Death in a White Tie (19 page)

“If they have been murdered you can try to catch the man that killed them.”

“ ‘An eye for an eye.’ It doesn’t do them any good. It’s only savagery.”

“Let the murderer asphyxiate someone else if it’s going to suit his book,” said Alleyn. “Is that the idea?”

“If there was any real thing we could do—”

“How about Donald doing what his uncle wanted so much? Taking his medical? That is,” said Alleyn quickly, “unless he really has got a genuine ambition in another direction. Not by way of Captain Withers’s night clubs.”

“I’ve just said he might be a doctor, now, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, “you have. So we’re talking in circles.” His hand was on the door-knob.

“I should have thought,” said Bridget, “that as a detective you would have wanted to make me talk.”

Alleyn laughed outright.

“You little egoist,” he said, “I’ve listened to you for the last ten minutes and all you want to talk about is yourself and your young man. Quite right too, but not the policeman’s cup of tea. You take care of your mother who needs you rather badly just now, encourage your young man to renew his studies and, if you can, wean him from Withers. Good-bye, now, I’m off.”

When he had closed the nursery door behind him, Alleyn made for the stairs. If Fox was still closeted in the library with Carrados conversation must be getting a bit strained. He passed Lady Carrados’s room and heard a distant noise.

“It’s insufferable, my dear Evelyn, that—”

Alleyn grimaced and went on downstairs.

He found Fox alone in the library.

“Hullo, Brer Fox,” said Alleyn. “Lost the simple soldier-man?”

“Gone upstairs,” said Fox. “I can’t say I’m sorry. I had a job to keep him here at all after you went.”

“How did you manage it?”

“Asked him if he had any experience of police investigation. That did it. We went from there to how he helped the police catch a footman that stole somebody’s pearls in Tunbridge and how if he just hadn’t happened to notice the man watching the vase on the piano nobody would ever have thought of looking in the Duchess’s potpourri. Funny how vain some of these old gentlemen get, isn’t it?”

“Screamingly. As we seem to have this important room all to ourselves we’d better see if we can get hold of Miss Harris. You might go and ask—”

But before Fox got as far as the door it opened and Miss Harris herself walked in.

“Good afternoon,” she said crisply, “I believe you wished to see me. Lady Carrados’s secretary.”

“We were on the point of asking for you, Miss Harris,” said Alleyn. “Won’t you sit down? My name is Alleyn and this is Inspector Fox.”

“Good afternoon,” repeated Miss Harris and sat down.

She was neither plain nor beautiful, short nor tall, dark nor fair. It crossed his mind that she might have won a newspaper competition for the average woman, that she represented the dead norm of femininity. Her clothes were perfectly adequate and completely without character. She was steeped in nonentity. No wonder that few people had noticed her at Marsdon House. She might have gone everywhere, heard everything like a sort of upper middle-class Oberon at Theseus’s party. Unless, indeed, nonentity itself was conspicuous at Marsdon House last night.

He noticed that she was not in the least nervous. Her hands rested quietly in her lap. She had laid a pad and pencil on the arm of her chair exactly as if she was about to take notes at his dictation. Fox took his own notebook out and waited.

“May we have your name and address?” asked Alleyn.

“Certainly, Mr Alleyn,” said Miss Harris crisply. “Dorothea Violet Harris. Address — town or country?”

“Both, please.”

“Town: fifty-seven Ebury Mews, S.W. Country: The Rectory, Barbicon-Bramley, Bucks.” She glanced at Fox. “B-a-r-b-i—”

“Thank you, miss, I think I’ve got it,” said Fox.

“Now, Miss Harris,” Alleyn began, “I wonder if you can give me any help at all in this business.”

To his tense astonishment Miss Harris at once opened her pad on which he could see a column of shorthand hieroglyphics. She drew out from her bosom on a spring extension a pair of rimless pince-nez. She placed them on her nose and waited with composure for Alleyn’s next remark.

He said: “Have you some notes there, Miss Harris?”

“Yes, Mr Alleyn. I saw Miss O’Brien just now and she told me you would be requiring any information I could give about Lord Gospell’s movements last night and this morning. I thought it better to prepare what I have to say. So I just jotted down one or two little memos.”

“Admirable! Let’s have ’em.”

Miss Harris cleared her throat.

“At about twelve-thirty,” she began in an incisive monotone, “I met Lord Robert Gospell in the hall. I was speaking to Miss O’Brien. He asked me to dance with him later in the evening. I remained in the hall until a quarter to one. I happened to glance at my watch. I then went downstairs to top landing. Remained there. Period of time unknown but I went down to the ballroom landing before one-thirty. Lord Gospell — I mean Lord Robert Gospell — then asked me to dance.”

