THE SANITY OF LADY WUTHERWOOD
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.
“Her ladyship,” she said, “mentioned that it was a business visit. H’m.”
“And do you know the nature of the business?”
“It came up,” said Tinkerton, “on the drive during conversation between his lordship and her ladyship.”
“Yes?”
“I sat with Mr. Giggle in front and did not catch the remarks, beyond a word here and there.”
“Still, you gathered—”
“I did not listen,” said Tinkerton, “of course.”
“Of course not.”
“But his lordship raised his voice once or twice and said he would not do something that his brother wished him to do.”
“What was that, do you know?”
“It was money matters.” Something very like a sneer appeared on Tinkerton’s lips.
“What sort of money matters?”
“The usual thing. Wanting his lordship to pay out.”
He could get no more from her than that. She showed no particular reluctance to answering his questions and no particular interest in them. He began to wonder if she had any warmth of feeling or any sense of partisanship in her makeup. As an experiment, he led the conversation towards Lady Wutherwood, and found that Tinkerton had been in her service for fifteen years. Her ladyship, she said mincingly, was always very kind. Alleyn remembered those lack-lustre eyes and that sagging mouth and wondered wherein the kindness lay. He asked Tinkerton if she had noticed any change in her mistress. Tinkerton said dully that her ladyship was always the same, very kind. “And generous?” Alleyn ventured. Yes, it seemed her ladyship was generous and considerate. Pressing a little more persistently Alleyn asked if she had noticed no mental instability in Lady Wutherwood. Tinkerton instantly became an oyster and to his next questions either answered no, or did not answer at all. She did not think Lady Wutherwood’s behaviour was so very peculiar. She could not say whether Lady Wutherwood was interested in the occult. Lady Wutherwood did not take any medicine or drug of any sort. Lady Wutherwood’s relations with her husband were not in any way unusual. She couldn’t say what sort of nursing-home it was that Lady Wutherwood went to. She did not notice anything very odd in Lady Wutherwood’s manner a few minutes ago. Her ladyship was upset, said Tinkerton of her own accord, and people often spoke wildly when they were upset. It was only natural.
“Was that why you made signs to the nurse over her ladyship’s shoulder?” asked Alleyn.
“Her ladyship is suffering from shock,” said Tinkerton in a burst of comparative candour. “I understand her ladyship. I knew she ought not to be upset by questions. I knew she ought to be in bed.”
It was the same thing when they came to the late Lord Wutherwood. He was, said Tinkerton, a very quiet gentleman. She wouldn’t describe him as mean nor would she describe him as generous. She couldn’t say whether he had understood his wife. By using the strictest economy of words Tinkerton managed to convey the impression that Alleyn was making an exhibition of himself and, if that was really her opinion, he was inclined to agree with her. He ran out of questions and sat looking at this infuriating woman. Suddenly he rose to his feet and, walking round the table, stood over her. Unlike most tall men Alleyn had the trick of swift movement. Tinkerton stiffened uneasily on the edge of her chair.
“You know, of course, that Lord Wutherwood was murdered?”
She actually turned rather pale.
“You know that?” Alleyn repeated.
“Everybody is saying so, sir.”
“Who is everybody? You have been with Lady Wutherwood ever since it happened. Does she say her husband was murdered?”
“The nurse said so.”
“Did the nurse tell you how he died?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did she tell you? Describe it, exactly, if you please.”
Tinkerton moistened her lips. “The nurse said he was injured with a knife.”
“What sort of knife?”
“I mean a skewer.”
“How was it done?”
“The nurse said he had been stabbed through his eye.”
“Who did it?”
Tincerton gaped at him.
“You heard me, I think,” said Alleyn. “Who murdered Lord Wutherwood?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”
“You know he must have been killed by some one in this flat”
“The nurse said so.”
“It was so. Very well, then. You understand that if you can prove it was impossible for you to have stabbed Lord Wutherwood through his eye into his brain, you had better do so.”
“But I said — I said I was downstairs when he was still calling her ladyship. I said so.”
