Grave Mistake

Chapter 9: Graveyard (III)

i

When alleyn looked in the glass the following morning his face did not appear as awful as it felt. No doubt the full panoply of bruises was yet to develop. He shaved painfully round the dressing, took a bath and decided he was in more or less reasonable form to face the day.

Fox came in to say their Assistant Commissioner was on the telephone. “If you can speak, that is.”

Alleyn said: “Of course I can speak,” and found that it was best to do so with the minimum demand upon his lower jaw. He stifled the explosive grunt of pain that the effort cost him.

The telephone was in the passage outside his room.

“Rory?” said their A.C. “Yes. I want a word with you. What’s all this about an exhumation?”

“It’s not precisely that, sir.”

“What? I can’t catch what you say. You sound as if you were talking to your dentist.”

Alleyn thought: “I daresay I shall be when there’s time for it,” but he merely replied that he was sorry and would try to do better.

“I suppose it’s the clip on the jaw Fox talked about. Does it hurt?”

“Not much,” Alleyn lied angrily.

“Good. Who did it?”

“The general idea is a naughty boy with a brick.”

“About this exhumation that is not an exhumation. What am I to say to the H.S.? Confide in me, for Heaven’s sake.”

Alleyn confided.

“Sounds devilish far-fetched to me,” grumbled the A.C. “I hope you know what you’re about.”

“So do I.”

“You know what I think about hunches.”

“If I may say so, you don’t mistrust them any more than I do, sir.”

“All right, all right. We’ll go ahead, then. Tomorrow night, you suggest? Sorry you’ve had a knock. Take care of yourself.”

“There is none that can compare,” Alleyn hummed in great discomfort. “With a tow, row bloody row to / Our A. Commissionaire. It’s on, Br’er Fox.”

“This’ll set the village by the ears. What time?”

“Late tomorrow night; We’ll be turning into tombstones ourselves if we keep up these capers.”

“What’s our line with the populace?”

“God knows. We hope they won’t notice. But what a hope!”

“How about someone accidentally dropped a valuable in the open grave? Such as — er—”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” said Fox crossly. “A gold watch?”

“When?” Alleyn asked. “And whose gold watch?”

“Er. Well. Bruce’s? Anytime before the interment. I appreciate,” Fox confessed, “that it doesn’t sound too hot.”

“Go on.”

“I’m trying to picture it,” said Fox after a longish pause.

“And how are you getting on?”

“It’d be ludicrous.”

“Perhaps the best way will be to keep quiet and if they do notice tell them nothing. ‘The police declined to comment.’ ”

“The usual tarpaulin, et cetera,I suppose? I’ll lay it on, will I?”

“Do. My face, by the way, had better be the result of a turn-up with a gang outside the village. Where’s the sergeant?”

“Down at the ‘factory.’ He’s going to take a look at Daft Artie.”

Alleyn began to walk about the room, found this jolted his jaw and sat on his bed. “Br’er Fox,”, hesaid, “there’s that child. Prunella. We can’t possibly risk her hearing of it by accident.”

“The whole story?”

“Upon my soul,” Alleyn said after a long pause, “I’m not at all sure I won’t have recourse to your preposterous golden watch, or its equivalent. Look, I’ll drop you in the village and get you to call on the Vicar and tell him.”

“Some tarradiddle? Or what?” Fox asked.

“The truth but not the whole truth about what we hope to find. Hope!” said Alleyn distastefully. “What a word!”

“I see what you mean. Without wishing to pester—” Fox began. To his surprise and gratification Alleyn gave him a smack on the shoulder.

“All right, fuss-pot,” he said, “fat-faced but fit as a flea, that’s me. Come on.”

So he drove Fox to the parsonage and continued up Long Lane, passing the gap in the hedge. He looked up at the church and saw three small boys and two women come round from behind the chancel end. There was something self-conscious about the manner of the women’s gait and their unconvincing way of pointing out a slanting headstone to each other.

“There they go,” Alleyn thought. “It’s all round the village by now. Police up to something round the grave! We’ll have a queue for early doors tomorrow night.”

He drove past the turning into Stile Lane and on toward the road that led uphill to Mardling Manor on the left and Quintern Place on the right. Keys Lane, where Verity Preston lived, branched off to the left. Alleyn turned in at her gate and found her sitting under her lime trees doing The Times crossword.

“I came on an impulse,” he said. “I want some advice and I think you’re the one to give it to me. I don’t apologize because, after all, in its shabby way it’s a compliment. You may not think so, of course.”

“I can’t say until I’ve heard it, can I?” she said. “Come and sit down.”

When they were settled she said: “It’s no good being heavily tactful and not noticing your face, is it? What’s happened?”

“A boy and a brick, is my story.”

“Not a local boy, I hope.”

“Your gardener’s assistant.”

“Daft Artie!” Verity exclaimed. “I can’t believe it”

“Why can’t you?”

“He doesn’t do things like that. He’s not violent: only silly.”

“That’s what Bruce said. This may have been mere silliness. I may have just happened to be in the path of the trajectory. But I didn’t come for advice about Daft Artie. It’s about your goddaughter. Is she still staying at Mardling?”

