Scales of Justice (8 page)

“My dear Kitty,” said Sir George in a special voice, “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. What can one say! What can one do!”

He apparently had already said and done more than any of the others to assuage Kitty’s distress, for it began perceptibly to take on a more becoming guise. She looked into his eyes and said, “How terribly good of you to come.” He sat down beside her, began to pat her hand, noticed his son and said, “I’ll have a word with you in a moment, old boy.”

Mark was about to retire to the terrace when the door opened and his grandmother looked in. “Mark?” she said. He went quickly into the hall. “In the study,” Lady Lacklander said, and in a moment he was there with Rose sobbing bitterly in his arms.

“You need pay no attention to me,” Lady Lacklander said. “I am about to telephone New Scotland Yard. Your father tells me they have been called in, and I propose to send for Helena Alleyn’s boy.”

Mark, who was kissing Rose’s hair, left off abruptly to say, “Can you mean Chief Inspector Alleyn, Gar?”

“I don’t know what his rank is, but he used to be a nice boy twenty-five years ago before he left the Service to become a constable. Central? This is Hermione, Lady Lacklander. I want New Scotland Yard, London. The call is extremely urgent as it is concerned with murder. Yes, murder. You will oblige me by putting it through at once. Thank you.” She glanced at Mark. “In the circumstances,” she said, “I prefer to deal with a gent.”

Mark had drawn Rose to a chair and was kneeling beside her, gently wiping away her tears.

“Hullo!” Lady Lacklander said after an extremely short delay. “New Scotland Yard. This is Hermione, Lady Lacklander, speaking. I wish to speak to Mr. Roderick Alleyn. If he is not on your premises, you will no doubt know where he is to be found. I don’t know his rank…”

Her voice, aristocratic, cool, sure of itself, went steadily on. Mark dabbed at Rose’s eyes. His father, alone with Kitty in the drawing-room, muttered agitatedly, “…I’m sorry it’s hit you so hard, Kit.”

Kitty looked wanly at him. “I suppose it’s the shock,” she said, and added without rancour, “I’m not as tough as you all think.” He protested chaotically. “O,” she said quite gently, “I know what they’ll say about me. Not you, p’raps, but the others. They’ll say it’s cupboard-sorrow. ‘That’s what’s upsetting the widow,’ they’ll say. I’m the outsider, George.”

“Don’t, Kit. Kit, listen…” He began to plead with her. “There’s something I must ask you — if you’d just have a look for — you know — that thing — I mean — if it was found—”

She listened to him distractedly. “It’s awful,” George said. “I know it’s awful to talk like this now, Kitty, but all the same — all the same — with so much at stake. I know you’ll understand.” Kitty said, “Yes. All right. Yes. But let me
think.
”

Nurse Kettle out on the terrace was disturbed by the spatter of a few giant rain drops.

“There’s going to be a storm,” she said to herself. “A summer storm.”

And since she would have been out of place in the drawing-room and in the study, she took shelter in the hall. She had no sooner done so than the storm broke in a downpour over the valley of the Chyne.

Alleyn and Fox had worked late, tidying up the last phase of a tedious case of embezzlement. At twelve minutes to ten they had finished. Alleyn shut the file with a slap of his hand.

“Dreary fellow,” he said. “I hope they give him the maximum. Damn’ good riddance. Come back with me and have a drink, Br’er Fox. I’m a grass-widower and hating it. Troy and Ricky are in the country. What do you say?”

Fox drew his hand across the lower part of his face. “Well, now, Mr. Alleyn, that sounds very pleasant,” he said. “I say yes and thank you.”

“Good.” Alleyn looked round the familiar walls of the Chief Inspector’s room at New Scotland Yard. “There are occasions,” he said, “when one suddenly sees one’s natural habitat as if for the first time. It is a terrifying sensation. Come on. Let’s go while the going’s good.”

They were half-way to the door when the telephone rang. Fox said, “Ah, hell!” without any particular animosity and went back to answer it.

“Chief Inspector’s room,” he said heavily. “Well, yes, he’s here. Just.” He listened for a moment, gazing blandly at his superior. “Say I’m dead,” Alleyn suggested moodily. Fox laid his great palm over the receiver. “They make out it’s a Lady Lacklander on call from somewhere called Swevenings,” he said.

“Lady
Lacklander
? Good Lord! That’s old Sir Harold Lacklander’s widow,” Alleyn ejaculated. “What’s up with her, I wonder.”

“Chief Inspector Alleyn will take the call,” Fox said and held out the receiver.

