Black As He Is Painted

V Small Hours

Chubb stood more or less to attention, looking straight before him with his arms at his sides. He cut quite a pleasing figure in Costard et Cie’s discreet livery: midnight blue shell-jacket and trousers with gold endorsements. His faded blond hair was short and well brushed, his fresh West Country complexion and blue eyes deceptively gave him the air of an outdoor man. He still wore his white gloves.

Alleyn had agreed with Mr. Whipplestone that it would be best if the latter were not present at the interview. “Though,” Alleyn said, “there’s no reason at all to suppose that Chubb, any more than my silly old brother George, had anything to do with the event.”

“I know, I know,” Mr. Whipplestone had returned. “Of course. It’s just that, however illogically and stupidly, I would prefer Chubb not to have been on duty in that wretched pavilion. Just as I would prefer him not to have odd-time jobs with Sheridan and those beastly Montforts. And it would be rather odd for me to be there, wouldn’t it? Very foolish of me, no doubt. Let it go at that.”

So Alleyn and an anonymous sergeant had Chubb to themselves in the controller’s office.

Alleyn said: “I want to be quite sure I’ve got this right. You were in and out of the pavilion with champagne which you fetched from an icebox that had been set up outside the pavilion. You did this in conjunction with one of the Embassy servants. He waited on the President and the people immediately surrounding him, didn’t he? I remember that he came to my wife and me soon after we had settled there.”

“Sir,” said Chubb.

“And you looked after the rest of the party.”

“Sir.”

“Yes. Well now, Chubb, we’ve kept you hanging about all this time in the hope that you can give us some help about what happened in the pavilion.”

“Not much chance of that, sir. I never noticed anything, sir.”

“That makes two of us, I’m afraid,” Alleyn said. “It happened like a bolt from the blue, didn’t it? Were you actually in the pavilion? When the lights went out?”

Yes, it appeared. At the back. He had put his tray down on a trestle table in preparation for the near blackout, about which the servants had all been warned. He had remained there through the first item.

“And were you still there when the singer, Karbo, appeared?” Yes, he said. Still there. He had had an uninterrupted view of Karbo, standing in his spotlight with his shadow thrown up behind him on the white screen.

“Did you notice where the guard with the spear was standing?” Yes. At the rear. Behind the President’s chair.

“On your left, would that be?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your fellow waiter?”

“The nigger?” said Chubb, and after a glance at Alleyn, “Beg pardon, sir. The native.”

“The African, yes.”

“He was somewhere there. At the rear. I never took no notice,” said Chubb stonily.

“You didn’t speak to either of them, at all?”

“No thanks. I wouldn’t think they knew how.”

“You don’t like black people?” Alleyn said lightly.

“No, sir.”

“Well. To come to the moment when the shot was fired. I’m getting as many accounts as possible from the people who were in the pavilion, and I’d like yours too, if you will. You remember that the performer had given out one note, if that’s the way to put it. A long-drawn-out sound. And then — as you recall it — what?”

“The shot, sir.”

“Did you get an impression about where the sound came from?”

“The house, sir.”

“Yes. Well, now, Chubb. Could you just, as best as you are able, tell me your own impressions of what followed the shot. In the pavilion, I mean.”

Nothing clear-cut emerged. People had stood up. A lady had screamed. A gentleman had shouted out not to panic. (“George,” Alleyn thought.)

“Yes. But as far as what you actually saw. From where you were, at the back of the pavilion?”

Hard to say, exactly, Chubb said in his wooden voice. People moving about a bit but not much. Alleyn said that they had appeared, hadn’t they? “Like black silhouettes against the spotlit screen.” Chubb agreed.

“The guard — the man with the spear? He was on your left. Quite close to you. Wasn’t he?”

“At the start, sir, he was. Before the pavilion lights went out.”

“And afterwards?’

There was a considerable pause: “I couldn’t say, exactly, sir. Not straightaway, like.”

“How do you mean?”

