Hand in Glove

CHAPTER SEVEN Pixie

It had been five past eleven when Alleyn was summoned to the telephone. He and Fox, having struck a blank in respect to the gloves, had been mulling over their notes in the Codling pub when the landlord, avid with curiosity, summoned him.

“It’s a call for you, sir,” he said. “Local. I didn’t catch the name. There’s no one in the bar parlour, if that suits you.”

Alleyn took the call in the bar parlour.

He said: “Alleyn here. Hullo?”

Mr. Pyke Period, unmistakable and agitated, answered. “Alleyn? Thank God! I’m so sorry to disturb you at this unconscionable hour. Do forgive me. The thing is there’s something I feel I ought to tell—”

The voice stopped. Alleyn heard a bump, followed by a soft, heavier noise and then by silence. He waited for a moment or two. There was a faint definite click and, again, silence. He rang and got the “engaged” signal. He hung up and turned to find Fox at his side.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

When they were clear of the pub he broke into a run, with Fox, heavy and capable, on his heels.

“Period,” Alleyn said. “And it looks damn’ fishy. Stopped dead in full cry. Characteristic noises.”

The pub was in a side street that led into the Green at Mr. Period’s end of it. There was nobody about and their footsteps sounded loud on the paving-stones. Connie Cartell’s Pekingese was yapping somewhere on the far side of the Green. Distantly, from the parish schoolroom, came the sound of communal singing.

Only one room in Mr. Period’s house was lit and that was the library. Stepping as quietly as the gravelled drive would permit, they moved towards the French windows. Bay trees stood on either side of the glass doors, which were almost but not quite shut.

Alleyn looked across the table Nicola had used, past her shrouded typewriter and stacked papers. Beyond, to his right, and against the window in the side wall, was Mr. Period’s desk. His shaded lamp, as if it had been switched on by a stage manager, cast down a pool of light on that restricted area, giving it an immense theatricality. The telephone receiver dangled from the desk and Mr. Period’s right arm hung beside it. His body was tipped forward in his chair and his face lay among his papers. The hair was ruffled like a baby’s and from his temple a ribbon of blood had run down the cheekbone to the nostril.

“Doctor”—Alleyn said—“What’s-his-name — Elkington.”

Fox said: “Better use the other phone.” He replaced the receiver very gingerly and went into the hall.

Mr. Period was not dead. When Alleyn bent over him, he could hear his breathing — a faint snoring sound. The pulse was barely perceptible.

Fox came back. “On his way,” he said. “Will I search outside?”

“Right. We’d better not move him. I’ll do the house.”

It was perfectly quiet and empty of living persons. Alleyn went from room to room, opening and shutting doors, receiving the indefinable smells of long-inhabited places, listening, looking and finding nothing. Mrs. Mitchell’s room smelt stuffily of hairpins and Alfred Belt’s of boot polish. Mr. Period’s bedroom smelt of hair lotion and floor polish, and Mr. Cartell’s of blankets and soap. Nothing was out of place anywhere in Mr. Period’s house. Alleyn returned to the library as Fox came in.

“Nothing,” Fox said. “Nobody, anywhere.”

“There’s the instrument,” Alleyn said.

It was the bronze paperweight in the form of a fish that Désirée had given Mr. Period. It lay on the carpet close to his dangling hand.

“I’ll get our chaps,” Fox said. “They’re in the pub. Here’s the doctor.”

Dr. Elkington came in looking as if his professional manner had been fully extended.

“What now, for God’s sake?” he said and went straight to his patient. Alleyn watched him make his examination, which did not take long.

“All right,” he said. “On the face of it he’s severely concussed. I don’t think there’s any extensive cranial injury but we’ll have to wait. Half an inch either way and it’d have been a different matter. We’d better get him out of this. Where’s that man of his — Alfred?”

“At a Church Social,” said Alleyn. “We could get a mattress. Or what about the sofa in the drawing-room?”

“All right. Better than manhandling him all over the shop.”

Fox and Alleyn carried Mr. Period into the drawing-room and propped him up on the sofa, Dr. Elkington supporting his head.

“Will he speak?” Alleyn asked Dr. Elkington.

“Might or might not. Your guess is as good as mine. There’s nothing we can do at the moment. He may have to go to hospital. I’d better get a nurse. What’s the story, if there is a story?”

“Somebody chucked a bronze paperweight at him. You’d better look at it. Don’t touch it unless you have to. Fox will show you. I’m staying here. I’ll let you know if there’s a change.”

“Attempted murder?” Dr. Elkington said, making a mouthful of it.

“I think so.”

“For God’s sake!” Dr. Elkington repeated. He and Fox went out of the room. Alleyn drew up a chair and watched Mr. Period.

His eyes were not quite closed and his breathing, though still markedly stertorous, seemed to be more regular. Alleyn heard Dr. Elkington at the telephone.

The doorbell rang. The other chaps, he thought. Fox would cope.

Mr. Period’s eyes opened and looked, squintingly, at nothing.

“You’re all right,” Alleyn said, leaning towards him.

Dr. Elkington came back. “It’s the paperweight sure enough,” he said. “Trace of blood on the edge.” He went to the sofa and took Mr. Period’s hand in his.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re all right.”

The flaccid lips parted. After an indeterminate noise a whisper drifted through them: “It was that song.”

“Song? What song?”

“He’s deeply concussed, Alleyn.”

“What song?”

