Scales of Justice

CHAPTER V Hammer Farm

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Skip?” Rose said. “Skip?”

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

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

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

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

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

“And Nurse Kettle, I hope?”

“And Nurse Kettle.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hah-yoo?” George intervened coldly.

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

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

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said.

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

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

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

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

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

“And you, Miss Cartarette?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“About nine minutes to eight?” Alleyn repeated.

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

“The golf course?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. The river path.”

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

Kitty pressed the palms of her hands against her head.

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

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

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

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

“Fishing?”

“Yes.”

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

There were subdued ejaculations from Mark and his grandmother.

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know when.”

“When did you begin your round?”

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

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

“About then, I daresay.”

“Would you say so, Mrs. Cartarette?”

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

“Did Mr. Phinn see you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Near a clump of alders?”

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

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

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

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

“Who was that, I wonder?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened, exactly?”

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

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

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

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

This time the silence was long and completely blank.

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

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

“No?” he said gently.

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

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

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

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

He said to Lady Lacklander, “Did you stay there long after he left you?”

“No. We talked for about ten minutes and then Maurice re-crossed the bridge, as I told you, and disappeared behind the willows on the right bank.”

“Which way did you go home?”

“Up through the Home Spinney to Nunspardon.”

“Could you see into the willow grove at all?”

“Certainly. When I was half-way up I stopped to pant, and I looked down and there he was, casting into the willow-grove reach.”

“That would be about eight.”

“About eight, yes.”

“I think you said you left your painting gear to be collected, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Who collected it, please?”

“One of the servants. William, the footman, probably.”

“No,” Mark said. “No, Gar. I did.”

“You?” his grandmother said. “What were you doing…” and stopped short.

Mark said rapidly that after making a professional call in the village he had gone in to play tennis at Hammer and had stayed there until about ten minutes past eight. He had returned home by the river path and as he approached Bottom Bridge had seen his grandmother’s shooting-stick, stool and painting gear in a deserted group on a hillock. He carried them back to Nunspardon and was just in time to prevent the footman from going down to collect them. Alleyn asked him if he had noticed a large trout lying on Bottom Bridge. Mark said that he hadn’t done so, but at the same moment his grandmother gave one of her short ejaculations.

“You must have seen it, Mark,” she said. “Great gaping thing lying there where Octavius Phinn must have chucked it down. On the bridge, my dear boy. You must have practically stepped over it.”

“It wasn’t there,” Mark said. “Sorry, Gar, but it wasn’t, when I went home.”

“Mrs. Cartarette,” Alleyn said, “you must have crossed Bottom Bridge a few minutes after Lady Lacklander had gone home, mustn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Kitty said. “We saw her going into the Nunspardon Home Spinney as we came over the hill by the second tee.”

“And Sir George, then, in his turn, went home through the Home Spinney, and you came down the hill by the river path?”

“That’s right,” she said drearily.

“Did you see the fabulous trout lying on Bottom Bridge?”

“Not a sign of it, I’m afraid.”

“So that between about ten to eight and ten past eight the trout was removed by somebody and subsequently left in the willow grove. Are you all of the opinion that Colonel Cartarette would have been unlikely to change his mind and go back for it?” Alleyn asked.

George looked huffy and said he didn’t know, he was sure, and Lady Lacklander said that judging by what Colonel Cartarette had said to her, she was persuaded that wild horses wouldn’t have induced him to touch the trout. Alleyn thought to himself, “If he was disinclined to touch it, still less would he feel like wrapping it up in grass in order to stow it away in his creel, which apparently was what he had been doing when he died.”

“I suppose there’s no doubt about this fish being the classic Old ’Un?” Alleyn asked.

“None,” Mark said. “There’s not such another in the Chyne. No question.”

“By the way, did you look down at the willow grove as you climbed up the hill to the Home Spinney?”

“I don’t remember doing so. I was hung about with my grandmother’s sketching gear and I didn’t…”

It was at this moment that Kitty Cartarette screamed.

She did not scream very loudly; the sound was checked almost as soon as it was born, but she had half risen from her sofa and was staring at something beyond and behind Alleyn. She had clapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide open beneath their raised brows. He noticed that they were inclined to be prominent.

They all turned to discover what it was that Kitty stared at but found only an uncovered French window reflecting the lighted room and the ghosts of their own startled faces.

“There’s someone out there!” Kitty whispered. “A man looked in at the window. George!”