“How am I to know that is true?”
“Mr. Giggle will have heard. He knew I was behind him. Ask Mr. Giggle.”
“I have asked him. He doesn’t remember hearing Lord Wutherwood call a second time.”
“But he did call a second time, sir. I tell you I heard him, sir. Mr. Giggle must have been too far down to have heard. I was behind Mr. Giggle.”
“And you say you met nobody and saw nobody as you passed along the passage, through the hall, and across the landing?”
“Only Mr. Giggle, sir, and he didn’t notice me. I just caught sight of his back as he went down and Master Michael’s back as he went into the other flat. Before God, sir, it’s true.”
“You are voluble enough,” said Alleyn, “when it comes to your own safety.”
“It’s true,” Tinkerton repeated shrilly. “I’ve said nothing that wasn’t true.”
“You’ve been with Lady Wutherwood fifteen years yet you don’t know the name of the nursing-home she went to or why she went. You don’t know whether she is interested in the supernatural or whether she isn’t. You say she never takes any medicine or drug. Do you still insist that all three statements are truthful?”
“I won’t talk about my lady. My lady hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s frightened and ill and shocked. It’s not my place to answer questions about her.”
Her hands worked drily together against the fabric of her skirt. Alleyn watched her for a moment and then turned aside.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll leave it at that. Before you go I want you to mark on this plan your exact position when Master Michael went into the other flat and when you saw Lord Wutherwood sitting in the lift.”
“I don’t know that I remember exactly.”
“Try.”
He put his sketch plan on the table with a pencil.
Tinkerton took the pencil in her left hand and, after consideration, made two faint dots on the plan.
“Your statement will be written out in longhand,” said Alleyn, “and you will be asked to sign it. That’s all for the moment. Thank you. Good night.”
III
“You were remarkably crisp with the woman,” said Curtis. “I’ve never heard you less amiable. What was wrong?”
“She’s a liar,” said Alleyn.
“Because she wouldn’t talk about her mistress? Wasn’t that rather commendable?”
“Not because of that. She told a string of lies. Have a look at the statement later on and you’ll spot them.”
“You flatter me, I’m afraid. Why was she lying, do you suppose?”
“Not because she murdered Master,” grunted Alleyn. “It’s a right-handed job if ever there was one.”
“She may be ambidextrous.”
“I don’t think so. She opened and closed the door, marked the plan, and took out her handkerchief with the left hand. She used the left hand every time she ministered to Lady Wutherwood. She’s not our pigeon, unless she’s an accessory to the blasted fact. What do you think, Fox?”
“I should say she’s got a snug job with her ladyship,” said Fox, glancing up from his notes and over the top of his glasses.
“Well, I must be off,” said Curtis. “See about this P.M. Fox rang up the coroner. I’ll start first thing in the morning. Cairnstock has an operation to-morrow and said he’d come and have a look later on. Don’t expect we’ll find anything of interest to you. I’ll ring you up about mid-day. Good night.”
He went out. Fox closed his note-book and removed his spectacles. Somewhere in the flat a clock struck eleven.
“Well, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn. “So it goes on. We’d better see another Lamprey. What’s your fancy? Suppose we follow Master Henry’s suggestion and talk to his mother.”
“Very good,” said Fox.
“We’d better let Lady Katherine go home. We can’t keep them all boxed up in here indefinitely, I suppose.” He looked at the constable. “My compliments to Lady Charles Lamprey, Gibson, and I’d be grateful if she could spare me a few minutes. And say that we shall not trouble Lady Katherine Lobe any further tonight. You won’t call them Lady Lamprey and Lady Lobe, will you? And warn the man on duty in the entrance that Lady Katherine is to be allowed out. She lives at Hammersmith, Fox. We’ll have to keep an eye on her, I suppose.”
“She’s not exactly the cut of a murderess, is she?” Fox remarked.
“You wouldn’t say so. You wouldn’t say she was the cut of a fairy, either, but apparently she vanishes.”
