Death of a Peer (13 page)

“That was the l-lift,” said Stephen. “I thought the police had d-disconnected it.”

“They had,” said Henry.

“I think I know what it is,” said Dr. Kantripp. “Don’t worry, Lady Charles. The police are attending to things, you know, and we have been expecting the — ah — the—”

“They’re taking him away?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Does my sister-in-law know?”

“I asked the nurse to explain. Lady Wutherwood is so very — I didn’t suggest that she should be present. Only distress her. If you’ll excuse me I think I’d better have a word with Alleyn.”

He went out, meeting Patch in the doorway.

“I say,” said Patch, “there are more men going into 26. They’re using the lift.”

“Shut the door,” said Colin.

But even with the door shut they could hear unmistakable and heavy sounds of Uncle G.’s departure. Even the Lampreys had nothing to say and sat in an uncomfortable hush, listening and yet not appearing to listen. With a clank and a heavy mechanical sigh, Uncle G. went down again in the lift.

Henry moved to a window of the drawing-room, pulled aside the curtains and looked down into the street. The others watched him uneasily and in a moment the twins joined him. Unwillingly, Roberta read in their faces the stages of Uncle G.’s progress. Henry opened his window more widely. Down in Pleasaunce Court, doors were shut. An engine started, a motor horn sounded, Henry dropped the curtain and turned back into the room.

“I suppose,” he said, “I shall not be promoted to first suspect if I merely observe, thank God for that.”

“Patch,” said Charlot, “has Mr. Alleyn finished with you?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Then go to bed, darling. I’ll come and say good night if I can. But don’t stay awake for me. Run along.”

Patch wandered to the door where she turned. “He hardly asked me anything,” she said. “Only what we were all doing in the dining-room when—”

“
Pas pour le jeune homme
,” said Frid warningly.

Patch made a rapid grimace at the constable’s chair and opened the door.

“Here, wait a minute,” cried Frid in alarm. But she was too late: Patch had gone.

“Look here,” said Frid to the constable, “can I go after her? I want to ask her something.”

“I’m afraid you can’t, Miss. I can ask the young lady to come back, if it’s any use,” offered the constable, who had risen to his feet.

“I don’t think it is,” said Frid gloomily. “Her French isn’t up to it.” She wandered in a desultory manner round the room.

Lord Charles came in from the hall and went to the fireplace. He leant his arms on the mantelpiece and his head on his arms.

“Well, old man,” said Charlot.

“Well, Immy,” he said without changing his position, “they’ve taken him away. You didn’t know him when he was a young man, did you?”

“No.”

“No. When we were boys we were good friends. It seems a queer thing for him to go away like this.”

“Yes,” said Charlot, “I expect it does.” He went and sat beside her.

“Well,” said Henry, “what happens now?”

“Examination of witnesses continues, I trust,” said Frid. “Who do you say he’ll ask for next? I’m longing for my turn.”

“Frid, my dear,” said her father, “don’t.”

“Don’t what, Daddy?”

“Don’t be so quite so whatever it is you are being. We’re all rather tired. Immy, ought I to ask if I may see Violet?”

“I don’t think so, darling. Dr. Kantripp says she seems to be much quieter and more sensible. No doubt she’ll—”

The drawing-room door opened slowly. The young constable scrambled to his feet, followed, one after another, by the Lampreys. Framed in the doorway, supported on one hand by a uniformed nurse and on the other by her maid, stood the Dowager Lady Wutherwood.