“She went back there after the funeral. Now I come to think of it, she said that tomorrow she’s going to London for a week.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“This is not going to be pleasant for you, I know. I think you must have felt — you’d be very unusual if you hadn’t — relieved when it was all over, yesterday afternoon. Tidily put away and mercifully done with. There’s always that sense of release, isn’t there, however deep the grief? Prunella must have felt it, don’t you think?”

“I expect she did, poor child. And then there’s her youth and her engagement and her natural ebullience. She’ll be happy again. If it’s about her you want to ask, you’re not going to—” Verity exclaimed and stopped short.

“Bother her again? Perhaps. I would like to know what you think. But first of all,” Alleyn broke off. “This is in confidence. Very strict confidence. I’m sure you’ll have no objections at all to keeping it so for forty-eight hours.”

“Very well,” she said uneasily. “If you say so.”

“It’s this. It looks as if we shall be obliged to remove the coffin from Mrs. Foster’s grave for a very short time. It will be replaced within an hour at the most and no indignity will be done it. I can’t tell you any more than that. The question is: should Prunella be told? If she’s away in London there may be a fair chance she need never know, but villages being what they are and certain people, the Vicar for one, having to be informed, there’s always the possibility that it might come out. What do you think?”

Verity looked at him with a sort of incredulous dismay.

“I can’t think,” she said “It’s incomprehensible and grotesque and I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“One keeps forgetting — or I do — that this is a matter of somebody killing somebody whom one had known all one’s life. And that’s a monstrous thought.”

“Yes, of course it’s monstrous. But to us, I’m afraid, it’s all in the day’s work. But I am concerned about the young Prunella.”

“So of course am I. I am indeed,” said Verity, “and I do take your point. Do you think, perhaps, that Gideon Markos should be consulted? Or Nikolas? Or both?”

“Do you?”

“They’ve — well, they’ve kind of taken over, you see. Naturally. She’s been absorbed into their sort of life and will belong to it.”

“But she’s still looking to you, isn’t she? I noticed it yesterday at the funeral.”

“Is there anything,” Verity found herself saying, “that you don’t notice?” Alleyn did not answer.

“Look,” Verity said. “Suppose you — or I if you like — should tell Nikolas Markos and suggest that they take Prue away? He’s bought a yacht, he informs me. Not the messing-about-in-boats sort but the jet-set, Riviera job. They could waft her away on an extended cruise.”

“Even plutocratic yachts are not necessarily steamed up and ready to sail at the drop of a hat.”

“This one is.”

“Really?”

“He happened to mention it,” said Verity, turning pink. “He’s planning a cruise in four weeks’ time. He could put it forward.”

“Are you invited?”

“I can’t go,” she said shortly. “I’ve got a first night coming up.”

“You know, your suggestion has its points. Even if someone does talk about it, long after it’s all over and done with, that’s not going to be as bad as knowing it is going to be done now and that it’s actually happening. Or is it?”

“Not nearly so bad.”

“And in any case,” Alleyn said, more to himself than to her, “she’s going to find out — ultimately. Unless I’m all to blazes.” He stood up. “I’ll leave it to you,” he said. “The decision. Is that unfair?”

“No. It’s good of you to concern yourself. So I talk to Nikolas. Is that it?”

To Verity’s surprise he hesitated for a moment.

“Could you, perhaps, suggest he put forward the cruise because Prunella’s had about as much as she can take and would be all the better for a complete change of scene: now?”

“I suppose so. I don’t much fancy asking a favour.”

“No? Because he’ll be a little too delighted to oblige?”

“Something like that,” said Verity.

ii

The next day dawned overcast with the promise of rain. By late afternoon it was coming down inexorably.

“Set in solid,” Fox said, staring out of the station window.

“In one way a hellish bore and in another an advantage.”

“You mean people will be kept indoors?”

“That’s right.”

“It’ll be heavy going, though,” sighed Fox. “For our lot.”

“All of that.”

The telephone rang. Alleyn answered it quickly. It was the Yard. The duty squad with men and equipment was about to leave in a “nondescript” vehicle and wanted to know if there were any final orders. The sergeant in charge checked over details.

“Just a moment,” Alleyn said. And to Fox. “What time does the village take its evening meal, would you say?”

“I’ll ask McGuiness.” He went into the front office and returned.

“Between five-thirty and six-thirty. And after that they’ll be at their tellies.”

“Yes. Hullo,” Alleyn said into the receiver. “I want you to time it so that you arrive at six o’clock with the least possible amount of fuss. Come to the vicarage. Make it all look like a repair job. No uniform copper. There’s a downpour going on here, you’ll need to dress for it. I’ll be there. You’ll go through the church and out by an exit on the far side, which is out of sight from the village. If by any unlikely chance somebody gets curious, you’re looking for a leak in the roof. Got it? Good. Put me through to Missing Persons and stay where you are for ten minutes in case there’s a change of procedure. Then leave.”

Alleyn waited. He felt the pulse in the bruise on his jaw and knew it beat a little faster. “If they give a positive answer,” he thought, “it’s all up. Call off the exercise and back we go to square one.”

