Black As He Is Painted

IV Aftermath

The handling of the affair at the Ng’ombwanan Embassy was to become a classic in the annals of police procedure. Gibson, under the hard drive of a muffled fury, and with Alleyn’s co-operation, had within minutes transformed the scene into one that resembled a sort of high-toned drafting-yard. The speed with which this was accomplished was remarkable.

The guests, marshalled into the ballroom, were, as Gibson afterwards put it, “processed” through the dining-room. There they were shepherded up to a trestle table upon which the elaborate confections of Costard et Cie had been shoved aside to make room for six officers summoned from Scotland Yard. These men sat with copies of the guest list before them and with regulation tact checked off names and addresses.

Most of the guests were then encouraged to leave by a side door, a general signal having been sent out for their transport. A small group were asked, very civilly, to remain.

As Troy approached the table she saw that among the Yard officers Inspector Fox, Alleyn’s constant associate, sat at the end of the row, his left ear intermittently tickled by the tail of an elaborately presented cold pheasant. When he looked over the top of his elderly spectacles and saw her, he was momentarily transfixed. She leant down. “Yes, Br’er Fox, me,” she murmured. “Mrs. R. Alleyn, 48 Regency Close, S.W.3.”

“Fancy!” said Mr. Fox to his list. “What about getting home?” he mumbled. “All right?”

“Perfectly. Hired car. Someone’s ringing them. Rory’s fixed it.”

Mr. Fox ticked off the name, “Thank you, madam,” he said aloud. “We won’t keep you”; and so Troy went home, and not until she got there was she to realize how very churned up she had become.

The curtained pavilion had been closed and police constables posted outside. It was lit inside and glowed like some scarlet and white striped bauble in the dark garden. Distorted shadows moved, swelled and vanished across its walls. Specialists were busy within.

In a small room normally used by the controller of the household as an office, Alleyn and Gibson attempted to get some sort of sense out of Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort.

She had left off screaming but had the air of being liable to start up again at the least provocation. Her face was streaked with mascara, her mouth hung open, and she pulled incessantly at her lower lip. Beside her stood her husband, the Colonel, holding, incongruously, a bottle of smelling-salts.

Three women in lavender dresses with caps and stylish aprons sat in a row against the wall as if waiting to make an entrance in unison for some soubrettish turn. The largest of them was a police sergeant.

Behind the desk a male uniform sergeant took notes and upon it sat Alleyn, facing Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort. Gibson stood to one side, holding on to the lower half of his face as if it were his temper and had to be stifled.

Alleyn said: “Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort, we are all very sorry indeed to badger you like this, but it really is a most urgent matter. Now. I’m going to repeat, as well as I can, what I think you have been telling us, and if I go wrong please, please stop me and say so. Will you?”

“Come on, Chrissy old girl,” urged her husband. “Stiff upper lip. It’s all over now. Here!” He offered the smelling-salts but was flapped away.

“You,” Alleyn said, “were in the ladies’ cloakroom. You had gone there during the general exodus of the guests from the ballroom and were to rejoin your husband for the concert in the garden. There were no other guests in the cloakroom, but these ladies, the cloakroom attendants, were there? Right? Good. Now. You had had occasion to use one of the four lavatories, the second from the left. You were still there when the lights went out. So far, then, have we got it right?”

She nodded, rolling her gaze from Alleyn to her husband. “Now the next bit. As clearly as you can, won’t you? What happened immediately after the lights went out?”

“I couldn’t think what had happened. I mean why? I’ve told you. I really do think,” said Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort, squeezing out her voice like toothpaste, “that I might be let off. I’ve been hideously shocked, I thought I was going to be killed. Truly. Hughie—?”

“Pull yourself together, Chrissy, for God’s sake. Nobody’s killed you. Get on with it. Sooner said, sooner we’ll be shot of it.”

“You’re so hard,” she whimpered. And to Alleyn: “Isn’t he? Isn’t he hard?”

But after a little further persuasion she did get on with it.

“I was still there,” she said. “In the loo. Honestly! — Too awkward. And all the lights had gone out but there was a kind of glow outside those slatted sort of windows. And I suppose it was something to do with the performance. You know. That drumming and some sort of dance. I knew you’d be cross, Hughie, waiting for me out there and the concert started and all that, but one can’t help these things, can one?”

“All right. We all know something had upset you.”

“Yes, well they finished — the dancing and drums had finished — and — and so had I and I was nearly going when the door burst open and hit me. Hard. On — on the back. And he took hold of me. By the arm. Brutally. And threw me out. I’m bruised and shaken and suffering from shock and you keep me here. He threw me so violently that I fell. In the cloakroom. It was much darker there than in the loo. Almost pitch dark. And I lay there. And outside I could hear clapping and after that there was music and a voice. I suppose it was wonderful, but to me, lying there hurt and shocked, it was like a lost soul.”

“Go on, please.”

“And then there was that ghastly shot. Close. Shattering, in the loo. And the next thing — straight after that — he burst out and kicked me.”

“Kicked you. You mean deliberately—?”

“He fell over me,” said Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort. “Almost fell, and in so doing kicked me. And I thought now he’s going to shoot me. So of course I screamed. And screamed.”

“Yes?”

“And he bolted.”

“And then?”

“Well, then there were those three.” She indicated the attendants. “Milling about in the dark and kicking me too. By accident, of course.”

The three ladies stirred in their seats.

“Where had they come from?”

“How should I know! Well, anyway, I do know because I heard the doors bang. They’d been in the other three loos.”

“All of them?” Alleyn looked at the sergeant. She stood up. “Well?” he asked.

“To try and see Karbo, sir,” she said, scarlet-faced. “He was just outside. Singing.”

“Standing on the seats, I suppose, the lot of you.”

“Sir.”

“I’ll see you later,” Gibson threatened. “Sit down.”

“Sir.”

“Now, Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort,” Alleyn said. “What happened next?”

