Death of a Peer (14 page)

“Yes.”

“And you noticed the mark on the back of his neck?”

“I saw it.”

“Just there?” asked Alleyn pointing to the startled Fox.

“Just there. It was a sign. Ssh! He does that sometimes.”

“The Little Master?” asked Alleyn.

“Ssh! Yes. Yes.”

“Do you think it happened before you were there? The attack on your husband, I mean.”

“He sat huddled in the corner, not speaking. I knew he was angry. He called for me in an angry voice. He had no right to treat me as he did. He should have been more careful. I warned him of his peril.”

“Did you speak to him when you entered the lift?”

“Why should I speak to him?” This was unanswerable. Alleyn pressed his questions, however, and gathered that Lady Wutherwood had scarcely glanced at her husband, who was sitting in the corner of the lift with his hat over his eyes. With an unexpected turn for mimicry she slumped down in her own chair and sunk her chin on her chest. “Like that,” she said, looking slyly at them from under her brows. “He sat like that. I thought he was asleep.” Alleyn asked her when she first noticed that something was amiss. She said that when the lift was half-way down she turned to rouse him. She spoke to him and finally, thinking he was asleep, put her hand on his shoulder. He fell forward. When she had reached this point in her narrative she began to speak with great rapidity. Her words clattered together and her voice became shrill. Dr. Kantripp gave the nurse a warning signal and they moved nearer to Lady Wutherwood.

“And there he was,” she gabbled, “with a ring in his eye and a red ribbon on his face. He was yawning. His mouth was wide,
wide
open. To see him like that! Wasn’t it wonderful, Tinkerton? Tinkerton, when I saw him, I knew it was all true and I opened my mouth like Gabriel and I screamed and screamed—”

“She’s off,” said Dr. Curtis gloomily, and rose to his feet. Lady Wutherwood’s voice soared in the indecent crescendo of hysteria. Fox began methodically to shut the windows. Dr. Kantripp issued crisp orders to Tinkerton, who showed signs of following the example of her mistress and was thrust out of the room by the nurse. The nurse suddenly became a dominant figure, bending in an authoritative manner over her patient. Alleyn went to the sideboard, dipped a handkerchief in a jug of water, and looked on with distaste while Dr. Kantripp slapped it across and across the screaming face. The screams were broken by gasps and the disgusting sound of gnashing teeth. Kantripp who had his fingers on her wrist said loudly: “You’ll have to bring me that jug of water, nurse, if you please.”

Alleyn fetched the water. Curtis said: “Unfortunate for the carpet,” and pulled a grimace. The nurse said in a firm, brightly genteel voice: “Now, Lady Wutherwood, I’m afraid we must pour this
all
over you.
Isn’t
that a shame?” Lady Wutherwood scarcely seemed to be aware of this impending disaster, yet her paroxysms began to abate and in a few minutes she was led away by Dr. Kantripp and the nurse.
iii

“Open the window again, Br’er Fox, if you please,” said Alleyn. “Let’s get some air into the room. That was a singularly distasteful scene.”

“I suppose you know what you were both talking about,” said Dr. Curtis, “but I’m damned if I did.”

“What’s your opinion of her, Curtis? No sign of epilepsy, was there?”

“None that I could see. Plain hysteria. That doesn’t say there’s nothing wrong mentally, of course.”

“No. What about it? Think she’s ga-ga?”

“Ah,” said Dr. Curtis, “you’re wondering if she’s the answer to the detective’s prayer for a nice homicidal lunatic.”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “what about it? Is she?”

Dr. Curtis pulled down his upper lip. “Well, my dear chap, you know how tricky it is. She seemed to speak very wildly, of course, although I must say you appeared to take an intelligent hand in the conversation.”

“What was she getting at, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Fox. “All that stuff about having a powerful protector and it
seemed
to be one of the twins. You don’t seriously suggest anybody impersonated one of those young fellows?”

“I don’t, Fox, but she does.”

“Then she
must
be dotty. What was the big idea, anyway?”

“It’s so damned preposterous that I hardly dare to think I’m on the right track. However, I’ll tell you what I imagine was the burden of her song.”

Dr. Kantripp returned. “The nurse and the maid are getting her to bed,” he said. “The maid will come along as soon as she can.”

