Black As He Is Painted

VIII Keeping Obbo

Fox drove slowly across the opening into Capricorn Place.

“There he goes. Not into the C.-M.’s, though, I’m sure,” said Alleyn. “Their lights are out and he’s walking on the opposite side in deep shadow. Stop for a moment, Fox. Yes. He’s not risking going past the house. Or is he? Look at that, Fox.”

A belated taxi drove slowly towards them up Capricorn Place. The driver seemed to be looking for a number. It stopped. The huge bulk of Sanskrit, scarcely perceptible in the shadows, light as a fairy, flitted on, the taxi screening it from the house.

“On you go, Fox. He’s heading for the brick wall at the far end. We go left, left again into the Square, then right, and left again. Stop before you get back to Capricorn Place.”

Fox executed this flanking manoeuvre. They passed by No. 1, the Walk, where Mr. Whipplestone’s bedroom light glowed behind his curtains, and by the Sun in Splendour, now in eclipse. They drove along the far end of the Square, turned left, continued a little way farther and parked.

“That’s Capricorn Place ahead,” said Alleyn. “It ends in a brick wall with an opening into a narrow walk. That walk goes behind the Basilica and leads by an alleyway into Palace Park Gardens. It’s my bet this is where he’s heading, but I freely admit it’s a pretty chancy shot. Here he comes.”

He crossed the intersection rather like a walking tent with his buoyant fat-man’s stride. They gave him a few seconds and then left the car and followed.

There was no sign of him when they turned the corner, but his light footfall could be heard on the far side of the wall. Alleyn jerked his head at the gateway. They passed through it and were just in time to see him disappear round a distant corner.

“This is it,” Alleyn said. “Quick, Fox, and on your toes.”

They sprinted down the walk, checked, turned quietly into the alleyway, and had a pretty clear view of Sanskrit at the far end of it. Beyond him, vaguely declaring itself, was a thoroughfare and the façade of an impressive house from the second-floor balcony of which protruded a flag-pole. Two policemen stood by the entrance.

They moved into a dark doorway and watched.

“He’s walking up as cool as you like!” Fox whispered.

“So he is.”

“Going to hand something in, is he?”

“He’s showing something to the coppers. Gibson cooked up a pass system with the Embassy. Issued to their staff and immediate associates with the President’s cachet. Quite an elaborate job. It may be, he’s showing it.”

“Why would he qualify?”

“Well may you ask. Look at this, will you?”

Sanskrit had produced something that appeared to be an envelope. One of the policemen turned on his torch. It flashed from Sanskrit’s face to his hands. The policeman bent his head and the light shone briefly up into his face. A pause. The officer nodded to his mate, who rang the doorbell. It was opened by a Ng’ombwanan in livery; presumably a night porter. Sanskrit appeared to speak briefly to the man, who listened, took the envelope if that was what it was, stepped back and shut the door after him.

“That was quick!” Fox remarked.

“Now he’s chatting to the coppers.”

They caught a faint high-pitched voice and the two policemen’s “Goodnight, sir.”

“Boldly does it, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn. They set off down the alleyway.

There was a narrow footpath on their side. As the enormous tented figure, grotesque in the uncertain darkness, flounced towards them it moved into the centre of the passage.

Alleyn said to Fox, as they passed it: “As such affairs go I suppose it was all right. I hope you weren’t too bored.”

“Oh, no,” said Fox. “I’m thinking of joining.”

“Are you? Good.”

They walked on until they came to the Embassy. Sanskrit’s light footfalls died away in the distance. He had, presumably, gone back through the hole in the wall.

Alleyn and Fox went up to the two constables.

Alleyn said: “Superintendent Alleyn, C. Department.”

“Sir,” they said.

“I want as accurate and full an account of that incident as you can give me. Did you get the man’s name? You?” he said to the constable who had seemed to be the more involved.

“No, sir. He carried the special pass, sir.”

“You took a good look at it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you didn’t read the name?”

“I–I don’t — I didn’t quite get it, sir. It began with S and there was a K in it. ‘San’ something, sir. It was all in order, sir, with his photograph on it, like a passport. You couldn’t miss it being him. He didn’t want to be admitted, sir. Only for the door to be answered. If he’d asked for admittance I’d have noted the name.”

“You should have noted it in any case.”

“Sir.”

“What precisely did he say?”

“He said he had a message to deliver, sir. It was for the First Secretary. He produced it and I examined it, sir. It was addressed to the First Secretary and had ‘For His Excellency the President’s attention’ written in the corner. It was a fairly stout manilla envelope, sir, but the contents appeared to me to be slight, sir.”

“Well?”

“I said it was an unusual sort of time to deliver it. I said he could hand it over to me and I’d attend to it, sir, but he said he’d promised to deliver it personally. It was a photograph, he said, that the President had wanted developed and printed very particular and urgent and a special effort had been made to get it done and it was only processed half an hour ago. He said he’d been instructed to hand it to the night porter for the First Secretary.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Well, I took it and put it over my torch, sir, and that showed up the shape of some rigid object like a cardboard folder inside it. There wasn’t any chance of it being one of those funny ones, sir, and he had got a special pass and so we allowed it and — well, sir, that’s all, really.”