Someone, it appeared, had a torch, and by its light they had hauled Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort to her feet.

“Was this you?” Alleyn asked the sergeant, who said it was. Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort had continued to yell. There was a great commotion going on in the garden and other parts of the house. And then all the lights went on. “And that girl” she said, pointing at the sergeant, “that one. There. Do you know what she did!”

“Slapped your face, perhaps, to stop you screaming?”

“How she dared! After all that. And shouting questions at me. And then she had the impertinence to say she couldn’t hang round there and left me to the other two. I must say, they had the decency to give me aspirins.”

“I’m so glad,” said Alleyn politely. “Now, will you please answer the next one very carefully. Did you get any impression at all of what this man was like? There was a certain amount of reflected light from the louvres. Did you get anything like a look at him, however momentary?”

“Oh, yes,” she said quite calmly. “Yes, indeed I did. He was black.”

An appreciable silence followed this statement. Gibson cleared his throat.

“Are you sure of that? Really sure?” Alleyn asked.

“Oh, perfectly. I saw his head against the window.”

“It couldn’t, for instance, have been a white person with a black stocking over his head?”

“Oh, no. I think he had a stocking over his head but I could tell.” She glanced at her husband and lowered her voice. “Besides,” she said, “I smelt him. If you’ve lived out there as we did, you can’t mistake it.”

Her husband made a sort of corroborative noise.

“Yes?” Alleyn said. “I understand they notice the same phenomenon in us. An African friend of mine told me that it took him almost a year before he left off feeling faint in lifts during the London rush hours.”

And before anyone could remark upon this, he said: “Well, and then one of our people took over and I think from this point we can depend upon his report.” He looked at Gibson. “Unless you—?”

“No,” Gibson said. “Thanks. Nothing. We’ll have a typewritten transcript of this little chat, madam, and we’ll ask you to look it over and sign it if it seems O.K. Sorry to have troubled you.” And he added the predictable coda. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said. Alleyn wondered how much these routine civilities cost him.

The Colonel, ignoring Mr. Gibson, barked at Alleyn. “I take it I may remove my wife. She ought to see her doctor.”

“Of course. Do. Who is your doctor, Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort? Can we ring him up and ask him to meet you at your house?”

She opened her mouth and shut it again when the Colonel said: “We won’t trouble you, thank you, good evening to you.”

They had got as far as the door before Alleyn said: “Oh, by the way! Did you by any chance get the impression that the man was in some kind of uniform? Or livery?”

There was a long pause before Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort said: “I’m afraid not. No. I’ve no idea.”

“No? By the way, Colonel, are those your smelling-salts?”

The Colonel stared at him as if he were mad and then, vacantly, at the bottle in his hand.

“Mine!” he said. “Why the devil should they be mine?”

“They are mine,” said his wife, grandly. “Anyone would suppose we’d been shop-lifting. Honestly!”

She put her arm in her husband’s and, clinging to him, gazed resentfully at Alleyn.

“When that peculiar little Whipple-whatever-it-is introduced you, he might have told us you were a policeman. Come on, Hughie darling,” said Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort, and achieved quite a magnificent exit.

It had taken all of Alleyn’s tact, patience and sheer authority to get the Boomer stowed away in the library, a smallish room on the first floor. When he had recovered from the effects of shock, which must surely, Alleyn thought, have been more severe than he permitted himself to show, he developed a strong inclination to conduct enquiries on his own account.

This was extremly tricky. At the Embassy they were technically on Ng’ombwanan soil. Gibson and his Special Branch were there specifically at the invitation of the Ng’ombwanan Ambassador, and how far their authority extended in the somewhat rococo circumstance of that Ambassador having been murdered on the premises was a bit of a poser.

So, in a different key, Alleyn felt, was his own presence on the scene. The Special Branch very much likes to keep itself to itself. Fred Gibson’s frame of mind, at the moment, was one of rigidly suppressed professional chagrin and personal mortification. His initial approach would never have been made under ordinary circumstances, and now Alleyn’s presence on, as it were, the S.B.’s pitch, gave an almost grotesque twist to an already extremely delicate situation. Particularly since, with the occurrence of a homicide, the focus of responsibility might now be said to have shifted to Alleyn, in whose division the crime had taken place.

Gibson had cut through this dilemma by ringing up his principals and getting authority for himself and Alleyn with the consent of the Embassy to handle the case together. But Alleyn knew the situation could well become a very tricky one.

“Apparently,” Gibson said, “we carry on until somebody stops us. Those are my instructions, anyway. Yours, too, on three counts: your A.C., your division, and the personal request of the President.”

“Who at the moment wants to summon the entire household including the spear-carrier and harangue them in their own language.”

“Bloody farce,” Gibson mumbled.

“Yes, but if he insists — Look,” Alleyn said, “it mightn’t be such a bad idea for them to go ahead if we could understand what they were talking about.”

“Well—”

“Fred, suppose we put out a personal call for Mr. Samuel Whipplestone to come at once — you know: ‘be kind enough’ and all that. Not sound as if we’re breathing down his neck.”

“What about it—?” asked Gibson unenthusiastically.

“He speaks Ng’ombwanan. He lives five minutes away and will be home by now. No. 1, Capricorn Walk. We can ring up. Not in the book yet, I daresay, but get through,” said Alleyn to an attendant sergeant and as he went to the telephone, “Samuel Whipplestone. Send a car round. I’ll speak to him.”

“The idea being?” Mr. Gibson asked woodenly.

“We let the President address the troops — indeed, come to that, we can’t stop him, but at least we’ll know what’s being said.”

“Where is he, for God’s sake? You put him somewhere,” Mr. Gibson said, as if the President were a mislaid household utensil.

“In the library. He’s undertaken to stay there until I go back. We’ve got coppers keeping obbo in the passage.”

“I should hope so. If this was a case of the wrong victim, chummy may well be gunning for the right one.”

