Death in Ecstasy Read online

  “Well, Mr. Ogden?”

  “Well now, Inspector, I can’t remember. Isn’t that just too bad?”

  “Miss Jenkins was next to you in the circle, wasn’t she?”

  “That is correct,” said Mr. Ogden tonelessly.

  “Yes. Now look here, sir. You’re a business man I take it?”

  “Surely.”

  “Thank God for that. I don’t know how much this organisation means to you, and I don’t want to say anything that will be offensive, but I’m longing for a sensible man’s view of the whole situation. An intelligent and knowledgeable view.”

  “Inside dope.” said Mr. Ogden.

  “Exactly.”

  “Go right ahead. Maybe I’ll talk and maybe not. Maybe I don’t know anything.”

  “I gather you are an officer of the executive?”

  “That’s so. A Warden.”

  “You know all these people quite well, I suppose?”

  “Why, yes. We are all enthusiastic about uplift. The spirit of comradeship pervades our relationship. You Britishers are weaned on starch, I guess, but I hand myself out a whole lot of roses for the way I’ve got this bunch started. Right at the commencement of the movement they used to sit around looking at each other like they all suffered from frostbite. Now they’ve got together like regular fellows. They’re a great little crowd.”

  “You’ve been interested in the organisation since its foundation?”

  “That’s so. That was way back in—why, it must be two years ago. I met up with Father Garnette coming across to England. I move about some, Inspector. That’s my job. That trip it was the Brightwater Creek Gold Mining Company. Yes, that’s what it would be. I recollect I had Father Garnette accept a small nugget as a souvenir. That would be May two years ago. I was very, very much impressed with Father Garnette’s personality.”

  “Really,” said Alleyn.

  “Yes, sir. I’m a self-made man, Chief. I was raised in a ten-cent fish joint, and my education simply forgot to occur, but when I meet culture I respect it. I like it handed out good and peppy, and that’s the way Father Garnette let me have it. By the time we hit Southhampton we’d doped out a scheme for this church, and before six months had passed we were drawing congregations of three hundred.”

  “Remarkable,” said Alleyn.

  “It was swell.”

  “Where did the money come from?”

  “Why, from the flock. Father Garnette had a small hall ’way down Great Holland Road. Compared with this it was a bum show, but say, did we work it? The Father had a service every night for a month. He got right down to it. A small bunch of very influential people came along. Just one or two, but they roped in more. When he’d got them all enthusiastic he had an appeal week and loosed a line of high-voltage oratory. Sob-stuff. I gave five grand and I’m proud to spill the beans.”

  “Who were the other subscribers?”

  “Why, Dagmar Candour was in on the plush seats with a thousand pounds and poor Cara checked in at the same level. Each of those ladies seemed ambitious to carry off the generosity stakes. Then there was M. de Ravigne and—and all the bunch of Initiates. I guess I’d hold up operations some if I recited all the subscribers.”

  “Miss Quayne must have been a very wealthy woman?”

  “She was very, very wealthy, and she had a lovely nature. Why, only last month she deposited five thousand in bearer bonds in the safe back there beyond the altar. They are waiting there until another five is raised among the rest of us and then it’s to form a building fund for a new church. That’s how generous she was.”

  Nigel had paused, pen in air, to gape at Mr. Ogden’s enthusiastic countenance, and to reflect a little childishly on the gullibility of average men and women. None of these people was particularly stupid, he would say, except perhaps Mrs. Candour. Miss Quayne had looked interesting. Mr. Ogden was obviously an intelligent business man. Janey Jenkins, Maurice Pringle, M. de Ravigne were none of them idiots. He forgot all about Miss Wade. Yet all these apparently sensible individuals had been duped by Garnette into parting with sums of money. Extraordinary! At this moment he remembered his own reaction to Father Garnette’s oratory and felt less superior.

  “That’s how generous she was,” repeated Mr. Ogden.

  “What was the relationship between M. de Ravigne and the deceased?”

  “Crazy about her,” answered Mr. Ogden succinctly.

  “Yet I rather gathered that the Initiates were a cut above earthly love,” ventured Alleyn.

