Grave Mistake (24 page)

“You don’t require me?”

“No.
La belle Jackson
is clearly not in the mood. Sickening for you.”

“We’ll meet at our pub, then?”

“Yes.”

“I shan’t wait up,” said Fox.

“Don’t dream of it.”

“In the meantime I’ll stroll down to the station hoping for better luck than I had with the Greengages bus.”

“Do. I’ll bring my file up to date.”

“Were you thinking of taking dinner?”

“I was thinking of taking worm-coloured fish in pink sauce and athletic fowl at our own pub. Do join me.”

“Thanks. That’s all settled, then,” said Fox comfortably and took himself oft.

v

There were only seven customers in the bar-parlour of the Iron Duke when Alleyn walked in at a quarter to nine: an amorous couple at a corner table and five city-dressed men playing poker.

Alleyn took a glass of a respectable port to a banquette at the farthest remove from the other tables and opened the evening paper. A distant roar of voices from the two bars bore witness to the Duke’s popularity. At five to nine Sister Jackson walked in. He received the slight shock caused by an encounter with a nurse seen for the first time out of uniform. Sister Jackson was sheathed in clinging blue with a fairly reckless cleavage. She wore a velvet beret that rakishly shaded her face, and insistent gloves. He saw that her makeup was more emphatic than usual, especially about the eyes. She had been crying.

“How punctual we both are,” he said. He turned a chair to the table with its back to the room and facing the banquette. She sat in it without looking at him and with a movement of her shoulders that held a faint suggestion of what might have passed as provocation under happier circumstances. He asked her what she would have to drink and when she hesitated and bridled a little, proposed brandy.

“Well — thank you,” she said. He ordered a double one. When it came she took a sudden pull at it, shuddered and said she had been under a severe strain. It was the first remark of more than three words that she had offered.

“This seems quite a pleasant pub,” he said. “Do you often come here?”

“No. Never. They — we — all use the Crown at Greendale. That’s why I suggested it. To be sure.”

“I’m glad,” Alleyn said, “that whatever it’s all about you decided to tell me.”

“It’s very difficult to begin.”

“Never mind. Try. You said something about blackmail, didn’t you? Shall we begin there?”

She stared at him for an awkwardly long time and then suddenly opened her handbag, pulled out a folded paper and thrust it across the table. She then took another pull at her brandy.

Alleyn unfolded the paper, using his pen and a fingernail to do so. “Were you by any chance wearing gloves when you handled this?” he asked.

“As it happened. I was going out. I picked it up at the desk.”

“Where’s the envelope?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. I think. On the floor of my car. I opened it in the car.”

The paper was now spread out on the table. It was of a kind as well-known to the police as a hand-bill: a piece of off-white commercial paper, long and narrow, that might have been torn from a domestic
aide-mémoire
. The message was composed of words and letters that had been cut from newsprint and gummed in two irregular lines.

“Post £500 fives and singles to C. Morris 11 Port Lane Southampton otherwise will inform police your visit to room 20 Genuine”

Alleyn looked at Sister Jackson and Sister Jackson looked like a mesmerized rabbit at him.

“When did it come?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“To Greengages?”

“Yes.”

“Is the envelope addressed in this fashion?”

“Yes. My name’s all in one. I recognized it — it’s from an advertisement in the local rag for Jackson’s Drapery and it’s the same with Greengages Hotel. Cut out of an advertisement.”

“You didn’t comply, of course?”

“No. I didn’t know what to do. I — nothing like that’s ever happened to me — I–I was dreadfully upset.”

“You didn’t ask anyone to advise you?”

She shook her head.

“Dr. Schramm, for instance?”

He could have sworn that her opulent flesh did a little hop and that for the briefest moment an extremely vindictive look flicked on and off. She wetted her mouth. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “No,
thank
you!”

“This is the only message you’ve received?”

“There’s been something else. Something much worse. Last evening. Soon after eight. They fetched me from the dining-room.”

“What was it? A telephone call?”

“You knew!”

“I guessed. Go on, please.”

“When the waiter told me, I knew. I don’t know why but I did. I knew. I took it in one of the telephone boxes in the hall. I think he must have had something over his mouth. His voice was muffled and peculiar. It said: ‘You got the message.’ I couldn’t speak and then it said: ‘You did or you’d answer. Have you followed instructions?’ I — didn’t know what to say so I said: ‘I will’ and it said ‘you better.’ It said something else, I don’t remember exactly, something about the only warning, I think. That’s all,” said Sister Jackson, and finished her cognac. She held the unsteady glass between her white-gloved paws and put it down awkwardly.