“My dear girl,” Lady Lacklander said, “you saw George’s reflection. There’s nobody there.”

“There is.”

“It’s probably Sergeant Oliphant,” Alleyn said. “We left him outside. Fox?”

Fox was already on his way, but before he reached the French window, the figure of a man appeared beyond its reflected images. The figure moved uncertainly, coming in from the side and halting when it was some way from the glass. Kitty made a slight retching sound. Fox’s hand was on the knob of the French window when beyond it the beam of Sergeant Oliphant’s torchlight shot across the dark and the man’s face was illuminated. It was crowned by a tasselled smoking cap and was deadly pale.

Fox opened the French windows.

“Pray forgive an unwarrantable intrusion,” said Mr. Danberry-Phinn. “I am in quest of a fish.”

Mr. Phinn’s behaviour was singular. The light from the room seemed to dazzle him. He screwed up his eyes and nose, and this gave him a supercilious look greatly at variance with his extreme pallor and unsteady hands. He squinted at Fox and then beyond him at the company in the drawing-room.

“I fear I have called at an inconvenient moment,” he said. “I had no idea… I had hoped to see…” his Adam’s apple bobbed furiously …“to see,” he repeated, “in point of fact, Colonel Cartarette.” He disclosed his teeth, clamped together in the oddest kind of smile.

Kitty made an indeterminate sound, and Lady Lacklander began, “My dear Octavius…” but before either of them could get any further, Alleyn moved in front of Mr. Phinn. “Did you say, sir,” Alleyn asked, “that you are looking for a fish?”

Mr. Phinn said, “Forgive me, I don’t think I have the pleasure…?” and peered up into Alleyn’s face. “Have I the pleasure?” he asked. He blinked away from Alleyn towards Fox. Fox was one of those, nowadays rather rare, detectives who look very much like their job. He was a large, grizzled man with extremely bright eyes.

“And in this case,” Mr. Phinn continued with a breathless little laugh, “I indubitably have not the pleasure.”

“We are police officers,” Alleyn said. “Colonel Cartarette has been murdered, Mr. Phinn. You are Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn, I think, aren’t you?”

“But how perfectly terrible!” said Mr. Phinn. “My dear Mrs. Cartarette! My dear Miss Rose! I am appalled. APPALLED!” Mr. Phinn repeated, opening his eyes as wide as they could go.

“You’d better come in, Occy,” Lady Lacklander said. “They’ll want to talk to you.”

“To me!” he ejaculated. He came in and Fox shut the French window behind him.

Alleyn said, “I shall want to have a word with you, sir. In fact, I think it is time that we saw some of you individually rather than together, but before we do that, I should like Mr. Phinn to tell us about the fish he is looking for.” He raised his hand. If any of his audience had felt like interjecting, they now thought better of the impulse. “If you please, Mr. Phinn?” Alleyn said.

“I’m so confused, indeed so horrified at what you have told me…”

“Dreadful,” Alleyn said, “isn’t it? About the fish?”

“The fish? The fish, my dear sir, is or was a magnificent trout. The fish is a fish of great fame. It is the trout to end all trout. A piscine emperor. And I, let me tell you, I caught him.”

“Where?” Lady Lacklander demanded.

Mr. Phinn blinked twice. “Above Bottom Bridge, my dear Lady L.,” he said. “Above Bottom Bridge.”

“You are an old humbug, Occy,” she said.

George suddenly roared out, “That’s a bloody lie, Octavius. You poached him. You were fishing under the bridge. We saw you from the second tee.”

“Dear me, George,” said Mr. Phinn going white to the lips. “What a noise you do make, to be sure.”

Fox had stepped unobtrusively aside and was busy with his notebook.

“To talk like that!” Mr. Phinn continued with two half bows in the direction of Kitty and Rose. “In a house of mourning! Really, George, I must say!”

“By God…!” George began, but Alleyn intervened.

“What,” he asked Mr. Phinn, “happened to your catch?”

Mr. Phinn sucked in a deep breath and began to speak very quickly indeed. “Flushed,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady, “with triumph, I resolved to try the upper reaches of the Chyne. I therefore laid my captive to rest on the very field of his defeat, id est, the upper, repeat upper, approach to Bottom Bridge. When I returned, much later, I cannot tell you how much later for I did not carry a watch, but much, much later, I went to the exact spot where my Prince of Piscines should have rested and…” he made a wide gesture during the execution of which it was apparent that his hands were tremulous… “Gone! Vanished! Not a sign! Lost!” he said.

