Grave Mistake

Chapter 8: Graveyard (II)

i

May i join you?” asked Dr. Schramm. The folds from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth lifted and intensified. It was almost a Mephistophelian grin.

“Do,” said Alleyn and turned to Sister Jackson. “If Sister Jackson approves,” he said.

She looked at nothing, said nothing and compressed her mouth.

“Silence,” Dr. Schramm joked, “gives consent, I hope.” And he sat down.

“What are you drinking?” he invited.

“Not another for me, thank you,” said Alleyn.

“On duty?”

“That’s my story.”

“Dot?”

Sister Jackson stood up. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said to Alleyn and with tolerable success achieved a social manner. “I hadn’t realized it was so late.”

“It isn’t late,” said Schramm. “Sit down.”

She sat down. “First round to the doctor,” thought Alleyn.

“The bell’s by you, Alleyn,” said Schramm. “Do you mind?”

Alleyn pressed the wall-bell above his head. Schramm had leant forward. Alleyn caught a great wave of whiskey and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and not quite in focus.

“I happened to be passing,” he chatted. He inclined his head toward Sister Jackson, “I noticed your car. And yours, Superintendent.”

“Sister Jackson has been kind enough to clear up a detail for us.”

“That’s what’s known as ‘helping the police in their investigation,’ isn’t it? With grim connotations as a rule.”

“You’ve been reading the popular press,” said Alleyn.

The waiter came in. Schramm ordered a large Scotch. “Sure?” he asked them and then, to the waiter. “Correction. Make that two large Scotches.”

Alleyn said: “Not for me. Really.”

“Two large Scotches,” Schramm repeated on a high note. The waiter glanced doubtfully at Alleyn.

“You heard what I said,” Schram insisted. “Two large Scotches.”

Alleyn thought: “This is the sort of situation where one could do with the odd drop of omnipotence. One wrong move from me and it’ll be a balls-up.”

Complete silence set in. The waiter came and went. Dr. Schramm downed one of the two double whiskeys very quickly. The bar-parlour clock ticked. He continued to smile and began on the second whiskey slowly with concentration: absorbing it and cradling the glass. Sister Jackson remained perfectly still.

“What’s she been telling you?” Schramm suddenly demanded. “She’s an inventive lady. You ought to realize that. To be quite, quite frank and honest she’s a liar of the first water. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

“You followed me.”

“It’s some considerable time since I left off doing that, darling.”

Alleyn had the passing thought that it would be nice to hit Dr. Schramm.

“I realy must insist,” Schramm said. “I’m sorry, but you have seen for yourself how things are, here. I realize, perf’ly well, that you will think I had a motive for this crime, if crime it was. Because I am a legatee I’m a suspect. So of course it’s no good my saying that I asked Sybil Foster to marry me. Not,” he said wagging his finger at Alleyn, “not because I’d got my sights set on her money but because I loved her. Which I did, and that,” he added, staring at Sister Jackson, “is precisely where the trouble lies.” His speech was now all over the place like an actor’s in a comic drunken scene. “You wouldn’t have minded if it had been like that. You wouldn’t have minded all that much if you believed I’d come back earlier and killed her for her money. You really are a bitch, aren’t you, Dotty? My God, you even threatened to take to her yourself. Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? Where’s the bloody waiter?”

He got to his feet, lurched across the table and fetched up with the palms of his hands on the wall, the left supporting him and the right clamped down over the bell-push which could be heard distantly to operate. His face was within three inches of Alleyn’s. Sister Jackson shrank back in her chair.

“Disgusting!” she said.

Alleyn detached Dr. Schramm from the wall and replaced him in his chair. He then moved over to the door, anticipating the return of the waiter. When the man arrived Alleyn showed his credentials.

“The gentleman’s had as much as is good for him,” he said. “Let me handle it. There’s a side door, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes,” said the waiter, looking dubious. “Sir,” he added.

“He’s going to order another Scotch. Can you cook up a poor single to look like a double? Here — this’ll settle the lot and forget the change. Right?”

“Well, thank you very much, sir,” said the waiter, suddenly avid with curiosity and gratification. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Waiter!” shouted Dr. Schramm. “Same ’gain.”

“There’s your cue,” said Alleyn.

“What’ll I say to him?”

“ ‘Anon, anon, sir’ would do.”

