Chapter 8: Graveyard (II)

i

May i join you?” asked Dr. Schramm. The folds from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth lifted and intensified. It was almost a Mephistophelian grin.

“Do,” said Alleyn and turned to Sister Jackson. “If Sister Jackson approves,” he said.

She looked at nothing, said nothing and compressed her mouth.

“Silence,” Dr. Schramm joked, “gives consent, I hope.” And he sat down.

“What are you drinking?” he invited.

“Not another for me, thank you,” said Alleyn.

“On duty?”

“That’s my story.”

“Dot?”

Sister Jackson stood up. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said to Alleyn and with tolerable success achieved a social manner. “I hadn’t realized it was so late.”

“It isn’t late,” said Schramm. “Sit down.”

She sat down. “First round to the doctor,” thought Alleyn.

“The bell’s by you, Alleyn,” said Schramm. “Do you mind?”

Alleyn pressed the wall-bell above his head. Schramm had leant forward. Alleyn caught a great wave of whiskey and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and not quite in focus.

“I happened to be passing,” he chatted. He inclined his head toward Sister Jackson, “I noticed your car. And yours, Superintendent.”

“Sister Jackson has been kind enough to clear up a detail for us.”

“That’s what’s known as ‘helping the police in their investigation,’ isn’t it? With grim connotations as a rule.”

“You’ve been reading the popular press,” said Alleyn.

The waiter came in. Schramm ordered a large Scotch. “Sure?” he asked them and then, to the waiter. “Correction. Make that two large Scotches.”

Alleyn said: “Not for me. Really.”

“Two large Scotches,” Schramm repeated on a high note. The waiter glanced doubtfully at Alleyn.

“You heard what I said,” Schram insisted. “Two large Scotches.”

Alleyn thought: “This is the sort of situation where one could do with the odd drop of omnipotence. One wrong move from me and it’ll be a balls-up.”

Complete silence set in. The waiter came and went. Dr. Schramm downed one of the two double whiskeys very quickly. The bar-parlour clock ticked. He continued to smile and began on the second whiskey slowly with concentration: absorbing it and cradling the glass. Sister Jackson remained perfectly still.

“What’s she been telling you?” Schramm suddenly demanded. “She’s an inventive lady. You ought to realize that. To be quite, quite frank and honest she’s a liar of the first water. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

“You followed me.”

“It’s some considerable time since I left off doing that, darling.”

Alleyn had the passing thought that it would be nice to hit Dr. Schramm.

“I realy must insist,” Schramm said. “I’m sorry, but you have seen for yourself how things are, here. I realize, perf’ly well, that you will think I had a motive for this crime, if crime it was. Because I am a legatee I’m a suspect. So of course it’s no good my saying that I asked Sybil Foster to marry me. Not,” he said wagging his finger at Alleyn, “not because I’d got my sights set on her money but because I loved her. Which I did, and that,” he added, staring at Sister Jackson, “is precisely where the trouble lies.” His speech was now all over the place like an actor’s in a comic drunken scene. “You wouldn’t have minded if it had been like that. You wouldn’t have minded all that much if you believed I’d come back earlier and killed her for her money. You really are a bitch, aren’t you, Dotty? My God, you even threatened to take to her yourself. Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? Where’s the bloody waiter?”

He got to his feet, lurched across the table and fetched up with the palms of his hands on the wall, the left supporting him and the right clamped down over the bell-push which could be heard distantly to operate. His face was within three inches of Alleyn’s. Sister Jackson shrank back in her chair.

“Disgusting!” she said.

Alleyn detached Dr. Schramm from the wall and replaced him in his chair. He then moved over to the door, anticipating the return of the waiter. When the man arrived Alleyn showed his credentials.

“The gentleman’s had as much as is good for him,” he said. “Let me handle it. There’s a side door, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes,” said the waiter, looking dubious. “Sir,” he added.

“He’s going to order another Scotch. Can you cook up a poor single to look like a double? Here — this’ll settle the lot and forget the change. Right?”

“Well, thank you very much, sir,” said the waiter, suddenly avid with curiosity and gratification. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Waiter!” shouted Dr. Schramm. “Same ’gain.”

“There’s your cue,” said Alleyn.

“What’ll I say to him?”

“ ‘Anon, anon, sir’ would do.”

“Would that be Shakespeare?” hazarded the waiter.

“It would, indeed.”

“Waiter!”

“Anon, anon, sir,” said the waiter self-consciously. He collected the empty glasses and hurried away.

“ ’Strordinary waiter,” said Dr. Schramm. “As I was saying. I insist on being informed for reasons that I shall make ’bundantly clear. What’s she said? ’Bout me?”

“You didn’t feature in our conversation,” said Alleyn.

“That’s what you say.”

Sister Jackson, with a groggy and terrified return to something like her habitual manner, said, “I wouldn’t demean myself.” She turned on Alleyn. “You’re mad,” she said, exactly as if there had been no break in their exchange. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was asleep.”

“Why didn’t you report your visit, then?” Alleyn said.

“It didn’t matter.”

“Oh, nonsense. It would have established, if true, that she was alive at that time.”

With one of those baffling returns to apparent sobriety by which drunken persons sometimes bewilder us, Dr. Scbxamm said: “Do I understand, Sister, that you visited her in her room?”

Sister Jackson ignored him. Alleyn said: “At about nine o’clock.”

“And didn’t report it? Why? Why?” He appealed to Alleyn.

“I don’t know. Perhaps because she was afraid. Perhaps because—”

Sister Jackson gave a strangulated cry. “No! No, for God’s sake! He’ll get it all wrong. He’ll jump to conclusions. It wasn’t like that. She was asleep. Natural sleep. There was nothing the matter with her.”

The waiter came back with a single glass, half full.

“Take that away,” Schram ordered. “I’ve got to have a clear head. Bring some ice. Bring me a lot of ice.”

The waiter looked at Alleyn, who nodded. He went out

“I’m going,” said Sister Jackson.—

“You’ll stay where you are unless you want a clip over the ear.”

“And you,” said Alleyn, “will stay where you are unless you want to be run in. Behave yourself.”

Schramm stared at him for a moment. He said something that sounded like: “Look who’s talking” and took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast coat-pocket, laid it on the table and began to fold it diagonally. The waiter reappeared with a jug full of ice.

“I really ought to mention this to the manager, sir,” he murmured. “If he gets noisy again, I’ll have to.”

“I’ll answer for you. Tell the manager it’s an urgent police matter. Give him my card. Here you are.”

“It — it wouldn’t be about that business over at Greengages, Would it?”

“Yes, it would. Give me the ice and vanish, there’s a good chap.”

Alleyn put the jug on the table. Schramm with shaking hands began to lay ice on his folded handkerchief.

“Sister,” he said impatiently. “Make a pack, if you please.”

To Alleyn’s utter astonishment she did so in a very professional manner. Schramm loosened his tie and opened his shirt. It was as if they both responded like Pavlovian dogs to some behaviouristic prompting. He rested his forehead on the table and she placed the pack of ice on the back of his neck. He gasped. A trickle of water ran down his jawline. “Keep it up,” he ordered and shivered.