Chubb suddenly erupted. “I was grabbed,” he said. “He sprung it on me. Me! From behind. Me!”

“Grabbed? Do you mean by the spearman?”

“Not him. The other black bastard.”

“The waiter?”

“Yes. Sprung it on me. From behind. Me!”

“What did he spring on you? A half-Nelson?”

“Head-lock! I couldn’t speak. And he put in the knee.”

“How did you know it was the waiter?”

“I knew all right. I knew and no error.”

“But how?”

“Bare arm for one thing. And the smell: like salad oil or something. I knew.”

“How long did this last?”

“Long enough,” said Chubb, fingering his neck. “Long enough for his mate to put in the spear, I reckon.”

“Did he hold you until the lights went up?”

“No, sir. Only while it was being done. So I couldn’t see it. The stabbing. I was doubled up. Me!” Chubb reiterated with, if possible, an access of venom. “But I heard. The sound. You can’t miss it. And the fall.”

The sergeant cleared his throat.

Alleyn said: “This is enormously important, Chubb. I’m sure you realize that, don’t you? You’re saying that the Ng’ombwanan waiter attacked and restrained you while the guard speared the Ambassador.”

“Sir.”

“All right. Why, do you suppose? I mean, why you, in particular?”

“I was nearest, sir, wasn’t I? I might of got in the way or done something quick, mightn’t I?”

“Was a small hard chair overturned during this attack?”

“It might have been,” Chubb said after a pause.

“How old are you, Chubb?”

“Me, sir? Fifty-two, sir.”

“What did you do in World War II?”

“Commando, sir.”

“Ah!” Alleyn said, quietly. “I see.”

“They wouldn’t of sprung it across me in those days, sir.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t. One more thing. After the shot and before you were attacked and doubled up, you saw the Ambassador, did you, on his feet? Silhouetted against the screen?”

“Sir.”

“Did you recognize him?”

Chubb was silent.

“Well — did you?”

“I — can’t say I did. Not exactly.”

“How do you mean — not exactly?”

“It all happened so quick, didn’t it? I–I reckon I thought he was the other one. The President.”

“Why?”

“Well. Because. Well, because, you know, he was near where the President sat, like. He must of moved away from his own chair, sir, mustn’t he? And standing up like he was in command, as you might say. And the President had roared out something in their lingo, hadn’t he?”

“So, you’d say, would you, Chubb, that the Ambassador was killed in mistake for the President?”

“I couldn’t say that, sir, could I? Not for certain. But I’d say he might of been. He might easy of been.”

“You didn’t see anybody attack the spearman?”

“Him! He couldn’t of been attacked, could he? I was the one that got clobbered, sir, wasn’t I? Not him: he did the big job, didn’t he?”

“He maintains that he was given a chop and his spear was snatched out of his grasp by the man who attacked him. He says that he didn’t see who this man was. You may remember that when the lights came up and the Ambassador’s body was seen, the spearman was crouched on the ground up near the back of the pavilion.”

Through this speech of Alleyn’s, such animation as Chubb had displayed deserted him. He reverted to his former manner, staring straight in front of him with such a wooden air that the ebb of colour from his face and its dark, uneven return seemed to bear no relation to any emotional experience.

When he spoke it was to revert to his favourite observation. “I wouldn’t know about any of that,” he said. “I never took any notice to that.”

“Didn’t you? But you were quite close to the spearman. You were standing by him. I happen to remember seeing you there.”

“I was a bit shook up. After what the other one done to me.”

“So it would seem. When the lights came on, was the waiter who attacked you, as you maintain, still there?”

“Him? He’d scarpered.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

Chubb said he hadn’t, but added that he couldn’t tell one of the black bastards from another. The conventional mannerisms of the servant together with his careful grammar had almost disappeared. He sounded venomous. Alleyn then asked him why he hadn’t reported the attack on himself immediately to the police, and Chubb became injured and exasperated. What chance had there been for that, he complained, with them all being shoved about into queues and drafted into groups and told to behave quiet and act co-operative and stay put and questions and statements would come later.

