Black As He Is Painted

VII Mr. Sheridan’s Past

When they had closed the file for unsolved homicide, subsection rape and asphyxiation, 1969, Fox remarked that if Chubb hadn’t seemed to have a motive before he certainly had one now. Of a far-fetched sort, Fox allowed, but a motive nevertheless. And in a sort of fashion, he argued, this went some way to showing that the society — he was pleased to call it the “fishy society”—had as its objective the confusion, subjection and downfall of the Black.

“I began to fancy Chubb,” said Fox.

At this point Alleyn’s telephone rang. To his great surprise it was Troy, who was never known to call him at the Yard. He said: “Troy! Anything wrong?”

“Not really and I’m sorry about this,” she said rapidly, “but I thought you’d better know at once. It’s your Boomer on the blower.”

“Wanting me?”

“Strangely enough, no. Wanting me.”

“Oh?” said Alleyn with an edge in his voice. “Well, he’ll have to wait. What for? No, don’t tell me. It’s about his portrait.”

“He’s coming. Now. Here. In full fig to be painted. He says he can give me an hour and a half. I tried to demur but he just roared roughshod over my bleating. He said time was of the essence because his visit is to be cut short. He said the conversation can be continued in a few minutes when he arrives, and with that he hung up and I think I hear him arriving.”

“By God, he’s a daisy. I’ll be with you in half an hour or earlier.”

“You needn’t. It’s not that I’m in the least flustered. It’s only I thought you should know.”

“Yon couldn’t be more right. Stick him up in the studio and get cracking. I’ll be there in a jiffy.”

Alleyn clapped down his receiver and said to Fox: “Did you get the gist of that? Whistle me up a car, Fox, and see if you can get the word through to Fred Gibson. I suppose he’s on to this caper, but find out. And you stay here in case anything comes through, and if it does call me at home. I’m off.”

When he arrived at the pleasant cul-de-sac where he and Troy had their house, he found the Ng’ombwanan ceremonial car, its flag flying, drawn up at the kerb. A poker-faced black chauffeur sat at the wheel. Alleyn was not surprised to see, a little way along the street on the opposite side, a “nondescript,” which is the police term for a disguised vehicle, this time a delivery van. Two men with short haircuts sat in the driver’s compartment. He recognized another of Mr. Gibson’s stalwarts sitting at a table outside the pub. A uniformed constable was on duty outside the house. When Alleyn got out of the police car this officer, looking self-conscious, saluted him.

“How long have you lot been keeping obbo on my pad?” Alleyn asked.

“Half an hour, sir. Mr. Gibson’s inside, sir. He’s only just arrived and asked me to inform you.”

“I’ll bet he did,” Alleyn said, and let himself in.

Gibson was in the hall. He showed something like animation on greeting Alleyn and appeared to be embarrassed. The first thing he had heard of the President’s latest caper, he said, was a radio message that the ambassadorial Rolls, with the Ng’ombwanan flag mounted, had drawn up to the front entrance of the Embassy. His sergeant had spoken to the driver, who said the President had ordered it and was going out. The sergeant reached Mr. Gibson on radio, but before he got to the spot the President, followed by his bodyguard, came out, swept aside the wretched sergeant’s attempts to detain him, and shouting out the address to his driver had been driven away. Gibson and elements of the security forces outside the Embassy had then given chase and taken up the appropriate stations where Alleyn had seen them. When they arrived the President and his mlinzi were already in the house.

“Where is he now?”

“Mrs. Alleyn,” said Gibson, coughing slightly, “took him to the studio. She said I was to tell you. ‘The studio,’ she said. He was very sarcastic about me being here. Seemed to think it funny,” said Gibson resentfully.

“What about the prime suspect?”

“Outside the studio door. I’m very, very sorry, but without I took positive action I couldn’t remove him. Mrs. Alleyn didn’t make a complaint. I’d’ve loved to’ve borrowed that chap then and there,” said Gibson.

“All right, Fred. I’ll see what I can do. Give yourself a drink. In the dining-room, there. Take it into the study and settle down.”

“Ta,” said Gibson wearily. “I could do with it.”

The studio was a separate room at the back of the house and had been built for a Victorian Academician of preposterous fame. It had an absurd entrance approached by a flight of steps with a canopy supported by a brace of self-conscious plaster caryatids that Troy had thought too funny to remove. Between these, in stunning incongruity, stood the enormous mlinzi, only slightly less impressive in a dark suit than he had been in his lion-skin and bracelets. He had his right forearm inside his jacket. He completely filled the entrance.

Alleyn said: “Good evening.”

“Good day. Sir,” said the mlinzi.

“I-am-going-in,” said Alleyn very distinctly. When no move was made, he repeated this announcement, tapping his chest and pointing to the door.

The mlinzi rolled his eyes, turned smartly, knocked on the door and entered. His huge voice was answered by another, even more resonant, and by a matter-of-fact comment from Troy: “Oh, here’s Rory,” Troy said.

The mlinzi stood aside and Alleyn, uncertain about the degree of his own exasperation, walked in.

