Final Curtain

CHAPTER XIII Spotlight on Cedric

i

Alleyn interviewed Cedric in the library. It was a place without character or life. Rows of uniform editions stood coldly behind glass doors. There was no smell of tobacco, or memory of fires, only the darkness of an unused room.

Cedric’s manner was both effusive and uneasy. He made a little dart at Alleyn and flapped at his hand. He began at once to talk about Troy. “She was too marvellous, a perfect darling. So thrilling to watch her at work: that magical directness, almost intimidating, one felt. You must be madly proud of her, of course.”

His mouth opened and shut, his teeth glinted, his pale eyes stared and his voice gabbled on and on. He was restless too, and wandered about the room aimlessly, lifting lids of empty cigarette boxes and moving ornaments. He recalled acquaintance with Alleyn’s nephews, with whom, he said, he had been at school. He professed a passionate interest in Alleyn’s work. He returned again to Troy, suggesting that he alone among the Philistines had spoken her language. There was a disquieting element in all this, and Alleyn, when an opportunity came, cut across it.

“One moment,” he said. “Our visit is an official one. I’m sure you will agree that we should keep it so. May we simply think the fact of my wife having been commissioned to paint Sir Henry a sort of freakish coincidence and nothing to do with the matter in hand? Except, of course, in so far as her job may turn out to have any bearing on the circumstances.”

Cedric’s mouth had remained slightly open. He turned pink, touched his hair, and said: “Of course if you feel like that about it. I merely thought that a friendly atmosphere—”

“That was extremely kind,” said Alleyn.

“Unless your somewhat muscular sense of the official proprieties forbids it,” Cedric suggested acidly, “shall we at least sit down?”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn tranquilly, “that would be much more comfortable.”

He sat in a vast arm-chair, crossed his knees, joined his hands, and with what Troy called his donnish manner, prepared to tackle Cedric.

“Mr. Thomas Ancred tells me you share the feeling that further inquiries should be made into the circumstances of Sir Henry’s death.”

“Well, I suppose I do,” Cedric agreed fretfully. “I mean, it’s all pretty vexing, isn’t it? Well, I mean one would like to know. All sorts of things depend… And yet again it’s not very delicious… Of course, when one considers that I’m the one who’s most involved… Well, look at me. Incarcerated, in this frightful house! And the entail a pittance. All those taxes too, and rapacious death duties. Never, never will anybody be found mad enough to rent it, and as for schools, Carol Able does nothing but exclaim how inconvenient and how damp. And now the war’s over the problem children will be hurtled away. One will be left to wander in rags down whispering corridors. So that you see,” he added, waving his hands, “one does rather wonder—”

“Quite so.”

“And they will keep talking about me as Head of the Family. Before I know where I am I shall have turned into another Old Person.”

“There are one or two points,” Alleyn began, and immediately Cedric leant forward with an ineffable air of concentration, “that we’d like to clear up. The first is the authorship of these anonymous letters.”

“Well, I didn’t write them.”

“Have you any idea who did?”

“Personally I favour my Aunt Pauline.”

“Really! Why?”

“She prefaces almost every remark she makes with the phrase: ‘I have reason to believe.’

“Have you asked Mrs. Kentish if she wrote the letters?”

“Yes, indeed. She denies it hotly. Then there’s Aunt Dessy. Quite capable, in a way, but more likely, one would have thought, to tell us flatly what she suspected. I mean, why go in for all this hush-hush letter-writing? That leaves my cousins Paul and Fenella, who are, one imagines, too pleasurably engrossed in their amorous martyrdom for any outside activities; my Mama, who is much too common-sensical; my aunt-in-law, Jenetta, who is too grand; and all the servants led by the Ancient of Days. That, as they say in sporting circles, is the field. Unless you feel inclined to take in the squire and the parson and dear old Rattlebones himself. It couldn’t be more baffling. No, on the whole I plump for Pauline. She’s about somewhere. Have you encountered her? Since the Tragedy she is almost indistinguishable from Lady Macduff. Or perhaps that frightful Shakespearian dowager who curses her way up hill and down dale through one of the historical dramas. Constance? Yes, Pauline is now all compact of tragedy. Dessy’s pretty bad, but wait till you meet Pauline.”