“Right. Sit down, Dr. Kantripp, and tell us what you know of this lady’s history.”

“Very little,” said Dr. Kantripp instantly. “I never saw her until to-night. As far as I can gather from Lady Charles and the others, there’s a history of eccentricity. You’d better ask them about that.”

“Yes, of course,” agreed Alleyn with his air of polite apology, “but I thought that first of all I would just ask you. I suppose they didn’t happen to mention whether the lady was interested in black magic.”

“Now, how the devil,” asked Dr. Kantripp, “did you get hold of that?”

“I was just going to explain. You heard her saying something about Marguerite Luondman of Gebweiler and Anna Ruffa of Douzy?”

“I’ve got them down in these notes,” said Fox, “though I didn’t know how to spell them.”

“Well, unless my extremely unreliable memory is letting me down, those two were a brace of medieval witches.”

“Oh, lor’,” said Fox disgustedly.

“Go on,” said Curtis.

Taking them in conjunction with her suggestions that she had a powerful protector, that her husband had been punished, that she had warned him of his peril, that she recognized her lift conductor by a mark on his neck, that this was a sign from her Little Master, together with all the rest of her mumbo jumbo, I came to the preposterous conclusion that Lady Wutherwood thinks her husband was destroyed by a demon.”

“Oh no, really!” cried Dr. Curtis. “It’s a little too much.”

“Have you ever come across a book called
Compendium Maleficorum
?”

“I have not. Why?”

“I don’t mind betting Lady Wutherwood’s got a copy.”

“You think she’s been mucking about with some sort of occultism and gone so far that she actually has hallucinations or illusions.”

“Is it so very unusual among women of her age, restless by temperament, to become hag-ridden by the bogus-occult?”

“You come across some funny things,” said Fox, “in these fortune-telling cases. I suppose you might say this is only going a step further.”

“That’s it, Br’er Fox. If it’s genuine.”

“You surely don’t believe—” began Dr. Kantripp.

“Of course not. I mean, if Lady Wutherwood’s apparent condition is genuine, she’s just another gullible woman with a taste for the occult. But is her condition genuine?” Alleyn looked at Dr. Kantripp. “What do you say?”

“I should like to see more of her and hear more of her history before venturing on an opinion,” said Dr. Kantripp uneasily.

“And also,” murmured Alleyn, “you would like, I fancy, to consult with the family.”

“My dear Alleyn!”

“I’m not trying to be offensive. Please don’t think that. But as well as being the Lampreys’ family doctor you are, aren’t you, personally rather attached to them?”

“I think everybody who gets involved with the Lampreys ends by falling for them,” said Dr. Kantripp. “They’ve got something. Charm, I suppose. You’ll fall for it yourself if you see much of them.”

“Shall I?” asked Alleyn vaguely. “That conjures up a lamentable picture, doesn’t it? The investigating officer who fell to doting on his suspects. Now, look here. You are two eminent medical gents. I should be extremely grateful for your opinion on the lady who has just made such a very dramatic exit. Without prejudice and all that which way would you bet? Was the lady shamming or was she not? Come now, it won’t be used against you. Give me a snap judgment, do.”

“Well,” said Dr. Curtis, “on sight I — it’s completely unorthodox to say so, of course, — but on sight and signs I incline to think she was not shamming. There was no change in her eye. The characteristic look persisted. And when you turned away there were no sharp glances to see how you were taking it. If she was shamming it was a well-sustained effort.”

“I thought so,” said Alleyn. “There was no ‘See how mad I am’ stuff. And there was, didn’t you think, that uncanny thread of logic that one finds in the mentally unsound? But of course she may be as eccentric as a rabbit on skates and not come within the meaning of the act. ‘It is quite impossible,’as Mr. Taylor says, ‘to define the term “insanity” with any precision.’ ”

“In this case,” said Kantripp, “you needn’t try. It doesn’t arise.”

“If,” said Fox in his stolid way, “she’d killed her husband?”

“Yes,” agreed Alleyn, “if she had done that?”

Dr. Kantripp put his hands in his trousers pockets, took them out again, and walked restlessly round the room.

“If she had done that,” Alleyn repeated, “the question of her sanity or degree of insanity would be of the very first importance.”

