Death of a Peer ra-10 Read online

  “Really?”

  “I’m not going to get myself trapped—”

  “Don’t talk silly,” said Inspector Fox austerely. “What’s the matter with you? The Chief Inspector asked you a plain question. Why can’t you answer it? You’re making yourself look awkward, that’s what you’re doing.”

  “Come along, now, Giggle,” said Alleyn. “Pipe up, there’s a good fellow.”

  “Well, sir, I’m sorry, but I’m all anyhow. His lordship got on good enough with his staff in a manner of speaking. There was some thought he was a bit on the near side and there was some didn’t like his sarcastic ways but I never minded. He treated me fair.”

  “Did some of the staff prefer her ladyship to his lordship?”

  “They might of.”

  “The maid for instance?”

  “She might of.”

  “Are you friendly with her maid?”

  “We get on all right,” said Giggle, eyeing Alleyn suspiciously.

  “Any attachment between you?”

  “What the hell’s that got to do with this business?” roared Giggle. “Who says there’s anything?”

  “Away you go again,” observed Alleyn wearily. “Will you answer the question or won’t you?”

  “There’s nothing between us, then. We might have been a bit friendly, like. What’s there in that? I don’t say we’re not friendly.”

  “Would you say that Tinkerton took Lady Wutherwood’s part against her husband? Sympathized with her?”

  “She’s very fond of her ladyship. She’s been with her a long time.”

  “Quite so. Did she sympathize with Lady Wutherwood when it came to any differences between them?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then there were differences between Lord and Lady Wutherwood?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Giggle, obviously relieved at this turn of the conversation.

  “What did they quarrel about, do you know?”

  “Her ladyship’s got funny ideas. She takes up with funny people.”

  “Do you think she’s normal mentally?”

  Giggle shuffled his feet and looked at his cap. His lips were trembling.

  “Come on,” said Alleyn.

  “It’s pretty well known she’s a bit funny. Grace Tinkerton doesn’t like it said, but it’s a fact. She was shut up for a time and she’s never what you’d call the same as other people. I think most of us on the staff have that opinion.”

  “Except Miss Tinkerton?”

  “She knows,” said Giggle, “but she won’t let on. Loyal-like.”

  “All right,” said Alleyn. “That’s everything, I think.”

  Giggle wiped his face with a shaking hand. He seemed to hover on the edge of speech.

  “What is it?” Alleyn asked.

  “Gawd, sir, I’m that upset! It’s got me down. Thinking about it.” He stopped again and then with a curious air of taking control of himself said rapidly, “I beg pardon, sir, for forgetting myself. I got that rattled thinking about it when Mr. Fox came at me again this morning—”

  “That’s all right,” said Alleyn, “good-bye.”

  Giggle gave him a terrified glance and went out.

  V

  A mid-day train took Alleyn, Fox and Nigel Bathgate into Kent. Nigel rang up Alleyn two minutes before he left for Victoria and climbed into the restaurant carriage two seconds after it had started moving. “Ever faithful, ever sure,” he said and ordered drinks for the three of them.

  “You won’t get much out of this,” said Alleyn.

  “You never know, do you? We sent a cameraman down there this morning. I hope to fix up some trimmings for the pictures.”

  “Have you seen your friends this morning?”

  “Yes.” Nigel looked doubtfully at Alleyn, seemed about to speak, but evidently changed his mind.

  “Let’s have lunch,” said Alleyn.

  During the journey he was amiable but uncommunicative. After lunch Fox and Nigel went to sleep and did not wake until they reached Canterbury. Here they found the sun shining between ponderous clouds moving slowly to the south. They changed to a branch line, arriving at Deepacres Halt at three o’clock.

  “Out we get,” said Alleyn. “The local superintendent is supposed to have sent a car. It’s three miles, I understand, to the chateau Wutherwood. There’s our man.”

  The superintendent himself waited for them on the platform and led the way out to a village road and the police car. He was evidently much stimulated by this visit from the Yard and showed great readiness to discuss Deepacres Park and the Lamprey family. As they drove away from the village he pointed to a pleasant cottage standing back from a side lane.

  “That’ll be Bill Giggle’s property now,” he said.

  “Nice for Bill Giggle,” said Alleyn.