“How d’you make that out, Mr. Alleyn?”
“According to herself, she met Michael on the landing just as he was going into the other flat. Tinkerton saw Michael but didn’t see Lady Katherine.”
“Perhaps the young gentleman made two trips, Mr. Alleyn.”
“The young gentleman is our prize witness up to date, Fox. He tells the truth. As far as one can judge the family talent for embroidery has given him a miss. He’s a good boy, is young Michael. No. Either Tinkerton added another lie to her bag or else—”
Gibson, the constable, opened the door and stood aside. Lady Charles Lamprey came in.
“Here I am, Mr. Alleyn,” she said, “but I hope you don’t expect any intelligent answers because I promise you that you won’t get them from me. If you told me that Aunt Kit was steeped in Gabriel’s blood I should only say: ‘Fancy. So it’s Aunt Kit after all. How too naughty of her.’ ”
He pulled out the arm-chair at the foot of the table and she sank down on it, taking the weight of her body on her wrists as elderly people do.
“Of course you must be deadly tired,” Alleyn said. “Do you know, that is the one thing that seems to happen to all people alike when a case of this sort crops up? Every one feels mentally and physically exhausted. It’s a sort of carryover from shock, I suppose.”
“It’s very unpleasant whatever it is. Would you be an angel and see if there are cigarettes on the sideboard?”
The box was empty. “Would you like to ring for some,” Alleyn asked, “or would these be any use?” He opened his case and put it on the table in front of her with an ash-tray and matches. “They are your sort, I think.”
“So they are. That is kind. But I must see that there are some here, because if we are going to be any time at all I shall smoke all these and then what will you do?”
“Please smoke them. I’m not allowed cigarettes on duty.”
He watched her light the cigarette and inhale deeply. Her hands were not quite steady.
“Now I’m ready for anything,” she said.
“It won’t be a solemn affair. I just want to check over your own movements, which seem to be very plain-sailing, and then I’ll ask you to tell me anything you can think of that may help us to sort things out a little.”
“I expect I’m much more likely to muddle them up, but I’ll try to keep my head.”
“According to my notes,” said Alleyn, looking dubiously at them, “you went to your room with Lady Wutherwood and Lady Katherine Lobe and remained there until you heard Lord Wutherwood call the second time. Then, followed by Lady Wutherwood, you went to the drawing-room.”
“Yes. She didn’t come into the drawing-room, you know. I hurried on ahead of her.”
“To ask for some one to take them down in the lift?”
“Yes,” she said steadily. “That’s it.”
“Did you see anybody else on your way to the drawing-room?”
“I think Mike was in the passage. Nobody else.”
“And Lord Wutherwood was in the lift?”
“I suppose he was. I didn’t look. He sounded cross so I rather skidded past, do you know?”
“I see. And then you asked for some one to work the lift and Mr. Stephen Lamprey went out and worked it.”
IV
Alleyn felt, rather than heard, her draw in her breath. She said lightly: “No, that’s not quite right. You remember that we don’t know which twin went out.”
“I think I know,” said Alleyn. “I’m not trying to trap you into an admission. We’ll leave it that a twin went out and you followed, as far as the hall, to say good-bye. Lady Wutherwood got into the lift and you returned to the drawing-room. That’s all right?”
“About me — yes.”
“I’ll ask you to sign it later, if you will. What I hope you will do now is give us some sort of side-light of Lord Wutherwood himself. I’m afraid many of my questions will sound impertinent. Perhaps the most offensive part of police investigation is the ferreting. We have to ferret, you know, like anything.”
“Ferret away,” said Lady Charles.
“Well, can you think of anybody who would want to kill Lord Wutherwood?”