“Would that be Shakespeare?” hazarded the waiter.

“It would, indeed.”

“Waiter!”

“Anon, anon, sir,” said the waiter self-consciously. He collected the empty glasses and hurried away.

“ ’Strordinary waiter,” said Dr. Schramm. “As I was saying. I insist on being informed for reasons that I shall make ’bundantly clear. What’s she said? ’Bout me?”

“You didn’t feature in our conversation,” said Alleyn.

“That’s what you say.”

Sister Jackson, with a groggy and terrified return to something like her habitual manner, said, “I wouldn’t demean myself.” She turned on Alleyn. “You’re mad,” she said, exactly as if there had been no break in their exchange. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was asleep.”

“Why didn’t you report your visit, then?” Alleyn said.

“It didn’t matter.”

“Oh, nonsense. It would have established, if true, that she was alive at that time.”

With one of those baffling returns to apparent sobriety by which drunken persons sometimes bewilder us, Dr. Scbxamm said: “Do I understand, Sister, that you visited her in her room?”

Sister Jackson ignored him. Alleyn said: “At about nine o’clock.”

“And didn’t report it? Why? Why?” He appealed to Alleyn.

“I don’t know. Perhaps because she was afraid. Perhaps because—”

Sister Jackson gave a strangulated cry. “No! No, for God’s sake! He’ll get it all wrong. He’ll jump to conclusions. It wasn’t like that. She was asleep. Natural sleep. There was nothing the matter with her.”

The waiter came back with a single glass, half full.

“Take that away,” Schram ordered. “I’ve got to have a clear head. Bring some ice. Bring me a lot of ice.”

The waiter looked at Alleyn, who nodded. He went out

“I’m going,” said Sister Jackson.—

“You’ll stay where you are unless you want a clip over the ear.”

“And you,” said Alleyn, “will stay where you are unless you want to be run in. Behave yourself.”

Schramm stared at him for a moment. He said something that sounded like: “Look who’s talking” and took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast coat-pocket, laid it on the table and began to fold it diagonally. The waiter reappeared with a jug full of ice.

“I really ought to mention this to the manager, sir,” he murmured. “If he gets noisy again, I’ll have to.”

“I’ll answer for you. Tell the manager it’s an urgent police matter. Give him my card. Here you are.”

“It — it wouldn’t be about that business over at Greengages, Would it?”

“Yes, it would. Give me the ice and vanish, there’s a good chap.”

Alleyn put the jug on the table. Schramm with shaking hands began to lay ice on his folded handkerchief.

“Sister,” he said impatiently. “Make a pack, if you please.”

To Alleyn’s utter astonishment she did so in a very professional manner. Schramm loosened his tie and opened his shirt. It was as if they both responded like Pavlovian dogs to some behaviouristic prompting. He rested his forehead on the table and she placed the pack of ice on the back of his neck. He gasped. A trickle of water ran down his jawline. “Keep it up,” he ordered and shivered.

Alleyn, watching this performance, thought how unpredictable the behaviour of drunken persons could be. Sister Jackson had been in the condition so inaccurately known as “nicely, thank you.” Basil Schramm had been in an advanced stage of intoxication but able to assess his own condition and after a fashion deal with it. And there they were, both of them, behaving like automata and, he felt sure, frightened out of what wits they still, however precariously, commanded.

She continued to operate the ice packs. A pool of water enlarged itself on the table and began to drip to the carpet.

“That’s enough,” Schramm said presently. Sister Jackson squeezed his handkerchief into the jug. Alleyn offered his own and Schramm mopped himself up with it. He fastened his shirt and reknotted his tie. As if by common consent he and Sister Jackon sat down simultaneously, facing each other across the table with Alleyn between them on the banquette: like a referee, he thought. This effect was enhanced when he took out his notebook. They paid not the smallest attention to him. They glared at each other, he with distaste and she with hatred. He produced a comb and used it.

“Now, then,” he said. “What’s the story? You went to her room at nine. You say she was asleep. And you,” he jabbed a finger at Alleyn, “say she was dead. Right?”

“I don’t say so, positively. I suggested it.”

“Why?”

“For several reasons. If Mrs. Foster was sleeping, peacefully and naturally, it’s difficult to see why Sister Jackson did not report her visit.”

“If there’d been anything wrong, I would have,” she said.

