Scales of Justice (9 page)

They had followed Watt’s Lane down into the valley and up the slope through blinding rain to the village. Oliphant pulled up at a spot opposite the Boy and Donkey. A figure in a mackintosh and tweed hat stood in the lighted doorway.

“The Chief Constable, sir,” said Oliphant. “Sir James Punston. He said he’d drive over and meet you.”

“I’ll have a word with him, before we go on. Wait a moment.”

Alleyn crossed the road and introduced himself. The Chief Constable was a weather-beaten, tough-looking man who had been a Chief Commissioner of Police in India.

“Thought I’d better come over,” Sir James said, “and take a look at this show. Damn’ bad show it is. Damn’ nice fellow, Cartarette. Can’t imagine who’d want to set about him, but no doubt you’ll be able to tell us. I’ll come down with you. Filthy night, isn’t it?”

The Yard car had drawn up behind Oliphant’s. Bailey, Thompson and the driver got out and unloaded their gear with the economic movements of long usage and a stubborn disregard of the rain. The two parties joined up and led by the Chief Constable climbed a stile and followed a rough path down a drenched hillside. Their torches flashed on rods of rain and dripping furze bushes.

“They call this River Path,” the Chief Constable said. “It’s a right-of-way through the Nunspardon estate and comes out at Bottom Bridge, which we have to cross. I hear the dowager rang you up.”

“She did indeed,” Alleyn said.

“Lucky they decided it was your pigeon anyway. She’d have raised hell if they hadn’t,”

“I don’t see where she fits in.”

“She doesn’t in any ordinary sense of the phrase. She’s merely taken it upon herself ever since she came to Nunspardon to run Chyning and Swevenings. For some reason they seem to like it. Survival of the feudal instinct, you might think. It does survive, you know, in isolated pockets. Swevenings is an isolated pocket and Hermione, Lady Lacklander, has got it pretty well where she wants it.” Sir James continued in this local strain as they slid and squelched down the muddy hillside. He gave Alleyn an account of the Cartarette family and their neighbours with a particularly racy profile of Lady Lacklander herself.

“There’s the local gossip for you,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody and has done so for centuries. There have been no stockbroking overflows into Swevenings. The Lacklanders, the Phinns, the Syces and the Cartarettes have lived in their respective houses for a great many generations. They’re all on terms of intimacy, except that of late years there’s been, I fancy, a little coolness between the Lacklanders and old Occy Phinn. And now I come to think of it, I fancy Maurice Cartarette fell out with Phinn over fishing or something. But then old Occy is really a bit mad. Rows with everybody. Cartarette, on the other hand, was a very pleasant, nice chap. Oddly formal and devilishly polite, though, especially with people he didn’t like or had fallen out with. Not that he was a quarrelsome chap. Far from it. I have heard, by the way,” Sir James gossiped, “that there’s been some sort of coldness between Cartarette and that ass George Lacklander. However! And after all that, here’s the bridge.”

As they crossed it, they could hear the sound of rain beating on the surface of the stream. On the far side their feet sank into mud. They turned left on the rough path. Alleyn’s shoes filled with water and water poured off the brim of his hat.

“Hell of a thing to happen, this bloody rain,” said the Chief Constable. “Ruin the terrain.”

A wet branch of willow slapped Alleyn’s face. On the hill to their right they could see the lighted windows of three houses. As they walked on, however, distant groups of trees intervened and the windows were shut off.

“Can the people up there see into the actual area?” Alleyn asked.

Sergeant Oliphant said, “No, sir. Their own trees as well as this belt of willows screen it. They can see the stretch on the far side above the bridge, and a wee way below it.”

“That’s Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s preserve, isn’t it?” asked the Chief Constable. “Above the bridge?”

“Mr.
Danberry-Phinn
?” Alleyn said, sharply.

“Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn, to give you the complete works. The ‘Danberry’ isn’t insisted upon. He’s the local eccentric I told you about. He lives in the top house up there. We don’t have a village idiot in Swevenings; we have a bloody-minded old gentleman. It’s more classy,” said Sir James, acidly.