“Do you know if there’s any paper in the house of the kind used for these letters?”

“Gracious, no! Exercise-book paper! The servants wouldn’t have had it at any price. By the way, talking of exercise books, do you think Caroline Able might have done it? I mean, she’s so wrapped up in id and isms and tracing everything back to the Oedipus Complex. Might it perhaps have all snapped back at her and made her a weeny bit odd? It’s only an idea, of course. I merely throw it out for what it’s worth.”

“About this tin of rat-bane,” Alleyn began. Cedric interrupted him with a shrill cry.

“My dear, what a party! Imagine! Milly, the complete hausfrau (my mama, you know)”—Cedric added the inevitable parentheses—“and Dessy steaming up the stairs and Pauline tramping at her heels like one of the Fates, and poor little me panting at the rear. We didn’t know what we were looking for, really. Partly rat poison and partly they thought there might be compromising papers somewhere because Sonia’s quite lovely, don’t you think, and really—the Old Person! Hardly adequate, one couldn’t help feeling. I pointed out that, constant or flighty, a Will was a Will, but nothing would stay them. I said in fun: ‘You don’t expect, darlings, to find phials of poison in her luggage, do you?’ and that put the idea of luggage into their heads. So up into the box-room they hounded me, and there, to use the language of the chase, we ‘found’.”

“You yourself took the tin out of the suitcase?”

“Yes, indeed. I was petrified.”

“What was it like?”

“Like? But didn’t dear Uncle Tom give it to you?”

“Was it clean or dirty?”

“My dear, filthy. They wanted me to prise open the lid, and such a struggle as I had. Little bits of rat-bane flying up and hitting me. I was terrified. And then it wouldn’t come out.”

“Who first suggested this search?”

“Now, that is difficult. Did we, thinking of that beastly little brochure in the cheese-dish (and there, I must tell you, I see the hand of Panty), did we with one accord cry: ‘rat-bane’ and let loose the dogs of war? I fancy Pauline, after coining the phrase ‘no smoke’ (or is it ‘reek’?) ‘without heat,’ said: ‘But where would she get any arsenic?’ and that Milly (my Mama), or it might have been me, remembered the missing rat-bane. Anyway, no sooner was it mentioned than Pauline and Dessy were in full cry for the guilty apartment. If you could see it, too. Darling Sonia! Well, ‘darling’ with reservations. The bed-chamber a welter of piercing pink frills and tortured satin and dolls peering from behind cushions or squatting on telephones, do you know?”

“I would be very glad,” said Alleyn, “if the suitcase could be produced.”

“Really? You wish, no doubt, to explore it for fingerprints? But of course you shall have it. Unbeknown, I suppose, to darling Sonia?”

“If possible.”

“I’ll trip upstairs and get it myself. If she’s there, I’ll tell her there’s a telephone call.”

“Thank you.”

“Shall I go now?”

“One moment, Sir Cedric,” Alleyn began, and again Cedric, with that winsome trick of anxiety, leant towards him. “Why did you, with Miss Sonia Orrincourt, plan a series of practical jokes on your grandfather?”

It was not pleasant to watch the blood sink from Cedric’s face. The process left his eyelids and the pouches under his eyes mauvish. Small grooves appeared beside his nostrils. His colourless lips pouted and then widened into an unlovely smile.

“Well, really!” he tittered. “That just shows you, doesn’t it? So darling Sonia has confided in you.” And after a moment’s hesitation he added: “As far as I’m concerned, dear Mr. Alleyn, that’s the end of darling Sonia.”

ii

“Perhaps I should explain,” Alleyn said after a pause, “that Miss Orrincourt has not made any statement about the practical jokes.”