“And you,” Alleyn said to the other man, “rang the bell?”

“Sir.”

“Anything said when the night porter answered it?”

“I don’t think he speaks English, sir. Him and the bearer had a word or two in the native language, I suppose it was. And then he just took delivery and shut the door and the bearer gave us a goodnight and left.”

Mr. Fox, throughout this interview, had gazed immovably, and to their obvious discomfort, at whichever of the constables was speaking. When they had finished he said in a sepulchral voice to nobody in particular that he wouldn’t be surprised if this matter wasn’t Taken Further, upon which their demeanour became utterly wooden.

Alleyn said: “You should have reported this at once. You’re bloody lucky Mr. Gibson doesn’t know about it”

They said in unison: “Thank you very much, sir.”

“For what?” Alleyn said.

“Will you pass it on to Fred Gibson?” Fox asked as they walked back the way they had come.

“The incident? Yes. But I won’t bear down on the handling of it. I ought to. Although it was tricky, that situation. He’s got the Embassy go-ahead with his special pass. The copper had been told that anybody carrying one was persona grata. He’d have been taking quite a chance if he’d refused.” Alleyn put his hand on Fox’s arm. “Look at that,” he said. “Where did that come from?”

At the far end of the long alleyway, in deep shadow, someone moved away from them. Even as they glimpsed it, the figure slipped round the corner and out of sight. They could hear the soft thud of hurrying feet. They sprinted down the alley and turned the corner, but there was no-one to be seen.

“Could have come out of one of these houses and be chasing after a cab,” Fox said.

“They’re all dark.”

“Yes.”

“And no sound of a cab. Did you get an impression?”

“No. Hat. Overcoat. Rubber soles. Trousers. I wouldn’t even swear to the sex. It was too quick.”

“Damn,” Alleyn said, and they walked on in silence.

“It would be nice to know what was in the envelope,” Fox said at last.

“That’s the understatement of a lifetime.”

“Will you ask?”

“You bet I will.”

“The President?”

“Who else? And at the crack of dawn, I daresay, like it or lump it. Fox,” Alleyn said, “I’ve been visited by a very disturbing notion.”

“Is that so, Mr. Alleyn?” Fox placidly rejoined.

“And I’ll be obliged if you’ll just listen while I run through all the disjointed bits of information we have about this horrid fat man and see if some kind of pattern comes through in the end.”

“Be pleased to,” said Fox.

He listened with calm approval as they walked back into the now deserted Capricorns to pick up their car. When they were seated in it Alleyn said: “There you are, Br’er Fox. Now then. By and large: what emerges?”

Fox laid his broad palm across his short moustache and then looked at it as if he expected it to have picked up an impression.

“I see what you’re getting at,” he said. “I think.”

“What I’m getting at,” Alleyn said, “is— fairly simply — this—”

Alleyn’s threat to talk to the Boomer at the crack of dawn was not intended to be, nor was it, taken literally. In the event, he himself was roused by Mr. Gibson, wanting to know if it really was true that the President was giving Troy another sitting at half-past nine. When Alleyn confirmed this, Gibson’s windy sighs whistled in the receiver. He said he supposed Alleyn had seen the morning’s popular press, and on Alleyn’s saying not yet, informed him that in each instance the front page carried a by-lined three-column spread with photographs of yesterday’s visit by the Boomer. Gibson in a dreary voice began to quote some of the more offensive pieces of journalese. “Rum Proceedings? Handsome Super’s Famous Wife and African Dictator.” Alleyn, grinding his teeth, begged him to desist and he did so, merely observing that all things considered he wondered why Alleyn fancied the portrait proposition.

Alleyn felt it would be inappropriate to say that stopping the portrait would in itself be a form of homicide. He switched to the Sanskrit incident and learnt that it had been reported to Gibson. Alleyn outlined his and Fox’s investigations and the conculsions he had drawn from them.

“It seems to look,” Mr. Gibson mumbled, “as if things might be coming to a head.”

“Keep your fingers crossed. I’m getting a search warrant. On the off-chance.”

“Always looks ‘active,’ applying for a warrant. By the way, the body’s gone.”

“What?”

“The deceased. Just before first light. It was kept very quiet. Back entrance. ‘Nondescript’ van. Special plane. All passed off nice and smooth. One drop of grief the less,” said Mr. Gibson.

“You may have to keep obbo at the airport, Fred. Outgoing planes for Ng’ombwana.”

“Any time. You name it,” he said dismally.

“From now. We’ll be in touch,” Alleyn said, and they rang off.

Troy was in the studio making statements on the background. He told her that yesterday’s protective measures would be repeated and that if possible he himself would be back before the Boomer arrived.

“That’ll be fine,” she said. “Sit where you did before, Rory, would you, darling? He’s marvellous when he focusses on you.”

“You’ve got the cheek of the devil. Do you know that everybody but you thinks I’m out of my senses to let you go on with this?”

“Yes, but then you’re you, aren’t you, and you know how things are. And truly — it is — isn’t it? — going — you know? Don’t say it, but — isn’t it?”

He said: “It is. Strange as it may sound, I hardly dare look. It’s leapt out of the end of your brush.”