Alleyn said:“Do you mind if I keep this? And would you be kind enough to refold it and put it in here for me?” He took an envelope from his pocket and laid it beside the paper.

She complied and made a shaky business of doing so. He put the envelope in his breast pocket.

“What will he do to me?” asked Sister Jackson.

“The odds are: nothing effective. The police may get something from him but you’ve anticipated that, haven’t you? Or you will do so.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sister Jackson,” Alleyn said. “Don’t you think you had better tell me about your visit to Room Twenty?”

She tried to speak. Her lips moved. She fingered them and then looked at the smudge of red on her glove.

“Come along,” he said.

“You won’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then why have you asked to see me? Surely it was to anticipate whatever the concocter of this message might hâve to say to us. You’ve got in first.”

“I haven’t done anything awful. I’m a fully qualified nurse.”

“Of course you are. Now then, when did you pay this visit?”

She focussed her gaze on the couple in the far corner, stiffened her neck and rattled off her account in a series of disjointed phrases.

It had been at about nine o’clock on the night of Mrs. Foster’s death (Sister Jackson called it her “passing”). She herself walked down the passage on her way to her own quarters. She heard the television bawling away in Number 20. Pop music. She knew Mrs. Foster didn’t appreciate pop and she thought she might have fallen asleep and the noise would disturb the occupants of neighbouring rooms. So she tapped and went in.

Here Sister Jackson paused. A movement of her chin and throat indicated a dry swallow.When she began again her voice was pitched higher but not by any means louder than before.

“The patient—” she said, “Mrs. Foster, I mean — was, as I thought she would be. Asleep. I looked at her and made sure she was — asleep. So I came away.
I came away
. I wasn’t there for more than three minutes. That’s all. All there is to tell you.”

“How was she lying?”

“On her side, with her face to the wall.”

“When Dr. Schramm found her she was on her back.”

“I know. That proves it. Doesn’t it?
Doesn’t it
!”

“Did you turn off the television?”

“No. Yes! I don’t remember. I think I must have. I don’t know.”

“It was still going when Dr. Schramm found her.”

“Well, I didn’t, then, did I? I didn’t turn it off.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“It’s no good asking me things like that. I’ve been shocked. I don’t remember details.”

She beat on the table. The amorous couple unclinched and one of the card players looked over his shoulder. Sister Jackson had split her glove.

Alleyn said: “Should we continue this conversation somewhere else?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

With a most uncomfortable parody of coquettishness she leant across the table and actually smiled or seemed to smile at him.

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

Their waiter came back and looked enquiringly at her empty glass.

“Would you like another?” Alleyn asked.

“I don’t think so. No. Well, a small one, then.”

The waiter was quick bringing it.

“Right. Now — how was the room? The bedside table? Did you notice the bottle of barbiturates?”

“I didn’t notice. I’ve said so. I just saw she was asleep and I went away.”

“Was the light on in the bathroom?”

This seemed to terrify her. She said: “Do you mean—? Was he
there
? Whoever it was? Hiding? Watching? No, the door was shut, I mean — I think it was shut.”

“Did you see anybody in the passage? Before you went into the room or when you left it?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“There’s that alcove, isn’t there? Where the brooms and vacuum cleaner are kept?”

She nodded. The amorous couple were leaving. The man helped the girl into her coat. They both looked at Alleyn and Sister Jackson. She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of cigareetes.

Alleyn said: “I’m sorry. I’ve given up and forget to keep any on me. At least I can offer you a light.” He did so and she made a clumsy business of using it. The door swung to behind the couple. The card players had finished their game and decided, noisily, to move into the bar. When they had gone Alleyn said: “You realize, don’t you — well of course you do — that the concocter of this threat must have seen you?”

She stared at him. “Naturally,” she said, attempting, he thought, a sneer.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a glimpse of the obvious, isn’t it? And you’ll remember that I showed you a lily head that Inspector Fox and I found in the alcove?”

“Of course.”

“And that there were similar lilies in the hand-basin in Mrs. Foster’s bathroom?”

“Naturally. I mean — yes, I saw them afterwards. When we used the stomach pump. We scrubbed up under the bath taps. It was quicker than clearing away the mess in the basin.”

“So it follows as the night the day that the person who dropped the lily head in the alcove was the person who put the flowers in the hand-basin. Does it also follow that this same person was your blackmailer?”

“I — yes. I suppose it might.”