“She hasn’t?” The ejaculation was so incisive that it was difficult to believe Cedric had uttered it. He now lowered his head and appeared to look at the carpet between his feet. Alleyn saw his hands slide over each other. “How perfectly futile,” Cedric’s voice said. “Such a very old gag. Such an ancient wheeze! I didn’t know but you’ve just told me! And in I go, as they say, boots and all.” He raised his face. Its pinkness had returned and its expression suggested a kind of boyish ruefulness. “Now do promise you won’t be lividly angry. It sounds too childish, I know. But I implore you, dear Mr. Alleyn, to look about you. Observe the peculiar flavour of Katzenjammer Castle. The façade now. The utterly unnerving inequalities of the façade. The terrifying Victoriana within. The gloom. Note particularly the gloom.”

“I’m afraid,” Alleyn said, “that I don’t follow this. Unless you’re going to tell me you hoped to enliven the architecture and decor of Ancreton by painting spectacles and flying cows on your grandfather’s portrait.”

“But I didn’t!” Cedric protested shrilly. “That miraculous portrait! No, believe me, I didn’t.”

“And the paint on the banister?”

“I didn’t do that either. Darling Mrs. Alleyn! I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”

“But at least you seem to have known about it.”

“I didn’t do it,” he repeated.

“The message written in grease-paint on the mirror? And the grease-paint on the cat?”

Cedric gave a nervous giggle. “Well—”

“Come,” said Alleyn. “You had dark red grease-paint under your finger-nail, you know.”

“What sharp eyes!” cried Cedric. “Dearest Mrs. Alleyn! Such a help she must be to you.”

“You did, in fact—”

“The Old Person,” Cedric interrupted, “had been particularly rococo. I couldn’t resist. The cat, too. It was a kind of practical pun. The cat’s whiskers!”

“And had you anything to do with the squeaking cushion in his chair?”

“Wasn’t it too robust and Rabelaisian? Sonia bought it and I–I can’t deny it — I placed it there. But why not? If I might make a tiny squeak of protest, dear Mr. Alleyn, has all this got anything to do with the business in hand?”

“I think it might well have been designed to influence Sir Henry’s Will, and with both his Wills we are, as I think you’ll agree, very definitely concerned.”

“This is too subtle for my poor wits, I’m afraid.”

“It was common knowledge, wasn’t it, that his youngest granddaughter was, at this time, his principal heir?”

“But one never knew. We bounced in and out of favour from day to day.”

“If this is true, wouldn’t these tricks, if attributed to her, very much affect her position?” Alleyn waited but was given no answer. “Why, in fact, did you allow him to believe she was the culprit?”

“That devilish child,” Cedric said, “gets away with innumerable hideous offences. A sense of injured innocence must have been quite a change for her.”

“You see,” Alleyn went on steadily, “the flying cow was the last trick of five, and, as far as we know, was the final reason for Sir Henry’s changing his Will that night. It was fairly conclusively proved to him that Panty did not do it, and it’s possible that Sir Henry, not knowing which of his family to suspect, took his revenge on all.”

“Yes, but—”

“Now whoever was a party to these tricks—”

“At least you’ll admit that I wouldn’t be very likely to try and cut myself out of the Will—”

“I think that result was unforeseen. You hoped, perhaps, to return to your former position with Panty out of the picture. To something, in fact, on the lines of the Will read at the dinnerparty, but rather better. You have told me that you and Miss Orrincourt were partners in one of these practical jokes. Indeed you’ve suggested to me that you at least had knowledge of them all.”

Cedric began to speak very rapidly. “I resent all this talk of partnership. I resent the implication and deny it. You force me into an intolerable position with your hints and mysteries. I suppose there’s nothing left but for me to admit I knew what she was doing and why she did it. It amused me and it enlivened the ghastly boredom of these wretched festivities. Panty I consider an abomination, and I don’t in the least regret that she was suspected or that she was cut out of the Will. She probably wallowed in her borrowed glory. There!”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn. “That clears up quite a lot of the fog. And now, Sir Cedric, are you quite sure you don’t know who wrote the letters?”