A voice on the line. “Hullo? Superintendent Alleyn? You were calling us, sir?”

“Yes. Any reports come in?”

“Nothing, sir. No joy anywhere.”

“Southampton? The stationer’s shop?”

“Nothing.”

“Thank God.”

“I beg pardon, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Never mind. It’s, to coin a phrase, a case of no news being good news. Keep going, though. Until you get orders to the contrary and if any sign or sniff of Carter comes up let me know at once. At once. This is of great importance. Understood?”

“Understood, Mr. Alleyn.”

Alleyn hung up and looked at his watch. Four-thirty.

“We give it an hour and then go over,” he said.

The hour passed slowly. Rain streamed down the blinded window pane. Small occupational noises could be heard in the front office and the intermittent sounds of passing vehicles.

At twenty past five the constable on duty brought in that panacea against anxiety that the Force has unfailingly on tap: strong tea in heavy cups and two recalcitrant biscuits.

Alleyn, with difficulty, swallowed the tea. He carried his cup into the front office where Sergeant McGuiness, with an affectation of nonchalance, said it wouldn’t be long now, would it?

“No,” said Alleyn, “you can gird up your loins, such as they are,” and returned to his own room. He and Fox exchanged a nod and put on heavy mackintoshes, sou’westers and gum boots. He looked at his watch. Half-past five.

“Give it three minutes,” he said. They waited.

The telephone rang in the front office but not for them. They went through. Sergeant McGuiness was attired in oilskin and sou’wester.

Alleyn said to P.C. Dance: “If there’s a call for me from Missing Persons, ring Upper Quintern Rectory. Have the number under your nose.”

He and Fox and McGuiness went out into the rain and drove to Upper Quintern village. The interior of the car smelt of stale smoke, rubber and petrol. The wind-screen wipers jerked to and fro, surface water fanned up from under their wheels and sloshed against the windows. The sky was so blackened with rainclouds that a premature dusk seemed to have fallen on the village. Not a soul was abroad in Long Lane. The red window curtains in the bar of the Passcoigne Arms glowed dimly.

“This is not going to let up,” said Fox.

Alleyn led the way up a steep and slippery path to the vicarage. They were expected and the door was opened before they reached it.

The Vicar, white-faced and anxious, welcomed them and took them to his study, which was like all parsonic studies with its framed photographs of ordinands and steel engravings of’classic monuments, its high fender, its worn chairs and its rows of predictable literature.

“This is a shocking business,” said the Vicar. “I can’t tell you how distressing I find it. Is it — I mean I suppose it must be — absolutely necessary?”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Alleyn.

“Inspector Fox,” said the Vicar, looking wistfully at him, “was very discreet.”

Fox modestly contemplated the far wall of the study.

“He said he thought he should leave it to you to explain.”

“Indeed,” Alleyn rejoined with a long hard stare at his subordinate.

“And I do hope you will. I think I should know. You see, it is consecrated ground.”

“Yes.”

“So — may I, if you please, be told?” asked the Vicar with what Alleyn thought, rather touching simplicity.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll tell you why we are doing it and what we think we may find. In honesty I should add that we may find nothing and the operation therefore may prove to have been quite fruitless. But this is the theory.”

The Vicar listened.

“I think,” he said when Alleyn had finished, “that I’ve never heard anything more dreadful. And I have heard some very dreadful things. We do, you know.”

“I’m sure.”

“Even in quiet little parishes like this. You’d be surprised, wouldn’t he, Sergeant McGuiness?” asked the Vicar. He waited for a moment and then said: “I must ask you to allow me to be present. I would rather not, of course, because I am a squeamish man. But — I don’t want to sound pompous — I think it’s my duty.”

Alleyn said: “We’ll be glad to have you there. As far as possible we’ll try to avoid attracting notice. I’ve been wondering if by any chance there’s a less public way of going to the church than up those steps.”

“There is our path. Through the shrubbery and thicket. It will be rather damp but it’s short and inconspicuous. I would have to guide you.”

“If you will. I think,” Alleyn said, “our men have arrived. They’re coming here first, I hope you don’t mind?”

He went to the window and the others followed. Down below on the “green” a small delivery van had pulled up. Three men in mackintoshes and wet hats got out. They opened the rear door and took out a large carpenter’s kit-bag and a corded bundle of considerable size that required two men to carry it.

“In the eye of a beholder,” Alleyn grunted, “this would look like sheer lunacy.”

“Not to the village,” said the Vicar. “It they notice. They’ll only think it’s the boiler again.”

“The boiler?”

“Yes. It has become unsafe and is always threatening to explode. Just look at those poor fellows,” said the Vicar. “Should I ask my wife to make tea? Or coffee?”

Alleyn declined this offer. “Perhaps later,” he said.

The men climbed the path in single file, carrying their gear. Rain bounced off their shoulders and streamed from their hat brims. Alleyn opened the door to them.

“We’re in no shape to come into the house, sir,” one of them said. He removed his hat and Bailey was revealed. Thompson stood behind him hung about with well-protected cameras.

