Grave Mistake (18 page)

“I’m sorry too many suspects makes you so cross, Br’er Fox, but I can’t oblige. Let’s take a look at an old enemy,
modus operandi
, shall we? Now that Bailey and Thompson have done their stuff what do we take out of it?
You
tell
me
that, my Foxkin.”

“Ah!” said Fox. “Well now, what? What happened, eh? I reckon — and you’ll have to give me time, Mr. Alleyn — I reckon something after this fashion. After deceased had been bedded down for the night by her daughter and taken her early dinner, a character we can call the electrician, though he was nothing of the kind, collected the lilies from the reception desk and came up to Number 20. While he was still in the passage he heard or saw someone approaching and stepped into the curtained alcove.

“As you did, we don’t exactly know why.”

“With me it was what is known as a reflex action,” said Fox modestly. “While in the alcove two of the lily’s heads got knocked off. The electrician
(soi disant)
came out and entered Number 20. He now — don’t bustle me—”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. He now?”

“Went into the bedroom and bathroom,” said Fox and himself suited the action to the word, raising his voice as he did so, “and put the lilies in the basin. They don’t half stink now. He returned to the bedroom and kidded to the deceased?”

“Kidded?”

“Chatted her up,” Fox explained. He leant over the bed in a beguiling manner. “She tells him she’s not feeling quite the thing and he says why not have a nice drink and a sleeping-pill. And, by the way, didn’t the young lady say something about putting the pill bottle out for her mother? She did? Right! So this chap gets her the drink — Scotch and water. Now comes the nitty-gritty bit.”

“It did, for her at any rate.”

“He returns to the bathroom which I shan’t bother to do. Ostensibly,” said Fox, looking his superior officer hard in the eye, “
ostensibly
to mix the Scotch and water but he slips in a couple, maybe three, maybe four pills. Soluble in alcohol, remember.”

“There’s a water jug on her table.”

“I thought you’d bring that up. He says it’ll be stale. The water. Just picks up the Scotch and takes it into the bathroom.”

“Casual-like?”

“That’s it.”

“Yes. I’ll swallow that, Br’er Fox. Just.”

“So does she. She swallows the drink knowing nothing of the tablets and he gives her one or maybe two more which she takes herself thinking they’re the first, with the Scotch and water.”

“How about the taste, if they do taste?”

“It’s a
strong
Scotch. And,” Fox said quickly, “she attributes the taste, if noticed, to the one or maybe two tablets she’s given herself. She has now taken, say, six tablets.”

“Go on. If you’ve got the nerve.”

“He waits. He may even persuade her to have another drink. With him. And put more tablets in it.”

“What’s he drink out of? The bottle?”

“Let that be as it may. He waits, I say, until she’s dopey.”

“Well?”

“And he puts on his gloves and smothers her,” said Fox suddenly. “With the pillow.”

“I see.”

“You don’t buy it, Mr. Alleyn?”

“On the contrary, I find it extremely plausible.”

“You do? I forgot to say,” Fox added, greatly cheered, “that he put the extra tablets in her mouth after she was out. Gave them a push to the back of the tongue. That’s where he overdid it. One of those fancy touches you’re so often on about. Yerse. To make suicide look convincing he got rid of a lot more down the loo.”

“Was the television going all this time?”

“Yes. Because Dr. Schramm found it going when he got there. Blast,” said Fox vexedly. “Of course if
he’s
our man—”

“He got home much earlier than he makes out. The girl at reception would hardly mistake him for an itinerant electrician. So someone else does that bit and hides with the vacuum cleaner and puts the lilies in the basin and goes home as clean as a whistle.”

“Yerse,” said Fox.

“There’s no call for you to be crestfallen. It’s a damn’ good bit of barefaced conjecture and may well be right if Schramm’s not our boy.”

“But if this Claude Carter is?”

“It would fit.”

“Ah! And Gardener? Well,” said Fox, “I know he’s all wrong if the receptionist girl’s right. I know that. Great hulking cross-eyed lump of a chap,” said Fox crossly.

There followed a discontented pause at the end of which Fox said, with a touch of diffidence: “Of course, there is another fringe character, isn’t there? Perhaps two. I mean to say, by all accounts the deceased
was
dead set against the engagement, wasn’t she?”

