex, for instance.”
“I — please don’t attach any significance to this — I rather felt, why I don’t know, that it was a woman.”
“And here we are at the gates. Mr. Alfred Bliss, he of the mackintosh, is, as you see, greatly interested in a distant view of an A.A. telephone box. We won’t disturb him. My dear lad, let us embark on a little ramble.”
“Good Lord, what do you mean — a ramble?”
“Have you never read Eyes and No Eyes? I am going to improve your keen young journalistic brain. Come on.”
He turned off the avenue into the woods with Nigel at his heels. They followed the merest hint of a track that wound its way through dense undergrowth.
“I discovered this track,” said Alleyn, “only yesterday. Acting on information received, as we say in the courts, I have come here to do a little genuine sleuthing. Someone came this way between four-thirty and six on Monday evening. I hope to learn something of their identity. Keep your eyes skinned, will you?”
Nigel tried to think of things that he ought to be looking for, and could arrive at nothing better than footprints and broken twigs. Alleyn walked very slowly, looking round him and down at the ground between each step. The ground was springy and quite dry. The wood smelt delicious, primal, and earthy. The track doubled and twisted. Alleyn turned his head this way and that, paused, squatted like a native, appeared to examine the ground between his feet, straightened up, and went slowly onwards.
Nigel stared at the intricate series of patterns made by green striking across green, and forgot to look for anything else. He wondered who had gone down this path before them, stirring the leaves, whose head had been darkly silhouetted against the patterns of green, whose presence had left the faint imprint which Alleyn so assiduously hunted.
Suddenly they were walking towards a high iron fence, and he realized that they had arrived at the edge of the wood where Frantock ran with the main road.
“Finis!” said Alleyn. “End of the trail. Seen anything?”
“Afraid not.”
“Not much to see. Now look here. Look at these iron standards in the fence. Fairly well discoloured and stained, aren’t they? Some sort of meagre little vegetable has managed to make a living on them. Easily rubbed off, though. Can you get your hand between them?”
“Not I.”
“Nor I neither. Someone managed to do it on Monday. Look there — a small hand.” He leant his face down to the rails and looked at them closely. Then cautiously he ran his fingers down the stem, holding his handkerchief to catch the minute fragments that fell into it. These in turn he scrutinized.
“Black fur,” he said. “I think black fur.”
“Holmes, my dear fellow, this is supernatural,” murmured Nigel.
“Holmes wasn’t such a boob when all’s said,” answered Alleyn. “Personally, I think those yarns are jolly clever.”
“As you say. Were you expecting to find black fur on the railings, may I ask?”
“I hadn’t hoped to — it’s a help, of course.”
“For God’s sake, Alleyn,” exploded Nigel, “tell me a bit more or don’t tell me anything. I’m sorry, but I am rather interested.”
“My dear fellow, I’m sorry, too. I assure you I’m not being mysterious out of vanity or officiousness. If I told you everything, every bit of evidence, every investigation I think proper to make, you would suspect, as I have suspected, every member of your house-party in turn. I will tell you this much. On Monday, late in the afternoon, a person whose identity I am anxious to establish came here to this fence and, unseen by the waterproof at the gates, threw a letter, stamped and addressed, out on to the road there. It was picked up by a passing cyclist, who took it into the village post office.”
“How did you nose all this out?”
“What an unattractive phrase that is! I didn’t nose at all. The cyclist, instead of putting the letter in the box, handed it over the counter with a brief explanation of where he had found it. The young woman in the basket cuffs who guards His Majesty’s mail in little Frantock showed startling intelligence. I had, of course, asked her to stop all letters going out of Frantock and, recognizing the locality, she thought there might be something up and held it back. It wasn’t in a Frantock envelope either.”
“You have got it, then?”
“Yes, I will show it to you when we get back.”
“Is it illuminating?”
“Quite the reverse at present. But indirectly I hope it will be. Come on.”
They made their way out of the wood and tramped in silence back to Frantock. Nigel made but one remark. “This time to-morrow,” he said, “the inquest will be over.”
“Presumably — or adjourned.”
“Thank heaven for that, anyhow; we can at least go home.”
They walked up the steps to the front door. “Come into the study for a moment,” invited Alleyn.
The study had been set apart as a sort of private office for him. He unlocked the door, and Nigel followed him in.
“Light the fire, will you,” said Alleyn; “we shall be some time.”
Nigel lit the fire and his pipe, and settled himself down in an arm-chair.
“Here is the letter,” said Alleyn. From his breast pocket he produced a white envelope, and handed it to Nigel.
“I may tell you,” he said, “that there were no finger-prints on it; of course, I have by this time got photos of all your finger-prints.”
“Oh, quite,” said Nigel rather blankly.
The envelope bore a typed address:
Miss Sandilands,
P.O. Shamperworth St.
Dulwich.
The enclosure also was typed; on a piece of the green note-paper used by Sir Hubert and distributed throughout all the bedrooms. Nigel read it aloud.
“Please destroy the parcel in Tunbridge B. at once and do not tell a soul.”
There was no signature.
“The envelope,” said Alleyn, “tells us nothing — it came from an odd packet of white stationery in the library writing desk.”
“And the type?”
“Corresponds with the machine in the library which also yields no finger-prints except the housemaid’s and a few very blurred and ancient ones left by Sir Hubert. This letter was typed by an inexperienced person— there are several mistakes, as you see.”
“Have you traced the female — Miss Sandilands?”
‘A C.I.D. man went to the post office in Shamperworth Street yesterday. A clerk there remembered a woman calling in the morning to ask if there were any letters for Miss Sandil
ands. There were none, and she has not been in since then.”
“She may go again.”
“Certainly, but I don’t want to wait.”
“What do you propose to do? Run up and down Tunbridge looking for a parcel?”
“I see you are in merry pin. No, I propose to work from this end, and with the aid of my bits of black fur it ought not to be difficult.”
“And the fur?”
Alleyn produced from his pocket his inevitable and rather insignificant Woolworth note-book.
“Meet my brain,” he said; “without it I’m done.” He turned the leaves rapidly, muttering to himself.
“Personnel. Details of characters. Hobbies. Here we are — clothes. Clothes, Bathgate, Grant. Grant. Wearing at time of incident — no. Chest of drawers, pink silk — no. In wardrobe, that’s more likely. Red leather coat, brown musquash, green and brown tweed coat and skirt. Red cap. Um — nothing there.”
“You have been very industrious,” said Nigel.
“My memory’s so bad,” Alleyn apologized.
“Don’t be affected,” said Nigel.
“Shut up. I hate your bedroom slippers and I know you use corn plaster. Handesley. Housemaids. North. Let’s see.”
“Surely you are wasting your time making lists of Angela’s underclothes,” said Nigel hotly.
“Don’t be cross with me — I get no kick out of them. There’s nothing there. Rankin. Tokareff — has he got a fur coat? Yes, he has, like an impresario’s; still his gloves are size eight. Try again. Wilde. Arthur, Mr. and Mrs.” He stopped muttering, and a curiously blank look suddenly masked his face.
“Well?” asked Nigel.
Alleyn passed him the little note-book. In it, written in an incredibly fine upright hand, Nigel read:
“Wilde. Mrs. Marjorie. Age about thirty-two. Height five foot four approx.” Here followed a detailed description of Marjorie Wilde, in which even the size of her gloves were noted. Then:
“Wardrobe. In hanging cupboard. Harris tweed coat and skirt, Shepherd’s plaid overcoat, Burberry raincoat, blue. Black astrakhan overcoat, black fur collar and cuffs.”