The model’s throne was at the far end of the studio. Hung over a screen Troy used for backgrounds was a lion’s skin. In front of it, in full ceremonials, ablaze with decorations, gold lace and accoutrements, legs apart and arms akimbo, stood the Boomer.

Troy, behind a four-foot canvas, was setting her palette. On the floor lay two of her rapid exploratory charcoal drawings. A brush was clenched between her teeth. She turned her head and nodded vigorously at her husband, several times.

“Ho-ho!” shouted the Boomer. “Excuse me, my dear Rory, that I don’t descend. As you see, we are busy. Go away!” he shouted at the mlinzi and added something curt in their native tongue. The man went away.

“I apologize for him!” the Boomer said magnificently. “Since last night he is nervous of my well-being. I allowed him to come.”

“He seems to be favouring his left arm.”

“Yes. It turns out that his collar-bone was fractured.”

“Last night?”

“By an assailant, whoever he was.”

“Has he seen a doctor?”

“Oh, yes. The man who looks after the Embassy. A Dr. Gomba. He’s quite a good man. Trained at St. Luke’s.”

“Did he elaborate at all on the injury?”

“A blow, probably with the edge of the hand, since there is no indication of a weapon. It’s not a break — only a crack.”

“What does the mlinzi himself say about it?”

“He has elaborated little on his rather sparse account of last night: that someone struck him on the base of the neck and seized his spear. He has no idea of his assailant’s identity. I must apologize,” said the Boomer affably, “for my unheralded appearance, my dear old man. My stay in London has been curtailed. I am determined that no painter but your wife shall do the portrait and I am impatient to have it. Therefore I cut through the codswallop, as we used to say at Davidson’s, and here, as you see, I am.”

Troy removed the brush from between her teeth. “Stay if you like, darling,” she said, and gave her husband one of the infrequent smiles that still afforded him such deep pleasure.

“If I’m not in the way,” he said, and contrived not to sound sardonic. Troy shook her head.

“No, no, no,” said the Boomer graciously. “We are pleased to have your company. It is permitted to converse. Provided,” he added with a bawling laugh, “that one expects no reply. That is the situation. Am I right, maestro?” he asked Troy, who did not reply. “I do not know the feminine of maestro,” he confessed. “One must not say maestress. That would be in bad taste.”

Troy made a snuffling noise.

Alleyn sat down in a veteran armchair. “Since I am here, and as long as it doesn’t disrupt the proceedings—” he began.

“Nothing,” the Boomer interposed, “disrupts me.”

“Good. I wonder then if Your Excellency can tell me anything about two of your last night’s guests.”

“My Excellency can try. He is so ridiculous,” the Boomer parenthesized to Troy, “with his ‘Excellencies.’ ” And to Alleyn: “I have been telling your wife about our times at Davidson’s.”

“The couple I mean are a brother and sister called Sanskrit.”

The Boomer had been smiling, but his lips now closed over his dazzling teeth. “I think perhaps I have moved a little.” he said.

“No,” Troy said. “You are splendidly still.” She began to make dark, sweeping gestures on her canvas.

“Sanskrit,” Alleyn repeated. “They are enormously fat.”

“Ah! Yes. I know the couple you mean.”

“Is there a link with Ng’ombwana?”

“A commercial one. Yes. They were importers of fancy goods.”

“Were?”

“Were,” said the Boomer without batting an eyelid. “They sold out.”

“Do you know them personally?”

“They have been presented,” he said.

“Did they want to leave?”

“Presumably not, since they are coming back.”

“What?”

“I believe they are coming back. Some alteration in plans. I understand they intend to return immediately. They are persons of little importance.”

“Boomer,” said Alleyn, “have they any cause to bear you a grudge?”

“None whatever. Why?”

“It’s simply a check-up. After all, it seems somebody tried to murder you at your party.”

“Well, you won’t have any luck with them. If anything they ought to feel grateful.”

“Why?”

“It is under my regime that they return. They had been rather abruptly treated by the previous government.”

“When was the decision taken? To reinstate them?”

“Let me see — a month ago, I should say. More perhaps.”

“But when I visited you three weeks ago I actually happened to see Sanskrit on the steps outside his erstwhile premises. The name had just been painted out.”

“You’re wrong there, my dear Rory. It was, I expect, in process of being painted in again.”

“I see,” said Alleyn, and was silent for some seconds. “Do you like them?” he said. “The Sanskrits?”

“No,” said the Boomer. “I find them disgusting.”

“Well, then—?”

“The man had been mistakenly expelled. He made out his case,” the Boomer said with a curious air of restraint. “He has every reason to feel an obligation and none to feel animosity. You may dismiss him from your mind.”

“Before I do, had he any reason to entertain personal animosity against the Ambassador?”

An even longer pause. “Reason? He? None,” said the Boomer. “None whatever.” And then: “I don’t know what is in your mind, Rory, but I’m sure that if you think this person could have committed the murder you are — you are — what is the phrase — you will get no joy from such a theory. But,” he added with a return to his jovial manner, “we should not discuss these beastly affairs before Mrs. Alleyn.”

