Final Curtain (41 page)

‘But you didn't consent?'

‘I must confess, Chief Inspector, I—I—the situation was most awkward. I feared he would upset himself seriously. I must confess that I compromaysed. In point of fact, I—'

‘You consented?'

‘I would have gladly refused the commission altogether but he would take no refusal. He forced me to take the book away with me. I returned it with compliments, and without comment through the registered post. He replied that when the time came I was to understand my instructions. The—ah—the time came and—and—'

‘You followed your own method, and said nothing to anybody?'

‘It seemed the only thing to do. Anything else was impossible from the point of view of technique. Ridiculous, in fact. Such preposterous ingredients! You can't imagine.'

‘Well,' said Fox, ‘as long as you can testify there was no arsenic. Eh, Mr Alleyn?'

‘I must say,' said Mr Mortimer, ‘I don't at all care for the idea of giving evidence in an affair of this sort. Ours is a delicate, and you might say exclusive, profession, Chief Inspector. Publicity of this kind is most undesirable.'

‘You may not be subpoenaed, after all,' said Alleyn.

‘Not? But I understood Inspector Fox to say—'

‘You never know. Cheer up, Mr Mortimer.'

Mr Mortimer muttered to himself disconsolately and fell into a doze.

‘What about the cat?' Fox asked. ‘And the bottle of medicine?'

‘No report yet.'

‘We've been busy,' Dr Curtis complained. ‘You and your cats! The report should be in some time today. What's all this about a cat anyway?'

‘Never you mind,' Alleyn grunted, ‘you do your Marsh-Berzelius tests with a nice open mind. And your Fresenius process later on, I shouldn't wonder.'

Dr Curtis paused in the act of lighting his pipe. ‘
Fresenius
process?' he said.

‘Yes, and your ammonium chloride and your potassium iodide and your Bunsen flame and your platinum wire. And look for the pretty green line, blast you!'

After a long silence Dr Curtis said: ‘It's like that, is it?' and glanced at Mr Mortimer.

‘It may be like that.'

‘Having regard to the general lay-out?'

‘That's the burden of our song.'

Fox said suddenly: ‘Was he bald when they laid him out?'

‘Not he. Mrs Henry Ancred and Mrs Kentish were both present. They'd have noticed. Besides, the hair was there, Fox. We collected it while you were ministering to Thomas.'

‘Oh!' Fox ruminated for a time and then said loudly: ‘Mr Mortimer! Mr Mortimer!'

‘Wha—?'

‘Did you notice Sir Henry's hair when you were working on him?'

‘Eh? Oh, yes,' said Mr Mortimer, hurriedly, but in a voice slurred with sleep. ‘Yes, indeed. We all remarked on it. A magnificent head of hair.' He yawned hideously. ‘A magnificent head of hair,' he repeated.

Alleyn looked at Dr Curtis. ‘Consistent?' he asked.

‘With your green line? Yes.'

‘Pardon?' said Mr Mortimer anxiously.

‘All right, Mr Mortimer. Nothing. We're in London. You'll be in bed by daybreak.'

A
T BREAKFAST ALLEYN SAID:
‘This case of ours is doing the usual snowball business, Troy.'

‘Gathering up complications as it goes?'

‘A mass of murky stuff in this instance. Grubby stuff, and a lot of it waste matter. Do you want an interim report?'

‘Only if you feel like making one. And is there enough time?'

‘Actually there's not. I can answer a crisp question or two, though, if you care to rap them out at me.'

‘You know, I expect, what they'll be.'

‘Was Ancred murdered? I think so. Did Sonia Orrincourt do it? I don't know. I shall know, I believe, when the analyst sends in his report.'

‘If he finds the arsenic?'

‘If he finds it in one place, then I'm afraid it's Sonia Orrincourt. If he finds it in three places, it's Sonia Orrincourt or one other. If he doesn't find it at all, then I
think
it's that other. I'm not positive.'

‘And—the one other?'

‘I suppose it's no more unpleasant for you to speculate about one than about several.'

‘I'd rather know, if it's all right to tell me.'

‘Very well,' Alleyn said, and told her.