“Now, look here, Occy…” Lady Lacklander in her turn began, and in her tum was checked by Alleyn.

“Please, Lady Lacklander,” Alleyn interjected. She glared at him. “Do you mind?” he said.

She clasped her plump hands together and rested the entire system of her chins upon them. “Well,” she said, “I called you in, after all. Go on.”

“What did you do,” Alleyn asked Mr. Phinn, “when you discovered your loss?”

Mr. Phinn looked very fixedly at him. “Do?” he repeated” “What should I do? It was growing dark. I looked about in the precincts of the bridge but to no avail. The trout was gone. I returned home, a bitterly chagrined man.”

“And there you remained, it seems, for about four hours. It’s now five minutes past one in the morning. Why, at such an hour, are you paying this visit, Mr. Phinn?”

Looking at Mr. Phinn, Alleyn thought, “He was ready for that one.”

“Why!” Mr. Phinn exclaimed spreading his unsteady hands. “My dear sir, I will tell you why. Rendered almost suicidal by the loss of this Homeric catch, I was unable to contemplate my couch with any prospect of repose. Misery and frustration would have been my bedfellows, I assure you, had I sought it. I attempted to read, to commune with the persons of my house (I refer to my cats, sir), to listen to an indescribably tedious piece of buffoonery upon the wireless. All, I regret to say, was of no avail: my mind was wholly occupied by The Great Fish. Some three quarters of an hour or so ago, I sought the relief of fresh air and took a turn down the river path. On emerging from the ruffian Syce’s spinney, I observed lights behind these windows. I heard voices. Knowing,” he said with a singular gulp, “knowing that poor Cartarette’s interest as a fellow angler would be aroused, I… my dear Lady L., why are you looking at me in this most disconcerting fashion?”

“Occy!” Lady Lacklander said. “Yard or no Yard, I can’t contain my information for another second. I was within a stone’s throw of you when you had your row with Maurice Cartarette. What’s more a few minutes earlier his wife and George both saw you poaching under the bridge. I heard you or Maurice throw down the trout on the bridge and I heard you part company in a high rage. What’s more Maurice came hotfoot to where I was painting and I had the whole story all over again from him. Now, my dear Roderick Alleyn, you may be as cross with me as you please, but I really could not allow this nonsensical tarradiddle to meander on for another second.”

Mr. Phinn blinked and peered and fumbled with his lips. “It used to be quite a little joke between my dear wife and me,” he said at last, “that one must never contradict a Lacklander.”

Only Alleyn and Fox looked at him.

“Mr. Phinn,” Alleyn said, “you normally wear spectacles, I think, don’t you?”

Mr. Phinn made a strange little gesture with his thumb and forefinger as if he actually adjusted his glasses. Thus, momentarily, he hid the red groove across the top of his nose and the flush that had begun to spread across his face. “Not all the time,” he said. “Only for reading.”

Lady Lacklander suddenly clapped the palms of her hands down on the arms of her chair. “So there we are,” she said. “And having said my say, George, I should like you, if you please, to take me home.”

She put out her right arm and as George was a little slow in coming, Alleyn took her hand, braced himself and hauled.

“ ‘Up she rises,’ ” Lady Lacklander quoted self-derisively, and up she rose. She stared for a moment at Mr. Phinn, who gaped back at her and mouthed something indistinguishable. She looked straight into Alleyn’s eyes. “Do you, after all,” she said, “propose to let me go home?”

Alleyn raised an eyebrow. “I shall feel a good deal safer,” he said, “with you there than here, Lady Lacklander.”

“Take me to my car. I have to shuffle a bit because of my damn’ toe. It’s no better, Kettle. George, you may join me in five minutes. I want to have a word with Roderick Alleyn.”

She said goodbye to Rose, holding her for a moment in her arms. Rose clung to her and gave a shuddering sob. Lady Lacklander said, “My poor child, my poor little Rose; you must come to us as soon as possible. Get Mark to give you something to make you sleep.”

Kitty had risen. “It was awfully kind of you to come,” she said and held out her hand. Lady Lacklander took it and after a scarcely perceptible pause let it be known that Kitty was expected to kiss her. This Kitty did with caution.

“Come and see me to-morrow, Kettle,” said Lady Lacklander, “unless they lock you up.”