“She hasn’t heard us,” said Alleyn simply. From where he sat he could see Troy at work. It was as if her response to her subject was distilled into some sort of essence that flowed down arm, hand and brush to take possession of the canvas. He had never seen her work so urgently. She was making that slight breathy noise that he used to say was her inspiration asking to be let out. And what she did was splendid: a mystery was in the making. “She hasn’t heard us,” he repeated.

“Has she not?” said the Boomer, and added: “That, I understand. I understand it perfectly.”

And Alleyn experienced a swift upsurge of an emotion that he would have been hard put to it to define. “Do you, Boomer?” he said. “I believe you do.”

“A fraction more to your left,” said Troy. “Rory — if you could move your chair. That’s done it. Thank you.”

The Boomer patiently maintained his pose, and as the minutes went by he and Alleyn had little more to say to each other. There was a kind of precarious restfulness between them.

Soon after half-past six Troy said she needed her sitter no more for the present. The Boomer behaved nicely. He suggested that perhaps she would prefer that he didn’t see what was happening. She came out of a long stare at her canvas, put her hand in his arm and led him round to look at it, which he did in absolute silence.

“I am greatly obliged to you,” said the Boomer at last.

“And I to you,” said Troy. “Tomorrow morning, perhaps? While the paint is still wet?”

“Tomorrow morning,” promised the Boomer. “Everything else is cancelled and nothing is regretted,” and he took his leave.

Alleyn escorted him to the studio door. The mlinzi stood at the foot of the steps. In descending, Alleyn stumbled and lurched against him. The man gave an indrawn gasp, instantly repressed. Alleyn made remorseful noises and the Boomer, who had gone ahead, turned round.

Alleyn said: “I’ve been clumsy. I’ve hurt him. Do tell him I’m sorry.”

“He’ll survive!” said the Boomer cheerfully. He said something to the man, who walked ahead into the house. The Boomer chuckled and laid his massive arm across Alleyn’s shoulders.

He said: “He really has a fractured collar-bone, you know. Ask Dr. Gomba or, if you like, have a look for yourself. But don’t go on concerning yourself over my mlinzi. Truly, it’s a waste of your valuable time.”

It struck Alleyn that if it came to being concerned, Mr. Whipplestone and the Boomer in their several ways were equally worried about the well-being of their dependents. He said: “All right, all right. But it’s you who are my real headache. Look, for the last time, I most earnestly beg you to stop taking risks. I promise you, I honestly believe that there was a plot to kill you last night and that there’s every possibility that another attempt will be made.”

“What form will it take, do you suppose? A bomb?”

“And you might be right at that. Are you sure, are you absolutely sure there’s nobody at all dubious in the Embassy staff? The servants—”

“I am sure. Not only did your tedious but worthy Gibson’s people search the Embassy but my own people did, too. Very, very thoroughly. There are no bombs. And there is not a servant there who is not above suspicion.”

“How can you be so sure! If, for instance, a big enough bribe was offered—”

“I shall never make you understand, my dear man. You don’t know what I am to my people. It would frighten them less to kill themselves than to touch me. I swear to you that if there was a plot to kill me, it was not organized or inspired by any of these people. No!” he said, and his extraordinary voice sounded like a gong. “Never! It is impossible. No!”

“All right. I’ll accept that so long as you don’t admit unknown elements, you’re safe inside the Embassy. But for God’s sake don’t go taking that bloody hound for walks in the park.”

He burst out laughing. “I am sorry,” he said, actually holding his sides like a clown, “but I couldn’t resist. It was so funny. There they were, so frightened and fussed. Dodging about, those big silly men. No! Admit! It was too funny for words.”

“I hope you find this evening’s security measures equally droll.”

“Don’t be stuffy,” said the Boomer.

“Would you like a drink before you go?”

“Very much but I think I should return.”

“I’ll just tell Gibson.”

“Where is he?”

“In the study. Damping down his frustration. Will you excuse me?”

Alleyn looked round the study door. Mr. Gibson was at ease with a glass of beer at his elbow.

“Going,” Alleyn said.

He rose and followed Alleyn into the hall.

“Ah!” said the Boomer graciously. “Mr. Gibson. Here we go again, don’t we, Mr. Gibson?”

“That’s right, Your Excellency,” said Gibson tonelessly. “Here we go again. Excuse me.”

He went out into the street, leaving the door open.

“I look forward to the next sitting,” said the Boomer, rubbing his hands. “Immeasurably. I shall see you then, old boy. In the morning? Shan’t I?”

“Not very likely, I’m afraid.”

“No?”

“I’m rather busy on a case,” Alleyn said politely. “Troy will do the honours for both of us, if you’ll forgive me.”

“Good, good, good!” he said genially. Alleyn escorted him to the car. The mlinzi opened the door with his left hand. The police car started up its engine and Gibson got into it. The Special Branch men moved. At the open end of the cul-de-sac a body of police kept back a sizable crowd. Groups of residents had collected in the little street.

A dark, pale and completely bald man, well-dressed in formal clothes, who had been reading a paper at a table outside the little pub, put on his hat and strolled away. Several people crossed the street. The policeman on duty asked them to stand back.

“What is all this?” asked the Boomer.

“Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the media have not been idle. There’s a front page spread with banner headlines in the evening papers.”

“I would have thought they had something better to do with the space.” He slapped Alleyn on the back. “Bless you,” he roared. He got into the car, shouted, “I’ll be back at half-past nine in the morning. Do try to be at home,” and was driven off. “Bless you,” Alleyn muttered to the gracious salutes the Boomer had begun to turn on for the benefit of the bystanders. “God knows you need it.”

The police car led the way, turning off into a side exit which would bring them eventually into the main street. The Ng’ombwanan car followed it. There were frustrated manifestations from the crowd at the far end, which gradually dispersed. Alleyn, full of misgivings, went back to the house. He mixed two drinks and took them to the studio, where he found Troy, still in her painting smock, stretched out in an armchair scowling at her canvas. On such occasions she always made him think of a small boy. A short lock of hair overhung her forehead, her hands were painty and her expression brooding. She got up, abruptly, returned to her easel, and swept down a black line behind the head that started up from its tawny surroundings. She then backed away towards him. He moved aside and she saw him.

“How about it?” she asked.

“I’ve never known you so quick. It’s staggering.”

“Too quick to be right?”

“How can you say such a thing? It’s witchcraft.”

She leant against him. “He’s wonderful,” she said. “Like a symbol of blackness. And there’s something — almost desperate. Tragic? Lonely? I don’t know. I hope it happens on that thing over there.”

“It’s begun to happen. So we forget the comic element?”

“Oh that! Yes, of course, he is terribly funny. Victorian music-hall, almost. But I feel it’s just a kind of trimming. Not important. Is that my drink?”

“Troy, my darling, I’m going to ask you something irritating.”

She had taken her drink to the easel and was glowering over the top of her glass at the canvas. “Are you?” she said vaguely. “What?”

“He’s sitting for you again in the morning. Between now and then I want you not to let anybody or anything you don’t know about into the house. No gas-meter inspectors or window cleaners, no parcels addressed in strange hands. No local body representatives. Nothing and nobody that you can’t account for.”

Troy, still absently, said, “All right,” and then suddenly aware: “Are you talking about bombs?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good Lord!”

“It’s not a silly notion, you know. Well, is it?”

“It’s a jolly boring one, though.”

“Promise.”

“All right,” Troy said, and squeezed out a dollop of cadmium red on her palette. She put down her drink and took up a brush.

Alleyn wondered how the hell one kept one’s priorities straight. He watched her nervous, paint-stained hand poise the brush and then use it with the authority of a fiddler. “What she’s up to,” he thought, “and what I am supposed to be up to are a stellar-journey apart and yet ours, miraculously, is a happy marriage. Why?”

Troy turned round and looked at him. “I was listening,” she said, “I do promise.”

“Well — thank you, my love,” he said.

That evening, at about the same time the Boomer dined royally at Buckingham Palace, Alleyn, with Fox in attendance, set out to keep observation upon Mr. Sheridan in his basement flat at No. 1, Capricorn Walk. They drove there in a “nondescript” equipped with a multi-channel radio set. Alleyn remembered that there had been some tatk of Mr. Whipplestone dining with his sister who had come up to London for the night, so there was no question of attracting his attention.

They had been advised by a panda on Unit Beat that the occupant of the basement flat was at home, but his window curtains must be very heavy because they completely excluded the light. Alleyn and Fox approached from Capricorn Square and parked in the shadow of the plane trees. The evening was sultry and overcast and the precincts were lapped in their customary quietude. From the Sun in Splendour, farther back in the Square, came the sound of voices, not very loud.

“Hold on a bit. I’m in two minds about this one, Fox,” Alleyn said. “It’s a question of whether the coterie as a whole is concerned in last night’s abortive attempt if that’s what it was, or whether Mrs. C.-M. and the Colonel acted quite independently under their own alcoholic steam. Which seems unlikely. If it was a concerted affair they may very well have called a meeting to review the situation. Quite possibly to cook up another attempt.”

“Or to fall out among themselves,” said Fox.

“Indeed. Or to fall out.”

“Suppose, for instance,” Fox said in his plain way, “Chubb did the job, thinking it was the President: they won’t be best pleased with him. And you tell me he seems to be nervous.”

“Very nervous.”

“What’s in your mind, then? For now?”

“I thought we might lurk here for a bit to see if Mr. Sheridan has any callers or if, alternatively, he himself steps out to take the air.”

“Do you know what he looks like?”

“Sam Whipplestone says he’s dark, bald, middle height, well-dressed, and speaks with a lisp. I’ve never seen him to my knowledge.” A pause. “He’s peeping,” said Alleyn.

A vertical sliver of light had appeared in the basement windows of No. la. After a second or two it was shut off.

“I wouldn’t have thought,” Fox said, “they’d fancy those premises for a meeting. Under the circs. With Mr. Whipplestone living up above and all.”

“Nor would I.”