She gave him a kiss. “I am grateful,” she said. “You know, don’t you?”

He went to the Yard in a pleasant if apprehensive state of mind and found a message from Mr. Whipplestone asking him to ring without delay. He put through the call and was answered at once.

“I thought you should know,” Mr. Whipplestone began, and the phrase had become familiar. He hurried on to say that, confronted by a leaking water-pipe, he had called at his land agents, Messrs. Able and Virtue, at ten past nine o’clock that morning to ask if they could recommend a plumber. He found Sanskrit already there and talking to the young man with Pre-Raphaelite hair. When he saw Mr. Whipplestone, Sanskrit had stopped short and then said in a counter-tenor voice that he would leave everything to them and they were to do the best they could for him.

The young man had said there would be no difficulty as there was always a demand in the Capricorns. Sanskrit said something indistinguishable and rather hurriedly left the offices.

“I asked, casually,” said Mr. Whipplestone, “if the pottery premises were by any chance to let. I said I had friends who were flat-hunting. This produced a curious awkwardness on the part of the lady attendant and the young man. The lady said something about the place not being officially on the market as yet and in any case if it did come up it would be for sale rather than to let. The present occupant, she said, didn’t want it made known for the time being. This, as you may imagine, intrigued me. When I left the agents I walked down Capricorn Mews to the piggery. It had a notice on the door: Closed for stocktaking. There are some very ramshackle curtains drawn across the shop window but they don’t quite meet. I peered in. It was very ill-lit but I got the impression of some large person moving about among packing cases.”

“Did you, by George!”

“Yes. And on my way home I called in at the Napoli for some of their pâté. While I was there the Cockburn-Montforts came in. He was, I thought, rather more than three sheets in the wind but, as usual, holding it. She looked awful.”

Mr. Whipplestone paused for so long that Alleyn said: “Are you there, Sam?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I am. To be frank, I’m wondering what you’re going to think of my next move. Be quiet, cat. I don’t habitually act on impulse. Far from it.”

“Very far, I’d have thought.”

“Although lately — However, I did act impulsively on this occasion. Very. I wanted to get a reaction. I gave them good-morning, of course, and then, quite casually, you know, as I took my pâté from Mrs. Pirelli, I said: ‘I believe you’re losing some neighbours, Mrs. Pirelli?’ She looked nonplussed. I said: ‘Yes. The people at the pig-pottery. They’re leaving, almost at once, I hear.’ This was not, of course, strictly true.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“No? Well, I turned and was face-to-face with Cockburn-Montfort. I find it difficult to describe his look, or rather his succession of looks. Shock. Incredulity. Succeeded by fury. He turned even more purple in the process. Mrs. Montfort quite gasped out ‘I don’t believe it!’ and then gave a little scream. He had her by the arm and he hurt her. And without another word he turned her about and marched her out of the shop. I saw him wheel her round in the direction of the piggery. She pulled back and seemed to plead with him. In the upshot they turned again and went off presumably to their own house. Mrs. Pirelli said something in Italian and then: ‘If they go I am pleased.’ I left. As I passed the top of Capricorn Place, I saw the C.-M.’s going up their steps. He still held her arm and I think she was crying. That’s all.”

“And this was — what? — half an hour ago?”

“About that.”

“We’ll discuss it later. Thank you, Sam.”

“Have I blundered?”

“I hope not. I think you may have precipitated something.”

“I’ve got to have a word with Sheridan about the plumbing — a genuine word. He’s at home. Should I—?”

“I think you might, but it’s odds on the C.-M.’s will have got in first. Try.”

“Very well.”

“And the Chubbs?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes. Oh dear. If you wish.”

“Don’t elaborate. Just the news, casually, as before.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be at home in about a quarter of an hour if you want me. If I don’t hear from you I’ll get in touch myself as soon as I can,” Alleyn said.

He checked with the man keeping observation and learned that Sanskrit had returned to the pottery after his visit to the land agents and had not emerged. The pottery was closed and the windows still curtained.

Five minutes later Alleyn and Fox found the entrance to the cul-de-sac, as on the former visit, cordoned off by police and thronged by an even larger crowd and quite a galaxy of photographers, who were pestering Superintendent Gibson with loud cries against constabular arrogance. Alleyn had a word with Gibson, entered his own house, left Fox in the study, and went straight to Troy in her studio. She had done quite a lot of work on the background.

“Troy,” he said, “when he comes, I’ve got to have a word with him. Alone. I don’t think it will take long and I don’t know how much it will upset him.”

“Damn,” said Troy.

“Well, I know. But this is where it gets different. I’ve no choice.”

“I see. O.K.”

“It’s hell but there it is.”

“Never mind — I know. Here he is. You’d better meet him.”

“I’ll be back. Much more to the point, I hope he will.”

“So do I. Good luck to whatever it is.”

“Amen to that, sweet powers,” Alleyn said, and arrived at the front door at the same time as the Boomer, who had his mlinzi in attendance, the latter carrying a great bouquet of red roses and, most unexpectedly, holding the white Afghan hound on a scarlet leash. The Boomer explained that the dog seemed to be at a loose end. “Missing his master,” said the Boomer.