“Absolutely.”

“And are you equally sure you didn’t put the book on embalming in the cheese-dish?”

Cedric gaped at him. “I?” he said. “Why should I? Oh, no! I don’t want Sonia to turn out to be a murderess. Or I didn’t, then. I’d rather thought… I… we’d… it doesn’t matter. But I must say I’d like to know.”

Looking at him, Alleyn was visited by a notion so extravagant that he found himself incapable of pressing Cedric any further on the subject of his relationship with Miss Orrincourt.

He was, in any case, prevented from doing so by the entrance of Pauline Kentish.

Pauline entered weeping: not loudly, but with the suggestion of welling tears held bravely back. She seemed to Alleyn to be an older and woollier version of her sister, Desdemona. She took the uncomfortable line of expressing thankfulness that Alleyn was his wife’s husband. “Like having a friend to help us.” Italicised words and even phrases surged about in her conversation. There was much talk of Panty. Alleyn had been so kind, the child had taken a tremendous fancy to him. “And I always think,” Pauline said, gazing at him, “that they KNOW.” From here they were soon involved in Panty’s misdoings. Pauline, if he had now wanted them, supplied good enough alibis for the practical jokes. “How could she when the poor child was being watched; closely, anxiously watched? Dr. Withers had given explicit orders.”

“And much good they’ve done, by the way!” Cedric interrupted. “Look at Panty!”

“Dr. Withers is extremely clever, Cedric. It’s not his fault if Juniper’s drugs have deteriorated. Your grandfather’s medicines were always a great help to him.”

“Including rat-bane?”

“That,” said Pauline in her deepest voice, “was not prescribed, Cedric, by Dr. Withers.”

Cedric giggled.

Pauline ignored him and turned appealingly to Alleyn. “Mr. Alleyn, what are we to think? Isn’t it all too tragically dreadful? The suspense! The haunting suspicion! The feeling that here in our midst…! What are we to do?”

Alleyn asked her about the events following Sir Henry’s exit from the little theatre on the night of his death. It appeared that Pauline herself had led the way to the drawing-room, leaving Troy, Paul and Fenella behind. Miss Orrincourt had only remained a very short time in the drawing-room where, Alleyn gathered, a lively discussion had taken place as to the authorship of the flying cow. To this family wrangle the three guests had listened uncomfortably until Barker arrived, with Sir Henry’s summons for Mr. Rattisbon. The squire and the rector seized upon this opportunity to make their escape. Paul and Fenella came in on their way to bed. Troy had already gone upstairs. After a little more desultory haggling the Birthday party broke up.

Pauline, Millamant and Desdemona had forgathered in Pauline’s room, Bernhardt, and had talked exhaustively. They went together to the bathrooms at the end of the passage and encountered Mr. Rattisbon, who had evidently come out of Sir Henry’s rooms. Alleyn, who knew him, guessed that Mr. Rattisbon skipped, with late Victorian coyness, past the three ladies in their dressing-gowns and hurriedly down the passage to his own wing. The ladies performed their nightly rites together and together returned to their adjacent rooms. At this juncture Pauline began to look martyred.

“Originally,” she said, “Bernhardt and Bancroft were one large room, a nursery, I think. The wall between is the merest partition. Milly and Dessy shared Bancroft. Of course, I know there was a great deal to be talked about and for a time I joined in. Milly’s bed was just through the wall from mine, and Dessy’s quite close. But it had been a long day and one was exhausted. They went on and on. I became quite frantic with sleeplessness. Really it was thoughtless.”

“Dearest Aunt Pauline, why didn’t you beat on the wall and scream at them?” Cedric asked, with some show of interest.