Miss Harris’s voice stopped for a moment. She moved her writing-pad on the arm of her chair.

“We danced,” she continued. “Three successive dances with repeats. Lord Robert introduced me to several of his friends and then he took me into the buffet on the street-level. We drank champagne. He then remembered that he had promised to dance with the Duchess of Dorminster —” Here Miss Harris appeared to lose her place for a moment. She repeated: “Had promised to dance with the Duchess of Dorminster,” and cleared her throat again. “He took me to the ballroom and asked me for the next Viennese waltz. I remained in the ballroom. Lord Robert danced with the Duchess and then with Miss Agatha Troy, the portrait painter, and then with two ladies whose names I do not know. Not at once, of course,” said Miss Harris in parenthesis. “That would be ridiculous. I still remained in the ballroom. The band played the ‘Blue Danube’. Lord Robert was standing in a group of his friends close to where I sat. He saw me. We danced the ‘Blue Danube’ together and revisited the buffet. I noticed the time. I had intended leaving much earlier and was surprised to find that it was nearly three o’clock. So I stayed till the end.”

She glanced up at Alleyn with the impersonal attentive air proper to her position. He felt so precisely that she was indeed his secretary that there was no need for him to repress a smile. But he did glance at Fox, who for the first time in Alleyn’s memory, looked really at a loss. His large hand hovered uncertainly over his own notebook. AHeyn realized that Fox did not know whether to take down Miss Harris’s shorthand in his own shorthand.

Alleyn said: “Thank you, Miss Harris. Anything else?”

Miss Harris turned a page.

“Details of conversation,” she began. “I have not made memos of
all
the remarks I have remembered. Many of them were merely light comments on suitable subjects. For instance, Lord Robert spoke of Lady Carrados and expressed regret that she seemed to be tired. That sort of thing.”

“Let us have his remarks under this heading,” said Alleyn with perfect gravity.

“Certainly, Mr Alleyn. Lord Robert asked me if I had noticed that Lady Carrados had been tired for some time. I said yes I had, and that I was sorry because she was so nice to everybody. He asked if I thought it was entirely due to the season. I said I expected it was, because many ladies I have had posts with have found the season very exhausting, although in a way Lady Carrados took the entertaining side very lightly. Lord Robert asked me if I liked being with Lady Carrados. I replied that I did, very much. Lord Robert asked me several questions about myself. He was very easy to talk to. I told him about the old days at the rectory and how we ought to have been much better off, and he was very nice, and I told about my father’s people in Bucks and he seemed quite interested in so many of them being parsons and what an old Buckinghamshire family we really are.”

“Oh, God,” thought Alleyn on a sudden wave of painful compassion. “And so they probably are and because for the last two or three generations they’ve had to haul down the social flag inch by inch their children are all going to talk like this and nobody’s going to feel anything but uncomfortably incredulous.”

He said: “You come from Barbicon-Bramley? That’s not far from Bassicote, is it? I know that part of Bucks fairly well. Is your father’s rectory anywhere near Falconbridge?”

“Oh, no. Falconbridge is thirty miles away. My uncle Walter was rector at Falconbridge.”

Alleyn said: “Really? Long ago?”

“When I was a small girl. He’s retired now and lives in Barbicon-Bramley. All the Harrises live to ripe old ages. Lord Robert remarked that many of the clergy do. He said longevity was one of the more dubious rewards of virtue,” said Miss Harris with a glance at her notes.

Alleyn could hear the squeaky voice uttering this gentle epigram.

“He
was
amusing,” added Miss Harris.

“Yes. Now look here, Miss Harris, we’re coming to something rather important. You tell me you went up to the top landing between, say, a quarter to one and one-fifteen. Do you think you were up there all that time?”

“Yes, Mr Alleyn, I think I was.”

“Whereabouts were you?”

Miss Harris turned purple with the rapidity of a pantomime fairy under a coloured spotlight.

“Well, I mean to say, I sat on the gallery, I went into the ladies’ cloakroom on the landing to tidy and see if everything was quite nice, and then I sat on the gallery again and — I mean I was just about.”

“You were on the gallery at one o’clock, you think?”

“I — really I’m not sure if I—”

“Let’s see if we can get at it this way. Did you go into the cloakroom immediately after you got to the landing?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“How long were you in the cloakroom?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“So you were back on the gallery again well before one.”

“Yes,” said Miss Harris without enthusiasm, “but—”

“At about the time I am trying to get at, Captain Withers and Mr Donald Potter were on the gallery, from where they moved into the sitting-room on that landing. Sir Herbert Carrados was in and out of the sitting-room and you may have heard him order the servant on duty up there to attend to the ash-trays and matches. Do you remember this?”