Roberta had been given a good many frights that evening and perhaps her resistance to shock had been weakened. There is no doubt that the appearance of Lady Wutherwood in the drawing-room doorway struck terror to her heart. It was as if some malicious stage-manager had planned this entrance along the best traditions of Victorian melodrama. By some chance of lighting, the colour of the green-painted door-jamb was reflected in Lady Wutherwood’s face. Her chin was lowered and her cavernously set eyes were in shadow while her mouth, which was wet but which still retained a trace of rouge, caught the light and glittered. The coils of dyed hair had become loosened and hung forward. Perhaps she had thrust Tinkerton aside, for her dress was ill-fastened and much in disarray. She seemed to have no bones. Even her hands showed no clear highlights on fingers and wrists, but hung puffily among the folds of her dress. Propped up by the nurse and maid, her posture was so odd that it suggested to Roberta a horrid notion. She thought Lady Wutherwood looked for all the world as though she dangled by the neck like some ill-managed puppet. Her lips moved and so still was the room that Roberta heard that clicking sound as Lady Wutherwood arranged her mouth for speaking; but when she did speak it was in an unremarkable voice, a voice that held no overtones of tragedy or horror.

“Charles,” said Lady Wutherwood, “I’ve come to see the police.”

“Yes, Violet. I’ll tell them.”

“I’ve come to see them because there is something they must understand. They have taken away Gabriel’s body. It must come back to me, to my house. The funeral will be from my house and nowhere else. I want to tell them that. Gabriel must come back.”
iii

Charlot hurried to her sister-in-law’s side and Roberta heard her speak in the voice she had used in the old days, when one of the children was hurt or distressed. It was a tranquil voice but Lady Wutherwood seemed scarcely aware of it. The nurse, professionally soothing, said: “Now, come along. We’ll just sit and wait while they bring the doctor.”

“Not in there,” said Lady Wutherwood. “I don’t go into that room.”

“Now, now, dear.”

“Where is the detective? I must see the people in authority.” Lady Wutherwood’s head turned with a rolling movement and from the shadowed caverns of her eyes she seemed to look at Charlot. “Go away,” she said loudly.

Lord Charles turned to the constable. “Will you tell Mr. Alleyn?”

He said: “Yes, my lord, certainly,” and looked at Lady Wutherwood who, with her escort, completely blocked the doorway.

“There’s a chair in the passage, nurse,” said Charlot.

Tinkerton said: “Come along now, m’lady,” in a thin voice but with an air of authority. Her mistress leant towards her and with a clumsy lurch turned and went into the passage, still supported by the two women. Charlot shut the door and eyeing her family spread out her hands and shrugged her shoulders.

“What,” she began, “do you suppose—”

But Frid interrupted her. Frid, standing in the centre of the room, urgent, and for once unconsciously dramatic, harangued her family in a sort of impassioned whisper.

“Look here,” she said, “he’s out of the way. What are we going to do? What has Patch said we did in the dining-room?”

“Obviously,” said Henry, “she told the truth.”

“She may have lied like a book.”

“Shall I whizz out and ask her?” Stephen suggested.

“My dear,” said Charlot, “the place is solid with policemen. You’d be arrested.”

“Well,” said Frid impatiently, “what shall we say? Quick. Before he comes back.”

“You will tell Alleyn the truth, Frid,” said Lord Charles.

“But, Daddy—”

“You will tell him the truth.” He looked at Lady Katherine. “After all,” he added, “nothing matters much now, after what has been already told.”

“But — all right, Daddy,” said Frid. “The truth it is. I don’t know what everybody else thinks, but to me it’s pretty obvious who did it.”

The others stared at her. Frid gestured towards the door.

“Oh,
no
,” said her father.

“Daddy, but of
course
. She’s mad. She’s stark ravers. You know how they hated each other. And Mummy, you said that you left her alone when you came here to ask one of the boys to work the lift. She must have done it then. Who else?”

“Charlie, do you think…”

Lord Charles stared at his wife. “Who else, Immy?” he said. “Who else?”

“I think Frid’s right,” said Stephen.

“Then,” said Henry, “for God’s sake come off your racket, you and Colin, and tell us who went down in the lift with them.”

Colin said: “I went down in the lift.”

“Don’t be a bloody fool,” said Stephen. “If Aunt V. did it, what do you want to muck in for? You’re mad.”

“You’re both mad,” said Henry. “If Aunt V. did it—”

“If Violet killed Gabriel,” said Charlot suddenly, “it is not our business to do anything but clear ourselves.”