He greeted Alleyn with all his usual buoyancy, and then after a quick look at him said: “Something is wrong, I think.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “We must speak together, sir.”

“Very well, Rory. Where?”

“In here, if you will.”

They went into the study. When the Boomer saw Fox, who had been joined by Gibson, he fetched up short.

“We speak together,” he said, “but not, it seems, in private?”

“It’s a police matter and my colleagues are involved.”

“Indeed? Good morning, gentlemen.”

He said something to the mlinzi, who handed him the roses, went out with the dog, and shut the door.

“Will you sit down, sir?” Alleyn said.

This time the Boomer made no protest at the formalities. He said: “By all means,” and sat in a white hide armchair. He wore the ceremonial dress of the portrait and looked superb. The red roses lent an extraordinarily surrealist touch.

“Perhaps you will put them down somewhere?” he said, and Alleyn laid them on his desk. “Are they for Troy?” he asked. “She’ll be delighted.”

“What are we to speak about?”

“About Sanskrit. Will you tell me what was in the envelope he delivered at the Embassy soon after midnight this morning? It was addressed to the First Secretary. With a note to the effect that it was for your attention.”

“Your men are zealous in their performance of their tasks, Mr. Gibson,” said the Boomer without looking at him.

Gibson cleared his throat.

“The special pass issued under my personal cachet evidently carried no weight with these policemen,” the Boomer added. ”

“Without it,” Alleyn said, “the envelope would probably have been opened. I hope you will tell us what it contained. Believe me, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was of great importance.”

The Boomer, who from the time he had sat down had not removed his gaze from Alleyn, said, “It was opened by my secretary.”

“But he told you what it was?”

“It was a request. For a favour.”

“And the favour?”

“It was in connection with this person’s return to Ng’ombwana. I think I told you that he has been reinstated.”

“Was it, perhaps, that he wants to return at once and asked for an immediate clearance — visas, permits, whatever is necessary? Procedures that normally, I think, take several days to complete?”

“Yes,” said the Boomer. “That was it.”

“Why do you suppose he told the police officers that the envelope contained a photograph, one that you had ordered urgently, for yourself?”

For a second or two he looked very angry indeed. Then he said: “I have no idea. It was a ridiculous statement. I have ordered no photographs.”

Alleyn said: “Mr. Gibson, I wonder if you and Mr. Fox will excuse us?”

They went out with a solemn preoccupied air and shut the door after them.

“Well, Rory?” said the Boomer.

“He was an informer,” Alleyn said, “wasn’t he? He was what Mr. Gibson would call, so unprettily but so appropriately, a snout.”

The Boomer had always, in spite of all his natural exuberance, commanded a talent for unexpected silences. He now displayed it. He neither moved nor spoke during a long enough pause for the clock in the study to clear its throat and strike ten. He then clasped his white gloved hands, rested his chin on them and spoke.

“In the old days,” he said, and his inordinately resonant voice, taking on a timbre of a recitative, lent the phrase huge overtones of nostalgia, “at Davidson’s, I remember one wet evening when we talked together, as youths of that age will, of everything under the sun. We talked, finally, of government and the exercise of power and suddenly, without warning, we found ourselves on opposite sides of a great gap — a ravine. There was no bridge. We were completely cut off from each other. Do you remember?”

“I remember, yes.”

“I think we were both surprised and disturbed to find ourselves in this situation. And I remember I said something like this: that we had stumbled against a natural barrier that was as old as our separate evolutionary processes — we used big words in those days. And you said there were plenty of territories we could explore without meeting such barriers and we’d better stick to them. And so, from that rainy evening onwards, we did. Until now. Until this moment.”

Alleyn said: “I mustn’t follow you along these reminiscent byways. If you think for a moment, you’ll understand why. I’m a policeman on duty. One of the first things we are taught is the necessity for non-involvement. I’d have asked to be relieved of this job if I had known what shape it would take.”

“What shape has it taken? What have you — uncovered?”

“I’ll tell you. I think that the night before last a group of people, some fanatical, each in his or her own degree a bit demented and each with a festering motive of sorts, planned to have you assassinated in such a way that it would appear to have been done by your spear-carrier — your mlinzi: it’s about these people that I’d like to talk to you. First of all, Sanskrit. Am I right or wrong in my conjecture about Sanskrit? Is he an informer?”

“There, my dear Rory, I must plead privilege.”

“I thought you might. All right. The Cockburn-Montforts. His hopes of military glory under the new regime came unstuck. He is said to have been infuriated. Has he to thank you, personally, for his compulsory retirement?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Boomer coolly. “I got rid of him. He had become an alcoholic and quite unreliable. Besides, my policy was to appoint Ng’ombwanans to the senior ranks. We have been through all this.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“Not to my face. He was abusive at a personal interview I granted. I have been told that in his cups he uttered threats. It was all very silly and long forgotten.”

“Not on his part, perhaps. You knew he had been invited to the reception?”

“At my suggestion. He did good service in the past. We gave him a medal for it.”

“I see. Do you remember the Gomez case?”

For a moment, he looked surprised. “Of course I remember it,” he said. “He was a very bad man. A savage. A murderer. I had the pleasure of procuring him a fifteen-year stretch. It should have been a capital charge. He—” The Boomer pulled up short. “What of him?” he asked.

