Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh Page A

the grounds; and how she’d told him Sybil wouldn’t be able to see him then and how Prunella had suggested later on that he left his lilies at the desk.
    “So he did just that?”
    “I think so. I suppose they both went back by the next bus.”
    “
Both
?”
    “I’d forgotten Charmless Claude.”
    “Did you say ‘Charmless’?”
    “He’s Syb’s ghastly stepson.”
    Verity explained Claude but avoided any reference to his more dubious activities, merely presenting him as a spineless drifter. She kept telling herself she ought to be on her guard with this atypical policeman in whose company she felt so inappropriately conversational. At the drop of a hat, she thought, she’d find herself actually talking about that episode of the past that she had never confided to anyone and which still persisted so rawly in her memory.
    She pulled herself together. He had asked her if Claude was the son of Sybil’s second husband.
    “No, of her first husband, Maurice Carter. She married him when she was seventeen. He was a very young widower. His first wife died in childbirth — leaving Claude, who was brought up by his grandparents. They didn’t like him very much, I’m afraid. Perhaps he might have turned out better if they had, but there it is. And then Maurice married Syb, who was in the WRENS. She was on duty somewhere in Scotland when he got an unexpected leave. He came down here to Quintern — Quintern Place is
her
house, you know — and tried to ring her up but couldn’t get through so he wrote a note. While he was doing this he was recalled urgently to London. The troop-train he caught was bombed and he was killed. She found the note afterwards. That’s a sad story, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. Was this stepson, Claude, provided for?”
    “Very well provided for, really. His father wasn’t an enormously rich man but he left a trust fund that paid for Claude’s upbringing. It still would be a reasonable standby if he didn’t contrive to lose it, as fast as it comes in. Of course,” Verity said more to herself than to Alleyn, “it’d have been different if the stamp had turned up.”
    “Did you say ‘stamp’?”
    “The Black Alexander. Maurice Carter inherited it. It was a pre-revolution Russian stamp that was withdrawn on the day it was issued because of a rather horrid little black flaw that looked like a bullet-hole in the Czar’s forehead. Apparently there was only the one specimen known to be in existence and so this one was worth some absolutely fabulous amount of money. Maurice’s own collection was medium-valuable and it went to Claude, who sold it, but the Black Alexander couldn’t be found. He was known to have taken it out of his bank the day before he died. They searched and searched but with no luck and it’s generally thought he must have had it on him when he was killed. It was a direct hit. It was bad luck for Claude about the stamp.”
    “Where is Claude now?”
    Verity said uncomfortably that he had been staying at Quintern but she didn’t know if he was still there.
    “I see. Tell me: when did Mrs. Foster remarry?”
    “In — when was it? In 1955. A large expensive stockbroker who adored her. He had a heart condition and died of it in 1964. You know,” Verity said suddenly, “when one tells the whole story, bit by bit, it turns almost into a classic tragedy, and yet, somehow one can’t see poor old Syb as a tragic figure. Except when one remembers the
look
.”
    “The look that was spoken of at the inquest?”
    “Yes. It would have been quite frightful if she, of all people, had suffered that disease.”
    After a longish pause Verity said: “When will the inquest be reopened?”
    “Quite soon. Probably early next week. I don’t think you will be called again. You’ve very helpful.”
    “In what way? No, don’t tell me,” said Verity. “I–I don’t think I want to know. I don’t think I want to be helpful.”
    “Nobody loves a policeman,” he said cheerfully and