“Let ’em try,” said Nurse Kettle, who had been entirely silent ever since Mr. Phinn’s arrival. Lady Lacklander gave a short laugh. She paid no attention to Mr. Phinn but nodded to Alleyn. He hastened to open the door and followed her through a large and charmingly shaped hall to the main entrance. Outside this a vast elderly car waited.

“I’ll sit in the back,” she said. “George will drive. I find him an irritating companion in time of trouble.”

Alleyn opened the door and switched on a light in the car.

“Now, tell me,” she said, after she had heaved herself in, “tell me, not as a policeman to an octogenarian dowager but as a man of discretion to one of your mother’s oldest friends, what did you think of Occy Phinn’s behaviour just now?”

Alleyn said, “Octogenarian dowagers, even if they are my mother’s oldest friend, shouldn’t lure me out of doors at night and make improper suggestions.”

“Ah,” she said, “so you’re not going to respond.”

“Tell me, did Mr. Phinn have a son called Ludovic? Ludovic Danberry-Phinn?”

In the not very bright light he watched her face harden as if, behind its mask of fat, she had set her jaw. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“It could hardly not be, could it, with those names?”

“I wouldn’t mention the boy if I were you. He was in the Foreign Service and blotted his copybook, as I daresay you know. It was quite a tragedy. It’s never mentioned.”

“Is it not? What sort of a man was Colonel Cartarette?”

“Pigheaded, quixotic fellow. Obstinate as a mule. One of those pathetically conscientious people who aim so high they get a permanent crick in their conscience.”

“Are you thinking of any particular incident?”

“No,” Lady Lacklander said firmly, “I am not.”

“Do you mind telling me what you and Colonel Cartarette talked about?”

“We talked,” Lady Lacklander said coolly, “about Occy poaching and about a domestic matter that is for the moment private and can have no bearing whatever on Maurice’s death. Good-night to you, Roderick. I suppose I call you Roderick, don’t I?”

“When we’re alone together.”

“Impudent fellow!” she said and aimed a sort of dab at him. “Go back and bully those poor things in there. And tell George to hurry.”

“Can you remember exactly what Mr. Phinn and Colonel Cartarette said to each other when they had their row?”

She looked hard at him, folded her jewelled hands together and said, “Not word for word. They had a row over the fish. Occy rows with everybody.”

“Did they talk about anything else?”

Lady Lacklander continued to look at him and said, “No,” very coolly indeed.

Alleyn made her a little bow. “Good-night,” he said. “If you remember specifically anything that they said to each other, would you be terribly kind and write it down?”

“Roderick,” Lady Lacklander said, “Occy Phinn is no murderer.”

“Is he not?” Alleyn said, “Well, that’s something to know, isn’t it? Good-night.”

He shut the door. The light in the car went out.

As he turned back to the house, Alleyn met George Lacklander. It struck him that George was remarkably ill at ease in his company and would greatly have preferred to deal exclusively with Fox.

“Oh… ah, hullo,” George said. “I… ah… I wonder, may I have a word with you? I don’t suppose you remember, by the way, but we have met a thousand years ago, ha, ha, when, I think, you were one of my father’s bright young men, weren’t you?”

Alleyn’s twenty-five-year-old recollection of George rested solely on the late Sir Harold Lacklander’s scorching comments on his son’s limitations. “No damn’ use expecting anything of George,” Sir Harold had once confided. “Let him strike attitudes at Nunspardon and in the ripeness of time become a J.P. That is George’s form.” It occurred to Alleyn that this prophecy had probably been fulfilled.

He answered George’s opening question and blandly disregarded its sequel. “Please do,” he said.

“Fact is,” George said, “I’m wondering just what the drill is. I am, by the way, and not that it makes any real difference, a Beak. So I suppose I may be said to fill my humble pigeonhole in the maintenance of the Queen’s peace, what?”

“And why not?” Alleyn infuriatingly replied.

“Yes,” George continued, goggling at him in the dark. “Yes. Well, now, I wanted to ask you what exactly will be the drill about poor Maurice Cartarette’s — ah — about the — ah — the body. I mean, one is concerned for Kitty’s sake. For their sake, I mean. His wife and daughter. One can perhaps help with the arrangements for the funeral and all that. What?”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn agreed. “Colonel Cartarette’s body will remain where it is under guard until to-morrow morning. It will then be taken to the nearest mortuary and a police surgeon will make an examination and possibly an extensive autopsy. We will, of course, let Mrs. Cartarette know as soon as possible when the funeral may be held. I think we shall probably be ready to hand over in three days, but it doesn’t do to be positive about these things.”