“A bit of information your sources didn’t pass on to you, it seems. Perhaps they didn’t know. Gomez has changed his name to Sheridan and lives five minutes away from your Embassy. He was not at your party but he is a member of this group, and from what I have heard of him he’s not going to let one setback defeat him. He’ll try again.”

“That I can believe,” said the Boomer. For the first time he looked disconcerted.

Alleyn said: “He watched this house from over the way while you sat to Troy yesterday morning. It’s odds on he’s out there again, now. He’s being very closely observed. Would you say he’s capable of going it alone and lobbing a bomb into your car or through my windows?”

“If he’s maintained the head of steam he worked up against me at his trial—” the Boomer began and checked himself. He appeared to take thought and then, most unconvincingly, let out one of his great laughs. “Whatever he does,” he said, “if he does anything, it will be a fiasco. Bombs! No, really, it’s too absurd!”

For an alarming second or two Alleyn felt himself to be at explosion point. With difficulty he controlled his voice and suggested, fairly mildly, that if any attempts made upon the Boomer turned out to be fiascos it would be entirely due to the vigilance and efficiency of the despised Gibson and his men.

“Why don’t you arrest this person?” the Boomer asked casually.

“Because, as you very well know, we can’t make arrests on what would appear to be groundless suspicion. He has done nothing to warrant an arrest.”

The Boomer scarcely seemed to listen to him, a non-reaction that didn’t exactly improve his temper.

“There is one more member of this coterie,” Alleyn said. “A servant called Chubb. Is he known to you?”

“Chubb? Chubb? Ah! Yes, by the way! I believe I have heard of Chubb. Isn’t he Mr. Samuel Whipplestone’s man? He came up with drinks while I was having a word with his master, who happened to mention it. You’re not suggesting—!”

“That Sam Whipplestone’s involved? Indeed I’m not. But we’ve discovered that the man is.”

The Boomer seemed scarcely to take this in. The enormous creature suddenly leapt to his feet. For all his great size he was on them, like an animal, in one co-ordinated movement.

“What am I thinking of!” he exclaimed. “To bring myself here! To force my attention upon your wife with this silly dangerous person who, bombs or no bombs, is liable to make an exhibition of himself and kick up dirt in the street. I will take myself off at once. Perhaps I may see her for a moment to apologize and then I vanish.”

“She won’t take much joy of that,” Alleyn said. “She has gone a miraculously long way in an unbelievably short time with what promises to be the best portrait of her career. It’s quite appalling to think of it remaining unfinished.”

The Boomer gazed anxiously at him and then, with great simplicity, said: “I get everything wrong.”

He had made this observation as a solitary black schoolboy in his first desolate term and it had marked the beginning of their friendship. Alleyn stopped himself from saying: “Don’t look like that,” and instead picked up the great bouquet of roses, put them in his hands, and said: “Come and see her.”

“Shall I?” he said, doubtful but greatly cheered. “Really? Good!”

He strode to the door and flung it open. “Where is my mlinzi?” he loudly demanded.

Fox, who was in the hall, said blandly: “He’s outside Mrs. Alleyn’s studio, Your Excellency.. He seemed to think that was where he was wanted.”

“We may congratulate ourselves,” Alleyn said, “that he hasn’t brought his spear with him.”

Alleyn had escorted the Boomer to the studio and seen him established on his throne. Troy, tingling though she was with impatience, had praised the roses and put them in a suitable pot. She had also exultantly pounced upon the Afghan hound, who, with an apparent instinct for aesthetic values, had mounted the throne and posed himself with killing effect against the Boomer’s left leg and was in process of being committed to canvas.

Alleyn, possessed by a medley of disconnected anxieties and attachments, quitted the unlikely scene and joined Fox in the hall.

“Is it all right?” Fox asked, jerking his head in the direction of the studio. “All that?”

“If you can call it all right for my wife to be settled cosily in there painting a big black dictator with a suspected murderer outside the door and the victim’s dog posing for its portrait, it’s fine. Fine!”

“Well, it’s unusual,” Fox conceded. “What are you doing about it?”

“I’m putting one of those coppers on my doorstep outside the studio where he can keep the mlinzi company. Excuse me for a moment, Fox.”

He fetched the constable, a powerful man, from the pavement and gave him his directions.

“The man doesn’t speak much English, if any,” he said, “and I don’t for a moment suppose he’ll do anything but squat in the sun and stare. He’s not armed and normally he’s harmless. Your job’s to keep close obbo on him till he’s back in the car with Master.”

“Very good, sir,” said the officer, and proceeded massively in the required direction.

Alleyn rejoined Fox.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler,” Fox ventured, “under the circumstances, I mean, to cancel the sittings?”

“Look here, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said. “I’ve done my bloody best to keep my job out of sight of my wife and by and large I’ve made a hash of it. But I’ll tell you what: if ever my job looks like so much as coming between one dab of her brush and the surface of her canvas, I’ll chuck it and set up a prep school for detectives.”

After a considerable pause Mr. Fox said judicially: “She’s lucky to have you.”

“Not she,” said Alleyn. “It’s entirely the other way round. In the meantime, what’s cooking? Where’s Fred?”