Schramm said: “Did you think it was suicide?”

“She was asleep.”

“Did you see the tablets — spilled on the table?”

“No. No.”

“Did you think she’d been drugged?”

“She was asleep. Peacefully and naturally. Asleep.”

“You’re lying, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Come on!”

She began to gabble at Alleyn: “It was the shock, you know. When he rang through and told me, I came and we did everything — such a shock — I couldn’t remember anything about how the room had looked before. Naturally not.”

“It was no shock to you,” Dr. Schramm said profoundly. “You’re an old hand. An experienced nurse. And you didn’t regret her death, my dear. You gloated. You could hardly keep a straight face.”

“Don’t listen to this,” Sister Jackson gabbled at Alleyn, “it’s all lies. Monstrous lies. Don’t listen.”

“You’d better,” said Schramm. “This is the hell-knows-no-fury bit, Superintendent, and you may as well recognize it. Oh, yes. She actually said when she heard about Sybil and me that she bloody well wished Syb was dead and she meant it. Fact, I assure you. And I don’t mind telling you she felt the same about me. Still does. Look at her.”

Sister Jackson was hardly a classical figure of panic but she certainly presented a strange picture. The velvet beret had flopped forward over her left eye so that she was obliged to tilt her head back at an extravagant angle in order to see from under it. Oddly enough and deeply unpleasant as the situation undoubtedly was, she reminded Alleyn momentarily of a grotesque lady on a comic postcard.

They began to exchange charge and countercharge, often speaking simultaneously. It was the kind of row that is welcome as manna from Heaven to an investigating officer. Alleyn noted it all down, almost under their noses, and was conscious, as often before, of a strong feeling of distaste for the job.

They repeated themselves ad nauseam. She used the stock phrases of the discarded mistress. He, as he became articulate, also grew reckless and made more specific his accusations as to her having threatened to do harm to Sybil Foster and even hinted that on her visit to Room 20 she might well have abetted Sybil in taking an overdose.

At that point they stopped dead, stared aghast at each other and then, for the first time since the slanging match had set in, at Alleyn.

He finished his notes and shut the book.

“I could,” he said, “and perhaps I should, ask you both to come to the police station and make statements. You would then refuse to utter or to write another word until you had seen your respective solicitors. A great deal of time would be wasted. Later on you would both state that you had been dead drunk and that I had brought about this pitiable condition and made false reports about your statements and taken them down in writing. All this would be very boring and unproductive. Instead, I propose that you go back to Greengages, think things over and then concoct your statements. You’ve been too preoccupied to notice, I fancy, but I’ve made pretty extensive notes and I shall make a report of the conversation and in due course, invite you to sign it. And now, I expect you will like to go. If, that is, you are in a fit state to drive. If not you’d better go to the lavatories and put your fingers down your throats. I’ll be in touch. Good evening.”

He left them gaping and went out to his car where he waited about five minutes before they appeared severally, walking with unnatural precision. They entered their cars and drove, very slowly, away.

ii

Fox had not gone to bed at their pub. He and Alleyn took a nightcap together in Alleyn’s room.

“Well, now,” said Fox rubbing his hands on his knees. “That was a turn-up for the books, wasn’t it? I’d’v;ve liked to be there. How do you read it, then, Mr. Alleyn? As regards the lady, now? Dropped in on the deceased round about nine p.m. and was watched by crepe-soles from the alcove and is being blackmailed by him. Which gives us one more reason, if we’d needed it, for saying crepe-soles is Claude?”

“Go on.”

“But,” said Fox opening his eyes wide, “but when the Doctor (which is what he isn’t, properly speaking, but never mind) when the Doctor rings through an hour or thereabouts later and tells her to come to Room Twenty and she does come and the lady’s passed away, does she say—” and here Mr. Fox gave a sketchy impersonation of a female voice: “ ‘Oh, Doctor, I looked in at nine and she was as right as Christmas’? No. She does not. She keeps her tongue behind her teeth and gets cracking with the stomach pump. Now why? Why not mention it?”

“Schramm seemed to suggest that at some earlier stage, in a fit of jealous rage, the Jackson had threatened she’d do some mischief to Mrs. Foster. And was now afraid he’d think that on this unmentioned visit she’d taken a hand in overdosing her with barbiturates.”