Alleyn sat on his desk and put the receiver to his ear. An incisive elderly voice was saying “… I don’t know his rank and I don’t know whether he’s on your premises or not, but you’ll be good enough if you please to find Mr. Roderick Alleyn for me. It is Hermione, Lady Lacklander, speaking. Is that New Scotland Yard and have you heard me? I wish to speak to…”

Alleyn announced himself cautiously into the receiver. “Indeed!” the voice rejoined. “Why on earth couldn’t you say so in the first instance? Hermione Lacklander speaking. I won’t waste time reminding you about myself. You’re Helena Alleyn’s boy and I want an assurance from you. A friend of mine has just been murdered,” the voice continued, “and I hear the local police are calling in your people. I would greatly prefer you, personally, to take charge of the whole thing. That can be arranged, I imagine?”

Alleyn, controlling his astonishment, said, “I’m afraid only if the Assistant Commissioner happens to give me the job.”

“Who’s he?”

Alleyn told her.

“Put me through to him,” the voice commanded.

A second telephone began to ring. Fox answered it and in a moment held up a warning hand.

“Will you wait one second, Lady Lacklander?” Alleyn asked. Her voice, however, went incisively on, and he stifled it against his chest. “What the hell is it, Fox?” he asked irritably.

“Central office, sir. Orders for Swevenings. Homicide.”

“Blistered apes! Us?”

“Us,” said Fox stolidly.

Alleyn spoke into his own receiver. “Lady Lacklander? I
am
taking this case, it appears.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Lady Lacklander. “I suggest you look pretty sharp about it. Au revoir,” she added with unexpected modishness, and rang off.

Fox, in the meantime, had noted down instructions. “I’ll inform Mr. Alleyn,” he was saying. “Yes, very good, I’ll inform him. Thank you.” He hung up his receiver. “It’s a Colonel Cartarette,” he said. “We go to a place called Chyning in Barfordshire, where the local sergeant will meet us. Matter of two hours. Everything’s laid on down below.”

Alleyn had already collected his hat, coat and professional case. Fox followed his example. They went out together through the never-sleeping corridors.

It was a still, hot night. Sheet-lightning played fretfully over the East End. The air smelt of petrol and dust. “Why don’t we join the River Police?” Alleyn grumbled. “One long water carnival.”

A car waited for them with Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson and their gear already on board. As they drove out of the Yard, Big Ben struck ten.

“That’s a remarkable woman, Fox,” Alleyn said. “She’s got a brain like a turbine and a body like a tun. My mother, who has her share of guts, was always terrified of Hermione Lacklander.”

“Is that so, Mr. Alleyn? Her husband died only the other day, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. A quarter of a century ago he was one of my great white chiefs in the D.S. Solemn chap… just missed being brilliant. She was a force to be reckoned with even then. What’s she doing in this party? What’s the story, by the way?”

“A Colonel Maurice Cartarette found dead with head injuries by a fishing-stream. The C.C. down there says they’re all tied up with the Royal Visit at Siminster and are understaffed, anyway, so they’ve called us in.”

“Who found him?”

“A district nurse. About an hour ago.”

“Fancy,” said Alleyn mildly, and after a pause, “I wonder just why that old lady has come plunging in after me.”

“I daresay,” Fox said with great simplicity, “she has a fancy for someone of her own class.”

Alleyn replied absently, “Do you, now?” and it said something for their friendship that neither of them felt the smallest embarrassment. Alleyn continued to ruminate on the Lacklanders. “Before the war,” he said, “the old boy was Chargé d’Affaires at Zlomce. The Special Branch got involved for a time, I remember. There was a very nasty bit of leakage: a decoded message followed by the suicide of the chap concerned. He was said to have been in cahoots with known agents. I was with the Special Branch at that time and had quite a bit to do with it. Perhaps the dowager wishes to revive old memories or something. Or perhaps she merely runs the village of Swevenings, murdered colonels and all, with the same virtuosity she brought to her husband’s public life. Do you know Swevenings, Br’er Fox?”

“Can’t say I do, sir.”

“I do. Troy did a week’s painting there a summer or two ago. It’s superficially pretty and fundamentally beautiful,” Alleyn said. “Quaint as hell, but take a walk after dusk and you wouldn’t be surprised at anything you met. It’s one of the oldest in England. ‘Swevenings,’ meaning Dreams. There was some near-prehistoric set-to in the valley, I forget what, and another during Bolingbroke’s rebellion and yet another in the Civil Wars. This Colonel’s blood is not the first soldier’s, by a long chalk, to be spilt at Swevenings.”

“They
will
do it,” Fox said cryptically and with resignation. For a long time they drove on in a silence broken at long intervals by the desultory conversation of old friends.

“We’re running into a summer storm,” Alleyn said presently. Giant drops appeared on the windscreen and were followed in seconds by a blinding downpour.

“Nice set-up for field-work,” Fox grumbled.

“It may be local. Although… no, by gum, we’re nearly there. This is Chyning. Chyning: meaning, I fancy, a yawn or yawning.”