“No, no, no. Not a bit of it,” bustled the Vicar. “We’ve people in and out all day. Haven’t we, McGuiness? Come in. Come in.”

They waited, dripping, in the little hall. The Vicar kilted up his cassock, found himself a waterproof cape and pulled on a pair of galoshes.

“I’ll just get my brolly,” he said and sought it in the porch.

Alleyn asked the men: “Is that a tent or an enclosure?” A framed tent, they said. It wouldn’t take long to erect: there was no wind.

“We go out by the back,” said the Vicar. “Shall I lead the way?”

The passage reeked of wetness and of its own house-smell: something suggestive of economy and floor polish. From behind one door came the sound of children’s voices and from the kitchen the whirr of an egg-beater. They arrived at a side door that opened on to the all-pervading sound and sight of rain.

“I’m afraid,” said the Vicar, “it will be rather heavy going. Especially with—” he paused and glanced unhappily at their gear, “—your burden,” he said.

It was indeed heavy going. The shrubbery, a dense untended thicket, came to within a yard of the house and the path plunged directly into it. Water-laden branches slurred across their shoulders and slapped their faces, runnels of water gushed about their feet. They slithered, manoeuvred, fell about and shambled on again. The Vicar’s umbrella came in for a deal of punishment

“Not far now,” he said at last and sure enough they were out of the wood and within a few yards of the church door.

The Vicar went first. It was already twilight in the church and he switched on lights, one in the nave and one in the south transept, which was furnished as a lady chapel. The men followed him self-consciously down the aisle and Bailey only just fetched up in time to avoid falling over the Vicar when he abruptly genuflected before turning right. The margin between tragedy and hysteria is a narrow one and Alleyn suppressed an impulse, as actors say, to “corpse”; an only too apposite synonym in this context.

The Vicar continued into the lady chapel. “There’s a door here,” he said to Alleyn. “Rather unusual. It opens directly on the Passcoigne plot. Perhaps—?”

“It will suit admirably,” Alleyn said. “May we open up our stuff in the church? It will make things a good deal easier.”

“Yes. Very well.”

So the men, helped by Sergeant McGuiness, unfolded their waterproof-covered bundle and soon two shovels, two hurricane lamps, three high-powered torches, a screwdriver and four coils of rope were set out neatly on the lady chapel floor. A folded mass of heavy plastic and a jointed steel frame were laid across the pews.

Bailey and Thompson chose a separate site in the transept for the assembling of their gear.

Alleyn said: “Right. We can go. Would you open the door, Vicar?”

It was down a flight of three steps in the corner of the lady chapel by the south wall. The Vicar produced a key that might have hung from the girdle of a Georgian jailer. “We hardly ever use it,” he said. “I’ve oiled the key and brought the lubricant with me.”

“Splendid.”

Presently, with a clocking sound and a formidable screech, the door opened on a downpour so dense that it looked like a multiple sequence of beaded curtains closely hung one behind the other. The church filled with the insistent drumming of rain and with the smell of wet earth and trees.

Sybil Foster’s grave was a dismal sight: the mound of earth, so carefully embellished by Bruce, looked as if it had been washed ashore with its panoply of dead flowers clinging to it: disordered and bespattered with mud.

They got the tent up with some trouble and great inconvenience. It was large enough to allow a wide margin round the grave. On one part of this they spread a ground-sheet. This added to an impression of something disreputable that was about to be put on show. The effect was emphasized by the fairground smell of the tent itself. The rain sounded more insistent inside than out.

Then men fetched their gear from the church.

Until now, the Vicar, at Alleyn’s suggestion, had remained in the church. Now, when they were assembled and ready — Fox, Bailey, Thompson, Sergeant McGuiness and the three Yard men, Alleyn went to fetch him.

He was at prayer. He had put off his mackintosh and he knelt there in his well-worn cassock with his hands folded before his lips. So, Alleyn thought, had centuries of parsons, for this reason and that, knelt in St Crispin’s-in-Quintern. He waited.

The Vicar crossed himself, opened his eyes, saw Alleyn and got up.

“We’re ready, sir,” Alleyn said.

He found the Vicar’s cape and held it out. “No, thanks,” said the Vicar. “But I’d better take my brolly.”

So with some ado he was brought into the tent where he shut his umbrella and stood quietly in the background, giving no trouble.

They made a pile of sodden flowers in a corner of the tent and then set about the earth mound, heaping it up into a wet repetition of itself. The tent fabric was green and this, in the premature twilight, gave the interior an underwater appearance.

The shovels crunched and slurped. The men, having cleared away the mound, dug deep and presently there was the hard sound of steel on wood. The Vicar came nearer. Thompson brought the coils of rope.

The men were expeditious and skillful and what they had to do was soon accomplished. As if in a reverse playback the coffin rose from its bed and was lifted on to the wet earth beside it.

One of the men went to a corner of the tent and fetched the screwdriver.

“You won’t need that,” Fox said quickly.

“No, sir?” The man looked at Alleyn.

