Final Curtain

CHAPTER IX Alleyn

i

By an alteration in the rhythm of the ship’s progress, suggestive almost of a physiological change, her passengers became aware of the end of their long voyage. Her pulse died. It was replaced by sounds of blind waves washing along her sides; of gulls, of voices, of chains, and, beyond these, of movement along the wharves and in the city beyond them.

At early dawn the Port of London looked as wan and expectant as an invalid already preparing for a return to vigour. Thin mist still hung about sheds and warehouses. Muffled lights were strung like a dim necklace along the waterfront. Frost glinted on roofs and bollards and ropes. Alleyn had gripped the rail for so long that its cold had bitten through his gloves into the palms of his hands. Groups of people stood about the wharves, outward signs of a life from which the passengers were, for a rapidly diminishing period, still remote. These groups, befogged by their own breath, were composed for the main part of men.

There were three women, and one wore a scarlet cap. Inspector Fox had come out in the pilot’s boat. Alleyn had not hoped for this, and had been touched and delighted to meet him; but now it was impossible to talk to Fox.

“Mrs. Alleyn,” said Fox, behind him, “is wearing a red cap. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Alleyn, I ought to have a word with a chap — The car’s just behind the Customs shed. I’ll meet you there.”

When Alleyn turned to thank him, he was already walking away, squarely overcoated, tidy, looking just like his job.

Now only a dark channel, a ditch, a gutter lay between the ship and the wharf. Bells rang sharply. Men moved forward to the bollards and stared up at the ship. One raised his hand and shouted a greeting in a clear voice. Ropes were flung out, and a moment later the final stoppage was felt dully throughout the ship.

That was Troy down there. She walked forward. Her hands were jammed down in the pockets of her overcoat. She looked along the deck, scowling a little, her gaze moving towards him. In these last seconds, while he waited for her to discover him, Alleyn knew that, like himself, she was nervous. He lifted his hand. They looked at each other, and a smile of extraordinary intimacy broke across her face.

ii

“Three years seven months and twenty-four days,” said Alleyn that afternoon. “It’s a hell of a time to be without your wife.” He looked at Troy sitting on the hearth-rug hugging her knees. “Or rather,” he added, “to be away from you, Troy. From you, who, so astonishingly happens to be my wife. I’ve been getting myself into such a hullabaloo about it.”

“Wondering,” Troy asked, “if we’d run short of conversation and feel shy?”

“You too, then?”

“It does happen, they say. It might easily happen.”

“I even considered the advisability of quoting Othello on his arrival at Cyprus. How would you have reacted, my darling, if I had laid hold upon you under letter A in the Customs shed and begun: ‘Oh, my fair warrior!’ ”

“I should probably have made a snappy come-back with something from Macbeth.”

“Why Macbeth?”

“To explain that would be to use up all the conversation I’d saved up on my own account. Rory—”

“My love?”

“I’ve been having a very queer time with Macbeth.”

She was looking doubtfully at him from under her ruffled forelock. “You may not care to hear about it,” she mumbled. “It’s a long story.”

“It won’t be too long,” Alleyn said, “if it’s you who tells it.”

Watching her, he thought: “That’s made her shy again. We are to re-learn each other.” Alleyn’s habit of mind was accurate and exhaustive. He had recognized and examined in himself thoughts that another man might have preferred to ignore. During the long voyage home, he had many times asked himself if, when they met again, he and Troy might not find the years had dropped between them a transparent barrier through which they would stare without love, at each other. The possibility occurred to him, strangely enough, at moments when he most desired and missed her. When she had moved forward on the quay, without at first seeing him, his physical reaction had been so sharp that it had blotted out his thoughts. It was only when she gave him the look of intimacy, which so far had not been repeated, that he knew, without question, he was to love her again.

Now, when she was before him in the room whose very familiarity was a little strange, his delight was of a virgin kind that anticipates a trial of its temper. Were Troy’s thoughts at this moment comparable with his own? Could he be as certain of her as he was of himself? She had entered into an entirely different mode of life during his absence. He knew nothing of her new associates beyond the rather sparse phrases she had allowed them in her letters. Now, evidently, he was to hear a little more.

“Come over here,” he said, “and tell me.”