“Should have told Alleyn. Whistling. Such awfully bad form. Luncheon.”

“What song?”

“Couldn’t — out of my head.” Mr. Period whispered plaintively. “So silly. ‘O.K. by me.’ So, of course. Recognized. At once.” The sound faded and for a moment or two the lips remained parted. Then Mr. Period’s own voice, uncannily articulate, said quite clearly: “May I speak to Superintendent Alleyn?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, holding up a warning hand. “Alleyn speaking.”

“Just to tell you. Whistling. Recognized it. Last night. In the lane. Very wrong of me not to — Divided loyalties.” There was a longish silence. Alleyn and Elkington stared absently at each other. “O.K. by me,” the voice sighed. “So vulgar.”

The eyes closed again.

“This may go on for hours, Alleyn.”

“How much will he remember when he comes round?”

“Everything probably, up to the moment he was knocked out. Unless there’s a serious injury to the brain.” Dr. Elkington was stooping over his patient. “Still bleeding a bit. I’ll have to put in a couple of stitches. Where’s my bag?” He went out. Fox was talking to the men in the hall. “We’ll seal the library and cover the area outside the window.”

“Do we search?” asked somebody. Williams, Alleyn decided.

“Better talk to the Chief.”

Fox and Williams came in with Dr. Elkington, who opened his professional bag.

“Just steady his head, will you?” he asked Alleyn.

Holding Mr. Period’s head between his hands, Alleyn said to Fox and Williams: “It looks as if the thing was thrown at him by somebody standing between the table and the French windows while he was ringing me up. I heard the receiver knock against the desk as it fell and I heard a click that might well have been made by the windows being pulled to. You’re not likely to find anything on the drive. It’s as dry as a bone and in any case the French doors are probably used continually. Whoever made the attack had time enough to effect a clean getaway before we came trundling in, but I think the best line we can take is to keep watch in case he’s still hiding in the garden — Noakes and Thompson can do that — and Fox, you rouse up Miss Cartell’s household. Somebody will have to stay here in case he speaks again. Bob, would you do that?”

“Right,” said Superintendent Williams.

“I’ve got a call to London.”

“To London?” Williams repeated.

“It may give us a line. Fox, I’ll join you at Miss Cartell’s. O.K?”

“O.K., Mr. Alleyn.”

“And Bailey had better have a go at the paperweight. I think it was probably on the table near the French windows. There are various piles of stacked papers, all but one weighed down. And one of the ashtrays has got two lipsticked butts in it. Miss Ralston and Leiss smoke Mainsails, Lady Bantling smokes Cafards and Mr. Period, Turkish. Ask him to look. Gloves!” Alleyn ejaculated. “If we could find those damn’ gloves. Not that they are likely to have anything to do with this party, but we’ve a glove-conscious homicide on our hands, I fancy. All right.…Let’s get cracking.”

It was at this juncture — at a quarter to midnight — that he talked on the telephone to Nicola Maitland-Mayne.

Then he rejoined Elkington in the drawing-room.

“Has he said anything else?”

“No.”

“Look here, Elkington, can you stick it here with Williams for a bit? We’re fully extended, we can’t risk the chance of missing anything he may say, and Williams will be glad of a witness. Somebody will relieve you as soon as possible.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Write it down, Bob, if he does speak. I’m much obliged to you both.”

He was about to go when a sound, fainter than anything they had yet heard, came from the sofa. It wavered tenuously for a second or two and petered out. Mr. Period, from whatever region he at present inhabited, had been singing.

As Alleyn was about to leave the house, Detective Sergeant Bailey presented himself.

“There’s a small thing,” he said.

“What small thing?”

“There’s nothing for us on the gravel outside the French windows, Mr. Alleyn, but I reckon there’s something on the carpet.”

“What?”

“Traces of ash. Scuffed into the carpet, I reckon, by one of those pin-point heels.”

“Good man,” Alleyn said. “Carry on.” He let himself out and walked down the drive.

It was a dark night, overcast and rather sultry. As he approached the gates he became aware of a very slight movement in a patch of extremely black shadows cast by a group of trees. He stopped dead. Was it Thompson or Noakes, on to something and keeping doggo, or was it…? He listened and again there was a rustle and the sound of heavy breathing. At this moment a spot of torchlight danced about the drive and Sergeant Noakes himself appeared from the opposite direction, having apparently crossed the lawn and emerged through Mr. Period’s shrubs. He shone his light in Alleyn’s face and said: “Oh, beg pardon, sir. There’s nothing to be seen, sir, anywhere. Except dog prints. Two kinds.”

Alleyn gestured silently towards the shadows. “Eh?” said Noakes. “What?” And then comprehensively: “Cor!”

There being no point after this in attempting any further concealment Alleyn said: “Look out, you ass,” and switched on his own torchlight, aiming it at the shadows.

“On your toes, now,” he said and advanced, Noakes with him.

He walked past a lowish thicket of evergreens, pointed his light into the depths beyond, and illuminated Alfred Belt with Mrs. Mitchell, transfixed in his arms.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir,” said Alfred.

Mrs. Mitchell said: “Oh dear; what a coincidence! What will the gentlemen be thinking,” and tittered.

“What we’ll be thinking,” Alleyn said, “depends to a certain extent on what you’ll be saying. Come out.”

Alfred looked at his arms as if they didn’t belong to him, released Mrs. Mitchell and advanced to the drive. “I should have thought, sir,” he said with restraint, “that the circumstance was self-explanatory.”

