Tied Up in Tinsel (24 page)

An expression that might have been the prelude to a grin dawned for a moment. “Well, actually I don’t, do I?” said Cressida. “Still, admit — it’s all a pretty good drag, isn’t it?”

She gave him another extremely matey look and then, in her usual fashion collapsed superbly into a chair.

Smith, Mrs. Forrester and even Hilary stared at her with unmistakable disfavour, Colonel Forrester with a kind of tender bewilderment.

“Cressy, my dear!” he mildly protested.

And at that an astonishing change came about in Cressida. Her eyes filled with tears, her mouth quivered and she beat with her pretty clenched fists on the arms of her chair. “All right, you lot,” she stammered. “I know what you’re thinking: how hard and mod and ghastly I’m being. All
right
. I don’t drip round making sorry-he’s-dead noises. That doesn’t mean I don’t mind. I do. I liked him — Moult. He was nice to me. You’ve all seen death, haven’t you? I hadn’t. Not ever. Not until I looked out of my window this morning and saw them putting it in a car, face up and awful. You needn’t say anything, any of you. No, Hilly, not even you — not yet. You’re old,
old
, all of you and you don’t
get
it. That’s all. Crack ahead with your meeting, for God’s sake.”

They stared at each other in consternation. Cressida beat on the arms of her chair and said, “Damn! I
won’t
bloody cry. I
won’t
.”

Hilary said, “
Darling
—” but she stamped with both feet and he stopped. Smith muttered something that sounded like “does you credit, love,” and cleared his throat.

Mrs. Forrester said: “I collect, Smith, that ludicrous as it sounds, you wish to hold some sort of meeting. Why don’t you do it?”

“Give us a chance,” he said resentfully.

Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I’m the stumbling block. I’ll leave you to it in a moment.”

Colonel Forrester, with something of an effort, got to his feet.

“Ask you to excuse me,” he said to Smith. “I’m not much good at meetings. Never have been. If you’ll allow me, Hilly, I’ll just sit in your study till breakfast.”

“Fred —”

“No, B. I haven’t got one of my Turns. I simply would like a moment or two to myself, my dear.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“
No
,” said the Colonel very firmly indeed. “Don’t fuss me, B. I prefer to be alone.” He went to the door, paused and looked at Cressida. She had her hand pressed to her mouth. “Unless,” the Colonel said gently, “you would care to join me, Cressy, presently. I think perhaps we’re both duffers at meetings, don’t you?”

She lifted her hand from her lips, sketched the gesture of blowing him a kiss, and contrived a smile. “I’ll come,” said Cressida. The Colonel nodded and left them. Alleyn opened the door for him. Before he could shut it again Mr. Fox appeared. Alleyn went out to him, pulling the door to. According to its habit it clicked and opened a few inches.

Fox rumbled at some length. Isolated words reached the listeners round the fire. “Finished… dressing-room… nothing… latent… urgent.”

Alleyn said, “Yes. All right. Tell the men to assemble in the stable yard. I want to speak to them. Tell Bailey and Thompson to leave the box out and the dressing-room unlocked. We’ve finished up there. Colonel Forrester will open the box when he’s ready to do so.”

“It’s an urgent phone call, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll take it. Away you go.”

He started off, clapped his hand to his waistcoat and said: “Damn, I forgot. The key of the box?”

“I’ve got it. Nothing for us, there.”

“Let the Colonel have it, then, will you, Fox?”

“Very good, sir.”

“I’ll take this call in the drawing-room. I’ll probably be some time over it. Carry on, Fox, will you? Collect the men outside at the back.”

“Certainly, sir,” Fox said.

Fox shut the library door and Alleyn went into the hall.

But he didn’t speak on the drawing-room, or any other, telephone. He ran upstairs two steps at a time, jolting discomfort to his left arm, and sought out his wife in their room.

“My love,” he said. “I want you to stay put. Here. And be a triple ape.”

“What on earth’s a triple ape?”

Alleyn rapidly touched her eyes, ears and lips.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “I see. And I don’t breathe either, I suppose.”

“There’s my girl. Now listen —”

He had not gone far with what he had to say before there was a knock on the door. At a nod from him, Troy called out, “Just a second. Who is it?”

The door opened a crack.

Fox whispered, “Me.”

Alleyn went to him. “Well?”

“Like a lamb,” said Fox, “to the slaughter.”

