Death in a White Tie (15 page)

Sir Daniel himself, neat, exquisite in London clothes and a slightly flamboyant tie, with something a little exotic about his fine dark head, looked as though he could have no other setting than this. He seated himself at his desk, joined his hands and contemplated Alleyn with frank curiosity.

“Surely you are Roderick Alleyn?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I have read your book.”

“Are you interested in criminology?” asked Alleyn with a smile.

“Enormously! I hardly dare to tell you this because you must so often fall a victim to the enthusiasm of fools. I, too! ‘Oh, Sir Daniel, it must be
too
marvellous to be able to look into the minds of people as you do.’ Their minds! My God! Their stomachs are enough. But I often think quite seriously that I should have liked to follow medical jurisprudence.”

“We have lost a great figure then,” said Alleyn.

“That’s very graceful. But it’s untrue, I’m afraid. I am too impatient and altogether too much of a partisan. As in this case. Lord Robert was a friend of mine. It would be impossible for me to look at this case with an equal eye.”

“If you mean,” said Alleyn, “that you do not feel kindly disposed towards his murderer, no more do we. Do we, Fox?”

“No, sir, that we do not,” said Fox.

Davidson’s brilliant eyes rested for a moment on Fox. With a single glance he seemed to draw him into the warm circle of his confidence and regard. “All the same,” thought Alleyn, “he’s uneasy. He doesn’t quite know where to begin.” And he said:

“You very kindly rang up to say you might be able to help us.”

“Yes,” said Davidson, “yes, I did.” He lifted a very beautiful jade paperweight and put it down. “I don’t know how to begin.” He darted a shrewd and somehow impish glance at Alleyn. “I find myself in the unenviable position of being one of the last people to see Lord Robert.”

Fox took out his notebook. Davidson looked distastefully at it.

“When did you see him?” Alleyn asked.

“In the hall. Just before I left.”

“You left, I understand, after Mrs Halcut-Hackett, Captain Withers and Mr Donald Potter, who went away severally about three-thirty.”

Davidson’s jaw dropped. He flung up his beautiful hands.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “I had a definite struggle with my conscience before I made up my mind to admit it.”

“Why was that?” asked Alleyn.

Again that sideways impish glance.

“I didn’t want to come forward at all. Not a bit. It’s very bad for us parasites to appear in murder trials. In the long run, it is very bad indeed. By the way, I suppose it
is
a case of homicide. No doubt about it? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Of course you can ask. There seems to be no doubt at all. He was smothered.”

“Smothered!” Davidson leant forward, his hands clasped on the desk. Alleyn read in his face the subtle change that comes upon all men when they embark on their own subject. “Good God!” he said, “he wasn’t a Desdemona! Why didn’t he make a rumpus? Is he marked?”

“There are no marks of violence.”

“None? Who did the autopsy?”

“Curtis. He’s our expert.”

“Curtis, Curtis? — yes, of course. How does he account for the absence of violence? Heart? His heart was in a poor condition.”

“How do you know that, Sir Daniel?”

“My dear fellow, I examined him most thoroughly three weeks ago.”

“Did you!” exclaimed Alleyn. “That’s very interesting. What did you find?”

“I found a very unpleasant condition. Evidence of fatty degeneration. I ordered him to avoid cigars like the plague, to deny himself his port and to rest for two hours every day. I am firmly persuaded that he paid no attention whatsoever. Nevertheless, my dear Mr Alleyn, it was not a condition under which I would expect an unprovoked heart attack. A struggle certainly might induce it and you tell me there is no evidence of a struggle.”

“He was knocked out.”

“Knocked out! Why didn’t you say so before? Because I gave you no opportunity, of course. I see. And quietly asphyxiated? How very horrible and how ingenious.”

“Would the condition of the heart make it quicker?”

“I should say so, undoubtedly.”

Davidson suddenly ran his fingers through his picturesque hair.

