Final Curtain

CHAPTER XVI Positively the Last Appearance of Sir Henry Ancred

i

Afterwards, when he told Troy about Fenella’s entrance, Alleyn said the thing that struck him most at the time was Jenetta Ancred’s command of savoir-faire. Obviously this was a development she had not foreseen and one which filled her with dismay. Yet her quiet assurance never wavered, nor did she neglect the tinge of irony that was implicit in her good manners.

She said: “Darling, how dramatic and alarming. This is my girl, Fenella, Mr. Alleyn. And this is my nephew, Paul Ancred.”

“I’m sorry to burst in,” said Fenella. “How do you do? Please may we talk to you?” She held out her hand.

“Not just at this moment,” said her mother. ”Mr. Alleyn and I really are rather busy. Do you mind, darling?”

Fenella’s grip on his hand had been urgent and nervous. She had whispered: “Please.” Alleyn said: “May we just hear what this is about, Mrs. Ancred?”

“Mummy, it’s important. Really.”

“Paul,” said her mother, “can’t you manage this firebrand of yours?”

“I think it’s important too, Aunt Jen.”

“My dearest children, I honestly don’t think you know—”

“But Aunt Jen, we do. We’ve talked it over quite coldbloodedly. We know that what we’ve got to say may bring a lot of publicity and scandal on the family,” said Paul with something very like relish. “We don’t enjoy the prospect, but we think any other course would be dishonest.”

“We accept the protection of the law,” said Fenella rather loudly. “It’d be illogical and dishonest to try and circumvent justice to save the family face. We know we’re up against something pretty horrible. We accept the responsibility, don’t we, Paul?”

“Yes,” said Paul. “We don’t like it, but we do it.”

“Oh,” Jenetta cried out vehemently, “for pity’s sake don’t be so heroic! Ancreds, Ancreds, both of you!”

“Mummy, we’re not. You don’t even know what we’re going to say. This isn’t a matter of theatre; it’s a matter of principle, and, if you like, of sacrifice.”

“And you both see yourselves being sacrificial and high-principled. Mr. Alleyn,” Jenetta said, and it was as if she added: “After all, we speak the same language, you and I. I do most earnestly beg you to take whatever these ridiculous children have to say with a colossal pinch of salt.”

“Mummy, it’s important.”

“Then,” said Alleyn, “let’s have it.”

She gave in, as he had expected, lightly and with grace. “Well, then, if we must be instructed… Do at least sit down, both of you, and let poor Mr. Alleyn sit down too.”

Fenella obeyed, with the charm of movement that was characteristic of all the female Ancreds. She was, as Troy had told him, a vivid girl. Her mother’s spareness was joined in Fenella with the spectacular Ancred beauty and lent it delicacy. “Nevertheless,” Alleyn thought, “she can make an entrance with the best of them.”

“Paul and I,” she began at once, speaking very rapidly, “have talked and talked about it. Ever since those letters came. We said at first that we wouldn’t have anything to do with it. We thought people who wrote that kind of letter were beyond everything, and it made us feel perfectly beastly to think there was anyone in the house who could do such a thing. We were absolutely certain that what the letter said was an odious, malicious lie.”

“Which is precisely,” her mother said without emphasis, “what I have been telling Mr. Alleyn. I really do think, darling—”

“Yes, but that’s not all,” Fenella interrupted vehemently. “You can’t just shrug your shoulders and say it’s horrid. If you don’t mind my saying so, Mummy dear, that’s your generation all over. It’s muddled thinking. In its way it’s the kind of attitude that leads to wars. That’s what Paul and I think anyway. Don’t we, Paul?”

Paul, with a red determined face, said: “What Fen means, I think, Aunt Jenetta, is that one can’t just say ‘Jolly bad form and all ballyhoo,’ and let it go at that. Because of the implications. If Sonia Orrincourt didn’t poison Grandfather, there’s somebody in the house who’s trying to get her hanged for something she didn’t do, and that’s as much as to say there’s somebody in the house who’s as good as a murderer.” He turned to Alleyn: “Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Not necessarily right,” Alleyn said. “A false accusation may be made in good faith.”