“Ah,” said Fox. “But the catch in that is: Mrs. Foster, according to our reading of the evidence, was first drugged and then smothered. So it looks as if he didn’t realize she was smothered, which if true puts him in the clear. Any good?”

“I think so, Br’er Fox. I think it’s quite a lot of good.”

“Would you say, now, that Sister J. would be capable of doing the job herself — pillow and all?”

“Ah, there you have me. I think she’s a jealous, slighted woman with a ferocious temper. Jealous, slighted women have murdered their supplanters before now but generally speaking they’re more inclined to take to the man. And by George, judging by the way she shaped up to Schramm tonight I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“By and large, then, these two are a bit of a nuisance. We’d got things more or less settled — well, I had,” said Mr. Fox with a hard look at Alleyn, “and it was just a matter of running Claude to earth. And now this silly lot crops up.”

“Very inconsiderate.”

“Yerse. And there’s no joy from the Claude front, by the way. The Yard rang through. The search is what the press likes to call nation-wide but not a squeak.”

“Southampton?”

“They’d sent a copper they don’t reckon looks like it, into The Good Read, in Port Lane. It’s an accommodation-address shop all right but there was nothing for ‘Morris.’ Very cagey the chap was: sussy for drugs but they’ve never collected enough to knock him off. The D.I. I talked to thinks it’s possible Claude Carter off-loaded the stuff he brought ashore there. If he’s thinking of slipping out by Southhampton he could have fixed it to collect Sister J.’s blackmail delivery on the way.”

“Suppose she’d posted it today, first-class mail, it wouldn’t arrive at the earliest until tomorrow,” said Alleyn.

“They’ve got the shop under obbo non-stop. If he shows, they’ll feel his collar, all right,” said Fox.

“If. It’s an odd development, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “There he is, large as life, mousing about up at Quintern Place and in and around the district until (according to Daft Artie) twelve o’clock or (according to Bruce) nine, last night. He comes down the lane with his pack on his back. He opens the squeaky lych-gate and leaves his prints there. And vanishes.”

“Now you see him, now you don’t. Lost his nerve, d’you reckon?”

“We mustn’t forget he left that note for Mrs. Jim.”

“P’raps that’s all there is to it. P’raps,” said Fox bitterly, “he’ll come waltzing back with a silly grin on his face having been to stay with his auntie. P’raps it was somebody else blackmailing Sister J., and we’ll get egg all over our faces.”

“It’s an occupational hazard,” Alleyn said vaguely and then to himself: “ ‘Into thin air’ and but for the footprints at the lych-gate, leaving ‘not a rack behind.’ Why? And then — where to, for pity’s sake?”

“Not by the late train to London,” said Fox. “They said at the station, nobody entered or left it at Great Quintern.”

“Hitched a lift?”

“Nice job for our boys, that’ll be. Ads in the papers and what a hope.”

“You’re in a despondent mood, my poor Foxkin.”

Mr. Fox, who, although an occasional grumbler, was never known to succumb to the mildest hint of depression, placidly ignored this observation.

“I shall cheer you up,” Alleyn continued. “You need a change of scene. What do you say to a moonlight picnic?”

“Now then!” said Fox guardedly.

“Well, not perhaps a picnic but a stroll in a graveyard? Bruce Gardener would call it a Gothic stroll, no doubt.”

“You don’t mean this, I suppose, Mr Alleyn?”

“I do, though, I can not get Daft Artie’s story out of my head, Fox. It isn’t all moonshine, presumably, because there are those prints, Carter has disappeared and there is the lay-by in the hedge. I suggest we return to the scene and step it out. What’s the time?”

“Eleven-ten.”

“The village ought to be asleep.”

“So ought we,” sighed Fox.

“We’d beter give the ‘factory’ a shout and ask if they can raise an acetylene lamp or its equivalent.”

“A reconstruction, then?”

“You find it a fanciful notion? A trifle vieux-jeu, perhaps?”

“I daresay it makes sense,” said Fox resignedly and went off to telephone.

Sergeant McGuiness on night duty at the station did produce an acetylene lamp, kept in reserve against power failures. He had it ready for them and handed it over rather wistfully. “I’d’ve liked to be in on this,” he confided to Fox. “It sounds interesting.”

Alleyn overheard him. “Can you raise a copper to hold the desk for an hour?” he asked. “We could do with a third man.”

