Final Curtain (37 page)

‘Without more ado,' Alleyn went on, ‘I must tell you that we are going to ask for an exhumation.'

After a considerable pause Mr Rattisbon said: ‘This is exceedingly perturbing.'

‘May I, before we go any further, say I do think that instead of coming to us with the story I'm about to relate, Sir Henry's successors might have seen fit to consult their solicitor.'

‘Thank yer.'

‘I don't know, sir, of course, how you would have advised them, but I believe that this visit must sooner or later have taken place. Here is the story.'

Twenty minutes later Mr Rattisbon tipped himself back in his chair and gave a preparatory bay at the ceiling.

‘Ma-m-ah!' he said. ‘Extraordinary. Disquieting. Very.'

‘You will see that all this rigmarole seems to turn about two factors,
(a)
It was common knowledge in his household that Sir Henry Ancred was to be embalmed,
(b)
He repeatedly altered his Will, and on the eve of his death appears to have done so in favour of his intended wife, largely to the exclusion of his family and in direct contradiction to an announcement he made a couple of hours earlier. It's here, I hope, Mr Rattisbon, that you can help us.'

‘I am,' said Mr Rattisbon, ‘in an unusual, not to say equivocal, position. Um. As you have very properly noted, Chief Inspector, the correct procedure on the part of the family, particularly on the part of Sir Cedric Gaisbrooke Percival Ancred, would have been to consult this office. He has elected not to do so. In the event of a criminal action he will scarcely be able to avoid doing so. It appears that the general intention of the family is to discredit the position of the chief beneficiary and further to suggest that there is a case for a criminal charge against her. I refer, of course, to Miss Gladys Clark.'

‘To
whom
?'

‘—known professionally as Miss Sonia Orrincourt.'

‘ “Gladys Clark,” ' Alleyn said thoughtfully. ‘Well!'

‘Now, as the solicitor for the estate, I am concerned in the matter. On consideration, I find no objection to giving you such information as you require. Indeed, I conceive it to be my professional duty to do so.'

‘I'm extremely glad,' said Alleyn, who had known perfectly well that Mr Rattisbon, given time, would arrive at precisely this decision. ‘Our principal concern at the moment is to discover whether Sir Henry Ancred actually concocted his last Will after he left the party on the eve of his death.'

‘Emphatically no. It was drawn up, in this office, on Sir Henry's instruction, on Thursday, the twenty-second of November of this year, together with a second document, which was the one quoted by Sir Henry as his last Will and Testament at his Birthday dinner.'

‘This all sounds rather erratic.'

Mr Rattisbon rapidly scratched his nose with the nail of his first finger. ‘The procedure,' he said, ‘was extraordinary, I ventured to say so at the time. Let me take these events in their order. On Tuesday, the twentieth November, Mrs Henry Irving Ancred telephoned this office to the effect that Sir Henry Ancred wished me to call upon him immediately. It was most inconvenient, but the following day I went down to Ancreton. I found him in a state of considerable agitation and clothed—m-m-m-ah—in a theatrical costume. I understood that he had been posing for his portrait. May I add, in parentheses,' said Mr Rattisbon with a bird-like dip of his head, ‘that although your wife was at Ancreton, I had not the pleasure of meeting her on that occasion. I enjoyed this privilege upon my later visit.'

‘Troy told me.'

‘It was the greatest pleasure. To return. On this first visit of Wednesday the twenty-first of November, Sir Henry Ancred showed me his rough drafts of two Wills. One moment.'

With darting movements, Mr Rattisbon drew from his filing cabinet two sheafs of paper covered in a somewhat flamboyant script. He handed them to Alleyn. A glance showed him their nature. ‘Those are the drafts,' said Mr Rattisbon. ‘He required me to engross two separate Wills based on these notes. I remarked that this procedure was unusual. He put it to me that he was unable to come to a decision regarding the—ah—the merits of his immediate relatives, and was, at the same time, contemplating a second marriage. His previous Will, in my opinion a reasonable disposition, he had already destroyed. He instructed me to bring these two new documents to Ancreton when I returned for the annual Birthday observances. The first was the Will witnessed and signed before the dinner and quoted by Sir Henry
at
dinner as his last Will and Testament. It was destroyed late that evening. The second is the document upon which we are at present empowered to act. It was signed and witnessed in Sir Henry Ancred's bedroom at twelve-twenty that night—against, may I add,
against
my most earnest representations.'

‘Two Wills,' Alleyn said, ‘in readiness for a final decision.'

‘Precisely. He believed that his health was precarious. Without making any specific accusations he suggested that certain members of his family were acting separately or in collusion against him. I believe, in view of your own exceedingly lucid account,' Mr Rattisbon dipped his head again, ‘that he referred, in fact, to these practical jokes. Mrs Alleyn will have described fully the extraordinary incident of the portrait. An admirable likeness, if I may say so. She will have related how Sir Henry left the theatre in anger.'

‘Yes.'

‘Subsequently the butler came to me with a request from Sir Henry that I should wait upon him in his room. I found him still greatly perturbed. In my presence, and with considerable violence, he tore up the, as I considered, more reasonable of the two drafts, and, in short, threw it on the fire. A Mr and Mrs Candy were shown in and witnessed his signature to the second document. Sir Henry then informed me that he proposed to marry Miss Clark in a week's time and would require my services in the drawing up of a marriage settlement. I persuaded him to postpone this matter until the morning and left him, still agitated and inflamed. That, in effect, is all I can tell you.'

