Tied Up in Tinsel

Seven — House Work

Colonel Forrester lay in a little heap face down under the window. He looked small and accidental. His wife, in her red dressing gown, knelt beside him, and as Troy and Alleyn entered the room, was in the act of raising him to a sitting position. Alleyn helped her.

Troy said, “He takes something, doesn’t he?”

“Tablets. Bedside table. And water.”

He was leaning back in his wife’s arms now, his eyes wide open and terrified and his head moving very slightly in time with his breathing. Her thin plait of hair dangled over him.

“It’s not here,” Troy said.

“Must be. Pill things. Capsules. He put them there. Be quick.”

Alleyn said: “Try his dressing gown pocket, if you can reach it. Wait. I will.” It was empty.

“I saw them. I reminded him. You haven’t looked. Fred! Fred, you’re all right, old man. I’m here.”

“Truly,” said Troy. “They’re not anywhere here. How about brandy?”

“Yes. His flask’s in the middle drawer. Dressing table.”

It was there. Troy unscrewed the top and gave it to her. Alleyn began casting about the room.

“That’ll be better. Won’t it, Fred? Better?”

Troy brought a glass of water but was ignored. Mrs. Forrester held the mouth of the flask between her husband’s lips. “Take it, Fred,” she said. “Just a sip. Take it. You must. That’s right. Another.”

Alleyn said: “Here we are!”

He was beside them with a capsule in his palm. He held it out to Mrs. Forrester. Then he took the flask from her put it beside a glass phial on the dressing table.

“Fred, look. Your pill. Come on, old boy.”

The delay seemed interminable. Into the silence came a tiny rhythmic sound: “Ah — ah — ah,” of the Colonel’s breathing. Presently Mrs. Forrester said: “That’s better. Isn’t it? That’s better, old boy.”

He was better. The look of extreme anxiety passed. He made plaintive little noises and at last murmured something.

“What? What is it?”

“Moult,” whispered the Colonel.

Mrs. Forrester made an inarticulate exclamation. She brushed her husband’s thin hair back and kissed his forehead.

“Turn,” said the Colonel, “wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“All right soon.”

“Of course you will be.”

“Up.”

“Not yet, Fred.”

“Yes. Get up.”

He began very feebly to scrabble with his feet on the carpet. Mrs. Forrester, with a look of helplessness of which Troy would have thought her totally incapable, turned to Alleyn.

“Yes, of course,” he said, answering it. “He shouldn’t lie flat, should he?”

She shook her head.

Alleyn leant over the Colonel. “Will you let me put you to bed, sir?” he asked.

“Very kind. Shouldn’t bother.”

Troy heaped up the pillows on the bed and opened it back. When she looked about her she found Alleyn with the Colonel in his arms.

“Here we go,” said Alleyn and gently deposited his burden.

The Colonel looked up at him. “Collapse,” he said, “of Old Party,” and the wraith of his mischievous look visited his face.

“You old fool,” said his wife.

Alleyn chuckled. “You’ll do,” he said. “You’ll do splendidly.”

“Oh yes. I expect so.”

Mrs. Forrester chafed his hands between her two elderly ones.

Alleyn picked up the phial delicately between finger and thumb and held it up to the light.

“Where was it?” Troy asked.

He motioned with his head towards a lacquered leather wastepaper bin under the dressing table. The gesture was not so slight that it escaped Mrs. Forrester.

“In there?” she said. “In there?”

“Is there something I can put the capsules in? I’d like to keep the phial if I may?”

“Anything. There’s a pin box on the dressing table. Take that.”

He did so. He spread his handkerchief out and gingerly wrapped up the phial and its stopper.

“The stable door bit,” he muttered and put them in his pocket.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Mrs. Forrester, who was rapidly returning to form.

“It means mischief,” said Alleyn.

The Colonel in a stronger voice said, “Could there be some air?”

The curtain was not drawn across the window under which they had found him. The rain still beat against it. Alleyn said, “Are you sure?”

Mrs. Forrester said, “We always have it open at the top. Moult does it before he goes to bed. Two inches from the top. Always.”

Alleyn found that it was unlatched. He put the heels of his hands under the top sash in the lower frame and couldn’t budge it. He tried to raise it by the two brass loops at the base but with no success.

“You must push up the bottom in order to lower the top,” Mrs. Forrester observed.

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“You can’t be. It works perfectly well.”

“It doesn’t, you know.”

“Fiddle,” said Mrs. Forrester.