Alleyn made no reply. He had wandered over to the dressing table and was gazing at its array of Sybil Foster’s aids to beauty and at the regimental photograph in a silver frame. Bailey had dealt delicately with them all and scarcely disturbed the dust that had settled on them or upon the looking-glass that had reflected her altered face.

After another long silence Alleyn said: “Do you know, Fox, you have, in the course of your homily, proved me, to my own face and full in my own silly teeth, to be a copybook example of the unobservant investigating officer.”

“You don’t say!”

“But I do say. Grinding the said teeth and whipping my cat, I do say.”

“It would be nice,” said Fox mildly, “to know why.”

“Let’s pack up and get out of this and I’ll tell you on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Fox reasonably inquired.

“To the scene where I was struck down with sand-blindness or whatever. To the source of all our troubles, my poor Foxkin.”

“Upper Quintern, would that be?”

“Upper Quintern it is. And I think, Fox, we’d better find ourselves rooms at a pub. Better to be there than here. Come on.”

i

Prunella was at home at Quintern Place. Her car was in the drive and she herself answered the door, explaining that she was staying at Mardling and had merely called in to pick up her mail. She took Alleyn and Fox into the drawing-room. It was a room of just proportions with appointments that had occurred quietly over many years rather than by any immediate process of collective assembly. The panelling and ceiling were graceful. It was a room that seemed to be full of gentle light.

Alleyn exclaimed with pleasure.

“Do you like it?” Prunella said. “Most people seem to like it.”

“I’m sure you do, don’t you?”

“I expect so. It always feels quite nice to come back to. It’s not exactly rivetting, of course. Too predictable. I mean it doesn’t
send
one, does it? I don’t know though. It sends my father-in-law-to-be up like a rocket. Do sit down.”

She herself sat between them. She arranged her pretty face in a pout almost as if she parodied some Victorian girl. She was pale and, Alleyn thought, very tense.

“We won’t be long about this,” he said. “There are one or two bits and pieces we’re supposed to tidy up. Nothing troublesome, I hope.”

“Oh,” said Prunella. “I see. I thought that probably you’d come to tell me my mother was murdered. Officially tell me, I mean. I know, of course, that you thought so.”

Until now she had spoken in her customary whisper but this was brought out rapidly and loudly. She stared straight in front of her and her hands were clenched in her lap.

“No,” Alleyn said. “That’s not it.”

“But you think she was, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid we do think it’s possible. Do you?”

Prunella darted a look at him and waited a moment before she said: “I don’t know. The more I wonder the less I can make up my mind. But then, of course, there are all sorts of things the police dig up that other people know nothing about. Aren’t there?”

“I suppose so.”

“My first reason for coming is to make sure you have been properly consulted about the arrangements for tomorrow and to ask if there is anything we can do to help. The service is at half-past-three, isn’t it? The present suggestion is that your mother will be brought from Maidstone to the church arriving about two o’clock but it has occurred to me that you might like her to rest there tonight. If so, that can easily be arranged.”

Prunella for the first time looked directly at him. “That’s kind,” she said. “I’d like that, I think. Please.”

“Good. I’ll check with our chaps in Maidstone and have a word with your Vicar. I expect he’ll let you know.”

“Thank you.”

“All right, then?”

“Super,” said Prunella with shaking lips. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d got over all this. I thought I was O.K.” She knuckled her eyes and fished a handkerchief out of her pocket. Mr. Fox rose and walked away to the farthest windows through which he contemplated the prospect.

“Never mind,” Alleyn said. “That’s the way delayed shock works. Catches you on the hop when you least expect it”

“Sickening of it,” Prunella mumbled into her handkerchief. “You’d better say what you wanted to ask.”

“It can wait a bit.”

“No!” said Prunella and stamped like an angry child. “Now.”

“All right. I’d better say first what we always say. Don’t jump to conclusions and read all sorts of sinister interpretations into routine questions. You must realize that in a case of this sort everyone who saw anything at all of your mother or had contact, however trivial, with her during the time she was at Greengages, and especially on the last day, has to be crossed off.”

“All except one.”

“Perhaps not excepting even one and then we
do
look silly.”

Prunella sniffed. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Do you know a great deal about your mother’s first husband?”

Prunella stared at him.

“
Know
? Me? Only what everyone knows. Do you mean about how he was killed and about the Black Alexander stamp?”

“Yes. We’ve heard about the stamp. And about the unfinished letter to your mother.”