“And does it also follow, do you think, that the blackmailer was the murderer of Mrs. Foster?”

“But you don’t know. You don’t know that she was—
that
.”

“We believe we do.”

She ought, he thought, to be romping about like a Rubens lady in an Arcadian setting: all sumptuous flesh, no brains and as happy as Larry, instead of quivering like an overdressed jelly in a bar-parlour.

“Sister Jackson,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell the coroner or the police or anyone at all that you went into Room Twenty at about nine o’clock that night and found Mrs. Foster asleep in her bed?”

She opened and shut her smudged lips two or three times, gaping like a fish.

“Nobody asked me,” she said. “Why should I?”

“Are you sure Mrs. Foster was asleep?”

Her lips formed the words but she had no voice. “Of course I am.”

“She wasn’t asleep, was she? She was dead.”

The swing door opened and Basil Schramm walked in. “I thought I’d find you,” he said. “Good evening.”

i

May i join you?” asked Dr. Schramm. The folds from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth lifted and intensified. It was almost a Mephistophelian grin.

“Do,” said Alleyn and turned to Sister Jackson. “If Sister Jackson approves,” he said.

She looked at nothing, said nothing and compressed her mouth.

“Silence,” Dr. Schramm joked, “gives consent, I hope.” And he sat down.

“What are you drinking?” he invited.

“Not another for me, thank you,” said Alleyn.

“On duty?”

“That’s my story.”

“Dot?”

Sister Jackson stood up. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said to Alleyn and with tolerable success achieved a social manner. “I hadn’t realized it was so late.”

“It isn’t late,” said Schramm. “Sit down.”

She sat down. “First round to the doctor,” thought Alleyn.

“The bell’s by you, Alleyn,” said Schramm. “Do you mind?”

Alleyn pressed the wall-bell above his head. Schramm had leant forward. Alleyn caught a great wave of whiskey and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and not quite in focus.

“I happened to be passing,” he chatted. He inclined his head toward Sister Jackson, “I noticed your car. And yours, Superintendent.”

“Sister Jackson has been kind enough to clear up a detail for us.”

“That’s what’s known as ‘helping the police in their investigation,’ isn’t it? With grim connotations as a rule.”

“You’ve been reading the popular press,” said Alleyn.

The waiter came in. Schramm ordered a large Scotch. “Sure?” he asked them and then, to the waiter. “Correction. Make that two large Scotches.”

Alleyn said: “Not for me. Really.”

“Two large Scotches,” Schramm repeated on a high note. The waiter glanced doubtfully at Alleyn.

“You heard what I said,” Schram insisted. “Two large Scotches.”

Alleyn thought: “This is the sort of situation where one could do with the odd drop of omnipotence. One wrong move from me and it’ll be a balls-up.”

Complete silence set in. The waiter came and went. Dr. Schramm downed one of the two double whiskeys very quickly. The bar-parlour clock ticked. He continued to smile and began on the second whiskey slowly with concentration: absorbing it and cradling the glass. Sister Jackson remained perfectly still.

“What’s she been telling you?” Schramm suddenly demanded. “She’s an inventive lady. You ought to realize that. To be quite, quite frank and honest she’s a liar of the first water. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

“You followed me.”

“It’s some considerable time since I left off doing that, darling.”

Alleyn had the passing thought that it would be nice to hit Dr. Schramm.

“I realy must insist,” Schramm said. “I’m sorry, but you have seen for yourself how things are, here. I realize, perf’ly well, that you will think I had a motive for this crime, if crime it was. Because I am a legatee I’m a suspect. So of course it’s no good my saying that I asked Sybil Foster to marry me.
Not
,” he said wagging his finger at Alleyn, “
not
because I’d got my sights set on her money but because I loved her. Which I did, and that,” he added, staring at Sister Jackson, “is precisely where the trouble lies.” His speech was now all over the place like an actor’s in a comic drunken scene. “You wouldn’t have minded if it had been like that. You wouldn’t have minded all that much if you believed I’d come back earlier and killed her for her money. You really are a bitch, aren’t you, Dotty? My God, you even threatened to take to her yourself. Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? Where’s the bloody waiter?”

He got to his feet, lurched across the table and fetched up with the palms of his hands on the wall, the left supporting him and the right clamped down over the bell-push which could be heard distantly to operate. His face was within three inches of Alleyn’s. Sister Jackson shrank back in her chair.

“Disgusting!” she said.

Alleyn detached Dr. Schramm from the wall and replaced him in his chair. He then moved over to the door, anticipating the return of the waiter. When the man arrived Alleyn showed his credentials.