“I am more distressed by this abominable, this unspeakable crime than I would have thought possible. Mr Alleyn, I had the deepest regard for Lord Robert. It would be impossible to exaggerate my regard for him. He seemed a comic figure, an aristocratic droll with an unusual amount of charm. He was much more than that. He had a keen brain. In conversation, he understood everything that one left unsaid, his mind was both subtle and firm. I am a man of the people. I adore all my smart friends and I understand —
Cristo Mio
, do I not understand! — my smart patients! But I am not, deep in my heart, at ease with them. With Lord Robert I was at ease. I showed off and was not ashamed afterwards that I had done so.”

“You pay him a great compliment when you confess as much,” said Alleyn.

“Do I not? Listen. If it had been anyone else, do you know what I should have done? I should have kept quiet and I should have said to myself
il ne faut pas réveiller le chat qui dort
, and hoped nobody would remember that I stood in the hall this morning at Marsdon House and watched Lord Robert at the foot of the stairs. But as it is I have screwed myself up to making the superb gesture of coming to you with information you have already received.
Gros-Jean en remontre à son cure
!”

“Not altogether,” said Alleyn. “It is not entirely
une vieille histoire
. You may yet glow with conscious virtue. I am longing for a precise account of those last minutes in the hall. We have the order of the going but not the nature of it. If you don’t mind giving us a microscopically exact version?”

“Ah!” Davidson frowned. “You must give me a moment to arrange my facts. A microscopically exact version! Wait now.” He closed his eyes and his right hand explored the surface of the carved jade paperweight. The deliberate movement of the fingers arrested Alleyn’s attention. The piece of jade might have been warm and living, so sensitively did the fingertips caress it. Alleyn thought: “He loves his beautiful possessions.” He determined to learn more of this
poseur
who called himself a man of the people and spattered his conversation with French and Italian tags, who was at once so frankly theatrical and so theatrically frank.

Davidson opened his eyes. The effect was quite startling. They were such remarkable eyes. The light grey iris, unusually large, was ringed with black, the pupil a sharp black accent. “I bet he uses that trick on his patients to some effect,” thought Alleyn, and then realized that Davidson was smiling. “Blast him, he’s read my thoughts.” And he found himself returning the smile as if he and Davidson shared an amusing secret.

“Take this down, Fox,” said Alleyn.

“Very good, sir,” said Fox.

“As you have noticed,” Davidson began, “I have a taste for the theatrical. Let me present this little scene to you as if we watched it take place behind the footlights. I have shaken hands with my host and hostess where the double flight of stairs meet in a gallery outside the ballroom. I come down the left-hand flight of stairs, thinking of my advancing years and longing for my bed. In the hall are scattered groups of people; coated, cloaked, ready for departure. Already the great house seems exhausted and a little raffish. One feels the presence of drooping flowers, one seems to smell the dregs of champagne. It is indeed time to be gone. Among the departing guests I notice an old lady whom I wish to avoid. She’s rich, one of my best patients, but her chief complaint is a condition of chronic, complicated and acute verbal diarrhoea. I have ministered to this complaint already this evening and as I have no wish to be offered a lift in her car I dart into the men’s cloakroom. I spend some minutes there, marking time. It is a little awkward as the only other men in the cloakroom are obviously engaged in an extremely private conversation.”

“Who are they?” asked Alleyn.

“A certain Captain Withers who is newly come upon the town and that pleasant youth, Donald Potter. They both pause and stare at me. I make a great business of getting my coat and hat. I chat with the cloakroom attendant after I have tipped him. I speak to Donald Potter, but am so poorly received that in sheer decency I am forced to leave. Lucy Lorrimer —
tiens
, there I go!”

“It’s all right,” said Alleyn, “I know all about Lucy Lorrimer.”

“What a woman! She is still screaming out there. I pull up my scarf and lurk in the doorway, waiting for her to go. Having nothing else to do I watch the other people in the hall. The
grand seigneur
of the stomach stands at the foot of the stairs.”