“Immy, my dear—”

“If it’s you, Charlie, or one of my children, against Violet, then I’m against Violet. I believe Frid’s right. If Violet killed Gabriel she’s mad. She’s been shut up before; she’ll be shut up again. Does that matter so much? Does it matter so much, even if she didn’t do it?”

“Immy!”

“A mad woman, and, what’s more, a horrible woman. You know you think she’s horrible, Charlie. And if she wasn’t demented before, she is now. She’ll have to be shut up anyway. When I see Mr. Alleyn I shall make it perfectly clear that Violet had the opportunity. And if he asks what the relationship has been between them I shall tell him. Why not? Why, in God’s name, shouldn’t I? You yourself say we should speak the truth. What is it but the truth that Violet and Gabriel have hated each other for years? We all know they have. Let us say so. What about that woman you told me Gabriel installed—”

“Immy—”

“I know, you’ve never told the children. Tell them now. Tell them.”

“It’s all right, Mama,” said Henry, “we know all about Uncle G.’s bits of nonsense.”

“Mummy’s right,” said Frid. “For God’s sake let’s stick to it. Aunt V. won’t be hanged. It’s odds on she did it. Then let them know as much as we know. The twins have put themselves in a pretty bad light with their Sydney Carton stuff. Let’s get them out of it. If it’s a twin or Aunt V., personally I prefer the twin. If she jabbed Uncle G. in the eye with a meat skewer—”

“I know,” said Henry, “but if she didn’t?”

“If she didn’t, she only gets shut up. Which is what she ought to be anyway.”

“What,” asked Henry, “does Robin think?”

But Robin, jerked abruptly into the picture, her thoughts racing down strange corridors, could only say with desperate emphasis that she knew none of them had done it, that she would do anything to save them from suspicion. And then, catching her breath over the implication of this avowal, she stopped short and looked with something like horror into Henry’s eyes.

“It’s no good, Robin,” said Henry, “you’ve got your views. So have I. I’ve only just realized it. But I’ve got them.”

“What do you mean, Henry?” demanded Charlot, clenching her hands. “We’ve only got a few seconds. That man will be back.”

“We can still talk in French,” said Frid.

“It’s not the same. We don’t understand each other in the same way.”

“We don’t understand each other now,” said Henry.

“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Charlot.

“I mean that I don’t think Aunt V. killed Uncle G.”

“Why, why, why?”

“Because she’s asked for his body.”

“She’s mad,” said Frid.

“Mad or sane, and in my opinion she’s not as mad as all that, I don’t believe she’d want his company if she’d dug a skewer into his brain and murdered him.”

Nobody answered Henry. The silence was broken by Lady Katherine Lobe. Lady Katherine had turned her deaf, inquisitive face to each of the Lampreys as they spoke. She now rose and going to her nephew laid her hand upon his arm.

“Charlie, my dear,” she said, “what has happened to Violet? She looks like a lost soul. Charlie, what has Violet done?”

But before Lord Charles could answer his aunt the door opened, and the constable returned.

Alleyn sat at the head of the dining-room table with Fox at his right hand and Dr. Curtis at his left. Lady Wutherwood sat at the far end, with Tinkerton and the nurse standing behind her chair like a couple of eccentric parlour-maids. In the background, and just inside the door, stood a constable, looking queerly at home without his helmet. A little closer to the table and gravely attentive, Dr. Kantripp looked on at this odd interview. At their first meeting Dr. Kantripp had warned Alleyn that Lady Wutherwood was greatly shaken. “I suppose she is,” Alleyn had said; “one expects that, but you mean something else, don’t you?” And Kantripp, looking guarded, muttered about hysteria, possible momentary derangement, extreme and morbid depression. “In other words, a bit dotty,” Alleyn grunted. “Curtis had better have a look at her, if you don’t mind.” He left the doctors together and afterwards accepted Dr. Curtis’ view that Kantripp was walking like Agag but that it might be as well to wait a bit before they attempted an interview with Lady Wutherwood. “She’s got a nasty eye,” Curtis said. “I couldn’t get her to utter. Can’t say anything on a mere look at the woman but she don’t seem too bright. Kantripp’s their family doctor but he’s never seen
her
before. He seems to have got wind of a dubious history. Private home. Periods of depression. I should go slow.”