“Not,” Fenella objected, “by the kind of person who writes anonymous letters. And anyway, even if it was in good faith, we know it’s a false accusation, and the realistic thing to do is to say so and, and…” She stumbled, shook her head angrily and ended with childish lameness, “and jolly well make them admit it and pay the penalty.”

“Let’s take things in their order?” Alleyn suggested. “You say you know the suggestion made in the letters is untrue. How do you know this?”

Fenella glanced at Paul with an air of achievement and then turned to Alleyn and eagerly poured out her story.

“It was that evening when she and Mrs. Alleyn drove down to the chemist’s and brought back the children’s medicine. Cedric and Paul and Aunt Pauline were dining out, I’d got a cold and cried off. I’d been doing the drawing-room flowers for Aunt Milly and I was tidying up in a sink-room where the vases are kept. It’s down some steps off the passage from the hall to the library. Grandfather had had some orchids sent for Sonia and she came to get them. I must say she looked lovely. Sort of sparkling, with furs pulled up round her face. She swept in and asked in that ghastly voice for what she called her bokay, and when she saw it was a spray of absolutely heavenly orchids she said: ‘Quite small, isn’t it! Not reely much like flowers, are they?’ Everything she’d done and everything she meant at Ancreton seemed to sort of ooze out of her and everything I felt about her suddenly boiled over in me. I’d got a cold and was feeling pretty ghastly, anyway. I absolutely blazed. I said some pretty frightful things about even a common little gold-digger having the decency to be grateful. I said I thought her presence in the house was an insult to all of us, and I supposed that when she’d bamboozled Grandfather into marrying her she’d amuse herself with her frightful boy-friends until he was obliging enough to die and leave her his money. Yes, Mummy, I know it was awful, but it just steamed out of me and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Oh, my poor Fen!” Jenetta Ancred murmured.

“It’s the way she took it that’s important,” Fenella continued, still gazing at Alleyn. “I must admit she took it pretty well. She said, quite calmly, that it was all very fine for me to talk, but I didn’t know what it was like to be on my beam-ends with no chance of getting anywhere in my job. She said she knew she wasn’t any good for the stage except as a showgirl, and that didn’t last long. I can remember the actual words she used. Fifth-rate theatrical slang. She said: ‘I know what you all think. You think I’m playing Noddy up for what I can get out of him. You think that when we’re married I’ll begin to work in some of the funny business. Look, I’ve had all that, and I reckon I’ll be as good a judge as anybody of what’s due to my position.’ And then she said she’d always thought she was the Cinderella type. She said she didn’t expect me to understand what a kick she’d get out of being Lady Ancred. She was extraordinarily frank and completely childish about it. She told me she used to lie in bed imagining how she’d give her name and address to people in shops, and what it would sound like when they called her m’lady. ‘Gee,’ she said, ‘will that sound good! Boy, oh boy!’ I really think she’d almost forgotten I was there, and the queer thing is that I didn’t feel angry with her any longer. She asked me all sorts of questions about precedence; about whether at a dinner-party she’d go in before Lady Baumstein. Benny Baumstein is the frightful little man who owns the Sunshine Circuit shows. She was in one of his No. 3 companies. When I said she would, she said ‘Yip-ee’ like a cow-girl. It was frightful, of course, but it was so completely real that in a way I respected it. She actually said she knew what she called her ‘ac-cent’ wasn’t so hot, but she was going to ask ‘Noddy’ to teach her to speak more refined.”

Fenella looked from her mother to Paul and shook her head helplessly. “It was no good,” she said, “I just succumbed. It was awful, and it was funny, and most of all it was somehow genuinely pathetic.” She turned back to Alleyn: “I don’t know if you can believe that,” she said.

“Very easily,” Alleyn returned. “She was on the defensive and angry when I saw her, but I noticed something of the same quality myself. Toughness, naïvety, and candour all rolled into one. Always very disarming. One meets it occasionally in pickpockets.”