She moved into her old place, leaning against his chair, and he looked down at her with a more tranquil mind, yet with such intense pleasure that the beginning of her story escaped him. But he had been ruthlessly trained to listen to statements and the habit asserted itself. The saga of Ancreton was unfolded.

Troy’s account was at first tentative, but his interest stimulated her. She began to enjoy herself, and presently hunted out her sketch-book with the drawings she had made in her tower-room. Alleyn chuckled over the small lively figures with their enormous heads. “Like the old-fashioned Happy Families cards,” he said, and she agreed that there was something Victorian and fantastic about the originals. After the eccentricities of the Ancreds themselves, the practical jokes turned out to be a dominant theme in her story. Alleyn heard of this with growing concern. “Here,” he interrupted, “did this blasted kid ruin your thing in the end or didn’t she?”

“No, no! But it wasn’t the blasted kid at all. Listen.”

He did, with a chuckle for her deductive methods. “She might conceivably, you know, write ‘grandfarther’ at one moment and ‘grandfather’ the next, but it’s a point of course.”

“It was her manner more than anything. I’m quite positive she didn’t do it. I know she’s got a record for practical jokes — but wait till I get to the end. Don’t fluster the witness.”

“Why not?” said Alleyn, stooping his head.

“To continue,” said Troy after a moment or two, and this time he let her go on to the end. It was an odd story. He wondered if she realized quite how odd it was.

“I don’t know whether I’ve conveyed the general dottiness of that monstrous house,” she said. “I mean, the queer little things that turned up. Like the book on embalming amongst the objets d’art and the missing rat bane.”

“Why do you put them together?”

“I dunno. I suppose because there’s arsenic in both of them.”

“You are not by any chance, my angel, attempting to land me with a suspected poisoning case on my return to your arms?”

“Well,” said Troy after a pause, “you would think that one up, wouldn’t you?” She screwed round and looked at him. “And he’s been embalmed, you know. By the Messrs. Mortimer and Loame. I met them in the hall with their black bags. The only catch in it is the impossibility of regarding any of the Ancreds in the light of a slow poisoner. But it would fit.”

“A little too neatly, I fancy.” With a trace of reluctance he added: “What were some of the other queer little things that happened?”

“I’d like to know what Cedric and the Orrincourt were giggling about on the sofa, and whether the Orrincourt was coughing or laughing in the governess-cart. I’d even like to know what it was she bought in the chemist’s shop. And I’d like to know more about Millamant. One never knew what Millamant was thinking, except that she doted perpetually on her ghastly Cedric. It would have been in her Cedric’s interest, of course, to sicken Sir Henry of poor old Panty, who, by the way, has a complete alibi for the flying cow. Her alibi’s a dangerous drug. For ringworm.”

“Has this odious child been taking thallium?”

“Do you know about thallium?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“It establishes her alibi for the flying cow,” said Troy. “I’d better explain.”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed when she had finished, “that lets her out for the flying cow.”

“She didn’t do any of them,” said Troy firmly. “I wish now that Paul and Fenella and I had gone on with our experiment.”

“What was that to be?”

“It involved your collaboration,” said Troy, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes.

“Like hell it did!”

“Yes. We wrapped up the paint-brush that had been used for the flying cow and we were going to ask all of them to let us take their finger-prints for you to compare with it. Would you have minded?”

“My darling heart, I’d compare them with the Grand Cham of Tartary’s if it would give you any fun.”

“But we never got them. Death, as you and Mr. Fox would say, intervened. Sir Henry’s death. By the way, the person who painted my banister left finger-prints on the stone wall above it. Perhaps after a decent interval I could hint for an invitation to Ancreton and you could come down with your insufflator and black ink. But honestly, it is a queer story, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he agreed, rubbing his nose. “It’s queer enough. We heard about Ancred’s death on the ship’s wireless. Little did I imagine you were in at it.”

“I liked him,” said Troy after a pause. “He was a terrific old exhibitionist, and he made one feel dreadfully shy at times, but I did like him. And he was grand to paint.”

“The portrait went well?”

“I think so.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Well, so you shall one of these days. He said he was leaving it to the Nation. What does the Nation do under those circumstances? Hang it in a dark corner of the Tate, do you imagine? Some paper or another, I suspect Nigel Bathgate’s, is going to photograph it. We might get a print.”

But Alleyn was not to wait long for the photograph. It appeared that evening in Nigel’s paper over a notice of Sir Henry’s funeral. He had been buried in the family vault at Ancreton with as much ceremony as the times allowed.

