Grave Mistake

Chapter 5: Greengages (II) Room 20

i

“—in view of which circumstances, members of the jury,” said the coroner, “you may consider that the appropriate decision would be again to adjourn these proceedings sine die.”

Not surprisingly the jury embraced this suggestion and out into the age-old quietude of Upper Quintern village walked the people who, in one way or another, were involved, or had been obliged to concern themselves in the death of Sybil Foster: her daughter, her solicitor, her oldest friend, her gardener, the doctor she had disregarded and the doctor who had become her fiancé. And her stepson, who by her death inherited the life interest left by her first husband. Her last and preposterous Will and Testament could not upset this entailment nor, according to Mr. Rattisbon, could this Will itself be upset. G. M. Johnson and Marleena Briggs, chambermaids on the second floor of the hotel, confessed with uneasy giggles that they had witnessed Mrs. Foster’s signature a week before she died.

This Will provided the only sensation of the inquest. Nobody seemed to be overwhelmingly surprised at Bruce Gardener’s legacy of £25,000 but the Swingletree clause and the sumptuous inheritance of Dr. Schramm caused a sort of stupefaction in court. Three reporters from the provincial press were seen to be stimulated. Verity Preston, who was there because her goddaughter seemed to expect it, had a horrid foreboding of growing publicity.

The inquest had again been held in the parish hall. The spire of St Crispin’s-in-Quintern cast its shadow over an open space at the foot of steps that led up to the church. The local people referred to this area as the “green” but it was little more than a rough lateral bulge in the lane. Upper Quintern was really a village only by virtue of its church and was the smallest of its kind: hamlet would have seemed a more appropriate title.

Sunlight, diffused by autumnal haze, the absence of wind and, until car engines started up, of other than countrified sounds, all seemed to set at a remove any process other than the rooted habit of the Kentish soil. Somehow or another, Verity thought, whatever the encroachments, continuity survives. And then she thought that it had taken this particular encroachment to put the idea into her head.

She wondered if Young Mr. Rattisbon would expect a repetition of their former conviviality and decided to wait until he emerged. People came together in desultory groups and broke up again. They had the air of having been involved in some social contretemps.

Prunella came out between the two Markos men. Clearly she was shaken; Gideon held her hand and his father with his elegant head inclined, stooped over her. Again, Verity had the feeling that they absorbed Prunella.

Prunella saw her godmother, said something to the men and came to Verity.

“Godma V,” she said. “Did you know? I meant to let you know. It’s the day after the day after tomorrow-Thursday — they’re going to — they say we can—”

“Well, darling,” said Verity, “that’s a good thing, isn’t it? What time?”

“Three-thirty. Here. I’m telling hardly anyone: just very old friends like you. And bunches of flowers out of our gardens, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed. Would you like me to bring you? Or — are you—?”

Prunella seemed to hesitate and then said: “That’s sweet of you, Godma V. Gideon and Papa M are — coming with me but — could we sit together, please?”

“Of course we could,” Verity said and kissed her.

The jury had come out. Some straggled away to the bus stop, some to a car. The landlord of the Passcoigne Arms was accompanied into the pub by three of his fellow jurors. The coroner appeared with Mr. Rattisbon. They stood together in the porch, looking at their feet and conversing. They were joined by two others.

Prunella, who held Verity’s hand, said: “Who’s that, I wonder? Do you know? The tall one?”

“It’s the one who called on me. Superintendent Alleyn.”

“I can see what you mean about him,” said Prunella.

The three representatives of the provincial press slid up to Alleyn and began to speak to him. Alleyn looked over their heads toward Verity and Prunella and as if he had signalled to her Verity moved to hide Prunella from the men. At the same instant Bruce Gardener came out of the hall and at once the three men closed round him.

Alleyn came over to Verity and Prunella.

“Good morning, Miss Preston,” he said. “I wondered if you’d be here.” And to Prunella. “Miss Foster? I expect your splendid Mrs. Jobbin told you I’d called. She was very kind and let me come into your house. Did she tell you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I was out.”

“There wasn’t any need, at that juncture, to bother you. I’m sorry you’re having such a horrid time. Actually,” Alleyn said, “I may have to ask you to see me one of these days but only if it’s really necessary. I promise.”

“O.K.,” Prunella said. “Whenever you like. O.K.”

“My dear Alleyn!” said a voice behind Verity. “How very nice to meet you again.”

Mr. Markos had come up, with Gideon, unnoticed by the others. The temper of the little scene changed with their appearance. He put his arm round Prunella and told Alleyn how well Troy’s picture looked. He said Alleyn really ought to come and see it. He appealed to Verity for support and by a certain change in his manner seemed to attach a special importace to her answer. Verity was reminded of poor Syb’s encomium before she took against the Markoses. She had said that Nikolas Markos was “ultra sophisticated” and “a complete man of the world.” He’s a man of a world I don’t belong to, Verity thought, but we have things in common, nevertheless.

“Miss Preston will support me,” Mr. Markos said, “won’t you?”

Verity pulled herself together and said the picture was a triumph.

Alleyn said: “The painter will be delighted,” and to all of them: “The gentlemen of the press look like heading this way. I suggest it might be as well if Miss Foster escaped.”

“Yes, of course,” said Gideon quickly. “Darling, let’s go to the car. Quick.”

But a stillness had fallen on the people who remained at the scene. Verity turned and saw that Dr. Schramm had come out into the sunshine. The reporters fastened on him.