“But in a funny sort of way,” Fenella said, “I felt that she was honest and had got standards. And much as I loathed the thought of her marriage to Grandfather, I felt sure that according to her lights she’d play fair. And most important of all, I felt that the title meant much more to her than the money. She was grateful and affectionate because he was going to give her the title, and never would she have done anything to prevent him doing so. While I was still gaping at her she took my arm, and believe it or not, we went upstairs together like a couple of schoolgirls. She asked me into her frightful rooms, and I actually sat on the bed while she drenched herself in pre-war scent, repainted her face and dressed for dinner. Then she came along to my room and sat on my bed while I changed. She never left off talking, and I suffered it all in a trance. It really was most peculiar. Down we went, together still, and there was Aunt Milly, howling for the kids’ and Grandfather’s medicine. We’d left it, of course, in the flower-room, and the queerest thing of all,” Fenella slowly wound up, “was that, although I still took the gloomiest possible view of her relationship with Grandfather, I simply could not continue to loathe her guts. And, Mr. Alleyn, I swear she never did anything to harm him. Do you believe me? Is all this as important as Paul and I think it is?”

Alleyn, who had been watching Jenetta Ancred’s hands relax and the colour return to her face, roused himself and said: “It may be of enormous importance. I think you may have tidied up a very messy corner.”

“A messy corner,” she repeated. “Do you mean—?”

“Is there anything else?”

“The next part really belongs to Paul. Go on, Paul.”

“Darling,” said Jenetta Ancred, and the two syllables, in her deepish voice, sounded like a reiterated warning. “Don’t you think you’ve made your point? Must we?”

“Yes, Mummy, we must. Now then, Paul.”

Paul began rather stiffly and with a deprecatory air: “I’m afraid, sir, that all this is going to sound extremely obvious and perhaps a bit high-falutin, but Fen and I have talked it over pretty thoroughly and we’ve come to a definite conclusion. Of course it was obvious from the beginning that the letters meant Sonia Orrincourt. She was the only person who didn’t get one, and she’s the one who benefited most by Grandfather’s death. But those letters were written before they found the rat-bane in her suitcase, and, in fact, before there was a shred of evidence against her. So that if she’s innocent, and I agree with Fenella that she is, it means one of two things. Either the letter-writer knew something that he or she genuinely thought suspicious, and none of us did know anything of the sort; or, the letter was written out of pure spite, and not to mince matters, with the intention of getting her hanged. If that’s so, it seems to me that the tin of rat-bane was deliberately planted. And it seems to me — to Fen and me — that the same person put that book on embalming in the cheese-dish because he was afraid nobody would ever remember it, and was shoving it under our noses in the most startling form he could think of.”

He paused and glanced nervously at Alleyn, who said: “That sounds like perfectly sound reasoning to me.”

“Well, then, sir,” said Paul quickly, “I think you’ll agree that the next point is important. It’s about this same damn’ silly business with the book in the cheese-dish, and I may as well say at the outset it casts a pretty murky light on my cousin Cedric. In fact, if we’re right, we’ve got to face the responsibility of practically accusing Cedric of attempted murder.”

“Paul!”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Jen, but we’ve decided.”

“If you’re right, and I’m sure you’re wrong, have you thought of the sequel? The newspapers. The beastliness. Have you thought of poor Milly, who dotes on the little wretch?”

“We’re sorry,” Paul repeated stubbornly.

“You’re inhuman,” cried his aunt and threw up her hands.

“Well,” said Alleyn peaceably, “let’s tackle this luncheon-party while we’re at it. What was everybody doing before the book on embalming made its appearance?”

This seemed to nonplus them. Fenella said impatiently: “Just sitting. Waiting for someone to break it up. Aunt Milly does hostess at Ancreton, but Aunt Pauline (Paul’s mother) rather feels she ought to when in residence. She — you don’t mind me mentioning it, Paul, darling? — she huffs and puffs about it a bit, and makes a point of waiting for Aunt Milly to give the imperceptible signal to rise. I rather fancied Aunt Milly kept us sitting for pure devilment. Anyway, there we stuck.”