Fox grunted comfortably and settled down in his seat. Several cars passed down Capricorn Walk towards Baronsgate, the last being a taxi which stopped at No. 1. A further half-dozen cars followed by a delivery van passed between the watchers and the taxi and were held up, presumably by a block in Baronsgate itself. It was one of those sudden and rare incursions of traffic into the quiet of the Capricorns at night. When it had cleared a figure was revealed coming through the gate at the top of the basement steps at No. 1: a man in a dark suit and scarf wearing a “City” hat. He set off down the Walk in the direction of Baronsgate. Alleyn waited for a little and then drove forward. He turned the corner, passed No. 1, and parked three houses further along.

“He’s going into the Mews,” he said. And sure enough, Mr. Sheridan crossed the street, turned right, and disappeared.

“What price he’s making a call on the pottery pigs?” Alleyn asked. “Or do you fancy the gallant Colonel and his lady? Hold on, Fox.”

He left Fox in the car, crossed the street, and walked rapidly past the Mews for some twenty yards. He then stopped and returned to a small house-decorator’s shop on the corner, where he was able to look through the double windows down the Mews past the Napoli and the opening into Capricorn Place, where the Cockburn-Montforts lived, to the pottery at the far end. Mr. Sheridan kept straight on, in and out of the rather sparse lighting, until he reached the pottery. Here he stopped at a side door, looked about him, and raised his hand to the bell. The door was opened on a dim interior by an unmistakable vast shape. Mr. Sheridan entered and the door was shut.

Alleyn returned to the car. “That’s it,” he said. “The piggery it is. Away we go. We’ve got to play this carefully. He’s on the alert, is Mr. S.”

At the garage where Mr. Whipplestone first met Lucy Lockett there was a very dark alley leading into a yard. Alleyn backed the car into it, stopped the engine, and put out the lights. He and Fox opened the doors, broke into drunken laughter, shouted indistinguishably, banged the doors, and settled down in their seats.

They had not long to wait before Colonel and Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort turned out of Capricorn Place and passed them on the far side of the Mews, she teetering on preposterous heels, he marching with the preternatural accuracy of the seasoned toper.

They were admitted into the same door by the same vast shape.

“One to come,” Alleyn said, “unless he’s there already.”

But he was not there already. Nobody else passed up or down the Mews for perhaps a minute. The clock in the Basilica struck nine and the last note was followed by approaching footsteps on their side of the street. Alleyn and Fox slid down in their seats. The steps, making the customary rather theatrical, rather disturbing effect of footfalls in dark streets, approached at a brisk pace, and Chubb passed by on his way to the pottery.

When he had been admitted Alleyn said: “We don’t, by the way, know if there are any more members, do we? Some unknown quantity?”

“What about it?”

“Wait and see, I suppose. It’s very tempting, you know, Br’er Fox, to let them warm up a bit and then make an official call and politely scare the pants off them. It would stop any further attempts from that quarter on the Boomer unless, of course, there’s a fanatic among them, and I wouldn’t put that past Chubb for one.”

“Do we try it, then?”

“Regretfully, we don’t. We haven’t got enough on any of them to make an arrest and we’d lose all chances of finally roping them in. Pity! Pity!”

“So what’s the form?”

“Well, I think we wait until they break up and then, however late the hour, we might even call upon Mr. Sheridan. Somebody coming,” Alleyn said.

“Your unknown quantity?”

“I wonder.”

It was a light footstep this time and approached rapidly on the far side of the Mews. There was a street lamp at the corner of Capricorn Place. The newcomer walked into its ambit and crossed the road coming straight towards them.

It was Samuel Whipplestone.

“Well, of course,” Alleyn thought. “He’s going for his evening constitutional, but why did he tell me he was dining with his sister?”

Fox sat quiet at his side. They waited in the dark for Mr. Whipplestone to turn and continue his walk.

But he stopped and peered directly into the alleyway. For a moment Alleyn had the uncanny impression that they looked straight into each other’s eyes, and then Mr. Whipplestone, slipping past the bonnet of the car, tapped discreetly on the driver’s window.

Alleyn let it down.

“May I get in?” asked Mr. Whipplestone. “I think it may be important.”

“All right. But keep quiet if anybody comes. Don’t bang the door, will you? What’s up?”

Mr. Whipplestone began to talk very rapidly and precisely in a breathy undertone, leaning forward so that his head was almost between the heads of his listeners.

“I came home early,” he said. “My sister, Edith, had a migraine. I arrived by taxi and had just let myself in when I heard the basement door close and someone came up the steps. I daresay I’ve become hypersensitive to any occurrences down there. I went into the drawing-room and, without turning on the lights, watched Sheridan open the area gate and look about him. He was wearing a hat, but for a moment or two his face was lit by the head-lamps of one of some half-dozen cars that had been halted. I saw him very clearly. Very, very clearly. He was scowling. I think I mentioned to you that I’ve been nagged by the impression that I had seen him before. I’ll return to that in a moment.”

“Do,” said Alleyn.

“I was still there, at my window, when this car pulled out of the square from the shadow of the trees, turned right, and parked a few doors away from, me. I noticed the number.”

“Ah!” said Alleyn

“This was just as Sheridan disappeared up the Mews. The driver got out of the car and — but I need not elaborate.”

“I was rumbled.”