“Who?”

“The man who presides over all these affairs. What is his name?”

“Dimitri?”

“Yes, Dimitri. He stand there like an imitation host. A group of young people go out. Then an older woman, alone, comes down the stairs and slips through the doors into the misty street. It was very strange, all that mist.”

“Was this older woman Mrs Halcut-Hackett?”

“Yes. That is who it was,” said Davidson a little too casually.

“Is Mrs Halcut-Hackett a patient of yours, Sir Daniel?”

“It so happens that she is.”

“Why did she leave alone? What about her husband and — hasn’t she got a débutante attached to her?”

“The protégée, who is unfortunately
une jeune fille un peu farouche
, fell a prey to toothache earlier in the evening and was removed by the General. I heard Lord Robert offer to escort Mrs Halcut-Hackett home.”

“Why did he not do so?”

“Perhaps because they missed each other.”

“Come now, Sir Daniel, that’s not your real opinion.”

“Of course it’s not, but I don’t gossip about my patients.”

“I needn’t assure you that we shall be very discreet. Remember what you said about your attitude towards this case.”

“I do remember. Very well. Only please, if you can avoid my name in subsequent interviews, I shall be more than grateful. I’ll go on with my recital. Mrs Halcut-Hackett, embedded in ermine, gives a swift look round the hall and slips out through the doors into the night. My attention is arrested by something in her manner, and while I stare after her somebody jostles me so violently that I actually stumble forward and only just save myself from falling. It is Captain Withers, who has come out of the cloakroom behind me. I turn to receive his apologies and find him with his mouth set and his unpleasant eyes — I mistrust people with white lashes — goggling at the stairhead. He does not even realize his own incivility, his attention is fixed on Lord Robert Gospell, who has begun to descend the stairs. This Captain Withers’s expression is so singular that I, too, forget our encounter. I hear him draw in his breath. There is a second’s pause and then he, too, thrusts his way through a party of chattering youngsters and goes out.”

“Do you think Withers was following Mrs Halcut-Hackett?”

“I have no reason to think so, but I do think so.”

“Next?”

“Next? Why, Mr Alleyn, I pull myself together and start for the door. Before I have taken three steps young Donald Potter comes out of the buffet with Bridget O’Brien. They meet Lord Robert at the foot of the stairs.”

“Yes?” said Alleyn, as Davidson paused.

“Donald Potter,” he said at last, “says what is no doubt a word of farewell to Bridget, and then he too goes out by the front entrance.”

“Without speaking to his uncle?”

“Yes.”

“And Lord Robert?”

“Lord Robert is asking in that very penetrating high-pitched voice of his if Dimitri has seen Mrs Halcut-Hackett. I see him now and hear him — the last thing I do see or hear before the double doors close behind me.”

That was a very vivid little scene,” said Alleyn.

“Well, it was not so long ago, after all,” said Davidson.

“When you got outside the house, did you see any of the others, or had they all gone?”

“The party of young people came out as I did. There was the usual bustle for taxis with linkmen and porters. Those linkmen! They are indeed a link with past glories. When one sees the lights from their torches flicker on the pale, almost wanton faces of guests half-dazed with dancing, one expects Millamant herself to come down the steps and all the taxis to turn into sedan chairs. However, I must not indulge my passion for elaboration. The party of young people surged into the three taxis that had been summoned by the porter. He was about to call one for me when, to my horror, I saw a Rolls-Royce on the other side of the road. The window was down and there, like some Sybil, mopping and mowing, was Lucy Lorrimer. ‘Sir Daniel! Sir Daniel.’ I shrank further into my scarf, but all in vain. An officious flunkey cries out: ‘The lady is calling you, sir.’ Nothing for it but to cross the road. ‘Sir Daniel! Sir Daniel! I have waited for you. Something most important! I shall drive you home and on the way I can tell you —’ An impossible woman. I know what it means. She is suffering from a curious internal pain that has just seized her and now is the moment for me to make an examination. I must come in. She is in agony. I think furiously and by the time I reach her window I am prepared. ‘Lady Lorrimer — forgive me — not a moment to spare — the Prime Minister — a sudden indisposition —!’ and while she still gapes I turn and bolt like a rabbit into the mist!”

