Death of a Peer (22 page)

“No.”

“No, you don’t. And with the weapons lying there beside these grooms or whatever they were, and so on, well the first thing anybody would have said was: ‘Here’s your birds.’ Not that there seemed to be anything like what you’d call an inquiry.”

“Not precisely,” said Alleyn.

“No, sir. No,” continued the constable, turning his back to the wind, “if Macbeth hadn’t got jumpy and mucked things up I reckon they’d have got away with it. They seemed to be well-liked people in the district. Some kind of royalty. Aristocratic, like. Well, nobody suspects people of that class. That’s my point.”

Alleyn pulled his hat on more firmly and turned up the collar of his coat.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll go off duty.”

“Yes, sir. I beg pardon, sir. Don’t know what came over me speaking so freely, sir.”

“That’s all right,“ said Alleyn. ”You’ve put a number of ideas in my head. Good night to you.”

The north wind that had come up during the night brought clouds. Before dawn these broke into teeming rain. At nine o’clock Roberta and Henry breakfasted in a room heavy with Victorian appointments. The windows were blind with rain and the room so dark that Henry turned on the lights.

“I don’t suppose that’s ever been done before except in a pea-soup fog,” he said cheerfully. “How did you sleep, Robin?”

“Not so badly,” said Roberta, “but for the wind in the chimney. It would drone out your name.”

“My name?” said Henry quickly. “I’ve never heard the north wind make a noise like ‘Henry.’ ”

“Your new name.”

“Oh,” said Henry, “that. Yes, it is rather flatulent, isn’t it?”

“Have you heard how Lady Wutherwood is this morning?”

“I met Tinkerton on the landing. She says Aunt V. slept like a log. ‘Very peaceful,’ Tinkerton said, as if Aunt V. was a corpse.”

“Don’t.”

“I suppose it’s real,” said Henry, returning with eggs and bacon from the side table. “I suppose somebody did kill Uncle G. last night. This morning it scarcely seems credible. What shall we do all day, Robin? Do you imagine if we go out our footsteps will be dogged by a plain-clothes detective? It might be fun to see if we could shake him off. I’ve always thought how easy it must be to lose a follower. Shall we try, or is it too wet?”

“There’s a policeman down in the hall.”

“How inexpressibly deadly for him,” said Henry. “I think the hall is possibly the worst part of this house. When we were small the direst threat Nanny had for us was that we should be sent to live in Brummell Street. Even now I slink past that stuffed bear, half expecting him to reach out and paw me to his bosom.”

“It’s such a large house,” said Roberta, “even the bear looks smallish. Has it been your family’s house for long?”

“It dates from a Lamprey who did some very fishy bit of hanky-panky for Good Queen Anne or one of her ministers. A pretty hot bit of work, one would think, to be rewarded with such a monstrous tip. She made him a Marquis into the bargain. The house must have been rather a fine affair in those days. It took my grandfather to ruin it. Uncle G. and Aunt V. merely added a few layers of gloom to the general chaos.”

“I suppose it’s your father’s house now.”

Henry paused in the act of raising his cup. “Golly,” he said, “I wonder if it is. One could make rather a lovely house of it, you know.” And to Henry’s face came a speculative expression which Roberta, with a sinking heart, recognized as the look of a Lamprey about to spend a lot of money.

“There’ll be terrific death duties,” she cried in panic.

“Oh, yes,” said Henry, grandly dismissing them.

They finished their breakfast in silence. An extremely old manservant, who Roberta thought must be Mrs. Moffatt’s husband, came in to say Henry was wanted on the telephone.

“I’ll answer it in the library,” said Henry, and to Roberta: “It’ll be the family. Come on.”

In a dimly forbidding library Roberta listened to Henry on the telephone: “Good morning, good morning,” said Henry brightly. “Anybody arrested yet or are you all at liberty? … Oh, good…Yes, thank you, Mama… No, but Tinkerton says she’s all right…” He ambled on in a discursive manner and Roberta’s attention strayed but was presently caught again by Henry ejaculating: “
Baskett
! Why on earth?… Good lord, how preposterous.” He said rapidly to Roberta: “That vast person Fox has been closeted with Baskett and Nanny for an hour and they’re wondering if he thinks Baskett… All right, Mama… No, I thought of showing Robin the house and then we might pay you a visit… Tonight?… Oh. Oh I see… Yes, if you think we ought to…Yes, I know it’s monstrous but it might be made rather pleasant don’t you think?” Henry lowered his voice. “I say, Mum,” he said guardedly, “will it be Aunt V.’s or ours?… Oh. Oh, well good-bye darling.”