“The gentleman’s had as much as is good for him,” he said. “Let me handle it. There’s a side door, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes,” said the waiter, looking dubious. “Sir,” he added.

“He’s going to order another Scotch. Can you cook up a poor single to look like a double? Here — this’ll settle the lot and forget the change. Right?”

“Well, thank you very much, sir,” said the waiter, suddenly avid with curiosity and gratification. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Waiter!” shouted Dr. Schramm. “Same ’gain.”

“There’s your cue,” said Alleyn.

“What’ll I say to him?”

“ ‘Anon, anon, sir’ would do.”

“Would that be Shakespeare?” hazarded the waiter.

“It would, indeed.”

“
Waiter
!”

“
Anon, anon
, sir,” said the waiter self-consciously. He collected the empty glasses and hurried away.

“ ’Strordinary waiter,” said Dr. Schramm. “As I was saying. I insist on being informed for reasons that I shall make ’bundantly clear. What’s she said? ’Bout me?”

“You didn’t feature in our conversation,” said Alleyn.

“That’s what you say.”

Sister Jackson, with a groggy and terrified return to something like her habitual manner, said, “I wouldn’t demean myself.” She turned on Alleyn. “You’re mad,” she said, exactly as if there had been no break in their exchange. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was asleep.”

“Why didn’t you report your visit, then?” Alleyn said.

“It didn’t matter.”

“Oh, nonsense. It would have established, if true, that she was alive at that time.”

With one of those baffling returns to apparent sobriety by which drunken persons sometimes bewilder us, Dr. Scbxamm said: “Do I understand, Sister, that you visited her in her room?”

Sister Jackson ignored him. Alleyn said: “At about nine o’clock.”

“And didn’t report it? Why?
Why
?” He appealed to Alleyn.

“I don’t know. Perhaps because she was afraid. Perhaps because—”

Sister Jackson gave a strangulated cry. “No! No, for God’s sake! He’ll get it all wrong. He’ll jump to conclusions. It wasn’t like that. She was asleep. Natural sleep. There was nothing the matter with her.”

The waiter came back with a single glass, half full.

“Take that away,” Schram ordered. “I’ve got to have a clear head. Bring some ice. Bring me a lot of ice.”

The waiter looked at Alleyn, who nodded. He went out

“I’m going,” said Sister Jackson.—

“You’ll stay where you are unless you want a clip over the ear.”

“And you,” said Alleyn, “will stay where you are unless you want to be run in. Behave yourself.”

Schramm stared at him for a moment. He said something that sounded like: “Look who’s talking” and took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast coat-pocket, laid it on the table and began to fold it diagonally. The waiter reappeared with a jug full of ice.

“I really ought to mention this to the manager, sir,” he murmured. “If he gets noisy again, I’ll have to.”

“I’ll answer for you. Tell the manager it’s an urgent police matter. Give him my card. Here you are.”

“It — it wouldn’t be about that business over at Greengages, Would it?”

“Yes, it would. Give me the ice and vanish, there’s a good chap.”

Alleyn put the jug on the table. Schramm with shaking hands began to lay ice on his folded handkerchief.

“Sister,” he said impatiently. “Make a pack, if you please.”

To Alleyn’s utter astonishment she did so in a very professional manner. Schramm loosened his tie and opened his shirt. It was as if they both responded like Pavlovian dogs to some behaviouristic prompting. He rested his forehead on the table and she placed the pack of ice on the back of his neck. He gasped. A trickle of water ran down his jawline. “Keep it up,” he ordered and shivered.

Alleyn, watching this performance, thought how unpredictable the behaviour of drunken persons could be. Sister Jackson had been in the condition so inaccurately known as “nicely, thank you.” Basil Schramm had been in an advanced stage of intoxication but able to assess his own condition and after a fashion deal with it. And there they were, both of them, behaving like automata and, he felt sure, frightened out of what wits they still, however precariously, commanded.

She continued to operate the ice packs. A pool of water enlarged itself on the table and began to drip to the carpet.

“That’s enough,” Schramm said presently. Sister Jackson squeezed his handkerchief into the jug. Alleyn offered his own and Schramm mopped himself up with it. He fastened his shirt and reknotted his tie. As if by common consent he and Sister Jackon sat down simultaneously, facing each other across the table with Alleyn between them on the banquette: like a referee, he thought. This effect was enhanced when he took out his notebook. They paid not the smallest attention to him. They glared at each other, he with distaste and she with hatred. He produced a comb and used it.