He began to sweat and put his hands behind his back. He said he didn’t feel too good. Alleyn told him that the sergeant would make a typescript of his statement and he would be asked to read and sign it if he found it correct.

“In the meantime,” he said, “we’ll let you go home to Mr. Whipplestone.”

Chubb, reverting to his earlier style, said anxiously: “Beg pardon, sir, but I didn’t know you knew—”

“I know Mr. Whipplestone very well. He told me about you.”

“Yes, sir. Will that be all, then, sir?”

“I think so, for the present. Good night to you, Chubb.”

“Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.”

He left the room with his hands clenched.

“Commando, eh?” said the sergeant to his notes.

Mr. Fox was doing his competent best with the group of five persons who sat wearily about the apartment that had been used as a sort of bar-cum-smoking-room for male guests at the party. It smelt of stale smoke, the dregs of alcohol, heavy upholstery and, persistently, of the all-pervading sandarac. It wore an air of exhausted raffishness.

The party of five being interviewed by Mr. Fox and noted down by a sergeant consisted of a black plenipotentiary and his wife; the last of the governors of British Ng’ombwana and his wife, and Sir George Alleyn, Bart. They were the only members of the original party of twelve guests who had remembered anything that might conceivably have a bearing upon events in the pavilion, and they remained after painstaking winnowing had disposed of their companions.

The ex-governor, who was called Sir John Smythe, remembered that immediately after the shot was fired everybody moved to the front of the pavilion. He was contradicted by Lady Smythe, who said that for her part she had remained rivetted in her chair. The plenipotentiary’s wife, whose understanding of English appeared to be rudimentary, conveyed through her husband that she, also, had remained seated. Mr. Fox reminded himself that Mrs. Alleyn, instructed by her husband, had not risen. The plenipotentiary recalled that the chairs had been set out in an inverted V shape with the President and his Ambassador at the apex and the guests forming the two wide-angled wings.

“Is that the case, sir?” said Fox comfortably. “I see. So that when you gentlemen stood up you’d all automatically be forward of the President? Nearer to the opening of the pavilion than he was? Would that be correct?”

“Quite right, Mr. Fox. Quite right,” said Sir George, who had adopted a sort of uneasy reciprocal attitude towards Fox and had, at the outset, assured him jovially that he’d heard a great deal about him, to which Fox replied: “Is that the case, sir? If I might just have your name.”

It was Sir George who remembered the actual order in which the guests had sat, and although Fox had already obtained this information from Alleyn, he gravely noted it down. On the President’s left had been the Ambassador, Sir John and Lady Smythe, the plenipotentiary’s wife, the plenipotentiary, a guest who had now gone home, and Sir George himself. “In starvation corner, what?” said Sir George lightly to the Smythes, who made little deprecatory noises.

“Yes, I see, thank you, sir,” said Fox. “And on the President’s right hand, sir?”

“Oh!” said Sir George waving his hand. “My brother. My brother and his wife. Yes. ’Strordinary coincidence.” Apparently feeling the need for some sort of endorsement, he turned to his fellow guests. “My brother, the bobby,” he explained. “Ridiculous, what?”

“A very distinguished bobby,” Sir John Smythe murmured, to which Sir George returned: “Oh, quite! Quite! Not for me to say but — he’ll do.” He laughed and made a jovial little grimace.

“Yes,” said Fox to his notes. “And four other guests who have now left. Thank you, sir.” He looked over the top of his spectacles at his hearers. “We come to the incident itself. There’s this report: pistol shot or whatever it was. The lights in the pavilion are out. Everybody except the ladies and the President gets to his feet. Doing what?”

“How d’you mean, doing what?” Sir John Smythe asked.

“Well, sir, did everybody face out into the garden trying to see what was going on — apart from the concert item, which I understand stopped short when the report was heard.”

