Death in a White Tie (22 page)

Miss Birnbaum grinned.

“You think you’re clever,” she said, “don’t you? Goodbye.”

They shook hands in a friendly manner, and she saw them out into the hall. Alleyn had a last glimpse of her standing stocky, dark and truculent against a background of restrained and decorous half-tones and beautiful pseudo-Empire curtains.

It was nearly six o’clock in the evening when Alleyn and Fox returned to Scotland Yard. They went to Alleyn’s room. Fox got to work on his notes, Alleyn tackled the reports that had come in while they were away. They both lit pipes and between them was established that pleasant feeling of unexpressed intimacy that comes to two people working in silence at the same job.

Presently Alleyn put down the reports and looked across at his friend. He thought: “How often we have sat like this, Fox and I, working like a couple of obscure clerks in the offices of the Last Judgment concern, filing and correlating the misdeeds of men. Fox is getting quite grizzled and there are elderly purple veins in his cheeks. I shall go home later on, a solitary fellow, to my own hole.” And into his thoughts came the image of a woman who sat in a tall blue chair by his fire, but that was too domestic a picture. Rather, she would sit on the hearthrug. Her hands would be stained with charcoal and they would sweep beautiful lines across a white surface. When he came in she would look up from her drawing and Troy’s eyes would smile or scowl. He jerked the image away and found that Fox was looking at him with his usual air of bland expectancy.

“Finished?” said Alleyn.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been trying to sort things out. There’s the report on the silver cleaning. Young Carewe took that on and he seems to have made a fair job of it. Got himself up as a Rat and Mice Destruction Officer and went round all the houses and palled up with the servants. All the Carrados silver was cleaned this morning including Sir Herbert’s cigar-case which isn’t the right shape anyway, because he saw it in the butler’s pantry. Sir Daniel’s man does his silver cleaning on Mondays and Fridays, so it was all cleaned up yesterday. François does Dimitri’s stuff every day or says he does. Young Potter and Withers are looked after by the flat service and only their table silver is kept polished. The Halcut-Hacketts’ cases are cleaned once a week — Fridays — and rubbed up every morning. That’s that. How’s the report from Bailey?”

“Bailey hasn’t much. There’s nothing in the taxi. He got Withers’s prints from my cigarette-case but, as we expected, the green sitting-room was simply a mess. He
has
found Withers’s and young Potter’s prints on the pages of Taylor’s
Medical Jurisprudence
. The pages that refer to asphyxiation.”

“By gum, that’s something.”

“Not such a great deal, Fox. They will tell us that when the newspaper report came out they were interested and turned up Taylor on suffocation; and who is to call them liars? The man who went to Leatherhead had a success. Apparently Withers keeps a married couple there. Our man pitched a yarn that he had been sent by the borough to inspect the electrical wiring in the house, and got in. What’s more he seems to have had a good look round. He found a roulette wheel and had the intelligence to examine it pretty closely. The middle dozen slots had been very slightly opened. I expect the idea is that Master Donald or some other satellite of Withers should back the middle dozen. The wheel seems brand new. There was an older one that showed no signs of irregularity. There were also several packs of cards which had been lightly treated with the favourite pumice-stone. Luckily for us the married couple had a violent row with the gallant Captain and were prepared to talk. I think we’ve got enough to pull him in on a gambling-hell charge. Thompson reports that Withers has stayed in all day. The telephone was disconnected as soon as we left. Donald Potter’s clothes were returned to him by taxi. Nobody has visited Withers. Dimitri comes next. Dimitri went home after he left here, visiting a chemist on the way to get his hand bandaged. He, too, has remained indoors, and has made no telephone calls. Most exemplary behaviour. How the blazes are we going to get any of these victims to charge Dimitri?”

“You’re asking me!” said Fox.

“Yes. Not a hope in a hundred. Well now, Fox, I’ve been over this damnable, dreary, involved, addling business of the green sitting-room. It boils down to this. The people who could have overheard Lord Robert’s telephone conversation were Withers, Sir Herbert Carrados, Miss Harris, Mrs Halcut-Hackett and Donald. They were all on or about the top landing and wouldn’t have to lie particularly freely in avoiding any reference to a brief dart in and out of the telephone-room. But, but, but, and a blasted but it is, it is quite possible that while Lord Robert telephoned, someone came upstairs and walked into the telephone-room. Mrs Halcut-Hackett was in the cloakroom; Withers, Donald and Carrados in the other sitting-room, Miss Harris in the lavatory. Dimitri says he was downstairs but who the devil’s to prove it? If the others are speaking the truth, anybody might have come up and gone down again unseen.”