A handsome car was parked nearby. Verity thought: that’s got to be his car. He’ll have to come past us to get to it. We can’t break up and bolt.

He said something — “No comment,” Verity supposed — to the press and walked briskly toward the group. As he passed them he lifted his hat. “Good morning, Verity,” he said. “Hullo, Markos, how are you? Morning, Superintendent.” He paused, looked at Prunella, gave a little bow and continued on his way. It had been well done, Verity thought, if you had the nerve to do it, and she was filled with a kind of anger that he had included her in his performance.

Mr. Markos said: “We all of us make mistakes. Come along, children.”

Verity, left with Alleyn, supposed Mr. Markos had referred to his dinner-party.

“I must be off,” she said. She thought: Death creates social contretemps. One doesn’t say: “See you on Thursday” when the meeting will be at a funeral.

Her car was next to Alleyn’s and he walked beside her. Dr. Schramm drove past them and lifted a gloved hand as he did so.

“That child’s surviving all this pretty well, isn’t she?” Alleyn asked. “On the whole, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. I think she is. She’s sustained by her engagement.”

“To young Markos? Yes. And by her godmama, too, one suspects?”

“Me! Not at all. Or anyway, not as much as I’d like.”

He grunted companionably, opened her car door for her and stood by while she fastened her safety belt. She was about to say goodbye but changed her mind. “Mr. Alleyn,” she said, “I gather that probate has been granted or passed or whatever it is? On the second Will?”

“It’s not a fait accompli but it will be. Unless, of course, she made yet another and later one, which doesn’t seem likely. Would it be safe to tell you something in confidence?”

Verity, surprised, said: “I don’t break confidences but if it’s anything that I would want to speak about to Prunella, you’d better not tell me.”

“I don’t think you would want to but I’d make an exception of Prunella. Dr. Schramm and Mrs. Foster were engaged to be married.”

In the silence that she was unable to break Verity thought that it really was not so very surprising, this information. There was even a kind of logic about it. Given Syb. And given Basil Schramm.

Alleyn said: “Rather staggering news, perhaps?”

“No, no,” she heard herself saying. “Not really. I’m just — trying to assimilate it. Why did you tell me?”

“Partly because I thought there was a chance that she might have confided it to you that afternoon but mostly because I had an idea it might be disagreeable for you to learn of it accidentally.”

“Will it be made known, then? Will he make it known?”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “I’m sure. If it’s anything to go by, he did tell me.”

“I suppose it explains the Will?”

“That’s the general idea, of course.”

Verity heard herself say: “Poor Syb.” And then: “I hope it doesn’t come out. Because of Prue.”

“Would she mind so much?”

“Oh, I think so. Don’t you? The young mind terribly if they believe their parents have made asses of themselves.”

“And would any woman engaging herself to Dr. Schramm make an ass of herself?”

“Yes,” said Verity. “She would. I did.”

ii

When Alleyn had gone Verity sat inert in her car and wondered what had possessed her to tell him something that for twenty-odd years she had told nobody. A policeman! More than that, a policeman who must, the way things had gone, take a keen professional interest in Basil Schramm, might even — no, almost certainly did — think of him as a “Suspect.” And she turned cold when she forced herself to complete the sequence — a suspect in what might turn out to be a case of foul play: of — very well, then, use the terrible soft word — of murder.

He had not followed up her statement or pressed her with questions nor, indeed, did he seem to be greatly interested. He merely said: “Did you? Sickening for you,” made one or two remarks of no particular significance and said goodbye. He drove off with a large companion who could not be anything that was not constabular. Mr. Rattisbon, too, looking gravely preoccupied, entered his own elderly car and quitted the scene.

Still Verity remained, miserably inert. One or two locals sauntered off. The Vicar and Jim Jobbin, who was part-time sexton, came out of the church and surveyed the weathered company of headstones. The Vicar pointed to the right and they made off in that direction, round the church. Verity knew, with a jolt, that they discussed the making of a grave. Sybil’s remotest Passcoigne forebears lay in the vault but there was a family plot among the trees beyond the south transept.

Then she saw that Bruce Gardener, in his Harris tweed suit, had come out of the hall and was climbing up the steps to the church. He followed the Vicar and Jim Jobbin and disappeared. Verity had noticed him at the inquest. He had sat at the back, taller than his neighbours, upright, with his gardener’s hands on his thighs, very decorous and solemn. She thought that perhaps he wanted to ask about the funeral, about flowers from Quintern Place, it might be. If so, that was nice of Bruce. She herself, she thought, must offer to do something about flowers. She would wait a little longer and speak to the Vicar,

“Good morning,” said Claude Carter, leaning on the passenger’s door.

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. She had been looking out of the driver’s window and he must have come up from behind the car on her blind side.

“Sorry,” he said, and grinned. “Made you jump, did I?”

“Yes.”

“My mistake. I just wondered if I might cadge a lift to the turn-off. If you’re going home, that is.”

There was nothing she wanted less but she said yes, if he didn’t mind waiting while she went up to the church. He said he wasn’t in a hurry and got in. He had removed his vestigial beard, she noticed, and had his hair cut to a conservative length. He was tidily dressed and looked less hang-dog than usual There was even a hint of submerged jauntiness about him.

“Smoking allowed?” he asked.

She left him lighting his cigarette in a guarded manner as if he was afraid someone would snatch it out of his mouth.

