Surfeit of Lampreys

  “I thought I smelt black magic in Lady Wutherwood’s conversation.”

  “She didn’t start off about it to you!”

  “Well, there were some rather cryptic allusions to unseen forces.”

  “Oh, no. Really, Violet is too odd.”

  “Lady Charles,” said Alleyn, “do you think she’s at all—”

  “Dotty?”

  “Well—”

  “You needn’t be apologetic, Mr. Alleyn. Violet popped into the drawing-room on her way to see you and if she kept up the form she showed then I’m surprised that you didn’t whisk a strait jacket out of your black bag. Was she very queer?”

  “I thought her so, certainly. I wondered if it could all be put down to shock.”

  Lady Charles said nothing but solemnly shook her head.

  “No?” murmured Alleyn. “You don’t think so?”

  “No. I’m afraid I can’t honestly say I do.”

  “Has there ever been serious trouble?”

  “Well, of course, we don’t see very much of them. My husband rather lost touch with Gabriel when we were in New Zealand but we did hear, from Aunt Kit and people, that she had gone away to a private nursing-home in Devonshire. It had been recommended by old Lady Lorrimer whose husband, as everybody knows, has been under lock and key for a hundred years. We heard that Violet’s trouble comes in sort of bursts, do you know? Cycles.”

  “Is there anything of that sort in the family history?”

  “Of that one hasn’t the faintest idea. Violet is a Hungarian, or a Yugo-Slav. One or the other. Her name isn’t Violet at all. It’s something beginning with ‘Gla,’ like Gladys, but ending too ridiculously. So Gabriel called her Violet. I think her maiden name was Zadody, but I’m not sure. She was nobody that anyone knew, even in Hungaria or Yugo-Slavia, which was quite another country, of course, in Gabriel’s wild-oatish youth. Gabriel said he had found her at the Embassy. I’m afraid Charlie used to say it was at a cabaret of that name or something slightly worse. You must remember her when you were a young man at parties. Or perhaps you are too young. He had her presented, of course, and everything. She was rather spectacular in those days, and looked like a Gibson Girl who didn’t wash very often. Of course you were too young, but I remember them both very well. I believe that even then there were crises-de-nerfs.”

  “That must have been rather difficult for Lord Wutherwood.”

  “Yes, miserable for him. Luckily there were no children. Luckily for us too, I suppose, as things have turned out, although I must say I don’t think it’s the pleasantest way of becoming the head of the family.”

  Her cigarette had gone out and she lit another. Alleyn felt quite certain that there was more than a touch of bravura in this rapid flow of narrative. It was a little too bright; the inconsequence was overstressed; the rhythm somewhere at fault. He thought that he was being shown a perilous imitation of the normal Lady Charles Lamprey by a Lady Charles Lamprey who was by no means normal. Once or twice he heard the faintest suggestion of a stutter and that reminded him of Stephen who, he felt sure, was overwhelmingly present in his mother’s thoughts. Extreme maternal devotion had never seemed to Alleyn to be a sentimental or a pretty attachment, but rather a passionate concentration which, when its object was threatened, developed a painful intensity. Maternal anxiety, he thought, was the emotion that human beings most consistently misrepresent, degrading its passion into tenderness, its agony with pathos. He was too familiar with the look that appears in frightened maternal eyes to miss recognizing it in Lady Charles’s and, though he was perfectly prepared to make use of her terror, he did not enjoy the knowledge that he had stimulated it. He heard her voice go rattling on and knew that she was trying to force an impression on him. “She wants me,” he thought, “to believe that her sister-in-law is insane.”

  “…and I’m so terrified,” she was saying, “that this really will throw her completely off her balance although, to be quite honest, we all thought she was very alarming when she arrived this afternoon.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, quite often she didn’t answer when you spoke to her and then when she did speak it was all about this wretched supernatural nonsense, unseen forces, and all the rest of it. The oddest part about it was—”

  “Yes?” asked Alleyn, as she hesitated.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this.”