“We didn’t return by the side gate,” Mrs. Mitchell offered, “on account of my not fancying it after what has taken place.”

“A very natural feminine reaction, sir, if I may say so.”

“We were returning,” said Mrs. Mitchell, “from the Church Social.”

“Mrs. Mitchell has been presented with the long-service Girls’ Friendly Award. Richly deserved, I was offering my congratulations.”

“Jolly good,” Alleyn said. “May I offer mine?”

“Thank you very much, I’m sure. It’s a teapot,” Mrs. Mitchell said, exhibiting her trophy.

“And of course, a testimonial,” Alfred amended.

“Splendid. And you have spent the evening together?”

“Not to say together, sir. Mrs. Mitchell, as befitted the occasion, occupied the rostrum. I am merely her escort,” said Alfred.

“The whole thing,” Alleyn confessed, “fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. What are you going to do next?”

“Next, sir?”

“Next.”

“Well sir. As it’s something of an event, I hope to persuade Mrs. Mitchell to join me in a nightcap, after which we will retire,” Alfred said with some emphasis, “to our respective accommodations.”

“Dog permitting,” Mrs. Mitchell said abruptly.

“Dog?”

“Pixie, sir. She is still at large. There may be disturbances.”

“Alfred,” Alleyn said, “when did you leave Mr. Period?”

“Leave him, sir?”

“Tonight?”

“After I had served coffee, sir, which was at eight-thirty.”

“Do you know if he was expecting a telephone call?”

“Not that I was aware,” Alfred said. “He didn’t mention it. Is anything the matter, sir, with Mr. Period?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “there is. He has been the victim of a murderous assault, and is severely concussed.”

“Oh, my Gawd!” Mrs. Mitchell ejaculated and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“My gentleman? Where is he? Here,” Alfred said loudly, “let me go in!”

“By all means. You will find Dr. Elkington there and Superintendent Williams. Report to them, will you?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Alfred.

“One other thing. When did you empty the ashtrays in the library?”

“After dinner, sir. As usual.”

“Splendid. Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Alfred said, automatically.

Alleyn saw them go in and himself crossed the Green to Miss Cartell’s house, A belated couple, closely entwined, was making its way home, presumably from the Social. Otherwise all was quiet.

He found Fox in Miss Cartell’s drawing-room with the household rounded up before him. On these occasions Fox always reminded Alleyn of a dependable sheepdog.

Connie herself was lashed into a dull purple robe, beneath the hem of which appeared the decent evidence of a sensible nightgown and a pair of extremely grubby slippers. Leonard Leiss was in trousers and shirt and Moppett in the négligé she had worn that morning. She was made up. Her pale lipstick had been smudged and her hair was dishevelled. She looked both sulky and frightened. Trudi, in a casque of hair curlers, but still fully dressed, seemed to be transfixed by astonishment.

Connie said: “Look here, this is all pretty ghastly, isn’t it? How is he?”

“He’s not conscious.”

“Yes, but I mean, how bad is it?”

Alleyn said they were not sure how bad it was.

“Well, but what happened?” Connie persisted, looking resentfully at Inspector Fox. “We don’t know anything. Turfing everybody out of bed and asking all these questions.”

“Oh, do pipe down, Auntie,” Moppett protested with some violence. “It’s perfectly obvious what it’s all about.”

“It’s not obvious to me.”

“Fancy!” Leonard remarked offensively.

Fox said with forbearance: “Well now, Mr.. Alleyn, we’re getting on slowly. I’ve tried to explain the necessity, as a purely routine affair, for checking-up these good people’s whereabouts.”

“Certainly.”

“Yes. Well it seems Miss Cartell has been at home this evening, apart from an interval when she took her little dog into the garden—”

“That’s right,” Connie interrupted indignantly. “And if it wasn’t for that damned bitch, I’d have been in my bed an hour ago. And where’s my Li? That’s what I want to know. He’s a valuable dog, and if anything’s happened to him, chasing after that mongrel, I’ll hold you responsible.” She wrung her hands distractedly.

“The little dog,” Fox explained, “has gone off for a romp.”

Moppett laughed shrilly.

“What happened exactly?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Connie shouted. “I was going to bed and he asked for outies. He’d already had them once, so I might have known, but he kept on asking. So I took him down. No sooner were we in the garden than I saw that brute, and so did he. She went floundering off and he was out of my arms and after her before I could stop him. I’m a bit clumsy because of my thumb. Otherwise,” she added, proudly, “he wouldn’t have made it.”

“Miss Cartell,” Fox explained, “was in the garden, calling the little dog, when I arrived.”

“There’ll have to be an organized search,” Connie blustered. “That’s all. An organized search. I’m jolly sorry about P.P., but I can’t help it.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Did what happen?”

“The Pekingese business.”

“How the hell should I know?” Connie said, rudely. “I seem to have been out there for hours. All over the village in this kit. Look at my feet! Nobody about, luckily. Not that I care. God knows where he’s got to.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“I haven’t been to bed.”

“Well, when did you get ready to go to bed?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. About nine o’clock.”

“Early!” Alleyn remarked.

“I wanted to watch the telly. I like to be comfortable,” said Connie.

“And did you watch your telly?”

“Started to, but it was a lot of guff about delinquent teenagers. I went to sleep. Li woke me. That’s when he asked for outies.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “we progress.”

