Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 1: A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 15

Detective-Inspector Alleyn had been most particular about the state of the house. Nothing must be touched, he said, until he had finished what he called his nosey-parkering. Nothing had been touched. Little Doctor Young, in his capacity as police surgeon for the district, had stressed the point from the moment of his arrival, and Bunce, PC, in his brief and enjoyable supremacy, had scared the life out of the servants, keeping them all confined to their own quarters. He had, however, set no watch at the gate, and Vassily apparently escaped by the simple method of walking out at the back door.

Alleyn recovered from his momentary rage at the disappearance of the butler, rang up the station and found that the old Russian had, with peculiar ingenuousness, caught the ten-fifteen for London. The inspector telephoned the Yard and gave orders that he should be traced and detained immediately.

By this time a detachment of plain-clothes men had appeared at Frantock. Alleyn had the tall and quite insurmountable fence inspected, mounted a guard of helmets, felt hats and waterproofs at the gates, and invited Detective-Sergeant Bailey, the fingerprint expert who had come down with him, to attend him in the house. Mr Bunce was also on tap in the hall. Handesley had been requested to detain his guests in the library or to let them loose in the garden.

‘Now,’ said Detective-Inspector Alleyn, ‘I’ll see Ethel, the only housemaid remaining. Ask her to come in, Bunce.’

Mary had been scared and Florence calm. Ethel, a pretty girl of about twenty-seven, was intelligent and interested.

‘Where were you,’ Alleyn asked her, ‘at ten to eight last night?’

‘I was in my room upstairs, sir, at the end of the back corridor. I had just changed my apron and noticed the time, and I thought I would go downstairs and help Mary tidy the hall. So I came along the back corridor into the passage past the best bedrooms.’

‘You mean past Mr Bathgate’s room?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s right. I got as far as the head of the stairs and looked over, and I saw Mr Rankin was still in the hall. Mary was there too, sir, locking the front door, and she looked up at me and jerked her head like, so I said to myself that I’d wait till the hall was clear before I came down. I turned back, and as I passed Mr Bathgate’s door, I remembered I hadn’t brought his shaving water, and that there was only two cigarettes left in his box. So I tapped on the door.’

‘Yes?’

‘The door wasn’t shut, and when I tapped it, it swung in a bit like, and at the same time Mr Bathgate calls out. “Come in”. So I went in, and just as I was asking about the shaving water the lights went out and I felt all confused, sir, so I went out too, and kind of groped my way back to my own room, sir.’

‘What was Mr Bathgate doing?’

‘Smoking a cigarette, sir, with a book in his hand. I think he had just called out something to Mr Wilde, who was bathing next door.’

‘Thank you, Ethel.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Ethel plaintively. She withdrew with some reluctance.

Alleyn, with a mental shrug at Nigel’s amazing imbecility in having overlooked his own cast-iron alibi, got on with the work. Roberts, the pantry-man, proved unprofitable. He had been in his pantry solidly for twenty minutes when the gong sounded. The cook and odd-boy were also completely without interest. Alleyn turned his attention to the hall itself.

He produced a tape measure and carefully took measurements between the cocktail table and the foot of the stairs. The tray with its sordid array of used glasses had been left untouched.

‘All very nice and proper,’ grumbled Alleyn to Detective-Sergeant Bailey; ‘nothing disturbed except the minor detail of the body.’

‘Lovely funeral if we’d only had a corpse, sort of,’ responded Bailey.

‘Well, young Bathgate says the body was lying at right angles to the gong. The last that Mary saw of Mr Rankin he was standing at the cocktail tray. Presumably at the end of it when he was struck. Come here, Bunce. How tall are you?’

‘Five-foot-eleven in me socks, sir.’

‘Good enough. The body is just on six foot. Stand here, will you?’

Bunce stood to attention, and Alleyn walked round him, looking at him carefully.