For the first time since the tragedy of last night Alleyn laughed. Davidson gave him a droll look and went on with his story.

“I ran as I have not done since I was a boy in Grenoble, pursued by that voice offering, no doubt, to drive me like the wind to Downing Street. Mercifully the mist thickened. On I went, looking in vain for a taxi. I heard a car and shrank into the shadows. The Rolls-Royce passed. I crept out. At last a taxi! It was coming behind me. I could just see the two misted headlights. Then voices, but indistinguishable. The taxi stopped, came on towards me. Engaged!
Mon Dieu
, what a night! I walked on, telling myself that sooner or later I must find a cab. Not a bit of it! By this time, I suppose, the last guest had gone. It was God knows what time of the morning and the few cabs I did meet were all engaged. I walked from Belgrave Square to Cadogan Gardens, and I assure you, my dear Mr Alleyn, I have never enjoyed a walk more. I felt like a middle-aged harlequin in search of adventure. That I found none made not the smallest matter.”

“Unless I’m much mistaken,” said Alleyn, “you missed it by a very narrow margin. Adventure is perhaps not the right word. I fancy tragedy passed you by, Sir Daniel, and you did not recognise it.”

“Yes,” said Davidson, and his voice was suddenly sombre. “Yes, I believe you may be right. It is not so amusing, after all.”

“That taxi-cab. Which way did you turn when you fled from Lady Lorrimer?”

“To my right.”

“How far had you run when you heard the taxi?”

“I don’t know. It is almost impossible to judge. Perhaps four hundred yards. Not far, because I had stopped and hidden from Lucy Lorrimer.”

“You tell us you heard voices. Did you recognise them?”

Davidson waited, staring thoughtfully at Alleyn.

“I realize how important this is,” he said at last. “I am almost afraid to answer. Mr Alleyn, I can only tell you that when those voices — I could hear no words, remember — reached me through the mist, I thought at first that one was a woman’s voice and then I changed my mind and thought it was a man’s. It was a high-pitched voice.”

“And the other?”

“Definitely a man’s.”

“Can you remember anything else, anything at all, about this incident?”

“Nothing. Except that when the taxi passed me I thought the occupants were men.”

“Yes. Will you give us a signed statement?”

“About the taxi incident? Certainly.”

“Can you tell me who was left behind at Marsdon House when you went away?”

“After the noisy party that went when I did, very few remained. Let me think. There was a very drunk young man. I think his name is Percival and he came out of the buffet just before I left and went into the cloakroom. There was somebody else. Who was it? Ah, yes, it was a curious little lady who seemed to be rather a fish out of water. I had noticed her before. She was quite unremarkable and one would never have seen her if she had not almost always been alone. She wore glasses. That is all I can tell you about her except — yes — I saw her dancing with Lord Robert. I remember now that she was looking at him as he came downstairs. Perhaps she felt some sort of gratitude towards him. She would have been pathetic if she had not looked so composed. I shouldn’t be surprised if she was a dependant of the house. Perhaps Bridget’s ex-governess, or Lady Carrados’s companion. I fancy I encountered her myself somewhere during the evening. Where was it? I forget!”

“The ball was a great success, I believe?”

“Yes. Lady Carrados was born under a star of hospitality. It is always a source of wonderment to me why one ball should be a great success and another offering the same band, caterer and guests an equally great failure. Lady Carrados, one would have said, was at a disadvantage last night.”

“You mean she was unwell?”

“So you’ve heard about that. We tried to keep it quiet. Yes, like all these mothers, she’s overdone herself.”