“Sonia fidgeted,” said Paul, “and sort of groaned.”

“Aunt Dessy said she thought it would be nice if we could escape having luncheon dishes that looked like the village pond when the floods had subsided. That was maddening for Aunt Milly. She said with a short laugh that Dessy wasn’t obliged to stay on at Ancreton.”

“And Dessy,” Paul continued, “said that to her certain knowledge Milly and Pauline were holding back some tins of whitebait.”

“Everybody began talking at once, and Sonia said: ‘Pardon me, but how does the chorus go?’ Cedric tittered and got up and wandered to the sideboard.”

“And this is our point, sir,” Paul cut in with determination. “The cheese was found by my cousin Cedric. He went to the sideboard and came back with a book, and dropped it over my mother’s shoulder on to her plate. It gave her a shock as you can imagine.”

“She gave a screech and fainted, actually,” Fenella added.

“My Mama,” said Paul unhappily, “was a bit wrought up by the funeral and so on. She really fainted, Aunt Jen.”

“My dear boy, I’m sure she did.”

“It gave her a fright.”

“Naturally,” Alleyn murmured, “books on embalming don’t fall out of cheese-dishes every day in the week.”

“We’d all,” Paul went on, “just about had Cedric. Nobody paid any attention to the book itself. We merely suggested that it wasn’t amazingly funny to frighten people, and that anyway he stank.”

“I was watching Cedric, then,” Fenella said. “There was something queer about him. He never took his eyes off Sonia. And then, just as we were all herding Aunt Pauline out of the room, he gave one of his yelps and said he’d remembered something in the book. He ran to the door and began reading out of it about arsenic.”

“And then somebody remembered that Sonia had been seen looking at the book.”

“And I’ll swear,” Fenella cut in, “she didn’t know what he was driving at. I don’t believe she ever really understood. Aunt Dessy did her stuff and wailed and said: ‘No, no, don’t go on! I can’t bear it!’ and Cedric purred: ‘But, Dessy, my sweet, what have I said? Why shouldn’t darling Sonia read about her fiancé’s coming embalment?’ and Sonia burst into tears and said we were all plotting against her and rushed out of the room.”

“The point is, sir, if Cedric hadn’t behaved as he did, nobody would have thought of connecting the book with the suggestion in the letters. You see?”

Alleyn said: “It’s a point.”

“There’s something else,” Paul added, again with that tinge of satisfaction in his voice. “Why did Cedric look in the cheese-dish?”

“Presumably because he wanted some cheese?”

“No!” Paul said triumphantly. “That’s just where we’ve got him, sir. He never touches cheese. He detests it.”

“So you see,” said Fenella.

ii

When Alleyn left, Paul showed him into the hall, and, after some hesitation, asked if he might walk with him a little way. They went together, head-down against a blustering wind, along Cheyne Walk. Ragged clouds scurried across the sky, and the sounds of river traffic were blown intermittently against their chilled ears. Paul, using his stick, limped along at a round pace, and for some minutes in silence.

At last he said: “I suppose it’s true that you can’t escape your heredity.” And as Alleyn turned his head to look at him, he went on slowly: “I meant to tell you that story quite differently. Without any build-up. Fen did, too. But somehow when we got going something happened to us. Perhaps it was Aunt Jen’s opposition. Or perhaps when there’s anything like a crisis we can’t escape a sense of audience. I heard myself doing the same sort of thing over there.” He jerked his head vaguely towards the east. “The gay young officer rallying his men. It went down quite well with them, too, but it makes me feel pretty hot under the collar when I think about it now. And about the way we strutted our stuff back there at Aunt Jen’s.”

“You made your points very neatly,” said Alleyn.

“A damn’ sight too neatly.” Paul rejoined, grimly. “That’s why I did think I’d like to try and say without any flourishes that we do honestly believe that all this stuff about poison has simply been concocted by Cedric to try and upset the Will. And we think it would be a pretty poor show to let him get away with it. On all counts.”

Alleyn didn’t reply immediately, and Paul said, nervously: “I suppose it’d be quite out of order for me to ask whether you think we’re right.”

