Scales of Justice (21 page)

“Except that if we’re right in our unblushing conjectures, Fox, Lady Lacklander overheard the Colonel give Chapter 7 to Mr. Phinn; in which case, if any of the Lacklanders were after blood, Mr. Phinn’s would be the more logical blood to tap.”

“Lady Lacklander may not have heard much of what they said.”

“In which case, why is she so cagey about it all now, and what did she and the Colonel talk about afterwards?”

“Ah, blast!” said Fox in disgust. “Well, then, it may be that the memoirs and Chapter 7 and Who-Stole-the-Secret-Document-in-Zlomce haven’t got anything to do with the case.”

“My feeling is that they do belong but are not of the first importance.”

“Well, Mr. Alleyn, holding the view you do hold, it’s the only explanation that fits.”

“Quite so. And I tell you what, Fox, motive, as usual, is a secondary consideration. And here is Chyning and a petrol pump and here (hold on to your hat, Fox; down, down, little flutterer) is the Jolly Kettle filling up a newly painted car which I’ll swear she calls by a pet name. If you can control yourself, we’ll pull in for some petrol. Good morning, Miss Kettle.”

“The top of the morning to you, Chief,” said Nurse Kettle turning a beaming face upon them. She slapped the back of her car as if it were a rump. “Having her elevenses,” she said. “First time we’ve met for a fortnight on account she’s been having her face lifted. And how
are
you?”

“Bearing up,” Alleyn said, getting out of the car. “Inspector Fox is turning rather short-tempered.”

Fox ignored him. “Very nice little car, Miss Kettle,” he said.

“Araminta? She’s a good steady girl on the whole,” said Nurse Kettle, remorselessly jolly. “I’m just taking her out to see a case of lumbago.”

“Commander Syce?” Alleyn ventured.

“That’s right.”

“He is completely recovered.”

“You don’t say,” Nurse Kettle rejoined, looking rather disconcerted. “And him tied up in knots last evening. Fancy!”

“He was a cot case, I understand, when you left him round about eight o’clock last night.”

“
Very
sorry for ourselves we were, yes.”

“And yet,” Alleyn said, “Mr. Phinn declares that at a quarter past eight Commander Syce was loosing off arrows from his sixty-pound bow.”

Nurse Kettle was scarlet to the roots of her mouse-coloured hair. Alleyn heard his colleague struggling with some subterranean expression of sympathy.

“Well, fancy!” Nurse Kettle was saying in a high voice. “There’s ’bago for you! Now you see it, now you don’t.” And she illustrated this aphorism with sharp snaps of her finger and thumb.

Fox said in an unnatural voice, “Are you sure, Miss Kettle, that the Commander wasn’t having you on? Excuse the suggestion.”

Nurse Kettle threw him a glance that might perhaps be best described as uneasily roguish.

“And why not?” she asked. “Maybe he was. But not for the reason you mere men suppose.”

She got into her car with alacrity and sounded her horn. “Home, John, and don’t spare the horses,” she cried waggishly and drove away in what was evidently an agony of self-consciousness.

“Unless you can develop a deep-seated and obstinate malady, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said, “you haven’t got a hope.”

“A thoroughly nice woman,” Fox said and added ambiguously, “What a pity!”

They got their petrol and drove on to the police station.

Here Sergeant Oliphant awaited them with two messages from Scotland Yard.

“Nice work,” Alleyn said. “Damn’ quick.”

He read aloud the first message. “Information re trout scales checked with Natural History Museum, Royal Piscatorial Society, Institute for Preservation of British Trout Streams, and D.R. S. K. K. Solomon, expert and leading authority. All confirm that microscopically your two trout cannot exhibit precisely the same characteristics in scales. Cartarette regarded an authority.”

“Fine!” said Inspector Fox. “Fair enough!”

Alleyn took up the second slip of paper. “Report,” he read, “on the late Sir Harold Lacklander’s will.” He read to himself for a minute, then looked up. “Couldn’t be simpler,” he said. “With the exception of the usual group of legacies to dependents the whole lot goes to the widow and to the son, upon whom most of it’s entailed.”

“What Miss Kettle told us.”

“Exactly. Now for the third. Here we are. Report on Commander Geoffrey Syce, R.N., retired. Singapore, March 1, 195- to April 9, 195-. Serving in H. M. S. — , based on Singapore.