The ejaculation was intended contemptuously, but he followed it like an instruction. He fiddled. His fingers explored the catch and ran along the junction of the two sashes.

“It’s wedged,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s a wedge between the sashes.”

“Take it out.”

“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said, “Mrs. Forrester. You just wait a bit.”

“Why!”

“Because I say,” he replied and the astounded Troy saw that Mrs. Forrester relished this treatment.

“I suppose,” she snapped, “you think you know what you’re about.”

“What is it, B?” asked her husband. “Is something wrong with the window?”

“It’s being attended to.”

“It’s awfully stiff. Awfully stiff.”

Alleyn returned to the bed. “Colonel Forrester,” he said. “Did you wrestle with the window? With your hands above your head? Straining and shoving?”

“You needn’t rub it in,” said the Colonel.

“Fred!” cried his wife, “what am I to do with you! I said —”

“Sorry, B.”

“I’ll open the other window,” Alleyn said. “I want this one left as it is. Please. It’s important. You do understand, don’t you? Both of you? No touching?”

“Of course, of course, of course,” the Colonel drawled. His eyes were shut. His voice was drowsy. “When he isn’t the White Knight,” Troy thought, “he’s the Dormouse.”

His wife put his hands under the bedclothes, gave him a sharp look, and joined Alleyn and Troy at the far end of the room.

“What’s all this about wedges?” she demanded.

“The houseman or whatever he is — ”

“Yes. Very well. Nigel.”

“Nigel. He may have wedged the sashes to stop the windows rattling in the storm.”

“I daresay.”

“If so, he only wedged one.”

As if in confirmation, the second window in the Forresters’ bedroom suddenly beat a tattoo.

“Ours haven’t been wedged,” said Troy.

“Nor has the dressing-room. May I borrow those scissors on your table? Thank you.”

He pulled a chair up to the window, took off his shoes, stood on it, and by gentle manipulation eased a closely folded cardboard wedge from between the sashes. Holding it by the extreme tip he carried it to the dressing table.

“It looks like a chemists’s carton,” he said. “Do you recognize it? Please don’t touch.”

“It’s the thing his pills come in. It was a new bottle.”

Alleyn fetched an envelope from the writing table, slid the wedge into it and pocketed it.

He put on his shoes and replaced the chair, “Remember,” he said, “don’t touch the window and don’t let Nigel touch it. Mrs. Forrester, will you be all right, now? Is there anything we can do?”

She sat down at her dressing table and leant her head on her hand. With her thin grey plait dangling and bald patches showing on her scalp she looked old and very tired.

“Thank you,” she said. “Nothing. We shall be perfectly all right.”

“Are you sure?” Troy asked and touched her shoulder.

“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’m quite sure. You’ve been very kind.” She roused herself sufficiently to give Alleyn one of her looks. “So have you,” she said, “as far as that goes. Very.”

“Do you know,” he said, “if I were you I’d turn the keys in the doors. You don’t want to be disturbed, do you?”

She looked steadily at him, and after a moment, shook her head. “And I know perfectly well what you’re thinking,” she said.

When Alleyn arrived downstairs it was to a scene of activity. Superintendent Wrayburn, now dressed in regulation waterproofs, was giving instructions to five equally waterproofed constables. Two prison warders and two dogs of super-caninely sharp aspect waited inside the main entrance. Hilary stood in front of one of the fires looking immensely perturbed.

“Ah!” he cried on seeing Alleyn. “Here you are! We were beginning to wonder —?”

Alleyn said that there had been one or two things to attend to upstairs, that the Colonel had been unwell but was all right again, and that he and Mrs. Forrester had retired for the night.

“Oh, Lor’!” Hilary said. “That too! Are you sure he’s all right? Poor Uncle Flea, but how awkward.”

“He’s all right.”

Alleyn joined Wrayburn, who made quite a thing of, as it were, presenting the troops for inspection. He then drew Alleyn aside and in a portentous murmur, said that conditions out-of-doors were now so appalling that an exhaustive search of the grounds was virtually impossible. He suggested, however, that they should make a systematic exploration of the area surrounding the house and extend it as far beyond as seemed feasible. As for the dogs and their handlers, Wrayburn said, did Alleyn think that there was anything to be got out of laying them on with one of the boots in the cloakroom and seeing if anything came of it? Not, he added, that he could for the life of him believe that anything would.

Alleyn agreed to this. “You’ve got a filthy night for it,” he said to the men. “Make what you can of a bad job. You do understand the position, of course. The man’s missing. He may be injured. He may be dead. There may be a capital charge involved, there may not. In any case it’s urgent. If we could have afforded to leave it till daylight, we would have done so. As it is — do your best. Mr. Wrayburn will give you your instructions. Thank you in advance for carrying out a foul assignment.”