“If you’ve finished with me—”

“I’ll have to ask you to wait a minute or two longer.”

“My God!” Connie said and threw up her hands.

Alleyn turned to Moppett and Leonard.

“And neither of you, I gather, joined in the search.”

Leonard stretched himself elaborately. “Afraid not,” he said. “I understood it to be a routine party.”

“I shouted up to you,” Connie pointed out resentfully.

“So sorry,” Moppett said. “I was in my bath.”

“You hadn’t washed your face,” Alleyn observed.

“I don’t clean my face in my bath.”

“But you bathed?”

“Yes.”

“When? For how long?”

“I don’t know when, and I like to take my time.”

“Fox?” Alleyn said. “Will you look in the bathroom?”

Fox made for the door.

“All right,” Moppett said breathlessly. “I didn’t have a bath. I was going to and I heard all the rumpus and Auntie shrieking for Li and I went to Lennie’s room and said ought we to do anything and we got talking and then your friend Mr. Fox came and hauled us down here.”

“And earlier? Before you thought of taking a bath?”

“We were talking.”

“Where?”

“In my room.”

Connie looked at her with a sort of despair. “Really, you two,” she said like an automaton. “What Mr. Alleyn will think!” She looked anxiously at him. “I can vouch for them,” she said. “They were both in. All the evening. I’d swear it.”

“You were asleep with the television on, Miss Cartell.”

“I’d have known if anyone went out. I always do. It was only a cat nap. They always bang the door. Anyway I heard them, talking and laughing upstairs.”

“Can you help us, Trudi?” Alleyn asked.

“I do not know what is all happen,” said Trudi. “I am at the priest’s hall where is a party. I sing. Schuplatter dancing also I do.”

“That’d sent them,” said Leonard and laughed.

“I return at half-past eleven o’clock and I make my hair.”

“Did you help in the search?”

“Please?”

“Did you help look for the little dog?”

“Ach! Yes. I hear the screech of Miss Cartell who is saying ‘Come Li, come Li,’ and I go.”

“There you are!” Connie cried out with a sort of gloomy triumph about nothing in particular.

Leonard murmured: “You’re wasting your time, chum.”

Alleyn said: “I should like to know if there were any personal telephone calls during the day, Miss Cartell. Apart from routine domestic ones.”

Connie stared at him distractedly. “I don’t know,” she said. “No. I don’t think so. No. Not for me.”

“For anyone else? Outgoing or incoming calls? Mr. Leiss?”

“I had a call to London,” Leonard said. “I had to put off an urgent business engagement. Thanks to your keeping me here.”

“It was a jolly long call,” Connie said, obviously with thoughts of the bill.

“Who was it made to, if you please?”

“Fellow at my club,” Leonard said grandly.

“The Hacienda?”

Leonard darted a venomous glance at him, leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

“And that was the only call?” Alleyn continued.

“Far as I know,” said Connie.

“Any messages?”

“Messages?”

“Notes? Word of mouth?”

“Not that I know,” Connie said wearily.

“Please?” Trudi asked. “Message? Yes?”

“I was asking if anyone brought a letter, a written note, or a message.”

“No, they didn’t,” Moppett loudly interrupted.

“But, yes, Miss. For you. By Mr. Belt.”

“All right. All right,” Leonard drawled. “She can’t remember every damn’ thing. It didn’t amount to a row of beans—”

“One moment,” Alleyn said, raising a finger. Leonard subsided. “So Belt brought you a message from Mr. Period. When, Miss Ralston?”

“I don’t know.”

“After tea,” Trudi said.

“What was the message?”

“I didn’t pay much attention. I don’t remember,” said Moppett.

“You don’t have to talk,” Leonard said. “Shut up.” He began to whistle under his breath. Moppett nudged his foot and he stopped abruptly.

“What,” Alleyn asked, “is that tune? Is it ‘O.K. by Me’?”

“No idea, I’m afraid,” Leonard said. Moppett looked deadly sick.

“Have you had the leak in the radiator mended?”

Moppett made a strange little noise in her throat.

“Miss Ralston,” Alleyn said, “did you whistle late last night when you were near Mr. Period’s garden gate?”

There was a kind of stoppage in the room as if a film had been halted at a specific point.

Moppett said: “You must be dotty. What do you mean — in the lane?”

“Like I told you. You don’t have to say one single thing. Just keep your little trap shut, baby,” said Leonard.

“Moppett!” Connie cried out. “Don’t. Don’t say anything, darling.”

Moppett hurled herself at her guardian and clawed her like a terrified kitten. “Auntie Con!” she sobbed. “Don’t let him! Auntie Con! I’m sorry. I don’t know anything. I haven’t done anything. Auntie Con!”

Connie enfolded her with a gesture that for all its clumsiness had something classic about it. She turned her head and looked at Alleyn with desperation.

“My ward,” she said, “hasn’t anything to tell you. Don’t frighten her.”

The front doorbell sounded loudly.

“I answer?” Trudi asked composedly.

“If you please,” Alleyn said.

Leonard got up and walked away. Connie’s large uncomely hand patted Moppett as if she were a dog. Voices sounded in the hall and an exclamation from Trudi.

“My God,” Connie exclaimed, “what now?”

“Don’t let them come,” Moppett said. “Who is it? Don’t let them come.”

Connie put her aside. After a venomous and terrified look at Alleyn, Moppett joined Leonard at the far end of the room, noisily blowing her nose.