“Yes, yes, that’s obvious. As a matter of fact I understand that she has paid visits to some sort of nursing-home. You can find out where and what it is, no doubt. Frid seemed to suggest there had been a bit of mental trouble at some time but — see here, Alleyn, do you suspect her of murder? Have you any reason to suppose there’s a motive?”

“No more reason, perhaps, than I have for suspecting motive with the Lampreys.”

“But, damn it all,” Dr. Kantripp burst out, “you can’t possibly think any one of those delightful lunatics is capable— To my mind it’s absolutely grotesque to imagine for one moment — I mean, look at them.”

“Look at the field, if it comes to that,” said Alleyn. “The Lampreys, Lady Katherine Lobe, Lady Wutherwood—”

“And the servants.”

“And the servants. The nurse, the butler, the cook, and the housemaids belonging to this flat; and the chauffeur and lady’s maid belonging to the Wutherwoods. Oh,
and
a bailiff’s man at present in possession here.”

“Good Lord!”

“Yes. I expect when Messrs. Lane & Eagle learn in the morning’s paper that Lord Charles has come in for the peerage, they will slacken the pressure. But in the meantime there is Mr. Grimball, the bum-baliff, to be added to the list of possibles. A fanciful speculation might suggest that Mr. Grimball fell for the Lamprey charm and, moved by remorse and distaste for his job, altruistically decided to murder Lord Wutherwood; or, if you like, that Mr. Grimball dispatched Lord Wutherwood as an indirect but certain method of collecting the debt.”

“I’d believe that,” said Dr. Kantripp rather defiantly, “before I’d believe one of the Lampreys did it.”

“How would you describe the Lampreys?” asked Alleyn abruptly.

“You’ve met them.”

“I know. But to some one who hadn’t met them. Suppose you had to find a string of appropriate adjectives for the Lampreys, what would they be? Charming, of course. What else?”

“What the devil does it matter how I describe them?”

“I should like to hear, however.”

“Good Lord! Well, amusing, and ah — well ah—”

“Upright?” suggested Alleyn. “Businesslike? Scrupulous? Reliable? Any of those jump to the mind?”

“They’re kind,” said Dr. Kantripp, turning rather red. ”They’re extremely good-natured. They wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Never do anybody any sort of injury?”

“Never wittingly, I am sure.”

“Scrupulous over money matters?”

“Very generous. Look here, Alleyn, I know what you’re driving at but it’s no good. They may be in a hole. They may be a bit vague about accounts and expenses and what not. I don’t say they’re not. Since we’re being so amazingly unprofessional, I don’t mind confessing I wish they did tidy up their bills a bit more regularly. The whole thing is that while they’ve got money they blue it and when they haven’t they can’t haul in their sails. But it’s only because they’re vague. It never occurs to them that other people don’t live in the same way. They don’t really think that money is of any importance. They would never in this world do anything desperate to get money. They couldn’t. It’s the way they are bred, I suppose.”

“Oh, no,” said Alleyn. “I don’t agree with that. Business consciences aren’t entirely bounded by the little fences of class, are they? However, that is beside the point.”

“Well, look here,” said Dr. Kantripp hastily, “I really must run along. Curtis has got my address if you should want me. I asked Lady Wutherwood about her own doctor and she said she hadn’t one. Hadn’t had a consultation for three years. I’ve got
his
man, if it’s relevant. Cairnstock, the brain man we called in, you know, has left a report. He couldn’t wait to see you, but Mr. Fox was here.”

“Yes, Fox got the report.”

“Right. Well, good-bye, Alleyn.” Dr. Kantripp offered his hand. “I — ah — I hope you’ll find — ah—”

“Somebody,” suggested Alleyn with a faint twinkle, “that nobody is at all fond of?”

“Oh well, dammit, it’s a nasty business, isn’t it?” said Dr. Kantripp, who presented the agreeable paradox of a man in a tearing hurry unable to take his departure when there was nothing to stop him. “She’ll do all right. Lady W., I mean. I’ve given her a sedative and so on.” He went to the door and executed a little shuffle. “Ah — Curtis will tell you we noticed — ah — a slight condition of the — ah — the eyes.”

“Pin-point pupils?” asked Alleyn.