So Alleyn went slow, finished his examination of the flat and the servants, had his general interview with the family and his separate interviews with Mike and Patch. Patch, under pressure and with evidence of the liveliest reluctance, had informed him that while father and uncle talked together in the drawing-room she and her brothers and sister, together with Roberta, had lain on the dining-room floor. It had been a kind of game, she said. “Game be damned,” Alleyn had said after Patch left them. “Look at that corner of the room. It’s out of the regular beat and the carpet retains its pristine pile. That’s where they lay. There’s a smudge of brown boot polish off the toes of one of those blasted twin’s shoes. Come over here.” He knelt by the sealed door. “Yes, and there’s a bit of red close to the crack. I can hear a murmuring of voices. Have a listen, Br’er Fox.”

Fox lay on the carpet and advanced his brick-coloured face towards the crack.

“By gum,” he said, “They’re talking French. It’s the twin that doesn’t stammer. Can you beat that?
Taisez-vous, donc
. That’s French.”

“So it is,” said Alleyn. “Leave them to it, just now, Br’er Fox. Yes, there’s no doubt about it they had their ears to that sealed-up door there. Listening. Have you seen the bum, Fox?”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. It’s a matter of forty-one pounds. Lane & Eagle, house decorators of Beauchamp Place, put him in. Carpet, and a couple of arm-chairs. His name is Grimball, not Grumball. They wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Giggle is really called Higgins or something. They’re like that — funny.”

“If they continue funny through this case,” Alleyn rejoined, “it’ll be a tour de force. Let them crack jokes at the coroner and see how he likes it.”

“Grimball says they’re a very nice family.”

“So they may be. Damn’ good company and as clever as a cage full of monkeys. Theyll diddle us if we don’t look out, Br’er Fox. The Lady Friede’s as hard as they come. They’ve taken a line and they’re going to stick to it. Look at those blasted twins. The noble lords Stephen and Colin, doing a Syracuse and Ephesus comedy turn. How the devil are we to find out which of them went down in the lift?”

“The widow?” Fox suggested.

“Don’t you believe it. If they weren’t very certain of themselves they wouldn’t have taken the risk. I’ll bet you their aunt will say she didn’t know which twin it was. Equally I’ll bet you their mother knows, and has taken her cue from her lily-white boys. Of course she knows. Can a mother’s tender care muddle up the kids she bare, bad luck to them?”

“I never heard anything like it,” said Fox warmly. “Trying to work off this twin stuff on the investigating officers. It’s unheard of. You can’t
have
that sort of nonsense.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“It’s disgraceful. Come to think of it, it’s a kind of contempt.”

“It’s no good getting cross, Foxkin. Let us but once lose our tempers with the Lampreys and we’re done. Yes? Come in. Open the door, Gibson.”

The red-headed constable, who had tapped on the door, was admitted by his mate.

“Why have you left your post?” snapped Fox.

“What is it, Martin?” asked Alleyn.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought I’d better come. The Dowager Lady Wutherwood’s in the passage and wants to see you. So I thought I’d better come.”

“And as soon as you turned your back,” said Fox angrily, “they got together and agreed on the tale they’d tell.”

“They’ve already done that, sir.”

“
What
!”

“While you were there?” asked Alleyn.

“Yes, sir. They spoke in French, sir. I’ve got it down in shorthand. They speak quite good French, with the exception of Lady Patricia. I thought that before proceeding, you’d like to see what they said.”

“Here!” said Fox. “Do you understand French?”

“Yes, Mr. Fox. I lived at Concarneau until I was fifteen. I didn’t know, Mr. Alleyn, what the ruling was about listening-in under those circumstances. I don’t remember anything in the regulations as to whether it could be put in as evidence. Seeing they didn’t know.”