‘What do you make of this, Bailey?’ he said. ‘This job was done inside five minutes at the most. The knife was in that leather slot by the stairs, unless it had been previously removed, which I think unlikely. Therefore, the murderer started off from here, took the thing in his right hand—so—and struck from the back.’

He went through the pantomime of stabbing the constable. ‘Now see what I mean. I’m six-foot-two, but I can’t get the right angle. Bend over, will you, Bunce? Ah, that’s more like it; but the banister gets in the way. He may have been leaning over the tray. It’s too far if I stand on the bottom step. Wait a bit. See if you can get anything from the bottom knob of the banister, will you, Bailey?’

‘It’ll be a fair mess of prints,’ said the expert glumly. He opened a small grip and busied himself with the contents.

Alleyn nosed round the hall. He inspected the main switch, the glasses, the cocktail shaker, the gong, all the tables and woodwork. He paused by the grate. The dead clinkers of last night’s fire were still there.

‘I ses, “Don’t you touch none of them grates”,’ said Bunce suddenly; ‘there’s only gas upstairs.’

‘Quite right,’ rejoined the inspector; ‘we will deal with the fireplaces ourselves.’ He bent over the fireplace and, taking a pair of tongs, removed the clinkers one by one, laying them on a piece of newspaper. As he did this he kept up a running commentary to Detective-Sergeant Bailey.

‘You’ll find Miss North’s prints on that sketch plan of the house that I put on the tray there. Also Bathgate’s. We must have everyone’s, of course. The tooth-mugs upstairs will be profitable in that direction. I hate asking for prints, it makes me feel so self-conscious. There’s nothing on the knife, needless to say—nor yet the switch. A nitwit wouldn’t leave a print behind him nowadays if he could help it.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ agreed Bailey. ‘There’s a proper muck up on the banister, but I rather think we’ll get something a bit better from the knob.’

‘The knob, eh?’ said Alleyn, who had now drawn out the ash-tray from under the grate.

‘Curious position, too. There’s a clear left-hand impression pointing downwards. Quite an awkward place to get your left hand, with the banister curving out at the bottom the way it does. It’s right on the inside edge. Very clear, too. Saw it with me naked eye at once.’

‘Your naked eye is uncanny, Bailey. Try the head of the stairs. Hullo, what’s this?’

He had been sifting the ashes in the tray, and now paused, squatting on his heels and peering at a small grimy object in the palm of his hand.

‘Made a find, sir?’ said the fingerprint expert, who was now at work on the stair-head.

‘Somebody’s been chucking away their belongings,’ grunted the inspector. He produced a small magnifying glass and squinted through it.

‘A Dent’s press button,’ he murmured, ‘with just a fragment of—yes, of leather—charred, but unmistakable. Ah, well.’ He put his trophy in an envelope and wrote on the flap.

The next twenty minutes he spent crawling about the floor, standing on chairs to examine the stairwell and outside of the treads, gingerly inspecting the cigarette boxes, and directing Bailey to test the coal scuttle and fire irons for prints.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘for the bedrooms. The mortuary van will be here any time now, Bunce. I’ll leave you to attend to that. Come on,’ he said, and led the way upstairs. On the landing he paused and looked about him.

‘On our left,’ he informed Bailey, ‘the bedroom of Mrs Wilde, the dressing-room of her husband, the bathroom, and Mr Bathgate’s room. All communicating. Very matey and rather unusual. Well, begin at the beginning, I suppose.’

Mrs Wilde’s room was disordered and bore a faint family likeness to a modern comedy bedroom. She had taken away its character, and Florence had not been allowed to put it back. The bed had not been made, and the early morning tea-tray was still on the table.

‘There’s your mark for prints, Bailey,’ said the inspector, and once again the expert produced his bag.

‘The alibi here is pretty good, I understand,’ remarked Bailey, sifting a fine powder over the surface of a cup.

‘Pretty good?’ answered Alleyn. ‘It’s pretty damn’ good for all of ‘em except Miss Grant. She did tell a nice meaty lie about her movements, and followed up with a faint on top of it.’

