The Yellow-Green Tassel by Victor Canning

Meet Colonel Thornton — an English colonel to end all (literary) English colonels.

This one’s chief occupation was to shoot finches in the early morning.

The old lady lay on the four-poster bed very still, very fragile, her hands folded across her breast. A black morning dress was buttoned close up to her throat and held by a large cameo brooch. She still had her shoes on, black, elastic-sided affairs with a brilliant polish on the patent-leather toes. On the pillow to one side of her was a round, hand-knitted cap, topped by a large greeny-yellow tassel. She has iron-gray hair, very neat and tidy.

The police doctor straightened up from beside the bed and said precisely, “Not more than four hours ago. Death was instantaneous. Probably a .22 slug. Not close range — no burns on the skin. Not close enough for suicide, anyway. Entered just in front of the left ear and upwards to the brain.”

He moved away from the bed and began to tidy things into his bag.

inspector Cardew could see the small black mark at the side of Miss Thornton’s temple. “Accident, do you think?”

The doctor shrugged. “Probably. But that’s not my department. I’ll send up for her. We’ll get the slug for you.”

Cardew went to the door with him and asked, “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, for the last twenty years. She and her brother, the Colonel. Both of them mad as bats, Inspector... Well, perhaps not as bad as that. But surely eccentric. She used to play a violin in the garden to get her flowers to grow. He played too — a flute. Flowers grew, too — best in the district. By the way, that’s not her own hair. It’s a wig. Never knew it myself until now.”

Cardew said to the constable outside the bedroom door, “No one in without my permission.”

He went down the dark, gloomy stairs with the doctor and saw him out. Back in the hall he met the housemaid coming through from the kitchen quarters with a coffee tray — two cups and two saucers.

She said, “The Colonel’s back, sir. Came in while you were upstairs with the doctor. Would you go into him in the study, sir, he asks? He knows, sir. He saw your cars outside and asked and I had to tell him.”

“How did he take it?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Well, I mean, he just nodded and then told me to bring coffee for you and him.”

She led the way into the study, announced the Inspector, deposited her tray, and left.

Colonel Thornton was standing by the window looking out at the garden which was bright in the early June sunlight. He was well over six feet, thinnish, and slightly stoop-shouldered. He wore corduroy trousers, a tweed jacket, leather-patched at the elbows, and his feet were bare in leather sandals. He turned to show a sunburned face, lean and worn, with bright, fierce blue eyes set just a little too closely together. His hair was white and needed cutting.

He said, “Morning, Inspector. Help yourself to some coffee. Damn bad business, what?” His voice was resonant, warm, but full of authority.

“It is indeed, Colonel.”

“Ha, well — happens to us all. Had a good run for her money. That’s the thing. Put up a good show while you’re going and then go without whining.” He came over and began to help himself to coffee.

For a moment Inspector Cardew felt embarrassed. This was not what he had expected. The Colonel showed not the slightest sign of distress. And he had lived with his sister for over twenty years. Cardew had a swift picture of the gray-haired old lady lying on her bed.

Ignoring the coffee, Cardew said, “She was found about two hours ago by the gardener. Lying on the path at the back of your shrubbery. The doctor thinks a .22 bullet, or something like that, killed her. It penetrated just in front of the left ear. Death was instantaneous.”

The Colonel nodded, took a noisy suck at his coffee cup, and then said, “Doctor, you say?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Have to speak up a bit. Shade deaf. Yes, he’s right — .22 bullet. Did it myself. No right to be on the path behind the shrubbery. Out of bounds from dawn until ten o’clock. Everyone knows that in this house. Big notice there, too.”

“Yes, Colonel. I saw it on my way down.”

“Who’s sawn it down?” The bright blue eyes fixed themselves on Cardew.

“Not sawn, Colonel. Seen. I’ve seen it.” He raised his voice sharply.

“Oh, no need to shout quite so loud. It’s only my left ear.”

Speaking very distinctly Cardew said, “Would you please explain, Colonel, how you came to shoot your sister?”

“Certainly. Unfortunate, but there it is. Come up with me.”

He went out of the room and up the central staircase to a bedroom on the second floor. It had one large window which overlooked the garden. From the lawn outside a bank ran steeply up to a distant woodland. On the bank just above the lawn and a little higher than the bedroom window was a long hedge of shrubbery. On a table by the window lay a .22 sporting rifle.

The Colonel went to the window and without looking at the Inspector said, “Know anything about ecology?”

“Ecology?”

“Yes — the relationship of birds and animals to plants. Too many rabbits, for instance, and Australia becomes a desert. Not as bad here, but too many damned greenfinches and bullfinches and my shrubbery becomes an abomination and a desolation. Eat the blossoms, eat the berries and drupes. Had all me Daphne mezereum ruined last year. Greenfinches. Pest. Have to keep them down.”

“You mean, Colonel, you sit up here and shoot at the birds?”

