Authors: Ngaio Marsh
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #det_classic, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #Police, #Mystery fiction, #Alleyn; Roderick (Fictitious character), #Police - New Zealand, #New Zealand, #New Zealand fiction
Vintage Murder (15 page)
ENTR’ACTE
Extract from a letter written by Chief Inspector Alleyn to Detective Inspector Fox of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard —
— so you will agree, my dear Fox, it really is a bit of a teaser. I see you wag your head and I know you think what a fool I was not to make my statement and my exit as rapidly as possible. I confess I am surprised at myself and can only suppose that I must
like
teckery — an amazing discovery. You will have got my cable and I shall have received your answer long before this letter reaches you. Of course, unless Alfred Meyer made a later will, as far as money goes, George Mason has the strongest motive, but on the evidence before us he could never have got up into the flies to put back the weight. I’ve told you the whole story and I have outlined my tentative theory which, as you will see, hinges on this one incontrovertible point. Mason was with me on the stage after the murder, and he went with Te Pokiha to the office. I’ve rung Te Pokiha up and he says he stayed in the office with Mason until he heard the police arrive, and left Mason there when he, Te Pokiha, returned to the stage. To put the thing beyond all argument, it now appears that after the police had come, the doorkeeper went along the yard, saw Mason sitting in the office sipping his whisky, and stayed talking to him until Mason went to the wardrobe-room. By that time the weight was back again. I have laboured this point because I know Wade is going to try and break Mason’s alibi for this period and I am satisfied that he cannot do it. Then there’s this grim little tiki — I wish you could see it — it’s a tiny squint-eyed effigy with a lolling head and curled up rudimentary limbs. The resemblance to the human embryo is obvious. It’s leering at me now from the blotting paper. They tried it for prints and it was smothered with them. Well, it’s reasonable to suppose that whoever put the weight back, dropped the tiki on the floor of the grid platform. Mason is ruled out. We have Hambledon, Carolyn Dacres, Liversidge, Ackroyd and the girl, Valerie Gaynes. These four could, I believe, have gone aloft, unnoticed, at both the vital times. At the risk of boring you to tears, my poor Fox, I now append a time-table for the two visits to the grid. I include the entire cast of characters, even our old friend Susan Max. Here it is. You will notice that I have marked the names without alibis. XA or XB stands for no alibi during the first or second vital periods, and XX (Guinness is
good
for you) for no alibi at either of these times. I’ve also noted the alleged motives.
As regards the attempt on the train (if it was an attempt and not a playful gambol on the part of a homing rugger expert), I regard any attempt to link it up with the theft — an attempt which Wade longs to make — as a likely pitfall. At that time the theft had not been discovered by Miss Gaynes. If Meyer had seen the thief on the job and had tackled him about it, why had he not forced him to return the money before the loss was known? Or, conversely, why had he not made the business public? As he did neither of these things, why should the thief try to murder him? Sergeant Cass intelligently suggests that perhaps the thief knew Meyer had twigged his little game, that Meyer was unaware of this, and that the thief struck before Meyer could take action, missed his pot on the train, and had a more successful go at the theatre. This does not explain Meyer’s delay in tackling the matter in the first instance. The force is now hunting up the train passengers, to try and let a little more light into the affair. I still incline to the view that the theft is a sideline, put in by the gods to make it more difficult. But what god dropped the little green tiki into this puzzle? I have seen some of the Maori deities in the local museum. Wild grimacing abortions, with thrust-out tongues and glinting eyes. They fascinate me. One seems to smell old New Zealand in them — a kind of dark wet smell like the native forest. Before this case came along I hired a car and made a trip into the country north of this town where a tract of native bush is preserved. On the way there are Maori villages — pas they call them — composed for the most part of horrid little modern cottages. The Maoris themselves wear European clothes with occasional native embellishments, among the older people. They have a talent for arranging themselves in pleasant groups and seem to be very light-hearted. The aristocrats among them are magnificent. Te Pokiha is an Oxford man. He is extremely good-looking, courteous, and most dignified. I am to dine with him and he is to tell me something of their folk-law. When, as I have already described, the men handed the little tiki round and Meyer made merry, I felt that he was guilty of the grossest error in taste. Te Pokiha was very cool and well-bred about it. What an idea for a fantastic solution — he killed Meyer because of the insult to the tiki and left the tiki up there as a token of his vengeance. “Cut it out,” as Inspector Wade would say. The local force is very polite to me. I am to meet the superintendent this morning. They might well have been a bit sticky over me and indeed, to begin with, I sensed a sort of defensiveness on Wade’s part. It was a curious mixture of “How about this for a genuine New Zealand (they say ‘New Zillund’) welcome?” and “Treat us fair and we’ll treat you fair, but none of your bloody superiority stuff.” They are extremely nice fellows and good policemen, and I hope I shan’t get on their nerves. One has to keep up a sort of strenuous heartiness, which I find a little fatiguing. The idiom is a bit puzzling but “corker” seems to be the general adjective of approbation. “Crook” means “ill,” “angry,” or “unscrupulous” according to the context; and “a fair nark” or, more emphatically, “a fair cow,” is anything inexpressibly tedious or baffling. The average working man — such as the railway porter and taxi driver (especially the older type) speaks much better English than his English contemporary. One notices the accent in polite circles, but Lor’ bless you, what of it? My poor Fox, I maunder at you. I hope you have enjoyed looking up the affairs of Mason and Meyer’s Incorporated Playhouses, and of Mr. Francis Liversidge. Such fun for you. I am feeling much better, so you need not put on your scolding air over my police activities. It is so amusing to be unofficial and yet in the game. I feel I may give surmise and conjecture free rein. Do write me a line when you’ve time.