  “I guess M. de Ravigne has not altogether cast off the shackles of the body,” said Mr. Ogden dryly. “But get this: Cara was not interested. No, sir. Her soul was yearning after the inner mysteries of the spirit.”

  “Did you hear what Mr. Pringle and Mrs. Candour said immediately after the tragedy?”

  Mr. Ogden looked uncomfortable.

  “Well, I can’t say—”

  Alleyn consulted his notebook and read aloud the conversation as Nigel had reported it to him.

  “Mr. Pringle said: ‘The whole thing is a farce.’ He talked about retribution. He said to Mrs. Candour: ‘You would have taken her place if you could.’ What do you think he meant, Mr. Ogden?”

  “I don’t know, Chief, honest I don’t,” said Mr. Ogden, looking very worried. “Maybe there was a little competition between the ladies for spiritool honours. Maybe Pringle kind of thought Mrs. Candour would have enjoyed a spell as Chosen Vessel.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t want to make too much of it. They were all het up. The boy’s three hundred per cent nerves. Garsh!” Mr. Ogden went on fervently, “I wish to hell we could smoke.”

  “Same here,” agreed Alleyn. “I’d give my soul for a pipe. No hope for me, I’m afraid, but I don’t think I need keep you much longer, Mr. Ogden.”

  Mr. Ogden looked astounded.

  “Well, say!” he remarked, “that’s certainly a surprise to me. I don’t get the works this trip?”

  “Nor the next, I hope. Unless you can think of anything you feel we ought to know I shan’t worry you any more until after the inquest. Of course, if you have any theory I should be extremely glad—”

  “For Gard’s sake!” ejaculated Mr. Ogden. “Listen. Are they all this way around the Yard?” He looked at Fox and lowered his voice to a penetrating whisper. “He looks more like a regular dick. An’ yet if I worded him maybe he’d talk back like a bud’s guide to society stuff. Is that so?”

  “You must meet Inspector Fox and find out,” said Alleyn. “Fox!”

  “Hullo, sir?” Fox hoisted himself up and walked solemnly round the pews towards them.

  “Mr. Ogden finds our methods a little lacking in colour.”

  “Indeed sir?”

  “Yes. Can you suggest any improvement? Have you any questions you would like to put to Mr. Ogden, Fox? Something really startling, you know.”

  “Well, sir, I can’t say I have. Unless”—Fox paused a moment and stared at Alleyn—”unless Mr. Ogden can tell us anything about the—er—the ingredients of the cup.”

  “Can you, Mr. Ogden?”

  “Surely. It’s some sissy dope from a departmental store. I’ve seen the bottles. Invalid Port. One half per cent alcohol. But—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, since you’re asking, Chief, I reckon Father Garnette has it pepped up some. A drop of brandy I’d say. Mind, I don’t know.”

  “There you are, Fox. Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” said Fox with a smile, “Unless the gentleman would like to be searched.”

  “Would you care to be searched, Mr. Ogden? We do that sort of thing rather neatly.”

  “Well, for crying out loud!” exclaimed Mr. Ogden. He looked from Alleyn to Fox, cast up his eyes, passed a plump hand over his head and burst out laughing.

  “Get to it,” he begged, “get to it. For the Lord’s sake get to it. Would I care to be searched!”

  “Carry on, Fox,” said Alleyn.


  Fox took out a notebook and Alleyn, with the swift precision of a pickpocket, explored the inner fastnesses of Mr. Ogden’s suit.

  “Note-case. One fiver and three singles. Pocketbook. Letter. Typewritten, stamped and sealed. Address ‘Hector K. Manville, Ogden-Schultz Gold-refining and Extracting Co., 81, East Forty-fifth Street, Boston, Massachusetts.’ Letter refers to a new gold refining process. It’s rather technical.”

  Fox read it with difficulty.

  “Bill from Harrods. £9 10s. 8d. To account rendered. Date: November 2nd of this year. Letter beginning ‘Dear Sam,’ signed Heck. Date—”

  Alleyn murmured on. It was all over before Mr. Ogden had left off chuckling.