“No. Not exactly. I think I remember seeing Captain Withers and Mr Potter through the sitting-room door as I passed to go downstairs. The larger sitting-room — not the one with the telephone. Lord Robert was in the telephone-room.”

“How do you know that?”

“I — heard him.”

“From the cloakroom?”

“The — I mean—”

“The room between the cloakroom and the telephone-room, perhaps,” said Alleyn, mentally cursing the extreme modesty of Miss Harris.

“Yes,” said Miss Harris looking straight in front of her. Her discomfiture was so evident that Alleyn himself almost began to feel shy.

“Please don’t mind if I ask for very exact information,” he said. “Policemen are rather like doctors in these instances. Things don’t count. When did you go into this ladies’ room?”

“As soon as I got upstairs,” said Miss Harris. “Hem!”

“Right. Now let’s see if we can get things straight, shall we? You came upstairs at, say, about ten or fifteen minutes to one. You went straight to this door next the green sitting-room with the telephone. Did you see anyone?”

“Captain Withers was just coming out of the green sitting-room. I think there was a lady in there. I saw her through the open door as I — as I opened the other.”

“Yes. Anyone else?”

“I think I noticed Sir Herbert in the other sitting-room, the first one, as I passed the door. That’s all.”

“And then you went into the ladies’ room?”

“Yes,” admitted Miss Harris, shutting her eyes for a moment and opening them again to stare with something like horror at Fox’s pencil and notebook. Alleyn felt that already she saw herself being forced to answer these and worse questions shouted at her by celebrated counsel at the Old Bailey.

“How long did you remain in this room?” he asked.

White to the lips Miss Harris gave a rather mad little laugh. “Oh,” she said, “oh, quayte a tayme. You know.”

“And while you were there you heard Lord Robert telephoning in the next room?”

“Yes, I did,” said Miss Harris loudly with an air of defiance.

“She’s looking at me,” thought Alleyn, “exactly like a trapped rabbit.”

“So Lord Robert probably came upstairs after you. Do you suppose the lady you had noticed was still in the green room when he began telephoning?”

“No. I heard her come out and — and she — I mean she tried to — tried to—”

“Yes, yes,” said Alleyn, “quite. And went away?”

“Definitely.”

“And then Lord Robert began to telephone? I see. Could you hear what he said?”

“Oh, no. He spoke in a low tone, of course. I made no attempt to listen.”

“Of course not.”

“I could not have heard if I had tried,” continued Miss Harris. “I could only hear the tone of the voice and that was quite unmistakable.”

“Yes?” said Alleyn encouragingly. “Now,” he thought, “now at last are we getting to it?” Miss Harris did not go on, however, but sat with her mouth done up in a maddening button of conscious rectitude.

“Did you hear the end of the conversation?” he said at last.

“Oh, yes! The end. Yes. At least someone came into the room. I heard Lord Robert say: ‘Oh, hello!’ Those were the only words I did distinguish, and almost immediately I heard the telephone tinkle, so I knew he had rung off.”

“And the other person? Was it a man?”

“Yes. Yes, a man.”

“Could you,” said Alleyn in a level voice, “could you recognise this man?”

“Oh,
no
,” cried Miss Harris with an air of relief. “No
indeed
, Mr Alleyn, I haven’t the faintest idea. You see, after that I didn’t really hear anything at all in the next room. Nothing at all. Really.”

“You returned to the landing?”

“Not immediately. No.”

“Oh!” said Alleyn. He could think of nothing else to say. Even Fox seemed to have caught the infection of extreme embarrassment. He cleared his throat loudly. Miss Harris, astonishingly, broke into a high-pitched prattle, keeping her eyes fixed on the opposite wall and clenching and unclenching her hands.

“No. Not for some minutes and then, of course, when I did return they had both gone. I mean when I finally returned. Of course Lord Robert went before then and — and — so that was perfectly all right. Perfectly.”

“And the other man?”

“He — it was most unfortunate. A little mistake. I assure you I did not see who it was. I mean as soon as he realized it was the wrong door he went out again. Naturally. The inner door being half-glass made it even more unfortunate though of course there being two rooms was — was better for all concerned than if it was the usual arrangement. And I mean that he didn’t see me so that in a way it didn’t matter. It didn’t really matter a scrap. Not a scrap.”

Alleyn, listening to this rigmarole, sent his memory back to the top gallery of Marsdon House. He remembered the Victorian ante-room that opened off the landing, the inner gloomy sanctum beyond. The chaotic fragments of Miss Harris’s remarks joggled together in his brain and then clicked into a definite pattern.