He opened a suitcase and began going through the contents.

‘What about this Russian affair, sir? The doctor or whatever he is?’

‘Yes, he seems to be a likely horse. Do you fancy him, Bailey?’

‘Well, from what you’ve told me about the knife and all that, it looks sort of possible. Personally I favour the butler.’

‘If Tokareff’s our man, he is pretty nimble on his pins. His room is some way along the passage and he sang, so they tell me, continuously. As for the butler—he was in the servants’ quarters the whole time and was seen there.’

‘Is that dead certain, sir? After all, he has done a bunk.’

‘True. He is rather tempting; but when you’ve got your prints from the banister, I’ll know better if I’m on the right track. Do your stuff in the bathroom now, will you, Bailey? Bathgate and Wilde will be found to predominate. Then come back and go through this tallboy for me while I get on to the other rooms. Do you mind working out of your department for a bit?’

‘Pleasure, sir. What am I looking for?’

‘A single glove. Probably yellow dogskin. Right hand. I don’t expect to find it here. Make a list of all the clothes, please.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Bailey from the bathroom.

Alleyn followed him and looked round the dressing-room and bathroom very carefully. Then he went to Nigel’s room.

It was much as it had been the night before. The bed had not been slept in. Alleyn had learnt from Bunce that Nigel had been up all night, trying to get calls through to the family solicitor, to his own office, and, on behalf of the police, to Scotland Yard. He had been invaluable to Handesley and to Angela North, had succeeded in getting Tokareff to stop talking and go to bed, and had silenced Mrs Wilde’s hysterics when her husband had thrown up his hands in despair and left her to it. The inspector considered Ethel’s statement that she had actually seen Nigel in his room as the lights went out good enough proof of his integrity. However, he examined the room carefully.

Conrad’s Suspense lay on the bedside table. The butts of two Sullivan Powell cigarettes were in the ash-tray. An inquiry showed that these were the last in the cigarette box at seven-thirty the evening before, and Ethel, recalled, repeated that she had noticed the box empty and Mr Bathgate smoking the last on her dramatically terminated visit. Mr Bathgate’s own cigarettes were of a less expensive variety. ‘Exit Mr Bathgate,’ murmured the detective to himself. ‘He couldn’t smoke two cigarettes, commit a murder, and talk to a housemaid while he was doing it, in ten or twelve minutes.’ He had come to this conclusion when the door opened and in walked Nigel himself.

At the sight of the Yard man in his room Nigel immediately felt as guilty as he would have done if his hands had been metaphorically drenched in his cousin’s blood.

‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered, ‘I didn’t realize you were here—I’ll push off.’

‘Don’t go,’ said Alleyn amiably. ‘I’m not going to put the handcuffs on you. I want to ask you a question. Did you by any chance hear anything outside in the passage while you were dressing last night?’

‘What sort of thing?’ asked Nigel, overwhelmed with relief.

‘Well, what does one hear in passages? Any sound of a footfall, for instance?’

‘No, nothing. You see, I was talking to Wilde all the time and his bath was running, too—I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything.’

‘I understand Mrs Wilde was in her room all this time. Do you remember hearing her voice?’

Nigel considered this carefully.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘yes, I am positive I heard Mr Wilde call out to her and I heard her answer him.’

‘At what precise moment? Before or after the lights went out?’

Nigel sat on the bed with his head in his hands.

‘I can’t be certain,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll swear on oath I heard her voice, and I think it was before and after the lights went out. Is it important?’

‘Everything is important, but taken in conjunction with the icy Florence’s statement, your own is useful as a corroboration. Now, look here, show me Tokareff’s room, will you?’

‘I think I know where it is,’ said Nigel. He led the way down the passage into the back corridor and turned to the left. ‘Judging from my recollection of his vocal efforts, I should say this was it.’

Alleyn opened the door. The room was singularly tidy. The bed had been slept in, but was little disturbed. Dr Tokareff would have appeared to have passed a particularly tranquil night. On the bedside table lay a Webster’s Dictionary, and a well-thumbed copy of The Kreutzer Sonata in English.