“Speaking for myself,” said Sir George, “I stayed where I was. There were signs of — ah — agitation and — ah — movement. Sort of thing that needs to be nipped in the bud if you don’t want a panic on your hands.”

“And you nipped it, sir?” Fox said.

“Well — I wouldn’t go so far — one does one’s best. I mean to say — I said something. Quietly.”

“If there had been any signs of panic,” said Sir John Smythe drily, “they did not develop.”

“—‘did not develop,’ ” Mr. Fox repeated. “And in issuing your warning, sir, did you face inwards? With your back to the garden?”

“Yes. Yes, I did,” said Sir George.

“And did you notice anything at all out of the way, sir?”

“I couldn’t see anything, my dear man. One was blinded by having looked at the brilliant light on the screen and the performer.”

“There wasn’t any reflected light in the pavilion?”

“No,” said Sir George crossly. “There wasn’t. Nothing of the kind. It was too far away.”

“I see, sir,” said Fox placidly.

Lady Smythe suddenly remarked that the light on the screen was reflected in the lake. “The whole thing,” she said, “was dazzling and rather confusing.” There was a general murmur of agreement.

Mr. Fox asked if during the dark interval anybody else had turned his or her back on the garden and peered into the interior. This produced a confused and doubtful response, from which it emerged that the piercing screams of Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort within the house had had a more marked effect than the actual report. The Smythes had both heard Alleyn telling the President to sit down. After the report everybody had heard the President shout out something in his own language. The plenipotentiary said it was an order. He shouted for lights. And immediately before or after that, Sir John Smythe said, he had been aware of something falling at his feet.

And then the lights had gone up.

“And I can only add, Inspector,” said Sir John, “that I really have nothing else to say that can have the slightest bearing on this tragic business. The ladies have been greatly shocked and I must beg you to release them from any further ordeal.”

There was a general and heartfelt chorus of agreement. Sir George said, “Hear, hear,” very loudly.

Fox said this request was very reasonable he was sure, and he was sorry to have put them all to so much trouble and he could assure the ladies that he wouldn’t be keeping them much longer. There were no two ways about it, he added, this was quite a serious affair, wasn’t it?

“Well, then—” said Sir John, and there was a general stir.

At this juncture Alleyn came in. In some curious and indefinable fashion he brought a feeling of refreshment with him rather like that achieved by a star whose delayed entry, however quietly executed, lifts the scene and quickens the attention of his audience.

“We are so sorry,” he said, “to have kept you waiting like this. I’m sure Mr. Fox will have explained. This is a very muddling, tragic and strange affair, and it isn’t made any simpler for me, at any rate, by finding myself an unsatisfactory witness and an investigating copper at one and the same time.”

He gave Lady Smythe an apologetic grin and she said — and may have been astonished to hear herself—“You poor man.”

“Well, there it is, and I can only hope one of you has come up with something more useful than anything I’ve been able to produce.”

His brother said: “Done our best. What!”

“Good for you,” Alleyn said. He was reading the sergeant’s notes.

“We’re hoping,” said Sir John, “to be released. The ladies—”

“Yes, of course. It’s been a beastly experience and you must all be exhausted.”

“What about yourself?” asked Lady Smythe. She appeared to be a lady of spirit.

Alleyn looked up from the notes. “Oh,” he said. “You can’t slap me back. These notes seem splendidly exhaustive and there’s only one question I’d like to put to you. I know the whole incident was extremely confused, but I would like to learn if you all, for whatever reason or for no reason, are persuaded of the identity of the killer?”

“Good God!” Sir George shouted. “Really, my dear Rory! Who else could it be but the man your fellows marched off. And I must compliment you on their promptitude, by the way.”

“You mean—?”

“Good God, I mean the great hulking brute with the spear. I beg your pardon,” he said to the black plenipotentiary and himself turned scarlet. “Afraid I spoke out of turn. Sure you understand.”

“George,” said his brother with exquisite courtesy, “would you like to go home?”