“The gentleman who burst into the lavatory?”

“Precisely. He may even have hidden in there till the coast was clear, though I can’t see why. There’s nothing particularly fishy in coming out of a sitting-room.”

“Ugh,” said Fox.

“As I see the case now, Fox, it presents one or two highlights. Most of them seem to be concentrated on cigarette-cases. Two cigarette-cases. The murderer’s and Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s.”

“Yes,” said Fox.

“After the cigarette-cases comes the lost letter. The letter written by Paddy O’Brien’s friend in Australia. The letter that somebody seems to have stolen eighteen years ago in Buckinghamshire. It’s odd, isn’t it, that Miss Harris’s uncle was sometime rector of Falconbridge, the village where Paddy O’Brien met with his accident? I wonder if either Miss Harris or Lady Carrados realizes there is this vague connection. I think our next move after the inquest is to go down to Barbicon-Bramley where we may disturb the retirement of Miss Harris’s uncle. Then we’ll have to dive into the past history of the hospital in Falconbridge. But what a cold trail! A chance in a thousand.”

“It’s a bit of a coincidence Miss Harris linking up in this way, isn’t it?” ruminated Fox.

“Are you building up a picture with Miss Harris as the agent of an infamous old parson who had treasured a compromising letter for eighteen years, and now uses it? Well, I suppose it’s not so impossible. But I don’t regard it as a
very
great coincidence that Miss Harris has drifted into Lady Carrados’s household. Coincidences become increasingly surprising as they gain in importance. One can imagine someone telling Miss Harris about Paddy O’Brien’s accident and Miss Harris saying the parson at Falconbridge was her uncle. Everybody exclaims tiresomely at the smallness of the world and nobody thinks much more of it. Mix a missing letter up in the story and we instantly incline to regard Miss Harris’s remote connection with Falconbridge as a perfectly astonishing coincidence.”

“She’d hardly have mentioned it so freely,” admitted Fox, “if she’d had anything to do with the letter.”

“Exactly. Still, we’ll have to follow it up. And, talking of following things up, Fox, there’s Lady Lorrimer. We’ll have to check Sir Daniel Davidson’s account of himself.”

“That’s right, sir.”

Fox unhooked his spectacles and put them in their case.

“On what we’ve got,” he asked, “have you any particular leaning to anyone?”

“Yes. I’ve left it until we had a moment’s respite to discuss it with you. I wanted to see if you’d arrived independently at the same conclusion yourself.”

“The cigarette-case and the telephone call.”

“Yes. Very well, Fox: ‘in a contemplative fashion and a tranquil frame of mind,’ let us discuss the cigarette-cases. Point one.”

They discussed the cigarette-cases.

At seven o’clock Fox said:

“We’re not within sight of making an arrest. Not on that evidence.”

Alleyn said: “And don’t forget we haven’t found the cloak and hat.”

Fox said: “It seems to me, Mr Alleyn, we’ll have to ask every blasted soul that hasn’t got an alibi if we can search their house. Clumsy.”

“Carrados,” began Alleyn, “Halcut-Hackett, Davidson, Miss Harris. Withers and Potter go together. I swear the hat and cloak aren’t in that flat. Same goes for Dimitri.”

“The garbage-tins,” said Fox gloomily. “I’ve told the chaps about the garbage-tins. They’re so unlikely they’re enough to make you cry. What would anybody do with a cloak and hat, Mr Alleyn, if they wanted to get rid of ’em? We know all the old dodges. You couldn’t burn ’em in any of these London flats. It was low tide, as you’ve pointed out, and they’d have had to be dropped off the bridge which would have been a pretty risky thing to do. D’you reckon they’ll try leaving ’em at a railway office?”

“We’ll have to watch for it. We’ll have to keep a good man to tail our fancy. I don’t somehow feel it’ll be a left-luggage affair, Brer Fox. They’ve been given a little too much publicity of late years. Limbs and torsos have bobbed up in corded boxes with dreary insistence, not only up and down the LNER and kindred offices, but throughout the pages of detective fiction. I rather fancy the parcels post myself. I’ve sent out the usual request. If they were posted it was probably during the rush hour at one of the big central offices, and how the suffering cats we’re to catch up with that is more than I can tell. Still, we’ll hope for a lucky break, whatever that may be.”

The desk telephone rang. Alleyn, suddenly and painfully reminded of Lord Robert’s call, answered it.

