Scales of Justice (25 page)

“Well, Rory,” she demanded, “what is all this? What are you suggesting?”

Alleyn hesitated for a moment and then said, “At the moment, I suggest that I see your son alone.”

“No.”

Mark, looking rather desperate, said, “Gar, don’t you think it might be better?”

“No.” She jabbed her fat finger at Alleyn. “What have you said and what were you going to say to George?”

“I told him that Colonel Cartarette was knocked out by a golf-club. I’ll now add for the information of you all, since you choose to stay here, that he was finally killed by a stab through the temple made by your shooting-stick, Lady Lacklander. Your paint-rag was used to wipe the scales of two trout from the murderer’s hands. The first blow was made from the punt. The murderer, in order to avoid being seen from Watt’s Hill, got into the punt and slid down the stream using the long mooring rope as you probably did when you yourself sketched from the punt. The punt, borne by the current, came to rest in the little bay by the willow grove, and the murderer stood in it idly swinging a club at the daisies growing on the edge of the bank. This enemy of the Colonel’s was so well known to him that he paid little attention, said something, perhaps, about the trout he had caught and went on cutting grass to wrap it in. Perhaps the last thing he saw was the shadow of the club moving swiftly across the ground. Then he was struck on the temple. We think there was a return visit with your shooting-stick, Lady Lacklander, and that the murderer quite deliberately used the shooting-stick on Colonel Cartarette as you used it this morning on your garden path. Placed it over the bruised temple and sat on it. What did you say? Nothing? It’s a grotesque and horrible thought, isn’t it? We think that on getting up and releasing the shooting-stick, there was literally a slip. A stumble, you know. It would take quite a bit of pulling out. There was a backward lunge. A heel came down on the Colonel’s trout. The fish would have slid away, no doubt, if it had not been lying on a sharp triangular stone. It was trodden down and, as it were, transfixed on the stone. A flap of skin was torn away and the foot, instead of sliding off, sank in and left an impression. An impression of the spiked heel of a golf shoe.”

George Lacklander said in an unrecognizable voice, “All this conjecture!”

“No,” Alleyn said, “I assure you. Not conjecture.” He looked at Lady Lacklander and Mark. “Shall I go on?”

Lady Lacklander, using strange unco-ordinated gestures, fiddled with the brooches that, as usual, were stuck about her bosom. “Yes,” she said, “go on.”

Mark, who throughout Alleyn’s discourse had kept his gaze fixed on his father, said, “Go on. By all means. Why not?”

“Right,” Alleyn said. “Now the murderer was faced with evidence of identity. One imagines the trout glistening with a clear spiked heel-mark showing on its hide. It wouldn’t do to throw it into the stream or the willow grove and run away. There lay the Colonel with his hands smelling of fish and pieces of cut grass all round him. For all his murderer knew, there might have been a witness to the catch. This, of course, wouldn’t matter as long as the murderer’s identity was unsuspected. But there is a panic sequel to most crimes of violence, and it is under its pressure that the fatal touch of over-cleverness usually appears. I believe that while the killer stood there, fighting down terror, the memory of the Old ’Un, lying on Bottom Bridge, arose. Hadn’t Danberry Phinn and the Colonel quarrelled loudly, repeatedly and vociferously — quarrelled that very afternoon — over the Old ’Un? Why not replace the Colonel’s catch with the fruits of Mr. Phinn’s poaching tactics and drag, not a red-herring, but a whacking great trout across the trail? Would that not draw attention towards the known enemy and away from the secret one? So there was a final trip in the punt. The Colonel’s trout was removed and the Old ’Un substituted. It was at this juncture that Fate, in the person of Mrs. Thomasina Twitchett, appeared to come to the murderer’s aid.”

“For God’s sake,” George Lacklander shouted, “stop talking—” He half formed an extremely raw epithet, broke off and muttered something indistinguishable.

“Who are you talking about, Rory?” Lady Lacklander demanded. “Mrs.
who
?”

“Mr. Phinn’s cat. You will remember, Mrs. Cartarette told us that in Bottom Meadow she came upon a cat with a half-eaten trout. We have found the remains. There is a triangular gash corresponding with the triangular flap of skin torn off by the sharp stone, and as if justice or nemesis or somebody had assuaged the cat’s appetite at the crucial moment, there is also a shred of skin bearing the unmistakable mark of part of a heel and the scar of a spike.”

