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

‘But why? Why not an accident? That dog, now: she is dangerous. I’ve told him so, over and over again.’

‘There are certain appearances: things that don’t quite tally. We must clear them up before we can come to any conclusion. There must, of course, be an inquest. And that is why,’ Alleyn said cheerfully, ‘I shall have to ask you any number of questions all of which will sound ridiculous and most of which, I dare say, will turn out to be just that and no more.’

It was at this juncture that Fox joined them, his excessively bland demeanour indicating, to Alleyn at least, that he had achieved his object and secured Pixie’s leash. The interview continued. Fox, as usual, managed to settle himself behind the subject and to take notes quite openly and yet entirely unnoticed. He had a talent for this sort of thing.

Mr Period’s conversation continued to be jumpy and disjointed, but gradually a fairly comprehensive picture of his ménage emerged. Alleyn heard of Cartell’s sister who was, of course, deeply shocked. ‘One of those red women who don’t normally seem to feel anything except the heat,’ Mr Period said oddly. ‘Never wear gloves and look, don’t you know, as if they never sit on anything but their hats or a shooting-stick. But I assure you she’s dreadfully cut up, poor Connie.’

Alleyn felt that Mr Period had invented this definition of Miss Cartell long ago and was so much in the habit of letting fly with it that it had escaped him involuntarily.

‘I mustn’t be naughty,’ he said unhappily. ‘Poor Connie!’ and looked exquisitely uncomfortable.

‘Apart from Miss Cartell and Lady Bantling, who I suppose is in one sense a connection or an ex-connection, are there any near relations?’

‘None that one would call near. It’s an old family,’ Mr Period said with a pale glance at his ruling passion, ‘but going – going. Indeed, I fancy he and Connie are the last. Sad.’

Alleyn said: ‘I’m afraid I shall have to ask you for an account of yesterday’s activities. I really am very sorry to pester you like this when you’ve had such a shock, but there it is. “Duty, duty must be done.”’

Mr Period brightened momentarily at this Gilbertian reference and even dismally hummed the tune, but the next second he was in the doldrums again. He worked backwards through the events of the previous day, starting with his own arrival in the lane, driven by Lady Bantling, at twenty past eleven. The plank bridge over the drain had supported him perfectly: the lamp was alight. As he approached the house he saw Mr Cartell at his bedroom window, which was wide open. Mr Cartell never, Mr Period explained, went to bed before one o’clock when he took Pixie out, but he often pottered about his room for hours before he retired. Alleyn thought he detected a note of petulance and also of extreme reticence.

‘I think,’ Mr Period said restlessly, ‘that Hal must have heard me coming home. He was at his window. He seemed – ah – he seemed to be perfectly well.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘I – ah – I – ah – I did just call out something after I came upstairs. He replied. I don’t remember – However!’

Mr Period himself, it transpired, had gone to bed, but not to sleep as the arrival and departure of treasure-hunters in the lane was disturbing. However, the last couple had gone before midnight and he had dozed off.

‘Did you wake again?’

‘That’s what’s so appalling to think of. I did. At one o’clock when he took Pixie out. She made the usual disturbance, barking and whining. I heard it. I’m afraid I cursed it. Then it stopped.’

‘And did you go to sleep again?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. Yes.’

‘Were you disturbed again?’

Mr Period opened his mouth and remained agape for some seconds and then said, ‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Nobody disturbed me,’ Mr Period said and looked perfectly wretched.

Alleyn took him back through the day. It was with reluctance that he was brought to admit that Mr Cartell had entertained his sister and two acquaintances to luncheon. As an afterthought he remarked that Lady Bantling and her son, Andrew Bantling, had been there for drinks.

‘Who,’ Alleyn asked, ‘were the acquaintances?’ and was told, sketchily, about Mary Ralston, Miss Cartell’s ward, and her friend, Leonard Leiss. At the Yard, Alleyn was often heard to lament the inadequacy of his memory, an affectation which was tolerantly indulged by his colleagues. His memory was in fact like any other senior detective-officer’s, very highly trained, and in this instance it at once recalled the paragraph in the Police Gazette of some months ago in which the name and portrait-parlé of Leonard Leiss had appeared together with an account of his activities which were varied and dubious. He had started life in Bermondsey, shown some promise, achieved grammar-school status and come under the protection of a benevolent spinster whom he subsequently robbed and deserted. This episode was followed by an association with a flick-knife gang and an interval of luxury spent with a lady of greater wealth than discretion, and employment as a chauffeur with forged references. There had been two convictions. ‘Passes himself off,’ the Police Gazette had concluded ‘as a person of superior social status.’