“Well — yes. If you like to put it that way. I saw you station yourself at the corner and then return to this car. And I saw you drive into the Mews. Of course I was intrigued, but believe me, Alleyn, I had no thought of interfering or indulging in any — ah—”

“Counter-espionage?”

“Oh, my dear fellow! Well. I turned away from my window and was about to put on the lights when I heard Chubb coming down the stairs. I heard him walk along the hall and stop by the drawing-room door. Only for a moment. I was in two minds whether to put on the lights and say ‘Oh, Chubb, I’m in’ or something of that sort or to let him go. So uncomfortable has the atmosphere been that I decided on the latter course. He went out, doubled-locked the door, and walked off in the same direction as Sheridan. And you. Into the Mews.”

Mr. Whipplestone paused, whether for dramatic effect or in search of the precise mode of expression, he being invisible, it was impossible to determine.

“It was then,” he said, “that I remembered. Why, at that particular moment, the penny should drop I have no notion. But drop it did.”

“You remembered?”

“About Sheridan.”

“Ah.”

“I remembered where I had seen him. Twenty-odd years ago. In Ng’ombwana.”

Fox suddenly let out a vast sigh.

“Go on,” said Alleyn.

“It was a court of law. British law, of course, at that period. And Sheridan was in the dock.”

“Was he indeed!”

“He had another name in those days. He was reputed to come from Portuguese East and he was called Manuel Gomez. He owned extensive coffee plantations. He was found guilty of manslaughter. One of his workers — it was a revolting business — had been chained to a tree and beaten and had died of gangrene.”

Fox clicked his tongue several times.

“And that is not all. My dear Alleyn, for the prosecution there was a young Ng’ombwanan barrister who had qualified in London — the first, I believe, to do so.”

“The Boomer, by God!”

“Precisely. I seem to recollect that he pressed with great tenacity for a sentence of murder and the death penalty.”

“What was the sentence?”

“I don’t remember — something like fifteen years, I fancy. The plantation is now in the hands of the present government, of course, but I remember Gomez was said to have salted away a fortune. In Portugal, I think. It may have been London. I am not certain of these details.”

“You are certain of the man?”

“Absolutely. And of the barrister. I attended the trial. I have a diary that I kept at that time and a pretty extensive scrapbook. We can verify. But I am certain. He was scowling in the light from the car. The whole thing flashed up most vividly those one or two minutes later.”

“That’s what actors call a double-take.”

“Do they?” Mr. Whipplestone said absently, and then: “He made a scene when he was sentenced. I’d never seen anything like it. It left an extraordinary impression.”

“Violent?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. Screaming. Threatening. He had to be handcuffed, and even then — it was like an animal,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

“Fair enough,” Fox rumbled, pursuing some inward cogitation.

“You don’t ask me,” Mr. Whipplestone murmured, “why I took the action I did. Following you here.”

“Why did you?”

“I felt sure you had followed Sheridan because you thought, as I did, that probably there was to be a meeting of these people. Whether at the Cockburn-Montforts’ or at the Sanskrits’ flat. And I felt most unhappily sure that Chubb was going to join them. I had and have no idea whether you actually intended to break in upon the assembly, but I thought it might well be that this intelligence would be of importance. I saw Chubb being admitted to that place. I followed, expecting you would be somewhere in the Mews, and I made out your car. So here I am, you see,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

“Here you are and the man without motive is now supplied with what might even turn out to be the prime motive.”

“That,” said Mr. Whipplestone, “is what I rather thought.”

“You may say,” Fox ruminated, “that as far as motives go it’s now one apiece. Chubb, the daughter. The Sanskrits, losing their business. Sheridan — well, ask yourself. And the Colonel and Mrs. C.-M. — what about them?”

“The Boomer tells me the Colonel was livid at getting the sack. He’d seen himself rigged out as a field marshal or as near as dammit. Instead of which he went into retirement and the bottle.”

“Would these motives apply,” Fox asked, “equally to the Ambassador and the President? As victims, I mean.”

“Not in Sheridan’s case, it would appear.”

“No,” Mr. Whipplestone agreed. “Not in his case.”

They were silent for a space. At last Alleyn said: “I think this is what we do. We leave you here, Br’er Fox, keeping what I’m afraid may prove to be utterly fruitless observation. We don’t know what decision they’ll come to in the piggery-flat or indeed what exactly they’re there to decide. Another go at the Boomer? The liquidation of the Klu-Klux-Fish or whatever it is? It’s anybody’s guess. But it’s just possible you may pick up something. And Sam, if you can stand up to another late night, I’d very much like to look at those records of yours.”

“Of course. Only too glad.”

“Shall we go, then?”

They had got out of the car when Alleyn put his head in at the window. “The Sanskrits don’t fit,” he said.

“No?” said Fox. “No motive, d’you mean?”

“That’s right. The Boomer told me that Sanskrit’s been reinstated in his emporium in Ng’ombwana. Remember?”

“Now, that is peculiar,” said Fox. “I’d overlooked that.”

“Something for you to brood on,” Alleyn said. “We’ll be in touch.”

He put his walkie-talkie in his pocket, and he and Mr. Whipplestone returned to No. 1, the Walk.