His mother’s voice asked if he would dine with her.

“I don’t suppose you can get away, my dear, but as this flat is only five minutes in a taxi it might suit you to come in.”

“I’d like to,” said Alleyn. “When?”

“Eight, but we can have it earlier if you like. I’m all alone.”

“I’ll come now, mama, and we’ll have it at eight. All right?”

“Quite all right,” said the clear little voice. “So glad, darling.”

Alleyn left his mother’s telephone number in case anybody should want him, and went by taxi to the flat she had taken in Catherine Street for the London season. He found Lady Alleyn surrounded by newspapers and wearing horn-rimmed glasses.

“Hullo, darling,” she said. “I shan’t pretend I’m not reading about poor Bunchy, but we won’t discuss it if you don’t want to.”

“To tell you the truth,” said Alleyn, “I rather feel I want to sit in an armchair, stare at nothing, and scarcely speak. Charming company for you, mama.”

“Why not have a bath?” suggested Lady Alleyn without looking up from her paper.

“Do I smell?” asked her son.

“No. But I always think a bath is rather a good idea when you’ve got to the staring stage. What time did you get up this morning?”

“
Yesterday
morning. But I have bathed and shaved since then.”

“No bed at all last night? I should have a bath. I’ll run it for you. Use my room. I’ve sent for a change of clothes.”

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn, and then: “You’re something rather special in the maternal line, aren’t you?”

He bathed. The solace of steaming water wrapped him in a sort of luxurious trance. His thoughts, that for sixteen hours had been so sharply concentrated, became blurred and nebulous. Was it only ‘this morning’ that he had crossed the courtyard to a taxi, half-hidden by wreaths of mist? This morning! Their footsteps had sounded hollow on the stone pavement. “I got to look after meself, see?” A door opened with a huge slow movement that was full of horror. “Dead, ain’t ’e?
Dead, ain’t ’e
? DEAD, AIN’T ’E?” “Suffocated!” gasped Alleyn and woke with his nose full of bath-water.

His man had sent clean linen and a dinner-suit. He dressed slowly, feeling rarefied, and rejoined his mother in the sitting-room.

“Help yourself to a drink,” she said from behind her newspaper.

He got his drink and sat down. He wondered vaguely why he should feel so dog-tired. He was used to missing a night’s sleep and working straight through the twenty-four hours. It must be because it was Bunchy. And the thought came into his mind that there must be a great many people at this hour who with him remembered that comic figure and regretted it.

“He had a great deal of charm,” said Alleyn aloud and his mother’s voice answered him tranquilly.

“Yes, a great deal of charm. The most unfair of all the attributes.”

“You don’t add: ‘I sometimes think,’ ” said Alleyn.

“Why should I?”

“People so often use that phrase to water down their ideas. You are too positive to use it.”

“In Bunchy’s case the charm was one of character and then it is not unfair,” said Lady Alleyn. “Shall we dine? It’s been announced.”

“Good Lord,” said Alleyn, “I never noticed.”

Over their coffee he asked: “Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s dining and going to a play with a suitably chaperoned party.”

“Does she see anything of Rose Birnbaum?”

“My dear Roderick, who on earth is Rose Birnbaum?”

“She’s Mrs Halcut-Hackett’s burden for the season. Her professional burden.”

“Oh, that gel! Poor little thing, yes. I’ve noticed her. I don’t know if Sarah pays much attention. Why?”

“I wish you’d ask her here some time. Not a seasonable party. She’s got an inferiority complex about them. She’s one of the more unfortunate by-products of the season.”

“I see. I wonder why that singularly hard woman has involved herself with a paying protégée. Are the Halcut-Hacketts short of money?”

“I don’t know. I should think she might be at the moment.”

“Withers,” said Lady Alleyn.

“Hullo. You know all about Withers, do you?”

“My dear Rory, you forget I sit in chaperones’ corner.”

“Gossip,” said Alleyn.

“The gossip is not as malicious as you may think. I always maintain that men are just as avid scandalmongers as women.”

“I know you do.”

“Mrs Halcut-Hackett is not very popular, so they don’t mind talking about her in chaperones’ corner. She’s an opportunist. She never gives an invitation that will not bring its reward and she never accepts one that is likely to lower her prestige. She is not a kind woman. She’s extremely common, but that doesn’t matter. Lots of common people are charming. Like bounders. I believe no woman ever falls passionately in love with a man unless he has just the least touch of the bounder somewhere in his composition.”