“No,” Alleyn said. “What you do now is dig deeper. But very cautiously. One man only. Bailey, will you do it? Clear away the green flooring and then explore with your hands. If the soil is easily moved, then go on — remove it. But with the greatest possible care. Stand as far to the side as you can manage.”

Bailey lowered himself into the grave. Alleyn knelt on the ground-sheet, looking down, and the others in their glistening mackintoshes grouped round him. The Vicar stood at the foot of the grave, removed from the rest. They might have been actors in a modern production of the churchyard scene in Hamlet.

Bailey’s voice, muffled, said: “It’s dark down here: could I have a torch?” They shone their torches into the grave and the beams moved over pine branches. Bailey gathered armfuls of them and handed them up. “Did we bring a trowel?” he asked.

The Vicar said there was one on the premises, kept for the churchyard guild. Sergeant McGuiness fetched it. While they waited Bailey could be heard scuffling. He dumped handfuls of soil on the lip of the grave. Alleyn examined them. The earth was loamy, friable and quite dry. McGuiness returned with a trowel and the mound at the lip of the grave grew bigger.

“The soil’s packed down, like,” Bailey said presently, “but it’s not hard to move. I–I reckon—” his voice wavered, “I reckon it’s been dug over — or filled in — or — hold on.”

“Go steady, now,” Fox said.

“There’s something.”

Bailey began to push earth aside with the edge of his hands and brush it away with his palms.

“A bit more light,” he said.

Alleyn shone his own torch in and the light found Bailey’s hands, palms down and fingers spread, held in suspended motion over the earth they had disturbed.

“Go on,” Alleyn said. “Go on.”

The hands came together, parted and swept the last of the earth.

Claude Carter’s face had been turned into a gargoyle by the pressure of earth, and earth lay in streaks across its eyeballs.

iii

Before they moved it Thompson photographed the body where it lay. Then with great care and difficulty, it was lifted and stretched out on the ground-sheet. Where it had lain they found Claude’s rucksack, tightly packed.

“He’d meant to pick up his car,” Fox said, “and drive to Southampton.”

“I think so.”

Sybil Foster was returned to her grave and covered.

The Vicar said: “I’ll go now. May God rest their souls.”

Alleyn saw him into the church. He paused on the steps. “It’s stopped raining,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed. How strange.”

“Are you all right?” Alleyn asked him. “Will you go back to the vicarage?”

“What? Oh. Oh no. Not just yet. I’m quite all right, thank you. I must pray now, for the living, mustn’t I?”

“The living?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Vicar shakily. “Yes indeed. That’s my job. I have to pray for my brother man. The murderer, you know.” He went into the church.

Alleyn returned to the tent

“It’s clearing,” he said. “I think you’d better stand guard outside.” The Yard men went out

Bailey and Thompson were at their accustomed tasks. The camera flashed for Claude as assiduously as a pressman’s for a celebrity. When they turned him over and his awful face was hidden they disclosed a huge red grin at the nape of the neck.

“Bloody near decapitated,” Thompson whispered and photographed it in close-up.

“Don’t exaggerate,” Fox automatically chided. He was searching the rucksack.

“It’s not far wrong, Mr. Fox,” said Bailey.

“If you’ve finished,” Alleyn said. “Search him.”

Bailey found a wallet containing twenty pounds, loose change, cigarettes, matches, his pocket-book, a passport and three dirty postcards.

And in the inside breast pocket, a tiny but extremely soiled box such as a jeweller might use to house a ring. The key was in Claude’s wallet.

Alleyn opened the box and disclosed a neatly folded miniature envelope wrapped in a waterproof silk and inside the envelope, between two watch-glasses, a stamp: the Emperor Alexander with a hole in his head.

“Look here, Fox,” he said.

Fox restrapped the rucksack and came over. He placed his great palms on his knees and regarded the stamp.

“That was a good bit of speculative thinking on your part,” he said. “It looks to me as if that large box we found in his room could have contained this one and left the trace in the rubble, all right. Funny, you know, there it’s lain all these years. I suppose Captain Carter stowed it there that evening. Before he was killed.”

“And may well have used some of the cement in the bag that’s still rotting quietly away in the corner. And marked the place on the plan in which this poor scoundrel showed such an interest.”

“He wouldn’t have tried to sell it in England, surely?”

“We’ve got to remember it was his by right. Being what he was he might have settled for a devious approach to a fanatic millionaire collector somewhere abroad whose zeal would get the better of his integrity.”

“Funny,” Fox mused. “A bit of paper not much bigger than your thumbnail. Not very pretty and flawed at that. And could be worth as much as its own size in a diamond. I don’t get it.”

“Collector’s passion? Not I. But it comes high in the list as an incentive to crime.”

“Where’ll we put it?”

“Lock the box and give it to me. If I’m knocked on the head again take charge of it yourself. I can’t wait till I get it safely stowed at the Yard. In the meantime—”

“We go in for the kill?” said Fox.

“That’s it. Unless it comes in of its own accord.”

“Now?”

“When we’ve cleared up, here.” He turned to Bailey and Thompson. They had finished with what was left of Claude Carter and were folding the ground-sheet neatly round him and tying him up with rope. They threaded the two shovels inside the rope to make hand-holds.