Sergeant McGuiness brightened. He said: “Our P.C. Dance was competing in the darts semi-finals at the local tonight. He’ll be on his way home but if he’s won he’ll be looking in to tell me. I daresay if it’s agreeable to you, sir—”

“I’ll condone it,” said Alleyn.

A scraping sound and a bobbing light on the window-blind announced the arival of a bicycle. The sergeant excused himself and hurried to the door. A voice outside shouted: “Done it, Sarge.”

“You never!”

“Out on the double seven.”

“That’s the stuff.”

“Very near thing, though. Wait till I tell you.”

“Hold on.” The sergeant’s voice dropped to a mumble. There was a brief inaudible exchange. He returned followed by a ginger-headed simpering colossus.

“P.C. Dance, sir,” said Sergeant McGuiness.

Alleyn congratulated P.C. Dance on his prowess and said he would be obliged if they could “borrow” him. “Borrow” is a synonym for “arrest” in the Force and the disreputable pun, if pun it was, had an undeserved success. They left Dance telephoning in triumph to his wife.

On their way to the village Alleyn outlined the object of the exercise for the gratified McGuiness. “We’re trying to make sense of an apparently senseless situation,” he said. “Item: could a walker coming down Stile Lane into Long Lane see much or anything of the light from Bruce Gardener’s lamp? Item: can someone hidden in the hedge see the walker? Item: can the walker, supposing he climbs the steps to the church and goes into the church—”

“Which,” said the sergeant, “excuse me, he can’t. The church is locked at night, sir. By our advice. Possibility of vandals.”

“See how right we were to bring you in. Who locks it? The Vicar?”

“That’s correct, Mr. Alleyn. And once the deceased lady was brought in that’s what he’d do. Lock up the premises for the night.”

“Leaving the church in darkness?” Fox asked.

“I think not, Fox. I think he’d leave the sanctuary lamp alight. We can ask.”

“So it’s after the arrival of the deceased that Artie’s story begins?”

“And our performance too for what it’s worth. Do they keep early hours in the village, Sergeant?”

“Half an hour after the local closes they’re all in bed.”

“Good.”

“Suppose,” Fox said on a note of consternation, “Daft Artie’s sleeping out?”

“It’ll be a bloody nuisance,” Alleyn grunted. “If he is we’ll have to play it by ear. I don’t know, though. We might pull him in to demonstrate.”

“Would he co-operate?”

“God knows. Here we are. We make as little noise as possible. Don’t bang the doors. Keep your voices down.”

They turned a sharp corner through a stand of beech trees and entered the village: a double row of some dozen cottages on either side of Long Lane, all fast asleep: the church, high above, its tower silhouetted against the stars, the rest almost disappearing into its background of trees. The moon had not yet risen so that Long Lane and the bank and hedge above it and the hillside beyond were all deep in shadow.

Alleyn drove the car on to the green near the steps and they got out.

“Hullo,” he said. “There’s somebody still awake up Stile Lane.”

“That’s the widow Black’s cottage,” said the sergeant. “There’ll be someone looking after her — the brother, no doubt.”

“Looking after her? Why?”

“Did you not hear? She was knocked over by a truck on the way back from the funeral this afternpon. The blind corner up the lane. I’ve been saying for years it’d happen. The chap was driving dead slow for the turning and she fell clear. He helped her in and reported it to us.”

“Would that be Bruce Gardener’s sister?” asked Fox.

“That’s right, Mr. Fox. We’re not likely to disturb them.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” Alleyn murmured. “If it’s Bruce up there and he looks out of the window and sees light coming from where he dug the grave and had his own lamp last night, he may come down to investigate. Damn!” He thought for a moment. “Oh, well,” he said, “we tell him. Why not? Let’s get moving. I’d like you, Sergeant, to act as the boy says he did. Get into the layby in the hedge when the times comes. Not yet. We’ll set you up. I’ll do the Carter bit. Mr. Fox is Bruce. All you have to do is to keep your eyes and ears open and report exactly what you see. Got the lamp? And the shovel? Come on, and quietly does it.”

He opened the lych-gate very cautiously, checking it at the first sign of the squeak. They slid through, one by one and moved quietly up the steps.