“I? We all would. Mustn’t desert the post, though. No preferential treatment.”

“Not a morsel, I assure you. I take it, then,” Alleyn said, turning to the others, “that you all believe the spear-carrier was the assailant?”

“Well — yes,” said Sir John Smythe. “I mean — there he was. Who else? And my God, there was the spear!”

The black plenipotentiary’s wife said something rather loudly in their native tongue.

Alleyn looked a question at her husband, who cleared his throat. “My wife,” he said, “has made an observation.”

“Yes?”

“My wife has said that because the victim fell beside her, she heard.”

“Yes? She heard?”

“The sound of the strike and the death noise,” he held a brief consultation with his wife. “Also a word. In Ng’ombwanan. Spoken very low by a man. By the Ambassador himself, she thinks.”

“And the word — in English?”

“ ‘Traitor,’ ” said the plenipotentiary. After a brief pause he added: “My wife would like to go now. There is blood on her dress.”

The Boomer had changed into a dressing-gown and looked like Othello in the last act. It was a black and gold gown, and underneath it crimson pyjamas could be detected. He had left orders that if Alleyn wished to see him he was to be roused, and he now received Alleyn, Fox, and an attenuated but still alert Mr. Whipplestone in the library. For a moment or two Alleyn thought he was going to jib at Mr. Whipplestone’s presence. He fetched up short when he saw him, seemed about to say something, but instead decided to be gracious. Mr. Whipplestone, after all, managed well with the Boomer. His diplomacy was of an acceptable tinge: deferential without being fulsome, composed but not consequential.

When Alleyn said he would like to talk to the Ng’ombwanan servant who waited on them in the pavilion, the Boomer made no comment but spoke briefly on the house-telephone.

“I wouldn’t have troubled you with this,” Alleyn said, “but I couldn’t find anybody who was prepared to accept the responsibility of producing the man without your authority.”

“They are all in a silly state,” generalized the Boomer. “Why do you want this fellow?”

“The English waiter in the pavilion will have it that the man attacked him.”

The Boomer lowered his eyelids. “How very rococo,” he said, and there was no need for him to add “as we used to say at Davidson’s.” It had been a catch phrase in their last term and worn to death in the usage. With startling precision it again returned Alleyn to that dark room smelling of anchovy toast and a coal fire, and to the group mannerisms of his and the Boomer’s circle so many years ago.

When the man appeared he cut an unimpressive figure, being attired in white trousers, a singlet and a wrongly buttoned tunic. He appeared to be in a state of perturbation and in deep awe of his President.

“I will speak to him,” the Boomer announced.

He did so, and judging by the tone of his voice, pretty sharply. The man, fixing his white-eyeballed gaze on the far wall of the library, answered with, or so it seemed to Alleyn, the clockwork precision of a soldier on parade.

“He says no,” said the Boomer.

“Could you press a little?”

“It will make no difference. But I will press.”

This time the reply was lengthier. “He says he ran into someone in the dark and stumbled and for a moment clung to this person. It is ridiculous, he says, to speak of it as an attack. He had forgotten the incident. Perhaps it was this servant.”

“Where did he go after this encounter?”

Out of the pavilion, it appeared, finding himself near the rear door and frightened by the general rumpus. He had been rounded up by security men and drafted with the rest of the household staff to one end of the ballroom.

“Do you believe him?”

“He would not dare to lie,” said the Boomer calmly.

“In that case I suppose we let him go back to bed, don’t we?”

This move having been effected, the Boomer rose and so, of course, did Alleyn, Mr. Whipplestone and Fox.

“My dear Rory,” said the Boomer, “there is a matter which should be settled at once. The body. It will be returned to our country and buried according to our custom.”

“I can promise you that every assistance will be offered. Perhaps the Deputy Commissioner has already given you that assurance.”

“Oh, yes. He was very forthcoming. A nice chap. I hear your pathologist spoke of an autopsy. There can be no autopsy.”

“I see.”

“A thorough enquiry will be held in Ng’ombwana.”