“We’ll look it up,” said Alleyn drily.

“Yes, sir. Will you see the Dowager Lady Wutherwood, sir?”

“Give me your notes,” said Alleyn, “and three minutes to look at them. Then bring her along. Wait a second. Did they say anything of importance?”

“They argued a good deal, sir. Principally about the two younger gentlemen. The twins. His lordship and Lady Friede wanted them to come clean. Her ladyship seemed to be frightened and rather in favour of nobody knowing which twin went down in the lift. Lord Henry was non-committal. They spoke principally about the motive against themselves, sir. I gather that Lord Charles — Lord Wutherwood—”

“Stick to Lord Charles,” said Fox irritably. “The whole thing’s lousy with lords and ladies. I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Not a bit, Brer Fox. Well, Martin?”

“It seems he’s in debt for about two thousand, sir. Pressing, I mean. He asked Lord Wutherwood to lend him two thousand and he refused.”

“Yes, I see.” Alleyn had been looking at the notes. “Well done, Martin. Now go and tell Lady Wutherwood that I shall be very pleased and grateful and all the rest of it, if she’ll be good enough to come in here. Then return to your shorthand. What’s your impression of Lady Wutherwood?”

“Well, sir, she looks very peculiar to me. Either she’s out of her mind, sir, or else she’d like everybody to think she was. That’s how she struck me, sir.”

“Indeed? Well, off you go, Martin.”

The red-headed constable went out and Fox stared at Alleyn. “We get some unexpected chaps in the force these days,” he said. “In your time, sir, you were a bit of a rarity. Now they go round splitting foreign tongues all over the place. Did you know he spoke French?”

“I did, as it happened, Br’er Fox.”

“I must get him to try some on me,” said Fox with his air of simplicity. “I don’t get on as fast as I’d like.”

“You’re getting on very nicely. Here she comes. Or rather, I fancy, here they come. I think I hear the voices of the medical gents.”

The door opened and the curious procession came in.
ii

And now Alleyn faced the woman whom he had previously begun to think of as his principal witness. It was his practice to discourage in himself any imaginative speculation, but on seeing her he could not escape the feeling that with the belated appearance of Lady Wutherwood the case had darkened. She was, he thought, such a particularly odd-looking woman. She sat very still at the foot of the table and stared at him with remarkable fixedness. The presence of Dr. Kantripp, and of the nurse and the maid, lent an air of preposterous consequence to the scene. Lady Wutherwood might almost have been holding some sort of audience. There was no doubt that she was antagonistic, but she had asked to see Alleyn and he decided that he would wait for her to open the conversation; and so it fell out that Lady Wutherwood and Alleyn, for perhaps half a minute, contemplated each other in silence across the long table.

At last she spoke. Her deep voice was unemphatic, her enunciation so level as to suggest that English was not her native tongue.

“When,” asked Lady Wutherwood, “will my husband’s body be given to me? They have taken him away. He must return.”

“If you wish it,” said Alleyn, “certainly.”

“I do wish it. When?”

“To-morrow night, perhaps?” Alleyn looked at Curtis who nodded. “To-morrow night, Lady Wutherwood.”

“What are they going to do with him?”

Curtis and Kantripp made deprecatory noises. The nurse put her hand on Lady Wutherwood’s shoulder. Tinkerton the maid, clucked thinly.

“Under the circumstances,” said Alleyn, “there will be an examination.”

“What will they do to him?”

Dr. Kantripp went to her and took her hand. “Now, now,” he said, “you must not distress yourself by thinking about these things.” He might have been a hundred miles away for all the notice she paid him. She did not withdraw her hand but he moved away, quickly and awkwardly.

“Will they do dreadful things to him?” she asked.

“The surgeon will examine the injury,” Alleyn said.

She was silent for a moment and then, on the same level note, “Before he returns,” she said, “tell them to cover his face.”

