Death of a Peer (19 page)

“Alleyn,” said Nigel, “will you let me stand by? I’m not pretending I’m any good at this sort of thing. ‘Oh God, you’re only Watson’ is my cry. But I–I would like to — to sort of look out for the Lampreys.”

“I don’t think I’d advise you to do it. I tell you we don’t know—”

“And I tell you I’m prepared to risk it. I’m only asking to do what I’ve so often done before. I’ll cover the case for my paper. They’ve actually given me carte blanche for that. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Frid said it was a nice scoop for me. And so, of course, it is,” added Nigel honestly. “Better me than one of the others, after all.”

“You may stay if you think it advisable, of course. But suppose that as things fall out we find ourselves being drawn to—”

“I know what you’re going to say and I’m convinced it’s entirely out of the question.”

“Then you’re in?”

“I’m in.”

“All right,” said Alleyn. “Gibson!” The door opened. “I’m ready for Lord Charles, if he can come.”

Alleyn had grown accustomed to Lord Charles’s walk. It recalled vividly a year out of his own past. From 1919 to 1920 Alleyn’s youthful and speculative gaze had followed tail-coated figures hurrying with discretion through the labyrinths of diplomatic corridors. These figures had moved with the very gait of Lord Charles Lamprey and Alleyn wondered if at any time he had been among them. He came into the dining-room with this well-remembered air, taking out his eye-glass as he moved to the table. There was a kind of amateurish gravity about him, linked to an expression of guarded courtesy. He was one of those blond men at whose age it is difficult to guess. Somewhere, Alleyn thought, between forty-five and fifty.

“You will be glad to hear, sir,” said Alleyn, “that we have nearly finished for to-night.”

“Oh yes,” said Lord Charles. “Splendid. Hullo, Nigel. Still with us? That’s good.”

“He’s asked for an unofficial watching-brief,” Alleyn explained. “Subject, of course, to your approval.”

“Do you mind, Charles?” asked Nigel. “As you know, I’m Alleyn’s Watson. Of course, you’ll tell me if you’d rather I made myself scarce.”

“No, no,” said Lord Charles, “do stay. It was our suggestion. I’m afraid, Alleyn, that by this time you must have decided that we are a fantastically unconventional family.”

The old story, thought Alleyn. It seemed to him that the Lampreys showed great industry in underlining their eccentricity.

He said: “I think it was a very sensible suggestion, sir. Bathgate is remarkably well equipped as a liaison officer between the press, yourselves, and the police.” This remark met with a silence. Nigel fidgeted and Lord Charles looked blank. Alleyn said: “As far as your own movements are concerned we’ve got a complete statement. You didn’t leave the drawing-room from the time Lord Wutherwood arrived until the lift returned after the injury was inflicted?”

“No. I was there all the time.”

“Yes. Well, now, I think I must ask you for some account of your conversation with Lord Wutherwood after the others left you alone together.”

Lord Charles rested his right arm on the table, letting his hand hang from the wrist. His left hand was thrust into his trousers pocket. He looked a little as though he sat for a modish portrait. “Well, Alleyn,” he began, “from what my Aunt Kit tells me and from what I have already told you and Mr. Fox, I expect you will have guessed why my brother called to-day. I was in a desperate financial case and I appealed to my brother for help. This was the subject of our conversation. My appalling children tell me they overheard us. No doubt they have given you a highly coloured account.”

“I should like to have your own account, sir.”

“Would you? Well, I told Gabriel how things were and he — ah — he read me a pretty stiff lecture. I fully deserved it. I don’t know how it is but I have never been able to manage very well. I think I may plead that I’ve had extraordinarily bad luck. A little while ago things seemed to be most promising. I ventured into business with a very able partner but unfortunately, poor fellow, he became mentally deranged and — ah — was foolish enough to shoot himself.”

“Sir David Stein?”

“Yes, it was,” said Lord Charles, opening his eyes very wide. “Did you know him?”

“I remember the case, sir.”

“Oh. Ah yes, I suppose you would. Very sad and, for me, quite disastrous.”

“You explained all this to Lord Wutherwood?”

“Oh, yes. And of course he scolded away about it. Indeed, we quite blazed at each other. It’s always been like that. Gabriel would give me hell and we would both get rather angry with each other and then, poor old boy, he would come to the rescue.”

“Did he come to the rescue this time?”