“I wasn’t going to do that,” Pauline rejoined with grandeur and immediately contradicted herself. “As a matter of fact I did at last tap. I said wasn’t it getting rather late. Dessy asked what time it was, and Milly said it couldn’t be more than one. There was quite an argument, and at last Dessy said: ‘Well, if you’re so certain, Pauline, look at your watch and see.’ And in the end I did, and it was five minutes to three. So at last they stopped and then it was only to snore. Your mother snores, Cedric.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And to think that only a little way away, while Dessy and Milly gossiped and snored, a frightful tragedy was being enacted. To think that if only I had obeyed my instinct to go to Papa and tell him—”

“To tell him what, Aunt Pauline?”

Pauline shook her head slowly from side to side and boggled a little. “Everything was so sad and dreadful. One seemed to see him rushing to his doom.”

“One also saw Paul and Panty rushing to theirs, didn’t one?” Cedric put in. “You could have pleaded with him for them perhaps?”

“I cannot expect, Cedric, that you would understand or sympathize with disinterested impulses.”

“No,” Cedric agreed with perfect candour. “I don’t think they exist.”

“T’uh!”

“And if Mr. Alleyn has no further absorbing questions to ask me I think I should like to leave the library. I find the atmosphere of unread silent friends in half-morocco exceedingly gloomy. Mr. Alleyn?”

“No, thank you, Sir Cedric,” Alleyn said cheerfully. “No more questions. If I may go ahead with my job?”

“Oh, do. Please consider this house your own. Perhaps you would like to buy it. In any case I do hope you’ll stay to dinner. And your own particular silent friend. What is his name?”

“Thank you so much, but Fox and I,” Alleyn said, “are dining out.”

“Then in that case,” Cedric murmured, sidling towards the door, “I shall leave Aunt Pauline to divert you with tales of Panty’s innocence in the matter of cheese-dishes, and her own incapability of writing anonymous letters.”

He was prevented from getting to the door by Pauline. With a movement of whose swiftness Alleyn would have thought her incapable, she got there first, and there she stood in a splendid attitude, the palms of her hands against the door, her head thrown back. “Wait!” she said breathlessly. “Wait!”

Cedric turned with a smile to Alleyn. “As I hinted,” he said, “Lady Macduff. With all her pretty chickens concentrated in the persons of Panty and Paul. The hen (or isn’t it oddly enough ‘dam’?) at bay.”

“Mr. Alleyn,” said Pauline, “I was going to say nothing of this to anybody. We are an ancient family—”

“On my knees,” said Cedric, “on my knees, Aunt Pauline, not the Sieur d’Ancred.”

“—and perhaps wrongly, we take some pride in our antiquity. Until to-day no breath of dishonour has ever smirched our name. Cedric is now Head of the Family. For that reason and for the sake of my father’s memory I would have spared him. But now, when he does nothing but hurt and insult me and try to throw suspicion on my child, now when I have no one to protect me—” Pauline stopped as if for some important peroration.

But something happened to her. Her face crinkled and reminded Alleyn instantly of her daughter’s. Tears gathered in her eyes. “I have reason to believe,” she began and stopped short, looking terrified. “I don’t care,” she said, and her voice cracked piteously. “I never could bear people to be unkind to me.” She nodded her head at Cedric. “Ask him,” she said, “what he was doing in Sonia Orrincourt’s rooms that night. Ask him.”

She burst into tears and stumbled out of the room.

“Oh, bloody hell!” Cedric ejaculated shrilly and darted after her.

iii

Alleyn, left alone, whistled disconsolately, and after wandering about the cold and darkening room went to the windows and there made a series of notes in his pocket-book. He was still at this employment when Fox came in.

“They said I’d find you here,” Fox said. “Have you done any good, Mr. Alleyn?”

“If stirring up a hive and finding foul-brood can be called good. What about you?”

“I’ve got the medicine bottle and three of the envelopes. I’ve had a cup of tea in Mr. Barker’s room.”

“That’s more than I’ve had in the library.”

“The cook and the maids came in and we had quite a nice little chat. Elderly party, it was. Mary, Isabel and Muriel, the maids are. The cook’s Mrs. Bullivant.”

“And what did you and Mary, Isabel and Muriel talk about?”