“Don’t use your torches unless you have to,” Alleyn said and as their eyes adjusted to the dark it thinned and gravestones stood about them. They reached the top. Alleyn led the way round the church: the nave, the north transept, the chancel, until they came to the Passcoigne plot and Sybil Foster’s grave. The flowers on the mound smelt heavy on the night air and the plastic covers glinted in the starlight as if phosphorescent.

Fox and McGuiness crouched over the lamp. Presently it flared. The area became explicit in a white glare. The sergeant spent some time regulating the flame. Fox stood up and his gigantic shadow rose against the trees. The lamp hissed. Fox lifted it and put it by the grave. They waited to make sure it was in good order.

“Right,” said Alleyn at last. “Give us eight minutes to get down, Fox, and then start. Don’t look into the light, Sergeant, it’ll blind you. Come on.”

The shadow of the church was intensified by the light beyond it and the steps took longer to descend than to climb. When they were back at the car Alleyn murmured: “Now, I’ll show you the lay-by. It’s in the hedge across the lane and a little to our right. About four yards further on there’s a gap at the top of the bank with a hurdle-gate. You can ease round the post, go through into the field and turn back to the lay-by. If by any chance somebody comes down the lane and gets nosey we’re looking for a missing child thought to be asleep near the hedge. Here we are. Make sure you’ll recognize it from the other side. There’s that hazel plant sticking up above the level of the hedge.”

They moved along the hedge until they came to the gap.

“Through you go,” Alleyn whispered, “turn left and then back six paces. You’ll have to crawl in, helmet and all. Give one low whistle when you’re set and I’ll go on into Stile Lane. That’s when your obbo begins.”

He watched the shadowy sergeant climb the bank and edge his bulk between the gate-post and the hedge. Then he turned about and looked up at the church. It was transformed. A nimbus of light rose behind it. Treetops beyond the Passcoigne plot started up, uncannily defined, like stage scenery and as he watched, a gargantuan shadow rose, moved enormously over the trees, threw up arms, and the sweeping image of a shovel, sank and rose again. Mr. Fox had embarked on his pantomime.

The sergeant was taking his time. No whistle. The silence, of a countryside, breathed out its nocturnal preoccupations: stirrings in the hedgerow, far-distant traffic, the movements of small creatures going about their business in the night

“Sst!”

It was the sergeant, back in the gap up the hill. His helmet showed against Mrs. Black’s lighted window in Stile Lane. Alleyn climbed the bank and leant over the hurdle.

“Artie is there,” breathed Sergeant McGuiness. “In his bidey-hole. Curled up. My Gawd, I nearly crawled in on top of him.”

“Asleep?”

“Sound.”

“It doesn’t matter. Come back into the lane and lean into the hollow in the bank below the lay-by. Your head will be pretty much on a level with his. I simply want to check that he could, have seen what he said he saw and heard. Back you come.”

The sergeant had gone. Alleyn slipped into the lane and walked up it, treading on the soft margin. Fox’s shadow still performed its gigantic ritual against the tree-tops.

Alleyn turned left into Stile Lane and walked a little way up it. He was now quite close to Mrs. Black’s cottage. The light behind the window was out. He waited for a moment or two and then retraced his steps, walking, now, in the middle of the road. He wondered if Claude Carter had worn his crepe-soled shoes last night. He wondered, supposing Daft Artie woke and saw him, if he would repeat his eldritch shriek.

Now he was almost opposite the lay-by. Not a hint of the sergeant, in blackest shadow under the hedge.

Alleyn paused.

It was as if an ironclad fist struck him on the jaw.

iii

He lay in the lane and felt grit against his face and pain and he heard a confusion of sounds. Disembodied voices shouted angrily.

“Mr. Fox! Come down here. Mr. Fox.”

He had been lifted and rested against a massive thigh. “I’m all right,” somebody said. He said it. “Where’s Fox? What happened?”

“The bloody kid. He chucked a brick at you. Over my head. Gawd, I thought he’d done you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Sergeant McGuiness.

“Where’s Fox?”

“Here,” said Fox. His large concerned face blotted out the stars. He was breathing hard. “Here I am,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

A furious voice was roaring somewhere out on the hillside beyond the hedge. “Come back. You damned, bloody young murderer. Come back, till I have the hide off of you.” Footsteps thudded and retreated.

“That’s Bruce,” said Alleyn, feeling his jaw. “Where did he spring from? The cottage?”