“Outside. He’s hoping for a word with you. Just routine, far as I know.”

Mr. Gibson sat in a panda a little way down the cul-de-sac and not far from the pub. Uniform men were distributed along the street and householders looked out of upstairs windows. The crowd at the entrance had thinned considerably.

Alleyn and Fox got into the panda.

“What’s horrible?” they asked each other. Gibson reported that to the best of his belief the various members of the group were closetted in their respective houses. Mrs. Chubb had been out-of-doors shopping but had returned home. He’d left a couple of men with radio equipment to patrol the area.

He was droning on along these lines when the door of Alleyn’s house opened and the large officer spoke briefly to his colleague in the street. The latter was pointing towards the panda.

“This is for me,” Alleyn said. “I’ll be back.”

It was Mr. Whipplestone on the telephone, composed but great with tidings. He had paid his plumbing call on Mr. Sheridan and found him in a most extraordinary state.

“White to the lips, shaking, scarcely able to pull himself together and give me a civil hearing. I had the impression that he was about to leave the flat. At first I thought he wasn’t going to let me in, but he shot a quick look up and down the street and suddenly stepped back and motioned with his head for me to enter. We stood in the lobby. I really don’t think he took in a word about the plumbers, but he nodded and — not so much grinned as bared his teeth from time to time.”

“Pretty!”

“Not very delicious, I assure you. Do you know, I was transported back all those years, into that court of justice in Ng’ombwana. He might have been standing in the dock again.”

“That’s not an over-fanciful conceit, either. Did you say anything about the Sanskrits?”

“Yes. I did. I ventured. As I was leaving. I think I may say I was sufficiently casual. I asked him if he knew whether the pottery in the Mews undertook china repairs. He looked at me as if I was mad and shook his head.”

“Has he gone out?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. You may be sure I was prepared to watch. I had settled to do so, but Mrs. Chubb met me in the hall. She said Chubb was not well and would I mind if she attended to my luncheon — served it and so on. She said it was what she called a ‘turn’ that he’s subject to and he had run out of whatever he takes for it and would like to go to the chemist’s. I, of course, said I could look after myself and she could go to the chemist’s. I said I would lunch out if it would help. In any case it was only ten o’clock. But she was distressed, poor creature, and I couldn’t quite brush her aside and go into the drawing-room, so I can’t positively swear Sheridan-Gomez-didn’t leave. It’s quite possible that he did. As soon as I’d got rid of Mrs. Chubb I went to the drawing-room window. The area gate was open and I’m certain I shut it.”

“I see. What about Chubb?”

“What, indeed! He did go out. Quite openly. I asked Mrs. Chubb about it and she said he’d insisted. She said the prescription took some time to make up and he would have to wait.”

“Has he returned?”

“Not yet. Nor has Sheridan. If, in fact, he went out.”

“Will you keep watch, Sam?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I think I’ll be coming your way.”

Alleyn returned to the car. He passed Mr. Whipplestone’s information on to Fox and Gibson and they held a brief review of the situation.

“What’s important as I see it,” Alleyn said, “is the way these conspirators are thinking and feeling. If I’m right in my guesses, they got a hell of a shock on the night of the party. Everything was set up. The shot fired. The lights went out. The expected commotion ensued. The anticipated sounds were heard. But when the lights went on again it was the wrong body killed by the right weapon wielded by they didn’t know who. Very off-putting for all concerned. How did they react? The next night they held a meeting at the Sanskrits’. They’d had time to do a bit of simple addition and the answer had to be a rat in the wainscotting.”

“Pardon?” said Gibson.

“A traitor in their ranks. A snout.”

“Oh. Ah.”

“They must at the very least have suspected it. I’d give a hell of a lot to know what happened at that meeting while you and I, Fox, sat outside in the Mews. Who did they suspect? Why? What did they plan? To have another go at the President? It seems unlikely that Sheridan-Gomez would have given up. Did any of them get wind of Sanskrit’s visit to the Embassy last night? And who the devil was the shadow we saw sprinting round the alley-corner?”

“Come on, Mr. Alleyn. What’s the theory? Who do you reckon?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you that, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said. And did.

“And if either of you lot,” he ended, “so much as mumbles the word ‘conjecture’ I’ll put you both on dab for improper conduct.”

“It boils down to this, then,” said Fox. “They may be contemplating a second attempt on the President or they may be setting their sights on the snout whoever they reckon him to be, or they may be split on their line of action. Or,” he added as an afterthought, “they may have decided to call it a day, wind up the Klu-Klux-Fish and fade out in all directions.”

“How true. With which thought we, too, part company. We must be all-ways away, Br’er Fox. Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds—”

“What’s all that about?” Gibson asked glumly.

“Quotations,” Fox said.

“Yes, Fred,” said Allen, “and you can go and catch a red-hipped bumble-bee on the lip of a thistle while Fox and I war with reremice for their leathern wings.”

“Who said all the bumph anyway?”

“Fairies. We’ll keep in touch. Come on, Fox.”