“Danberry-Phinn,” Alleyn repeated. “Isn’t there some connection there with the Lacklanders?”

Sir James said shortly, “Both Swevenings men, of course.” His voice faded uncertainly as he floundered into a patch of reeds. Somewhere close at hand a dog howled dismally and a deep voice apostrophized it, “Ah, stow it, will you.” A light bobbed up ahead of them.

“Here we are,” Sir James said. “That you, Gripper?”

“Yes, sir,” said the deep voice. The mackintosh cape of uniformed constable shone in the torchlight.

“Dog still at it seemingly,” said the sergeant.

“That’s right, Mr. Oliphant. I’ve got him tethered here.” A torch flashed on Skip, tied by a handkerchief to a willow branch.

“Hullo, old fellow,” Alleyn said.

They all waited for him to go through the thicket. The constable shoved back a dripping willow branch for him.

“You’ll need to stoop a little, sir.”

Alleyn pushed through the thicket. His torchlight darted about in the rain and settled almost at once on a glistening mound.

“We got some groundsheets down and covered him,” the, sergeant said, “when it looked like rain.”

“Good.”

“And we’ve covered up the area round the corpse as best we could. Bricks and one or two planks from the old boatshed yonder. But I daresay the water’s got under just the same.”

Allyn said, “Fair enough. We couldn’t ask for better. I think before we go any nearer we’ll get photographs. Come through, Bailey. Do the best you can. As it stands and then uncovered, with all the details you can get, in case it washes out before morning. By Jove, though, I believe it’s lifting.”

They all listened. The thicket was loud with the sound of dripping foliage, but the heavy drumming of rain had stopped, and by the time Bailey had set up his camera, a waxing moon had ridden out over the valley.

When Bailey had taken his last flash-photograph of the area and the covered body, he took away the groundsheet and photographed the body again from many angles, first with the tweed hat over the face and then without it. He put his camera close to Colonel Cartarette’s face and it flashed out in the night with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Only when all this had been done, did Alleyn, walking delicately, go closer, stoop over the head and shine his torch full on the wound.

“Sharp instrument?” said Fox.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “yes, a great puncture, certainly. But could a sharp instrument do all that, Br’er Fox? No use speculating till we know what it was.” His torchlight moved away from the face and found a silver glint on a patch of grass near Colonel Cartarette’s hands and almost on the brink of the stream. “And this is the Old ’Un?” he murmured.

The Chief Constable and Sergeant Oliphant both broke into excited sounds of confirmation. The light moved to the hands, lying close together. One of them was clenched about a wisp of green.

“Cut grass,” Alleyn said. “He was going to wrap his trout in it. There’s his knife, and there’s the creel beside him.”

“What we reckoned, sir,” said the sergeant in agreement.

“Woundy great fish, isn’t it?” said the Chief Constable, and there was an involuntary note of envy in his voice.

Alleyn said, “What was the surface like before it rained?”

“Well, sir,” the sergeant volunteered, “as you see, it’s partly gravel. There was nothing to see in the willows where the ground was dry as a chip. There was what we reckoned were the deceased’s footprints on the bank where it was soft and where he’d been fishing and one or two on the earthy bits near where he fell, but I couldn’t make out anything else and we didn’t try, for fear of messing up what little there was.”

“Quite right. Will it rain again before morning?”

The three local men moved back into the meadow and looked up at the sky.

“All over, I reckon, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Set fine,” said the deep-voiced constable.

“Clearing,” said Sir James Punston.

“Cover everything up again, Sergeant, and set a watch till morning. Have we any tips of any sort about times? Anybody known to have come this way?”

“Nurse Kettle, sir, who found him. Young Dr. Lacklander came back with her to look at him, and
he
says he came through the valley and over the bridge earlier in the evening. We haven’t spoken to anyone else, sir.”

“How deep,” Alleyn asked, “is the stream just here?”

“About five foot,” said Sergeant Oliphant.