Shore duty. Activities, apart from duties: At first, noticeably quiet tastes and habits. Accepted usual invitations but spent considerable time alone, sketching. Later, cohabited with a so-called Miss Kitty de Vere, whom he is believed to have met at a taxi-dance. Can follow up history of de Vere if required. Have ascertained that Syce rented apartment occupied by de Vere, who subsequently met and married Colonel Maurice Cartarette, to whom she is believed to have been introduced by Syce. Sources—”

There followed a number of names, obtained from the Navy List, and a note to say that H. M. S. — being now in port, it had been possible to obtain information through the appropriate sources at the “urgent and important” level.

Alleyn dropped the chit on Oliphant’s desk.

“Poor Cartarette,” he said with a change of voice, “and, if you like, poor Syce.”

“Or, from the other point of view,” Fox said, “poor Kitty.”

Before they returned to Swevenings, Alleyn and Fox visited Dr. Curtis in the Chyning Hospital mortuary. It was a very small mortuary attached to a sort of pocket-hospital, and there was a ghastly cosiness in the close proximity of the mall to the now irrevocably and dreadfully necrotic Colonel. Curtis, who liked to be thorough in his work, was making an extremely exhaustive autopsy and had not yet completed it. He was able to confirm that there had been an initial blow, followed, it seemed, rather than preceded by, a puncture, but that neither the blow nor the puncture quite accounted for some of the multiple injuries, which were the result, he thought, of pressure.
Contrecoup,
he said, was present in a very marked degree. He would not entirely dismiss Commander Syce’s arrows nor Lady Lacklander’s umbrella spike, but he thought her shooting-stick the most likely of the sharp instruments produced. The examination of the shooting-stick for blood traces might bring them nearer to a settlement of this point. The paint-rag, undoubtedly, was stained with blood, which had not yet been classified. It smelt quite strongly of fish. Alleyn handed over the rest of his treasure-trove.

“As soon as you can,” he said, “do, like a good chap, get on to the fishy side of the business. Find me scales of both trout on one person’s article, and only on one person’s, and the rest will follow as the night the day.”

“You treat me,” Curtis said without malice, “like a tympanist in a jazz band perpetually dodging from one instrument to another. I’ll finish my P.M., blast you, and Willy Roskill can muck about with your damned scales.” Sir William Roskill was an eminent Home Office analyst.

“I’ll ring him up now,” Alleyn said.

“It’s all right; I’ve rung him. He’s on his way. As soon as we know anything, we’ll ring the station. What’s biting you about this case, Rory?” Dr. Curtis asked. “You’re always slinging off at the ‘expeditions’ officer and raising your cry of
festina lente.
Why the fuss and hurry? The man was only killed last night.”

“It’s a pig of a case,” Alleyn said, “and on second thoughts I’ll keep the other arrow — the bloody one. If it is blood. What the hell can I carry it in? I don’t want him to—” He looked at the collection of objects they had brought with them. “That’ll do,” he said. He slung George Lacklander’s golf bag over his shoulder, wrapped up the tip of Syce’s arrow and dropped it in.

“A pig of a case,” he repeated; “I hate its guts.”

“Why this more than another?”

But Alleyn did not answer. He was looking at the personal effects of the persons under consideration. They were laid out in neat groups along a shelf opposite the dissecting table, almost as if they were component parts of the autopsy. First came the two fish: the Old ’Un, 4 pounds of cold, defeated splendour, and beside it on a plate the bones and rags of the Colonel’s catch. Then the belongings of the men who had caught them: the Colonel’s and Mr. Phinn’s clothes, boots, fishing gear and hat. Kitty’s loud new tweed skirt and twin set. Sir George’s plus fours, stockings and shoes. Mark’s and Rose’s tennis clothes. Lady Lacklander’s tent-like garments, her sketching kit and a pair of ancient but beautifully made brogues. Alleyn stopped, stretched out a hand and lifted one of these brogues.

“Size about four,” he said. “They were hand-made by the best bootmaker in London in the days when Lady Lacklander still played golf. Here’s her name sewn in. They’ve been cleaned, but the soles are still dampish and—” He turned the shoe over and was looking at the heel. It carried miniature spikes. Alleyn looked at Fox, who, without a word, brought from the end of the shelf a kitchen plate on which were laid out, as if for some starvation-diet, the remains of the Colonel’s fish. The flap of skin with its fragment of an impression was carefully spread out. They waited in silence.

“It’ll fit all right,” Alleyn said. “Do your stuff, of course, but it’s going to fit. And the better it fits, the less I’m going to like it.”

And with this illogical observation he went out of the mortuary.

“What
is
biting him?” Dr. Curtis asked Fox.

“Ask yourself, Doctor,” Fox said. “It’s one of the kind that he’s never got, as you might say, used to.”

“Like that, is it?” Dr. Curtis, for the moment unmindful of his own terrible explicit job, muttered, “I often wonder why on earth he entered the Service.”