“Now, then,” he said. “What’s the story? You went to her room at nine. You say she was asleep. And
you
,” he jabbed a finger at Alleyn, “say she was dead. Right?”

“I don’t say so, positively. I suggested it.”

“Why?”

“For several reasons. If Mrs. Foster was sleeping, peacefully and naturally, it’s difficult to see why Sister Jackson did not report her visit.”

“If there’d been anything wrong, I would have,” she said.

Schramm said: “Did you think it was suicide?”

“She was asleep.”

“Did you see the tablets — spilled on the table?”

“No.
No
.”

“Did you think she’d been drugged?”

“She was asleep. Peacefully and naturally. Asleep.”

“You’re lying, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Come on!”

She began to gabble at Alleyn: “It was the shock, you know. When he rang through and told me, I came and we did everything — such a shock — I couldn’t remember anything about how the room had looked before. Naturally not.”

“It was no shock to you,” Dr. Schramm said profoundly. “You’re an old hand. An experienced nurse. And you didn’t regret her death, my dear. You gloated. You could hardly keep a straight face.”

“Don’t listen to this,” Sister Jackson gabbled at Alleyn, “it’s all lies. Monstrous lies. Don’t listen.”

“You’d better,” said Schramm. “This is the hell-knows-no-fury bit, Superintendent, and you may as well recognize it. Oh, yes. She actually said when she heard about Sybil and me that she bloody well wished Syb was dead and she meant it. Fact, I assure you. And I don’t mind telling you she felt the same about me. Still does. Look at her.”

Sister Jackson was hardly a classical figure of panic but she certainly presented a strange picture. The velvet beret had flopped forward over her left eye so that she was obliged to tilt her head back at an extravagant angle in order to see from under it. Oddly enough and deeply unpleasant as the situation undoubtedly was, she reminded Alleyn momentarily of a grotesque lady on a comic postcard.

They began to exchange charge and countercharge, often speaking simultaneously. It was the kind of row that is welcome as manna from Heaven to an investigating officer. Alleyn noted it all down, almost under their noses, and was conscious, as often before, of a strong feeling of distaste for the job.

They repeated themselves ad nauseam. She used the stock phrases of the discarded mistress. He, as he became articulate, also grew reckless and made more specific his accusations as to her having threatened to do harm to Sybil Foster and even hinted that on her visit to Room 20 she might well have abetted Sybil in taking an overdose.

At that point they stopped dead, stared aghast at each other and then, for the first time since the slanging match had set in, at Alleyn.

He finished his notes and shut the book.

“I could,” he said, “and perhaps I should, ask you both to come to the police station and make statements. You would then refuse to utter or to write another word until you had seen your respective solicitors. A great deal of time would be wasted. Later on you would both state that you had been dead drunk and that I had brought about this pitiable condition and made false reports about your statements and taken them down in writing. All this would be very boring and unproductive. Instead, I propose that you go back to Greengages, think things over and then concoct your statements. You’ve been too preoccupied to notice, I fancy, but I’ve made pretty extensive notes and I shall make a report of the conversation and in due course, invite you to sign it. And now, I expect you will like to go. If, that is, you are in a fit state to drive. If not you’d better go to the lavatories and put your fingers down your throats. I’ll be in touch. Good evening.”

He left them gaping and went out to his car where he waited about five minutes before they appeared severally, walking with unnatural precision. They entered their cars and drove, very slowly, away.

ii

Fox had not gone to bed at their pub. He and Alleyn took a nightcap together in Alleyn’s room.

“Well, now,” said Fox rubbing his hands on his knees. “That was a turn-up for the books, wasn’t it? I’d’v;ve liked to be there. How do you read it, then, Mr. Alleyn? As regards the lady, now? Dropped in on the deceased round about nine p.m. and was watched by crepe-soles from the alcove and is being blackmailed by him. Which gives us one more reason, if we’d needed it, for saying crepe-soles is Claude?”

“Go on.”

“
But
,” said Fox opening his eyes wide, “
but
when the Doctor (which is what he isn’t, properly speaking, but never mind) when the Doctor rings through an hour or thereabouts later and tells her to come to Room Twenty and she does come and the lady’s passed away, does she say—” and here Mr. Fox gave a sketchy impersonation of a female voice: “ ‘Oh, Doctor, I looked in at nine and she was as right as Christmas’? No. She does not. She keeps her tongue behind her teeth and gets cracking with the stomach pump. Now why? Why not mention it?”