Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh Page B

stood up. So did Verity. She was a tall woman but he towered over her.
    He said: “I think this business has upset you more than you realize. Will you mind if I give you what must sound like a professionally motivated word of advice? If it turns out that you’re acquainted with some episode or some piece of behaviour, perhaps quite a long way back in time, that might throw a little light on — say on the character of one or the other of the people we have discussed — don’t withhold it. You never know. By doing so you might be doing a disservice to a friend.”
    “We’re back to the Will again. Aren’t we?”
    “Oh, that? Yes. In a sense we are.”
    “You think she may have been influenced? Or that in some way it might be a cheat? Is that it?”
    “The possibility must be looked at when the terms of a Will are extravagant and totally unexpected and the Will itself is made so short a time before the death of the testator.”
    “But that’s not all? Is it? You’re not here just because Syb made a silly Will. You’re here because she died. You think it wasn’t suicide. Don’t you?”
    He waited so long and looked so kindly at her that she was answered before he spoke.
    “I’m afraid that’s it,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”
    Again he waited, expecting, perhaps, that she might ask more questions or break down but she contrived, as she put it to herself, to keep up appearances. She supposed she must have gone white because she found he had put her back in her chair. He went away and returned with a glass of water.
    “I found your kitchen,” he said. “Would you like brandy with this?”
    “No — why? There’s nothing the matter with me,” said Verity and tried to steady her hand. She took a hurried gulp of water.
    “Dizzy spell,” she improvised. “ ‘Age with stealing steps’ and all that.”
    “I don’t think he can be said to have ‘clawed you with his clutch’.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Anyway, I shan’t bother you any longer. Unless there’s something I can do?”
    “I’m perfectly all right. Thank you very much, though.”
    “Sure? I’ll be off then. Goodbye.”
    Through the drawing-room window she watched him go striding down the drive and heard a car start up in the lane.
    “Time, of course, does heal, as people say in letters of condolence,” she thought. “But they don’t mention the scars and twinges that crop up when the old wound gets an unexpected jolt. And this is a bad jolt,” thought Verity. “This is a snorter.”
    And Alleyn, being driven by Inspector Fox to Quintern Place, said: “That’s a nice intelligent creature, Br’er Fox. She’s got character and guts but she couldn’t help herself going white when I talked about Schramm. She was much concerned to establish that they hadn’t met for many years and then only once. Why? An old affair? On the whole, I can’t wait to meet Dr. Schramm.”
     
    iii
    But first they must visit Quintern Place. It came into view unmistakably as soon as they had passed through the village: a Georgian house halfway up a hill, set in front of a stand of oaks and overlooking a rose-garden, lawns, a ha-ha and a sloping field and woodlands. Facing this restrained and lovely house and separated from it by a shallow declivity, was a monstrous Victorian pile, a plethora of towers and pepper pots approached by a long avenue that opened, by way of grandiloquent gates, off the lane leading to Quintern. “That’s Mardling Manor, that is,” said Alleyn, “the residence of Mr. Nikolas Markos, who had the good sense and taste to buy Troy’s
Several Pleasures
.”
    “I wouldn’t have thought the house was quite his style,” said Mr. Fox.
    “And you’d have been dead right. I can’t imagine what possessed him to buy such a monumental piece of complacency unless it was to tease himself with an uninterrupted view of a perfect house,” said Alleyn and little knew how close to the mark he had gone.
    “Did you pay a call on the