“Worrying about something, do you imagine?” asked Alleyn, and then in reply to Davidson’s raised brows, he said: “I wouldn’t ask if it was not relevant.”

“I can’t imagine, I must confess, how Lady Carrados’s indisposition can have any possible connection with Lord Robert Gospell’s death. She is nervously exhausted and felt the strain of her duties.” Davidson added as if to himself: “This business will do her no good, either.”

“You see,” said Alleyn, “in a case of this sort we have to look for any departure from the ordinary or the expected. I agree that this particular departure seems quite irrelevant. So, alas, will many of the other facts we bring to light. If they cannot be correlated they will be discarded. That is routine.”

“No doubt. Well, all I can tell you is that I noticed Lady Carrados was unwell, told her to go and lie down in the ladies’ cloakroom, which I understand was on the top landing, and to send her maid for me if she needed me. Getting no message, I tried to find her, but couldn’t. She reappeared later on and told me she felt a little better and not to worry about her.”

“Sir Daniel, did you happen to see the caterer, Dimitri, return her bag to Lady Carrados?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“I’ve heard that for a time last night she thought she had lost it and was very distressed.”

“She said nothing to me about it. It might account for her upset. I noticed that bag. It has a very lovely emerald and ruby clasp — an old Italian setting and much too choice a piece to bedizen a bit of tinsel nonsense. But nowadays people have no sense of congruity in ornament. None.”

“I have been looking at your horse. You, at least, have an appreciation of the beautiful. Forgive me for forgetting my job for a moment but — a ray of sunshine has caught that little horse. Rose red and ochre! I’ve a passion for ceramics.”

Davidson’s face was lit from within. He embarked eagerly on the story of how he acquired his little horse. His hands touched it as delicately as if it was a rose. He and Alleyn stepped back three thousand centuries into the golden age of pottery and Inspector Fox sat as silent as stout Cortez with his official notebook open on his knees and an expression of patient tolerance on his large solemn face.

“ — and speaking of Benvenuto,” said Davidson who had talked himself into the Italian Renaissance, “I saw in a room at Marsdon House last night, unless I am a complete nincompoop, an authentic Cellini medallion. And where, my dear Alleyn, do you suppose it was? To what base use do you imagine it had been put?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Alleyn, smiling.

“It had been sunk; sunk, mark you, in a machine-turned gold case with a devilish diamond clasp and it was surrounded with brilliants. Doubtless this sacrilegious abortion was intended as a receptacle for cigarettes.”

“Where was this horror?” asked Alleyn.

“In an otherwise charming green sitting-room.”

“On the top landing?”

“That’s the one. Look for this case yourself. It’s worth seeing in a horrible sort of way.”

“When did you visit this room?”

“When? Let me see. It must have been about half-past eleven. I had an urgent case yesterday and the assistant surgeon rang me up to report.”

“You didn’t go there again?”

“No. I don’t think so. No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t,” persisted Alleyn, “happen to hear Lord Robert telephone from that room?”

“No. No, I didn’t return to it at all. But it was a charming room. A Greuze above the mantelpiece and three or four really nice little pieces on a pie-crust table and with them this hell-inspired crime. I could not imagine a person with enough taste to choose the other pieces, allowing such a horror as a Benvenuto medallion — and a very lovely one — sunk, no doubt cemented, by its perfect reverse, to this filthy cigarette-case.”

“Awful,” agreed Alleyn. “Speaking of cigarettes, what sort of case did you carry last night?”

“Hullo!” Davidson’s extraordinary eyes bored into his. “What sort of—” He stopped and then muttered to himself: “Knocked out, you said. Yes, I see. On the temple.”

“That’s it,” said Alleyn.

Davidson pulled a flat silver case from his pocket. It was beautifully made with a sliding action and bevelled edges. Its smooth surface shone like a mirror between the delicately tooled margins. He handed it to Alleyn.

“I don’t despise frank modernity, you see.”