To the handlers he made suitable acknowledgments and was at some pains to put them in the picture.

“On present evidence,” he said, “the missing man was last seen in that cloakroom over there. He may have gone outdoors, he may have gone upstairs. We don’t know where he went. Or how. Or in what state. I realize, of course, that under these conditions, as far as the open ground is concerned there can be nothing for the dogs to pick up, but there may be something in the entrance porch. If, for instance, you can find more than two separate tracks, that would be something, and you might cast round the front and sides of the east wing, especially about the broken conservatory area. I’ll join you when you do that. In the meantime Mr. Wrayburn will show you the ropes. All right?”

“Very good, sir,” they said.

“All right, Jack,” Alleyn said. “Over to you.”

Wrayburn produced the fur-lined boot — an incongruous and somehow rather piteous object — from under his cape and consulted with the handlers. The front doors were opened, letting in the uproar of the Nor’east Buster and letting out the search parties. Fractured torch beams zigzagged across the rain. Alleyn shut out the scene and said to Hilary, “And now, if you please, I’ll talk to the staff.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll ring —”

“Are they in their own quarters — the staff common-room, you call it, don’t you?”

“Yes. I think so. Yes, yes, they are.”

“I’ll see them there.”

“Shall I come?”

“No need. Better not, I think.”

“Alleyn: I do beg that you won’t — won’t —”

“I shall talk to them exactly as I shall talk to any one of you. With no foregone conclusions and without prejudice.”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes. Well, good. But — look here, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I mean, you do think — don’t you? — that there’s been — violence?”

“When one finds blood and hair on the business end of a poker, the thought does occur, doesn’t it?”

“Oh Lord!” said Hilary. “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, what a bore it all is! What a disgusting, devastating bore!”

“That’s one way of putting it. The staff-room’s at the back through there, isn’t it? I’ll find my own way.”

“I’ll wait in the study, then.”

“Do.”

Beyond the traditional green baize door was a passage running behind the hall, from the chapel, at the rear of the east wing, to the serveries and kitchen at the rear of the dining room in the west wing. Alleyn, guided by a subdued murmur of voices, tapped on a central door and opened it.

“May I come in?” he asked.

It was a large, comfortable room with an open fire, a television and a radio. On the walls hung reproductions of post-impressionist paintings, chosen, Alleyn felt sure, by Hilary. There were bookshelves lined with reading matter that proclaimed Hilary’s hopes for the intellectual stimulation of his employees. On a central table was scattered a heterogeneous company of magazines that perhaps reflected, more accurately, their natural inclination.

The apple-cheeked boy was watching television, the five members of the regular staff sat round the fire, their chairs close together. As Alleyn came in they got to their feet with the air of men who have been caught offside. Blore moved towards him and then stood still.

Alleyn said, “I thought it would be easier if we talked this business over here where we won’t be interrupted. May we sit down?”

Blore, with a quick look at the others, pulled back the central chair. Alleyn thanked him and took it. The men shuffled their feet. A slightly distorted voice at the other end of the room shouted, “What you guys waitin’ for? Less go.”

“Turn that off,” Blore commanded in his great voice, “and come over here.”

The rosy boy switched off the television set and slouched, blushing, towards them.

“Sit down, all of you,” Alleyn said. “I won’t keep you long.”

They sat down and he got a square look at them. At Blore: once a headwaiter, who had knifed his wife’s lover in the hanging days and narrowly escaped the rope, swarthy, fattish, baldish and with an air of consequence about him. At Mervyn, the ex-signwriter, booby-trap expert, a dark, pale man who stooped and looked sidelong. At Cooke, nicknamed Kittiwee, whose mouth wore the shadow of a smirk, who loved cats and had bashed a warder to death. At Slyboots and Smartypants, who lay along his ample thighs, fast asleep. At Nigel, pallid as uncooked pastry, almost an albino, possibly a lapsed religious maniac, who had done a sinful lady. Finally at Vincent, now seen by Alleyn for the first time at Halberds and instantly recognized since he himself had arrested him when, as gardener to an offensive old lady, he had shut her up in a greenhouse heavy with arsenical spray. His appeal, based on the argument that she had been concealed by a date palm and that he was unaware of her presence, was successful and he was released. At the time Alleyn had been rather glad of it. Vincent was a bit ferrety in the face and gnarled as to the hands.