  “Very nice. Funny, the way he’s come by it. Ancient history, it is. Bill Giggle’s old man was coachman to his late lordship’s father and saved his life. Runaway horse affair, it was. His old lordship promised Bill Giggle’s dad the cottage for his work which was very courageous and smart but, in the end, it was horses did for his old lordship, just the same, for he was killed in the hunting field. Only lived a few minutes but in the hearing of them that were there he said he was sorry he’d never made that addition to his will, and asked his son — that’s his late lordship — to make it good. Well, his new lordship’s, as he was then, didn’t actually hand over the cottage, being a bit on the near side, but he sent for his lawyers and made his will and let it be known young Bill Giggle would get the place when he himself was dead and gone.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, and they’re going to take the railroad that way now, so it looks as if Bill Giggle’s in for a nice thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn, “it does.”

  He was rather silent after that. They drove through country lanes past a mild sequence of open fields, small holdings, spinneys, and a private golf course, to the gates of Deepacres Park. The house was hidden by trees and as they climbed a long winding avenue Fox began to look solemnly impressed.

  “A show-place, seemingly,” said Fox.

  “Wait till you see the house,” said the superintendent. “It’s as fine a seat as you’ll find in Kent after Leeds Castle. Not so big, but impressive, if you know what I mean.”

  He was right. The great house stood on a terrace above a deer park. It was built at the time of John Evelyn and that industrious connoisseur of fine houses could have found no fault in it. Indeed he might have described it as perfectly uniform structure, observable for its noble site, and showing without like a diadem. The simile would have been well chosen, thought Alleyn, for in the late afternoon sunshine the house glowed like a jewel against the velvet setting of its trees.

  “Lummy!” said Nigel. “I never knew it was as grand as all this. Good Lord, it’s funny to think of the Lampreys coming home to this sort of roost.”

  “I suppose Lord Charles was born here?” observed Alleyn.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose so. Yes, of course he was. Rather terrific, isn’t it?” And Nigel’s fingers went to his tie.

  “I’ve told the servants to expect you,” said the superintendent. “They’ll be in a fine taking on over this, I’ll be bound.”

  But the butler and housekeeper, when Alleyn saw them, seemed to be less agitated than bewildered. They were more concerned, it seemed, with the problem of their own responsibilities and, for the moment, were made uneasy by the lack of them. They had heard of his lordship’s death through the stop-press column of the newspaper. They had received no orders. Should they and a detachment of servants go up to London? Where was his lordship to be buried? Alleyn suggested they should ring up Brummell Street or the Pleasaunce Court flat. He produced a search warrant and got to work. It would take weeks to go over the whole of Deepacres but he hoped to bring off a lucky dip. Lord Wutherwood’s secretary, it appeared, was away on his holiday. Alleyn’did not regret his absence. He asked
to see the rooms Lord Wutherwood used most often and was shown a library and a sort of office. Fox went off to a dressing-room in a remote wing. Nigel sought out the housekeeper to get, so he said, the faithful retainer’s angle on the story. Alleyn had brought a bunch of keys taken from Lord Wutherwood’s body. One of them fitted the lock of a magnificent Jacobean cupboard in the library. It was full of bundles of letters and papers. With a sigh he settled down to them, pausing every now and then to glance through the tall windows at the formal and charming prospect outside.

  He found little to help him in the Jacobean cupboard.

  There were gay begging letters from Lord Charles, acidly blue-pencilled by his brother: “Answered 10/5/38, Refused. Answered 11/12/38. Final refusal.” But Lord Charles’s letters still came in and there were further final refusals. The late Lord Wutherwood, Alleyn saw, had been a methodical man. But he had not always refused to help his brother. A letter from New Zealand was blue-pencilled “Replied 3/4/33. £500” and a still earlier appeal: “£500 forwarded B. N. Z.” These appeared to be the only occasions on which Lord Charles had not drawn a blank. There were letters from Lady Katherine Lobe in which the writer reminded her nephew of his obligations to the poor and placed her pet charities before him. These were emphatically pencilled “No.” Among a bundle of ancient letters Alleyn came upon one from the Nedbrun Nursing Home, Otterton, Devon. It reported Lady Wutherwood’s condition as being somewhat improved. He made a note of the address.