At the head of the steps she met the Vicar returning with Bruce and Jim. To her surprise Jim, a bald man with a loud voice, was now bent double. He was hovered over by the Vicar.

“It’s a fair bugger,” he shouted. “Comes over you like a bloody thunderclap. Stooping down to pull up them bloody teazles and now look at me. Should of minded me own business.”

“Yes, well: jolly bad luck,” said the Vicar. “Oh. Hullo, Miss Preston. We’re in trouble as you see. Jim’s smitten with lumbago.”

“Will he be able to negotiate the descent?” Bruce speculated anxiously. “That’s what I ask myself. Awa’ wi ye, man, and let us handle you doon the steps.”

“No, you don’t. I’ll handle myself if left to myself, won’t I?”

“Jim!” said Verity, “what a bore for you. I’ll drive you home.”

“No, ta all the same, Miss Preston. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. I’m best left to manage myself and if you’ll excuse me that’s what I’ll do. I’ll use the handrail. Only,” he added with a sudden, shout of agony, “I’d be obliged if I wasn’t watched.”

“Perhaps,” said the Vicar, “we’d better—?”

Jim, moving like a gaffer in a Victorian melodrama, achieved the handrail and clung to it. He shouted: “I won’t be able to do the job now, will I?”

There was an awkward silence broken by Bruce. “Dinna fash yourself,” he said. “No problem. With the Mister’s kind permission I’ll dig it myself and think it an honour. I will that.”

“The full six foot, mind.”

“Ou aye,” Bruce agreed. “All of it. I’m a guid hand at digging,” he added.

“Fair enough,” said Jim and began to ease himself down the steps.

“This is a most fortunate solution, Bruce,” said the Vicar. “Shall we just leave Jim as he wishes?” and he ushered them into the church.

St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern was one of the great company of parish churches that stand as milestones in rural history: obstinate registers to the ravages of time. It had a magnificent peal of bells, now unsafe to ring, one or two brasses, a fine east window and a surprising north window in which — strange conceit — a walrus-mustachioed Passcoigne, looking startlingly like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was depicted in full plate armour, an Edwardian St. Michael without a halo. The legend indicated that he had met his end on the African veld. The familiar ecclesiastical odour of damp held at bay by paraffin heaters greeted Verity and the two men.

Verity explained that she would like to do anything that would help about the flowers. The Vivar said that custody of all brass vases was inexorably parcelled out among the Ladies Guild, five in number. She gathered that any attempt to disrupt this procedure would trigger off a latent pecking order.

“But they would be grateful for flowers,” he added.

Bruce said that there were late roses up at Quintern Place and he’d thought it would be nice to have her ain favourites to see her off. He muttered in an uneven voice that the name was appropriate: Peace. “They endure better than most oot o’ water,” he added and blew his nose. Verity and the Vicar warmly supported this suggestion and Verity left the two men to complete, she understood, the arrangements for digging Sybil’s grave.

When she returned to the top of the steps she found that Jim Jobbin had reached the bottom on his hands and knees and was being manipulated through the lych-gate by his wife. Verity joined them. Mrs. Jim explained that she was on her way to get dinner and had found Jim crawling backward down the last four steps. It was no distance, they both reminded Verity, along the lane to their cottage. Jim got to his feet by swarming up his wife as if she was a tree.

“It’ll ease off once he straightens himself,” she said. “It does him good to walk.”

“That’s what you think,” her husband groaned but he straightened up and let out an oath as he did so. They made off in slow motion.

Verity returned to her car and to Claude, lounging in the passenger’s seat. He made a token shuffle with his feet and leant over to open the door.

“That was as good as a play,” he said. “Poor old Jobbin. Did you see him beetling down the steps? Fantastic!” He gave a neighing laugh.

“Lumbago’s no joke to the person who’s got it,” Verity snapped.

“It’s hysterical for the person who hasn’t, though.”

She drove as far as the corner where the lane up to Quintern Place branched off to the left.

“Will this suit you?” she asked, “or would you like me to run you up?”

He said he wouldn’t take her out of her way but when she pulled up he didn’t get out

“What did you make of the inquest?” he asked. “I must say I thought it pretty off.”

“Off?”

“Well — you know. I mean what does that extraordinary detective person think he’s on about? And a further postponement. Obviously they suspect something.”

Verity was silent.

“Which isn’t exactly welcome news,” he said. “Is it? Not for this medico, Schramm. Or for Mr. Folksy Gardener if it comes to that.”

“I don’t think you should make suggestions, Claude.”

“Suggestions! I’m not suggesting anything, but people are sure to look sideways. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I were in those gentlemen’s boots, that’s all. Still, they’re getting their lovely legacies, aren’t they, which’ll be a great consolation. I could put up with plenty of funny looks for twenty-five thousand of the best. Still more for Schramm’s little lot.”

“I must get home, Claude.”

“Nothing can touch my bit, anyway. God, can I use it! Only thing: that old relic Rattisbon says it won’t be available until probate is allowed or passed or whatever. Still, I suppose I can borrow on my prospects, wouldn’t you think?”

“I’m running late.”

“Nobody seems to think it’s a bit oft-colour her leaving twenty-five thousand of the best to a jobbing gardener she’d only hired a matter of months ago. It’s pretty obvious he’d got round her in a big way: I could tell you one or two things about Mr. gardener-Gardener.”