  “We shall be grateful if you will tell us anything that occurs to you. I think,” Alleyn added without emphasis, “that I can promise you we shall not lose our sense of proportion.”

  She glanced at Fox who was placidly contemplating his notes.

  “I’m sure you won’t,” she said. “It’s only that I’m afraid of losing mine. It’s just that it seems so strange, now, to remember what Violet said to me.”

  “What was that?”

  “It was when we were in my bedroom. Gabriel had been rather acid about Violet’s black magic, or whatever it is, and apparently she rather hated him sort of sneering at her. She sat on my bed and stared at the opposite wall until really I could have shaken her, she looked so gloomy and odd, and then suddenly she said in a very bogus voice (only somehow it wasn’t quite bogus, do you know): ‘Gabriel is in jeopardy.’ It was so melodramatic that it made one feel quite shy. She went on again, very fast, about somebody who foretold the future and had said that Gabriel’s sands were running out at a great rate. I supposed she must go in for a little fortune-telling or something, as a kind of relaxation from witchcraft. It all sounds too silly and second-rate but she herself was so wildly incoherent that I honestly did think she had gone completely dotty.”

  Lady Charles paused and looked up at Alleyn. He had not returned to his chair but stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, listening. Perhaps she read in his face something that she had not expected to see there—a hint of compassion or of regret. Her whole attitude changed. She broke into a storm of words.

  “Why do you look like that,” Lady Charles cried out. “You ought to be an effigy of a man. Don’t look as if you were sorry for somebody. I…” She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, beat twice with her closed hands on the wooden arms of her chair, and then leant towards him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid you are quite right about people’s nerves. Mr. Alleyn, it’s no use for me to beat about the bush, with you looking on at my antics. I’m not a clever or a deliberate woman. My tongue moves faster than my brain and already I am in a fair way to making a fool of myself. I think perhaps I shall do better if I’m terribly frank.”

  “I think so, too,” Alleyn said.

  “Yes. I’m sure you have guessed my view of this awful business. Everything that I have told you is quite true. I do exaggerate sometimes, I know, but not over important things, and I haven’t exaggerated or over-stressed anything that I have told you about Violet Wutherwood. I think she is quite mad. And I believe she killed her husband.”

  The point of Fox’s pencil broke with a sharp snap. He looked resignedly at it and took another from his pocket.

  “You will think,” said Lady Charles, “that I am working for my husband and my children. I know Aunt Kit told you we were practically sunk and had asked Gabriel for money. I know that will look like a pretty strong motive. I know the twins have behaved idiotically. I don’t even expect you to believe me when I tell you that it’s always been their way, when one of them is in trouble, for both to stand the racket. I realized that all these things must make you a bit wary of anything I say and I can’t expect you to be very impressed when I tell you I know, as surely as I breathe, that none of my children could, under circumstances a thousand times worse than ours, hurt any living creature. But if they were not my children, if I’d only been a looker on, like Robin Grey, only less interested, less of a partisan than Robin, I would still be certain that Gabriel was killed by his wife.”

  “It’s a perfectly tenable theory,” said Alleyn, “at present. Can you give me anything more than her condition and her
conversation in the bedroom? Motive?”

  “They had been at daggers drawn for years. Once or twice they have separated. Not legally. Gabriel would never have considered a divorce, I’m sure. He wouldn’t like the idea of displaying his failure; he would never admit that anything he did was a mistake. And I don’t suppose Violet has ever been normal enough to think of getting rid of him. She seemed to have merely settled down to hating him. And even if she had ever thought of it I don’t suppose she’d altogether fancy the idea. I mean there are certain amenities—Deepacres and the London house and all the rest of it. She could have divorced him, of course. He had a series of rather squalid little affairs that everybody knew about and nobody mentioned. They’d loathed each other for years, in a dreary sort of way, but this afternoon there was something quite different. I mean Violet seemed to be actively venomous. It was as if she had poured all her dislikes of other people or things into one enormous hatred of Gabriel. That’s how it was, exactly.”