“That’s not ferreting; it’s more like bombing. I can’t think of anybody who, in their right minds, would actually and literally want to kill Gabriel. I expect lots of people have, as one says, felt like killing him. He was a frightfully irritating fellow, poor dear. Not a fragment of charm and so drearily ungay, do you know? I mean, it does help if people are gay, doesn’t it? I set enormous store on gaiety. But of course one doesn’t kill people simply because they are not exactly one’s own cup of tea and I suppose he had his grey little pleasures. He was passionately interested in plumbing and drainage, I understand, and carried out all sorts of experiments at Deepacres where one pulls chains when one would expect to turn taps and the other way round. So, what with his drains and his Chinese pots, I daresay he had quite a giddy time. And with Violet wrapped up in her black magic, you may say they both had hobbies.”
“I thought I smelt black magic in Lady Wutherwood’s conversation.”
“She didn’t start off about it to you!”
“Well, there were some rather cryptic allusions to unseen forces.”
“Oh, no. Really, Violet is too odd.”
“Lady Charles,” said Alleyn, “do you think she’s at all—”
“Dotty?”
“Well—”
“You needn’t be apologetic, Mr. Alleyn. Violet popped into the drawing-room on her way to see you and if she kept up the form she showed then I’m surprised that you didn’t whisk a strait jacket out of your black bag. Was she very queer?”
“I thought her so, certainly. I wondered if it could all be put down to shock.”
Lady Charles said nothing but solemnly shook her head.
“No?” murmured Alleyn. “You don’t think so?”
“No. I’m afraid I can’t honestly say I do.”
“Has there ever been serious trouble?”
“Well, of course, we don’t see very much of them. My husband rather lost touch with Gabriel when we were in New Zealand but we did hear, from Aunt Kit and people, that she had gone away to a private nursing-home in Devonshire. It had been recommended by old Lady Lorrimer whose husband, as everybody knows, has been under lock and key for a hundred years. We heard that Violet’s trouble comes in sort of bursts, do you know? Cycles.”
“Is there anything of that sort in the family history?”
“Of that one hasn’t the faintest idea. Violet is a Hungarian, or a Yugo-Slav. One or the other. Her name isn’t Violet at all. It’s something beginning with ‘Gla,’ like Gladys, but ending too ridiculously. So Gabriel called her Violet. I think her maiden name was Zadody, but I’m not sure. She was nobody that anyone knew, even in Hungaria or Yugo-Slavia, which was quite another country, of course, in Gabriel’s wild-oatish youth. Gabriel said he had found her at the Embassy. I’m afraid Charlie used to say it was at a cabaret of that name or something slightly worse. You must remember her when you were a young man at parties. Or perhaps you are too young. He had her presented, of course, and everything. She was rather spectacular in those days, and looked like a Gibson Girl who didn’t wash very often. Of course you were too young, but I remember them both very well. I believe that even then there were crises-de-nerfs.”
“That must have been rather difficult for Lord Wutherwood.”
“Yes, miserable for him. Luckily there were no children. Luckily for us too, I suppose, as things have turned out, although I must say I don’t think it’s the pleasantest way of becoming the head of the family.”
Her cigarette had gone out and she lit another. Alleyn felt quite certain that there was more than a touch of bravura in this rapid flow of narrative. It was a little too bright; the inconsequence was overstressed; the rhythm somewhere at fault. He thought that he was being shown a perilous imitation of the normal Lady Charles Lamprey by a Lady Charles Lamprey who was by no means normal. Once or twice he heard the faintest suggestion of a stutter and that reminded him of Stephen who, he felt sure, was overwhelmingly present in his mother’s thoughts. Extreme maternal devotion had never seemed to Alleyn to be a sentimental or a pretty attachment, but rather a passionate concentration which, when its object was threatened, developed a painful intensity. Maternal anxiety, he thought, was the emotion that human beings most consistently misrepresent, degrading its passion into tenderness, its agony with pathos. He was too familiar with the look that appears in frightened maternal eyes to miss recognizing it in Lady Charles’s and, though he was perfectly prepared to make use of her terror, he did not enjoy the knowledge that he had stimulated it. He heard her voice go rattling on and knew that she was trying to force an impression on him. “She wants me,” he thought, “to believe that her sister-in-law is insane.”