Alleyn examined the case, rubbing his fingers over the tooling. Davidson said abruptly:

“One could strike a sharp blow with it.”

“One could,” said Alleyn, “but it’s got traces of plate-powder in the tooling and it’s not the right kind, I fancy.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it possible that I could have been so profoundly relieved,” said Davidson. He waited for a moment and then with a nervous glance at Fox, he added: “I suppose I’ve no alibi?”

“Well, no,” said Alleyn, “I suppose you haven’t, but I shouldn’t let it worry you. The taximan may remember passing you.”

“It was filthily misty,” said Davidson peevishly. “He may not have noticed.”

“Come,” said Alleyn, “you mustn’t get investigation nerves. There’s always Lucy Lorrimer.”

“There is indeed always Lucy Lorrimer. She has rung up three times this morning.”

“There you are. I’ll have to see her myself. Don’t worry; you’ve given us some very useful information, hasn’t he, Fox?”

“Yes, sir. It’s kind of solidified what we had already.”

“Anything you’d like to ask Sir Daniel, Fox?”

“No, Mr Alleyn, thank you. I think you’ve covered the ground very thoroughly. Unless—”

“Yes?” asked Davidson. “Come on, Mr Fox.”

“Well, Sir Daniel, I was wondering if you could give us an opinion on how long it would take a man in Lord Robert Gospell’s condition to die under these circumstances.”

“Yes,” said Davidson, and again that professional note sounded in his voice. “Yes. It’s not easy to give you the sort of answer you want. A healthy man would go in about four minutes if the murderer completely stopped all access of air to the lungs. A man with a condition of the heart which I believe to have obtained in this instance would be most unlikely to live for four minutes. Life might become extinct within less than two. He might die almost immediately.”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.”

Alleyn said: “Suppose the murderer had some slight knowledge of medicine and was aware of Lord Robert’s condition, would he be likely to realize how little time he needed?”

“That is rather a difficult question to answer. His slight knowledge might not embrace asphyxia. I should say that any first-year student would probably realize that a diseased heart would give out very rapidly under these conditions. A nurse would know. Indeed, I should have thought most laymen would think it probable. The actual time to within two or three minutes might not be appreciated.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Alleyn got up.

“I think that really is everything. We’ll get out a statement for you to sign, if you will. Believe me, we do realize that it has been very difficult for you to speak of your patients under these extremely disagreeable circumstances. We’ll word the beastly document as discreetly as may be.”

“I’m sure you will. Mr Alleyn, I think I remember Lord Robert telling me he had a great friend at Scotland Yard. Are you this friend? I see you are. Please don’t think my question impertinent. I am sure that you have suffered, with all his friends, a great loss. You should not draw too much upon your nervous energy, you know, in investigating this case. It is quite useless for me to tell you this, but I am a physician and I do know something about nerves. You are subjecting yourself to a very severe discipline at the moment. Don’t overdo it.”

“Just what I’d like to tell him, sir,” said Fox unexpectedly.

Davidson turned on him a face cordial with appreciation. “I see we understand each other, Mr Fox.”

“It’s very kind of you both,” said Alleyn with a grin, “but I’m not altogether a hothouse flower. Good-bye, Sir Daniel. Thank you so much.”

They shook hands and Fox and Alleyn went out.

“Where do we go now?” asked Fox.

“I think we’d better take a look at Marsdon House. Bailey ought to have finished by now. I’ll ring up from there and see if I can get an appointment with the Carrados family
en masse
. It’s going to be difficult, that. There seems to be no doubt that Lady Carrados is one of the blackmailing victims. Carrados himself is a difficult type, a frightful old snob he is, and as vain as a peacock. Police investigation will undoubtedly stimulate all his worst qualities. He’s the sort of man who’d go to any lengths to avoid the wrong kind of publicity. We’ll have go to warily if we don’t want him to make fools of us and a confounded nuisance of himself.”