“Good.”

“And I think, since you have completed your investigations, have you not, it would be as well to find out if the good Gibson is in a similar case. If so I would suggest that the police, after leaving and at their convenience, kindly let me have a comprehensive report of their findings. In the meantime I shall set my house in order.”

As this was in effect an order to quit, Alleyn gave his assurance that there would be a complete withdrawal of the Yard forces. The Boomer expressed his appreciation of the trouble that had been taken and said, very blandly, that if the guilty person was discovered to be a member of his own household, Alleyn, as a matter of courtesy, would be informed. On the other hand the police would no doubt pursue their security precautions outside the Embassy. These pronouncements made such sweeping assumptions that there was nothing more to be said. Alleyn had begun to take his leave when the Boomer interrupted him.

He said: “There is one other matter I would like to settle.”

“Yes?”

“About the remainder of my stay in England. It is a little difficult to decide.”

“Does he,” Alleyn asked himself, “does the Boomer, by any blissful chance, consider taking himself back to Ng’ombwana? Almost at once? With the corpse, perhaps? What paeans of thanksgiving would spring from Gibson’s lips if it were so.”

“—the Buck House dinner party, of course, stands,” the Boomer continued. “Perhaps a quieter affair will be envisaged. It is not for me to say,” he conceded.

“When is that?”

“Tomorrow night. No. Tonight. Dear me, it is almost two in the morning!”

“Your other engagements?” Alleyn hinted.

“I shall cancel the tree-planting affair and of course I shall not attend the race-meeting. That would not look at all the thing,” he said rather wistfully, “would it?”

“Certainly not.”

“And then there’s the Chequers visit. I hardly know what to say.” And with his very best top-drawer manner to the fore, the Boomer turned graciously to Mr. Whipplestone.

“So difficult,” he said, “isn’t it? Now, tell me. What would you advise?”

This, Alleyn felt, was a question to try Mr. Whipplestone’s diplomatic resources to their limit. He rose splendidly to his ordeal.

“I’m quite sure,” he said, “that the Prime Minister and, indeed, all the organizations and hosts who had hoped to entertain Your Excellency will perfectly understand that this appalling affair puts anything of the sort out of the question.”

“Oh,” said the Boomer.

“Your Excellency need have no misgivings under that heading, at least,” Mr. Whipplestone gracefully concluded.

“Good,” said the Boomer, a trifle dismally, Alleyn thought.

“We mustn’t keep you up any longer,” Alleyn said, “but before we take ourselves off I would like, if I may, to ask one final rather unorthodox question.”

“What is that?”

“You are, I know, persuaded that neither the Ng’ombwanan waiter nor the guard — the mlinzi, is it? — is a guilty man.”

“I am sure of it.”

“And you believe, don’t you, that Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort was mistaken in thinking her assailant was an African?”

“She is a very stupid, hysterical woman. I place no value on anything she says.”

“Have they — the Cockburn-Montforts — any reason to harbour resentment against you or the Ambassador?”

“Oh, yes,” he said promptly. “They had reason and I’ve no doubt they still do. It is well known that the Colonel, having had a hand in the formation of our armed forces, expected to be retained and promoted. I believe he actually saw himself in a very exalted role. But, as you know, my policy has been to place my own people in all key positions. I believe the Colonel went into unwilling retirement, breathing fire. In any case,” the Boomer added as an afterthought, “he had become alcoholic and no longer responsible.”

“But they were asked to the reception?”

“Oh, yes! It was a suitable gesture. One could not ignore him. And now — what is this unorthodox question, my dear Rory?”

“Simply this. Do you suspect anyone — specifically — of the murder of your Ambassador?”

Again that well-remembered hooded look with the half-closed eyes. After a very long pause, the Boomer said: “I have no idea, beyond my absolute certainty of the innocence of the mlinzi.”

“One of your guests in the pavilion?”

“Certainly not.”

“I’m glad about that, at least,” said Alleyn drily.