“… and I’m so terrified,” she was saying, “that this really will throw her completely off her balance although, to be quite honest, we all thought she was very alarming when she arrived this afternoon.”
“In what way?”
“Well, quite often she didn’t answer when you spoke to her and then when she did speak it was all about this wretched supernatural nonsense, unseen forces, and all the rest of it. The oddest part about it was—”
“Yes?” asked Alleyn, as she hesitated.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“We shall be grateful if you will tell us anything that occurs to you. I think,” Alleyn added without emphasis, “that I can promise you we shall not lose our sense of proportion.”
She glanced at Fox who was placidly contemplating his notes.
“I’m sure you won’t,” she said. “It’s only that I’m afraid of losing mine. It’s just that it seems so strange, now, to remember what Violet said to me.”
“What was that?”
“It was when we were in my bedroom. Gabriel had been rather acid about Violet’s black magic, or whatever it is, and apparently she rather hated him sort of sneering at her. She sat on my bed and stared at the opposite wall until really I could have shaken her, she looked so gloomy and odd, and then suddenly she said in a very bogus voice (only somehow it wasn’t quite bogus, do you know): ‘Gabriel is in jeopardy.’ It was so melodramatic that it made one feel quite shy. She went on again, very fast, about somebody who foretold the future and had said that Gabriel’s sands were running out at a great rate. I supposed she must go in for a little fortune-telling or something, as a kind of relaxation from witchcraft. It all sounds too silly and second-rate but she herself was so wildly incoherent that I honestly did think she had gone completely dotty.”
Lady Charles paused and looked up at Alleyn. He had not returned to his chair but stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, listening. Perhaps she read in his face something that she had not expected to see there — a hint of compassion or of regret. Her whole attitude changed. She broke into a storm of words.
“Why do you look like that,” Lady Charles cried out. “You ought to be an effigy of a man. Don’t look as if you were sorry for somebody. I…” She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, beat twice with her closed hands on the wooden arms of her chair, and then leant towards him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid you are quite right about people’s nerves. Mr. Alleyn, it’s no use for me to beat about the bush, with you looking on at my antics. I’m not a clever or a deliberate woman. My tongue moves faster than my brain and already I am in a fair way to making a fool of myself. I think perhaps I shall do better if I’m terribly frank.”
“I think so, too,” Alleyn said.
“Yes. I’m sure you have guessed my view of this awful business. Everything that I have told you is quite true. I do exaggerate sometimes, I know, but not over important things, and I haven’t exaggerated or over-stressed anything that I have told you about Violet Wutherwood. I think she is quite mad. And I believe she killed her husband.”
The point of Fox’s pencil broke with a sharp snap. He looked resignedly at it and took another from his pocket.
“You will think,” said Lady Charles, “that I am working for my husband and my children. I know Aunt Kit told you we were practically sunk and had asked Gabriel for money. I know that will look like a pretty strong motive. I know the twins have behaved idiotically. I don’t even expect you to believe me when I tell you that it’s always been their way, when one of them is in trouble, for both to stand the racket. I realized that all these things must make you a bit wary of anything I say and I can’t expect you to be very impressed when I tell you I know, as surely as I breathe, that none of my children could, under circumstances a thousand times worse than ours, hurt any living creature. But if they were not my children, if I’d only been a looker on, like Robin Grey, only less interested, less of a partisan than Robin, I would still be certain that Gabriel was killed by his wife.”
“It’s a perfectly tenable theory,” said Alleyn, “at present. Can you give me anything more than her condition and her conversation in the bedroom? Motive?”
“They had been at daggers drawn for years. Once or twice they have separated. Not legally. Gabriel would never have considered a divorce, I’m sure. He wouldn’t like the idea of displaying his failure; he would never admit that anything he did was a mistake. And I don’t suppose Violet has ever been normal enough to think of getting rid of him. She seemed to have merely settled down to hating him. And even if she had ever thought of it I don’t suppose she’d altogether fancy the idea. I mean there are certain amenities — Deepacres and the London house and all the rest of it. She could have divorced him, of course. He had a series of rather squalid little affairs that everybody knew about and nobody mentioned. They’d loathed each other for years, in a dreary sort of way, but this afternoon there was something quite different. I mean Violet seemed to be actively venomous. It was as if she had poured all her dislikes of other people or things into one enormous hatred of Gabriel. That’s how it was, exactly.”