“Oh, you saw that, did you? Well — ah — Good-bye. Goodbye, Fox. Good-bye.”

“Very awkward for him,” said Alleyn, after the door had shut.

It’ll take that Abigail some time to stow away her mistress for the night,” said Alleyn. “Before she comes back, let’s go over what we’ve got. Check me as I go, Br’er Fox. We’ve got, in a half-baked sort of way, the positions of the Lampreys & Co., according to themselves, from the time their charade came to an end until the time they carried him, dying and unconscious, out of the lift. We now know which of the twins took him down in the lift.”

“Do we?” asked Dr. Curtis.

“Oh, yes, rather. I’ll come to that in a bit. We know the Lampreys are in deep water and we gather they had hopes of extracting two thousand pounds from the victim. We know they used the skewer in their charade, that it was lying on the hall table just before Lord Wutherwood left the drawing-room, and that it had disappeared a few minutes later. Young Michael is our authority, here, and he’s very positive about it. So it looks as though our homicide was somebody who was in the hall for a moment after Lord W. went to the lift and before Michael returned to the hall from the dining-room. According to evidence, during this brief interlude the Ladies Friede and Patricia went from the dining-room to Lady Charles’s bedroom in Flat 26, and therefore passed through the hall. The Ladies Wutherwood and Katherine Lobe went from the bedroom to their respective lavatories and did
not
pass through the hall. Lady Katherine afterwards stole out to visit a pawnbroker. She tells me she didn’t enter this flat. Lord Charles remained in the drawing-room where he was later joined by his sons who did not pass through the hall; Giggle, the chauffeur, went from the passage in 26 to the servants’ hall in this flat, thence to the dining-room where he collected Michael, who saw him go downstairs. The fact that Lord Wutherwood was heard to call out again in a normal manner, after this, is a good mark for Giggle but will have to be checked. As for the servants, you’ve found, haven’t you, Fox, that the butler, Baskett, was in the servants’ sitting-room with the exception of a trip to the hall where he put Lord W. into his coat and gave him his scarf and bowler. From this trip to the hall, he returned directly to the sitting-room. One maid was out, the other was in the kitchen with the cook and the sinister Mr. Grimball. Nanny, a redoubtable dragon, was in the room with Lady Wutherwood’s maid, Miss Tinkerton. Presumably Tinkerton left to get her bonnet and tippet from the servants’ hall and subsequently went downstairs. But Tinkerton’s movements are vague, as she has been too much in waiting on her mistress for us to question her. That will be attended to in a moment. Now then, all this is hellishly involved, but one infuriating fact emerges. According to their several accounts of themselves it would have been possible for any one of them to have slipped into the hall, grabbed the skewer, and subsequently have visited the lift. If one of the Lampreys did this, the others will no doubt lie like flat-fish to save his or her mutton. The girls will swear they did not separate. So will the boys. But Lord Charles and Lady Charles
were
alone for some of the time. So, by the way, was that quiet little New Zealander, who I must say has visited her Motherland in time for a pretty holiday. All right. At the moment we can’t wipe anybody off the slate with the exception of the cook, the maid, and the bum. As a lively coda to all this rigmarole, follows the suggestion that Lady W. did not love her lord, and although she screamed industriously all the way up in the lift, was not altogether astonished that he should die of a meat skewer in the eye. And, by that same token, Curtis, wouldn’t you expect him to die a bit sooner? That thing must have made a filthy mess of his brain, surely?”

“Just now,” said Dr. Curtis, “you quoted Taylor. Do you remember the American Crowbar Case?”

“Phineas P. Gage?”

“The same. Do you remember that an iron rod forty-three inches long and one and a quarter inches in diameter, with a tapering point and weighing thirteen and a quarter pounds, passed completely through Phineas’ head?”

“ There was much haemorrhage,’ ” Alleyn chanted drearily, “ ‘and escape of brain matter.’ ”

“He eventually recovered all his faculties of body and mind…”

“ ‘… with the loss of the injured eye.’ I knew you’d flatten me with Phineas P. And what of Mr. J. Collyer Adam (Public Prosecutor, Madras) and his case of the man with the knife in his forehead?”