They none of them looked at Alleyn.

“The first thing I have to say,” he said, “is this. You know that I know who you are and that you’ve all been inside and what the convictions were. You,” he said to Vincent, “may say you’re in a different position from the others, having been put in the clear, but where this business is concerned and at this stage of the inquiry, you’re all in the clear. By this I mean that your past records, as far as I can see at the moment, are of no interest and they’ll go on being uninteresting unless anything crops up to make me think otherwise. A man has disappeared. We don’t know why, how, when or where and we’ve got to find him. To use the stock phrase, alive or dead. If I say I hope one or more or all of you can help us, I don’t mean, repeat don’t mean, that one or more or all of you is or are suspected of having had anything to do with his disappearance. I mean what I say: I’m here to see if you can think of anything at all, however trivial, that will give us a lead, however slight. In this respect you’re on an equal footing with every other member of the household. Is that understood?”

The silence was long enough to make him wonder if there was to be no response. At last Blore said, “It’s understood, sir, I suppose, by all of us.”

“But not necessarily believed? Is that it?”

This time the silence was unbroken. “Well,” he said, “I can’t blame you. It’s a natural reaction. I can only hope you will come to accept the proposition.”

He turned to the boy, who stood apart looking guarded. “You’re a local chap, aren’t you?” Alleyn said.

He extracted with some difficulty that the boy, whose name was Thomas Appleby, was a farmer’s son engaged for the festive season. He had never spoken to Moult, had with the other servants come into the drawing-room for the Christmas tree, had had no idea who the Druid was, had received his present, and had returned to his kitchen and outhouse duties as soon as the ceremony ended and had nothing whatever to offer in the way of information. Alleyn said he could go off to bed, an invitation he seemed to accept with some reluctance.

When he had gone Alleyn told the men what he had learnt about their movements at the time of the Christmas tree: that they too had seen the Druid, failed to recognize him, received their gifts, and returned to their duties. “I understand,” he said, “that you, Cooke, with the extra women helpers, completed the arrangements for the children’s supper and that you saw Miss Tottenham return to the drawing-room but didn’t see anything of Moult. Is that right?”

“Yes, it is,” said Kittiwee, setting his dimples. “And I was concerned with, my own business, if I may put it that way, sir, and couldn’t be expected to be anything else.”

“Quite so. And you,” Alleyn said to Vincent, “did exactly what it had been arranged you should do in respect of the tree. At half-past seven you stationed yourself round the corner of the east wing. Right?”

Vincent nodded.

“Tell me, while you were there did anyone throw open a window in the east frontage and look out? Do you remember?”

“ ‘Course I remember,” said Vincent, who had an indeterminate accent and a bronchial voice. “He did. To see if I was there like he said he would. At seven-thirty.”

“The Colonel? Or Moult?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I? I took him for the Colonel because I expected him to be the Colonel, see?”

“Was he wearing his beard?”

“I never took no notice. He was black-like against the light.”

“Did he wave or signal in any way?”

“I waved according, giving him the office to come down. According. Now they was all in the drawing-room. And he wove back, see, and I went round to the front. According.”

“Good. Your next move was to tow the sledge round the corner and across the courtyard, where you were met by Moult, whom you took to be Colonel Forrester. Where exactly did you meet him?”

Behind Nigel’s effigy, it appeared. There, Vincent said, he relieved the Druid of his umbrella and handed over the sledge, and there he waited until the Druid returned.

“So you missed the fun?” Alleyn remarked.

“I wouldn’t of bothered anyway,” said Vincent.

“You waited for him to come out and then you took over the sledge and he made off through the porch and the door into the cloakroom? Right.”

“That’s what I told Mr. Bill-Tasman and that’s what I tell everyone else who keeps on about it, don‘ I?”

“Did you give him back the umbrella?”

“No. He scarpered off smartly.”

“Where were you exactly when you saw him go into the cloakroom?”

“Where was I? Where would I be? Out in the bloody snow, that’s where.”

“Behind the effigy?”

“Hey!” said Vincent flaring up. “You trying to be funny? You trying to make a monkey outa me? You said no funny business, that’s what you said.”

“I’m not making the slightest attempt to be funny. I’m simply trying to get the picture.”

“How could I see him if I was be’ind the bloody statcher?”

Blore, in his great voice, said, “Choose your words,” and Kittiwee said, “Language!”

“You could have looked round the corner, I imagine, or even peered over the top,” Alleyn suggested.