“Really? And he lies on his right side roughly parallel with the stream and facing it. Not more than two feet from the brink. Head pointing down-stream, feet towards the bridge. The fish lies right on the brink by the strand of grass he was cutting to wrap it in. And the wound’s in the left temple. I take it he was squatting on his heels within two feet of the brink and just about to bed his catch down in the grass. Now, if, as the heelmarks near his feet seem to indicate, he kneeled straight over into the position the body still holds, one of two things must have happened, wouldn’t you say, Br’er Fox?”

“Either,” Fox said stolidly, “he was coshed by a left-handed person standing behind him or by a right-handed person standing in front of him and at least three feet away.”

“Which would place the assailant,” said Alleyn, “about twelve inches out on the surface of the stream. Which is not as absurd as it sounds when you put it that way. All right. Let’s move on. What comes next?”

The Chief Constable, who had listened to all this in silence, now said, “I gather there’s a cry of possible witnesses waiting for you up at Hammer. That’s Cartarette’s house up here on Watt’s Hill. If you’ll forgive me, Alleyn, I won’t go up with you. Serve no useful purpose. If you want me, I’m five miles away at Tourets. Anything I can do, delighted, but sure you’d rather be left in peace. I would in my day. By the way, I’ve told them at the Boy and Donkey that you’ll probably want beds for what’s left of the night. You’ll find a room at the head of the stairs. They’ll give you an early breakfast if you leave a note. Good-night.”

He was gone before Alleyn could thank him.

With the sergeant as guide, Alleyn and Fox prepared to set out for Hammer. Alleyn had succeeded in persuading the spaniel Skip to accept them, and after one or two false starts and whimperings he followed at their heels. They used torches in order to make their way with as little blundering as possible through the grove. Oliphant, who was in the lead, suddenly uttered a violent oath.

“What is it?” Alleyn asked, startled.

“
Gawd
!” Oliphant said. “I thought someone was looking at me.
Gawd, d’you see that
!”

His wavering torchlight flickered on wet willow leaves. A pair of luminous disks stared out at them from the level of a short man’s eyes.

“Touches of surrealism,” Alleyn muttered, “in Bottom Meadow.” He advanced his own torch, and they saw a pair of spectacles caught up in a broken twig.

“We’ll pluck this fruit with grateful care,” he said and gathered the spectacles into his handkerchief.

The moon now shone on Bottom Meadow, turning the bridge and the inky shadow it cast over the broken-down boatshed and punt into a subject for a wood engraving. A group of tall reeds showed up romantically in its light, and the Chyne took on an air of enchantment.

They climbed the river path up Watt’s Hill. Skip began to whine and to wag his tail. In a moment the cause of his excitement came into view, a large tabby cat sitting on the path in the bright moonlight washing her whiskers. Skip dropped on his haunches and made a ridiculous sound in his throat. Thomasina Twitchett, for it was she, threw him an inimical glance, rolled on her back at Alleyn’s feet and trilled beguilement. Alleyn liked cats. He stooped down and found that she was in the mood to be carried. He picked her up. She kneaded his chest and advanced her nose towards his.

“My good woman,” Alleyn said, “you’ve been eating fish.”

Though he was unaware of it at the time, this was an immensely significant discovery.

When they approached Hammer Farm, Alleyn saw that the three desmesnes on Watt’s Hill ended in spinneys that separated them from the lower slopes and, as the sergeant had observed, screened them from the reaches of the Chyne below Bottom Bridge. The river path ran upwards through the trees and was met by three private paths serving the three houses. The sergeant led the way up the first of these. Thomasina Twitchett leapt from Alleyn’s embrace and with an ambiguous remark darted into the shadows.

“That’ll be one of Mr. Phinn’s creatures, no doubt,” said Sergeant Oliphant. “He’s crackers on cats, is Mr. Phinn.”

“Indeed,” Alleyn said, sniffing at his fingers.

They emerged in full view of Hammer Farm house with its row of French windows lit behind their curtains.

“Not,” said the sergeant, “that it’s been a farm or anything like it, for I don’t know how long. The present lady’s had it done up considerable.”

Skip gave a short bark and darted ahead. One of the curtains was pulled open, and Mark Lacklander came through to the terrace, followed by Rose.