“I must go, Claude.”

“Yes. O.K.”

He climbed out of the car and slammed the door. “Thanks for the lift, anyway,” he said. “See you at the funeral. Ain’t we got fun?”

Glad to be rid of him but possessed by a languor she could not understand, Verity watched him turn up the lane. Even seen from behind there was a kind of furtive jauntiness in his walk, an air of complacency that was out of character. He turned a corner and was gone.

“I wonder,” she thought, “what he’ll do with himself.”

She drove on up her own lane into her own little avenue and got her own modest luncheon. She found she hadn’t much appetite for it.

The day was gently sunny but Verity found it oppressive. The sky was clear but she felt as if it would almost be a relief if bastions of cloud shouldered each other up from beyond the horizon. It occurred to her that writers like Ibsen and Dickens — unallied in any other respect — were right to make storms, snow, fog and fire the companions of human disorders. Shakespeare too, she thought. We deprive ourselves aesthetically when we forgo the advantages of symbolism.

She had finished the overhaul of her play and had posted it off to her agent. It was not unusual, when work-in-hand had been dealt with and she was cleaned out, for her to experience a nervous impulse to start off at once on something new. As now, when she found herself wondering, if she could give a fresh look to an old, old theme: that of an intelligent woman enthralled by a second-rate charmer, a “bad lot,” in Verity’s dated jargon, for whom she had no respect but was drawn to by an obstinate attraction. If she could get such a play successfully off her chest, would she scotch the bogey that had returned to plague her?

When at that first Markos dinner-party, she found that Basil Schramm’s pinchbeck magnetism had evaported, the discovery had been a satisfaction to Verity. Now, when a shadow crept toward him, how did she feel? And why, oh why, had she bleated out her confession to Alleyn? He won’t let it rest, she thought, her imagination bolting with her. He’ll want to know more about Basil. He may ask if Basil ever got into trouble and what’ll I say to that?

And Alleyn, returning with Fox to Greengages via Maidstone, said: “This case is getting nasty. She let it out without any pushing or probing and I think she amazed herself by doing so. I wouldn’t mind betting there was more to it than the predatory male jilt and the humiliated woman, though there was all of that, too, I daresay.”

“If it throws any light on his past?”

“We may have to follow it up, of course. Do you know what I think she’ll do about it?”

“Refuse to talk?”

“That’s it. There’s not much of the hell-knows-no-fury in Verity Preston’s makeup.”

“Well,” said Fox reasonably, “seeing how pretty he stands we have to make it thorough. What comes first?”

“Get the background. Check up on the medical side. Qualified at Lausanne, or whatever it was. Find out the year and the degree. See if there was any regular practice in this country. Or in the U.S.A. So much waste of time, it may be, but it’ll have to be done, Br’er Fox. And, on a different lay: here comes Maidstone again. Call at stationers and bookshops and see if anyone’s bought any Will forms lately. If not, do the same in villages and towns and in the neighbourhood of Greengages.”

“Hoping we don’t have to extend to London?”

“Fervently. And, by the by, Fox, we’d better ask Mr. Rattisbon to let us fingerprint the Will. They should find the lady herself, Mr. R. and Johnson and Briggs. And Lord knows how many shop-assistants. But courage, comrade, we may find that in addition to witnessing the Will, G. M. Johnson or Marleena Briggs or even that casket of carnal delights, Sister Jackson, was detailed to pop into a stationer’s shop on her day off.”

When they reached Greengages, this turned out to be the answer. Johnson and Briggs had their days off together and a week before Mrs. Foster died they had made the purchase at a stationer’s in Greendale. Mrs. Foster had given them a present and told them to treat themselves to the cinema and tea.

“That’s fine,” said Alleyn. “We just wanted to know. Was it a good film?”

They fell into an ecstasy of giggles.

“I see. One of those?”

“Aw!”

“Anybody else know about the shopping?”

“Aw, no,” said G. M. Johnson.

“Yes they did, you’re mad,” said Marleena Briggs.

“They never.”

“They did, too. The Doctor did. He come in while she told us.”

“Dr. Schramm came in and heard all about it?” said Alleyn casually.

They agreed and were suddenly uninterested.

He then asked each of them in turn if she recognized the writing on an envelope he had addressed to himself and their prints having been thus obtained he gave them a tip.

“There you are, both of you. Treat yourselves to another shocker and a blow-out of cream buns.”

This interview concluded, Alleyn was approached by the manager of the hotel, who evidently viewed their visit with minimal enthusiasm. He hustled them into his office, offered drinks and looked apprehensive when these were declined.

“It’s just about the room,” he said. “How much longer do you people want it? We’re expecting a full house by next week and it’s extremely inconvenient, you know.”

“I hope this will be positively our last appearance,” said Alleyn cheerfully.

“Without being uncivil, so do I. Do you want someone to take you up?”

“We’ll take ourselves, thank you all the same. Come along, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn. “En avant. You’re having one of your dreamy spells.”

He led the way quickly to the lifts.

The second floor seemed to be deserted. They walked soundlessly down the carpeted passage to Number 20. The fingerprint and photography men had called and gone and their seal was still on the door. Fox was about to break it when Alleyn said: “Half a jiffy. Look at this.”

Opposite the bedroom door was a curtained alcove. He had lifted the curtain and disclosed a vacuum cleaner. “Handy little hidey-hole, isn’t it?” he said. “Got your torch on you?”