“I’ve never liked to enquire,” Fox said in his plain way, “but I’m sure I’m very glad he did. Well, I’ll leave you with your corpse.”

“…seeing you,” Dr. Curtis said absently, and Fox rejoined his principal. They returned to the police station, where Alleyn had a word with Sergeant Oliphant. “We’ll leave you here, Oliphant,” Alleyn said. “Sir William Roskill will probably go straight to the hospital, but as soon as there’s anything to report, he or Dr. Curtis will ring you up. Here’s a list of people I’m going to see. If I’m not at one of these places, I’ll be at another. See about applying for a warrant; we may be making an arrest before nightfall.”

“ ’T, ’t, ’t,” Sergeant Oliphant clicked. “Reely? In what name, sir? Same as you thought?”

Alleyn pointed his forefinger at a name on the list he had given the sergeant, who stared at it for some seconds, his face perfectly wooden.

“It’s not positive,” Alleyn said, “but you’d better warn your tame J.P. about the warrant in case we need it in a hurry. We’ll get along with the job now. Put a call through to Brierley and Bentwood, will you, Oliphant? Here’s the number. Ask for Mr. Timothy Bentwood and give my name.”

He listened while Sergeant Oliphant put the call through and noticed abstractedly that he did this in a quiet and business-like manner.

Alleyn said, “If Bentwood will play, this should mean the clearing-up of Chapter 7.”

Fox raised a massive finger and they both listened to Oliphant.

“O, yerse?” Oliphant was saying. “Yerse? Will you hold the line, sir, while I enquire?”

“What is it?” Alleyn demanded sharply.

Oliphant placed the palm of his vast hand over the mouthpiece. “Mr. Bentwood, sir,” he said, “is in hospital. Would you wish to speak to his secretary?”

“Damnation, blast and bloody hell!” Alleyn said. “No, I wouldn’t. Thank you, Oliphant. Come on, Fox. That little game’s gone cold. We’d better get moving. Oliphant, if we can spare the time, we’ll get something to eat at the Boy and Donkey, but on the way, we’ll make at least one call.” His finger again hovered over the list. The sergeant followed its indication.

“At Uplands?” he said. “Commander Syce?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Have everything laid on, and if you get a signal from me, come at once with suitable assistance. It’ll mean an arrest. Come on, Fox.”

He was very quiet on the way back over Watt’s Hill.

As they turned the summit and approached Jacob’s Cottage, they saw Mr. Phinn leaning over his gate with a kitten on his shoulder.

Alleyn said, “It might as well be now as later. Let’s stop.”

Fox pulled up by the gate and Alleyn got out. He walked over to the gate and Mr. Phinn blinked at him.

“Dear me, Chief Inspector,” he said, taking the kitten from his neck and caressing it, “how very recurrent you are. Quite decimalite, to coin an adjective.”

“It’s our job, you know,” Alleyn said mildly. “You’ll find we do tend to crop up.”

Mr. Phinn blinked and gave a singular little laugh. “Am I to conclude, then, that I am the subject of your interest? Or are you on your way to fresh fields of surmise and conjecture? Nunspardon, for instance. Do you perhaps envisage my Lady Brobdignagia, the Dowager Tun, the Mammoth Matriarch, stealing a tip-toe through the daisies? Or George aflame with his newly acquired dignities, thundering through the willow grove in plus fours? Or have the injuries a clinical character? Do we suspect the young Aesculapius with scalpel or probe? You are thinking I am a person of execrable taste, but the truth is there
are
other candidates for infamy. Perhaps we should look nearer at hand. At our elderly and intemperate merryman of the shaft and quiver. Or at the interesting and mysterious widow with the dubious antecedents? Really, how very footling, if you will forgive me, it all sounds, doesn’t it? What can I do for you?”

Alleyn looked at the pallid face and restless eyes. “Mr. Phinn,” he said, “will you let me have your copy of Chapter 7?”

The kitten screamed, opening its mouth and showing its tongue. Mr. Phinn relaxed his fingers, kissed it and put it down.

“Forgive me, my atom,” he said. “Run to Mother.” He opened the gate. “Shall we go in?” he suggested, and they followed him into a garden dotted about with rustic furniture of an offensive design.

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “you can refuse. I shall then have to use some other form of approach.”

“If you imagine,” Mr. Phinn said, wetting his lips, “that as far as I am concerned this Chapter 7, which I am to suppose you have seen on my desk but not read, is in any way incriminating, you are entirely mistaken. It constitutes, for me, what may perhaps be described as a contra-motive.”