“That’s right,” somebody said.

Fox was saying: “Get cracking, Sarge. Sort it out. I’ll look after this!”

More retreating footsteps at toe run.

“Here, get me up. What hit me?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Alleyn. Let me have a look. Caught you on the jaw. Might have broken it.”

“You’re telling me. What did?” He struggled to his knees and then with Fox’s help to his feet. “Damn and blast!” he said. “Let me get to that bank while my head clears. What hit me?”

“Half a brick. The boy must have woken up. Bruce and the sarge are chasing him.”

Fox had propped him against the bank and was playing a torch on his face and dabbing it very gently with his handkerchief. “It’s bleeding,” he said.

“Never mind that. Tell me what happened.”

“It seems that when you got as far as here — almost in touching distance of the sarge — the boy must have woken up, seen you, dark and all though it is, picked up a half-brick from his fireplace and heaved it. It must have passed over the sarge’s head. Then he lit off.”

“But, Bruce?”

“Yes. Bruce. Bruce noticed the light in the graveyard and thought it might be vandals. There’s been trouble with them lately. Anyway, he came roaring down the hill and saw the boy in the act. How’s it feel now?”

“Damn’ sore but I don’t think it’s broken. And the sergeant’s chasing Daft Artie?”

“Him and Bruce.”

“No good making a song and dance over it: the boy’s not responsible.”

“It’s my bet they won’t catch him. For a start, they can’t see where they’re going.”

“I wonder where his home is,” said Alleyn.

“Bruce’ll know. It must,” said Fox, still examining Alleyn’s jaw, “have caught you on the flat. There’s a raw patch but no cut. We’ll have to get you to a doctor.”

“No, we won’t,” Alleyn mumbled. “I’ll do all right. Fox, how much could he see from the lay-by? Enough to recognize me? Go and stand where I was, will you?”

“Are you sure—?”

“Yes. Go on.”

Fox moved away. The light still glowed beyond the church. It was refracted faintly into the centre of the lane. Fox was an identifiable figure. Just.

Alleyn said: “So we know Artie could have recognized Carter and I suppose, me. Damnation, look at this.”

A window in the parsonage on the far side of the green shone out. Somebody opened it and was revealed as a silhouette. “Hullo!” said a cultivated voice. “Is anything the mattah?”

The Vicar.

“Nothing at all,” Alleyn managed. “A bit of skylarking in the lane. Some young chaps. We’ve sorted it out.”

“Is that the police?” asked the Vicar plaintively.

“That’s us,” Fox shouted. “Sorry you’ve been disturbed, sir.”

“Nevah mind. Is there something going on behind the church? What’s that light?”

“We’re just making sure there’s been no vandalism,” Alleyn improvised. It hurt abominably to raise his voice. “Everything’s in order.”

By this time several more windows along the lane had been opened.

“It’s quite all right, sir,” Fox said. “No trouble. A bunch of young chaps with too much on board.”

“Get that bloody light out,” Alleyn muttered.

Fox, using his own torch, crossed the lane. The lych-gate shrieked. He hurried up the steps and round the church.

“You don’t think perhaps I should just pop down?” the Vicar asked doubtfully, after a considerable pause.

“Not the slightest need. It’s all over,” Alleyn assured him. “They’ve bolted.”

Windows began to close. The light behind the church went out.

“Are you sure? Was it those lads from Great Quintern? I didn’t hear motor bikes.”

“They hadn’t got bikes. Go back to bed, Vicar,” Alleyn urged him. “You’ll catch your death.”

“No mattah. Goodnight then.”

The window was closed. Alleyn watched Fox’s torchlight come bobbing round the church and down the steps. Voices sounded in the field beyond the hedge. Bruce and the sergeant. They came through the hurdle and down the bank.

“I’m here,” Alleyn said. “Don’t walk into me.” The sergeant’s torchlight found him.

“Are you all right, sir? ’E’s got clean away, I’m afraid. It was that bloody dark and there’s all them trees.”

Bruce said: “I’ll have the hide off my fine laddie for this. What’s possessed the fule? He’s never showed violent before. By God, I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”

“I suppose it was Artie?”

“Nae doubt about it, sir.”

“Where did you come from, Bruce?”

It was as they had thought. Bruce had been keeping company with his shaken sister. She had gone to bed and he was about to return to Quintern Place. He looked out of the window and saw the glare of the lamp in the churchyard.