  “No phials of poison,” said Alleyn lightly. “That’s all, sir.”

  “It was real smart,” declared Mr. Ogden handsomely. “They don’t fan a man neater than that in the States. That’s saying some. Well, Inspector, if that’s all I guess I’ll move off. Say, it seems real callous for me to be standing here talking facetious when Cara Quayne is lying—See here, Chief, have I got to say murdered?”

  “We must wait for the inquest, Mr. Ogden.”

  The American’s genial face had suddenly become preter-naturally solemn like that of a clown, or a child who has been reproved for laughing.

  “If it is murder,” he said quietly, “and the trail’s not just all that easy and—aw hell, Chief, I’ve got the dollars and I ain’t paralysed yet.”

  With which cryptic remark Mr. Ogden took himself off.

  “Is he real?” asked Nigel, “or is he a murderer with unbridled histrionic ambitions? Surely no American was ever so American. Surely—”

  “Do stop making these exclamatory interjections. You behave for all the world like a journalistic Greek chorus. Fox, what did the gentleman mean by his last remark. The one about not suffering from paralysis?”

  “I understood him to be offering unlimited sums of money to the police and the prosecution, sir.”

  “Bribery, thinly disguised, depend upon it,” said Nigel. “I tell you no American was ever—”

  “I don’t know. His eyes, at all events, are original. People do run true to type. It’s an axiom of police investigation. Next please, Bailey.”

  Janey Jenkins was next.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Janey and Maurice

  MISS JENKINS was one of those women who are instinctively thought of by their Christian names. She looked like a Janey. She was shortish, compact, with straight hair, well brushed, snapping black eyes, snub nose, and an amusing mouth. Without being pretty she was attractive. Her age was about twenty-two. She walked briskly towards Alleyn, sat down composedly and said: “Well, Inspector Alleyn, let’s get it over. I’ll answer any questions you like, compromising or uncompromising, as long as it’s over quickly.”

  “I thank whatever gods may be,” rejoiced Alleyn, “and there are enough to begin with on the premises, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”

  “We are rather generously endowed, aren’t we?” said Janey.

  “You must forgive me. I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

  “You weren’t. I’m not altogether an ass. This is rather a rum show, I dare say.”

  “You don’t talk like my idea of an Initiate.”

  “Don’t I? Well perhaps I’m not a very good one. I’m thinking of backsliding, Inspector Alleyn. Oh, not because of this awful business. At least—I don’t know. Perhaps it has shown us up in rather an unattractive light.” She paused and wrinkled her forehead. “It all seems very bogus to you I expect, but—but—there’s something in it—or I thought so.”

  “When I was an undergraduate I became a Plymouth Brother for two months. It seemed frightfully important at the time. I believe nowadays they go in for Black Magic.”

  “Yes, Maurice tried that when he was up. Then he switched over to this.”

  “You speak of Mr. Pringle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he introduce you to this church?”

  “Clever of you,” said Janey. “Yes, he did.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, about six months ago.”

  “You have advanced rather quickly, surely.”

  “This was my first evening as an Initiate. Maurice has been one for some time. I was to have begun special instruction next week.”

  “You don’t mean to go on with it?”

  “I don’t,” said Janey.

  “Would you mind telling me why?”

  “I think perhaps I would.” She looked thoughtfully at Alleyn. “No, I’ll tell you. I’ve got my doubts about it. I’ve had my doubts about it for some time, to be quite honest.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Maurice was so terribly keen. You see we’re engaged. He could talk of nothing else. He’s awfully highly strung—terribly sensitive—and—and sort of vulnerable, and I thought—”

  “You thought you would keep an eye on him—that it?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “I am sure you will not regret doing so. Miss Jenkins, do you know what Mr. Pringle was driving at when he said that Mr. Garnette was keeping them all quiet, that Mrs. Candour would have taken Miss Quayne’s place if she could, and that he was going to tell everybody something?”

  “How do you know Maurice said that?”

  “You may remember he was in the middle of it when I arrived. He stopped short when he saw me. I heard some of it. Mr. Bathgate has told me the rest. What is the explanation?”