“We passed the time of day and listened to the wireless. Mrs. Bullivant showed me photographs of her nephews in the fighting forces.”

“Come on, Fox,” said Alleyn, grinning.

“By gradual degrees,” said Fox, enjoying himself, “we got round to the late baronet. He must have been a card, the late old gentleman.”

“I believe you.”

“Yes. The maids wouldn’t say much while Mr. Barker was there, but he went out after a bit and then it was, as you might say, plain sailing.”

“You and your methods!”

“Well, we were quite cosy. Naturally, they were dead against Miss Orrincourt, except Isabel, and she said you couldn’t blame the old gentleman for wanting a change from his family. It came as a bit of a surprise from Isabel, who’s the oldest of the maids, I should say. She’s the one who looks after Miss Orrincourt’s rooms, and it seems Miss Orrincourt got quite friendly with her. Indiscreet, really, but you know the type.”

“It’s evident, at least, that you do.”

“They seemed to be as thick as thieves, Miss O. and Isabel, and yet, you know, Isabel didn’t mind repeating most of it. The garrulous sort, she is, and Mrs. Bullivant egging her on.”

“Did you get anywhere with the history of the milk?”

“Isabel took it out of a jug in the refrigerator and left it in Miss Orrincourt’s room. The rest of the milk in the jug was used for general purposes next day. Miss O. was in her room and undressing when Isabel brought it. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes or so later that Miss O. took it to the old gentleman. It was heated by Isabel in the kitchen and some patent food put in. The old gentleman fancied Miss O. did it, and said nobody else could make it to suit him. It was quite a joke between Isabel and Miss O.”

“So there’s no chance of anybody having got at it?”

“Only if they doped the tin of patent food, and I’ve got that.”

“Good.”

“And I don’t know if you’re thinking she might have tampered with the medicine, sir, but it doesn’t seem likely. The old gentleman never let anybody touch the bottle on account of Miss Desdemona Ancred having once given him embrocation in error. It was a new bottle, Isabel says. I’ve got it from the dump. Cork gone, but there’s enough left for analysis.”

“Another job for Dr. Curtis. What about the Thermos?”

“Nicely washed and sterilised and put away. I’ve taken it, but there’s not a chance.”

“And the same goes, I imagine, for the pails and cloths?”

“The pails are no good, but I found some tag-ends of rag.”

“Where have you put these delicious exhibits?”

“Isabel,” said Fox primly, “hunted out a case. I told her I had to buy pyjamas in the village, being obliged unexpectedly to stay the night, and I mentioned that a man doesn’t like to be seen carrying parcels. I’ve promised to return it.”

“Didn’t they spot you were taking these things?”

“Only the patent food. I let on that the police were a bit suspicious about the makers and it might have disagreed. I dare say they didn’t believe me. Owing to the behaviour of the family I think they know what’s up.”

“They’d be pretty dumb if they didn’t.”

“Two other points came out that might be useful,” said Fox. Alleyn had a clear picture of the tea-party. Fox, no doubt, had sipped and complimented, had joked and sympathised, had scarcely asked a question, yet had continually received answers. He was a pastmaster at the game. He indulged his hostesses with a few innocuous hints and was rewarded with a spate of gossip.

“It seems, Mr. Alleyn, that the young lady was, as Isabel put it, leading Sir Henry on and no more.”

“D’you mean—”

“Relationship,” said Fox sedately, “according to Isabel, had not taken place. It was matrimony or nothing.”

“I see.”

“Isabel reckons that before this business with the letters came out, there was quite an understanding between Miss O. and Sir Cedric.”

“What sort of understanding, in the name of decency?”

“Well, sir, from hints Miss O. dropped, Isabel works it out that after a discreet time had elapsed Miss O. would have turned into Lady A. after all. So that what she lost on the swings she would, in a manner of speaking, have picked up on the roundabouts.”

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn. “ ‘What a piece of work is man!’ That, if it’s true, would explain quite a number of the young and unlovely baronet’s antics.”

