Final Curtain

CHAPTER XVII Escape of Miss O

i

At 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 print 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 be 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?”

“Ten to twelve, sir.”

“Her train gets in at twelve. We haven’t an earthly… Hallo! Hallo! Is that you, Miss Able?… Alleyn here. Don’t answer anything but yes or no, please. I want you to do something that is urgent and important. Miss Orrincourt is returning by the train that arrives at midday. Please find out if any one has left to meet her. If not, make some excuse for going yourself in the pony-cart. If it’s too late for that, meet it when it arrives at the house. Take Miss Orrincourt into your part of the house and keep her there. Tell her I said so and take no refusal. It’s urgent. She’s not to go into the other part of the house. Got that?… Sure?… Right. Splendid. Goodbye.”

He rang off, and found Fox waiting with his overcoat and hat. “Wait a bit,” he said. “That’s not good enough.” And turned back to the telephone. “Get me Camber Cross Police Station. They’re the nearest to Ancreton, aren’t they, Fox?”

“Three miles. The local P.C. lives in Ancreton parish, though. On duty last night.”

“That’s the chap, Bream… Hallo!.. Chief Inspector Alleyn, Scotland Yard. Is your chap Bream in the station?… Can you find him?… Good! The Ancreton pub. I’d be much obliged if you’d ring through. Tell him to go at once to Ancreton Halt. A Miss Orrincourt will get off the midday train. She’ll be met from the Manor House. He’s to let the trap go away without her, take her to the pub, and wait there for me. Right! Thanks.”

“Will he make it?” Fox asked.

“He has his dinner at the pub and he’s got a bike. It’s no more than a mile and a half. Here we go, Fox. If, in the ripeness of time, Mr. Loame is embalmed by his own firm, I hope they make a mess of him. What precisely did this bogus secretary say?”

“Just that you’d told him to get a confirmation of the formula. It was a toll-call, but, of course, Loame thought you were back at Ancreton.”

“And so he tells poor old Ancred’s killer that there was no arsenic used in the embalming and blows our smoke-screen to hell. As Miss O. would say, what a pal! Where’s my bag? Come on.”

But as they reached the door the telephone rang again.

“I’ll go,” Alleyn said. “With any luck it’s Curtis.”

It was Dr. Curtis. “I don’t know whether you’ll like this,” he said. “It’s the Home Office report on the cat, the medicine and the deceased. First analysis completed. No arsenic anywhere.”

“Good!” said Alleyn. “Now tell them to try for thallium acetate, and ring me at Ancreton when they’ve found it.”

ii

They were to encounter yet another interruption. As they went out to the waiting car, they found Thomas, very white and pinched, on the bottom step.

“Oh, hallo,” he said. “I was coming to see you. I want to see you awfully.”

“Important?” Alleyn said.

“To me,” Thomas rejoined with the air of innocence, “it’s as important as anything. You see, I came in by the morning train on purpose. I felt I had to. I’m going back this evening.”

“We’re on our way to Ancreton now.”

“Really? Then I suppose you wouldn’t…? Or shouldn’t one suggest it?”

“We can take you with us. Certainly,” said Alleyn after a fractional pause.

“Isn’t that lucky?” said Thomas wistfully and got into the back seat with them. Detective-Sergeant Thompson was already seated by the driver. They drove away in a silence lasting so long that Alleyn began to wonder if Thomas, after all, had nothing to say. At last, however, he plunged into conversation with an abruptness that startled his hearers.

“First of all,” said Thomas loudly, “I want to apologize for my behaviour last night. Fainting! Well! I thought I left that kind of thing to Pauline. Everybody was so nice, too. The doctors and you,” he said, smiling wanly at Fox, “driving me home and everything. I couldn’t be more sorry.”

“Very understandable, I’m sure,” said Fox comfortably. “You’d had a nasty shock.”

“Well, I had. Frightful, really. And the worst of it is, you know, I can’t shake it off. When I did go to sleep it was so beastly. The dreams. And this morning with the family asking questions.”

“You said nothing, of course,” said Alleyn.

“You’d asked me not to, so I didn’t, but they took it awfully badly. Cedric was quite furious, and Pauline said I was siding against the family. The point is, Alleyn, I honestly don’t think I can stand any more. It’s unlike me,” said Thomas. “I must have a temperament after all. Fancy!”

“What exactly do you want to see us about?”

“I want to know. It’s the uncertainty. I want to know why Papa’s hair had fallen out. I want to know if he was poisoned and if you think Sonia did it. I’m quite discreet, really, and if you tell me I’ll give you my solemn word of honour not to say anything. Not even to Caroline Able, though I dare say she could explain why I feel so peculiar. I want to know.”

“Everything from the beginning?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind. Everything.”

“That’s a tall order. We don’t know everything. We’re trying, very laboriously, to piece things together, and we’ve got, I think, almost the whole pattern. We believe your father was poisoned.”

Thomas rubbed the palms of his hands across the back of the driver’s seat. “Are you certain? That’s horrible.”