“He hoped,” said Troy, “that the Nation would wish otherwise.”

“The Abbey?”

“I’m afraid so. Poor Sir Henry, I wish it had. Ah, well,” said Troy, dropping the newspaper, “that’s the end of the Ancreds as far as I’m concerned.”

“You never know,” Alleyn said vaguely. Then, suddenly impatient of the Ancreds and of anything that prolonged beyond this moment the first tentative phase of their reunion, he stretched out his hands towards Troy.

This story is concerned with Alleyn and Troy’s reunion only in so far as it affected his attitude towards her account of the Ancreds. If he had heard it at any other time it is possible that, however unwillingly, he might have dwelt longer on its peculiarities. As it was, he welcomed it as a kind of interlude between their first meeting and its consummation, and then dismissed it from his conscious thoughts.

They had three days together, broken only by a somewhat prolonged interview between Alleyn and his chief at the Special Branch. He was to resume, for the time being at least, his normal job at the Yard. On the Thursday morning when Troy returned to her job, he walked part of the way with her, watched her turn off, and with an odd feeling of anxiety, himself set out for the familiar room and the old associates.

It was pleasant, after all, to cross that barren back hall, smelling of linoleum and coal, to revisit an undistinguished office where the superintendent of C.I., against a background of crossed swords, commemorative photographs and a horseshoe, greeted him with unmistakable satisfaction. It was oddly pleasant to sit again at his old desk in the chief inspectors’ room and contemplate the formidable task of taking up the threads of routine.

He had looked forward to a preliminary gossip with Fox, but Fox had gone out on a job somewhere in the country and would not be back before the evening. In the meantime here was an old acquaintance of Alleyn’s, one Squinty Donovan, who, having survived two courts-martial, six months’ confinement in Broadmoor, and a near-miss from a flying bomb, had left unmistakable signs of his ingenuity upon a lock-up antique shop in Beachamp Place, Chelsea. Alleyn set in motion the elaborate police machinery by which Squinty might be hunted home to a receiver. He then turned again to his file.

There was nothing exciting; a series of routine jobs. This pleased him. There had been enough of excursions and alarums, the Lord knew, in his three years’ hunting for the Special Branch. He had wanted his return to C.I. to be uneventful.

Presently Nigel Bathgate rang up, “I say,” he said, “has Troy seen about the Will?”

“Whose Will?”

“Old Ancred’s. She’s told you about the Ancreds, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It’s in this morning’s Times. Have a look at it. It’ll rock them considerably.”

“What’s he done?” Alleyn asked. But for some reason he was unwilling to hear more about the Ancreds.

He heard Nigel chuckling. “Well, out with it,” he said. “What’s he done?”

“Handed them the works.”

“In what way?”

“Left the whole caboosh to the Orrincourt.”

iii

Nigel’s statement was an over-simplification of the facts, as Alleyn discovered when, still with that sense of reluctance, he looked up the Will. Sir Henry had cut Cedric down to the bare bones of the entail, and had left a legacy of one thousand pounds to Millamant, to each of his children and to Dr. Withers. The residue he had willed to Sonia Orrincourt.

“But — what about the dinner speech and the other Will?” Troy cried when he showed her the evening paper. “Was that just a complete have, do you suppose? If so, Mr. Rattisbon must have known. Or — Rory,” she said, “I believe it was the flying cow that did it! I believe he was so utterly fed up with his family he marched upstairs, sent for Mr. Rattisbon and made a new Will there and then.”

“But didn’t he think the enfant terrible had done the flying cow? Why take it out of the whole family?”

“Thomas or somebody may have gone up and told him about Panty’s alibi. He wouldn’t know who to suspect, and would end up by damning the whole crew.”

“Not Miss Orrincourt, however.”

“She’d see to that,” said Troy with conviction.

She was, he saw, immensely taken up with this news, and at intervals during the evening returned to the Ancreds and their fresh dilemma. “What will Cedric do, can you imagine? Probably the entail is hopelessly below the cost of keeping up Katzenjammer Castle. That’s what he called it, you know. Perhaps he’ll give it to the Nation. Then they could hang my portrait in its allotted place, chequered all over with coloured lights and everybody would be satisfied. How the Orrincourt will gloat.”