A strangulated yapping broke out and an unmistakable voice said: “Shut up, you little ass,” and then, apparently to Trudi: “Well, just for a moment.”

Désirée Bantling came in, followed by her husband. She was dressed in green and mink and carried the dishevelled and panting Pekingese.

“Hullo, Connie,” she said. “Look what we’ve found!”

Connie made a plunge at her and gathered the dog into her arms in much the same way she had taken Moppett.

“Hullo, Rory,” said Désirée, “still at it? Good evening,” she added in the direction of Fox, Moppett and Leonard.

Bimbo said: “We picked him up out there having a high old time with the boxer bitch.”

“She took another bite at poor Bimbo,” Désirée said. “Same hand and all. It’s becoming quite a thing with her. Show them, darling.”

Bimbo, who had his left hand in his overcoat pocket, said: “Do shut up about it, darling.”

“He’s rather touchy on the subject,” Désirée explained. “I can’t think why.”

“You bad boy,” Connie said. The Pekingese licked her face excitedly.

“So, knowing you’d be in a fever, we roped him in. I fear she’s seduced him, Connie,” said Désirée.

“Is nature,” Trudi observed. She was standing inside the door.

“And there,” Désirée remarked with a grin, “you have the matter in a nutshell.”

She gave a comprehensive glance round the room. “We’re not staying,” she said, “having had a pretty lethal evening. Sorry to interrupt. Come along, darling.”

Alleyn said: “Just a minute, if you don’t mind.”

She looked at him in her leisurely unconcerned way. “What, again?” she remarked and sat down.

“Where exactly did you find the dog?”

With Pixie, it appeared, on the Green. It had taken Désirée and Bimbo some time to catch Li, and they must have looked, she said, pretty silly, if there’d been anyone to see them. She fitted a cigarette into a holder. Her beautiful gloves were dirty.

“Where had you come from?”

“My dears, we’d been dining near Bornlee Green. A dim general and his wife; and pretty heavy weather, by and large, we made of it.”

“Rather late for a dinner party.”

“With bridge afterwards, darling.”

“I see. Tell me,” Alleyn said, “have you seen or heard anything of Pyke Period since I left Baynesholme this afternoon?”

“No,” said Bimbo, at once. “Why?”

Alleyn turned to Désirée, who raised her eyebrows at him. “And you?” he asked her.

“I ran in for a moment on our way to Bomlee Green. There was something I wanted to tell him. Bimbo waited in the car.”

“Was it something about the letter we discussed just before I left Baynesholme?”

“Actually, yes.” She gave him a half smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I changed my mind. I told him.”

“I don’t know what anybody’s talking about,” Connie grumbled. She looked anxiously at Moppett, who had got herself under control and, with Leonard, stayed at the far end of the room, avidly listening.

“You’re not alone in that, Auntie,” said Moppett.

Bimbo said, loudly: “Look here, I don’t know if anybody agrees with me, but I’m getting very bored with the turn this affair is taking. We’re being asked all sorts of personal questions without the smallest reason being given, and I don’t feel inclined to take much more of it.”

“Hear, hear,” said Leonard. Bimbo glanced at him with profound distaste.

“I fear, my darling,” Désirée said, “you will have to lump it. Our finer feelings are not of much account, I fancy.”

“All the same, I want to know. What’s this about P.P.? Why the hell shouldn’t you call in to see him? We might be living in a police state,” he blustered, looking sideways at Alleyn.

“Mr. Dodds,” Alleyn said, “any visit to Mr. Period during the last few hours is perfectly relevant, since, at about eleven o’clock this evening, somebody attempted to murder him.”

There are not so very many ways in which people react to news of this sort. They may cry out in what appears to be astonishment, they may turn red or white and look ambiguous, or they may simply sit and gape. Bimbo and Désirée followed this last pattern.

After a moment Désirée exclaimed: “P.P.? Not true!” And, at the same time, Bimbo said: “Not possible!”

“On the contrary,” said Alleyn, “possible and, unfortunately, true.”

“Attempted to murder him,” Bimbo echoed. “How? Why?”

“With a brass paperweight. Possibly,” Alleyn said, turning to Désirée, “because you told him that I’d got the letter he sent by mistake to you.”

Looking at Désirée, Alleyn thought: But I won’t get any change out of you, my girl. If I’ve given you a jolt, you’re not going to let anyone know it.

“That seems very far-fetched,” she said composedly.

“Here!” Connie intervened. “Did you get a funny letter too, Désirée? Here — What is all this?”

“I’m afraid I don’t believe you,” Désirée said to Alleyn.

“You’ve no right to make an accusation of that sort,” Bimbo cried out. “Making out people are responsible for murderous attacks and not giving the smallest explanation. What evidence have you got?”

“Since the damage has been done,” Alleyn said, “I’m prepared to put a certain amount of the evidence before you.”

“Damn’ big of you, I must say! Though why it should concern Désirée—”

Alleyn said: “Directly or indirectly, you are all concerned.”

He waited for a moment. Nobody said anything and he went on:

“It’s too much to expect that each one of you will answer any questions fully or even truthfully, but it’s my duty to ask you to do so.”

“Why shouldn’t we?” Connie protested. “I don’t see why you’ve got to say a thing like that. Boysie always said that in murder trials the guilty have nothing to fear. He always said that. I mean the innocent,” she added distractedly. “You know what I mean.”