There was a card on the hall table with the word out neatly printed on it. “We leave it there to let each other know,” Mr. Whipplestone explained. “On account of the door chain.” He turned the card over to show in, ushered Alleyn into the drawing-room, shut the door and turned on the lights.

“Do let’s have a drink,” he said. “Whisky and soda? I’ll just get the soda. Sit down, do. I won’t be a jiffy.”

He went out with something of his old sprightly air.

He had turned on the light above the picture over the fireplace. Troy had painted it quite a long time ago. It was a jubilant landscape half-way to being an abstract. Alleyn remembered it well.

“Ah!” said Mr. Whipplestone, returning with a syphon in his hands and Lucy weaving in and out between his feet. “You’re looking at my treasure. I acquired it at one of the Group shows, not long after you married, I think. Look out, cat, for pity’s sake! Now: shall we go into the dining-room, where I can lay out the exhibits on the table? But first, our drinks. You begin yours while I search.”

“Steady with the Scotch. I’m supposed to keep a clear head. Would you mind if I rang Troy up?”

“Do, do, do. Over there on the desk. The box I want is upstairs. It’ll take a little digging out.”

Troy answered the telephone almost at once. “Hello, where are you?” Alleyn asked.

“In the studio.”

“Broody?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m at Sam Whipplestone’s and will be most probably for the next hour or so. Have you got a pencil handy?”

“Wait a bit.”

He had a picture of her feeling about in the pocket of her painting smock.

“I’ve got a bit of charcoal,” she said.

“It’s only to write down the number.”

“Hold on. Right.”

He gave it to her. “In case anyone wants me,” he said. “You, for instance.”

“Rory?”

“What?”

“Do you mind very much? About me painting the Boomer? Are you there?”

“I’m here all right. I delight in what you’re doing and I deplore the circumstances under which you’re doing it.”

“Well,” said Troy, “that’s a straight answer to a straight question. Good night, darling.”

“Good night,” he said, “darling.”

Mr. Whipplestone was gone for some considerable time. At last he returned with a large old-fashioned photograph album and an envelope full of press cuttings. He opened the connecting doors to the dining-room, laid his findings out on the table, and displaced Lucy, who affected a wayward interest in them.

“I was a great hoarder in those days,” he said. “Everything’s in order and dated. There should be no difficulty.”

There was none. Alleyn examined the album, which had the faded melancholy aspect of all such collections, while Mr. Whipplestone looked through the cuttings. When the latter applied to items in the former, they had been carefully pasted beside the appropriate photographs. It was Alleyn who first struck oil.

“Here we are,” he said. And there, meticulously dated and annotated in Mr. Whipplestone’s neat hand, were three photographs and a yellowing page from the Ng’ombwana Times with the headline: Gomez Trial, Verdict, Scene in Court.

The photographs showed, respectively, a snapshot of a bewigged judge emerging from a dark interior; a crowd, mostly composed of black people, waiting outside a sun-baked court of justice; and an open car driven by a black chauffeur with two passengers in tropical kit, one of whom, a trim, decorous-looking person of about forty, was recognizable as Mr. Whipplestone himself. “Going to the Trial.” The press photographs were more explicit. There, unmistakably himself, in wig and gown, was the young Boomer. “Mr. Bartholomew Opala, Counsel for the Prosecution.” And there, already partially bald, dark, furious and snarling, a man handcuffed between two enormous black policemen and protected from a clearly menacing crowd of Ng’ombwanans. “After the Verdict. The Prisoner,” said the caption. “Leaving the Court.”

The letter-press carried an account of the trial with full journalistic appreciation of its dramatic highlights. There was also an editorial.

“And that,” Alleyn said, “is the self-same Sheridan in your basement flat.”

“You would recognize him at once?”

“Yes. I thought I’d seen him for the first time — and that dimly — tonight, but it turns out that it was my second glimpse. He was sitting outside the pub this afternoon when the Boomer called on Troy.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Whipplestone drily, “you will be seeing quite a lot more of him. I don’t like this, Alleyn.”

“How do you think I enjoy it!” said Alleyn, who was reading the press cutting. “The vows of vengeance,” he said, “are quite Marlovian in their inventiveness, aren’t they?”

“You should have heard them! And every one directed at your Boomer,” said Mr. Whipplestone. He bent over the album. “I don’t suppose I’ve looked at this,” he said, “for over a decade. It was stowed away in a trunk with a lot of others in my old flat. Even so, I might have remembered, one would have thought.”

“I expect he’s changed. After all — twenty years!”

“He hasn’t changed all that much in looks and I can’t believe he’s changed at all in temperament.”

“And you’ve no notion what became of him when he got out?”

“None. Portuguese East, perhaps. Or South America. Or a change of name. Ultimately, by fair means or foul, a British passport.”

“And finally whatever he does in the City?”

“Imports coffee perhaps,” sniffed Mr. Whipplestone.

“His English is non-committal?”

“Oh, yes. No accent, unless you count a lisp, which I suppose is a hangover. Let me give you a drink.”