“Ethically,” said Alleyn, “yes. But I don’t think you realised the implications. Your aunt did.”

“I know, Aunt Jen’s very fastidious. It’s the dirty linen in public that she hates.”

“And with reason,” said Alleyn.

“Well, we’ll all have to lump it. But what I meant really was, were we right in our deductions?”

“I ought to return an official and ambiguous answer to that,” Alleyn said. “But I won’t. I may be wrong, but on the evidence that we’ve got up to date I should say your deductions were ingenious and almost entirely wrong.”

A sharp gust carried away the sound of his voice.

“What?” said Paul, distantly and without emphasis. “I didn’t quite hear—”

“Wrong,” Alleyn repeated, strongly. “As far as I can judge, you know, quite wrong.”

Paul stopped short, and, dipping his head to meet the wind, stared at Alleyn with an expression not of dismay, but of doubt, as if he still thought he must have misunderstood.

“But I don’t see… we thought… it all hangs together—”

“As an isolated group of facts, perhaps it does.”

They resumed their walk, and Alleyn heard him say fretfully: “I wish you’d explain.” And after another pause he peered rather anxiously at Alleyn. “Perhaps it wouldn’t do, though,” he added.

Alleyn thought for a moment, and then, taking Paul by the elbow, steered him into the shelter of a side street. “We can’t go on bawling at each other in a gale,” he said, “but I don’t see that it can do any harm to explain this much. It’s quite possible that if all this dust had not been raised after your grandfather’s death, Miss Orrincourt might still have become Lady Ancred.”

Paul’s jaw dropped. “I don’t get that.”

“You don’t?”

“Good God,” Paul roared out suddenly, “you can’t mean Cedric?”

“Sir Cedric,” said Alleyn, dryly, “is my authority. He tells me he has seriously considered marrying her.”

After a long silence Paul said slowly: “They’re as thick as thieves, of course. But I never guessed… No, it’d be too much… I’m sorry, sir, but you’re sure—?”

“Unless he invented the story.”

“To cover up his tracks,” said Paul instantly.

“Extremely elaborate and she could deny it. As a matter of fact her manner suggested some sort of understanding between them.”

Paul raised his clasped hands to his mouth and thoughtfully blew into them. “Suppose,” he said, “he suspected her, and wanted to make sure?”

“That would be an entirely different story.”

“Is that your theory, sir?”

“Theory?” Alleyn repeated vaguely. “I haven’t got a theory. I haven’t sorted things out. Mustn’t keep you standing here in the cold.” He held out his hand. Paul’s was like ice. “Good-bye,” said Alleyn.

“One minute, sir. Will you tell me this? I give you my word it’ll go no further. Was my grandfather murdered?”

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn. “Yes. I’m afraid we may be sure of that. He was murdered.” He walked down the street, leaving Paul, still blowing on his frozen knuckles, to stare after him.

iii

The canvas walls were faintly luminous, They were laced to their poles with ropes and glowed in the darkness. Blobs of light from hurricane lanterns suspended within formed a globular pattern across the surface. One of these lanterns must have been touching the wall, for the village constable on duty outside could clearly make out shadows of wire and the precise source of light.

He glanced uneasily at the motionless figure of his companion, a police officer from London, wearing a short cape. “Bitter cold,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Be long, d’yew reckon?”

“Can’t say.”

The constable would have enjoyed a walk. He was a moralist and a philosopher, well known in Ancreton for his pronouncements upon the conduct of politicians and for his independent views in the matter of religion. But his companion’s taciturnity, and the uncomfortable knowledge that anything he said would be audible on the other side of the canvas, put a damper on conversation. He stamped once or twice, finding reassurance in the crunch of gravel under his feet. There were noises within the enclosure: voices, soft thumps. At the far end and high above them, as if suspended in the night, and lit theatrically from below, knelt three angels. “Through the long night watches,” the constable said to himself, “may Thine angels spread their white wings above me, watching round my head.”