“But can all this—” Mark began. “I mean, when you talk of correspondence—”

“Our case,” Alleyn said, “will, I assure you, rest upon scientific evidence of an unusually precise character. At the moment, I’m giving you the sequence of events. The Colonel’s trout was bestowed upon the cat. Lady Lacklander’s paint-rag was used to clean the spike of the shooting-stick and the murderer’s hands. You may remember, Dr. Lacklander, that your grandmother said she had put all her painting gear tidily away, but you, on the contrary, said you found the rag caught up in a briar bush.”

“You suggest then,” Mark said evenly, “that the murder was done some time between ten to eight, when my grandmother went home, and a quarter past eight, when I went home.” He thought for a moment and then said, “I suppose that’s quite possible. The murderer might have heard or caught sight of me, thrown down the rag in a panic and taken to the nearest cover only to emerge after I’d picked up the sketching gear and gone on my way.”

Lady Lacklander said after a long pause, “I find that a horrible suggestion. Horrible.”

“I daresay,” Alleyn agreed dryly. “It was an abominable business, after all.”

“You spoke of scientific evidence,” Mark said.

Alleyn explained about the essential dissimilarities in individual fish scales. “It’s all in Colonel Cartarette’s book,” he said and looked at George Lacklander. “You had forgotten that perhaps.”

“Matter of fact, I — ah — I don’t know that I ever read poor old Maurice’s little book.”

“It seems to me to be both charming,” Alleyn said, “and instructive. In respect of the scales it is perfectly accurate. A trout’s scales, the Colonel tells us, are his diary in which his whole life-history is recorded for those who can read them. Only if two fish have identical histories will their scales correspond. Our two sets of scales, luckily, are widely dissimilar. There is Group A, the scales of a nine- or ten-year-old fish who has lived all his life in one environment. And there is group B, belonging to a smaller fish who, after a slow growth of four years, changed his environment, adopted possibly a sea-going habit, made a sudden spurt of growth and was very likely a newcomer to the Chyne. You will see where this leads us, of course?”

“I’m damned if I do,” George Lacklander said.

“O, but yes, surely. The people who, on their own and other evidence, are known to have handled one fish or the other are Mr. Phinn, Mrs. Cartarette and the Colonel himself. Mr. Phinn caught the Old ’Un; Mrs. Cartarette tells us she tried to take a fish away from Thomasina Twitchett. The Colonel handled his own catch and refused to touch the Old ’Un. Lady Lacklander’s paint-rag with the traces of both types of fish scales tells us that somebody, we believe the murderer, handled both fish. The further discovery of minute blood-stains tells us that the spike of the shooting-stick was twisted in the rag after being partially cleaned in the earth. If, therefore, with the help of the microscope we could find scales from both fish on the garments of any one of you, that one would be Colonel Cartarette’s murderer. That,” Alleyn said, “was our belief.”

“Was?” Mark said quickly, and Fox, who had been staring at a facetious Victorian hunting print, re-focussed his gaze on his senior officer.

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “The telephone conversation I have just had was with one of the Home Office men who are looking after the pathological side. It is from him that I got all this expert’s stuff about scales. He tells me that on none of the garments submitted are there scales of both types.”

The normal purplish colour flooded back into George Lacklander’s face. “I said from the beginning,” he shouted, “it was some tramp. Though why the devil you had to — to—” he seemed to hunt for a moderate word—“to put us through the hoops like this—” His voice faded. Alleyn had lifted his hand. “Well?” Lacklander cried out. “What is it? What the hell is it? I beg your pardon, Mama.”

Lady Lacklander said automatically, “Don’t be an ass, George.”

“I’ll tell you,” Alleyn said, “exactly what the pathologist has found. He has found traces of scales where we expected to find them: on the Colonel’s hands and the edge of one cuff, on Mr. Phinn’s coat and knickerbockers and, as she warned us, on Mrs. Cartarette’s skirt. The first of these traces belongs to group B and the other two to group A. Yes?” Alleyn said, looking at Mark, who had begun to speak and then stopped short.

“Nothing,” Mark said. “I — no, go on.”

“I’ve almost finished. I’ve said that we think the initial blow was made by a golf-club, probably a driver. I may as well tell you at once that so far none of the clubs has revealed any trace of blood. On the other hand, they have all been extremely well cleaned.”

George said, “Naturally. My chap does mine!”

“When it comes to shoes, however,” Alleyn went on, “it’s a different story. They too have been well cleaned. But in respect of the right foot of a pair of golfing shoes there is something quite definite. The pathologist is satisfied that the scar left on the Colonel’s trout was undoubtedly made by the spiked heel of this shoe.”