  It was Fox who made the strange discovery. The sun had crept low on the library windows and the room had begun to be filled with a translucent dusk when a door at the far end opened and Fox, bulkily dark, materialized from the shadows of the hall beyond. Alleyn was down on the floor, groping in the bottom shelf of the cupboard. He sat back on his heels and watched Fox advance slowly from dark into thick golden light. Fox looked a huge and portentous figure. He seemed to carry some small object on the palms of his hands. Without speaking Alleyn watched him. The carpet was deep and he advanced as silently as a robust ghost. It was not until he drew quite near that Alleyn could distinguish the object he held in his hands.

  It was a small and very ugly doll.

  Without a word Fox put it on the carpet. It was a pale, misshapen figure, ill-modelled from some dirtily glossy substance of a livid colour. It was dressed, after a fashion, in a black coat and grey trousers. On the tip of its deformity of a head were stuck a few grey hairs. Black-headed pins formed the eyes; a couple of holes the nostrils. A row of match ends projected horridly from beneath a monstrous upper lip. Alleyn advanced a long finger and pointed to the end of the figure where the feet should have been. They had dwindled away like the feet of the suffering Jews in Cruikshank’s drawing for The Ingoldsby Legends.

  “Melted,” said Fox loudly.

  Alleyn’s finger travelled up to the breast of the doll. A long pin stuck out from its travesty of a waistcoat.

  “Where was it?”

  “In the back of his dressing-table drawer.”

  “This is the thing he wouldn’t show old Rattisbon. I wonder why.”

  “Perhaps he was afraid he’d laugh.”

  “Perhaps,” said Alleyn.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  SCENE BY CANDLELIGHT

  There was no break that day in the clouds over London. From morning to night it rained inexorably. Whenever they went to the library window in Brummell Street, Roberta and Henry looked down on a pattern of bobbing umbrellas, on the glistening mackintosh of the Brummell Street policemen, on the roofs of wet cars and on the jets of water that spurted from under their wheels. When, after lunch, they went out into Brummell Street under a borrowed umbrella, the wind drove them sideways, and Henry tucked Roberta’s hand under the crook of his elbow. In spite of everything that had happened, Roberta felt her heart warm to this adventure, to the Londoners hurrying intently through the rain, to the lamplit shop-windows, to the scarlet buses that sailed above the traffic, to the sea of noise, and to Henry who piloted her through the rain. She was glad that Henry had no more than one and elevenpiece in his pockets and that, instead of borrowing her proffered ten shillings and taking a taxi, he suggested they should go roundabout by bus and tube to Pleasaunce Court. Splendid, sang Roberta’s heart, to mount the swaying bus and go cruising down Park Lane, splendid to plunge into the entrance of the tube station, to smell the unexpected sweetness of air that was driven through the world of underground, to sink far below the streets and catch a roaring subterranean train. Splendid, she thought, to sit opposite Henry in the tube and to see his face, murkily lit but smiling at her.

  “Like London?” he asked, guessing at her thoughts, and she nodded back at him, feeling independent and adventurous. Best of all, it seemed to Roberta, was this sense of independence. Nobody in the crowded tubes knew she was Roberta Grey from New Zealand. She didn’t matter to them or they to her and she warmed to them for their very indifference. It didn’t even matter that she and Henry must be back at Brummell Street before Uncle G. came home in his coffin. It was ridiculous to suppose that the Lampreys were in any sort of danger. For Roberta was twenty and abroad in London.

  The behaviour of the Lampreys did nothing to subdue her mood. Charlot was resting and Lord Charles had gone to see his bank manager but the others, though rather black under the eyes, displayed flashes of their usual form. They all had tea in the dining-room including Mike, who wore an air of triumph. Frid absent-mindedly poured tea in all the cups before her and then strolled about the room smoking. Patch consumed oranges from a side table and the twins ate quantities of toast.

  “I suppose you’ve heard,” said Colin, “that Mr. Grumball’s gone.”

  “And his name is Grimball,” said Stephen.

  “He went,” explained Patch, “because Daddy’s all hotsy-totsy now as regards money.”