Within the enclosure, but, close beside him, the voice of the Chief Inspector from the Yard said: “Are we ready, Curtis?” His shadowy figure suddenly loomed up inside the canvas wall. “Quite ready,” somebody else said. “Then if I may have the key, Mr. Ancred?”

“Oh — oh — er — yes.” That was poor Mr. Thomas Ancred.

The constable listened, yet desired not to listen, to the next too-lucid train of sounds. He had heard them before, on the day of the funeral, when he came down early to have a look while his cousin, the sexton, got things fixed up. Very heavy lock. They’d had to give it a drop of oil. Seldom used. His flesh leapt on his bones as a screech rent the cold air. “Them ruddy hinges,” he thought. The blobs of light were withdrawn and the voices with them. He could still hear them, however, though now they sounded hollow. Beyond the hedge a match flared up in the dark. That would be the driver of the long black car, of course, waiting in the lane. The constable wouldn’t have minded a pipe himself.

The Chief Inspector’s voice, reflected from stone walls, said distinctly: “Get those acetylene lamps going, Bailey.”

“Yes, sir,” someone answered, so close to the constable that he jumped again. With a hissing noise, a new brilliance sprang up behind the canvas. Strange distorted shadows leapt among the trees about the cemetery.

Now came sounds to which he had looked forward with squeamish relish. A drag of wood on stone followed by the uneven scuffles of boots and heavy breathing. He cleared his throat and glanced stealthily at his companion.

The enclosure was again full of invisible men. “Straight down on the trestles. Right.” The squeak of wood and then silence.

The constable drove his hands deep into his pockets and looked up at the three angels and at the shape of St. Stephen’s spire against the stars. “Bats in that belfry,” he thought. “Funny how a chap’ll say it, not thinking.” An owl hooted up in Ancreton woods.

Beyond the canvas there was movement. A light voice said jerkily: “I think, if it doesn’t make any difference, I’d like to wait outside. I won’t go away. You can call me, you know.”

“Yes, of course.”

A canvas flap was pulled aside, letting out a triangle of light on the grass. A man came out. He wore a heavy overcoar and muffler and his hat was pulled over his face, but the constable had recognized his voice and shifted uneasily.

“Oh, it’s you, Bream,” said Thomas Ancred.

“Yes, Mr. Thomas.”

“Cold, isn’t it?”

“Hard frost before dawn, sir.”

Above them the church clock gave a preparatory whirr and with a sweet voice told two in the morning.

“I don’t like this much, Bream.”

“Very upsetting, sir, I’m sure.”

“Terribly upsetting, yes.”

“And yet, sir,” said Bream with a didactic air, “I been thinking: this here poor remains beant a matter to scare a chap, if rightly considered. It beant your respected father hisself as you might put it, sir. He’s well away receiving his reward by now, and what you are called to look upon is a harmless enough affair. No more, if you’ll excuse me, than a left-off garment. As has been preached at us souls regular in this very church.”

“I dare say,” said Thomas. “Nevertheless… Well, thank you.”

He moved away down the gravel path. The London officer turned to watch him. Thomas did not move quite out of range of the veiled light. He stood, with his head bent, near the dim shape of a gravestone and seemed to be rubbing his hands together.

“Cold and nervous, poor chap,” Bream said to himself.

“Before we go any further” (that was Chief Inspector Alleyn again), “will you make a formal examination, Mr. Mortimer? We’d like your identification of the name-plate and your assurance that everything is as it was at the time of the funeral.”

A clearing of the throat, a pause and then a muffled voice. “Perfectly in order. Our own workmanship, Mr. Alleyn. Casket and plate.”

“Thank you. All right, Thompson.”

The click of metal and the faint grind of disengaging screws. This seemed to Bream to continue an unconscionable time. Nobody spoke. From his mouth and nostrils and those of the London constable, little jets of breath drifted out and condensed on the frozen air. The London man switched on his flash-lamp. Its beam illuminated Thomas Ancred, who looked up and blinked.

“I’m just waiting,” he said. “I won’t go away.”

“Quite all right, sir.”

“Now,” ordered the voice in the enclosure, “everything free? Right!”