Vincent, in a tremulous sulk, finally revealed that he saw Moult go through the cloakroom door as he, Vincent, was about to conceal the sledge round the corner of the east wing.

Alleyn asked when the Christmas tree was demolished and Blore said this was effected by Vincent, Nigel and the boy while the party was at dinner. The children had finished their supper and had been let loose, with their presents, in the library. The ornaments were stripped from the tree, packed into their boxes and removed. The tree itself, on its movable base, was wheeled out through the french windows, and the curtains were drawn to conceal it.

“And there it remained, I suppose. Until when?”

Another long silence.

“Well,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “it’s not there now. It’s round the corner under the east wing. Who put it there? Did you, Vincent?”

He hung fire but finally conceded that he had moved the tree. “When?” Alleyn asked, remembering Troy’s midnight observation from her window. Vincent couldn’t say exactly when. It emerged that after the dining-room had been cleared, the mammoth washing-up disposed of and the rest of the exhaustive chores completed, the staff, with the outside help, had sat down to a late supper. Vincent, upon whose forehead a thread of minute sweat-beads had come into being, said that he’d been ordered by Mr. Bill-Tasman to clear away the tree because, Alleyn gathered, the sight of it, denuded and disreputable, would be too anticlimactic. In all the fuss Vincent had forgotten to do so until he was going to bed.

He had put on his oilskins, fetched a wheelbarrow from the woodshed, collected the tree, and dumped it in the wreckage of the old conservatory.

“Why there?” Alleyn asked.

With an air strangely compounded of truculence and something that might be fear, Vincent asked at large where he was expected to take it in the dead of night.

It would be shifted anyway, he said, when the bulldozers got round to making a clean sweep of all that glass and muck, which they were due to do any day now, for filling in their excavations.

Alleyn said, “I’m sure you know, all of you, don’t you, why you were asked to search the area where the tree lies? It was because it was thought that Moult might have wandered there and collapsed or even, for some reason, leant too far out of an upstairs window and fallen.”

“What an idea!” said Kittiwee and tittered nervously.

Vincent said that half-a-dozen bloody Moults might have fallen in that lot and he wouldn’t have seen them. He had tipped the tree out and slung his hook.

“Tell me,” Alleyn said, looking round the circle, “you must have seen quite a lot of Moult off and on? All of you?”

If they had been so many oysters and he had poked them, they couldn’t have shut up more smartly. They looked anywhere but at him and they said nothing.

“Come—” he began and was interrupted by Nigel, who suddenly proclaimed in a high nasal twang: “He was a sinner before the Lord.”

“Shut up,” said Mervyn savagely.

“He was given to all manner of mockery and abomination.”

“Oh, do stop him, somebody!” Kittiwee implored. He struck out with his legs and the cats, indignant, sprang to the ground. Kittiwee made faces at Alleyn to indicate that Nigel was not in full possession of his wits.

“In what way,” Alleyn asked Nigel, “was Moult an abomination?”

“He was filled with malice,” muttered Nigel, who appeared to be at a slight loss for anathemas. “To the brim,” he added.

“Against whom?”

“Against the righteous,” Nigel said quickly.

“Meaning you,” said Mervyn. “Belt up, will you?”

Blore said, “That’s quite enough, Nigel. You’re exciting yourself and you know what it leads to.” He turned to Alleyn. “I’m sure, sir,” he boomed, “you can see how it is, here. We’ve been overstimulated and we’re a little above ourselves.”

“We’re all abominations before the Lord,” Nigel suddenly announced. “And I’m the worst of the lot.” His lips trembled. “Sin lies bitter in my belly,” he said.

“Stuff it!” Mervyn shouted and then, with profound disgust: “Oh Gawd, now he’s going to cry!”

And cry poor Nigel did, noisily, into a handkerchief held to the lower half of his face like a yashmak. Over this he gazed dolorously at Alleyn through wet, white eyelashes.

“Now, look here,” Alleyn said, “Nigel. Listen to me. No,” he added quickly, anticipating a further demonstration. “Listen. You say you’re a sinner. All right. So you may be. Do you want to cleanse your bosom or your belly or whatever it is, of its burden? Well, come on, man. Do you?”

Without removing the handkerchief, Nigel nodded repeatedly.

“Very well, then. Instead of all this nonsense, how about helping us save another sinner who, for all you know, may be out there dying of exposure?”

Nigel blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes.

“Come on,” Alleyn pressed. “How about it?”

Nigel seemed to take council with himself. He gazed mournfully at Alleyn for some moments and then said: “It’s a judgment.”