After a long silence she said: ‘But it seems completely unreal. I can't possibly believe it.'

‘Didn't everything they did at Ancreton seem a bit unreal?'

‘Yes, of course. But to imagine that underneath all the showings-off and temperaments
this
could be happening…I can't. Of all of them…that one!'

‘Remember, I may be wrong.'

‘You've a habit of not being wrong, though, haven't you?'

‘The Yard,' said Alleyn, ‘is littered with my blunders. Ask Fox. Troy, is this very beastly for you?'

‘No,' said Troy, ‘it's mostly bewildering. I didn't form any attachments at Ancreton. I can't give it a personal application.'

‘Thank God for that,' he said and went to the Yard.

Here he found Fox in waiting with the tin of rat-bane. ‘I haven't had a chance to hear your further adventures at Ancreton, Foxkin. The presence of Mr Mortimer rather cramped our style last night. How did you get on?'

‘Quite nicely, sir. No trouble really about getting the prints. Well, when I say no trouble, there was quite a bit of high-striking in some quarters as was to be expected in that family. Miss O. made trouble, and, for a while, stuck out she wouldn't have it, but I talked her round. Nobody else actually objected, though you'd have thought Mrs Kentish and Miss Desdemona Ancred were being asked to walk into the condemned cell, the way they carried on. Bailey got down by the early train in the morning and worked through the prints you asked for. We found a good enough impression in paint on the wall of Mrs Alleyn's tower. Miss O. all right.
And
her prints are in the book. Lots of others too, of course. Prints all over the cover, from when they looked at it after it turned up in the cheese-dish, no doubt. I've checked up on the letters, but there's nothing in it. They handed them round and there you are. Same thing in the flower-room. Regular mess of prints and some odds and ends where they'd missed sweeping. Coloured tape off florist's boxes, leaves and stalks, scraps of sealing-wax, fancy paper and so on. I've kept all of it in case there was anything. I took a chance to slip into Miss O.'s room. Nothing beyond some skittish literature and a few letters from men written before Sir Henry's day. One, more recent, from a young lady. I memorized it. “Dear S. Good for you, kid, stick to it, and don't forget your old pals when you're Lady A. Think the boy friend'd do anything for me in the business? God knows, I'm not so hot on this Shakespeare, but he must know other managements. Does he wear bed-socks? Regards Clarrie.” '

‘No mention of the egregious Cedric?'

‘Not a word. We looked at Miss Able's cupboard—Only her own prints. I called in at Mr Juniper's. He says the last lot of that paper was taken up with some stuff for the rest of the house a fortnight ago. Two sets of prints on the bell-push from Sir Henry's room—his own and old Barker's. Looks as if Sir Henry had grabbed at it, tried to use it and dragged it off.'

‘As we thought.'

‘Mr Juniper got in a great way when I started asking questions. I went very easy with him, but he made me a regular speech about how careful he is and showed me his books. He reckons he always double-checks everything he makes up. He's particularly careful, he says, because of Dr Withers being uncommonly fussy. It seems they had a bit of a row. The doctor reckoned the kids' medicine wasn't right, and Juniper took it for an insult. He says the doctor must have made the mistake himself and tried to save his face by turning round on him. He let on the doctor's a bit of a lad and a great betting man, and he thinks he'd been losing pretty solidly and was worried, and made a mistake weighing the kids or something. But that wouldn't apply to Sir Henry's medicine, because it was the mixture as before. And I found out that at the time he made it up he was out of arsenic and hasn't got any yet.'

‘Good for Mr Juniper,' said Alleyn dryly.

‘Which brings us,' Fox continued, ‘to this tin.' He laid his great hand beside it on the desk. ‘Bailey's gone over it for dabs. And here we have got something, Mr Alleyn, and about time too, you'll be thinking. Now this tin has got the usual set of prints. Some of the search party's, in fact. Latent, but Bailey brought them up and got some good photographs. There's Mrs Kentish's. She must have just touched it. Miss Desdemona Ancred seems to have picked it up by the edge. Mr Thomas Ancred grasped it more solidly round the sides and handled it again when he took it out of his bag. Mrs Henry Ancred held it firmly towards the bottom. Sir Cedric's prints are all over it, and there, you'll notice, are the marks round the lid where he had a shot at opening it.'

