Authors: Ngaio Marsh

Tags: #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #det_classic, #Romance, #Political, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #Police, #Detective and mystery stories, #Alleyn; Roderick (Fictitious character)

Death at the Bar (22 page)

Alleyn paused.

“I’m afraid this is heavy going,” he said. “I won’t be much longer. Watchman, when hit, pulled out the dart and threw it into the floor. When Oates called for the dart Legge obligingly found it on the floor behind the table, but not before Oates — who’s a sharp fellow, Nick — has, as he says, spotted it alaying there. You throw those darts down as often as you like and I’ll guarantee they stick in. And moreover we’ve statements from them all that it
did
stick in. All right. The lights had been wavering on and off throughout the evening. Before Watchman died they went off. There was a horrid interval during which Watchman made ghastly noises, everybody tramped about on broken glass, and Cubitt felt somebody’s head butt against his legs. Miss Moore, she told me, heard somebody click the light to make sure it would stay off. He then dived down to find the tell-tale iodine bottle and plant the innocent one under the bench. He must, as you say, have found the bottom of the bottle hard to smash and have thrown it in the fire. You remember he called out that he would throw wood on the fire in order to get a little light. Just as he did that, the lights went on. There’s a second switch in the inglenook, you know. He’d done another job of work in the dark. He’d picked up the dart and infected it with the cyanide. The dart was sticking in the floor, well away from the others. He had only to feel for the table and then find the dart. Here he made the fatal mistake of adding a fancy touch. We’ve proved that the dart was infected
after
the accident. Legge’s fingerprints are all over it. If anyone else had pulled it out of the floor they would either have left prints of their own or smudged his. He should have left the dart alone, and we would have concluded that if it was ever poisoned the stuff was washed off by blood or had evaporated.”

“I cannot conceive,” said the Colonel. “why he’d wanted to anoint the dart. Why implicate himself? Why?”

“In order that we should think exactly what we did think. ‘Why,’ we cried, ‘there was Legge, finding the dart, with every opportunity to wipe it clean, and he didn’t! It couldn’t be Legge!’ Legge’s plan, you see, depended on the theory of accident. He made it clear that he could have done nothing to the dart beforehand.”

“Then,” said the Colonel, “if the rest of this tarradiddle, forgive me my dear fellow, is still in the air, we yet catch him on the point of the dart.”

“I think so. I explained to Harper this afternoon that I thought it better not to make an arrest at once. We realized that our case rested on a few facts and a mass of dubious conjecture. Fox and I pretended to despise conjecture and we hoped to collect many more bits of evidence before we fired point-blank. We still hope to get them before Legge comes up for assault and battery. We hope, in a word, to turn conjecture into fact. Until this evening I also hoped to get more from Legge himself, and, by George, I nearly got a dose of prussic acid. He must have slipped into the tap-room and put his last drop of poison in the decanter. He must also have had that last drop hidden away in a bottle somewhere, ever since he murdered Watchman. Not on his person for he was searched, and not in his room. Perhaps in his new room at Illington, perhaps in a
cache
somewhere outside the pub. Some time after Harper had searched his room, Legge got rid of a small glass dropper with a rubber top. If he used it to draw prussic acid from the rat-hole, he must have cleaned and filled it with his lotion, emptied it, and restored it to its place on his dressing-table. If he also used it to do his work with the decanter, he got rid of it this afternoon together with whatever vessel housed the teaspoonful of prussic acid. We’ll search for them both.”

Alleyn paused and looked round the circle of attentive faces. He raised a long finger.

“If we could find so much as the rubber top of that dropper,” he said, “hidden away in some unlikely spot, then it would be good-bye conjecture and welcome fact!”

iii

“A needle,” cried Colonel Brammington, after a long pause, “a needle in a haystack of gigantic proportions.”

“It’s not quite so bad as that. It rained pretty heavily during the lunch-hour. Legge hasn’t changed his shoes and he hasn’t been out in them. They’re slightly stained and damp. He crossed the yard several times, but he didn’t get off cobblestones. The paths and roads outside the pub are muddy. He’s therefore either thrown the bottle and dropper from the window or got rid of them in the house or garage.