‘Is Mr Leiss,’ Alleyn asked, ‘a young man of about twenty-seven? Dark, of pale complexion, rather too-smartly dressed and wearing a green ring on the signet finger?’

‘Oh, dear!’ Mr Period said helplessly. ‘I suppose Raikes has told you. Yes. Alas, he is!’

After that it was not hard to induce a general lament upon the regrettability of Leonard. Although Sergeant Raikes had in fact not yet reported the affair of the Scorpion sports-car, Mr Period either took it for granted that he had done so or recognized the inevitability of coming round to it before long. He said enough for Alleyn to get a fair idea of what had happened. Leonard, Mr Period concluded, was a really rather dreadful young person whom it would be the greatest mistake to encourage.

‘When I tell you, my dear fellow, that he leaned back in his chair at luncheon and positively whistled? Sang even! I promise! And the girl joined in! A terrible fellow! Poor Connie should have sent him packing at the first glance.’

‘Mr Cartell thought so too, I dare say?’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Mr Period, waving it away. ‘Yes, indeed. Oh, rather!’

‘To your knowledge had he any enemies? That sounds melodramatic, but had he? Or, to put it another way, do you know of anyone to whom he might have done any damage if he had lived?’

There was a long pause. From the lane came the sound of a car in low gear. Alleyn could see through the window that a canvas screen had been erected. His colleagues, evidently, had arrived.

‘I’m just trying to think,’ said Mr Period. He turned sheet-white. ‘Not in the sense you mean. No. Unless – but, no.’

‘Unless?’

‘You see, Alleyn, one does follow you. One does realize the implication.’

‘Naturally,’ Alleyn said. ‘It’s perfectly obvious, I’m sure. If a trap was laid for Mr Cartell last night, I should like to know if there’s anyone who might have had some motive in laying it.’

‘A booby-trap, for instance?’ He stared at Alleyn, his rather prominent front teeth closed over his underlip. ‘Of course I don’t know what you’ve found. I – I – had to go out there and – and identify him, but frankly, it distressed me very much and I didn’t notice – But, had, for instance, the planks over the ditch – had they been interfered with?’

‘Yes,’ said Alleyn.

‘Oh, my God! I see. Well, then; might it not all have been meant for a joke? A very silly, dangerous one, but still no more than a booby-trap? Um? Some of those young people in the treasure hunt. Yes!’ Mr Period ejaculated. ‘Now, isn’t that a possibility? Someone had moved the planks and poor Harold fell, you know, and perhaps he knocked himself out and then, while he was lying unconscious, may not a couple – they hunted in couples – have come along and – inadvertently dislodged the drain-pipe?’

‘You try dislodging one of those pipes,’ Alleyn said dryly. ‘It could scarcely be done inadvertently, I think.’

‘Then – then: even done deliberately out of sheer exuberance and not knowing he was there. A prank! One of those silly pranks. They were a high-spirited lot.’

‘I wonder if you can give me their names?’

As most of them had come from the county, Mr Period was able to do this. He got up to twenty-four, said he thought that was all, and then boggled.

‘Was there somebody else?’

‘In point of fact – yes. By a piece of what I can only describe, I’m afraid, as sheer effrontery, the wretched Leiss and that tiresome gel, Mary Ralston, got themselves asked. Desirée is quite hopelessly good-natured. Now he,’ Mr Period said quickly, ‘in my opinion would certainly be capable of going too far – capable de tout. But I shouldn’t say that. No. All the same, Alleyn, an accident resulting from some piece of comparatively innocent horse-play would not be as appalling as – as –’

‘As murder?’

Mr Period flung up his hands. ‘Alas!’ he said. ‘Yes. Of course, I’ve no real knowledge of how you go to work, but you’ve examined the ground no doubt. One reads of such astonishing deductions. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask.’

‘Why not?’ Alleyn said amiably. ‘The answer’s regrettably simple. At the moment there are no deductions, only circumstances. And in point of fact there’s nothing, as far as we’ve gone, to contradict your theory of a sort of double-barrelled piece of hooliganism. Somebody gets the enchanting idea of rearranging the planks. Somebody else gets the even more amusing idea of dislodging a main sewer pipe. The victim of the earlier jeu d’esprit, by an unfortunate coincidence, becomes the victim of the second.’

‘Of course, if you put it like that –’

‘Coincidences do happen with unbelievable frequency. I sometimes think they’re the occupational hazards of police work. So far, for all we’ve seen, there’s no reason to suppose that Mr Cartell has not been the victim of one of them. Unless,’ Alleyn said, ‘you count this.’