The sergeant was speaking on the telephone. “Superintendent Alleyn would like a word with you, sir.”

Alleyn detected in Mr. Whipplestone’s voice an overtone of occupational cool. “My dear Alleyn,” he said, “this is a most disturbing occurrence. I understand the Ambassador has been — assassinated.”

“Yes.”

“How very dreadful. Nothing could have been worse.”

“Except the intended target taking the knock.”

“Oh — I see. The President.”

“Listen,” Alleyn said and made his request.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

“I know it’s asking a lot. Damn cheek in fact. But it would take us some time to raise a neutral interpreter. It wouldn’t do for one of the Ng’ombwanans.”

“No, no, no, no, quite. Be quiet, Lucy. Yes. Very well, I’ll come.”

“I’m uncommonly grateful. You’ll find a car at your door. ’Bye.”

“Coming?” Gibson said.

“Yes. Sergeant, go and ask Mr. Fox to meet him and bring him here, will you? Pale. About sixty. Eyeglass. V.I.P. treatment.”

“Sir.”

And in a few minutes Mr. Whipplestone, stepping discreetly and having exchanged his tailcoat for a well-used smoking jacket, was shown into the room by Inspector Fox, whom Alleyn motioned to stay.

Gibson made a morose fuss of Mr. Whipplestone.

“You’ll appreciate how it is, sir. The President insists on addressing his household staff and—”

“Yes, yes. I quite understand, Mr. Gibson. Difficult for you. I wonder, could I know what happened? It doesn’t really affect the interpreter’s role, of course, but — briefly?”

“Of course you could,” Alleyn said. “Briefly then: Somebody fired a shot that you must have heard, apparently taking aim from the ladies’ loo. It hit nobody, but when the lights went up the Ambassador was lying dead in the pavilion, spitted by the ceremonial Ng’ombwanan spear that was borne behind the President. The spear-carrier was crouched a few paces back, and as far as we can make out — he speaks no English — maintains that in the dark, when everybody was milling about in a hell of a stink over the shot, he was given a chop on the neck and his spear snatched from him.”

“Do you believe this?”

“I don’t know. I was there, in the pavilion, with Troy. She was sitting next to the President and I was beside her. When the shot rang out I told her to stay put and at the same time saw the shape of the Boomer half rise and make as if to go. His figure was momentarily silhouetted against Karbo’s spotlight on the screen at the other end of the lake. I shoved him back in his chair, told him to pipe down, and moved in front of him. A split second later something crashed down at my feet. Some ass called out that the President had been shot. The Boomer and a number of others yelled for lights. They came up and — there was the Ambassador, literally pinned to the ground.”

“A mistake then?”

“That seems to be the general idea — a mistake. They were of almost equal height and similar build. Their uniforms, in silhouette, would look alike. He was speared from behind and, from behind, would show up against the spotlight screen. There’s one other point. My colleague here tells me he had two security men posted near the rear entrance to the pavilion. After the shot they say the black waiter came plunging out. They grabbed him but say he appeared to be just plain scared. That’s right, isn’t it, Fred?”

“That’s the case,” Gibson said. “The point being that while they were finding out what they’d caught, you’ve got to admit that it’s just possible in that bloody blackout, if you’ll excuse me, sir, somebody might have slipped into the pavilion.”

“Somebody?” said Mr. Whipplestone.”

“Well, anybody,” Alleyn said. “Guest, waiter, what-have-you. It’s unlikely but it’s just possible.”

“And got away again? After the — event?”

“Again — just remotely possible. And now, Sam, if you don’t mind—”

“Of course.”

“Where do they hold this tribal gathering, Fred? The President said the ballroom. O.K.?”

“O.K.”

“Could you check with him and lay that on — I’ll see how things are going in the pavilion and then join you. All right? Would that suit you?”

“Fair enough.”

“Fox, will you come with me?”

On the way he gave Fox a succinct account of Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort’s story and of the pistol shot, if pistol shot it was, in its relation to the climactic scene in the garden.

“Quite a little puzzle,” said Fox cosily.

In the pavilion they found two uniform policemen, a photographic and a fingerprint expert — Detective Sergeants Thompson and Bailey-together with Sir James Curtis, never mentioned by the press without the additional gloss of “the celebrated pathologist.” Sir James had completed his superficial examination. The spear, horridly incongruous, still stuck up at an angle from its quarry and was being photographed in a close-up by Thompson. Not far from the body lay an overturned chair.

“This is a pretty kettle of fish you’ve got here, Rory,” said Sir James.

“Is it through the heart?”

“Plumb through and well into the turf underneath, I think we’ll find. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so rigid. It looks as though the assailant followed through the initial thrust and, with a forward lunge, literally pinned him down.”

“Ferocious.”

“Very.”

“Finished?” Alleyn asked Thompson as he straightened up. “Complete coverage? All angles? The lot?”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Bailey? What about dabs?”

Bailey, a mulishly inclined officer, said he’d gone over the spear and could find evidence of only one set of prints and that they were smeared. He added that the camera might bring up something latent but he didn’t hold out many hopes. The angle of the spear to the body had been measured. Sir James said it had been a downward thrust. “Which would indicate a tall man,” he said.

“Or a middle-sized man on a chair?” Alleyn suggested.

“Yes. A possibility.”

“All right,” Alleyn said. “We’d better withdraw that thing.”

“You’ll have a job,” Sir James offered.

They did have a job and the process was unpleasant. In the end the body had to be held down and the spear extracted by a violent jerk, producing a sickening noise and an extrusion of blood.

“Turn him over,” Alleyn said.

The eyes were open and the jaw collapsed, turning the Ambassador’s face into a grotesque mask of astonishment. The wound of entry was larger than that of exit. The closely cropped turf was wet.

“Horrible,” Alleyn said shortly.

“I suppose we can take him away?” Sir James suggested. “I’ll do the P.M. at once.”