“Yawns and dreams,” Fox said. “Funny sort of district! What language would that be, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Chaucerian English, only don’t depend on me. The whole district is called the Vale of Traunce, or brown-study. It all sounds hellishly quaint, but that’s how it goes. There’s the blue lamp.”

The air smelt fresher when they got out. Rain drummed on roofs and flagstones and cascaded down the sides of houses. Alleyn led the way into a typical county police-station and was greeted by a tall sandy-haired sergeant.

“Chief Inspector Alleyn, sir? Sergeant Oliphant. Very glad to see you, sir.”

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said, introducing him. There followed a solemn shaking of hands and a lament that has become increasingly common of late years in the police force. “We’re that short of chaps in the county,” Sergeant Oliphant said, “we don’t know which way to turn if anything of this nature crops up. The Chief Constable said to me, “Can we do it, Oliphant? Suppose we call on Siminster, can we do it? And look, Mr. Alleyn, I had to say no, we can’t.”

Fox said, “T’ch.”

“Well, exactly, Mr. Fox,” Oliphant said. “If you haven’t got the chaps, it’s no good blundering in, is it? I’ve left my one P.C. in charge of the body, and that reduces my staff to me. Shall we move off, Mr. Alleyn? You’ll find it wettish.”

Alleyn and Fox accompanied the sergeant in his car while Bailey, Thompson and the Yard driver followed their lead. On the way Sergeant Oliphant gave a business-like report. Sir George Lacklander had rung up Sir James Punston, the Chief Constable, who in turn had rung Oliphant at a quarter to nine. Oliphant and his constable had then gone to Bottom Meadow and had found Dr. Mark Lacklander, Nurse Kettle and the body of Colonel Cartarette. They had taken a brief statement from Nurse Kettle and asked her to remain handy. Dr. Lacklander, who, in Oliphant’s presence, made a very brief examination of the body, had then gone to break the news to the relatives of the deceased, taking Nurse Kettle with him. The sergeant had returned to Chyning and reported to the Chief Constable, who decided to call in the Yard. The constable had remained on guard by the body with Colonel Cartarette’s spaniel, the latter having strenuously resisted all attempts to remove him.

“Did you form any opinion at all, Oliphant?” Alleyn asked. This is the most tactful remark a C.I.D. man can make to a county officer, and Oliphant coruscated under its influence.

“Not to say opinion, sir,” he said. “Not to say that. One thing I did make sure of was not to disturb anything. He’s lying on a patch of shingle screened in by a half-circle of willows and cut off on the open side by the stream. He’s lying on his right side, kind of curled up as if he’d been bowled over from a kneeling position, like. His hat was over his face. Nurse Kettle moved it when she found him, and Dr. Lacklander moved it again when he examined the wound which is in the left temple. A dirty great puncture,” the sergeant continued, easing off his official manner a point or two, “with what the doctor calls extensive fractures all round it. Quite turned my chap’s stomach, drunks-in-charge and disorderly behaviour being the full extent of his experience.”

Alleyn and Fox having chuckled in the right place, the sergeant continued. “No sign of the weapon, so far as we could make out, flashing our torches round. I was particular not to go hoofing over the ground.”

“Admirable,” said Alleyn.

“Well,” said Sergeant Oliphant, “it’s what we’re told, sir, isn’t it?”

“Notice anything at all out of the way?” Alleyn asked. The question was inspired more by kindliness than curiosity, and the sergeant’s reaction surprised him. Oliphant brought his two freckled hams of hands down on the driving-wheel and made a complicated snorting noise. “Out of the way!” he shouted. “Ah, my God, I’ll say we did. Out of the way! Tell me, now, sir, are you a fly-fisherman?”

“Only fair to middling to worse. I do when I get the chance. Why?”

“Now listen,” Sergeant Oliphant said, quite abandoning his official position. “There’s a dirty great fish in this Chyne here would turn your guts over for you. Pounds if he’s an ounce, he is. Old in cunning, he is, wary and sullen and that lordly in his lurkings and slinkings he’d break your heart. Sometimes he’ll rise like a monster,” said Sergeant Oliphant, urging his car up Watt’s Hill, “and snap, he’s took it, though that’s only three times. Once being the deceased’s doing a matter of a fortnight ago, which he left his cast in his jaws, he being a mighty fighter. And once the late squire Sir Harold Lacklander, which he lost him through being, as the man himself frankly admitted, overzealous in the playing of him, and NOW,” the sergeant shouted, “NOW, for the last and final cast, hooked, played and landed by the poor Colonel, sir, and lying there by his dead body, or I can’t tell a five-pound trout from a stickleback. Well, if he had to die, he couldn’t have had a more glorious end. The Colonel, I mean, Mr. Alleyn, not the Old ’Un,” said Sergeant Oliphant.