Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

met him once at a dinner-party some months ago. At Mardling: Mardling Manor belonging to Mr. Nikolas Markos. It’s his son who’s engaged to Prunella.”
    “The millionaire Markos, would that be?”
    “Not that I know. He certainly seems to be extremely affluent.”
    “The millionaire who buys pictures,” said Alleyn, “if that’s any guide.”
    “This one does that. He’d bought a Troy.”
    “That’s the man,” said Alleyn. “She called it
Several Pleasures
.”
    “But — how did you—? Oh, I see,” said Verity, “you’ve been to Mardling.”
    “No. The painter is my wife.”
    “Curiouser,” said Verity, after a long pause, “and curiouser.”
    “Do you find it so? I don’t quite see why.”
    “I should have said, how lovely. To be married to Troy.”
    “Well, we like it,” said Troy’s husband. “Could I get back to the matter in hand, do you think?”
    “Of course. Please,” said Verity with a jolt of nausea under her diaphragm.
    “Where were we?”
    “You asked me if I’d met Basil Smythe.”
    “
Smythe
?”
    “I should have said Schramm,” Verity amended quickly. “I believe Schramm was his mother’s maiden name. I think she wanted him to take it. He said something to that effect.”
    “When would that have happened, would you suppose?”
    “Sometime after I knew him, which was in 1951, I think,” Verity added and hoped it sounded casual.
    “How long had Mrs. Foster known him, do you imagine?”
    “Not — very long. She met him first at that same dinner-party. But,” said Verity quickly, “she’d been in the habit of going to Greengages for several years.”
    “Whereas he only took over the practise last April,” he said casually. “Do you like him? Nice sort of chap?”
    “As I said I’ve only met him that once.”
    “But you knew him before?”
    “It was — so very long ago.”
    “I don’t think you liked him very much,” he murmured as if to himself. “Or perhaps — but it doesn’t matter.”
    “Mr. Alleyn,” Verity said loudly and, to her chagrin, in an unsteady voice. “I know what was in the Will.”
    “Yes, I thought you must.”
    “And perhaps I’d better just say it — the Will — might have happened at any time in the past if Sybil had been thoroughly upset. On the rebound from a row, she could have left anything to anyone who was in favour at the time.”
    “But did she to your knowledge ever do this in the past?”
    “Perhaps she never had the same provocation in the past.”
    “Or was not sufficiently attracted?”
    “Oh,” said Verity, “she took fancies. Look at this whacking great legacy to Bruce.”
    “Bruce? Oh, yes. The gardener. She thought a lot of him, I suppose? A faithful and tried old retainer? Was that it?”
    “He’d been with her about six months and he’s middle-aged and rather like a resurrection from the more dubious pages of J. M. Barrie but Syb thought him the answer to her prayers.”
    “As far as the garden was concerned?”
    “Yes. He does my garden, too.”
    “It’s enchanting. Do you dote on him, too?”
    “No. But I must say I like him better than I did. He took trouble over Syb. He visited her once a week with flowers and I don’t think he was sucking up. I just think he puts on a bit of an act like a guide doing his sob-stuff over Mary Queen of Scots in Edinburgh Castle.”
    “I’ve never heard a guide doing sob-stuff in Edinburgh Castle.
    “They drool. When they’re not having a go at William and Mary, they get closer and closer to you and the tears seem to come into their eyes and they drool about Mary Queen of Scots. I may have been unlucky, of course. Bruce is positively taciturn in comparison. He overdoes the nature-lover bit but only perhaps because his employers encourage it. He
is
, in fact, a dedicated gardener.”
    “And he visited Mrs. Foster at Greengages?”
    “He was there that afternoon.”
    “While you were there?”
    Verity explained how Bruce and she had encountered in