“On Moult? Why?”

There was no marked — there was scarcely any discernible— movement among the other four men: it was more as if they jointly held their breath and barely saved themselves from leaning forward.

“He was a wine-bibber,” Nigel shouted. “Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging.”

And now there was a distinct reaction: an easing of tension, a shifting of feet, a leaning back in chairs, a clearing of throats.

“Is that the case?” Alleyn asked at large. “What do you say? Blore? Do you agree?”

“Allowing for the extravagant style of expression, sir,” Blore conceded, “I would say it is the case.”

“He tippled?”

“He did, sir, yes. Heavily.”

“Have you any reason to think, any of you, that he had taken more than was good for him yesterday afternoon?” Suddenly they were loquacious. Moult, they said, had undoubtedly been tippling all day. Mervyn volunteered that he had seen Moult sneak out of the dining-room and had subsequently discovered that the whisky decanter on the sideboard which he had only lately filled had been half-emptied. Kittiwee had an unclear story about the total disappearance of a bottle of cooking brandy from the pantry. Vincent unpersuasively recollected that when Moult met him, in druidical array, he had smelt very strongly of alcohol. Blore adopted a patronizing and Olympic attitude. He said that while this abrupt spate of witness to Mr. Moult’s inebriety was substantially correct, he thought it only proper to add that while Mr. Moult habitually took rather more than was good for him, yesterday’s excesses were abnormal.

“Do you think,” Alleyn said, “that Colonel and Mrs. Forrester know of this failing?”

“Oh, really, sir,” Blore said with a confidential deference that clearly derived from his headwaiter days, “you know how it is. If I may say so, the Colonel is a very unworldly gentleman.”

“And Mrs. Forrester?”

Blore spread his hands and smirked. “Well, sir,” he said. “The ladies!” which seemed to suggest, if it suggested anything, that the ladies were quicker at spotting secret drinkers than the gentlemen.

“While I think of it,” Alleyn said. “Colonel Forrester has had another attack. Something to do with his heart, I understand. It seems he really brought it upon himself trying to open their bedroom window. He didn’t,” Alleyn said to Nigel, who had left off crying, “notice the wedge, and tried to force it. He’s better, but it was a severe attack.”

Nigel’s lips formed the word “wedge.” He looked utterly bewildered.

“Didn’t you wedge it, then? To stop it rattling in the storm? When you shut up their room for the night?”

He shook his head. “I never!” he said. “I shut it, but I never used no wedge.” He seemed in two minds: whether to cut up rough again or go into an aimless stare. “You see me,” he muttered, “when you come in.”

“So I did. You were wet. The window came down with a crash, didn’t it, as I walked in.”

Nigel stared at him and nodded.

“Why?” Alleyn asked.

Again, a feeling of general consternation.

Nigel said, “To see.”

“To see what?”

“They don’t tell me anything!” Nigel burst out. “I seen them talking, I heard.”

“What?”

“Things,” he said and became sulky and uncommunicative.

“Odd!” Alleyn said without emphasis. “I suppose none of you knows who wedged the Colonel’s window? No? Ah, well, it’ll no doubt emerge in due course. There’s only one other thing I’d like to ask you. All of you. And before I ask it I want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. I do most earnestly beg you not to think I’m setting a trap for you, not to believe I’m influenced in the smallest degree by your past histories. All right. Now, I expect you all know about the booby-trap that was set for my wife. Did you tell them about it, Cox?”

After a considerable pause, Mervyn. said: “I mentioned it, sir,” and then burst out: “Madam knows I didn’t do it. Madam believes me. I wouldn’t of done it, not to her, I wouldn’t. What would I do it to her for? You ask madam, sir. She’ll tell you.”

“All right, all right, nobody’s said you did it. But if you didn’t, and I accept for the sake of argument that you didn’t, who did? Any ideas?”

Before Mervyn could reply, Nigel came roaring back into action.

“With malice aforethought, he done it,” Nigel shouted.

“Who?”

The other four men all began to talk at once: their object very clearly being to shut Nigel up. They raised quite a clamour between them. Alleyn stopped it by standing up: if he had yelled at the top of his voice it would have been less effective.

“Who,” he asked Nigel, “did it with malice aforethought?”

“You leave me alone, Mr. Blore. Come not between the avenger and his wrath, Mr. Blore, or it’ll be the worse for all of us.”

“Nobody’s interrupting you,” Alleyn said and indeed it was true. They were turned off like taps.

“Come on, Nigel,” Alleyn said. “Who was it?”