Troy’s voice faded on a note of uncertainty. Alleyn saw her hands move nervously together. She caught his eye and turned away. “Let’s not talk about the poor Ancreds,” she said.

“What are you munching over in the back of your mind?” he asked uneasily.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. He waited, and after a moment she came to him. “It’s only that I’d like you to tell me: Suppose you’d heard from somebody else, or read, about the Ancreds and all the unaccountable odds and ends — what would you think? I mean—” Troy frowned and looked at her clasped hands. Doesn’t it sound rather horribly like the beginning of a chapter in Famous Trials?”

“Are you really worried about this?” he said after a pause.

“Oddly enough,” said Troy, “I am.”

Alleyn got up and stood with his back turned to her. When he spoke again his voice had changed.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better tackle it, then.”

“What’s the matter?” he heard Troy saying doubtfully. “What’s happened?”

“Something quite ridiculous and we’ll get rid of it. A fetish I nurse. I’ve never fancied coming home and having a nice cosy chat about the current homicide with my wife. I’ve never talked about such cases when they did crop up.”

“I wouldn’t have minded, Rory.”

“It’s a kind of fastidiousness. No, that’s praising it. It’s illogical and indefensible. If my job’s not fit for you, it shouldn’t be my job.”

“You’re being too fancy. I’ve got over my squeamishness.”

“I didn’t want you to get over it,” he said. “I tell you I’m a fool about this.”

She said the phrase he had hoped to hear. “Then do you think there’s something in it — about the Ancreds?”

“Blast the Ancreds! Here, this won’t do. Come on, let’s tackle the thing and scotch it. You’re thinking like this, aren’t you? There’s a book about embalming in their ghastly drawing-room. It stresses the use of arsenic. Old Ancred went about bragging that he was going to have himself mummified. Any one might have read the book. Sonia Orrincourt was seen doing so. Arsenic, used for rat poison, disappeared in the house. Old Ancred died immediately after altering his Will in the Orrincourt’s favour. There wasn’t an autopsy. If one were made now, the presence of arsenic would be accounted for by the embalming. That’s the colour of the nigger in the woodpile, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Troy, “that’s it.”

“And you’ve been wondering whether the practical jokes and all the rest of the fun and games can be fitted in?”

“It sounds less possible as you say it.”

“Good!” he said, quickly turning to her. “That’s better. Come on, then. You’ve wondered if the practical jokes were organized by the Orrincourt to put the old man off his favourite grandchild?”

“Yes. Or by Cedric, with the same motive. You see, Panty was hot favourite before the Raspberry and Flying Cow Period set in.”

“Yes. So, in short, you’re wondering if one of the Ancreds, particularly Cedric, or Miss Orrincourt, murdered old Ancred, having previously, in effect, hamstrung the favourite.”

“This is like talking about a nightmare. It leaves off being horrid and turns silly.”

“All the better,” he said vigorously. “All right. Now, if the lost arsenic was the lethal weapon, the murder was planned long before the party. You understood Millamant to say it had been missing for some time?”

“Yes. Unless—”

“Unless Millamant herself is a murderess and was doing an elaborate cover-up.”

“Because I said one didn’t know what Millamant thought about it, it doesn’t follow that she thought about murder.”

“Of course it doesn’t, bless your heart. Now, if any one of the Ancreds murdered Sir Henry, it was on the strength of the announcement made at the dinner-party and without any knowledge of the effective Will he made that night. If he made it that night.”!

“Unless one of the legatees thought they’d been cheated and did it out of pure fury.”

“Or Fenella and Paul, who got nothing? Yes. There’s that.”

“Fenella and Paul,” said Troy firmly, “are not like that.”

“And if Desdemona or Thomas or Jenetta—”

“Jenetta and Thomas are out of the question—”

“—did it, the practical jokes don’t fit in, because they weren’t there for the earlier ones.”

“Which leaves the Orrincourt and Cedric, Millamant and Pauline.”

“I can see it’s the Orrincourt and Cedric who are really bothering you.”

“More particularly,” said Troy unhappily, “the Orrincourt.”

“Well, darling, what’s she like? Has she got the brains to think it up? Would she work out the idea from reading the book on embalming that arsenic would be found in the body anyway?”