“As it happens,” Fox said and gave it to him. He went into the alcove and closed the curtain.

The lift at the far end of the long passage whined to a stop. Sister Jackson and another lady emerged. Fox, with a movement surprisingly nippy for one of his bulk, joined his superior in the alcove.

“Herself,” he whispered. Alleyn switched off his torch.

“See you?”

“Not to recognize.”

“Impossible. Once seen.”

“She had somebody with her.”

“No need for you to hide, you fathead. Why should you?”

“She flusters me.”

“You’re bulging the curtain.”

But it was too late. The curtain was suddenly withdrawn and Sister Jackson discovered. She screamed.

“Good morning, Sister,” Alleyn said and flashed his torchlight full in her face. “Do forgive us for startling you.”

“What,” she panted, her hand on her spectacular bosom, “are you doing in the broom cupboard?”

“Routine procedure. Don’t give it another thought.”

“And you, don’t shine that thing in my face. Come out”

They emerged.

In a more conciliatory tone and with a sort of huffy come-to-ishness she said: “You gave me a shock.”

“So did you us,” said Mr. Fox. “A nice one,” he roguishly added.

“I daresay.”

She was between them. She flashed upward glances first at one, then the other. Her bosom slightly heaved.

“We really do apologize,” he said.

“I should hope so.” She laid her hand, which was plump, on his closed one. He was surprised to feel a marked tremor and to see that the colour had ebbed out of her face. She kept up the flirtatious note, however, though her voice was unsteady. “I suppose I’ll have to forgive you,” she said. “But only if you tell me why you were there.”

“I caught sight of something.”

He turned his hand over, opened it and exposed the crumpled head of a pink lily. It was very dead and its brown pollen had stained his palm.

“I think,” he said, “it will team up with the ones in Mrs. Foster’s last bouquet. I wondered what the electrician was doing in the broom cupboard.”

She gaped at him. “Electrician?” she said. “What electrician?”

“Don’t let it worry you. Excuse us, please. Come on, Fox. Goodbye, Sister.”

When she had starched and bosomed herself away he said: “I’m going to take another look at that broom-hide. Don’t spring any more confrontations this time. Stay here.”

He went into the alcove, drew the curtains on himself and was away for some minutes. When he rejoined Fox he said: “They’re not so fussy about housework in there. Quite a lot of dust on the floor. Plenty of prints — housemaid’s, no doubt, but on the far end, in the corner away from the vacuum cleaner where nobody would go normally, there are prints, left and right, side by side, with the heels almost touching the wall. Men’s crepe-soled shoes, and beside them — guess.”

He opened his hand and disclosed another dead lily head. “Near the curtain I could just find the prints again but overlaid by the housemaid’s and some regulation type extras. Whose, do you think?”

“All right, all right,” said Fox. “Mine.”

“When we go down we’ll look like sleuths and ask the desk lady if she noticed the electrician’s feet.”

“That’s a flight of fancy, if you like,” said Fox. “And she won’t have.”

“In any case Bailey and Thompson will have to do their stuff. Come on.”

When they were inside Number 20 he went to the bathroom where the fetid bouquet still mouldered in the basin. It was possible to see that the finds matched exactly and actually to distinguish the truss from which they had been lost.

“So I make a note: ‘Find the electrician’?” asked Fox.

“You anticipate my every need.”

“How do you fancy this gardener? Gardener?”

“Not much!” said Alleyn. “Do you?”

“You wouldn’t fancy him sneaking back with the flowers when Miss Foster and party had gone?”

“Not unless he’s had himself stretched: the reception girl said slight, short and bespectacled. Bruce Gardener’s six foot three and big with it. He doesn’t wear spectacles.”

“He’d be that chap in the Harris tweed suit at the inquest?”

“He would. I meant to point him out to you.”

“I guessed,” said Fox heavily.

“Claude Carter, on the contrary, is short, slight, bespectacled and in common with the electrician and several million other males, doesn’t wear overalls.”

“Motive? No. Hang on. He gets Mrs. Foster’s bit from her first husband.”

“Yes.”

“Ask if anyone knows about electricians? And nobody will,” Fox prophesied.

“Ask about what bus he caught back to Quintern and get a dusty answer.”

“Ask if anyone saw him any time, anywhere.”

“With or without lilies. In the meantime, Fox. I seem to remember there’s an empty cardboard box and a paper shopping bag in the wardrobe. Could you put those disgusting lilies in the box? Keep the ones from the broom cupboard separate. I want another look at her pillows.”

They lay as they had lain before: three of them: luxuriant pillowcases in fine lawn with broiderie-anglaise threaded with ribbon. Brought them with her, Alleyn thought. Even Greengages wouldn’t run to these lengths.

The smallest of them carried a hollow made by her dead or alive head. The largest lay at the foot of the bed and was smooth. Alleyn turned it over. The under surface was crumpled, particularly in the centre — crumpled and stained as if it had been wet and, in two places, faintly pink with small, more positive indentations, one of them so sharp that it actually had broken the delicate fabric. He bent down and caught a faint nauseating reek. He went to the dressing table and found three lipsticks, all of them, as was the fashion at that time, very pale. He took one of them to the pillow. It matched.

iii

During the remaining sixty hours before Sybil Foster’s burial in the churchyard of St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern the police investigations, largely carried out over the telephone, multiplied and accelerated. As is always the case, much of what was unearthed turned out to be of no relevance, much was of a doubtful or self-contradictory nature and only a scanty winnowing found to be of real significance. It was as if the components of several jig-saw puzzles had been thrown down on the table and before the one required picture could be assembled, the rest would have to be discarded.