“Well then—. There’s nothing else that I can think of.”

“Do you know if she kept that letter? And any other of his letters?”

Prunella began: “If I did I wouldn’t—” and pulled herself up. “Sorry,” she said, “yes, she did. I found them at the back of a drawer in her dressing-table. It’s a converted sofa-table and it’s got a not terribly secret, secret drawer.”

“And you have them still?”

She waited for a second or two and then nodded. “I’ve read them,” she said. “They’re fantastic, lovely letters. They can’t possibly have anything at all to do with any of this. Not possibly.”

“I’ve seen the regimental group photograph.”

“Mrs. Jim told me.”

“He was very good-looking, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. They used to call him Beau Carter. It’s hard to believe when you see Claude, isn’t it? He was only twenty-one when his first wife died. Producing Claude. Such an awful waste, I’ve always thought. Much better if it’d been the other way round though of course in that case I would have been — just not. Or would I? How muddling.”

She glanced down the long room to where Mr. Fox, at its furthest extreme, having put on his spectacles, was bent over a glass-topped curio table. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

“Being tactful.”

“Oh. I see.”

“About your mother — did she often speak of her first husband?”

“Not often. I think she got out of the way of it when my papa was alive. I think he must have been jealous, poor love. He wasn’t exactly a heart-throb to look at, himself. You know — pink and portly. So I think she kept things like pre-papa photographs and letters discreetly out of circulation. Sort of. But she did tell me about Maurice — that was his name.”

“About his soldiering days? During the war when I suppose that photograph was taken?”

“Yes. A bit about him. Why?”

“About his brother officers, for instance? Or the men under him?”

“
Why
?” Prunella insisted. “Don’t be like those awful pressmen who keep bawling out rude questions that haven’t got anything to do with the case. Not,” she added hastily, “that you’d really do that because you’re not at all that kind. But, I mean what on
earth
can my mum’s first husband’s brother officers and men have to do with his wife’s murder when most of them are dead, I daresay, themselves?”

“His soldier-servant, for instance? Was there anything in the letters about
him
? The officer-batman relationship can be, in its way, quite a close one.”

“Now you mention it,” said Prunella on a note of impatience, “there were jokey bits about somebody he called The Corp, who I suppose might have been his servant but they weren’t anything out of the way. In the last letter, for instance. It was written here. He’d got an unexpected leave and come home but Mummy was with her WRENS in Scotland. It says he’s trying to get a call through to her but will leave the letter in case he doesn’t. It breaks off abruptly saying he’s been recalled, urgently to London and has just time to get to the station. I expect you know about the train being bombed.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well,” said Prunella shortly, “it was a direct hit. On his carriage. So that’s all.”

“And what about The Corp? In the letter?”

“What? Oh. There’s a very effing bit about — sorry,” said Prunella. “ ‘Effing’ is family slang for ‘affecting’ or kind of ‘terribly touching.’ This bit is about what she’s to do if he’s killed and how much — how he feels about her and she’s not to worry and anyway The Corp looks after him like a nanny. He must have been rather a super chap, Maurice, I always think.”

“Anything about the Black Alexander?”

“Oh, that! Well — actually, yes, there is something. He says he supposes she’ll think him a fuss-pot but, after all, his London bank’s in the hottest blitz area and he’s taken the stamp out and will store it elsewhere. There’s something about it being in a waterproof case or something. It was at that point he got the urgent recall to London. So he breaks off — and — says goodbye. Sort of.”

“And the stamp was never found.”

“That’s right. Not for want of looking. But obviously he had it on him.”

“Miss Foster, I wouldn’t ask you this if it wasn’t important and I hope you won’t mind very much that I do ask. Will you let me see those letters?”

Prunella looked at her own hands. They were clenched tightly on her handkerchief and she hurriedly relaxed them. The handkerchief lay in a small damply crumpled heap in her lap. Alleyn saw where a fingernail had bitten into it.

“I simply can’t imagine
why
,” she said. “I mean, it’s fantastic. Love letters, pure and simple, written almost forty years ago and concerning nothing and nobody but the writer. And Mummy, of course.”

“I know. It seems preposterous, doesn’t it? But I can’t tell you how ‘professional’ and detached I shall be about it. Rather like a doctor. Please let me see them.”