“I shouldn’t have thought,” said Troy cheerfully, “that she’d make head or tail of the book. It was printed in very dim italics with the long ‘s’ like an ‘f’. She’s not at all the type to pore over literary curiosa unless she thought they were curious in the specialized sense.”

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you. I’m thinking of other things for myself. Arsenic takes effect pretty quickly, doesn’t it? And tastes beastly? He couldn’t have had it at dinner, because, apart from being in a foul rage, he was still all right when he left the little theatre. And — if Sonia Orrincourt had put it in his Ovaltine, or whatever he has in his bedside Thermos, could he have sipped down enough to kill him without noticing the taste?”

“Unlikely,” Alleyn said. Another silence fell between them. Alleyn thought: “I’ve never been able to make up my mind about telepathy. Think of something else. Is she listening to my thoughts?”

“Rory,” said Troy. “It is all right, isn’t it?”

The telephone rang and he was glad to answer it. Inspector Fox was speaking from the Yard.

“Where have you been, you old devil?” said Alleyn, and his voice held that cordiality with which we greet a rescuer.

“Good evening, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox. “I was wondering if it would inconvenience you and Mrs. Alleyn very much if—”

“Come along!” Alleyn interrupted. “Of course it won’t. Troy will be delighted; won’t you, darling? It’s Fox.”

“Of course I shall,” said Troy loudly. “Tell him to come.”

“Very kind, I’m sure,” Fox was saying in his deliberate way. “Perhaps I ought to explain though. It’s Yard business. You might say very unusual circumstances, really. Quite a contretemps.”

“The accent’s improving, Fox.”

“I don’t get the practice. About this business, though. In a manner of speaking, sir, I fancy you’ll want to consult Mrs. Alleyn. She’s with you, evidently.”

“What is it?” Troy asked quickly. “I can hear him. What is it?”

“Well, Fox,” said Alleyn after a pause, “what is it?”

“Concerning the late Sir Henry Ancred, sir. I’ll explain when I see you. There’s been an Anonymous Letter.”

iv

“Coincidence,” said Fox, putting on his spectacles and flattening out a sheet of paper on his knee, “is one of the things you get accustomed to in our line of business, as I think you’ll agree, sir. Look at the way one of our chaps asked for a lift in the Gutteridge case. Look at the Thompson-Bywaters case—”

“For the love of heaven!” Alleyn cried, “let us admit coincidence without further parley. It’s staring us in the face. It’s a bloody quaint coincidence that my wife should have been staying in this wretched dump, and there’s an end of it.”

He glanced at Fox’s respectable, grave, and attentive face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no good expecting me to be reasonable over this business. Troy’s had one bad enough experience of the nastiest end of our job. She’ll never altogether forget it, and— well, there you are. One doesn’t welcome anything like a reminder.”

“I’m sure it’s very upsetting, Mr. Alleyn. If I could have—”

“I know, I know.” And looking at Fox, Alleyn felt a spasm of self-distaste.

“Fox,” he said suddenly, “I’m up against a silly complexity in my own attitude to my job. I’ve tried to shut it off from my private life. I’ve adopted what I suppose the Russians would call an unrealistic approach: Troy in one compartment, the detection of crime in another. And now, by way of dotting me one on the wind, the fates have handed Troy this little affair on a platter. If there’s anything in it she’ll be a witness.”

“There may not be anything in it, Mr. Alleyn.”

“True enough. That’s precisely tHe remark I’ve been making to her for the last hour or so.”

Fox opened his eyes very wide. “Oh, yes,” said Alleyn, “she’s already thought there was something off-colour about the festivities at Ancreton.”

“Is that so?” Fox said slowly. “Is that the case?”

“It is indeed. She’s left us alone to talk it over. I can give you the story when you want it and so can she. But I’d better have your end first. What’s that paper you’ve got there?”

Fox handed it to him. “It came in to us yesterday, went through the usual channels, and finally the Chief got on to it and sent for me this evening. You’d gone by then, sir, but he asked me to have a word with you about it. White envelope to match, addressed in block capitals ‘C.I.D., Scotland Yard, London.’ Postmark, Victoria.”

Alleyn took the paper. It appeared to be a sheet from a block of faintly ruled notepaper. The lines were, unusually, a pale yellow, and a margin was ruled down the side. The message it contained was flatly explicit:

“Water-mark, ‘Crescent Script’. People write these things,” said Fox. “You know yourself there may be nothing in it. But we’ve got to take the usual notice. Talk to the super at the local station, I suppose. And the doctor who attended the old gentleman. He may be able to put the matter beyond doubt. There’s an end of it.”