The winnowings, Alleyn thought, were for the most part suggestive rather than definitive. A call to St. Luke’s Hospital established that Basil Smythe, as he then was, had indeed been a first year medical student at the appropriate time and had not completed the course. A contact of Alleyn’s in Swiss Police headquarters put through a call to a hospital in Lausanne confirming that a Dr. Basile Schramm had graduated from a teaching hospital in that city. Basile, Alleyn was prepared to accept, might well have been a Swiss shot at Basil. Schramm had accounted to Verity Preston for the change from Smythe. They would have to check if this was indeed his mother’s maiden name.

So far nothing had been found in respect of his activities in the United States.

Mrs. Jim Jobbin had, at Mrs. Foster’s request and a week before she died, handed a bottle of sleeping-pills over to Bruce Gardener. Mrs. Foster had told Bruce where they would be found: in her writing desk. They had been bought some time ago from a Maidstone chemist and were a proprietary brand of barbiturate. Mrs. Jim and Bruce had both noticed that the bottle was almost full. He had duly delivered it that same afternoon.

Claude Carter had what Mr. Fox called a sussy record. He had been mixed up, as a very minor figure, in the drug racket. In his youth he had served a short sentence for attempted blackmail. He was thought to have brought a small quantity of heroin ashore from S.S. Poseidon. If so, he had got rid of it before he was searched at the customs.

Verity Preston had remembered the august name of Bruce Gardener’s latest employer. Discreet enquiries had confirmed the authenticity of Bruce’s references and his unblemished record. The head gardener, named McWhirter, was emphatic in his praise and very, very Scottish.

This, thought Alleyn, might tally with Verity Preston’s theory about Bruce’s dialectical vagaries.

Enquiries at appropriate quarters in the City elicited the opinion that Nikolas Markos was a millionaire with a great number of interests of which oil, predictably, was the chief. He was also the owner of a string of luxury hotels in Switzerland, the South Pacific, and the Costa Brava. His origin was Greek. Gideon had been educated at a celebrated public school and at the Sorbonne and was believed to be in training for a responsible part in his father’s multiple business activities.

Nothing further could be discovered about the “electrician” who had taken Bruce’s flowers up to Sybil Foster’s room. The desk lady had not noticed his feet

“We’ll be having a chat with Mr. Claude Carter, then?” asked Fox, two nights before the funeral. He and Alleyn were at the Yard, having been separated during the day on their several occasions, Fox in and about Upper Quintern and Alleyn mostly on the telephone and in the City.

“Well, yes,” he agreed. “Yes. We’ll have to, of course. But we’d better walk gingerly over that particular patch, Br’er Fox. If he’s in deep, he’ll be fidgetty. If he thinks we’re getting too interested he may take off and we’ll have to waste time and men on running him down.”

“Or on keeping obbo to prevent it. Do you reckon he’ll attend the funeral?”

“He may decide we’d think it odd if he didn’t. After his being so assiduous about gracing the inquests. There you are! We’ll need to go damn’ carefully. After all, what have we got? He’s short, thin, wears spectacles and doesn’t wear overalls?”

“If you put it like that.”

“How would you put it?”

“Well,” said Fox, scraping his chin, “he’d been hanging about the premises for we don’t know how long and, by the way, no joy from the bus scene. Nobody remembers him or Gardener. I talked to the conductors on every return trip that either of them might have taken but it was a Saturday and there was a motor rally in the district and they were crowded all the way. They laughed at me.”

“Cads.”

“There’s the motive, of course,” Fox continued moodily. “Not that you can do much with that on its own. How about the lilies in the broom cupboard?”

“How about them falling off in the passage and failing to get themselves sucked up by the vacuum cleaner?”

“You make everything so difficult,” Fox sighed.

“Take heart. We have yet to see his feet. And him, if it comes to that. Bailey and Thompson may have come up with something dynamic. Where are they?”

“Like they say in theatrical circles. Below and awaiting your pleasure.”

“Admit them.”

Bailey and Thompson came in with their customary air of being incapable of surprise. Using the minimum quota of words they laid out for Alleyn’s inspection an array of photographs: of the pillowcase in toto, of the stained area on the front in detail and of one particular, tiny indentation, blown up to the limit, which had actually left a cut in the material. Over this, Alleyn and Fox concentrated.

“Well, you two,” Alleyn said at last, “what do you make of this lot?”

It was by virtue of such invitations that his relationship with his subordinates achieved its character. Bailey, slightly more communicative than his colleague, said: “Teeth. Like you thought, Governor. Biting the pillow.”

“All right. How about it?”

Thompson laid another exhibit before him. It was a sort of macabre triptych: first a reproduction of the enlargement he had already shown and beside it, corresponding in scale, a photograph of all too unmistakably human teeth from which the lips had been retracted in a dead mouth.

“We dropped in at the morgue,” said Bailey. “The bite could tally.”

The third photograph, one of Thompson’s montages, showed the first superimposed upon the second. Over this, Thompson had ruled vertical and horizontal lines.

“Tallies,” Alleyn said.

“Can’t fault it,” said Bailey dispassionately.