“It gied me a shock,” he said, and with one of his occasional vivid remarks: “It was oncanny: as if I mysel’ was in two places at once. And then I thought it might be they vandals and up to no good. And I saw the shadow on the trees like mine had been. Digging. Like me. It fair turned my stomach, that.”

“I can imagine.”

“So I came the short cut down the brae to the lane as fast as I could in the dark. I arrived at the hedge and his figure rose up clear against the glow behind the kirk. It was him all right. He stood there for a second and then he hurrled something and let out a bit screech as he did so. I shouted and he bolted along the hedge. The sergeant was in the lane, sir, with you in the light of his torch and flat on your back and him saying by God, the bugger’s got him and yelling for Mr. Fox. So I went roaring after the lad and not a hope in hell of catching him. He’s a wild crittur. You’d say he could see in the dark. Who’s to tell where he’s hiding?”

“In his bed, most likely,” said the sergeant. “By this time.”

“Aye, you may say so. His mother’s cottage is a wee piece further down the lane. Are you greatly injured, Superintendent? What was it he hurrled at you?”

“Half a brick. No, I’m all right.”

Bruce clicked his tongue busily. “He might have kilt you,” he said.

“Leave it alone, Bruce. Don’t pitch into him when you see him. It wouldn’t do any good. I mean that.”

“Well,” said Bruce dourly, “if you say so.”

“I do say so.”

Fox joined them, carrying his doused lamp and the shovel.

Bruce, who wasted no ceremony with Fox, whom he seemed to regard as a sort of warrant-officer, asked him in scandalized tones what he thought he’d been doing up yon. “If you’ve been tampering with the grave,” he said furiously, “it’s tantamount to sacrilege and there’s no doubt in my mind there’s a law to deal with it. Now then, what was it? What where you doing with yon shovel?”

“It was dumb show, Bruce,” Alleyn said wearily. “We were testing the boy’s story. Nothing’s been disturbed.”

“I’ve a mind to look for mysel’.”

“Go ahead, by all means if you want to. Have you got a torch?”

“I’ll leave it,” Bruce said morosely. “I dinna like it but I’ll leave it.”

“Goodnight to you, then. I think, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn, “I’ll get in the car.”

His face throbbed enormously and the ground seemed to shift under his feet. Fox piloted him to the car. The sergeant hovered.

When they were under way Fox said he proposed to drive to the outpatients’ department at the nearest hospital. Alleyn said he would see Dr. Field-Innis in the morning, that he’d had routine tetanus injections and that if he couldn’t cope with a chuck under the chin the sooner he put in for retirement the better. He then fainted.

He was out only for a short time, he thought, as they seemed not to have noticed. He said in as natural a manner as he could contrive that he felt sleepy, managed to fold his arms and lower his head, and did, in fact, drift into a sort of doze. He was vaguely aware of Fox giving what is known as “a shout” over the blower.

Now they were at the station and so, surprisingly, was the district police surgeon.

“There’s no concussion,” said the police surgeon, “and no breakage and your teeth are O.K. We’ll just clean you up and make you comfortable and send you home to bed, um?”

“Too kind,” said Alleyn.

“You’ll be reasonably comfortable tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t push it too far, though. Go easy.”

“That,” said Mr. Fox in the background, “will be the day.”

Alleyn grinned, which hurt. So did the cleaning up and dressing.

“There we are!” said the police surgeon, jollily. “It’ll be a bit colourful for a day or two and there’s some swelling. You won’t have a permanent scar.”

“Most reassuring. I’m sorry they knocked you up.”

“What I’m there for, isn’t it? Quite an honour in this case. Good morning.”

When he had gone Alleyn said: “Fox, you’re to get on to the Home Secretary.”

“Me!” exclaimed the startled Fox. “Him? Not me!”

“Not directly you, but get the Yard and the A.C. and ask for it to be laid on.”

“What for, though, Mr. Alleyn? Lay on what?”

“What do you think? The usual permit.”

“You’re not,” said Fox, “—you can’t be — you’re not thinking of digging her up?”

“Aren’t I? Can’t I? I am, do you know. Not,” said Alleyn, holding his pulsing jaw, “in quite the sense you mean but — digging her up, Br’er Fox. Yes.”