“That’s right. From dawn until I go to shave and bath. Have me breakfast here. Strict standing order. No one in shrubbery before ten. Only way, Inspector. Wearing that damn silly hat, the maid told me. No wonder. Yellow-green tassel looks just like a greenfinch. Standing on the path behind the shrubbery she’d just show the tassel. Nothing else. Hellish thing to happen, hellish — but there you are. Mors omnibus communis. Pure accident. Only shot I fired this morning, round about seven.”

“But, Colonel, why would your sister be in the shrubbery against your orders? She knew your habits.”

“Rabbits? None in this garden, Not since myximatosis.”

“Why,” said Cardew, for once in his life feeling singularly incapable of handling a situation, “should your sister be in the shrubbery? She knew the rules.”

“Course she did. But she took me too literally. Always have breakfast together here in the morning. About six. Both early risers. Up at five sometimes she was. Pottering around doing odd jobs. She was a first-class do-it-yourself nabob. Distemper, paint, paper, anything. Always brought our breakfast here before maid arrived. Told her this morning I was going into Battersham to get some more .22 shots. That’s why she felt it was all right to go into the shrubbery.”

“If you had no ammunition, how could she have been shot?”

“Told you. Took me too literally. I still had one shot up the spout. Always leave the rifle with one up the spout ready to take a quick pot. Damn bad luck for Milly. Just happened to be the one. Fluke in a million. Be an inquest, I suppose? Lot of gawking people, and the coroner, young Feathershaw, sounding off about firearms. But what do you do?” He looked out of the window at the shubbery. “I’ve tried everything — bird scares, spraying, black cotton, plastic bags, muslin. No damn good. Place looks like a Chinese laundry. Kill ’em. The word spreads. Kill ’em while you have breakfast.” He turned and gave the Inspector a steady look. “If there’s nothing else, Inspector, I’ve got work to do. The world can’t stop, you know.”

Cardew let him go. He just didn’t know what to make of the Colonel. Although the whole thing seemed clearly an accident, he was beginning to have a familiar nagging of doubt. But for the life of him he couldn’t think why.

He went down to the bedroom where Miss Thornton lay and was met by the constable talking to the housemaid outside.

“Says she’d like a word with you, sir.”

“Please, if I may, sir. Could we go — go inside. It’s not something I want anyone else to hear.”

Cardew opened the door and they went in. The maid stood with her back to the bed.

“Well, what is it?”

“Well, Inspector, you know Miss Thornton was a little — well, odd. Well, sir, she gave me strict instructions years ago where to look for her will if she died. I wasn’t to tell the master where because he didn’t know about her wig. Anyone but the master, she said. And then it was to be kept quiet. She was touchy about the wig.”

“Where is the will then?”

“Under the best wig, sir — the one she’s wearing. Sewn up in the lining.”

“Thank you,” said Cardew.

He opened the door and she went out. He moved to the bed and eased the old lady’s wig off. Part of the center seam of the underside of the wig had been unpicked at some time and carefully resewn. Cardew slit the stitches.

He pulled out a folded and crumpled envelope which was sealed and addressed to a local solicitor. He put it in his pocket and then bent to put the wig back. The curtains of the room had been drawn badly and a shaft of sunlight fell across the woman’s head. The top of her head was bald, the skin a yellow-gray color.

In the strong light Cardew noticed four or five white marks on the top of the old lady’s skull. He lifted the head gently and examined them. They were made by white paint and from their size he guessed were the finger-marks of a man.

He left the room and went slowly down the stairs. He wasn’t feeling so helpless now. Almost at the bottom, at a turn of the stairs, he found what he wanted: a length of the bannister had been freshly repainted white. It was at a corner where, if a man had been carrying a woman down in a fireman’s lift, he would have put his free hand for support. And if the women’s wig had fallen off, a man would have lowered her to the stairs and held her head up with his hand while he put the wig back on — a man who could have shot his sister in his bedroom while they took breakfast and who then had time to carry her out into the shrubbery before maid or gardener appeared for work.

He found the Colonel in his workshop above the garage.

Cardew said, “Colonel, how long have you known that your sister wore a wig?”

The Colonel straightened up from his bench and said calmly, “For years, Inspector. Never let on, though. Woman’s vanity, what? Shall have her buried in it, of course. She’d like that. Mary Queen of Scots wore one, you know. Great secret. But when her head rolled it fell off.”

“Just as your sister’s did this morning when you carried her downstairs after shooting her. Didn’t you notice that your hand had white paint on it from the bannister she had painted before bringing your breakfast up? You made a nice set of white paint marks on her head.”

The Colonel stared at him impassively for a long time. Then slowly he began to chuckle. “Well, I’m damned,” he said. “That was when I got it. I thought it was afterwards when I came back and went upstairs. Saw it then on my hands and washed it off.”. He frowned suddenly. “Bit of a bad show, isn’t it, your taking wigs off the dead?”

“I had to, Colonel, to get her will — a will, I imagine, which leaves everything to you but which I’m afraid won’t ever benefit you now.” The Colonel shrugged. “Rem acu tetigisti,” he said.

“My Latin is non-existent, I’m afraid, Colonel. But I must ask you to come with me.”

“Certainly, Inspector. And a rough translation would be — very rough, mind you — you have hit the matter exactly on the head.”