He produced a further exhibit: the vital section of the pillowcase itself mounted between two polythene sheets, and set it up beside Thompson’s display of photographs.

“Right,” Alleyn said. “We send this to the laboratory, of course, and in the meantime, Fox, we trust our reluctant noses. People who are trying to kill themselves with an overdose of sleeping-pills may vomit but they don’t bite holes in the pillowcase.”

“It’s nice to know we haven’t been wasting our time,” said Fox.

“You are,” said Alleyn staring at him, “probably the most remorseless realist in the service.”

“It was only a passing thought. Do we take it she was smothered, then?”

“If Sir James concurs, we do. He’ll be cross about the pillowcase.”

“You’d have expected the doctors to spot it. Well,” Fox amended, “you’d have expected the Field-Innis one to, anyway.”

“At that stage their minds were set on suicide. Presumably the great busty Jackson had got rid of the stomach-pumping impedimenta after she and Schramm, as they tell us, had seen to the bottling of the results. Field-Innis says that by the time he got there, this had been done. It was he, don’t forget, who said the room should be left untouched and the police informed. The pillow was face-downwards at the foot of the bed but in any case only a very close examination reveals the mark of the tooth. The stains, which largely obscure it, could well have been the result of the overdose. What about dabs, Bailey?”

“What you’d expect. Dr. Schramm’s, the nurse Jackson’s. Deceased’s, of course, all over the shop. The other doctor’s — Field-Innis. I called at his surgery and asked for a take. He wasn’t all that keen but he obliged. The girl Foster’s on the vanity box and her mother’s like you indicated.”

“The tumbler?”

“Yeah,” said Bailey with his look of mulish satisfaction. ‘That’s right. That’s the funny bit. Nothing. Clean. Same goes for the pill bottle and the Scotch bottle.”

“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” said Fox.

“Where do we get to, Br’er Fox?”

“Gloves used but only after she lost consciousness.”

“What I reckoned,” said Bailey.

“Or after she’d passed away?” Fox speculated.

“No, Mr. Fox. Not if smothering’s the story.

Alleyn said: “No dabs on the reverse side of the pillow?”

“That’s correct,” said Thompson.

“I tried for latents,” said Bailey. “No joy.”

He produced, finally, a polythene bag containing the back panel of the pretty lawn pillow, threaded with ribbon. “This,” he said, “is kind of crushed on the part opposite to the tooth print and stains. Crumpled up, like. As if by hands. No dabs but crumpled. What I reckon — hands.”

“Gloved. Like the Americans say: it figures. Anything else in the bedroom?”

“Not to signify.”

They were silent for a moment or two and then Bailey said: “About the Will. Dabs.”

“What? Oh, yes?”

“The lawyer’s. Mr. Rattisbon’s. Small female in holding position near edges: the daughter’s probably: Miss Foster.”

“Probably. And—?”

“That’s the lot.”

“Well, blow me down flat,” said Alleyn.

The telephone rang. It was a long distance call from Berne. Alleyn’s contact came through loud and clear.

“Monsieur le Superintendant? I am calling immediately to make an amendment to our former conversations.”

“An amendment, mon ami?”

“An addition, perhaps more accurately. In reference to the Doctor Schramm at the Sacré Coeur, you recollect?”

“Vividly.”

“Monsieur le Superintendant, I regret. My contact at the bureau has made a further search. It is now evident that the Doctor Schramm in question is deceased. In effect, since 1952.”

During the pause of the kind often described as pregnant Alleyn made a face at Fox and said: “Dead.” Fox looked affronted.

“At the risk,” Alleyn said into the telephone, “of making the most intolerable nuisance of myself, dare I ask if your source would have the very great kindness to find out if, over the same period, there is any record of an Englishman called Basil Smythe having qualified at Sacré Coeur? I should explain, my dear colleague, that there is now the possibility of a not unfamiliar form of false pretence.”

“But of course. You have but to ask. And the name again?”

Alleyn spelt it out and was told he could expect a return call within the hour. It came through in twelve minutes. An Englishman called Basil Smythe had attended the courses at the time in question but had failed to complete them. Alleyn thanked his expeditious confrere profusely. There was a further interchange of compliments and he hung up.

iv

“It’s not only in the story-books,” observed Fox on the following morning as they drove once more to Greengages, “that you get a surplus of suspects but I’ll say this for it: it’s unusual. The dates tally, don’t they?”

“According to the records at St. Luke’s, he was a medical student in London in 1950. It would seem he didn’t qualify there.”

“And now we begin to wonder if he qualified anywhere at all?”

“Does the doctor practise to deceive, in fact?” Alleyn suggested.

“Perhaps if he was at the hospital and knew the real Schramm he might have got hold of his diploma when he died. Or am I being fanciful?” asked Fox.

“You are being fanciful. And yet I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“Funnier things have happened.”

“True,” said Alleyn and they fell silent for the rest of the drive.

They arrived at Greengages under the unenthusiastic scrutiny of the receptionist. They went directly to Number 20 and found it in an advanced stage of unloveliness.

“It’s not the type of case I like,” Fox complained. “Instead of knowing who the villain is and getting on quietly with routine until you’ve collected enough to make a charge, you have to go dodging about from one character to another like the chap in the corner of a band.”

“Bang, tinkle, crash?”