“Well,” said Dr. Curtis with a grin, “with those examples before you, what d’you mean by asking why he didn’t die sooner? For all we know, until I’ve had a peep inside, he might have survived to tell you ’oo done it and saved us all a night’s work.”

“He got a swinging great crack on the temple,” Alleyn observed.

“Yes. I was going to ask you how you account for it.”

“The smudge, inefficiently removed off the chromium steel boss in the lift wall, accounts for it. So, I fancy, do the bruises on the right temple and round the eyes, and the cut on the left temple, as well as a dent in the side of Lord W.’s bowler and the bloodstains on a pair of driving gloves we found in the lift. Henry Lamprey’s gloves, they are, as he very airily admitted. Michael saw them in the hall, so no doubt they were taken at the same time as the knife. I get a picture of a great buffet on the side of the head. Then I see a picture of a left hand laid thumb downwards across the eyes, with the heel of the hand against the walL While the left hand is still in position and the subject unconscious, the point of the skewer, held in the right hand and guided through the fingers of the left, completes a singularly nasty piece of work.”

“A bit conjectural, isn’t it?”

“Before they took the body away, Fox and I made an experiment. We stopped the lift at the uninhabited flat below this one and reconstructed the scene. Luckily rigor was not far advanced. The body fitted the marks exactly. The dent in the bowler tallies with a bit of chromium steel fancy work above the stain. Thompson’s taken some shots of it. The results should be illuminating and calculated to give a tender juryman convulsions. And here, I fancy, comes Miss Tinkerton.”
ii

Tinkerton was a thin, ambling sort of woman of about fifty. The only expression observable in her face was one of faint disapproval. She was colourless, not only in complexion, or merely because she gave no impression of character, but all over and in detail. Her eyes, her lashes, her lips, her voice, and her movements, were all without colour. It was as if she existed in a state of having recently uttered the phrase “not quite nice,” and forgotten its inspiration, while her mouth idiotically maintained the form given by the sentiment. She was dressed with great neatness in clothes that, a long time ago, might have belonged to some one else but had since absorbed nonentity. She wore pince nez and a hair net. When Alleyn asked her to sit down, she edged round a chair and, with an air of suspicion, cautiously lowered her rump. She fixed her eyes on the edge of the table.

“Well, Tinkerton,” said Alleyn, “I hope her ladyship has settled down more comfortably.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she asleep, do you know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then she won’t need you again, we hope. I’ve asked you to come in here because we want you, if you will, to give us as detailed an account as you can of your movements from the time you came here this afternoon until the discovery of Lord Wutherwood’s injury. We are asking everybody who was in the flat to account as far as possible for their movements. Can you remember yours, do you think?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. You arrived with Lord and Lady Wutherwood in their car. We’ll start there.”

But it was a thin account they got from Tinkerton. She did not seem actually to resent the interview, but she maintained a question-and-answer attitude, replying in the most meagre phrases, never responding to Alleyn’s invitation for a running narrative. It seemed that she spent most of the visit with Nanny in her sitting-room, from which she emerged at some vague moment and went to the servants’ hall in Flat 25. By dint of patient and dogged questions, Alleyn discovered that on leaving Nanny’s room she found Giggle and Michael playing trains in the passage, and the rest of the Lamprey children in the hall of Flat 25, dressing themselves for their charade. Tinkerton waited modestly on the landing until they went into the drawing-room and then slipped across into the passage and the servants’ hall where she met Baskett, with whom she enjoyed conversation and a glass of sherry. She also called on cook. She could give no idea of the time occupied by these visits. On being pressed for further information, she said that she washed her hands in Flat 25. From this ambiguous employment she went down the passage towards the hall, meaning to return to Nanny in Flat 26. However she saw Baskett in the hall, putting Lord Wutherwood into his coat. She immediately went into the servants’ sitting-room, heard Lord Wutherwood yell for his wife, collected her handbag, and hurried to the landing in time to see Giggle go downstairs. Alleyn got her to repeat this. “I want to be very clear about it. You were in the passage. You looked into the hall where you caught a glimpse of Lord Wutherwood and Baskett. You went into the servants’ sitting-room, which was close at hand, picked up your bag, went out again, walked along the passage, through the hall, and onto the landing. Did you meet any one?”