“It’s a bloody lie!” George Lacklander bawled out. “Who are you accusing? Whose shoe?”

“It’s a hand-made job. Size four. Made, I should think, as long as ten years ago. From a very old, entirely admirable and hideously expensive bootmaker in the Burlington Arcade. It’s your shoe, Lady Lacklander.”

Her face was too fat to be expressive. She seemed merely to stare at Alleyn in a meditative fashion, but she had gone very pale. At last she said without moving, “George, it’s time to tell the truth.”

“That,” Alleyn said, “is the conclusion I hoped you would come to.”

“What are you suggesting?” Nurse Kettle repeated and then, seeing the look in Kitty’s face, she shouted, “No! Don’t tell me!”

But Kitty had begun to tell her. “It’s each for himself in their world,” she said, “just the same as in anybody else’s. If George Lacklander dreams he can make a monkey out of me, he’s going to wake up in a place where he won’t have any more funny ideas. What about the old family name then! Look! Do you know what he gets me to do? Break open Maurice’s desk because there’s something Maurie was going to make public about old Lacklander and George wants to get in first. And when it isn’t there, he asks me to find out if it was on the body. No! And when I won’t take that one on, what does he say?”

“I don’t know. Don’t tell me!”

“O, yes, I will. You listen to this and see how you like it. After all the fun and games! Teaching me how to swing—” She made a curious little retching sound in her throat and looked at Nurse Kettle with a kind of astonishment. “You know,” she said, “golf. Well, so what does he do? He says, this morning, when he comes to the car with me, he says he thinks it will be better if we don’t see much of each other.” She suddenly flung out a string of adjectives that Nurse Kettle would have considered unprintable. “That’s George Lacklander for you,” Kitty Cartarette said.

“You’re a wicked woman,” Nurse Kettle said. “I forbid you to talk like this. Sir George may have been silly and infatuated. I daresay you’ve got what it takes, as they say, and he’s a widower and I always say there’s a trying time for gentlemen just as there is — but that’s by the way. What I mean, if he’s been silly, it’s you that’s led him on,” Nurse Kettle said, falling back on the inexorable precepts of her kind. “You caught our dear Colonel and not content with that, you set your cap at poor Sir George. You don’t mind who you upset or how unhappy you make other people. I know your sort. You’re no good. You’re no good at all. I shouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t responsible for what’s happened. Not a scrap surprised.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Kitty whispered. She curled back, in her chair and staring at Nurse Kettle, she said, “You with your poor Sir George! Do you know what I think about your poor Sir George? I think he murdered your poor dear Colonel, Miss Kettle.”

Nurse Kettle sprang to her feet. The wrought-iron chair rocked against the table. There was a clatter of china and a jug of milk overturned into Kitty Cartarette’s lap.

“How dare you!” Nurse Kettle cried out. “Wicked! Wicked!
Wicked
!” She heard herself grow shrill and in the very heat of her passion she remembered an important item in her code: Never Raise the Voice. So although she would have found it less difficult to scream like a train, she did contrive to speak quietly. Strangely commonplace phrases emerged, and Kitty, slant-eyed, listened to them. “I would advise you,” Nurse Kettle quavered, “to choose your words. People can get into serious trouble passing remarks like that.” She achieved an appalling little laugh. “Murdered the Colonel!” she said, and her voice wobbled desperately. “The idea! If it wasn’t so dreadful, it’d be funny. With what, may I ask? And how?”

Kitty, too, had risen, and milk dribbled from her ruined skirt to the terrace. She was beside herself with rage.

“How?” she stammered. “I’ll tell you how and I’ll tell you with what. With a golf-club and his mother’s shooting-stick. That’s what. Just like a golf ball it was. Bald and shining. Easy to hit. Or an egg. Easy—”

Kitty drew in her breath noisily. Her gaze was fixed, not on Nurse Kettle, but beyond Nurse Kettle’s left shoulder. Her face was stretched and stamped with terror. It was as if she had laid back her ears. She was looking down the garden towards the spinney.

Nurse Kettle turned.

The afternoon was far advanced and the men who had come up through the spinney cast long shadows across the lawn, reaching almost to Kitty herself. For a moment she and Alleyn. looked at each other and then he came forward. In his right hand he carried a pair of very small old-fashioned shoes: brogues with spikes in the heels.