‘It's been enormously helpful,' Alleyn said. ‘One other point if you don't mind. Sir Henry's two drafts are not dated. He didn't by any chance tell you when he wrote them?'

‘No. His behaviour and manner on this point were curious. He stated that he would enjoy no moment's peace until both Wills had been drawn up in my office. But no. Except that the drafts were made before Tuesday, the twentieth, I cannot help you here.'

‘I'd be grateful if they might be put away and left untouched.'

‘Of course,' said Mr Rattisbon, greatly flustered, ‘by all means.'

Alleyn placed the papers between two clean sheets and returned them to their drawer.

That done, he rose, and Mr Rattisbon at once became very lively. He escorted Alleyn to the door, shook hands and uttered a string of valedictory phrases. ‘Quite so, quite so,' he gabbled. ‘Disquieting. Trust no foundation but nevertheless disquieting. Always depend upon your discretion. Extraordinary. In many ways, I fear, an unpredictable family. No doubt if counsel is required…Well, goodbye. Thank yer. Kindly remember me to Mrs Alleyn. Thank yer.'

But as Alleyn moved, Mr Rattisbon laid a claw on his arm. ‘I shall always remember him that night,' he said. ‘He stopped me as I reached the door and I turned and saw him, sitting upright in bed with his gown spread about him. He was a fine-looking old fellow. I was quite arrested by his appearance. He made an unaccountable remark, too, I recollect. He said: “I expect to be very well attended, in future, Rattisbon. Opposition to my marriage may not be as strong in some quarters as you anticipate. Goodnight.” That was all. It was, of course, the last time I ever saw him.'

The Hon Mrs Claude Ancred had a small house in Chelsea. As a dwelling-place it presented a startling antithesis to Ancreton. Here all was lightness and simplicity. Alleyn was shown into a white drawing-room, modern in treatment, its end wall one huge window overlooking the river. The curtains were pale yellow, powdered with silver stars, and this colour, with accents of clear cerise, appeared throughout the room. There were three pictures—a Matisse, a Christopher Wood, and, to his pleasure, an Agatha Troy. ‘So you still stick around, do you?' he said, winking at it, and at that moment Jenetta Ancred came in.

An intelligent looking woman, he thought. She greeted him as if he was a normal visitor, and, with a glance at the painting, said: ‘You see that we've got a friend in common,' and began to talk to him about Troy and their meeting at Ancreton.

He noticed that her manner was faintly and recurrently ironic. Nothing, she seemed to say, must be insisted upon or underlined. Nothing really matters very much. Overstatement is stupid and uncomfortable. This impression was conveyed by the crispness of her voice, its avoidance of stresses, and by her eyes and lips, which constantly erected little smiling barriers that half-discredited the frankness of her conversation. She talked intelligently about painting, but always with an air of self-deprecation. He had a notion she was warding off the interview for which he had asked.

At last he said: ‘You've guessed, of course, why I wanted you to let me come?'

‘Thomas came in last night and told me he'd seen you and that you'd gone down to Ancreton. This is an extremely unpleasant development, isn't it?'

‘I'd very much like to hear your views.'

‘Mine?' she said, with an air of distaste. ‘They can't possibly be of the smallest help, I'm afraid. I'm always a complete onlooker at Ancreton. And please don't tell me the onlooker sees most of the game. In this instance she sees as little as possible.'

‘Well,' said Alleyn cheerfully, ‘what does she think?'

She waited for a moment, looking past him to the great window. ‘I think,' she murmured, ‘that it's almost certain to be a tarradiddle. The whole story.'

‘Convince us of that,' Alleyn said, ‘and we're your slaves for ever in the CID.'

‘No, but really. They're so absurd, you know, my in-laws. I'm very attracted to them, but you can't imagine how absurd they can be.' Her voice died away. After a moment's reflection she said: ‘But Mrs Alleyn saw them. She must have told you.'

‘A little.'

‘At one time it was fifth columnists. Pauline suspected such a nice little Austrian doctor who's since taken a very important job at a big clinic. At that time he was helping with the children. She said something told her. And then it was poor Miss Able who was supposed to be undermining her influence with Panty. I wonder if, having left the stage, Pauline's obliged to find some channel for her histrionic instincts. They all do it. Naturally, they resented Miss Orrincourt, and resentment and suspicion are inseparable with the Ancreds.'

‘What did you think of Miss Orrincourt?'

‘I? She's too lovely, isn't she? In her way, quite flawless.'

‘Apart from her beauty?'

‘There didn't seem to be anything else. Except a very robust vulgarity.'

‘But does she really think as objectively as all that?' Alleyn wondered. ‘Her daughter stood to lose a good deal through Sonia Orrincourt. Could she have achieved such complete detachment?' He said: ‘You were there, weren't you, when the book on embalming appeared in the cheese-dish?'

She made a slight grimace. ‘Oh, yes.'

‘Have you any idea who could have put it there?'

‘I'm afraid I rather suspected Cedric. Though why…For no reason except that I can't believe any of the others would do it. It was quite horrible.'

‘And the anonymous letters?'

‘I feel it must have been the same person. I can't imagine how any of the Ancreds—after all they're not—However.'

She had a trick of letting her voice fade out as if she had lost faith in the virtue of her sentences. Alleyn felt that she pushed the suggestion of murder away from her, with both hands, not so much for its dreadfulness as for its offence against taste.

‘You think, then,' he said, ‘that their suspicion of Miss Orrincourt is unfounded and that Sir Henry died naturally?'

‘That's it. I'm quite sure it's all a make-up. They think it's true. They've just got one of their “things” about it.'