Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 2. Ngaio Marsh

is a note on today’s page: “Dine and go ‘Hail Fellow’ Criterion, Raoul, tomorrow.” I wanted to be sure she stuck to the printed date. The next page, tomorrow’s, is the one she tore out. There’s the date. She must have torn it out today.’

      ‘Things are looking up a bit, aren’t they, sir?’ ventured Fox.

      ‘Are they, Fox? Perhaps they are. And yet – it’s a sticky business, this. Light your pipe, my Foxkin, and do a bit of ‘teckery. What’s in your mind, you sly old box of tricks?’

      Fox lit his pipe, sat down, and gazed solemnly at his superior.

      ‘Come on, now,’ said Alleyn.

      ‘Well, sir, it’s a bit early to speak anything like for sure, but say the lady knew what we know about that parcel there. Say she found it out today, when the parson was out – called in to see him perhaps.’

      ‘And found the safe open?’

      ‘Might be. Sounds kind of careless, but might be. Anyway, say she found out somehow and wanted to tell him. Say he came in, read the note, and – well, sir, say he thought something would have to be done about it.’

      ‘I don’t think he has read the note, Fox.’

      ‘Don’t you, sir?’

      ‘No. We can see if his prints are on it. If he has read it I don’t think he’s a murderer.’

      ‘Why not?’ asked Nigel.

      ‘He’d have destroyed it.’

      ‘That’s so,’ admitted Fox.

      ‘But,’ Alleyn went on, ‘as I say, I don’t think he’s read it. There are no cigarette-ends of that brand about, are there?’

      They hunted round the room. Alleyn went into the bedroom and came back in a few moments.

      ‘None there,’ he said, ‘and dear Mr Garnette looks very unattractive with his mouth open. But I think we’d better look for prints in there, Bailey. There’s that open door. Did you run anything to earth in the bedroom, Fox?’

      ‘A very small trace of a powder in the wash-stand cupboard, sir. That’s all.’

      ‘Well, what about cigarette-butts?’

      ‘None here,’ announced Fox, who had examined the grate as well as all the ashtrays in the room. ‘There are several Virginians – Mr Bathgate’s and Dr Curtis’s I think they are – no Turkish anywhere.’

      ‘Then he hasn’t opened the box.’

      ‘I must say I can’t help thinking that note’s got a bearing on the case,’ said Fox.

      ‘I think you’re right, Fox. Put it in my bag, box and all. Let’s finish off and go home.’

      ‘And tomorrow?’ asked Nigel.

      ‘Tomorrow we’ll get Mr Garnette to open the surprise packet.’

      ‘What about the gentleman in question, sir?’

      ‘What about him?’

      ‘Will he be all right? All alone?’

      ‘Good heavens, Fox, what extraordinary solicitude! He’ll wake up with a hirsute tongue and a brazen belly. And he will be very, very troubled in his mind. There’s that back door.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘We’ll have to leave a couple of men here. Let’s tidy up. Put all that stuff back in the safe, Fox, will you? I’ll tackle the desk.’

      The two detectives replaced everything with extreme accuracy. Alleyn locked the safe and the desk and pocketed the keys. He strolled over to the bookcase, and as Fox packed up the police bag he murmured titles to himself: The Koran, Spiritual Experiences of a Fakir, From Wotan to Hitler, The Soul of the Lotus Bud, The Meaning and the Message, Jnana Yoga …‘Hullo, here’s something of his own invent. As I live, a little book of poems. Purple suède, Heaven help us, purple suède! Eros on Calvary and Other Poems, by Jasper Garnette. Old pig!’

      He opened the book and read.

       The grape and thorn together bind my brows;

      Delight and torment is my double mead.

      ‘Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, how inexpressibly beastly!’

      He shoved the poems back and then, with a grimace at Nigel, thrust his hand behind the books and, after a little groping, pulled out several dusty volumes, all covered in brown paper.

      ‘Petronius,’ he said, ‘and so on. This is his nasty little secret hoard. Notice the disguise, will you! Hullo, what’s this?’

      He turned to the table and held a very battered old book under the lamp.

      ‘Abberley’s Curiosities of Chemistry. What a remarkably rum old book! Published by Gasock and Hauptmann, New York, 1865. I’ve met it before somewhere. Where was it?’

      He screwed up his face with an effort to remember and, holding the book lightly in his long, fastidious hands, let it fall open.

      ‘I’ve got it,’ said Alleyn. ‘It was in the Bodleian, twenty years ago.’

      He opened his eyes and turned to Nigel. That young man was standing with his mouth agape and his eyes bulging.

      ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Alleyn.

      Nigel pointed to the book in the inspector’s hands. Fox and Alleyn both looked down.

      ‘The book had fallen open at a page headed: ‘A simple but little-known method of making sodium cyanide.’

       CHAPTER 12 Alleyn Takes Stock

      ‘Dear me!’ said Alleyn as he laid the book on the table. ‘This is a quaint coincidence.’ He paused a moment and then murmured: ‘I wonder if coincidence is quite the right word.’

      ‘H’m’ said Fox, deeply.

      ‘I’d call it the Hand of – of Fate, or Providence, or Nemeses or something,’ said Nigel.

      ‘I dare say you would – on the front page. Not this time, however.’ But Nigel was reading excitedly.

      ‘Do listen, Alleyn. It says you can make sodium cyanide from wool and washing soda.’

      ‘Really? It sounds a most unpalatable mixture.’

      ‘You have to heat them terrifically in a retort or something. It says: “it is, perhaps, a fortunate circumstance that this simple recipe is not generally known. The tyro is advised to avoid the experiment as it is attended by a certain amount of danger, so deadly is the poison thus produced.”’

      ‘Yes. Don’t blow down my neck and don’t touch the book, there’s a good chap. Bailey will have to get to work on it. Not nearly so much dust on this as on the other hidden books, you notice, Fox, and the brown paper cover is newer. The others are stained. Blast! I don’t like it at all.’

      Bailey reappeared and was given the book.

      ‘I don’t think the results will be very illuminating,’ said Alleyn. ‘Try the open page as well as the cover. What is it these books smell of?’

      He sniffed at them.

      ‘It’s those stains, I seem to imagine. It’s very faint. Perhaps I do imagine. What about you, Bailey?’

      Alleyn examined the Curiosities closely. ‘It smells faintly. There’s no stain on the cover.’ He slipped the blade of his pocket-knife beneath the brown paper and peered under it: ‘And there is no stain on the red cover of the book. There you are, Bailey.’