“What I got to say,” said Mr. Smith, “is important and I’ll thank you to hear me out. When I’ve said it, I’ll welcome comment, but hear me out first. It’s a bit of luck for us that flipping door opens of itself. You heard. He’s got a phone call and he’s going to talk to his mob in the backyard. That gives us a breather. All right. He’s made up his mind, Gawd knows why, that your lovely lot’s out of it, ’Illy. That means — it’s got to mean — ’e’s settled for one of us. So what we say in the next confrontation is bloody important. No, Missus, don’t butt in. Your turn’s coming.

“Now. We know Alf Moult was alive when ’e finished ’is act and waltzed out of the drawing-room winder looking a proper charlie and all. We know ’e was alive when ’e ’ad ’is whiskers taken off. We know ’e was left, alive, in the cloakroom. And that’s all we do know of our own observations. So. The important thing for us is to be able to account for ourselves, all of us, from the time we last see ’im. Right? A-course it’s right.

“Well then. As it appears, we all can answer for the fair sex in the person of Cressy Tottenham. Matter of a minute after Alf finished his act, Cressy come in, having removed his whiskers for ’im, and she certainly hadn’t ’ad time to do ’im in and dispose of ’is body.”

“Look here, Uncle Bert —”

“All right, all right, all right! I said she couldn’t of, didn’t I? So she couldn’t of. This is important. From Cressy’s point of view. Because she seems to of been the last to see ’im alive. Except of course, ’is slayer, and that puts ’er in a special category.”

“It does nothing of the sort,” Hilary said.

“Don’t be silly, Hilary,” said his aunt. “Go on, Smith.”

“Ta. To resume. I was coming to you, Missus. Cressy come in an’ mentioned to you it was Alf and not the Colonel done the Daddy Christmas act and you lit off. Where did you go?”

“To my husband. Naturally.”

“Straight off? Direct?”

“Certainly. To our bedroom.”

“You didn’t look in on the dressing-room?”

“I did not.”

“Can you prove it?”

Mrs. Forrester reddened angrily. “No,” she said.

“That’s unfortunate, innit?”

“Nonsense. Don’t be impertinent.”

“Ah, for Gawd’s sake!”

“Aunt B, he’s trying to help us.”

“When I require help I’ll ask for it.”

“You require it now, you silly old bag,” said Mr. Smith.

“How dare you speak to me like that!”

“Uncle Bert —
really
.”

“And what about yourself, ’Illy? We’ll be coming to you in a sec. Where was I? Oh, yes. With Cressy in the drawing-room. She tells you two about the job and one after another you leave the room. Where did you go?”

“I? I looked for Moult to thank him. I looked in the cloakroom and the library and I went upstairs to see if he was there. And I visited Uncle Flea and Aunt B was with him and finally I joined you all in the dining-room.”

“There you are,” said Mr. Smith. “So if Alf Moult went upstairs you or your auntie or (supposing ’e ’adn’t ’ad one of ’is turns) your uncle,
could
of done ’im in.”

“Well — my dear Uncle Bert — ‘could have’! Yes, I suppose so. But so could —” Hilary stopped short.

“So could who? I couldn’t of. Mrs. Alleyn couldn’t of. Cressy couldn’t of. We was all sitting down to our Christmas dinner, good as gold, as anyone will bear us out.”

Mrs. Forrester said, “Are we to take it, Smith, that your attitude is entirely altruistic? If you are persuaded that you are completely free of suspicion, why all this fuss?”

“Innit marvellous?” Mr. Smith apostrophized. “Innit bleeding marvellous? A man sees ’is friends, of what ’e thought was ’is friends, in a nasty situation and tries to give them the office. What does ’e get? You can’t win, can you?”

“I’m sure,” she said, “we’re very much obliged to you, Smith. There’s one aspect of this affair, however, that I think you have overlooked.”

She paused, thrust her hands up the opposite sleeves of her magenta cardigan and rested them on her stomach. “Isn’t it possible,” she said, “that Moult was done away with much later in the evening? Your uncle, Hilary, will not care to admit it but Moult did, from time to time, indulge in drinking bouts. I think it extremely likely this was such an occasion. Cressida considers he had drink concealed about his person. He may well have taken it after his performance, hidden himself away somewhere, possibly in a car, and thus eluded the searchers and emerged later in the evening — to be murdered.”

