Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water

Raikes made a non-committal noise and looked at Alleyn.

‘I think you do, you know, Sergeant,’ Alleyn said and the foreman, gratified, continued:

‘So we got ’im out like you said, sir. It was a very nasty job, what with the depth and the wet and the state he was in. And once out – finish! Gone. No mistake about it. So we give the alarm in the house there and they take a fit of the horrors and fetch the doctor.’

‘Good,’ Alleyn said, ‘couldn’t be clearer. Now, look here. You can see pretty well where he was lying, although, of course, the impression has been trodden out a bit. Unavoidably. Now, the head was about there, I take it, so that he was not directly under the place where the planks had been laid, but at an angle to it. The feet beneath, the head out to the left. The left hand, now. Was it stretched out ahead of him? Like that? With the arm bent? Was the right arm extended – so?’

The foreman and his mates received this with grudging approval. One of the mates said: ‘Dead right, innit?’ and the other: ‘Near enough.’ The foreman blew a faint appreciative whistle.

‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘he’s clutching a clod of mud and you can see where the fingers dragged down the side of the ditch, can’t you? All right. Was one plank – how? Half under him or what?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

Superintendent Williams said: ‘You can see where the planks were placed all right, before they fell. Clear as mud, and mud’s the word in this outfit. The ends near the gate were only just balanced on the edge. Look at the marks where they scraped down the side. Bound to give way as soon as he put his weight on them.’

The men broke into an angry expostulation. They’d never left them like that. They’d left them safe: overlapping the bank by a good six inches at each side; a firm bridge.

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said, ‘you can see that, Williams. There are the old marks. Trodden down but there, undoubtedly.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the foreman pointedly.

‘Now then, let’s have a look at this lamp,’ Alleyn suggested. Using the ladder, they retrieved it from its bed in the ditch, about two feet above the place where the body had lain. It was smothered in mud but unbroken. The men pointed out an iron stanchion from which it had been suspended. This was uprooted and lying near the edge of the drain.

‘The lamp was lit when you knocked off yesterday, was it?’

‘Same as the others and they was still burning, see, when we come on the job this morning.’

Alleyn murmured: ‘Look at this, Fox.’ He turned the lamp towards Fox who peered into it.

‘Been turned right down,’ he said under his breath. ‘Hard down.’

‘Take charge of it, will you?’

Alleyn rejoined the men. ‘One more point,’ he said. ‘How did you leave the drain-pipe yesterday evening? Was it laid out in that gap, end to end with the others?’

‘That’s right,’ they said.

‘Immediately above the place where the body was found?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

The foreman looked at his mates and then burst out again with some violence. ‘And if anyone tries to tell you it could be moved be accident you can tell him he ought to get his head read. Them pipes is main sewer pipes. It takes a crane to shift them, the way we’ve left them, and only a lever will roll them in. Now! Try it out on one of the others if you don’t believe me. Try it. That’s all.’

‘I believe you very readily,’ Alleyn said. ‘And I think that’s all we need bother you about at the moment. We’ll get out a written record of everything you’ve told us and ask you to call at the station and look it over. If it’s in order, we’ll want you to sign it. If it’s not, you’ll no doubt help us by putting it right. You’ve acted very properly throughout as I’m sure Mr Williams and Sergeant Raikes will be the first to agree.’

‘There you are,’ Williams said. ‘No complaints.’

Huffily reassured, the men retired.

‘The first thing I’d like to know, Bob,’ Alleyn said, ‘is what the devil’s been going on round this dump? Look at it. You’d think the whole village had been holding May Day revels over it. Women in evening shoes, women in brogues. Men in heavy shoes, men in light shoes, and the whole damn’ mess overtrodden, of course, by working boots. Most of it went on before the event, all of it except the boots, I fancy, but what the hell was it about?’

‘Some sort of daft party,’ Williams said. ‘Cavorting through the village, they were. We’ve had complaints. It was up at the big house, Baynesholme Manor.’

‘One of Lady Bantling’s little frolics,’ Dr Elekton observed dryly. ‘It seems to have ended in a dog-fight. I was called out at two thirty to bandage her husband’s hand. They’d broken up by then.’

‘Can you be talking about Desirée, Lady Bantling?’

‘That’s the lady. The main object of the party was a treasure hunt, I understand.’

‘A hideous curse on it,’ Alleyn said heartily. ‘We’ve about as much hope of disentangling anything useful in the way of footprints as you’d get in a wine press. How long did it go on?’

‘The noise abated before I went to bed,’ Dr Elekton said, ‘which was at twelve. As I’ve mentioned, I was dragged out again.’

‘Well, at least we’ll be able to find out if the planks and lantern were untouched until then. In the meantime we’d better go through the hilarious farce of keeping our own boots off the area under investigation. What’s this? Wait a jiffy.’

He was standing near the end of one of the drain-pipes. It lay across a slight depression that looked as if it had been scooped out. From this he drew a piece of blue letter-paper. Williams looked over his shoulder.

‘Poetry,’ Williams said disgustedly.

The two lines had been amateurishly typed. Alleyn read them aloud.

‘If you don’t know what to do

Think it over in the loo.’

‘Elegant, I must say!’ Dr Elekton ejaculated.

‘That’ll be a clue, no doubt,’ Fox said, and Alleyn gave it to him.

‘I wish the rest of the job was as explicit,’ he remarked.

‘What,’ Williams asked, ‘do you make of it, Alleyn? Any chance of accident?’

‘What do you think yourself?’

‘I’d say, none.’

‘And so would I. Take a look at it. The planks had been dragged forward until the ends were only just supported by the lip of the bank. There’s one print, the deceased’s by the look of it, on the original traces of the planks before they were moved. It suggests that he came through the gate, where the path is hard and hasn’t taken an impression. I think he had his torch in his left hand. He stepped on the trace and then on the planks which gave under him. I should say he pitched forward as he fell, dropping his torch, and one of the planks pitched back, striking him in the face. That’s guesswork, but I think Elekton, that when he’s cleaned up, you’ll find the nose is broken. As he was face down in the mud, the plank seems a possible explanation. All right. The lantern was suspended from an iron stanchion. The stanchion had been driven into the earth at an angle and overhung the edge between the displaced drain-pipe and its neighbour. And, by the way, it seems to have been jammed in twice: there’s a second hole nearby. The lantern would be out of reach for him and he couldn’t have grabbed it. How big is the dog?’

‘What’s that?’ Williams asked, startled.

‘Prints that have escaped the boots of the drain-layers, suggest a large dog.’

‘Pixie,’ said Sergeant Raikes who had been silent for a considerable time.

‘Oh!’ said Superintendent Williams disgustedly. ‘Her.’

‘It’s a dirty great mongrel of a thing, Mr Alleyn,’ Raikes offered. ‘The deceased gentleman called it a boxer. He was in the habit of bringing it out here before he went to bed, which was at one o’clock, regular as clockwork. It’s a noisy brute. There have been,’ Raikes added, sounding a leitmotiv, ‘complaints about Pixie.’