He hung up the receiver. “I’m afraid we’ll have to stay tonight, Robin,” he said. “They’re bringing him here, you see.”

“I see.”

“And Mama rather thinks we get this house. Let’s have a look at it”
ii

At eleven o’clock Alleyn got the surgeon’s report on the post-mortem. It was accompanied by a note from Dr. Curtis. The skewer, he said, had been introduced into the left orbit and had penetrated the fissure at the back of the eye and had entered the blood vessels at the base of the brain.

Alleyn brooded over the report, put it aside, and rang up Mr. Rattisbon, the Lamprey’s family solicitor. Mr. Rattisbon was an old acquaintance of Alleyn’s. He said that he was just leaving to wait upon the new Lord Wutherwood but would call on Alleyn in an hour’s time. He sounded extremely bothered and fussily remote. Alleyn was heartily thankful that the Lampreys had not sent for Mr. Rattisbon last night. If any one could keep their tongues from uttering indiscretions it was surely he. “I shall get very little out of him,” Alleyn thought. “He’ll be as acid as a lime and as dry as a biscuit. He will look after the Lampreys.” And with a sigh he turned back to his report. Presently Fox came in, beaming mildly, with his white scarf folded neatly under his wet mackintosh and his umbrella and hat in his hand.

“Hullo, Br’er Fox. Enjoy your game of Happy Families this morning?”

“I got on nicely, thank you, Mr. Alleyn. I looked in at the house in Brummell Street. I didn’t see Mr. Henry Lamprey— Lord Rune, rather — or Miss Grey, but I understand they passed a quiet night. Her ladyship’s quieted down a lot too, so the nurse told me. She thinks one nurse will be enough tonight. I saw that chap Giggle, the chauffeur, and passed the time of day with him. He didn’t seem to like it.”

“Your method of ‘passing the time of day’ is sometimes a bit ominous, Foxkin. What did you say to Giggle?”

“I thought I’d have a shot at shaking his story about when he went downstairs. He got very nervous, of course, when I hammered away at it, but he stuck to it that he went down just after Lord Wutherwood called out the first time.”

“It’s the truth,” said Alleyn. “Young Michael saw him go. You won’t shake that story, Br’er Fox.”

“So I found, sir. I left the chap in a great taking on, however, and went along to Pleasaunce Court. They all seem to be much the same. Quite enjoyed signing their statements. I don’t fancy they slept a great deal, but they were as bright as ever and uncommonly friendly.”

“A fig for their friendliness,” muttered Alleyn.

“Lady Friede seemed very put out that you didn’t interview her last night,” Fox continued as he opened the door and shook his dripping umbrella into the corridor.

Alleyn grunted.

“You appear to have made quite an impression, sir.”

“Shut that door, and put your gamp away and come here, damn you.”

Fox obeyed these instructions with an air of innocence. He sat down and took out his official notebook. Alleyn reflected that his affection for Fox must be impregnable since it survived the ordeal of watching him moisten his forefinger on his lower lip whenever he turned a page, a habit that in any other associate would have filled Alleyn with a desire to be rid of him.

“Yes,” said Fox, finding his place. “Yes. Baskett. Well now, Mr. Alleyn, I’ve been able to get very little out of him beyond what we already knew. He helped his late lordship into his coat and went back to the servants’ hall. He states positively that he didn’t meet Miss Tinkerton on the way. Says he didn’t see her at all. But if her story’s correct that she saw Baskett and his lordship from the passage and fetched her things from the servants’ hall, then they must have met in one place or another. He seems a straightforward old chap, too.”

“And she doesn’t seem a straightforward middle-aged girl. No, by gum, Fox, she doesn’t. But she’s not our pigeon, you know.”

“I reckon she was up to something, however, and I fancy I’ve found what it is.”

“Have you, now! This is what we keep you for, Foxkin.”

“Is that so?” said Fox with his slow smile. “Well, Mr. Alleyn, I thought I’d better finish in the flat and let them get it straight again. Following your suggestion I had a look round the hall. Now, as you know, the hall was in a mess. The young people had had these charades and hadn’t done much to clear up beyond slinging things into the cupboard. Now the cupboard was open. The cupboard door is flush with the hall door. All right.
On
the floor, half in and half out, was one of those thin, transparent mackintoshes that ladies go in for nowadays. All right.
Inside
the cupboard and
on
the mackintosh I found a couple of prints. Female shoes, with what they call Cuban heels, pointing inwards and to the left. Now one heel has gone through the stuff and the other has made a deep dent. Very nice prints, the surface being a bit tacky and taking a good impression. Now, sir, which of those ladies wore Cuban-heeled shoes?”