“The bell-push in his room had been manipulated in such a way that it wouldn’t ring. One of the wires had been released. The bell-push hung by the other wire and when he grasped it the wooden end came away in his hand. We started from there.”

“That seems a simple little thing.”

“There are lots of more complicated things. Your father made two Wills, and signed neither of them until the day of his Birthday party. The first he signed, as I think he told you, before the dinner. The second and valid one he signed late that night. We believe that Miss Orrincourt and your nephew Cedric were the only two people, apart from his solicitor, who knew of this action. She benefited greatly by the valid Will. He lost heavily.”

“Then why bring him into the picture?” Thomas asked instantly.

“He won’t stay out. He hovers. For one thing, he and Miss Orrincourt planned all the practical jokes.”

“Goodness! But Papa’s death wasn’t a practical joke. Or was it?”

“Indirectly, it’s just possible that it was caused by one. The final practical joke, the flying cow on the picture, probably caused Sir Henry to fix on the second draft.”

“I don’t know anything about all that,” Thomas said dismally. “I don’t understand. I hoped you’d just tell me if Sonia did it.”

“We’re still waiting for one bit of the pattern. Without it we can’t be positive. It would be against one of our most stringent rules for me to name a suspect to an interested person when the case is still incomplete.”

“Well, couldn’t you behave like they do in books? Give me a pointer or two?”

Alleyn raised an eyebrow and glanced at Fox. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that without a full knowledge of the information our pointers wouldn’t mean very much.”

“Oh, dear! Still, I may as well hear them. Anything’s better than this awful blank worrying. I’m not quite such a fool,” Thomas added, “as I dare say I seem. I’m a good producer of plays. I’m used to analysing character and I’ve got a great eye for a situation. When I read the script of a murder play I always know who did it.”

“Well,” Alleyn said dubiously, “here, for what they’re worth, are some relative bits of fact. The bell-push. The children’s ringworm. The fact that the anonymous letters were written on the children’s school paper. The fact that only Sir Cedric and Miss Orrincourt knew your father signed the second Will. The book on embalming. The nature of arsenical poisoning, and the fact that none has been found in his body, his medicine, or in the body of his cat.”

“Carabbas? Does he come in? That is surprising. Go on.”

“His fur fell out, he was suspected of ringworm and destroyed. He had not got ringworm. The children had. They were dosed with a medicine that acts as a depilatory and their fur did not fall out. The cat was in your father’s room on the night of his death.”

“And Papa gave him some hot milk as usual. I see.”

“The milk was cleared away and the Thermos scalded out and used afterwards. No chemical analysis was possible. Now, for the tin of rat-bane. It was sealed with an accretion of its content and had not been opened for a very long time.”

“So Sonia didn’t put arsenic in the Thermos?”

“Not out of the tin, at any rate.”

“Not at all, if it wasn’t — if—”

“Not at all, it seems.”

“And you think that somehow or another he took the Dr. Withers ringworm poison.”

“If he did, analysis will show it. We’ve yet to find out if it does.”

“But,” said Thomas. “Sonia brought it back from the chemist’s. I remember hearing something about that.”

“She brought it, yes, together with Sir Henry’s medicine. She put the bottles in the flower-room. Miss Fenella Ancred was there and left the room with her.”

“And Dr. Withers,” Thomas went on, rather in the manner of a child continuing a narrative, “came up that night and gave the children the medicine. Caroline was rather annoyed because he’d said she could do it. She felt,” Thomas said thoughtfully, “that it rather reflected on her capability. But he quite insisted and wouldn’t let her touch it. And then, you know, it didn’t work. They should have been as bald as eggs, but they were not. As bald as eggs,” Thomas repeated with a shudder. “Oh, yes, I see. Papa was, of course.”

He remained sitting very upright, with his hands on his knees, for some twenty minutes. The car had left London behind and slipped through a frozen landscape. Alleyn, with a deliberate effort, retraced the history of the case: Troy’s long and detailed account, the turgid statements of the Ancreds, the visit to Dr. Withers, the scene in the churchyard. What could it have been that Troy knew she had forgotten and believed to be important?

Thomas, with that disconcerting air of switching himself on, broke the long silence.

“Then I suppose,” he said very abruptly and in a high voice, “that you think either Sonia gave him the children’s medicine or one of us did. But we are not at all murderous people. But I suppose you’ll say that lots of murderers have been otherwise quite nice quiet people, like the Düsseldorf Monster. But what about motive? You say Cedric knew Papa had signed the Will that cut him out of almost everything, so Cedric wouldn’t. On the other hand, Milly didn’t know he’d signed a second Will, and she was quite pleased about the first one, really, so she wouldn’t. And that goes for Dessy too. She wasn’t best pleased, but she wasn’t much surprised or worried. And I hope you don’t think… However,” Thomas hurried on, “we come to Pauline. Pauline might have been very hurt about Paul and Panty and herself, but it was quite true what Papa said. Her husband left her very nicely off and she’s not at all revengeful. It’s not as if Dessy and Milly or I wanted money desperately, and it’s not as if Pauline or Panty or Fenella (I’d forgotten Fenella and Jen) are vindictive slayers. They just aren’t. And Cedric thought he was all right. And honestly,” Thomas ended, “you can’t suspect Barker and the maids.”