“I’m not so sure about that. We’re on Ng’ombwanan ground. We’re on sufferance. The mortuary van’s outside all right, but I don’t think we can do anything about the body unless they say so.”

“Good Lord!”

“There may be all sorts of taboos, observances and what-have-you.”

“Well,” said Sir James, not best pleased, “in that case I’ll take myself off. You might let me know if I’m wanted.”

“Of course. We’re all walking about like a gaggle of Agags, it’s so tricky. Here’s Fred Gibson.”

He had come to say that the President wished the body to be conveyed to the ballroom.

“What for?” Alleyn demanded.

“This assembly or what-have-you. Then it’s to be put upstairs. He wants it flown back to Ng’ombwana.”

“Good evening to you,” said Sir James and left.

Alleyn nodded to one of the constables, who fetched two men, a stretcher and a canvas. And so his country’s representative re-entered his Embassy, finally relieved of the responsibility that had lain so heavily on his mind.

Alleyn said to the constables: “We’ll keep this tent exactly as it is. One of you remains on guard.” And to Fox: “D’you get the picture, Br’er Fox? Here we all were, a round dozen of us, including, you’ll be surprised to hear, my brother.”

“Is that so, Mr. Alleyn? Quite a coincidence.”

“If you don’t mind, Br’er Fox, we won’t use that word. It’s cropped up with monotonous regularity ever since I took my jaunt to Ng’ombwana.”

“Sorry, I’m sure.”

“Not at all. To continue. Here we were, in arrowhead formation with the President’s chair at the apex. There’s his chair and that’s Troy beside it. On his other side was the Ambassador. The spear-carrier, who is at present under surveillance in the gents’ cloaks, stood behind his master’s chair. At the rear are those trestle tables used for drinks, and a bit further forward an overturned, pretty solid wooden chair, the purpose of which escapes me. The entrance into the tent at the back was used by the servants. There were two of them, the larger being one of the household henchmen and the other a fresh-faced, chunky specimen in Costard’s livery. Both of them were in evidence when the lights went out.”

“And so,” said Fox, who liked to sort things out, “as soon as this Karbo artist appears, his spotlight picks him up and makes a splash on the screen behind him. And from the back of the tent where this spear expert is stationed, anybody who stands up between him and the light shows up like somebody coming in late at the cinema.”

“That’s it.”

“And after the shot was fired you stopped the President from standing up, but the Ambassador did stand up and Bob, in a manner of speaking, was your uncle.”

“In a maner of speaking, he was.”

“Now then,” Fox continued in his stately manner. “Yes. This shot. Fired, we’re told by the lady you mentioned, from the window of the female conveniences. No weapon’s been recovered, I take it?”

“Give us a chance.”

“And nobody’s corroborated the lady’s story about this dirty big black man who kicked her?”

“No.”

“And this chap hasn’t been picked up?”

“He is like an insubstantial pageant faded.”

“Just so. And do we assume, then, that having fired his shot and missed his man, an accomplice, spear-carrier or what have you, did the job for him?”

“That may be what we’re supposed to think. To my mind it stinks. Not to high Heaven, but slightly.”

“Then what—?”

“Don’t ask me, Br’er Fox. But designedly or not, the shot created a diversion.”

“And when the lights came on?”

“The President was in his chair where I’d shoved him and Troy was in hers. The other two ladies were in theirs. The body was three feet to the President’s left. The guests were milling about all over the shop. My big brother was ordering them in a shaky voice not to panic. The spear-carrier was on his knees nursing his carotid artery. The chair was overturned. No servants.”

“I get the picture.”

“Good, come on, then. The corroboree, pow-wow, conventicle or coven, call it what you will, is now in congress and we are stayed for.” He turned to Bailey and Thompson. “Not much joy for you chaps at present, but if you can pick up something that looks too big for a female print in the second on the left of the ladies’ loos it will be as balm in Gilead. Away we go, Fox.”

But as they approached the house they were met by Gibson, looking perturbed, with Mr. Whipplestone in polite attendance.

“What’s up, Fred?” Alleyn asked. “Have your race relations fractured?”

“You could put it like that,” Mr. Gibson conceded. “He’s making things difficult.”

“The President?”

“That’s right. He won’t collaborate with anyone but you.”

“Silly old chump.”

“He won’t come out of his library until you’ve gone in.”

“What’s bitten him, for the love of Mike?”

“I doubt if he knows.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Whipplestone ventured, “he doesn’t like the introduction of me into the proceedings?”

“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” said Gibson unhappily.

“What a nuisance he contrives to be,” Alleyn said. “I’ll talk to him. Are the hosts of Ng’ombwana mustered in the ballroom?”

“Yes. Waiting for Master,” said Gibson.

“Any developments, Fred?”

“Nothing to rave about. I’ve had a piece of that sergeant in the cloakroom. It seems she acted promptly enough after she left her grandstand seat and attended to Mrs. C-M. She located the nearest of my men and gave him the info. A search for chummy was set up with no results and I was informed. The men on duty outside the house say nobody left it. If they say so, nobody did,” said Gibson, sticking his jaw out. “We’ve begun to search for the gun or whatever it was.”

“It sounded to me like a pistol,” said Alleyn. “I’d better beard the lion in his library, I suppose. We’ll meet here. I’m damned sorry to victimize you like this, Sam.”

“My dear fellow, you needn’t be. I’m afraid I’m rather enjoying myself,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

Alleyn scarcely knew what sort of reception he expected to get from the Boomer or what sort of tactics he himself should deploy to meet it.

In the event, the Boomer behaved pretty much according to pattern. He strode down upon Alleyn and seized his hands. “Ah!” he roared, “you are here at last. I am glad. Now we shall get this affair settled.”

“I’m afraid it’s far from being settled at the moment.”

“Because of all these pettifogging coppers. And believe me, I do not include you in that category, my dear Rory.”

“Very good of you, sir.”