“He didn’t write a cheque there and then,” said Lord Charles. “That was not his way, you know. I expect he wanted me to have a night to think over my wigging and feel properly ashamed of myself.”

“Did he promise to do so?” There was a fraction of a pause.

“Yes,” said Lord Charles.

Alleyn’s pencil whispered across his note-book. He turned a page, flattened it, and looked up. Neither Lord Charles nor Nigel had stirred but now Nigel cleared his throat and took out a cigarette case.

“He promised,” said Alleyn, “quite definitely, in so many words, to pay up your debts?”

“Not exactly in so many words. He muttered that he supposed he would have to see me through as usual, that— ah — that I would hear from him.”

“Yes. Lord Charles, your children, as you evidently have heard, lay in the corner there and listened to,the conversation. Suppose I told you they had not heard this promise of your brother’s, what would you say?”

“I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. They could not possibly have heard it. Gabriel had walked to the far end of the room and I had followed him. I only just heard it myself. He — ah — he mumbled it out as if he was half ashamed.”

“Then suppose, alternatively, that I tell you they state they did hear him promise to help you, would you say that they were not speaking the truth?”

“Somebody once told me,” said Lord Charles, “that detective officers were not allowed to set traps for their witnesses.”

“They are not allowed to hold out veiled promises and expose them to implied threats,” said Alleyn. “It is not quite the same thing, sir. I’m sure you know that you may leave any question unanswered if you think it advisable to do so.”

“I can only repeat,” said Lord Charles breathlessly, “that he promised to help me and that I think it unlikely that they could have heard him.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, writing.

Nigel leant across the table, offering his cigarettes to Lord Charles. Lord Charles had not changed his modish attitude. He looked perfectly at his ease, perfectly aware of his surroundings, and yet he did not notice Nigel’s gesture. There was something odd in this unexpected revelation of his detachment. Nigel touched his sleeve with the cigarette case. He started, moved his arm sharply and, with a murmured apology, took a cigarette.

“I really don’t think there’s very much else,” said Alleyn. “There’s a small point about the arrival of your three elder sons after Lord Wutherwood left. In what order did they come into the drawing-room?”

“The twins came in first. Henry appeared a moment or two later.”

“How long, should you say, sir? A minute? Two minutes?”

“I shouldn’t think longer than two minutes. I don’t think any one had spoken before he came in.”

“You didn’t at once tell them that Lord Wutherwood had promised to see you out of the wood?”

“I didn’t, no. I was still rather chastened, you see, by my scolding.”

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn politely. “Of course. That really is all, I think, sir. I’m so sorry but I’m afraid I shall have to litter a few men about the flat for a little while still.”

“Surely we may go out to-morrow?”

“Of course. You won’t, any of you, want to leave London?”

“No.”

“The inquest will probably be on Monday. I wonder, sir, if you can give me the name of Lord Wutherwood’s solicitors.”

“Rattisbon. They’ve been our family lawyers for generations. I must ring up old Rattisbon, I suppose.”

“Then that really is everything.“ Alleyn stood up. ”We shall ask you to sign a transcript of your statement tomorrow, if you will. I must thank you very much indeed, sir, for so patiently enduring all this police procedure.”

Lord Charles did not rise. He looked up with an air of hesitancy. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there’s one other thing that rather bothers us, Alleyn. Tinkerton, my sister-in-law’s maid, you know, came into the dining-room just now in a great state. It seems that my sister-in-law, whom I may say we all thought was safely asleep in my wife’s bed, has now waked up and is in a really appalling frame of mind. She says she must have something or another from their house in Brummell Street and that Tinkerton and only Tinkerton can find it. Some patent medicine or another, it seems to be. Well now, your men are allowing no one to leave the flat. I explained all that to Tinkerton and she went off only to return saying that Violet was out of bed trying to dress herself and proving too big a handful for the nurse. The nurse, for her part, says she won’t tackle the job singlehanded. We’ve rung up for a second nurse but now Tinkerton, although she’s perfectly willing to carry on with the nurses, has obviously taken fright. It’s all a frightful bore, and Imogen and I are both at our wits’ end. I won’t pretend we wouldn’t be most relieved to see the last of poor Violet, but we also feel that if you allowed her to go she ought to have somebody who is not a servant or a strange nurse to be with her in that mausoleum of a house. Imogen says she will go but that I will not have. She’s completely fagged out and where she is to sleep if Violet stays here for the rest of the night I simply don’t know. I — really the whole thing is getting a little more than we can reasonably be expected to endure. I wonder if you could possibly help us?”