“I see. When do you think she could have done it?”
“I’ve been thinking it out. You see, she left Aunt Kit and me in the bedroom round about the first time Gabriel yelled for her. She didn’t come back until after the second time he yelled, and then we both went along to the landing and I went into the drawing-room. There was no one else on the landing or in the hall.”
“Did she seem very odd at that time?”
“I can’t tell you how strange and ominous. I put out my hand to bring her along the passage but she drew away as thought I’d hit her and followed behind me. I was almost alarmed. I scuttled away as quickly as I could to get out of her reach. But she muttered along after me. It was like having a doubtful dog at one’s heels. At any moment I expected her to growl and snap.”
There was a pause. Alleyn had turned aside and moved to one of the windows. Fox looked up in surprise.
“ Mr. Alleyn,” said Lady Charles, “what are you doing? You — you’re not laughing?”
Alleyn turned round. His face was scarlet. He stood before her, his hands stretched out. “Lady Charles,” he said, “I fully deserve that you should report me and have me turned out of the force. I’ve done the unforgivable thing — there’s no excuse for me but I do apologize with all my heart.”
“I don’t want you to be turned out of any force. But why did you laugh?”
“It — I’m afraid the explanation will only add to the offence. I — you see—”
“It was at me,” said Lady Charles with conviction. The strain had gone from her voice. “People do laugh at me. But what did I say? Mr. Alleyn, I insist on knowing what it was.”
“It was nothing. There are some people who can’t hold back a nervous laugh when they hear of somebody’s death. Heaven knows a detective officer isn’t one of them, but I’m afraid that if I hear anything very sinister and dramatic related with great empressement it sometimes has that effect on me. It was the way you described Lady Wutherwood as she followed you, muttering. I — it’s no use. I’m abject.”
“I suppose you’re not a relation of ours by any chance,” said Lady Charles thoughtfully.
“I don’t think so.”
“You never know. All the Lampreys laugh at disastrous pieces of news so I thought you might be. We must go into it sometime. I’m a distant Lamprey myself, you know. Nothing hygienically sinister. What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Blandish,” said Alleyn helplessly.
“I must ask Charlie. Blandish. But in the meantime hadn’t we better go back to poor Violet?”
“By all means.”
“Not that there’s very much more to say. Except that she might have done it instead of going to the lavatory or while I was in the drawing-room, although she would have to be pretty nippy to manage it then.”
“Yes.”
“Is that all?”
“One other question. Can you give the name of the doctor Lady Wutherwood saw before she went to the nursing home?”
“Good heavens, no! It was years ago.”
“Or the nursing-home?”
“It was in Devonshire. Could it have been on Dartmoor or am I thinking of something else?”
“How did you get on, Maman?” asked Frid in French.
“Not so badly,” answered her mother in the same tongue. “I have made him laugh, at least.”
“Laugh!” Lord Charles ejaculated. “ Mon Dieu, what at?”
“I had to work for it,” said Charlot wearily. “He thinks I’m a sort of elderly enfant terrible. He thinks he made the most formidable gaffe in laughing at me. He apologized quite charmingly.”
“I hope you didn’t overdo it, Immy.”
“Not I, darling. He hasn’t the faintest inkling of what I was up to. Don’t worry. Soyez tranquil.”
“ Soyez tranquil,” wrote P. C. Martin faithfully, on the last page of his note-book and, with, a sigh, took a fresh one from the pocket of his tunic.
“Blast that woman!” said Alleyn in the dining-room. “She was determined to break me up, and, damn her, so she did. I hope she thinks she got away with it.”
“You apologized very nicely, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox. “I expect she does.”
“We’ll have the twins, Gibson,” said Alleyn.