“Him. Him that the wrath of the Almighty has removed from the midst.”

“Moult?”

“That’s perfectly correct,” said Nigel with one of his plummet-like descents into the commonplace.

From this point, the interview took on a different complexion. Nigel withdrew into a sort of omniscient gloom, the others into a mulish determination to dissociate themselves from any opinion upon any matter that Alleyn might raise. Blore, emerging as a reluctant spokesman, said there was proof — and he emphasized the word — that Moult had set the booby-trap, and upon Nigel uttering in a loud voice the word “spite,” merely repeated his former pantomime to indicate Nigel’s total irresponsibility. Alleyn asked if Moult was, in fact, a spiteful or vindictive character and they all behaved as if they didn’t know what he was talking about. He decided to take a risk. He said that no doubt they all knew about the anonymous and insulting messages that had been left in the Forresters’ and Cressida Tottenham’s rooms and the lacing of Mr. Smith’s barley water with soap.

They would have liked, he thought, to deny all knowledge of these matters, but he pressed them and gradually collected that Cressida had talked within hearing of Blore, that Mr. Smith had roundly tackled Nigel, and that Moult himself had “mentioned” the incidents.

“When?” Alleyn asked.

Nobody seemed exactly to remember when.

“Where?”

They were uncertain where.

“Was it here, in the staff common-room, yesterday morning?”

This, he saw, had alarmed and bewildered them. Nigel said “How —?” and stopped short. They glared at him.

“How did I know, were you going to say?” said Alleyn. “It seems the conversation was rather noisy. It was overheard. And Moult was seen leaving by that door over there. You’d accused him, hadn’t you, of playing these tricks with the deliberate intention of getting you into trouble?”

“We’ve no call to answer that,” Vincent said. “That’s what you say. It’s not what we say. We don’t say nothing.”

“Come,” Alleyn said, “you all disliked him, didn’t you? It was perfectly apparent. You disliked him, and his general attitude gave you some cause to do so.”

“Be that as it may, sir,” said Blore, “it is no reason for supposing the staff had anything to do with—” His enormous voice trembled. He made a violent dismissive gesture. “— with whatever he’s done or wherever he’s gone.”

“I agree. It doesn’t follow.”

“We went our way, sir, and Mr. Moult went his.”

“Quite. Where to? What was Mr. Moult’s way and where did it take him? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“If you’ll excuse the liberty,” Kittiwee said, “that’s your business, sir. Not ours.”

“Of course it’s my business,” Alleyn cheerfully rejoined. “Otherwise, you know, I shouldn’t waste half an hour butting my head against a concrete wall. To sum up. None of you knows anything about or is prepared to discuss, the matter of the insulting messages, booby-trap, soapy barley water or wedged window. Nor is anyone prepared to enlarge upon the row that took place in this room yesterday morning. Apart from Nigel’s view that Moult was steeped in sin and, more specifically, alcohol (which you support), you’ve nothing to offer. You’ve no theories about his disappearance and you don’t appear to care whether he’s alive or dead. Correct?”

Silence.

“Right. Not only is this all my eye and Betty Martin but it’s extremely damaging to what I’d hoped would be a sensible relationship between us. And on top of all that, it’s so bloody silly that I wonder you’ve got the faces to go on with it. Good-night to you.”

Mr. Wrayburn was in the hall, pregnant with intelligence of police dogs and fur-lined boots. The dog Buck, who sat grinning competently beside his handler, had picked up two separate tracks from the cloakroom and across the sheltered porch, agreeing in direction with the druidical progress. “There and back,” said Wrayburn, “I suppose.” But there had been no other rewarding scents. An attempt within doors had been unproductive owing, Alleyn supposed, to a sort of canine embarras de richesses. All that could be taken from this, Mr. Wrayburn complained, was the fact, known already, that Moult left the cloakroom and returned to it and that unless he was carried out or changed his boots, he didn’t leave by the porch door a second time.

Alleyn said, “Try one of the slippers from Moult’s room: see what comes of that.”

“I don’t get you.”

Alleyn explained. Wrayburn stared at him. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”

The slipper was fetched and introduced to the dog Buck, who made a dutiful response. He was then taken to the porch and courtyard where he nosed to and fro, swinging his tail but obviously at a loss. The second dog, Mack, was equally disinterested. When taken to the cloakroom, however, they both produced positive and energetic reactions over the main area, but ignored the fellow of the fur-lined boot and the floor under the makeup bench.