They returned to their own anonymous car and were driven to the Capricorns. Here a discreet prowl brought them into touch with one of Gibson’s men, a plain-clothes sergeant, who had quite a lot to say for himself. The fishy brotherhood had not been idle. Over the last half-hour the Cockburn-Montforts had been glimpsed through their drawing-room window engaged in drinking and — or so it seemed — quarrelling in a desultory way between libations. Chubb had been followed, by a plain-clothes sergeant carrying artist’s impedimenta, to a chemist’s shop in Baronsgate, where he handed in a prescription and sat down, presumably waiting for it to be made up. Seeing him settle there, the sergeant returned to Capricorn Mews, where, having an aptitude in that direction, he followed a well-worn routine by sitting on a canvas stool and making a pencil sketch of the pig-pottery. He had quite a collection of sketches at home, some finished and prettily tinted and aquarelles, others of a rudimentary kind, having been cut short by an arrest or by an obligation to shift the area of investigation. For these occasions he wore jeans, a dirty jacket, and an excellent wig of the Little Lord Fauntleroy type. His name was Sergeant Jacks.

Mr. Sheridan, the Cockburn-Montforts and the Sanskrits had not appeared.

Fox parked the car in its overnight position under the plane trees in Capricorn Square, from where he could keep observation on No. 1, the Walk, and Alleyn took a stroll down the Mews. He paused behind the gifted sergeant and, after the manner of the idle snooper, watched him tinker with a tricky bit of perspective. He wondered what opulent magic Troy at that moment might be weaving, over in Chelsea.

“Anything doing?” he asked.

“Premises shut up, sir. But there’s movement. In the back of the shop. There’s a bit of a gap in the curtains and you can just get a squint. Not to see anything really. Nobody been in or out of the flat entrance.”

“I’ll be within range. No. 1, Capricorn Walk. Give me a shout if there’s anything. You could nip into that entry to call me up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Two youths from the garage strolled along and stared.

Alleyn said: “I wouldn’t have the patience, myself. Don’t put me in it,” he added. These were the remarks by bystanders that Troy said were most frequently heard. “Is it for sale?” he asked.

“Er,” said the disconcerted sergeant.

“I might come back and have another look,” Alleyn remarked, and left the two youths to gape.

He pulled his hat over his left eye, walked very quickly indeed across the end of Capricorn Place and on into the Walk. He had a word with Fox in the car under the plane trees and then crossed the street to No. 1, where Mr. Whipplestone, who had seen him coming, let him in.

“Sam,” Alleyn said. “Chubb did go to the chemist.”

“I’m extremely glad to hear it.”

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t call at the piggery, you know.”

“You think not?”

“If he suffers from migraine the stresses of the past forty-eight hours might well have brought it on.”

“I suppose so.”

“Is his wife in?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Whipplestone, looking extremely apprehensive.

“I want to speak to her.”

“Do you? That’s — that’s rather disturbing.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

“Are you going to press for information about her husband?”

“Probably.”

“How very — distasteful.”

“Police work is, at times, precisely that.”

“I know. I’ve often wondered how you can.”

“Have you?”

“You strike me, always, as an exceptionally fastidious man.”

“I’m sorry to disenchant you.”

“And I’m sorry to have been tactless.”

“Sam,” Alleyn said gently, “one of the differences between police work and that of other and grander services is that we do our own dirty washing instead of farming it out at two or three removes.”

Mr. Whipplestone turned pink. “I deserved that,” he said.

“No, you didn’t. It was pompous and out of place.”

Lucy Lockett, who had been washing herself with the zeal of an occupational therapist, made one of her ambiguous remarks, placed her forepaw on Alleyn’s knee, and leapt neatly into his lap.

“Now then, baggage,” Alleyn said, scratching her head, “that sort of stuff never got a girl anywhere.”

“You don’t know,” Mr. Whipplestone said, “how flattered you ought to feel. The demonstration is unique.”

Alleyn handed his cat to him and stood up. “I’ll get it over,” he said. “Is she upstairs, do you know?”

“I think so.”

“It won’t take long, I hope.”

“If I — if I can help in any way—?”

“I’ll let you know,” said Alleyn.

He climbed the stairs and tapped on the door. When Mrs. Chubb opened it and saw him, she reacted precisely as she had on his former visit. There she stood, speechless with her fingers on her lips. When he asked to come in she moved aside with the predictable air of terrified reluctance. He went in and there was the enlarged photograph of the fresh-faced girl. The medallion, even, was, as before, missing from its place. He wondered if Chubb was wearing it.

“Mrs. Chubb,” he said, “I’m not going to keep you long and I hope I’m not going to frighten you. Yes, please, do sit down.”

Just as she did last time, she dropped into her chair and stared at him. He drew his up and leant forward.

“Since I saw you yesterday,” he said, “we have learnt a great deal more about the catastrophe at the Embassy and about the people closely and remotely concerned in it. I’m going to tell you what I believe to be your husband’s part.”

She moved her lips as if to say: “He never—” but was voiceless.

“All I want you to do is listen and then tell me if I’m right, partly right or wholly mistaken. I can’t force you to answer, as I expect you know, but I very much hope that you will.”