“How right he was. Very well, shall we start with that premise in mind? Now. Yesterday at luncheon, Mr. Cartell told a story about a man who cooked a baptismal register in order to establish blood relationship with a certain family. Those of you who were there may have thought that Mr. Period seemed to be very much put out by this anecdote. Would you agree?”

Connie said bluntly: “I thought P.P.’s behaviour was jolly peculiar. I thought he’d got his knife into Boysie about something.”

Moppett, who seemed to have regained her composure, said: “If you ask me, P.P. was terrified Uncle Hal would tell the whole story. He looked murder at him. Not that I mean anything by that.”

“In any case,” Alleyn continued, “Mr. Period was disturbed by the incident. He wrote a short and rather ambiguous letter to Miss Cartell, suggesting that his ancestry did, in fact, go back as far as anyone who bothered about such things might wish, and asking her to forgive him for pursuing the matter. At the same time he wrote a letter of condolence to Lady Bantling. Unfortunately he transferred the envelopes.”

“How bad is he?” Désirée asked suddenly.

Alleyn told her how bad Mr. Period seemed to be and she said: “We can take him if it’d help.”

Bimbo started to say something and stopped.

“Now this misfortune with the letter,” Alleyn plodded on, “threw him into a fever. On the one hand he had appeared to condole with Miss Cartell for a loss that had not yet been discovered, and, on the other, he had sent Lady Bantling a letter that he would give the world to withdraw, since, once it got into my hands, I might follow it up. As long as this letter remained undisclosed, Mr. Period remained unwilling to make any statement that might lead to an arrest for the murder of Mr. Cartell. He was afraid, first, that he might bring disaster upon an innocent person, and, second, that anything he said might lead to an examination of his own activities and Mr. Cartell’s veiled allusions to them. All this,” he added, “supposes him, for the moment, to be innocent of the murder.”

“Of course he is,” Désirée muttered impatiently. “Good Lord! P.P.!”

“You don’t know,” Bimbo intervened with a sharp look at her. “If he’d go to those lengths, he might go the whole hog.”

“Murder Hal, to save his own face! Honestly, darling!”

“You don’t know,” Bimbo repeated obstinately. “He might.”

“Assume for the moment,” Alleyn said, “that he didn’t, but that he was in possession of evidence that might well throw suspicion on someone else. Assume that his motive in not laying this information was made up of consideration for an old friend and fear of the consequences to himself. He learns that I have been told of yesterday’s luncheon party, and also that 1 have been given the letter that was occasioned by the conversation at the party. It’s more than possible that he heard, on the village grapevine, that I visited Ribblethorpe Church this afternoon. So the gaff, he thinks, is as good as blown. With a certain bit of evidence weighing on his conscience, he sends his man here with a note asking you, Miss Ralston, to visit him. Wanting to keep the encounter private, he suggests a late hour. After a good deal of discussion with Mr. Leiss, no doubt, you decide to fall in with this plan. You do, in fact, cross the Green at about 10:45, and visit Mr. Period in his library.”

“You’re only guessing,” Moppett said. “You don’t know.”

“You enter the library by the French windows. During the interview you smoke. You drop ash on the carpet and grind it in with your heel. You leave two butts of Mainsail cigarettes in the ashtray. Mr. Period tells you he heard someone whistling in the lane very late last night and that he recognized the tune. You and Mr. Leiss knew your way about the garden, I believe. To support this theory, we have the theft of Mr. Period’s cigarette case—”

“I never,” Leonard interrupted, “heard anything so fantastic. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“…Which you, Mr. Leiss, left on the sill, having opened the window with this theft in mind. Subsequently, it may be, the case became too hot and you threw it in the drain, hoping it would be supposed that Mr. Period had lost it there, or that the workmen had stolen and dumped it. Alternatively, you might have dropped it, inadvertently, when you altered the planks in order to bring about Mr. Cartell’s death.”

He waited for a moment. An all-too-familiar look of conceit and insolence appeared in Leonard. He stretched out his legs, leant back in his chair and stared through half-closed eyes at the opposite wall. A shadow trembled on his shirt and he kept his hands in his pockets.

Connie said: “It’s not true: none of it’s true.”

Moppett repeated: “Not true,” in a whisper.

“As to what actually took place at this interview,” Alleyn went on, “Mr. Period will no doubt be willing to talk about it when he recovers. My guess would be that he tackled Miss Ralston pretty firmly, told her what he suspected, and said that if she could give him an adequate explanation he would, for Miss Cartell’s sake, go no further. She may have admitted she was the whistler he heard from his window and said that she had come into his garden on the way home from the party to get water for Mr. Leiss’s car-radiator, which had sprung a leak. I think this explanation is true.”

Moppett cried out: “Of course it’s true. I did. I got the water and I put the bloody can back. I remembered having seen it under the tap.”

“After lunch, when you took Mr. Period’s cigarette case off the sill?”

“Fantastic!” Leonard repeated. “That’s all. Fantastic!”

“Very well,” Alleyn said. “Let it remain in the realms of fantasy.”

“If it’s in order,” Désirée said. “I’d like to ask something.”

“Of course.”

“Are we meant to think that whoever threw the fish laid the trap for Hal?”

“A fish?” Leonard asked with an insufferable air of innocence. “But has anyone said anything about a fish?”

Désirée disregarded him. She said to Alleyn: “I ought to know. I gave it to P.P. yesterday morning. He’s dotty about pikes and this thing looked like one. He put it in the library.…Could I have an answer to my question?”