“My dear boy!” For a moment Alleyn thought they were to be treated to one of those bursts of Homeric laughter, but instead his friend touched him gently on the shoulder and gave him a look of such anxiety and affection that he found himself oddly moved.

“Of course it was not a guest. Beyond that,” the Boomer said, “I have nothing to say.”

“Well, then—” Alleyn glanced at Fox and Mr. Whipplestone, who once more made appropriate motions for departure.

“I too have a question,” said the Boomer, and they checked. “My government wishes for a portrait to be hung in our Assembly. I would like, formally, to ask if your wife will accept this commission.”

“I’ll deliver the message,” said Alleyn, concealing his astonishment.

At the door he muttered to the others: “I’ll join you in a moment,” and when they had gone he said: “I’ve got to say this. You will look after yourself, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“After all—”

“You need have no qualms. I shall sleep very soundly with my mlinzi outside my door.”

“You don’t mean—?”

“Certainly. It is his treasured privilege.”

“For God’s sake!”

“I shall also lock my door.”

Alleyn left on a gale of laughter.

They went in silence to their extemporized office. When they got there Mr. Whipplestone passed his thin.hand over his thinner hair, dropped into a chair and said, “He was lying.”

“The President, sir?” asked Fox in his best scandalized voice. “About the spearman?”

“No, no, no, no! It was when he said he didn’t suspect anybody — specifically— of the crime.”

“Come on,” Alleyn said. “Tell us. Why?”

“For a reason that you will find perfectly inadmissible. His manner. I did, at one time, know these people as well, perhaps, as a white person can. I like them. They are not ready liars. But my dear Alleyn, you yourself know the President very well indeed. Did you have the same reaction?”

Alleyn said: “He is an honourable person and a very loyal friend. I believe it’d go deeply against the grain for him to lie to me. Yes, I did think he was uncomfortable. I think he may suspect somebody. I think he is withholding something.”

“Have you any idea what?”

Alleyn shoved his hands down in his trouser pockets and walked about the room. In his white tie and tails, with miniatures on his coat and with his general air of uncontrived elegance, he presented an odd contrast to Mr. Fox in his work-a-day suit, to the sergeant in uniform, and even to Mr. Whipplestone in his elderly smoking-jacket and scarf.

“I’ve nothing,” he said at last, “that will bear the light of day. Let’s leave it for the moment and stick to facts, shall we? Sam, could you, before we go, give us a résumé of what was said at that showdown in the ballroom? I know you’ve written a report and I’m damn’ grateful and will go over every word of it very carefully indeed. But just to go on with. And also exactly what the waiter said, which sounds like a sequel to What the Butler Saw, doesn’t it? When he came into the library?”

“I’ll try,” said Mr. Whipplestone. “Very well. The waiter. At the outset the President told him to give an account of himself during the crucial minutes before and after the murder took place. His reply as far as I can translate it literally was, ‘I will say what I must say.’ ”

“Meaning, in effect, ‘I must speak the truth’?”

“Precisely. But he could equally have meant: ‘I will say what I am forced to say.’ ”

“Suggesting that he had been intimidated?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. He then said that he’d collided with the other waiter in the dark.”

“Chubb?”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Whipplestone uneasily.

“And Chubb says the man attacked him.”

“Exactly. So you have told me.”

“Do you think the man was lying?”

“I think he might have merely left out mention of the attack.”

“Yes, I see. And the man himself: the spearman—mlinzi or whatever? Was he at all equivocal?”

Mr. Whipplestone hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “No, with him it was different. He said — and I think I remember it exactly — that he had taken a terrible — in the sense of awe-inspiring, terrifying if you like — oath of loyalty to the President and therefore could never, if he were guilty, declare his innocence to the President on the body of his victim.”

“That’s almost exactly how the President translated him to me.”

