Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 3: Death in a White Tie, Overture to Death, Death at the Bar. Ngaio Marsh
from a severe form of carry-over. It smelt of stale cigarette butts. They were everywhere, bent double, stained red, stained brown, in ash-trays, fireplaces and waste-paper boxes; ground into the ballroom floor, dropped behind chairs, lurking in dirty cups and floating in a miserable state of disintegration among the stalks of dying flowers. Upstairs in the ladies’ dressing-room they lay in drifts of spilt powder, and in the green boudoir someone had allowed a cigarette to eat a charred track across the margin of a pie-crust table.
Alleyn and Fox stood in the green boudoir and looked at the telephone.
‘There he sat,’ said Alleyn, and once more he quoted: ‘“The cakes-and-ale feller. Might as well mix his damn brews with poison. And he’s working with –” Look, Fox, he must have sat in this chair, facing the door. He wouldn’t see anybody coming because of that very charming screen. Imagine our interloper sneaking through the door. He catches a word that arrests his attention, stops for a second and then, realising what Lord Robert is doing, comes round the screen. Lord Robert looks up: “Hullo, I didn’t see you,” and knowing he has just mentioned the Yard, pitches his lost property story and rings off. I’ve left word at the Yard that every name on that guest list is to be traced and each guest asked as soon as possible if he or she butted in on that conversation. I’m using a lot of men on this case, but the AC’s behaving very prettily, thank the Lord. Get that PC, will you?’
The constable who had been left in charge reported that Detective-Sergeant Bailey had been all over the room for prints and had gone to the Yard before lunch.
‘Is the telephone still switched through to this room?’
‘I believe so, sir. Nothing’s been touched.’
‘Fox, ring up the Yard and see if there’s anything new.’
While Fox was at the telephone Alleyn prowled about the room looking with something like despair at the evidence of so many visitors. It was useless to hope that anything conclusive would be deduced from Bailey’s efforts. They might find Lord Robert’s prints on the telephone but what was the good of that? If they could separate and classify every print that had been left in the room it would lead them exactly nowhere.
Fox turned away from the telephone.
‘They’ve got through the list of guests, sir. Very smart work. Five men on five telephones. None of the guests admit to having overheard Lord Robert, and none of the servants.’
‘That’s our line, then. Find the interloper. Somehow I thought it would come to that.’ Alleyn wandered about the room. ‘Davidson was right; it’s a pleasant room.’
‘The house belongs to an uncle of Lady Carrados, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, General Marsdon. He would appear to be a fellow of taste. The Greuze is charming. And these enamels. Where’s the offensive Cellini conversion, I wonder.’ He bent over the pie-crust table. ‘Nothing like it here. That’s funny. Davidson said it was on this table, didn’t he? It’s neither here nor anywhere else in the room. Rum! Must have belonged to one of the guests. Nothing much in it. Still, we’d better check it. What a hellish bore! All through the guests again, unless we strike it lucky! François might have noticed it sometime when he was doing the ash-trays. Better ask him.’
He rang up François, who said he knew nothing of any stray cigarette-case. Alleyn sighed and took out his notes. Fox cruised solemnly about the top landing.
‘Hi!’ called Alleyn after ten minutes. ‘Hi! Fox!’
‘Hullo, sir?’
‘I’ve been trying to piece these people’s movements together. As far as I can see, it goes something like this. Now pay attention, because it’s very muddly and half the time I won’t know what I’m talking about. Some time during the supper interlude Lady Carrados left her bag in this room. François saw Dimitri collect it and go downstairs. Miss Troy, who was dancing with Bunchy, saw him return the bag to Lady Carrados in the ballroom. Miss Troy noticed it looked much emptier than before. We don’t know if there were any witnesses to the actual moment when she left the bag, but it doesn’t matter. Bunchy saw her receive it from Dimitri. At one o’clock he rang me up to say he had a strong line on the blackmailer and the crucial conversation took place. Now, according to François, there were four people who might have overheard this conversation. Withers, Donald Potter, Sir Herbert Carrados, and the colourless Miss Harris, who may or may not have been in the lavatory, but was certainly on this landing. Someone else may have come and gone while François was getting matches for the enraged Carrados. On François’s return he went into the telephone-room and found it empty. Sounds easier when you condense it. All right. Our job is to find out if anyone else could have come upstairs, listened to the telephone, and gone down again while François was in the servants’ quarters. Withers says he heard the telephone when he was in the other sitting-room. He also says Carrados was up here at that time so, liar though no doubt he is, it looks as if he spoke the truth about that. Come on, Fox, let’s prowl.’
The gallery was typical of most large, old-fashioned London houses. The room with the telephone was at the far end, next it was a lavatory. This turned out to be a Victorian affair with a small ante-room and a general air of varnish and gloom. The inner door was half-panelled with thick clouded glass which let through a little murky daylight. Beyond it was a bedroom that had been used as a ladies’ cloakroom and last, at the top of the stairs, the second sitting-out room. Beside the door of this room was another green baize door leading to servants’ quarters and back stairs. The other side of the gallery was open and looked over the great well of the house. Alleyn leant on the balustrade and stared down the steep perspective of twisting stairs into the hall two storeys below.
‘A good vantage spot this,’ he said. ‘We’ll go down, now.’
On the next landing was the ballroom. Nothing could have looked more desolate than the great empty floor, the chairs that wore that disconcerting air of talking to each other, the musicians’ platform, littered with cigarette butts and programmes. A fine dust lay over everything and the great room echoed to their footsteps. The walls sighed a little as though the air imprisoned behind them sought endlessly for escape. Alleyn and Fox hunted about but found nothing to help them and went down the great stairs to the hall.
‘Here he stood,’ said Alleyn, ‘at the foot of the left-hand flight of stairs. Dimitri is not far off. Sir Daniel came out of the cloakroom over there on the left. The group of noisy young people was nearer the front entrance. And through this door, next the men’s cloakroom, was the buffet. Let’s have a look at it. You’ve seen all this before, Brer Fox, but you must allow me to maunder on.’
They went into the buffet.
‘It stinks like a pot-house, doesn’t it? Look at Dimitri’s neat boxes of empty champagne bottles under the tables. Gaiety at ten pounds a dozen. This is where Donald and Bridget came from in the penultimate scene and where Dimitri and Carrados spoke together just before Lord Robert left. And for how long afterwards? Look, Fox, here’s a Sherlock Holmes touch. A cigar stump lying by a long trace of its own ash. A damn good cigar and has been carefully smoked. Here’s the gentleman’s glass beside it and here, on the floor, is the broken band. A Corona-Corona.’ Alleyn sniffed at the glass. ‘Brandy. Here’s the bottle, Courvoisier ’87. I’ll wager that wasn’t broadcast among the guests. More likely to have been kept for old Carrados. Fox, ring up Dimitri and find out if Sir Herbert drank brandy and smoked a cigar when he came in here after the party. And at the same time you might ask if we can see the Carrados family in about half an hour. Then we’ll have to go on to the Halcut-Hackett group. Their house is close by here, Halkin Street. We’ll have to come back. I want to see Carrados first. See if General and Mrs Halcut-Hackett will see us in about two hours, will you, Fox?’
Fox padded off to the telephone and Alleyn went through the second door of the buffet into a back passage. Here he found the butler’s pantry. Dimitri’s supper tray was still there. ‘He did himself very well,’ thought Alleyn, noticing three or four little green-black pellets on a smeared plate. ‘Caviare. And here’s the wing of a bird picked clean. Champagne, too. Sleek Mr Dimitri, eating away like a well-fed