“ ‘Sir. Sir. Sir.’—what tommy-rot. Never mind. We shall not waste time over details. I have come to a decision and you shall be the first to hear what it is.”

“Thank you, I’ll be glad to know.”

“Good. Then listen. I understand perfectly that your funny colleague — what is his name?”

“Gibson?” Alleyn ventured.

“Gibson, Gibson. I understand perfectly that the well-meaning Gibson and his band of bodyguards and so on were here at the invitation of my Ambassador. I am correct?”

“Yes.”

“Again, good. But my Ambassador has, as we used to say at Davidson’s, kicked over the bucket, and in any case the supreme authority is mine. Yes?”

“Of course it is.”

“Of course it is,” the Boomer repeated with immense satisfaction. “It is mine and I propose to exercise it. An attempt has been made upon my life. It has failed as all such attempts are bound to fail. That I made clear to you on the happy occasion of your visit.”

“So you did.”

“Nevertheless, an attempt has been made,” the Boomer repeated. “My Ambassador has been killed and the matter must be cleared up.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“I therefore have called together the people of his household and will question them in accordance with our historically established democratic practice. In Ng’ombwana.”

As Alleyn was by no means certain what this practice might turn out to be he said, cautiously, “Do you feel that somebody in the household may be responsible?”

“One may find that this is not so. In which case—” The great voice rumbled into silence.

“In which case?” Alleyn hinted.

“My dear man, in which case I hope for your and the well-meaning Gibson’s collaboration.”

So he’d got it all tidied up, Alleyn thought. The Boomer would handle the black elements and he and the C.I.D. could make what they liked of the white. Really, it began to look like a sort of inverted form of apartheid.

“I don’t have to tell you,” he said, “that authorities at every level will be most deeply concerned that this should have happened. The Special Branch, in particular, is in a great taking-on about it.”

“Hah! So much,” said the Boomer with relish, “For all the large men in the shrubberies. What?”

“All right. Touché.”

“All the same, my dear Rory, if it is true that I was the intended victim, it might well be said that I owe my life to you.”

“Rot.”

“Not rot. It would follow logically. You pushed me down in my chair, and there was this unhappy Ambassador waving his arms about and looking like me. So — blam! Yes, yes, yes. In that case, I would owe you my life. It is a debt I would not willingly incur with anyone but you — with you I would willingly acknowledge it.”

“Not a bit,” Alleyn said, in acute embarrassment. “It may turn out that my intervention was merely a piece of unnecessary bloody cheek—” He hesitated and was inspired to add, “as we used to say at Davidson’s.” And since this did the trick, he hurried on. “Following that line of thought,” he said, “you might equally say that I was responsible for the Ambassador’s death.”

“That,” said the Boomer grandly, “is another pair of boots.”

“Tell me,” Alleyn asked, “have you any theories about the pistol shot?”

“Ah!” he said quickly. “Pistol! So you have found the weapon?”

“No. I call it a pistol shot provisionally. Gun. Revolver. Automatic. What you will. With your permission, we’ll search.”

“Where?”

“Well — in the garden. And the pond, for instance.”

“The pond?”

Alleyn gave him a digest of Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort’s narrative. The Boomer, it appeared, knew the Cockburn-Montforts quite well and indeed had actually been associated with the Colonel during the period when he helped organize the modern Ng’ombwanan army. “He was efficient,” said the Boomer, “but unfortunately he took to the bottle. His wife is, as we used to say, hairy round the hocks.”

“She says the man in the lavatory was black.”

There followed a longish pause. “If that is correct, I shall find him,” he said at last.

“He certainly didn’t leave these premises. All the exits have been closely watched.”

If the Boomer was tempted to be rude once more about Mr. Gibson’s methods he restrained himself. “What is the truth,” he asked, “about this marksman? Did he, in fact, fire at me and miss me? Is that proved?”

“Nothing is proved. Tell me, do you trust — absolutely — the spear-carrier?”

“Absolutely. But I shall question him as if I do not.”

“Will you — and I’m diffident about asking this — will you allow me to be there? At the assembly?”

For a moment he fancied he saw signs of withdrawal, but if so they vanished at once. The Boomer waved his paw.

“Of course. Of course. But my dear Rory, you will not understand a word of it.”

“Do you know Sam Whipplestone? Of the F.O. and lately retired?”

“I know of him. Of course. He has had many connections with my country. We have not met until tonight. He was a guest. And he is present now with your Gibson. I couldn’t understand why.”

“I asked him to come. He speaks your language fluently and he’s my personal friend. Would you allow him to sit in with me? I’d very grateful.”

And now, Alleyn thought, he really was in for a rebuff — but no, after a disconcerting interval the Boomer said: “This is a little difficult. An enquiry of this nature is never open to persons who have no official standing. Our proceedings are never made public.”

“I give you my firm undertaking that they wouldn’t be in this instance. Whipplestone is the soul of discretion. I can vouch for him.”

“You can?”

“I can and I do.”

“Very well,” said the Boomer. “But no Gibsons.”

“All right. But why have you taken against poor Gibson?”

“Why? I cannot say why. Perhaps because he is so large.” The enormous Boomer pondered for a moment. “And so pale,” he finally brought out. “He is very, very pale.”

Alleyn said he believed the entire household was now assembled in the ballroom and the Boomer said that he would go there. Something in his manner made Alleyn think of a star actor preparing for his entrance.

“It is perhaps a little awkward,” the Boomer reflected. “On such an occasion I should be attended by my Ambassador and my personal mlinzi — my guard. But since the one is dead and the other possibly his murderer, it is not feasible.”

“Tiresome for you.”

“Shall we go?”

They left, passing one of Gibson’s men in Costard’s livery. In the hall they found Mr. Whipplestone, patient in a high-backed chair. The Boomer, evidently minded to do his thing properly, was extremely gracious. Mr. Whipplestone offered perfectly phrased regrets for the Ambassador’s demise and the Boomer told him that the Ambassador had spoken warmly of him and had talked of asking him to tea.