“No,” said Alleyn, “we don’t.”

“So it seems you must suspect a person who wanted money very badly and was left some in the first Will. And, of course, didn’t much care for Papa. And Cedric, who’s the only one who fits, won’t do.”

He turned, after making this profound understatement, to fix upon Alleyn a most troubled and searching gaze.

“I think that’s a pretty accurate summing up,” Alleyn said.

“Who could it be?” Thomas mused distractedly and added with a sidelong glance: “But, then, you’ve picked up all sorts of information which you haven’t mentioned.”

“Which I haven’t time to mention,” Alleyn rejoined. “There are Ancreton woods above that hill. We’ll stop at the pub.”

P.C. Bream was standing outside the pub and stepped forward to open the door of the car. He was scarlet in the face.

“Well, Bream,” Alleyn said, “carried out your job?”

“In a manner of speaking, sir,” said Bream, “no. Good afternoon, Mr. Thomas.”

Alleyn stopped short in the act of getting out. “What? Isn’t she there?”

“Circumstances,” Bream said indistinctly, “over which I ’ad no control, intervened, sir.” He waved an arm at a bicycle leaning against the pub. The front tyre hung in a deflated festoon about the axle. “Rubber being not of the best—”

“Where is she?”

“On my arrival, having run one mile and a quarter—”

“Where is she?”

“Hup,” said Bream miserably, “at the ’ouse.”

“Get in here and tell us on the way.”

Bream wedged himself into one of the tip-up seats and the driver turned the car. “Quick as you can,” Alleyn said. “Now, Bream.”

“Having received instructions, sir, by telephone, from the Super at Camber Cross, me having my dinner at the pub, I proceeded upon my bicycle in the direction of Ancreton ’Alt at eleven-fifty a.m.”

“All right, all right,” said Fox. “And your tyre blew out.”

“At eleven-fifty-one, sir, she blew on me. I inspected the damage, and formed the opinion it was impossible to proceed on my bicycle. Accordingly I ran.”

“You didn’t run fast enough, seemingly. Don’t you know you’re supposed to keep yourself fit in the force?” said Fox severely.

“I ran, sir,” Bream rejoined with dignity, “at the rate of one mile in ten minutes and arrived at the ’Alt at twelve-four, the train ’aving departed at twelve-one, and the ladies in the pony-carriage being still in view on the road to the Manor.”

“The ladies?” said Alleyn.

“There was two of them. I attempted to attract their attention by raising my voice, but without success. I then returned to the pub, picking up that there cantankerous bice ong rowt.”

Fox muttered to himself.

“I reported by phone to the Super. He give me a blast, and said he would ring the Manor and request the lady in question to return. She ’as not done so.”

“No,” Alleyn said. “I imagine she’d see him damned first.”

The car turned in at the great entrance and climbed through the woods. Half-way up the drive they met what appeared to be the entire school, marching and singing under the leadership of Miss Caroline Able’s assistant. They stood aside to let the car pass. Alleyn could not see Panty among them.

“Not their usual time for a walk,” said Thomas.

The car drew up at last into the shadow of the enormous house.

“If nothing else has gone cock-eyed,” Alleyn said, “she’ll be in the school.”

Thomas cried out in alarm: “Are you talking about Caroline Able?”

“No. See here, Ancred. We’re going into the school. There’s a separate entrance back there, and we’ll use it. Will you go into this part of the house and please say nothing about our arrival?”

“Well, all right,” said Thomas, “though I must say I don’t quite see—”

“It’s all very confusing. Away you go.”

They watched Thomas walk slowly up the steps, push open the great door, and pause for a second in the shadowy lobby. Then he turned and the door closed between them.

“Now, Fox,” Alleyn said, “you and I will go into the school. I think the best thing we can do is to ask her to come back with us to London and make a statement. Awkward if she refuses, but if she does we’ll have to take the next step. Drive back to the end of the building there.”

The car was turned, and stopped again at a smaller door in the west wing. “Thompson, you and Bream wait back there in the car. If we want you, we’ll get you. Come on, Fox.”

They got out. The car moved away. They had turned to the doorway when Alleyn heard his name called. Thomas was coming down the steps from the main entrance. He ran towards them, his coat flapping, and waved his arm.

“Alleyn! Alleyn! Stop!”

“Now what?” Alleyn said.

Thomas was breathless when he reached them. He laid his hands on the lapels of Alleyn’s coat. His face was colourless and his lips shook. “You’ve got to come,” he said. “It’s frightful. Something frightful’s happened. Sonia’s in there, horribly ill. Withers says she’s been poisoned. He says she’s going to die.”