“You’ve thought it all out very nice and tidy, ’aven’t you?” sneered Mr. Smith.

“And so, you may depend upon it, has Mr. Alleyn,” she retorted.

“The search was very thorough, Aunt Bed.”

“Did they look in the cars?”

Hilary was silent.

“In which case,” Mrs. Forrester said exactly as if he had answered, “I cannot see that you, Smith, or Cressida or indeed you, Hilary, are to be excluded from the list of suspected persons.”

“What about yourself?” Smith asked.

“I?” she said with her customary spirit. “No doubt I could have killed Moult. I had no conceivable motive for killing him but no doubt I could have done so.”

“Nothing simpler. You go up to the Colonel, who’s on ’is bed and asleep. You hear Alf Moult in the dressing-room. You go froo the barfroom into the dressing-room, pick up the poker and Bob’s your uncle. You shove the corpse out of the winder.” Mr. Smith caught himself up. “You did say Vince and Co. picked it up under the winder, didn’t you, ’Illy?”

“I don’t think I said anything about it. But according to Alleyn, yes, they did.”

“The
modus operandi
you have outlined, Smith, could have been used by anybody if my theory is correct. You’ve talked a great deal but you’ve proved nothing, I said you’ve —”

“Don’t you bawl me out as if I was your old man,” Mr. Smith roared. “I been watching you, Missus. You been acting very peculiar. You got something up your sleeve you’re not letting on about.”

Hilary, with a wildish look, cried out, “I won’t have this sort of thing!”

“Yes, you will. You can’t help yourself. You want to watch your aunt. I did. When Alleyn was talking about that marvellous tin box. You didn’t like that, Missus, did you?”

Mr. Smith advanced upon Mrs. Forrester. He jabbed at her with a fat forefinger. “Come on,” he said. “What’s it all about? What’s in the ruddy tin box?”

Mrs. Forrester walked out of the room, slamming the door. When she had gone, it opened silently of its own accord.

The key fitted. It turned easily. Now. The hoop was disengaged. The hasp was more difficult, it really needed a lever but there was none to hand. At the cost of a broken fingernail and in spite of a glove it was finally prised up from the staple.

The lid opened to a vertical position but tended to fall forward, so that it was necessary to prop it up with the head. This was irksome.

A cash box: locked. A map-case. Canvas bags, tied at the neck with red tape. Tubular cartons. Manila envelopes, labelled. “Correspondence: B to F.F. F.F. to B.” He had kept all their letters.

“Receipts.” “Correspondence, general.” “Travel, etc.” “Miscellaneous.” A document in a grand envelope. “To our Trusty and Well-beloved —”

It was necessary to keep calm. To keep what Cressida called one’s cool. Not to scrabble wildly in the welter of accumulated papers. To be methodical and workmanlike. Sensible.

A locked box that rattled. The jewels she hadn’t taken out for the party. And at last a leather dispatch-case with an envelope flap: locked.

No panic but something rather like it when somebody walked past the door. The keys had been removed so one couldn’t lock the door.

The impulse to get out at once with the case and deal with it in safety was almost irresistible, but it presented its own problems. If only one knew how to pick a lock! Perhaps they would think that Moult had burst it. It was a sliding mechanism with a metal hinged piece on the leather flap engaging with a lock on the case itself. Perhaps the slide could be knocked down? Or, better, force the hinged piece up? The poker, of course, had gone but there were the tongs with their little thin flat ends.

Yes. Between the metal flap and the lock there was just room. Shove. Shove hard and force it up.

There!

A diary. A large envelope. “My Will.” Not sealed. A rapid look at it. Leave that. Put it back — quick. The thing itself: a reinforced envelope and inside it the document, printed in German, filled in and signed. The statement in Colonel Forrester’s hand. The final words: “declare her to be my daughter,” and the signature: “Alfred Moult.”

Replace the dispatch-case, quick, quick, quick.

Relock the tin box. Back into the wardrobe with it. Now, the envelope. She must hide it under her cardigan and away.

She stood up, breathless.

The doors opened simultaneously and before she could cry out there were men in the room and Alleyn advancing upon her.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “this is it.”

And for the second time during their short acquaintance Cressida screamed at the top of her voice.