  “You don’t suppose, do you,” said Henry, “that Uncle G.’s hoarded gold becomes ours in the flash of an eye? There are death duties, my child.”

  “What are death duties?”

  None of the Lampreys seemed to know the answer to Patch’s question. Even Henry, though vaguely depressing, was uninformed.

  “Oh, well,” said Patch, “there’s always Aunt Kit’s money from the pearls she popped. Perhaps that’ll square the death duties.”

  “Or pay for learned counsel to defend one of us,” said Frid.

  “You would think of that, Frid,” said Henry.

  “Well, let’s face it, one of us may—”

  “Pas pour le jeune homme,” said Colin.

  “I know what that means,” said Mike. “But you needn’t worry. Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn’ll solve the mystery sometime to-day, I should think. Robin, did you know Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn happened to have rather an important talk with me last night?”

  “Did he, Mikey? That was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Not bad. He happened to want to know one or two things and I happened to remember them. I must say he’s an absolute whizzer. Well,” added Mike, “I mean he’s the kind of person another person knows bang off for a whizzer. You can kind of recognize it. I say, Robin, do you know he hadn’t got his magernifying-glass with him and I happened to be able to lend him mine? I bet he finds some pretty hot clues with my magernifying-glass. Hoo!” said Mike, kicking the leg of his chair, “I bet old B-K’s chops fall when I tell him about the magernifying-glass. ”

  “Who’s old B-K?”

  “A person,” said Mike. “As a matter of fac’ it’s Benham-Kaye in my form at school. He’s pretty high-hat. I bet he won’t be so high-hat when I tell him—”

  “Your conversation,” said Frid, “is like a round of catch sung by one person only.”

  “What did you tell Mr. Alleyn, Mike?” asked Henry.

  “Oh, about when the skewer was in the hall and when it wasn’t and who I saw and when. He said I was a pretty good witness.”

  “Robin,” said Henry, “it’s half-past five. I think we should return to duty.”


  II

  The return trip to Brummell Street was not quite so satisfactory. Henry, having borrowed a little money from Nanny, took a taxi. He was very silent and Roberta had time to think of the night that awaited them in the Brummell Street house. She had time to wonder where they would put Uncle G. and whether Aunt V., hitherto invisible, would appear for dinner. It seemed that Roberta and Henry were expected by Charlot to remain at Brummell Street and she began to wonder nervously if Henry would be bored by a long evening with her in that cadaverous library. Perhaps the aunt would be there too, and Roberta began to imagine how Aunt V. would sit and stare at Henry and herself and how, when bedtime came, they would climb the stairs and walk silently through the long passages. Perhaps they would have to pass the door of the room where Uncle G. lay in his coffin. Perhaps Aunt V. would madly insist on their looking at Uncle G. Roberta wished the rain would stop and that the clouds would roll away and let a little evening sun into Brummell Street. For the first time since she came to England she felt lonely. She decided that after dinner she would write to her own unknown middle-class aunt who, thought Roberta with an inward smile, must have been rather shaken by her evening paper. The evening papers were evidently full of Uncle G. At street corners Roberta saw placards with: “DEATH OF A PEER” and “SHOCKING TRAGEDY. LORD WUTHERWOOD KILLED.” She couldn’t help wondering if inside these papers there were photographs of herself and Henry coming out of Pleasaunce Court Mansions. Perhaps underneath the photograph would be written: “Lord Rune and a friend leaving the fatal flat last night.” Henry stopped the taxi at a street corner and bought a paper. “This is Nigel’s affair,” he said. “Let’s see what sort of gup he’s handed out, shall we?” They read the paper in the taxi and, sure enough, there was the flashlight photograph with their faces, appropriately haggard, like white puddings with startled black-current eyes. Roberta thought the letter-press quite indecently frightful but Henry said it might have been worse and that Nigel had spared them a lot. The taxi drew up at 24 Brummell Street. They left the paper behind and once more entered the heavy house. They were immediately aware of a sort of subdued activity. They smelt flowers and there, climbing the stairs, was a maid with a great wreath of lilies in her arms. Moffatt, the old manservant who had let them in, told them that part of the Deepacres staff were coming up to London by the morning train. “But we’ve managed very well, my lord,” said Moffatt. “Everything is prepared. The flowers are beautiful.”