  “I see. When do you think she could have done it?”

  “I’ve been thinking it out. You see, she left Aunt Kit and me in the bedroom round about the first time Gabriel yelled for her. She didn’t come back until after the second time he yelled, and then we both went along to the landing and I went into the drawing-room. There was no one else on the landing or in the hall.”

  “Did she seem very odd at that time?”

  “I can’t tell you how strange and ominous. I put out my hand to bring her along the passage but she drew away as thought I’d hit her and followed behind me. I was almost alarmed. I scuttled away as quickly as I could to get out of her reach. But she muttered along after me. It was like having a doubtful dog at one’s heels. At any moment I expected her to growl and snap.”

  There was a pause. Alleyn had turned aside and moved to one of the windows. Fox looked up in surprise.

  “Mr. Alleyn,” said Lady Charles, “what are you doing? You—you’re not laughing?”

  Alleyn turned round. His face was scarlet. He stood before her, his hands stretched out. “Lady Charles,” he said, “I fully deserve that you should report me and have me turned out of the force. I’ve done the unforgivable thing— there’s no excuse for me but I do apologize with all my heart.”

  “I don’t want you to be turned out of any force. But why did you laugh?”

  “It—I’m afraid the explanation will only add to the offence. I—you see—”

  “It was at me,” said Lady Charles with conviction. The strain had gone from her voice. “People do laugh at me. But what did I say? Mr. Alleyn, I insist on knowing what it was.”

  “It was nothing. There are some people who can’t hold back a nervous laugh when they hear of somebody’s death. Heaven knows a detective officer isn’t one of them, but I’m afraid that if I hear anything very sinister and dramatic related with great empressement it sometimes has that effect on me. It was the way you described Lady Wutherwood as she followed you, muttering. I—it’s no use. I’m abject.”

  “I suppose you’re not a relation of ours by any chance,” said Lady Charles thoughtfully.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You never know. All the Lampreys laugh at disastrous pieces of news so I thought you might be. We must go into it sometime. I’m a distant Lamprey myself, you know. Nothing hygienically sinister. What was your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Blandish,” said Alleyn helplessly.

  “I must ask Charlie. Blandish. But in the meantime hadn’t we better go back to poor Violet?”

  “By all means.”

  “Not that there’s very much more to say. Except that she might have done it instead of going to the lavatory or while I was in the drawing-room, although she would have to be pretty nippy to manage it then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “One other question. Can you give the name of the doctor Lady Wutherwood saw before she went to the nursing home?”

  “Good heavens, no! It was years ago.”

  “Or the nursing-home?”

  “It was in Devonshire. Could it have been on Dartmoor or am I thinking of something else?”

  “How did you get on, Maman?” asked Frid in French.

  “Not so badly,” answered her mother in the same tongue. “I have made him laugh, at least.”

  “Laugh!” Lord Charles ejaculated. “Mon Dieu, what at?”

  “I had to work for it,” said Charlot wearily. “He thinks I’m a sort of elderly enfant terrible. He thinks he made the most formidable gaffe in laughing at me. He apologized quite charmingly.”

  “I hope you didn’t overdo it, Immy.”

  “Not I, darling. He hasn’t the faintest inkling of what I was up to. Don’t worry. Soyez tranquil.”

  “Soyez tranquil,” wrote P. C. Martin faithfully, on the last page of his note-book and, with, a sigh, took a fresh one from the pocket of his tunic.

  “Blast that woman!” said Alleyn in the dining-room. “She was determined to break me up, and, damn her, so she did. I hope she thinks she got away with it.”

  “You apologized very nicely, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox. “I expect she does.”