“Yes. And I think it is a true statement. But — well, my dear Alleyn, I hope you won’t think I’ve got an awful cheek if I suggest to you that the President is on the whole a naïve person and that he is not going to heed, not even perhaps notice, any vague ambiguities that might cast doubt upon his men. But of course you know him very well and I don’t.”

“Do I?” said Alleyn. “Perhaps. There are times when I wonder. It’s not a simple story: I can assure you of that.”

“There’s something very likeable about him. You were quite close friends, I think you said, at school.”

“He’s always roaring out that I was his best friend. He was certainly one of mine. He’s got a very good brain, you know. He sailed through his law like nobody’s business. But you’re right,” Alleyn said thoughtfully, “he cuts dead anything he doesn’t want to believe.”

“And of course he doesn’t want to believe that one of his own people committed a crime?” Mr. Whipplestone urged.

Fox made a noise of agreement.

Alleyn said: “No. Perhaps he doesn’t—want to,” and vexedly rubbed his nose. “All the same,” he said, “I think we may be fishing in the wrong pond. In very muddy waters, at all events.”

“Do you mind,” Mr. Whipplestone asked, “if I put a very direct question to you?”

“How can I tell till I hear it?”

“Quite. Here goes then. Do you think an attempt was made upon the President?”

“Yes.”

“And do you think it will be repeated?”

“I think it’s only too likely that something else may be tried. Only too likely,” said Alleyn.

There was a long silence.

“What happens now, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Fox, at last.

“I’m damned if I know. Call it a night, I suppose. We’ve been given our marching orders and no mistake. Come on. We’d better tell Fred Gibson, hadn’t we?”

Mr. Gibson was not sorry to get the sack from the Embassy. It relieved him of an untenable and undefinable task and left him free to supervise the orthodox business of mounting security measures outside the premises and wherever the President might take it into his head to go during the remainder of his visit. He expressed muffled but profound satisfaction when Alleyn pointed out that the public appearances would probably be curtailed when not cancelled.

“You could say,” he mumbled presently, “that after a fashion we’ve picked up a bit of joy in this show.” And he divulged that they had found the shell of the shot fired from the Luger. It was on the ground outside the lavatory window. They’d had no luck with a bullet.

“But,” said Gibson with a kind of huffy satisfaction, “I don’t reckon we need to shed tears over that one. Take a look at this.”

He opened his large pale hand. Alleyn and Fox bent over it.

“Wad?” Fox said. “Here! Wait a sec. I wonder now.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Fred. I wonder if you’ve drawn a blank.”

They left the Embassy.

Troy was awake when Alleyn got home. She called out to him to save him the trouble of trying not to disturb her. When he came in she was sitting up in bed with her arms round her knees.

“Not a nice party, after all,” he said. “I’m sorry, my darling.”

“Have you—?”

“No. Troy, I had to let you go off without a word. I couldn’t look after you. Were you very much shocked?”

“I didn’t really see. Well — yes — I did see but in a funny sort of way it didn’t look — real. And it was only for a flash — not more than a second or two. In a way, I didn’t believe it.”

“Good.”

“Everybody sort of milling around.”

“That’s right.”

“And you got us all out of the way so very expeditiously.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. But—” she bit her lip and said very quickly—“it was the spear, wasn’t it? He was speared?”

He nodded, and put her irregular dark locks of hair out of her eyes.

“Then,” Troy said, “haven’t you arrested that superb-looking being?”

“The Boomer says the superb-looking being didn’t do it. And anyway we haven’t the authority inside the Embassy. It’s a rum go and no mistake. Do you want to hear?”

“Not now. You’d better get some sleep.”

“Same to you. I shall have a bath. Good morning, my love. Oh — I forgot. I have a present for you from the Boomer!”

“For me? What can you mean?”

“He wants you to paint him. His suggestion, not mine.”

Troy was immovable for several seconds. She then gave Alleyn a quick exultant look and suddenly burrowed into her pillow.

He stared down at her and reflected on things one was supposed to remember about the artistic temperament. He touched her hair and went off to his bath with the dawn light paling the window.