‘Thank you so much, Mr Bathgate,’ said Alleyn; ‘I can carry on here.’

Nigel withdrew, thankful to leave the atmosphere of official investigation and yet, paradoxically, conscious of a sense of thwarted curiosity.

Inspector Alleyn opened the wardrobe and drawers and noted down the contents, then turned his attention to the suitcase that had been neatly bestowed under one of the cupboards. In this he found a small leather writing-case with a lock that responded at once to the attentions of a skeleton key. The case contained a number of documents typewritten in Russian, a few photographs, mostly of the doctor himself, and a small suede pouch in which he found a little seal set in a steel mount. Alleyn took it to the writing-table, inked it and pressed it down on a piece of paper. It gave a tolerably clear impression of a long-bladed dagger. The inspector whistled softly between his teeth and, referring to the documents, found a similar impression on many of the pages. He copied one or two sentences into his note-book, carefully cleaned the seal and replaced everything in the writing-case, snapping the lock home and restoring the suitcase to its former position. Then he wrote a note in his little book, ‘Communicate with Sumiloff in re above,’ and with a final glance round, returned to the passage.

Next he went into Angela’s bedroom, and then into Rosamund Grant’s. Finally he visited Sir Hubert Handesley’s bedroom, dressing-room, and bathroom. All these he subjected to a similar meticulous search, making a list of the clothes, going through the pockets, sorting, examining, and restoring every movable and garment. He found little to interest him, and had paused to light a cigarette in Handesley’s dressing-room, when a light rap on the door and a respectful murmur outside announced the presence of Detective-Sergeant Bailey.

Alleyn went out into the passage.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Bailey, ‘but I think I’ve got hold of something.’

‘Where?’

‘In the lady’s bedroom, sir. I’ve left it just as it is.’

‘I’ll come,’ said Alleyn.

They returned to Marjorie Wilde’s bedroom, passing Mary, all eyes, on the landing.

‘Now then, Mary,’ said Alleyn severely, ‘what are you doing up here? I thought I asked you all to stay in your own department for an hour.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m that sorry, sir, but the master’s asked for ‘is Norfick jacket wot’s got ‘is pipe in it, sir, and Mr Roberts ‘e sent me up for it.’

‘Tell Roberts I thought he understood my instructions. I will bring down the jacket myself for Sir Hubert.’

‘Yes, sir,’ murmured Mary plaintively, and scuttled downstairs again.

‘Well, Bailey, what is it?’ asked the inspector, shutting Mrs Wilde’s door behind him.

‘It’s this drawer-contraption here,’ said Bailey, with his slightly disparaging air of social independence.

The six drawers of a Georgian tallboy were laid out neatly on the floor.

‘You’ve no eye for antiques, Bailey,’ said Inspector Alleyn. ‘That’s a very nice piece indeed.’ He walked over to the empty carcass and stroked the top surface appreciatively.

‘It’s a bit the worse for wear, however,’ said Bailey. ‘The casing at the bottom’s hollow, and there’s a hole in the inside lining. See, sir? Well, it seems to me someone’s been scuffling about in that bottom drawer and pushed a small soft object over the end of it. It’s fallen into the bottom. You can just touch it.’

Alleyn went down on his knees and thrust his fingers into the gap in the bottom of the tallboy.

‘Give me that buttonhook on the table,’ he said quickly.

Bailey handed it to him. In a few minutes the inspector gave a grunt of satisfaction and fished up a soft, smallish object. He dropped it on the floor and stared at it with extraordinary concentration. It was a woman’s yellow dogskin glove.

The inspector took an envelope out of his pocket and from it he produced a discoloured and blistered press button to which a few minute particles of leather were still adhering. He laid it beside the fastening on their find and pointed his long finger at the floor.

The two buttons were identical.

‘Not such a bad beginning, Bailey,’ said Inspector Alleyn.