  “I don’t think I can answer that.”

  “Can’t you? Why not?”

  “I don’t want to stir it all up. It has got nothing to do with this dreadful thing. I’m sure of that.”

  “You cannot possibly be sure of that. Listen to me. Mr. Bathgate is prepared to swear that Miss Quayne put nothing into the cup after it was handed to her. She took it by the stem on both hands and drank from it without changing their position. She died two minutes after she drank from the cup. I had gone round the circle of Initiates. No one else, except the acolyte and Mr. Garnette, had handled it. Can you not see that the inter-relationships of those six people are of importance? Can you not see that I must learn all I may of them? I must not try to persuade you to speak against your judgment—if I did this I should grossly exceed my duty. But please Miss Jenkins, don’t say: ‘It’s got nothing to do with the case.’ We don’t know what may or may not bear on the case. There is only one person who could tell us that.”

  “Only one person? You mean—a guilty person?”

  “I do. If such a one exists.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” said Janey at last. “Maurice hero-worshipped Father Garnette. He went, as Mr. Ogden would say, crazy about him. I think Father Garnette took hold of his imagination. Maurice is very responsive to personal magnetism.”

  “Yes.”

  “I feel for it myself. When he preaches—it’s rather extraordinary—one feels as though the most terrific revelation is being made. No, that’s not quite it. Everything seems to be beautifully dovetailed and balanced.”

  “A sense of exquisite precision,” murmured Alleyn. “I believe opium smokers experience it.”

  Janey flushed.

  “You mean we were drugged with words. I don’t think I quite admit that. But where was I? Oh. Well, a little while ago Maurice began to suspect that things were happening all the same in the background. He had put Father Garnette on a pedestal, you see, and the least suggestion of—of worldly interest seemed wrong to Maurice. Some of the women in the congregation, Mrs. Candour and poor Cara too, I’m afraid, were rather blatantly doting. Maurice got all worked up about it. He minded most dreadfully. That’s what he meant when he talked like that about Mrs. Candour.”

  “He meant that Mrs. Candour was jealous of Miss Quayne and Mr. Garnette had kept it quiet?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  “But not
that Mrs. Candour was so jealous that—he didn’t mean that. Please, please don’t think that. It was nothing. Maurice was hysterical. He sees everything in an exaggerated light. You do believe me, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Alleyn. “I think you are understanding things, you know.”

  “I’m not. Oh, why did I say anything! I won’t answer any more questions. Let me go.” Janey’s voice shook. She stood up, her hands clenched, her pupils dilated.

  “Of course you may go, Miss Jenkins,” said Alleyn very quietly. “You have had a wretched experience and it’s unnerved you. Believe me, you need not reproach yourself for anything you have told me. Really. If only people would understand that in these cases they are under a moral obligation to help the police, that by keeping things back they may actually place an innocent man or woman in the gravest danger! However, I grow pompous and in a minute I might become facetious. Save yourself, Miss Jenkins, and go home.”

  Janey managed a smile and brushed her hand across her face.

  “Oh dear,” she whispered.

  “You’re done up,” said Alleyn quickly. “Bathgate, dodge out and get a taxi for Miss Jenkins, will you?”

  “I think I’d better wait for Maurice, please.”

  “Do you? Would you like some of Mr. Garnette’s brandy?”

  “No thank you. I’ll just wait in the back pews if I may.”

  “Of course you may. If it wouldn’t bother you too much the wardress will run over you. Have you ever been searched?”

  “Never. It sounds beastly, but I suppose I must.”

  “That’s very sensible. Inspector Fox will take you to the wardress. I’ll see your young man now.”

  Janey walked firmly down the aisle with Fox and disappeared into the shadows. Fox returned and Bailey produced Maurice Pringle.

  Maurice looked quickly about him, and stopped like a pointer when he saw Alleyn. At the inspector’s suggestion he came into the hall but refused to sit down. He thrust his hands into his pockets and seemed unable to stand still.

  “Now then, Mr. Pringle,” began Alleyn cheerfully.

  “Where’s Janey? Miss Jenkins?”’ demanded Maurice.