“Skip?” Rose said. “Skip?”

He whined and flung himself at her. She sank to her knees crying and holding him in her arms. “Don’t, darling,” Mark said, “don’t. He’s wet and muddy. Don’t.”

Alleyn, Fox and Sergeant Oliphant had halted. Mark and Rose looked across the lawn and saw them standing in the moonlight with their wet clothes shining and their faces shadowed by their hatbrims. For a moment neither group moved or spoke, and then Alleyn crossed the lawn and came towards them, bareheaded. Rose stood up. The skirts of her linen house-coat were bedabbled with muddy paw marks.

“Miss Cartarette?” Alleyn said. “We are from the C.I.D. My name is Alleyn.”

Rose was a well-mannered girl with more than her share of natural dignity. She shook hands with him and introduced him to Mark. Fox was summoned and Sergeant Oliphant eased up the path in an anonymous manner and waited at the end of the terrace.

“Will you come in?” Rose said, and Mark added, “My grandmother is here, Mr. Alleyn, and my father, who informed the local police.”

“And Nurse Kettle, I hope?”

“And Nurse Kettle.”

“Splendid. Shall we go in, Miss Cartarette?”

Alleyn and Fox took off their wet mackintoshes and hats and left them on a garden seat.

Rose led the way through the French window into the drawing-room, where Alleyn found an out-of-drawing conversation piece established. Lady Lacklander, a vast black bulk, completely filled an arm chair. Alleyn noticed that upon one of her remarkably small feet she wore a buckled velvet shoe and upon the other, a man’s bath slipper. Kitty Cartarette was extended on a sofa with one black-velvet leg dangling, a cigarette in her holder, a glass in her hand and an ash tray with butts at her elbow. It was obvious that she had wept, but repairs had been effected in her make-up, and though her hands were still shaky, she was tolerably composed. Between the two oddly assorted women, poised on the hearthrug with a whiskey-and-soda, looking exquisitely uncomfortable and good-looking, was Sir George Lacklander. And at a remove in a small chair perfectly at her ease sat Nurse Kettle, reclaimed from her isolation in the hall.

“Hullo,” said Lady Lacklander, picking her lorgnette off her bosom and flicking it open. “Good evening to you. You’re Roderick Alleyn, aren’t you? We haven’t met since you left the Foreign Service, and that’s not yesterday nor the day before that. How many years is it? And how’s your mama?”

“More than I care to remind you of and very well considering,” Alleyn said, taking a hand like a pincushion in his.

“Considering what? Her age? She’s five years my junior, and there’s nothing but fat amiss with me. Kitty, this is Roderick Alleyn; Mrs. Cartarette. My son George.”

“Hah-yoo?” George intervened coldly.

“…and over there is Miss Kettle, our district nurse. Good evening,” Lady Lacklander continued, looking at Fox.

“Good evening, my lady,” said Fox placidly.

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said.

“Now, what do you propose to do with us all? Take your time,” she added kindly.

Alleyn thought to himself, “Not only must I take my time, but I must also take control. This old lady is up to something.”

He turned to Kitty Cartarette. “I’m sorry,” he said, “to come so hard on the heels of what must have been an appalling shock. I’m afraid that in these cases police enquiries are not the easiest ordeals to put up with. If I may, Mrs. Cartarette, I’ll begin by asking you”… he glanced briefly round the room… “indeed, all of you, if you’ve formed any opinion at all about this affair.”

There was a pause. He looked at Kitty Cartarette and then steadily, for a moment, at Rose, who was standing at the far end of the room with Mark.

Kitty said, “Somehow, I can’t sort of get it. It seems so… so
unlikely.
”

“And you, Miss Cartarette?”

“No,” Rose said. “No. It’s unthinkable that anyone who knew him should want to hurt him.”

George Lacklander cleared his throat. Alleyn glanced at him. “I… ah…” George said, “I… ah… personally believe it must have been some tramp or other. Trespassing or something. There’s nobody in the district, I mean. I mean, it’s quite incredible.”