Gibson was nowhere to be seen, but another of his men quietly passed Alleyn a folded paper. While Mr. Whipplestone and the Boomer were still exchanging compliments, he had a quick look at it.

“Found the gun,” it read. “See you, after.”

The ballroom was shut up. Heavy curtains were drawn across the French windows. The chandeliers sparkled, the flowers were brilliant. Only a faint reek of champagne, sandarac and cigarette smoke suggested the aftermath of festivities.

The ballroom had become Ng’ombwana.

A crowd of Ng’ombwanans waited at the end of the great saloon where the red alcove displayed its warlike trophies.

It was a larger assembly than Alleyn had expected: men in full evening dress whom he supposed to be authoritative persons in the household, a controller, a secretary, undersecretaries. There were some dozen men in livery and as many women with white head-scarves and dresses, and there was a knot of under-servants in white jackets clustered at the rear of the assembly. Clearly they were all grouped in conformance with the domestic hierarchy. The President’s aides-de-camp waited at the back of the dais. And ranked on each side of it, armed and immovable, was his guard in full ceremonial kit: scarlet tunics, white kilts, immaculate leggings, glistening accoutrements.

And on the floor in front of the dais was a massive table, bearing under a lion’s hide the unmistakable shape of the shrouded dead.

Alleyn and Mr. Whipplestone entered in the wake of the Boomer. The guard came to attention, the crowd became very still. The Boomer walked slowly and superbly to his dais. He gave an order and two chairs were placed on the floor not far from the bier. He motioned Alleyn and Mr. Whipplestone to take them. Alleyn would have greatly preferred an inconspicuous stand at the rear, but there was no help for it and they took their places.

“I daren’t write, dare I?” Mr. Whipplestone muttered, “and nor dare I talk.”

“You’ll have to remember.”

“All jolly fine.”

The Boomer, seated in his great chair, his hands on the arms, his body upright, his chin raised, his knees and feet planted together, looked like an effigy of himself. His eyes, as always a little bloodshot, rolled and flashed, his teeth gleamed, and he spoke in a language which seemed to be composed entirely of vowels, gutturals and clicks. His voice was so huge that Mr. Whipplestone, trying to speak like a ventriloquist, ventured two words.

“Describing incident,” he said.

The speech seemed to grow in urgency. He brought both palms down sharply on the arms of his chair. Alleyn wondered if he only imagined that a heightened tension invested the audience. A pause and then, unmistakably, an order.

“Spear, chap,” ventriloquized Mr. Whipplestone. “Fetch.”

Two of the guards came smartly to attention, marched to meet each other, faced front, saluted, about-turned and marched out. Absolute stillness followed this proceeding. Sounds from outside could be heard. Gibson’s men in the garden, no doubt, and once, almost certainly, Gibson’s voice.

When the silence had become very trying indeed, the soldiers returned with the spear-carrier between them.

He was still dressed in his ceremonial garments. His anklets and armbands shone in the lamplight and so did his burnished body and limbs. But he’s not really black, Alleyn thought. “If Troy painted him he would be anything but black — blue, mole, purple, even red where his body reflects the carpet and walls.” He was glossy. His close-cropped head sat above its tier of throat-rings like a huge ebony marble. He wore his lion’s skin like a lion. Alleyn noticed that his right arm was hooked under it as if in a sling.

He walked between his guards to the bier. They left him there, isolated before his late Ambassador and his President and close enough to Alleyn and Mr. Whipplestone for them to smell the sweet oil with which he had polished himself.

The examination began. It was impossible most of the time for Alleyn to guess what was being said. Both men kept very still. Their teeth and eyes flashed from time to time, but their big voices were level and they used no gesture until suddenly the spearman slapped the base of his own neck.

“Chop,” breathed Mr. Whipplestone. “Karate. Sort of.”

Soon after this there was a break and neither man spoke for perhaps eight seconds; then, to Alleyn’s surprise and discomfiture, the Boomer began to talk, still in the Ng’ombwanan tongue, to him. It was a shortish observation. At the end of it the Boomer nodded to Mr. Whipplestone, who cleared his throat.

“The President,” he said, “Directs me to ask you if you will give an account of what you yourself witnessed in the pavilion. He also directs me to translate what you say, as he wishes the proceedings to be conducted throughout in the Ng’ombwanan language.”

They stood up. Alleyn gave his account, to which the Boomer reacted as if he didn’t understand a word. Mr. Whipplestone translated.

Maintaining this laborious procedure, Alleyn was asked if after the death had been discovered he had formed any opinion as to whether the spearman was, in fact, injured.

Looking at the superb being standing there like a rock, it was difficult to imagine that a blow on the carotid nerve or anywhere else for that matter could cause him the smallest discomfiture. Alleyn said: “He was kneeling, with his right hand in the position he has just shown. His head was bent, his left hand clenched and his shoulders hunched. He appeared to be in pain.”

“And then,” translated Mr. Whipplestone, “what happened?”

Alleyn repressed an insane desire to remind the Boomer that he was there at the time and invite him to come off it and talk English.

He said: “There was a certain amount of confusion. This was checked by—” he looked straight at the Boomer—“the President, who spoke in Ng’ombwanan to the spearman, who appeared to offer some kind of statement or denial. Subsequently five men on duty from the Special Branch of the C.I.D arrived with two of the President’s guard who had been stationed outside the pavilion. The spearman was removed to the house.”

Away went Mr. Whipplestone again.

The Boomer next wished to know if the police had obtained any evidence from the spear itself. Alleyn replied that no report had been released under that heading.

This, apparently, ended his examination, if such it could be called. He sat down.

After a further silence, and it occurred to Alleyn that the Ng’ombwanans were adepts in non-communication, the Boomer rose.

It would have been impossible to say why the atmosphere, already far from relaxed, now became taut to twanging point. What happened was that the President pointed, with enormous authority, at the improvised bier and unmistakably pronounced a command.