And everything else being ready they struck the tent, folded it and laid it with its frame across the body. Bailey, Thompson, McGuiness and the Yard man stood on either side. “Looks a bit less like a corpse,” said Thompson.

“You’ll have to go down the steps this time,” Alleyn told them. “Mr. Fox and I will bring the rest of the gear and light the way.”

They took their torches from their pockets. Twilight had closed in now. The after-smell of rain and the pleasant reek of a wood fire hung on the air. Somewhere down in the village a door banged and then the only sound was of water dripping from branches. Sybil’s grave looked as if it had never been disturbed.

“Quiet,” said one of the men. “Isn’t it?”

“Shall we move off, then?” Fox asked.

He stooped to pick up his load and the other four men groped for their hand-holds under the tent.

“Right?” said Bailey.

But Alleyn had lifted a hand. “No,” he whispered. “Not yet. Keep still. Listen.”

Fox was beside him. “Where?”

“Straight ahead. In the trees.”

He turned his light on the thicket. A cluster of autumnal leaves sprang up and quivered. One after another the torch-beams joined his. This time all the men heard the hidden sound.

They spread out to the left and right of Alleyn and moved forward. The light on the thicket was intensified and details of foliage appeared in uncanny precision, as if they carried some significance and must never be forgotten. A twig snapped and the head of a sapling jerked.

“Bloody Daft Artie, by God!” said Sergeant McGuiness.

“Shall we go in?” asked Fox.

“No,” said Alleyn and then, loudly: “Show yourself. You can’t run away from it this time. Call it a day and come out.”

The leaves parted but the face that shone whitely between them, blinking in the torchlight, was not Daft Artie’s.

“This is it, Bruce,” said Alleyn. “Come out.”

iv

Bruce Gardener sat bolt upright at the table with his arms folded. He still bore the insecure persona of his chosen role: red-gold beard, fresh mouth, fine torso, loud voice, pawky turn of speech: the straightforward Scottish soldier-man with a heart of gold. At first sight the pallor, the bloodshot eyes and the great earthy hands clenched hard on the upper arms were not conspicuous. To Alleyn, sitting opposite him, to Fox, impassive in the background and to the constable with a notebook in the corner, however, these were unmistakable signs,

Alleyn said: “Shorn of all other matters: motive, opportunity and all the rest of it, what do you say about this one circumstance? Who but you could have dug Sybil Foster’s grave four feet deeper than was necessary, killed Carter, buried his body there, covered it, trampled it down and placed the evergreen flooring? On your own statement and that of other witnesses you were there, digging the grave all that afternoon and well into the night. Why were you so long about it?”

Alleyn waited. Gardener stared at the opposite wall. Once or twice his beard twitched and the red mouth moved as if he was about to speak. But nothing came of it.

“Well?” Alleyn said at last and Bruce gave a parody of clearing his throat. “Clay,” he said loudly.

The constable wrote: “Ans. Clay,” and waited.

“So you told me. But there was no sign of clay in that mound of earth. The spoil is loamy and easy to shift. So that’s no good,” Alleyn said. “Is it?”

“I’ll no’ answer any questions till I have my solicitor present.”

“He’s on his way. You might, however, like to consider this. On that night after the funeral when we had an acetylene lamp like yours up there by the grave, you, from your sister’s window, saw the light and it worried you. You told us so. And it wasn’t Daft Artie who lay in the cubbyhole in the hedge, it was you. It wasn’t Daft Artie who heaved half a brick at me, it was you. You were so shaken by the thought of us opening the grave that you lost your head, came down the hill, hid in the hedge, chucked the brick and then set up a phoney hunt for an Artie who wasn’t there. Right?”

“No comment.”

“You’ll have to find some sort of comment, sooner or later, won’t you? However, your solicitor will advise you. But suppose Artie was in bed with a cold that evening, how would you feel about that?”

“Ans. No comment,” wrote the constable.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there’s no point in plugging away at it. The case against you hangs on this one point. If you didn’t kill and bury Claude Carter, who did? I shall put it to you again when your solicitor comes and he no doubt will advise you to keep quiet. In the meantime I must tell you that not one piece of information about your actions can be raised to contradict the contention that you killed Mrs. Foster; that Carter, a man with a record of blackmail, knew it and exercised his knowledge on you that you, having arranged with him to pay the blackmail if he came to the churchyard that night, had the grave ready, killed him with the shovel you used to dig the grave and buried him there. Two victims in one grave. Is there still no comment?”

In the silence that followed, Alleyn saw, with extreme distaste, tears well up in Bruce’s china-blue, slightly squinting eyes and trickle into his beard.

“We were close taegither, her and me,” he said and his voice trembled. “From the worrrd go we understood each ither. She was more than an employer to me, she was a true friend. Aye. When I think of the plans we made for the beautifying of the property—” his voice broke convincingly.

“Did you plan those superfluous asparagus beds together and were the excavations in the mushroom shed your idea or hers?”

Bruce half-rose from his chair. Fox made a slight move and he sank back again.