Curtis murmured something inaudible. Alleyn said: “That will be done.”

“Tell them to cover it with something heavy and thick. Close down his eyes. The eyes of the dead can see where the eyes of the living are blind. That is established, else how could they find their way, as they sometimes do, into strange houses?”

Mr. Fox wrote in his note-book; the nurse looked significantly towards Dr. Kantripp. Tinkerton, over her mistress’ shoulder, executed a little series of nods and grimaces and shakes of the head. Alleyn and Lady Wutherwood stared into each other’s faces.

“That is all,” said Lady Wutherwood, “but for one thing. It must be understood that I will not be touched or persecuted or followed. I warn you that there is a great peril in wait for anybody who intercepts me. I have a friend who guards me well. A very powerful friend. That is all.”

“Not quite,” said Alleyn. “Lady Wutherwood, if you had not asked for this interview I should have done so. You see, the circumstances of your husband’s death have obliged me to make very close inquiries.”

Without changing her posture or the fixed blankness of her gaze, she said: “You had better be careful. You are in danger.”

“I,” murmured Alleyn. “How should I be in danger?”

“My husband died because he offended against one greater than himself. I have not been told by whose agency he died. But I know the force that killed him.”

“What force is that?”

The corners of the shifting mouth moved up. Small wrinkles appeared about her eyes. Her face became a mask of an unlovely Comedy. She did not answer Alleyn’s question.

“I must tell you,” he said, “that if you know of anything that would explain even the smallest detail in the sequence of events that led to his death, you should let the police know what it is. On the other hand we cannot compel you to give information. You may think it advisable to send for your solicitor who, if he considers that you are likely to prejudice yourself by answering any question, will advise you not to do so.”

“I know very well,” said Lady Wutherwood, “by what means I may be brought to betray myself into a confession of things I have not done and words I have never uttered. But I remember Marguerite Luondman of Gebweiler and Anna Ruffa of Douzy. As for a solicitor, I have no need or desire for such protection. I am well protected. I am in no danger.”

“In that case,” said Alleyn equitably, “you will not object, perhaps, to answering one or two questions.”

She did not reply. He waited for a moment and had time to notice the scandalized expression of Mr. Fox, and the alert and speculative glances of the two doctors.

“Lady Wutherwood,” said Alleyn, “who took you down in the lift?”

She answered at once: “It seemed to be one of his nephews.”

“Seemed?”

Lady Wutherwood laughed. “Yes,” she said, “seemed.”

“I don’t understand that,” said Alleyn. “Lady Charles Lamprey asked for one of her sons to take you down in the lift, didn’t she?”

Lady Wutherwood nodded.

“And one of them came out of the flat and, in fact, entered the lift and took you down? You saw him come out? And you stood close beside him in the lift? It was one of the twins, wasn’t it?”

“I thought so, then.”

“You thought so, then,” Alleyn repeated and was silent for a moment. Lady Wutherwood laughed again and her laughter, Alleyn thought, was for all the world like the cackle of one of the witches in a traditional rendering of “Macbeth.” This idea startled him and he went back in his mind over the string of inconsequent statements to which she had treated them. He was visited by an extremely odd notion.

“Lady Wutherwood,” he began, “do you think it is possible that somebody impersonated one of the twin brothers?”

She gave him an extraordinary look and, with a movement that startled them all by its abruptness and shocking irrelevancy, wrapped her arms across her breast and hugged herself. Then with a sidelong glance, horridly knowing, she nodded again very slightly.

“Was there any recognizable mark?” asked Alleyn.

Her right hand crept up to her neck and round to the back of it. She moved her head slightly and, catching sight of the nurse, hurriedly withdrew her hand and laid one of her fingers across her lips. And through Alleyn’s thoughts ran the memory of three lines:

“Only,” thought Alleyn, “Lady Wutherwood’s finger is not choppy nor are her lips skinny. Damnation, what the devil is all this?” And aloud he said: “He stood with his back towards you in the lift?”