“O, quite!” George said. “Quite. Quite. Quite.”

Alleyn said, “Simply for the record — I shall have to put this sort of question to everybody who was in Colonel Cartarette’s landscape last evening — you and Mrs. Cartarette began your round of golf, I think you said, at seven?”

“I didn’t notice the exact time,” George said in a hurry.

“Perhaps Mrs. Cartarette will remember. Did she meet you on the course?”

“Ah — no. No, I — ah — I called for her in the car. On my way back from Chyning.”

“But you didn’t drive her back?”

“No. Shorter to walk, we thought. From where we were.”

“Yes, I see… And Mrs. Cartarette says she arrived here at about five past eight. Perhaps you played golf, roughly, for an hour. How many holes?”

“We didn’t go round the course. Mrs. Cartarette is learning. It was her first — ah — attempt. She asked me to give her a little coaching. We — ah — we only played a couple of holes. We spent the rest of the time practising some of her shots,” George said, haughtily.

“Ah, yes. And you parted company at about ten to eight. Where?”

“At the top of the river path,” he said and added, “as far as I remember.”

“From there would you see Lady Lacklander coming up towards you? She began her ascent at ten to eight.”

“I didn’t look down. I didn’t notice.”

“Then you won’t have noticed Colonel Cartarette either. Lady Lacklander says he was fishing in the willow grove at the time and that the willow grove is visible from the river path.”

“I didn’t look down. I… ah… I merely saw Mrs. Cartarette to the river path and went on through the Home Spinney to Nunspardon. My mother arrived a few minutes later. And now,” George said, “if you’ll excuse me, I really must drive my mama home. By the way, I do hope you’ll make use of us. I mean, you may need a headquarters and so on. Anything one can do.”

“How very kind,” Alleyn rejoined. “Yes, I think we may let you go now. Afraid I shall have to ask you to stay in Swevenings for the time being.”

He saw George’s jaw drop.

“Of course,” he added, “if you have important business elsewhere, it will be quite in order to come and tell me about it and we’ll see what can be done. I shall be at the Boy and Donkey.”

“Good God, my dear Alleyn…”

“Damn’ nuisance, I know,” Alleyn said, “but there you are. If they will turn on homicide in your bottom meadow. Goodnight to you.”

He circumnavigated George and returned to the drawing-room, where he found Rose, Mark and Kitty uneasily silent, Mr. Phinn biting his fingers, and Inspector Fox in brisk conversation with Nurse Kettle on the subject of learning French conversation by means of Gramophone records. “I don’t,” Mr. Fox was saying, “make the headway I’d like to.”

“I picked up more on a cycling tour in Brittany when I had to than I ever got out of my records.”

“That’s what they all tell me, but in our line what chance do you get?”

“You must get a holiday some time, for Heaven’s sake.”

“True,” Fox said, sighing. “That’s a fact. You do. But somehow I’ve never got round to spending it anywhere but Birchington. Excuse me, Miss Kettle, here’s the Chief.”

Alleyn gave Fox a look that both of them understood very well, and the latter rose blandly to his feet. Alleyn addressed himself to Kitty Cartarette.

“If I may,” he said, “I should like to have a very short talk with Miss Kettle. Is there perhaps another room we may use? I saw one, I think, as I came across the hall. A study perhaps.”

He had the feeling that Mrs. Cartarette was not overanxious for him to use the study. She hesitated, but Rose said, “Yes, of course. I’ll show you.”

Fox had gone to the French window and had made a majestical signal to the sergeant, who now came into the drawing-room.

“You all know Sergeant Oliphant, of course,” Alleyn said. “He will be in charge of the local arrangements, Mrs. Cartarette, and I thought perhaps you would like to have a word with him. I would be grateful if you would give him the names of your husband’s solicitor and bank and also of any relations who should be informed. Mr. Phinn, I will ask you to repeat the substance of your account to Sergeant Oliphant, who will take it down and get you to sign it if it is correct.”

Mr. Phinn blinked at him. “I cannot,” he said, with a show of spirit, “of course, be compelled.”

“Of course not. But I’m afraid we shall have to trouble all of you to give us signed statements, if you are willing to do so. If you do yours first, it will leave you free to go home. I hope,” Alleyn concluded, “that you will not find it too difficult without your glasses. And now, Miss Cartarette, may we indeed use the study?”