“It’s been a short cut,” Alleyn said. “We left the library door open and let it be known the coast was clear. Fox displayed the key of the padlock, Cressida Tottenham said she was on her way to the study and would give it to the Colonel. We went upstairs, kept out of sight, and walked in on her. It was a gamble and it might never have come off. In which ease we would have been landed with a most exhaustive routine investigation. We are, still, of course, but with the advantage of her first reaction. She was surprised and flabbergasted and she gave herself away in several most significant places.”

“Rory — when did you first —?”

“Oh — that. Almost from the beginning, I think,” said he with a callow smirk. “You see, there everybody was, accepting her story that Moult substituted for the Colonel, which put her ostensibly in the clear and made a squint-eyed nonsense of the evidence: the robe, the wig, the lot. Whereas if
she
had substituted for the Colonel there was no confusion.

“She hit Moult on the base of his skull with the poker in the dressing-room, probably when he was leaning out of the window looking for his signal from Vincent, who, by the way, saw him and, according to plan, at once hauled his sledge round to the front. At this point the bells started up. A deafening clamour. She removed the wig and the robe, which unzips completely down the back. If he was lolling over the sill, there’d be no trouble. Nor would it be all that difficult to tumble him out.

“The tricky bit, no doubt, was going downstairs but by that time, as she knew when she heard the bells, the whole household, including the staff, were assembled in the library. Even if one of the servants had seen her carrying the robe and all the other gear, they’d have thought nothing of it at the time. She went into the dressing-room, stuffed a couple of cotton-wool pads in her cheeks and put on the wig, the robe, the great golden beard and moustache and the mistletoe crown. And the fur-lined boots.
And
the Colonel’s woolly gloves which you all thought he’d forgotten. And away she went. She was met by the unsuspecting Vincent. She waltzed round the Christmas tree, returned to the cloakroom and offed with her lendings. In five minutes she was asking you if Moult did his act all right because she couldn’t see very well from the back of the room.”

“Rory — where is she?”

“In her bedroom with a copper at the door. Why?”

“Is she — frightened?”

“When I left her she was furious. She tried to bite me. Luckily I was on my guard so she didn’t repeat her success with the vase.”

Alleyn looked at his wife. “I know, my love,” he said. “Your capacity for pity is on the Dostoevskian scale.” He put his arm round her. “You are such a treat,” he said. “Apart from being a bloody genius. I can’t get over you. After all these years. Odd, isn’t it?”

“Did she work it out beforehand?”

“No. Not the assault. It was an improvisation — a
toccata
. Now, she’s in for the fugue.”

“But — those tricks — the booby-trap and all?”

“Designed to set Bill-Tasman against his cosy little clutch of homicides. She would have preferred a group of resentful Greeks in flight from the Colonels.”

“Poor old Hilary.”

“Well — yes. But she really is a horrid piece of work. All the same there are extenuating circumstances. In my job one examines them, as you know, at one’s peril.”

“Go on.”

“At one’s peril,” he repeated and then said, “I don’t know at what stage Colonel Forrester felt he was, according to his code, obliged to step in. From the tenor of the documents in that infernal tin box, one gathers that she was Moult’s daughter by a German girl who died in childbirth, that it was Moult who, with great courage, saved the Colonel’s life and got a badly scarred face for his pains. That Moult had means comprising a tidy inheritance from a paternal tobacconist’s shop, his savings, his pay and his wages. That the Colonel, poor dear, felt himself to be under a lifelong debt to Moult. All right. Now Moult, like many of his class, was an unrepentant snob. He wanted his natural daughter upon whom he doted to be ‘brought up a lady.’ He wanted the Colonel to organize this process. He wanted to watch the process, as it were, from well back in the pit, unidentified, completely anonymous. And so it fell out. Until the whirligig of time, according to its practice, brought in its revenges. Hilary Bill-Tasman, having encountered her at his uncle’s and aunt’s house, decided that she was just the chatelaine for Halberds and, incidentally, the desire of his heart. She seemed to fill the bill in every possible respect. ‘Tottenham’ for instance. A damn’ good family.”

“Is it?” said Troy. “Yes. Well.
Tottenham
. Why Tottenham?”

“I’ll ask the Colonel,” said Alleyn.

“Moult,” said the Colonel, “was a keen follower of the Spurs. He chose it for that reason.”

“We didn’t care for it,” said Mrs. Forrester. “After all there are — Fred tried to suggest Bolton or Wolverhampton but he wouldn’t hear of them. She is Tottenham by deed-poll.”

“How,” Alleyn asked, “did it all come to a crisis?”