“Or,” said Alleyn, “did Captain Carter, who, as you informed us, used to confide in you, tell you before he came down to Quintern on the last afternoon of his life that he proposed to bury the Black Alexander stamp somewhere on the premises? And forty years later when you found yourself there did you think it a good idea to have a look around on your own accord?”

“You can’t prove it on me,” he shouted without a trace of Scots. “And what about it if you could?”

“Nothing much, I confess. We’ve got more than enough without that. I merely wondered if you knew when you killed him that Claude Carter had the Black Alexander in his breast pocket. You gave it its second burial.”

Purple-red flooded up into Bruce’s face. He clenched his fists and beat them on the table.

“The bastard!” he shouted. “The bloody bastard. By Christ, he earned what he got.”

The station sergeant tapped on the door. Fox opened it.

“It’s his solicitor,” he said.

“Show him in,” said Fox.

v

Verity Preston weeded her long border and wondered where to look for a gardener. She chided herself for taking so personal a view. She remembered that there had been times when she and Bruce had seemed to understand each other over garden matters. It was monstrous to contemplate what they said he had done but she did not think it was untrue.

A shadow fell across the long border. She swivelled round on her knees and there was Alleyn.

“I hope I’m not making a nuisance of myself,” he said, “but I expect I am. There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

He squatted down beside her. “Have you got beastly couch-grass in your border?” he asked.

“That can hardly be what you wanted to ask but no, I haven’t. Only fat-hen, dandelions and wandering-willy.”

He picked up her handfork and began to use it. “I wanted to know whether the plan of Quintern Place with the spot marked X is still in Markos’s care or whether it’s been returned.”

“The former, I should imagine. Do you need it?”

“Counsel for the prosecution may.”

“Mrs. Jim might know. She’s here today, would you like to ask her?”

“In a minute or two, if I may,” he said shaking the soil off a root of fat-hen and throwing it into the wheelbarrow.

“I suppose,” he said, “you’ll be looking for a replacement”

“Just what I was thinking. Oh,” Verity exclaimed, “it’s all so flattening and awful. I suppose one will understand it when the trial’s over but to me, at present, it’s a muddle.”

“Which bits of it?”

“’Well, first of all, I suppose what happened at Greengages.”

“After you left?”

“Good Heavens, not before, I do trust.”

“I’ll tell you what we believe happened. Some of it we can prove: the rest follows from it. The prosecution will say it’s pure conjecture. In a way that doesn’t matter. Gardener will be charged with the murder of Claude Carter, not Sybil Foster. However, the one is consequent upon the other. We believe, then, that Gardener and Carter, severally, stayed behind at Greengages, each hoping to get access to Mrs. Foster’s room, Carter probably to sponge on her, Gardener, if the opportunity presented itself, to do away with her. It all begins from the time when young Markos went to Mrs. Foster’s room to retrieve his fiancée’s bag.”

“I hope,” Verity said indignantly, “you don’t attach—”

“Don’t jump the gun like that or we shall never finish. He reported Mrs. Foster alive and, it would be improper but I gather, appropriate, to add, kicking.”

“Against the engagement. Yes.”

“At some time before nine o’clock Claude appeared at the reception desk and, representing himself to be an electrician come to mend Mrs. Foster’s lamp, collected the lilies left at the desk by Bruce and took them upstairs. When he was in the passage something moved him to hide in an alcove opposite her door leaving footprints and a lily head behind him. We believe he had seen Bruce approaching and that when Bruce left the room after a considerable time, Carter tapped on the door and walked in. He found her dead.

“He dumped the lilies in the bathroom basin. While he was in there, probably with the door ajar, Sister Jackson paid a very brief visit to the room.”

“That large lady who gave evidence? But she didn’t say—”

“She did, later on. We’ll stick to the main line. Well. Claude took thought. It suited him very well that she was dead: he now collected a much bigger inheritance. He also had, ready-made, an instrument for blackmail and Gardener would have the wherewithal to stump up. Luckily for us he also decided by means of an anonymous letter and a telephone call to have a go at Sister Jackson, who had enough sense to report it to us.”

“I suppose you know he went to prison for blackmail?”

“Yes. So much for Greengages. Now for Claude, the Black Alexander and the famous plan.”

Verity listened with her head between her hands, making no further interruptions and with the strangest sense of hearing an account of events that had taken place a very, very long time ago.

“—so Claude’s plan matured,” Alleyn was saying. “He decided to go abroad until things had settled down. Having come to this decision, we think, he set about blackmailing Gardener. Gardener appeared to fall for it. No doubt he told Claude he needed time to raise the money and put him off until the day before the funeral. He then said he would have it by that evening and Claude could collect it in the churchyard. And I think,” said Alleyn, “you can guess the rest”

“As far as Claude is concerned — yes, I suppose I can. But — Bruce Gardener and Sybil — that’s much the worst. That’s so — disgusting. All those professions of attachment, all that slop and sorrow act — no, it’s beyond everything.”

“You did have your reservations about him, didn’t you?”

“They didn’t run along homicidal lines,” Verity snapped.