“I think so,” Alleyn said. “We can arrange for Lady Wutherwood to go to her own house. We shall have to send some one along to be on duty there, but that can easily be done. I can spare a man from here.”

“I’m extraordinarily relieved.”

“About somebody else going — who do you suggest?”

“Well…” Lord Charles passed his hand over the back of his head. “Well, Robin Grey — Roberta Grey, you know — has very nicely offered to go.”

“Rather a youthful guardian,” said Alleyn with a lift of his eyebrow.

“Ah — yes. Yes, but she’s a most resourceful and composed little person and says she doesn’t mind. My wife suggests that Nanny might go to keep her company. I mean she will be perfectly all right. Two trained nurses and Tinkerton, who for all her fright insists that she can carry on as usual and says Violet will be quite quiet when she has had this medicine of hers. You see Frid, my eldest girl, may be a bit shaken, and of course Patch — Patricia — is too young. And we feel it ought to be a woman — I mean just for the look of things. You see, the nurse says that without some one besides Tinkerton she feels she can’t take the responsibility until the second nurse comes. So we thought that if Robin — I mean, of course, with your approval.”

Alleyn remembered a steadfast face, heart-shaped and colourless, with wide-set eyes of grey. His own phrase “a courageous little liar” recurred to him. But it was no business of his who the Lampreys sent to keep up the look of things in Brummell Street. Better perhaps that it should be the small New Zealander who surely did not come into this tragicomedy except in the dim role of confidante and wholehearted admirer of the family. With a remote feeling of uneasiness Alleyn agreed that Miss Grey and Nanny Burnaby should go in a taxi to Brummell Street; that Lady Wutherwood, Tinkerton, and the nurses, should be driven there by Giggle with Gibson as police escort. Lord Charles hurried away to organize these manoeuvres. Nigel, with a dubious look at Alleyn, murmured something about returning in a minute or two and slipped out after Lord Charles. Alleyn, left alone, walked restlessly about the dining-room. When Fox returned Alleyn instantly thrust the notes of Lord Charles’s statement at him.

“Look at that,” he said, “or rather don’t. I’ll tell you. He said that when they got to the far end of the drawing-room his brother promised in a mumble to help him. He said that none of his precious brood could have heard it. He was in a fix. He didn’t know what they’d told me. I tripped him, Br’er Fox.”

“Nicely,” said Fox, thumbing over the notes.

“Yes, but, damn him, it still might be true.
They
may have lied but he may have spoken the truth. I’ll swear he didn’t, though.”

“I know he didn’t,” said Fox.

“Do you, by George?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been talking to the parlour-maid.”

“With parlour-maids,” said Alleyn, “you stand supreme. What did she say?”

“She was in the pantry at the time,” said Fox, hauling out his spectacles and note-book. “The pantry door was open and she heard most of what was said between the brothers. I got her to own up that she slid out into the passage after a bit and had a good earful. I asked her why none of the other servants heard what she says she heard and her answer was that they all hung together with the family. She’s under notice and doesn’t mind what she says. Rather a vindictive type of girl with very shapely limbs.”

“That’s nice,” said Alleyn. “Go on. What’s her name?”

“Blackmore’s the name. Cora. She says that the two gentlemen got very hot with each other and there was a lot of talk about the deceased cutting his brother out of everything he could. Blackmore says he went on something terrible. Called his present lordship everything from a sponger to a blackguard, and fetched up by saying he’d see him in the gutter before he’d give him another penny-piece. Then she says his present lordship lost his temper and things got very noisy until the boy — Master Michael — went into the drawing-room with a parcel. When Blackmore saw Master Michael she made out that she was doing something to the soda-water machine in the passage. He went in and they pulled up and said no more to each other. The deceased came away almost at once. As he got to the door he said, speaking very quiet and venomous according to Blackmore: ‘That’s final. If there’s any more whining for help I’ll take legal measures to rid myself of the lot of you.’ Now, sir,” said Fox, looking over the top of his spectacles, “Blackmore was playing round behind the soda-water machine which is close to the wall. She
says
she heard his present lordship say, very distinctly: ‘I wish that there was some measure, legal or illegal, by which I could get rid of
you
!”