“He will if he can,” said Alleyn grimly. “You may depend upon that.”

“In the meantime, the A.C. suggested I should report to you and see about a chat with Mrs. Alleyn. He remembered Mrs. Alleyn had been at Ancreton before you came back.”

“Report to me? If anything comes of this, does he want me to take over?”

“Well, sir, I fancy he will. He mentioned, jokingly-like, that it’d be quite unusual if the investigating officer got his first statement on a case from his wife.”

“Facetious ass!” said Alleyn with improper emphasis.

Fox looked demurely down his nose.

“Oh, well,” said Alleyn, “let’s find Troy and we’ll hag over the whole blasted set-up. She’s in the studio. Come on.”

Troy received Fox cheerfully. “I know what it’s all about, Mr. Fox,” she said, shaking hands with him.

“I’m sure I’m very sorry—” Fox began.

“But you needn’t be,” Troy said quickly, linking her arm through Alleyn’s. “Why on earth should you be? If I’m wanted, here I am. What happens?”

“We sit down,” Alleyn said, “and I go over the whole story as you’ve told it to me. When I go wrong, you stop me, and when you think of anything extra, you put it in. That’s all, so far. The whole thing may be a complete washout, darling. Anonymous letter writers have the same affection for the Yard that elderly naturalists have for The Times. Now then. Here, Fox, to the best of my ability, is the Ancred saga.”

He went methodically through Troy’s account, correlating the events, tracing the several threads in and out of the texture of the narrative and gathering them together at the end.

“How’s that?” he asked her when he had finished. He was surprised to find her staring at him as if he had brought off a feat of sleight of hand.

“Amazingly complete and tidy,” she said.

“Well, Fox? What’s it amount to?”

Fox wiped his hand over his jaw. “I’ve been asking myself, sir,” he said, “whether you mightn’t find quite a lot of circumstances behind quite a lot of sudden demises that might sound funny if you strung them together. What I mean to say, a lot of big Houses keep rat-bane on the premises, and a lot of people can’t lay their hands on it when they want it. Things get mislaid.”

“Very true, Foxkin.”

“And as far as this old-fashioned book on embalming goes, Mr. Alleyn, I ask myself if perhaps somebody mightn’t have picked it up since the funeral and got round to wondering about it like Mrs. Alleyn has. You say these good people weren’t very keen on Miss Sonia Orrincourt and are probably feeling rather sore about the late old gentleman’s Will. They seem to be a highly-strung, excitable lot.”

“But I don’t think I’m a particularly highly-strung, excitable lot, Mr. Fox,” said Troy. “And I got the idea too.”

“There!” said Fox, clicking his tongue. “Putting my foot in it as usual, aren’t I, sir?”

“Tell us what else you ask yourself,” said Alleyn.

“Why, whether one of these disappointed angry people hasn’t let his imagination, or more likely hers, get the upper hand, and written this letter on the spur of the moment.”

“But what about the practical jokes, Mr. Fox?” said Troy.

“Very silly, mischievous behaviour. Committing a nuisance. If the little girl didn’t do them, and it looks as if she couldn’t have done them at all, then somebody’s brought off an unpleasant trick. Spiteful,” Fox added severely. “Trying to prejudice the old gentleman against her, as you suggest, I dare say. But that doesn’t necessarily mean murder. Why should it?”

“Why, indeed?” said Alleyn, taking him by the arm. “You’re exactly what we needed in this house, Br’er Fox. Let’s all have a drink.” He took his wife on his other arm, and together they returned to the sitting-room. The telephone rang as Troy entered and she answered it. Alleyn held Fox back and they stared at each other.

“Very convincing performance, Fox. Thank you.”

“Rum go, sir, all the same, don’t you reckon?”

“Too bloody rum by half. Come on.”

When they went into the room Troy put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and turned to them. Her face was white.

“Rory,” she said, “it’s Thomas Ancred. He wants to come and see you. He says they’ve all had letters. He says he’s made a discovery. He wants to come. What shall I say?”

“I’ll speak to him,” said Alleyn. “He can see me at the Yard in the morning, damn him.”