“Not an unusual reaction. You’d be surprised how it crops up after quite appalling cases. Heath, for instance. Some of his acquaintances couldn’t believe such a nice chap would behave like that.”

“With Bruce, though, it was simply for cash and comfort?”

“Just that. Twenty-five thousand and a very nice little house which he could let until he retired.”

“But he’d have got them anyway in the long run.”

“They were about the same age. She might well have outlived him.”

“Even so—. Yes, all right. So he knew the terms of the Will?”

“Oh, yes. He handed it over to Mrs. Jim, who noticed that the envelope was groggily gummed up. Mrs. Jim knew Mrs. Foster was given to afterthoughts: reopening and inefficiently resealing her correspondence and thought nothing of it. And there were only the Rattisbon and Prunella prints on the Will. Who do you think had removed Mrs. Foster’s and Johnson’s and Marleena Briggs’s? And his own.”

“Still,” Verity said. “He’d have been sitting pretty at Quintern if Sybil had lived.”

“Not if Dr. Schramm knew anything about it. They had a row and he intimated to Gardener, almost in so many words, that he’d get the sack.”

After a long pause, Verity said: “What about the stamp?”

“The Black Alexander? He knew about it. Captain Carter had talked about it. Bruce Gardener,” said Alleyn, “is in some ways the most accomplished villain I’ve come across. He’s never told me a lie when it wasn’t necessary. Over a long, long span, probably from his boyhood, he’s developed the persona that has served him best: the honest, downright chap; winning, plausible, a bit of a character with the added slightly phoney touch of the pawky Scot. By and large,” said Alleyn, “a loss to the Stage. I can see him stealing the show in superior soap.”

“The stamp?”

“Ah, yes. He hasn’t admitted it but I’ve no doubt he knew perfectly well that his sister lived in his captain’s village and that the stamp had never been found. Hence the multiplicity of asparagus and mushroom beds.”

“And then — Claude?”

“Yes. And along comes Claude and Claude’s found a map with a point marked X and while heart-stricken Bruce is digging his kind and generous lady’s grave Claude has a go in the fireplace and strikes it rich.”

“Oh, well!” said Verity and gave it up. And then, with great difficulty, she said: “I would be glad to know — Basil Smythe wasn’t in any way involved, was he? I mean — as her doctor he couldn’t be held to have been irresponsible or anything?”

“Nothing like that.”

“But — there’s something, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes. It appears that the Dr. Schramm who qualified at Lausanne was never Mr. Smythe, and I’m afraid Schramm was not a family name of Mr. Smythe’s mama. But it appears he will inherit his fortune. He evidently suggested — no doubt with great tact — that as the change had not been confirmed by deed poll, Smythe was still his legal name. And Smythe, to Mr. Rattisbon’s extreme chagrin, it is in the Will.”

“That,” said Verity, “is I’m afraid all too believable.”

Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “You’ll see, won’t you, why I was so anxious that Prunella should be taken away before we went to work in the churchyard?”

“What? Oh, that. Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

“If she was on the high seas she couldn’t be asked as next of kin to identify.”

“That would have been — too horrible.”

Alleyn got to his feet. “Whereas she is now, no doubt, contemplating the flesh-pots of the Côte d’Azure and running herself in as the future daughter-in-law of the Markos millions.”

“Yes,” Verity said, catching her breath in a half-sigh, “I expect so.”

“You sound as if you regret it.”

“Not really. She’s a level-headed child and it’s the height of elderly arrogance to condemn the young for having different tastes from one’s own. It’s not my scene,” said Verity, “but I think she’ll be very happy in it.”

And at the moment, Prunella was very happy indeed. She was stretched out in a chaise-longue looking at the harbour of Antibes, drinking iced lemonade and half-listening to Nikolas and Gideon, who were talking about the post from London that had just been brought aboard.

Mr. Markos had opened up a newspaper. He gave an instantly stifled exclamation and made a quick movement to refold the paper.

But he was too late. Prunella and Gideon had both looked up as an errant breeze caught at the front page.

“It’s no good, darlings,” Prunella said after a pause, “trying to hide it all up. I’m bound to hear, you know, sooner or later.”

Gideon kissed her. Mr. Markos, after making a deeply sympathetic noise, said: “Well — perhaps.”

“Go on,” said Prunella. “You know you’re dying to read it.”

So he read it and as he did so the circumspection of the man of affairs and the avid, dotty desire of the collector were strangely combined in Mr. Markos. He folded the paper.

“Darling child,” said Mr. Markos. “You now possess a fortune.”

“I suppose I must.”

He picked up her hands and beat them gently together. “You will, of course, take advice. It will be a momentous decision. But if,” said Mr. Markos, kissing first one hand and then the other, “if after due deliberation you decide to sell, may your father-in-law have the first refusal? Speaking quite cold-bloodedly, of course,” said Mr. Markos.

The well-dressed, expensively gloved and strikingly handsome passenger settled into his seat and fastened his belt.

Heathrow had passed off quietly.

He wondered when it would be advisable to return. Not, he fancied, for some considerable time. As they moved off the label attached to an elegant suitcase in the luggage rack slipped down and dangled over his head.

The End