“Supposing Miss Orrincourt did monkey with the Thermos, Mr. Alleyn, we might have to consider whether Sir Cedric knew what she was up to.”

“We might indeed.”

“I know it’s silly,” Fox went on, rubbing his nose, “but when a case gets to this stage I always seem to get round to asking myself whether such-and-such a character is a likely type for homicide. I know it’s silly, because there isn’t a type, but I ask myself the question just the same.”

“And at the moment you ask it about Sonia Orrincourt?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It’s quite true, that beyond the quality of conceit, nobody’s found a nice handy trait common to all murderers. But I’m not so sure that you should sniff at yourself for saying: ‘That man or woman seems to me to have characteristics that are inconceivable in a murderer!’ They needn’t be admirable characteristics either.”

“D’you remember what Mr. Barker said about the rats in Miss Orrincourt’s rooms?”

“I do.”

“He mentioned that Miss Orrincourt was quite put-about by the idea of using poison, and refused to have it at any price. Now, sir, would a young woman who was at least, as you might say, toying with the idea of poison, behave like that? Would she? She wouldn’t do it by accident. She might do it to suggest she had a dread of poison, though that’d be a very far-fetched kind of notion too. And would she have owned up as readily to those practical jokes? Mind, you caught her nicely, but she gave me the impression she was upset more on account of being found out for these pranks themselves than because she thought they’d lead us to suspect something else.”

“She was more worried about the Will than anything else,” Alleyn said. “She and Master Cedric planned those damned stunts with the object of setting the old man against Panty. I fancy she was responsible for the portrait vandalism, Cedric having possibly told her to confine her daubs to dry canvas. We know she bought the Raspberry, and he admits he placed it. I think she started the ball rolling by painting the banister. They plotted the whole thing together. He practically admitted as much. Now, all that worries her may be merely an idea that the publication of these goings-on could upset the Will.”

“And yet—”

“I know. I know. That damn bell-push. All right, Fox. Good work. And now, I suppose, we’d better see Mrs. Henry Ancred.”

iv

Millamant was at least a change from her relations-by-marriage in that she was not histrionic, answered his questions directly, and stuck to the point. She received them in the drawing-room. In her sensible blouse and skirt she was an incongruous figure there. While she talked she stitched that same hideously involved piece of embroidery which Troy had noticed with horror and which Panty had been accused of unpicking. Alleyn heard nothing either to contradict or greatly to substantiate the evidence they had already collected.

“I wish,” he said, after a minute or two, “that you would tell me your own opinion about this business.”

“About my father-in-law’s death? I thought at first that he died as a result of his dinner and his temperament.”

“And what did you think when these letters arrived?”

“I didn’t know what to think. I don’t now. And I must say that with everybody so excited and foolish about it one can’t think very clearly.”

“About the book that turned up in the cheese-dish…” he began.

Millamant jerked her head in the direction of the glass case. “It’s over there. Someone replaced it.”

He walked over to the case and raised the lid. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take charge of it presently. You saw her reading it?”

“Looking at it. It was one evening before dinner. Some weeks ago, I think.”

“Can you describe her position and behaviour? Was she alone?”

“Yes. I came in and she was standing as you are now, with the lid open. She seemed to be turning over the leaves of the book as it lay there. When she saw me she let the lid fall. I was afraid it might have smashed, but it hadn’t.”

Alleyn moved away to the cold hearth, his hands in his pockets. “I wonder,” said Milly, “if you’d mind putting a match to the fire. We light it at four-thirty, always.”

Glad of the fire, for the crimson and white room was piercingly cold, and faintly amused by her air of domesticity, he did as she asked. She moved, with her embroidery, to a chair before the hearth. Alleyn and Fox sat one on each side of her.

“Mrs. Ancred,” Alleyn said, “do you think any one in the house knew about this second Will?”

“She knew. She says he showed it to her that night.”

“Apart from Miss Orrincourt?”