“Tinkerton, for one,” said Alleyn. “What about the parlourmaid?”

“No. I checked up on Cora. She wears round heels. I’ve brought away that mackintosh, Mr. Alleyn, and with your approval I’ll take a chance and try to lay my hands on Miss Tinkerton’s shoes.”

“Better ask Master Henry or Miss Grey to do it for you,” said Alleyn drily. “They’ll be only too pleased if they think we’re sniffing round after the servants.”

“Should you say they were dependable?”

“She is. But I don’t give it as a serious suggestion. Br’er Fox. What do you think Tinkerton may have been up to?”

“I was going to ask you for an opinion.”

“Having one of your own up your sleeve, you old dog. Well Fox, the cupboard is in the hall between the hall and the drawing-room. Isn’t it at least possible that the lady in the cupboard was listening to the conversation in the drawing-room?”

“Ah,” said Fox. “When?”

“There’s only one possible time if it was yesterday afternoon.”

“
Which
it was,” said Fox. “Baskett says the cupboard was all spick and span before the charade. We’re lucky it wasn’t tidied up later on. He was going to put things straight when the accident happened and after that our chaps told him not to. So it must have been during the conversation between the brothers. I got the old nurse talking. She won’t say anything against the family but she’s got her knife into Miss Tinkerton. You know what these old girls are like, sir. Mrs. Burnaby kept sort of hinting at things, suggesting Miss Tinkerton’s a very inquisitive sort of woman and very much in with her ladyship and against his late lordship. I reckon Miss T. and Mrs. B. had a row at some time or other and Mrs. Burnaby doesn’t forget it. I reckon they’re kind of bosom enemies if you know what I mean.”

“I do. Not very reliable evidence.”

“No, but there may be something in it all the same. She couldn’t say a good word for Miss Tinkerton but there was nothing you could get your teeth into. At one time it was Miss Tinkerton carrying on with the menservants — that Giggle, as Mrs. B. called him, in particular.”

“Good lord!”

“Yes. At another time it was Miss Tinkerton repeating gossip about Miss Friede, as Mrs. Burnaby calls her.”

“What sort of gossip?”

“Oh, saying the stage was a funny life for a young lady. Nothing definite. She kept saying ‘those two.’ ”

“Who did she mean?”

“That’s what I asked her, and she gave a bit of a laugh and said: ‘Never mind, but they were hand in glove against his late lordship and there was more in it than met the eye.’ Seemed as if she meant Tinkerton and her ladyship. Later on she said her ladyship would be properly in the soup if it wasn’t for Miss T.
I
don’t know,” said Fox. “Search me what she was driving at half the time, but I’ve got it all down and you can see it, sir, for what it’s worth. Based on imagination from start to finish, as like as not, but it did seem to suggest that Miss Tinkerton’s a bit of a sly one. And taking the prints in the cupboard into consideration, if they
are
hers, I wondered if she was sort of keeping watch — well, for somebody else. Naming no names, as Mrs. B. would say.”

“On the other hand,” Alleyn said, “she may have been merely snooping for the love of the sport, like your friend Cora.”

“That’s so. You know, sir, I sometimes wonder how people would react if they heard everything their servants said about them.”

“I should think the Lampreys would laugh till they were sick,” said Alleyn. “I remember one afternoon, when my brother George and I were conceited youths, we took a couple of deck chairs and our books to a spot which happened to be under the window of the servants’ hall. The window was open and we heard a series of very spirited imitations of ourselves and our parents. The boot-boy was particularly gifted. George was conducting a not very reputable affair of the heart of which I knew nothing. But the boot-boy had it all pat.” Alleyn broke into one of his rare laughs. “It was damn good for us,” he said.

“Would you say they were usually correct, though? If this old nurse lets on that Miss Tinkerton and the chap Giggle are carrying on a bit, or that Miss T. is in some sort of cahoots with her mistress, or that Miss T.’s got her knife into the Lampreys, is she more likely to be lying or talking turkey?”

“If she’s got her knife into Miss T.,” said Alleyn, “it’s a fifty-fifty chance. I should say Nanny Burnaby was a bit of a tartar. Inclined to be illogically jealous and touchy but a very faithful old dragon with the family. I bet you didn’t get her to say anything about them.”