“I think the murderer and the paperweight thrower are one and the same person.”

“Good,” said Désirée. “That lets us out, Bimbo.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Bimbo said with a short laugh. “Why?”

“Well, because neither of us has the slightest motive for hurling anything at P.P.”

“Isn’t he one of the trustees for Andrew Bantling’s estate?” Leonard asked of nobody in particular.

She turned her head and looked very steadily at him. “Certainly,” she said. “What of it?”

“I was just wondering, Lady Bantling. You might have discussed business with Mr. Period when you called on him this evening?”

Bimbo said angrily: “I’m afraid I fail entirely to see why you should wonder anything of the sort, or how you can possibly know the smallest thing about it.”

“Yes, but I do, as it happens. I heard you talking things over with your dashing stepson at the party.”

“Good God!” Bimbo said, and turned up his eyes.

Désirée said to Alleyn: “I told you. I called to own up that I’d given you his letter. I felt shabby about it and wanted to get it off my chest.”

“What’s his attitude about the Grantham Gallery proposal, do you know?”

“Oh,” Désirée said easily, “he waffles.”

“He’ll be all right,” Bimbo said.

“Just a moment,” Leonard intervened. He still lay back in his chair and looked at the ceiling but there was a new edge in his voice. “If you’re talking about this proposition to buy an art gallery,” he said, “I happen to know P.P. was all against it.”

Bimbo said: “You met Mr. Period for the first time when you got yourself asked to lunch in his house. I fail to see how that gives you any insight into his views on anything.”

“You don’t,” Leonard observed, “have to know people all their lives to find out some of the bits and pieces. The same might apply to you, chum. How about that affair over a certain club?”

“You bloody little pipsqueak—”

“All right, darling,” Désirée said easily. “Pipe down. It couldn’t matter less.”

“Not when you marry money, it couldn’t,” Leonard agreed offensively.

Bimbo strode down the room towards him: “By God, if the police don’t do something about you, I will.”

Fox rose from obscurity. “Now, then, sir,” he said blandly. “We mustn’t get too hot, must we?”

“Get out of my way.”

Leonard was on his feet. Moppett snatched his arm. He jabbed at her with his elbow, side-stepped, and backed down the room, his hand in his jacket pocket. Alleyn took him from behind by the arms.

“You’ve forgotten,” he said. “I’ve got your knife.”

Leonard uttered an elaborate obscenity, and at the same time Fox, with the greatest economy, caused Bimbo to drop backwards into the nearest chair. “That’s right, sir,” he said. “We don’t want to get too warm. It wouldn’t look well, in the circumstances, would it?”

Bimbo swore at him. “I demand,” he said, pointing a bandaged hand at Alleyn, “I demand an explanation. You’re keeping us here without authority. You’re listening to a lot of bloody, damaging, malicious lies. If you suspect one of us, I demand to know who and why. Now then!”

“Fair enough,” said Désirée. “You stick out for your rights, duckie. All the same,” she added, looking Alleyn full in the face, “I don’t believe he knows. He’s letting us cut up rough and hoping something will come out of it. Aren’t you, Rory?”

She was inviting Alleyn, as he very well knew, to acknowledge, however slightly, that he and she spoke the same language: that alone, of all this assembly, they could understand each other without elaboration. He released the now quiescent Leonard and answered her directly.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t quite like that. It’s true that I believe I know who murdered Harold Cartell. I believe that there is only one of you who fills the bill. Naturally, I’m looking for all the corroborative evidence I can find.”

“I demand—” Bimbo reiterated, but his wife cut him short.

“All right, darling,” she said. “So you’ve told us. You demand an explanation and I rather fancy you’re going to get it. So do pipe down.” She returned to Alleyn. “Are you going to tell us,” she asked, “that we all had red-hot motives for getting rid of Hal? Because I feel sure we did.”

“Contrary to popular belief,” he said, “the police are concerned less with motive than with opportunity and behaviour. But, yes. As it happens you all had motives of a sort. Yours, for instance, could be thought to come under the heading of maternal love.”

“Could it, indeed?” said Désirée.

“By God!” Bimbo shouted, but Alleyn cut him short.

“And you,” he said, “wanted to invest in this project that Cartell wouldn’t countenance. Judging from the unopened bills on your desk and your past history, this could be a formidable motive.”

“And that,” Leonard observed, smirking at Bimbo, “takes the silly grin off your face, Jack, doesn’t it?”

“Whereas,” Alleyn continued, “you, Mr. Leiss, and Miss Ralston were directly threatened, both by Mr. Cartell and, I think, Mr. Period, with criminal proceedings which would almost certainly land you in jail.”

“No!” Connie ejaculated.

“A threat,” Alleyn said, “that may be said to provide your motive as well, I’m afraid, Miss Cartell. As for Alfred Belt and Mrs. Mitchell, who are not present, they were both greatly concerned to end Mr. Cartell’s tenancy, which they found intolerable. Murder has been done for less.”

It was not pleasant, he thought, to see the veiled eagerness with which they welcomed this departure. Leonard actually said: “Well, of course. Now you’re talking,” and Moppett flicked the tip of her tongue over her lips.

“But I repeat,” Alleyn went on, “that it is circumstance, opportunity and behaviour that must concern us. Opportunity, after a fashion, you all had. Miss Ralston and Mr. Leiss were on the premises late that night; they had stolen the cigarette case and the case was found by the body. The trap was laid by somebody wearing leather-and-string gloves, and Mr. Leiss has lost such a pair of gloves.”