  “We’ll have the twins, Gibson,” said Alleyn.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Perjury by Roberta

  “YOU SEE,” SAID ALLEYN, looking carefully at the twins, “you are not absolutely identical. In almost everybody the distance between the outer corner of the left-hand eye and the left-hand corner of the mouth is not precisely the same as the distance between the outer corner of the right-hand eye and the right-hand corner of the mouth. A line drawn through both eyes and prolonged is hardly ever parallel with a line drawn along the lips and prolonged. You get an open-angled and close-angled side to every face. That’s why reflection in a looking-glass of somebody you know very well always seems distorted and queer. In both of your faces, the close-angle is on the left. But in Lord Stephen the angle is the least fraction more emphatic.”

  “Is this the B-B-Bertillon system?” asked Stephen. “P-portrait parle?”

  “A version of it,” said Alleyn. “Bertillon paid great attention to ears. He divided the ear into twelve major sections and noticed a great many subdivisions. Yours are not quite identical with your brother’s. And then, of course, there’s that mole on the back of your neck. Lady Wutherwood noticed it in the lift.” He turned to Colin. “So you see you really would be rather foolish if you persisted in saying you went down in the lift. It would be a false statement and the law is not very amiable about false statements.”

  “Bad luck, Col,” said Stephen with a shaky laugh. “You’re sunk.”

  “I think you’re trying to bamboozle us, Mr. Alleyn,” Colin said. “You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance, after all. I don’t believe Aunt V. would have noticed a carbuncle, much less a mole, on anybody’s neck. She’s too dotty. I stick to my statement. I can tell you exactly what happened.”

  “I’m sure you can,” said Alleyn politely. “But do you know, I don’t think we want to hear it. You both had plenty of time to put your heads together before the police arrived. I’m sure the stories would tally to a hair’s-breadth, but I don’t think we’ll trouble you for yours. I won’t ask you for a statement. I don’t think we need bother you any longer. Good night.”

  “It’s a trap,” said Colin slowly. “I’m not going. You’ll damn well take my statement, whether you like it or not.”

  “We’re not allowed to set traps, I promise you, I should be setting a trap if I pretended not to know which of you worked the lift and so encouraged you to carry on with your comedy of errors.”

  “Do p-pipe down, Colin,” said Stephen rapidly. “It’s no go. I didn’t want you to do it. Mr. Alleyn, you’re quite right. I didn’t kill Uncle G. but, on my word of honour, I t-took him down in the lift and Colin stayed in the drawing-room. Don’t commit any more p-perjury, Col, for God’s sake, just go b-buzz off.”

  The twins, white to the lips, stared at each other
. It so chanced that each of them reflected the other’s pose to the very slant of their narrow heads. The impression made by identical twins is always startling to strangers. It is accompanied by a sensation of shifted focus. It seems to us that the physical resemblance must be an outward sign of mental unity. It is easy to believe that twins are aware of each other’s thoughts, difficult to imagine them in dissonance; and Alleyn wondered if these twins were in agreement when Colin suddenly said: “Let me stay here while you talk to Stephen, please. I’m sorry I was objectionable. I’d like to stay.”

  Alleyn did not answer and Colin added: “I won’t butt in. I’d just be here, that’s all.”

  “He knows everything about it,” Stephen said. “I t-told him.”

  “If he first tells us what he did while you were in the lift,” said Alleyn, “he may stay.”

  “Please do, Col,” said Stephen. “You’ll only make me look every kind of bloody skunk if you d-don’t.”

  “All right,” said Colin, slowly. “I’ll explain.”

  “That’s excellent,” said Alleyn. “Suppose you both sit down.”

  They sat on opposite sides of the table, facing each other.

  “I’d rather explain first of all,” Colin began, “that it’s not a new sort of stunt, our joining with the same story. It’s a kind of arrangement we’ve always had. When we were kids we fixed it up between us. I daresay it sounds pretty feeble-minded and sort of ‘ “I did it, sir!” said little Eric,’ but it doesn’t strike us like that. It’s just an arrangement. Not over everything but when there’s a really major row brewing. It doesn’t mean that I think Stephen bumped off Uncle G. I know he didn’t. He told me he didn’t. So I know.”