Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 2: Death in Ecstasy, Vintage Murder, Artists in Crime. Ngaio Marsh
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Fox locked the safe and sealed it with tape and wax. Alleyn pocketed the keys.
‘Come on out,’ he said.
‘They all returned to the sanctuary. Bailey had got the torch flaring again. The hall had taken on a new but rather ghastly lease of life. It looked like a setting for a film in extremely bad taste. The nude gods, the cubistic animals, the velvets and the elaborate ornaments flickered in the torchlight with meretricious theatricality. It was, Nigel told himself, altogether too much of a good thing. And yet, over-emphasized as it was, it did make its gesture. It was not, as it might well have been, merely silly. As the light flared up, the faces of the plaster figures flushed and seemed to move a little. The shadows under the eyes and nostrils of the Wotan wavered and the empty scowl deepened. One god seemed to puff out his cheeks, another to open and close his blank eyes. It was very still; there was no sound at all but for the roar of the naphtha. The men’s voices sounded forlorn and small. It had grown very cold.
Alleyn walked down to the chancel steps and peered out into the body of the hall.
‘I want you all up here for a moment,’ he said.
His voice seemed to echo a little. A plain-clothes man came out of the vestry and another appeared in the aisle. A constable came out of the porch.
When they were all assembled under the torch Alleyn asked them to kneel in a circle. They did this, the constable and Fox very stolidly, Bailey with morose detachment, and two plain-clothes men with an air of mild interest. Nigel was unpleasantly moved by this performance. His imagination fashioned out of shadows the figure of Cara Quayne.
Alleyn knelt with them. All their hands were shadowed by the sconce. They held them folded as Nigel showed them. They passed the cup from hand to hand, beginning with Fox who knelt in Mrs Candour’s place. Alleyn made them send it twice round the circle. Then they all stood up.
‘Notice anything?’ asked Alleyn.
Nobody spoke.
Alleyn suddenly flung the cup from him. It fell with a dull thud and the wine seeped into the carpet. Alleyn bent down and invited them all to look. In the bottom of the cup were the dregs of the wine and a tiny piece of paper.
‘You see it’s stuck to the side,’ said Alleyn.
‘When did you put it in, sir?’ asked Fox.
‘The first time round. You see, none of you noticed it. It’s much too dark. The little tube tipped up, the salt slipped out of the open end, the paper went transparent. I hadn’t coloured mine red, but still you didn’t see it.’
‘By Gum,’ said Fox.
Bailey said: ‘Cuh!’ and bent down again to examine the paper.
‘Yes,’ added Fox suddenly, ‘but how did the murderer know it would be so safe?’
‘That,’ said Alleyn, ‘is another matter altogether. I rather think it’s the crux of the whole case.’
When Nigel woke on the morning after his visit to the House of the Sacred Flame, it was with a vague sense of disquietude as though he had been visited by nightmare. As the memory of the night’s adventure came back to him it still seemed unreal. He could scarcely believe that, only a few hours ago, he had knelt under a torch among images of Nordic gods, that he had seen a woman, who seemed to be possessed of an evil spirit, drink and die horribly. He closed his eyes and the faces of the Initiates appeared again. There was Miss Wade with prim lips, Pringle talking, talking, Ogden perspiring gently, M. de Ravigne who seemed to bow his head with grotesque courtesy, Janey Jenkins, and Mrs Candour who opened her mouth wider and wider –
He jerked himself back from sleep, got out of bed, and went to his window. The rain still poured down on the roofs. Wet umbrellas bobbed up and down Chester Terrace. A milkman’s cart with a dejected and irritated pony was drawn up at the corner of Knocklatchers Row. Nigel looked down Knocklatchers Row. Perhaps he would not have been very surprised if there had been no Sign of the Sacred Flame, but there it was, swinging backwards and forwards in the wind, and underneath it he could just see the narrow entry.
He bathed, breakfasted, opened his paper and found no reference to the tragedy. So much the better. He rang up his office, got out his notes, sat down to the typewriter and worked solidly for an hour. Then he rang up Scotland Yard. Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn was in his room and would speak to Mr Bathgate.
‘Hullo!’ said Nigel with extreme cordiality.
‘What do you want?’ asked Alleyn guardedly.
‘How are you?’
‘In excellent health, thank you. What do you want?’
‘It’s just a matter of my copy –’
‘I knew it.’
‘I want to put it in as soon as possible.’
‘I’m seeing the A.C. in half an hour, and then I’m going out.’
‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
‘Come, birdie, come,’ said Alleyn.
Nigel gathered up his copy and hurried out.
He found Alleyn in his office, writing busily. The inspector grinned at Nigel.
‘You persistent devil,’ he said, ‘sit down. I won’t be five minutes.’
Nigel coyly laid the copy before him and subsided into a corner. Alleyn presently turned to the copy, read it, blue-pencilled a word or two, and then handed it back.
‘You are learning to behave quite prettily,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’ll take that straight along to Fleet Street.’
‘I’d better,’ agreed Nigel, ‘It’s front-page stuff. They’ll pull the old rag to bits for me this time. What are you up to this morning, Inspector?’
‘I’m going to Shepherd Market when I’ve seen the boss-man.’
‘Cara Quayne’s house? I’ll meet you there.’
‘Will you indeed?’
‘Don’t you want me?’
‘I’ll be very glad to see you. Don’t let any of your brother bloodsuckers in.’
‘I can assure you there is no danger of that. I’ll sweep past like a May Queen.’
‘You’d better have my card. Give it back to me – I remember your previous performances, you see.’ He flipped a card across to Nigel, ‘I feel like a form master who goes in for favourites.’
‘Oh, sir, thanks most horribly, sir. It’s frightfully decent of you, sir,’ bleated Nigel.
‘For the honour of the Big Dorm., Bathgate.’
‘You bet, sir.’
‘Personally,’ said Alleyn, ‘I consider schoolboys were less objectionable when they did talk like that.’
‘When cads were cads and a’ that?’
‘Yes. They talk like little men nowadays. They actually take refuge in irony, a commodity that should be reserved for the middle-aged. However, I maunder. Meet me at the Château Quayne in half an hour.’
‘In half an hour.’
Nigel hurried to his office where he made an impressive entry with his copy and had the intense satisfaction of seeing sub-editors tear their hair while the front page was wrecked and rewritten. A photographer was shot off to Knocklatchers