“Well,” Wrayburn said, “we know he was in here, don’t we? Not only when he was being got up for the party but earlier when he was fixing the room for the Colonel. Still — it looks as if you’re right, by gum it does. What next?”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to tackle that mess that was once a conservatory, Jack. How’s the search over the grounds going?”

“As badly as could be expected under these conditions. The chaps are doing their best but — if he’s lying out in that lot they could miss him over and over again. Didn’t this bunch of homicides have a go at the conservatory wreckage?”

“So we’re told. With forks and spades. Thundering over the terrain like a herd of dinosaurs, I daresay. I think we must have a go. After all we can’t rule out the possibility that he was hit on the head and stunned.”

“And wandered away? And collapsed?”

“You name it. Hold on while I get my mackintosh.”

“You’ll need gum boots.”

“See if there are any stray pairs in the other cloakroom, will you? I won’t be long.”

When Alleyn had collected his mackintosh and a futile hat from his dressing-room, he called on his wife.

He was surprised and not overdelighted to find Cressida Tottenham there, clothed in a sea-green garment that stuck to her like a limpet where it was most explicit and elsewhere erupted in superfluous frills.

“Look who’s here!” Cressida said, raising her arm to a vertical position and flapping her hand. “My Favourite Man! Hullo, Heart-throb!”

“Hullo, Liar,” he mildly returned.

“Rory!” Troy protested.

“Sorry.”

“Manners, Jungle Cat,” said Cressida. “Not that I object. It all ties in with the groovy image. The ruder they are, the nearer your undoing.”

Troy burst out laughing. “Do you often,” she asked, “make these frontal attacks?”

“Darling: only when aroused by a Gorgeous Brute. Do you mind?”

“Not a bit.”

Alleyn said, “Gorgeous brute or not, I’m on the wing, Troy.”

“So I see.”

“Think nothing of it if you notice a commotion under your windows.”

“Right.”

“We’ve been brushing our hair,” Cressida offered, “and emptying our bosoms. Ever so cosy.”

“Have you, indeed. By the way, Miss Tottenham, while I think of it: what did you wear on your feet when you made Moult up in the cloakroom?”

“On my feet?” she asked and showed him one of them in a bejewelled slipper. “I wore golden open-toed sandals, Mr. Alleyn, and golden toenails to go with my handsome gold dress.”

“Chilly,” he remarked.

“My dear — arctic! So much so, I may tell you, that I thrust my ten little pigs into Uncle Flea’s fur-lined trotters.”

“Damn!”

“Really? But why?” She reflected for a moment. “My dear!” Cressida repeated, making eyes at Troy. “It’s the smell! Isn’t it? Those wolfish dogs! I’ve mucked up poor Mr. Moult’s footwork for them. Admit!”

“Presumably you swapped for the performance?”

“But, of course. And I’m sure his feet will have triumphed over mine or does my skin scent beat him to the post?”

Ignoring this, Alleyn made for the door and then stopped short. “I almost forgot,” he said. “When did you come upstairs?”

Cressida blew out her cheeks and pushed up the tip of her nose with one finger. The effect was of an extremely cheeky Zephyr.

“Come on,” Alleyn said. “When? How long ago?”

“Well. Now. When did I?”

“You came in here ten minutes ago, if it’s any guide,” Troy said. “I’d just wound my watch.”

“And you’d been in your room,” Alleyn said. “How long?” He glanced at her. “Long enough anyway to change your clothes.”

“Which is no slight matter,” Cressida said. “Say twenty minutes. It was getting a bit of a drag in the library. Hilly’s lost his cool over the sleuthing scene and Uncle Bert Smith doesn’t exactly send one. So I came up.”

“Did you meet anybody on the way?”

“I certainly did. I met that ass Nigel at the head of the stairs, bellowing away about sin. I suppose you’ve heard how he pushed a sexy note under my door. About me being a sinful lady?”

“You feel certain he wrote it?”

“Who else would?” Cressida reasoned. “Whatever they might think? It’s his theme song, isn’t it — the sinful lady bit?”

“Very much so. When did you go down to dinner?”

“I don’t know. Last, as usual, I expect.”

“Did you at any stage meet anybody going into or coming out of the Forresters’ rooms?”

Cressida helplessly flapped her arms. “Yes,” she said. “Nigel again. Coming out. He’d been doing his turning down the bed lot. This time he only shrank back against the wall as if I had infective hepatitis.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “I must be off.” He looked at his wife.

“All right?” he asked.

“All right.”

When he had gone Cressida said, “Let’s face it, darling. I’m wasting my powder.”