Yours ever,
Roderick Alleyn.
Alleyn sealed and addressed his letter and glanced at the lounge clock. Ten o’clock. Perhaps he had better take another look at Master Gordon Palmer who, at nine o’clock, appeared to be sunk in the very depths of sottish slumber. Alleyn took the lift to the second floor. The unwavering stare of the lift-boy told him that his identity was no longer a secret. He went to Gordon’s room, tapped on the door and walked in.
Gordon was awake but in bed. He looked very unattractive and rather ill.
“Good morning,” said Alleyn. “Feeling poorly?”
“I feel like death,” said Gordon. He glanced nervously at the chief inspector, moistened his lips and then said rather sheepishly: “I say, I’m sorry about last night. Can I have my key back? I want to get up.”
“I unlocked your door an hour ago,”“ said Alleyn. ”Haven’t you noticed?”
“As a matter of fact my head is so frightful I haven’t moved yet.”
“I suppose you drank yourself to sleep?”
Gordon was silent.
“How old are you?” asked Alleyn.
“Seventeen.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Alleyn involuntarily. “What do you suppose you’ll look like when you’ve grown up? An enfeebled old dotard. However, it’s your affair.”
Gordon attempted to smile.
“And yet,” continued Alleyn, raising one eyebrow and screwing up his face, “you don’t look altogether vicious. You’re pimply, of course, and your skin’s a nauseating colour — that’s late hours and alcohol — but if you gave your stomach and your lungs and your nerves a sporting chance you might improve enormously.”
“Thanks, very much.”
“Rude, you think? I’m twenty-five years older than you. Old gentlemen of forty-two are allowed to be impertinent. Especially when they are policemen. Do you want to get into trouble with the police, by the way?”
“I’m not longing to,” said Gordon, with a faint suggestion of humour.
“Then why, in Heaven’s name, did you bolt? You have permanently changed the silhouette of Detective-Sergeant Cass. He now presents the contour of a pouter-pigeon.”
“Oh no, does he? How superb!”
“How
superb
!” imitated Alleyn. “The new inflexion. How
superb
for you, my lad, if you’re clapped into durance vile.”
Gordon looked nervous.
“Come on,” continued Alleyn. “Why did you bolt. Was it funk?”
“Oh, rather. I was terrified,” said Gordon lightly.
“Of what? Of your position in regard to Courtney Broadhead? Were you afraid the police would press you to re-state your theory?”
“It’s not my theory.”
“We came to that conclusion. Liversidge filled you up with that tarradiddle, didn’t he? Yes, I thought so. Were you afraid we’d find that out?”
“Yes.”
“I see. So you postponed the evil hour by running away?”
“It was pretty bloody waiting in that room. Hour after hour. I was cold.”
His eyes dilated. Suddenly he looked like a frightened schoolboy.
“I’ve never seen anyone — dead — before,” said Gordon.
Alleyn looked at him thoughtfully.
“Yes,” he said at last, “it was pretty foul, wasn’t it? Given you the horrors?”
Gordon nodded. “A bit.”
“That’s bad luck,” said Alleyn. “It’ll wear off in time. I don’t want to nag, you know, but alcohol’s no good at all. Makes it worse. So you eluded Mr. Cass because you’d got the jim-jams while you were waiting in the wardrobe-room?”
“It was so quiet. And outside there — on the stage — getting cold and stiff—”
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Alleyn. “They took him away long before that, you silly fellow. Now tell me, what did Liversidge say to you when you left the scene of the disaster?”
“Frankie?”
“Yes. In the dressing-room-passage, before you went to the wardrobe-room?”
“He — he — I think he said something about — did I remember what we’d said.”
“What did he mean?”
“About Courtney and the money.”
“Now think carefully and answer me truthfully. It’s important. Who first made the suggestion that Broadhead might have taken that money — you or Mr. Liversidge?”
“He did, of course,” said Gordon at once.
“Ah, yes,” said Alleyn.
He sat down on the end of the bed and again he contemplated Gordon. It seemed to him that after all the boy was not so intolerably sophisticated. “His sophistication is no more than a spurious glaze over his half-baked adolescence,” thought Alleyn. “Under the stress of this affair it has already begun to crack. Perhaps he may even read detective stories.” And suddenly he asked Gordon:
“Are you at all interested in my sort of job?”
“I
was
, rather, in the abstract,” said Gordon.
“I’m puzzled by your reactions to this affair. Last night, you know, you were so very alert and cock-a-hoop. Your attack on Broadhead! It was most determined.”
“I hadn’t had time to think. It didn’t seem real then. None of it seemed real. Just rather exciting.”