“They were all afraid he might do something of the sort. He was always changing his Will. But I don’t think any of them knew he’d done it.”

“I wondered if Sir Cedric—”

The impression that with Millamant all would be plain speaking was immediately dispelled. Her short hands closed on her work like traps. She said harshly: “My son knew nothing about it. Nothing.”

“I thought that as Sir Henry’s successor—”

“If he had known he would have told me. He knew nothing. It was a great shock to both of us. My son,” Millamant added, looking straight before her, “tells me everything — everything.”

“Splendid,” murmured Alleyn after a pause. Her truculent silence appeared to demand comment. “It’s only that I should like to know whether this second Will was made that night when Sir Henry went to his room. Mr. Rattisbon, of course, can tell us.”

“I suppose so,” said Millamant, selecting a strand of mustard-coloured silk.

“Who discovered the writing on Sir Henry’s looking-glass?”

“I did. I’d gone in to see that his room was properly done. He was very particular and the maids are old and forget things. I saw it at once. Before I could wipe it away he came in. I don’t think,” she said meditatively, “that I’d ever before seen him so angry. For a moment he actually thought I’d done it, and then, of course, he realized it was Panty.”

“It was not Panty,” Alleyn said.

He and Fox had once agreed that if, after twenty years of experience, an investigating officer has learned to recognize any one manifestation, it is that of genuine astonishment. He recognized it now in Millamant Ancred.

“What are you suggesting?” she said at last. “Do you mean—?”

“Sir Cedric has told me he was involved in one of the other practical jokes that were played on Sir Henry, and knew about all of them. He’s responsible for this one.”

She took up her embroidery again. “He’s trying to shield somebody,” she said. “Panty, I suppose.”

“I think not.”

“It was very naughty of him,” she said in her dull voice. “If he played one of these jokes, and I don’t believe he did, it was naughty. But I can’t see — I may be very stupid, but I can’t see why you, Mr. Alleyn, should concern yourself with any of these rather foolish tricks.”

“Believe me, we shouldn’t do so if we thought they were irrelevant.”

“No doubt,” she said, and after a pause, “you’ve been influenced by your wife. She would have it that Panty was all innocence.”

“I’m influenced,” Alleyn said, “by what Sir Cedric and Miss Orrincourt have told me.”

She turned to look at him, moving her torso stiffly. For the first time her alarm, if she felt alarm, coloured her voice. “Cedric? And that woman? Why do you speak of them together like that?”

“It appears that they planned the practical jokes together.”

“I don’t believe it. She’s told you that. I can see it now,” said Millamant on a rising note. “I’ve been a fool.”

“What can you see, Mrs. Ancred?”

“She planned it all. Of course she did. She knew Panty was his favourite. She planned it, and when he’d altered the Will she killed him. She’s trying to drag my boy down with her. I’ve watched her. She’s a diabolical, scheming woman, and she’s trying to entrap my boy. He’s generous and unsuspecting and kind. He’s been too kind. He’s at her mercy,” Millamant cried sharply and twisted her hands together.

Confronted by this violence and with the memory of Cedric fresh in his mind, Alleyn was hard put to it to answer her. Before he could frame a sentence she had recovered something of her composure. “That settles it,” she said woodenly. “I’ve kept out of all this, as far as one can keep out of their perpetual scenes and idiotic chattering. I’ve thought all along that they were probably right but I left it to them. I’ve even felt sorry for her. Now I hope she suffers. If I can tell you anything that will help you, I’ll do so. Gladly.”

“Oh, damn!” thought Alleyn. “Oh, Freud! Oh, hell!” And he said: “There may still be no case, you know. Have you any theory as to the writer of the anonymous letters?”

“Certainly,” she said with unexpected alacrity.

“You have?”

“They’re written on the paper those children use for their work. She asked me some time ago to re-order it for them when I was in the village. I recognized it at once. Caroline Able wrote the letters.”

And while Alleyn was still digesting this, she added: “Or Thomas. They’re very thick. He spent half his time in the school wing.”