‘Not a very determined shot.'

‘No. Probably scared of getting rat-bane on his manicure,' said Fox. ‘But the point is, you see—'

‘No Orrincourt?'

‘Not a sign of her. Not a sign of glove-marks either. It was a dusty affair, and the dust, except for the prints we got, wasn't disturbed.'

‘It's a point. Well, Fox, now Bailey's finished with it we can open it.'

The lid was firm and it took a penny and considerable force to prise it up. An accretion of the contents had sealed it. The tin was three-parts full, and the greyish paste bore traces of the implement that had been used to scoop it out.

‘We'll have a photo-micrograph of this,' Alleyn said.

‘If Orrincourt's our bird, sir, it looks as if we'll have to hand the tin over to the defence, doesn't it?'

‘We'll have to get an expert's opinion, Fox. Curtis's boys can speak up when they've finished the job in hand. Pray continue, as the Immortal used to say, with your most interesting narrative.'

‘There's not much more. I took a little peep at the young baronet's room, too. Dunning letters, lawyer's letters, letters from his stockbroker. I should say he was in deep. I've made a note of the principal creditors.'

‘For an officer without a search warrant you seem to have got on very comfortably.'

‘Isabel helped. She's taken quite a fancy for investigation. She kept a lookout in the passage.'

‘With parlour-maids,' Alleyn said, ‘you're out on your own. A masterly technique.'

‘I called on Dr Withers yesterday afternoon and told him you'd decided on the exhumation.'

‘How did he take it?'

‘He didn't say much but he went a queer colour. Well, naturally. They never like it. Reflection on their professional standing and so on. He thought a bit and then said he'd prefer to be present. I said we'd expect that, anyway. I was just going when he called me back. “Here!” he said, kind of hurriedly and as if he wasn't sure he might not he making a fool of himself, “you don't want to pay too much attention to anything that idiot Juniper may have told you. The man's an ass.” As soon as I was out of the house,' said Fox, ‘I made a note of that to be sure the words were correct. The maid was showing me out at the time.'

‘Curtis asked him last night, after we'd tidied up in the cemetery, if he'd like to come up and watch the analysis. He agreed. He's sticking to it that the embalmers must have used something that caused the hair to fall out. Mr Mortimer was touched to the professional quick, of course.'

‘It's a line defending counsel may fancy,' said Fox gloomily. The telephone rang and Fox answered it.

‘It's Mr Mortimer,' he said.

‘Oh, Lord! You take it, Fox.'

‘He's engaged at the moment, Mr Mortimer. Can I help you?'

The telephone cackled lengthily and Fox looked at Alleyn with bland astonishment. ‘Just a moment.' He laid down the receiver. ‘I don't follow this. Mr Alleyn hasn't got a secretary.'

‘What's all this?' said Alleyn sharply.

Fox clapped his hand over the receiver. ‘He says your secretary rang up their office half an hour ago and asked them to repeat the formula for embalming. His partner, Mr Loame, answered. He wants to know if it was all right.'

‘Did Loame give the formula?'

‘Yes.'

‘Bloody fool,' Alleyn said violently. ‘Tell him it's all wrong and ring off.'

‘I'll let Mr Alleyn know,' said Fox, and hung up the receiver. Alleyn reached for it and pulled the telephone towards him.

‘Ancreton, 2A,' he said. ‘Priority. Quick as you can.' And while he waited: ‘We may want a car at once, Fox. Ring down, will you? We'll take Thompson with us. And we'll need a search warrant.' Fox went into the next room and telephoned. When he returned Alleyn was speaking. ‘Hallo. May I speak to Miss Orrincourt?…Out?…When will she be in?…I see. Get me Miss Able, Barker, will you?…It's Scotland Yard here.' He looked round at Fox. ‘We'll be going.' he said. ‘She came up to London last night and is expected back for lunch. Damn! Why the hell doesn't the Home Office come to light with that report? We need it now, and badly. What's the time?'