“I see,” Alleyn said. “The next point is: do we know of anybody who was near Colonel Cartarette within, let us say, two hours of the time… I believe it was five minutes to nine… when you, Miss Kettle, found him?”

“Exactly what,” Lady Lacklander said, “do you mean by ‘near’?”

“Let us say within sight or hearing of him.”

“I was,” said Lady Lacklander. “I made an appointment with him for eight, which he kept twenty minutes early. Our meeting took place on the river bank opposite the willow grove where I understand he was found.”

Fox, unobtrusively stationed by the piano, had begun to take notes. Although her back was turned towards him, Lady Lacklander appeared to sense this activity. She shifted massively in her chair and looked at him without comment.

“Come,” Alleyn said, “that’s a starting point, at least. We’ll return to it later if we may. Does anyone know anything about Colonel Cartarette’s movements after this meeting which lasted… how long do you think, Lady Lacklander?”

“About ten minutes. I remember looking at my watch after Maurice Cartarette left me. He re-crossed Bottom Bridge, turned left and disappeared behind the willow grove. It was then nine minutes to eight. I packed up my things and left them to be collected and went home. I’d been sketching.”

“About nine minutes to eight?” Alleyn repeated.

Kitty said, “I didn’t see him, but… I must have been somewhere near him, I suppose, when I came back from the golf course. I got home at five past eight — I remember.”

“The golf course?”

“At Nunspardon,” George Lacklander said. “Mrs. Cartarette and I played a round of golf there this evening.”

“Ah, yes. The course is above the stream, isn’t it, and on the opposite side of the valley from where we are now?”

“Yes, but the greater part is over the crest of the hill.”

“The second tee,” Mark said, “overlooks the valley.”

“I see. You came home by the bottom bridge, Mrs. Cartarette?”

“Yes. The river path.”

“On the far side wouldn’t you overlook the willow grove?”

Kitty pressed the palms of her hands against her head.

“Yes, I suppose you would. I don’t think he could have been there. I’m sure I’d have seen him if he had been there. As a matter of fact,” Kitty said, “I wasn’t looking much in that direction. I was looking, actually, at the upper reaches to see…” she glanced at George Lacklander …“well, to see if I could spot Mr. Phinn,” she said.

In the silence that followed, Alleyn was quite certain that the Lacklander wariness had been screwed up to its highest tension. All three had made slight movements that were instantly checked.

“Mr. Danberry-Phinn?” Alleyn said. “And did you see him?”

“Not then. No. He must have either gone home or moved beyond the upper bend.”

“Fishing?”

“Yes.”

“Poaching!” George Lacklander ejaculated. “Yes, by God, poaching!”

There were subdued ejaculations from Mark and his grandmother.

“Indeed?” Alleyn asked. “What makes you think so?”

“We saw him. No, Mama, I insist on saying so. We saw him from the second tee. He rents the upper reaches above the bridge from me, by God, and Maurice Cartarette rents… I’m sorry, Kitty… rented the lower. And there… damndest thing you ever saw… there he was on his own ground on the right bank above the bridge, casting above the bridge and letting the stream carry his cast under the bridge and below it into Cartarette’s waters.”

Lady Lacklander gave a short bark of laughter. George cast an incredulous and scandalized glance at her. Mark said, “Honestly! How he dared!”

“Most blackguardly thing I ever saw,” George continued. “Deliberate. And the cast, damme, was carried over that hole above the punt where the Old ’Un lurks. I saw it with my own eyes! Didn’t I, Kitty? Fellow like that deserves no consideration at all.
None,
” he repeated with a violence that made Alleyn prick up his ears and seemed to rebound (to his embarrassment) upon George himself.

“When did this nefarious bit of trickery occur?” Alleyn asked.

“I don’t know when.”

“When did you begin your round?”

“At six-thirty. No!” shouted George in a hurry and turning purple. “No! Later. About seven.”

“It wouldn’t be later than seven-fifteen then, when you reached the second tee?”

“About then, I daresay.”

“Would you say so, Mrs. Cartarette?”

Kitty said, “I should think, about then.”

“Did Mr. Phinn see you?”