“Exactly. Motive,” Fox indignantly continued. “Take motive. There’s Bruce Gardener who gets twenty-five thousand out of it and the stepson who gets however much his father entailed on him after his mother’s death and there’s a sussy-looking quack who gets a fortune. Not to mention Mr. Markos who fancied her house and Sister Jackson who fancies the quack. You can call them fringe characters. I don’t know! Which of the lot can we wipe? Tell me that, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I’m sorry too many suspects makes you so cross, Br’er Fox, but I can’t oblige. Let’s take a look at an old enemy, modus operandi, shall we? Now that Bailey and Thompson have done their stuff what do we take out of it? You tell me that, my Foxkin.”

“Ah!” said Fox. “Well now, what? What happened, eh? I reckon — and you’ll have to give me time, Mr. Alleyn — I reckon something after this fashion. After deceased had been bedded down for the night by her daughter and taken her early dinner, a character we can call the electrician, though he was nothing of the kind, collected the lilies from the reception desk and came up to Number 20. While he was still in the passage he heard or saw someone approaching and stepped into the curtained alcove.

“As you did, we don’t exactly know why.”

“With me it was what is known as a reflex action,” said Fox modestly. “While in the alcove two of the lily’s heads got knocked off. The electrician (soi disant) came out and entered Number 20. He now — don’t bustle me—”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. He now?”

“Went into the bedroom and bathroom,” said Fox and himself suited the action to the word, raising his voice as he did so, “and put the lilies in the basin. They don’t half stink now. He returned to the bedroom and kidded to the deceased?”

“Kidded?”

“Chatted her up,” Fox explained. He leant over the bed in a beguiling manner. “She tells him she’s not feeling quite the thing and he says why not have a nice drink and a sleeping-pill. And, by the way, didn’t the young lady say something about putting the pill bottle out for her mother? She did? Right! So this chap gets her the drink — Scotch and water. Now comes the nitty-gritty bit.”

“It did, for her at any rate.”

“He returns to the bathroom which I shan’t bother to do. Ostensibly,” said Fox, looking his superior officer hard in the eye, “ostensibly to mix the Scotch and water but he slips in a couple, maybe three, maybe four pills. Soluble in alcohol, remember.”

“There’s a water jug on her table.”

“I thought you’d bring that up. He says it’ll be stale. The water. Just picks up the Scotch and takes it into the bathroom.”

“Casual-like?”

“That’s it.”

“Yes. I’ll swallow that, Br’er Fox. Just.”

“So does she. She swallows the drink knowing nothing of the tablets and he gives her one or maybe two more which she takes herself thinking they’re the first, with the Scotch and water.”

“How about the taste, if they do taste?”

“It’s a strong Scotch. And,” Fox said quickly, “she attributes the taste, if noticed, to the one or maybe two tablets she’s given herself. She has now taken, say, six tablets.”

“Go on. If you’ve got the nerve.”

“He waits. He may even persuade her to have another drink. With him. And put more tablets in it.”

“What’s he drink out of? The bottle?”

“Let that be as it may. He waits, I say, until she’s dopey.”

“Well?”

“And he puts on his gloves and smothers her,” said Fox suddenly. “With the pillow.”

“I see.”

“You don’t buy it, Mr. Alleyn?”

“On the contrary, I find it extremely plausible.”

“You do? I forgot to say,” Fox added, greatly cheered, “that he put the extra tablets in her mouth after she was out. Gave them a push to the back of the tongue. That’s where he overdid it. One of those fancy touches you’re so often on about. Yerse. To make suicide look convincing he got rid of a lot more down the loo.”

“Was the television going all this time?”

“Yes. Because Dr. Schramm found it going when he got there. Blast,” said Fox vexedly. “Of course if he’s our man—”

“He got home much earlier than he makes out. The girl at reception would hardly mistake him for an itinerant electrician. So someone else does that bit and hides with the vacuum cleaner and puts the lilies in the basin and goes home as clean as a whistle.”

“Yerse,” said Fox.

“There’s no call for you to be crestfallen. It’s a damn’ good bit of barefaced conjecture and may well be right if Schramm’s not our boy.”

“But if this Claude Carter is?”

“It would fit.”

“Ah! And Gardener? Well,” said Fox, “I know he’s all wrong if the receptionist girl’s right. I know that. Great hulking cross-eyed lump of a chap,” said Fox crossly.

There followed a discontented pause at the end of which Fox said, with a touch of diffidence: “Of course, there is another fringe character, isn’t there? Perhaps two. I mean to say, by all accounts the deceased was dead set against the engagement, wasn’t she?”

Alleyn made no reply. He had wandered over to the dressing table and was gazing at its array of Sybil Foster’s aids to beauty and at the regimental photograph in a silver frame. Bailey had dealt delicately with them all and scarcely disturbed the dust that had settled on them or upon the looking-glass that had reflected her altered face.

After another long silence Alleyn said: “Do you know, Fox, you have, in the course of your homily, proved me, to my own face and full in my own silly teeth, to be a copybook example of the unobservant investigating officer.”

“You don’t say!”

“But I do say. Grinding the said teeth and whipping my cat, I do say.”

“It would be nice,” said Fox mildly, “to know why.”

“Let’s pack up and get out of this and I’ll tell you on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Fox reasonably inquired.

“To the scene where I was struck down with sand-blindness or whatever. To the source of all our troubles, my poor Foxkin.”

“Upper Quintern, would that be?”

“Upper Quintern it is. And I think, Fox, we’d better find ourselves rooms at a pub. Better to be there than here. Come on.”