“Just ease a little, it’s a precision fit. That’s right. Slide?”

“Oh, cripes!” Bream said to himself.

Wood whispered along wood. This sound was followed by complete silence. Thomas Ancred turned away from grass to gravel path and walked aimlessly to and fro.

“Curtis? Will you and Dr. Withers—?”

“Yes. Thanks. Move that light a little this way, Thompson. Will you come here, Dr. Withers?”

“The — ah — the process is quite satisfactory, don’t you consider, Doctor? Only a short time, of course, but I can assure you there would be no deterioration.”

“Indeed? Remarkable.”

“One is gratified.”

“I think we’ll have that bandage taken away, if you please. Fox, will you tell Mr. Ancred we’re ready for him?”

Bream watched the thick-set Inspector Fox emerge and walk over towards Thomas. Before he had gone more than a few paces there was a sudden and violent ejaculation inside the enclosure. “Good God, look at that!” Inspector Fox paused. The Chief Inspector’s voice said, very sharply, “Quiet, Dr. Withers, please,” and there followed a rapid whispering.

Inspector Fox moved away and joined Thomas Ancred. “If you’ll come this way, Mr. Ancred.”

“Oh! yes, of course. Very good. Right ho! ” said Thomas in a high voice, and followed him back to the enclosure. “If I moved a bit,” Bream thought, “when they opened the flaps I’d see in.” But he did not move. The London constable held the doorway open, glancing impassively into the tent before he let the canvas fall. The voices began again.

“Now, this is not going to be a very big ordeal, Mr. Ancred.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Oh, good.”

“Will you—?”

Bream heard Thomas move. “There, you see. Quite peaceful.”

“I — yes — I identify him.”

“That’s all right, then. Thank you.”

“No,” said Thomas, and his voice rose hysterically, “it’s not all right. There’s something all wrong, in fact. Papa had a fine head of hair. Hadn’t he, Dr. Withers? He was very proud of it, wasn’t he? And his moustache. This is bald. What have they done with his hair?”

“Steady! put your head down. You’ll be all right. Give me that brandy, Fox, will you? Damn, he’s fainted.”

iv

“Well, Curtis,” Alleyn said as the car slid between rows of sleeping houses, “I hope you’ll be able to give us something definite.”

“Hope so,” said Dr. Curtis, stifling a heavy yawn.

“I’d like to ask you, Doctor,” said Fox, “whether you’d expect one fatal dose of arsenic to have that effect.”

“What effect? Oh, the hair. No. I wouldn’t. It’s more often a symptom of chronic poisoning.”

“In for one of those messes, are we?” Fox grumbled. “That will be nice. Fields of suspects opened up wide, with the possibility of Miss O. being framed.”

“There are objections to chronic poisoning, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said. “He might die when he’d concocted a Will unfavourable to the poisoner. And moreover, you’d expect a progressive loss of hair, not a sudden post-mortem moult. Is that right, Curtis?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, then,” Fox persisted heavily, “how about the embalming process? Would that account for it?”

“Emphatically not,” Mr. Mortimer interjected. “I’ve given the Chief Inspector our own formula. An unusual step, but in the circumstances desirable. No doubt, Doctor, he has made you conversant—”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Dr. Curtis. “Formalin. Glycerine. Boric Acid. Menthol. Potassium nitrate. Sodium citrate. Oil of cloves. Water.”

“Precisely.”

“Hey!” said Fox. “No arsenic!”

“You’re two days late with the news, Br’er Fox. Things have moved while you were at Ancreton. Arsenic went out some time ago, didn’t it, Mr. Mortimer?”

“Formalin,” Mr. Mortimer agreed with hauteur, “is infinitely superior.”

“There now,” Fox rumbled with great satisfaction. “That does clear things up a bit, doesn’t it, Mr. Alleyn? If arsenic’s found it’s got no business to be there. That’s something definite. And what’s more, any individual who banked on its being used by the embalmer made the mistake of his or her life. Nothing for counsel to muddle the jury with, either. Mr. Mortimer’s evidence would settle that. Well.”