“Not another, thank you, Sam. I must keep my wits about me, such as they are.” He hesitated for a moment and then said: “There’s one thing I think perhaps you should know. It’s about the Chubbs. But before I go any further I’m going to ask you, very seriously indeed, to give an undertaking not to let what I tell you make any difference — any difference at all — to your normal manner with the Chubbs. If you’d rather not make a blind commitment like this, then I’ll keep my big mouth shut and no bones broken.”

Mr. Whipplestone said quietly: “Is it to their discredit?”

“No,” Alleyn said slowly, “not directly. Not specifically. No.”

“I have been trained in discretion.”

“I know.”

“You may depend upon me.”

“I’m sure I can,” Alleyn said, and told Mr. Whipplestone about the girl in the photograph. For quite a long time after Alleyn had finished he made no reply, and then he took a turn about the room and said, more to himself than to Alleyn: “That is a dreadful thing. I am very sorry. My poor Chubbs.” And after another pause: “Of course, you see this as a motive.”

“A possible one. No more than that.”

“Yes. Thank you for telling me. It will make no difference.”

“Good. And now I mustn’t keep you up any longer. It’s almost midnight. I’ll just give Fox a shout.”

Fox came through loud, clear and patient on the radio.

“Dead on cue, Mr. Alleyn,” he said. “Nothing till now but I think they’re breaking up. A light in a staircase window. Keep with me.”

“Right you are,” said Alleyn, and waited. He said to Mr. Whipplestone: “The party’s over. We’ll have Sheridan-Gomez and Chubb back in a minute.”

“Hullo,” said Fox.

“Yes?”

“Here they come. The Cockburn-Montforts. Far side of the street from me. Not talking. Chubb, this side, walking fast. Hold on. Wait for it, Mr. Alleyn.”

“All right.”

Alleyn could hear the advancing and retreating steps.

“There he goes,” Fox said. “He’ll be with you in a minute, and now here comes Mr. Sheridan, on his own. Far side of the street. The C.-M.’s have turned their corner. I caught a bit of one remark. From her. She said: ‘I was a fool. I knew at the time,’ and he seemed to shut her up. That’s all. Over and — hold on. Hold on, Mr. Alleyn.”

“What?”

“The door into the Sanskrit premises. Opening a crack. No light beyond, but it’s opening all right. They’re being watched off.”

“Keep with it, Fox. Give me a shout if there’s anything more. Otherwise, I’ll join you in a few minutes. Over and out.”

Alleyn waited with Mr. Whipplestone for about three minutes before they heard Chubb’s rapid step, followed by the sound of his key in the lock.

“Do you want to see him?” Mr. Whipplestone murmured. Alleyn shook his head. They heard the chain rattle. Chubb paused for a moment in the hall and then went upstairs.

Another minute and the area gate clicked. Mr. Sheridan could be heard to descend and enter.

“There he goes,” said Mr. Whipplestone, “and there he’ll be, rather like a bomb in my basement. I can’t say I relish the thought.”

“Nor should I, particularly. If it’s any consolation, I don’t imagine he’ll be there for long.”

“No?”

“Well, I hope not. Before I leave you I’m going to try, if I may, to get on to Gibson. We’ll have a round-the-clock watch on Gomez-cum-Sheridan until further notice.”

He roused Gibson, with apologies, from his beauty sleep and told him what he’d done, what he proposed to do, and what he would like Gibson to do for him.

“And now,” he said to Mr. Whipplestone, “I’ll get back to my patient old Fox. Goodnight. And thank you. Keep the scrapbook handy, if you will.”

“Of course. I’ll let you out.”

He did so, being, Alleyn noticed, careful to make no noise with the chain and to shut the door softly behind him.

As he walked down Capricorn Mews, which he did firmly and openly, Alleyn saw that there were a few more cars parked in it and that most of the little houses and the flats were dark, now, including the flat over the pottery. When he reached the car and slipped into the passenger’s seat, Fox said: “The door was on the chink for about ten seconds and then he shut it. You could just make it out. Light catching the brass knocker. Nothing in it, I daresay. But it looked a bit funny. Do we call off the obbo, then?”

“You’d better hear this bit first.”

And he told Fox about the scrapbook and Mr. Sheridan’s past.

“Get away!” Fox said cosily. “Fancy that now! So we’ve got a couple of right villains in the club. Him and Sanskrit. It’s getting interesting, Mr. Alleyn, isn’t it?”

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself, Br’er Fox. For my part I—” He broke off. “Look at this!” he whispered.

The street door of the Sanskrits’ flat had opened and through it came, unmistakably, the elephantine bulk of Sanskrit himself, wearing a longish overcoat and a soft hat.

“Now what’s he think he’s doing!” breathed Mr. Fox.

The door was locked, the figure turned outwards, and for a moment the great bladder-like face caught the light. Then he came along the Mews, walking lightly as fat people so often do, and disappeared down Capricorn Place.

“That’s where the C.-M.’s hang out,” said Fox.

“It’s also the way to Palace Park Gardens, where the Boomer hangs out. How long is it since you tailed your man, Fox?”

“Well—”

“We’re off on a refresher course. Come on.”