“Not he. Too damned taken up with his poaching,” said George.

“Why didn’t you tackle him?” Lady Lacklander enquired.

“I would have for tuppence, Mama, but Kitty thought better not. We walked away,” George said virtuously, “in disgust.”

“I saw you walking away,” said Lady Lacklander, “but from where I was, you didn’t look particularly disgusted, George.”

Kitty opened her mouth and shut it again, and George remained empurpled.

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “you were sketching, Lady Lacklander, weren’t you? Whereabouts?”

“In a hollow about the length of this room below the bridge on the left bank.”

“Near a clump of alders?”

“You’re a sharpish observant fellow, it appears. Exactly.”

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “you were sketching.” Lady Lacklander said rather grimly, “through the alders.”

“But you couldn’t see Mr. Phinn poaching?”

“I couldn’t,” Lady Lacklander said, “but somebody else could and did.”

“Who was that, I wonder?”

“None other,” said Lady Lacklander, “than poor Maurice Cartarette himself. He saw it and the devil of a row they had over it, I may tell you.”

If the Lacklanders had been a different sort of people, Alleyn thought, they would have more clearly betrayed the emotion that he suspected had visited them all. It was, he felt sure from one or two slight manifestations, one of relief rather than surprise on Mark’s part and of both elements on his father’s. Rose looked troubled and Kitty merely stared. It was, surprisingly, Nurse Kettle who made the first comment.

“That old fish,” she said. “Such a lot of fuss!”

Alleyn looked at her and liked what he saw. “I’ll talk to her first,” he thought, “when I get round to solo interviews.”

He said, “How do you know, Lady Lacklander, that they had this row?”

“A: because I heard ’em, and B: because Maurice came straight to me when they parted company. That’s how, my dear man.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“I gathered that Maurice Cartarette came down intending to try the evening rise when I’d done with him. He came out of his own spinney and saw Occy Phinn up to no good down by the bridge. Maurice crept up behind him. He caught Occy red-handed, having just landed the Old ’Un. They didn’t see
me,
” Lady Lacklander went on, “because I was down in my hollow on the other bank. Upon my soul, I doubt if they’d have bridled their tongues if they had. They sounded as if they’d come to blows. I heard them tramping about on the bridge. I was debating whether I should rise up like some rather oversized deity and settle them when Occy bawled out that Maurice could have his so-and-so fish and Maurice said he wouldn’t be seen dead with it.” A look of absolute horror appeared for one second in Lady Lacklander’s eyes. It was as if they had all shouted at her, “But he
was
seen dead with it, you know.” She made a sharp movement with her hands and hurried on. “There was a thump, as if someone had thrown something wet and heavy on the ground. Maurice said he’d make a county business of it, and Occy said if he did, he, Occy, would have Maurice’s dog empounded for chasing his, Occy’s, cats. On that note they parted. Maurice came fuming over the hillock and saw me. Occy, as far as I know, stormed back up the hill to Jacob’s Cottage.”

“Had Colonel Cartarette got the fish in his hands, then?”

“Not he. I told you, he refused to touch it. He left it there, on the bridge. I saw it when I went home. For all I know, it’s still lying there on the bridge.”

“It’s lying by Colonel Cartarette,” Alleyn said, “and the question seems to be, doesn’t it, who put it there?”

This time the silence was long and completely blank.

“He must have come back and taken it, after all,” Mark said dubiously.

“No,” Rose said strongly. They all turned to her. Rose’s face was dimmed with tears and her voice uncertain. Since Alleyn’s arrival she had scarcely spoken, and he wondered if she was so much shocked that she did not even try to listen to them.

“No?” he said gently.

“He wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s not at all the sort of thing he’d do.”

“That’s right,” Kitty agreed. “He wasn’t like that,” and she caught her breath in a sob.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said at once. “Stupid of me. Of course, you’re right. The Colonel wasn’t like that.”

Rose gave him a look that told Alleyn as much as he wanted to know about their relationship. “So they’re in love,” he thought. “And unless I’m growing purblind, his father’s got more than half an eye on her stepmother. What a very compact little party, to be sure.”