He waited for a moment and then said: “Well. Here it is. I believe that your husband, being a member of the group we talked about yesterday, agreed to act with them in an attack upon the President of Ng’ombwana. I think he agreed because of his hatred of blacks and of Ng’ombwanans in particular.” Alleyn looked for a moment at the smiling photograph. “It’s a hatred born of tragedy,” he said, “and it has rankled and deepened, I daresay, during the last five years.

“When it was known that your husband was to be one of the waiters in the pavilion, the plan was laid. He had been given detailed instructions about his duties by his employers. The group was given even more detailed information from an agent inside the Embassy. And Chubb’s orders were based on this information. He had been a commando and was very well suited indeed for the work in hand. Which was this. When the lights in the pavilion and the garden went out and after a shot was fixed in the house, he was to disarm and disable the spearman who was on guard behind the President, jump on a chair, and kill the President with the spear.”

She was shaking her head to and fro and making inexplicit movements with her hands.

“No?” Alleyn said. “Is that wrong? You didn’t know about it? Not beforehand? Not afterwards? But you knew something was planned, didn’t you? And you were frightened? And afterwards you knew it had gone wrong? Yes?”

She whispered. “He never. He never done it.”

“No. He was lucky. He was hoist — he got the treatment he was supposed to hand out. The other waiter put him out of action. And what happened after that was no business of Chubb’s.”

“You can’t hurt him. You can’t touch him.”

“That’s why I’ve come to see you, Mrs. Chubb. It may well be that we could, in fact, charge your husband with conspiracy. That means, with joining in a plan to do bodily harm. But our real concern is with the murder itself. If Chubb cuts loose from this group — and they’re a bad lot, Mrs. Chubb, a really bad lot — and gives me a straight answer to questions based on the account I’ve just given you, I think the police will be less inclined to press home attempted murder or charges of conspiracy. I don’t know if you’ll believe this, but I do beg you, very seriously indeed, if you have any influence over him, to get him to make a complete break, not to go to any more meetings, above all, not to take part in any further action against anybody — Ng’ombwanan, white or what-have-you. Tell him to cut loose, Mrs. Chubb. You tell him to cut loose. And at the same time not to do anything silly like making a bolt for it. That’d be about the worst thing he could do.”

He had begun to think he would get no response of any kind from her when her face wrinkled over and she broke into a passion of tears. At first it was almost impossible to catch the sense of what she tried to say. She sobbed out words piecemeal, as if they escaped by haphazard compulsion. But presently phrases emerged and a sort of congruence of ideas. She said what had happened five years ago might have happened yesterday for Chubb. She repeated several times that he “couldn’t get over it,” that he “never hardly said anything,” but she could “tell.” They never talked about it, she said, not even on the anniversary, which was always a terrible day for both of them. She said that for herself something “came over” her at the sight of a black man, but for Chubb, Alleyn gathered, the revulsion was savage and implacable. There had been incidents. There were times when he took queer turns and acted very funny with headaches. The doctor had given him something.

“Is that the prescription he’s getting made up now?”

She said it was. As for “that lot,” she added, she’d never fancied him getting in with them.

He had become secretive about the meetings, she said, and had shut her up when she tried to ask questions. She had known something was wrong. Something queer was going on.

“They was getting at him and the way he feels. On account of our Glyn. I could tell that. But I never knew what.”

Alleyn gathered that after the event Chubb had been a little more communicative in that he let out that he’d been “made a monkey of.” He’d acted according to orders, he said, and what had he got for it? Him with his experience? He was very angry and his neck hurt.

“Did he tell you what really happened? Everything?”

No, she said. There was something about him “getting in with the quick one according to plan” but being “clobbered” from behind and making a “boss shot of it.”

Alleyn caught back an exclamation.

It hadn’t made sense to Mrs. Chubb. Alleyn gathered that she’d felt, in a muddled way, that because a black man had been killed Chubb ought to have been pleased, but that he was angry because something had, in some fashion, been put across him. When Alleyn suggested that nothing she had told him contradicted the version he had given to her, she stared hopelessly at him out of blurred eyes and vaguely shook her head.

“I suppose not,” she said.

“From what you’ve told me, my suggestion that you persuade him to break with them was useless. You’ve tried. All the same, when he comes back from the chemist’s—”

She broke in: “He ought to be back,” she cried. “It wouldn’t take that long! He ought to’ve come in by now. Oh Gawd, where is he?”

“Now don’t you go getting yourself into a state before there’s need,” Alleyn said. “You stay put and count your blessings. Yes, that’s what I said, Mrs. Chubb. Blessings. If your man had brought off what he set out to do on the night of the party you would have had something to cry about. If he comes back, tell him what I’ve said. Tell him he’s being watched. Keep him indoors and in the meantime brew yourself a strong cuppa and pull yourself together, there’s a good soul. Good morning to you.”

He ran downstairs and was met at the drawing-room door by Mr. Whipplestone.

“Well, Sam,” he said. “Through no fault of his own your Chubb didn’t commit murder. That’s not to say—”

The telephone rang. Mr. Whipplestone made a little exasperated noise and answered it.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, yes. He is. Yes, of course. Yes.”

“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Roderick.”

As soon as she heard Alleyn’s voice, Troy said: “Rory. Important. Someone with a muffled voice has just rung up to say there’s a bomb in the President’s car.”