Alleyn said: “Mr. Mortimer, had Sir Henry any notion of the method used?”

In a voice so drowsy that it reminded Alleyn of the dormouse’s, Mr. Mortimer said: “It’s very curious, Chief Inspector, that you should ask that question. Oh, very curious. Because, between you and I, the deceased gentleman showed quite an unusual interest. He sent for me and discussed the arrangements for the interment. Two years ago, that was.”

“Good Lord!”

“That is not so unusual in itself. Gentlemen of his position do occasionally give detailed instructions. But the deceased was so very particular. He — well, really,” Mr. Mortimer said, coughing slightly, “he quite read me a little lecture on embalming. He had a little book. Yes,” said Mr. Mortimer, swallowing a yawn, “rather a quaint little book. Very old. It seemed an ancestor of his had been embalmed by the method, quate outdated, I may say, outlined in this tainy tome. Sir Henry wished to ascertain if our method was similar. When I ventured to suggest the book was somewhat démodé, he became — well, so annoyed that it was rather awkward. Very awkward, in fact. He was insistent that we should use the same process on — ah — for — ah — himself. He quate ordered me to do it.”

“But you didn’t consent?”

“I must confess, Chief Inspector, I–I—the situation was most awkward. I feared, he would upset himself seriously. I must confess that I compromaysed. In point of fact, I—”

“You consented?”

“I would have gladly refused the commission altogether but he would take no refusal. He forced me to take the book away with me. I returned it with compliments, and without comment through the registered post. He replied that when the time came I was to understand my instructions. The — ah — the time came and — and—”

“You followed your own method, and said nothing to anybody?”

“It seemed the only thing to do. Anything else was impossible from the point of view of technique. Ridiculous, in fact. Such preposterous ingredients! You can’t imagine.”

“Well,” said Fox, “as long as you can testify there was no arsenic. Eh, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I must say,” said Mr. Mortimer, “I don’t at all care for the idea of giving evidence in an affair of this sort. Ours is a delicate, and you might say exclusive, profession, Chief Inspector. Publicity of this kind is most undesirable.”

“You may not be subpoenaed, after all,” said Alleyn.

“Not? But I understood Inspector Fox to say—”

“You never know. Cheer up, Mr. Mortimer.”

Mr. Mortimer muttered to himself disconsolately and fell into a doze.

“What about the cat?” Fox asked. “And the bottle of medicine?”

“No report yet.”

“We’ve been busy,” Dr. Curtis complained. “You and your cats! The report should be in some time to-day. What’s all this about a cat anyway?”

“Never you mind,” Alleyn grunted, “you do your Marsh-Berzelius tests with a nice open mind. And your Fresenius process later on, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Dr. Curtis paused in the act of lighting his pipe. “Fresenius process?” he said.

“Yes, and your ammonium chloride and your potassium iodide and your Bunsen flame and your platinum wire. And look for the pretty green line, blast you!”

After a long silence Dr. Curtis said: “It’s like that, is it?” and glanced at Mr. Mortimer.

“It may be like that.”

“Having regard to the general lay-out?”

“That’s the burden of our song.”

Fox said suddenly: “Was he bald when they laid him out?”

“Not he. Mrs. Henry Ancred and Mrs. Kentish were both present. They’d have noticed. Besides, the hair was there, Fox. We collected it while you were ministering to Thomas.”

“Oh!” Fox ruminated for a time and then said loudly: “Mr. Mortimer! Mr. Mortimer!”

«Wha—?”

“Did you notice Sir Henry’s hair when you were working on him?”

“Eh! Oh, yes,” said Mr. Mortimer, hurriedly, but in a voice slurred with sleep. “Yes, indeed. We all remarked on it. A magnificent head of hair.” He yawned hideously. “A magnificent head of hair,” he repeated.

Alleyn looked at Dr. Curtis. “Consistent?” he asked.

“With your green line? Yes.”

“Pardon?” said Mr. Mortimer anxiously.

“All right, Mr. Mortimer. Nothing. We’re in London. You’ll be in bed by daybreak.”