The Ngaio Marsh Collection – A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Marsh, Ngaio]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Series - Ngaio Marsh, Crime
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2009-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

According to the Widow

Alleyn sat at the head of the dining-room table with Fox on his right hand and Dr Curtis on his left. Lady Wutherwood sat at the far end, with Tinkerton and the nurse standing behind her chair like a couple of eccentric parlour-maids. In the background, and just inside the door, stood a constable, looking queerly at home without his helmet. A little closer to the table and gravely attentive, Dr Kantripp looked on at this odd interview. At their first meeting Dr Kantripp had warned Alleyn that Lady Wutherwood was greatly shaken. ‘I suppose she is,’ Alleyn had said. ‘One expects that, but you mean something else, don’t you?’ And Kantripp, looking guarded, muttered about hysteria, possible momentary derangement, extreme and morbid depression. In other words, a bit dotty.’ Alleyn grunted. ‘Curtis had better have a look at her, if you don’t mind.’ He left the doctors together and afterwards accepted Dr Curtis’s view that Kantripp was walking like Agag but that it might be as well to wait a bit before they attempted an interview with Lady Wutherwood. ‘She’s got a nasty eye,’ Curtis said. ‘I couldn’t get her to utter. Can’t say anything on a mere look at the woman but she don’t seem too bright. Kantripp’s their family doctor but he’s never seen her before. He seems to have got wind of a dubious history. Private home. Periods of depression. I should go slow.’

So Alleyn went slow, finished his examination of the flat and the servants, had his general interview with the family and his separate interviews with Mike and Patch. Patch, under pressure and with evidence of the liveliest reluctance, had informed him that while her father and uncle talked together in the drawing-room, she and her brothers and sister, together with Roberta, had lain down on the dining-room floor. It had been a kind of game, she said. ‘Game be damned,’ Alleyn had said after Patch left them. ‘Look at that corner of the room. It’s out of the regular beat and the carpet retains its pristine pile. That’s where they lay. There’s a smudge of brown boot polish off the toes of one of those blasted twin’s shoes. Come over here.’ He knelt by the sealed door. ‘Yes, and there’s a bit of red close to the crack. I can hear a murmuring of voices. Have a listen, Br’er Fox.’

Fox lay on the carpet and advanced his brick-coloured face towards the crack.

‘By gum,’ he said, ‘they’re talking French. It’s the twin that doesn’t stammer. Can you beat that? “Taisez-vous donc.” That’s French.’

‘So it is,’ said Alleyn. ‘Leave them to it, just now, Br’er Fox. Yes, there’s no doubt about it they had their ears to that sealed-up door there. Listening. Have you seen the bum, Fox?’

‘Yes, Mr Alleyn. It’s a matter of forty-one pounds. Lane and Eagle, house decorators of Beauchamp Place, put him in. Carpet, and a couple of armchairs. His name is Grimball not Grumball. They wouldn’t know.

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