“No,” she said. She answered nothing immediately but met each question with an air of obstinate disapproval.

“You simply saw Giggle’s back as he made for the stairs. Any one else?”

“Master Michael was going into the other flat.”

“Where was Lord Wutherwood when you reached the landing?”

“In the lift.”

“Sitting down?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Will you go on please?”

Tinkerton primmed her lips.

“What did you do after that?” asked Alleyn patiently.

Tinkerton said huffily that she followed Giggle downstairs. She remembered hearing Lord Wutherwood yell a second time. When he did that she was already some way downstairs. She joined Giggle in the car and remained there with him until the young lady came to fetch them. This came out inch by reluctant inch.

Alleyn made very careful notes, taking her over the stages of her movements several times. She seemed to be perfectly sure of her own accuracy and repeated monotonously that she had seen nobody but Giggle and Michael, as she went along the passage, through the hall, across the landing and downstairs.

“Please think very carefully,” Alleyn repeated. “You saw nobody else? You are absolutely positive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right,” said Alleyn, cheerfully. “And now, what did you talk about all the afternoon?” At this sudden change of tone and of tactics, Tinkerton’s air of disapproval deepened. “I really couldn’t say, sir,” she said thinly.

“You mean you don’t remember—”

“I don’t recollect.”

“But you must remember
something
, Tinkerton. You had a long chat with Lady Charles Lamprey’s nurse, didn’t you? It must have been a long chat, you know, because when you came out Giggle and Master Michael were playing trains and they didn’t do that until some time after your arrival. What did you and Nanny (Mrs. Burnaby, isn’t she?) discuss together?”

Tinkerton primmed her lips again and said several things were mentioned.

“Well, let us hear some of them.”

Tinkerton said: “The young ladies and gentlemen came up.”

“Of course,” said Alleyn amiably, “you would discuss the family. Naturally.”

“They came up,” Tinkerton repeated guardedly.

“In what connection?”

“Mrs. Burnaby brought them up,” said Tinkerton, as if Nanny had suffered from a surfeit of Lampreys and had taken an emetic for it. “Miss Friede’s theatricals. I should,” added Tinkerton, “have said ‘Lady Friede.’ Pardon.”

“I suppose you are all very interested in her theatricals?”

A slightly acid tinge crept over Tinkerton’s face as she agreed that they were.

“And in all the family’s doings, I expect. Did Lord and Lady Wutherwood often pay visits to this flat?”

Not very often it seemed. Alleyn began to feel as if Tinkerton was a bad cork and himself an inefficient corkscrew, drawing out unimportant fragments, while large lumps of testimony fell into the wine and were lost.

“So this visit was quite an event,” he suggested. “Have you been in the London house for long?”

“No.”

“For how long?”

“We have not been there.”

“You mean you arrived in London to-day.” She didn’t answer. “Is that what you mean? Where did you come from?”

“From Deepacres.”

“From Deepacres? That’s in Kent, isn’t it? Did you come straight to this flat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had his lordship ever done that before, do you know?”

“I don’t recollect.”

“When were you to return to Deepacres?”

“Her ladyship remarked to his lordship, on the way up, that she would like to stay in Town for a few days.”

“What did he say to that?”

“His lordship did not wish to remain in Town. His lordship wished to return to-morrow.”

“What decision did they come to?” asked Alleyn. Was it imagination, or had he got a slightly firm grip in the cork?

“His lordship,” said Tinkerton, “remarked that he had been dragged up to London and wouldn’t stay away longer than one night.”

“Then,” said Alleyn, “they had come to London solely on account of this visit to the flat?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Where were you to spend the night?”

“In his lordship’s Town residence,” said Tinkerton genteelly. “Twenty-four Brummel Street, Park Lane.”

“At such short notice?”

“A skeleton staff is kept there,” said Tinkerton. “Of course,” she added.

“Do you know why this visit was undertaken?”

“His lordship received a telegram yesterday.”

“From Lord Charles Lamprey?”

“I believe so.”

“Have you any idea why Lord Charles wanted to see his brother?”

Tinkerton’s expression of disapproval became still deeper. Alleyn thought he saw a glint of complacency behind it. Perhaps, after all, Miss Tinkerton was not altogether proof against the delights of gossip.