She glanced at the distant Fox, still absorbed in the contents of the curio table. “I don’t want to make a fuss about nothing,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

“Are they still in the not-so-secret, secret drawer of the converted sofa-table?”

“Yes.”

“I should like to see it.”

They had both risen.

“Secret drawers,” said Alleyn lightly, “are my specialty. At the Yard they call me Peeping Tom Alleyn.” Prunella compressed her lips. “Fox,” Alleyn said loudly, “may I tear you away?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox said, removing his spectacles but staying where he was. “I beg
your
pardon, Miss Foster. My attention was caught by this — should I call it specimen table? My aunt, Miss Elsie Smith, has just such another in her shop in Brighton.”

“Really?” said Prunella and stared at him.

Alleyn strolled down to the other end of the room and bent over the table. It contained a heterogeneous collection of medals, a vinaigrette, two miniatures, several little boxes in silver or cloisonné and one musical box, all set out on a blue velvet base.

“I’m always drawn to these assemblies,” Alleyn said. “They are family history in hieroglyphics. I see you’ve rearranged them lately.”

“No, I haven’t. Why?” asked Prunella, suddenly alerted. She joined them. It was indeed clear from indentations in the velvet that a rearrangement had taken place. “Damn!” she said. “At it again! No, it’s too much.”

“At it?” Alleyn ventured. “Again? Who?”

“Claude Carter. I suppose you know he’s staying here. He — does so fiddle and pry.”

“What does he pry into?”

“All over the place. He’s always like that. The old plans of this house and garden. Drawers in tables. He turns over other people’s letters when they come. I wouldn’t put him past reading them. I’m not living here at the moment so I daresay he’s having field days. I don’t know why I’m talking about it.”

“Is he in the house at this moment?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only just come in, myself. Never mind. Forget it. Do you want to see the letters?”

She walked out of the room, Alleyn opening the door for her. He followed her into the hall and up the staircase.

“How happy Mr. Markos will be,” he remarked, “climbing up the golden stairs. They
are
almost golden, aren’t they? Where the sun catches them?”

“I haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, but you should. You mustn’t allow ownership to dull the edge of appetite. One should always know how lucky one is.”

Prunella turned on the upper landing and stared at him.

“Is it your habit,” she asked, “to go on like this? When you’re on duty?”

“Only if I dare hope for a sympathetic reception. What happens now? Turn right, proceed in a westerly direction and effect an entrance?”

Since this was in fact what had to be done, Prunella said nothing and led the way into her mother’s bedroom.

A sumptuous room. There was a canopied bed and a silken counterpane with a lacy nightgown case topped up by an enormous artificial rose. A largesse of white bearskin rugs. But for all its luxury the room had a depleted air as if the heart had gone out of it. One of the wardrobe doors was open and disclosed complete emptiness.

Prunella said rapidly: “I sent everything, all the clothes, away to the nearest professional theatre. They can sell the things they don’t use: fur hats and coats and things.”

There were no photographs or feminine toys of any kind on the tables and chimney-piece, and Sybil’s sofa-cum-dressing-table, with its cupid-encircled looking-glass, had been bereft of all the pots, bottles and jars that Alleyn supposed had adorned it.

Prunella said, following his look. “I got rid of everything. Everything.” She was defiant.

“I expect it was the best thing to do.”

“We’re going to change the room. Completely. My father-in-law-to-be’s fantastic about houses — an expert. He’ll advise us.”

“Ah, yes,” said Alleyn politely.

She almost shouted at him: “I suppose you think I’m hard and modern and over-reacting to everything. Well, so I may be. But I’ll thank you to remember that Will. How she tried to bribe me, because that’s what it was, into marrying a monster, because that’s what he is, and punish me if I didn’t. I never thought she had it in her to be so mean and despicable and I’m not going to bloody cry again and I don’t in the least know why I’m talking to you like this. The letters are in the dressing-table and I bet you can’t find the hidden bit.”

She turned her back on Alleyn and blew her nose.

He went to the table, opened the central drawer, slid his finger round inside the frame and found a neat little knob that released a false wall at the back. It opened and there in the “secret” recess was the classic bundle of letters tied with the inevitable faded ribbon.

There was also an open envelope with some half-dozen sepia snapshots inside.

“I think,” he said, “the best way will be for me to look at once through the letters and if they are irrelevant return them to you. Perhaps there’s somewhere downstairs where Fox and I could make ourselves scarce and get it settled.”