The spearman, giving no sign of agitation, at once extended his left hand — the right was still concealed in his bosom — and drew down the covering. And there was the Ambassador, open-mouthed, goggle-eyed, making some sort of indecipherable declaration.

The spearman, laying his hand upon the body, spoke boldly and briefly. The President replied even more briefly. The lion-skin mantle was replaced, and the ceremony — assembly, trial whatever it might be — was at an end. At no time during the final proceedings had the Boomer so much as glanced at Alleyn.

He now briefly harangued his hearers. Mr. Whipplestone muttered that he ordered any of them who had any information, however trivial, bearing however slightly on the case, to speak immediately. This met with an absolute silence. His peroration was to the effect that he himself was in command of affairs at the Embassy. He then left. His A.D.C.s followed, and the one with whom Alleyn was acquainted paused by him to say the President requested his presence in the library.

“I will come,” Alleyn said, “in ten minutes. My compliments to the President, if you please.”

The A.D.C. rolled his eyes, said, “But—”, changed his mind and followed his master.

“That,” said Mr. Whipplestone, “was remarkably crisp.”

“If he doesn’t like it he can lump it. I want a word with Gibson. Come on.”

Gibson, looking sulky, and Fox were waiting for them at their temporary quarters in the controller’s office. On the desk, lying on a damp unfolded handkerchief, was a revolver. Thompson and Bailey stood nearby with their tools of trade.

“Where?” said Alleyn. ’

“In the pond. We picked it up with a search-lamp. Lying on the blue tiled bottom at the corner opposite the conveniences and three feet in from the margin.”

“Easy chucking distance from the loo window.”

“That’s correct.”

“Anything?” Alleyn asked Bailey.

“No joy, Mr. Alleyn. Gloves, I reckon.’’

“It’s a Luger,” Alleyn said.

“They are not hard to come by,” Mr. Whipplestone said, “in Ng’ombwana.”

“You know,” Alleyn said, “almost immediately after the shot, I heard something fall into the pond. It was in the split second before the rumpus broke out.”

“Well, well,” said Fox. “Not,” he reasoned, “a very sensible way for him to carry on. However you look at it. Still,” he said heavily, “that’s how they do tend to behave.”

“Who do, Br’er Fox?”

“Political assassins, the non-professionals. They’re a funny mob, by all accounts.”

“You’re dead right there, Teddy,” said Mr. Gibson. “I suppose,” he added, appealing to Alleyn, “we retain possession of this Luger, do we?”

“Under the circumstances we’ll be lucky if we retain possession of our wits. I’m damned if I know. The whole thing gets more and more like a revival of the Goon Show.”

“The A.C., your department, rang.”

“What’s he want?”

“To say the Deputy Commissioner will be calling in to offer condolences or what have you to the President. And no doubt,” said Gibson savagely, “to offer me his advice and congratulations on a successful operation. Christ!” he said, and turned his back on his colleagues.

Alleyn and Fox exchanged a look.

“You couldn’t have done more,” Alleyn said after a moment. “Take the whole lay-out, you couldn’t have given any better coverage.”

“That bloody sergeant in the bog.”

“All right. But if Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort’s got it straight, the sergeant wouldn’t have stopped him in the dark, wherever she was.”

“I told them. I told these bastards they shouldn’t have the blackout.”

“But,” said Fox, in his reasonable way, “the gun-man didn’t do the job anyway. There’s that aspect, Mr. Gibson, isn’t there?”

Gibson didn’t answer this. He turned around and said to Alleyn: “We’ve got to find out if the President’s available to see the D.C.”

“When?”

“He’s on his way in from Kent. Within the hour.”

“I’ll find out.” Alleyn turned to Mr. Whipplestone. “I can’t tell you, Sam, how much obliged to you I am,” he said. “If it’s not asking too much, could you bear to write out an account of that black — in both senses — charade in there while it’s still fresh in your mind? I’m having another go at the great panjandrum in the library.”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Whipplestone. “I’d like to.”

So he was settled down with writing materials and immediately took on the air of being at his own desk in his own rather rarified office with a secretary in deferential attendance.

“What’s horrible for us, Fred?” Alleyn asked. It was a regulation enquiry for which he was known at the Yard.

“We’ve got that lot from the tent party still waiting. Except the ones who obviously hadn’t a clue about anything. And,” Gibson added a little awkardly, “Mrs. Alleyn. She’s gone, of course.”

“I can always put her through the hoops at home.”

“And — er,” said Gibson still more awkwardly, “there is — er — your brother.”

“What!” Alleyn shouted. “George! You don’t tell me you’ve got George sitting on his fat bottom waiting for the brutal police bit?”

“Well—”

“Mrs. Alleyn and Sir George,” said Fox demurely. “And we’re not allowed to mention coincidence.”

“Old George,” Alleyn pondered, “what a lark! Fox, you might press on with statements from that little lot. Including George. While I have another go at the Boomer. What about you, Fred?”

“Get on with the bloody routine, I suppose. Could you lend me these two,” he indicated Bailey and Thompson, “for the ladies’ conveniences? Not that there’s much chance of anything turning up there. Still, we’ve got this Luger-merchant roaming round somewhere in the establishment. We’re searching for the bullet, of course, and that’s no piece of cake. Seeing you,” he said morosely, and walked out.

“You’d better get on with the loo,” Alleyn said to Bailey and Thompson, and himself returned to the library.

“Look,” Alleyn said, “it’s this way. You — Your Excellency — can, as of course you know, order us off whenever you feel like it. As far as enquiries inside the Embassy are concerned, we can become persona non grata at the drop of a hat and as such would have to limit our activities, of which you’ve no doubt formed an extremely poor opinion, to looking after your security whenever you leave these premises. We will also follow up any lines of enquiry that present themselves outside the Embassy. Quite simply it’s a matter of whether or not you wish us to carry on as we are or make ourselves scarce. Colonel Sinclaire, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is on his way. He hopes he may be allowed to wait upon you. No doubt he will express his deep regrets and put the situation before you in more or less the same terms I have used.”