Rose led the way across the hall into the room where eight hours ago she had talked to her father about her love for Mark. Alleyn and Fox followed her. She waited for a moment and stared, as it seemed to Alleyn, with a kind of wonder at the familiar chairs and desk. Perhaps she saw a look of compassion in his face. She said, “He seems to be here, you know. The room can’t go on without him, one would think. This was his place more than anywhere else.” She faltered for a moment and then said, “Mr. Alleyn, he was such a darling, my father. He was as much like my child as my father, he depended on me so completely. I don’t know why I’m saying this to you.”

“It’s sometimes a good idea to say things like that to strangers. They make uncomplicated confidants.”

“Yes,” she said and her voice was surprised, “that’s quite true. I’m glad I told you.”

Alleyn saw that she suffered from the kind of nervous ricochet that often follows a severe shock. Under its impetus the guard that people normally set over their lightest remarks is lowered and they speak spontaneously of the most surprising matters, as now when Rose suddenly added, “Mark says he couldn’t have felt anything. I’m sure he’s not just saying that to comfort me, because being a doctor, he wouldn’t. So I suppose in a way it’s what people call a release. From everything.”

Alleyn asked quietly, “Was he worried about anything in particular?”

“Yes,” Rose said sombrely, “he was indeed. But I can’t tell you about that. It’s private, and even if it wasn’t, it couldn’t possibly be of any use.”

“You never know,” he said lightly.

“You do in this case.”

“When did you see him last?”

“This evening. I mean last evening, don’t I? He went out soon after seven. I think it was about ten past seven.”

“Where did he go?”

She hesitated and then said, “I believe to call on Mr. Phinn. He took his rod and told me he would go on down to the Chyne for the evening rise. He said he wouldn’t come in for dinner, and I asked for something to be left out for him.”

“Do you know why he called on Mr. Phinn?”

Rose waited for a long time and then said, “I think it had something to do with… with the publishing business.”

“The publishing business?”

She pushed a strand of hair back and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I don’t know who could do such a thing to him,” she said. Her voice was drained of all its colour. “She’s exhausted,” Alleyn thought and, against his inclination, decided to keep her a little longer.

“Can you tell me, very briefly, what sort of pattern his life has taken over the last twenty years?”

Rose sat on the arm of her father’s chair. Her right arm was hooked over its back and she smoothed and re-smoothed the place where his bald head had rested. She was quite calm and told Alleyn in a flat voice of the Colonel’s appointments as military attaché at various embassies, of his job at Whitehall during the war, of his appointment as military secretary to a post-war commission that had been set up in Hong Kong and finally, after his second marriage, of his retirement and absorption in a history he had planned to write of his own regiment. He was a great reader, it seemed, particularly of the Elizabethan dramatists, an interest that his daughter had ardently shared. His only recreation apart from his books had been fishing. Rose’s eyes, fatigued by tears, looked for a moment at a table against the wall where a tray of threads, scraps of feathers and a number of casts was set out.

“I always tied the flies. We made up a fly he nearly always fished with. I tied one this afternoon.”

Her voice trembled and trailed away and she yawned suddenly like a child.

The door opened and Mark Lacklander came in looking angry.

“Ah, there you are!” he said. He walked straight over to her and put his fingers on her wrist. “You’re going to bed at once,” he said. “I’ve asked Nurse Kettle to make a hot drink for you. She’s waiting for you now. I’ll come and see you later and give you a nembutal. I’ll have to run into Chyning for it. You don’t want me again, I imagine?” he said to Alleyn.

“I do for a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

“Oh!” Mark said, and after a pause, “Well, yes, of course, I suppose you do. Stupid of me.”

“I don’t want any dope, Mark, honestly,” Rose said.

“We’ll see about that when you’re tucked up. Go to bed now.” He glared at Alleyn. “Miss Cartarette is my patient,” he said, “and those are my instructions.”

“They sound altogether admirable,” Alleyn rejoined. “Goodnight, Miss Cartarette. We’ll try to worry you as little as possible.”

“You don’t worry me at all,” Rose said politely and gave him her hand.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said to Mark, “if we may see Nurse Kettle as soon as she is free. And you, a little later, if you please, Dr. Lacklander.”

“Certainly, sir,” Mark said stiffly and taking Rose’s arm, led her out of the room.

“And I also wonder, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said, “apart from bloody murder, what it is that’s biting all these people.”

“I’ve got a funny sort of notion,” Fox said, “and mind, it’s only a notion so far, that the whole thing will turn out to hang on that fish.”

“And I’ve got a funny sort of notion you’re right.”