Leonard and Moppett began to talk together, but Alleyn held up his hand and they stopped dead.

“Their behaviour, however, doesn’t make sense. If they were planning to murder Mr. Cartell they would hardly have publicized their actions by singing and whistling under Mr. Period’s window.”

Moppett gave a strangulated sob, presumably of relief.

“Lady Bantling had opportunity, and she knew the lay of the land. She could have set the trap; but it’s obvious that she didn’t do so, as she was seen, by Mr. Bantling and Miss Maitland-Mayne, returning across the planks to her car. She, too, had publicized her visit by serenading Mr. Cartell from the garden. Her behaviour does not commend itself as that of an obsession maternal murderess.”

“Too kind of you to say so,” Désirée murmured.

“Moreover, I fancy she is very well aware that her son could anticipate his inheritance by borrowing upon his expectations and insuring his life as security for the loan. This reduces her motive to one of mere exasperation, and the same may be said of Mr. Bantling himself.”

“And of me,” said Bimbo quickly.

Alleyn said: “In your case, there might well be something we haven’t yet winkled out. Which is what I mean about the secondary importance of motive. However, I was coming to you. You had ample opportunity. You retired to a bathroom, where you tell me you spent a long time bandaging your hand. You could equally well have spent it driving back to the ditch and arranging the trap. No, please don’t interrupt. I know you were bitten. That proves nothing. You may also say that you took Mr. Leiss’s overcoat to him. Were his gloves in the pocket?”

“How the hell do I know! I didn’t pick his ghastly pockets,” said Bimbo, turning very white.

“A statement that at the moment can’t be checked. All the same, there’s this to be said for you: if you are both telling the truth about your movements this evening, you are unlikely to have chucked the paperweight at Mr. Period’s head. Although,” Alleyn said very coolly, “the amorous dog chase might well have led you into Mr. Period’s garden.”

“It might have,” Désirée remarked, “but, in point of fact, it didn’t. Bimbo was never out of my sight.”

“If that is so,” Àlleyn said, “it leads us to an inescapable conclusion.”

He waited, and across the stillness of the room there floated small inconsequent sounds: the whisper of Fox’s pencil and his rather heavy breathing, the faint rasp of Moppett’s fingernails on the arms of her chair, and from somewhere within the house a scarcely perceptible mechanical throb.

“There remains,” Alleyn said, “just one person to whom opportunity, behaviour and motive all point, inescapably. This one person presents certain characteristics: a knowledge of Mr. Cartell’s movements, the assurance that at one o’clock the Baynesholme guests would have long ago left the scene, and access to Mr. Leiss’s gloves. So much for opportunity. Behaviour. There are certain reactions. Everybody knows about Mr. Period’s propensity for writing letters of condolence: he’s famous for them. Now, suppose one of you gets a Period letter, couched in rather ambiguous terms but commiserating with you on the loss of somebody whom you saw fighting-fit the previous evening. What would you think? Either that he was dotty or that he had sent you the wrong letter. You might get an initial shock, but a few moments’ thought would reassure you. You would not, having gone to find out what it was all about and encountered a bewildered Mr. Period, turn deadly white and almost faint. But if you had murdered the supposed subject of the letter, how would you react? Suppose you had awakened in the morning with the remembrance of your deed festering in your mind and then been presented with this letter. Suppose, finally, that when you were being interviewed by the police, a second letter arrived, couched in exactly the same phrases. Wouldn’t that seem like a nightmare? Wouldn’t it seem as if Mr. Period knew what you’d done, and was torturing you with his knowledge? What would you do then?”

Connie Cartell had risen to her feet. She made an extraordinary gesture with her weather-chapped bandaged hand.

“You can’t prove it,” she said. “You haven’t got the gloves.”

At that moment a loud and confused rumpus broke out in the garden. There was a cry of frustration and a yelp of pain. The Pekingese leapt from Connie’s embrace.

A body crashed against the French windows. They burst open to admit Pixie, immensely overwrought and carrying some object in her mouth. She was closely followed by Alfred Belt.

Alleyn shouted: “Shut those windows.” Alfred did so and stood in front of them, panting noisily.

With an expertise borne of their early training, Alleyn and Fox seized, respectively, Pixie and Li. Alleyn thrust his thumbs into the corners of Pixie’s slavering mouth.

Her plaything dropped to the floor. Alfred, gasping for breath, stammered: “In the garden, sir. Here. Ran her to earth. Digging.”

Moppett cried out: “Lennie! Lennie! Look! They’re your gloves!”

Alleyn said to Bimbo: “Catch hold of this dog.”

“I’ll be damned if I do.”

“I do her,” said Trudi.

She dragged Pixie from the room.

Alleyn stooped to retrieve the gloves. He unrolled them. The leather in the palms had been torn, and fragments of string hung loose from the knitted backs. The thumb of the left-hand glove was discoloured with blood. He began to turn it inside out. As he did so, Connie Cartell screamed.

It was a shocking sound, scarcely less animal than the canine outcry that had preceded it. Her mouth remained open and for a moment she looked like a mask for a Fury. Then she plunged forward and, when Fox seized her, screamed again.

The lining of the thumb showed a fragment of blackened and bloodstained cotton wool, and smelt quite distinctly of the black ointment used for girth-gall.