For the first time since they had renewed their acquantance, Alleyn found a kind of hesitancy in the Boomer’s manner. He made as if to speak, checked himself, looked hard at Alleyn for a moment, and then began to pace up and down the library with the magnificent action that really did recall clichés about caged panthers.

At last he stopped in front of Alleyn and abruptly took him by the arms. “What,” he demanded, “did you think of our enquiry? Tell me.”

“It was immensely impressive,” Alleyn said at once.

“Yes? You found it so? But you think it strange, don’t you, that I, who have eaten my dinners and practised my profession as a barrister, should subscribe to such a performance. After all, it was not much like the proceedings of the British coroner’s inquest?”

“Not conspicuously like. No.”

“No. And yet, my dear Rory, it told me a great deal more than would have been elicited by that highly respectable court.”

“Yes?” Alleyn said politely. And with a half-smile: “Am I to know what it told Your Excellency?”

“It told My Excellency that my nkuki mtu mwenye—my mlinzi, my man with the spear — spoke the truth.”

“I see.”

“You are non-committal. You want to know how I know?”

“If it suits you to tell me.”

“I am,” announced the Boomer, “the son of a paramount chief. My father and his and his, back into the dawn, were paramount chiefs. If this man, under oath to protect me, had been guilty of murdering my innocent and loyal servant he could not have uncovered the body before me and declared his innocence. Which is what he did. It would not be possible.”

“I see.”

“And you would reply that such evidence is not admissible in a British court of law.”

“It would be admissible, I daresay. It could be eloquently pleaded by able counsel. It wouldn’t be accepted, ipso facto, as proof of innocence. But you know that as well as I do.”

“Tell me this. It is important for me. Do you believe what I have said?”

“I think I do,” Alleyn said slowly. “You know your people. You tell me it is so. Yes. I’m not sure but I am inclined to believe you are right.”

“Ah!” said the Boomer. “So now we are upon our old footing. That is good.”

“But I must make it clear to you. Whatever I may or may not think has no bearing on the way I’ll conduct this investigation: either inside the Embassy, if you’ll have us here, or outside it. If there turns out to be cogent evidence, in our book, against this man, we’ll follow it up.”

“In any case, the event having taken place in this Embassy, on his own soil, he could not be tried in England,” said the Boomer.

“No. Whatever we find, in that sense, is academic. He would be repatriated.”

“And this person who fires off German weapons in ladies’ lavatories. You say he also is black.”

“Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort says so.”

*’A stupid woman.”

“Tolerably so, I’d have thought.”

“It would be better if her husband beat her occasionally and left her at home,” said the Boomer with one of his gusts of laughter.

“I should like to know, if it isn’t too distressing for you to speak of him, something of the Ambassador himself. Did you like him very much? Was he close to you? Those sorts of questions?”

The Boomer dragged his great hand across his mouth, made a long rumbling sound in his chest, and sat down.

“I find it difficult,” he said at last, “to answer your question. What sort of man was he? A fuddy-duddy, as we used to say. He has come up, in the English sense, through the ranks. The peasant class. At one time he was a nuisance. He saw himself staging some kind of coup. It was all rather ridiculous. He had certain administrative abilities but no real authority. That sort of person.”

Disregarding this example of Ng’ombwanan snob-thinking, Alleyn remarked that the Ambassador must have been possessed of considerable ability to have got where he did. The Boomer waved a concessionary hand and said that the trend of development had favoured his advancement.

“Had he enemies?”

“My dear Rory, in an emergent nation like my own every man of authority has or has had enemies. I know of no specific persons.”

“He was in a considerable taking-on about security during your visit,” Alleyn ventured, to which the Boomer vaguely replied: “Oh. Did you think so?”

“He telephoned Gibson and me on an average twice a day.”

“Boring for you,” said the Boomer in his best public school manner.

“He was particularly agitated about the concert in the garden and the blackout. So were we for that matter.”

“He was a fuss-pot,” said the Boomer.

“Well, damn it all, he had some cause, as it turns out.”

The Boomer pursed his generous mouth into a double mulberry and raised his brows. “If you put it like that.”

“After all, he is dead.”

“True,” the Boomer admitted.

Nobody can look quite so eloquently bored as a Negro, The eyes are almost closed, showing a lower rim of white, the mouth droops, the head tilts. The whole man suddenly seems to wilt. The Boomer now exhibited all these signals of ennui and Alleyn, remembering them of old, said: “Never mind. I mustn’t keep you any longer. Could we, do you think, just settle these two points: First, will you receive the Deputy Commissioner when he comes?”

“Of course,” drawled the Boomer without opening his eyes.

“Second. Do you wish the C.I.D. to carry on inside the Embassy or would you prefer us to clear out? The decision is Your Excellency’s, of course, but we would be grateful for a definite ruling.”

The Boomer opened his slightly bloodshot eyes. He looked full at Alleyn. “Stay,” he said.

There was a tap at the door and Gibson, large, pale and apologetic, came in.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to the President. “Colonel Sinclaire, the Deputy Commissioner, has arrived and hopes to see you.”

The Boomer, without looking at Gibson, said: “Ask my equerry to bring him in.”

Alleyn walked to the door. He had caught a signal of urgency from his colleague.

“Don’t you go, Rory,” said the Boomer.

“I’m afraid I must,” said Alleyn.

Outside, in the passage, he found Mr. Whipplestone fingering his tie and looking deeply perturbed. Alleyn said: “What’s up?”

“It may not be anything,” Gibson answered. “It’s just that we’ve been talking to the Costard man who was detailed to serve in the tent.”

“Stocky, well set-up, fair-haired?”

“That’s him. Name of Chubb,” said Gibson.

“Alas,” said Mr. Whipplestone.