“Lavatory,” said Fox gloomily.

“Possibly, Br’er Fox. We may have to resort to plumbing. His whole object would be to get rid of them immediately. He didn’t know when we mightn’t take a glass of sherry. Now, there’s a valuable axiom which you, Colonel, have pointed out. The criminal is very prone to repetition. How did Legge get rid of the iodine bottle? He smashed it and threw the thick pieces into the fire. When he had more glass to get rid of in a hurry, wouldn’t he at once think of his former method? He’s a very unusual criminal if he didn’t. There was no fire here, but during the afternoon he made several trips to the garage. He was packing some of his books in the car. I think our first move is to search the car and the garage. It’s full of junk so it will be a delightful task.”

Alleyn turned to Oates.

“Would you like to begin, Oates?”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

“Search the car and garage thoroughly. I’ll join you in ten minutes.”

“Methodical, now,” said Harper, “remember what I’ve told you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Oates went out.

“I think Mrs. Ives is still about,” said Alleyn. “She works late.”

“I’ll see if I can find her, sir,” said Fox.

“You’ll stay where you are. I’ll go,” said Alleyn.

Mrs. Ives had gone to her room but had got no farther than her first row of curling pins. Alleyn interviewed her in Legge’s room. She’d taken a cup of tea up to his room in the afternoon when he was packing his books. She couldn’t say exactly when, but knew it was after three and before four o’clock. She had noticed the ear lotion and dropper on top of his dressing-table.

“Particular, I noticed it,” said Mrs. Ives, “along of it being wet and marking wood. Usually, of a morning, it’s all mucky with that pink stuff he puts in his ears. ‘About time you washed the thing,’ I said, ‘and I see you’ve done it.’ He seemed quite put-about. Well, you know — put-about, like, at my noticing.”

“And did you go away soon after that, Mrs. Ives?”

“Well, sir, seeing I was not welcome,” said Mrs. Ives, bridling a little, “I went. I offered to help him with his books but he seemed like he didn’t fancy it. So I went on with my work upstairs. Polishing floor, I was.”

“Which floor did you polish when you left Mr. Legge?”

“Passage, sir, and I might of saved myself the trouble, seeing he come and went, to and fro from yard, half a dozen times, stepping round me and dropping muck from his papers and passels.”

“Did he go into the bathroom or any other room upstairs?”

Mrs. Ives blushed. “He didn’t, then. He made two or three trips, and after last trip he went into private tap. The gentlemen were down there, Mr. Parish and Mr. Cubitt. You come up here soon after that to change your clothes.”

Alleyn thanked her, spent an uncomfortable quarter of an hour on the roof outside Legge’s window, and returned to the parlour.

“That’s why he didn’t fill it with lotion again and leave it. He’d just washed it when Mrs. Ives walked in, and when she noticed it, he lost his nerve and decided to get rid of it.”

“The dropper,” said Harper, “had a rubber top.”

“It’d float,” said Fox.

“He didn’t go there, Br’er Fox. Mrs. Ives would have seen him. And there isn’t one downstairs. It’s the garage or the yard. Hullo, here’s Oates!”

Oates came in. He was slightly flushed with triumph.

“Well?” said Harper.

“In accordance with instructions, sir,” said Oates, “I proceeded to search the premises—”

“A truce to these vain repetitions,” began Colonel Brammington with some violence.

“Never mind all that, Oates,” said Harper. “Have you found anything?”

“Smashed glass, sir. Powdered to scatters and under a bit of sacking. The sacking’s been newly shifted, sir.”

“We’ll look at it,” said Alleyn. “Anything else?”

“I searched the car, sir, without success. I noted she was low in water, sir, and I took the liberty of filling her up. When she was full, sir, this come up to the top.”

He opened his great hand.

Lying on the palm was a small wet India-rubber cap such as is used on a chemist’s lotion-dropper, for the eye or ear.

“Good-bye conjecture,” said Alleyn, “and welcome fact.”

The End

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